Still June 9, 1985, midday
What lay beyond the door kept any and all satisfaction at finally seeing what the nuns' rooms were like from surfacing in his mind until much, much later. Indeed, most of the details (like the fact that though the room was about the same size as his own, it seemed larger because it was sparsely furnished, with only a twin-size bed, small desk and wooden chair, and chest of drawers) wouldn't surface outside the realm of nightmares for years.
The first thing that did manage to make an impression was all the blood – it soaked the bed, dripping thickly from the plain wool blanket, and seemed to cover every available surface. The room's window, letting in a large amount of warm sunlight, cast everything in stark relief, save for the handful of splatters across the glass. The blood on the glass seemed lit with an inner fire, and were it not for the overwhelming state of the room, Caleb might have noticed that the sunshine streaming through the splatters made them actually quite beautiful.
The second was the smell. Thick and heavy with copper that seemed more of a taste than a scent, the thought how could this not be smelled in the hall flashed through Caleb's mind before it had time to register.
Another thought, this one far more stubborn than those that had flickered in and out of existence like fireflies' mating beacons since opening the door lodged right at the forefront of Caleb's mind. Where is Sister Margaret?
Caleb may not have liked the sister all that much, but he didn't want to see her hurt. He looked around the room in more detail, forcing himself to ignore both the blood and his frustrated curiosity at whether or not there was enough of the red liquid spread around to have killed someone. If she's really hurt, I'll hafta call for help. Will they hear me downstairs if I yell?
Though he tried not to step in any of the puddles, it was unavoidable. He crossed the room and checked the other side of the bed and the far side of the chest of drawers. The space under the bed was empty, as was the knee-space under the desk. She's not here, he realized. Maybe she's at the hospital? Would be why Sister Ann said what she did. They probably haven't had time to clean up yet, 'specially if they had to deal with some sicko.
Before any more rationalizations could form, the sole of his sneaker came down on something sitting, unnoticed, at the edge of the puddle closest to the bed. It squished slightly, before making a loud, wet snap.
Removing his foot from the object with a jerky motion that had more in common with the instinctive reaction to brushing against a hot frying pan than any sort of locomotion, Caleb looked down to see what he'd stepped on.
Though bloody and somewhat mangled, there was no mistaking what it was.
A finger.
The candy bar, his two coffees, and his breakfast made a sudden reappearance. The smell of half-digested pancakes and coffee and stomach acid made him gag again, but he could only dry-heave as nothing was left to throw up. His eyes watering from the force with which his body had rejected the food, Caleb fled the room, slipping twice on puddles of blood.
He was moving fast enough that it was a wonder he didn't trip on the stairs and break his neck. On reaching the landing for the second floor, he collided with Carson. Before the man could start to berate the teen for clumsiness, running indoors, or whatever other infraction (real or imagined) the man could dream up, Caleb began babbling. "Carson! Sister Margaret! Too much blood, Sister Ann sent me to Drogan's but I saw it on the floor upstairs and maybe she was hurt so I had to check, but there was a finger and and…" the tirade was cut short as his stomach tried to reject itself again.
Realizing that the kid wasn't messing around – no one, no matter how good an actor, could fake that particular shade of pasty green – Carson tried to get some sense out of him. "Hold up there, son," he placed a hand on the kid's shoulder, his normal dislike of person-to-person interactions temporarily suspended, "just calm down. Take a couple of deep breaths for me, and then tell me what's got you so worked up."
The physical contact with his shoulder served to ground Caleb's whirlwind anti-thoughts and he did as the Home's accountant suggested and took a deep breath. The air further served to calm him some, and after breathing in a second, he collected his thoughts and tried again. "There's something really wrong, sir. Sister Margaret's room is…is…" A couple of faint twinges from his abdominal muscles made his breath hitch before he willed the sensations away.
"Is what?" Carson asked, pushing aside his curiosity at what the teen had been doing on the fourth floor to begin with.
"There's a lot of blood." Unnoticed by Caleb, his breathing started coming shorter and faster. "I stepped on a finger."
Had it not been for the little signs like the sheen of cold sweat on the kid's brow and a smear of fresh red marring the side of the kid's dirty white sneaker, Carson would have been tempted to think it was nothing more than an elaborate prank. However, as he'd told himself earlier, no one was that good of an actor. He was still skeptical that it could possibly be as bad as all that, though, and figured he should probably check things out himself. If it turned out that the kid had overreacted (Or hallucinated, who knows what shit the kids these days are experimenting with can do?), then he would call one of the sisters to deal with addressing how the kid had been out-of-bounds. "There's a sofa in my office, son. Go sit down before you fall down and wait for me to come back."
Caleb nodded distractedly and headed in the direction of the promised couch. Carson waited until the kid had disappeared through the door before heading towards the fourth floor. Beginning at the third step up from the third-floor landing, the accountant found the first signs that the kid hadn't been exaggerating. A partial footprint in rich red marred the green carpet runner. Another footprint, more complete than the last, and of the same foot (the left) slowly dried on the fifth step up. The sixth step held the faint outline of a right shoeprint.
Carson sprinted the remaining distance, following the footprints that grew in clarity the closer he came to the room the kid had mentioned.
Back in the accountant's office, a little less than two minutes after sinking onto the horribly ugly sofa, Caleb heard what he thought to be the scream of a frightened twelve year-old girl. He jumped back to his feet and threw the door open. A second scream sounded in the wake of the first, drifting down from the stairwell. Much later, Caleb would take the time to find the humor inherent with the fact that the paunchy, forty-something, balding accountant had a scream even more appropriate to horror movies than that of Jamie Lee Curtis.
The scream managed to attract the attention of just about every person who spent their Sunday afternoons lingering around the Home. One of the men who lived on the second floor – Caleb knew him by sight, if not by name – stumbled out of his room and shouted down the hall for someone by the name of Zeke to turn his damn TV down because some of us work the night shift, asshole.
By the time the man had finished his complaint, roughly a dozen people had gathered in the hall. One of them, Sister Sarah, noticed Caleb. "Mr. Forrester?" she had obviously heard the scream, but had mistakenly connected it to the still-pale teen.
Caleb shook his head, "Weren't me, sister. I reckon it come from Carson, up on the fourth floor."
"And just what would Mr. Carson be doing up there?" As she always did, the light emphasis she placed on the title clearly conveyed her desire for everyone to also use people's proper titles. "And just why aren't you with the rest of the children? They must be having quite a bit of fun – shame you seem to be missing out – as they haven't yet appeared for lunch. I should send some of the girls down to the class with some snacks…" the last bit was said with the tone of someone making a verbal note to themselves.
The barbs on the wire cinched in his gut grew spikes. "They're still not done with class?" Panic seized Caleb and refused to let go. He only managed not to physically express this panic by shaking the nun by sheer force of will alone.
"No, dear. Have you been ill?"
Caleb ignored the question and babbled out a quicker explanation of what he'd found in Sister Margaret's room than the first one he'd given to Carson. Before any of the cluster of adults could question him further, he shoved himself out of the crowd and ran as fast as his coltish legs could take him to the Sunday school classroom.