Viole[n]t Obscurity Page 2

  I shook his hand, letting out a deep breath. "Oh, well it's nice to meet you. I'm Dr. Adeline Violet."

  The other two men extended their hands and I learned their names were Lewis and Ryan, orderlies for the ward.

  "I'll show you your office, Dr. Violet." I followed Christopher down a sterile white hallway, while the other two dispersed. It appeared exactly identical to Ward N upstairs.

  A relief.

  "This is it." He opened the last door at the far end of the hall. A flick of the switch revealed a large office with a simple metal desk surrounded by at least six filing cabinets. Simple. Plain. No windows down here in the basement. It was much larger than the office I'd had upstairs.

  I sat my purse on the empty desk and ran my fingers across the glass top. The sweat on the tips caused them to slide freely instead of skidding along the surface like they should have. The air in the office was stale, old, empty as if no one had occupied it in a long time. There were no personalized items, like Dr. Tawney hadn't just worked from here a little over a week ago. Like he, and the doctors before him had never existed.

  "Do you like it?"

  I glanced back at Christopher. He stood in the doorway.

  "Ah, yes." I smoothed my hands down the front of my coat.

  "Not what you expected is it?"

  "Well—"

  "You expected cobwebs and weeping walls, stained with the souls of the most volatile psychotic criminals in the United States."

  It wasn't a question. "I suppose so." I chuckled, images from my dream resurfacing.

  "Those from upstairs come up with some pretty wild stories for us down here." He crossed his arms over his chest. His scrubs were dark blue and he had a sparse smattering of gray hair across his head, with a bald spot in the middle.

  "They do." I nodded and glanced around, feeling better about being down here than I had since the moment I'd accepted the job. The last week had been a mantra of me repeating over and over in my head that I could do this. That I could work down here in Ward Z, the downstairs. I'd tried to block out the voices of my coworkers – and not just Brian's voice. Others were there too, basically everyone from Ward N and the surrounding floors had come down to try to convince me to stay, or just to stare. That's right, some had come down on their break and stood outside my office peering in. Some were fascinated, interested, curious. Others looked at me as if it was the last time they would ever see me. Never once did anyone look at me with jealousy or resentment amongst those of my psychiatry peers.

  Blocking out those looks, those words from people I didn't hate like I did Brian, was much harder than I expected. But this wasn't so bad. The office was plain, simple. The walls in the hallway were white, regular white, like any other ward, and everyone I'd met so far seemed nice, funny even, maybe.

  "I'd like to meet the rest of my staff down here. If possible, I'd like to organize a meeting with everyone today, so I can get a feel for everyone, and be briefed on any special type of protocol that may be different than I'm used to upstairs."

  "The rest of the staff?" Christopher quirked a surprisingly thick eyebrow.

  I kept my gaze on his. "Yes. The rest of the staff."

  He smiled, revealing his significant gaps. "You just met them."

  "Wh-what?" I shoved the limp piece of hair that had come out of my low ponytail, behind my ear. "I only met you, Ryan, and – and—"

  "Lewis," he supplied. "We're it for the day staff. Then there's Henry, he's the night staff nurse."

  "But I'm head of psychiatry for Ward Z, there should be two other psychiatrists at least, a medical doctor, more nurses and orderlies. How—"

  "Not down here. We don't work the same as upstairs." Christopher seemed irritated.

  "There should be a medical doctor, though. The federal government requires at least one doctor per ward, maybe more." And just like that my panic returned. I wasn't qualified to handle medical problems for patients. "Not to mention surgeons, if—"

  "We had a medical doctor. He quit. The board still hasn't replaced him."

  "Oh," I blew out a sigh of relief, "how long ago did he quit?"

  "Over a year ago. We aren't holding our breath."

  "A year? Well – that just – I…" I couldn't form the words to try and understand.

  "Things are different down here. Let me show you, Dr. Violet, before you have an aneurism and we have to replace you too."

