A Little More Dead Read online

  “That’s where you were this morning?” Pete asked.

  “Did Oz sanction that?” Charlie chimed in and then turned to Pete. “Isn’t that where Katie is?”

  Pete nodded and turned to me. “Is that who you meant by Crazy Katie? Is that why you were worried about being attacked by her?”

  “No, I meant a different Crazy Katie,” I said with a flat tone. Pete and Charlie exchanged a confused look and I sighed, exasperated. “Yes, it’s the same person.”

  “C’mon, guys,” Burt said, relaxing back in his chair. “You know you can’t talk about this. You’re putting me in an awkward position here.”

  “Burt, my tea’s cold. Will you get me a refill please?” I asked and fluttered my eyelashes at him. “Anna does it for me all the time. I’m so accident prone she worries I’ll burn myself.” I handed him my mug but he didn’t look convinced. “You don’t want me to burn myself on your watch, do you?”

  Burt blew out a breath and then took my mug. “You’ve got the time it takes me to refill this mug. Talk fast.” He got up and headed to the tea station on the far side of the canteen. Not too fast either. So far, despite his poor taste in woman, I liked Burt.

  “Crazy Katie escaped last night,” I said for Pete and Charlie’s benefit. “Anna took me to Mendall Asylum this morning for a tour. Tommy was there. I spoke to one of the nurses, Gary. He had really hairy wrists. He didn’t know anything about Crazy Katie’s escape. Then another nurse called Jason, total douche, came along and shooed Gary off before I could get anything good. Jason denied that Crazy Katie had escaped. In fact, he denied anyone had ever escaped. And I think he and Anna know each other.” I glanced over my shoulder to see Burt still at the tea table and then turned back to the three stunned faces staring at me. “Questions?”

  “I have one,” Pete said. “How do you keep managing to get yourself into these situations?”

  “It’s so funny, Pete. I was about to ask the same question but I was going to use a completely different tone,” Sabrina said.

  “That’s because you’re as bad as her,” Pete said, gesturing to me.

  I pointed to Pete with my fork. “To be fair, Pete, I didn’t make Katie crazy. I didn’t tell her to escape. I didn’t decide to have a tour of the mental institution she escaped from. None of this is on me.”

  “I researched Mendall Asylum a bit but there was nothing of interest in the records,” Sabrina said. “Is Tommy trying to investigate how she escaped?”

  “And, here’s your tea.” Burt placed the mug in front of me and sat down. He looked around the table. “All good?”

  I nodded. “Yep, thank you for the tea.”

  Burt smiled at me. “You’re welcome.”

  “How long have you had Anna as a companion?” Pete asked. “It’s only been a few weeks, right?”

  “Uh-huh, why?” I asked.

  “Because these types of tours have to be booked months in advance,” Charlie said and then turned to Burt. “You work at Mendall, right? Did you pull some strings to get Bridget on a tour ahead of the queue?”

  “Guys, please,” Burt said. “Anna is going to ask me how this went and I want to be able to tell her it went well. That Bridget didn’t talk about things she shouldn’t have.”

  “Bridget’s not asking the questions. I am,” Charlie said with an uncharacteristic authoritative tone that had both Sabrina and me raising our eyebrows.

  Burt shook his head. “I didn’t pull any strings. I can’t. I’m just a nurse.”

  “How do you know Anna?” I asked. He seemed so nice and normal. And nice. I had no idea how or why he’d be friends with Evil Barbie.

  “We’re housemates,” Burt said.

  “Ah,” Sabrina and I said in unison. Obviously, we’d had the same thought.

  “So what was up with Anna and that Jason guy?” I asked.

  Burt shook his head. “I don’t really—”

  “I thought Anna was after Oz,” Sabrina said and then held up her hand. “Actually, I don’t care. Burt, tell me more about Mendall Asylum. About the crazy girl who escaped.”

  Burt sighed heavily and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “What is wrong with you people?”

  Pete tapped his temple. “I have a list. Would you like to hear it?”

