Ashes to Ashes (Experiment in Terror #8) (20 page)

“
They actually
did that to children?” Rebecca asked.

“
Not all,” he
said. “But some. They rarely survived the procedure. If they did,
they were usually worse off, walking around like their chests had
been scooped out.”

“
Jesus,” Dex
swore under his breath. “I just can’t imagine it.”

“
The horrors
of history,” Oldman said slowly. “And I’d love to say that a visit
to this room was as bad as it got for a youngster. But with rumors
of abuse and crumbling standards in Sea Crest, I hate to think of
what could be worse.”

“
Was there
abuse?” I asked.

He cocked his head, considering
his answer before saying, “My grandmother never reported anything
like that. She was a good woman, saintly almost, who loved to help
others in need. But they weren’t all like her. It was hard to be up
here, isolated, in constant fear of death while constantly
surrounded by it. The nurses had rules too. They couldn’t get
emotional over patients, they had to act like everything was fine
all the time. It was hard. Many nurses killed themselves. And some
nurses, we’ll if you believe the rumors, some went crazy. Took it
out on the children. But they are, of course, just rumors. None of
this has ever been documented. I should know.”

My body felt like it was
getting colder by the moment. This floor had fewer windows than the
others, making it darker. If Dex thought we’d explore this floor in
the night, he was absolutely out of his mind.

“
We should get
going,” Oldman said as he came toward us with Dex in tow. “I need
to get back to the museum soon and we’ve one more floor to
go.”

“
But you
haven’t told us what you’ve seen here,” Dex pointed out.

Oldman grunted and stopped in
the middle of the hallway. “Personally, on this floor, it’s not
what I’ve seen but more what I’ve heard. What I’ve felt. I’ve had
the feeling that someone was behind me when there was no one there.
I’ve heard screams coming from the blood room. I’ve heard wet
coughing, like someone is coughing up blood, the sound of wheels
going past, and footsteps. I’ve seen a doctor in a white coat
standing in the corner of one of the rooms.” He shuddered at that
thought. “And I hope I never see him again. Can we get going?”

I picked up on how noticeably
agitated he was acting, which in turn made me feel queasy. If the
historian wanted to get going, we were definitely going.

“
What have
others seen?”Dex asked as we climbed the stairs to the final
floor.

Oldman gave him a grave look.
“It depends who you ask and what their beliefs are.”

“
Beliefs?” I
repeated.

He nodded as we stopped on the
landing. Below us was the darkness of the third floor, above us was
the contrasting light of the fourth floor. And yet I felt the
fourth floor held more secrets, more animosity than any of the
others.

“
People have
reported seeing the same…creature…on the third and fourth
floors.”

“
Creature?” I
felt icy trails going down my spine. I didn’t want to venture what
the creature looked like.

“
The fourth
floor, as you’ll soon see, was used to house the patients who were
close to death and the ones that had gone insane. There used to be
a metal gate right here,” he pointed across the stairs, “that
prevented them from escaping. As weak and skinny as they were, they
were always a threat. Some people say that with all the bad energy,
the lost souls, the mistreated patients, the experiments gone
wrong, the mass grave—“

“
Mass grave?”
I interrupted.

He gave me a sympathetic look.
“Many bodies were never claimed by their families. They feared the
disease would get them, even in death. Superstitions, you know. The
dead had to be put somewhere.”

This place couldn’t possibly
get worse.

“
So what was
the creature?” Rebecca asked.

“
Many that
have seen it believe it’s a demon,” he said. “It looks like a human
but isn’t. Crawls on the ceiling and walls.”

And it totally just got worse.
That was what the bad thing was. A demon.

A motherfucking demon.

I started to think that maybe
Pippa’s warning hadn’t been a figment of my imagination after
all.

“
Does it ever
hurt anyone?” Dex asked in a low voice.

