Asylum

by Amy Cross

  "Stay positive," my father replies, but his heart's not in it and it sounds like he's just going through the motions, saying the words he knows he's supposed to say.

  My mother turns to me. "What about you, Annie?" she asks.

  "Me?" I say, feeling as if everyone in the room is suddenly staring at me. "What about me?"

  "What do you think?" she continues. "Honestly. Deep down, in your heart of hearts, what do you think has happened to your little brother?" She waits for me to say something. "Come on," she continues, "I know you're perceptive. You're not an idiot, are you? You must have an opinion. What do you think has happened?"

  I pause for a moment. "I guess he's been abducted," I say. Hell, there's no point lying, is there?

  "And why would someone do that?" my mother asks.

  I take a deep breath. "Obvious reasons," I say.

  "Obvious reasons?" she replies. "Obvious reasons? What do you mean by that?"

  "Just..." I pause, as a series of horrible scenarios flash through my mind. "You know..."

  "What are the obvious reasons?" she asks.

  "Do I have to spell it out?" I reply, getting a little annoyed by her persistence.

  "There's really no point talking like this," says the detective, clearly sensing my discomfort.

  "No!" my mother says, raising her voice a little. She walks over to me. "Annie, I want to know what you think. Honestly. Where do you think your brother is right now? What do you think this monster is doing to him?"

  I look up at her, into her desperately sad eyes. "I guess he's probably been used and killed by now," I say.

  "Used?" my mother asks.

  "Annie!" my father says, clearly annoyed.

  "No," my mother hisses at him. "She's right. She's saying what she thinks. We should all say what we think." She leans down and hugs me. "Well done, Annie," she says. "Well done." She lets go of me and turns to the detective. "I know you think he's dead too. I know you think he's been abducted by some sick pervert, who's had his way with him and then killed him. Go on, admit it. Just be honest with us."

  The detective takes a deep breath. "I think we still have a good chance of finding Taylor alive," he says.

  "Liar," my mother replies. Her voice isn't raised, but she's angry. "No-one in this room believes you."

  "Maybe you should have a rest," my father says, trying to usher her back through to the bedroom.

  "No, I'm okay," she says, resisting. "I want to be here when this asshole finally admits that our son is dead. I want to be here when he gets the phone call that they've found a body in a shallow grave or at the bottom of a dumpster."

  The detective looks uncomfortable. I know he's trying hard to be optimistic, and I know he can't say what he's really thinking, so it's kind of fun to see him squirming like this. I mean, I'm not exactly street-wise or cynical, but even I know that when a seven-year-old kid goes missing for three days, the odds are that he's not coming home unscathed. The best we can hope for right now is that at least his body will be found, so we can give him a proper funeral. I guess that's probably what worries my parents the most now: the idea that there'll be no body, so they'll never be able to get any closure. That, and that thought that Taylor's death was probably horrific. He must have been terrified. He must have been in agony. It must have been... I pause, getting a slight chill at the thought of how his final moments must have passed. Poor little kid. His whole life was sheltered and timid.

  "You need to rest," my father says, this time managing to get my mother to go with him back to the bedroom. It's kind of sickening how they've fallen into cliched roles: my mother the sobbing wreck, and my father stoically trying to hold her together. Then again, my parents have always embraced cliches. I guess it makes them feel like they're doing the right thing, when in reality there's absolutely nothing that either of them can do. Taylor is blatantly gone.

  "Whoever did this," my mother says, turning back to the detective. "I want him caught. I want to look in his eyes and I want to know exactly what he did to my son. I don't want to be spared any details. I want to see the photos. I want to hear the descriptions. I want all the... all the..."

  "Webcam footage?" I ask.

  "Annie!" my father says, a look of real anger in his eyes. "Will you just shut up?"

  "She's right," my mother says, turning to go into the bedroom. "That's probably what this is. There are some sick people out there. I want to be the one who presses the button when the fucker's executed."

