P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

After a few seconds, Alice started up the stairs again, unlocking a door on the second floor. “This floor was where all the therapies were done,” she said.

He saw the nurse’s station first, a large desk enclosed in thick dirty glass with slots to pass medication through. There was garbage everywhere and the smell of urine hung in the air. Alice continued down the hall, stopping at a door. Louis looked in and saw a single claw-footed bathtub in the center of the room.

“Ice baths. They were used to shock the system,” Alice said, walking away.

He followed her, catching up as she swung open another door. It looked like an examination room inside. There was one window, covered with steel mesh. A bed sat in the center, worn leather straps with large buckles dangling from each side, more leather at the foot.

“Electroshock therapy,” Alice said.

Louis stared at the straps. “How did it work?” he asked.

“It was supposed to shock the brain back into functioning normally,” she said. “They used it for everything, three and four times a week, even on things like depression. But it caused convulsions, sometimes so bad patients broke bones or their teeth.”

“And afterward?”

“The patients were postictal. . confused, disoriented.”

Alice moved on, pushing open more doors, but Louis couldn’t take his eyes off the table. Suddenly there was little he wanted to see. He was picturing Claudia DeFoe in this place and he couldn’t help but wonder again how she ended up here with people like Donald Lee Becker. He was wondering, too, how in the hell he was going to tell all this to Phillip.

He fell into step behind Alice, stopping to look into the other small rooms. Some had padded walls, others old wood tables, a few just stacks of cardboard boxes. Most of the doors had been taken off their hinges and were stacked against the peeling walls or rusting radiators. The hallway walls were marked with graffiti-obscenities, crude drawings, and a symbol Louis recognized as a devil’s pentagram.

“We’ve had a lot of trouble with break-ins,” Alice said. “Kids think this is a cool place to party.” She turned away with a disgusted snort, pulling up her coat collar against the wind whistling through a broken window-pane.

They passed a small pile of leather straps dumped in a corner and Alice saw him look down. She offered no explanation and he didn’t ask.

“I’ll show you the wards,” she said.

Alice led him to another stair well. Unlike the one on the first floor, this one was narrow, dark, and completely caged in heavy grating. Louis guessed it was because the stairs were used by the patients going down to therapy.

“The women were housed on the third floor,” Alice said, heading toward another metal door. “The men were kept up on four.”

The large room on the third floor was sectioned off by pillars, small barred windows every ten feet or so. In the dim light, Louis could count twenty metal beds, their white paint peeling, the bare springs cobwebbed and corroded. At each footboard sat a small metal locker. Off in one corner, there was a jumble of wood rocking chairs. The floors were littered with beer cans, garbage, and a couple of old striped mattresses.

“Seen enough?” Alice asked.

He said nothing, and Alice turned away from him. He knew the tour was over and he closed the door to the ward. The bang echoed through the hollow halls. Alice led him down a back stairwell and they emerged into a dark hallway. Louis was disoriented and headed toward what he thought was the exit. But it was just another plain metal door with PASSAGE 12 painted on it. There was no doorknob, no handle of any kind.

“This way, Mr. Kincaid,” Alice called out.

Back in the lobby, Alice held the door for him, and he stepped back into the cold air.

He turned to look at her as she locked the building. “Thank you,” he said.

“I hope you’re able to help Mr. Lawrence.”

“I need to know what happened to her here,” Louis said. “And where her remains might be now. I need to see her records.”

Alice’s face scrunched slightly as she stared into the gray sky.

“Please,” Louis said. “He doesn’t even know how she died.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kincaid. I just can’t.”

He nodded, and they started back to the main building. It was just before noon now, but the day had not warmed up at all. The wind was stiff from the west, the leaves skipping furiously at their feet. Alice was pulling on gloves when Louis heard someone call out. He paused.

“Did you hear that?” Louis asked.

“Hear what?”

Louis took a step toward the trees behind E Building. The wind was coming through the branches, and he strained to hear, but there was nothing.

Alice came up to him. “People always think they hear voices out here,” she said.

He looked to her. “It was real.”

They waited a few seconds, listening, but when nothing else came, they both started down the path. But the cry came again. It sounded human, but wounded. Tearful. Scared.

“I heard that,” Alice said.

Louis spun and started to the woods, but he stopped suddenly. A man. . his tall form slowly taking shape as he emerged from the deep shadows. He was struggling to walk. And he was carrying something long and limp.

Louis took another step.

A body. . he was carrying a body. A woman.

As Charlie Oberon staggered closer into the light, everything came into focus. His bloody sweatshirt. A woman’s lifeless, naked body, Charlie’s long fingers pressed into her thighs. Arms, hanging limp, shreds of dark, wet leaves stuck to them. Her hair. . long, blond, and thick with blood.

“She won’t wake up,” Charlie cried. “She won’t wake up.”

Louis broke into a run toward him.

Louis reached for his gun, but he didn’t have it. It was in the glove box of the Impala. He had no cuffs either. And he had no idea what he was looking at.

Charlie was motionless now, his face slick with sweat despite the cold, and his arms were trembling under the weight of the woman.

The woman was naked, her skin a pasty blue gray with splotches of red, small bits of leaves and twigs stuck to it. Caked blood streaked her blond hair.

“Set her down,” Louis said.

Charlie’s eyes filled with tears.

Louder and sharper. “Set her down. Now.”

Charlie looked behind Louis at Alice, his eyes begging her for some sort of help. Louis motioned Alice forward, and as she stepped up next to him he could hear her quickened breaths.

“Talk to him, Miss Cooper,” Louis said. “But don’t get too close.”

When she did not speak, he snuck a glance. Her hand was at her lips, her powdered skin colorless.

“Talk to him.”

“Charlie,” Alice managed, “put Rebecca down.”

“She won’t wake up,” Charlie said. “She’s cold. She’s cold.”

“Put her down, Charlie,” Alice said again.

Her voice was stronger now, her gaze steady on Charlie. And she took a step closer, then another. Louis started to reach for her, but she moved away from him.

“Charlie,” she said, “put Rebecca down, please. Carefully.”

Charlie dropped to one knee, easing the woman to the grass. She fell toward Louis, arms limp, head cocked to the side.

Bruises. On her face and shoulders. Raw, red marks around her wrists, ankles, and neck.

Louis forced his eyes away from the woman to Charlie. He had not moved, his head hanging low, arms at his sides. He was staring at her as if she were a broken toy he knew he could not fix.

“Charlie, back away from her,” Louis said.

Charlie didn’t seem to hear at first. Then he took a few steps backward, then a few more, finally collapsing on the ground about fifteen feet behind the body. He drew his legs in and crossed his arms over his belly, still staring vacantly.