by Z. Rider
Insylum
Z. Rider
Contents
Summary
Copyright
(Bookend I)
1. Maybe She Was Hoping You’d Change Your Mind
2. No One Fucking Disappeared
3. You Can Have It
4. Hey
5. gobackgobackgoback
6. How You Gonna Reach Them, Smart Guy?
7. all the colors
8. That’s Funny, Right?
9. A Lock Thuds into Place
10. Don’t Blow
11. A.J.’s Not Coming
12. She’s a Tick
13. The Only Person Left in the World
14. tickticktick
15. Pretty Sure It’s a Lie
16. The Pinprick Goes in Anyway
17. Never Again
18. You’re Not to Be Back Here
(Bookend II)
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Also by Z. Rider
About the Author
Thank You!
Nate and A.J., have been waiting years for traveling funhouse Insylum to come to their town. When its last night coincides with the night before A.J. ships out to Afghanistan, they know that’s the date they have to go.
They’re the last two in line, the last two to get in before the place packs up for its move to the next town.
And they may never get back out.
Insylum
Z. Rider
Dark Ride Publishing, PO Box 63, Erwin, TN 37650
Special thank you to the following for their work on the book: Editing: Garrett Cook | Beta reading: Nick & Mr. Rider | Cover design: DamonZa.com | Illustration: Nizar Ilman | Interior layout: Heather Lackey
Suckers Copyright © 2014 by Z. Rider—All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are imaginary or used fictitiously.
ISBN: 978-1-942234-05-0
(Bookend I)
“We’ve made progress,” Dibbock says, but she’s skeptical. She can see the young man in question seated by the window in the other room, silhouetted in the midmorning light, a thin slip against the bright leaves of the oak beyond the glass. She fidgets with the zipper on her jacket, sliding it up, pushing it back down.
“He’s still going back in though,” Dibbock says.
Dibbock is lean and angular, his hair the color of squid ink. An errant lock arcs over an angled eyebrow. This has always made it difficult for her to trust him. She knows that’s unfair, but she’d prefer someone with a lumpier profile. A receding hairline. A little pilling in the sweater under his white coat, maybe; something that said a wife or child gave it to him some years ago and he doesn’t care to toss it out yet.
Dibbock’s smooth wool sweater looks like he cut the tags off it this morning.
“He’s still trying to get him out?” she says.
“Still trying to get him out. But on his good days, he’s here more than he is there.”
Which means what—half the day he’s not catatonic? Three-quarters of the day?
The spring day is bright, if still a little chilly. She gnaws her lip. The silhouette of the young man burns into her vision, floating like a cloud of gnats across Dr. Dibbock’s crisp lab coat as she turns her head. “I guess I’ll see him now.”
“It’ll do him good.” Dibbock swings open the door with his long arm, and the dark afterimage of the boy flits into the room ahead of her.
1
Maybe She Was Hoping You’d Change Your Mind
“That’s it. That’s all for tonight.” A dingy red cap clings to the crown of the Insylum worker’s head as he drags a rope across the line, cutting it in two.
The shutters at the box office window clap shut.
“What the fuck?” someone shouts from the other side of the rope. “We’ve been here two hours.”
The worker’s shoulders lumber as he winds the end of the rope around a post.
“Come on!” a girl calls. “It’s the last night! You can stay open longer!”
The hinges on the ticket shack squawk like a shot bird as the door swings open. A woman steps out, cashbox clutched against her bulky sweater. She has her fingers pulled into the sleeves, and she shoves the door shut with an elbow. White puffs of air cloud from her chapped lips.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” someone says.
“Bullshit,” says another.
On our side of the rope, where A.J. and I and eight lucky others wait our turn to be let in, A.J. faces away from the pissed-off crowd as he says, “Just in time, huh?”
I rub my arms through my coat.
