Asylum

by Amy Cross

  Finding the cable I need, I spend a few minutes locating the source of the problem. At first, it seems like there's nothing to look at here. The cable appears to be fine, and there's nothing that might be causing the power fluctuations. Still, I keep looking and finally I discover the fault: there's a trail of water along the floor, and some snow on the side of the cable. I look around, trying to work out how snow managed to get into the building from outside. I guess at least I've discovered what caused the power fluctuations, even if I can't yet explain the next part of the mystery: how did this small patch of snow get in here? Cleaning the side of the cable, I figure that should solve the problem. I'll get the janitor to come and take a look at the wall and work out how the snow got in. See? No ghost, no supernatural bullshit. Just a leaky building and a cable that needs to be better insulated.

  As I head back toward my lab at the other end of the basement, I hear a noise nearby. Stopping for a moment, I shine the torch into the darkness. A lesser person would start thinking about ghosts, but I know it's just gonna turn out to be a damaged pipe. The noise rings out again: a kind of scraping sound, like something being dragged against metal. I take a few steps in the direction from which the noise came, and I listen again. Moments later, the noise seems closer. I'll be the first to admit that it sounds like someone is dragging something in my direction, but I know that's not what's really happening. Although the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, that's just a normal human reaction to a situation in which certain factors are unknown. There's no such thing as ghosts.

  Suddenly my torch picks out the shape of a man, standing a few meters away. I stop dead in my tracks, surprised that there's someone else down here. The man is just standing, staring at me, and it's immediately clear that he doesn't belong here. For one thing, he's wearing what appears to be an old-fashioned uniform; for another, he looks to be in awful shape. He's got cuts all over his face, and parts of his skin seem to have turned purple and yellow. He's just standing there, his dark little eyes fixed on me with a determined stare. I suddenly become very, very aware that I don't have any kind of weapon down here, nothing I can use to defend myself.

  "You're the guy," I say, taking a step away from him. "You're the guy everyone's looking for, right?"

  No reply. He just stares at me.

  "It's cool," I continue, being careful to not startle him. "I don't mind you being down here. I guess it's cold outside, huh? You want to be warmer? You want to be in here? That's totally cool. I mean, not forever, but if you want to wait out the blizzard, that's fine."

  The man just stares at me. To be honest, he's starting to become a little more creepy now. It's as if he can't hear what I'm saying, or perhaps he just doesn't care.

  "I tell you what," I say. "You wait here, and I'll go get you some food, okay? You're hungry, yeah? I'll go to the kitchen and grab something warm, and a drink. You want tea? Coffee? Hell, maybe I can even swing you a beer, yeah?"

  Nothing. He blinks a couple of times, but he doesn't say anything.

  "Stay right here," I say. "Right in this spot, so I can find you again, okay? I'll be back in five minutes with a real feast, buddy, okay? Trust me, you'll be rolling on the floor, clutching your full belly, by the time I'm finished with you." I take a few steps away, not wanting to turn my back on him. "Don't go anywhere, yeah?"

  I finally turn and hurry through to my lab, heading straight for the elevator. I've never wanted to get out of here so fast. Clearly the guy isn't a ghost, but that still doesn't mean I want to be down here with him. For all I know, he's got a crowbar behind his back and a fetish for caving in the skulls of hot young tech workers in basements. I step into the elevator and hit the button to go up. As the mechanism grinds into action and the chamber starts to go up the shaft, I take a series of deep breaths, trying to make sure I'm calm before I get up onto the ward. After all, I don't want to let Nurse Winter or any of the others see that I'm a little flustered here. That'd be embarrassing.

  When the door opens, I hurry out onto the ward. There's no-one around, so I head through to the recreation room. A bunch of patients are sitting around looking vacant and stupid, and Nurse Perry is talking to one of them by a window.

  "Hey," I say, walking over, "where's Eddie?"

  She frowns. "Probably doing another perimeter search," she says. "Why?"

  "No reason," I reply.

