Insanity

by Susan Vaught

  For my sweet Frank, always and forever the best parrot ever.

  I believe birds go to heaven, and you’re flying with the angels.

  What hills, what hills, my own true love,

  What hills so dark and low?

  That is the hills of hell, my love,

  Where you and I must go!

  —“The Daemon Lover,” folk ballad, author unknown

  Version recorded in Harlan County, Kentucky

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I: Unforgiven

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part II: Hungry

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Part III: The Scream at the End of the Hall

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Part IV: Fear

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Susan Vaught

  Prologue

  Levi

  There was something wrong with the dog.

  I saw it when I left the store, nothing but a little thing. I would have stopped to give it some love, but I had to get back before Imogene started to worry.

  Don’t go out to night, boy. Death’s walkin’ on two legs.

  But I had gone out, because I wanted some Slim Jims and peanuts and a Coke, and now I had a mutt following me home. It was a beagle with floppy ears and a tail that didn’t wag. Its eyes were too black, or maybe its teeth were too white.

  I kept hold of my bag and walked faster, cutting in front of Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital. My breath made a fog. It was November and already cold in Never, Kentucky. Above the trees on my left, the old asylum’s bell tower hid the stars. It was dark, but the moon was bright, and I knew the way.

  Behind me, that dog let out a growl.

  Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.

  Somebody famous said that, not Imogene. Maybe it was a baseball player, but I couldn’t remember which one. Something flickered in the distance, winking between black pines and oaks.

  Flashlight?

  I glanced toward the psychiatric hospital. The back of my neck got the shivers, and that idiot dog growled again.

  The bell tower. Had the light come from way up at the top? I slowed down, even though I knew I shouldn’t, and got a new case of the shivers.

  Nothing good ever came from the top of that bell tower, or from any of the thin spots in that hospital. Imogene looked after the place as best she could, but sometimes—

  “That’s about enough, Levi,” I told myself, mocking my grandmother’s voice. I shook my head to rattle out the stupid thoughts and headed for home again.

  Something at the top of that tower turned with me. It was watching me. It was staring at my back, just like the dog was.

  “Knock it off,” I muttered, and the mutt growled, and I walked so fast I was almost running.

  My steps echoed on the path across the hospital grounds. Everything got quiet except the dog. It panted way too loud.

  Light flashed across my face and I stumbled, blinking until I could see again, and then I stopped. The dog had gotten itself in front of me, its eyes wide and its mouth open and its tongue lolling to the ground. In that weird yellow light, its shadow rose across the trees behind it.

  The shadow was giant and black and wolf-sized.

  The shadow had red eyes.

  Don’t go out to night, boy. Death’s walkin’ on two legs.

  “You got four legs,” I told the creepy dog. I barely heard myself for the blood hammering in my ears.

  Leaves crunched nearby.

  I whipped around and fixed on the sound, expecting to see—what? A real wolf? Some crazy freak with a flashlight? Lincoln Psychiatric didn’t have murderers and bad criminals now. At least, I didn’t think they did.

  Spots danced across my eyes as I squinted at the woods. Nothing. Just trees, and that old stone bell tower standing watch over Never. A single yellow light flickered way up at the top, like somebody was swinging an old-timey lantern.

  I’m not crazy. I puffed out more fog. I’d told myself that same thing a lot of times.

  A twig snapped on my right, and I jumped again.

  “It’s okay,” I told myself, watching the mist rise in front of my nose. The night smelled like wet leaves and grave dirt. “It’s just the dog.”

  The beagle stood in that strange lantern light from the bell tower. It was wagging its tail, but that didn’t seem friendly. Its shadow still had red eyes, and the shadow wasn’t wagging its tail.

  I backed away from the dog.

  It followed me, pace for pace, its lips pulled back to show fangs as big as my fingers. The wolf shadow rippled across the trees, huge and black and bristly, and the tower watched like a menace at the edge of my thoughts. My breath came shorter and my blood pumped faster.

  The hound opened its mouth and let out a howl so loud it rattled my skull. My feet tangled, and I fell backward against something warm and solid.

  A man?

  “Easy there,” said a voice deep enough to give me more shivers even as its owner kept me from spilling ass-over-teakettle and set me on my feet again.

  “The dog—” I started to say but stopped, because I had Imogene’s blood and she had raised me to use it since my parents died, and people didn’t always see what I saw. If I asked him about his shadow, the man would think I was a runaway from the hospital. What was he doing here, anyway? Most people stayed off these paths.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just trying to get home.”

  The man let me go, and then he laughed at me.

  I didn’t like the sound.

  The guy, he was tall and mostly bald, but muscled like a runner. His dark skin didn’t have any scars, and he was wearing suit pants and a nice shirt with a tie, but no jacket. Church clothes. He looked like a preacher.

