Hastings Hospital
Haley Ladd felt her eyelids grow heavy as she glanced at the clock beneath the Subaru's rearview mirror. It was already after midnight. It had been more than two hours since she turned off the interstate and, for all intents and purposes, left civilization in her wake. Hindsight told her that she should have stayed on the highway rather than exited onto a single-lane rural road, but she had assumed the most direct route would save time.
"Some shortcut!" Haley laughed as she strained her eyes to see through the darkness.
Even though the interstate would have taken her ten miles out of her way, had she stayed on it, she could have traveled at sixty-five miles per hour rather than the thirty-five she was forced to maintain along the dark, pothole-ridden, winding route she had chosen. The interstate also offered convenient rest stops at regular intervals where she could fill her gas tank, get a cup of hot coffee or use the restroom. On the back road, there was nothing but trees. While Robert Frost may have preferred the road less traveled, Haley wished she had taken the highway.
She leaned forward to press the tuner button on her car stereo, stopping at an oldies station where the deejay was playing back-to-back hits from the Seventies. When she looked up again, she saw a deer standing in the road directly up ahead. Haley slammed on her brakes and turned the wheel to avoid hitting the animal, and the Subaru went off the road and down into a ditch. She had not bothered to buckle her seatbelt when getting into the car and thus got a nasty bump on her forehead when she collided with the windshield.
Just great! she thought, fighting the urge to rest her head on the steering wheel and have a good cry.
Luckily, there was little damage to the front end of her vehicle. She shifted to reverse, and the four-wheel drive system easily got her out of the ditch.
Although the car was all right, her head hurt like hell. She raised her hand to her bruise and saw blood on her fingertips.
I ought to see a doctor, she thought. It's probably nothing serious, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
Still, where would she find a medical care facility in the middle of these never-ending woods?
Haley drove for half an hour before seeing a small sign that read HOSPITAL. Beneath it was an arrow pointing to the right. Relieved by her discovery, she turned and drove a short distance through heavy woods and an untended lawn.
The hospital must be abandoned, she surmised with keen disappointment, just like the rest of this part of the world.
Suddenly she saw a light piercing through the darkness. She drove up the circular driveway and parked in one of the spaces reserved for visitors.
Even in the darkness of night, the old brick building looked immense. With its Gothic turrets looming high above her, the hospital seemed like it would be more at home in Transylvania than in Massachusetts. A cold October wind blew and rustled the sparse foliage of the trees, and hundreds of brown, brittle leaves danced at her feet. Haley shivered, turned the handle and pulled on the heavy front door, which opened easily.
A woman wearing an old-fashioned nurse's uniform that was one time white but now a dingy gray and starched cap was sitting behind the front desk, watching a small portable television. When she heard the door slam shut, the nurse turned and stared at Haley. There was neither a welcome nor a may I help you? from the nurse, whose expression was clearly one of alarm.
"Is this the entrance to the hospital?" Haley inquired.
The nurse slowly nodded, staring fearfully at the unexpected visitor.
"I had a minor car accident a few miles from here, and I bumped my head on the windshield. It's stopped bleeding already, but I'm afraid of a concussion. Do you treat emergencies here? If so, may I see a doctor?"
Without saying a word, the nurse got up, walked around the desk and headed down a nearby hall. Haley had to suppress a giggle, for despite the proper uniform the nurse wore, she had bedroom slippers on her feet.
Several minutes later the nurse returned with a doctor.
"A patient!" the man said with a laugh that he abruptly cut off. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "We don't get many people dropping in—not anymore."
Haley smiled.
"You are a bit off the beaten track out here."
"Most of the staff and patients were moved to the new facility in Ipswich. There are only a few of us still left here."
"I thought the place had the look of being abandoned. Are you still open for business?"
"Yes. Yes. Come back into the examining room, and let me have a look at you."
The nurse, still looking like a deer staring into the headlights of an approaching truck, returned to her television program without even asking Haley if she had medical insurance.
"Ladies first," the doctor said politely as he opened the door to a small examination room.
The door closed behind Haley and the doctor with a loud, echoing clang.
"I guess you really don't get many patients," she remarked as she looked around the room.
The doors on the cabinets were rusted, the glass broken and the shelves nearly empty. Apprehension swept over Haley like a tidal wave. This fear was compounded threefold when the "doctor" put on his stethoscope and placed the diaphragm on the bruise on her forehead. The frightened young woman looked at the name tag on the man's lab coat, which identified the owner as Dr. Orrin Livingston. She seriously doubted, however, that the man wearing the coat was a doctor.
"You're crazy, all right," the man posing as Dr. Livingston pronounced. "I prescribe ten minutes of shock treatment followed by two hours of Gilligan's Island."
Haley bolted toward the door, but the man in the lab coat grabbed her by the arm.
"Where are you going?" he asked with a maniacal laugh. "The shock therapy room is upstairs between the whirlpool baths and the padded room."
