Asylum: The Afterlife investigations #1

by Ibsen, Ambrose

  “Yes, professor, how are you? I hope it isn't too late. I was just calling to let you know that I'd gotten ahold of my groundsman, Terrence. By the looks of it, the only day this week he'll be able to visit the asylum is tomorrow. Does that work for you? I understand that the semester is out right now, and that many of your club members may be off campus at the moment. We can reschedule if you'd prefer—”

  “No,” I interjected, “That'll be fine. Perfect, as a matter of fact. Any specific time?”

  “Well,” continued Blake, “he tends to arrive early in the day for his inspections, but considering the nature of your work he'd be willing to come later in the day, so that you might enjoy some time there after dark. I imagine that would be a better time to commune with the spirits, wouldn't you agree?”

  I chuckled. “Oh, of course. That'll be fine.”

  “Excellent. I'll have him arrive at dusk—maybe around 7 or 8 PM, how does that sound? And, of course, I'm going to have him bring along those waivers we talked about. Once you've signed those, he'll take you on a tour.”

  “Excellent! Thank you for this, Mr. Blake. I have a few students who'd be interested in joining me. We appreciate this a great deal.”

  With the appointment made to meet the next evening at 7 PM, I hung up and pulled off onto a side street, letting the car idle.

  “What did he say?” asked Jake.

  “He says we're free to visit the asylum tomorrow evening. The groundskeeper, Terrence, is going to be there to do his routine inspection and will give us a tour,” I said.

  “Awesome! What time?” asked Elizabeth, shaking the headrest to my seat so violently I feared it might pop off.

  “7 PM,” I replied. Then, licking my lips, I added, “Now, isn't that something?”

  “What?” asked Jake.

  I checked the date and time on my phone, shrugging weakly. “We're going to be visiting the asylum on the 28th. The 28th of March. That's the 28th anniversary of the Third Ward Incident, on the nose.” I frowned, raking a hand through my hair and leaving my wavy locks disheveled. “I don't want to sound paranoid, but that's a hell of a coincidence. The number twenty-eight... it keeps turning up. What are the odds of us visiting the place on the anniversary of the killings? I mean, if we stick around the building long enough, we could conceivably be there within the hour—the minute—all of that went down.”

  Jake and Elizabeth talked it over, failing to see any great significance in the timing. Probably because I'd done a poor job of articulating my dread.

  There was something more than a little strange about our ending up at Chaythe Asylum at that particular date and time. It felt like more than mere coincidence... it felt like we were being led, guided into the place by some outside force. On the one hand, that seemed completely ludicrous; so many factors had contributed to our arranging a visit to the asylum, and many of them had been random variables. There was no way we could have been influenced by some external force—no way I could have known when Terrence, the groundskeeper, would be available to let us in, for instance.

  And yet, that's exactly how it felt.

  Like we were being led along.

  But, by whose hand? Enid's?

  I laughed to myself, dismissing the notion.

  And yet it resurfaced just the same.

  “It's getting late,” I said. “I should probably get home and get some sleep. Want me to drop you off at the dorms again?”

  Elizabeth protested, suggested that we stop and get something to eat. I wasn't feeling too hungry just then, though, and proceeded to Dorchester hall, where I let the two of them out of the car. “I'll be in touch. Might want to get some sleep, as we're going to be up late tomorrow,” I told them. With a wave, I pulled out of the narrow campus drive and started for downtown.

  Where food held no interest for me in that moment, I thought that a shot of strong drink might help to steady my suddenly shaky hands and I stopped off at a liquor store for a bottle of Smirnoff vodka before returning home.

  The night wasn't over for me. Not just yet.

  17

  The first thing I did upon entering the apartment was to pour myself a generous vodka over ice.

  The second was to place a call to Dave Thackeray.

  The radio DJ would be up at this hour, would have some time to kill before going on-air. I dialed him and took to pacing around my living room, the Smirnoff scalding my throat with every nervous sip.

