Cainsville: Visions Part 34

"Can we agree this place is creepy?" Ricky whispered.

I nodded and pulled my hand back. "Macy said it wasn't an army base, but that's what it looks like."

"Could be. We're heading to the biggest building, right?"

"Yep. In the middle."

He surveyed the landscape. Beyond the pillbox houses we could make out buildings a couple of stories tall. We stuck to shadows and silence as we made our way toward them.

I made notes of my surroundings, trying to arrange everything into a mental map. There'd been only one road leading in, but there were more here, laid out in a grid pattern. Like an army base or other "prepackaged" community. What else needed to be isolated like this? A prison? A commune? It seemed too open for the former and too industrial for the latter.

We were pa.s.sing the last of the house-like buildings when I caught sight of words carved into the foundation. I touched Ricky's arm to stop him as I bent to read. Someone had painstakingly etched a sentence into the concrete blocks.

There is no freedom from the prison of the mind.

I looked around at the tiny houses with no gla.s.s in the barred windows. With doors that could be locked from the outside.

I fought chills as I rose. We continued on, me following in Ricky's tracks as we skirted a two-story building, circling until we could see around the front.

There was a car in the middle of the main road. The interior light was on, the pa.s.senger door open. Across the street stood a building that looked like a high school. A long three-story rectangle, saved from architectural obscurity by a tower rising an extra twenty feet over the main doors. On top of the tower was a cross with a broken arm. To the left, an empty flagpole groaned in the wind. There was a balcony on the front tower, half the railing missing.

Over the main doors, I could make out a sign, with letters big enough to read in the moonlight. Part of the first word was obscured, but I could see the rest. State Hospital.

"Hospital?" Ricky whispered. "Way out here? With cabins for patients?"

"It's a mental hospital."

"An asylum?"

I gazed around. Those locked box cabins wouldn't exactly meet modern standards for mental care, but they weren't cages, either. I took in the architecture. Early twentieth century. The rise of modern psychiatry, if I remembered my college cla.s.ses. Not anyplace I'd want to stay, but past the era of treating patients like animals.

"An early psychiatric inst.i.tution," I whispered. "Not Bedlam, but not up to today's code."

An experiment, it seemed, in a more humane way to treat the mentally ill. Still locking them up and keeping them away from normal folks, but giving them some sense of a community. Yet I remembered those words carved in stone, and a chill ran through me, as it hadn't in the cemetery. That was death. Final and unavoidable. This...?

There is no freedom from the prison of the mind.

I shook it off. Knowing the function of the compound helped, if only to keep my brain from whirring to solve the puzzle. Ricky motioned he was going to slip from the shelter of the building and take a look down the road. I stayed where I was and watched him as he crept along the wall. He moved three careful steps from it, staying in its shadow as he peered down the lane.

He scanned the collection of buildings. Then he gestured for me to wait as he set out, flush with the wall then crossing the gap to the next building with a few fluid steps, never pausing to check where he put his feet down, as if knowing they'd land silently. When he did pause, his gaze swept the road, his head moving slowly, deliberately.

He looks like he's hunting.

Desire and fascination mingled unbidden as I watched him. Wind bl.u.s.tered past, and his blond hair whipped against his face, but he didn't even seem to notice, just kept looking along the buildings. Then he returned to me.

"Someone's down there," he said. "Watching for us."

"Third building across the road, right? I noticed a faint light."

He shook his head. "Too obvious. That's a decoy. Same as the building beside this one where the door's cracked open. Both are staged. He's in the one to the right of it. Second story. Left front corner room."

"What's the giveaway?"

"I drew him out, standing in the road like that. He knows you're not alone now, which should put him on notice. If the girl's over there-" he pointed at the three-story building "-he can't get to her without us seeing. You can go look for her while I keep an eye on him."

"Thank you."

Keeping an eye on our mystery man didn't mean staying where we were. There was no need, now that he'd spotted Ricky. So we darted to the car, using that for cover, before dashing to the three-story building across the road.

The open front door was plastered with more No Trespa.s.sing and Private Property signs, along with warnings that the building was in unsafe condition and trespa.s.sing could result in serious injury or death. Judging by the number of jimmy marks in the frame, the warnings hadn't stopped urban explorers intent on taking a look.