A knit cap ahead of us sparkles with gold threads under lights strung from a dead-winter tree branch. The girl wearing it turns toward us, her cheeks pinked, the rest of her skin pale as cream. “You guys are last?”
“Looks like it,” A.J. says. The tips of his ears are scarlet from the cold. It used to be you didn’t see his ears. It used to be he had hair. Now the top of his head is a stiff brush.
“Uh-oh,” the girl says.
My face is raw. It’s not just cold out but damp cold. “What?” I say back, the muscles in my cheeks stiff as taffy.
“The last two on the last night always disappear,” she says. “Haven’t you heard that?”
“Wanna trade places?” A.J. asks with that smile of his.
I’m thinking, That’s a lot of people to go missing. Two weeks per town, hardly much of a break between stops except for the travel time. That’s a lot of people to go missing.
The guy she’s with tilts his head back to say, “That’s bullshit.”
“I’m serious,” she says. “You can look it up on Google. People go missing.”
From the building comes a shriek, making us all look.
A.J. flashes me a grin.
Fuck him.
Corrugated metal and hazy fiberglass panels climb three stories. The fogged windows flicker and flash. Shadows cling to the place, like the crew unpacked them from the back of a trailer and threw them over the building’s edges and angles like dark tinsel.
A couple of weeks ago, all this was a frozen field. Insylum was a bunch of pieces—walls and braces, girders and hardware—strapped to flatbeds, trucking in over the old bypass. After the trailers sitting at the far back of the property rumble out tomorrow, this’ll be just a rutted field again, until June when the town sets up its annual fete—no booze, no gambling, no smoking, just pony rides, beanbag tosses for the “fun” of it, and tables of home-canned jam sparkling like gems.
I probably won’t be there.
A.J. drums his fingers on his hips, his chin tilted as he watches over people’s heads.
I turn my back to him. The thin distance between us leans heavy against my jacket. No friendship is perfect, right? Everyone grows apart eventually—right? I wish he’d just leave already.
One. More. Night.
Another shriek rattles the walls. This one was a recording, I think, juicing up the last of us waiting to get in.
“People go missing,” the boyfriend says, turning to face us now, “but not because they’re the last two on the last night.” He’s a basketball player, I think. College.
“That story’s bullshit,” he says. “People disappear at random.”
I don’t think he’s ever been hit in the face with a basketball. Nose is too perfect. Those teeth have had orthodontic work, but probably not because they’d been knocked out of place. “Sometimes it’s the first night,” he says, “sometimes it’s the tenth. And they don’t disappear in pairs. It’s really rare for two people to go in together and both of them don’t come out.”
I’ve been hit in the face with a basketball. I guess it didn’t leave scars, but it still feels like you can tell the kind of people who get h
it in the face from the kind who don’t.
The girl hugs herself as she nestles her chin in her scarf, saying, “That’s not what I heard.”
“People go missing,” he says, “because if you go through there and you actually are insane, they’ll keep you.”
“I guess we’re all fucked then.” A.J.’s voice is like rusted nails in the back of my neck. I click my teeth together and look away while he says, “We all have to be crazy to go in there in the first place.”
The girl hunches deeper into her coat. “Tell me about it.”
“It’ll be fun,” I say in a flat voice. Cars are pulling out of the field—the people who didn’t make it to this side of the rope. They’ll be going for coffee or burgers or going home and playing video games. Or just going to bed and putting the day behind them—like I’d really fucking like to do.
I rock on my toes.
“It’ll be fun,” A.J. echoes.
My hands are fists in my coat pockets.
“God, do you think it really lasts three hours?” she says.
“Kate, Kate, Kate.” Mr. Basketball loops an arm over her shoulder. “You could spend three days in Ikea, and all they’ve got is furniture.”
She backhands him, but not hard. I’m guessing three months—they’ve been together long enough to be comfortable, not so long they’re bored. The little digs don’t sting yet.
Fuck. Ignore me. I’m just trying to get through the evening.
