Inside the Asylum

by Mary SanGiovanni

“I…I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” he replied, scratching at his arm, “something bad always happens when people hear about them. After I told the doctors, they medicated me. After I told the cops, they arrested me. After I told the lawyer and the judge, they put me here. And after I told the shrinks here, they told me I couldn’t go home. They all said they’d listen, that they’d be fair, and they lied. They weren’t fair. They think I’m crazy.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  Henry looked startled. “No?”

  Kathy smiled. She thought it came across as warm and reassuring enough. “No. But I do think it’s important we talk about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I think you have a very special gift. Not only can you picture things so vividly in your head that they seem real, but you can actually take it a step further and make them real. It’s an incredible talent. Like, I know your friends maybe once were imaginary, but you’ve made them real. Am I right?”

  Henry nodded, but he looked at her with suspicion.

  “I think you wanted to create a beautiful place, a place to escape to, and people to take you in…to protect you. Shelter you. Love you.”

  Henry looked back at his lap again. She was losing him.

  “Do they scare you sometimes?”

  That got his attention. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you ever afraid of what they’ll do? What they can do—without you, I mean? Like when you’re sleeping?”

  “I know people think they killed the others in here, but they wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t hurt people who aren’t hurting me.”

  “Well, Henry, what if they believed those other patients were going to hurt you, or get in your way?”

  Henry shook his head vigorously. “No. No, they wouldn’t do stuff behind my back.” He tried to turn his expression away from her, but despite his protests, she thought he secretly very much believed what she was telling him. “They come from me. That’s what Dr. Ulster said. They’re reflections of my feelings. Pieces of my personality. Their thoughts are my thoughts and their actions are my wishes, but they…” His voice trailed off.

  “Aren’t real,” she said softly. “But we know that’s not true, don’t we?”

  Slowly, Henry nodded. After several seconds of silence, he said, “You want me to wish them away, don’t you?”

  “I know how you must feel about them, but they are hurting people, Henry. I just don’t want to see them hurt you or get you in any more trouble.”

  “I don’t know how to wish them away,” he said. His voice sounded very small.

  “Maybe you could try to do whatever you did to wish them to be,” she offered.

  Henry looked up at her and scoffed. “So I should go suffer another twenty-five years of abuse and torture to get up enough juice to undo them?”

  “No,” she said quickly, “I didn’t mean—”

  “I can’t stop them,” he said, “even if I wanted to. If all they want to do is be people, why not let them?”

  “Because that isn’t all they want. They’re changing things, changing people. They want to bring that place you made up in your head outside of it, to drop it on top of this world.”

  “They’re undoing reality out there,” Holt said, “for everyone.”

  “So now you know how I feel,” Henry mumbled.

  “Henry, we’re going to stop them. They may have been good to you once, but they’re not good for you now. Surely some part of you, whatever part is still connected to them, sees that. You don’t want them to hurt anybody else, do you? You’re not a killer like they are.”

  Henry’s eyes flashed anger. “They never killed anyone I didn’t want dead!” he shouted. “Bad people who deserved to die. Bad people who hurt me. They saved me! They were my friends when no one even wanted to know me. No one’s ever been there for me like they have!”

  “I admire your loyalty,” Kathy said patiently. “But you need to ask yourself if, once they’re free to be their own entities, they will be as loyal to you. After all, they have been doing things behind your back whether you believe that or not. I know because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen them. And they’ve been up to an awful lot. What they’ve accomplished so far, they’ve done using the words and rites of bad people…and your girl, well, she did some bad things to get that information.”

  “Don’t you dare talk about Maisie like that! She loves me and she takes care of me and she’d never do anything to scare me or hurt me.”

  “I’m sorry, Henry, but I think she’s done with all that now. Done with you,” Kathy said softly.

  “No! You’re lying! You’re fucking lying!”

  “I’m not. And I need your help.”

  “Why should I help you?”

