My gaze automatically travelled back the B wing hallway, glancing at the doorway. I was, in a big way, glad I’d be alone on floor five tonight. Despite the A wing debacles that were sure to happen, I’d have time to talk to 5B without Anna’s listening ears. I didn’t need anyone in this place having more gossip about how the new girl was crazy.
***
“They think you can help them all,” he whispered when I went in his room a little while after Anna left. I ditched the protocol for room checks, skipping straight to his. I needed to piece more information together.
“Who does?” I asked, studying him.
“Brown and Blue and Pink. Red too. I didn’t see her last night. Thank you,” he said, grinning ear to ear. His demeanor was a placid lake, still on the surface. I wondered what was churning just below in the murkiness, however.
I wanted to ask him about the red drawing girl. I wanted to know her story. Before I had time, though, to broach the subject, he crossed his room and pointed to a neatly stacked pile of paper.
“Take these. Little Brown wants to go, too.” His outreached arm was steady as he extended the stack of paper toward me. I hesitated before reaching out, grabbing the stack.
The top picture was a crayon drawing done in brown again, just like the other night. A skinny, lanky boy was standing on a mound of dirt. In place of his eyes, simply drawn worms bored into his head. His mouth was open in what appeared to be a scream.
Terror gripped me as I thought of the stapler incident, of the figure who had appeared. It was impossible to link them, the figure I’d seen and the crudely made lines on the page. Still, similarities resonated between them, enough similarities to help me ascertain the cold, hard truth.
There were more beings than just the girl from the red drawing. They were all real.
5B pivoted and strolled back to his cot. His face lacked the anguish I’d seen so many times. In some ways, it seemed as though he’d transferred that anguish to me with the passing of the drawings. I flipped through picture after picture, all portraying a lanky boy, all in the color brown. Some pictures had the boy in a hole in the ground, some underneath a tree. Some featured puddles at his feet. All were mundane, except for one fact.
I thought about the photos of red and how she’d appeared. I thought of how it was like she’d jumped from the page, like he’d imagined her up and made her come to life with his box of crayons. I was terrified that the tall boy with worms in his eyes and a mouth spewing a substance would be breathed to life with his drawings again, would show up in my apartment. Like a demented magician, he seemingly created these horrifying beings out of nothing but his waxy crayons in his solitary room.
I shook, studying the drawings for a moment with indecision crowding my brain. I needed to step back. I was already drawing attention, and I had enough of my own problems to worry about. Whatever this was, I couldn’t be a part of it. With 5B staring, I set the drawings down on the desk.
“It’s too late, Jessica,” he barked, his calm demeanor turning volatile as he watched the drawings hit the table. “They’ve already chosen you.” His voice boomed through the cell, an announcer’s voice filled with confidence. He leaped from his cot, crossing the room in a few deep strides. Before I could even think, he had me cornered.
“Take them,” he rasped. “Take them all. They need you. I need rid of them.” He violently whipped the papers in my face. I grabbed them, holding back the tears. I looked again at the brown boy. Why was he screaming in this picture? What did 5B do to him? To them all? And what would I be able to do about it?
“You can help us. They told me you could.” His whisper was now a pitiful plea, a prayer to an unseen God who perhaps didn’t exist. He pivoted again, slower this time. His shoulders drooped. He had faith in a woman who wasn’t deserving, a woman who wanted to be rid of this problem, too. But maybe 5B was right. It was too late to turn around. Redwood had its clutches in me. It had chosen me, in some ways. He had chosen me.
I turned to leave the room, my shaking hand holding the pictures that I knew I would spend countless hours stewing over. Who were the children, and where did they come from? How was 5B connected? Eerie ideas were starting to brew, ones I wasn’t quite keen on discovering. Still, if my hunches were accurate, then I needed to break through. I needed to solve this because the information could be eye-opening.
I turned to look at 5B one more time before leaving the room. But as I did, something else caught my eye.
A flash of brown in the corner of the room. I blinked, and it was gone, but not before the muffled groan bellowed. I was certain it wasn’t an earthly noise. I was also certain it would be another tireless night. I shuddered at the thought, tears falling as I realized the only way to stop the madness was perhaps to enter it straight on.
It was at the door, though, that the chant began, an eerie, off-tune rhyme that sank deep into my bones.
“Little Brown, face down, one, two, three, straight from the gate.” He said it twice, but he didn’t have to. I
