The Redwood Asylum: A Paranormal Horror by L.A. Detwiler (recommended reading txt) 📕

body. Blood dripped from the gash, and her single eye studied me. The high ponytail, the shoes with bows. They were all familiar in a way that horrified me more than if she’d been a stranger. I blinked and shook my head. I opened my eyes, but she was still there. She wasn’t the residue of an unfinished dream. She wasn’t a figment of my nightmares. I blinked again, this time for a second longer.

I opened my eyes once more.

She was still there, staring straight at me.

She. Was. Real.

She said nothing, the blonde-haired girl who looked to be around ten. She perused me with her single eye, the other socket empty. She looked harmless in her adorable little dress, her petite figure. But her head flailed back and forth as if her neck were chomping toward me. A gurgling noise echoed in my room, the noise mixing with the beating of my heart and my gasping for breath. I clenched my fingers and braced for what was to come, even though my mind still kept chanting that it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Certainly . . .

Every bone in my body rejected the notion that the entity was real, but real she was. That single fact I was sure of, my racing heart validating the sentiment least I try to shove it aside.

She raised a finger to point at me, her face grave. She stumbled toward me, and I didn’t dare move a muscle. I realized that her other hand was clutching something tight. A piece of paper with red crayon streaks. She stepped toward me, her feet echoing on the wooden floor. I stared at the gash on her neck, internalizing the pain she must be in. When she got close, she reached out her arm, the paper waggling at the end of her hand. I studied it, not daring to reach out. The drawing of the river, of the trees, of her.

She dropped the picture on my bed, and then, before I could process it, she’d scurried away, the gurgling noise louder as she zoomed through my apartment. I abandoned my bed to follow her, but she was gone. The apartment was still and empty. The sun was just coming up, the light bouncing through the window and illuminating the broken glass and bowl on the floor. The open drawer of my desk hung wide open, the crayon drawings scattered about.

I shook my head in disbelief. He wasn’t crazy. She was real. 5B wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t crazy at all.

Then, another sobering thought struck me; if he was completely mad, so was I.

I crumpled to the floor, clutching my head as I realized I had no choice but to solve the puzzle if I wanted this nightmare to go away.  I also started to think about how many other residents at Redwood were, in fact, telling the truth about the beings they claimed to know.

Chapter Ten

Walking in for my shift through the larger-than-life doors of Redwood, I felt like I’d been run over by a bus and then backed over—three times. No amount of coffee could wake me, yet no amount of deep breathing exercises could quiet my restless spirit.

She hadn’t come back, but she hadn’t needed to. I was freaked. I hadn’t been this horrified since that night all those months ago. I quickly shut off the thought, shaking my head. I couldn’t afford to go there. Not in the middle of all of this. One thing at a time. That was my defensive technique, much needed to survive.

I made my way up the stairs to floor five, my legs bundles of jelly. It took every ounce of energy in me to force my legs to move. Every few steps, I felt the need to turn around and look over my shoulder. I expected to see her there, following me with her bobbling head and dripping neck. The cartoon drawing animated in real life, somehow.

They weren’t just drawings, I reminded myself. They were real. Impossibly, assuredly real. Every single one of them must be real. He wasn’t insane. Not at all.

How many others in the place were the same? Misunderstood by the so-called superior minds when in reality, our “normal,” superior minds simply were oblivious to the truths around us. I thought of the man on floor two who begged me to believe that he wasn’t insane.  How many were like him, seeing the truths we couldn’t see yet paying the ultimate price of freedom for it? As I settled into the front desk, ready to take over the floor, Anna came around the corner with a file.

“Wow,” she murmured, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “No offense, but you look rough. What happened?”

I looked at her, confused as to why she was already at work. I contemplated the truth, thought maybe she had experience with this sort of thing. After all, ghosts were no secret to Redwood. Weird shit happened all the time. Perhaps the girl I had seen had graced someone else with her presence at some point, too. I shuddered at the thought. Another question, though, came out of my mouth.

“Why are you here so early?”

She wore the pale face of a woman who had been up way too long.

“They called me at noon. Lucy called off again, and they were desperate.”

“Wasn’t it my turn to be on call?”

Anna approached, putting some files on the desk. She avoided looking at me. “It’s okay. We just thought you could use a day.”

I stifled the replies in my throat, not wanting to confirm what I already suspected. They were worried about me, all the sightings and such. Talking about what I’d experienced wouldn’t help anything. I kept my ideas to myself, suddenly wary of the woman who had been nothing but kind. I felt the familiar wall build itself up.

“Thanks,” I replied simply, and she nodded.

“The good news is that you should have an easy night. Even good old 5B is