"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter One-Hundred-And-Forty-One: An Interview With Victor Creel
(Dear Billy, Pt. 3)
***
The high-security, lower level wing of Pennhurst Asylum was exactly how Rowan remembered it.
Dim overhead lights providing just the barest hint of light in the otherwise dark lower level and the patients inside the cells. A nearly unnatural sense of dryness in a place where it should be damp or drip water. And behind the bars of the cells, the shuffles and low whispers and giggles from the patients deemed too dangerous to be interred above.
If the above levels of Pennhurst gave Rowan the creeps, then this wing intensified it.
As the door clanged shut and the gated one slid open with a metallic clank, the guard led them down the corridor as he told them the rules.
"Do not startle him. Do not touch him. Do not pass him anything. Stand five feet away from the bars at all times," the guard instructed. "Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," Nancy said.
"Yes, sir," Robin and Valerie echoed back, more meekly than Nancy's.
Rowan didn't say anything. She knew the rules by now, and while this place and the patients in here gave her the creeps, they didn't scare her.
She'd faced scarier things now. And besides, she was the most dangerous person here.
"Oh, Victor," the guard called as he scraped his baton across the bars to catch Victor's attention, but the old man didn't turn from where he sat at the table. "Today's your lucky day! You got visitors. Real pretty ones. Including your favourite visitor."
When Victor didn't turn again, the guard turned to them and said, "Must be in one of his moods. Have fun."
"We'll try to," Valerie said tightly, a smile just as strained on her face.
The guard huffed, but walked away, leaving them alone with Victor Creel.
"Victor?" Nancy said to him. When he again didn't turn, she went on, "My name is Nancy. Nancy Wheeler. And this is..."
"Robin Buckley," Robin introduced, and Valerie added, "And I'm Valerie Martinéz."
"You already know me by now, old man. It's Rowan," Rowan jumped in, resisting the urge to grab the bars.
"Um, we have some questions—" Nancy tried to begin, only for Victor to cut in curtly, "I don't talk to reporters. Hatch knows that. I thought you knew that too, Rowan."
"I know, and I do. That was a lie I said to him to get them in here," Rowan confessed, feeling bad she'd broken that fragile trust she'd somehow forged with the old, grief-hollowed man in front of her.
