Page 14 of Unnatural (Men and Monsters #2)

She’d seen doctors every few weeks at first, and they’d done extensive testing that showed she was generally healthy if underweight, anemic, and deficient in several vitamins and minerals.

They’d given her instructions on how to wean off the pharmaceuticals she was on, which was easy considering she’d already gone off those medications.

Her health hadn’t only remained stable, it’d improved vastly, so she’d been cleared for checkups every month, then every six months, and finally once a year like any other ordinary person.

Ordinary. One of the most beautiful words in the English language to Autumn.

She was ordinary. Not only of body but of mind.

She’d told her doctor about the dreams she’d once had, though not all the particulars—not about the dirt under her fingernail or the singular pale hair hidden under her tongue—and he’d nodded and said, yes, that was very typical for those prescribed the medications she’d taken.

She’d had a life to live, classes to attend, goals to achieve.

Still, she hadn’t given up. She’d spent her spare hours attempting to track down the kids she’d once lived with and the nurses too, particularly Salma.

But she’d run into one dead end after another.

And she’d been an hour and a half out of the city, only able to do her investigative work by phone.

Bill had done what he could, but he too had been brushed off by social workers, blatantly told to cease encouraging Autumn that her dreams were reality or that the hallucinations she’d experienced had been real.

Side effects. Merely side effects, and common ones at that.

It wasn’t helpful to humor her, they said.

He owed it to his new charge to make it possible for her to settle into her new life, and she could see in his eyes that though he believed Autumn, he also didn’t disagree with that part of their advice.

There was really no tangible proof of what she’d told him, only the claims of a once highly medicated girl.

There might be other explanations, right?

There was plentiful information on the internet about not only the dreams that came along with the medication Autumn had been on all her life but the fact that in some children, it also caused the hallucinations the doctors had spoken of.

What if she’d sleepwalked? What if her experience was something other than what it seemed?

Not nefarious but…explainable? Was it likely, or even possible, that the hospital where she’d once lived had been purposely putting their patients in danger…

offering them up as…what? Prey to be hunted by…

human monsters? The more Autumn tried to make sense of it and the further away in years she moved, the more it felt like a hallucination…

a fever dream…distant and separate from reality.

She didn’t even have her journal anymore, the chronicle of her time at Mercy Hospital and the whisperings of her soul as she’d trudged through a valley of shadows toward what she assumed was an almost certain death.

Yet despite the somewhat bleary nature of the first part of her life, and even though her new existence was filled with stability, with friends, with ordinary problems and mundane days, she couldn’t escape the vision of him that still filled her mind when she closed her eyes. Her moonlight boy.

And because of him, she hadn’t stopped searching. She hadn’t ceased going down avenues that might eventually bring her some kind of clarity.

Her tenacity finally paid off when she was seventeen and managed to locate Genie, who had been working at a hospital in another town outside New York City.

She’d seemed surprised and delighted to hear from Autumn and had invited her to her apartment.

Bill had taken the day off and driven her there, and she’d tearfully reunited with the nurse who had been a constant in her life for so many years.

But though she’d probed, Genie had appeared confused by Autumn’s questions about the dreams and repeated what she’d been told so many times before: it was the medication and only that.

The bruises, the scratches, all explained by the disease.

She’d seemed sincere, and on one hand, Autumn wanted to believe that Genie believed what she said.

Because though Autumn was desperate for answers, to know that women she’d thought of as mothers had intentionally and knowingly allowed her to be put in harm’s way would have been devastating.

Genie had been able to clear up one mystery, however, and it was a crushing one.

The reason Mercy Hospital had closed so abruptly was simple really: the clientele had drastically reduced.

That meant, of course, that so many of Autumn’s friends had died, and there had simply been no reason to keep such a large establishment open.

She’d feared as much.

Still, she powered on.

And now she was there to tell Bill what more her digging had accomplished.

“I might have found my mother,” she said softly. “Or at least…her name.”

Bill’s head turned. “Your mother?” He paused, digesting that information. “After all this time?” He let out a soft chuckle. “My tireless girl! How? Where?”

