08 Jan Can You Hear the Voices?

Working security at the Twin Valley Behavioral Center for Children has exposed me to more strange events than I can count. For all its fancy wording, it’s a long-term mental-health facility, not maximum security–but we still get our fair share of crazy moments around here. I work third shift, and by the time I arrive the patients are usually all asleep.

Most nights, I monitor the patients and read a book on my phone. Occasionally, a new patient will be transported in the middle of the night, but even that is typically uneventful. Now and again I’m forced to take someone down for striking a staff member, riling up other patients, or trying to hurt themselves.

It’s all standard stuff, mostly. I think the craziest thing I’ve ever dealt with, until a few nights ago, was a female patient who swore to anyone that would listen that I was the Archangel Michael in human form. My friends and I got a huge kick out of that when I told them. Even my mom and I had a few laughs over it; I usually tell her about my shifts whenever she asks.

Tonight started like every other shift. The patients were asleep, and I was talking to the nurse on staff while I peeked at the security monitor. We were talking about the latest episode of The Walking Dead like we often did. I was right in the middle of my “I hate Andrea” tirade when a call came over my radio.

“Look alive, Kevin,” he said. “We’ve got a new patient coming your way. Keep your eye on this one–he’s only being housed here until there’s a spot open in max. Also, just a heads up: the guy is in his thirties.”

I was a little surprised, to be honest. We weren’t equipped to handle that kind of patient. It was a much older building, substantially outdated compared to most places. That was the downside of having mental health issues in a relatively small town. In any event, we’d never had an adult brought in before, at least not that I’d heard of–and I found his admittance unusual.

I sighed and keyed up my mic to respond. “Understood,” I responded. “What’s your ETA?”

There was static on the walkie for a moment before the response came back. “We just pulled up front, and we’re coming in hot.”

Oh, great, I thought. That meant something had gone wrong. The nurse I’d been talking to looked a little scared, but I did my best to put her at ease before heading to unlock the front doors. We’d transitioned to one of those key card systems, but due to budgetary constraints it was a hand-me-down from another state, so there were a few bugs. By the time I got the damn thing open, two of the transport guards came flying through the door with a guy in cuffs.

The guy looked like he couldn’t have been older than his early thirties. He had long dark hair, a matching goatee, and haunting hazel eyes that seemed to stare right through me. Various tattoos covered his somewhat pale skin. Once inside, I locked the door behind them and directed everyone to the ancient “padded room” that we rarely used these days. There was a hospital bed in there that we kept in good condition for emergencies.

I helped the guards get the patient onto the bed, where we strapped him in. When the job was done, they wished me luck, chuckled, and left. They always bailed after bringing someone in, and I always envied that a bit. I’d tried to transfer to transport once before but got that speech about “how useful” I was where they had me.

Once the transport guards left, it was my job to stay in the room with the nurse while she injected him with whatever it is they used to calm the patients when they were having “episodes.” Just before we both left the room, the new arrival called us over.

“Can you hear them?” he asked.

I immediately put all my money on a schizophrenia diagnosis. As if sensing this, the man looked directly into my eyes. I’ll admit, he seemed a lot more focused than I had expected. He spoke to me directly.

“They’re telling me your name is Kevin, and that you’ve been working here for three years now.”

I raised a brow at the guy. While his information was indeed correct, he could have easily overheard the transport guys talking about it. I decided not to put any stock in it and turned to leave the room with the nurse.

The guy made one last attempt to keep us in the room. “Your mother’s name is Nancy, and you talk to her almost every night after work. Your father’s name was Joe. He passed away from cancer last spring.”

Still some standard stuff, but not the kind I would expect the transport guards to talk about or even really know. I kept my personal life private while at work.

I humored the guy. “How do you know all of that?”

His eyes still had not left mine. “Because they’re talking about you right now.”

I rolled my eyes and looked over at the nurse. She seemed nervous but wasn’t making any attempt to leave the room. Since I couldn’t leave her alone, I continued my conversation with the man.

“Who’s talking about me?” I inquired. “There’s only three of us here, sir.”

The man shook his head adamantly as he spoke. “I don’t expect you to see them; not even I can see them. I can hear them, though, as plain as day.”