The line edges forward. A.J. and I move up, side by side, silence perched between us. Six people ahead of us now. With fifteen minutes between each pair, I figure we’ve got another forty-five minutes in the cold, but it’s nothing compared to the three hours we spent waiting in the line to get in this line.
And oh how close we were to winding up on the other side of that rope. My eyes slide toward the field, where the last of the taillights bounce away. Lucky assholes.
Just this one last obligation.
“Have you guys done this before?” the girl asks.
I shake my head.
“My cousin did it once,” she says, “when it was in Virginia. Oh my God, it sounds horrible. They can do anything they want in there, and you can’t stop them.”
“I’d like to see them try,” Mr. Basketball says.
“I’m serious—the guy my cousin went with accidentally punched one of the actors. You know, just reflexively because he was freaking out? And they freakin’ tased him. Billy said when they got to the end the guy was crying to be let out, shaking like a leaf! This is someone who’s like two fifty. He was a linebacker in high school.”
“It’s stories like that that bring people in,” her boyfriend says.
“It’s stories like that that freak me the hell out,” she says.
He pulls her close. “Don’t worry. If anything bad happens, I’ll push you in front to keep them busy while I go for help.”
“You’re such an asshole.” But she doesn’t pull away, and he kisses her on her sparkly knit cap.
I shuffle my feet, watching the parking area. The only cars left are for the people in line and the people already inside. Mostly, I’m watching my car, looking forward to when we get back in it. When I get to drop A.J.’s ass off at his dad’s house. When I get to go home and go to sleep and wake up after A.J.’s already in the air.
When he’s seen the note I tucked into the book he’s taking on the plane.
When it’s all over and I’m just Nate instead of Nate-and-A.J.
I always thought we’d be Nate and A.J., best friends forever—backyard picnics with our families in our thirties, fishing trips in our fifties. Rocking chairs side by side at the old folks’ home. I’m surprised at how liberating it feels to be so close to just being… me.
The metal walls shake halfway up the building.
“I heard the creature props are pretty amazing,” A.J. says.
I don’t particularly give a fuck what he’s heard.
Kate says, “If by ‘amazing’ you mean ‘gross.’ My cousin had nightmares for months.”
“So you’re doing this why?” her boyfriend asks.
“Because I need my head examined apparently. I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
Laughter bubbles from the far end of the building. Everyone looks, and a few people emerge from the shadows, heading toward the dark cars.
“See.” The boyfriend nudges Kate. “They had fun. That doesn’t sound like grown men sobbing.”
“Oh, God,” she says. “This is horrible. They can force you to eat things. I know I’m going to vomit. I can’t even drink milk that’s close to the expiration date.”
“You’re working yourself up.”
“I know, I know. It’s the anticipation. If we’d just come here and walked right in, I’d be fine.” While she twists her scarf, watching the people, the car doors slam shut.
The building ahead swallows two more of us, and we shuffle forward.
Twisted branches stretch over our heads. A bare bulb blinks out over A.J.
Kate and her boyfriend chatter together, their backs to us. I glance toward A.J. from the corner of my eye before picking up the conversation we seem to only be able to have in pieces. “So you’re not going to be around for it?”
“Nah, I’ll be gone.”
“But you could have been around for it.”
“If that’s what she’d wanted, she’d have scheduled it sooner,” he says.
My chest feels like someone’s turning a key to tighten my ribs. I push my fists deeper in my pockets. “Maybe she was hoping you’d change your mind.” The cold still makes it hard to talk. Or the irritation, one.
A.J.’s jacket rustles. Finally he says, “You know Delia.”
I thrust my tongue in my cheek to keep quiet. I do know Delia. She’s been there all my life, my big sister by a gap just big enough that I can never really bridge it.
There’s no end to how much this whole thing between them disturbs me.
Three screams pierce the corrugated walls.
Kate’s hand flies to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she says as she looks back at us, wide-eyed.
