Asylum (26 page)

“Come on! Help me!” Abby grunted, giving another push with her shoulder.

“Who’s out there? Stop being a coward and show yourself!” Dan shouted.

He moved to Abby’s side, adding his own strength to hers, but the cabinet wouldn’t budge. He beat his fists against the metal, shouting, “Let us out, let us out,” until his voice went hoarse. He heard Abby suck down a shuddering breath before collapsing in tears against the wall.

She checked her cell phone.

“No reception,” she said, wiping a tear out of her eyes. “Who would do this, Dan?”

“
Shh!
I hear something.…” They fell silent and listened. Behind the cabinet Dan distinctly heard the shuffling of footsteps. He thought he heard a click, maybe the soft tap of a woman’s heel. But then nothing.

They listened as the footsteps moved away from the office and became faint. Abby pushed against the cabinet one more time, digging her legs into the ground, but it seemed to have been wedged into place from the other side.

Dan aimed a kick at the cabinet and then stumbled backward, grabbing for the wall to keep from falling over. “I can’t believe it.… Why would he lead us down here just to trap us inside? Unless he has further plans, and he needed us out of the way.…”

“Who’s ‘he’?” Abby said. “You’re really scaring me, Dan. Let’s just give ourselves a second to catch our breath, and then we’ll try to push it again together, okay?”

Dan nodded. She was right, panicking wouldn’t help anything. They’d get out of here and they’d punish Dennis—or whoever was copying him—once and for all.

Then Dan heard a sound like the soft scrape of a shoe over wood. It was coming from the stairs behind them.

“What was—” But he didn’t get to finish his question. A dark shape emerged, hurtling toward them.

He heard a hollow thud and Abby toppled into his arms. Dan’s last thought before he fell was of her, of how pretty she looked just then, poised as if dancing, her lips parted and her dark braid coming undone.

Then he felt the blow on the back of his head.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER

N
o
 35 

H
e came to under the light of a harsh white bulb. The filament twinkled and the old electricity was humming loudly, ready to cut out at any second. Dan groaned and tried to move.

He couldn’t.

At first, he thought it was the pain in his head that was trapping him, but as consciousness and feeling returned, he could tell that there were straps buckled tightly over his chest, head, waist, and ankles.

He screamed, and the sound echoed back at him. The straps held him fast, and his struggles only increased the pain and the fear that were making him frantic. The most he could do was turn his head a fraction of an inch from one side to the other.

The operating amphitheater. That’s where they were. The tables, the gurneys … That meant there was a tray of sharp surgical instruments mere inches from his skull.

“Let me out!” he shouted. “You can’t do this to me!”

Dan twisted his neck the other way. Abby was strapped to her own table, and she had a gag in her mouth. A metal gurney was set out next to her. The white light reflected the stainless steel tray at her side, illuminating drills, scalpels, hooks—the horror show of tools needed to perform a lobotomy.

The overhead light flashed as if there’d been a power surge, forcing Dan to blink. When the electricity stabilized again, a shadow oozed from the dark perimeter of the amphitheater. Dan could just make it out in the blurry spots of his vision, but he couldn’t see who it was. The man with the crowbar? Ted Bittle?
Jordan?
Dan was shaken enough to believe anything.

Then, in the light, the reality shocked him.

“Felix?”
His voice was almost drowned out by the bouncing echoes of the chamber. “What the hell is going on? How did you get down here?”

“I never left,” said Felix slowly.

“Untie us, you idiot! Get us out of here.”

“Oh, you’re not going anywhere,
Daniel Crawford
,” Felix said with a snicker. As Felix came closer, Dan saw that he was barefoot and wild-eyed. He wore a white doctor’s coat over a pair of boxer shorts.

“What do you think I should call my masterpiece? I was thinking:
Revenge
.”