I sighed and looked back at the nurse. She was just standing there, watching the guy like she expected him to grow a second head. I knew I had to snap her out of it, so I moved directly in front of her as I addressed her. “Is everything okay? We should probably leave the room now.”

She blinked a few times before snapping out of it, her voice weak as she replied. “Yeah, you’re right,” she conceded. “Sorry about that–let’s get out of here.”

Without even sparing the guy another look, the two of us left the room and locked up the door behind us. We returned to our station, and I went back to looking at the monitors. After a few minutes of that, the nurse spoke up.

“There’s something off about that guy,” she confided. “It’s kind of creepy.”

I looked over to her and chuckled. “We work in a mental hospital,” I responded. “Everyone here is a little off.”

She shook her head at me as she continued the conversation. “It’s more than that. I’ve seen plenty of schizophrenic patients in my time, but not one that knew personal information like that.”

I waved her off. “Everything he said was public record. Maybe he’s just really into obituaries. I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Besides, he’s locked in a padded cell, cuffed to a bed. It’s not like he’s getting up or leaving anytime soon. The transport guards made it seem like this was temporary, anyway.”

She smiled and apologized for being jumpy, and I told her not to worry about it. It was normal to be a little paranoid, working late at night in a place like that. Twin Valley had a way of affecting people, even the mostly sane ones. We resumed our conversation about The Walking Dead for a little while and ended up rehashing a lot of our same arguments before the conversation was over.

She excused herself to do some rounds, and I went back to monitoring the patients. Someone had the foresight to install a security camera in the padded cell, which made my job even easier. When I looked at the feed, the guy seemed to be talking to someone. As expected, there was no one else in there with him. I watched him for a few more minutes before checking the other feeds.

A little while later, the nurse showed up and seemed freaked out again. I was curious now and asked her about it. “Is everything okay? You’re looking pretty pale right now.”

She looked at me oddly before speaking. “Have you been messing with me?”

For the second time that night, I raised a brow. I had no idea what the she was talking about and didn’t mind saying so. “What do you mean? I’ve been sitting right here the whole time.”

She plopped down into the chair next to mine, and I noticed her shaking a little. She sat there collecting herself. “I swear I heard someone talking to me in the back hallway just a few minutes ago. I thought maybe it was you trying to screw with me. You swear it wasn’t you?”

Certain she’d just frightened herself, I put her mind at ease. “No, it wasn’t me, and I didn’t see anyone but you on the camera feed. What did you hear?”

She looked me square in the face. “Did you break your left arm trying to get a cat out of a tree when you were eight?”

I sat up a little straighter in my chair and glared at her. I knew for a fact that she and I had never spoken about that before. Someone had to be messing with me, and my money was on Ben from transport. I’d played a great prank on him a few months back at a party, and he swore he’d get me back one of these days. It seemed odd to use a patient to do it, but at this point, I wasn’t putting anything past him.

I snapped at the nurse, “Did Ben put you up to this?”

She shook her head vehemently and put a hand on my arm. There were tears glistening in her storm-gray eyes. “No, I swear,” she cried, suddenly emotional, and swallowed hard. “I heard someone talking about you in the hallway. Please believe me, Kevin.”

I shook her off and stood up immediately, deciding to check things out for myself. The joke was losing its humor quickly, and I planned on getting to the bottom of it as soon as possible. I clipped the radio to my belt and headed into the back hallway. I walked up and down it a few times, listening hard to hear whatever it was the nurse had been talking about.

When I heard nothing, I returned to the nurse and talked to her. “Let’s go,” I said, impatient. “I want to question that new patient, but I’m not allowed to without another staff member present.”

She looked terrified at the thought of seeing him again, and it took quite a lot of convincing to get her to change her mind. After some debate, she followed me–slowly. When we arrived, I unlocked the door with my key card, and we stepped inside. I reached down and put the rubber stopper under the bottom of the door. Neither of us wanted to get accidentally locked inside.

