A Night at the Asylum

by Jade McCahon

“Sara, this is Roy Conroy,” came the answer, and it was Roy, sounding more nervous than he ever had. “There’s been an accident.”

  Fear seized me, overpowered only by the strongest feeling of déjà vu. “Who?” I asked frantically. “Who’s had an accident?” My grip on the phone tightened.

  “It’s Tommy,” he replied, his voice fading in and out, garbling as he went on. “You need to come down to the station right away.”

  The floor swayed beneath my feet. I thought I was suffocating, like the temperature had climbed to a hundred degrees and choked the air out of the tiny room. This had happened before, but not quite like this. In my mind in the dream I knew Tommy was dead, but instead of devastation, the phone call gave me hope. The twisted logic began to get the better of me. If Tommy had been in an accident in the dream, he couldn’t be dead in real life. It would make no sense upon waking, but here it was perfectly reasonable.

  “I’ll be right there,” I heard myself saying, and exited the kitchen straight away. The cold, musty air of the garage hit me in the face and I gulped it in. The only vehicle inside was the big black beast of a motorcycle Tommy had been riding when he was killed. My nonsensical hope surged again; the bike looked absolutely perfect. There was no way it had been bent in half around a tree almost five years ago.

  It took me exactly three seconds to realize I would have to ride the thing.

  Impossible, I thought, but how else was I going to get to the police station?

  I straddled the bike, feeling its much-too-real weight between my legs, threatening to toss me over onto the ground. It took a moment to get used to the balance. Then it occurred to me – I needed a helmet. Tommy had a jet black helmet with orange flames going up the sides, but he never wore it. Now that I looked around the garage it was not hanging in its usual spot, or anywhere else, for that matter. I was going to have to ride without it.

  Considering I’d never ridden a motorcycle before, I wasn’t the least bit nervous. Maybe it was the subconscious knowledge that this was definitely a dream, and nothing could hurt me here. Was I sure of that? I put my foot on the clutch of the motorcycle, lifted my body and struck downward, and like magic the bike roared to life. It was the loudest, meanest, most intimidating sound I’d ever heard.

  I wasn’t sure how it happened but suddenly I was on the road, flying like the wind. It was so easy to get caught up in the uninhibited feeling of it that I almost missed the turn to the station. When I parked the bike in front of the squat brick building, my old foreboding feelings from earlier in the kitchen crept slowly back into my stomach.

  Only one light burned at the front desk but I didn’t have to wait there long. The sound of drunken footsteps stumbled down the hall, and around the corner Emmett Sutter came to greet me. Despite his shuffling walk, he looked surprisingly sober. There were bruises on his angelic face and he had an IV port attached to his arm. Behind him he dragged the pole, strung up to its little bag of medicine.

  The sight of him created emotional pandemonium inside my body. A part of me was terrified. Another part of me longed to reach out to him. “Where is my brother?” I asked him instead, once again shoving my feelings away. I stayed on the other side of the front desk, deliberately keeping my distance.

  “I saw him,” Emmett answered cryptically and made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Right this way, Sara.” Once again there was that stir of exhilaration when he spoke my name. I followed as he glided back down the hall like a phantom, his striped hooded sweatshirt a deranged contrast against the white cinderblock walls.

  He stopped in front of the interrogation rooms and held his arm out once more. I suddenly had the overwhelming fear that I was about to be shown a dead body. And behind door number one, your decapitated brother! Then he was leading me down the hall toward the jail cells, where he stopped. “Your brother’s here, because I told Ead what I saw,” Emmett offered, his red lips twisted into a grimace. I was being lured, like a child by a piece of candy, but there was no resisting. He repeated his words from earlier in the night, the words he’d said to me in waking life. “I did it Sara. It was me. I’m so sorry.”

  “But I was told there'd been an accident,” I murmured, my eyes wide as they searched the jail cell in front of me.

  “He’s right in here, behind this door.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “No, he isn’t.” Reality exploded in my subconscious then and I fell to my knees, bashing them against the hard cement floor. “My brother is dead. Don’t you remember, Brad?”

