HELL'S NIGHT
CHAPTER 7- HYSTERIA


John Loomis arrived back at the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium around the same time the sun was beginning to rise; and hours before Madison would wake up to a phone call in Haddonfield.

John had not gotten a wink of sleep in over 24 hours, but it didn’t show one bit. All of his senses were wide awake and fuming with anger, not only at the ignorance of the staff, but also at himself for delaying so long at ending Michael’s life when he had the chance.

Now his worst nightmare had come to life, and the day he had been dreading his entire career had arrived.

That’s not true, he told himself. Tomorrow is the real day when the shit will hit the fan.

He pulled into the facility to see numerous police cruisers and ambulances on the scene, and his heart dropped immediately, knowing Michael had made a clean escape.

John barely made it out of his car before Dr. Starks came running out of the building hysterically to meet him.

“John, oh my god what have we done?!! He’s gone! He’s gone! And we’re to blame for the carnage inside that building!” David yelled, practically inches from John’s face. “That mad man is gone, John! He’s gone, damnit!!”

John said nothing. He just smacked David so hard across the face that he actually lost his balance.

“You listen to me, you little shit!” Loomis growled angrily as he grabbed David by the collar and pulled him close to his face. “This is all your fault! YOURS! I told you this would happen and you didn’t listen to me! You’re too damned worried about money and publicity and had total disregard for the danger and evil that was cooped up inside that thing that walked out of here last night!”

Starks just stared at him, still in shock from being slapped. For a moment, David didn’t respond and John thought the pitiful man was going to faint right there in the parking lot. By this time, their little scuffle had drawn the attention of some cops and emergency workers on the scene, but no one bothered to interrupt.

“John, I’m sorry, can you ever forgive me?” David finally asked as his eyes welled up with tears, sounding as though all that had happened finally hit home.

John never answered the question, but simply asked: “How many bodies?”

“Bodies?” David questioned as though the word was foreign to him.

“Yes, you idiot! Bodies, as in dead people. People that lost their lives due to your ignorance!” Loomis screamed, clearly becoming frustrated.

“Three, three bodies,” David replied somberly while stressing the word body as though it made him sick.

Just as he finished his sentence, Loomis noticed the emergency workers loading a stretcher with a body bag into the back of an ambulance.

“I want to see,” Loomis simply stated and began walking toward the entrance as they rolled another body bag out of the entrance and into the ambulance.

Starks didn’t say a word. He just sat down on the curb next to Loomis’s parked car and mumbled something incoherent to himself repeatedly.

As John walked into the empty reception room of the sanitarium, he could hardly believe his eyes. Somewhere outside, a cop was yelling at him for crossing their yellow police line, but John didn’t care. The formerly bright white room with a tall oak reception desk was now completely covered in red. There were emergency workers everywhere snapping pictures of the walls, floor, and ceiling, all of which had blood stains on them.

Everything that was once so neat and orderly had now either been broken or upturned. John saw the county coroner writing in a notepad sitting on a bench that had somehow managed to stay dry during the blood storm. He then caught of a glimpse of the middle-aged woman’s face right before they zipped the body bag the rest of the way up, and John realized Michael had murdered the nightshift RN’s. As he watched them roll her out of the building, John decided he had seen enough.

Loomis stormed out of the building and went to get into his car, but Dr. Starks stopped him.

“Where are you going?!” David asked, still in near hysteria.

“Haddonfield,” was Loomis’s one-word reply. “The police or FBI won’t be able to find Michael, but I know I will.”


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