Asylum

by Kristen Selleck

  “Chloe!” he said, dropping to his knees.

  She was curled up on her side in the fetal position, still shaking. Sam watched as he partially lifted her, cradling her with one arm.

  “Clo, stop,” he whispered. “stop. I’m here. You’re okay, it’s all okay.” With his free hand he brushed the dark strands of hair away from her mouth and off her face. He rubbed the back of his hand against her cheek and whispered ssshhhhh, over and over.

  Chloe’s body stiffened and then went limp, her eyes closed Seth continued to whisper at her.

  “Is she…?” Sam asked peering over his shoulder.

  Chloe’s body suddenly surged forward into a sitting position, ripping herself out of Seth’s arms. Her eyes were still closed, her head lolling on her neck.

  And then the eyes snapped open, different now, horrified eyes, eyes that saw something neither Sam nor Seth could see. Chloe began flailing wildly, slapping at herself…her legs…her thighs. Her mouth a perfect oval, the shape of someone screaming a soundless scream.

  “Do something!” Sam shrieked at Seth.

  “Chloe,” he said again, trying unsuccessfully to grab her hands. “Chloe, you’re safe. Chloe can you hear me? It’s okay.”

  At last, not knowing what else to do, he wrapped her in a restraining hug, not allowing her the use of her arms. Her body still struggled, fighting against his grip. She jerked her head from side to side.

  “S’ burning…gotta stop it…everything…burning…” Chloe gasped.

  “Nothing’s burning, nothing, Clo. You’re in your room, you’re safe. You’re here with me. Nothing’s going to hurt you,” he soothed.

  She fought a moment more and her body went slack again, limp. Her eyes closed. Seth leaned her back against one arm and slid the other beneath her knees. He lifted her carefully and laid her on the bed.

  “We have to call someone. She’s breathing, right? Is she breathing?” Sam asked.

  He was crouched down next to the bed, his hand against Chloe’s face, watching her intently.

  “Seth?” Sam raised her voice. “We have to call someone. This is bad. She might have to go to a hospital or something.”

  Still not answering he leaned forward, his face so close to Chloe’s that Sam thought for a moment he was going to kiss her. Instead he froze, his nose an inch from her lips.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Sam demanded.

  “Alcohol. She smells like alcohol, real strong. Was she drinking? I thought she was at the library,” he asked.

  “I thought she was too! I don’t know! I don’t-” Sam paused in the midst of the beginning of a tirade. Her eyes fell on the open bottle of vodka on Chloe’s desk. The incriminating ring of liquid and the shot glass with a tiny line of wet at the bottom, a red flag.

  “Yeah, it looks like she was,” Sam glanced at the level in the bottle with an experienced eye. “It looks like maybe four or five shots tops, though.”

  “What did she say to you when you came in?” he fired back, climbing to his feet, “What was she doing?”

  “Nothing!” Sam insisted. “She was crouched down over in the corner, and I started talking to her and she didn’t even look at me. I don’t know what the hell she was doing, freaking out-”

  “There’s broken glass everywhere!” Seth pointed at the shattered remnants of the mirror. “Was it like that when you came in? She didn’t say anything?”

  He spun around, surveying the room as though it could give him some clue as to what was going on.

  “It was like that,” Sam defended herself. She was on the floor over there, and there was glass everywhere, and I asked her why she did it, and she didn’t answer, I just-”

  “This!” Seth stabbed one finger at the wall behind her. “Was this here?”

  Sam turned. Scrawled across the wall in black marker she read the words ‘They’re watching’.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t. I don’t remember seeing it, but I don’t remember looking that way either. What do you think that’s supposed to mean?”

  “What about your ghost? He wrote trapped, help, AM, I don’t remember all of it, is this one of the messages that’s shown up before?” he asked.

  “No,” Sam shook her head. “No, and he hasn’t written anything or done anything in forever.”

  “What the hell happened in here?” he whispered. Sam got the feeling that he was talking to himself and not to her. She wrung her hands and took a few calming breaths.

