Asylum

by Madeleine Roux

  “So you killed Joe and framed that man in town,” Dan said. “You only pretended to find Joe’s body.”

  Felix touched Dan’s nose again, making him sick to his core.

  “The second statue was just for fun. For laughs. That one I called Chaos. Too bad the molding didn’t stick.”

  “Yi.” Dan remembered how he thought Yi had been posed, the legs too neatly arranged to be an accident.

  “No.” Suddenly Felix was in his face, eye to eye, saliva dripping from his too-pink mouth onto Dan’s chin. The giggly insanity had all run out, and now it was just rage. “Chaos. Chaos.”

  Felix danced back away from him, making a full circle around Dan’s table as he talked. “And then, for my curtain call, I had to take action before that horrible man ruined all our fun. He’d almost found us, Daniel Crawford—he knew what was happening. I called that sculpture Precautionary Measures.”

  Sal Weathers had almost found them. He knew what had been unleashed in Brookline.

  “But now those fools are out of my way, and it’s your turn, your turn.” Felix was chuckling with glee. Then his eyes narrowed. “I’ve been waiting for you, waiting for so long. You will be my finest sculpture, my magnum opus.”

  Dan wondered when exactly the transformation had happened. Maybe it had started on day one—it was Felix who’d found the photos and planted the idea for Dan to see them himself. Maybe Dan had never known the real Felix at all.

  But the fact that he’d been sleeping next to this thing for days, maybe weeks, gave him hope. He felt like Felix must still be in there somewhere—otherwise he would surely have killed him long ago.

  “And that man with the crowbar? The one who attacked you?” Dan said, trying to buy Felix time, to make him talk.

  “Oh, him,” Felix said, as if the thought of the man bored him. “I let him in through the window with a false promise of drugs. When I couldn’t deliver, he got a little—angry.” Felix said this last word with a flutter of his fingers. “Of course, my real target was your friend, the mathematician. My plan was to meet him downstairs, then meet my alibi in the attic. I didn’t count on him coming with a crowbar, or you waking up, not after I borrowed your phone. Not my finest hour, to be sure, but I did do a bang-up job messing with your mind. Just as you used to mess with mine.” He hissed the last words into Dan’s ear.

  “You’re crazy,” Dan shouted, lashing out against the straps. Still too tight.

  “Am I?” Felix seemed genuinely taken aback by the idea. He picked up a scalpel from the tray and stuck the blunt end in his mouth to chew on. Then he plucked it out again and flourished it. “Maybe I am. Hardly matters now. I’m finally going to get you back for all those failed experiments. Although I suppose one of them didn’t fail, did it, Crawford? I mean, here we are!” Felix was on top of him again. “Does that make you happy? Or does it make you saaaaad?” With the sharp end of the scalpel, Felix lightly traced his own clown-faced grimace. It left behind a red curve, a thin scratch that was visible even after he’d taken the instrument away.

  “But I’m not Daniel Crawford! I’m Dan, your roommate!” Dan shouted.

  “Roommate?” Felix mused. “Yes, you and I, we were in the same room, this room. But we were never mates. Oh no.” With this, Felix dipped the scalpel toward Dan’s head until it was poised just above his eye.

  And that’s when the light cut out.

  “No!” Felix shouted. His rapid footsteps echoed across the room, moving farther and farther away as he went toward the switches.

  Dan breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. A hand clamped over his mouth, making it impossible to talk. Dan tried to shake it off, but it was no use.

  “Shhh” came the voice in his ear. Even with that one sound he knew who was there to save them.

  Jordan.

  Dan stopped struggling. He felt the straps that were holding his head down fall away, then those around his chest, and finally those on his waist and ankles. He sat up quickly, massaging life back into his numb legs. Jordan’s hand squeezed his shoulder in warning.

  The light snapped back on with a loud, electric hum. Jordan was there, squinting, his glasses reflecting the sudden burst of light.

  “I knew you two were useless without me,” Jordan muttered, backing up close to Dan.

