The Redwood Asylum: A Paranormal Horror L.A. Detwiler (best books to read for self development .txt) 📖

ones none of us have ever seen. Sure, we know this place has unwelcome energies, has spirits who aren’t at peace. But you just seem to be encountering more. And—”

“And what?” I asked as she cast her eyes downward. She took a beat and then looked back at me with her chocolatey eyes.

“We’ve never seen them act belligerently, not to the staff who are kind.”

I stood up from the chair, infuriated. “You think I’m doing something to the patients? You think I’m not kind?” Tears stung my eyes. I wanted to come here to do good. It hurt that someone was accusing me otherwise.

Anna put up her hands. “Of course not. I’m just worried, is all. I’ve never seen this much activity. There’s something about you, Jessica, that seems to bring it out in them.” She crossed herself at the mention as if she had to ward off the evil spirits attracted to me.

I exhaled. “I’m taking my break,” I announced, feeling the need to get away. I exhaled, stomping off toward the stairwell. She called after me, but I wrapped my arms around myself, beeped my badge, and exited through the door, heading straight to the ground floor and out the building. I’d come to Redwood to disappear, to fit in. Even in Redwood, I didn’t seem to be managing that goal. Even the freakish walls of the asylum were rejecting me. Shit.

Outside of the monstrous building, I paced on the cobblestoned sidewalk, blowing puffs of air into the chilly fall night. The blackness around the property was impenetrable, the thick blanket of trees suffocating Redwood in a blanket of mystery. Tears stung my eyes. Of all things, why me?

I’d wanted to blend in and to just be at Redwood. But I couldn’t escape the attention, even though I wanted to. I was wrapped up in some situation with 5B, and now I was seeing things no one else was. And then there was the fact that he acted like he knew me. Sure, it could’ve just been that he was crazy. But what if Anna was right? What if there was something more at play? What if the spirits knew the truths no one else could?

Perhaps they could see what even I didn’t want to acknowledge, what I had worked so hard to push back down.

I stopped my pacing, leaning against the chilled stone wall of the exterior and exhaled. My hands trembled, and I suddenly wished I smoked. I thought about all the secrets harbored in the walls of the asylum, even now. In the distance, I heard giggles mixed with screams. The paradoxical quality of the sounds intertwining created dissonance deep within. It underscored the solitude I felt outside of Redwood, inside of Redwood, and even in my own mind. I was alone. More alone than I’d ever been in my entire life.

No one would miss me if Redwood sucked me in for good, if the forest around it consumed me and spit me back out, bones and ash gnawed up to bits. My parents were gone, the only people I considered friends back at Mercy Hospital had written me off, and even the staff here must’ve been gossiping about the new girl who was only one step shy of having a room of her own. Only one person seemed to see me, to recognize me. I chilled from the temperature and from the thought.

Sometimes being all alone is better than having companionship. I’d learned that over and over again, but especially at Redwood. The scream echoed again in the distance, so I did the only thing I could. I turned and went back inside the stone walls, where at least the screams of the dead mixed with screams of the living.

Chapter Seven

He sat at the table, drawing furiously when I went into his room. He mumbled over and over about all sorts of things. I noticed a stack of drawings beside him as he continued on to the next, the brown crayon poised in an overhand position. The whole stack of papers were done in brown this time. I stared, studying him at work.

“May I?” I asked, ignoring Anna’s advice to leave him alone when he was in a drawing state. He didn’t look up at me, his trance-like behavior continuing in a flurry of activity. He drew, the crayon pressed so hard to the paper that I thought it might break. I took a risk, reaching for the stack to leaf through.

The first drawing was loosely deemed to be of a boy, tall and skinny. His hair stood up every which way. In the border, worms of all shapes and sizes seemed to wiggle around him, a mound of dirt up to his knees. It was, by no means, the drawing of an artist. It lacked the finesse in the lines, perhaps because of his crayon grip. It was abstract, as if a child had drawn in. Still, something about the drawing irked me.

I flipped the stack.

The next one seemed to be similar, except the boy’s face was contorted into a crude scream. Mouth open, worms seemed to crawl out of the figure’s throat. Over and over, each paper the same, a rough sketch of a tall, lanky boy in brown. Perhaps just the sketches of a warped, overtired mind. I thought about setting them back down. After all, Anna said the doctors had studied them over and over, had believed they were just his way of getting his emotions out.  I turned to leave the room, to finish some paperwork, when he paused mid-drawing to look at me.

“They want to go home with you. They need you to take them. He wants to come with you. Please take him. Please. Take him, take him, take him.” His hands were clasped together in a desperate plea as he stood from his bed. It was late—well, early in the morning—when I snuck back into the room of 5B, Anna busy