  "What's wrong?" she asks, clearly able to tell that I'm kind of psyched. "Has something happened?"

  "No," I say. "No, not at all."

  She grabs my arm and leads me quickly out of the recreation room. Once we're in the corridor outside, she turns to me. "Is it the intruder?" she asks. "Have you seen something?"

  "He's in the basement," I say.

  "Oh God," she replies.

  "So I need to find Eddie and we need to get every security guard we've got down there, 'cause this guy is one scary looking fucker."

  We hurry along the corridor, looking for the guards. "Did he say anything to you?" Nurse Perry asks. "Was he still shouting and ranting?"

  "No," I say. "He just kept kind of staring at me. It was pretty freaky."

  We quickly find Eddie. He's standing at the front door, staring out at the snowy landscape. We tell him what's going on, and he gets on the radio to summon his security team. Within a few minutes, Eddie and three of his men are heading over to the elevator. I explain to them exactly where the guy was standing and what he looked like, and to my relief they tell me not to come down with them. I notice they've all got guns in their holsters, so I hope that if they shoot the fucker, they at least do it away from my valuable equipment. Nurse Perry and I watch as they get into the elevator and the door closes.

  "Good luck," Nurse Perry calls after them, before turning to me. "I need to get back to the patients," she says, clearly worried. "I don't want them to know that anything's wrong."

  As I watch her hurry away, I hear footsteps at the other end of the corridor. Turning, I see Nurse Winter coming towards me.

  "Two visits in one day, Jerry?" she says, smiling. "What have we done to deserve this honor?"

  "There's a fucking psycho in the basement," I say. "That's what."

  She pauses for a moment. "The intruder?"

  "Fucking right," I reply. "Staring at me like some kind of statue. Looks like a mad bastard. Eddie and the others have gone down to haul his ass back up here."

  "Okay," she says. "That's good. As long as we get the situation under control, that's all that matters. Did he attack you in any way?"

  I shake my head. "He just stood there, staring at me."

  "Well, that's okay," she says. "What did he look like?"

  "He was kind of a middle-aged guy," I tell her. "He was wearing this old-fashioned uniform, and his skin was all discolored. Fuck knows where he came from. Maybe some ambulance broke down nearby or something."

  She stares at me for a moment. "Follow me," she says.

  We go through to her office. She goes to the bookshelf and immediately pulls out a file, which she opens on her desk. It contains loads of old documents, and she seems to be anxiously searching for something in particular. I keep glancing over at the door, wondering what's going on down in the basement right now. Have Eddie and his men found the psycho?

  "Is this him?" Nurse Winter says, taking a photo out of the file and passing it to me.

  To my surprise, I realize that the man in the photo is the same guy who I just saw in the basement. Sure, he looks a little younger and a lot healthier in the photo, but you can kind of tell from the eyes that it's the same guy. "Who is he?" I ask.

  "Francis Morgan," she replies. "He worked in one of the tin mines that used to operate nearby. When you described him, it rang a bell from some contemporary descriptions I read a while ago."

  "Tin mines?" I say, handing the photo back to her. "I didn't know there were tin mines near here."

  "There aren't," she replies. "Not now." She smiles. "This photo is from 1908, Jerry. Francis Morgan die
d a year later."

  I stare at her. "No kidding," I say, trying not to show that I'm starting to feel seriously freaked out by all of this.

  "There were stories," she continues, "saying that his ghost was sometimes seen in the area after he was killed. There was a cave-in at the mine, and he was the only one to get out. He died from his injuries, but those who met him say he was frantic, screaming for help." She pauses for a moment. "It seems you met a ghost, Jerry."

  Nurse Winter

  Middlebridge, 1999.

  "Mom?" I say, shocked to find my mother standing on the street outside my father's house.

  "Hi," she says, staring past me. She has that vacant, slightly absent expression that was one of the first signs of her dementia all those years ago.

