by Dan Poblocki
This book is dedicated to Keira Fromm, my
earliest ghost-hunting accomplice, and to
Caroline McKeown, a fellow enthusiast of
abandoned places. Thank you both for your
friendship and inspiration.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Part Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
EVERY TOWN HAS ITS SHARE OF SECRETS. And when whispered by children in the dead of night, some secrets become stories. They percolate and brew and change. Sometimes, under special circumstances, the stories become legends, destined to survive even as the children who share them grow up and move on.
In a town called Hedston, a ruined building called Graylock Hall stood in the state forest like an enormous funeral monument. It had once been a notorious psychiatric hospital housing almost one thousand patients. Local kids referred to it as “the asylum in the woods,” and most of them knew well enough to stay away. Since its closing, the secrets contained within the hospital’s walls had given rise to a frightening legend of madness and murder. If you’d grown up nearby, the subject of that legend — a nurse who had worked the graveyard shift — would have haunted your nightmares from an early age.
It started with a storm.
Late one night while the hospital was still in operation, the building lost electricity in the midst of a summer thunderstorm. During the blackout, one of the patients from the youth ward went missing. The next morning, the staff found the girl’s body — drowned, bloated, and blue — facedown in the reeds at the water’s edge.
Then, several months later, a second patient drowned — another storm, another power outage. Some of Graylock’s staff grew suspicious of the nurse who had been on duty during both accidents, but they said nothing. After a third drowning, the staff wished they hadn’t kept their fears secret.
Three children lost. Three bodies discovered at the water’s edge — small limbs tangled in lake weed, eyes staring blindly at the pale morning sky.
The people of Hedston refused to believe that the deaths were a coincidence. And so they arrested the nurse who’d worked the graveyard shift, claiming that the madness of the place had infected her — that she had decided death was the only way to end the suffering of the children in her charge. To add to the townspeople’s horror, a day after her arrest, the police discovered the nurse’s body hanging from a bedsheet that she’d tied to the bars of her cell.
With the nurse’s death, the truth of the matter would remain her secret, a secret that became a story, a story that became a legend.
Within a few short years, the hospital was shut down. Graylock Hall was left to rot, but in the town of Hedston, the tale of Nurse Janet lived on.
And they say that, inside the abandoned building, a woman in white still wanders the corridors, her thick-heeled shoes click-clacking against the tile as she follows at an arm’s length behind anyone who dares intrude. When she catches you, she sticks you with her needle, then drags you outside to the water’s edge, down to the deep tangles of clutching lake weed.
They say she smiles as she holds you under — her face blurred as you stare up through the silvery surface, her teeth glistening white — delighted to continue her murderous quest to end the suffering of the insane. For who but those with their own touch of madness would dare enter the asylum in the woods and pursue its terrible secrets?
Everyone knows you’d have to be crazy to do something like that.
SITTING ON THE PORCH STEPS of his aunts’ Victorian house, Neil Cady clutched a small satchel in his lap and waited for his new friend, Wesley Baptiste, to arrive. Neil had found the bag at the back of the pantry in his aunts’ kitchen and knew it would be perfect for exploring Graylock Hall. Inside, he’d stashed a small flashlight for the shadows, one of his sister’s bobby pins for picking locks, a bottle of water, some plastic sandwich bags for collecting evidence, his digital camera, and a notebook and pen.
The night before, Wesley had told him the legend of Nurse Janet. Even after hearing the dire warning to “keep out of Graylock … or else!” that concluded the tale, Neil wanted nothing more than to get inside the asylum in the woods to see for himself what the fuss was about.
When it came to ghosts, spirits, and spooky things, Neil considered himself an expert. He and his friends back in New Jersey knew how to create a Ouija board with poster board and a Sharpie marker, how to capture a spirit on film, how to recognize the prickly feeling you get in supposedly haunted places. These all took practice to master, but Neil had some good mentors. His favorite show, Ghostly Investigators, was on every Friday night. Neil had not missed an episode since the show had debuted two years ago. The hosts, Alexi and Mark, had three great tips for optimizing data collection during a ghost hunt: Keep your batteries fresh, your mind open, and your underwear clean.
“Waiting for the bus home?”
Neil turned to find his older sister, Bree, standing behind him in the doorway.
“Har-har,” said Neil, swiveling away from her. “So funny, you are.”