  “Sneaky!” Felix shrieked from the switches near the door. He jumped the stairs leading down to the operating floor, bounding side to side like a deranged jackrabbit. “Fleshy, bendy, moldy, sculpty, sneaky fools!” His words ran together in a crazed slur, eyes wide and wild as he charged at them, scalpel held high.

  “Move!” Dan shouted, jumping off the operating table. He pushed Jordan behind him and grabbed a gurney.

  Felix descended on him, slashing in every direction. Dan kept the wheeled table between them, moving it to block wherever Felix moved.

  Felix laughed, tossing the scalpel from hand to hand.

  “I haven’t had this much fun in years.”

  On the last word he lunged, flying across the table. Dan ducked, but Felix was stronger and quicker, and he grabbed Dan by the collar, throwing him to the floor. Dan clamped his hand around Felix’s wrist to keep the scalpel from cutting his face. But Felix had at least twenty pounds of muscle on him, and the strength in Dan’s arms was fading fast.

  Felix pinned him down. The scalpel lowered inch by agonizing inch, until Dan could feel the sharp tip of it grazing his cheek.

  No. You will not let him do this to you. You are better than he is.

  With a strength he didn’t know he had, Dan pushed back hard and sent Felix tumbling. The scalpel fell out of Felix’s hand.

  Dan rolled hard to one side and jumped to his feet. He loomed over Felix and Felix screamed, recoiling. Dan reached down, suddenly strong, so strong, and grabbed him by his coat. He hauled him up, throwing him onto the operating table. Dan roared from the effort, but then it was over and Felix was lying down, helpless.

  “Strap him down!” Dan commanded. “Strap him down! We can’t let him get free.”

  As Dan held Felix to the table, Jordan grabbed the straps and buckled them quickly. Chest first, then legs. Felix was struggling wildly, and it took two tries to get the head buckled in—finally Jordan had to cradle it in his hands while Dan tightened the strap. There were flecks of saliva and blood on Felix’s lips, and his muscles were bulging and pulling against the restraints.

  Soaked in sweat, firing on all cylinders, Dan reached down to pick up the scalpel.

  The time for experiments and cures is over. You need to end this, Dan, once and for all.

  “Dan, what you are doing with that?” Jordan asked, nervously eyeing the scalpel in Dan’s hand. “He’s not going anywhere now. Let’s go and let the police handle this.”

  “No,” Dan seethed. “No one else. Only I can finish this.”

  The scalpel lowered against Dan’s will.

  No, no, this isn’t what I want, this isn’t me.…

  I am you.

  The scalpel drew closer and closer to Felix.

  No.

  The vision descended on him hard and fast, ripping him out of his body and into another. It was another time, another decade, and he was Daniel Crawford, the warden, again.

  The theater was packed with observers. Everyone craned in their seats to witness his technique. Half of them believed his claims and half of them didn’t, but they all wanted to know his secret procedure, just in case it worked.

  And poor, broken Dennis, strapped to the gurney. At least, as a side effect of the preparatory operations, he had finally been cured of his rage.

  Then came the screech of the intercom. That stupid new secretary, Julie. If this was anything less than dire, he’d have her head.

  “The police! The police are on their way!”

  The police? Coming here?

  Somebody told.

  And now his audience was fleeing in a frenzy. He seethed in anger at the pounding of their footsteps, and the voices rising around
him like the tide of some obliterating sea. Those cowardly doctors tumbled over one another as they ran.… So the police were coming. How about that.

  Dennis screamed, shocking Daniel out of his thoughts. Had he not given him a high enough dose of sedative? Did it matter? This was to be the final experiment, after all.

  Cursing, Daniel hurried to finish—far sloppier than he would have liked—and then, throwing off his bloody gloves, he fled, the last to leave. The last but for Dennis. He switched off the lights.

  The others were long gone when he reached his office. He lost precious time moving a cabinet over the door to the lower levels, his last hope to pretend that his practices were entirely aboveground. He took off his spectacles and jammed them onto the hook, residual blood smearing down the wall. Papers, photographs, all of it scattered. He hardly cared. This was a minor setback, he’d give them that, but his work would live on. His legacy. His life.