  “Because your friends are looking for the kind of trouble that has your name on it this time,” Ernie broke in, clapping a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “They plan to do you wrong, son. I think you know that deep down, too.” He pointed to the mangled remains of his ear. “Your friend Edgar did that. The boy with fire in his eye.”

  “Edgar did that?” Henry reached out to touch the damage but changed his mind and pulled his hand away. “Edgar usually just sees what’s going on, or what will happen, or what already did. He never hurts anyone, not unless—”

  “Unless Orrin or Maisie tell him to?”

  “No…no, not unless the Viper tells him to,” Henry said, dazed.

  “Who’s the Viper?” Kathy asked.

  “The only one I’m not sure is one of mine,” Henry said.

  The door behind them opened. Kathy tensed and could tell from the body language of the others that they, too, were ready for a fight. The bowed blond head and the silhouette of the figure as it leaned against a crutch and limped into the room were familiar. The figure paused just inside the doorway and looked up.

  “Well,” Toby said, “looks like I’m late to the party.”

  * * * *

  “Toby, how—what are you doing here?” Kathy asked, surprised.

  “Looking for you,” he said. He was a little out of breath, and despite his reptile grin, he carried a faint grimace of pain on his features. How he was managing to stand on those swollen, purple ankles was, Kathy supposed, simply a testament to his force of will. He didn’t just want to find her; he believed he needed to, though why was beyond her. She would have thought he’d have been enjoying the chaos.

  “You found me,” she said flatly.

  “So I did.”

  “Toby, they want me to make them go away—Maisie and the others.” Henry still sat on the bed, his hands fidgeting in his lap, his head slightly bowed, but he looked up at Toby with earnest desperation.

  Toby sighed and slumped against his crutch. “Yeah, kid. This one time I think they may be right.”

  Kathy and the others turned to him with sharp surprise. Toby was agreeing with them?

  “But…I don’t have anyone else. Only them,” Henry said, unshed tears glittering in the dim moonlight of the room.

  “I know it feels that way,” Toby said. “I know you feel alone. But you’re not alone. You’re surrounded by people who care. You’ve got Pammy Ulster, right? Good old Dr. Pam. And you have Ernie, here. And my sister. If she says she’s here to protect you, you can trust that. It’s her job, Henry, and she’s good at it.”

  Kathy gaped at her brother. He sounded sincerely concerned and honestly sympathetic…but she knew he wasn’t capable of sympathy or empathy. He either didn’t understand that people really did have feelings or couldn’t imagine such feelings as having any real significance compared to his own. He no doubt had an ulterior motive in manipulating Henry into thinking he cared, but still, he did genuinely seem to want what she did—to stop the tulpas. For the moment, their goals were al
igned, and just then, Kathy didn’t care what her brother’s reasons were, so long as he could convince Henry to make the monsters go away.

  Henry took some time to consider what Toby was saying, and then replied, “I told her I didn’t know how. And it’s true. I don’t.”

  “That’s okay,” Toby said with that small smile that made her skin crawl. “I do.”

  Chapter 11

  Kathy and her ragtag team made it to the recreation room on the third floor without incident. They had heard some banging around in the art therapy room, but Ernie had been quick; he’d locked the door from the outside before anything in the room knew they were there. Although they crept past the door as quietly as those echoing halls would allow, Kathy couldn’t help feeling that the things beyond the locked door could feel them. A partly mechanical appendage slapped the little glass window, and ivy-like tendrils hissed and wiggled at them from beneath the door.

  In the rec room, they barricaded the double doors with what little furniture was left. One or two of the couches were missing, as were the chess and checkers tables. Gone, too, was the vending machine that had once delivered candy bars on a credit system to patients who maintained good behavior. Kathy thought there might have once been a pinball machine and an arcade game against one of the far walls, but they were both gone, as well. The thought of having to go toe to toe with a Space Invaders cabinet was so absurd and so surreal that it was both laughable and terrifying.