  "What are you doing here?" I ask. To be honest, I'd come to the conclusion that my mother never even left her house, but here she is, properly dressed and looking... well, looking kind of normal. I guess she has periods where she's lucid and periods where she's not.

  "I..." she starts to say, but her voice tails off. It's as if she's not sure why she came.

  "Do you want me to take you home?" I ask. "Come on, Mom. It's cold." I step toward her.

  "No," she says, staring at the house.

  I take a deep breath. There's a strange noise coming from her, a kind of clicking, crunching sound. It's subtle and fairly quiet, but it's persistent. "Mom, are you okay?" I ask. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to be here."

  She doesn't say anything. She just keeps staring straight ahead. After a moment, a small beetle crawls around from the back of her head. As it reaches her mouth, she brushes it away with a gloved hand. "Damn things," she says.

  "Mom, you need help," I say.

  Another beetle crawls around and onto her face, and again she brushes it away.

  "Mom?" I say, suddenly feeling a cold chill. That strange sound is almost like... I slowly walk around her, but it's dark out here and I can't really see much on the back of her head. There's something moving, though, that's for sure. "Come over here," I say, taking her gently by the arm and leading her over to a nearby streetlight. When we get there, I see the truth: the back of her head has been eaten away, and little black beetles are crawling all over her exposed brain. As I watch, some of the beetles continue to chew small pieces of brain matter.

  "How's your father?" my mother asks.

  "Mom," I say, "you..." I stare at the beetles. It's quite clear that my mother is beyond help. It's amazing that she's even able to function, but I guess the beetles have only just got started. "Mom, you need to come with me," I continue, taking her hand. "Right now."

  "I should say hi to your father," she says, her speech a little slurred.

  "He's not there," I say.

  "He's not?" she replies, turning to me. "Oh," she continues, sounding genuinely sad.

  "Come on," I say, carefully leading her away. We end up walking across town. My mother is slow, but I can't imagine how I'd get her on a bus or into a taxi, not in this state. It takes us a couple of hours to get to the street where she lives, but she shows no sign of getting tired. The dark streets are deserted, and our footsteps seem to echo in the night. We talk as we walk, though I'm the one doing most of the talking and I start to realize that her responses to my questions are getting slower and slower, which suggests that the beetles are causing more and more damage. Finally we get to her house and I let us in. The place still stinks, but at least the lights work. Now that I can get a good view of the extent of her injuries, it's clear that the beetles are consuming her quickly.

  "Mom," I say, "can you hear me?"

  She doesn't respond.

  "Mom?"

  Slowly, she turns to me. "Kirsten?" she asks.

  "Yeah, Mom," I say. "It's me." I take a deep breath, recognizing the sadness in her eyes. "Mom, are you in pain?"

  She nods.

  "How much pain?" I ask.

  She pauses. "Quite a lot."

  Trying to hold back tears, I smile sadly at her. "What do you want me to do, Mom?"

  She stares at me for a moment. "I suppose you should probably kill me."

  I nod. "I think you're right."

  "Uh-huh," she says, turning and shuffling through to the living room. I follow, staring at the beetles chewing on the back of her head, trying to work out how I should end my mother's suffering. If I do nothing, she'll die a painful death that might take a few days. If I act swiftly and firmly, her suffering will be over. I know what I have to do.

  Walking through to the kitchen, I sort through the filth and eventually find a large carving knife. It's covered in some kind of congealed brown residue, but I guess I could clean it up and use it to... to what? Standing there, staring at the blade, the enormity of the situation hits me. I'm about to kill my own mother. Sure, she's in such a terrible state that it's effectively a mercy killing, but I still have to push the blade into her. If only there was another way, one that didn't involve such a direct and horrific move on my part.

  I hurry through to the bathroom, hoping to find some sleeping pills. I figure it'd be easier to dose her up and hope that she dies peacefully. As I search, however, I realize that this too is a hopeless plan. Sleeping pills are by no means a guaranteed way of killing someone, and I might just make her sick. A gun would be the best choice, because I'd be able to just point and pull the trigger, but I'm pretty certain that there won't be a gun in this house. My mother's certainly not the kind of person who'd want such a thing anywhere near her.

