Asylum: The Afterlife investigations #1

by Ibsen, Ambrose

  Elizabeth went first. I stepped aside as she and Jake bent down and crawled out the door. Scurrying through the mess of broken glass, they arrived on the outside and then screamed for me to follow them.

  I was the only one left in the building with that thing. It stared back at me—if empty sockets full of shadow can be said to stare—from within arm's reach, but to my surprise, it didn't move to touch me. I stood there for an instant, unable to do much but wince in fright, before my survival instincts fully kicked in and I dropped to my knees. Shards of glass dug into my pant legs as I crawled out of the building army style.

  The feel of the breeze against my skin was just about the most beautiful goddamn thing I'd ever felt.

  The three of us were out.

  Gaining my feet, I joined the other two, panting, and looked through the glass doors at the interior of the lobby, where the figure still stood.

  To my terror, it began to move. For some time it had remained stationary, but it turned out that it had merely been waiting its turn. The specter dropped onto all fours and skittered quickly through the break in the glass, joining us outside.

  My heart seized.

  For a moment, time stopped. No one breathed. The abomination paused outside the entrance and appraised us from behind its tangled mane. Its misshapen maw slipped open further in what seemed to me a smile.

  And then, like a patch of fog caught in the sunlight, the figure slowly disappeared. Atom by atom it faded into nothingness until it was just the three of us standing outside the dark old building. When it had gone, I turned to the others, still dizzy with fear, and fell onto my ass. “What just happened?” I asked.

  Elizabeth and Jake had no words and joined me in the grass, shuddering. From around the corner there came a faint beam of light. It bobbed up and down until its source came round the bend and joined us out front.

  It was Terrence.

  Covered in grime and looking generally like hell, the groundskeeper gave us a once-over, turned to the recently shattered door, and, yanking off his ball cap to smooth out the thinning hair beneath, he said, “Jesus Christ, what'd you do that for?”

  I fiddled around in my pocket for my pack of smokes, drawing out the last of them with numb, twitching fingers. Once I'd gotten it lit, I took a long drag and closed my eyes as the nicotine did its work. “It's a long story,” I replied. “But for what it's worth, we're happy to see you, too, Terrence.”

  “You know how long you were in there for?” he spat. “Some six goddamn hours. It's almost two in the morning, you know that? What in the hell were you getting up to in there, huh? Did you break anything else?” Terrence knelt down to examine the damage to the door, then pointed a jagged finger at Elizabeth. “And where the hell did you go back there, young lady? I was looking for you all till just now—was gettin' ready to call in the National Guard. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

  I flicked a cone of ash from my cigarette and gave him a weary smile. “What's the closest place we can find a stiff drink? There's some time left before last call.”

  33

  We made our peace with Terrence and gave him a rather abridged version of events. He claimed we'd been in the asylum for almost six hours, and that he'd walked almost the entirety of the grounds looking for us. I explained to him that Jake and I had found Elizabeth in the basement, in the sub-cellar isolation chamber, but to my surprise he denied knowledge of any such place.

  “You must be confused,” insisted Terrence. “There's nothing below the basement. It's a mess down there and it's easy to get turned around, but there ain't nothing down below that level—I'd know, as I've seen the blueprints for the joint.” He looked at Elizabeth with utter confusion, asked where her clothes had gone, why she was wearing an old, dirty gown. She didn't answer except to apologize for all we'd put him through.

  I assured him that we hadn't damaged anything in the asylum and that the broken glass out front had been the only casualty. After having been lost so many hours, I told him we'd grown panicked and hadn't been able to find our way to the back lobby where he'd initially let us in. He seemed to buy it and said he'd do something about the broken glass.

  “I'll throw a board over it, I guess. Tell Mr. Blake it was broke when we got here. If I tell him what really happened, he'll just get pissed at me for letting you all out of my sight for so long.” When we'd followed him back to the parking lot and I'd slipped into the driver's seat of my Cavalier, he leaned up next to my window and asked, “So, what'd y'all see in there? What had you so frightened? When I found you out there, sitting in the grass, you all looked like death.”

  Jake and Elizabeth were huddled in the back seat, silent. I started the car and shook my head. “It's like you said. We shouldn't have come here looking to stir things up, Terrence.”

  We thanked the groundskeeper for his time and sped through the lot towards the exit. The guard out front opened the gate for us and was feeling chatty. “Damn, you guys were in there for a long time,” he said. “How'd it go?”

  “I wouldn't recommend it,” I uttered as I coasted onto the highway.

  * * *

  I slept in the Cavalier for the first time since I was in college. Still shaky and exhausted, I drove the three of us back to campus in near-silence and parked in an empty lot near the student union where we all fell asleep until a cop knocked on my window and advised me not to loiter. From there, I went by Dorchester Hall and dropped off Elizabeth and Jake before heading back to my apartment.

  It was on the drive back to the dorm, in the hour before sunrise, that we first talked about what we'd seen in the asylum.

  “We made it out,” said Jake. “You were right, professor. We just had to follow the right path, give the building what it wanted, and it would let us out.”

