Chapter Twenty
Tuesday
Moving with dizzying speed, Bunny disappeared from my sight in an instant.
Her girlish laughter bounced along the winding halls, leaving me a trail to follow.
Certainty that I was on her trail had me moving through the hospital’s labyrinthian corridors with confidence—until a right turn spat me out at a dead end.
An imposing archway loomed before me, with faded scripture painted above in swirling letters: Cor Jesu Sacratissimum, miserere nobis. My Latin was meager at best, but I could make out a portion of the passage.
Jesus, have mercy on us.
A cold hand of dread ran down my spine as I stepped into the large chamber.
A long aisle stretched before me, with countless pews flanking either side.
Oil paintings depicting patron saints hung on the chapel walls.
The portrait of Saint Bartholomew demanded the eye first, with its center placement and elaborate gilded frame.
My attention drifted to the altar. A wooden Jesus hung on the cross, wearing only a tattered loincloth and a crown of thorns. Blood streaked his gaunt expression, permanently frozen in anguish.
As I edged closer to the macabre statue, I realized the paint was wet, the shock of scarlet still oozing…
No, not paint. Blood.
Fresh blood.
Every muscle in my body clenched when a noise came from behind the altar at the end of the chapel.
Squelch, squelch, squelch. Like something stabbing into wet flesh repeatedly.
My nerves launched into overdrive as the urge to turn and run gripped me tight. As a doctor, I didn’t allow myself to follow that instinct. Curiosity and the desire to help in the event of an accident pushed me forward.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
I stole a glance around the altar, and what I saw had every cell in my veins freezing over with unholy dread.
A man was on the ground, lifeless, a pool of blood spreading around him as his blank eyes bore straight through me.
A nurse straddled the corpse, a scalpel clutched in her hand as she stabbed his throat over and over, blood smattering her white uniform with every jab.
She'd been at it awhile. His head was a few stabs away from being completely severed.
The man’s gown was pulled up to his ribs, leaving him bare from the waist down, and the nurse’s dress was bunched around her hips. She rocked with wild abandon on his pelvis.
Disgust slithered under my skin. The sloppy wet noises weren’t just coming from the scalpel thrusting into the man’s destroyed throat. The nurse was having sex with her victim, and by the look of it, her victim hadn’t been dead for long.
Disquieting awe twisted through me.
They’d been having sex when she'd murdered him.
The nurse’s moans grew louder, to where I was sure she hadn’t heard me approach. I had to go and get help. As I backed away, her undulations stilled.
Then, like something straight from a horror movie, the woman’s head turned a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. The sound of her own bones cracking only had the disturbing grin on her face, stretching wider. "Would you like a turn, Doctor? He feels so good inside!”
She erupted into shrill laughter as she resumed fucking the corpse.
My stomach heaved, and my hand slammed over my mouth to hold back the bile burning up my throat.
I’d seen my fair share of disturbing shit, from the bloated corpse of my alcoholic father lying on the floor of his trailer amongst a swarm of flies, to the grisliest of accidents from my training in the ER.
But I hadn’t seen anything like this.
Then I registered the green veins covering the nurse’s exposed buttocks and thighs. Was this just another hallucination from the pills? How could it be? I hadn’t taken them in days. More likely, it was an extreme reaction the nurse was having to Rook’s Treatment.
The nurse angled her upper body in a way that gave me a clear view of the nametag fixed to her bloody uniform. Nurse Marisela.
Marisela giggled. “Come on, Doctor, he’s got a nice big cock. It will be even harder once rigor mortis sets in!”
"Wh–what have you done?" I managed to rasp.
"This patient was naughty. He needed to be punished."
She appeared surprised by my expression of sheer disgust—and a maelstrom of other emotions I couldn’t begin to process. “Don’t worry, Doctor. He’ll come back. They always do.”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t back away. I was going into shock, and before I could shake myself free, Nurse Marisela screeched her release.
Her nails ripped into the dead man’s chest, and she convulsed on top of him as if possessed by a demon.
Her scream tore through the chapel like an evil hymn, and the statue of Christ gazed down at me with disapproval.
As if I could have stopped this. And maybe I could have stopped it if only I’d arrived sooner.
“Boo!”
A new voice shouted behind me. I screamed as I whipped around to see Bunny jumping out from behind a pew.
The girl howled with amusement as she fell onto the floor, kicking her bare feet. “Did you see that, Joanie?” She held her doll up with one hand and pointed at me with the other. “We got her good!”
“Bunny, run! Go get help!!"
Her giggle attack came to a sudden halt. She sat up, blinking at me. “What’s wrong? You don’t like this game?”
What was wrong with this girl? Couldn’t she see all the blood and the dead body? I glanced back at the altar, bewilderment gagging me. The nurse was gone. Her victim, too. In fact, there was no trace that they’d been here at all.
Even the blood was gone.
