Lashonda nodded, preoccupied. She had to struggle a bit to insert the key in the lock and get it to turn. When it finally did, there was a loud mechanical click. But then before pulling the door open, she hesitated and turned back to look directly at Mitt. “Are you sure you are ready for this?” she asked. She was still holding on to the key.
“I don’t know,” Mitt admitted. “I was wondering the same thing back when we were eyeing the place from a safe distance. Let me ask you this: What do you think the chances are we’re going to be seeing some of the... resident spirits?” He’d hesitated asking his question and was reluctant to use the term ghosts. He still wasn’t convinced ghosts existed in the real world, and saying the word out loud seemed like too much of an acknowledgment.
“My guess would be about a hundred percent,” Lashonda said. “At least that’s been my experience. I’ve always seen them when I’ve come in here after all the patients had been moved out and the building was empty. But I’ve never done that with anyone other than my mother just before and after Hurricane Sandy. You’ll be the first.”
“Did she see them?”
“No, she didn’t, as I told you in the cafeteria. But remember, she was not a portal like I believe you and I are. I expect to see a lot of them tonight as I normally do, and I’ll be shocked if you don’t as well.”
“Fair enough,” Mitt said. He was encouraged that she was taking the experience so much in stride. “I guess the important thing is that you’re convinced that they can’t interact with us directly, correct?”
“Correct, that has been my experience. What I’ve learned to do is to ignore them, which can be difficult, as they can be visually distressing if not revolting. It’s hard to imagine how much these patients suffered when the major medical treatments for just about any ailment were to be bled or made to vomit and have propulsive diarrhea. It defies current-day imagination, especially with the little or no sanitation that was available back then and the horrendous overcrowding. I understand that at one point Bellevue had two thousand beds, which is hard enough to grasp, but then during epidemics, like cholera outbreaks, the patients had to share beds and even the floor and the halls. On top of that, patients were regularly experimented on, even subjected to surgery with no anesthesia and no antisepsis in front of an amphitheater full of students.”
“Good God,” Mitt voiced. Just thinking about what Lashonda was saying made him squirm anew. He’d always wanted to believe a hospital was a place for people to go to be relieved of suffering and not vice versa.
“And those poor people labeled as insane were even worse off,” Lashonda said. “Before this psychiatric hospital was built and the specialty reformed, a lot of such patients were treated with chains, various other kinds of restraints, and truncheons. On top of that, with the restraints there’d probably been even worse sanitation.”
“Okay, okay,” Mitt repeated, raising his hands in submission. “I get the picture. There’s more than enough reason for the place to be haunted. Fine! All I want is to be assured that we’ll be able to walk back out with life and limb intact when we are finished with our visit.”
“That I can guarantee,” Lashonda said. “It’s not physical injury that I’m concerned about in the slightest, but rather your state of mind. Please gird yourself because your senses are going to be assaulted. Since you told me you have already experienced the apparitions, heard the cries, and suffered the odors, I assume you’ll be able to tolerate it. My advice is to ignore it all as best as you can. That’s what I’ve learned to do, and it works — the visuals, sounds, and odors usually just disappear if they are ignored. Do you think you can do it?”
“I haven’t been able to do it yet,” Mitt said. “But then again, I haven’t tried. I do have to admit, each time I’ve been confronted with what I’ve called hallucinations, I’ve been a bit less taken aback.”
“I assumed as much,” Lashonda said, “which is part of the reason I agreed to take you inside. Are you ready?”
“I guess I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be.”
“Okay, but stay close!”
Mitt laughed hollowly. “Don’t worry about that.”
Lashonda turned her attention back to the oversized double doors and gave the one on the right a significant tug. The door reluctantly let itself be opened, creaking in protest just as the outer gate had. Immediately a stale smell wafted out of the abandoned building.
“Here we go,” Lashonda announced, gesturing inside. “You first, but don’t turn your light on until I close the door behind us. And keep your beam mostly covered with your free hand and trained downward. We don’t want any lights to flash in any of the windows. But we won’t have to worry about it for long, as we’ll be taking the central stairway directly down to the basement, where the lack of windows means we won’t have to worry about our lights.”
“Got it,” Mitt responded as he hesitantly preceded Lashonda into the building’s foyer. As he did so, he experienced another passing wave of paresthesia, which added to his mounting jitters.
Chapter 26
Thursday, July 4, 4:46 a.m.
As soon as Lashonda had stepped inside and pulled the heavy door closed behind them, Mitt switched on his flashlight. As he’d been advised, he carefully made certain the beam was mostly shielded with the palm of his left hand and angled downward. Lashonda quickly moved past him, turning on her flashlight and covering it in a similar fashion. With a wave over her shoulder for him to follow, she passed an empty reception desk and headed into the central hall. From there two main corridors ran east and west along the long axis of the building. On both sides of the central hall were multiple out-of-service elevators, and in the middle was a Da Vinci — like open, spiral stairway with an ornate metal railing.
As Mitt followed Lashonda, he allowed his flashlight to illuminate a bit more of the surrounding central hall. He also briefly shined his light down each of the corridors, but both were longer than his flashlight beam’s reach. In keeping with the Renaissance embellishments on the exterior, both the main corridors’ interiors were remarkably decorative, with a series of half-round pilasters with Doric capitals supporting faux rib vaulting. Each of the many doors leading off the corridors had decorative jambs and miniature entablatures. A few of the doors in the immediate vicinity were open, and in several Mitt was surprised to catch a glimpse of remaining but outdated office furniture, as if the people had left for the night and would be back in the morning.
But what was the most striking to Mitt was the color. The walls of the two lengthy hallways extending east and west were a two-toned yellow-tan with the more yellow color starting about five feet off the tile floor to include the barrel-vaulted ceiling. The lower portion of the walls were the darker tan. The baseboard was a five-inch strip of glossy black, rubberized artificial material. Why Mitt found the color scheme so eye-catching was that it uncannily resembled the walls in the nightmares he’d experienced just prior to waking up Monday and Tuesday morning. In both instances he’d been chased down similarly colored, endless hallways by an unknown assailant or assailants, and the association gave him yet another chill. Was the dream some sort of harbinger of this visit? He didn’t know, but he certainly hoped not.
“How are you faring?” Lashonda questioned as Mitt reached her. To give him time to catch up, she’d hesitated at the top of the downward flight of the circular stairs.