Asylum (28 page)

            Chloe
watched as her shadow leapt out in front of her and stretched across a wide
lawn, angling upwards across a tall, brick building.  A car shot by her on the
right side, its bright headlights illuminating the dark sidewalk for an
instant.  She watched the red taillights disappear around the bend in the road
ahead.

            It
could also have something to do with Elizabeth Mathers, she thought.  That was
the other name they discovered that day that had shown up on the wall. 
And
your own
, a voice reminded her,
don’t forget it wrote your name too.

            And
that was what made it all suspect to her.  That was what made her want to
dismiss it all.  Her name.  At the hospital, she had a roommate for awhile. 
The girl had been a pathological liar, though that wasn’t her actual diagnosis,
that would have been too rude.  Her actual diagnosis had been something much
more polite, personality disorder maybe?  Whatever they had called it, the girl
told the most outrageous lies.  All of them stemming from some need to be
better, smarter, more wonderful, more important than she actually was.  The
girl was the daughter of Russian royalty in exile, she was the center of a CIA
plot to eradicate all traces of an experiment to endow human beings with super
powers.  She had ESP, she was a princess, men had fallen in love and died for
her…

            Chloe
had voiced her annoyance to a therapist about the matter in one session, a
therapist who shrugged and reminded her that we all wanted to be special, and
wasn’t Chloe’s belief that something was trying to contact her, and that only
she could understand and see it, sort of the same thing?  To be healthy, Chloe
concluded, was to admit that there was nothing particularly special about you.

            Another
approaching car’s headlights lit up the sidewalk.  Chloe moved to the far left,
trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible.  The car slowed anyways. 

            She’ll
never leave you alone
,
the voice told her
, no matter what you promise her, you’ll never be free of
her.

            Chloe
spun around, narrowing her eyes against the blinding lights and tried to glower
angrily at the dark shape in the driver seat.

            “Miss
Adams?” called Dr. Willard.  And then, “Chloe?  Can I give you a ride?”

            Of
course…Dr. Willard…the only other person who showed up when you least wanted
them to.  But then he was a professor, one she fully planned on squeezing an
excellent reference out of one day.  Slowly, she walked to the driver’s side
window.  She ducked down and looked in.

            “Can
I give you a ride somewhere?  It’s snowing,” he reminded her.  Chloe nodded,
noticing again that a few white flakes were drifting down around her.  She
walked around the front of the car, got in, and snapped on her seatbelt.

            “Where
to?” Dr. Willard asked.

            “Ummm…”
Chloe said, judging her direction and then looking at the clock, “the game?”

            “I
think it’s pretty much done by now, Miss Adams,” he said.

            “Goodge
Field, then?  We were supposed to meet friends there,” Chloe thought quickly. 
Dr. Willard pulled away from the curb.

            “It’s
a tradition you know.  Goodge Field after the first home game of the season,”
he said.

            “Uh-huh,”
Chloe agreed.

            “They
used to do it way back when I was a student.”

            “Oh.” 

            “But
don’t you think,” he continued, “that maybe your friend Sam may need some help
back at the-”

            “No,”
Chloe cut him off, “No. I’m sure she’s got it under control.  Look…I’m sorry
about…about my mom.  She’s kind of a freak.”

            Dr.
Willard nodded thoughtfully, and then shrugged.

            “See
it all the time,” he volunteered.

            “What?”
Chloe laughed, “You see mothers all the time that think their kids are nuts?”

            Dr.
Willard smiled as he watched the road in front of them.

            “Certainly,”
he admitted.  “Familial relationships aren’t really my forte, but I remember
enough from my grad school days.  Parent-child relationships become so
difficult as the child reaches adulthood.  So often parents want something
different for the child than the child wants.  Sometimes a parent will pin all
those failed dreams on a child, hoping the child will accomplish things that
they themselves could not.  Sometimes it’s more a validation of how they spent
the past eighteen or so years of their lives.  Some will stomp all over that
relationship in an attempt to mold the blossoming adult into a shape that
pleases them.  You see it quite often at this stage.”

            Chloe
nodded.  That was exactly how she’d put it.  Strange that Dr. Willard was the
first psychologist she’d ever talked to that justified her suspicions.   Really
strange.

            “I
have often been jealous of an old acquaintance of mine.  We both went to school
together, back when we were undergrads.  He never went on from there.  He
teaches high school English in Ohio somewhere.  Yet his stories about his
students, about how involved he is in their lives…how they come to him with
their problems…well, I must admit, there are days when I yearn for that kind of
a relationship with my students.  I think sometimes that I may have traded the
role of true teacher for the respect and admiration of my fellows,” he said.

            There
was a weighted silence in the car.  Chloe judged it.  He was asking to be made
a confident.  To be the adult that she, and maybe Sam too, could trust.  He was
smart, and well-informed on the subject, and the logical outlet for their
problem…so why did she have such a problem telling him about it?  In her mind,
she could see Sam snickering in the backseat. 

            Well
it’s the moustache, of course Clo
,” laughed the phantom Sam.

            “I
didn’t do it,” Chloe said quickly, “I didn’t write all those names on the
wall.”

            “I
believe you,” Dr Willard said, just as quickly.  “Your roommate told me I’d
have to wait to interview the young lady who did however.  But you know her,
don’t you?  Where would she come up with this?  Where would she get these names
from?”

            “I
don’t know,” Chloe admitted, “but I have this idea, it’s just that it sounds
nuts...”

            “How
about you tell me, and I’ll help you decide if it
is
nuts, I am somewhat
qualified to decide,” Dr. Willard offered.