  "Yay, Mom," I say. My mother's always been really liberal, but now she's all trigger-happy. I remember her taking Taylor and me on a protest march against the death penalty last year, and now listen to her asking for the right to execute the guy who's taken Taylor. Fuck it, I always knew my mother was a hypocrite.

  "Ignore Annie," my father says as he leads my mother into the bedroom. "She's just doing what she does best, riling people up."

  As soon as they're gone, I turn to the detective. "So is this linked to that other kid who went missing?" I ask.

  He pauses for a moment. "It's too early to say," he says eventually, clearly striving to be diplomatic. It's probably written in his job description that he has to keep spewing out this bullshit until the last possible moment, even when it's blatantly obvious to everyone that he's just delaying the inevitable. To be honest, I'd have a lot more respect for him if he'd just admit the truth. My parents clearly understand that this isn't going to end well, so it seems kind of cruel for this guy to be trying to keep their hope alive.

  "But there's gotta be a chance that the cases are linked," I say. "You never caught that guy, did you?"

  "Not yet," he says.

  "And that kid," I continue, "when you found him, he was all cut up and stuffed into -"

  "Let's not get into that right now," the detective says, interrupting me. "Let's focus on the positive things."

  "Have you ever found a missing kid after this long?" I ask. I wait for him to reply, but I can see that he's trying to come up with some more optimistic bullshit to distract from the fact that my brother is obviously dead. "I mean," I continue, "no-one kidnaps a little kid and then just looks after them for a while, do they? They kidnap them so they can do stuff to them and then toss them out with the trash."

  "I prefer to -" His phone starts ringing. "Excuse me," he says before answering. "Detective Price." He listens to the person on the other end for a moment. "Where?" he asks. "I'll be right there." Disconnecting the call, he turns to me and smiles. "We've found your brother, Annie."

  "Bullshit," I spit back at him.

  "He's alive and well, by the sounds of it." He walks toward my parents' bedroom door and knocks, before turning back to me. "There's your miracle," he adds.

  "What is it?" my father asks wearily as he opens the door.

  "We've found your son alive," the detective says. "We've found Taylor. I'm not sure of the precise circumstances at the moment, but he's been found by officers a few miles away. It sounds like he's absolutely fine and unharmed. They're taking him to a downtown station, and we have to go and see him right now."

  My mother rushes through the door, grabbing her car keys. "We have to get to him!" she shouts. "God knows what they've done to my baby!"

  "Great," I say under my breath, watching the panic as everyone prepares to go and check on Taylor. "Everything's going to be just perfect from now on. The happy family reunited." I look up at the ceiling. Perhaps there's a God after all, and he was only fucking with us. "Thanks," I mutter sarcastically. "Thanks for everything."

  Chapter One

  Nine months later.

  The creepiest thing about our new house is that it's so still and quiet. No, wait: the creepiest thing is actually the fact that it's out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a fucking forest. Wait. That's not it, either. The absolute creepiest thing is that the windows are huge, which means at night everything's black outside and it feels like we're being watched even though there's no-one around for miles. Or maybe t
he creepiest thing is...

  Well, you get the idea. When you think of creepy houses, you usually think of old buildings; creaky old wooden places where loads of people died. Our house is different. It's brand new, built this year, made entirely out of steel and glass. It's like something from an architectural magazine. It shouldn't be creepy at all, but it is. It's like it's waiting for bad things to happen. Does that make sense? Buildings can have personalities, just like people, and our new house freaks me out.

  But the stillness is so strange. Seriously, you can stand in the doorway and look into any room, and it's like you're looking at a photo in a magazine. Even the trees outside the window are completely static, as if they've been hushed into submission by our family. It almost feels wrong to move about, as if the place shouldn't be disturbed. Nothing makes a noise, not even the air conditioning. My father has always been a control freak, always making sure he buys the best and most efficient machines. In our kitchen, for example, the fridge is unbelievably quiet; you have to actually put your ear against the side in order to hear the machinery running. It's just insane how quiet our house is. How still.

