Asylum (Asylum, #1)(12)
“Help!” he screamed, but his voice came out in a whisper.
The room changed. Now Dan was lying on a table in a robe. A key clicked in the door and a waiter wearing glasses and a white serving uniform came in, rolling a tray in front of him. There was a big silver dome on the tray, and Dan could hear something under it tinkling and rattling like silverware. “Your dinner, sir,” the waiter said, removing the dome. Underneath were surgical instruments: a scalpel, a clamp, and a hypodermic needle.
Dan looked up, and the waiter’s face had changed. Now he was wearing a white doctor’s coat and a surgical mask. Worst of all, where his eyes had been there were only black sockets, as if his eyes had been scratched out.
As he reached for the instruments, the doctor said in a gentle voice, “Don’t worry, Daniel Crawford. I’m here to take care of you.”
Dan startled awake. Sweat was pouring down his face, and he had grabbed the sheet so tightly that his fingers were cramping. He was still muttering, “No, no, don’t hurt me!”
Heart pounding, he sat up. His eyes adjusted to the darkness slowly. He was in his room. There was no waiter, no doctor. There was only Felix, stock-still, standing beside the bed watching him.
“Ah!” He sank down into the pillows again and yanked the sheet up to his chin. “What . . . what are you doing?”
“You were speaking in your sleep, Daniel,” Felix replied calmly. He took a tiny step away from the bed. “Are you feeling all right? The noise was . . . Well, it woke me, as you can see. . . .”
“S-sorry,” Dan mumbled. “Just a nightmare. I’m . . . I’m fine, really.”
But I’d be better if you backed the hell away.
“I need some air,” he added, rolling out of bed. The sheets were damp with sweat.
“That should help,” Felix said with a sad smile. “Fresh air always clears my thoughts. I hope it does the same for you.”
Dan grabbed his hoodie and raced out the door, wondering if he was fleeing his roommate, the room, or both. He tried to slow down his breathing. It was just a dream, that’s all it was. He wiped sweat from the bridge of his nose with one knuckle. The photographs had clearly disturbed him more than he’d realized. For the second night in a row, sleep was a lost cause. The hallway was dimly lit and quiet. No one was there, but Dan shivered. What was it about this place that made him feel like he was being watched?
It felt good to get downstairs. But when he got to the entrance hall, the main door was already propped open. Someone had gone out before him and was now sitting on the steps.
“Funny meeting you here,” he said.
Abby yelped, surprised. Dan only just managed to dodge the pebble she picked up and chucked in his direction. “Dan! Ugh. You scared me half to death.”
It probably didn’t help that his bad dream and sudden waking had left his voice hoarse. “Sorry,” he said, sitting down next to her. “Didn’t mean to make you jump.”
Abby sat with her knees drawn up and her phone in one hand, her arms wrapped tight around her shins. Little fat clouds with smiles decorated her pajama pants.
“You’re up late,” she said. Her voice sounded ragged, too.
“Couldn’t sleep. You?”
Abby looked at him, as if weighing how to respond. Finally, she said, “I got a text from my sister. Well, several texts. Things at home are . . . They could be better.” She paused. Dan might not have been a social wizard, but he knew that asking questions was not the right thing to do just now. So he waited for Abby to go on. “My parents don’t see eye to eye on much. Pops does corporate jingles and he hates it, but the money’s good. Mom thinks he should go back to making real music. His music. But it doesn’t pay.”
“No easy answers there.”
“They go back and forth, and every time I get so freaked out thinking that they’ll . . . Anyway, Jessy thinks it’s for real this time. She thinks they’ll really do it.” Abby sighed.
“What? Divorce?” Sensitive, Dan, real sensitive.
“Yeah.” She sighed again, and this time he heard a catch in her breath. He had no idea what to do if she started crying, and he hoped like hell it wouldn’t come to that, because he wouldn’t know the right way to handle it. “It would kill my sister. Sometimes I think it would kill me, too.”
“That really sucks. I’m sorry.” He was flubbing this. Epically. Not that it was an appropriate time to be acting all smooth and seductive or whatever, but surely something deeper was required here?
“I wish they could just keep it together for a few more years until Jessy and I are both in college.”
Dan sat in what he hoped came off as sympathetic silence.
“So what about you?” she asked, tilting her head.
“Me? What about me?”
“Why couldn’t you sleep?”
“Oh.” Dan could feel that familiar instinct to shut down coming on. And he didn’t want to darken the mood even more with a detailed retelling of his dream. Still, Abby had shared something private with him, and her eyes looked so big and sad. . . . A fair trade seemed only right. “I had a nightmare.”
“Like falling or drowning?”
“Sort of.” No, not really. But he decided he couldn’t tell her about the dream after all. Not that dream, and not the ones he usually had either. She would think he was too strange, and her opinion mattered a lot to him. So all he said was “It was just the kind where you feel so . . . so . . .”