Page 27 of The Haunting of Lockton
I tried to hold back a laugh and failed. The two of them cracked me up. My laugh seemed to snap them out of their banter-fest.
“Sorry,” Julian told me with a sheepish smile. “Do you mind explaining the massacre? Both for my oblivious, mobile-game-obsessed brother and the viewers?”
“Of course,” I said, fighting another smile. One look at the building looming in front of us washed away those last traces of humor. “No one knows for sure how it all began. Patients somehow escaped their rooms and turned on nurses and doctors, and some attacked each other. Firsthand accounts say it was total chaos and happened so fast. By the time the bloodshed ended, twenty-three people were dead, fifteen of them patients. Even more were wounded.”
“A man escaped, right?” Julian asked. “He ran for help and shed light on what was really happening here.”
“Yes,” I answered. “While the staff were distracted by the riot, a patient fled the grounds. The police didn’t believe him at first and brought him back here in handcuffs. They believed he was… well, a lunatic who’d escaped. But that’s when they saw the remnants of the massacre, which then led to an internal investigation into the asylum.”
“And some people think the riot started because of this Roy guy’s death?” Skyler asked. “Why?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I met his gaze before quickly looking away. “Regardless, an innocent man’s life was cruellytaken from him. A death that was followed by many more before it all came to a close.”
“How do you know the apparition is Roy?” Skyler focused on the window.
“Those who’ve seen him said blood was pooling from his head. Now, many lobotomies were performed, so the spirit could be any number of patients. But that window?” Unable to stop myself, I looked over at Skyler. The traces of sunlight piercing through the clouds highlighted his face in a way that kick-started my heart. Again. “Patient reports from the nurses mention how Roy would often stand there in the late afternoon. He liked to watch the sunset.”
“We’ll be sure to place a camera in the hallway facing the window,” Julian said. “Just in case Roy appears.”
We then walked around the property as Iregaledthem with more stories. I told them about the woman in the white gown who’d been seen wandering the grounds, other apparitions of alleged patients and nurses, some of the voices that had been heard, and finally, the apparition known as the Hanging Man.
“The Hanging Man?” Skyler asked as we went through a hole in the fence to check out the back of the asylum. It was about the size of a football field and had once been a recreational area for the patients.
I pointed to the large oak tree near the back fence. “People have seen him swinging from that branch. There’s speculation it’s the ghost of Samuel Howard.”
Julian’s brows lifted. “Seriously?”
I nodded. “Howard is reported to have taken his own life, either from guilt for what they did here or in response to those evil deeds coming to light after the riot. People have seen the apparition in other areas of the building too. But they didn’t see him hanging. Instead, they claim he was gliding down the corridor with his neck bent.”
Skyler rubbed at his arms.
“Ready to go inside?” I asked.
Skyler shot me an incredulous look, as if to say,You expect me to after hearing that?
“Scared?” It took all my strength to keep from smiling. The thought of this cocky hottie being creeped out was kind of adorable.
“Me? Scared?” Skyler scoffed. “Not even a little.”
“Then stop wasting daylight and come on,” Julian said before walking with me toward the building.
“Fine. Whatever.” Skyler jogged to catch up to us. “But if we get eaten by a creepy bent-necked ghost, I’m blaming both of you.”
Lockton’s interior complemented the abandoned aesthetic of the outside. The paint-chipped white walls had been tarnished from neglect, exposure to elements, and graffiti throughout the years. Rusted bed frames leaned against one wall, and down the long corridor leading from the main reception hall, wheelchairs long since vacant sat collecting dust, the material on the back ripped and the seat tattered and dirty.
It was early afternoon, and light spilled in through the front windows, allowing us to see. But there were dark corners and windowless hallways that light couldn’t reach as we moved along the first floor.
Julian turned on the flash on his phone as he recorded our walk-through. I knew little about making videos, but I assumed he’d use some of today’s footage for various clips, probably with a voice-over of one of them talking about the investigation.
“Man, I know insane asylums have a horrible history, but Lockton is on a whole other level,” Skyler said, peeking through a doorway we passed. “Why would a prestigious and filthy rich man like Arthur Warren bother with a place like this? I mean, he had enough money and power to do whatever he wanted.”
“That’s the point, I think,” I responded. “He could do anything he wanted. And he did. Lockton was a privately owned institution, funded by Arthur Warren and a few other men with deep pockets. As for why? A lot of people speculate that the purpose of Lockton wasn’t to help the insane or have a safe place for them; it was to run these experiments.”
Julian paused. “So some believe Lockton was a smoke screen of sorts for human experimentation? That Warren’s intention from the beginning was to basically torture these people?”
“It’s certainly a theory that’s made its rounds around town over the years. Curiosity can be a dangerous thing, and some will do anything to appease said curiosity. You’ve heard of resurrection men?”
“Body snatching,” Julian said, nodding. “They’d dig up corpses and sell them to medical schools and private physicians for dissection and research.”