  It's a little before 9am and, as usual on a Sunday, I'm the first one up. My parents tend to sleep until noon at the weekend, and my little brother doesn't like getting up any earlier than necessary. It's just me, then, wandering around the house in my pajamas, trying to find something to do that won't cause a noise or disturb anyone. Our house is way out in the countryside, a big modern house with huge glass windows, set firmly in the middle of a forest. My father made a lot of money selling his photography company a few years ago, and he used his new-found largesse to buy this land, design and build this house, and move us all out here. It's a strange place to live, especially after years in Portland, but I guess it's probably healthier out here. The air's much cleaner. I just wish there was some more noise around the place.

  When I was a kid, we lived in a house near the train tracks. I got used to the sound of trains passing, day and night, about fifty meters from my bedroom. At the time, I thought it was annoying, even though I eventually managed to ignore the noise. Over the years, the sound of those trains became as natural to me as my own heartbeat. Now that I'm living in such a quiet place, everything's changed and I find that I don't know what to do with myself. It's as if someone has taken away all the background noise and is forcing me to live sealed in a bell jar. I'd love it if a jet flew overhead, or a car sped along a road nearby... Anything! But there's no chance of that, not out here. We're alone. Completely alone. So alone, in fact, that when I take a cup out of the cupboard and put it on the table, I feel like I'm making far too much noise.

  "What are you doing?" Taylor asks.

  I turn to find that my little brother is up and awake. He's standing in the doorway.

  "Nothing," I say. "What are you doing?"

  He stares at me for a moment. "Nothing," he says, walking over to the fridge and taking out a carton of orange juice. "Mom and Dad are still asleep."

  "There's a shocker," I reply. I turn back to the window, staring out at the trees. Some mornings I feel as if they've moved a little, as if they've inched a little closer to the house.

  "Why are you looking out the window?" Taylor asks.

  "I just am," I say.

  "But why?"

  "I like it."

  "Why?"

  I sigh. "It helps me relax," I tell him, starting to lose my patience a little.

  "Why?"

  "It just does."

  "Why?"

  I turn to him. "Can you knock it off?"

  He smiles, drinking his juice. "Can we play outside?" he asks.

  "Not right now," I say.

  "Why not?" says a different voice.

  "Because -" I pause, suddenly realizing that someone else just spoke. A voice I don't recognize. I turn and see that there's no-one else in the room. "Did you hear that?" I ask, turning to Taylor.

  He stares blankly at me.

  "I don't want to go out and play," I say cautiously.

  "But you're staring at the trees," Taylor replies. "Doesn't that mean you want to go out there?"

  "No," I say. The truth is, I find the forest to be creepy and dirty. I prefer to look at it from behind the window, safe from any insects and creatures.

  "Can I go outside?" he asks.

  I shrug. "I guess," I say. "Just don't go too far and don't do anything stupid."

  "Cool," he says, turning and running out of the room.

  "Don't go any further than the bridge!" I shout after him, hoping he'll be careful. The last thing we need is for Taylor to go missing again. My parents are still freaked out about the last time. That's why we moved out here. My mother decided, once Taylor was safely home, that we couldn't stay in the city. My father's money from the company allowed us to get this house built quickly, and now here we are. All alone in the forest. Apart from the guy at the grocery store twenty miles away, the only other people we ever speak to are friends from back home, who we occasionally chat to online. It's not the same, though. It's like my parents, terrified at how close they came to losing Taylor, have decided to seal us away in splendid isolation. I feel like I've been vacuum-packed. I miss Maine. I miss my old life. It didn't seem like much of a life back then, but it was something. I had friends.

  Standing by the window, I watch as Taylor runs outside. It's autumn and the forest floor is covered with yellow and red leaves, and the trees are starting to become a little bare. There's not much to do around this place, so I've found myself observing the natural world more and more. I'm really aware of how the seasons are changing, and how the colors are evolving from summer through to autumn. Soon it'll be winter, and I hear there's a good chance of snow, which should seal us in even more completely. I swear, one day someone'll realize they haven't heard from any of us for a while; they'll come and check on us and find we've killed one another. Seriously, this place is like a pressure cooker. It wouldn't surprise me if one of us eventually snapped. Probably my mother. Hell, she's kind of snapped already. Hauling us out of school was pretty insane, right? Dragging us to this remote house was nuts too. I can't even begin to imagine the extent to which Taylor and I are getting fucked up right now, but I'm sure I'll be able to explain all about it to my therapist one day when I eventually move out and start living my own life.

