My Probation Consists on Guarding an Abandoned Asylum | Part 4

Part 3 | Part 5 

I contemplated the reappearing blood stain. Fuck it.

I checked my task list. “2. Make sure all the fire extinguishers are operational and the first aid kit is complete.” I didn’t know we had a kit.

After wandering through all Wings, except J (because shit no), I examined the four fire extinguishers. One had expired. I tried using it. Weird. It was empty. Knowing this place, I assumed that would be the case for the other three. It was. Will need to ask Alex (learned the name of the guy who delivers me the groceries) for replacements.

I searched through the kitchen, cafeteria and every other place I thought of for the medical kit. Was in my office all along. Room made things go unnoticed.

As good as if there hadn’t been one. Just some almost-tearing gauss and old ointment that must had lost all its healing properties years ago. Added this to the anti-inventory.

***

“3. Always keep the Chappel close and lock.” Shit. It has been open for a couple of nights now.

Was on my way to the management office hoping there will be a Chappel’s key, when in the entrance hall I was intercepted by a woman in her forties. I presupposed it was another ghost, but she was wearing contemporary clothes. What in the ass was she doing here?

“Please, need your help,” she said.

She tried pulling my jacket. I didn’t move.

“Is my brother,” she clarified.

So what? Just glanced at her hoping she’ll break and tell me it was a prank.

“I’m not joking. He is on Wing J.”

Fuck.

“Let’s go,” I reluctantly agreed.

***

“Our mother was a patient here, in the nineties.”

It was hard to pay attention to her story as I expected something hiding in the dark of the electricity-less Wing J.

“Suddenly, we stopped hearing anything from her. Not know what happened.”

I nodded.

“Here!”

The girl stopped and pointed to the left, to an obscure room. Door was barely open, just enough to let out a tiny wind flow and a hardly audible pain moaning. Rusty brackets squeaked as we entered.

The unmistakable sensation when in presence of violence, that I had developed in my time working here, turned on to the stratosphere. A mild metallic taste, pressure making my eardrums stiffer and pop when swallowing saliva, and an intense chill on the spot where I broke my shinbone as a kid.

That was better than the image of the crucified guy on the wall that became discernable after I lifted my flashlight.

***

Back in my office, we used the precarious first aid kit to “assist” the beaten, almost breath-less and pierced dude. He had lost a lot of blood. His clothes were torn apart. He wasn’t making sense of whatever he was striving to say. His sister pretended to understand him. After covering the hand holes with improvised dressing, he fainted.

The girl examined his neck. Not for pulse. She was looking for a necklace. After making sure he still had it, she showed me hers. They matched.

 “My mother gave my twin and I these necklaces. She had a third one. Told us we were going to be together… always.”

So corny. I said nothing.

“You know where the record room is?” she asked.

“Sure. Don’t think you wanna go there,” dead seriously.

“I need to.”

***

We left his brother in the office, sleeping, while we ventured through Wing B (finally one with electric power) to the records room. Less somber than Wing J, but the tapestry falling apart and the Swiss cheese-like floor wasn’t welcoming either.

“What’s the name we are looking for?” I inquired.

“Stacey. We share name.”

Passed like ten minutes flipping my fingers through wet and mistreated folders with the names written in a baroque calligraphy impossible to discern their meaning.

“Here!” Stacey announced triumphantly.

Pang!

Stacey glance at me scared.

“We need to go,” I sentenced.

PANG!

***

My office was empty upon our return.

“And my brother?”

“Not know,” I admitted. “But here we are safe.”

She opened the record.

Not a lot of information on what happened to her. “Cause of death: Natural Causes.” “Status: Body missing from the morgue.”

Stacey stared at me incredulously.

“Seems to be a note there,” I pointed out.

A handwritten phrase at the end of the document read: “Suspect: The Slaughterer.”

Now I gazed at her.

“Who’s The Slaughterer?” She questioned.

A metallic sound echoed through the whole building as soon as she finished talking. Something answered.

It sounded like a machine. Metal crashing against each other. I knew what it was.

We arrived at the kitchen in the moment the sound was muted. In the cold reflective counter surface, there were torn clothes, bleed vendages and a necklace. We behold the scene in shock.

Stacey took it harder. Her legs gave up on her. She broke shrieking in horror.

The meat grinder machine had little shredded meat still in between its gears.

Stacey started mourning between yells.

“I think I know where your mother is now.”

***

Stacey and I watched the incinerator. Thankfully, she understood what that meant. No need to explain to her that I had thrown her mother’s rotten flesh in there a couple weeks ago.

She held two toppers that had appeared in the cold room. Both had scribbled: Robert.

I opened wide the noisy trapdoor of the incinerator. Stepped back a little.

Still with tears flowing down her face like cataracts, she approached and threw the freshly mashed meat to the mighty fire breathing machine stuck to the wall.

With her right hand, she clinched to her necklace, while squeezing her brother’s with her left.

“Will see you and mother later,” she prayed.

Stacey held her brother’s necklace in the incinerator’s mouth, when a familiar sound interrupted the ritual.

Pang!

We both turned to find the axe ghost banging his weapon against a wall. He smiled sadistically at us. His towering height and almost dark materialization imposed even at the distance.

I kept looking at the apparition. He didn’t pay attention to me. His eyesight was shooting directly to Stacey’s face.

Discretely grasped her left arm from behind and pulled her gently.

She didn’t move. Break out of my grab and screamed in anger at the ghoul.

The spirit rushed towards her.

I tried to get her back.

She stepped forward.

The phantom lifted his rusty axe.

Her yell turned into a war roar.

The malicious grin extended in pleasure.

I stepped away.

The ghost rose over her.

She threw her brother’s necklace.

It hit the creature.

Pain shriek. Retrieved immediately.

Necklace fell to the ground. High-pitch thump gave way to a silence just disrupted by mine and Stacey’s agitated breathing.

***

“Why the fuck you let her stay the night in there?” Russel busted my balls next morning.

Stacey retreated looking down.

“First, she just lost her twin brother. Second, last time I left someone out ended up as a flag, victim of an amateurish Jack the Reaper. And third, I am the guard here. If you want to stay here during the night you can decide who enters and who doesn’t. Okay?” I reprehended him aggressively.

“Ok, it’s fine. Will take her to the mainland,” he accepted.

I smiled with contempt.

Stacey approached me.

“Thank you so much, for everything. Also, want you to keep this.”

She placed her brother’s necklace on my hand.

“I can’t…”

“Sure you can,” she interrupted me. “Apparently it serves as protection, you will need it more than I.”

Smirked at her.

“Also, that way it will connect me to someone still alive that I can trust.”

She hugged me. Head out to the small boat navigated by Alex in which Russel had come.

I smiled and waved at him. He returned the gesture.

“We need to talk,” I indicated Russel.

“I know what you mean. If you want to go back to San Quentin, it’s fine. Just let me tell you, as you should have noticed, this place tends to attract people, most of them not very lucky.”

Beat.

“And, you are the best guard we have had here in a while.”

He pointed with a head movement to Stacey.

“That’s some serious shit around here,” he finished.

Yeah, I’ll stay here a little more. Write you later.