The Whispering Room (4 page)

W
ith its lush gardens and gleaming white columns, Pinehurst Manor might have been a slightly careworn cousin of the grand old dames situated along River Road, that fabled seventy-mile corridor of Southern plantation homes stretching on either side of the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

But to the discerning eye, it soon became apparent that the house was merely a poor replica of its far grander predecessors. Built in 1945 as a personal residence for Dr. Bernard DeWitt, a noted psychiatrist and philanthropist from Baton Rouge, the original home was later expanded and converted into a private sanatorium.

Under Dr. DeWitt's stewardship, Pinehurst Manor became one of the most highly regarded psychiatric institutions in Louisiana. For over thirty years,
the hospital treated patients from all over the state, suffering from all manner of mental disorders, but by the late eighties, the once pillared splendor of Pinehurst was but a distant memory.

Rocked by the twin scandals of misappropriation of funds and inappropriate behavior by some of the male orderlies, the hospital fell on hard times. By the end of the decade, only a handful of forgotten patients remained in treatment and those unfortunate few were eventually turned out when Pinehurst was forced to shut its doors for good.

The building remained boarded up for over a decade until the state bought the property and reopened it as a medium-security psychiatric facility, admitting only those patients who were not considered a serious threat to society.

But all that changed with Katrina.

Hospitals affected by the storm had to be evacuated quickly and even though every effort was made to relocate the more violent patients—those designated criminally insane—to maximum-security facilities in other parts of the state, the sheer number of beds lost to flooding forced low-to-medium-security hospitals like Pinehurst to take in the overflow.

One of the patients evacuated to Pinehurst was Mary Alice Lemay.

For over thirty years, Mary Alice had been incarcerated at a branch of the South Louisiana State
Hospital in Plaquemines Parish, a dingy, gloomy facility with cinder-block walls, chipped tile flooring and hallways that reeked of urine.

In that building, the worst of the worst were housed and treated—the serial killers, rapists and child molesters who had been remanded to a state psychiatric hospital rather than being sent to prison.

Mary Alice had spent the first few years of her custody under a suicide watch and in virtual solitary confinement. During that time, she received not a single outside visitor. Friends and relatives were so shocked by what she'd done, they couldn't bring themselves to meet her gaze in the courtroom, let alone visit her face-to-face in a mental institution—especially considering most thought she deserved the electric chair.

The weeks, months, years of her internment were passed alone and in complete silence until a new doctor assigned to her case decided one day that integration into the general population of the institution would be beneficial to her treatment.

So the door to her room came open, and Mary Alice Lemay stepped through into a world unlike any she could have previously imagined.

A nightmare world of confusion, misery and perpetual terror.

She was encouraged to mingle with the other patients, but she didn't like eating her meals in the cafeteria or socializing in the solarium or taking
group walks around the grounds. Her ward was filled with all sorts of people suffering from all kinds of distress—addicts, schizophrenics, those with depression and bipolar disorder—and Mary Alice was afraid of them.

She'd been born and raised in a small town in Southern Louisiana. For the most part, she'd lived a very sheltered life, and what she saw inside the walls of that hospital shocked her.

Some of the patients were so violent, they were never allowed to leave their cells. Others were let out, but were kept restrained, and it was those patients that seemed to watch Mary Alice with more than a passing interest.

They were the ones with the dark stares and the knowing smiles, the ones who gave her a nod as she passed by in the hallway, as if to acknowledge a kindred spirit.

And then there were the sad cases, the distraught patients who tugged at Mary Alice's heart. The elderly woman who stood in a corner all day long pulling imaginary spiders from her tangled, gray hair. The young man who drew nothing but eyes, then cut them out and taped them to the back of his head.

Sometimes Mary Alice wondered what that young man had been like as a child. Had he been happy and carefree, or had the seeds of his sickness already been sewn?

Sometimes Mary Alice thought of her own children, but she'd learned early on that it was unwise to look back. No good could come of living in the past, of trying to remember a time when she, too, had been happy and carefree.

It had all been so long ago.

Before evil had invaded her life.

Before she had been forced to do the unthinkable. The unforgivable.

Mary Alice didn't want to look back, but the only thing she had to look forward to each day was art therapy where, instead of drawing eyes, she took up origami. Some of the doctors used the art of paper folding as a way to decrease anxiety and aggression in the patients, but for Mary Alice, it was an escape.

Her fingers were very nimble, her patience boundless, and she could lose herself for hours in the intricate folds. Soon her room overflowed with the tiny paper cranes, each one beautiful and unique and—to Mary Alice—each represented a very special wish.

She'd had to leave all her cranes behind when she was transferred to Pinehurst, but she didn't really mind. The new facility was so much better. The building was old, but it had a lot of character and there where windows everywhere. The green-gold light that filtered down through the trees outside her room each morning reminded her of the bayou, and when she stared out that window, she could easily ignore
the bars and imagine that she was back in her own bedroom.

But she refused to dabble in the dangers of make-believe, nor would she allow herself the luxury of losing her mind. Every hour of every day, Mary Alice Lemay was cognizant of where she was and why she was here.

She knew what people thought of her, what they called her here and in the outside world. But they hadn't looked into the eyes of her children. They hadn't seen what she'd seen. They didn't know what she knew.

So, no, Mary Alice did not—
would not
—look back with regret.

