Asylum (10 page)

“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, flashing 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.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

CHAPTER

N
o
 12 

D
an 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 …”

Suddenly, Abby burst into tears.

Jordan immediately put an arm around her, and she collapsed against his side.

“W-we’re s-so sorry, Joe,” she sobbed, wiping her tear-stained face. Her tears left actual streaks down her dusty face. “We d-didn’t mean to b-break any rules. We w-were just so curious.… Please … I’m so s-sorry!”

It was, in Dan’s honest opinion, too theatrical, and Joe seemed to pick up on that, too, rolling his eyes at her. But then Abby inhaled deeply and burst out with the rawest, most heartbreaking sob Dan had ever heard. Joe looked dismayed, and Dan could see his authority cracking before their eyes. Joe was thinking about what a monster he would be if he reported her.

“It’ll be all right,” Dan said softly, patting Abby’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.…”

“For the love of … Just don’t do it again, all right? I mean it. Don’t.” Joe shined his flashlight into each of their faces in turn. Abby nodded furiously when the light was on her. “Now get back to your rooms.
Now
.”

He marched off, muttering under his breath.

“Sweet Enola Gay, that was amazing,”
Jordan whispered when Joe was out of sight. Then he turned and pulled Abby into his arms, spinning her off her feet. “An Oscar moment if ever there was one!”

“Thanks,” she said, using the back of her hand to wipe the last of the tears. Without another word, she set off for the stairs. “That was too close.”

“Close? Closer than close. We got
caught
,” Dan said, feeling as if he was resurfacing from the murky depths of a swamp. And to think, he’d been on a date with Abby just hours before. A nice
normal
date …

They reached Abby’s door.

“Jeez, I need a shower,” she said. She sounded like she wasn’t even a little bit fazed.

But a shower did sound great. Dan itched from the dust and dirt that had settled over his skin, and the more he thought about it, the more it itched. He’d be clawing at his skin soon, but he wanted to talk to Abby one last time alone before he went back to his room. He looked at Jordan, trying to signal with his eyes that he wanted some privacy to say good-bye to Abby, dusty or otherwise.