I knew what the right answers were. I knew just what my mom and the good, so nice doctor wanted to hear so that they could check a few boxes on the mental health evaluation sheet, prescribe five or six types of medication and then congratulate me for being so cooperative.

"So do you believe that you actually saw your friend who's been missing for five years? Did he appear to you?" Dr. Stephenson, the head of the Riverbend Behavior Health Center, asked me.

"It seemed like I saw him, but I know that's impossible," I said. "I know it wasn't really him." Except that it was really him. Levi.

"Your friend might still be alive, and I know you would like to see him again. Right?"

"Yeah, it must be some kind of wishful thinking." I twisted my hands together before remembering that my every action was being noted on a piece of paper. Folding them in my lap I gazed steadily at the doctor. I was very careful not to look at the mangled body of a girl hanging sideways on the wall by ivy vines. When I had first walked in, she was squirming, but now she simply leered at me and licked her blackened lips.

I couldn't let the kind doctor know I saw the patients from 80 years ago still roaming the halls of his modern institution. He would make me move in with them.

"And what did your friend say to you? Your mother told me that you heard him say something," Dr. Stephenson continued.

"I thought I heard a voice telling me to run, to escape the town before something bad happened."

"What sort of bad thing might happen, do you think?" he asked.

"That I would disappear like he did."

"You are referring to the day his brother and he were kidnapped, I presume?"

I nodded, looking at my lap now. Beetles were pouring out of the girl's mouth onto the wall and down towards the floor. One was on the carpet coming for my mom and me.

I had to get out of there.

"Can we walk around?" I asked, breathless. "I've never actually done a tour, and my mom talks about this place all the time."

"Sweetheart, I don't think now—" my mom started to say.

"Fine, that's fine, let's take a walk." The doctor stood and motioned for us to go at the same time the first beetle reached my chair. Standing, I squished it under my thick sole with a satisfying crunch.

We strolled down the hall of the historical building constructed in 1935 to lock up the local lunatics. It housed the doctor's offices and tour exhibits currently.

"Your fears are very reasonable, you know, Brooklyn," the doctor said. He continued talking, telling me that these were natural responses to past trauma, but at that moment I wasn't listening to him anymore.

Slime was growing over the tiles and cheerful wall paper, vines were creeping across the ceiling. We kept walking. Four scrawny, half-naked children were sitting in a far corner. They turned their faces to me and reached out their arms. All of their right hands had been cut off. I focused on the window at the end of the hall. I was not seeing this. I was not seeing this.

A young man came around a corner and drew up sharply before walking into me. Blue eyes narrowed in anger and a mess of blond-white hair cut a searing path straight through my chest to hack my heart in two. Sean. Sean had aged five years and was staring at me. He frowned in confusion for a second, then raised a jagged knife to point it at me.

I stopped walking, and tried to pretend I was looking through Sean at the far window. It wasn't possible for him to be here, and a part of me knew that it wasn't real, but part of me screamed that it was.

"Brooklyn! You have to get out of here," Sean said. The one-handed children were coming closer to beg. He motioned with his knife to shoo them off. "He's been watching you. He's coming for you. You have to get home and stay there. Now!"

"Hhoo...." I choked. "Who?" I ignored the sharp glance from my mother and the doctor's sudden intake of breath.

Sean grabbed my arm. His fingers dug painfully into my skin. "Levi. Levi is coming for you."

I lost it. I lost all my pretend sanity that I had kept wrapped around me like a blanket, like a shield, as if all that pretending would hold the monsters at bay.

But I was the monster. A murderous, boy-stabbing monster. And the other monsters wanted to devour me, to eat me up and keep me forever.

I was screaming, kicking at the locked doors, begging my mother to take me home. Guards took my arms. I was held down, then lifted, still kicking and screaming. They carried me through the slime-coated hallways. Past the children who reached for me with one hand each. Under dripping ceilings and mud coated floors. Through puddles of murky water.

Their feet splashed, but they never slowed, never noticed. I cried. I begged them.

Please don't take me to that room again.

Don't tie me down.

Sean's face, five years older, a hundred years harder, appeared in the barred window at my cell over my mother's shoulder. I yanked one hand free and reached—I don't know who I was reaching for. Neither of them came to help me.

Don't put that syringe in my—

***

The thing under the bed was sleeping. Its wheezing breath was regular and slow. Regular and slow. I move in and out of my own sleep, checking each time if it was sleeping.

The world fades again. I was sleeping.

Its claws scraping the shredded mattress beneath my back woke me. The room was dark, window black. Only a few electric spots glowed, telling me I was still trapped in the cell. My arms and legs were tied down.

I gasped for air and strained at the buckles, hoping to loosen my limbs, and knowing it was useless. I whimpered as that thing under me dragged sharp claws along what must be threads of cloth that separated us. What will it do when it reaches my skin? When it scrapes my back? When will it stop?

I choke back a scream. Would it help? If the nurses came in and turned on the lights? Would they let me up for a bathroom break? And then what? Tie me down again until that thing chews through skin, muscle and bone to my heart, while I scream in pain and they ignore me?

Writhing, I yank at the restraints. Sweat pours from my skin, into my eyes.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

I take a deep breath to yell for the nurses.

The door clicks open softly.

A flashlight beam bounces to life, shining in my eyes. Someone chuckles. I nearly puke.

"What would you give in return for your freedom, right now?" a girl asked.

A claw hooked the skin at my spine and I jerked upwards in an arch.

She laughed.

Alicia. Alicia laughed at me.

*** Wow! I'm picking this story up again, and hope to race to the finish line with it. Thank you so much for reading! Hit the star if you enjoyed!!! ***