Oldman shook his head and stuck
a toothpick between his teeth. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never
seen it. That doesn’t mean it’s not there but…as you can tell, this
place will play tricks on you. There’s too much history, too many
people who have passed through these walls. You never know what
you’re going to get here. And I find that fascinating.” He looked
up at the fourth floor. “On second thought, do you mind if we skip
that floor? You’re welcome to take a quick look but that whole
thing I said earlier about not pushing my luck…”

“
No, that’s
totally cool,” I said a little too gratefully.

“
Do you mind
if I just shoot a few seconds?” Of course Dex had to ask
that.

Oldman shook his head and
sauntered over to the window on the landing, hands behind his back.
“Go ahead.”

Rebecca decided to go up with
Dex while I stayed at the historian’s side as he looked out the
window.

“
You know,” I
admitted, hoping that talking would calm my heart rate down,
“before I knew about this place, I had no idea that sanatoriums
existed.”

He smiled quietly. “That was
the same back then. Despite these hospitals all over the
country—despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people came
to them to die—everyone liked to pretend that this didn’t exist.
But it did. You can shuffle people away into isolated buildings and
lock them up with false promises of a cure. But the patients, the
ones that never saw their families again, they didn’t forget. It’s
no wonder this place is haunted. All the ghosts here just want
someone to talk to, someone to recognize that they exist, even when
they don’t.”

“
And the demon
thing?” I said, my voice shaking slightly.

“
Maybe some
ghosts don’t want attention. Maybe they just want to inflict the
pain and terror that they felt every day. Maybe some are too far
gone in their hate and revenge that they cease to be ghosts and
become something else.” He spoke quietly as he leaned in closer and
speared me with a shrewd gaze. “Have you seen it?”

I felt like my throat was
closing up. I nodded slowly.

He made an “ah” face, then said
calmly, “You’ve got a nice energy about you. They like that.”

“
Okay,” Dex
said loudly as he jogged down the stairs with Rebecca at his side.
“There wasn’t too much to see up there. Looks pretty much the same
as the second floor, although I think I located the door to the
body chute.”

“
Dangerous
thing,” Oldman commented. “You know they found a runaway girl in
there one year. She’d snuck in by the post office and then got
stuck for a few days.”

“
Post office?”
I asked.

“
There’s an
abandoned one down the road. The body chute actually goes all the
way in. It’s a real long walk in a very dark place.”

I shot Dex a look to warn him
to not even think about it, but Oldman went on, “After that, they
boarded it up around the post office so you couldn’t get in. Or
out, I suppose.” He glanced at his watch.”Well, I’m afraid it’s
time for me to go. I hope you’ve enjoyed your tour of the Sea Crest
Sanatorium.”

We walked down the stairs, and
with each landing we reached, my shoulders felt lighter and
lighter. Once we got to the main floor, the first bell rang and
teachers began scurrying about, and I started to feel like I was
back in my own skin again.

“
And I hope
you be extra careful while you’re here,” Oldman said to me just
before he walked off into the sunshine.

“
What did he
say?” Dex asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing I
wasn’t already thinking.”

CHAPTER TEN

After we’d gone through the
tour, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to Brenna about her
experience with the bad thing. In fact, I was so close to
suggesting we head out into Tillamook to get some food while we
could, just to be in the sunshine and see the freedom of the waves,
when Kelly came looking for us while we were sprawled in the
teacher’s lounge.

“
Hi there,”
she said in her quiet voice, her hair gathered delicately around
her face. “Brenna wanted to let you know that she had to go home
sick and that she’ll take a rain check for tomorrow.”

“
Oh no,” I
said, straightening up in my chair. “Is she okay?”

She nodded. “I took a quick
look at her. It’s probably food poisoning or a 24-hour bug. She’ll
be fine.”

“
What about
her students?” Dex asked. “What do they do if she’s not there to
teach? Is there a sub?”

I gave him a look. “You better
not be thinking about teaching art, Dex, because I’ve seen your
drawings.” Nude drawings, I wanted to add. Like, Anime porn.