My pulse thrashed in my chest. "Th–they were just here, a nurse...c-covered in blood."
"The nurses here usually are," Bunny said matter-of-factly as she got up from the floor. "Do you need a hug? You look scared.”
I steered my bewildered expression back to the girl, blinking several times as my brain struggled to make sense of what I'd just seen. Could it really be my pills, driving me to insanity, or was there something else far more sinister at work?
“Bunny, do you ever see things that aren't really there. Bad things?”
"All the time! Even before my lobotomy."
My gaze snapped to the scar on her head, the pieces snapping into place. My rage, paired with the adrenaline coursing through me, had my hands shaking. "Wait. They performed a lobotomy on you?”
It wasn’t the fifties anymore, so why was Saint Bartholomew’s stuck in the past? They had no right. “I’ll report this, Barbara. They won’t get away with it. We’ll move you to a new facility. I won’t rest until every person here is transferred to a hospital that isn’t stuck in the dark ages.”
To my surprise, Bunny giggled. "Wow, you're really new here, aren't you? Fresh meat, sizzling hot off the mortal plane."
"What are you talking about?"
"There’s nowhere to transfer to, silly. We’re all just playthings.” She waggled Joanie at me. "Just like my dolly."
I swallowed, unsure of what to take seriously and what could be written off as the nonsensical words of a lobotomized criminal. She wasn’t exactly a reliable source. Then again, who here was? Every patient and staff member I’d met so far seemed unwell.
Myself included.
"Can you sit with me for a moment?" I said, taking a seat in a nearby pew.
If I dwelled too much on what I’d just seen, I’d drive myself closer to the brink of complete insanity. The well-being of all the patients here relied on me keeping my shit together, so I foisted my attention on the trail Patient Seventeen had left me.
Bunny had to show me Rook's old office as Seventeen instructed. There had to be something helpful there, maybe some damning information that would be enough to shut this place down and land him behind bars forever.
I closed my eyes, counting to three. One, two, three...
The wood beneath me creaked with Bunny's weight as she sat beside me. "Are you praying?"
"Kind of. I'm meditating. Clearing my mind of any unnecessary thoughts and centering my soul."
"Praying doesn't work here. God is far away.”
I opened my eyes to find Bunny’s eyes brimming with tears. “He never listens to me, anyway.”
Taking Bunny’s hand in mine, I gave it a sympathetic squeeze. "He doesn't listen to me either."
She smiled through her tears and wiped them away with a swipe of Joanie’s hair across her cheeks.
This poor woman. She didn't seem dangerous, certainly not enough to warrant what they'd done to her.
“Bunny, how old are you?”
"Eighteen, I think,” she said after a beat of thought.
"Your file says you're an old lady."
She pondered some more, her feet kicking like a small child's as her legs were too short to reach the ground. "Maybe I am. I don't know anymore."
Her face crinkled, and the thought seemed to trouble her. She hurriedly changed the subject. "This place is creepy, huh? It was an old church before the Rooks took it over."
"The Rooks?"
"Mmm. Dr. Malcolm Rook, the first, bought this place, this church. Turned it into a loony bin. You know, the sort where husbands stuff their disobedient wives and disabled people who can’t help being different.
Anyway, he’s dead now,” she sing-songed.
“You know that old man in the glass case in the lobby? The one all skinned-up like Saint Bartholomew?”
I nodded.
“That’s him. The founder.”
“That’s Rook’s father? How did he end up skinned in the glass case?”
“Rumor has it that it was by his request. He was super into the whole church and Jesus thing. I think he was a priest before he became a brain doctor. Believed that suffering was a part of being closer to God or some stupid shit.”
I chewed my lip as I digested this new piece of information. So it was a family business. “Bunny, may I ask why you were admitted to Saint Bartholomew’s?”
"My stepdad got me pregnant,” she said with a shrug, as if it was old news. “Momma told everyone I was a sex addict who seduced him. But I didn’t want to do those things with nasty Roger. He was old and creepy. He made me.”
“Bunny—I’m so sorry.”
I hated how this wasn’t the first time I'd heard a story like hers. I'd provided therapy to so many abused women of all ages. Where was the justice? My eyes went back to her lobotomy scar. Certainly not at Saint Bartholomew's.
"It's okay." She sighed as she pulled at her doll's hair. "He got what he deserved."
"You killed him, didn't you?" I asked, remembering the few details from her file.
"Yup! The next time he tried to take my clothes off, I cut him up." She made a chopping motion, as if wielding an invisible cleaver. “Then I chopped his thing off and put it in the meat grinder."
Keeping my face straight would have been impossible if it weren't for my years of training. Keeping a non-judgmental space for her, where she felt safe to open up to me, was vital in gaining her trust, which I'd need if she were going to show me to Rook's office.
"And what did you do with the meat?"
She beamed at me with a toothy grin. "I made meatloaf. Momma's favorite."