  ∞

  “I think Burt might be a little sweet on Anna,” Sabrina said as we walked to the kitchen hatch to dump our trays at the end of lunch. I frowned at her. She frowned back. “What?”

  I held out my hand for her to shake. “Oh, hi there, Mrs States-the-Obvious. I’m Bridget.”

  Sabrina pulled a face at me and knocked my hand away. “I didn’t think it was that obvious.”

  “Oh, it was,” I said, nodding. “It was also obvious that she didn’t seem to know, which I thought was pretty odd since she’s the type of person who enjoys that sort of attention.”

  “And because he seems like such a nice guy,” Sabrina added.

  “He does, doesn’t he,” I agreed. “Maybe Anna has hidden depths. Like, really hidden.”

  “Like you’d need an excavation team working overnight in shifts hidden,” Sabrina agreed.

  After roughly five minutes of conversation over lunch it had become apparent that Burt was the type of person that everyone liked. There was literally nothing offensive about him. Not his appearance, not his accent, not his sense of humour, nothing. Since he’d been so worried about having to explain to Anna about how he’d failed her, we spent the rest of lunch talking about utterly benign things like favourite foods. It had come as no surprise to me, or anyone, that Pete couldn’t pick a favourite food. The way he shovelled it down his throat I’d have been more surprised if he tasted it enough to choose one.

  “Okay. Find out what you can about Crazy Katie while you’re at the asylum,” Sabrina reminded me. “I’ll see what I can find out about her victims and you getting on that tour.”

  “You good to go?” Burt asked as he walked up behind us.

  “Yep, thanks for waiting.” If it had been Anna I’d have had a snappy, slightly mean comeback ready for that comment, but Burt hadn’t really done anything to deserve that. At least, not yet. I reached over and gave Sabrina a quick hug.

  “Still freaks me out when you voluntarily do this,” she said.

  “Just shut up and take it,” I said before pulling away and following Burt out of the room.

  Burt tunnelled us back into the metal matchbox where everybody else was already assembled. We passed through the same process as before and as Burt handed our papers to the guard I noticed a tattoo on his wrist. It looked like a squiggly, loopy signature. It was like a Magic Eye picture. Every time I almost grasped what it was my eyes refocused and I lost it again.

  “It’s a pair of doves,” he said when he saw me looking and traced the outline of the overlapping birds. If he’d not told me I’d never have worked it out. But once he’d shown me, it was so obvious. “It’s a bit girly, I know,” he said, reading my expression.

  “Little bit,” I said with a grimace. “But as long as you like it.”

  “I had it done a long time ago when I was struggling. It symbolises hope to me.”

  To me it symbolised the importance of going to a properly licensed tattoo artist but that was something mean Bridget would say and Burt had been nothing but nice to me, so I just nodded and lined up in the hallway with everyone else.

  “Did everyone have a good lunch?” Dr Mendall asked and was greeted with a mumbled assent. “Excellent. We’re going to start this afternoon with a tour of the facility in which you’ll get to meet some of our patients. Now please remember these people are under our care, so be respectful.”

  Anna appeared at the other end of the corridor. She looked slightly dishevelled. Not in a state of disarray but just not as perfectly pristine as she had been before lunch. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. She approached our group and Burt left to meet her halfway without so much as a “nice to meet you” to me.

/>   She gave Burt a wide smile when she saw him. He returned it. His was genuine. Hers was not. They had a brief, whispered exchange with more than one glance thrown my way, and then Anna hurried along the corridor to stand beside me.

  “Any questions?” Mendall asked. I hadn’t realised he’d still been speaking, I’d been focusing on Anna and Burt too much to listen.

  “Burt said you behaved yourself,” Anna whispered. “I hope you didn’t take advantage of him.”

  “We’re going where the inmates are?” the Ken doll asked.

  “Yes, we’ll visit some of the common areas where the patients are,” Dr Mendall said.

  “Is this safe?” asked the Ken doll, plucking the question from my mind once again.

  “Perfectly.” Dr Mendall smiled along our column. “Don’t worry.”

  “I wish he’d stop telling us not to worry,” Tommy mumbled from behind me. I hadn’t even realised he was there.