  “You’re one of them,” he said. “That’s too bad. But better now, before you’re old enough to make real trouble.”

  The beagle snarled, and the man’s black eyes flicked to the dog. He muttered something I couldn’t hear, but I felt the power in every word. The mutt’s growl turned into a whine, and it shrank away and faded into the trees like a ghost.

  Cold truth settled on my skin, and my teeth started to chatter.

  That dog hadn’t been growling at me. It had been growling at the preacher-man. Thunder rumbled from somewhere far away, and the light from the bell tower flashed before it went out.

  Did the lunatics in Lincoln Psychiatric still run screaming through the halls when it s
tormed? I saw that on a news special one time. It used to be that way a hundred years ago. Imogene said so, and my grandmother always told the truth.

  Run, her voice whispered in my brain, but it was too late.

  The man moved when I did, grabbing me and yanking me backward. My bag went flying as I crashed to the hard-packed ground of the path, spilling peanuts and Slim Jims all over the ground. Agony tore up my right arm as my bone snapped at the elbow. It hurt so bad I went dizzy and dumb. My face bashed against pebbles, and one of my teeth broke.

  My thoughts knotted up and I yelled, but I didn’t hear anything because my throat didn’t work. I used my good arm to push myself up, but the preacher-man threw smelly powder in my face.

  I coughed.

  It burned. I couldn’t breathe.

  Was the preacher-man saying a prayer? He rambled on about forgiveness and duties and saving souls. The guy was nuts.

  It’s okay. I’m still breathing. I’m still alive.

  I blinked up at the man, who had daggers in his big hands.

  I’m still alive.

  I told myself again.

  And then, I wasn’t.

  Part I

  Unforgiven

  Forest

  Her face reminded me of black marble, carved with wrinkles and frowns and sad eyes, always looking far away like she could see things I’d never understand.

  Her hands—now those were cypress roots, dark and knobby, and rough when I had to touch them.

  She never let go of the picture.

  The photo was older than me, and she talked to it as though it were a person, down low where nobody could hear. It was laminated, and when I bathed her I’d wrap it in a plastic bag, because take that picture away from Miss Sally Greenway and she’d be throwing everything on the ward straight at your head. I never really looked at the photo, because I was too busy to pay it much mind.

  How stupid was that? Stupid and wrong. That picture was the most important thing to the eighty-seven-year-old woman I dressed and fed almost every day. I should have looked at it.

  When I finally did, I almost lost my mind.

  Chapter One

  “Be careful, Forest!” Leslie Hyatt slapped my hand so hard I almost dropped the comb I was trying to wedge into Miss Sally’s stubborn white hair.

  Leslie’s dark eyes narrowed, doubling the wrinkles on her forehead. When she lifted her arm to point her finger at me, her oversized black scrubs fanned out until she looked like a giant bat. “What if she was your grandmama, girl? Would you want her hair pulled by some fool teenager can’t make a braid without yanking the poor woman bald?”

  She stepped toward Miss Sally, who sat in her wheelchair without moving or speaking, holding that black-and-white picture of a man she hadn’t seen since she was young. “Give me that.” Leslie took the comb away from me. “I done told you, it’s like this.”

  She worked the teeth of the comb, gently teasing smaller and smaller sections of hair. For her, they stayed right where she put them.

  I fiddled with the rowan-wood bracelet on my right wrist, running my fingers across its familiar carved surface and smooth iron beads. “Sorry.” I managed a smile despite my stinging knuckles. I liked Leslie. She’d been helping me learn since I first came to work on second shift at Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital.

  That was six months ago—two days after I turned eighteen, aged out of foster care, and had to take my GED and find a place to live. When I wasn’t pulling hair, I was bottom-of-the-line staff at Lincoln, nothing but a bath-giver, a bed-pan scrubber, a bed-changer. I clipped fungusy nails, changed stinky clothes and disgusting diapers, made beds, fed patients, got spit on and bit and kicked and called names—whatever it took to keep nineteen elderly folks clean and comfortable in a forgotten basement ward in a double-forgotten state psychiatric hospital. If it paid me a salary and provided insurance and earned me overtime privileges so I could make more money, I’d do it, and I’d smile and mean it. Every dollar I got to put into savings instead of spending on rent and food was a dollar toward getting to college—and getting out of Never, Kentucky.

  While Leslie worked on Miss Sally’s hair, something rumbled outside the cedar-colored limestone walls. It came on slow and quiet, but it built and built and built until the barred windows rattled and the fluorescent lights flickered. All along the single hallway of Lincoln’s geriatric ward, patients grumbled or whimpered or shifted in their wheelchairs. A few started rolling toward their rooms.

