Asylum (Asylum, #1)(40)
“Oh God, Felix, I’m really sorry,” Dan said. “Nobody should have to see something like that.”
On the bed, Felix was shaking, rattling the whole bed frame.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Felix shook his head. It looked like if he opened his mouth he would start crying.
“If you need to talk or anything, you know where to find me. Anytime.”
Felix didn’t respond.
In a fog, Dan went through the motions of brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed. A police officer patrolled the hallway. His hand was on his holster. It made Dan walk very carefully down the hall.
Back in the room, Felix had, surprisingly, fallen asleep. Dan turned off the light and got into bed in the clothes he was wearing. He didn’t want to risk waking Felix by changing. Besides, it wasn’t like he would be able sleep anyway. As he lay down, he heard a crunching noise. He reached into the pouch of his hoodie and pulled out a few sheets of paper. He had no idea how they got there; dimly, he remembered seeing a set of cabinets in the operating amphitheater, but he had passed out with that vision before reaching them. Was this another memory gap? Weird, though, because he really couldn’t remember even making it across the room.
He had an odd thought. What if Abby had put them in his pocket while he was still unconscious? He knew that there had been papers on the ground when he came to. Did she read them and already know about Lucy? But surely she would have said something if she did. And he couldn’t think of any reason why she would have put the papers in his pocket.
There was enough light coming through the window that Dan didn’t need to switch on his bedside lamp. He smoothed the crumpled papers on his pillow. They were the same kind of memos that he’d already seen.
Dan reached the last piece of paper. The handwriting jumped out at him.
The warden.
A flash of inspiration this morning over breakfast—there is, I think, a way in which my ideas can live on forever. All men seek immortality in their own way, either through a legacy of children carrying their name and genetic material, through architecture, through science, and this now is simply my search for a legacy like no other.
The work will be grisly, true. I’ve no doubt about that. Yet Michelangelo had his secret cadavers, and so too must I, an artist of a different sort, risk and sacrifice. . . .
So the warden had been performing grisly “sacrifices” on his patients. In order to create a legacy for his name. Dan thought back to the index cards they’d looked at in the warden’s office, so many of them with N under the Recovered box. How many operations had failed? How many patients had been needlessly subjected to pain and terror all for the sake of the warden searching for a kind of immortality?
Dan kept reading:
I always hated that word—sacrifice. It conjures images of savages beating drums around a fire. But sacrifices there must be, and how dear. And how dangerous.
That was the end of the entry. But there was more writing on the back, in the warden’s now familiar handwriting. And at the bottom, a signature. Two words: “Daniel Crawford.”
The police found the man who’d killed Joe the next day, in a bar downtown with Joe’s wallet and a garrote. The director held a meeting in Wilfurd Commons to tell the student body that they were safe now, but that if any of them wanted to go home, they would get a full refund. Classes would resume the next day. There would be counselors standing by if students needed someone to talk to.
Dan found Abby and asked her if she wanted to go for a walk. The yard outside Wilfurd lacked its usual mob of kids playing Frisbee or lawn bowling. Everyone on campus was in a somber mood. They decided to get away from the campus for a while, so they took a path that led to the forest. As soon as they had gone a couple of yards, the air got cooler and the light dimmer from the riot of trees arching over them.
“How is Felix holding up?” Abby said after a while.
Dan shrugged. He didn’t really know. “He wasn’t there when I woke up, and I didn’t see him in the Commons. Maybe he’s seeing one of the counselors.”
“How about you? Feel ok?” Abby slipped her hand into his.
“Yeah,” Dan lied. Tell her, tell her everything. Stop holding everything in. But really, how could he tell her? Hey, so it turns out there was this one warden behind all the horrible shit here, and oh, guess what, we have the same name. Oh, and I’ve been having these dreams like I’m seeing through his eyes. No biggie.
At least Dan finally knew why Sal Weathers and his wife had gotten so angry when he’d told them his name.
“Jordan’s not answering his phone,” Abby said, interrupting his thoughts. The pine needles crunched under their feet. “I texted him last night when I got to my room and again this morning. I assume he heard the news that they found the guy, although I’m not sure he’s left his room. I got one reply: ‘busy with homework.’ I don’t get why he’s being so strange. So unlike the kid I met on the bus.”
“Maybe he needs to be alone for a while. I mean, he saw the body.”
“Maybe . . . but I keep thinking about what Yi said, about us watching out for him. I’m just worried, you know? I worry,” she said. “I’ll try him again later. Can’t hurt to try, right?”
Dan didn’t see her for the rest of the day. Back in his room, he found himself staring at the wall, his thoughts in a jumble. When his phone rang in his pocket, he nearly jumped out of his skin.