Sorrow, yes, but not regret.

Whatever anyone else thought of her, she knew that she was neither a monster nor a martyr, but a mother who had willingly sacrificed her own soul in order to secure her children's eternal salvation.

She had done what any loving mother would do.

“Mama?”

Mary Alice was sitting in a rocking chair, staring through the bars of the window. When she heard that voice—the sound like the sweet tinkle of a bell—she thought at first she must have imagined it. But when she looked up, she saw a woman in the doorway of her room.

A woman with golden hair and beguiling blue eyes.

A woman with the face of an angel.

Her angel.

Her beautiful girl.

She put out a hand and the angel floated toward her, graceful and elegant. So loving and sweet.

It was only then that Mary Alice realized her visitor wasn't alone. A man had come into the room behind her. He was tall and dark and thin to the point of gauntness. His hair was swept back from his forehead and his dark eyes held a strange reddish hue. He had a terrible scar on the right side of his neck that looked as if he might have been burned years ago.

When his gaze met Mary Alice's, a shiver of dread crept up her spine.

She'd seen those eyes somewhere before, or what was behind them.

“Mama, this is Ellis Cooper. He's a very good friend of mine.”

The man leaned down and tried to take Mary Alice's hand, but she pulled it away. For some reason, she didn't want him to touch her.

He picked up a paper crane from the floor and held it out in his palm.

“This yours?” he asked with a smile that chilled Mary Alice to her very core. “I always loved origami. Some guy once told me about a Japanese legend. Seems if you fold a thousand of these things, your wish will come true.”

Mary Alice said nothing.

Ellis Cooper glanced around. “Looks like you've got a ways to go.”

Mary Alice refused to look up. She would not meet the man's gaze. She would not stare into that dark abyss.

But she could feel his eyes on her.

“Your daughter's told me a lot about you,” he said with a liquid smoothness. “I've sure been looking forward to coming to see you. If you don't mind my saying so, this is a pretty special day for me.”

“Ellis,” said the angel. “Would you leave us alone for a moment?”

“Oh, you bet. Take all the time you need. I'll just wait outside.”

He bent suddenly and put his face very close to Mary Alice's so that she could no longer avoid his gaze.

And this time, he grabbed her hand before she could pull it away. He held it very tight between both of his. His skin was cold and dry, and there was something reptilian about those terrible, gleaming eyes.

“I expect we'll meet again very soon, Mary Alice. And I do so look forward to that encounter.”

He released her hand then and straightened, and though Mary Alice still kept her gaze averted, she sensed something pass between the man and her daughter. A smile maybe. Or a brief, intimate touch.

A smaller, softer hand took hers once they were
alone. “Everything's going to be all right now. You'll see.”

Mary Alice placed the angel's hand between both of hers and clung for dear life.

“It's okay, Mama. I know what I have to do. I've always known.”

That soft hand came up to stroke Mary Alice's cheek.

“You taught me well. And now that I have Ellis helping me, it's going to be so much easier.” The angel's blue eyes shimmered with excitement as she leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Mama…he's one of us!”

No, Mary Alice thought in despair.
That man is not one of us.

Ellis Cooper was one of
them.

 

Ellis leaned a shoulder against the wall as he peered through the reinforced glass panel in the door, watching in fascination as the little drama unfolded inside.

Every so often, he would glance up the hallway in front of him and then over his shoulder behind him to make sure one of the patients or someone on the staff didn't sneak up and catch him unawares.

He was probably being a little paranoid, Ellis realized, but he knew only too well of the trickery and deception that went on in a place like this. You couldn't trust anyone.

Ellis had spent a couple of hitches in state mental wards, the first when he was only fifteen years old. Given his experience, he couldn't say he was exactly happy to be back in one. But at least today, he had the freedom to walk out whenever he chose. That was something.

Normally, he steered clear of any type of institution, be it a government office or even a regular hospital. He had a fundamental distrust of anything that smacked of authority, of any place in which he was not in complete control, but he'd found the prospect of a meeting with the infamous Mary Alice Lemay too irresistible to pass up.

So he'd temporarily disabled his aversion, if not his paranoia. Ellis knew from past experience that he could stand anything for a little while, even the worst kind of torture.

Now that he was here, though, all those old feelings were creeping up on him again. And dear God, the memories!

The slack jaws and vacant stares.

The unholy smells that drifted from the open doorways.

He glanced up at the surveillance camera at the end of the hallway. There was another one at the opposite end and probably a few hidden in places that were not readily discernable.

Oh, yes, Ellis knew all about those cameras.

The incessant winking of the red eyes had re
minded him night and day that he was never alone. Not in his room, not in the cafeteria, not in the showers or on the toilet. As long as those red eyes were blinking, someone was watching. Always.

Even when he prayed.

Maybe especially when he prayed, seeing as how it had been his religion that had netted him his first trip to the psych ward in the first place.

Well, not
his
religion exactly. Not back then. That was before his awakening.

It was his father's interpretation of the gospel that had caught the attention of Child Protective Services in the backwoods Georgia town where he grew up.

His father, Nevil, had been a preacher and an avid follower of the teachings of George Went Hensley, one of the founders of the charismatic movement. Ellis's father, like Hensley, had believed in a strict interpretation of the Bible, including the “signs” passage from Mark: