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

“You really should clean up that mess in the closet,” he uttered, and I froze. His words were so matter of fact.

“How did you know?” I asked, my voice wheezy and cracking. My mind raced with possibilities of how Roxy could have made it up to tell him and why she would do that.

“He told me. He’s mad you didn’t listen to me. You’re making them mad, Jessica. It’s getting worse. You’re making it worse.”

My yogurt from lunch roiled in my stomach, and my head was spinning. It was insanity, his imaginary friends and all the drawings. But how could he possibly know about the closet? How could he know?

I took a deep breath and stepped closer to him, watching his frenzied drawing. Pools of red puddled under a little girl in the drawing. She was missing an eye, but her smile was huge. I noticed, however, that in each of the drawings, her head wasn’t connected to her body, floating above it like a cloud. He sketched on, scribbling items and trees and a river. But the little girl was in every drawing.

“Who is she?” I asked, pointing to the girl. I scolded myself for instigating him.

“You’ll see,” he said, and his simple but predictive words freaked me out. I took a step back.

“Wait, wait. Jessica. Wait,” he said, standing with the stack. “Take them. You need to take them. Take them please,” he begged, and I reached out for them like an obedient servant. A stack of red drawings in my hands, I looked into his burning eyes. There was a relief as he handed them to me, as if he were passing off the secrets of his soul in those thin sheets of paper. He waddled to his cot, laying down.

“All better. I told you I’d do it. Yes, yes, she will,” he said, having a conversation with an invisible, nonexistent being in the corner of the room. I folded the pictures, preparing to take them with me after finishing my tasks in his room.

But before I could leave, he halted his conversation with the being in the room. Turning his head at an odd, tilted angle, he stared at me. I swallowed, fear bubbling in my chest.

He opened his mouth, and a soft whisper came out.

“Little Red. Around the Bend. The Crooked Nose.”

Then he repeated it.

Again.

Again.

Again.

All the while, I stood there, listening to the articulation of the creepy chant as the enigmatic words drew me in. Finally, I shook myself loose and turned toward the door. The whole way out, though, he continued, the words pounding into my memory.

Pictures in hand, I scuttled toward the nurse’s station as the words echoed some more.

I tucked them into my bag underneath the nurse’s station, not wanting anyone to see that I was actually taking them with me.

It was senseless, I knew. But if nothing else, maybe I could understand him better if I unlocked the secrets of the pictures. Then again, maybe they were nothing at all, just lunatic ravings of another of Redwood’s residents, like the man on floor two. Like all of them, really.

The more I was at Redwood, the more I realized the line between lunacy and reality was blurred for so many. I had to keep my line clear and in focus. It would be so easy to lose my grip, I feared.

The Grounds

Feared by staff, patients, and the rebellious school children who try to sneak onto the property, the grounds surrounding Redwood are perhaps its most intriguing feature. The iron gate clad with an establishment sign guards the forest, but it seems unnecessary. Anyone with eyes and a sense of danger, even a weakly developed one, knows to stay out. Redwood is for keeping in. Those who walk on the uncanny ground succumb to its clutches, fall victim to its horrors in one way or another.

Leading up to the archaic stone building is a winding dirt road, unlit and unrelenting in its curving ways. The steep incline and the dense vegetation have led numerous workers and visitors to a near-death experience. One car in 1962 actually crashed into a tree, injuring the driver so severely, she is now a patient in the very place she was visiting.

The trees, mostly Redwoods as one would expect, are thickly planted and densely packed. Even in the daylight, the forest surrounding the institution is a thick moat that delivers the impression of claustrophobia. To walk into the forest for any period of time is to lead one to getting lost. Some legends say that a few new nurses made the mistake of wandering through the forest on their break and never were heard from again. This legend is, unlike the other horrifying tales, unsubstantiated, nonetheless, and most likely a tall tale created to scare curious teenagers from the property.

Still, here and there, an errant teenage boy has climbed the gate and made his way into the forest moat surrounding the building. Incited by a dare or trying to impress a girl, many a wayward teenager has pretended to be stoic and brave as he claimed a twig, a flower, or any other souvenir from the ground. And although most would deny it, more than a few have been almost driven the point of madness by this fool’s errand. For there is something sinister, something ill-conceived about the rugged terrain Redwood sits on. Ten minutes alone in the forest at night, and a chill of the deepest kind is delivered up one’s spine and around every crevice of his or her being.

Voices lurk in the forest, for one. The staff who frequent the sidewalk by the east wall during break claim to hear children’s moans, names, and wails of agony echoing from the forest at repeated intervals. Some believe the victims of the asylum’s older, crueler days spend their time wandering the grounds in search of a way out. Others claim that beneath the grounds