Asylum (27 page)

The vision descended on him hard and fast, ripping him out of his body and into another. It was another time, another decade, and he was Daniel Crawford, the warden, again.

The theater was packed with observers. Everyone craned in their seats to witness his technique. Half of them believed his claims and half of them didn’t, but they all wanted to know his secret procedure, just in case it worked.

And poor, broken Dennis, strapped to the gurney. At least, as a side effect of the preparatory operations, he had finally been cured of his rage.

Then came the screech of the intercom. That stupid new secretary, Julie. If this was anything less than dire, he’d have her head.

“The police! The police are on their way!”

The police? Coming here?

Somebody told.

And now his audience was fleeing in a frenzy. He seethed in anger at the pounding of their footsteps, and the voices rising around him like the tide of some obliterating sea. Those cowardly doctors tumbled over one another as they ran.… So the police were coming. How about that.

Dennis screamed, shocking Daniel out of his thoughts. Had he not given him a high enough dose of sedative? Did it matter? This was to be the final experiment, after all.

Cursing, Daniel hurried to finish—far sloppier than he would have liked—and then, throwing off his bloody gloves, he fled, the last to leave. The last but for Dennis. He switched off the lights.

The others were long gone when he reached his office. He lost precious time moving a cabinet over the door to the lower levels, his last hope to pretend that his practices were entirely aboveground. He took off his spectacles and jammed them onto the hook, residual blood smearing down the wall. Papers, photographs, all of it scattered. He hardly cared. This was a minor setback, he’d give them that, but his work would live on. His legacy. His life.

The door was flying open. The police were pouring in. And then there were cuffs and shackles, much like the ones holding Dennis down below.

Somebody told.

It was the girl, he thought, it had to be the girl. She was every nurse’s favorite, with her dancing, her smiling, her beautiful hair.… One of them must have gone soft, let her slip, and now it was all crashing down because of her, the snitch with the little scar on her head. She’d seen and understood too much.

But his legacy had lived on, and now Warden Crawford was back where he belonged. In the amphitheater where Dennis had waited for him all these years.

Only one thing wasn’t right. His vision wasn’t quite perfect.… Everything was spinning.

“Dan? Dan?” Someone was calling his name.

He reeled and tumbled forward, finding the gurney and gripping it for balance. A pale, quivering face peered up at him. Dennis, or was it … Felix? Either way, he had the scalpel, it was right there in his hand, waiting to carve.…

Dan forced himself to focus, to look again. This wasn’t him. He wasn’t the warden, and would never be.

He dropped the scalpel. The clatter echoed through the theater.

I’m not you. I will never be you.

“Fleshy, bendy, moldy fool, this isn’t over,” Felix whispered. “It’s far from over.”

Dan shoved the gurney away in fear and disgust, far, far out of his reach. It tumbled and fell over, and, strapped to the top, Felix groaned before going quiet.

“It’s this place,” Dan shouted. Jordan had gone to Abby, forcing open her restraints and shaking her awake. “We have to get out of the asylum.” He stumbled toward his friends. “We need to leave, all of us.”

He reached the other gurney just as Abby was woozily climbing down. She flung herself into his arms, but Dan only gave her the quickest squeeze before pulling away. “We have to get out of here, it’s Brookline.… Me and Felix … You have to help me get him far away from here.”

“That’s going to be tough. He’s out cold.” Jordan had sprinted back to the fallen gurney. He glanced up from where he knelt, glasses askew. “But if we all lift together I think we can carry him in the restraints.”

Dan nodded, steeling himself as he returned to Jordan’s side. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER

N
o
 36 

T
hey were met halfway up the final staircase by Teague, flanked by two other officers. Sagging under the weight of Felix, Dan threw a hand up to shield his eyes from the blinding flashlights.

“Now you decide to show up,” Jordan muttered, though the three of them were only too happy to relinquish the job of carrying Felix to three grown men; Dan’s roommate had put on some serious muscle weight, and each moment they spent trying to haul him out of the basement was another chance for the warden to sink his hooks back into Dan.

“I couldn’t find these yahoos anywhere in the building, so I called the station before following you two in,” Jordan explained. “At least one of us was thinking straight.”

“Anyone injured?” Teague asked, herding the kids up the stairs. When they reached the top and the alcove with the alphabetized cabinets, he oversaw the transfer of Felix to the other officers.

“Felix took a hit to the head,” Dan answered. He watched as they lifted Felix between them and struggled to fit through the hole in the wall that led to the warden’s public office. Curious, Dan thought.… If it hadn’t been Jordan trapping them inside with the cabinet, who had it been?

Teague shot him a look, arching one brow.

“Yes, I’m the one who knocked him out,” Dan continued, smoothing the hair back from his head; a terrible headache was brewing at the base of his skull. “I’ll tell you everything, just …”

“We need to get out of here,” Abby spoke up for him, appearing at his side and hooking her arm through his. “Please, just question us outside, or at the station. Wherever you want, but not here.”

“Fine. But I’m keeping my eyes on you three.”

Teague made good on that, corralling them right outside the door to Brookline. As soon as the deputies had loaded Felix onto a stretcher and then into an ambulance, they reappeared to help guard the kids. “So,” Teague said, shining his flashlight in their eyes again.

“Cut it out,” Jordan said, ducking his head. “We just found your killer, so could you please not—”

He wasn’t given the chance to finish his sentence. Through the glare of Teague’s flashlight and the police car lights, Dan saw a shadow speed across the grass.

“Teague!” he shouted. Something small and sharp had reflected off the whirring lights. The figure held a knife. “Watch out!”