His mouth twisted freakishly when he talked, moving too much over every word. And his voice didn’t sound like Felix’s; it was high and mocking, like a clown’s. He walked strangely, too, lurching from side to side as if he were tied to puppet strings and being manipulated by someone high above.

“Felix, what are you talking about?” Dan said. This was
Felix
,
quiet, unassuming
Felix
. Why the hell would Felix of all people want revenge?

But deep down, Dan knew that this wasn’t Felix anymore. This was his roommate’s body, but the man inside—the man wanting revenge—was someone else. Someone who didn’t want revenge on Dan, but on Daniel Crawford. This was the Sculptor.

Felix slunk up to Dan’s table and leaned over him. “You’re all so easy to mold, fleshy clay fools,” he sang.

His eyes were completely black. He moved his thumb almost tenderly down Dan’s nose. “The first was too easy. I found him alone on the stairway, thinking he could watch over you all. But I was watching over
him
, and he didn’t even see me coming. That one I called
Prelude
. The only tricky part was finding another fool to pin it on. That’s where I needed Felix’s help. A late-night biology lab to mix a little chloroform, and
poof
! We were ready for anything.”

Dan thought he could see the real Felix fighting on the inside, trying to take back control. The lights in his eyes brightened and darkened, as if the power in his body was blinking on and off. He needed to give Felix enough time to win.

“So you killed Joe and framed that man in town,” Dan said. “You only
pretended
to find Joe’s body.”

Felix touched Dan’s nose again, making him sick to his core.

“The second statue was just for fun. For laughs. That one I called
Chaos
. Too bad the molding didn’t stick.”

“Yi.” Dan remembered how he thought Yi had been posed, the legs too neatly arranged to be an accident.

“No.”
Suddenly Felix was in his face, eye to eye, saliva dripping from his too-pink mouth onto Dan’s chin. The giggly insanity had all run out, and now it was just rage.
“Chaos. Chaos.”

Felix danced back away from him, making a full circle around Dan’s table as he talked. “And then, for my
curtain call
, I had to take action before that horrible man ruined all our fun. He’d almost found us, Daniel Crawford—he knew what was happening. I called that sculpture
Precautionary Measures
.”

Sal Weathers had almost found them. He knew what had been unleashed in Brookline.

“But now those fools are out of my way, and it’s your turn,
your turn
.” Felix was chuckling with glee. Then his eyes narrowed. “I’ve been waiting for you, waiting for so long. You will be my finest sculpture, my magnum opus.”

Dan wondered when exactly the transformation had happened. Maybe it had started on day one—it was Felix who’d found the photos and planted the idea for Dan to see them himself. Maybe Dan had never known the real Felix at all.

But the fact that he’d been sleeping next to this
thing
for days, maybe weeks, gave him hope. He felt like Felix must still be in there somewhere—otherwise he would surely have killed him long ago.

“And that man with the crowbar? The one who attacked you?” Dan said, trying to buy Felix time, to make him talk.

“Oh
,
him
,” Felix said, as if the thought of the man bored him. “I let him in through the window with a false promise of drugs. When I couldn’t deliver, he got a little—
angry.
” Felix said this last word with a flutter of his fingers. “Of course, my real target was your friend, the mathematician. My plan was to meet him downstairs, then meet my alibi in the attic. I didn’t count on him coming with a crowbar, or you waking up, not after I borrowed your phone. Not my finest hour, to be sure, but I did do a bang-up job messing with your mind. Just as you used to
mess with mine
.” He hissed the last words into Dan’s ear.

“You’re crazy,” Dan shouted, lashing out against the straps. Still too tight.

“Am I?” Felix seemed genuinely taken aback by the idea. He picked up a scalpel from the tray and stuck the blunt end in his mouth to chew on. Then he plucked it out again and flourished it. “Maybe I am. Hardly matters now. I’m finally going to get you back for all those
failed
experiments. Although I suppose one of them didn’t fail, did it, Crawford? I mean, here we are!” Felix was on top of him again. “Does that make you happy? Or does it make you saaaaad?” With the sharp end of the scalpel, Felix lightly traced his own clown-faced grimace. It left behind a red curve, a thin scratch that was visible even after he’d taken the instrument away.