The door opened into a reception room. It seemed tiny, given the size of the building. I guess they hadn't expected many visitors. A counter extended across the room, with mail cubbies behind it. Bits of crumbled concrete and blown-in leaves littered the floor. My footsteps crunched across the debris as we walked.

I took out my phone, for both the flashlight and the directions I'd jotted down from Macy's instructions.

"I need to go that way," I said, pointing. There were doorways at either end of the reception area, the doors long gone.

"And I'll go that way." Ricky pointed opposite. "Upstairs, where I have a better vantage point. Can you stand watch while I do that? I'll text when I'm in place."

I nodded.

"Be careful in here," he whispered. "Just because I know where the girl's kidnapper is doesn't mean he's alone."

"I know."

It took Ricky a few minutes to get upstairs. Then he texted to say he could still see the guy, and I set out.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX.

The open doorway led to a hall. The exit I wanted was on my left, with its door hanging by the top hinge. I walked through it into another hall, this one so short I wondered why they bothered making it a hall at all. It was really more of an entranceway, leading into a cavernous room. I stepped inside.

Huge windows let in enough moonlight for me to look around. The room took up two stories, with rows of pipes hanging from the ceiling. Were they pipes? Or had they once held lighting? I couldn't tell from down here. As for what the room had been used for, there was little doubt of that. There were still a few metal bed frames, bolted to the floor.

As I moved through the ward, movement flickered above. Rotting rafters showed through chunks of missing ceiling. A black shape took form on one of the suspended pipes. I lifted my flashlight to see a perched raven watching me.

"Ewch i ffwrdd, bran," I muttered.

The raven lifted its wings, ruffling its feathers as if offended. Then it settled back into silent watching. At another flash of motion, I noticed a hole in the roof. Moonlight streamed through it. Then the moon vanished as an owl glided past.

Ravens and owls. That's no coincidence. They're here for a reason.

Watching me.

I kept going with one eye on the raven. It didn't move. I pa.s.sed through the left doorway at the end of the ward and came out into ...

A bathroom.

Not a restroom, but an actual room of baths. Four deep tubs, built right into the floor of the narrow room. For hydrotherapy, I presumed. Writing covered the walls. Not the "AJ was here!" style graffiti I'd seen elsewhere, but lines like "a clean body is not a clean mind" and "out, d.a.m.ned spot" and "water cannot wash away the sins of the soul."

A squeak sounded from the farthest tub. When I walked over, I could see it was filled with water. Bits of paper floated on top.

No, not paper. Petals. Red poppy petals.

I looked back at the doorway, but there was no sign of the raven or the owls. Just me, alone in this room, seeing poppies. I forced myself forward. Filthy water reached almost to the brim. The petals floated on it.

With the gun in my right hand, I reached out my left and touched the water. As I scooped petals, my fingers brushed something under the surface. I stumbled back, but fingers grabbed my wrist. A shape shot up from the filthy water. The bloated corpse of a dark-haired woman. Her mouth opened, a horrible, twisted, swollen mouth, skin sloughing off, teeth hanging loose.

"Your fault," she said. "All yours."

I wrenched away and my hand came free, her skin still clinging to it, as if I'd yanked the bloated flesh from her bones. I fell back, hitting the floor, a scream clogged in my throat, looking up to see- I was alone in an empty room.

I stuffed my gun in my pocket, and without thinking I pulled out something else. The boar's tusk. I gripped it tight and pushed to my feet and looked into the tub. It was empty. I reached down to see if the sides were wet. As I did, I realized I was still clutching something in my left hand. I opened it and a trio of damp poppy petals fell into the dry tub. I stared at them. Then I picked them up, fingers rubbing the petals to rea.s.sure myself they were real. I put them into my pocket and continued on.

The next room was a lavatory, with a row of toilets along one wall. Only low walls divided them, and if there had ever been doors, I couldn't see any remnants of them.

