A Night at the Asylum

by Jade McCahon

  “Ow!” I squealed. “What the hell was that for?”

  “What do you think it was for?!” Jamie shouted, her quivering curls coming alive around her face. “I get a call in the middle of the night to pick you up at the police station and you’re not even going to tell me why?!”

  “Jesus!” I screamed. “Don’t have a stroke! I was going to!” I glared at her and rubbed my wounded shoulder, then yanked off my jacket. The interior of the car was suddenly too warm, and I wanted to see if she’d left a bruise, so I’d have an excuse to kill her.

  “Well?!” she shrieked.

  “Okay!” Damn but she was demanding. “I just…went out for a walk…” I smirked, “and somehow ended up here.”

  Jamie was not amused. Refusing to drive the car until I told her everything, and of course interrupting me with questions the whole time, she compelled me to confess. I started with the dream, because there wasn’t much point in exclusion. As an assistant pill-pusher at the local pharmacy, Jamie subsists primarily on caffeine and gossip, yielding an unparalleled power of persuasion. She’d followed me around for the past year, virtually forcing me to like her, her annoying cuteness and intense loyalty equally unwavering. She’s like a stray dog, really. Besides, I had no one else in which to confide my troubles. And that made Jamie my best friend.

  “And can you guess who the masked man was?” I pocketed my cigarettes and lighter – still determined to smoke those bastards – and tossed my jacket into her backseat, where it landed softly in a pile of discarded Chinese food cartons. She was waiting impatiently for me to speak again. “Emmett Sutter,” I said.

  The expected squeal, the scoff, the confused look…none of those came. Instead she closed her eyes. “He’s in trouble,” she whispered. A storm passed across her face; her long lashes quivered. Seconds later it was gone, and her eyes opened. “So was he?” she asked.

  “Was he what?”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “No. He didn’t smell like alcohol. Probably just high as a kite.” Dread knotted my stomach. Emmett’s words in the car…I could not deny they were haunting me. “By the way…isn’t insulin some sort of prescription medication?”

  “Yes. It’s used to lower blood sugar when it gets too high. You’ve never known anyone who was diabetic?” Jamie looked incredulous. “That’s like, half the population now.”

  “Sometimes I think your job at the pharmacy is just an excuse to be in other people’s business.”

  “Please. Everyone knows the national statistics on diet-related illness.” She tilted her head to one side. “But come on,” she said agreeably. “Of course it is.”

  “Is Emmett diabetic?” Jamie worked at the only pharmacy in town, and chances were good that the Sutters used it.

  “No,” she answered, frowning. A trace of the storm clouding her expression a moment ago crept back into her eyes. “But Ead is. He actually takes insulin for type one diabetes. Sometimes hereditary, and not diet-related, as it happens,” she murmured.

  He gave me insulin. My body felt as though it were sinking through the floorboard of the car.

  “Sara? What’s wrong?”

  I gritted my teeth. “But you wouldn’t use it…like, to get high or anything…you wouldn’t become addicted to it, would you?”

  “It doesn’t really work like that.” Jamie said. “You know, they did insulin coma experiments on patients at the asylum…” her voice was distant, almost inaudible.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” She shook her headful of curls. “Are you sure Emmett was high? You know he’s not into drugs, right? I mean, he doesn’t even take pharmaceuticals. He’s…sort of a…fanatic about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know he’s a vegan…” I looked at her questioningly and she continued. “You know, clean living…environmentalist…he doesn’t believe in putting anything unnatural into his system. Ever since his mom died, he has this…aversion…to chemicals…he doesn’t smoke or drink or anything like that. That’s why I never fill anything for him. He won’t even take cough syrup.”

  “You found all that out from not filling his prescriptions?”

  “No. I’ve…talked to him.” Jamie’s liquid brown eyes held the slightest trace of guilt.