  “It’s all right,” Leslie told them, easing up on her combing. “It’s just Maintenance caving in those old tunnels under the Administration Building.” Her deep tone rippled across the stone floor like the kind of thunder that made people smile and sleep deeper at night. She was around sixty years old and had come to work at Lincoln when she was twenty-three. She had known some of these patients for most of her life—and theirs. They stopped rolling, or at least stopped fussing and looking worried.

  The building rattled again, and this time the lights blinked off. The few seconds of darkness before the backup generator kicked on made me gasp. We had no real windows down here, just a few rows of glass panes so high they touched the ceiling—and it was October, so it got dark almost as soon as we finished serving dinner.

  When Leslie grabbed my arm, I jumped.

  “You got to stay calm,” she told me in a gentle voice lined with steel. “They’re helpless, and they don’t know what’s going on. All this jackhammering and blasting, it’s likely to give some poor soul a heart failure.” She handed the comb back to me. “As nervous as you get, you really planning to work your first double to night, this close to Halloween?”

  Why was my heart beating so hard? I tried to answer but worried I would squeak at the thought of spending the night in the hospital, so I nodded instead.

  “Well, okay.” Leslie shook her head. “You’re cut out to work with my little peoples down here, but I don’t know if you got what it takes for night shift. When the bells start ringing and you’re runnin’ the dark halls pissin’ yourself before you can get to a bathroom, you remember I warned you.”

  “The bells don’t ring.” I went back to combing Miss Sally’s head, careful not to tangle my bracelet in her hair. “They told us so in orientation. Hasn’t been a sound out of Tower Cottage for thirty years.”

  Miss Sally started talking to her picture, all little whispers and laughs. I caught “bells” a few times.

  “Thirty years is what they say.” Leslie winked at me and headed back to the patient whose hair she’d been combing out before she came to help me with Miss Sally.

  “Bells,” Miss Sally whispered again, staring down at her photo.

  When Lincoln was built back in 1802, the superintendent’s residence got a tower that had three big bells at the top. They rang for wake-up, meals, and bedtime, five times a day, regular as the clock on the face of that odd-colored limestone. If the bells rang any other time, people in Never were supposed to bolt their shutters, lock their doors, and come help look for whichever patient had escaped. Back then, four thousand patients lived at the hospital, some from the day they were born to the day they died. Today, we had maybe three hundred patients, mostly people too old or too sick to go to placements in Never or the surrounding towns in southern Kentucky. Tower Cottage was closed around 1980 because it cost too much to keep it in good repair. Lincoln used it to store files and records now.

  “Don’t walk at night,” Miss Sally told her photo as I finally got a good start on a braid. “If the bells ring, don’t walk at night.”

  My fingers went still.

  Did I hear that right?

  Miss Sally talked in sentences, but they were usually all gibberish with some names and real words now and then.

  “Don’t walk at night,” she said again, then nodded her head like she was agreeing with somebody.

  I let go of her hair and walked around her wheelchair until I could kneel in front of her and look into that carved-marble face. Her eyes we
re fixed on her photo, and her lips were moving.

  Another explosion sounded in the distance, then rippled through the old hospital like a storm about to break.

  “Hope they know what they’re doing over there,” Leslie said loud enough for me to hear her across the hall. “Them tunnels been a menace for years.” Without taking a breath, she went straight into, “It’s all right, everybody. It’s okay. Even if they knock that old tower on its head, we’ll be fine down here.”

  “Don’t walk at night,” Miss Sally whispered to me as she eased her knotty fingers onto my bracelet. She touched the wood and took a breath, then looked at me—really looked at me. The film of confusion cleared from her eyes.

  Chills broke across my neck and arms. My mouth fell open. I needed to say something back to her, but I couldn’t think of anything that made sense.

  Miss Sally held out her photo as though she wanted me to take it.

  No way. No way.

  She shook the photo at me and whispered, “He wants to talk to you.”

  I absolutely could not move.

  I knew Miss Sally had an illness, that she had been hearing voices and talking to that picture since way before I was even alive. I’d heard the tales of how Miss Sally had been married and had kids, but her mind went south after her last baby, and she started running naked in the streets and screaming about “haints” and the “other side” and listening to voices nobody else could hear. I had no idea what they called her sickness back then, but her diagnosis now was all modern and official: schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. She had never gotten better on any medicine, and she had never been able to go home again. Her husband visited her every day until sometime in 1952, when he just stopped coming.

  Miss Sally was a very sweet but very ill woman who couldn’t help that she believed in things like talking pictures. It was my job to stay in reality and help her. I needed to be kind to her and comfort her and not upset her on purpose by ignoring the amazing gift of her holding out that picture to me, but I didn’t want to look at it. I really, really didn’t.