  If prompted I wouldn't have been able to easily explain the reason for my anxiety. It was borne, I thought, of a small feeling, a niggling and persistent feeling, that I'd gone a little too far in my investigations. I felt myself being drawn into something—a plot, or else the den of some large, predatory animal—and wanted to get my head straight. In order for me to do that, I needed some feedback from the outside world.

  It was for that reason I was turning to Dave. There was something I wanted to know.

  He picked up, and the first thing I heard was him smacking his lips. He was probably bent over a carton of sloppy Chinese takeout, based on the sucking noise he made. “Hello?” he said as he chewed.

  “Hey, Dave, it's Stephen Barlow. The professor from Moorlake? We spoke the other night, at your studio?” I gave my glass a shake, letting the ice cubes rattle. “I just had a quick question for you.”

  “Oh, right, the professor,” said Dave. He wiped at his mouth loudly. “Say, I was thinking of calling you, truth be told. After we spoke the other night, the weirdest damn thing happened.”

  I held my breath and my stomach tightened around a mass of cold vodka and acid. “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I was meaning to call you because after you came by, those calls stopped. Haven't had one since the night you were in here.” He took a bite, breathing loudly, and then added, “It's the damnedest thing. Was getting those calls for awhile and then they just dropped off.”

  I fell, more than sat, into the chair in my living room, a bit of vodka crashing over the lip of my glass and onto my fingers. I'd called Dave to ask him whether the calls had still been coming, but here he was telling me that he wasn't getting them anymore—that the one I'd taken had been his last. That meant one of two things, and I was pretty sure I knew which it was. “Y-You're fucking with me, right? This whole thing... it's been a joke, hasn't it? It's been a prank, an ornate one?”

  “No, chief. It's not like that,” he assured me. “It's legit. You were here, heard it yourself.” He chuckled into his container of food so that it echoed slightly. “Maybe I should be askin' you that, eh? You come and visit me, take that call, and suddenly whoever it is stops calling every night. Makes me wonder if those calls weren't meant for you all along, bud.”

  I cursed under my breath and emptied my glass in one go, because now I was wondering the same damn thing.

  Coincidence after coincidence... where could I draw the line? At what point could I stop writing things off as coincidence and determine the real state of affairs?

  “You still there?” he asked.

  I grunted.

  “You been there yet? The asylum, I mean? Find anything?”

  I might've told him about all of the reading I'd done, the info I'd dug up and the fact that I was scheduled to visit the place the next evening. Talkative though I was feeling, I knew nothing good would come of it, though. From Dave I could only expect lunatic ramblings, conspiracy theories, and that was the last thing my already paranoid mind needed. “Not yet,” I said. “Not sure I'm going to, to be honest with you.”

  And that last part was the truth.

  I got off the phone as quickly as I could, poured myself another glass of vodka and stared at it a long while, wondering if I was really going to go through with this tour of the asylum.

  Are you scared? I asked myself.

  Yes, I was.

  Why? I wondered.

  That was a harder question to answer.

  I felt myself—and by extension, my students—at the center of a plot already some 28 years i
n motion. In the puzzle that was the awful history of Chaythe Asylum, Jake, Elizabeth and I were new pieces. Just where we fit in was impossible to say at this point in time, but that we were on the verge of finding out I hadn't the least doubt. Up to this point, everything had come together far too easily. All of the facts I'd wanted to find about the place, all of the stories I'd heard about its most infamous personalities, had more or less fallen into my lap. Again, I felt as though I'd been led to it all for some greater purpose.

  And whatever hand had guided me, well, let's just say I somehow doubted it was divine.

  I still didn't believe in ghosts. At least, I told myself that I didn't. But here we were, being led straight through the front door of that shadowed asylum, and on the anniversary of its most publicized and horrific incident.

  Where was the truth in all of this? What could I write off as coincidence? My grip on reality was weakening. Perhaps the vodka was playing a role, but the longer I sat there, the less sure I became of everything.

