Project 17 (12 page)

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"Why's it closed?" Tony asks. "We didn't close it."

I try the knob, but it won't turn--like it's locked. "What the fuck?" I shout out.

Another scream rips through the walkie-talkie.

"Maybe the talkie's working now," Greta says, pressing the talk button down. "Mimi? Are you there?"

Liza makes the sign of the cross.

Meanwhile, I set the camera down on the ground, angled toward us, and pound against the door with everything I've got. "Who the hell locked this thing?"

Tony tries to help me, but his ninety-pound frame only gets in my way.

I tell him to move and then take a couple steps back. I run and body-shove the door. But the thing won't budge. "We gotta go another way!" I shout.

"I think it's working now," Greta says, handing me her walkie-talkie. "I can hear voices on the other end."

I press it up against my ear. "It's Chet!" I can hear his voice. "Chet!" I shout into the thing.

But he obviously can't hear me, because I don't get a response.

"Piece of shit!" I yell, resisting the urge to chuck the thing against the wall. I try the door again. Still locked. "Let's go!" I say, grabbing the camera and moving in the opposite direction, hoping to find an alternate route upstairs.

"Let's check the map," Tony squeals.

I toss it at him and hurry down the tunnel. The

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walkie-talkie still pressed against my ear, I no longer hear any voices--just Liza's right behind me, whispering the Lord's Prayer.

I take a couple turns but end up at a dead end--the freakin' tunnel just ends--and we have to turn back.

"This place is a maze," Greta says.

"Wait, what's that noise?" Tony says.

We stop a second to listen. It sounds like a bunch of people talking--their voices whispering and whimpering together.

"Somebody's there," Tony says.

"It's pipes," I argue, noticing the water leaking through the cracks along the ceiling.

"That is
not
pipes," Greta shouts. "Someone's up there."

I strain to listen. It's like a constant whispering sound. "Just pipes," I insist, knowing that must be the truth. "Let's go!" Liza insists.

"This way!" Tony shouts, using the map. He leads us to an open doorway. Beyond it is a stairwell that leads us upstairs. Someone's drawn a row of pissed-off angels, seventeen of them--their backs are numbered--climbing up the wall, heading for their doom. There's a picture of a devil at the very top. We sprint down a corridor and backtrack to the reception room.

"Where is she?" Greta shouts.

The reception room is empty now, all except for Mimi's circle of candles--still ignited on the floor.

120

DERIK

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"
Mimi shouts. Her voice is coming from the D wing.

I tell Tony to stay with Greta and Liza and then I hurry down the hallway and around the corner--until I find Chet and Mimi.

They're standing in one of the rooms, facing one another. Nobody appears to be hurt, but Mimi looks pissed. "Get away from me!" she repeats, taking a step back from him.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Chet says. "It was stupid."

"What the hell happened here?" I ask.

But neither of them answers me.

"Hello?"
I shout even louder.
"What happened?"

"Chet's an asshole, that's what happened," Mimi says, finally looking up at me.

"What did you do?" I take a step toward him.

Chet turns to me. "It was just a joke. No big deal."

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"What was a joke?"

"I was just taking a leak down here," he explains, gesturing to the tub. "I heard Mimi heading this way, so I hid behind the door and jumped out at her when she came in. No big deal."

"For your information," Mimi cuts in, "this is not a bathroom. They used it for hydrotherapy."

"Hydro-what-apy?" Chet asks.

"They made patients sit in the tub water for hours," she explains. "A canvas strapped over them so they couldn't get out. It was some warped idea of therapy."

"So what does that have to do with me?" Chet asks.

"Why don't you have a little respect?" Mimi says.

"I'm sorry, okay? I had to go, and the tub worked just fine--drain and all."

But Mimi is still flipping out, accusing him of trying to scare her way before she even headed down here. "I could hear you whispering my name," she says.

"What are you talking about? I didn't whisper anything."

"Don't play dumb," she snaps. "You were whispering my name. And I could hear the sound of water running."

"Maybe what you heard was the sound of me taking a leak."

"What's going on?" Greta asks, inserting herself into the action. She practically elbows her way past me so she can stand dead center, taking full advantage of the camera.

Liza and Tony are here, too--Liza practically glued to my side. Not that I mind.

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"I'm not making this up," Mimi continues, rubbing her temples. "Someone was calling my name; someone even answered me. I said 'This isn't funny!' and someone answered, 'I'm not laughing.' It came through the walkie-talkie."

"Well, maybe that was one of us," I offer. "We could hear someone's voice coming through the speaker. Maybe you could hear us as well."

"Did one of you say that?" Mimi asks.

We all look at one another, but nobody seems to remember. I move even closet to Liza, sensing how freaked out she is. Her leg trembles against mine.

"I can't even remember what I said two seconds ago, never mind ten minutes," I say.

"Seriously," Chet says, turning to Mimi. "All joking aside; it wasn't me. I mean, aside from jumping out at you."

"Then who was it?" she asks.

"There's got to be some explanation," I say, giving Liza a reassuring squeeze, my arm wrapped around her shoulder. "It was probably just the talkie. You were probably either picking up on us, or maybe someone in the area. Those things probably have a killer radar."

"When they're actually working," Tony adds.

"Well, what about what happened to us?" Greta says, stating into the camera. "We were downstairs in the tunnel and the door closed and locked on us. We almost couldn't get back up here."

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"This place is more than a hundred years old," I say. "What do you expect with heavy doors and rusted hinges?"