  The door was flying open. The police were pouring in. And then there were cuffs and shackles, much like the ones holding Dennis down below.

  Somebody told.

  It was the girl, he thought, it had to be the girl. She was every nurse’s favorite, with her dancing, her smiling, her beautiful hair.… One of them must have gone soft, let her slip, and now it was all crashing down because of her, the snitch with the little scar on her head. She’d seen and understood too much.

  But his legacy had lived on, and now Warden Crawford was back where he belonged. In the amphitheater where Dennis had waited for him all these years.

  Only one thing wasn’t right. His vision wasn’t quite perfect.… Everything was spinning.

  “Dan? Dan?” Someone was calling his name.

  He reeled and tumbled forward, finding the gurney and gripping it for balance. A pale, quivering face peered up at him. Dennis, or was it … Felix? Either way, he had the scalpel, it was right there in his hand, waiting to carve.…

  Dan forced himself to focus, to look again. This wasn’t him. He wasn’t the warden, and would never be.

  He dropped the scalpel. The clatter echoed through the theater.

  I’m not you. I will never be you.

  “Fleshy, bendy, moldy fool, this isn’t over,” Felix whispered. “It’s far from over.”

  Dan shoved the gurney away in fear and disgust, far, far out of his reach. It tumbled and fell over, and, strapped to the top, Felix groaned before going quiet.

  “It’s this place,” Dan shouted. Jordan had gone to Abby, forcing open her restraints and shaking her awake. “We have to get out of the asylum.” He stumbled toward his friends. “We need to leave, all of us.”

  He reached the other gurney just as Abby was woozily climbing down. She flung herself into his arms, but Dan only gave her the quickest squeeze before pulling away. “We have to get out of here, it’s Brookline.… Me and Felix … You have to help me get him far away from here.”

  “That’s going to be tough. He’s out cold.” Jordan had sprinted back to the fallen gurney. He glanced up from where he knelt, glasses askew. “But if we all lift together I think we can carry him in the restraints.”

  Dan nodded, steeling himself as he returned to Jordan’s side. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  CHAPTER

  No 36

  They were met halfway up the final staircase by Teague, flanked by two other officers. Sagging under the weight of Felix, Dan threw a hand up to shield his eyes from the blinding flashlights.

  “Now you decide to show up,” Jordan muttered, though the three of them were only too happy to relinquish the job of carrying Felix to three grown men; Dan’s roommate had put on some serious muscle weight, and each moment they spent trying to haul him out of the basement was another chance for the warden to sink his hooks back into Dan.

  “I couldn’t find these yahoos anywhere in the building, so I called the station before following you two in,” Jordan explained. “At least one of us was thinking straight.”

  “Anyone injured?” Teague asked, herding the kids up the stairs. When they reached the top and the alcove with the alphabetized cabinets, he oversaw the transfer of Felix to the other officers.

  “Felix took a hit to the head,” Dan answered. He watched as they lifted Felix between them and struggled to fit through the hole in the wall that led to the warden’s public office. Curious, Dan thought.… If it hadn’t been Jordan trapping them inside with the cabinet, who had it been?

  Teague shot him a look, arching one brow.

  “Yes, I’m the one who knocked him out,” Dan continued, smoothing the hair back from his head; a terrible headache was brewing at the base of his skull. “I’ll tell you everything, just …”

  “We need to get out of here,” Abby spoke up for him, appearing at his side and hooking her arm through his. “Please, just question us outside, or at the station. Wherever you want, but not here.”

  “Fine. But I’m keeping my eyes on you three.”

  Teague made good on that, corralling them right outside the door to Brookline. As soon as the deputies had loaded Felix onto a stretcher and then into an ambulance, they reappeared to help guard the kids. “So,” Teague said, shining his flashlight in their eyes again.

