Page 17 of Bratva Warriors 1
“Right out there in front of everyone,” Briar added.“Yet, where there is no one.”
“You’re kidding me?”Serenity exclaimed.“Like aren't they contagious or something?”
“Nah, I don’t think so.”Briar shrugged.
Felix looked back and forth at them to ask, “What do you mean contagious?”He stared at Serenity.
Serenity tapped a key on her PC then read what her screen had on it, “North Brother Island was once the site of the Riverside Hospital for quarantinable diseases.”She then read some more and gasped.“Wow!”
“What?”Felix asked.
“This is where they sent Typhoid Mary.She was confined to the island for over two decades until she died there in November 1938.Because of her contagious illness, she had been declared a public menace in 1915.Researchers estimate that Mary had contaminated at least one hundred and twenty two people, including five who died.”
Felix slowly shook his head.
“But that is only the tip of it,” Nicky spoke up.“Riverside Hospital had been founded in the 1850s as asmallpox hospital to treat and isolate victims of that disease.Its mission eventually expanded to other quarantinable diseases, initially typhoid and then smallpox and tuberculosis.It also had the Tuberculosis Pavilion, which opened in 1943.A hundred people died of the disease there.During the polio epidemic in 1916, Riverside treated numerous patients.”
“Then there are the ghost stories,” Briar added.“That’s why I got interested enough to ask around about this place.I love ghost stories” Briar nodded at Serenity.“Look up General Slocom.”
Serenity typed it in.Then her eyes rounded.“Oh, my...”
Felix sighed heavily.
Sergi glanced at him and chuckled.“Felix always gets nervous when it comes to um...hauntings.”
“Well, it is worse than that,” Nicky said as he read what he found, “The island was the site of the wreck of theGeneral Slocum, a steamship that burned up on June 15, 1904: 1,021 people died either from the fire on board the ship, or from drowning before the ship beached on the island's shore.A thousand bodies rolled up to the shore over the next two weeks.”
Briar nodded her head at Felix.“Lots of ghosts,” she teased.“Like walking around as lost souls that cannot seem to leave the island.All of them calling out for help.Not knowing they’re dead.”
“Briar,” Atrem cautioned her teasing.
“All of them desperate to take over a human body,” Briar kept going in a raspy low tone.“So that they could live again.”
Felix looked a little pale as he shivered.“Ok, now you are just getting revenge on me for our scuffle when we first met.”
“Scuffle?”Briar asked.“Cousin, you slapped me and pushed me around.”
He shook his head.“I have apologized several times over.I sent you flowers.I bought you candy.I have tried to be family.What else do you want?”He raised his large arms in the air.
“I told you already.”Briar glared at him.
Felix now wore a stony expression.“I told you I can’t do that.”
“Do what?”Sergi asked him.
He slowly shook his head, refusing to answer.
“I want him and I to have a bout,” Briar answered the question.
Everyone in the room looked over at her.
“What?”Sergi asked.
“You heard me, sir.”Briar crossed her arms over her chest.“I mean a fight in a ring.Between Felix and I.”
Silence fell in the security wing as they all gaped at her.
“Not ever going to happen, little girl,” Felix snapped.