Chet goes to say something but then sees the writing above the tub. Someone's painted the words "I've been waiting for you" in bright red letters, making him pause. "This place is wacko."

"Exactly," Liza says. "Which is why we shouldn't be here."

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LIZA

WHILE THE OTHERS
sit around the circle of candles, taking a break, I sneak the journal again and read another entry, hoping that Mimi doesn't notice:

September 8, 1981

Last night I was punished. There's a woman here who murdered her husband. She got moved to my room, to the bed right next to mine.

And she scares me even more than Jessica.

I didn't want to sleep next to her, so I refused to go to bed. The next thing I know, four nurses came at me, ripped off my clothes, and threw me in one of the seclusion rooms in the back. I wouldn't stop kicking and screaming and punching the door, so they came back in, held me down, and injected me with something to make me sleep.

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I hate this place. I hate the smell here-a mix of urine and bleach. And I hate most of the nurses. Some of them are so unbelievably cruel, especially to the older patients. They make them walk around naked-for ease, I think, so they don't have to keep changing them. And then they hose them down for cleaning.

A couple days ago, Vicky, this one crazy nurse, toed naked Mrs. Delaney to a chair with a bedsheet. Vicky kept her there pretty much all day, but Mrs. Delaney didn't complain too much since she'd been all drugged up.

Did I mention that I hate the drugs here? The pills I take make me jumpy all the time. Everybody tell me that I'll get used to the medication, that soon I'll settle in and make this place my home.

But I'll never call this place anything else but hell. The only good thing is that I've become friends with this one girl, Becky, who's in here because she kept plucking out all her hair. She wears a wig now, and her dad visits her at least a couple times a week. We go out on the terrace together sometimes for a smoke and talk about what we'll do once we get out of this place. She has all these ideas, but I can't think of one, so I just listen, and she doesn't see to mind. She has a doll that she carries around all the time. It's made of cloth and year, so the nurses let her keep it. Plus, it's missing the button eyes, so there's nothing she can use to hurt herself. Yesterday, Becky asked me to draw eyes on the doll for her. I did using black

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and blue fine-point markets, giving her the biggest, longest eyelashes a girl could every have. Becky was so happy with the job I did, with the sparkly shade of blue I shoes, that she renamed the doll after me-calling her Christy.

More tomorrow.

P.S. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll be seventeen. Happy Birthday to me.

I close the journal and take a deep breath, wishing this were all one big dream that I could wake up out of, wondering how a girl my age could end up here. I glance toward Christine's watercolor again, focusing a moment on all the missing pieces--an arm, a hip, her mouth, the feet, her heart--and then I flip it over to look at the date. She painted it almost one full year after her first journal entry, making me wonder if this place only made her worse.

"What do you think?" Mimi asks.

My heart jumps just hearing her voice--realizing that she's been watching me all this time. The shadow of a candle flame flickers against her chin and crawls up her face, cutting it in two.

"Are you okay?" Derik asks, sensing my anxiety.

I nod, grateful for his concern. Contrary to what I'd heard about him prior to coming here, he's been really sweet to me, asking me how I am at every ten-minute interval. And sticking close by me.

"I think she haunts this place," Mimi says. "I think

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she wanted someone to find her picture and journal."

"And I think you've been watching too many scary movies," Derik says, passing me an opened box of Cheez-Its.

I frown at it--at the idea of eating products that contain hydrogenated oils--but I take a handful anyway to be polite.

I go to pass the box to Tony, but he and Greta are way too busy arguing over some storyboards that he made up. Apparently Tony has his own ideas for how Derik's film should look.

"Who says this Christine chick is even dead?" Derik asks, distracting me from eavesdropping.

"That graffiti we saw on the wall," Mimi says. "Remember ... the writing that said her body is buried out in the garden."

"But who even knows if that was true?" I ask for my own benefit. "Maybe it was someone who saw her journal and decided to be funny."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Mimi arches her eyebrows, like she can sense my discomfort--and enjoys it.

"Speaking of graffiti," Chet begins, "You know what I think is
really
weird?"

"The writing in the hydrotherapy room?" Mimi answers.

Chet nods, totally in sync with her. "Nothing like taking a whiz in front of a sign that says 'I've been waiting for you.' Talk about pressure."

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"But it's true," Mimi says. "They
have
been waiting for us."

"Who?" I ask, somehow already knowing the answer.

"The spirits that linger here, the ones like Christine who can't move on."

"Do you think Christine's the one who wrote that graffiti?" Chet asks her.

"Are you kidding me, man?" Derik says, giving Chet's shoulder a push, "I can't believe you're getting sucked into this. I mean, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but last I heard, ghosts don't graffiti walls."

"How do
you
know?" Mimi asks. "Ever ask one?"

"Will you listen to yourself?" Derik aims his camera at her. "You're starting to sound a little weird, here--I mean, even weirder than usual."

"And that means
so
much coming from a stellar guy like you," Mimi says.

Derik peeks up at me, a bit embarrassed, maybe, because he quickly looks away. I can't help but wonder if the embarrassment is because of his reputation--if maybe he's afraid of my finding out about him.

Even though I already know.

"What do you think the spirits are waiting for?" Chet continues, obviously interested in all of Mimi's ghost talk.

Mimi takes a couple Cheez-Its and slides them into her mouth, over her stud-pierced lip. "I don't know," she says finally. "I mean, this place is going to be torn down next week. Maybe they need our help to tie up some unfinished