  28 years ago, to the day, a 28 year old woman who'd been under the care of a mysterious and now-vanished doctor who'd been known for unorthodox and potentially illegal treatments went on a killing spree in an insane asylum. Just recently, strange phone calls were placed to a local radio DJ—the very same one who just so happened to answer my crappy ad—from a long-disconnected number associated with that asylum. And once I heard the message, those calls stopped coming altogether, almost as though they'd always been intended for me. I've spent days now, learning all about the asylum, wondering if something hasn't been trying to reach out to me from within its walls...

  I gulped down some vodka.

  But all of this really started when that kid died. The accident on Main street. He died in your arms and asked “Can you hear them?” Then, during that phone call, the man with the deep voice asked the same. This has all been in motion for some time, and I've gotten myself wrapped up in it.

  No, “wrapped up” didn't seem like the right word choice here.

  “Trapped” was more like it.

  It wasn't too late to turn back. Considering the students I had under my wing in this investigation, I couldn't afford to take any risks if I truly expected there to be something dangerous at the end of this tunnel.

  You're such an idiot, I thought, feeling my cheeks flush in shame. What are you even talking about? What could be waiting for you there except for maybe a hobo with a shiv? A stray cat or hungry raccoon? I was reading too deeply into everything I'd found, it was clear. My constant focus on the asylum had been unhealthy. Perhaps that was reason enough to put off the visit; I needed a break from all of this asylum business, from talk of killing sprees and mad doctors. Hell, my mental state had been screwed up after the accident; what I really needed was an hour-long chat with a shrink.

  My phone lit up, a handful of texts from Elizabeth popping up onto the screen. I flipped it facedown, knocking back another splash of vodka, but its persistent buzzing called me back.

  I'm bringing a digital recorder and a flashlight. Make sure your phone is fully charged for taking pictures and videos. I sent Jake out to buy a first aid kit, just in case. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so dress accordingly.

  I laughed aloud. Elizabeth had taken the initiative on preparing for this field trip. She was much more the teacher than I in this instance. Dragging my drunken ass to the closet, I picked out some clothes for the trip tomorrow; a heavier jacket that would keep out the rain, a pair of boots, my only pair of jeans. Leaving them spread out on the card table beside my laptop, I shuffled out of my current wear and stepped into my robe, returning to the living room where I planned to sip vodka in front of the TV until sleep overcame me.

  Elizabeth texted again. Pick us up outside the dorms, will you? Around 5. That'll give us time to eat first.

  I texted her back. OK.

  I ended up skipping the TV, couldn't even muster up the enthusiasm to switch it on. Legs crossed, I put on a little music on my phone—pulled up Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours on Youtube—and listened while nursing still more vodka. The room around me seemed to spin a bit, but I still wasn't drunk enough to sleep.

  I wasn't drunk enough to bury thoughts of the asylum.

  In less than twenty-four hours, I'd be driving Jake and Elizabeth out there. We'd meet Terrence and enter the building that'd so captured my fascination for days now. There was every chance that the tour would be short, safe and simple—in fact, my reason told me it was stupid to think it might turn out otherwise.

  Ol' Blue Eyes' baritone in “Glad To Be Unhappy” called to mind the deep voice of the man I'd heard on the phone back at Dave's studio, and I shivered without meaning to. Had that been the voice of Dr. W. R. Corvine? What had become of the old doctor, who'd been stripped of his privileges for alleged malpractice?

  I shut my eyes and set aside my glass, listening to the music and humming along. I pushed out all thoughts of the asylum and told myself I'd tackle them in the morning, once I'd had some sleep.

  Morning—afternoon—came fast, however, and I awoke with one hell of a headache, still in my robe. My back ached for having spent the night in the chair, and once I'd scrubbed the dried drool from my chin and dunked my head in the shower, I began to approach something like real wakefulness. Putting on the clothes I'd set out the night before, I decided to forego my usual coffee ritual and instead left the apartment, seeking out a cup at the nearest cafe. I had a solid two hours before I was set to pick up Elizabeth and Jake and decided I'd fill them with some contemplative coffee drinking and mandatory sobering-up.

