Asylum

by Kristen Selleck

  “-and I saw the girl do it, so I’m telling you, Chloe’s got nothing to do with this. She was just trying to help,” Sam’s voice was angry, loud. Dr. Willard seemed to slowly lose his focus on the wall and realize that another person had walked onstage. He stared at the woman absentmindedly, probably trying to detach himself from the puzzle of names and how they fit together and remember the words of introduction. She saved him the trouble.

  “Diana Adams,” her mother’s hand shot out, demanding formality. “I’m Chloe’s mother…” She glared at him expectantly.

  Dr.Willard grasped her fingertips lightly.

  “Dr. James Willard…psych department,” he said.

  “I see. So you’re Chloe’s psychologist here at school then?” Her eyes focused on the curling wax moustache first and slowly moved up to the black plaster hair and downward to his respectable penny loafers.

  “I…well… in a manner of speaking. But she’s equally my student as I am her psychologist…and teacher,” Dr. Willard smiled.

  “And you’re documenting this?” Debra continued.

  “Of course!” exclaimed Dr. Willard, mistaking her meaning entirely. “Yes, it’s really quite an impressive assembly of names in my corner of the field. She must know something! The girl, I mean. I’ve seen that symbol before, often. She must know what it means. A group, I’ll wager. A secret society of some sort. This is amazing! The kind of discovery that will really make them sit up in my field! I’ve always suspected something like this, but to actually have some proof…well it’s…it’s thrilling!”

  Diana Adams sniffed. Chloe had long ago decided her sniff was audible disdain.

  Chloe took a few unwilling steps towards the trio. Some vague notion of trying to dispel the scene unfurled against the howling demands of all her voices to leave, to get out, to run anywhere but there.

  “Is there someone in charge here? Someone with some notion of reality that I can speak with?” demanded Diana.

  Sam tossed her unused sponge into the bucket and crossed her arms, fixing Diana with the sarcastic smirk Chloe already knew better than the back of her hand.

  “Nobody here but us crazies, Chloe’s mom! Why don’t you go somewhere where you’re wanted…like uhhhh…I don’t know…is there a social club for witches? Try Salem. Or you could just go to Hell.”

  Chloe felt her panic rise up and grasp at her throat, effectively closing it. She was going to hyperventilate. She felt a sudden pang of empathy for Jen. Run! The sane part demanded.

  She wouldn’t run, that would look bad, but she would leave. She would remove herself long enough to calm down, and if Diana Adams left in the interim, so much the better.

  “Clo!” Sam called at her retreating back. Chloe threw up her hand, holding one finger up as she went, the universal sign for ‘just give me a minute’. She could hear the carpet being stomped to dust behind her as her mother followed. She walked faster.

  Diana Adams caught up with her in the lobby. Her hand clamped Chloe’s shoulder in a vise grip. Determined not to fall under a downpour of accusations, Chloe spun and ripped herself away.

  “Why didn’t you go home?” she demanded.

  “I was worried! I told you I was worried, and it turns out I was right! You’re starting all over again with it, aren’t you? Same story, new town.” Diana hissed.

  “What do you want?” Chloe asked miserably.

  “I stayed…I stayed because I wanted you to listen to me. I wanted to talk to you…but not with that boy around. He’s not good for you. He’s controlling you, using you. He’s trying to turn you against your family. We’re the only people that really care about you, and they only really want one thing at this age…but you haven’t figured that out yet have you?”

  “Seth wants…to be a forester, or maybe a hockey player…is that what you mean?” Chloe smiled innocently, poking at her. This was the same old dance…slap for slap…it was shocking how quickly she fell back into it.

  “Cute. Very cute, little girl,” Diana whispered threateningly, “You know what I mean.”

  Chloe shrugged.

  “Come home,” Diana demanded.

  “Because you miss me so much?” Chloe forced a laugh. “I always knew, deep down, that I was your favorite.”

  Her mother nodded slowly, faking acceptance. She put on her hurt face, it was another step in the dance.

