Page 36 of Unwell
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 atime. 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.
TWENTY-TWO
GINNY
Every sound felt like an axe cleaving my skull.
My sobs were no longer mine, tearing from me before becoming a twisted, mocking form of themselves. The room stole them before throwing them back at me, multiplied into a thousand whispering jeers. It felt like each one crawled beneath my skin and buried itself like a cockroach. My limbs itched with the phantom sensations of them.
