She had been right all along: The Inn was haunted.
Not only by the ghosts of long-ago Civil War patients, but by the things Gran was doing down in the basement. Terrible deeds and actions caused their own kind of haunting. Vi believed that it held memories of every terrible thing that had happened inside its walls. The building felt angry and sick to her; it felt dangerous.
The summer rain pounded down, soaking their clothes, their hair. They slipped in the wet grass, holding each other up. Thunder boomed in the distance, a low grumbling roar. Lightning struck, and the world flashed bright and blue and brilliant for one second, as if God were taking a picture. The sky was electric, alive and humming, and Vi felt like they were tapped into it, feeding off it, the current running through them, turning them into live-wire girls. She felt that if lightning came down and struck them right now, it wouldn’t kill them or even hurt them.
It would just make them more powerful.
They reached the building and crept around to the back door. Vi’s heart was pounding, partly from nerves, but also because with Iris she felt like so much more than herself. She couldn’t let Gran take Iris away. This was their only hope. It was the only thing that could save Iris, save them both.
Vi slipped her copy of the key into the lock.
“I’m afraid,” Iris said, stepping back.
“You don’t have to do this,” Vi told her.
“Yes, I do. I need to see where I came from.”
“What we find in there,” Vi said, “we’re going to use it to fix things.”
“Promise?”
Vi nodded. “We’re going to find out who you really are,” she said. “We’re going to learn your real name. We’ll get the papers that prove everything Gran did to you, and we’ll bring them to Julia and the police. The whole world is going to know what happened here.”
And what will happen then? she wondered.
What would Gran do?
How would she react when she learned what Vi had done?
She couldn’t think about that. Could only think about the next step.
She pulled the door open.
They peered up and down the hallway before they entered. All clear. She took Iris’s hand again, and in they went. Each of them had on an empty backpack to help them carry more files.
The building smelled like disinfectant spray, old wood, and brick. It smelled like ghosts.
They turned right, creeping down the corridor into the Common Room. Vi led Iris to the door marked BASEMENT and quickly unlocked it, and Iris followed her through. They went down the stairs to the basement, took a right, and approached the heavy metal door. Vi pulled out the key she’d marked B WEST.
“Are you ready?” she asked Iris.
Iris nodded, gave a weak smile.
Vi thought of the months, the years maybe, that Iris had spent down there, locked in that room. While the whole time, Vi was right across the lawn. She could have come and rescued her. Saved her. If only she had known.
She unlocked the door.
They stepped through, looking and listening. It was quiet.
“These three rooms on the left,” Vi said, “that’s where they keep the patients.”
They peered through the little window into the first room. It was empty, holding only a single bed.
“No one,” Vi said. Iris nodded, looking relieved.
They moved on to the next room, opened the door. The same size as the first, but in addition to the bed with the leather restraints, this one held big metal lights, like in an operating room, and a metal table with a metal box on it.
“Is that…” Iris reached for the box, touched one of the dials.
There were cables leading out of it to two paddles.
Vi nodded. “It’s for shock treatments.”
Iris pulled her hand away. “Is this where they did it to me?”
“Maybe,” Vi said, all the spit in her mouth drying up. “Probably.”
She went to the metal cabinet in the corner, opened one of the drawers.
Surgical tools. Scalpels. Forceps. Curved scissors. Retractors. Suturing kits. A small silver saw. She slammed the drawer shut before Iris could see.
The next drawer held vials of medication and needles. Vi picked one up. Thorazine. She put it back, saw several bottles full of ether and chloroform.
“What’s in there?” asked Iris.
“Medicines,” Vi said.
The green-painted concrete floor sloped slightly to a drain with a rusted metal cover.
“I don’t like this room,” Iris said.
“Me neither,” Vi agreed. Again, she took Iris’s hand and led her back into the hall.
They moved down to the final door on the left.
She reached out, tried the switch. The light inside did not come on. Vi turned the knob, pushed the door open, and stepped into the room, with Iris following her.
Vi let out the breath she’d been holding.
“I know this room,” Iris said.
Vi nodded, feeling like she knew it too, though she couldn’t have, not really. She’d only imagined it.
Like the others, it held a metal-framed hospital bed with restraints. And to the right, a deep tub.
Iris closed the door. They were plunged into darkness. Iris was squeezing Vi’s hand so hard Vi worried her fingers would be crushed.
Vi felt the walls closing in. She needed to get out, away from the darkness. Her breathing got faster, more frantic. “I—I—” she stammered. Need to go. Can’t stay. Please. But Iris was speaking.
“I always knew when something bad was going to happen because I could see them coming. Most of the time, they covered the little window so that it was totally black in here. When they were about to come in, they’d open the little window and look in at me. All I could see was their eyes.”
It felt as if Vi remembered too; her own memories were mixed up with Iris’s. She looked at the little rectangle in the door glowing with light, and it became the headlights of an oncoming car. She was in the backseat of the car with her parents. Her father was driving. He swerved to avoid the car, the oncoming lights filling their windshield, impossibly bright.
“And I couldn’t move,” Iris went on. Her voice was quiet. “Couldn’t sit up or even lift my arms or legs because I was held down to the bed with leather straps that left my wrists and ankles raw.”
Vi felt herself strapped tightly into the backseat as the car plunged into the water. She struggled to get loose and couldn’t. She was going to drown down there, the car filling with water, the seatbelt keeping her trapped.
“Sometimes they put me in the tub. The water was ice-cold. They’d strap me and leave me there in the dark. I’d stay in that water until my whole body was numb, even my brain,” Iris said. “They did other things. I can’t remember details, just lights and sounds. The smell of medicine. A buzz. Voices. But it was like I went someplace else.”
“Yes,” Vi said, because she knew about going someplace else, someplace other than where you were. She closed her eyes and she was back in the car, only it was a bed she was strapped to, and someone was talking to her, someone was counting backward, and she wasn’t sure who she was, if she was herself or Iris.
10, 9, 8, 7…
“And then Dr. Hildreth came and released me,” Iris said. “She undid the bindings. She took my hand. Asked if I was ready to go home.”
It was Gran’s voice counting backward in Vi’s memory, Gran undoing the seatbelt, pulling Vi from the wrecked car in the water.
Vi was so cold. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t feel anything but Gran’s arms around her.
You’ve got a strong heart, Violet Hildreth.
The world spun. Vi felt a headache coming on, one of the bad ones.
“Come on,” she said, seizing Iris’s hand. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll take you to the file room. We’ll grab what we can and go.”
She’d had enough of this place.
She was worried that they were too late. That Gran and Dr. Hutchins had already destroyed all the records.
Too late, too late.
She flipped on the light in the little room with the file cabinet and desk.
“I’ve been here before,” Iris said.