But Teague wasn’t the target. Dan had just enough time to guard his face with his forearms before the woman was throwing herself at him, screaming. Dan recognized her a half second before she was in his face. It was Sal Weathers’s wife.

She screamed an ungodly scream.

Dan fell back, feeling the knife slash close enough to cut his sleeve. His friends and Teague joined the fray, trying to reel the woman back in without getting cut. Teague pulled out his gun and shouted, “Nobody move!”

“Wait! Don’t hurt her!” Abby rushed over to the woman, throwing herself between her and Teague. Sal’s wife went still for just a moment, but it was all the officers needed to grab her by the arms and drag her away across the grass.

She was screaming again, absolutely ballistic. “Wait!” Abby cried, following. “Did you see that?” she called to the boys over her shoulder. “Her forehead … Did you see it?”

She wasn’t waiting for an answer, and both Dan and Jordan had to run to keep up.

“Did she cut you?” Jordan panted.

“No, but my shirt got it pretty bad.”

One last spike of adrenaline carried Dan to where Sal’s wife was kneeling in the damp lawn, the knife finally wrestled from her hands. Abby stood in front of her, slowly drawing an object from her pocket. A chipped piece of porcelain that sparkled under the blazing police lights.

He might have known Abby had been the one to take it. Of course she would have been making trips to the basement without him. Dan finally understood.

“Do you recognize this?” Abby asked the woman softly.

The woman’s hair had gotten ruffled in the commotion, and now, with her bangs swept aside, the scar on her forehead was plainly visible. A scar just like the little girl in the photo. Abby spun the figurine, making it dance.

From where she knelt, Lucy reached for the ballerina. Abby let her take it, smiling sadly.

“You’re Lucy, right? Lucy Valdez? My name is Abby Valdez. You had a brother …
have
a brother. My father. I know it’s a lot to take in, but I think he would love to see you. And I want you to know that your dad, he … Well, he never forgave himself for sending you here.”

Lucy cradled the chipped ballerina in her palms, holding it close to her chest.

Dan wondered if she’d found Sal’s body in the woods, or if her rage came purely from the fact that she suspected he was the warden.

“Officer Teague,” Dan called, and the policeman hustled over to him.

“Everything all right?”

“In the basement, before we knocked Felix out, he told me that he’d killed someone else. A man from town. He said he left the body in the woods near Camford Baptist.”

“That’s awfully specific,” Teague said suspiciously. “Are you sure about that?”

“I’m just telling you what he said.”

Dan knew he was going to have a hard time getting out of this mess. When Felix came to, he might not remember all the things he’d done. And then it might be his word against Dan’s. Dan had a feeling he knew who Officer Teague liked less.

But now Teague just nodded and radioed in for someone on his team to check out the woods.

Jordan slid up next to Dan with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “She was right,” he said. “Can you believe it?”

“I can. I should have believed her sooner.”

Abby was kneeling in the grass near her aunt, watching her from a cautious distance.

“So what about Felix?” Jordan asked with a sigh. He stretched his arms in the blanket out like a cape, covering a yawn with the crook of his elbow. “Was he … Do you think he’ll recover? Are they going to put him in jail?”

Dan shrugged. “It’s up to the police, I guess. I don’t think what happened was entirely his fault, but I have no idea how the law works in cases like these. I just hope he gets help, the right kind of help.” He glanced over his shoulder at Brookline looming behind them. “Not the kind of help this place had to offer.”

“And us?”

“They’ll shut the program down,” Dan said, certain, “and we’ll go home.”

“Awesome.” Jordan kicked at the dirt. “I guess I always knew gay rumspringa would end and I’d have to leave Oz. Now I have to go back home and pretend to be straight for one more year. How
do
you stand it?”

“It’s a terrible burden, let me tell you.” They laughed, but Dan couldn’t help but worry for Jordan. What would his parents do when they found out where Jordan had really gone for the summer? “You know … If you want—I mean, if your parents get too terrible—you could come stay with me. For a while, or, I don’t know. I’m sure my parents would be cool with it.”

Jordan fixed his glasses and snorted, and Dan was certain he was going to be turned down.

“Can your mom cook?”

“No, but my dad can.”

“Sold.” Jordan stuck out his hand and Dan took it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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CHAPTER

N
o
 37 

“I
suppose they’ll send someone for Felix’s stuff,” Dan was saying, shoving the last of his books into a suitcase. Sandy and Paul busied themselves with stacking the packed bags near the door. His side of the room was virtually empty now, but Felix’s things remained untouched, a half-full Gatorade sitting on his desk.

“Poor kid,” his mother said, joining Dan at the bed. He’d already stripped the mattress and balled up the sheets. He didn’t let any of it put a hitch in his packing; even if he wasn’t eager to say good-bye to his new friends, he wanted to be out of Brookline. Every second he stayed felt like a second too many.

“Knock, knock?”

All three of them turned to find Abby at the open door. She rocked shyly on her heels, waiting to come in.

“Oh, hey. I’m glad you stopped by,” Dan said. A night’s rest at the hotel in town had done them all good—Abby looked amazing in an off-the-shoulder tunic and rubbery leggings. Her combat boots were splattered with pink and yellow paint.

“We’ll take these down to the car,” his father offered, giving Dan a look that was anything but subtle.

Even so, Dan welcomed the privacy.

“Nice to meet you both,” Abby said as his parents trooped by.

“You too, sweetie.” His mom gave him a little wave of encouragement from the door, unseen by Abby.

The balled-up bedsheets joined his books. Dan had to lean hard on the suitcase to get it to close. “You all moved out?”