Chapter 21 - Nancy
TWENTY-ONE
NANCY
Working was torturous with Dr. Marney’s cum pooling in my underwear. Every step reminded me of him. Of what we’d done. Of coming around him despite detesting him.
The warmth gathering in my panties sickened me. Yet some secret shameful part of me hoped it would take root inside me. That Marney’s sperm was fighting to impregnate me as I walked.
The thought made me want to gag and rejoice at the same time.
But where was Ginny? I hadn’t seen her through my entire shift. I’d dropped off her bag of ribbons, leaving them on her bedside table, but I hadn’t seen her at all.
I searched her ward, the grounds, and the woods.
Nothing.
‘Marney probably dragged her down to the basements for one of his experiments,’ an orderly muttered when I asked. The boredom in his voice told me he didn’t care either way. I clenched my jaw to hold back from biting at him.
The basements. Hell, I hoped not. I hated it down there. The air grew thicker with every step into the asylum’s innards, like it heaved with the sorrow of all who had passed there.
Still, I went. For Ginny.
The stairwell reeked of rust and damp, the aging asylum long past needing work done.
It made plenty of profit, but it never filtered back into improvements.
Just lined the pockets of the monsters who ran the place.
The only new equipment purchased was loosely defined experimental techniques that were fun for the doctors.
Each bowing step groaned under my feet. The deep groan of the metal acted like a step-by-step warning to go no further. The deeper I went, the more cloying the air became. The lingering scent of mould and rot.
Then a scream came hurtling through the abandoned corridors. Bloody and grim. I gripped the handrail until my fingers ached.
The wail was high and feminine, torn and so raw it cut through my soul.
Ginny?
I forced myself onward, creeping in the shadows. None of the doctors would be pleased to see me lurking where I didn’t belong. But I had to check. To save her if I could.
My chest stuttered when I saw a short-haired blonde soaked in blood.
Ginny!
Oh God, no. My body tensed until I quaked against the wall, trying to hold in a wail of my own.
I made myself to look again.
The short hair was all I could see. Not short enough.
Maybe it wasn’t Ginny?
Doubt edged me closer. A tall stack of rusting bed frames provided cover as I tried to swallow my breath. Too loud.
The vast space was more of a storage room for anything too old to be of use than a dedicated room.
Marney had converted half into a makeshift surgery theatre-come-dungeon.
There was nothing sterile about it, though, Marney didn’t care whether his subjects succumbed to an infection.
Hell, he was more likely to introduce one.
I hadn’t forgotten the poor old man he’d inflicted with rabies just to watch him suffer.
Not the girl he’d locked into one of the metal cages with him.
Dr. Marney loomed over the patient who he’d secured to the metal gurney with soiled leather straps.
I pressed a hand to my mouth to stifle the vomit that rose in the back of my throat.
The woman’s stomach had a gash from hip to hip.
Marney reached in and hauled out her intestines, draping them like butcher’s links as the woman convulsed.
Blood seeped in waves from her wound, dripping in a quick staccato onto the red soaked floor.
Marney twisted his hand once, twice. The engorged innards cocooned his fist like a vile bandage.
The smell hit me all at once, iron and shit.
And something sweeter and sicklier, that I’d only ever smelled when the butcher left the backroom open while splitting a pig.
Marney’s face looked demonic, like a truly evil entity lurked below his human skin. He squeezed and laughed as the woman gave weakening cries. My heart broke for her. The sacrilege inflicted upon another human ripped me to the core.
With the other hand, he forced his erection into his fist, fucking the slick, scarlet coils.
The wet slop of the grotesque action and the sound of his grunts made my stomach heave.
He’d moaned like that while inside me, too.
The bubbling squelch as blood frothed around his cock had me swallowing another wave of vomit.
Even so, my thighs clenched. The horror bled into the memory of his cock inside me only a few hours before. His filthy voice in my ear promising to breed me.
I hated myself for it.
The woman’s eyes bulged. Rolling so far back she appeared possessed. Her screams had gone hoarse, morphing into bloody gurgles. Marney didn’t notice. Or seem to care.
Bile seared my throat as I leaned, heaving against the rusted beds. The room blurred as I blinked back tears. I stumbled back and retched into the dark, vomit covering the concrete floor. A sob tore from my throat, and I feared Marney had heard. I had to get out.
Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I forced myself to move.
Ginny. I had to find Ginny.
While the glow of the strip light above the stairs beckoned, I couldn’t leave without checking if she was there. If she was, she might have been Marney’s next victim.
A high pitched, but soft, sound caught my attention. Like the whine of a baby echoing through the halls.
I followed the sound along a narrow passage, the walls furred with mould and the floor slick with stale water beneath my shoes. Squinting in the dark, I saw murky red drops.
Blood?
I bent down and ran my fingers through the liquid.
Sticky.
Not fresh.
The thought should have relieved me. I’d seen Ginny only the previous day. It couldn’t be the baby’s. Or hers…right?
Seizing a length of old iron piping, I brandished it in front of me as I crept forward. The corridor opened out into a cavernous darkness. My pulse, and the low keening noise from somewhere in the vacuous space, were all I could hear echoing back at me.
Stumbling into the dark, I found a switch on the wall and flicked it.
The bulb flickered twice before filling the room with a sickly yellow light.
A small bundle lay in the far corner, wrapped in a bloodied blanket. Baby-sized. One edge jerking as the whining noise increased.
‘No…’ I cried, dropping the pipe with a clatter and crossing the space in a heartbeat.
The blanket was damp and stinking, with fat black flies buzzing around it. I gagged on the sour reek as I knelt.
With trembling fingers, I peeled the blanket back where a face should have been.
Dead rats.
A dozen bloated furry bodies split open.
Maggots writhed in the soft flesh, the sound of them chewing wetly making me heave.
Matching baby pink ribbons circled their throats, pulled tight.
Too tight. The poor creatures had been choked to death.
All but one. Maimed and writhing with a ribbon about its neck.
The stink hit me full in the face. The cloying rot.
The sharp tang of ammonia. And the metallic smell of death.
I wanted to scream, but it lay bound in my chest. The devastation of the woman, and the cruelty to the animals, leaving me hollow.
I dropped the blanket and staggered back. Tears ran down my cheeks in waterfalls of despair. And relief. Because it wasn’t the baby in the bundle.
My legs burned as I tore back through the guts of the building, forcing myself to take the stairs two at a time. Crashing through a door, the building spat me out right into Robert’s arms.
Whatever he saw in my face stilled any admonition he might have thrown at me. Tight hands gripped my arms to steady me.
‘I can’t find Ginny,’ I gasped through a torrent of sobs. I daren’t mention the other monstrosities I’d seen. Being married to one of the doctors wouldn’t protect me if Marney knew what I’d seen.
‘No.’ Robert clenched his jaw and took an angry breath. ‘They’ve got her in the Echo Chamber. She played up, so they put her in there.’
Relief flooded me only briefly.
Because the Echo Chamber wasn’t any safer than the basements.