Insylum

by Z. Rider

  She’s clearly worried.

  “Oh God, baby, please.”

  It does sound like the girl outside. And she’s definitely crying.

  6

  How You Gonna Reach Them, Smart Guy?

  A.J., on his back with the bottoms of his feet jammed against the bars, slides his fingers along the underside of the panel above him. His heart gallops—still—and sweat slicks his armpits, but panicking hasn’t gotten him anywhere, and he’s damned if he’s going to sit here like a rat in a cage until they decide to let him out.

  Skittering noises have been coming from farther down the ductwork. They run across a length of duct and disappear, only to return a few minutes later in another area, chasing in circles before dying off again. It makes him think of spider legs, impossibly thin and long, with steel tips at their ends. The skittering scratches at the inside of his skull too, making his brain itch hot. When that happens, he has to press his eyes closed and wait it out.

  But right now, the ducts are silent except for his ragged breaths.

  The panel is held in place with two fasteners at the nearest end. He shimmies and stretches, feeling down the length of the panel for matching fasteners at the other end, but all he finds is a crease where the panels meet. He’ll worry about the other end later.

  The fasteners over his head are flat, like squashed bolt heads. A slot runs through each. He’d give anything for a quarter right now; all he has to work with is stubby fingernails.

  With a shoulder jammed against the bars, he digs his thumbnail in a slot and grits his teeth, twisting.

  His thumb slips. The edge of the slot tears skin.

  He shoves the cut in his mouth and mumbles “Shit” around it.

  A fucking penny, and I could get it open.

  After a few breaths, he pushes his nail back in the fastener, bracing his other hand on the panel.

  The fastener moves, maybe an eighth of a turn. With a tight smile, he shifts and tries again.

  Sweat trickles down his scalp. The edge of a breath escapes his gritted teeth.

  With a curse, he kicks the unmoving gate by his feet before digging his nail in again. Pain bleats at the edge of his nail. He ignores it.

  When he gets the bolt half turned, it drops loose in his hole, jiggly when he touches it. Whatever it was locked into, it’s unlocked now.

  The second fastener is more awkward to get an angle on. He tries using his left hand, but his left hand’s always been half useless. He contorts himself, mashing his cheek into the bars to reach it with his right.

  Grunting and cursing, he manages to turn the fastener until it hangs loose like the other.

  Dropping onto his back, he pushes at the end of the panel. It lifts a few inches. Cool air and faint light tumble over his knuckles. He forces a hand through the opening, metal scraping skin. There seems to be room up there, but he has no idea if it’s enough for someone to crawl around in.

  The real question is, if he can get himself up there, will the duct’s ceiling hold him?

  And where the hell will he go?

  The gates still haven’t moved. He wonders if anyone’s watching, maybe through an infrared camera.

  Maybe they’re just listening to him shift and grunt and curse.

  The thing in the duct skitters and scrabbles again, prickling across the surface of his brain, making his ear canals itch. He hasn’t been too worried about it—if the thing comes around the corner, the bars will stop it. If it fits between the bars, then it’s small enough to crush.

  But he is sick of being stuck. He closes his eyes until the skittering passes. In the silence, he cants the panel up into the space above the ducts. Grasping its sides, he tugs a little. Its far end dislodges from the next panel down and drops, banging his knees.

  There isn’t room in the cage for both him and the panel, so he lifts the fallen end with his shins until its bottom end can be slid over top of the next panel down. He lets his breath out with a sigh and stares at the dim alcove he’s just gotten access to.

  His neck is crooked against the bars. It gives a jolt of complaint when he tries to straighten it. Then he sits up, his head and shoulders rising into cooler air.

  The scrabbling thing scrabbles again, though it sounds more distant from up in the alcove.

  The tips of his hair brush the ceiling. He puts a palm against that while he looks down the direction he’d come.

  Blocked off.

  The direction he’d been going is open though. That simplifies the decision.

  A woman’s scream comes muffled through the walls. A power tool revs to life—a drill, maybe a saw. He’s not sure. It’s pretty far off.