“You’ll be fine,” her boyfriend says.
“They can restrain you. I don’t think I’d like being restrained. At all.”
“There goes that fantasy.”
“That’s different. Oh, shit.” Her hand flies back to her mouth.
“You’ll be fine. Look, we’re next.”
“Oh my fucking God. Why are we doing this?”
The double doors at the entrance are supposed to look like the front of a creepy medical facility. Warm light glows from within. Around Mr. Basketball’s arm, I can make out a wall in there with rows of clipboard charts hanging from it.
“Nervous?” A.J. asks.
I shake my head, hands shoved in my pockets. The cold isn’t bothering me as much as it was. Probably because I’m steamed inside all over again. His voice makes my shoulders pull tight.
My fucking sister, dude.
“How about you?” I ask, expecting him to shrug it off—he’s a marine now, after all.
He says, “Maybe a little.”
“You’re going to get your head blasted off in Afghanistan. This should be nothing.”
“I’m gonna try not to get my head blasted off in Afghanistan.”
His back’s straighter since boot camp, his posture stiffer. He looks strange with his hair gone. Every time I see him now, all I think is, Who is this guy?
“People come back from overseas with their heads all screwed up, you know,” I say.
He smiles. “Are you still gonna hang out with me when my head’s all screwed up?”
After a war in my throat where No keeps trying to jump out—and it has nothing to do with any mental injuries he might suffer overseas—I say, “You were already screwed up to start with.” It’s the nicest thing I can come up with.
My fucking sister, dude.
He laughs, throwing his head back, and it
triggers a memory: him standing on a rocky cliff over the river. It’s summer. He’s wearing cutoffs. His bare feet are planted on cool rocks dappled with shade from leaves overhead. His hair’s unruly, and the sun shines through it, lighting it gold. Delia’s tan legs are part of the picture—she’s sitting on a patch of grass, propped back on her arms, squinting into the sun. It was a rare appearance on her part; she usually had better things to do, better people to hang with. Mostly the image is A.J., and in it A.J. runs three steps, launches into the air, and lets out a whoop before plummeting into the river.
I don’t know why I’m thinking about that; that A.J. isn’t this A.J.
The door ahead swings open. A frowning nurse reads names from a clipboard: “Bateman. Harrison.” Bulges in her starchy uniform push out in all kinds of places you wouldn’t expect, like she’s smuggling kielbasa links around her waist, bratwurst in her armpits. She’s not wearing any kind of creepy makeup, which is kind of lame. I guess they’re trying to make you feel like this place is real. You know, except for the giant INSYLUM sprayed across the front, and the fact that the place looks like some half-assed, rusted-out factory.
Kate grips her boyfriend’s arm, whispering, “What if I’ve changed my mind?” as he leads her to the door.
Then we’re alone, A.J. and me.
I push a pebble with the toe of my sneaker.
“Man,” he says. “I’m gonna be beat on that flight tomorrow.”
I tip my head back, sweeping my eyes up the building. It’ll be nearly midnight by the time they call us in, going on three by the time we come out. No wonder they shut down the line when they did. Three in the morning is late enough to have to work by any standard.
“Kind of glad we’re the last ones through though,” A.J. says. “Almost like we get it all to ourselves, right?”
“Yeah.”
We’d tracked Insylum’s tour dates for almost two years—Oregon, Illinois, Florida, never anywhere near us—before falling out of the habit of checking their rickety Geocities-holdover web page. We’d more or less forgotten the whole thing altogether when I found the Xeroxed flyer taped to the game store’s front window. This was the day after A.J.’d received his orders for Afghanistan, and I had a hangover from getting drunk with him, celebrating—I mean, if you can call getting news that your best friend was being sent to a battle zone something to “celebrate.” So I was cranky from having to open that morning, and my first thought was that someone had posted a flyer about a band or something, until what I was staring at finally cut through my hangover fog.