“I don’t think it’s coming,” said Bree, continuing the joke. She stepped out onto the porch, pretending to gaze down the quiet street. A strong breeze shook the leaves in the woods across the road, as if a phantom vehicle were passing by on its way to an unfathomable destination. After a moment, Bree sat down next to him. “Seriously, though, why do you look like you’re going somewhere? Aunt Claire and Aunt Anna told us to wait here for them.”
“Aunt Claire mentioned that they’d ‘be right back.’ Neither of them said a thing about waiting for them.”
His sister pursed her lips. “They’re picking up groceries to cook us dinner tonight. The waiting was implied. I don’t want to get on their bad side after only two days up here.”
“I’ve got plans,” said Neil softly. The more time I spend around the aunts, the more I think about Mom. He kept the thought to himself.
“Plans?” Bree squinted at him, as if to scold him. “Oh, well, you’ve got plans. Sor-ry.”
Frustrated, Neil was about to shout out the truth — I need to think about something else! — when she gently touched his arm.
“You’re not the only one having a hard time with all of this. Come on.” Bree tilted her head at the door behind her. “Let’s watch TV.”
“I’m not having a hard time with anything,” Neil lied. “I just don’t feel like moping around when we have a whole new town to explore.”
“You’re skipping out on the aunts to explore Hedston?” Bree’s tone conjured a picture in his mind of the run-down main street he’d first encountered a couple days ago. The polluted river smelled a bit like old coffee; a short, yellow waterfall poured over a concrete divider near the small bridge at the town’s edge. Rusted train tracks — the wooden ties of which were well on their way to a state of rot — crossed through what had once been a thriving business district, and grass had grown so high between the disintegrating planks that when the wind rustled the tall stalks, it almost sounded like a whistle. The sidewalks of Hedston were cracked and crumbling.
Step on a crack … It was a wonder that up here everyone’s mother didn’t have a broken back.
“Aunt Claire’s pie shop is the only thing this place has going for it,” Bree continued, resigned. “What else do you and Wesley think you’re going to find out there?”
“We’re not going into town.”
Bree flinched. “Then, where are you going?”
Neil hesitated. “The insane asylum. Graylock Hall?”
“It’s a psychiatric hospital,” Bree said. “I don’t think people call them asylums anymore except in horror movies.”
“Wesley says it’s haunted. We’re going looking for ghosts.”
“No way.”
“What do you mean, ‘no way’?” Neil fumed.
“Give me a break, Neil! In what world do you think it’s okay for you to break into an abandoned building? Who knows what toxic stuff is floating around? Never mind what might be hiding in there. Or who.”
Neil cringed — he should have just lied. Why does lying always get such a bad rap? The thought of an empty building in the woods had been his only incentive to get out of bed that morning. Since Wesley had told him about the hospital the night before, he’d been ecstatic to have a real reason to be here in Hedston. It was something to do — somewhere to go, to escape the idea of his parents. Back in New Jersey, his mother was lost in a swarm of anxious thought, trouble that had been sparked by his father’s departure earlier that year to pursue a long dreamed of acting career in California.
Neil’s parents had created their own hideaways, both real and imagined, and now Neil would too. Like parent, like child. He hoped the mystery of Nurse Janet would be his escape from all this. Thank goodness for nonexistent cell service near the mountains, or else Bree might actually have a chance of stopping him. The aunts were virtually unreachable at the grocery store.
Still, they could turn into the driveway at any moment.
“Since you’re so worried about me, why don’t you come too?” Neil said, forcing himself to smile, shrugging his shoulders, chuckling a bit.
When his sister raised an eyebrow, he realized he’d laid it on way too thick.
“Nice try.” Bree grabbed his arm. “Come on. Inside.”
Neil began to pull away, when a sputtering noise came up the driveway. Thin rubber tires kicked up gravel. A boy on a bicycle skidded to a stop. Wesley Baptiste.
“Hey, Neil! You ready?”
Someone else turned off the street and rode swiftly up the path. He stopped beside Wesley and lifted off his helmet. Neil realized instantly who the boy was. Wesley had mentioned an older brother but had said nothing about him coming with them. “This is Eric.”
Eric was like a stretched-out version of his little brother — his face longer, his jawbone more angular, his shoulders wider. His eyes and skin were slightly darker than his little brother’s, but it was obvious that the two boys came from the same parents. Straddling his bike, Eric waved a curt salute.