  “Oh, really?” That feeling…was that a pang of…annoyance? Frustration? Jealousy? I snorted. Still, I knew Jamie was right. Though Emmett and I didn’t exactly run in the same circles, I’d gone to school with him only my entire life. He was one of those kids that was always doing animal shelter fund raisers and volunteering at the community garden. Back then he’d seemed like the black sheep of his family. Nice work for a future felon…

  “What is it?” Jamie asked.

  “What would happen to someone if they were given insulin and they weren’t diabetic?” Goosebumps rose on my flesh.

  “A blood sugar crash, probably…hypoglycemia, disorientation, dizziness. And depending on what type of insulin it is, it could persist in the blood stream for…hours. Do you think that’s what was wrong with him?” Her eyes widened in alarm.

  Roy had said Emmett had a drug problem. The argument I’d heard in the station, and all Jamie had just told me, seemed to suggest something different, something much more sinister. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re really worried about him.”

  “He was really messed up.”

  Jamie contemplated for a moment before snatching her cell phone from the console. “You didn’t tell anyone else about this, did you?” she asked, the buttons beeping as she pressed them.

  “Well, I sort of told Roy.”

  “He’ll do the right thing…he just needs a little help.”

  “Huh? Jamie…what are you doing?”

  She put the phone to her ear. When she spoke, her voice was nasally, accented…unrecognizable. “Yeah, I just saw a cop kicking the crap out of someone who was unconscious – looked like an OD victim – and they were dragging him inside the police station.” Like a ninja, she anticipated my desperate, exasperated grab for the cell and karate chopped my arm away. “He’s gonna need an ambulance. Caught the whole thing on my phone cam too…can’t wait to sell it to the Journal.” Almost as an aside, she added, “This is amazing…a police brutality story. In an election year! So exciting.”

  My hands grabbed for the cell again, but her palm clapped over my face and she gave my head a vehement shove.

  Her drawl deepened, bordering on ridiculous. “The victim? White male, 19 years old. Five foot nine, 150 pounds. My name?” Instead of answering, she ended the call with an impish grin. “Saw that on TV once,” she giggled.

  “Jamie, what did you just do?!” I was reeling in paranoia, dizzy with shock.

  “I called an ambulance for Emmett,” she answered innocently. “Oh, relax.”

  “Relax? You just – what was –” My brain could not comprehend the preposterousness that had just occurred. “What if Brad or Roy already took him to the hospital? What if they figure out we’re the ones that called? Caller ID, hello?! What if this whole thing is just Emmett trying to keep himself out of trouble?” There was still that nagging chance he’d gone rogue or insane, abandoned his former convictions for a try at the more literal interpretation of the word. It was hard to fathom even someone as disgusting as Ead trying to kill his own brother. Even if all the pieces seemed to fit…it was hard to believe.

  Jamie waved her hand and rolled her eyes at my apparent idiocy. “None of what you just maniacally screamed at me is even relevant. I know what I’m doing.”

  “What makes you think even if the ambulance gets there, they’ll get past Brad? And what exactly are you selling to the Journal?!” Half-shouting, half-crying, I was a bundle of sleep-deprived nerves. “And why did you say police brutality?”

  Jamie laughed. “The mayor is the only guy with authority over the police commissioner, right? So he’ll make sure the EMTs get past Brad.”

  “Why the hell would he do that?�
��

  “Because he thinks reporters are about to swarm his little police station. Like you heard me say on the phone, my dear, it’s an election year,” she repeated, grinning triumphantly. “And the overnight dispatcher – who, by the way, answers the anonymous tips line starting at midnight – God, I just love small towns – just so happens to be the mayor’s wife.”

  For a moment I was completely dumbstruck. When I recovered, my voice was shriller than ever. “How the hell do you know all this?!”

  “My friend Doug is an EMT here.” She shrugged.

  My heart was pounding. I couldn’t decide if what she’d done was the stupidest thing I’d ever witnessed or pure genius. Of everything bad that could come of it, I only wondered what the consequences might be for Emmett.