  For some unfathomable reason I’d invoked pure evil, and suddenly Emmett was gone and Brad Sutter stood in front of me, his tall frame menacing against the wall. He had no face. He was just a skull with a serpentine smile.

  “What are you talking about, Sara?” he growled in his low voice. “Tommy is right here.” His bony fingers swung the cell door open and the room changed, furnished with only a white table and one metal chair.

  My brother wasn’t there. It was a girl instead, in a long white dress, her dark ringlets twirling in a breeze I couldn’t feel. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place who she was. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. Frustration coursed through me. I stepped closer.

  She cupped her hands together, beckoning me forward, her soft-spoken words finally reaching my ears. “He knows the truth.” She blew a ghostly breath into her cupped fingers, and white, glassy powder swirled into the air around me. “Give him sugar,” she whispered mysteriously.

  Suddenly she stepped aside, revealing what rested on the metal table behind her. A large black sphere was perched in front of me, shining like a beacon on the darkest of nights. Flames tore up the sides of it, and the front was clear plastic, a window that allowed its wearer to see. It was Tommy’s helmet.

  The sight of it was so horrifying, so bewilderingly grotesque, that I covered my eyes with my hands and screamed. Though I had never seen Tommy wear it once while he was alive, we’d realized the stupid thing was missing after he died. And now in my nightmares, here it was.

  And it was a monster.

  When I took my hands away from my eyes the police station with its cinderblock rooms had vanished, and I was lying in a deep hole, looking up at a clear blue sky. A different girl was staring at me over the side of the rectangular hole, an angel with long blonde hair and dancing blue eyes. I would have recognized her anywhere. As a teenager I’d idolized her. Jon's girlfriend and Cole's sister…Bonita’s best friend and cornerstone of Tommy’s group...one could not forget Jenny Allison.

  I clamped my eyes shut again and when I opened them she was lying in the hole beside me. Her eyes were the color of the sky passing overhead. Something about her beautiful face was frightening. Her icy smile reflected the coldness of death.

  “Sara,” she whispered. I couldn't speak, couldn't move, and her voice crackled like lightning, making my hair stand on end. She reached up with one hand and caressed my face. Her skin smelled like the mildew that clung to an old stone wall, the stench of abandonment and decay. I was frozen, not only by the iciness of her touch, but by the absoluteness of her presence. “Just make sure you don't forget about me!” she screeched, and her words were so shrill they followed me out of sleep.

  I sat up in the backseat, my eardrums still vibrating with Jenny’s voice. We were pulling into my driveway, the yellowy porch light washing over us. I saw that Jamie had nodded off too. Cole reached over and gently shook her awake.

  “Thanks for the ride, Cole.” I took a deep breath, still reeling from the dream, fighting the urge to jump out of the car and run. “Tell Raymond to…just call me later, okay?” I didn’t add that I probably wouldn’t answer.

  Jamie yawned and stretched as we both climbed out. “How embarrassing,” she whispered. “I hope I didn’t snore.”

  I was suspicious about her little nap, though the reason why escaped me. “Are you coming?” I asked, grabbing the paper sack off the backseat and closing the car door behind me.<
br />
  She looked at me guiltily. “Hey…would it be cool if I met you at the restaurant later?” she asked, a smile twitching at the corner of her lips. “I kind of thought I’d hang out with Cole till he’s done at the hospital…”

  “Sure,” I said weakly, smiling. “No problem.” If she didn’t go with him, she’d keep me awake yapping about him.

  “Really? Thanks!” she squealed quietly and squeezed me in a too-tight hug before I could resist. Then she climbed back into the passenger seat. She and Cole both waved at me as the car pulled away.

  I turned around, looking up at my warm, invitingly ordinary house. The only thing dampening my relief at being here was the feeling of being so very alone.

  I had to use the spare key under the plastic dog poo since I’d left my own house keys in my jacket. The empty porch swing trembled ever so slightly in the late-night breeze. Suddenly frantic to get inside, I scurried up the cement steps, collapsing on the other side of the oak door. I hung the key on the hook on the wall and stepped into the living room.