  What did happen? Sam glanced between Chloe’s body, the vodka bottle, the words on the wall, the broken mirror. A growing feeling of dread, followed by a wave of guilt washed over her.

  Seth walked over to Chloe’s desk, he lifted the vodka bottle and looked at it. Then he stepped around the desk and picked up an uncapped black marker. He set it down next to the shot glass and kicked at some wadded-up balls of paper that had spilled out of the overturned garbage can.

  “Seth,” Sam said in a low voice, “I’m starting to think…now that I think about it, it’s kind of obvious what happened. I mean…she was really upset. She came in and must have pushed the desk against the door, and you didn’t see it, but when I first came in she had the window covered with a blanket too. She barricaded herself in, took a couple of shots and just started freaking out. She must have broke the mirror, and wrote on the wall herself. I don’t know if she told you or not, but it’s not the first time. She’s had…an episode like this before. Seth, they put her in a nut house when she was in high school. I think she was so upset or hurt that she…what do they call it…regressed?”

  “That was different,” he answered sharply.

  “I don’t think so. I think that’s what you want to believe,” Sam said. “We’re going to have to call someone, get some help. That’s the best we can do for her right now.”

  Seth shook his head ‘no’, but didn’t say anything. Instead he stooped down, turned the garbage can upright and starting putting the paper wads back in it one at a time. As she watched, he smoothed out one of the discarded papers and began reading it.

  “I honestly think we should call her mom,” Sam continued. “It’s really our only option.”

  Seth dropped from crouching, to sitting on the ground and grabbed another wad of paper. This he uncrumpled and read as well. Then another, and another, laying each wrinkled sheet on top of each other as he finished.

  “Awww, Clo,” he finally whispered.

  “What is it?” Sam asked curiously, taking a step forward.

  Seth laid a hand on top of the stack of papers.

  “She loves me,” he said, somewhat dumbfounded.

  “Okay,” Sam blew an exasperated breath..

  Leaving him to pick through garbage, Sam began opening Chloe’s desk drawers and rifling through them.

  “What are you doing?” Seth asked.

  “Looking for her cell phone, do you see her bag anywhere? She usually keeps it in her bag,” Sam explained patiently.

  “Why do you need her cell phone?”

  “Her mom, Seth. We’re going to have to call her mom,” Sam explained.

  “We are not calling that woman,” Seth answered. “We are not!”

  “What do you propose we do? Take her to the hospital or something? Her mom will know what to do.”

  “Just…” Seth rubbed at his forehead vigorously. “just give me a second, damnit, just let me think a minute.”

  Sam threw up her hands and rolled her eyes to the ceiling as though silently petitioning the heavens.

  “When that girl down at the end of the hall, the one that left the night we went to Traverse City, started acting funny and writing on the walls or whatever, you said she was possessed, Sam,” he remembered.

  “Yeah, I don’t know, I thought she was, but she was also really really drunk,” Sam shook her head at him.

  “No! I remember you tried to tell me that someone had seen her levitate, that she was possessed and when I tried to say that maybe it
was all just an act you said…in fact your exact words were, you would not doubt me at all if you’d seen her. How is that different from what’s happening to Chloe? Why were you so sure Mel was possessed, but Chloe isn’t?” he demanded.

  “Okay, she’s possessed. There, does that make you happy? I still think we should call her mom-”

  “No!” he cut her off, “No. I’ll think of something. Just give me a minute to think.”

  He went to the bed and bent down at Chloe’s side, covering her hand with his own.

  “Wake up,” he whispered. “Come out of it, Clo. What should I do? What do you want me to do, how can I help? Come back.”

  Chloe didn’t stir. Sam pursed her lips and shook her head at him. Why did men have to be completely useless whenever there was a real crisis? She looked away from him in disgust. The window reflected the room like a black mirror. Sam blinked and rubbed her eyes.

