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Theta stubbed out her cigarette. “You’re right. That’s not fair. Come on. Let’s go find the others.”
Isaiah looked wary. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Come on. Let’s ankle.”
Theta wanted this night to be over. Even more than the thought of spending the night in the asylum, she dreaded the conversation with Memphis to come.
It was the lights Theta noticed first as they approached ward A. They were winking on and off. It was disorienting. And very creepy. The doors were shut, but when Theta reached for the knob, they creaked open.
Isaiah stopped short. “I got a bad feeling.”
“Like a regular bad feeling, like your stomach hurts… or a we oughta run bad feeling?”
Isaiah was scared, but he didn’t want her to know it. Hadn’t he said he wanted to be treated like a big kid, like the rest of them? If he looked like a coward, they’d probably never let him come along again. He stepped into the corridor.
“Smoky in here,” Theta said, coughing. “Somebody musta forgot to open a flue or something.” As they made their way down the hall, Theta saw that the doors to the patients’ rooms were open, but many of the patients were missing. Others sat on their beds staring out.
“The Forgotten, the Forgotten, we are the Forgotten,” they whispered as Theta and Isaiah passed by.
Isaiah was truly frightened now. Even more so when he heard screams and deranged laughter coming from somewhere he couldn’t see. There were marks on the clean walls. Bloody handprints. The laughter got stronger.
“Theta,” he said.
“Yeah. I see,” she said. “I think we better turn back.”
They turned around and the doors slammed shut, sealing them inside.
Isaiah’s eyes rolled back in his head. His body shook. “We are the Forgotten, forgotten no more,” he said in a strangled whisper.
“Isaiah! Oh, please don’t do this, please don’t,” Theta begged.
Someone was coming toward them. A doctor moved carefully down the dim hall, pushing a wheelchair in front of him with a nurse seated there. His coat rested on the seat, across the nurse’s lap, and his shirtsleeves had been rolled to the elbows. The doctor’s head swept left and right, looking.
“Doctor!” Theta called. “Can you help me? My friend is sick.…”
The doctor’s head whipped in their direction. The faulty light blinked on, off, on, off. But it had been enough to see: Blood spattered the good doctor’s suit. The nurse’s eyes were fixed and a gash marred her pretty throat. The doctor reached under his coat and retrieved the ax hidden there. His gaze drifted ceiling-ward. His lips stretched into a tight smile. His teeth glinted in the blinking light.
“She questioned my authority, the bitch. Can you imagine?” The doctor laughed. It was the laugh Theta had heard earlier, the deranged one.
“Polly Pratchet had a hatchet. Worked it night and day,” the doctor said, grunting as he swung the ax. “Polly Pratchet had a hatchet. Now you’d better pray!”
“They got inside him,” Isaiah said, coming out of his trance. “He belongs to them.”
Theta grabbed Isaiah’s hand and ran, searching for a place to hide. Behind them, the doctor’s voice splintered as if several of him spoke at once: “We are the Forgotten, forgotten no more.”
They came to a stairwell that led down to the second and first floors. Isaiah pulled back on Theta’s hand and shook his head. “We shouldn’t go down there.”
The doctor staggered after them, dragging his ax along the floor behind him, leaving a trail of blood. Theta could just make out the wisps of blue mist coming off him, as if he were made of ice inside.
“We can’t go back that way. This is the only way out.”
Theta knew not to ignore Isaiah’s premonitions. But what choice did they have? She stretched her fingers, as if trying to work heat into them, but no spark would come. Theta peered over the stair railing. The flickering bulb overhead made it hard to see. Down below, it was completely dark. Worse, the staircase wound around; if somebody or something was hiding around a curve, they wouldn’t know until it was too late.
“All right. I’ll go first. Stay behind me, okay?”
Isaiah nodded, and they stepped into the stairwell, away from the madman with the ax screaming behind them. Theta took a few tentative steps. Her legs quivered. She feared they’d give way completely. She’d never been so terrified. The scraping of the ax echoed even in the stairwell’s gloom. She reached the first landing, between the second and third floors. “Okay. It’s safe.”
Isaiah stepped down quietly behind her.