  "Morning," says my father, coming through from my parents' bedroom. He walks to the breakfast bar and starts preparing a pot of coffee. "Sorry, did I disturb you? You look very... contemplative."

  "I'm just watching Taylor play," I say.

  "Taylor?" my father says, clearly a little worried. He hurries over to join me at the window. "Is he outside?"

  "Relax," I say. Taylor is barely ten meters from the house, playing in the leaves. "See?"

  "Did you tell him not to go too far?" my father asks.

  "I told him not to go further than the bridge," I reassure him.

  "Okay," he replies. "Okay, that's good." He goes back over to finish making the coffee, but I can tell he's a little concerned. If my father seems stressed, though, that's nothing compared to my mother. Seriously, she's a nightmare. In fact, she's borderline psycho. She won't let Taylor out of her sight for more than a few minutes. I guess I understand. After what happened back in Maine, she has every right to be concerned, especially given what we know so far about precisely where Taylor was during those days he was missing.

  "You got any plans for today?" my father asks, trying to steer us back toward a normal conversation.

  "Are you kidding?" I say. "Sure. I thought I'd pop down to the mall, meet some friends, maybe see a movie."

  He smiles. "Sarcasm is a very low form of humor, Annie," he says. "Do you seriously miss that kind of life?"

  "Uh-huh," I reply.

  "Didn't you think life was too complicated?" he continues. "Don't you prefer being out here in the wilderness?"

  "No," I say. I pause for a moment, not sure whether I should re-open the discussion that we
nt so badly wrong the other day. Then again, it was mainly my mother who caused the problems. It might be a good idea to try getting my father on my side. "So I was thinking," I say. "Maybe in the new year, it's time for me to strike out on my own."

  "We already had this discussion," he replies as he pours himself a cup of steaming coffee.

  "I can't stay here forever," I say. "I want to have an actual life."

  "Just a little longer," he replies. "We just need to get settled again. We need to reconnect as a family. Your mother -"

  "Mom's nuts," I say. "Sorry, but it's true. I can't stay here just because Mom's a paranoid wreck. If I wait much longer, I'll be middle-aged by the time I get out of here."

  "I know," he says. "I know, but please think about this from your mother's point of view. We came so close to losing Taylor. She just needs some stability for a little while longer before we go making any big changes."

  "And that means I have to suffer?" I say.

  "Are you really suffering?" he replies. "I mean, you have a comfortable life, Annie. You just have to stick around a little longer until your mother's happier with the idea of you moving away. Given everything that's happened, I don't see that this is a huge sacrifice. Another year or two of -"

  "Another year or two?" I say, interrupting. Is he serious? I was thinking more of a few months, and suddenly he's talking about years? "I've got to have my own life," I point out. "I can't just sit around here to make Mom feel better. Lots of people move away from home every day and they're absolutely fine."

  Sighing, my father brings a cup of coffee over to me. "Here," he says.

  "No thanks," I reply. I hate coffee. Why doesn't he ever notice things like that?

  "Where is he?" my father asks, staring out the window.

  I turn and see that Taylor is nowhere to be seen. "He's probably round the other side of the house," I say.

  My father hurries over to one of the other windows. "I still can't see him," he says, and I can tell from the tone of his voice that he's getting worried.

  "Jesus," I mutter, going to look out the kitchen window. "What are the odds that -" I freeze as I look out and see not only Taylor, but also someone else. They're quite far from the house, so I can't make out the features of the stranger, but the mere presence of someone else out here near our house is pretty freaky. "Dad," I say, my heart starting to race in my chest, "there's someone out there with Taylor."