Asylum

by Madeleine Roux

  “Why not check it out,” Dan said cautiously. “There’s probably nothing down there, but …”

  “Exactly.” Abby reached for Jordan’s hand. “It’s just a bunch of old pictures. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “It’s not about that,” Jordan snapped. “I’m trying to make it so we don’t get kicked out. So I don’t get kicked out! I’m not even supposed to be here. It would be a total shitstorm if my parents found out.”

  “Calm down, guys, I’m sure we can all agree on something else to do.” Dan aimed for neutrality, hoping to lower the tension in the room. Besides, he could always explore on his own later.

  “But it’s two against one—Dan and I want to check it out, don’t we, Dan?” Abby said.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I mean, there could be a clue down there about those emails you got, your mysterious ghostwriter—”

  “Your what?” Jordan perked up, turning to glare at Dan. “What emails?”

  “Hey, I hadn’t really decided whether I wanted to spread that information around just yet.”

  “Wuh-hoh, lovers’ first spat? And over a ‘ghostwriter’? What exactly did I miss?” Jordan sat back down on the bed and patted the space next to him. Dan and Abby both kept standing.

  “Dan got a weird email, but when he went to read it, it was gone. Doctor stuff, patient report or something like that.”

  Dan bristled.

  “Maybe it’s a data ghost,” Jordan said.

  “What’s a data ghost?” Dan asked.

  “It’s like a fragment of human consciousness that gets stuck in a piece of technology even after the person’s dead … a bit of soul trying to reach out before it’s gone for good. It can communicate, but only for a little while before it starts going haywire and degrading.”

  That sounded eerily on point to Dan. Maybe he wasn’t crazy after all.… Although the idea of an actual ghostwriter wasn’t exactly comforting. “Is this a real thing? How have I not heard of it before?”

  “Oh, no, it’s not real.” Jordan laughed, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand. “At least, I don’t think so. I saw it on an episode of Doctor Who. But it sounds similar though, right?”

  “It does,” Abby agreed, “but I think Dan was looking for something a little less sci-fi. And if it’s real he wants, then he’ll probably find it down in the basement, don’t you think?”

  Jordan paced, fishing a die out of his pocket and passing it around between his palms. Abby reached out and intercepted it, hiding it in her fist. “You said it was doctor stuff, right Dan? Maybe something down there is reaching out from beyond the grave or, I don’t know, sending psychic brain waves to freak you out.”

  There was a pause as they all considered this.

  Finally, Jordan said, “Dan, if something unexplainable is going on, why would you want to go sticking your nose in it? I mean, not that I believe it, but shouldn’t you just let sleeping dogs lie? What are you even hoping to find?”

  Dan shrugged. From the break in Jordan’s voice, Dan could tell that they’d won. Against his better judgment, Jordan would be joining them downstairs.

  “I have a feeling I’ll know it when I see it.”

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  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  CHAPTER

  No 11

  It didn’t take Jordan long to pick the lock this time.

  “Once more into the breach?” said Dan, trying to make a joke. No one responded. Idiot.

  It was as dusty and dark as Dan remembered. He shivered, with cold or excitement he wasn’t sure. Probably a bit of both.

  Despite having seen it only once before, they moved quickly through the reception area, retracing their previous path to the warden’s office.

  Dan held the door open until everyone had stepped through.

  “So where do we start?” Jordan asked in a nervous whisper.

  “I feel like there has to be more to the old wing,” Dan said. “Which would mean there’s another door around here somewhere.”

  He sincerely hoped there was more, anyway. It seemed a bit extreme that people in town would want to tear down the whole building over a dusty reception room and a messy office. But there was something else, too, a feeling that the asylum went deeper.

  “Look for hidden doors, latches, anything,” he said, squeezing between his friends. The beam from the flashlight he’d brought this time bounced along the floor and up the walls as he studied the filing cabinets and bookshelves. Abby drifted to the wall beside the desk and immediately found the picture of the little girl again. Jordan stood frozen as if he’d already seen enough. Dan ignored them and pressed ahead.

  He moved from one bookcase to the next, shining his light over the cracks between each one. Dust covered everything, shimmering up into the air at even the lightest disturbance. Going clockwise, Dan eventually ended up at a cluster of filing cabinets that lined the wall behind the warden’s desk. The third cabinet in the bunch looked strangely cocked, as if it had been pulled out from the wall and pushed back again, but not all the way. This was it, he knew it. As if to confirm his suspicion, a pair of rusted, broken spectacles hung from a hook on the other side of the cabinet. He reached out to touch them, then stopped. There were fingerprint streaks on the wall behind the glasses, like someone had hung them up with a bloody hand.

  “Guys, I think I found something,” he said, reaching around to the back of the cabinet and gripping the edge. He pulled, and the cabinet lurched half an inch forward, its metal feet screeching across the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Jordan hissed. “Don’t break anything.”

  “Let me help.” Abby was at his side, gripping the front right edge of the cabinet and counting, “One, two, three.”

  They heaved, and the cabinet eased forward a foot, giving them a glimpse of an opening behind.

