The corridor opened up into an enormous room. The temperature dropped, and cold air crawled over my skin. I squeezed Jared’s hand tighter, my pride back at the top of the stairs along with my courage.
A bare bulb flickered at the opposite end of the room, revealing the truth about this place in weak bursts. They stood in two rows at the ends of the aluminum beds that were outfitted with thin mattresses and frayed canvas straps:
Children—at least twenty of them.
Ranging from four or five years old to nine or ten, they were sickly and gaunt, in matching pairs of stained long underwear. With their hair buzzed to less than an inch, it was hard to distinguish the boys from the girls. Their eyes reflected the light when it hit them, like they were still among the living.
But something was wrong with their faces.
The muscles were frozen, contorted in unnatural expressions and exaggerated smiles. Only their eyes moved, conveying the emotions their faces couldn’t.
“Turn around slowly.” Jared kept his voice low. “We’re going back the way we came.”
“No, we aren’t.”
I pointed at two children standing behind me. They watched us curiously, their faces as mangled as the others’. They held hands, the taller one clutching the younger child’s protectively. Steel gray eyes and innocent blue ones gazed back at us.
Jared pulled me closer.
The taller child lifted a thin arm, a plastic IV port taped inside the crook of his bony elbow. He pointed at the other end of the room, where the remaining children were lined up.
“What do they want?”
Jared pulled my hand behind his back and drew me closer. “Something happened here. I think they need us to bear witness so they can rest.”
The child was still pointing.
“Should we do what he wants?”
“Spirits of children are unpredictable, but I don’t think we have a choice. There are too many of them. If they get agitated…”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
Turning my back on those children-that-weren’t-children was terrifying. I kept thinking about the girl in the yellow dress at Lilburn, who had looked so innocent right before she tried to kill us.
We walked closer as the flickering bulb bathed the room in pale light. An IV pole was positioned at the head of each dented bed frame, the canvas straps pulled tight across the stripped mattresses, as if they were still restraining bodies beneath them.
Yellowed newspaper clippings were taped to the walls. I scanned the chilling headlines: Seven Children Die in West Virginia Group Home, Siblings Acquitted for Poisoning Their Parents After Years of Abuse, Nurse in Harken Fired for Administering Lethal Dose of Medication.
I couldn’t stand to read any more.
I looked back at the rows of hopeful eyes. Without a word, each child extended an arm. A piece of tape secured an IV port inside every elbow. One of the frailer children handed me an amber bottle with block lettering typed on the yellow label: STRYCHNINE.
Jared rubbed his free hand over his face. “Strychnine causes muscular damage—” As he spoke the words, their eyes widened. “They were poisoned.”
Bile rose in the back of my throat. “And those people got away with it.”
“No.” Jared stared at me, his eyes full of anger. “My dad used to say the evidence of evil can be hidden, but it always leaves a stain. We’ll tell someone what happened here.”
The older child behind me walked toward the other children, beckoning us to follow.
We reached the last bed.
The wall behind it was cracked, like someone had tried to break through. A hole about the size of a small doorway revealed the wooden framework within the wall, and the brick behind it. Whoever started the hole never finished it.
I heard a sound. It started out faint and intensified. “Is that—?”
“Scratching.”
It was coming from inside the wall.
The kids around us scattered, cowering behind the aluminum frames of their beds. A figure emerged from the hole.
A boy.
He was older than the rest of the children—maybe thirteen or fourteen. It was hard to tell, but he was much taller than the others, with sharper features and vacant eyes. A sledgehammer rested against his shoulder.
He stepped closer, his clothes coated with dust and debris from the crumbling bits of concrete. “I tried to find a way out, I swear. But the brick was too thick.” The boy’s voice wavered, a crazed look in his bloodshot eyes. “Now I’m the only one left.”
Did he think he was still alive?
“Father will be angry if he finds out you were down here. He’ll punish me.” The spirit paced back and forth in front of us, muttering to himself.
“He’s gone,” Jared said. “You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
The spirit’s eyes narrowed. “Strangers lie. If I watch over what’s his, he’ll come back for me. He promised.”
The boy had to be referring to the other children. Was he responsible for keeping them down here until his deranged father killed them?
Jared raised the semiautomatic paintball gun, shoving me behind him. The spirit vanished as the paintball cases exploded against the wall, brown holy water running down it in streaks.
An arm swung around my neck from behind. The point of something thin and sharp pressed against the skin below my ear.
A needle.
Every breath brought the point closer, and I imagined it puncturing my skin and filling my body with the poison that probably killed every child in this room.
“You shot at me.” The boy’s tone was menacing.
Jared tossed the gun. It spun over the footprints on the concrete floor. “I’m sorry. Just don’t hurt her. I’ll do whatever you want.”
The spirit’s hand moved as he spoke and the needle threatened to puncture my skin. “I have to protect it. Then I’ll be free.”
“I can get you out of here,” Jared pleaded.
“It’s too late for that,” the boy whispered in my ear, the warmth of breath absent. He pushed me forward without compromising his grip. “Move.”
Jared backed up slowly without taking his eyes off me.
The spirit tightened his arm around my neck and nodded from Jared to the crumbling hole in the wall. “Get inside.”
Jared stepped into the hole without hesitation, a doorway leading nowhere. I waited, praying I wouldn’t feel the prick of the needle on my skin.
A second passed, then another.
One hard shove and I stumbled into the crude opening. Jared pulled me toward him. We were trapped in a cage of wooden framework no bigger than a phone booth, with nothing but solid brick behind it.
Jared locked his arms around
my waist. “You’re okay.”
I looked up at him in time to see his expression change from relief to terror. He spun me around and my back slammed against the brick inside the wall. I faced the hole now, Jared’s body wedged between the vicious spirit and me.
“What are you—” A board smacked against the opening, and nails pounded into the wood. “He’s closing the hole.”
My throat closed along with it. The darkness, the memory, the terror closed in on me. Dizziness tugged at my equilibrium.
Another board hit the wall.
“No!” I threw my hands against it, pushing with all my strength. The wood vibrated each time the hammer hit a nail. Jared turned around so we were both facing the crisscrossed slices of the room that were still visible.
I couldn’t see the spirits of the other children anymore, only glimpses of the bare bulb and the head of the hammer.
Jared pounded his fists on the slats of wood, but they didn’t give. “The nails shouldn’t be this strong.”
The sledgehammer hit another nail.
The sound reminded me of the bolts hitting the floor of the warehouse when they unscrewed themselves from the window. It had been impossible for Lukas and Jared to hold them in place.
Was the boy’s spirit strengthening these nails the same way?
Another board slapped against the opening, eclipsing the last sliver of light. The hammer hit the wood over and over. I counted every nail.
Twenty-seven.
That was the count when the last one plunged into the wood, trapping us inside.
CHAPTER 26
Within the Walls
He shut us in. He shut us in. He shut us in.
I heard myself screaming, but the only words I could make out were the ones in my head.
I was back inside my mother’s closet again, helpless and terrified—the memories battering me one after another. Darkness pressing in from all sides, heavy and suffocating. My ragged breathing. The smell of mothballs and cedar. Smooth wood under my hands as I ran them over the walls.