Chapter 24: Asad
I WANT TO CHECK out some more of my footage. We've been here for several hours, and so I'm thinking I've got some pretty decent sh*t, but I can't really concentrate.
Zoya's just sitting there reading that journal Tanveer found, avoiding eye contact. Or maybe I'm being paranoid.
"Anything good?" I ask, bumping her shoulder lightly against mine.
"Yeah," Tanveer says. "You've been hoarding that thing for the past hour. Hand it over."
Zoya does and Tanveer takes the thing, opens it up to the middle, and is just about to read aloud one of the entries when Humaira interrupts her: "Do I smell a monologue?"
"What are you talking about?" Tanveer asks.
"Let me read it," Humaira says.
"Why?" Tanveer's face twists up.
"Let her," I say, inserting a new tape into the camera. "I think she'll do a good job."
"She'll do an amazing job," Ayaan corrects.
Humaira takes the journal and positions herself cross-legged on the floor right in front of me. I hit the RECORD button, and she breaks into the role right away. She reads in a high-pitched voice that sends chills down the back of my neck:
February 20, 1982
I can't stop shaking inside—it's like my blood has morphed from liquid to mush, like it's crawling around inside my veins, looking for a way out.
Becky is gone. Her father came and got her.
And now I have no one.
And so I just want to do it. I've been trying to think up ways. I think the doctor knows, because he upped my meds again. I think he wants to make me crazy, to keep me here forever. He wants to make me his experiment. Everybody tells me it's true, including my grandfather. He keeps talking to me inside my head, telling me how I'll be here forever, how all the doctors and nurses think so, and how Vicky is out to get me.
Now that Becky's gone, I can't trust anyone here.
The nurses are working with the doctor—they're all conspiring to make me crazy. I think they're the ones who put my grandfather in my head. I just want to get him out. I don't want to hear his voice anymore. At least Becky let me keep Nicki, her doll, before her father took her away. Nicki talks to me, too. She has a voice like Julie's, my first foster mom, the one who died—the only one who loved me.
I want to join her in Heaven.
Soon, I think. I will.
N.K.
P.S. I've written a little lullaby for Nicki. I like to sing it to her before bed. Rock-a-bye Nicki on Witches' Hill. When the wind blows the patients will kill. When the nurse comes, I'll pretend I'm asleep, then shoot her with needles so she won't make a peep.
Humaira drops the journal to her lap, and we're all just staring, sort of taken aback by what she read, by how she made it sound.
"That was brilliant, baby," Ayaan tells her.
"More like disturbed," I say.
"What?" Imran asks. "Didn't your mommy used to sing that little ditty to you?"
"Well, it would certainly explain a lot if your mommy sang it to you," Humaira says, turning to Imran.
"You did a really good job," Tanveer tells Humaira, getting to the point. "The voice was really fitting—not overdone, you know? Sort of delicate, like how I'd imagine Nikhat might sound."
"You think?" Humaira smiles.
"Totally authentic, babycakes," Ayaan says. "No faking necessary."
"No faking anything with you." She growls.
"Wait," Zoya says, turning to me. "Didn't you say before that you saw a doll hanging from a noose?"
I nod. "The one with the recorder."
"Do you think it's the same one?"
"Negative," Tanveer says, before I can answer. "Nikhat's doll is cloth and her eyes were inked on with fine-point markers when the originals fell out. Asad, didn't you say the one you saw was rubber with those freaky doll eyes that open and shut?"
I nod.
"It sounds like she's really going to do it," Imran cuts in. "To kill herself."
"That's why I haven't been able to read the end," Tanveer says. "I almost don't want to know what happens to her."
"Well, I do." Imran breaks open another Yoo-hoo. "Let's hear it."
"No," Tanveer says. "I'm not ready yet."
"Well, either get ready or block your ears," Humaira says. "Because I have to know." She flips to the last entry in the journal and reads, her voice even more like a little girl's than before—a mix of softness and giggles that seriously creeps me out.
March 4th, 1982
I love my doll Nicki. She sleeps with me in bed. Grampy sleeps with me, too. He tells me I'm ready. So does the moth that flies by my bed. I jump on my bed. I fly through the sky. I eat fresh grass. I play on the swings.
I know a way out.
Tonight. After everyone's asleep.
Please, God, don't make it hurt. Take care of Nicki. God tells me to hide Nicki someplace safe, so they don't take her after I'm gone. Everyone wants to take her. I know they'll take her. I know they'll give her the needle and put her to sleep and take her clothes and feed her mush. I'm sorry, Nicki. I'll always love you, but I can't take you with me. I have to hide you someplace safe now. In the auditorium. Under my chair tonight. Number seventeen. At the performance. I'll make sure I get that one. I'll fight for it. And bite for it. And go to packs or a seclusion room for it. I don't care. I'm going to hide this journal, too. I'll wrap it up in wax paper. If somebody nice finds it, please find Nicki. Please take care of her and give her a home.
And help me rest in peace.
Love,
Nikhat
Humaira finishes off with an evil little giggle that literally makes the hairs on my arms stand up. "Screw Humaira Garbo," Tanveer says. "You should be thinking Linda Blair."
"Who?" Zoya asks. "The Exorcist," Ayaan explains. "The original 1973 version, not the remake. Linda also starred in Exorcist II, the Heretic, and she's now the host of The Scariest Places on Earth."
"Don't forget that she starred in Stranger in Our House, Hell Night, and that film where she plays the teenage alcoholic," Humaira adds.
"Sarah T," Ayaan confirms. "Not that I'm some big Linda Blair cultie or anything. I just make it my business to know this stuff."
"Of course," Zoya says, with an eye roll that makes me laugh.
"Wait," Imran interrupts, following with a Yoo-hoo belch. "What the hell is up with that journal entry? She can't just end her journal like that?"
"Is it just me," I ask, "or are you guys missing the weirdest piece of that whole entry?"
"What are you talking about?" Tanveer asks.
"The number seventeen," I answer, aiming my camera at her. "It's everywhere in this place. The graffiti angels going up the wall by the stairs, the patient artwork in the art therapy room—"
"The tombstone someone drew in the A wing," Imran adds.
"And now the chair," Tanveer whispers.
"Isn't Nikhat seventeen, too?" Zoya asks.
Tanveer nods. "We need to look for the doll."
"And what'll that prove?" Imran asks. "We still won't know what happened to her."
"Yes we will," Zoya says. "If the doll's there, then she did it—she killed herself."
"Right," Tanveer says. "And if it's gone, she didn't."
"How do you figure that?" I ask, still filming.
"Because let's just say, for the sake of argument, that she tried to off herself but then failed or had second thoughts," Tanveer explains. "She would have gone back to retrieve the doll. I mean, just listen to her: the doll is her only friend. She can't live without it."
"Right," Imran says. "But maybe somebody else found the doll. I mean, how many people have broken in here over the years? What are the chances that it's still actually under chair seventeen?"
"Let's go check it out," I say, grabbing the map. "The auditorium is right upstairs."
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