“But I’m not Daniel Crawford! I’m Dan, your roommate!” Dan shouted.

“Roommate?” Felix mused. “Yes, you and I, we were in the same room,
this
room. But we were never
mates
. Oh no.” With this, Felix dipped the scalpel toward Dan’s head until it was poised just above his eye.

And that’s when the light cut out.

“No!” Felix shouted. His rapid footsteps echoed across the room, moving farther and farther away as he went toward the switches.

Dan breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. A hand clamped over his mouth, making it impossible to talk. Dan tried to shake it off, but it was no use.

“Shhh” came the voice in his ear. Even with that one sound he knew who was there to save them.

Jordan
.

Dan stopped struggling. He felt the straps that were holding his head down fall away, then those around his chest, and finally those on his waist and ankles. He sat up quickly, massaging life back into his numb legs. Jordan’s hand squeezed his shoulder in warning.

The light snapped back on with a loud, electric hum. Jordan was there, squinting, his glasses reflecting the sudden burst of light.

“I knew you two were useless without me,” Jordan muttered, backing up close to Dan.

“Sneaky!” Felix shrieked from the switches near the door. He jumped the stairs leading down to the operating floor, bounding side to side like a deranged jackrabbit. “Fleshy, bendy, moldy, sculpty, sneaky
fools
!” His words ran together in a crazed slur, eyes wide and wild as he charged at them, scalpel held high.

“Move!” Dan shouted, jumping off the operating table. He pushed Jordan behind him and grabbed a gurney.

Felix descended on him, slashing in every direction. Dan kept the wheeled table between them, moving it to block wherever Felix moved.

Felix laughed, tossing the scalpel from hand to hand.

“I haven’t had this much fun in
years
.”

On the last word he lunged, flying across the table. Dan ducked, but Felix was stronger and quicker, and he grabbed Dan by the collar, throwing him to the floor. Dan clamped his hand around Felix’s wrist to keep the scalpel from cutting his face. But Felix had at least twenty pounds of muscle on him, and the strength in Dan’s arms was fading fast.

Felix pinned him down. The scalpel lowered inch by agonizing inch, until Dan could feel the sharp tip of it grazing his cheek.

No. You will not let him do this to you. You are better than he is.

With a strength he didn’t know he had, Dan pushed back hard and sent Felix tumbling. The scalpel fell out of Felix’s hand.

Dan rolled hard to one side and jumped to his feet. He loomed over Felix and Felix screamed, recoiling. Dan reached down, suddenly strong, so strong, and grabbed him by his coat. He hauled him up, throwing him onto the operating table. Dan roared from the effort, but then it was over and Felix was lying down, helpless.

“Strap him down!” Dan commanded. “Strap him down! We can’t let him get free.”

As Dan held Felix to the table, Jordan grabbed the straps and buckled them quickly. Chest first, then legs. Felix was struggling wildly, and it took two tries to get the head buckled in—finally Jordan had to cradle it in his hands while Dan tightened the strap. There were flecks of saliva and blood on Felix’s lips, and his muscles were bulging and pulling against the restraints.

Soaked in sweat, firing on all cylinders, Dan reached down to pick up the scalpel.

The time for experiments and cures is over. You need to end this, Dan, once and for all.

“Dan, what you are doing with that?” Jordan asked, nervously eyeing the scalpel in Dan’s hand. “He’s not going anywhere now. Let’s go and let the police handle this.”

“No,”
Dan seethed. “No one else. Only
I
can finish this.”

The scalpel lowered against Dan’s will.

No, no, this isn’t what I want, this isn’t me.…

I
am
you.

The scalpel drew closer and closer to Felix.

No
.