  I followed Christopher out of my new office, with my mouth gaping.

  "Ward Z is not like upstairs. It isn't confined by the same rules the federal government imposes on the rest of the hospital." He gestured to the doors lining the hallway. "Our residents down here are permanently in solitary confinement. They never leave their rooms, therefore, they don't need as many babysitters." He approached a door and wrapped gnarled-looking knuckles against it. They barely made any noise at all. "The walls, the doors, the rooms - they are all made with a special type of reinforced steel." He continued to drum his knuckles. "No other ward in the building has this kind of steel technology. Not even volcano lava could destroy it. If the rest of the hospital burned, these rooms would stay intact, regardless. Not even the sun smashing into the earth could melt these walls down."

  "The government is trying to protect these patients more than the rest of the hospital?"

  Christopher chuckled. "The walls are for our protection, not theirs. I'm sure you've seen some pretty fucked up things upstairs Dr. Violet, but this is as bad as it gets."

  I swallowed, but the persistent lump in my throat wouldn't go down. "So we have strong walls, but surely we need more staff." I glanced through the window into the room. I didn't see anyone inside outside of a plain bed, but that didn't mean anything. "If all these rooms are full—"

  "There are only four patients in Ward Z."

  "Wait, four? Just four?"

  He nodded. "The most ever kept down here at once was ten, that was before my time here, though. When I started there were seven."

  "What happened to them?"

  He stepped away from the door, sending a whoosh of air toward me. He smelled stale, dusty, like my new office. "No patient ever leaves Ward Z, not alive."

  I followed Christopher around, listening as he told me about the special ways the rooms were utilized, how my key card worked, and how things typically functioned down here. It turned out, I was to be the only person to have direct, regular contact with the four patients. Just me. No one else, not the orderlies, nor the nurse were to be in contact with them without my presence – not even in the case of an emergency in the middle of the night.

  "They could be dying, Dr. Violet, and we cannot enter that room without you. It is only your key, your hand, that will allow us access."

  "But, what about food?"

  He gestured toward a metal type flap at the bottom. "All food goes in and out that way. If they won't return the plate, then they starve until it is returned."

  When I tried to point out how unethical something of the sort was, he walked me to the door farthest from my office, closest to the stairs. Z01.

  "This is Raymond Smithers. He's been in here the longest, since the sixties, close to when we first opened. Look inside."

  I peered through the window. A man sat inside on the edge of his twin bed, from what I could see, he appeared to be older, but his face was obscured with a muzzle.

  "Raymond, since arriving at Silent River, has killed more than ten hospital employees and four other patients."

  "How did he get weapons? There must have been really poor security at the time."

  "The most recent staff member he killed had your job, some five or six years ago. It was in the transition into these new fancy doors and walls they installed." Christopher leaned in close, so close I could feel the briefest tickle of his breath against my ear. "He didn't need a weapon. He uses his teeth."

  I stared at the man in the room, through the clear window. One of the orderlies must have cleaned it recently. He rubbed one hand over his wrist
, a shiny metal bracelet adorning each. The muzzle on his face was black, clamped tight around his head, spurts of gray hair poked out of the holes at the back. I couldn't see his eyes as he stared forward at something I couldn't see.

  "He uses his teeth to kill, and then to eat."

  Goose bumps spread across my skin. I could see it in my mind. The tufts of gray hair sticking out of his head, the muzzle gone, replaced with blood. My blood.

  "You don't believe me?"

  I blinked and looked at Christopher, letting the image of the blood fade away. "I didn't say…"

  Christopher lifted his sleeve, revealing a teeth-mark shaped scar on the inside of his bicep – it was in that soft, fleshy place on his aged arm, that always stayed a lighter shade.

  "Got me good, too."

  "When did this happen?" Part of me wanted to reach out and feel the raised flesh of the scars. I'd had a fascination since I was a little kid, with touching things to understand them. I kept my hand in my pocket.