  Elizabeth leaned away from him, legs crossed and her fingers picking at the edges of the gown. “The thing in the asylum wanted us to show it the way out. We followed the same path Enid did that night, twenty-eight years ago. But whereas Enid was stopped before she could leave the asylum, there was no one there to stop us from leaving—and from it following us out.”

  I glanced back at her in the rearview, my eyes burning for the shitty sleep. “What are you saying?”

  She chose her words very carefully. “I think we've done a very bad thing. Whatever that monstrosity in the asylum was, it had been waiting all this time for something to let it out. It was the thing that entered Enid, the thing that made her do such terrible things, and it tried to escape with her after the murders. After all those years, it had gained enough power to call out to the world, to lure people inside. And once it had us inside, it used us—forced us to re-live the night of the murders and made us show it the way out. I can't help but think we've done a terrible thing.”

  I shrugged, bringing the car to a stop outside their dorm and shifting into park. Maybe she was onto something. I couldn't be sure. I was just happy to be out of there.

  Jake opened his door. “There's no sense in worrying about it, babe. We escaped the building. The thing—whatever it was—is gone now.”

  Elizabeth sighed, stepping out of the car after him. “I hope you're right, but... I don't think it is, Jake.”

  I told them both to get some sleep and waved goodbye.

  The minute I pulled away and watched them disappear into the dorm building from my side mirror, I found I missed them.

  At that moment, I really didn't want to be alone.

  * * *

  Prior to heading back to my apartment, I visited a big box store to pick up a few things. First, I bought a prepaid burner cell phone to replace the one I'd lost back at the asylum. Next, recalling the cassette tape I had in my pocket, I scored a small tape player for about fifteen bucks. Though I didn't have the nerve to listen to it just then, I hoped that the tape, which featured a dictation by Dr. Corvine, might provide a few answers to the horrors we'd faced in the asylum.

  I spent nearly the whole of March 29th in bed, snoring aw
ay. I found myself plagued by nightmares, but they were brief things, and when I finally awoke late at night, I couldn't remember what they'd been about.

  The apartment seemed stuffy and altogether too quiet. I'd slept with the light on in my room for the first time since childhood, and upon waking I switched on every other light in the place to ward off the shadows. After a shower, I put on a change of clothes and hiked down the road to the Corner Grill, where I enjoyed a burger, fries and soda at 1 AM.

  As expected, Moorlake had become a ghost town. The streets were empty. Though they remained open over the break, the clubs and bars were practically abandoned, and everywhere I went the poor saps scheduled to work them looked miserably bored. Loud dance music poured from the open doors and windows for the enjoyment of no one in particular.

  I was feeling restless as I walked back to the apartment. I encountered no one as I shuffled down the sidewalk, but I didn't exactly feel alone—the constant push of foreign eyes made certain of that. Though the streets were clear, I thought that someone must be standing in one of the many darkened windows of downtown, staring at me as I passed. The night was warm, but I pulled up the collar of my jacket nonetheless.

  When I got home, I locked my front door and then, out of nervous impulse, went back to it twice to ensure it remained locked. Then, pulling all of the blinds closed, I took to pacing and wondered if I shouldn't just go back to bed. Though I'd spent most of the day sleeping, I didn't feel particularly rested. I sat down in my recliner and cable surfed for a bit, if only to give the food in my stomach a chance to digest, when my gaze was drawn to the TV stand. There, I'd left the cassette tape I'd found in the asylum storeroom, wrapped in the sheet of paper Jake had freed from Corvine's old Remington.

  It was morbid curiosity that saw me mute the television and wander over to the tape. I picked it up, unwrapped it, and had a look at the single line of text—geographical coordinates—that stretched across the top of the paper. They read: 46°08′N 86°40′W

  I sat down at my computer and punched the coordinates into Google, curious what they might correspond to. Maybe they were to coordinates to Dr. Corvine's favorite fishing spot, I mused. Surprisingly however, the coordinates corresponded to a spot up north, in the vicinity of the remote Hiawatha National Park. Taking things further, I took the coordinates, or rather the address they corresponded to, and punched it into a satellite mapping service which gave me a bird's eye view of the spot. I was shown an expanse of dense forest, at the center of which appeared a small structure. Zooming in further, it soon became clear that I was looking at a remote cabin.

  The sight perplexed me. That the coordinates matched up to a cabin in the middle of a vast wilderness seemed like more than mere coincidence to me, and yet I had to wonder why Corvine had gone to the trouble of typing them out. What significance did the cabin have to the doctor? I stared at the grainy image of the cabin for a long while before turning my attention to the cassette.

  Unwrapping the tape player I'd bought earlier that day, I slipped a pair of AA's into it and then rewound the tape to the very beginning. I hate to admit that I startled as the rewinding was complete and the button clicked.

  Setting the tape player on the table beside my laptop, I hit the PLAY button and sat down on the edge of my bed to listen.

  “This is William Reynholm Corvine, M.D., dictating notes on patient Enid Lancaster, medical record number 44444. The date is March 26th, 1989. 2200 hours.”