  “If you want to blame me for all your problems, I understand. That’s what children do after all. I’m not perfect, I know that…but I have tried. Maybe you’ll understand someday, when you’ve got children. You want the best for them, and it breaks your heart when you see them going down the wrong path.” Diana gazed at the floor…seemingly sad.

  Stay strong, warned sanity.

  But she wants her mommy to love her soooo much, doesn’t she? laughed the other.

  “I’m fine…really. I’m okay here…I like it,” Chloe insisted.

  “If you come home, we’ll try harder,” Diana promised, “We’ll go to counseling together…as a family. If your father hadn‘t left-- if he hadn’t…he was a sick man, Chloe. A sick, crazy man, and I couldn’t help him. No one could. And when he left, he was so far into his own world that I think it was the safest thing for all of us. You were so young, I didn’t think it could have affected you. I didn’t want to believe that you were the same. It’s impossible that you could remember, you were just too…too young, I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to go through it again. And why you? Your sisters saw it, they remember him. And they’ve always been so well-adjusted….”

  What has started to melt inside Chloe instantly refroze.

  “And I must have been faking, because they’re such wonderful perfect geniuses…I must have just wanted to find a way to get attention!” Chloe filled in.

  Diana’s face reddened, whether it was from rage or embarrassment, Chloe couldn’t tell.

  “Come home,” Diana asked again.

  “No,” Chloe decided.

  “And you’re determined not to come home for Christmas?” Debra asked.

  “Determined,” Chloe agreed.

  “Will you come home for the summer? I have things I want to tell you. Things about your father, stuff I should have told you a long time ago, but I thought I was doing what was in your best interest.”

  Chloe stared at her mother for a long time. There was so much she could have said. Her mother watched her, that plastic face of hers unreadable. When she finally spoke, she did it without thinking, without measuring her words.

  “I love you,” she said in a low voice, “I don’t always like you, but I love you. We went wrong somewhere. Sometimes…I think it’s my fault. Most of the time I think it’s yours…but I love you. It wasn’t all bad. Not every day. There are times when I see you in me. Things that you taught me. Times when I stand up for myself…”

  Diana nodded.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked. “It’s so isolated up here, so small. I think I saw a restaurant in town when I was driving around the campus. It had a sign that said “Eat” outside it, so I think it was a restaurant.”

  “This is the U.P. Mom,” Chloe replied, “We don’t have Applebee’s’. We’ve got ‘the Eat’ and ‘Good Food” and “Eat Here”, and they all serve pasties.”

  “Can I buy you a pastie then?”

  Chloe wondered if it was one of those times. One of those junctures where some seemingly small decision might end up changing the course of a person’s life. The two women stared at one another. To Chloe, it was the chance (maybe) to sit across the table from one another as equals, as women. Either that, or to pick up the weight again. The burden of being the daughter of a woman with something to prove to the world. For Chloe, the metronome of decision swung slowly…back and forth, back and forth. It froze momentarily, dead center, and then fell heavily to one side.

  “I have somewhere I’m supposed to be right now. I’ve got to go. I’m late,” Chloe said. She began backing towards the doors.

 
“You’ll come home for the summer though and you‘ll call, once a week at least?” Debra repeated.

  “I’ll come home for the summer. I won’t tell you I’ll stay, I’ll come home. BUT…you have to tell me about Dad. I want to know about him. I’ve got to go now, really, I’m late.” Chloe said, backing towards the doors.

  Outside it was snowing. Chloe walked, not making any decision on a destination. The roads were deserted. She had no coat, just the heavyweight BHC hooded sweatshirt she had planned on wearing to the game, and her new hat.

  She stuffed her hands into the front pocket of the hoodie and laced her fingers together to keep them warm. She followed the sidewalk north of Kirkbride, passing Goodman-Harker Hall and then past darkened buildings used for classrooms and offices, heading back towards the center of campus.

