A Night at the Asylum

by Jade McCahon

  “Alright.” I grasped Emmett’s hand roughly, and we started toward the door. “Let’s hurry.”

  Emmett tucked the helmet under his arm as we left. It was the same drill as before; we had to look around, go quietly, carefully. The corridor was clear. I grasped his arm and let him pull me back toward the viewing room, and we seemed to move down the hall in slow motion. We’d found what we’d come here for, and now we just had to make it back to the morgue and out the window. This was going to be the longest five minutes of my life.

  Emmett’s fingers clasped my wrist tightly. We were almost there. Something caught my eye on the floor. I stopped so fast and bent down I almost dragged him along with me. My knee touched the ground and I felt cold wetness seep into my pants as I picked up a tiny white tile I had nearly stepped on. I turned it over curiously in my hand. It was a single domino, covered in tiny black dots.

  Time seemed to stop, and I was filled with wonder. It had taken five years for Tommy to make me understand, to lead me to this place, this second, where the truth could be redeemed. He’d never given up. He’d showed me exactly what I needed to see, employed whatever pathway would bring me here. When I’d felt hopelessly lost, he’d led me to Emmett. How hard it would have been for me to believe something like this could happen if it hadn’t happened to me.

  I looked up to see the door to the visitor’s room opening. Ead Sutter stepped into the hallway, pointing the gun he’d found discarded on the floor.

  If I hadn’t been kneeling, the bullet would have gone right through me.

  “Sara – run!” Emmett shouted, his face contorting with fear. I took off down the corridor in a terrified sprint, ducking into the first doorway I saw. It was the laundry room. I pushed myself toward the back near the lockers, crouching down in the darkest, furthest corner.

  That’s when I realized Emmett wasn’t with me.

  Another gunshot rang out in the hallway, skittering off the sheetrock. All there was to do was pray. I prayed to my brother. “Please, Tommy, help me. Help me.” Quiet footsteps neared the door to the laundry room, and I held my breath. I just had to somehow make it to the morgue. Then I could get out of here…but I wouldn’t leave without Emmett.

  I heard a blurt of white noise and a voice on a police radio. I couldn’t tell what was being said. Seconds later the text chime on my phone went off. What the hell? Hadn’t it died like a half hour ago? I winced and opened it carefully. The noise had been so loud. Had Ead heard it?

  The text was from 58008 again. From Tommy. THRD FLR, it read. I shook my head. Was he telling me to go to the third floor now? How was that logical? Another text came and I finally set the phone to vibrate. I couldn’t take the chance of the damned thing getting me killed. This next message made it clear I wasn’t supposed to argue. A palpable wave of frustration hit me, but it felt like it was coming from somewhere else. Or maybe someone.

  JUSTGO.

  I waited, listening. I didn’t hear anything; not footsteps, not gunshots, not the radio. But I didn’t think for a minute that Ead could actually be gone. Something furry, with tiny legs, skittered across the back of my neck. It was hard to be quiet when you know a spider is about to make a nest in your hair. I came out of the corner silently flailing, like some sort of demented mime, and tripped over a chair. A horrendous crashing noise ensued, and I scrambled into the dark corner behind the door to the room, my heart pounding so hard I thought it would burst.

  Nothing happened. Everything was eerily quiet. My phone vibrated again.

  GO. NOW.

  And I ran. Down the hall, through the double doors, back onto the crumbling staircase where I would climb to the third floor. It didn’t make any sense when there were so many other ways out. But since I wasn’t going to leave here without Emmett, and my brother’s irreverent ghost knew more than I did about Ead’s whereabouts, I’d have to trust I was headed in the right direction.

  It seemed to take forever to get to the top of the stairs. I burst through the double doors to the Women’s Ward, panting and sweating, lightning flashing through the broken windows and thunder rolling loudly in the half-dark. Everyone was gone - the teenagers, the drunks, the protesters. There was no one. As soon as this revelation hit me, so did the floor. I tripped on something and went sliding over the muck face first.

  The police had gone wing by wing, evacuating each and every last straggler. They were making sure everybody was out in preparation for the demolition.

