Chapter 15
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Since the bank of old copiers in the public part of the library required coins to operate at ten cents a page, Nigel and Chris marked any articles related to the asylum with bits of paper as bookmarks, then hauled the heavy compendiums upstairs to the office where they’d first entered. Thankfully, the old copier there groaned to life and laboriously spit out copies when they pushed the button. The toner was pale and left streaks, but the copies were legible enough to read.
They went a decade in each direction from 1932, then called it a day and went back to the asylum. Nigel longed for a shower after handling books and equipment covered with twenty years of dust and cobwebs, but unfortunately had to make do with wipes and the camping sink Ms. Montague had provided.
Shortly after their return, the broken surface of the drive crunched under the tires of Dr. Lawson’s Prius. Nigel went out to greet them, giving Oscar a swift hug when he climbed out. “How did things go?”
Oscar’s brown eyes were shadowed. “Let’s share everything we found over dinner,” he said. “I’d rather not have to tell the story twice.”
On that ominous note, the two teams regrouped in the main tent, where Tina was busy cooking a big pot of ramen. Armed with bowls and mugs of coffee, they gathered around the big table, along with Dr. Lawson. Ethan silently joined them as well.
Nigel hesitated—Ethan had heavily implied they weren’t meant to be cooperating with each other. But to hell with it; that ship had sailed. The moment Ms. Montague saw their footage, she’d know they’d teamed up.
Oscar, Zeek, and Dr. Lawson related their meeting with Trey Nelson while they ate. When they were done, Nigel shook his head. “That poor man. It sounds like the incident here ruined his life.”
“This confirms it.” Adrienne slurped up a noodle draped over her spoon. “We need to trap the nurse before someone gets hurt.”
“And that you never learned to use chopsticks.” Chris clicked the end of theirs in Adrienne’s direction.
She flushed. “I make up for it by having other talents.”
Nigel cleared his throat, cutting off their…argument?…banter? “Chris and I found the newspaper archive in the library. It’s not digitized, but luckily the office copier still worked. We haven’t had much of a chance to actually read more than the headlines, but Chris made an important discovery.”
Chris shrugged, golden skin reddening slightly. “It’s only because I was working my way forward from the date of the staff photo, and you were working back. Go ahead and tell them.”
“Give me a sec.” Nigel lifted his bowl and drank down the remaining broth, before carrying it to the sink. The stack of copies was on his cot, so he shuffled through them, grabbed the page he sought, and returned to the table.
The headline blared large enough to be easily read when he laid the copy paper down. “The date of the issue is September 12, 1933,” Nigel said, then cleared his throat and read aloud.
TRAGIC ACCIDENT TAKES LIFE OF ASYLUM SUPERINTENDENT, HEAD NURSE
Dr. Wilkes Pioneered New Treatments for the Insane; Will be Mourned by Medical Community
A shocking accident has robbed the Howlston Lunatic Asylum of both its Superintendent, Dr. Herbert Wilkes (62), and the head of its nursing staff, Miss Della Young (48). According to reports, the two were in the electroshock room when faulty wiring led to a fire. As the room is located in the basement portion of the asylum, the victims had no other means of egress, and the fire went unnoticed by other staff until all possibility of rescue was gone.
A group composed of staff and patients were able to put out the fire before any other rooms were damaged. No one else was injured in the blaze, and no patients needed to be removed or rehoused elsewhere.
Dr. Wilkes was well known in the psychiatric community for pioneering new approaches to what is known as biological psychiatry. As his wife and children preceded him in death, his body has been returned to his native New Jersey, where it will be interred beside his family.
Nigel handed it to Oscar, who studied it and then passed it on. “So we know the nurse and the doctor both died on the same day at the same time.”
“Here on the grounds, which would explain why they’re both hanging around.” Oscar went to the ramen pot and helped himself to seconds. “Especially since their deaths sound fairly traumatic.”
