She had been right all along: The Inn was haunted.
Not only by the ghosts of long-ago Civil War patients, but by the things Gran was doing down in the basement. Terrible deeds and actions caused their own kind of haunting. Vi believed that it held memories of every terrible thing that had happened inside its walls. The building felt angry and sick to her; it felt dangerous.
The summer rain pounded down, soaking their clothes, their hair. They slipped in the wet grass, holding each other up. Thunder boomed in the distance, a low grumbling roar. Lightning struck, and the world flashed bright and blue and brilliant for one second, as if God were taking a picture. The sky was electric, alive and humming, and Vi felt like they were tapped into it, feeding off it, the current running through them, turning them into live-wire girls. She felt that if lightning came down and struck them right now, it wouldn’t kill them or even hurt them.
It would just make them more powerful.
They reached the building and crept around to the back door. Vi’s heart was pounding, partly from nerves, but also because with Iris she felt like so much more than herself. She couldn’t let Gran take Iris away. This was their only hope. It was the only thing that could save Iris, save them both.
Vi slipped her copy of the key into the lock.
“I’m afraid,” Iris said, stepping back.
“You don’t have to do this,” Vi told her.
“Yes, I do. I need to see where I came from.”
“What we find in there,” Vi said, “we’re going to use it to fix things.”
“Promise?”
Vi nodded. “We’re going to find out who you really are,” she said. “We’re going to learn your real name. We’ll get the papers that prove everything Gran did to you, and we’ll bring them to Julia and the police. The whole world is going to know what happened here.”
And what will happen then? she wondered.
What would Gran do?
How would she react when she learned what Vi had done?
She couldn’t think about that. Could only think about the next step.
She pulled the door open.
They peered up and down the hallway before they entered. All clear. She took Iris’s hand again, and in they went. Each of them had on an empty backpack to help them carry more files.
The building smelled like disinfectant spray, old wood, and brick. It smelled like ghosts.
They turned right, creeping down the corridor into the Common Room. Vi led Iris to the door marked BASEMENT and quickly unlocked it, and Iris followed her through. They went down the stairs to the basement, took a right, and approached the heavy metal door. Vi pulled out the key she’d marked B WEST.
“Are you ready?” she asked Iris.
Iris nodded, gave a weak smile.
Vi thought of the months, the years maybe, that Iris had spent down there, locked in that room. While the whole time, Vi was right across the lawn. She could have come and rescued her. Saved her. If only she had known.
She unlocked the door.
They stepped through, looking and listening. It was quiet.
“These three rooms on the left,” Vi said, “that’s where they keep the patients.”
They peered through the little window into the first room. It was empty, holding only a single bed.