  “Cut it out,” Jordan said, ducking his head. “We just found your killer, so could you please not—”

  He wasn’t given the chance to finish his sentence. Through the glare of Teague’s flashlight and the police car lights, Dan saw a shadow speed across the grass.

  “Teague!” he shouted. Something small and sharp had reflected off the whirring lights. The figure held a knife. “Watch out!”

  But Teague wasn’t the target. Dan had just enough time to guard his face with his forearms before the woman was throwing herself at him, screaming. Dan recognized her a half second before she was in his face. It was Sal Weathers’s wife.

  She screamed an ungodly scream.

  Dan fell back, feeling the knife slash close enough to cut his sleeve. His friends and Teague joined the fray, trying to reel the woman back in without getting cut. Teague pulled out his gun and shouted, “Nobody move!”

  “Wait! Don’t hurt her!” Abby rushed over to the woman, throwing herself between her and Teague. Sal’s wife went still for just a moment, but it was all the officers needed to grab her by the arms and drag her away across the grass.

  She was screaming again, absolutely ballistic. “Wait!” Abby cried, following. “Did you see that?” she called to the boys over her shoulder. “Her forehead … Did you see it?”

  She wasn’t waiting for an answer, and both Dan and Jordan had to run to keep up.

  “Did she cut you?” Jordan panted.

  “No, but my shirt got it pretty bad.”

  One last spike of adrenaline carried Dan to where Sal’s wife was kneeling in the damp lawn, the knife finally wrestled from her hands. Abby stood in front of her, slowly drawing an object from her pocket. A chipped piece of porcelain that sparkled under the blazing police lights.

  He might have known Abby had been the one to take it. Of course she would have been making trips to the basement without him. Dan finally understood.

  “Do you recognize this?” Abby asked the woman softly.

  The woman’s hair had gotten ruffled in the commotion, and now, with her bangs swept aside, the scar on her forehead was plainly visible. A scar just like the little girl in the photo. Abby spun the figurine, making it dance.

  From where she knelt, Lucy reached for the ballerina. Abby let her take it, smiling sadly.

  “You’re Lucy, right? Lucy Valdez? My name is Abby Valdez. You had a brother … have a brother. My father. I know it’s a lot to take in, but I think he would love to see you. And I want you to know that your dad, he … Well, he never forgave himself for sending you here.”

  Lucy cradled the chipped ballerin
a in her palms, holding it close to her chest.

  Dan wondered if she’d found Sal’s body in the woods, or if her rage came purely from the fact that she suspected he was the warden.

  “Officer Teague,” Dan called, and the policeman hustled over to him.

  “Everything all right?”

  “In the basement, before we knocked Felix out, he told me that he’d killed someone else. A man from town. He said he left the body in the woods near Camford Baptist.”

  “That’s awfully specific,” Teague said suspiciously. “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m just telling you what he said.”

  Dan knew he was going to have a hard time getting out of this mess. When Felix came to, he might not remember all the things he’d done. And then it might be his word against Dan’s. Dan had a feeling he knew who Officer Teague liked less.

  But now Teague just nodded and radioed in for someone on his team to check out the woods.

  Jordan slid up next to Dan with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “She was right,” he said. “Can you believe it?”

  “I can. I should have believed her sooner.”

  Abby was kneeling in the grass near her aunt, watching her from a cautious distance.

  “So what about Felix?” Jordan asked with a sigh. He stretched his arms in the blanket out like a cape, covering a yawn with the crook of his elbow. “Was he … Do you think he’ll recover? Are they going to put him in jail?”

  Dan shrugged. “It’s up to the police, I guess. I don’t think what happened was entirely his fault, but I have no idea how the law works in cases like these. I just hope he gets help, the right kind of help.” He glanced over his shoulder at Brookline looming behind them. “Not the kind of help this place had to offer.”

  “And us?”

  “They’ll shut the program down,” Dan said, certain, “and we’ll go home.”

  “Awesome.” Jordan kicked at the dirt. “I guess I always knew gay rumspringa would end and I’d have to leave Oz. Now I have to go back home and pretend to be straight for one more year. How do you stand it?”