  Looking in the bedroom, the only thing I find that could be useful is a vase. It occurs to me that I could knock my mother unconscious and then either drown her or try to find some other, non-violent way of finishing her off. Then again, I'd have to actually bring the vase crashing down on her head with enough force to knock her out. Could I do that? It sounds easy enough, but as I stand there and stare at the vase, I realize that there's no way I can actually go through with this.

  Suddenly I realize that there's silence in the rest of the house.

  Heading back through towards the front room, I find my mother sitting on the sofa. I'd thought - prayed, even - that her silence might mean that she'd died and her suffering was over. No such luck. She's just sitting in silence, staring into thin air, and taking slow breaths. The beetles are still chewing away on her brain, but I have no idea how long it'll take before they cause so much damage that she loses consciousness. This might be the slowest, most horrific torture anyone could go through. After all, my mother's not exactly in charge of her motor reflexes, so she might be in agony even though the only expression she can manage is a smile. Killing her would be humane.

  But how the hell am I going to do this?

  "Mom," I say quietly.

  She turns to me, a vacant look in her eyes.

  "I don't know if..." I pause, fighting back tears. "How do you want me to do this?"

  "Do what?" she asks.

  This is crazy. I just have to get on with it, and I need to find a way that doesn't feel too violent. I go back to the kitchen, grab the largest knife I can find, and head back through to find that my mother is still just sitting there, staring into space.

  "This won't hurt," I say, to comfort myself as much as her. "Not much."

  She doesn't respond. I can see the beetles still crawling through her exposed brain, chewing on her. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for her to experience this. Holding the knife in my shaking hands, I prepare to bring it down on her head. I just have to be strong for a moment and remember that this is in her best interests.

  I stand for several minutes, poised to strike the final blow. My hands shaking more than ever, I fight back tears. Why can't I do this? Why can't I end my mother's suffering? She doesn't deserve any of this. Finally, overcome by a sense of my own weakness, I lower the knife and I just stand there, quietly weeping. I couldn't do it. As much as I tried to rationalize my actions, I couldn't bring myself to actually kill my mother.

/>   And then I realize she's already dead.

  Walking around so I can see her face, I kneel down and look into her eyes. Glassy and vacant, they stare straight ahead and I can tell that she's gone. I reach out and take her wrist, checking for a pulse. Nothing. Her agony is over.

  "Goodbye," I say quietly.

  I turn and head out the door, out into the street. I have no idea how long it will take before someone finds my mother's body. Wild animals will probably break in and feast on her corpse, but that doesn't matter: a corpse is just a mass of bone and flesh; it has very little to do with the soul. I have no idea what happens to a consciousness once it has been claimed by death, but I hope that wherever she is, my mother is at peace. Standing in her front yard, I look down at the knife, still in my hand. I couldn't use it on my mother. I lacked the necessary anger. But there's one person who does deserve to die, and I think maybe I've got the strength to finish him off.

  Jerry

  Lakehurst. Today.

  Half an hour after Eddie and the other men went down into the basement, there's still no word from them. I'm all for going in guns blazing, but Nurse Winter says we have to wait and let the guards to their job. She's very insistent that we don't disturb them, even though I can't help worrying that by now they're all dead and the lab's been messed up. Nurse Winter seems remarkably calm, and I sit on the sofa in the corner of her office, staring at the photo of Francis Morgan. There's no denying that it's him, but none of this makes sense. I know there's no such thing as ghosts, but it was still this face that stared at me in the basement. It's really tempting to just accept that what I saw in the basement was some kind of apparition, some kind of specter, but I'm not quite ready to admit that ghosts exist. Not yet. There's still a part of me that thinks this is gonna turn out to be some kind of huge misunderstanding, and that Eddie is gonna appear any moment, dragging some vagrant out of the elevator.