My stomach sank with the knowledge that I had drawn so much attention to myself, first with 5B, and now here. I was on thin ice. If the janitor was right, how much time did I really have? Not long at all, and yet I was no closer to finding peace for 5B, or to figuring anything out at all. I wanted to leave, to get in my car and drive away. But it felt selfish somehow. Wrong. I had enough sins on my soul. I needed to try to make things right. A flash of that windy, dark night, that rearview mirror in my mind.
I coughed, hoping to clear it.
“Can I take him for you?” I asked, smiling nonthreateningly. Roxy studied me, and I thought she would say no. But she shrugged.
“It’s my break time anyway. Sure. But come straight back then. We have meds to distribute before lights out.”
I nodded and took over driving the wheelchair. I steadily headed toward the elevator, the ding startling my jumpy self as I wheeled him in and punched the button for floor five. I wanted to tell him it would be okay, to reassure him that I would figure it out. But I didn’t know how it could be okay. Or what to do about it. Should I call the police, tell them I suspected shady happenings?
No. I didn’t have any evidence of anything at all. I needed something solid I could take to them, something to get them looking into the asylum. I shuddered at the thought that perhaps some who had gone before me had done just that. How many other “residents” were simply prisoners in the place of horrors, abandoned by the staff, by Redwood, by the world?
“I’m sorry,” I said to him before the doors dinged open on floor five.
I heard an anguishing gurgle. I didn’t know which would be worse—if he’d lost mental capacity in the treatment, or if he didn’t. Guilt assaulted me as I wheeled him toward his new prison, tears threatening to fall as I wondered how the hell any of it could be real. I expected to see Anna at the desk, but it was Brett who greeted me.
“Where’s Anna?” I asked, pausing at the door to the room.
“On break.”
“Oh,” I murmured. So I would have a couple minutes until Roxy told her that I’d come up here. I was certain that Anna would be up to floor five in a hurry. It didn’t leave much time.
I felt terrible about dumping the man into the room and leaving in a hurry, but if he had a prayer of being saved, I needed to get proof that could be investigated. If I could prove that 5B had murdered children, perhaps it would launch an investigation. Perhaps the police could be encouraged to investigate Redwood altogether. It was a ludicrous idea, thinking I could bring down an institution that had terrorized for well over a century. But there was apparently no one else.
I rushed down the hall after locking up, eager to see if there were any more drawings I could find in 5B. I burst into the room quickly, knowing I didn’t have much time. He was in his cot, but there was a stack of paper on his desk. I claimed them, glancing down to see blue.
He’d said there were four. I’d seen Red, Brown, and Pink. I’d remembered the rhyme about Blue, had seen his drawings on that first day. But something was missing.
Yellow. I shuddered as my suspicions from early rang true. Shit. It was worse than I could’ve ever thought.
I didn’t have time to ask as badly as I wanted to—and perhaps a part of me didn’t want to verify what I was assuming to be true at all. I rushed out, tucking the drawings carefully in my pockets as I beelined for the elevator, returning to floor two to pretend. To pretend to be a mindless staff member. To pretend to be focused on my job. To pretend like Redwood wasn’t savagely swallowing up humans and spitting out bones.
So much pretending in everyday life, isn’t there?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The dreams that came when I fell asleep made me wish I’d never crawled into bed, despite my exhaustion. After studying the drawing of Blue, his bulging eyes and lake waters lapping at his feet, I waited patiently to see if any spectral visitors would appear. Nodding off at my desk as the sun was rising, I decided I couldn’t fight it any longer. If the children were to come, they would come. I couldn’t stay awake anymore.
Sleep did not come easily, anyway. It was interrupted by fitful, sweaty intervals. In my dreams, I saw fire lapping up the body of a little boy. I was a little girl with a knife at my throat, propped against a gravestone. I was tied in a chair, worms crawling on my legs. And at one point, I sank down, down, down further in a murky red lake, my feet tied to an anchor as I gasped for air. Every dream felt real, and each one was accompanied by a gurgling or screaming sound that seemed to echo in my room even after I opened my eyes.
And then, when I was just prepared to get up and call it quits, it all changed.
He arrived, his shorts and black T-shirt soaked and dripping. His eyes bulging from his sickeningly bloated face and his bulging limbs. He smelled of dry rot and mildew, his whole body blue and wet. He didn’t talk, just stood at the edge of my bed. Coughing up water, I cringed at the sight of him but also felt relieved. Finally. Proof, if you could call it that. Because I recognized him at once.
Anthony Ambridge, his blonde hair and blue eyes visible even through the distortion. And with