  A chill wormed its way into my bones as the doctor's voice filled the air. I was called back to my visit to the radio station, to the queer call I'd received there, which had drawn me to the asylum in the first place. The voice was the same.

  “Routine vitals were taken prior to treatment, all within normal ranges, and again five minutes after the administration of five micrograms of Scotophobin—SPN-006. Heart rate increased a great deal, though it was measured in the expected range. Patient was restrained and instructed to remain calm.” Suddenly, the dictation took a different turn. Corvine began talking frankly about the progress of his prescribed treatment. “I have had doubts, I admit, as to the subject's suitability for this line of experimentation. Already afflicted with an intense fear of the dark, the Scotophobin—SPN-006 had, in previous, higher, dosages, elicited a purely frightened response. At five micrograms however, real progress has been made. She has begun to hear—and see—things in the chamber with her beyond the range of ordinary experience. The occupant of the chamber has made itself known to her, resulting in a marked agitation on the part of the patient. This is not wholly unexpected; previous tests at Hiawatha with a less refined version of the drug prepared me for the possibility of aggression, and I have seen to it that the patient remains in restraints until the session is complete. We are very near a breakthrough, I suspect.”

  Something about that wording, “The occupant of the chamber,” gave me pause. I stopped the tape, reclining on my bed. Was he talking about that monstrous thing that had followed us through the asylum? The “imposter”, as Elizabeth had called it?

  I went back to my web browser, pulled up the map site where I once again looked at the bird's eye still of the little cabin just outside the Hiawatha National Forest. “...Previous tests at Hiawatha...” Was I to believe that this cabin belonged to Corvine, and that he'd carried out the first stages of his research there? That's certainly what it sounded like.

  To hear others tell it, W. R. Corvine had lost his medical license after the closure of Chaythe Asylum, when he was found to have carried out unsanctioned experiments on his patients with untested drugs. This Scotophobin—SPN-06 was probably one such drug. It had been said that all of the doctor's notes and research had disappeared along with the man himself, though in listening to this tape I felt I'd just come across a trail of breadcrumbs that might lead me to both.

  There was no telling whether Dr. Corvine still lived. If he did, then he was likely a very old man. But what of this cabin in Hiawatha? The picture was rough, but as best I could tell the structure was sound. It was possible that the doctor had absconded to this private residence of his along with his research in 1989, to avoid the prying eyes of the Ohio medical board.

  If I went there now, would I find anything?

  Would the doctor himself be waiting for me? And, if so, what would he be able to tell me about the thing the three of us had encountered in Chaythe Asylum—the thing that he had, seemingly through illicit scientific research, loosed upon the world?

  For a long time, I simply stretched out on the bed, wishing I'd bought more cigarettes.

  I considered listening to more of the tape, but stayed my hand each time, not sure that I wanted to dig any deeper into this. We'd gone far enough, hadn't we? I was no longer a skeptic—I'd become the complete opposite, in fact. I was poised to become a regular at Sunday Mass after all I'd seen.

  It was March the 30th now. There were ten more days of spring break left. Ten days till I'd resume my normal schedule and go back to lecturing my single class. Ten more days before I'd have to see Phil, my insufferable office mate, again. To be quite honest, that life sounded pretty comforting to me. If I'd had the opportunity, I'd have called off the break entirely and returned to teaching the next day.

  But that wasn't an option.

  Like it or not, I had a lot of free time on my hands. A full ten days, to be precise.

  Ten whole days to sit and think. To ask questions. To concern myself with things that were dark and intriguing but that were, undoubtedly, none of my concern.

  Perhaps I would dig a little deeper.

  Perhaps we hadn't gone far enough yet.

  The three of us had experienced something terrifying in that asylum, and at the moment it seemed to be over. But what if it hadn't truly ended? What if Elizabeth was right? “I think we've done a very bad thing,” she'd said of letting the monstrosity—the so-called “occupant”—out of the building. Maybe it would be wise, I thought, to take things a little further; to trace this horror to
its root so that we might ensure its elimination. Would it be such a bad thing for us to follow this lead? Surely I wasn't the only one who wanted to understand what we'd been through. Our only chance at finding answers—and an admittedly fleeting one, at that—resided in this remote Michigan cabin that appeared tied to the infamous doctor. I did some quick calculations and found that the cabin was only a seven hour drive from campus. It didn't seem far at all. Not far enough for me to drop the idea of going there altogether.

  I picked up my phone and tapped out a text to Elizabeth. “It's Prof. Barlow. Got a new number. I found something interesting. It has to do with the asylum. Are you and Jake up for a road trip?”

  With that, I tucked my phone into my pocket and set out to the nearest gas station for a pack of smokes.

  I'd handed over a crumpled five to the tired clerk in exchange for a pack of Viceroys when my phone began to buzz against my hip.

  Thank you for reading!

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  About the Author

  Once upon a time, a young Ambrose Ibsen discovered a collection of ghost stories on his father's bookshelf. He was never the same again.