Remember when I mentioned how outdated the place was earlier? Yeah, once that door closes, it auto-locks and can only be opened from the outside. After a guard and a nurse once got stuck in there with a violent patient, someone bought a stopper to prevent it from happening. I felt a little weird about entrusting my safety and well-being to a rubber wedge.

With that issue all settled, I stood back up and turned my attention to the guy cuffed to the bed. “All right, man, I’m going to ask you a few questions. For starters, did Ben give you all that information on me while you were being transported here?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know which one of them was Ben, but no,” he said. “The voices told me. They tell me a lot of things.”

I moved on to my next question almost immediately. I didn’t want to have to stay in this room any longer than I needed to.

“Who do these voices belong to?”

Not that I believed in what was going on, but I felt like I needed to cover all my bases. This was a weird situation no matter how you looked at it. The guy responded easily enough, “I’m not exactly sure, but I’ve been hearing them for years.”

I nodded at that and considered what my next option was. I came up with a great test quickly and laid it out for him. “Do you mind if we try a brief experiment? I’d like to ask you a question about something I’ve never told anyone before. If the answer is right, I might believe you.”

He nodded.

I thought of a great question and got on with it.

“What was the name of the girl I lost my virginity to, and where did it happen?”

The guy looked around the room a bit as if listening for the answer. After a period of silence, he looked back at me and answered, “Her name was Jessica, and you were in the back of a red and white pickup truck with a white topper.”

I took a deep breath after hearing that. No one knew about what happened with Jessica, let alone that it had happened in a truck. I asked one more question just to make sure. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, after all. “Okay, here’s the next question: What am I most afraid of?”

I knew for a fact no one could answer this; not even my mother knew the answer. As before, there were a few minutes of silence during which the patient looked around the room.

Just before he could answer, however, the nurse beat him to the punch. “You’re terrified of being alone ever since you were a kid and your babysitter locked you in that closet so she could spend some uninterrupted time with her boyfriend. She threatened to tell your mother about the horror comic collection you weren’t supposed to have, if you told on her.”

My eyes grew wide as I stared at the nurse. They were clearly both hearing the same voice, and obviously, I could not. I was officially getting creeped out now. I even felt a chill run down my spine. New questions came to mind, and I looked back to the guy. “Is that why you’re here? Because of the voices?”

He shook his head and set the record straight. “No—I’m here because I killed someone. The voices told me to do it.”

His response gave me pause. I hadn’t pegged him as a murderer. I was speechless, and my frayed nerves were more than obvious. Unable to think straight, I violated protocol and left the nurse alone in the room, and returned to my desk. I was not prepared for what was happening and felt like I needed to put as much distance between me and whatever was going on in that room as possible–without losing my job.

On the feed, I watched as the nurse pulled the stopper, left the room, and headed in my direction. She sat in the chair beside me, and neither of us looked at each other or said a word for what felt like forever. I continued checking the monitors like always, but at that point the lack of conversation had gotten uncomfortable.

I turned my head towards her. “I can’t wait till they get that guy out of here,” I said. “This nonsense is seriously getting to me.”

The nurse nodded. She was still every bit as pale as she had been earlier, so I knew for a fact she was more freaked out than I was. Suddenly, before she could say anything in response, her eyes began darting around all over the place, and she stood.

I looked at myself. Everything seemed fine. “What’s going on now?” I asked, attempting to understand. “Do you…”

She brought a finger to her lips and shushed me. This went on for a good couple of minutes, which caused shivers to once again radiate up and down my spine. Eventually, she looked at me with fearful eyes. “The voices, I think they’re children,” she said. “I didn’t notice it before, but now it’s as clear as day. You really can’t hear them?”

I shook my head and gave her a look that made it clear I thought she was insane. I couldn’t hear a thing, and still harbored the thought of Ben screwing with me. I radioed to confront him about it when things settled down again. For the moment, though, I was a little curious about what the voices were saying. That the voices belong to kids makes it that much worse, you know?

“So, what are they saying now?” I asked.

I could see tears slowly forming in the corners of her eyes. In place of a proper response, she leaned down and hugged me tightly, which was sort of uncomfortable. I didn’t know her well enough for her to be violating my personal space like that. I tried to pry her off me, but she just kept squeezing tighter and crying.