Haley suddenly grasped the full horror of the situation. This was not a medical facility; it was an abandoned mental hospital. Her cousin, Nadia, who had a taste for the macabre, had sneaked into both Danvers State and Taunton State and photographed the interiors of the decaying asylums. Haley, however, was an unimaginative girl who had never shared Nadia's fascination with abandoned mental institutions and deserted prisons. If she had, perhaps she would have immediately recognized Hastings Hospital's true nature.
"I'm feeling much better now," she announced with a tremulous voice, trying to humor the man, who was clearly unbalanced.
"I'm the doctor, not you," he argued and pointed toward the nametag on the lab coat. "That's me: Dr. Doolittle. Of course, here at Hastings Hospital, all the doctors do as little as possible."
The joke—probably left over from the days when Hastings was still in operation—brought on a renewed bout of laughter from the madman.
Haley decided that humoring her captor would not work. It was time for a new tactic.
"Get your hands off me," she shouted as she pulled away from his grasp. "I'm leaving and you can't stop me."
She opened the thick metal door, raced down the hall past the nurse, who had probably traded in her straitjacket for the uniform she was wearing, and headed for the exit. Haley turned the knob and pushed, but the door wouldn't open. She threw all her weight against it, but it still remained closed.
"You can't get out that way," called the man in the lab coat, who had finally caught up to her. "That door is an innie, not an outie."
That comment brought laughter from the woman in the nurse's uniform, whose open mouth revealed toothless gums.
"There must be a way out of here," Haley cried defiantly, "and I'll find it."
"The windows are barred, and the doors are locked. I know. I've been trying for months to get out of here," the man told her.
"Roaches get in, but they can't get out," the woman posing as a nurse said before again turning her attention to her portable television.
Haley ignored her.
"You couldn't possibly have been here for months. Someone surely would have discovered you by now."
"I know!" the fake doctor suddenly cried with excitement. "We can play hide and seek. Nurse Doolittle," he addressed the woman watching television, "tell the others we have company, and we're going to play a game."
"Others?" Haley echoed with fear. "How many of you are there?"
The man held up one hand, its fingers spread.
"There are five?"
He then held up the other hand and began raising and lowering his fingers as though he were playing a musical instrument.
The nurse soon returned, followed by six other former patients. Four wore stained and ripped pajamas that gave off a powerful stench of perspiration and human waste, one wore a guard uniform that smelled no better and the sixth, an elderly woman, was stark naked.
"Gert," the man in the lab coat chided the nude woman, "how many times have I told you this is a formal affair. Where are your slippers?"
Haley appealed to the others for assistance.
"Can any of you help me? I came here by mistake, and I can't find my way out."
"A mistake?" the naked woman cackled. "That's what they all say. Now, where did I put my car keys? Has anyone seen them?"
"Forget about your keys," the man in the lab coat said impatiently. "We're going to play hide and seek." He turned back to Haley and declared, "You're it. We'll close our eyes and count to ten while you hide, and then we'll try to find you."
"That's not the way the game works. One person is 'it,' and the others hide from ...."
The man stamped his feet like a child throwing a temper tantrum.
"This is my game, and we'll play it the way I say. If you don't agree, then take your ball and go home."
"I'd love to go home. How do I get out of here?"
"After we play hide and seek, I'll show you the way to the back door—if you agree to play by my rules, that is."
As much as she hated to, Haley would have to trust that the crazy man wearing Dr. Livingston's lab coat would keep his word.
"Ten ... ten ... ten... ten ...," the lunatic doctor began counting monotonously.
Haley decided that rather than hide, she would take the opportunity to look for an exit. She quickly ran down the main hall, opening a series of doors, but all she found were a doctor's office, examining room, nurses' lounge, file room and storage closet. At the far end of the hall was the entrance to a large room littered with broken chairs and overturned tables.
This must have been the cafeteria, she thought hopefully. The kitchen has to be nearby.
Large kitchens, she knew, usually had separate entrances for deliveries.
A shout from down the hall spurred her into action: "Olly olly oxen free!"
Haley had to find a way out of Hastings Hospital before the inmates found her. To her left was a long counter where the kitchen workers probably once spooned out food with assembly line precision. Just beyond the end of the counter was a doorway. Haley ran toward it.
The sight of the kitchen sickened her. Empty cans, broken bottles, discarded boxes, rotten meat and produce and an assortment of bugs covered the floor and counters. It looked as though the patients had indeed been living there for several months, existing on the hospital's remaining food supply. Haley stifled a scream as a large rat scurried past her feet, carrying off a moldy chunk of bread.
A thick metal door stood opposite the institutional-sized stoves and ovens.
"Please, God," Haley prayed. "Don't let it be locked."
She pulled on the long chrome handle, and the door opened. This time, she could not stifle her scream. The door was not an exit. It was an entrance to the kitchen's walk-in freezer. Two corpses were seated inside, frozen. The first was a distinguished-looking, gray-haired man, whom Haley supposed was the real Dr. Orrin Livingston. A young woman, wearing only her panties, bra and stockings, sat next to him. Her nurse's uniform no doubt was being worn by the toothless inmate who liked to watch reruns of old sitcoms on her portable television. The doctor had apparently been strangled with his own necktie, while the nurse had been bludgeoned with a blunt object.
