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SEVEN

Arkham Mental Institution
Norwich, Connecticut
Saturday, October 7, 2006
8:55 AM

"We believe the patient may be experiencing hallucinations, particularly ones he's using to project his trauma onto," Doctor Richard Greene explained as Amy trailed behind him down the stark white halls of Arkham's fifth floor psychosis ward. "He firmly believes that his daughter was taken by a creature she drew right before her disappearance, and is holding tight to his assuredness. Even after a whole night of observation, his story has yet to change."

Biting her lip, Amy allowed the doctor to lead her down a series of corridors lined with nothing but plain white doors with small windows cut into the thick metal. From inside the rooms through the plate glass, screaming, muttering, and even eerie silence carried from beyond as the two passed, sometimes walking quicker than a few of the nurses and guards that strolled the halls, tending to the those contained in their cells. Watching in between Doctor Greene's informative spiels—each of which filled with medical jargon that seemed to lessen as time went on as the man seemed to comprehend that she couldn't understand him—as the women dressed in the same blue scrubs fluttered from room to room carrying trays holding pills in cups, Amy often felt her heart sink as she caught glimpses of the people housed inside Arkham, strangely sensing that at least half of them were there because of a situation similar to David Hollbrook's.

In the time it had taken Amy to get over to Norwich, a town of houses surrounding a shipping harbor, she had learned all she needed to know about Arkham through a conversation with Taylor on the phone. Though she knew her friend would sooner jump into translating the book they had been lead to by A, Amy had somehow managed to convince Taylor to spend a few minutes behind the computer looking into the asylum. From what she learned, the building was a six-story construct with only one elevator and a dedicated level for each type of grouped illness, the severity escalating by floor. The first contained the low-hazard patients, the ones seeking psychiatric observation for bipolar disorders and the like, whereas the topmost story housed those with dangerous syndromes, such as those with psychopathic tendencies. Surprisingly, as soon as Amy had walked in and talked to the receptionist, she had been startled to find David Hollbrook on the fifth floor, wondering just how dangerous the staff thought he was.

Introducing herself under an alias, something she thought was required and appropriate, Amy had immediately been lead to Doctor Greene's office, taking a seat and discussing the circumstances of David's admission. Finding out nothing more than the fact that the man suffered from mood-neutral delusions, apparently defined as a fantasy that doesn't alter the patient's emotional state, and that he had been admitted just after midnight, Amy had let the doctor lead her down to David's room, allowing her admittance to talk to him solely because she was a Yale University med student—a lie she had created on the walk from the car to the front doors of the old building.

However, as she kept pace with him, Amy began to get the feeling that Doctor Greene was seeing through her fib, having to explain his technical terms to someone who claimed to be a psychology major. Though she had taken a few weeks of abnormal psych ever since classes had started at the tail end of August, anything involving delusions, hallucinations, and terms that were beyond that had yet to be covered, leaving Amy to flounder a little as Doctor Greene looked at her for understanding. Faking it the best she could until she needed clarification, Amy tried to keep up as the man walked briskly, talking in abrupt paragraphs as they headed down the fifth-floor corridor.

Stopping outside of room 502, which stood at the very end of the hallway, the numbering system seeming backwards from the direction they had come, Doctor Greene halted and paused near the middle of the passageway, as though to keep the patient inside from overhearing what he was about to say. "Ms. Dawes—"

"Rachel," Amy corrected him.

"Ms. Dawes," Doctor Greene went on, "under legal binding, I can only allow you ten minutes with Mr. Hollbrook, nothing more. As such, I can also only allow you in with a warden in case things get out of hand, is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," Amy nodded.

Searching her with a knowing glare for a moment, Doctor Greene gave Amy a once-over before heading for the door and pulling out a key. Shoving it into the lock and turning the knob, the doctor moved aside to let Amy pass, leaving her for a moment as he went to fetch someone to stand guard. In the time that he was gone, Amy could see that David Hollbrook's room looked exactly as she had expected it to, with stark walls, bedding, and floors, each of them the immaculate white that had always been depicted in movies and television shows. Sitting perched on the corner of the twin-sized mattress, a man who Amy could only guess to be Mr. Hollbrook sat staring at her, his thin face carrying the darkness of a five o'clock shadow and the hollowness of lack of sleep.

Nearing him as the warden finally appeared, Amy searched for a chair to sit down in, finding nothing. Seeming to understand what she was looking for, David got up and hobbled to the wall near the door, leaning against it. As he walked, Amy noticed the man had a limp unlike any she had seen before, as though his left leg didn't bend at all. Frowning at the thought of the man giving up his seat for her, and noting how incredibly normal and chivalrous that was, Amy decided to get straight to the point to allow the man to return to the bed as quickly as possible.

"Mr. Hollbrook, I'm Rachel Dawes from the University Medical Center, how are you doing today?" Amy said calmly as she fell into the role she had assumed, pulling out the handheld notebook she had found lodged between the seats of the silver Lexus, the same one Taylor had been using during their interview with Susan Walter. When she got no response except for a small smile, Amy returned the gesture before situating herself more comfortably on the bed and retrieving a pen. "Please don't be alarmed. I'm just here to take into account everything you saw happen last night when your daughter Natalie was taken from her bedroom. I'm only here to help."

Taylor sat hunched over the keyboard as she attempted to read the foreign language on the page in front of her as well as type it perfectly into the computer. However, the dull light of the fall day and the barely-lit overhead were intent on making that as difficult as possible, causing her to leave out letter accents and apostrophes that were needed when it came to dealing with Catalan and transcribing it into English.

For the past hour that Amy had been gone, Taylor had been working relentlessly at getting everything in Els Dimonis Mortals D'aigua perfectly decoded, writing down each new sentence by hand whenever the online translator she had found spit it back out. So far, she had managed to get through the first three pages, liking where she was headed, but nowhere near done. The book was at least as many pages long as The Encyclopedia Britannica, with the number rising high into the twelve hundreds. To barely get through the initial three was hardly an accomplishment, but it was enough motivation to keep Taylor going.

Out in the corridor, the usual Saturday chatter carried through the top floor of Dwight Hall, with the occasional sound of doors slamming shut or someone laughing too loud breaking Taylor's concentration. Frowning at the disruption, and nearly getting up the nerve to head out and reprimand whoever was making the racket, Taylor tried to ignore it as best as possible as she carried on, stopping every now and again whenever some new eruption of laughter wafted into her bedroom. Eventually getting up the slam her own bedroom door, hoping that it would send a hint to whoever was out there, Taylor was momentarily relieved of sound, only becoming distracted as her cell phone began to ring. Checking the caller ID and seeing that it was her mother, Taylor threw the mobile aside, letting it roll to voicemail.

For some reason, with Professor McDowell backing up A's claims about the book, Taylor had become consumed with deciphering the language, feeling just as swallowed in the task as she had been when it came to the idea of digging up information on ghosts last month. Working feverishly and steadily to get the task done, Taylor then had glued herself to the chair in Amy's bedroom, not moving for days on end until she was through looking into what had been handed to her. However, if that was any indicator of how this case was going to go, Taylor's efforts would be for naught, especially since after all that work looking into spirits, it had turned out she and Amy were faced with a demon instead. Thankfully, though, Taylor now had an outside contact she was certain she could trust, someone who was leading her in the right direction rather than deceiving her.

Hunkering down over her work again, Taylor began to absorb herself into the material, finding herself falling into a pattern as she carefully input the Catalan into the text box and hit translate with the click of a mouse. Unfortunately, before she could finish the fourth page, the sound of keys in a lock came from the other side of her shut door, followed closely behind by almost imperceptible footsteps. Groaning loudly, Taylor put her pen down after she scribbled the word "creature" for what felt like the thousandth time, turning in her chair just as Amy knocked and entered her room. On her face, the look of disappointment was clear, as well as the sense that something was wrong.

"How'd it go?" Taylor asked, crossing her arms and leaning back. "Bad? Good?"

"Incredibly… normal," Amy frowned. "Even though the guy was upset about his daughter going missing, he explained everything as if he was totally sane. Apparently he's an injured war vet who jumped balconies to get to his daughter's bedroom. By the time he got into the girl's room, she was gone, as well as the thing that took her. The only thing more distressing than what he said was the fact that he blames himself. He thinks he should have been faster or something." Amy stopped to bite her lip. "But he never mentioned anything about some kind of water creature, just said that something took her, which makes me wonder how he was placed in an asylum in the first place."

"Did you talk to one of the doctors?" Taylor asked, sitting up straighter in interest.

"Yeah, I did," Amy sighed. "I even asked David Hollbrook to tell me exactly what he said to Doctor Greene, and if he told me the truth, then there's nothing in there about any kind of monster. But the doctor knew about it, so I don't know if I was lied to or if something's off. I'm more inclined to think something's wacky."

Pursing her lips, Taylor furrowed her brow. "Why?"

"Remember in the article how it said David saw that drawing Natalie had done, that drawing we saw. There wasn't a mention of it in the entire conversation. And the doctor didn't bring it up, either, just claimed that the guy was hallucinating."

"Maybe he didn't tell you the truth," Taylor shrugged.

"Yeah, maybe," Amy frowned, grasping her keys tighter in her hand.

For a moment, the two girls remained in their respective places, staring off into space while they both thought. In Taylor's experience with her friend, she knew to trust Amy's judgment when she sensed something was off, remembering specific incidents of when she had outwardly vocalized her uncertainty with a situation. In the past, Amy had uncovered that Rachel Richardson, the first girl to die during the demon attacks, was being cheated on by Chase DuPonte just by a slight inference she had made in regards to the way the guy interacted with Stacy Miller. After that, Amy had been the one to get them started on the creature hunt, noting that something was wrong by the time Celia had been thrown from the top story of Connecticut Hall.

Taking those instances into account, Taylor rose to her feet and pulled on her jacket, not wanting to leave the work behind to head out, but feeling as though she had no other choice. Ignoring her friend's raised eyebrow as she carefully tugged on her black hoodie to avoid messing up her hair, Taylor nodded at the door, leading the way toward it.

"Where are you going?" Amy asked, curiosity and confusion mixed in her inflection.

"If we're going to get to the bottom of this, we need to take a look at Natalie Hollbrook's room," Taylor asked, taking the first step out into the crowded corridor. "You said something seems off, so…"

"So you're suggesting we do what? Break into their house to find out if I'm right?" Amy frowned, seeming suddenly reluctant. "Don't you think that's going a little too far? I'm not really sure if I'm willing to risk jail time just to capture some monster that may or may not be behind this whole thing."

Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Taylor hurried forward, becoming irritated again with Amy's fluctuating involvement. "Trust me, we won't get caught."