  He hauls himself up, dragging forward on elbows and belly until his whole body is lying above the ductwork. There’s just enough room to lift his head. Since there’s no reason to stick around, he starts forward, knees banging walls, toes slipping on slick metal. It’s like going through the obstacle course at boot camp, except he doesn’t have dirt to dig his boots into, or boots to dig, and there are no machine gun special effects overhead.

  And he has no fucking idea how long he’s going to be belly crawling for.

  The critter in the ducts skitters closer, its long legs tapping the inside of A.J.’s skull as it explores the duct walls. It feels like it’s right below him.

  With knees, toes, and elbows, he heaves himself forward.

  A support bar scrapes his hips. A metal piece the panels screw into bites his knee. The whole structure creaks as he makes his way along it.

  Light filters through cracks above him and reaches faintly up around the outside of the duct. He peers down the side, pressing his temple against the metal wall. A space of maybe an inch lies between duct and wall. All he can see through it is a faded glow that ripples darkly as someone somewhere below passes in front of its source.

  He wonders if that was Nate moving past. He fills his lungs, thinking of calling down, when a different sort of ripple flickers the light. His heart rate spikes again—he can’t begin to explain why—and his forehead goes clammy.

  He needs to keep moving.

  He drags himself forward.

  It’s not like getting Nate’s attention would be any help to anyone, him way down there, A.J. way up here. If it was even Nate.

  And if it was Nate, he has trouble of his own coming up behind him.

  After fifteen feet, A.J.’s panting.

  At twenty, he comes to an intersection. If he’d thought the last turn down in the ductwork had been tight—Jesus. He snakes and kicks and wriggles himself through on his side, his scalp trickling with sweat and no room to get an arm up to rake through his hair.

  Below, the skittering legs run up the walls.

  He shifts onto his stomach and hauls himself forward. Another long six feet, and the only sounds he hears are his breaths hitting back from the metal under his sore fingers.

  You’re a fucking idiot.

  He’s going to run into a wall somewhere. The ductwork beneath will end at a grate that would have let him climb back into a room or hallway, but he’ll be up here with his fucking head butted against a wall.

  Even if he comes across another panel like the one he crawled up through, he’s screwed: the slots to turn them will be on the underside.

  How you gonna reach them then, smart guy?

  He has no leverage to kick through. Best he can hope for is to wrench an end of a panel up enough to squeeze past it, which might be asking a lot when he barely has any room to move his elbows.

  And if he can’t get back down into the ducts?

  He isn’t going to be able to turn around—he’ll have to shove himself all the way back on his fucking stomach, back through the tight turns, back through that spot where he’d stopped and looked down and got hit with that spike of panic in his chest. And after all that, where would he be?

  Right back in the cage. Like a fucking rat.

  Maybe the bars will have come up by the time he gets back.

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nbsp; Then how are you going to get to the open panel, Sherlock? You’d have a fucking gate blocking the way to your hole.

  He really doesn’t want to go back. He’s the kind of guy who’ll go five miles past a missed turn just to avoid backtracking a quarter mile.

  The duct makes another ninety-degree bend. He scrabbles the walls with his fingers, pulling himself on his side, one arm jammed under him, his other shoulder bumping the ceiling. His fingertips ache from trying to get purchase on the metal walls. His useless slippers make his feet slip.

  Panting, he stops long enough to toe the slippers off. Barefoot he can at least get leverage. He shoves through the last of the bend, berating himself for being stupid enough to bother.

  You’re just going to have to crawl back through.

  No light filters through, up or down. He reaches forward in the darkness, flattens his palm against metal, digs his fingers in, and pulls himself another few inches.

  What the fuck were you thinking?

  Sweat stings his eyes. He crowds his elbow under his chest to get a finger close enough to rub the burn away.

  This shit fucking sucks.

  He presses his palm on the ductwork. He can go backward any time, head back to his little chute to wait like a good pig. Eventually they’ll either let him out or, forgetting to do that, they’ll uncover him when they dismantle the place in a few hours.