“His band kicked him out this morning,” said Wesley, “so he decided to tag along. He plays guitar.”
Eric’s smile dropped away, and he threw a death glare at his little brother. “They didn’t kick me out,” he said, almost to himself. “I quit. They’re a terrible band.”
Bree stood, moving in a single fluid motion, like a dancer lifting delicately off a stage. Neil watched as she smoothed her long brown hair and straightened the hem of her baby blue T-shirt. “I play the viola,” she said. As the words escaped her mouth, she blushed. Eric simply stared at her. “So … I know how hard it can be to work with other musicians — an orchestra, in my case, which is slightly different. But still …” She cleared her throat. “Maybe I should come with you guys too,” she said, glancing at Neil. “I mean, it’s probably a good idea to have some adults there. For safety’s sake.” Neil pressed his lips together. He hated when she made him feel like a kid, even though she was a mere four years older than him. “I just need to grab my sneakers. Wait for me?” She dashed back into the house, not listening for an answer, slamming the screen door behind her.
“Who’s an adult?” Wesley said to Neil. “I thought you said Bree was only sixteen.”
“Give the girl a break,” Eric said softly. “She’s looking for an adventure. Just like you guys.”
Neil raised an eyebrow as Wesley smiled at him.
THE BAPTISTE BROTHERS LEANED THEIR BIKES against the side of the porch. Since Bree didn’t have a bike of her own and was scared to ride on any of their handlebars, they’d all have to walk. Neil was annoyed, but at least Bree had given up her goal of keeping him from going to Graylock.
Taking a right at the end of the driveway, the small group hiked along the side of the road. The summer sunlight filtered between the tree trunks, making stripes of shadow at their feet. Cicada song rose and fell in nearly deafening waves. The beauty of the afternoon clashed with the group’s intention — a fact that was not lost on Neil, who grew increasingly excited with every step. He could almost feel the presence of the building in the woods, waiting for him. “How much farther?” he asked.
“There’s a turnoff just ahead,” said Eric. “I can’t believe how close your aunts live to this place.”
“I can’t believe Neil hadn’t heard of Graylock until I told him about it last night,” said Wesley.
“Me neither!” said Bree, skipping forward so she could walk beside Eric. “I mean, I’ve known about it for years.” After a moment of uncomfortable silence, she added, “How did you all meet?”
“Well, Wesley’s my little brother,” said Eric, with a smirk. “We go way back.”
Bree blushed. “Yeah, I got that. But where did you find Neil, Wesley?”
“The library, of course,” said Wesley.
A couple days before, when Neil and Bree had arrived at their aunts’ house, the first thing they all did together was visit the pie shop. After eating an amazingly gooey piece of shoofly pie in the shop’s cozy café, Neil thanked Claire and Anna and asked if he could stroll down Tulley Avenue, the main road running through Hedston.
He hadn’t been able to get his mother’s tearstained face out of his head. I just need some time alone, honey, she’d informed him only a week earlier. Her sister, Claire, had offered to take Neil and Bree for the summer. Hedston was several hours north of their home in New Jersey. Neil’s uncle, Felix, lived closer, in a studio apar
tment in Jersey City. But he also worked late in New York City. They would have been alone all day and most evenings, and at night, they’d have had to cramp onto a small fold-out couch.
So instead, Neil had escaped up to the country with his sister, only to find unlimited time to think about all the horrible things his brain insisted he remember. Neil now understood: You cannot escape from yourself. He also understood that his brain wasn’t so different from his mother’s.
That first day in Hedston, Neil walked up and down Tulley Avenue several times, kicking stones out of his way, plucking leaves off shrubs in front of shabby-looking cottages, humming nonsense songs to himself.
Neil had passed the library twice before he noticed a boy sitting on the top step, staring intensely off into the distance. Neil turned toward where the boy was gazing, but all he could see was a dip in the road that revealed a wooded hillside, the leaves of the far trees blowing in the breeze.
“Do you see him?” the boy asked from the top of the stairs. After a few seconds, Neil realized that the boy was talking to him.
“See who?”
“The Green Man,” said the boy, with a smile. He wore a white T-shirt with what looked like a neon-purple Popsicle stain dribbled down the front. His frizzy black hair lay half-curled like a mop on top of his head.