“You notice they don’t say anything about services for the nurse,” Tina said, the corner of her mouth twisting down.
“Of course not.” Adrienne’s spoon clinked against her bowl. “It’s all about the old white man.”
Zeek sat back, frowning slightly as though having a difficult thought. “The article says there’s a basement. I haven’t seen an entrance, unless the elevator goes down there.”
Why hadn’t Nigel wondered about a basement before? “There must be some other entrance—the elevator came long after the rest of the building. And of course, they would have needed a boiler room, steam tunnels…there must be a coal chute going to the outside, at the very least. I should have realized we were missing a level earlier.”
“Don’t go hard on yourself, babe.” Oscar reached out with his free hand and wrapped his fingers around Nigel’s. “How many old buildings has OutFoxing been in? If anyone should have thought of it, it should have been us.”
Nigel turned to Ethan, who had finished eating and was now silently studying the copy. “Well? Do you know how to get in the basement?”
Ethan’s gaze flicked up to Nigel, then back to the newspaper article. “I’ve passed on all the information I possess.”
“Or that Patricia told you to,” Dr. Lawson said.
“Ms. Montague is a…reticent woman.” Ethan returned the article to Nigel. “Even I am not fully in her confidence.”
Adrienne scowled at him, then glanced at Nigel. “Thanks for sharing this.”
If she’d meant to get a rise out of Ethan, it failed. He didn’t so much as blink.
“So maybe Wilkes was trying to warn us in the mirror,” Zeek said slowly. “With the writing on the wall.” His eyes widened. “Oh my god, do you think the nurse killed him? Maybe she was murdering patients, and he found out about it, and she tried to kill him but things got out of hand and they both died?”
“That’s wild conjecture,” Nigel said firmly. “We have no evidence Della Young did anything wrong in life.”
“Don’t we?” Oscar asked unexpectedly. When Nigel looked at him, he shrugged. “Remember how many deaths were recorded in the twenties and thirties? Enough that their binders were visually thicker than the others around them. Maybe the increase in mortality was due to disease, or random chance. Or maybe Della Young was an angel of death.” When Zeek looked confused, he added, “That’s what they call nurses who become serial killers.”
Dr. Lawson shook her head. “As Taylor said, we have no evidence of that. Yes, she has been an aggressive ghost, and yes, she certainly contributed to the death of the investigator on the stairs. But calling her a serial killer is making a leap the size of the Grand Canyon.”
Adrienne pushed back her chair and stood up. “Either way, it’s clear our best course of action is to trap her ghost so we can investigate in safety. Once she’s gone, hopefully the other ghosts will be more willing to interact with us.”
“And we can help them move on,” Oscar added.
Nigel squeezed his fingers. Oscar had mentioned being worried about carrying on his grandmother’s legacy, afraid he was too inexperienced. Getting the nurse’s disruptive ghost out of the way would make everything much easier, and would hopefully give his boyfriend the boost of confidence he needed.
“Agreed,” he said. “After tonight, Della Young won’t walk these halls again.”
Oscar shivered as they walked over the drive toward the colossal building. It was still early enough in the spring to have cold nights here in the mountains, and the temperature dropped rapidly once the sun was down.
“Where do you think we should set up?” Zeek asked Adrienne. She carried a small square case retrieved from the trunk of their car, which presumably contained whatever they intended to use as a ghost trap.
“Not in the hall with the creeper,” she replied with a shudder. Glancing over her shoulder, she asked, “What do you think, Oscar? You’re the medium—is there an ideal place to set up our trap and lure her in?”
“I haven’t had any strong feelings about location, in regards to her,” he said, pondering. “She seems free to move around the asylum, rather than being tied in one spot. If we could get into the basement, I’d suggest the room where she died. Since we don’t know how to do that, maybe we can check out the old staff quarters? Somewhere away from the other ghosts we’ve encountered, so we don’t accidentally catch them instead.”