  They set up folding chairs in a small circle—like group therapy, Henry commented—and sat down, with Toby at the head of the circle. He probably would have enjoyed holding court like that, but his face was etched with pain and he talked through gritted teeth. He grunted as he shifted forward on the chair.

  “As I was saying, the best way to dispel tulpas is for their creator to deconstruct them. However, as my dear sister pointed out, we might just be beyond that point now. These tulpas have used very powerful spells to assure their place in this world. And these spells aren’t easily undone, I can assure you. Still”—he leaned back stiffly in the chair—“there are ways.”

  “And you,” Holt said with equal measures of incredulity and distrust, “you know these ways?”

  Toby fixed a stare on Holt that spoke of his own mistrust of police. “It was once my job to know, so yeah.”

  “What do you need from us, Toby?” Ernie appeared to be genuinely interested.

  That hard, black hole of a stare loosened a little on Toby’s face, and he said, “First, Henry needs to be on board with making them go away.”

  The others turned to Henry. Kathy could see he looked genuinely scared. They were asking a lot. She knew that. From a psychological standpoint, what they wanted Henry to do could very well break his mind irrevocably. Kathy struggled with that, but not nearly as much as she thought she should. It made her more uncomfortable to imagine she shared even the slightest sociopathic streak with her older brother.

  Henry took in the expectant faces around him and with a sigh, finally nodded. “Okay. Yeah.”

  “You can’t back out no matter what they say to you,” Toby warned. “I’m serious, man. If you hesitate even for a second, they’ll know and they can take advantage of that.”

  “I know,” Henry said with a defensive twitch of the shoulders. “They have to go. I know.”

  “Okay,” Toby said, accepting Henry’s acquiescence. “Then we’re going to need some of the usual things. I assume you brought the usual items?”

  Kathy held up her bag. “Orgonite with black tourmaline, white sage, a black candle, chalk for the triangle, and a lighter. And I figured some more exotic items might be useful—a Key of Thniaxom the Traveler and an Artifact of Iaroki, in particular.”

  Toby looked impressed. “Way to think ahead, little sis. Now, we’re also going to need sleeping pills, a sharp knife or dagger—or maybe a scalpel if that’s all you can find—and that small black bag behind the loose piece of wall in my room. Anything else we may need is in there.”

  “Okay, so pretend half of us in the room don’t have any idea what you two are talking about,” Holt said. “What exactly are we doing?”

  “We’re going to create a way to fight back. An egregore.”

  “A what now?” Ernie asked.

  “A manifestation of our own collective will—a kind of tulpa, only less conscious, less aware of itself. Think of it as our creating, say, an arsenal and not a being. I’ll show you how to do it. We’re going to use the arsenal to…well, to strengthen us, for starters, and then to weaken and destabilize Maisie and her friends. Then Henry is going to wish them away, right, Henry?”

  “And if that doesn’t work?” Henry asked.

  “Then we move on to plan B. If we can’t make them disappear on their own, we’ll force them to go someplace else.”

  Holt shrugged. “I know I’m out of my depth, here, okay? I don’t know anything about this voodoo shit, but if Kathy is okay with everything, then just tell us where to stand and when.”

  Kathy thought he looked clearly uncomfortable at having to put any of his trust in a serial killer. Holt, of all people, wasn’t about to forget what Toby was.

  She tried to allay the man’s fears. “From what I know and what I’ve researched, I think this is the way to go.”

  “Then we’ll get you what you’re missing, so we can start,” Ernie said. “The dispensary beyond the double doors out by the nurse’s station has some aspirin, maybe a box or two of Aleve. You want narcotics or even something like Ambien, we gonna have to go upstairs and get it out of the pharmaceuticals closet. Your bag ain’t no thing; that’s right next door. But for something sharp, you can either go down to the kitchens on the first floor or the med center on the fourth. I’m guessing you less likely to run into those things out there moving up a floor rather than down two.”

