Page 92 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

“You’ll understand when we get there,” Dr. Baldwin said.

Before she could say more, he turned and walked to his car. “I’m not going inside that building,” Sage said to Detective Nolan. “You can’t make me.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “But the only way we’re going to find out who killed your sister and stepfather is by you helping me find answers about what’s really been going on in this place. Because to tell you the truth, at this point I’m as confused as you are.”

She bit the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood. She wanted to find Rosemary’s killer too, but she didn’t want to lose her sanity or her life in the process. Coming back to Willowbrook and going inside a resident building was too much.

When Sergeant Clark pulled onto the main road again, she wanted him to keep driving, right out the front gate and back to the city. But wanting something wasn’t going to get her anywhere. And there was no getting out of this mess now anyway. She could either help Nolan find the killer or look over her shoulder for the rest of her life until he was caught.

“But I don’t understand,” she said. “What does House Thirteen have to do with Eddie?”

Nolan lit a cigarette, then turned and held the half-empty pack out to her, his arm across the back of the seat. Unfiltered Camels. Not her brand, and she hadn’t smoked a cigarette in over two weeks, but she didn’t care. She picked one from the pack with trembling fingers, let him light it, and took a long drag.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But Dr. Baldwin thinks it’s important toshowyou what we’re talking about, not tell you.” He took a drag of his cigarette, held it for what seemed like forever, then forced the smoke out between his lips. “And I agree.”

“But after that we’re getting the hell out of here,” she said. “Right?”

“Yup. As soon as we get this next bit cleared up.” He squinted through the windshield, reading the stenciled numbers on the buildings.

Whatever that means, she thought. She took another drag of the cigarette, but it tasted awful and made her dizzy. She held on to it for another minute, then quickly rolled down the window and threw it out.

When they reached the right building, Clark parked behind the left wing next to Baldwin’s car.

“Wait here,” Nolan said. “This shouldn’t take long.”

He got out and opened her door, but Sage sat motionless in the back seat trying to find her courage. The images from House Six would haunt her for the rest of her life; she didn’t need more to add to the torture. What if House Thirteen was worse? What if going inside made her have another anxiety attack like the one she had in Eddie’s car? Thinking Dr. Baldwin might want to lock her up again didn’t help.

Detective Nolan leaned down and looked at her through the open door. “You coming?”

She nodded and got out, then followed him to the back of House Thirteen. Keeping her eyes on the ground, she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other until they reached the employee entrance. Once inside, Dr. Baldwin led them down a hallway past metal doors, some open and some closed, others slightly ajar. In one room, industrial-size barrels of Pine-Sol and janitors’ carts filled with mops and brooms lurked against the far wall like warped circus wagons. In another, lockers lined the walls, along with a time clock and a timecard rack, practically empty.

At the end of the hall, they turned right into another corridor, this one wider and with fewer doors. It looked exactly like the main hallway in House Six. For a second, she felt light-headed, overcome by the powerful sensation that she was about to fall to the floor. Half convinced that she’d just been jarred awake from a long dream to find herself still locked inside Willowbrook, she reminded herself to breathe and stayed close to Detective Nolan. At least there were no moaning residents in wheelchairs and carts lining the hall.

When they passed the turnoff leading to the seclusion ward, she half expected Wayne to be standing there with a shit-eating grin on his face, ready to throw her into a straitjacket and drag her into the tunnels to slit her throat.

But Wayne was dead. So who would be waiting there instead?

At the far end of the hall, they came to a set of riveted double doors below a sign that read:ADULT WARD D. BURNED OUT CHRONIC.

“I thought Willowbrook was for children?” Detective Nolan said.

“It is, mostly,” Dr. Baldwin, unlocking the doors. “But children grow up.”

He pushed open one side of the double doors and held it, and the familiar stench of feces and Pine-Sol immediately wafted over them, along with the nightmarish sounds of muttering and wailing and screaming. Nausea stirred in Sage’s stomach. It was all she could do not to turn around and run.

After she and Nolan went through, Baldwin locked the door again and led them down a wide corridor, past more doors with square windows covered with metal bars. A woman screamed behind one door. A man pushed his face up to a window and barked at them. Another man let out of string of profanities.

Sage walked in the center of the corridor with her hands over her ears, the floor and walls reeling in front of her. Detective Nolan looked left and right, sometimes hesitating, sometimes walking fast. While he tried to maintain a professional detachment, the horror in his eyes betrayed him.

After they passed a nurses’ station and took a left, Dr. Baldwin stopped at a door with a sign that read:CONSULTATION ROOM.

“You can wait in here,” he said, unlocking the door and letting them through.

Inside, a pockmarked table surrounded by four wooden chairs sat in the center of what looked like a small waiting room, with three more chairs against one wall, beneath a painting of a pond surrounded by wildflowers. Detective Nolan took a seat at the table, turning the chair sideways to face the door. At first Sage couldn’t decide whether to pace or sit. Then she got dizzy, so she sat in one of the chairs lining the wall, her hands tightly clasped in her lap, her knuckles turning white. A thousand thoughts and questions ran through her head, jumbling together so fast she couldn’t think straight. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to stop trembling.

Within minutes, Dr. Baldwin returned, followed by an attendant gripping the arm of a young man. The young man shuffled into the room with his eyes down, his face devoid of emotion. When Sage saw who it was, she felt something shift inside her head, as if Dr. Baldwin had reached into her brain with his ice pick and altered reality. She couldn’t breathe.

“Eddie?” she managed. “What are you doing here?”

---