  "Five or six years ago. It's hard to keep count." He dropped his sleeve.

  "You mean, when the psychiatrist was killed?"

  "Yes. One in the same." He met my gaze. "It was a chaotic time. The new system had just been installed. Raymond was the first to be put in one of those rooms." He glanced at the window shaking his head slowly. "Dr. Edwards was excited to try it out. But there was a malfunction with the new electronic restraints, since we weren't using the chains anymore." He paused.

  "So what happened?"

  Hi gaze met mine again, and I couldn't help but notice the blackheads in his nose. "Like you, only he had access. It was…days before we managed to get into the room."

  "Days?" I gasped.

  He nodded, his face flat of emotion. "There wasn't much left of him. Some parts of him were just bones. And Dr. Edwards' eyes," Christopher made a popping sound with his mouth. "Gone."

  "Gone," I repeated.

  Christopher smiled. "Raymond ate them."

  "Oh," I covered my mouth.

  "Once we got in there, it took a horde of us to get Dr. Edwards out, well," he paused, "what was left of him. That's where I got this." He pulled back his sleeve revealing his scar again. "You see this?" He motioned to a little scar above where the teeth marks were, no more than an inch above it. He tapped the raised flesh. "You know what this is?"

  I considered it for a moment. "A different scar?"

  "No," he chuckled. "That motherfucker needs braces. Fucking snaggle-toothed asshole."

  I blinked, giving my eyes their solace, and stepped back from the window and from Christopher, refusing to flinch.

  I had expected there to be terrible people down here, but I wasn't going to let Christopher see that he was getting to me. He continued to chuckle at me.

  I took a deep breath. He was a part of my staff, of which apparently I was the only head. If I let him see that I could be easily scared, my staff wouldn't take me seriously and this would be over before it began.

  "I'll need to see files on all my patients."

  A smug sneer covered Christopher's face. "Top drawer in the first filing cabinet in your office, Dr. Violet."

  I left him there in the hallway, in front of Raymond's room – the cannibal – my patient – and headed to learn about my four new patients.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I stood in front of room Z15 – the patient room just across from my office. The watch on my wrist told me it was nearly eight o'clock. Darkness would have already fallen on Silent River, but Ward Z still looked the same as it had when I arrived early this morning. The hallway white, sterile, yellowed from the stained overhead lights. I stared up at the one that separated my office from this patient's room. There were dead crickets inside it. Their little bodies a lifeless shadow enmeshed in yellow.

  I took a deep breath and looked back at Z15. It was stupid to be nervous. I had worked with criminally insane people for the last six months, and in that time, I had witnessed patients smearing their feces all over their bodies, the walls, even me. I'd found a patient on my second day, who had managed to strangle himself with his night shirt. I'd seen shit and death, and that was in a ward where I had a minimum of twenty patients to oversee on my own.

  These were just four patients. Four.

  I got this.

  I held a small remote in hand. I pressed the red button once. Earlier in the day Christopher and the orderlies had shown me how to use this cool gadget. Each room had its own remote – the remote connected to the bracelets I'd seen Cannibal Ray wearing, each patient having their own. The bracelets could not be removed, fixed to the patient's wrists and ankles for the remainder of their lives. A press of the red button sent chains sliding out of the fancy steel walls, connecting to the patient. The patient would then have twenty-five seconds to position themselves in their chair, before the chains tightened, forcing them to sit down if they weren't already there. The light above the patient's room would turn from soft blue to green when it was safe for me to go in.

  It was probably too late to start seeing my patients. I should have waited until tomorrow, calling it a night and heading back to my new home in the woods of Silent River. But after everything, all the suspense of these patients, the urge to face one, meet them and have my typical introductory chat seemed like a necessity.

  I pressed my palm to the white pad. The door made a soft hissing sound before opening inward. I took a deep breath and moved forward.

