Dead Insane

By Lena Flannery

Dead Insane takes place in a mental institution that is soon to be torn down. While employees are working on getting ready for the move to the new building, odd things began to happen. Dont walk down into the tunnels unless you are brave enough! Some things are better left alone!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543478938

Lena Flannery

Lena Flannery lives in Lower Michigan. She works for Michigan Department of Corrections/Community Mental Health Authority. She has served as a former Deputy in the State of Michigan, with a long history in law enforcement. When shes not working as the state facility, or writing new stories she truly enjoys spending quality time with her grandchildren and her family. Author of The Railyard Shift and The Dead that Walks Among Us.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

M Y NAME IS Sharon Landers. I live in a small town in northern Michigan. I used work for the Community Mental Health that was until the day when peculiar things started happening at the facility. You see, I was assigned to work at a building that was over a hundred years old. Being a place that housed mentally ill individuals, the building was located outside of town, nestled more in the country with a lot of land surrounding the grounds. It often felt as if the facility was out in the middle of nowhere, The State began to build a new facility that would better meet the needs of the patients/prisoners.

Many times the overhead lights in the building would flicker on and off. Recently, it seemed as if this was happening more than ever. I chalk it up to the State not wanting to spend any more money fixing a building that was going to be vacant soon as we were planning the relocation in the very near future. Besides the light issues, the building also had some four-legged tenants; rats. The rats had infested the tunnels below that were often used for service and deliveries. Since the facility was located off the beaten path, the police in this area are often slow to respond for backup calls. Literally the building is smack dab in the middle of the country, in no man’s land.

There was something a bit odd about the elevators in the building, each of them had buttons for each floor including the last floor which is number thirteen (13). Over the years I have found many buildings with multiple floors don’t list the thirteenth floor as being accessible from the elevator, so this was something that often stuck out to me like a sore thumb. Have you ever noticed that there is never a thirteenth floor listed on elevators? It just seemed off to me. Isn’t the number thirteen (13) supposed to be a lucky number? In this case, I have to say I really don’t think it is. I have worked at the Community Mental Health Authority for seven years now, and nothing out of the ordinary was happening until six months ago. That’s when all the crazy and weird occurrences started happening. People began to appear in the darkened hallways, shadows were cast on the walls as if someone was physically there and when you would slowly approach them, they would just disappear out of thin air! There were screams, horrible, piercing screams that would often happen in the middle of the night. Then, there were people that were found, they were found dead. Now, this is where my story begins.

CHAPTER ONE

The Lights

OCTOBER 26, 2000 WAS JUST another crisp autumn day with a cool, brisk wind blowing as I, Sharon Landers started off to work for the day. It was an hour drive from my home to Jack’s town to work. I usually take the scenic route to work by driving the back farm roads as this route isn’t so congested and allows me to miss all the traffic on the freeway. I always kept my cell phone with me just in case if I broke down. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the same old everyday routine for me – eat, sleep and work. I gathered my school books and papers and neatly organized them into my binder, and put everything into my backpack so I had them for work. I had planned on studying on my lunch break as I had two major exams coming up and a paper due by the end of the week.

At fifty-three years old, I already had earned my Master’s degree and I was working as a security aide for the Mental Health Department. This is definitely not what I had envisioned to be doing for the rest of my life, I truly am passionate about helping others, and I always planned on being a social worker. At my current age, I figured it’s better late than never, so what the heck, I’ll never retire working where I am now, so I might as well finish what I had started years ago. I have four teenage daughters still living at home with me, and it’s not cheap between clothes, shoes, food, dances and all the other teenage girl needs I often find myself coming last when I want something. I truly feel I am at a dead-end job and I’m getting nowhere fast, so it’s time for a change. Besides, that old building that I am assigned to work in, really gives me the creeps! I am almost to work now, only another ten minutes and I should be at the gate.

The moon is bright up in the sky tonight, and it’s actually quite beautiful when you take a moment to really look at it and study it. However, it’s a full moon, and those always seem to make the crazy people even crazier and at work we typically end up having a rough night ahead of us when the full moon comes out. I sure hope tonight proves to not be that bad. I really need to put some study time in so I can get a good grade on my upcoming exams. I pray Lynn is on staff tonight. I hate it when is off or on vacation. Working with Lynn makes everything much more bearable as she and I often get a chance to talk. We have a lot in common, and when we work together as a team it helps make the night shift go by so much faster as we have so much in common and when we chat, the time just seems to fly by. If she is here tonight, I can take the first desk and get a lot of my school work done before morning arrives. I really am in dire need of getting this work done and turning it in as soon as possible. As I pulled through the gate into the parking lot, I saw Lynn’s truck parked up towards the front of the building. The parking lot lights flickered on and off. Great. I thought to myself, ‘I just know we’re going to lose power and I won’t be able to finish any of my school work.’ I pulled up next to Lynn’s truck and rolled down my window. Lynn rolled her window down also. Hey, you! It looks like we’re going to have another lights out night ahead of us, said Lynn with a laugh. I couldn’t help but giggle a bit, and then I said, Well, I hope not! I have a bunch of papers that I have to get written for school and I really need to get them done tonight. I have deadlines that I have to meet for these assignments! Lynn shook her head and with a half-smile across her face she responded, Girl, I’ve been there, and done that! I still am trying to figure out how on Earth you manage to do it all? With that, both women exited their vehicles and walked together up and into the building to work. It’s just another night on the graveyard shift.