  “Worrying, isn’t it?” I asked with a nod.

  “Shush, hon. I’d like you to focus here, okay? It’s for your benefit,” Anna said and I looked over my shoulder to give Tommy a flat stare. He dipped his head to cover his laugh but his responsible adult nodded ahead of us, implying I should turn focus ahead. Briefly, I wondered if Tommy’s responsible adult was his sleuthing partner since I’d not seen him reprimand Tommy once.

  Burt was motioning us forward and the column started to shuffle after him. Dr Mendall stood to the side so we could pass, nodding at each pair as they went. When the Ken doll passed his responsible adult peeled off to talk to Mendall. I don’t think the Ken doll even noticed. This was not boding well for the Ken doll, but by the confidence in his walk I doubted he even realised.

  The column snaked around several more corners before coming to a halt at a very secure-looking metal door. Mendall waved his hand in the air like a tour guide to get our attention while he walked to the head of the column and Navy Suit moved back to the Ken doll.

  “We’re about to go into the common area,” Dr Mendall said, standing in front of the metal door. “All patients who are responding well to treatment are allowed in here. This is their home, so please be respectful. You can talk to anyone who is happy to talk to you but please don’t force conversation on anyone.” Mendall turned his back to us. The sound of jangling keys echoed along the corridor. The door creaked loudly, ominously, as it swung open and he gestured for those at the front to go inside.

  “That’s it?” I asked Anna. “Be respectful? That’s the only instruction he’s giving us as we walk into a room of possibly very crazy people?”

  “Do you need more instruction than that?” Anna hissed at me as the adjustment companion of the guy in front turned around and gave Anna a sympathetic look.

  I turned around to Tommy. “Is it me or is this backward?”

  Anna clicked her fingers in front of my face before Tommy could answer.

  “Yes, Anna, hon, I do need more instruction than that!” I snapped. “I need to know if someone is likely to attack me if I walk too fast or breathe too heavily or gesture too quickly or just exist.”

  “If it wasn’t perfectly safe we wouldn’t be allowed in,” Anna said in a tone you would use to explain something really simple to a child.

  “Well, if it’s perfectly safe and these people aren’t likely to attack us, why are they in here?” I asked.

  “Because they ask too many questions!” Anna snapped back.

  I was about to think of an amazing comeback when it occurred that she was probably telling the truth. She’d mostly likely thought of it as a jibe to get me to be quiet but apparently maladjusted people asked a lot of questions because the afterlife just didn’t make any logical sense. And if it didn’t make sense to you then you were classed as maladjusted. I bit my tongue and shuffled toward the door in silence, only slightly annoyed that Anna had taken my lack of a response to mean she’d won. I could accept that for the moment, since that hopefully would mean I wouldn’t be admitted to the afterlife’s mad house. Which was quite possibly where all the sane people lived.

  The room beyond the door looked like every psychiatric ward I’d seen on TV. The room was beige. There were several couches and armchairs on one side of the room, all beige, and table and chair sets spread out on the other side. The patients were all in pyjamas. Beige pyjamas. Or grey sweatpants and sweatshirts. They moved around the room slowly and with no real direction or motive. Everything about their movements felt sluggish. It made me wonder if they were drugged or if they’d been here so long they’d just lost all sense of purpose. Just like general afterlife people.

  I followed the column into the centre of the room. We were like a wall of people.

  “Well, isn’t this disturbing?” Tommy said quietly behind me as he scanned the room over my shoulder.

  Before I could answer, Anna yanked me to the side and stepped between Tommy and me, scowling at him the whole time.

  “I’m not a rag doll, Anna,” I said and pulled my arm out of her hold. “Don’t ever touch me like that again.”

  “Well, do as I say,” she snapped at me.

  “You didn’t tell me to do anything!” I snapped back.

  “That’s not the point,” she said and, before I could even challenge that ridiculous statement, she turned to Tommy. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop talking to my responsibility.”