  The asylum yawned before me, silent, empty.

  Empty except for Ead, Emmett, me, and the ghosts.

  ****

  Eleven O’Clock

  By eleven that morning everyone was out of the asylum that could leave of their own free will. Anyone caught straggling was arrested on sight. Police radios broke through the tense rumble of thunder, but even their sound dwindled as the cops exited the building.

  I was hiding under a desk on the third floor, led there by my dead brother through a text message while the guy I was in love with was being chased by his psychotic sibling. My best friend who had just spent the last hour possessed by a spirit guide/demon was outside with my gay ex-boyfriend and the brother of the girl whose body I’d probably find in this very building.

  It was all in a day’s work for me.

  I knew there wasn’t much time. All that stuff about destiny that Joey had been spouting off was starting to sink in. Maybe everyone had a destiny and maybe this was mine. I was terrified, for myself and for Emmett. I started to cry again, but forced myself to stop. I couldn’t just give in so easily. Ead had killed my brother and Jenny. He’d tried to kill Emmett, and maybe finally succeeded. There would be no more crying. He would only get away with more if I didn’t stop him.

  That didn’t make the thought of confronting him any less frightening.

  One problem was that I was empty handed. And Ead now had the gun.

  My baleful ponderings were interrupted by the vibration in my pocket. Scooting further under the desk, I opened the phone with a whisper. “Raymond?”

  “Sara? Are you okay? Are you still inside? I tried to come back in but the cops wouldn’t let me. I even tried going halfway down the road and they still—”

  “Raymond, listen,” I interrupted. “Don’t...do anything. Stay with Jamie.” I gritted my teeth; it was excruciating not to tell him everything, but I would not risk him coming in here after me. I had to keep him safe. “Everything’s…fine. I’ll be out really soon.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I just – I have to go.”

  “But I heard gunshots,” Raymond hissed. “Some of the cops even went running in after that. What happened?”

  “I don't know.” My voice quavered, broke. Thank God I was losing my signal. “Call my dad, okay? Tell him I love him.” I hung up, cursing myself for being an idiot. I shouldn’t even have answered the phone. Raymond would never get past the cops now anyway. I expected him to try to call me back, but he didn’t. I breathed a sigh of finality.

  I needed a weapon. I needed a backbone.

  I needed a fucking miracle.

  The desk was one of those semi-circular nurses’ desks, but it had been pushed into a corner of the dining area on this floor. My knees started to hurt from being pressed into the hard tile floor. Interestingly, I was starting to feel sleepy. Why was it so quiet in here? Why couldn't I hear footsteps, voices, a struggle, anything? Where were all the cops that had supposedly run in here to check out the source of the gunshots?

  I wanted so desperately to cry out to Emmett, to know that he was okay. Strange, but the thought was only now occurring to me that I didn’t know if he carried a cell phone with him. My own had gone completely silent. Where was my brother? Had he left me here, disappeared into wherever it was that ghosts go?

  I couldn’t wait anymore. Carefully I scooted toward the front of the desk. I inched my head out of the darkness, trying to look at the littered floor around me, searching the piles of crumbled plaster and we
t mounds of old books. I needed something I could hit someone with. Of course this would be one of the cleanest rooms in the entire asylum. My sleep-deprived mind was full of words, disjointed phrases, accusations that I had been imagining all of this – that I really was alone here. I wanted to lie down where I was and just take a little nap, just wake up when all of this was over.

  Thinking of Emmett kept me awake.

  Crawling to the very edge of the desk, I craned my neck so I could look around it. I coughed as I inhaled the powdery mud-caked floor. About 8 feet away in a water closet I could see a pipe that had fallen halfway to the floor, torn from its brackets. The pipe would not compare to a gun, but it was something.

  “Tommy…should I go?” I asked. I waited for a full five minutes. My phone did not make a sound. “I’ll take that as a no…and I’ll do it anyway,” I muttered.

  I crept out from behind the desk and scurried to the tiny water closet, ducking behind the half-open door. Every few seconds I stopped to listen for an attack, but I heard nothing. The floor was gritty under my shoes, and the thunder overhead faded in and out. The pipe was just hanging there like it had been waiting for me, and I took hold of it, grappling with every ounce of strength I had.

