The Crescent

Chapter 5

The numbness prickling through Will nullified his fear, and he descended to the first floor with a detached calm. This allowed him to observe miniscule discomforts: the chafe of his bowtie, the sweat in his socks, the methodical thud of his camera against his chest as he stepped forward. Things he took for granted and things Gloria, Clyde, Beatrice, and Camila would never experience again. He had an acute sense of his mortality, and how hungry Baker and his hospital were for it.

He held his camera close. The undeveloped film on it was precious. It was, at the very least, enough to instigate an investigation, if not shut down Baker's hospital completely. He made his way to the basement, where he could slip out the door from which he'd entered, and no one would ever know he'd been there until the grisly scenes were featured on The Cellardoor Journal, and then every other newspaper in Arkansas.

Will had the strong urge to leave with more. Something to encompass the horror here, in case the pictures weren't enough.

He faced the basement door, shored up his courage and entered.

The nurses had left the light on, and this time Will was prepared for the spectacle of Beatrice Wright's body. He grimaced. By now he'd acclimated to the abundance of death in this place, but it still made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight.

"It's okay," he told himself. "You're a journalist."

The words, like magic, struck a chord of bravery in Will. He strode past the corpse to the coal-colored door. He passed the shelves of tumors. Each glass jar represented a human life. He wondered which of them belonged to Mr. Flores's wife. No, don't go down that rabbit hole. But it was too late. His attention was snagged shelves, and suddenly he wanted to leave with more than his pictures. Something to truly encompass the horror here.

Peering through his choices, he spotted a particularly large jar on the top shelf, and it ensnared his gaze, and he decided he must have it. The top shelf was much taller than Will was, and he began to scale it. He was stretching himself to the skirts of his body's limitations, reaching for the jar with his free hand, the tips of his fingers brushing across the cool glass, when the shelf made a dangerous groan.

"Oh no," he said.

The shelf toppled forward. He pushed himself backward to avoid being crushed. Jars shattered and tumors hit the floor in wet slaps as the shelf came down on him. His head cracked against the floor, and everything went black.