  A disembodied voice spoke from somewhere in the dark. “So there you are,” it said.

  ****

  Five O’Clock

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  The lamp clicked on in the corner of the living room, flooding the area with dim yellow light.

  “Jeez, Dad! Don’t do that!” I cried breathlessly.

  My father’s face looked particularly haggard in the soupy glow. I was always taken aback when I noticed how much he had aged in the last five years. His hair had turned from a humble brown to a peppered gray, the lines in his face like chasms separating the two halves of his life – the years before he had buried his son and the years after. He’d gained some weight and lost it again, his appetite inconsistent, now non-existent. Still, he was faring better than my mother, whose main source of protein these days was sedatives.

  “I’ve been up since three and you haven’t been here,” my father accused, folding his hands across his lap.

  If he only knew…and thank God he didn’t. It was obvious he wasn’t really angry with me, but it was always important to go through the motions. We had to maintain some semblance of a normal relationship, after all.

  “You know, I’m starting to believe that crap about me having to open the restaurant because you need more rest.”

  “It’s good for you,” he answered stubbornly. “It teaches responsibility. Builds character.”

  “Really?”

  He frowned, the deep dark corners of his mouth sinking. “Alright,” he sighed. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  My heart softened, and I sat down across from him in our big squeaky armchair, the one Tommy used to leap off of wearing a pillow-case cape. “Neither could I. That’s why I was out.”

  “Oh yeah?” Dad raised his eyebrows. “Who were you with?”

  “Jamie, Dad. And Jenny Allison’s brother, Cole. You remember him?”

  “Yeah. No Raymond, huh?” He was sympathetic.

  “Nope. We’re still over.”

  “I’m sorry sweetheart. You two will work it out.”

  “Yeah, right.” I stood up, clearing my throat loudly. “I’m going to go change, and then I’ll head on up to the restaurant.” Sleeping was not an option anymore; the late hour and recurring nightmares had convinced me of it. Suddenly realizing I hadn’t even gone to the bathroom since leaving the house, I raced up the stairs, my bladder urging me painfully ahead.

  Once that particular disaster was averted, I went straight to my room and threw on a sweat shirt, cursing the clock. If those ovens weren’t heated and the coffee brewing before six-thirty, there were going to be some angry old men bitching my ear off, my father included. That fatigue, so cumbersome before my little nap in the car, had completely abated. The second wind seemed strange, since the maybe six minutes of actual sleep I’d had were consumed by my second horrific dream of the night. I set about packing up my messenger bag – with its revolving collection of paperbacks and magazines used to stave off insanity during slow times at the restaurant – and tossed my cigarettes, phone, and exorbitant gas station procurements inside. I threw my charger in too, partly because having an extra battery still seemed a bit extreme barring a hurricane or the impending apocalypse or something. After one last definitive look around my room, I turned off the light and pulled the door closed quietly.

  I found myself face-to-face with Tommy’s bedroom then, which was directly across the hall from mine. The door was open again, as it often was for no apparent reason. I usually just silently closed it.

  This time I went in.

  Almost immediately I had that distinct but now familiar feeling that I wasn’t alone. Adrenaline shot through my stomach and I listened, holding my breath. “Dad?” I whispered, not really expecting an answer. He’d apparently never left the living room. I could hear the microwave running and the TV quietly doling out the morning news.

  The air in Tommy’s bedroom was cold. It had been so long since I’d been in here. The walls were bare, his posters and drawings and other reminders of his existence shoved into containers in the back of the closet.

  I sat on the neatly made bed. Tommy’s black comforter had been replaced by a generic beige one that was meant for guests to use. As if we ever had any guests. As my eyes ran horizontally along the naked walls, I saw all the things Tommy and I used to do. Crashing into each other wearing football helmets…arguing about the levelness of a shelf we were hanging…fixing the flickering blacklight bulb…basketball in the corner…board games on the floor…there were so many ghosts in this room, imprints of moments and conversations. It was hard to remember any particular instance, but at the same time every single thing was impossible to forget. Once there was a group of friends here, sharing pizza and playing video games on a TV that had long since been donated to the little boy across the street. These friends were inseparable. They weren’t my friends, but I wanted to be like them. At five years younger, I was sort of just tagging along.