Around 1:00 A.M. both Lynn and Sharon managed to read the patient reports, document charts, and organize all the paperwork they needed to get started for their shift. Sharon had do a perimeter check on all the doors, making sure all the prisoner/patients were in there rooms, locked in safe the night and are breathing. Lynn had gotten all the paperwork made up and started round sheets, formal count sheets dated and times in place. Any close observations sheets that were due to run out before the shift ended Lynn had reprinted new sheets for that also. Sharon had gotten the coffee started in the ice room, for the supervisor. The supervisor was the typical stickler when it came to his demand for having coffee ready at the beginning of the shift. He expected to have coffee made exactly the way he liked it; very strong and piping hot. The supervisor, Mr. Butkus didn’t like women working on his unit. He was a firm believer that dealing with any prisoner was a man’s job, women would only get hurt. He never took into account that the women had the exact same training as the men and some women even had a background in law enforcement before starting to work at the facility. Lynn and Sharon had been on other units before, to which they proved in crisis situations that they could handle themselves quite proficiently. The men on the other units had no problem calling Lynn and Sharon for backup. It would only be a matter of time hopefully that Sharon and Lynn could prove they were just as useful as the men. At least they hoped someday they would be treated equally as the men were.

Right now Butkus, Jerry, Edward and Sinsu, were in the chart room talking amongst themselves.

Besides the supervisor, the other three are officers just like Lynn and Sharon. The other three; all males would soon come out of the chart room and just like clockwork, every night Butkus would go into the television room and watch television and dose off until 3:00 AM when staffing would come through. It was Lynn and Sharon’s job to holler Door when they heard someone coming through so that the supervisor, Jerry and Edward could come out of the room and look alert while staffing was there. Sinsu would come out and stay at the desk with Lynn and Sharon until 3:00 A.M. and staffing had left, before he would take a break. Sinsu felt it was very wrong and discriminative as to how the women were trusted. Sometimes the supervisor was hard on him too, because he would stand up for Lynn and Sharon. Edward on the other hand was the supervisor’s favorite employee, the Golden Boy who could do no wrong. Edward would get away with making up a bed in the chairs in the television room and would sleep all night until breakfast was being started for the prisoners. Jerry was the unit snitch. He would do anything and everything he possibly could to brown nose the supervisor to make himself look good. He wanted the supervisor to believe he did all the work and was very upset when the women came onto the unit. Lynn and Sharon thought maybe outside of work they would probably be nice, approachable, decent people, but here at work it was nothing more than the good old boys club.

When people were attending both school and working, Community Mental Health Authority had made provisions for the workers to be able to use company computers during their lunch break. Sharon had been trying for months to get some of her work done on the computer once she arrived at work. This was a very trying effort as Butkus would always find her at fault for something, and he took great pride in degrading the women on the unit. There was also an L.P.N. who worked on the unit whose name was Louise. She was a very nice lady and she did her job exceptionally well. Besides being quiet, she would often sit back and just observe the workers, supervisors and patients at the facility. She was quite bothered how Sharon and Lynn were often being treated. Louise would always remind Sharon and Lynn to just do their work and don’t worry about them. Louise was famous for always saying, I’m not stuck with them. She is a very kind and caring person with a heart of gold, yet she also has problems of her own that she has to deal with as well. Then, there’s Janis. She is the other RN (supervisor). She fills in when Butkus is off or on vacation. Butkus’ unit was also Janis’ unit. Janis is a no-nonsense, she only sees black and white no grey kind of person who always goes by the book, and never strays from the rules that are in place. However, Janis is easy to get along with; both the men and women can work with her with little to no issue whatsoever. She also understands what the women are going through and just gives them gentle reminders to come in to work each day, do your job, don’t make anyone else’s problems yours, and to go home for the day, that way you keep yourself in order, and then no one can do anything to you.

Besides the building being unfit to work in, let alone have any live there, it’s needless to say that the stress level is at extreme levels all the time, with almost every employee. Company morale is at an all-time low as the State had