  “No way,” Abby breathed. “A secret passage? Is this for real? How did you know to look here?”

  “The spectacles,” Dan said, pointing to the hook and the glasses.

  Abby looked at the streak marks, shuddered, and then seemed to collect herself.

  “Just a little farther and I think we can squeeze through,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Nope. No, thank you. I am not going in there.” Jordan shuffled a few steps backward, holding his hands up as if in surrender.

  “Suit yourself. I want to see where this leads.” She motioned for Dan to help her out, and after one last moment of hesitation, Dan reached for the back of the cabinet and pulled. In two quick tugs, their way was clear.

  “Use your flashlight, Dan. I can’t see anything.”

  He went through first, his heart pounding in his ears.

  “This must have been a real doorway once, but it looks like someone tried to brick it off,” Dan said as he and Abby crouched and walked through to the next room.

  “Then who opened it back up?”

  Bits of loose brick and wall scattered from Dan’s shoes. “Professor Reyes mentioned something about a senior seminar archiving this place. I’m guessing they needed to knock a hole in the wall to get access.”

  The ceiling and walls opened up, and with a quick sweep of the flashlight, Dan determined they were in a second, smaller office, this one with nothing but two tan filing cabinets and a downward stairwell to the right.

  “What’s in there?” Jordan called from the other side, making them both jump.

  “Nothing much,” Dan replied, nearing the cabinets. Little placards with A–D, E–I, and so on down the alphabet were affixed to each drawer. “Just patient records, I think. You can come through if you want.”

  Jordan appeared from the narrow passage, his eyes wide and spooked. He noticed the dark stairwell and recoiled. “Please tell me you are not thinking about going down there, Abs.”

  “We haven’t even found anything yet,” she replied, f
lashing her phone toward the stairs. “Feels cold. I bet it leads down to a whole lower level.”

  “Which is exactly why you shouldn’t go. Have you seen even one horror movie? Jesus!”

  “I just want to see where it goes,” she said. “And the stairs don’t look too bad.” Gingerly, she put one foot on the top stair and transferred her weight to it. “See? Sturdy enough.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Dan offered.

  “Great. Awesome. You two go into the abyss, then. I’ll just be here not getting axe-murdered.”

  Together, Dan and Abby carefully took the stairs down, testing each step before putting their full weight on it. Dan wanted to think it was romantic, the way they were watching out for each other, but it was a stretch, even before you considered the cold and the moldy smell that grew stronger with every step. At last the stairs ended abruptly, winding around into a narrow corridor. Step by step they crept forward, the corridor pressing in on them, making Dan feel like he couldn’t breathe. He wondered how claustrophobic it must have felt working down here—especially if you were trying to push a wheelchair or a gurney along this narrow hall.

  Doors began appearing on their left and then their right, staggered every few yards or so. Abby drew up in front of one, flashing her light into the little slot of a window set in the door.

  “God,” she murmured. “There’s still stuff laying around.”

  “What kind of stuff? Let’s see.” Dan opened the door and inched inside, frightened of what they might find. He shined his flashlight into the darkness.

  Instantly, he felt sick. It was the room from his vision, right down to the operating table and the bloody shackles on the wall. How could he have seen a room he’d never been in? He felt shaky and weak, and leaned against the door while Abby toured around the room with her tiny cell phone light.

  “What’s that on the table?” she asked, pointing to the rusty stain on the white sheet.

  “Blood,” said Dan.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  I have no idea.

  “It’s so sad in here.” Abby looked up at the single window in the room with the bars across it, as if anyone could actually climb through a slit that small and that high. As low as they were, the window must just barely be aboveground, if it led outside at all. “Did they really live like this?”

  “This place would make anyone crazy,” Dan said with a violent shudder. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He’d meant the basement altogether, but when Abby turned to lead them farther down the hallway, Dan didn’t stop her. At last, the narrow corridor opened up into a kind of small rotunda, with two closed doors at the far end of the curve.

  Abby approached the left-hand door, shining her phone over it. “More offices?” she said.

  “I don’t know.… I thought the offices were all upstairs.…” Dan opened the left door —unlocked—and took a step into the room. It was a mess. The contents of six—no, seven—file cabinets lay strewn across the floor. There were folders, papers, and hand-written notes heaped in waist-deep piles. Like someone had been frantically looking for something and hadn’t had time to clean up.

  Dan picked his way through the mess, going to a door on the opposite side of the room and peering in. He couldn’t help smiling as he shined his flashlight into the next office—jackpot.

  “What is this place?” Abby asked. “Maybe it’s storage? I mean there’s stuff tossed everywhere.…”

  “No, come look.” Dan pushed through to the next room, Abby close on his heels. His light fell over a desk and, behind it, a high-backed chair. This room was as neat as the previous one was messy. In fact, it was so marvelously, eerily intact that a half-finished letter still lay on the desk, abandoned. A fountain pen had long ago bled its innards onto the paper. Dan leaned over the little visitor’s chair to get a better look, but whatever had been written on the paper was now obscured by spilled ink. Damn it. He felt foolish for the depth of his disappointment. What had he expected to find? Something with a subject line like those ghost emails?

