“So this was called the blood room because of the way they bled the patients out?” Rebecca asked. She sounded slightly disgusted.
He shook his head. “Yes, and no. There were also a lot of surgeries done in here—experimental surgeries. One involved collapsing a lung to get the fluid out. That was the most common one, done to probably half the patients that came in here. Others involved removing ribs or muscles in their chests in order to expand the lungs. Sometimes they would insert balloons into their lungs and fill them with air.” He grimaced and looked at the walls, and I realized the rust might have been blood stains. “It got messy.”
“They actually did that to children?” Rebecca asked.
“Not all,” he said. “But some. They rarely survived the procedure. If they did, they were usually worse off, walking around like their chests had been scooped out.”
“Jesus,” Dex swore under his breath. “I just can’t imagine it.”
“The horrors of history,” Oldman said slowly. “And I’d love to say that a visit to this room was as bad as it got for a youngster. But with rumors of abuse and crumbling standards in Sea Crest, I hate to think of what could be worse.”
“Was there abuse?” I asked.
He cocked his head, considering his answer before saying, “My grandmother never reported anything like that. She was a good woman, saintly almost, who loved to help others in need. But they weren’t all like her. It was hard to be up here, isolated, in constant fear of death while constantly surrounded by it. The nurses had rules too. They couldn’t get emotional over patients, they had to act like everything was fine all the time. It was hard. Many nurses killed themselves. And some nurses, we’ll if you believe the rumors, some went crazy. Took it out on the children. But they are, of course, just rumors. None of this has ever been documented. I should know.”
My body felt like it was getting colder by the moment. This floor had fewer windows than the others, making it darker. If Dex thought we’d explore this floor in the night, he was absolutely out of his mind.
“We should get going,” Oldman said as he came toward us with Dex in tow. “I need to get back to the museum soon and we’ve one more floor to go.”
“But you haven’t told us what you’ve seen here,” Dex pointed out.
Oldman grunted and stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Personally, on this floor, it’s not what I’ve seen but more what I’ve heard. What I’ve felt. I’ve had the feeling that someone was behind me when there was no one there. I’ve heard screams coming from the blood room. I’ve heard wet coughing, like someone is coughing up blood, the sound of wheels going past, and footsteps. I’ve seen a doctor in a white coat standing in the corner of one of the rooms.” He shuddered at that thought. “And I hope I never see him again. Can we get going?”
I picked up on how noticeably agitated he was acting, which in turn made me feel queasy. If the historian wanted to get going, we were definitely going.
“What have others seen?”Dex asked as we climbed the stairs to the final floor.
Oldman gave him a grave look. “It depends who you ask and what their beliefs are.”
“Beliefs?” I repeated.
He nodded as we stopped on the landing. Below us was the darkness of the third floor, above us was the contrasting light of the fourth floor. And yet I felt the fourth floor held more secrets, more animosity than any of the others.
“People have reported seeing the same…creature…on the third and fourth floors.”
“Creature?” I felt icy trails going down my spine. I didn’t want to venture what the creature looked like.
“The fourth floor, as you’ll soon see, was used to house the patients who were close to death and the ones that had gone insane. There used to be a metal gate right here,” he pointed across the stairs, “that prevented them from escaping. As weak and skinny as they were, they were always a threat. Some people say that with all the bad energy, the lost souls, the mistreated patients, the experiments gone wrong, the mass grave—“
“Mass grave?” I interrupted.
He gave me a sympathetic look. “Many bodies were never claimed by their families. They feared the disease would get them, even in death. Superstitions, you know. The dead had to be put somewhere.”
This place couldn’t possibly get worse.
“So what was the creature?” Rebecca asked.
“Many that have seen it believe it’s a demon,” he said. “It looks like a human but isn’t. Crawls on the ceiling and walls.”
And it totally just got worse. That was what the bad thing was. A demon.
A motherfucking demon.
I started to think that maybe Pippa’s warning hadn’t been a figment of my imagination after all.
“Does it ever hurt anyone?” Dex asked in a low voice.
Oldman shook his head and stuck a toothpick between his teeth. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen it. That doesn’t mean it’s not there but…as you can tell, this place will play tricks on you. There’s too much history, too many people who have passed through these walls. You never know what you’re going to get here. And I find that fascinating.” He looked up at the fourth floor. “On second thought, do you mind if we skip that floor? You’re welcome to take a quick look but that whole thing I said earlier about not pushing my luck…”
“No, that’s totally cool,” I said a little too gratefully.
“Do you mind if I just shoot a few seconds?” Of course Dex had to ask that.