  In the window, only the top of Seth’s head was visible. There was the dresser, the desks, herself, and…someone else. A man, one she had never seen before, with a striped shirt…suspenders, a clean-shaven face with a cleft chin, and even from a distance, dark angry eyes. Had he been visible in the room, he would have been standing right beside her. When she finished rubbing her eyes, he was still there…glowering at her.

  “Seth…” she whispered.

  Seth looked up and turned his head, following her gaze to the window. He jumped to his feet, one hand still on Chloe. The image in the window faded, dissolved until they could only see themselves.

  “Oh my…GOD,” Sam gasped.

  Seth whipped his head around to stare at her, and his eyes lit up. Something in his head must have clicked.

  “I know what to do,” he said.

  Gathering Chloe up in his arms, he hurried out. Sam stood alone in the room for a moment, staring at the window. A slow smile crept across her face as she studied her faint reflection.

  * * *

  Chloe coughed and choked. There was smoke everywhere, burning her eyes, pouring down her throat, filling her nostrils until she couldn’t breathe. The absolute darkness made it more terrifying. She could feel her hands, but even waving them in front of where she was sure her face was, she could see nothing. Worse yet, there seemed to be no ground. Nothing firm and solid that she could flatten herself across and crawl away on. If there was fire, shouldn’t she be able to see something? Yet she could hear it, cracking and popping somewhere very close by. She tried again to breath, but couldn’t draw air. Where was she? Where was this place? She was going to suffocate.

  “You can make it stop,” A dry voice said from nearby. “Try it and see. Tell it to stop burning…it will.”

  Chloe tried to take another panicked gasp of air, and couldn’t draw anything in but smoke. She beat an invisible hand against her chest. She was going to vomit, she was going to die.

  “You don’t need to breath,” the voice said calmly. “It’s an illusion in this place, a habit of the body, one of the first things to go. Now tell it to stop burning.”

  “STOP BURNING! STOP BURNING!” she wheezed.

  For an instant she seemed to spin in the black bottomless world, and then it was silent. No smells of burning or smoke either, just darkness. She still couldn’t take a breath, but she quickly realized she wasn’t losing consciousness, her lungs just wanted to take in air. She could feel them inside working to expand. She could hear her heart beating too. Yet when she focused on it, the sound didn’t come from inside her chest, it seemed to beat all around her, it was external.

  “Wha-” she gasped in a tiny airless voice.

  “You’re trying to form words with a mouth. You don’t need that here, you just have to think them,” the voice answered.

  For a second, she could hear something else, another noise over the sound of her heart beating. It sounded like Sam. Sam yelling from far off. Her voice sounded tinny, like it was recorded on an old phonograph.

  “Where am I?” Chloe thought, and the words boomed loudly around her.

  “You’re inside yourself,” the voice replied. “It’s a hard place to get to, so well done there.”

  “What is burning? Where is the fire coming from?” she thought, wincing at the volume of her words.

  “I’m afraid that’s my fault,” the voice conceded sorrowfully. “It’s part of my reality, it comes with me. Something of a curse really, lose the body, keep all it’s experiences, especially it’s last.”

  “GEORGE!” Chloe thought-shouted.

  “In the spirit,” he agreed. “Now how about you make us some ground, and possibly some light?

  “How?” Chloe wondered.

  “Oh, this is your head, you see? You still control the body, the thought processes. I don’t claim to understand the science, but I’m quite sure that all you have to do is picture it.” he explained.

  Chloe ground her teeth and thought with all her might about the hardest most solid and level ground that she could possibly ever imagine beneath her feet. Her toes quickly smashed and bent, her senses reeled. Had she still been falling then?

  “Well done,” George’s voice applauded her effort, “Now…light?”

  Chloe squeezed imaginary eyes shut. The first thought to cross her mind was the northern lights on Presque Isle. The wavering curtain of multi-colored light illuminating the beach. When she opened her eyes, she saw water lapping against a frozen beach at night. Overhead the aurora borealis shone more brightly than she had ever seen it in real life. Blazing reds fading into fiery oranges and then flaming yellows against a backdrop of stars. Seated on a long flat rock, near at hand, a man with a thick black moustache and high collared shirt watched her patiently.