  “Well, whether he was telling the truth or not…at least he won’t die.” Jamie’s words were a reply to my very private thoughts, bringing me out of my stupor. That’s one thing about Jamie that cannot go unmentioned – her very uncanny perceptiveness often seems to run deeper than simple gossip-whoring.

  “Seriously! Relax!” she laughed again.

  Terrified as I was, a weight seemed to have been lifted off me somehow. Gradually, my anxiety dissipated into laughter. It bubbled out of me, easing the pressure of the crushing paranoia. “I have to admit it…you’ve got balls.” I stated genuinely. “I am slowly feeling my indifference toward our friendship turn to true respect.”

  “Really?” Jamie beamed. Her ringlet curls shook giddily as she eased the car into drive and back out into the road.

  A moment later we heard the startup of the sirens, their mournful wail reaching a crescendo as they passed on the street behind us. I ducked down in the seat, still freaking out, and Jamie giggled at me. I tried to not think about Emmett and what the rest of this night would be like for him. It was best to put it completely out of my mind. After a few minutes we were calm again, lapsing into silence. My eyes caught the dashboard clock. It had been nearly three hours since being awakened by the dream of my brother, and in two more hours I had to be at my family’s restaurant serving donuts and coffee to a bunch of toothless old farmers who got up way too damned early.

  Jamie looked over at me. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you open the restaurant. Tell me more about your dream.”

  There was that keenness again, and while normally it didn’t faze me, tonight with my nerves so on edge, it was strikingly obvious...not to mention aggravating. Either she’s really good, or my face is easy to read, I thought. “Nothing else happened,” I answered with a tired shrug, “just the usual stuff. We’re sitting on the porch playing some game. I know something bad’s going to happen but can’t make him stay.”

  “How was it this time?” she asked sympathetically.

  We’d talked about this before. “Very real. Like really being there.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see her staring at me. It lasted so long I inwardly questioned her ability to stay on the road. “What if you were?” she asked.

  “Oh, here we go.” We could never have a conversation about the dreams without it devolving into an absurd debate about the supernatural.

  “What? Some people believe that dreams like that aren’t dreams at all, they’re visitations. Maybe Tommy is really trying to get through to you and you just don’t want to accept it.”

  “Look, don’t talk about him like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you…like he…like it was real.” What did she know about him? I felt unreasonably protective for a moment, but forced myself to calm down. She meant well, even if she was immensely irritating. I struggled to put my exasperation into words. “He was my brother. He could tell me anything. So why come to me in a dream? Why not right in front of my face while I’m awake?” This whole conversation was provoking another round of goose bumps on my arms.

  “Maybe he’s tried that. Maybe you didn’t notice.”

  Now she was just being ridiculous. “No. No. I definitely would have noticed.”

  “And by the way, you shouldn’t talk about him like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “You said was. You shouldn’t say he was your brother. He still is.”

  In spite of the boundaries she was straddling with that one, it felt wrong to argue.

  “Look, the fact that there’s a spirit world that overlaps our own is practically common knowledge now,” Jamie said. “It’s part of pop culture. All over television, movies, the internet…you need to get with the times. This isn’t 1984. The science is way ahead of you on this.”

  I snickered. “Yeah, well, what you call science is what I call theatrics. And how has that changed since 1984?”

  “You are so cynical,” Jamie murmured, her eyes narrowed at me. “I can’t believe it. At twenty. It’s really a shame.”

  I ignored her. “Look, I’ve told you before, I just don’t get into that stuff. Tommy…Tommy was totally into it. He and his friends would go on ghost hunts together. He was always taking pictures…he tried to catch their voices on that little tape recorder thingy he had…”

  “So…what, it scares you?” Jamie asked. “Don’t tell me you’re like my grandmother and you subscribe to all that religious stuff that says it’s wrong to peer behind the curtain.”

  “No…” I shrugged. “It’s not that. It’s that I don’t really believe in anything anymore. Not God…not… organized religion…especially not the ‘spirit world’.” The words were a bit of a revelation, and a strange sadness enveloped me. I hadn’t fully understood my feelings until speaking them aloud.