  Provided you don’t get a forklift tine in the head when they do.

  Provided it’s not their intention to keep you.

  Don’t be a fucking idiot.

  He puts an elbow ahead of him to drag himself forward.

  He’s read everything people shared on Reddit—rumors, experiences. Nate hadn’t wanted his fun ruined, but A.J. liked to know what he was going into. The stuff about the disappearances looked like all rumor, Google searches turning up nothing.

  If people were going missing, it’d be news.

  He doesn’t like that he was injected though. He doesn’t like that he’s trapped.

  Sharp, chilled fingers are starting to clutch at his lungs, and his breaths come ragged.

  He pushes with his knee against a side wall and shoves himself forward.

  His head bumps metal.

  His fingers scrabble, feeling for a left or right turn, but all he gets are walls.

  He’s hit the dreaded dead end.

  God damn it.

  Lightheadedness swims through his skull. He can’t catch enough air. This is just like that other time, but that other time had been out in the sunshine, in the sweltering heat of an August morning with grasshoppers flicking through the spokes of their bikes as they raced through a field. A gorgeous, sunny summer day, and blood seeps dark and sluggish across the rock Nate cracked his skull on. This was just like that, but without Nate to get to the hospital. No, this was just him, hyperventilating at a dead end.

  7

  all the colors

  I’m a red-blooded nineteen-year-old American. I watch horror movies. I know they’re not real, but tell that to my heart as I move toward the window.

  The girl screams—“Oh no no—Roger!”—and that doesn’t help. The back of my neck prickles like it’s trying to run the other direction.

  I see a wall first, a sickly cool hospital green.

  Dipping my chin, lifting my eyes, leaning farther in from the window’s edge, I see the girl, her back to me, her arms stretched over her head, held up there by beige hospital restraints. Her Insylum-issue pajama top gaps raggedly open along a tear in its side. The band of a fuchsia bra winks through.

  “Please, let us go.” Her voice is husky with snot and pleading. Her wrists twist. Her blond hair’s a mess, like she just got out of bed. Her toes struggle to keep in touch with the filthy linoleum under them. I have no idea what happened to her slippers.

  She says, “You’ve scared us, all right? We’re scared. Roger?” She turns, following something out of range of my view. She doesn’t have her sparkly cap or puffy coat, but it’s her, the girl from outside. She says, “He needs help. Can’t you see? It’s not fun anymore!” Mascara streaks her cheeks. Her eyes are wet, shining.

  I can’t see who she’s talking to. I turn my cheek, trying to. My nostrils fog the glass.

  “No! No! Oh my God. Roger! Roger, get up. GET UP!”

  A power tool cranks up, a whining buzz like the flies in that other room, all concentrated into a mean little motor.

  “Roger!” She jerks against the straps.

  My shoulder bumps the door. My palm is sweaty against its surface. I catch the back of a lab coat, then it’s out of sight again.

  The girl jerks around, following the throaty rev of the tool. She’s teetering on her toes, begging. Fresh tears roll down her cheeks, clouded dark with her eye makeup.

  “Roger.” It comes in the hiccough of a sob. “Roger, get up. Please get up, baby, please, you have to get up.”

  The power tool drops to a throaty growl.

  “NO!”

  It hacks into something out of my view. The girl shrieks, her face like a bedsheet under the streaks of makeup. Her hands tremble so hard they jitter above the cuffs.

  I grab the doorknob. I don’t know what the fuck I’m thinking, only that I can’t stand here and watch this—and I’m hoping, really fucking hoping, that’s it all a show.

  Please, God, let it be a show.

  The knob barely jiggles.

  The power tool shreds. Over its chewing, I can hear whatever it’s spitting out smack the wall on the other side of me.

  I pound the glass with my fist.

  The girl whips her head over. “Oh my God, help us, please. Help us!”

  The menacing buzz is back, the motor idling. A shadow dips across the far wall. A crisp white lab coat suddenly fills the window in front of me, its front sprayed with bright blood—wet, rich blotches soaking into the white fibers.