“Great idea.” She smiled at him.
Given their limited time at the asylum, it would probably be more efficient to split up and keep investigating while Adrienne and Zeek went about deploying their ghost trap. But Nigel wanted to see it firsthand, and Adrienne had requested use of their SLS, which meant one of them had to act as camera person. Chris had volunteered to do that, so it only made sense for Oscar to join them.
The interior of the building felt far colder than it should have, given how warm the day had been. There should have been some residual heat trapped inside, or at least, he would have thought so. Nigel sniffled, then bent over in a fit of coughing. Oscar thumped him on the back.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Is it healthy for you to be in here? Maybe you should go back and keep Tina company, watch everything over our cams.”
Nigel shook his head and cleared his throat. “No. I’m fine. It’s definitely just allergies—I didn’t so much as sneeze in the library earlier.”
Oscar was less certain. “Okay, but if you start feeling worse, promise me you’ll go back to the tents and rest.”
Nigel didn’t look happy about it, but said, “Fine. I promise.”
“Thank you.”
As they approached the stairs and elevator, Adrienne said, “I wish the elevator worked. I’m tired of walking up and down these damned stairs.”
The center of the asylum between the two patient wings was set aside for administration and staff quarters. The first floor held the offices they’d already investigated, and the second was given over to the suites used by the superintendents, senior doctors, and their families. The third had housed junior doctors and other ranking staff, while the fourth and most utilitarian was where nurses, orderlies, and other staff had their bunks.
All of which suggested Della Young, as the head nurse, had probably lived on the third floor.
“Do you want me to carry that for you?” he offered, gesturing to the case in her hand.
“No—it’s not heavy.” She started up. “I just won’t need to hit the StairMaster at the gym for the next two months.”
By the time they arrived on the third floor, Nigel was out of breath and wheezing, which stoked Oscar’s worry back into full flame. Chest colds could turn into pneumonia far too easily, and pneumonia was no joke.
Hopefully he’d be able to convince Nigel to go to an urgent care clinic tomorrow. For now, he and Zeek began to search for the room that seemed most likely to have housed the asylum’s head nurses over the years.
The stairs let out onto what looked like a spacious common room, with private bedrooms to the front and back. Once-vibrant wallpaper hung from the walls in strips, and mold dotted the revealed plaster. Couches and chairs sagged, covered in dust and no doubt full of mouse nests. There was a large rug, which at some point someone had rolled up and shoved to the side, exposing the original hardwood flooring.
The two rooms toward the front of the asylum had fireplaces, and held the remains of beds and chairs that looked in the same bad shape as the couches in the common room. There were desks as well, and one had a bookcase that still held some medical texts from forty years prior. “This is probably where the doctors lived,” Oscar guessed.
The living quarters at the back were smaller, divided into four spaces rather than only two. There was just enough room for a bed and a small desk in each, though at least they were private rather than shared like the fourth-floor staff rooms. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be an obvious way to tell who had occupied which room—assuming the room assignments had remained constant since the 1930s in the first place.
As they poked around, though, he became aware of the sensation of being watched. He paused, staring out one of the windows into the empty blackness of the night, half expecting to see a face reflected in the glass from behind him. None appeared, but he knew she was close.
He retreated to the common room with the others. “Since we don’t know which room was hers, I suggest we do this here, where she would have spent at least some of her off-hours.” He paused, then added, “She’s already hanging around, by the way. Keeping an eye on us.”
“That’s not reassuring,” said Chris from where they were setting up a static cam.
“It’s what we want, though,” Adrienne countered. She put down the case in the center of the common room, then flipped the latches and opened it up.
Inside, nestled within layers of foam padding, was what looked like a large box made from matte gray metal. Adrienne carefully lifted it from the padding, then set it in the center of the floor.
“So what is that?” Oscar asked.
Zeek grinned. “This, my friend, is a Devil’s Toy Box.”