  “Maybe that’s why he has to come to you in a dream. Because you don’t believe in it.”

  My exhausted brain was not capable of analytical thought or arguing with Jamie. “Okay, can we just…change the subject please?”

  For a few minutes we drove, randomly conversing. We were nearing my street now, and she deliberately interrupted a rant I was on about Ead to ask if she could stay at my house. It was strange – Jamie’s reaction to talk of the Perverted Patrolman was similar to mine when she brought up the topic of the paranormal. How could I blame her? We all have our threshold of fear. Ghosts she could talk about all night, but that guy…that guy was really scary.

  “They’re tearing it down in the morning you know. The asylum,” Jamie said suddenly, and it took me a second to realize that she’d abruptly changed the subject again.

  The asylum…it was one thing about this town unlike most others. On the outskirts of the city, where the streetlights are few and far between, stood a huge, decaying, vacated hospital. Before the 1980s it had been used as a mental institution; the decades thereafter a partying ground for unruly, curious teenagers. There’d been a debate about having it destroyed for quite a while, and when the decision was made by the city council only two days ago they’d wasted no time scheduling the building’s demise. A group of protesters was trying to stop the demolition – some sort of historical society thing. Raymond had told me he might join the cause. Remembering Raymond made me feel sad and dumped again, and thinking of the asylum being torn down reminded me of losing my brother.

  What a suck-fest this night was turning out to be.

  So I’m not sure why I decided to make it harder on myself. “Drive past Raymond’s house, will you?” I asked.

  Jamie groaned. “Why? He called you back…why don’t you just call him?”

  My overtired mind didn’t care how she knew he’d called me back when neither of us had brought it up yet. My current mission held all of my attention. “I just want to see something. Please.”

  With a grimace, she turned down Raymond’s dimly lit street.

  And there it was, this time parked in the back alleyway. I had to crane my neck like a stalker to see it, but it was there – a black Mustang, the same car I’d seen the night after Raymond had kicked me unceremoniously to the curb.

  She hadn’t even bothered to pull it into the garage.

  “That…b
itch!” I swore.

  As if by invocation, the Mustang’s lights popped on and it careened backward into the street, so abruptly that Jamie had to stomp on the brakes to avoid broadsiding it. My knees smashed into the dashboard and we were showered with an explosion of trash from the landfill in the backseat. Without a thought, I reached over and snapped my seatbelt across my waist. “Follow her,” I barked.

  “Have you lost it? No!” Jamie cried, but my face was so hostile she strapped her own belt on.

  “Come on!” I shouted. “I want to see where she’s going with my boyfriend.”

  Jamie exhaled loudly in irritation, but made a squealing U-turn in the middle of the street. “Let’s do this,” she growled.

  Whether it was the ferocity of my voice or the lure of impending drama or just plain curiosity that compelled Jamie to drive, she made art of it. She backed away on the dark streets, lingered on corners, drifting and weaving like a professional creeper. “You’ve definitely done this before,” I murmured, but she didn’t answer. Her mouth was set in a grim line, her small features tensed, concentrating on the black vehicle with narrowed eyes. She made a sharp right turn and we were backing off again, trailing the tiny points of taillights up a hill and out into the country.

  The inside of the little car was still too warm as we crept smoothly up the road, yet I couldn’t help but shiver as we left the lights of town and the safety of suburbia. The land was a mass of dark shapes and sprawling trees, the city far away in the distance. I gazed out the window, wondering what it would be like to be lost out in those fields alone in the dark. It made me think of Jenny Allison.

  I didn’t have much time to contemplate. Jamie backed off the Mustang suddenly, her eyes on the rearview mirror, swearing under her breath. “What is it?” As I turned I saw the gray police car bearing down upon us, heard the siren bleat a warning for us to pull over. I uttered some expletives of my own.

  “What should I do?” Jamie asked, her hair wild about her face.

  “What do you mean? You should pull over,” I said. The last thing we needed was to get arrested. Again.