Mr. Alexander Garrick's Traveling Circus Read online

  It seemed like forever until the roar of the crowd’s final, uproarious applause startled her. She heard laughter and noises as the crowd departed. The tall man and Bearded Lady stood at the entrance flap to the tent as a few of the others circled near her, warily watching for peeking eyes. She sensed their hunger for her growing. She just wasn’t sure what the hunger meant or, perhaps she did and didn’t want to think about it.

  And then, when the grounds had quieted and all hope of someone finding her had faded to dust, he plowed through the tent.

  “Marvelous, lovelies. Smashingly marvelous. We’ve made a king’s ransom here. And now it is time to pack up and to move on. We depart at once. I’ve heard the next town is simply teeming with possibilities. Great work. Great job. And now, we feast.”

  The circus performers clapped and cheered, but the Ringmaster set his sights on one thing.

  Her.

  She trembled as he walked casually forward, his hand flipping the pocket watch he carried. He got near her, took off the top hat, and cast it onto the butcher block.

  “Oh my, I’ve done well this time. I’ve done well. Almost as well as last time. This one is a true keeper, folks.”

  “Come on, boss. Let us have our fun,” the clown whispered, clapping his hand on the butcher block table as some of the others whooped and danced. She could feel them closing in on her, could feel them upon her with a reckless abandonment she hadn’t yet experienced. Even the boy was in the circle, his eyes lasered on her as she trembled and quaked, trying to back up, to roll away, to disappear. She fell to her side in the process, a position that made her feel more vulnerable.

  The Ringmaster leaned down, his foul breath fogging up her chilled face.

  “The show must begin,” he said, and then they were upon her.

  THE SCREECHING OF THE wheels woke her first.

  The excruciating pain brought her to reality second.

  Her eyes flashed open and terror seized her. She screamed, but the gag still muffled her voice. She realized the ground was moving. The bars about her were confusing. They were cold against her back. She glanced down before understanding her legs weren’t bound any more. They were straight out in front of her, her back against the moving cage. Her momentarily relief at this fact, however, was tainted by the searing pain in her body, by her tiredness, and by the palpitating of her heart as she realized the cart she was in was moving through the forest.

  There was a murky grayness cloaking the cart, as if dawn was getting ready to break. Still, the dense forest was so thick that there was a fog-like haze marring her view. How long had she been asleep? She turned to look out, the straw underneath her smelling of animal feces and filth. A clearing of a throat in the corner of the cart, however, startled her. She spun to face the intruder.

  In the corner of the cart sat a small, hunched over woman. Even in the darkness, her white hair seemed to shimmer. She was wrapped in robes and fabrics, swaddled in garb that gave her a mysterious appearance. She stood and, after gaining her footing against the squeaking cart, approached the girl. She tried to squirm backward, but the pain was too much.

  She looked up at the old woman, who grinned and made sounds of delight. She reached underneath the fabric that was wrapped about her, pulling out another garment from underneath the hem.

  The girl squinted, eyeing a costume. Even in the murky atmosphere, she thought she could see the familiar, vibrant red that she’d seen before. The boy. His had been of the same fabric. The woman smiled, revealing her toothless gums. She pointed to the girl and then the costume, nodding in delight as she repeated the action once more.

  The girl studied the costume, dazed and confused. Her eyes travelled down the billowing, flared legs of the costume, and then back up to the bodice. She noticed that unlike the boy’s, this costume did not have the flowing sleeves. In fact, there were no sleeves at all.

  Squinting as the woman stumbled toward her, still mute but grinning, the girl reached out to touch the fabric. Her mind willed her hands forward, but she could not touch the costume. She tried again, but her fingers did not graze the silky fabric as she’d imagined. Confusion hazed her brain. And then her eyes glanced down to see if perhaps her arms were still, in fact, bound.

  But where her arm should be, there was nothing. Terror seized hold of her breathing, of her heart, of her mind. She tried to stand, but flailed to the ground, a flash of pain lighting up her eyes and head. She thought she would pass out. The old woman stopped down, putting a wrinkled, dry hand on her cheek, murmuring incoherent words in another language to her.