  Also on the desk was a small leather-bound folder. Dan picked it up and was about to look through it when Abby said, “Check this out, Dan.”

  Dan slid the folder into his hoodie pocket and walked around the desk. There were a few photographs in freestanding frames lined up beside a green glass banker’s lamp. Abby had one of them in her hands and now passed it to Dan.

  A row of nurses in clean aprons and masks all stood neatly posed, with the warden in his spectacles and coat seated in front. Every single one of them stared straight ahead except for the nurse at the far right; her head was cocked unnaturally to the side, as if her neck had been snapped just before the picture was taken.

  Taking a step back, Dan imagined the infamous Brookline warden sitting at this desk, adjusting his spectacles and poring over research or composing a letter, maybe even this letter, the one stained with spilled black ink. A second, less rusty pair of spectacles sat on the desk near the photos. Without really being aware of it, Dan reached for them. They felt brittle to the touch and icy, but he held onto them, turning them over until the lenses caught the light and shone behind their layer of dust. Try them on, Dan. And so he did. They fit perfectly. He looked again at the photograph of the warden and the nurses, the photograph in which no one was smiling. The glass of the frame reflected his face back at him, overlaid on the photo. With a jolt he realized that he looked like the warden.

  He tore off the glasses as though they had burned him.

  Then something struck him. He’d seen this man—the warden—before. Twice.

  “They sure look jazzed to be there,” Abby commented. But Dan barely heard her.

  “Hey! Guys! Guys? I found something up here!” It was Jordan, his voice echoing down from the floor above, reaching them faintly across the stretch of corridor. Dan set the photo back where Abby had found it, going so far as to reposition the frame in the marks it’d left in the dust. He felt that the last thing he should do was disturb a place like this.

  They hurried back down the hall and up the stairs, more confident now that they had made the trip once. Jordan was in the midst of searching through the alphabetized cabinets. With his cell phone tucked between his cheek and his shoulder, he was thumbing through the contents of the top drawer. It was full of yellowing index cards. “There are a ton of files in here,” he said. “It must have every single one of the patients. And get this: every single one of them’s criminally insane.”

  Both Dan and Abby craned over his shoulder to see what he meant.

  Jordan pulled out one of the cards, and they leaned in to study it. It was for a patient named Bittle, Frank. It had his name, date of birth, and city of origin. There was a box marked “DOA 3.13.1964” that must have meant date of admission. Surely a psych ward wouldn’t treat patients who were dead on arrival? Below that box was another that gave Dan a chill: Homicidal. There were small check boxes for Y and for N. On this particular card, the Y had been checked. Yes. Frank Bittle had been a murderer. Under the Recovered box was an N for No, he had not recovered.

  Abby replaced the card and flipped through a few more. Every single one had a Y checked for Homicidal. Every single one had an N in the Recovered box.

  “Look—this one burned down his own house with his family still inside,” Abby read.

  “They certainly didn’t mention this in the admissions packet.” Jordan reached for another of the cards, inspecting it closely. “This guy killed three wives before he was caught and sent here.”

  Dan’s brain was racing. As Jordan and Abby pulled out more cards, he ducked under them and opened a middle drawer in the file cabinet. Maybe he could find a card on Dennis Heimline, a card that might say what had ultimately happened to him. He flipped through the cards quickly. Gabler, Gentile, Gold. Ah, here was H. Hall, Harte, Heimline … He reached out to pull it—

  —and a hand gripped his shoulder.

  “Got you!” a voice said.

  UN
CORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  CHAPTER

  No 12

  Dan shouted in surprise. In the glare of a new flashlight, he couldn’t see who had grabbed him. He thought his heart would burst.

  “Hey! Chill out! Someone’s going to get hurt down here.”

  It was Joe, the redheaded hall monitor from the orientation meeting. Shit. Dan felt a bead of sweat slip down his temple.

  “A sign and a big lock on the door weren’t enough? How did you get in here anyway? Come on out, it’s not safe. There’s water damage everywhere. Not to mention the rats.”

  Dan swallowed hard. “There wasn’t— We didn’t—”

  “Didn’t what? Think? Now come on, get out of here.” Joe turned around, and in a flash, Dan pulled out the index card on Dennis Heimline and shoved it into his pocket.

  “Shit,” Jordan groaned. “I am so burned.”

  “I’ve got this,” Abby whispered. “Just follow my lead, okay?”

  How could she be so calm? Dan’s hands were shaking, and he was full-on sweating. This was not him. He was not a troublemaker. He was a reader, a studier, and rule follower. Who was this person who broke into offices and stole things?

  Joe waited for them all to get through the passage in the wall, shining his flashlight directly at their feet. When Dan stood up on the other side, Abby looked like she was rubbing her eyes furiously, getting dust all over her face.

  “Is she okay?” Dan asked Jordan softly.

  Jordan shrugged.

  Joe motioned them all into the old reception area. As he corralled them back into the first floor hallway, Dan frantically tried to think of a way to pretend this was all part of his classwork for Professor Reyes. Every excuse sounded more implausible than the last. Joe paused at the door to redo the padlock and said, “Okay, this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to …”