“
There’s no
sub for her class on such short notice,” Kelly said. “The kids get
an extra hour of recess with either me or one of the lunch ladies
supervising. I’ll just take them out in the front yard where it’s
sunny, let them run around.”

“
Can we come
watch?” Dex asked, getting off the couch, mug of coffee in his
hands.

“
Dex…” Rebecca
said in a warning tone, not getting what he was doing.

Kelly shrugged with one
shoulder and smiled shyly. “Sure. I bet you guys need some sun
after being in here all morning.”

She was right about that. After
she left, I got up and poked Dex in the side. “What’s your deal,
mister?”

He eyed us both like we were
morons. “If Brenna isn’t there, then we can talk to the kid.
Jody.”

“
I’m not sure
if that’s the right thing to do,” Rebecca cautioned. “I think we
need permission.”

“
It doesn’t
have to be on camera,” Dex said adamantly. “And besides, you’re
losing your touch, producer lady. You need to be thinking about the
big picture here. Roll with the punches, turn disappointment into
opportunity.”

“
I think
you’ve gone mad,” Rebecca said, swiping his coffee out of his hand.
“But I see what you’re saying.”

I didn’t really care either
way; I just wanted to be outside in the sunshine.

Though the playground and small
sports field was in the back of the building, the amount of trees
kept the sun from reaching the ground. Out in the front there were
wide fields on either side of the driveway, with picnic tables
scattered about. We plunked ourselves down at one with microwaved
meals and tried to eat all the while wondering which kid was
Jody.

Eventually, however, she found
us.

“
Are you the
ghost hunters?” a little girl asked as she walked toward us. I
noticed an orange rubber ball in her hands. The sunshine in her
blonde hair and the green freshness of the grass made everything
look so wholesome, but that damn ball was a weighty reminder of
what was always present at this place.

“
That we are,”
Dex said with a wide, welcoming smile. “And who might you
be?”

“
I’m Jody,”
she said, rubbing at her nose. She was a cute kid with big blue
eyes, a little on the short side for her age, dressed head to toe
in a matching pink leopard sweat suit. “Miss Brenna went home sick
today.”

“
We heard,”
Rebecca said. I was surprised to see how warm her features became
as she addressed her. “But the nurse Kelly said she would be fine.
She’ll probably be back tomorrow, feeling as good as
new.”

Jody shrugged and started
twisting back and forth at the waist. “I guess. I was sick for a
while.”

“
Were you?” I
asked, even though Brenna had told us.

“
Yes,” she
said. “I had consumption.”

I nearly spit out my orange
juice. Rebecca recovered faster than I did.

“
Consumption?”
she repeated. “I don’t think you had that.”

“
I did,” Jody
said like it wasn’t a big deal. “The nurse said it wasn’t and my
doctor Willard said it wasn’t, but Elliot said it was. I was
coughing up blood. He said that’s how it happened to him.” She
stopped twisting and looked me right in the eye. “Shawna told me
I’d never see my family again.”

She kept staring at me to the
point where Dex and Rebecca glanced over to see what was going
on.

“
Who is
Shawna?” I asked gingerly, trying to keep my voice light and
breezy.

“
Shawna isn’t
my friend. She doesn’t like that Elliot pays attention to me. And
she doesn’t like you.”

I felt like walls were closing
in on me. “She doesn’t like me?” I barely got out. “I’ve never met
her. We just got here yesterday.”

“
She says she
saw you earlier when you were looking in her room,” Jody said
matter-of-factly. “She’s looking at you right now.”

Oh, Jesus. Oh,
just
no
. “What?”

Jody pointed at the building. I
followed her finger to the second floor windows. I didn’t see
anything there; the sun was shining off the broken panes. “I…I
don’t see anything,” I told her.

“
She’s there,”
she said assuredly. “You just have to look for her.”