  “I agree with Ernie,” Holt said. “I think Ernie and I should head up to the fourth to get the scalpel and the sleeping pills and, Kathy, maybe you pop over to your brother’s room and get his bag?”

  “Works for me,” Kathy said.

  “I’ll watch Henry,” Toby offered.

  “Someone needs to watch Toby,” Holt said, casting a quick, undisguised glare at Kathy’s brother.

  Toby shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Detective, I’m not in much condition to get into trouble. I think your worry may be a bit misplaced.”

  Holt regarded him coldly and seemed on the verge of saying something when Kathy took his arm.

  “They’ll be fine,” she said, ushering out the men and closing the door behind her. “I’ll only be gone a minute, and then I’ll be right back here to watch them both.” However, she also felt a flash of unease at leaving her brother alone with Henry. She still didn’t completely understand his motivations in helping her. Ever since the day she’d found his trophy box of finger bones in the back of his closet, she’d made it a point to learn his tells, to figure out what he was after long before she agreed to even continue speaking with him. It bothered her that she couldn’t tell what he looked to get out of helping in this situation. It bred a quickly growing bad feeling that she was only trading on a lesser of two evils, and only temporarily.

  “We’ll meet you back here as soon as we can,” Holt said. “If we don’t run into trouble, it shouldn’t take us long.”

  “Okay,” Kathy said. “Be careful, guys. If you can avoid letting them touch you in any way, do it. If they touch you, they can feed on your auras and get inside your head.”

  The men gave her grim nods and moved off down the hall. She turned to her brother’s room.

  In all the years that Toby had been confined to Connecticut-Newlyn, she had only ever seen his room three times. The first had been when he was first committed. The second had been when she’d come to get him for their father’s funeral. The third had been for his thirtieth birthday. They had been three distinc
tly uncomfortable moments in her life, and she didn’t look forward to adding a fourth.

  She took a deep breath and went to the closed door next to Henry’s. Her hand paused on the knob. It was just a door, and not even a very impressive one at that. She’d dealt with worse doors, and worse things behind doors than old ghosts and sour memories. She could handle this.

  Kathy pushed open the door, and as she stepped across the threshold, a flood of feelings came back to her.

  “Oh, Kat. Silly, stupid Kat. You should have stayed out of my room.”

  It had been hot that night, hot and miserably sticky. She’d just wanted a t-shirt. She’d gone rummaging in his closet and found an old Metallica shirt…and his little box of human finger bones. She would have given anything to believe those bones were anything else, meant anything else other than trophies of the women he’d killed.

  She remembered how one minute she’d been thinking she had to put the box back before he found out, that he’d be so angry, and the next minute, he’d been pulling her hair hard and dragging her to the floor. She remembered the box flying out of her hand and Toby straddling her, reeking of whiskey. She remembered the storm of hate in his eyes and the shiny new knife.

  “You know, I could do you right here. I’ve thought about it, you know. I could fuck you and stab you to pieces and drag whatever’s left of you out into the woods. I’d hide you better than the others. Dad would neeeever find you. No one would ever find you.”

  She’d felt sick to her stomach.

  “But you’re my sister. I don’t want to kill you—really, I don’t…”

  He was so heavy on top of her. His erection cut into her hip. He was so very heavy.

  “But damn, do I ever want to cut you.”

  Then he’d pressed the blade into her skin just above her left eyebrow and pulled the blade down, skipping over her eye and landing on her cheek just below the eye socket. Then he dragged the blade down farther, all the way to her jawbone.

  All that screaming, an echo in the chambers of her mind now, sounded like it was coming from outside her head. Everything had blurred. Toby had done that. The pain and tears and the screaming had made everything blur. She remembered being sure he was going to kill her, that one of her fingers would end up in that little box with all the others. She had been afraid to die back then.