  So Mel was possessed by a ghost, she admitted to herself in the dark. It could be that in helping with researching the building, she had run across some of the history of other asylums, maybe even run across a name or two…unlikely but possible. Combine that with drinking and maybe…maybe…but no. No. Could Sam have brought Mel and Jen into the library basement, to help look through the collection there, done it without telling her? But why would she do that? To scare her? The only other logical possibility, right? Sam concocted the whole thing. A set-up to scare Chloe back into foam-at-the-mouth insanity.

  The thought stopped Chloe‘s feet. She shook her head violently and forced herself to resume walking. That would be paranoia. It would be really unhealthy to think that way. Mel was possessed by whatever was still walking around Kirkbride Hall, unseen. That, she had to admit, was what was most logical. They knew it wanted to communicate with them. That’s why they were spending so much time trying to figure it out. Or, really, having Jen and Melanie work on it, because she and Sam were spending most of their spare time in the basement of the library, and now, the two researches were linked. The name George Townsend…first in that old newspaper article Jen had given her, and then on their list from Dr. Willard. An escaped patient that had tried to burn down their hall. He was the likeliest suspect for the ghost. She had been afraid in the old bell tower, when she and Sam were playing with the Ouija board, and even after that, when the writing appeared on the walls, but since then, since they had given him a name and a story, she hadn’t really felt any fear. Even with the little things that had happened in the room. The lights, things falling off shelves, it didn’t seem malicious, just a reminder that he was there, that he wanted to be known. But possession on the other hand…well that was bad…or maybe, desperate? Was he able to posses her because she was drunk, or was it because she was using the Ouija board, or did he need both? He could have done it to either of them then, couldn’t he? Back in the bell tower, they were drinking vodka and talking and playing Ouija, why didn’t he do it then? Had something changed? Was there something that was driving him harder, making him more desperate to be understood?

  “Understand!” she whispered out loud. That was what it had said. Understand, it had demanded. Something about waiting too, right? Something had changed, something made it more determined. Or maybe they just weren’t moving fast enough, because what could really change for the dead? How could the efforts of the living really affect them? There was the fact that his name had shown up on their list just before the incident. In fact, when she thought about it, it seemed more than logical to assume that about the same time they discovered the name on their list, Mel and Jen were playing Ouija. It could always be coincidence, of course.

  Chloe watched as her shadow leapt out in front of her and stretched across a wide lawn, angling upwards across a tall, brick building. A car shot by her on the right side, its bright headlights illuminating the dark sidewalk for an instant. She watched the red taillights disappear around the bend in the road ahead.

  It could also have something to do with Elizabeth Mathers, she thought. That was the other name they discovered that day that had shown up on the wall. And your own, a voice reminded her, don’t forget it wrote your name too.

  And that was what made it all suspect to her. That was what made her want to dismiss it all. Her name. At the hospital, she had a roommate for awhile. The girl had been a pathological liar, though that wasn’t her actual diagnosis, that would have been too rude. Her actual diagnosis had been something much more polite, personality disorder maybe? Whatever they had called it, the girl told the most outrageous lies. All of them stemming from some need to be better, smarter, more wonderful, more important than she actually was. The girl was the daughter of Russian royalty in exile, she was the center of a CIA plot to eradicate all traces of an experiment to endow human beings with super powers. She had ESP, she was a princess, men had fallen in love and died for her…

  Chloe had voiced her annoyance to a therapist about the matter in one session, a therapist who shrugged and reminded her that we all wanted to be special, and wasn’t Chloe’s belief that something was trying to contact her, and that only she could understand and see it, sort of the same thing? To be healthy, Chloe concluded, was to admit that there was nothing particularly special about you.

  Another approaching car’s headlights lit up the sidewalk. Chloe moved to the far left, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. The car slowed anyways.

  She’ll never leave you alone, the voice told her, no matter what you promise her, you’ll never be free of her.

  Chloe spun around, narrowing her eyes against the blinding lights and tried to glower angrily at the dark shape in the driver seat.

