So far, with Warren not claiming responsibility, he had turned up squat.
This was the last ward, the last floor. The top floor. If he found nothing here, then he would have to go back to see Warren.
Stelig spotted the cleaner, Sam Goodfrey, and called him over. The elderly black man placed his mop against the wall and shuffled over. “Yessir?”
“Sam, you see anything unusual here today?”
“Like what, Sir?”
“Any of the patients acting weird, any of them missing for awhile?”
The cleaner looked down at the floor, licked his lips, then looked back up. His eyes reminded Stelig of a puppy’s — only this puppy had bags the size of large suitcases under them. “No Sir. No strange business. Why?”
“Well, I suppose you might as well hear about it. You’re gonna hear about it eventually. There was some nasty business in Ward C.” Stelig paused before saying, “All the inmates were killed. As were three nurses.”
The old man gasped. He put one wrinkled hand over his mouth. “Good lord. That’s horrible. How did it happen?”
“Warren Spencer.”
“He killed them all?”
Stelig nodded.
“Well we’re not entirely sure yet,” Adams said. “Warren claims it was somebody else. Another inmate. We’re looking around the hospital, trying to find information on who else could have done it.”
“I’m positive it was Warren,” Stelig said. “Still, be on the look-out for any of the inmates acting…out of the ordinary.”
“I will. Yessir, I surely will.”
“Okay. Thank you. And I don’t need to tell you that this goes no further than this building. Nobody needs to know unless absolutely necessary. Understand?”
The old man nodded. “Of course, Sir.”
“Good. Continue with your work.”
The cleaner nodded, turned then walked slowly back to his mop and bucket.
“Was it just me, or did that old fart look happy with the news?”
“Maybe, I dunno,” Stelig said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.
“You think he knows more than he’s letting on?”
“Don’t be fucking ridiculous. He’s an old man. He’s a cleaner. What could he possibly know?”
Adams shrugged his round shoulders.
“I’m telling ya, this is a waste of time. These patients up here, they’re about as harmless as…” Stelig thought of the first thing that came to mind, “as a bunch of puppy dogs.”
“Might I remind you, Sir, that they are criminals.”
“Most of these patients are just crazy. Harmless, but crazy.” Stelig looked down at the stubby Doctor. “Might I remind you that this is the good ward, the quiet ward? The patients here haven’t displayed any signs of violent behavior since committing their crimes. Hell, they’re not the least bit violent. Not now.”
“How about Harris over there?” Adams pointed to the man sitting in the far corner of the room. “He butchered his entire family.”
Stelig huffed. “That was five years ago. He hasn’t displayed any signs of violent or aggressive behavior since. He went willingly with the cops, never even put up a fight. Hell, Harris is more harmless than anyone here. All he does is sit in that corner humming to himself.” Stelig stopped and looked over at Harris. Watched the man stare into space, grinning stupidly to himself. He listened to his humming.
“Christ, think I’d go crazy listening to that all day,” Adams said. “He sings the same three notes all day. Nothin’ else. Can you believe it?” Adams chuckled. “Enough to make anyone crazy. Don’t know how the doctors and nurses up here can stand it.”
Stelig sighed. He had always felt sorry for Harris. Wasn’t sure why, but there was something pathetic about him. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Still, it proves my point. They’re all harmless in here. Nuts, but harmless. We’re wasting our time. Warren did it, and he knows it. Doesn’t want to take the blame, that’s all.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t see why he’d lie, that’s all.”
Harris looked at Stelig then. Turned his head and gazed into the Doctor’s eyes. Unease shot through Stelig’s body. The man still hummed the same three notes, but now he was wearing a lopsided grin. It would’ve been almost comical were it not for the intelligence in his eyes.
It unnerved Stelig, although he would never admit it.
Stelig turned around and tried to shake his discomfort. “You’re too trusting, Adams. That’s your problem. Come on, let’s go. There’s nothing here.”
As the two men walked down the corridor, Stelig began humming.
“Catchy tune,” Adams said with a smile.
“Huh?”
“You were humming the same three notes as our resident singer.”
“Was I?”
Adams nodded.
Stelig’s unease grew. He smiled, but when he spoke his tone was serious. “Well I just hope I can get the damn tune out of my head.”
I wrote this story for the anthology Asylum Volume 3: The Quiet Ward. For those of you who don’t know, the Asylum anthologies were a wonderful group of books that dealt with, funnily enough, stories set in and about asylums. Each book was about a different ward, or a different type of mania — there was the violent ward, the psycho ward, and the third and last book, the one this story appeared in, was the quiet ward.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I did pinch the title from the song of the same name by Led Zeppelin.
TEMPTATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS PATH
Screaming. All around him people were screaming. Incomprehensible wails and darkness pressing down like a giant’s foot destroying everything that got in its way. It’s the end. Really and truly the end. But there was one last decision that had to be made, one last act of indulgence and then it would all be over…
He jerked awake as a hand grabbed him. “Huh? wha’?”
“You’ve been chosen. Come on, get up.”
Aleister P. Donaldson squinted up at the person whose arm was latched onto his Armani jacket and vomited.
“Whoa, hey there, now, fella. That’s no way to greet your saviour now, is it?”
Aleister hocked the last of the vomit to the alley floor and tried to get his head around what was going on. Did the old man just call himself my saviour?
Now the old guy was pulling Aleister up, and managed to do so with remarkable strength. “If I didn’t feel like shit right now, you’d be dead, old man,” Aleister garbled and then a headache exploded like a thousand nuclear warheads had just gone off in his head.
“Come on, hurry.”
“I ain’t going no…” Aleister was pulled across the alley into an open door and was inside a gloomy room before he could finish his feeble protest. He felt queasy and almost vomited again, but suppressed the urge and fixed his crooked tie instead. Once his mind had stopped spinning, he collected his groggy thoughts and said, “Okay, tell me just what the hell is going on here. Have I been kidnapped?”
“Peaches!”
Aleister jumped at the sudden cry.
“No peaches,” the old man who had dragged Aleister into this place said to some other old man sitting on a crate marked peaches. “We have to discuss our destiny.”
“Destiny?” croaked a female’s voice. “I can tell you about destiny. I was destined to become a star. Broadway Queen they called me. Had the looks, the voice, the talent, the…”
“Peaches!”
“No, I didn’t have any fucking peaches,” the woman barked. “But I did have a nice set of melons.” She laughed, loud and wet.