  The brackets groaned loudly. I braced my sneaker against the wall and pulled as hard as I could. It wouldn’t budge. “Come on, damn you!” I growled. The brackets twisted and warped, but the bolts refused to let go.

  I collapsed against the wall, out of breath. Somewhere in the near distance, I heard a police radio. As calmly and as quietly as I could, I closed the water closet door. Heavy footsteps came and went outside of it. I listened to their voices.

  “Daisy to Romero. You got an all-clear?” The radio cop was a bleat of static.

  “Yeah...Sutter says he was shooting at a cat.”

  “Dammit, get that gun away from him. Commissioner says he wants an all-clear in five minutes.”

  I wished I knew if Romero was one of the ones I could trust. Most likely, none of them were. My phone vibrated. I opened it as quietly as possible and looked down at the screen.

  STAY.

  Yes, I thought. Yes. Thank you.

  My hope was renewed.

  I waited for the sound of the footsteps and the static-filled radio to fade away. Then I went back to cranking on the pipe. It was difficult to grunt quietly. The brackets made the most obnoxious grinding noise and my sneaker left a muddy footprint on the already grimy wall. When I finally did get the pipe loose, it sent me flying across the room, where the crash was what I thought a wrecking ball to the top floor might sound like. I expected it to hurt a lot worse than it did, but the pipe was free, and I was in one piece. I stood up, shaking the disorientation off.

  I opened the door to the water closet, holding the pipe over my head, poised to swing it. I looked back and forth, trying to make out anything with a vaguely human shape in the dimness, but there was no one. Creeping back toward the semi-circle desk, I stood still for a moment. I needed to catch my breath.

  The all-clear should have been in force by now. Did that mean Ead had left too? Or Emmett? I didn’t believe it for a minute. I knew I should now storm the halls looking for them, but I just stood there, paralyzed with fear.

  Another text. ALLCLR. The cops were gone. Except the ones who lingered behind, waiting to murder people, I thought.

  I slid to the floor, placing the pipe beside me with as little noise as possible, gulping deep, tumultuous breaths. I can do this. Calm down. I can do this. As I leaned my head back, willing myself to somehow scramble up courage, my eyes traced the lines of random exposed pipes and tangled wires spilling out of the ceiling. Did the sprinklers up there still work?

  I suddenly remembered the cigarettes in my pocket. I pulled the lighter out before I had a chance to think twice about what I was doing. I had to find a way to get Ead’s attention, to lead him to me so I could ambush him.

  I grabbed a handful of muddy papers off of the circular desk and held them to the flame. It took a couple of minutes, thanks to their dampness, but when they lit I stuffed them into the end of the pipe. Carefully I climbed onto the desk, standing on tiptoe, reaching as high as I could. I hoped the fire would do its job before I gravely injured myself.

  And then it happened. I heard the siren ringing loudly nearby, and then the fountain of water rained down on my head. If it worked the way I assumed it would, only the sirens and sprinkler on this floor would be activated, and the location would be easy for Ead to track. When he showed up, I would be ready for him.

  Wouldn’t I?

  I crouched behind the desk again with the burnt pipe over my head, shaking, but not because of the cold water soaking through my clothes. I was terrified. What the hell had I just done?

  A flash of lightning blinded me, and I felt my body float slowly backward, as if I were picked up on a breeze and laid gently down again. I recognized the precursor to the spiritual acid trip I’d already experienced twice before. When I opened my eyes I was lying on pavement, the fields around me dark, warm night air shifting about my body. I was dizzy and disoriented, but not in any pain. I tried to raise myself up off the road and heard rocks and gravel crackling under me as I moved.

  My vision was blurred slightly...no, not blurred, tinted. I was looking through something, like plastic. I touched my head.

  I was wearing a motorcycle helmet.

  There were taillights in the near distance, and reverse lights that beamed white beneath them. A car was backing up. Was someone stopping to help me? I looked over at a tree a few feet off to my right. There was a huge, twisted pile of black metal there, smoke pouring from its mutilated corpse. It was a bike.