            So
Chloe told him.  She explained about the Ouija board and the night in the bell
tower. She told him about the old newspaper article and the research they had
done on the hall, and on George Townsend in particular.  She told him about how
the name had shown up on the research list and how they had come home to find
Mel, seemingly possessed, scrawling the list of names on the wall.  Dr. Willard
listened…an expressionless face, dark and amber-tinted by the lights of the
dials on the car radio.  At last, he let out a long sigh and shook his head
slowly.

            “It’s
been a lot for you both to deal with,” he said sadly.  “I wish I’d been able to
inspire more confidence in you, you could have come to me about this long
before now.”

            “Did
you know that our hall was built to be an asylum?” Chloe asked.

            “I’d
heard rumors of it since I was a student here.  Yes, I know it,” he admitted.

            “You
knew that a patient named George Townsend had tried to burn it down?” she
demanded.

            “Nothing
more than campus legend,” Dr. Willard said, “I never saw a name, only heard a
story about a mental patient confined there who had tried to burn the building
down.  The place was never actually an asylum, that much I had determined, so I
never gave the old stories too much credit.  It appears I was wrong.”

            “So
the name George Townsend….?” Chloe prodded.

            “Was
exactly what I told you it was, a name that showed up on a register as a
patient with multiple admissions,” Dr. Willard confirmed.

            “It
was a new discovery?” Chloe asked, to be sure.

            “Yes,
I received a new log book, just in the past week.  I have a contact, an
antiques dealer in Traverse City that calls whenever he acquires something he
thinks I may be interested in.  People in that area that used to work at the
old asylum will occasionally sell things, sometimes he visits area estate
sales, sometimes even former patients.  Though George Townsend…it seems that
the name has come up more than once.  There was the log book…I’m sure there was
something else,” he mused quietly, talking more to himself than to Chloe,
“something…some letter or such thing he showed me.  I didn’t think it was quite
relevant enough to purchase then.”

            “A
letter?  Something this antiques dealer still has?” Chloe asked.

            “I
believe so,” Dr. Willard said slowly, “I’ll call him, ask him to hold it.  I’m
heading down that way over Christmas break anyhow-”

            “That’s
two months from now!” Chloe reminded him, “Couldn’t you just have him read it
to you over the phone, or maybe fax a copy to you?  It might be important.”

            Dr.
Willard shook his head.  “That would be rather rude of me I think.  I haven’t
paid for the piece and it’s not as though he owes me any favors.  He’s been
such a good finder for me, I wouldn’t want to jeopardize-”

            “What
if I went and got it for you?” Chloe pressed.

            Dr.
Willard seemed taken aback, he cleared his throat.

            “Ummm…well…I
suppose it…I truly appreciate your enthusiasm but-” he stumbled.

            “You
don’t understand!” Chloe insisted, “My name is up there on the wall.  It wants
something from me. It wants me too-” she snapped her mouth shut over the
words.  Dr. Willard had never actually said that he believed any of it.  He
could have meant that it was too bad they hadn’t come to him before they’d
jumped off the deep end.

            “What
do you think it wants of you?” Dr. Willard asked quietly.

            “I
don’t know,” she admitted, “I really don’t.  You don’t think…you don’t think
that I’m overreacting and that it’s possible that this is all just…just
coincidence?”

            “What
is all of life but one great coincidence?” Dr. Willard asked.

            “I
don’t understand,” Chloe slumped miserably in her seat.

            “Life
develops from primordial soup because of a unique combination of factors which
are optimal for encouraging such development.  Hence fish swim, amphibians
crawl onto land, monkeys swing from trees, and a teacher gives a student a ride
to drunken field party,” Dr. Willard winked at her.

            Chloe
smiled, because she felt he wanted her to.  She didn’t feel amused, she felt
more confused than anything.

            “I
was kind of asking if you believed me or not,” she explained.  “and I feel like
you’re answering by saying you don’t believe in God.”

            Dr.
Willard slowed the car and ran over the curb onto Goodge Field.  Chloe noticed
that the cars parked there were already five and six deep.  He threw the car
into park and left the sedan idling.  In the dark he turned towards her.  She
swallowed nervously.

             Religion
was an area she didn’t ever want to wander into.  If anyone had asked, she
would have said she was Catholic.  Her mother insisted they went to mass every
Christmas and Easter, and she had never given it too much thought.  She knew,
however, that there was some sort of stigma attached to religion in scientific
circles, and Dr. Willard was a psychologist.  Maybe she had just painted a
bulls eye on her forehead.  Catholic was an easy target, and as a
non-practicing Catholic, she was probably the easiest of marks.  She sent a
half-formed prayer skyward, asking whoever may have been at the receiving end
not to let it degenerate into a debate between an avid atheist and a lapsed
Christian.

            “God?
I don’t know about any celestial design committee, I suppose I’m more
determined to believe in humans,” he began.

            Chloe
coughed nervously and stared at the floor mat.

            “I’m
more inclined to believe that God is nothing more than a metaphor for the
strength of the human spirit,” Dr. Willard announced.

           
New
age philosophy,
her helpful voice determined smugly,
just as full of
holes and even less defendable than what you believe!

            “So…you’re
saying that you don’t believe in God, but you do think ghosts are probable?” 
Chloe asked, her confusion evident.

            “I
don’t know about God,” Dr. Willard pursed his lips as though contemplating
something.  “If you believe we were formed in his image, shouldn’t he be just a
bit more concerned with justice?  Bad things happening to good people and all
that…isn’t it more likely that he was formed in our image?  He can’t even live
up to human standards of right and wrong-”