  “Very nice,” he commended her without moving his lips.

  Chloe looked down at herself and saw…nothing. NOTHING! She didn’t exist. He was a ghost and in this world, he was sitting, watching her bodiless form. She was the ghost, she did not exist. She could feel the panic starting again.

  And then Seth’s voice. So far away, some words, so faint: I’m here, you’re okay it’s all okay. She could almost feel his finger brush against her invisible cheek. She mimicked taking a deep breath.

  “Alright?” George asked.

  Chloe nodded.

  “That’s right, you exist, imagine yourself, you’ll see yourself just fine,” he encouraged.

  Again Chloe followed his advice and saw her hands, and then arms appear, like a photograph being developed. She looked down at a pair of bare feet and wiggled her toes.

  “You see?” George nodded. “The good thing about having a body, a beating heart, an electrical brain current…all this is much easier when one is alive.”

  “Alive!” Chloe repeated. “Alive in this blackness? Am I dying? I’m dying and the fire was hell, wasn’t it? I’m going to hell!”

  With a suddenness that would have taken her breath away, had she any to begin with, the fires blazed up around her, this time bright and easy to behold. The heat was instantly unbearable. Hell…she was in hell! The fires licked at her newly formed toes and legs, then like snakes they slithered up her calves, her thighs.

  “Stop it!” she screamed. “It’s burning, everything’s burning, Oh God please, stop it! Make it stop!”

  And then Seth’s voice…safe, it whispered, and that sudden overwhelming feeling that he was there, that he was near.

  “That’s right, let it go, relax,” George’s voice soothed. “It is what you want it to be.”

  The night time beach scene rematerialized in front of her. George sat unchanged on his rock. The fires were gone.

  “What is going on? Where am I?” Chloe sobbed, the words echoed around her.

  “As I said, you’re in your own head…with me. You invited me, you know. It is much easier this way. You’ve just never before made yourself accessible.” he shrugged.

  “What do you want? Why are you still here?” Chloe demanded.

  “You know about ‘the Men’, I presume. You’ve figured
that much out at least?”

  “Abraham’s Men?” Chloe clarified.

  “Certainly. And something tells me you know about THEM as well, I can see it in here…a sense of foreboding…of fear,” he nodded.

  “The bad ones…” Chloe’s thoughts whispered, as though afraid someone might overhear. “They’re watching? Is that what you meant by they?”

  George nodded.

  “Don’t think on them overlong,” he cautioned. “They can find you as well. Your kind, our kind, it’s like carrying a torch in the dark.”

  “What do you want?” Chloe demanded again.

  George smiled at her sadly.

  “To pass the buck, I’m afraid,” his voice was unreadable.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Father Andrew Finnegan was a man basically at peace. Admittedly, there were times when he wondered whether or not he was truly doing enough. His life seemed almost too easy, too comfortable. Upon entering seminary, he had all the youthful notions of great deeds to be done. At twenty-two he had envisioned himself in the white collar, spooning broth into the mouths of starving, skeletal, African children, rewarded only by the newfound devotion to God shining in their eyes. He had imagined himself sweating through jungle foliage, cutting a path towards those who had not yet the knowledge of the immaculate heart of Mary, to which he devoted himself.

  The path he had cut was quite different. Circumstances and a friend in the diocese had gotten him assigned to a parish in the U.P. early on. Back to his home, close to a gentle and loving father whose sickness had been the inspiration for his assignment.

  After his death, he had stayed on in the small church, fostering an active youth group from a rapidly dwindling population of young people. His work with the young adults had drawn the attention of the higher ups, from which had proceeded the order to take over the church in Birch Harbor. A campus church, one comprised mainly of ever-changing student faces, and a few diehard townies.