  It had been Jon and Jenny, Bonita and Tommy – friends all their lives, until the unthinkable happened. Jenny was taken from them, from all of us. Jon had headed endless unsuccessful crusades alongside the Allisons to find her. Then three months later there had been Tommy, his motorcycle, and the tree. Bonita had simply left without a word to anyone, off to live with her father, a bigwig prosecuting attorney in another state. She was always threatening to run away and live with him, and no one ever believed her. The day before Tommy’s funeral she was gone, and she hadn’t come back…until now.

  So many ghosts…and not even the kind I could speak to…not even the kind I could legitimately fear. Taking a quick look to make sure my dad wasn’t coming down the hall, I kneeled on the floor. My memories of all of us in this room had given me an idea. Tommy had one of those beds with the drawers under it, the drawers now empty. I pulled the left one off the track and set it on the carpet, reaching my hand into the empty hole. For a second I was frozen by the fear that something was going to grab me.

  Grow up, I chided myself. I pushed my hand around the space and my heart thumped triumphantly when it struck a tin box. Pay dirt. I couldn’t believe it was still here. I pulled the box out and opened it quietly on the carpet. Inside were a spiral notebook, a wooden game board, and a tiny digital voice recorder (along with a package of brand new tapes), all bound together with a huge rubber band.

  “There’s still the board, but you refuse to pick it up.”

  I was picking it up now, dammit.

  When your father was raised on a reservation and your mother was a devout Catholic, it wasn’t porn you hid under your mattress, it was occult paraphernalia. Tommy had a fascination with paranormal accoutrements of any kind. And while he often spent his money on advanced ghost-hunting equipment, he always went back to his old standard, The Board. It wasn’t a parlor game – this thing was made out of solid oak and hand-carved, something he’d probably picked up from a psychic fair or specialty shop.
He kept the spiral notebook – a detailed account of any messages he received from the spirit board – as a kind of journal of his self-education. Saying he’d been obsessed, especially after Jenny was abducted, was probably a gross understatement. I removed the notebook from beneath the rubber band carefully and opened it. Normally I would have been hesitant about intruding into Tommy’s private property but tonight I was compelled. I had all but forgotten my hurry to make it to the restaurant in time to meet the supply and demand of the morning’s caffeine and bacon.

  Opening to the first page, I was overcome with emotion just seeing my brother’s familiar handwriting after so long, the left-handed scrawls in blue ink that represented his best penmanship. Clearly this journal had been important to him. I closed it, fighting tears, then held it to my heart until it started to feel silly. He would have made fun of me for such a display of mush. I looked at the book again.

  Everything was dated, mostly far apart at first. Near the last three months of his life, the entries became almost daily. Many were flanked by questions Tommy jotted down about the process of using the board, things he didn’t understand. Some were observations. Others were direct questions, and then the recorded answers. He’d included passages that he found interesting, paragraphs from articles on the internet or books he’d read. It had been widely believed in my family (and continuously lamented by my mother) that Tommy was an atheist, but I knew it wasn’t true. If anything, he was more spiritual than the rest of us with his collection of convictions.

  I wanted to believe there was another side to our world. I wanted to believe he was still out there. But I’d never had an experience that solidified for me that it was true. On the inside cover of the notebook, Tommy had scrawled this tiny line: “Religion is a defense against the experience of God. –Carl Jung.” To my brother, his questions were his truth. He didn’t need religion. He felt he had moved beyond its cynical limits.

  There were paragraphs about astral projection, ghosts, about the physical body being a “machine” that we used for life on the physical plane. There was an entry labeled “Psychic Fair” and this one I remembered. I’d been banned from Tommy’s room shortly after he’d written this. I held the notebook closer to make out the scrawled letters. Yes, this was something I could never forget.