The elevator doors shut as he got out, warily observing me with his hands in his pockets. I went up to floor five, my fingers pressing against my forehead. It still ached from the ear-splitting noise. What the hell?
Had I met another Josephine, this one from the basement? That had to be it, I realized with a chill. Why hadn’t anyone warned me?
When I got back to the desk on floor five, a bit steadier but still stressed from the encounter, Anna was doing some paperwork.
“Did you forget the sheets?” she asked, looking at my empty hands.
“Anna, why didn’t you tell me about the ghost girl down there? She scared the shit out of me. I thought someone had escaped, and that noise . . .” I rambled on. It didn’t even strike me as crazy that ghosts and hauntings were now a part of my daily language.
Anna put up a hand. “Whoa, slow down. What ghost girl? In the laundry? I’ve never heard or seen of any ghosts in the laundry. We’ve got Josephine, the Drowning Girl, and a few others. But none in the basement that I’ve ever heard of.”
“But there was a girl. She had red hair, braided, and her face was a mess. It was all melted and contorted. And there was this insane sound,” I argued.
Anna shook her head. “Darlin’, I’ve been here for as long as anyone, and I know all the horror stories from this place. There’s no laundry ghost, and no red-haired, smashed face girl. Not that I’ve been apprised of. If you saw someone, she must be yours.”
“Mine?” I asked, not liking the sound of that.
Anna shrugged. “She doesn’t belong to any of us, is all I’m saying. Maybe you’ve just been working too many hours, and the whole Josephine thing got you freaked out. A weary mind can make up all sorts of oddities. Just ask the people around here. Why don’t you take a break? I’ll go get that laundry. And I’ll keep my eye out for a, what is it? Red-haired girl with a melted face?” Anna offered a sweet smile, but to me, it looked pitying.
I needed to get a grip. I hadn’t been this stressed since . . .
***
That night, I had the dream again. I woke up in a sweat, wondering how anyone stayed sane at a place like Redwood. Wondering if anyone actually did. The perspiration poured down my face as I got a glass of water, feeling like I was, in many ways, drowning.
The Drowning Girl
Drowning is a terrible way to die. Many are convinced it is like floating peacefully upward. Nevertheless, if you have ever, by chance, witnessed an actual drowning, you know the choking, sputtering, lungs on fire feeling is far from peaceful. Just ask the staff on the second floor of Redwood.
It is on the second floor of Redwood that the Drowning Girl presides, as she is affectionately called by the staff. Her real name, Rebecca Fields, has long since been obliterated from the oral history passed down in the asylum, but in some ways, the fault is purely her own. She’s made a new name for herself amongst the patients and the staff.
During the day, the Drowning Girl is quiet, amicable even. Sometimes residents claim to see her swollen blue face peeking in through the windows, but it is all in good fun. She has been known to wave to a few residents in a show of greeting, and they often wave back. The nurses on floor two have seen her with their own eyes, if only from their peripherals, so they know she is not simply a figment of the overactive and irrational imaginations of Redwood’s lost. The girl jauntily skips about, playfully flickering light switches or creaking open the large, hospital-like white doors that were installed during the great renovation of 1985.
But at night, it is all a different story. The Drowning Girl changes, as many of the residents do. The staff on floor two are cautious when they are ambling about the floor, especially during the month of May. Records show that is the month she perished due to a lung infection—but as with all things in Redwood, the true account has been passed down through the workers who run the asylum. Shaped by history and marred by time, certainly some elements of fantasy have been added. However, there is hardly one current worker who would argue that clearly Rebecca Fields did not, in fact, die of a lung infection, at least not of natural causes.
At night, the Drowning Girl turns into a terrifying sight indeed. Lurking about corners, creeping on the ceiling, her face bulges as she screams in agony, her shrieks mingling with the terrified cries of Redwood’s most vocal residents. Her anguish is palpable through her sputtering and coughing, and the puddles of water she leaves are a tripping hazard. Sometimes, especially in May, the puddles have been noted to be red and sticky, perhaps made of blood.
When the Drowning Girl comes along in the hallways, the staff on floor two do not go into the staff bathroom on the floor. To do so incites an anger that is inexplicable and unexpected from a girl her size. She has been noted to fling open stall doors so hard they have given a few workers a concussion. Items are thrown, tiles in the wall cracked. Her rage in that bathroom, nevertheless, is understandable—because it is said that in that bathroom on floor two, her main nurse drowned her in the toilet one muggy May night.
Rebecca had been abandoned in Redwood in the 1930s for her morose behavior and penchant for the occult—meaning she murdered the neighbor’s dog and often talked about death. Certainly, the fact that her older brother slaughtered her mother in front