  Tommy grinned at her. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

  Anna tossed her head and faced forward, I assumed feeling mollified by Tommy’s obsequiousness. I threw him a disgusted look but he just grinned at me and nodded at something ahead of us. I turned and saw the Ken doll walking amongst the patients. I say walking but he was really more of a strutter. He might have been the first one out of the safety of our column but he wasn’t exactly talking to anyone. All fur coat and no knickers, as my mam would say.

  The column began breaking apart as people tentatively stepped away from the safety of their responsible adults and into the room. The adjustment companions stayed where they were, notebooks out and pens poised, waiting for their maladjusts to do something worthy of writing down.

  “Go on, hon,” Anna said and urged me forward. I went. Only because it would be five minutes out of her company and, really, those who’d been incarcerated were more likely to be my type of people anyway.

  I wandered around the room. No patient made eye contact with me. Not like they were so busy doing their own thing they hadn’t noticed me. More like they all purposely avoided looking directly at me. And when they thought I wasn’t looking they would cast furtive looks my way. I scanned the room. They weren’t doing it to anyone else.

  “Well, that’s weird,” Tommy said as he came to stand next to me.

  “I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed it,” I said. “I wonder why they won’t look at me.”

  “It might have something to do with that.” Tommy gestured to the far side of the room.

  “What the hell …?” I walked across the room to get a better look. On a door hung a painting of me. Or a version of me. If the pillar-box red hair didn’t give that away, then you could sort of make out my features. Though they had a harsh almost devilish twist to them. It was decidedly unflattering. I felt someone behind me and assumed it was Tommy. “Not exactly my best angle.”

  “I was angry when I painted it. That was what you looked like to me,” said a familiar voice that was definitely not Tommy.

  I whirled around. Alex. Alex, who’d tried to kill me not so long ago, was standing homicidally close. I don’t know what expression was on my face but he stepped back straightaway.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you’d seen me.”

  “How? My back was to the room.” And wasn’t that a lesson learned?

  Alex jerked his head in the direction of the door we’d come through. “I meant when you came in.”

  “No. I did not see you,” I said with a sharp shake of my head.
He said nothing. I said nothing. I waited for him to launch at me. He didn’t. I waited for him to shout abuse at me. He didn’t. I stared at his face for a long moment and then pointed at each of his eyes in turn. “You seem … rational.”

  He laughed. It was actually quite a pleasant sound. Not brittle or bitter like I’d have expected. Not exactly full of humour either but it definitely wasn’t a psychopathic laugh.

  He gave a self-conscious nod. “I feel rational.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s good then,” I said, not really sure of the etiquette for talking to the man who held you at gunpoint.

  “I’m sorry for,” Alex fashioned his hand into a gun and shot at me, “y’know.”

  “Oh. Right.” I nodded and then shrugged, lost for sensible words. “It’s—I mean—y’know—I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

  “Bridget, hon?” Anna called from her safe spot across the room. She drew a circle in the air with her finger and I assumed that meant she wanted me to mingle. Again, normally I’d have ignored her but it was all a bit weird talking to someone who’d just apologised for attempting to kill you.

  What was weirder was that I wasn’t even really angry with him for it. He’d been upset and manipulated. He’d not been thinking clearly. Even when he had the gun aimed at me some part of my brain was sure he wasn’t going to shoot. Still.

  “I have to …” I jerked my head in the direction of the centre of the room. I took a step away and then turned back to the painting. “I’m not exactly vain but …”

  Alex gestured to it. “You can take it down. I have a new one to put up anyway.”

  “Of me?” I asked, shuffling back a step. I was getting a heavy crazy stalker vibe.

  “No.” Alex lifted the piece of thick paper in his hands and turned it around.

  It was a painting of Bertha. She had worked on the reception desk at the bureau with Alex before a whole heap of murderous stuff happened, which she hadn’t survived, and Alex had been sent here.

  “That’s a really good likeness,” I said as I stepped a little closer to get a better look. In my honest opinion he’d been as overly flattering to her image as he’d been unflattering to mine. But I wasn’t about to say that. Better not to provoke the recovering possibly homicidal person. And he actually had a little talent in the artistic arena, even if he’d made me look demonic.