She got a few words out between sobs. “I’m so sorry, Kevin, I didn’t know.”

I hadn’t the slightest idea what she was going on about. I left that creeped-out feeling behind, edging closer and closer towards being seriously pissed off. I pushed her as hard as I could without hurting her and broke the hold she had on me.

I stood up immediately and demanded answers. “Tell me what you’re talking about right now!” I shouted. “I’m getting tired of this!”

She stepped towards me again, and I recoiled. There was no way in hell I was letting that woman put her arms around me like that again. It’s not that she wasn’t attractive; she was, in fact. I just didn’t like a single thing about the entire situation. At any other time, it might have been a different story–but not that night.

She stopped trying to get closer, wiped her eyes as best she could, and spoke. “I had no idea about what happened to your little boy,” she said. “I’m always here if you need to talk.”

I couldn’t speak. Adrenaline coursed through my veins like wildfire. Only my ex and my mother knew about my son; we’d done everything we could to keep it out of the papers. Blake had gone missing when he was three years old. He’d never been found, despite our best efforts. Even though it happened nearly a decade ago, I teared up like it was yesterday.

Were these kids good, evil, or somewhere in between? What was their purpose, and why was I the subject of so many of their conversations? None of this made any sense, and I had no idea how to sort it out. Unsure of how to handle the situation, I sat back down and returned to my monitors. Seeing no one out of their rooms or so much as a janitor walking down a hall, I switched my feed to the guy cuffed to his bed in the padded cell.

I sat there and watched his lips move on and off for a good ten minutes before I ran a hand over my face. With the wave of adrenaline wearing off, I was finally getting tired. Unfortunately, I still had roughly three hours of my shift left. I rubbed my temples and stood.

Before I left the station, I looked at the nurse. “I’m going to go get some coffee from the vending machine. Do you want anything while I’m there?”

She nodded and asked for her usual, with creamer and sugar. I wandered down the hall and descended the stairs to the vending area. I deposited a few quarters in the dispenser and waited while the cup fell into place and that hot, steaming nectar of the gods squirted from the nozzle.

Suddenly I heard an odd sound behind me and spun around quickly to identify its source. It resembled children’s footsteps. When I saw nothing, I dismissed it as a product of my overworked brain and slowly turned back around to face the machine. With one cup of coffee made, I slid another few quarters into the slot and sighed. While it was dispensing, I added the sugar and creamer she’d requested and snagged a straw to stir the concoction.

By the time I was done, my own cup of coffee was ready to go. I made mine the way I liked it, scooped them both up, and headed for the staircase. I froze in my tracks as I noticed several small, wet footprints on the floor near the bottom of the stairwell. My first thought was that some kids were out of bed, so I followed the trail down the hall, coffee cups in hand.

A few minutes later, I came to a dead end. The prints should have stopped there, but they didn’t. It looked as if the kids had walked up the wall and across the ceiling. At that point, I was fed up, so I hurried back to and up the steps, then down the hall to the station, without looking back. I quickly handed the nurse her coffee, took a seat, and got back to work monitoring the camera feeds.

“Thanks for the coffee. What do I owe you?” she asked before taking a sip.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a shrug, not bothering to look at her. “You can buy next time.”

She smiled weakly and squeaked out the words, “Thanks, I really needed this.”

Silence descended once again between us as I focused on the task at hand. The longer I sat there, the more I began to worry. I couldn’t help but wonder what other secrets these “mystery children” knew about me. There were quite a few things I kept to myself–but one in particular, if it were to become known, would ruin me. I suppose some people’s secrets are darker than others.

I glanced at the nurse to check on her–but she wasn’t there. I looked back at the feed and saw her heading back to the padded cell. As I watched, she unlocked the door with her key card and stepped in, and I switched to the feed inside the room. She and the patient seemed to be talking, but I had no idea what they were saying. I silently cursed management for the poor quality of their security cameras and their lack of audio, then quietly chastised myself for never learning to read lips.

The meeting between the nurse and our latest patient carried on for a few minutes. Then, suddenly, they both turned and looked directly at the camera–sending another chill up and down my spine. It was as if they knew, at that exact moment, that I was watching them. I grumbled a bit, got up, and headed to the cell to see for myself what was going on.