  It was my bike.

  I tried to get up from the pavement but my body was too heavy. My neck protested, and when I touched it, I noticed the fingertips of my gloves were burned off. I must have slid and stopped myself with my hands. It was a miracle I was alive. If I had still been on that bike when it met with the tree, I'd have been smoking like the hulk of tin it was now.

  I waved my arms at the reversing car, hoping I could flag them down. Mom and Dad were going to kill me for this. Bonita was waiting for me. A surge of affection pulsed through me when I thought of her. How I loved her. She’d said she had something important to tell me. She sounded so upset, so freaked out. I had something to tell her too. It was about Jenny.

  And my sister expected me to meet her at the game. Now I’d have to get a ride.

  A memory of fear suddenly overtook me. I had been afraid when I'd come here. I should be afraid now. I rolled out of the way of the reversing car just as it smashed over the spot where I'd been lying two seconds ago. Recognition of what I was doing here and what was happening hit me so hard it knocked away my breath. I had to get up. I had to run. Why hadn't I seen this coming?

  I’d known he had spotted me in his car earlier. I’d been worried enough to wear this stupid helmet. I’d been watching out for that car, expecting it even – and yet it had barreled out of the dark before I could react and sideswiped my bike, throwing me off into the ditch and my bike into the tree. Damn. Irony was never kind to me…and it had really screwed me this time, hadn’t it?

  I heard the car door slamming. Footsteps. Boots on gravel. Looming over me I saw a face, narrow and twisted and full of hate and anger. His eyes were as empty as a dried-up well. His smile, full of evil retribution, was one of the last things I was going to see.

  A metal-tipped boot swung out and I felt cracks spread across ribs I was sure hadn't been broken in the accident. Was this really happening to me? I could not breathe, could not react. I tried to flounder away again and felt a blow to my back that threatened to empty the contents of my stomach. The helmet was jerked off my head and the warm breeze cooled the sweat on my brow. Things were so quiet for a moment that I thought the attack was all over. But as I turned to look behind me, I saw my perpetrator advance toward me with a broken branch raised over his head. I screamed but no noise came out
. Ead. No. Don't do this. His eyes had been taken over, his throat growling and teeth bared, by the evil that had lived within him all along. He was a twisted product of his father's abuse, his mother's torment, his own depraved soul. Who knew why he was doing this? All I knew was that he'd hurt my friend, had done the worst sort of things you could do to a person, the sickest, most horrifying torture, and now he was going to end me. I tried to kick my legs, to thrash my arms, but I wasn't fast enough. The car engine hummed beside me, singing me into permanent sleep. I didn’t want to go like this. I had too much to do. I had so much I wanted.

  I felt another sharp pain as the boot smashed its pointed end into my face. My left eye wouldn't open. I was turned onto my back but I couldn't see in front of me now. I flailed my arms knowing that after a few seconds I would never see again.

  The branch came down on me, and again I tried to scream. Pain erupted across my head, like a lightning bolt splitting it in half.

  Wait it out, I told myself. I wanted to be aware the moment it was over. I wanted to be conscious when I went, so I would know where I was going next.

  The end was abrupt.

  Expected, but still a shock.

  I saw the blurred image of the branch rising over my head. There was an odd sourceless light glancing off it as it came down against my face.

  But it wasn't my face, of course.

  This time it was my brother's.

  I physically jerked myself out of the flashback, seeing the death followed by the dark. I felt the void sucking at my mind, the door between my world and theirs swinging wide, and with it came an instant, indiscriminate perception of every soul lost in this horrid place. These beings now forever on the astral plane, the victims of medical murder, cried and clawed toward the entrance, begging me to hear their stories as well. Sickness, loneliness, intolerable agony, reached for me all in the course of a short, muffled scream. The door slammed shut and I was left with only the vacuum of my own life. My stomach heaved and I tossed myself away from the desk, throwing up on the floor. Sobs tore from my throat, plaster and mud sticking to my face as I tried to pull myself back to my feet. I knew I should stop, should quiet myself, but I couldn't. I could only scream.