"There you are!" the lunatic in the lab coat cried triumphantly. "I found you! And I see that you've found Dr. Doolittle. Of course, here at Hastings Hospital, all the doctors do as little as possible."
The stale joke brought forth peals of laughter from the other patients.
"What happened to Dr. Livingston and his nurse?" Haley asked, doubting she would get a sane reply.
One of the other inmates, the middle-aged man wearing a guard's uniform, answered, "I don't know about the others, but I don't belong in here. I faked insanity because I assumed a few months in this booby hatch would be better than serving time in prison. Boy, was I ever wrong! It was damned near impossible to get released. When they started moving the patients up to Ipswich, I hid in the basement. I know how things are in these state-run facilities. Incompetence is the rule, not the exception. I hoped to remain in hiding until the others left, and then I would simply walk out the door."
"What happened?"
"For one thing, these psychos decided to follow me into the basement. I couldn't get rid of them. A single patient can slip through the fingers of an inept administrator, but eight? That's stretching things even for a state hospital."
"They found you?"
"Dr. Livingston and his nurse did. I had no choice but to eliminate them, with the help of my friends."
"We put them in the freezer," the woman in the nurse's uniform said, "so they'll keep. After all, the canned food won't last forever."
Haley shuddered with revulsion. The inmates intended to resort to cannibalism once the food supply was depleted.
"Don't worry," the man in the guard uniform assured her. "We're not going to kill you and serve you for dinner. We've still got a storeroom full of provisions."
"If you're telling me the truth, then why haven't you left yet? The longer you stay, the more likely it is that your presence here will be discovered. The authorities will eventually notice that Dr. Livingston and his nurse are missing—if they haven't already. They'll come here to look for them."
"That's what I've been hoping for. You see, there is a security system in this hospital. All the doors, except the main one through which you entered, are electronically locked, and none of us knows the security code to unlock them."
"If the hospital was closed down, why is the security system still on?"
"Who knows? Maybe the state just wanted to keep out the ghoulish sightseers."
"And what about the front door?"
"It opens from the outside only. Our only hope of ever leaving here is if the state sends someone to look for us. They haven't yet, though. Maybe they just assume Dr. Livingston ran off with his nurse. They were an 'item,' you know."
"Couldn't we call for help?"
"Nope. The phones were shut off when the place closed."
"But there are lights."
"The hospital has its own generator and water supply, but no phones."
The man in the lab coat was getting restless.
"I'm bored with hide and seek," he whined. "I want to play doctor."
His hand shot out and grabbed Haley by the wrist.
"I'll be Dr. Doolittle, and you can be my patient. Let's go to the examination room."
Haley looked to the man in the guard's uniform, her eyes imploring him for help.
"Just play along. It's best not to upset them," he advised, nodding his head toward the more seriously disturbed inmates. "They can get violent if you do, and you may be here for quite a while yet."
* * *
Leo Purcell looked across the front seat at his wife, Paige.
"Remember what the doctor said, honey: breathe."
The young woman, going through hard labor, grimaced with pain. She tried to breathe like she'd been taught in the prenatal classes, but it was difficult.
"You ... breathe," Paige panted. "I'm in ... too much ... pain."
Then she screamed, and her husband cringed.
Leo realized that he had been foolish to take a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy from New Jersey to Massachusetts, even though his wife had begged him to do so. She could have waited until the following autumn to see the fall foliage, but no, it had to be this year. Now, here they were lost in the middle of nowhere, probably hours from the nearest hospital.
I wish I'd paid more attention to the instructor in those birthing classes, he thought, desperately hoping he wouldn't have to pull over to the side of the road and deliver the baby himself.
"Our prayers are answered," he announced with relief a few minutes later as the car's high beams illuminated a sign at the side of the road.
He turned the car to the right and drove down a narrow, tree-lined driveway to a visitor's parking lot. He parked his Ford Focus next to a Subaru Forester that looked as though it had been left there to rust away ages ago.
"Come on, Paige, honey," he urged as he helped his wife get out of the car.
"Don't they ... have a ... wheelchair?"
"I doubt it," Leo replied as he looked up at the forbidding Gothic turrets that towered above them in the darkness.
I hope this place is open, he thought.
The lights were on in several of the rooms, which was a good sign.
The expectant mother and father walked through the front door and saw a nurse wearing an old-fashioned uniform and a starched nurse's cap sitting behind the main desk.
"You two are going to have a baby, aren't you?" the pretty nurse asked, clapping her hands with joy like a young child. "It will be so nice to have a baby to play with."
Paige groaned with pain as another contraction ripped through her body.
"Nurse, could you please get a doctor?" Leo asked with growing impatience as the door slammed closed behind him.
"Oh yes, I'll go get Dr. Doolittle," Haley Ladd replied, laughing hysterically. "Of course, you'll soon find out that here at Hastings Hospital, all the doctors do as little as possible."
The image below and the one in the upper left corner are of the Danvers State Insane Asylum, which has been converted into luxury apartments.
Salem often sneaks into Danvers State. He enjoys exercising his claws by climbing the walls in the padded rooms.