When I arrived, the nurse was gone–which I found strange, as I hadn’t passed her in the hall–and the patient was grinning at me. Considering the room was at the end of the hall and that there was nowhere else to go, the nurse’s sudden disappearance had me rattled. I glanced around the room; she had vanished without a trace.

Suddenly the patient started cackling. I jumped a little and spun around to glare at him. “Where’s the nurse?”

He stopped laughing, but the grin never left his pale features. His only response was, “We know what you did.”

My heart sank. This was the moment I had been dreading all night. Just as I was about to turn around and get the hell out of there, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I spun around and received a blow to the face with a bedpan. I staggered a little before shaking it off. I looked up in time to see the nurse holding the bedpan and coming at me for another attack. I ducked to the side, pushed her away, and took off, sprinting down the hallway.

I heard footfalls rapidly approaching, right behind me. My heart pounded in my chest, making it difficult to breathe. The station was too open and there was no way I could defend it, so I grabbed my radio as I ran by and headed to the room where they distributed the medications. I slid my card in the slot, but nothing happened. I peered over my shoulder and saw the nurse closing in on me with a needle in her hand–a syringe filled with some unidentified substance.

Another swipe yielded no results. By then, my hands were sweating so badly I could barely hold on to the card. The nurse would catch up to me any second, and I knew it. It took everything I had to maintain my composure.

The third swipe worked like a charm; the little green light flashed, and I heard the click of the door as it unlocked. Quickly, I pushed it open, slipped to the other side, and slammed it shut behind me.

Once I’d bought myself some time, my first order of business was to barricade the door so that she couldn’t get in even if she used her card. With my adrenaline surging again, it took little to reposition the full shelving units against the door and load them up with every heavy item I could find.

I heard her beating against the door and screaming the words, “We know what you did, Kevin! You won’t get away with it!”

I whipped out my radio and called out for help. “If anyone is listening right now, this is an emergency!” I cried. “I need help at the Twin Valley Behavioral Center for Children.”

Oddly enough, it was Ben that responded. “This is Ben,” he replied. “What the hell is going on, Kevin? We’re en route now to pick up that transfer from earlier.”

Thank God they were on the way. I pulled myself together and answered as calmly as I could. “You guys need to step on it, seriously. I’m under attack here!”

The door slammed against the shelves with tremendous force. The nurse was screaming nonsensical words and slamming herself into the door repeatedly. I feared the shelves would topple any second. I leaned against them as I waited for a response.

Eventually, Ben’s voice drifted back through the radio. “Please tell me he didn’t get loose!”

Each slam against the shelves and the door rocked me, and I knew I couldn’t hold out much longer. In between her nonsensical shrieking, the nurse cried out in pain, her bones cracking and splintering as he flung herself at the barricade with abandon.

I activated my walkie. “No, Ben, he didn’t get loose,” I said, “but he’s done something to the nurse. I don’t know how to explain what’s happening here. I just need you guys to hurry up!”

The reply came quickly. “We’re going as fast as we can, Kevin. We’ll be there in just a minute. Just hang in there.”

That was easier said than done, given the circumstances. The shelves were on the brink of collapse, tilting ominously. Needing to distract myself, I kept talking to Ben. Having that contact with another sane person was a little comforting.

“Who did this guy kill, anyway?” I asked.

There was static for a few seconds before he answered me.

“They uncovered seven more bodies beneath his basement a few hours ago,” Ben replied. “That’s why we’re coming back for him so soon.”

I heard the door splitting, and, with a deafening crash, the shelving units finally gave way, pinning me to the floor. The impact sent my radio spinning out of my hand, sliding halfway across the room. I heard Ben’s voice burst through the static one last time before all the lights went out.

“Apparently, all of his victims were prime suspects in child disappearance cases,” Ben continued, unaware of the exact nature of my circumstances. “We’re pulling in now. Hang tight, Kevin.”

It was too late, I knew, and I was out of time.

For a while, you can run–from responsibility and consequences, even judgment–but you can’t run forever.

Sooner or later, the past always catches up to you.