  Fear usurped her as her body quaked in reaction. It couldn’t be. It mustn’t be. But when she gained the courage to look, it was unmistakable. Where there had once been a shoulder, an arm, a hand, there was nothing but a filthy white rag stained in blood. Flashes from the tent caused terror to surge through her once more. Her brain ached with the thoughts of the knife, of the clown, of the Ringmaster’s unforgivable sneer.

  She vomited in the hay, the pain of her body transforming into a pain she thought would kill her right there. The woman tried to prop her back up, but she did not budge. Her cheek against the scratchy filth of the cart, her eyes glanced out the iron bars into the unknown forest.

  She wished she could turn and look back from the direction they’d come from. She wished she could see just a hint of the town she once called home, the place she’d once lived, and the girl she’d been before.

  But Mr. Alexander Garrick’s Traveling Circus waits for no one. It waits for nothing. Thus, it pushed on, into the vastness of the wide, open spaces before them, where the next town of children and lore and whisperings anxiously awaited the unforgettable sights.

  They were desperate to remember the wonder. To whisper about the forgotten children of the traveling circus. To thank God they had two legs, two arms, and a life society deemed average.

  Did you love “Mr. Alexander Garrick’s Traveling Circus”?

  For another creepy horror story filled with twists and turns, grab The Redwood Asylum now. Read on to see a sample of this eerie page-turner.

  FROM THE USA TODAY Bestseller L.A. Detwiler comes a new eerie horror filled with secrets, ghosts, and murder.

  The dead do talk ... if you’re brave enough to hear their sinister secrets.

  In a thick forest sits a forgotten stone building, The Redwood Asylum. Once inside, the criminally insane, the darkly disturbed, and the eternally confused residents learn one thing very quickly: they are at the mercy of ruthless evil in many forms.

  At twenty-six, Jessica Rosen starts a new job at Redwood in the hopes of forgetting an insidious past. She quickly realizes, however, that Redwood harbors malevolent secrets and beings in every chilly corner. On her second day adjusting to her job, the unstable man in 5B quickly latches onto Jessica in an unsettling way. When his rantings and warnings start to make sense, though, Jessica will be taken on a ride of secrets, murder, and dangerous beings. As she begins to uncover the horrifying truths behind the man’s past , the terrors of Redwood Asylum will follow her home and make her question her own sanity.

  Can Jessica solve the secrets of the man in 5B in time to save herself, or will the terrors trap her in Redwood’s evil clutches forever?

  A spine-tingling page-turner by USA Today Bestseller L.A. Detwiler perfect for paranormal horror fans.

  Prologue

  On a winding road, concealed in a dark forest of overpowering trees and forgotten memories, sits a seemingly ancient building. The town it belongs to, Oakwood, likes to forget its existence, but the prisoners harbored behind the decaying stone walls know very much what the place is. Not many places like it have subsisted in its form, but since 1834, the Redwood Asylum has stood proud and tall, welcoming its patients in and feasting on whatever remains of their mental states.

  It began with good intentions in 1834, if misguided by the cruel realities of medicine at the time. Francis Weathergate’s sister, Claudette, was struggling with what medical d
octors deemed nervous conditions due to her melancholic behaviors, tantrums, and risk-taking penchants. In modern times, medical doctors would deem her a teenager, but the era was different. We cannot always fault people for being who they are in the time they are born into.

  The son of a wealthy mine owner, Francis did what he knew to do—he threw money at the problem, building the most state-of-the-art, five-story facility dedicated to asylum medicine of the time. And for a while, Redwood, from the exterior, was a picturesque building one could smile at, a sort of vacation home quality permeating every facet of its existence. The wealthy felt good about locking up the members of their families labeled inferior. The outside was glossy, picture-worthy, and stunning.

  But as with all facilities of this nature, the interior was a horror that couldn’t be so readily masked. Some said if you got too close, you could hear the screams of not only the living. The deceased inhabitants supposedly strolled aimlessly through the thick forest at night, stuck in Redwood’s claws even after death. Some said their minds were too far gone to even know when to die. Others still thought maybe something was amiss at Redwood but of course didn’t worry enough to investigate. After all, they were ten miles away in the town center, drinking coffee and chasing dollars and feeling the warm sunshine on their pale faces. Thus, the town went quiet, leaving the asylum to its dark devices in the midst of its forest island so far on the outskirts of town, it was practically its very own.

  Today, Redwood Asylum would be a tourist attraction, a place for the photographer to visit, to smile in front of, to garnish attention. But Oakwood already has plenty of money, so it prefers to keep Redwood somewhat of a secret, a forgotten relic of the past that is still functioning. In fact, if you were to visit Oakwood, you would not hear a whisper about the building with a maniacal interior. And even if you stumbled upon the building, you may not even realize that the prisoners still remain—both living and dead.

  Certainly, the sign out front has been transformed from The Redwood Asylum to The Redwood Psychiatric Center, a play on words that sounds more pleasing to the ear of the mentally stable. But make no mistake—the residents, as they’re now called formally, know exactly what the sign out front should say. And the residents of the past know exactly what the current residents should expect.

  The nurses and staff at Redwood aren’t evil monsters. No, most are simply desperate for work or desperate to disappear from the world in a sense. Some are eager to remind themselves that they are of the mentally sound side, and there’s nothing like working with the most intense mentally disturbed cases to do just that.

  Still, this living artifact carries with it an evil past and an equally as frightening future. For once inside, the criminally insane, the darkly disturbed, and the eternally confused residents learn one thing very quickly: they are now at the mercy of others.

  If you know anything about human nature, you know that mercy rarely overstays its welcome.

  Chapter One

  I first met the demented man of 5B on a gray Wednesday. The dismal weather heightened by the darkness of the impenetrably thick forest surrounding Redwood Asylum pounded into my already frayed nerves. I’d survived the first day at my new job—barely. I’d met the tortured soul of room 4A who was terrorized by imaginary demons sitting on his shoulders. I’d helped the floor nurse, Anna, administer medicines to wildly violent criminals and to a woman who shrieked at unimaginable decibels nonstop. I walked by shadows of people, perhaps the most haunting of all, who seemed dead, body and soul, but were still breathing. I’d gone home to my tiny apartment just on the outskirts of the grounds feeling completely worn, wondering what the hell I was doing coming to the decrepit place. Beggars can’t be choosers, however, and Redwood was perfect in many regards. Just not for the psyche.

  It’s true, I thought about not returning after my first day. It was like I’d walked inside a time warp, and the Psychiatric Hospital label wasn’t fooling me. I saw Redwood for what it was—a damned asylum. I knew that the screams from some of the treatment rooms weren’t imaginary or misplaced. It didn’t take long to realize that the thick walls didn’t completely mask all of the atrocities, horrors, and terrors happening in the modernized version of the asylum it once was.

  I was left asking myself over and over: how could a place like this exist in modern times? Still, there are forgotten corners in every town, and Redwood is one example—mercifully for the outside world, but inhumanely for those who grace the hallways.

  “This one’s a real nutjob,” Anna whispered to me outside of room 5B on the fifth floor, the one I was assigned to. Floor five housed the most difficult cases and was split into two wings. The A wing housed the criminally insane; the B wing housed those who weren’t criminals but were violent enough to become just that if the staff wasn’t careful. Each wing contained five rooms for a total of ten patients on my floor. How lucky I’d been to be chosen for floor five. . .

  As I prepared to enter 5B, her comment startled me. I appraised the middle-aged nurse, wondering if she were testing me to see if I would be bothered by her term of nutjob, which certainly wasn’t professional or clinical but perhaps accurate. I decided to stay silent. I still had a lot to weigh out in the place. It wouldn’t do to make enemies already.

  “Be careful around him. He seems harmless at first, but we’ve had quite a few incidents,” she continued.

  I wanted to remind her that anyone at Redwood had a few incidents, especially those on floor five apparently. Instead, I stayed quiet, wondering what I’d see in room 5B that could be any worse than the other rooms. I had no idea at the time that I was about to flirt with destiny and damnation, that the man in the room with the dirty blond hair and eerily calm demeanor was about to set me on a hideous journey that I would never recover from, that would threaten my own sanity. He would potentially seal my inability to escape from the clutches of Redwood like so many who had gone before me.

  I didn’t know it on that dismal day, of course. There are never any flashing lights or billboards that tell you when your world is going to careen off the path. It just happens, leaving us with whiplash, tears, and a churning sense of regret that we missed all the signs.

  That day, I only knew that the job as a nurse at Redwood paid decently, was in my field, and took me far away from the disastrous mistakes I’d made over 1,000 miles away. Even though the place carried a weight of malevolence with it, it felt good to disappear. The dark forest, the thick walls of the stone building felt like a protective apron in a blast furnace, shielding me from the outer corners of the real world. In Redwood, time did seem to fade away and all realities of news, politics, and others dissipated, too. There seemed to only be Redwood, a community guarded in a forest alcove.

  I pushed back a strand of hair and followed Anna through the locked door of 5B, a tiny window casting a small glow of natural light that mixed with the too-bright fluorescent bulbs into the starkly white room. I reminded myself not to worry because this was the “high security” floor. There was limited movement of the residents, and the rooms were tightly guarded. Still, a sinking feeling wormed its way in. After a single day of work, I’d realized that the extra security just meant that one of the security guards would check the doors to the floor a few extra times if he remembered. There was also a panic button under the desk in the middle of the floor, our headquarters. Whether it actually worked or not was something I planned to never have to investigate. I did a lot of wishful thinking in the early days.

  Floor five, where I had been assigned, included rooms with padded cells where the residents were kept under special watch. While those in the B wing were afforded some privileges such as limited activity time for good behavior, it was closely monitored and rare. The other floors had as carefree of an atmosphere as one could expect to find in an asylum. Floor five, as my luck would have it, was stifling and restrictive.

  I walked in and spotted him sitting on his cot, staring at his feet. His hair was sticking up in all directions, what
little he had left. His skin was leathered but pale. How long since he’d seen the outside world? His eyes looked bright, but his body seemed dimmed somehow. I had no idea how old he was, couldn’t even fathom a guess. It was like Redwood was an odd time warp that simultaneously mummified its residents and also catapulted them into the aging process. I shuddered at the thought, wondering how Redwood was any better than a prison. It wasn’t, in short.

  “Mr. Essic, time for your meds. Here, our new nurse, Jessica, will bring you the juice. Doesn’t juice sound good?”

  Anna was calm and poised, her voice kind although condescending in an unavoidable way. He ignored her words until she said my name. When my name left her lips, I noticed how his gaze darted up and landed right on me. My stomach leaped as I feared the worst. Would he try to strangle me? What protection did I have? The only armed guard was stationed down the hall. Would he hear my screams in a place like this where they were so commonplace?

  What 5B actually did, though, was perhaps worse. He stared straight into my eyes, and I watched the lines in his face soften. Recognition. He nodded, his lips a straight line. His poker-face would win thousands, doubtless, if it weren’t for his expressive eyes.

  “Jessica. They told me you were coming. Who knew they were telling the truth? Maybe this will be it. Maybe you’re it.” He smiled and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe his luck. I exhaled as Anna reached for the juice from my shaking hand.

  She appraised me, and I painted on a weak smile coupled with a nod. I was brave and strong. Capable of handling this. Anna took care of giving out the meds, settling 5B back in—his name was apparently Robert Essic, but most everyone referred to the patients by the numbers here. It was easier when delivering items, Anna had informed me. 5B promptly settled back onto his cot, his head on his pillow as he stared at the ceiling.