  My heart beats like it’s fighting to get out as I lift my eyes.

  I meet a pair of black goggles, their plastic frames flecked with blood and bits of what I realize to my horror could be chips of bone.

  Behind the lenses, dead coal eyes. Below them, thin lips pressed tight. The lines framing the mouth dent. A hand in a black rubber glove yanks the window shade down. It sways lightly against the glass.

  The power tool chokes back to full life. The screaming starts again, a hundred times worse—shrill, desperate. Beyond panic, into senselessness.

  I clamp my hands over my ears. There’s no one else in the hall, no one else in sight. Kate’s shrieks shake my eardrums. Panic floods cold through the middle of me, stealing my breath. First, I can’t move at all—then I lunge for the door, shaking the knob, banging the window with the flat of my hand.

  Beyond the shade, the power tool makes that biting grind again.

  Kate’s shadow shakes and twists like a fish on a hook.

  Blood throbs in my face so hard it feels like my eyeballs are being hammered out of their sockets.

  I hit the window with both fists, yelling. I kick the door with the flat of my foot. I rush it with my shoulder. It doesn’t even shake. I bounce off and scramble back for the doorknob. I pound the glass, desperate to interrupt.

  The screaming gurgles, hitches, moans—then stops altogether. The power tool keeps chunking and spitting, singing all by itself.

  The shadow doesn’t dance and jerk; it just sways and falls back, sways and falls back.

  I hit the glass. “HEY!” At this point, I’ve lost my mind. If he’s killed her, I’m volunteering to be the next victim. Rationally I know this, but some part of me still wants to get him away from her. Maybe there’s a chance, maybe there’s hope—

  Maybe it’s just a fucking show, moron.

  My eyes are seared with heat. My whole body vibrates with adrenaline.

  “HEY!” The yell scrapes the back of my throat raw. I run at the door one more time, hitting it with my whole body—chest, palms, thighs.

  The shade flips up with a rattle.
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  There’s silence.

  The room is empty.

  Red, wet, and empty.

  My pulse pounds.

  I hear a wet plop. See the puddle on the floor. Lift my eyes to the empty restraints dangling from the ceiling. Another drop gathers fatly at the lower curve of blood-soaked beige leather.

  I press my face to the glass, fogging it with short, sharp breaths—looking through the room. It’s a massacre, all that blood, but no bodies. No people.

  Backing away, I stumble over my own feet. A sick wash of brittle cold sluices through my veins. I turn fast and grab for a wall, clutching it, head hanging, lungs gasping.

  I don’t think I’m actually going to throw up, but shit.

  Shit.

  It’s just a show.

  It’s just a fucking show.

  I can still hear the saw, vibrating inside my skull, at the tips of my fingers. I can feel, in my wrists, the resistance and hum as the blade burrows into bone and hums back out, like using the electric pruner on the hedges behind my mom’s house. In my head, the saw sounds greedy. It sounds pleased with itself. My nerves vibrate with it.

  I stagger away from the wall.

  It’s just a show.

  But it was the girl from the line.

  It’s a show on her end too. It’s JUST A FUCKING SHOW.

  My face is clammy. I feel like I’m going to pass out, like my legs are going to crumple.

  It’s fake. It’s fucking fake.

  Jesus Christ this is insane.

  Where the fuck is A.J.?

  I’d give anything to see A.J., grasp him by the shoulders, and make him reassure me it’s all fake. He’d get a good laugh at me. That’s okay.

  I’d give anything to get the fucking buzzing out of my head. The vibration in my wrists. It’s so easy to feel like that’s how it would have felt to cut into a chest. I have to grasp my wrists and twist them to get the sensation to go away.

  I start moving again, swallowing back spit. A closed door comes up on my left, its window like a dark socket. Crisp letters say Treatment Room #1 on the glass. I keep moving, my hand shaking as I wipe my mouth with the crook of my thumb. My gaze darts from corner to corner, trying to see around each one before I actually have to deal with what might be hiding on the other side.