I checked each stall as I moved through the room. Only when I reached the last did I notice writing on the opposite wall. Three words. Written in foot-high block letters.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

I swallowed and rubbed my arms. I tried to pull my gaze away, but it kept returning to those words, somehow more haunting than any that had come before.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

I didn't understand. Not any of it. Not the ravens, not the owls, not the hallucinations and the poppies, not even what the h.e.l.l I was doing here, walking through an abandoned psychiatric hospital, clutching a gun and a boar's tusk. Part of me wanted to just stop and scream, "I don't understand!" and demand that the universe reply. That it give me answers. It wouldn't. Those were up to me.

As I pulled my gaze from the words, a shadow darted past the next doorway. I dashed to it just in time to see a figure run into yet another room in this labyrinth of decay.

I raced in to find the next room empty, with no sign of what it had been used for. According to the directions, the door to Macy was on my left. The figure had darted through the door to my right. I went right. I told myself I chose that because it might have been Macy, but I knew it wasn't. Someone else was here.

I jogged through that doorway and through another, following the dark figure. Then I stopped short. I was in an empty room with only one entrance. The door slapped shut behind me.

I swung my gun on the figure standing by the now-closed door. It was the guy I'd caught trying to break into Ricky's apartment.

"Oh." He looked at the gun, a faint smile on his lips. "Does that mean you'd like to leave?" He opened the door. "By all means. Go rescue the girl. We don't really need to talk."

I stayed where I was, my gun trained on him.

He laughed. "That's what I thought. Poor Macy. You aren't here for her at all, are you? You're here to find out why Ciara Conway died. Why her body turned up in your car. Why I would use Macy to lure you in. Those answers are far, far more important than Macy herself, aren't they?"

"If I shoot, will you get to the point faster?"

"Hmm, no, sadly. It will be mildly inconvenient, but it won't hurt me. I think you know that."

"How would I?"

"How indeed. Aren't you wondering how I got past your lover?"

I stiffened, my gaze swinging to the door.

"Oh, he's fine. In fact, go ahead and text him to make sure. I wouldn't suggest mentioning I'm here. If he comes to your rescue, I'll have to leave. Better if he just keeps watching that building."

I texted Ricky. He replied: All clear.

"See?" the man said. "He can take care of himself. All his kind can."

He knew Ricky was a biker, then. How much else did he know about him? Even the thought made me anxious.

"You needn't worry about the boy," he said. "I know better than to hurt him. His family would retaliate, and they are more than I care to tackle."

"They are."

"Do you even know who I'm talking about?"

"The Saints. Ricky's gang."

He smiled. "Ah, yes. The bikers. Definitely not enemies one wishes to make." He looked around. "What do you think of this place? Does it look familiar?"

"Actually, yes, I remember staying here ... despite the fact it's probably been closed since before I was born." I glowered at him. "I don't know what you're playing at-"

"Memory," he said. "I'm playing at memory, Eden Olivia. Prodding and pushing. You may have never stayed here, but you have relatives who did. Sad cases, really. The perils of mixing blood that was never meant to be mixed. There is so much that can go wrong. Just ask your parents. Or Seanna Walsh. Or Ciara Conway."

"What are you talking about?"

"I can't tell you. Too many ramifications. But I can poke at your memory. Inherited memory. If I prod enough, you will question, and if you question, you will find the answers and you will see exactly where you stand. On quicksand. Two sides offer you ropes. The two halves to your whole. Mortal enemies. Both want you. Both promise safe ground to stand on. Both lie."

Frustration welled in my gut, and I thought of those words in the bathroom. I DON'T UNDERSTAND. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I didn't understand, and I was so sick of these teases, of these hints, of all this weird s.h.i.t that meant something and didn't mean something, and I just wanted- "To go back to your old life?" he said, as if I'd spoken the words aloud.

"What are you?" I asked. "I want answers, or-"

"Or you'll what, Eden Olivia? Shoot me? Walk away? Neither does you any good. As for what I am, that's a very personal question. I'll give you a name instead. You may call me Tristan."

My cell phone buzzed. I glanced down at the screen.

"Mr. Walsh, I presume?" Tristan asked.

It was. As the call went to voice mail, Tristan came closer. I lifted my gun.

He smiled. "I think we've already established that won't do any good."

"I'll take my chances."