  “Miss Adams?” called Dr. Willard. And then, “Chloe? Can I give you a ride?”

  Of course…Dr. Willard…the only other person who showed up when you least wanted them to. But then he was a professor, one she fully planned on squeezing an excellent reference out of one day. Slowly, she walked to the driver’s side window. She ducked down and looked in.

  “Can I give you a ride somewhere? It’s snowing,” he reminded her. Chloe nodded, noticing again that a few white flakes were drifting down around her. She walked around the front of the car, got in, and snapped on her seatbelt.

  “Where to?” Dr. Willard asked.

  “Ummm…” Chloe said, judging her direction and then looking at the clock, “the game?”

  “I think it’s pretty much done by now, Miss Adams,” he said.

  “Goodge Field, then? We were supposed to meet friends there,” Chloe thought quickly. Dr. Willard pulled away from the curb.

  “It’s a tradition you know. Goodge Field after the first home game of the season,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” Chloe agreed.

  “They used to do it way back when I was a student.”

  “Oh.”

  “But don’t you think,” he continued, “that maybe your friend Sam may need some help back at the-”

  “No,” Chloe cut him off, “No. I’m sure she’s got it under control. Look…I’m sorry about…about my mom. She’s kind of a freak.”

  Dr. Willard nodded thoughtfully, and then shrugged.

  “See it all the time,” he volunteered.

  “What?” Chloe laughed, “You see mothers all the time that think their kids are nuts?”

  Dr. Willard smiled as he watched the road in front of them.

  “Certainly,” he admitted. “Familial relationships aren’t really my forte, but I remember enough from my grad school days. Parent-child relationships become so difficult as the child reaches adulthood. So often parents want something different for the child than the child wants. Sometimes a parent will pin all those failed dreams on a child, hoping the child will accomplish things that they themselves could not. Sometimes it’s more a validation of how they spent the past eighteen or so years of their lives. Some will stomp all over that relationship in an attempt to mold the blossoming adult into a shape that pleases them. You see it quite often at this stage.”

  Chloe nodded. That was exactly how she’d put it. Strange that Dr. Willard was the first psychologist s
he’d ever talked to that justified her suspicions. Really strange.

  “I have often been jealous of an old acquaintance of mine. We both went to school together, back when we were undergrads. He never went on from there. He teaches high school English in Ohio somewhere. Yet his stories about his students, about how involved he is in their lives…how they come to him with their problems…well, I must admit, there are days when I yearn for that kind of a relationship with my students. I think sometimes that I may have traded the role of true teacher for the respect and admiration of my fellows,” he said.

  There was a weighted silence in the car. Chloe judged it. He was asking to be made a confident. To be the adult that she, and maybe Sam too, could trust. He was smart, and well-informed on the subject, and the logical outlet for their problem…so why did she have such a problem telling him about it? In her mind, she could see Sam snickering in the backseat.

  Well it’s the moustache, of course Clo,” laughed the phantom Sam.

  “I didn’t do it,” Chloe said quickly, “I didn’t write all those names on the wall.”

  “I believe you,” Dr Willard said, just as quickly. “Your roommate told me I’d have to wait to interview the young lady who did however. But you know her, don’t you? Where would she come up with this? Where would she get these names from?”

  “I don’t know,” Chloe admitted, “but I have this idea, it’s just that it sounds nuts...”

  “How about you tell me, and I’ll help you decide if it is nuts, I am somewhat qualified to decide,” Dr. Willard offered.

  So Chloe told him. She explained about the Ouija board and the night in the bell tower. She told him about the old newspaper article and the research they had done on the hall, and on George Townsend in particular. She told him about how the name had shown up on the research list and how they had come home to find Mel, seemingly possessed, scrawling the list of names on the wall. Dr. Willard listened…an expressionless face, dark and amber-tinted by the lights of the dials on the car radio. At last, he let out a long sigh and shook his head slowly.