Chapter Fourteen
Under the guise of being sent on a mission, I managed to assuage Roxy to tell me where the records were kept. Not the typical records I drafted daily, but the ‘deep,’ records. The files on every resident’s past, treatments, and prognoses.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that the documents were housed in the basement, deep in the underground section of Redwood. I also shouldn’t have been shocked that according to Roxy, they were off-limits to the staff. When you have a dark past like Redwood, secrets aren’t meant to be aired out for all to see.
It took some finagling the next night to get to them. Finagling that involved swiping a key from a custodian after distracting him. It was risky. I could lose my job. Maybe even worse. I thought of the icy stare Anna shot at me when I asked too many questions. I considered how everyone at Redwood adhered to a tacit code of conduct, which required keeping your head down and your hands busy. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time until the keys were missed. I also knew I couldn’t afford to get caught. My legs shakily carried me onward, down the stairs to the forgotten corner of Redwood.
The musty smell assaulted my noise as I edged forward, my heart racing. I knew that at any moment, it could all end. The files were so close, though. Perhaps the answers were so close. I was on shaky ground without a map. There were no true, clear answers to the dead.
Into the records room I went, dust floating about as I used the flashlight on my cell phone to take inventory. There were so many filing cabinets, organized by years, by letters. How many secrets did the place hold? And how many secrets had never even been transcribed onto paper? I breathed in the archaic dust and breathed out hope, fear, and terror rolled into one.
I reminded myself to focus and panned my light over the labels. I found my way to the most recent filing cabinets after some time, certain that any minute an alarm would sound to alert the staff of the missing keys. Hopefully, John’s lunch would keep him occupied for a full thirty minutes, and more importantly, hopefully no one saw me enter his tiny office and talk to him when the keys went missing.
I oriented myself to the lettering system and did some rooting. I papercut myself on a file that was out of place. I shoved the ‘Mills’ file aside as I dug through the stack of E’s until I came to the right one.
Robert Essic.
I inhaled deeply and prepared myself for whatever was inside. I scanned through the documents, startled at a slightly younger version of 5B that stared at me from the front of the file. He had a moustache then and thick, brown hair. He had the same, stoic facial expression in his intake photo that he often wore in the present day. I searched his information, taking photos of some information I thought might be helpful.
His address. A picture of the newspaper clipping along with the article that went with his arrest. Doctors’ notes. I took as many photos as I could, my heart pounding as I reminded myself what was at stake. Just as I was preparing to put the file back, footsteps sounded from behind. Heavy, fast moving footsteps inched into the dusty room of records, and my heart wedged itself in my throat.
I set the file back in the cabinet and inched behind it. I knew my beam of light was certainly visible, and the door was open. There was no hiding from whoever had found me. Unwilling to wait breathlessly for the interminable amount of time until my fate presented itself, I raised my voice.
“Hello?”
There was no answer, just footsteps again. I panned my light and jumped at the sight of red hair floating behind a gauzy figure.
Instinctively retreating, my back against the cool, dusty metal of the cabinet, I tried again.
“Who’s there?”
Nothing but a chill in the air and goosebumps on my arm. I walked toward the exit, knowing I needed to rid myself of the keys strategically so as to not raise questions.
But as I approached the doorway, the red-haired figure darted out from nowhere, stopping me in my tracks. I dropped my phone, cursed, and backed up. My eyes maladjusted to the dark area, I could only make out the edges of the ethereal, haunting figure. Was this the same one from the laundry room? Was it connected to 5B or the asylum? I could no longer tell the difference in the hellish house of horrors that had become my life.
“What do you want?” I asked, a whispered prayer between us.
I felt chilled and terrified, but my intrinsic curiosity kept me frozen in place.
“Be careful, Jessica. Do not unearth secrets you cannot handle.” The voice was soft and feminine but tinged with a hint of sorrow and distance.
“Who are you?”
But the figure was gone. I knew it before I reached down and reclaimed my phone. Still, I shined the light on the doorway to the records room in the hopes that the figure would be there to reveal the answers I sought. There wasn’t a trace of anything or anyone. I shivered, confused and dazed. I locked up the room, heading back to the stairs to ditch the keys and to return to my work.
All night, though, as I handled mischievous residents and questioning glances from Anna, I thought of the figure and who she could be. More importantly, I wondered how she was woven into the fabric of my life that had become more otherworldly than I’d liked to have admitted.
Chapter Fifteen
Iwaited until I got to my car at the end of my shift to glance at the files on my phone. The knowledge