  A man sat facing me, in his chair like I expected. I moved slowly, casually, like I'd been taught, taking the seat across from him. I picked Z15 because he'd been the leader of a crime syndicate in Detroit, a volatile gang known as the Purgatory Brotherhood. Ward N had been the home specifically to those whose psychotic problems related directly to gang activity.

  Start with what you know, right?

  "Hello Mr. Whitman. I'm Dr. Adeline Violet. I'm going to be your new psychiatrist. I'm sorry for coming in so late, but—" I stopped when I met his gaze. He stared at me with wide, twitchy eyes. Gray eyes with a ring of solid black around them. Perceptive, intelligent eyes that seemed to peer into the nooks and crannies of my insides. His lips moved as he watched me, singing unintelligible words of a song. A quick glance at his file had said he hummed all the time, singing a song, what sounded like the same one, over and over again constantly and had since he was admitted to Ward Z three years ago. But I hadn't expected it to sound so pleasant. "—it's been a long first day." I smiled.

  He tilted his head to the side, tapping slender fingers on the table, they seemed to follow the pattern of his song, providing rhythm.

  "I just wanted to come in and get acquainted with you since we will be working together."

  He continued tapping and humming, his gaze unnerving. Tattoos covered his arms and crawled up his neck, out of the white jumpsuit he wore. There were more on his face, framing his brow was the word Purgatory in some sort of script – for the brotherhood. There were other words, more script down his jawline, but I couldn't make them out. I had to squash the urge to touch them.

  His black hair was relatively short, but it pointed up and to the side in the very front, as though he'd run his hands through it over and over.

  "I know it's been awhile since you've had someone come in and speak with you. There were some minor issues with personnel change. I'm sure you know how it can be in a hospital." I chuckled nervously, "but I will be in to meet with you several times a week." I realized I was rambling, something I didn't usually do.

  What the fuck are you doing, Adeline? Get it together.

  "How are you doing today?" I asked, hoping for some sort of a response.

  He stopped humming. "You're young."

  I frowned and tucked my hair behind my ear, feeling abnormally self-conscious. My mom said I was getting too old, that I'd let the better part of my twenties get away from me with medical school.

  "You'll never get those years back, Adeline. Never."

  I didn't feel old though, twenty-nine fel
t the same as twenty-two. Still single, alone. More debt, though.

  "Well, thank you, Mr. Whitman. Is it okay if I call you Aaron?"

  "I want to guess your age." His head was still crooked to the side his gray eyes never leaving mine.

  I pressed my lips together. His gaze watched the movement. He was humming again.

  "Okay."

  "Hmmm." He leaned forward as far as the chains attached to his wrist would allow, they scraped along the metal table top. He sized me up. "You should stand up and spin around."

  I narrowed my gaze, but kept my voice light. "We're here to talk about you, Mr. Whitman."

  His lips spread across shockingly white teeth, whiter than his pale skin. "Don't you want to play with me?"

  Heat spread across my chest, and I was thankful the beige top I wore covered up to my neckline. I tended to get red splotches across my chest when I was angry, nervous, excited, or any sort of intense emotion. I was usually pretty good at controlling my emotions so that wouldn't happen – especially when it came to patients – but today I seemed to already be failing in that department.

  "No games, Mr. Whitman."

  "You're no fun." But he was still smiling, his restless eyes following my every movement, making me feel like a bug under a microscope. "But you're also wrong."

  I lifted my brows in surprise. "Am I?"

  "Oh, yes. This is all a game." His voice flittered somewhere between deep and airy.

  "Is it?"

  "Didn't I just say so?"

  He wasn't humming anymore, but his fingers continued to tap a rhythm on the table.

  "Why do you think that?" I asked. I flipped to a clean page in my notebook.

  "Think what?" Both hands were tapping now, in sync with one another.

  "That this is a game?"

  "There are always new pieces, new players."

  "Like me?"

  "Are you new? Or just an old piece back on the board?"