She gave him a slight smile. My tireless girl. So why, inside, when it came to her unending personal investigation, did she feel so beaten down? “New York City. It might not be her, but I’m going to pay the woman a visit and find out.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

Autumn thought about that for a moment. “No. I think I’d like to do this alone.

” Bill was her safe place. Her living proof that good things could—and did —come to those who waited.

She wanted to keep her two worlds—the one she’d come from and the one where she belonged—separate, at least temporarily.

She wasn’t even sure exactly why. It just felt right to her.

“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Just promise you’ll be careful. And, Autumn, whatever happens…” He reached over, taking her hand and squeezing it, seeming unable to have the right words to finish that sentence. She saw it in his eyes though.

“I know, Bill,” she said. “I know.”

***

Autumn breezed through the door to the jail, greeting Patty the receptionist, who had the phone to her ear, with a wave and heading toward the sheriff’s office.

Sheriff Monroe wasn’t in his office, but she found him standing in the kitchen, perusing a box of doughnuts on the table in front of him.

She pushed it to the side and set down the Ziploc baggie of muffins she’d brought with her.

“What’s that?” he asked, raising a suspicious brow.

“What it’s not,” she said, “is an overload of sugar and simple carbs. No seed oils either.”

“Oh God, it’s fiber, isn’t it?”

“It’s good for you.”

He grumbled before taking a muffin from the baggie and biting into it. Autumn waited as he chewed and swallowed. “Not Krispy Kreme,” he said. “But not half-bad.” He took another bite.

Autumn grinned. “Remember, your body is a temple. Treat it like one.”

“Yes, Nurse Ratched.”

Autumn laughed. “Cell one?”

“Yup.”

She walked through the small building to the cell areas near the back where she found the man slumped on the bench. She pulled the unlocked cell door open. “Hi, Seymour.”

He looked up, eyes bleary and rimmed in red. “You again?”

She sat down next to him. “ You again? We’ve gotta stop meeting like this, Seymour. It isn’t at all proper.”

“Proper? I don’t know nothin’ about proper.”

“Sure you do. You’ve just forgotten temporarily. I’m here to remind you.”

In answer, he tipped his head back, letting it hit the wall behind him.

“Also, you smell terrible,” she told him. “And you look like death warmed over.”

“Where’s my pep talk?”

“That was a pep talk.”

He mustered a small humor-filled snort but then closed his eyes and sighed. “Give me the seal of approval so I can get out of here, wouldja?”

She put her hands on her knees, staring at him for a moment.

He was thirty-six years old, and he looked like he was fifty-six.

She kept hoping this would be the last time she’d see him sitting in a cell detoxing on Monday morning, and he kept disappointing her.

“You’ve gotta stop drinking, Seymour. Didn’t I tell you Franklin Brown said he’d accompany you to meetings at the church on Springhaven?

They meet every Friday night. They’d welcome you with open arms.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, not opening his eyes.

“You have to make the choice though. It’s up to you.” She thought of the kids she’d grown up with, the ones who would have given their right arm to be able to stop waking up sick. “Do you know how many people would give anything to have a choice between feeling well and feeling half-dead?”

“Don’t put a guilt trip on me.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to inspire you to recognize the gifts you’ve already been given.

Accept them now before it’s too late. No guilt.

Just…hope. Belief.” She patted his knee.

“This is no way to live, Seymour. Waking up in a drunk tank every Monday morning. Constantly feeling sick and miserable. You can do better than this.”

“Can I?”

“Yes. Yes. Leagues better.”

He spared her a glance and then was silent for a moment as she waited for him to blow her off. Again. What she’d said was true. She continued to hold out hope. But ultimately, his life was up to him.

“Fine. Friday night,” he mumbled.

For a moment, his words didn’t register. “Really?” she breathed. “Really?” She grabbed his hand.

He made a groaning sound as though the jostling movement was enough to make him want to toss his cookies, and looking at him, it probably was. She let go.

“I’ll text Franklin and he’ll pick you up. Friday. Be ready. The meeting starts at six thirty.” Despite his stench, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

He smiled but didn’t open his eyes.