  Having ordered a double shot of espresso and a glass of ice water, I took a window seat and looked out onto the street. Elizabeth had been right. It was a grey, rainy sort of day.

  And I didn't really care for the way the sky seemed to churn in the distance. Seemed to me a storm was on its way.

  18

  “Where are your supplies?” was the first thing Elizabeth asked me.

  I was sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for the two of them to climb in, and the lack of a trunk chock full of ghost hunting goodies had her shaken up. “I thought you had all of that handled.”

  She dropped her backpack and glared at me from the back seat. She slammed the door of my '05 Cavalier a lot harder than she should've and uttered, “I was hoping you'd pack the same kinda stuff.”

  Jake's backpack, less stuffed than his girlfriends, got tossed into the back. He then plopped down into the passenger seat. “Drop it,” he said. “You packed enough for all three of us.”

  I turned around, showing her my phone. “Well, at least I brought this. And look, I've got almost 70% battery left.”

  Crossing her arms, Elizabeth slumped in her seat. “You aren't taking this seriously,” she fumed. She was wearing a thin jacket made of soft-looking green fabric with a white T-shirt and jeans beneath. Jake had opted for jeans and his navy Moorlake University hoodie again; quite possibly the same ones he'd been wearing during our last meeting.

  “You're right,” I conceded. “I should have packed more stuff. Anyhow, we've got a narrow window before we're set to meet ol' Terrence at the asylum, and you mentioned something about getting food beforehand. Where do you guys want to go? I've been drinking coffee all day, trying to get myself sorted, and I feel like my blood sugar is well into the negative. If one of you doesn't speak up, I'm totally heading to Taco Bell for a taco twelve-pack.”

  “Did you at least bring a flashlight?” she pressed.

  I coasted into the right lane and picked up speed. “All right. Taco Bell it is. Hope that asylum has a bathroom.”

  * * *

  It's true that I was hungry. The half-dozen tacos I'd ordered were sitting as well as you might imagine after having spent the day drinking only strong black coffee and the previous night swilling Smirnoff.

  But I was also feeling nervous. The day was growing long, the light in the sky seeming to fade with every passing moment. There'd be light out for some hours ye
t, but it was doubtful we'd see the sunset tonight. Soon, we'd be driving down the highway, heading straight for that shuttered hulk of a building we'd so admired from the roadside some nights prior.

  And this time, we'd be able to go inside.

  At least one other passenger seemed to be on my same wave-length. Jake was being a lot more timid with his chalupa than any other college-aged jock I'd ever known. Like me, he was having second thoughts about the visit, about our pursuits.

  Which begged the question—why were we even doing this? What did we hope to find? I knew myself to be compelled by a weird curiosity surrounding the seemingly mounting coincidences regarding the institution but I had no idea what I could actually expect there, and had every reason to predict we'd find nothing but dark, dirty rooms. Elizabeth had claimed to want some convincing proof of the supernatural so that she might better understand the strange childhood episode that'd reversed her blindness, but she'd never really explained what would serve to her as bonafide proof. Would a weird light orb in a photograph be enough for her? A cold-spot in the undoubtedly drafty old building?

  I glanced back at her in the rearview. She'd ordered light—a soda, baggie of cinnamon twists and a single soft taco—which I'd playfully chided her for, and was taking a pull from her soda as I spoke. “So, we're going in. We're going to take a full tour of the place in the hopes of finding... what, exactly? When you say you want proof of the supernatural, what do you mean?”

  She considered the question a moment, combing a lock of orange behind one freckled ear. “Anything will do,” she replied. “The more intense and convincing the better.”

  Jake set down his food and glared at her from the side mirror. “Really? You want something in there to reach out and grab you?” He asked the question in a tone that betrayed annoyance.

  “It isn't enough to have it grab me,” she teased. “I need to record proof of it.”