Asylum (Asylum, #1)(58)

Abby raced ahead, scrambling up the stairs as she took them two and three at a time. But they reached the top too late. The cabinet was already blocking their way out. Abby ran over and shoved herself against the cabinet, scrabbling for purchase with her fingernails. Dan could hear her gulping for air just above the deafening thunder of his own pulse.

Trapped. They were trapped, locked up in the dark of their final cell.

No, they couldn’t be trapped. . . . Dan thought of Jordan out there, first hoping for a savior and then wondering darkly if Jordan was the one who had done this. Dan could hardly trust his own mind—it stood to reason that his “friends” were no better.

“Come on! Help me!” Abby grunted, giving another push with her shoulder.

“Who’s out there? Stop being a coward and show yourself!” Dan shouted.

He moved to Abby’s side, adding his own strength to hers, but the cabinet wouldn’t budge. He beat his fists against the metal, shouting, “Let us out, let us out,” until his voice went hoarse. He heard Abby suck down a shuddering breath before collapsing in tears against the wall.

She checked her cell phone.

“No reception,” she said, wiping a tear out of her eyes. “Who would do this, Dan?”

“Shh! I hear something. . . .” They fell silent and listened. Behind the cabinet Dan distinctly heard the shuffling of footsteps. He thought he heard a click, maybe the soft tap of a woman’s heel. But then nothing.

They listened as the footsteps moved away from the office and became faint. Abby pushed against the cabinet one more time, digging her legs into the ground, but it seemed to have been wedged into place from the other side.

Dan aimed a kick at the cabinet and then stumbled backward, grabbing for the wall to keep from falling over. “I can’t believe it. . . . Why would he lead us down here just to trap us inside? Unless he has further plans, and he needed us out of the way. . . .”

“Who’s ‘he’?” Abby said. “You’re really scaring me, Dan. Let’s just give ourselves a second to catch our breath, and then we’ll try to push it again together, okay?”

Dan nodded. She was right, panicking wouldn’t help anything. They’d get out of here and they’d punish Dennis—or whoever was copying him—once and for all.

Then Dan heard a sound like the soft scrape of a shoe over wood. It was coming from the stairs behind them.

“What was—” But he didn’t get to finish his question. A dark shape emerged, hurtling toward them.

He heard a hollow thud and Abby toppled into his arms. Dan’s last thought before he fell was of her, of how pretty she looked just then, poised as if dancing, her lips parted and her dark braid coming undone.

Then he felt the blow on the back of his head.





He came to under the light of a harsh white bulb. The filament twinkled and the old electricity was humming loudly, ready to cut out at any second. Dan groaned and tried to move.

He couldn’t.

At first, he thought it was the pain in his head that was trapping him, but as consciousness and feeling returned, he could tell that there were straps buckled tightly over his chest, head, waist, and ankles.

He screamed, and the sound echoed back at him. The straps held him fast, and his struggles only increased the pain and the fear that were making him frantic. The most he could do was turn his head a fraction of an inch from one side to the other.

The operating amphitheater. That’s where they were. The tables, the gurneys . . . That meant there was a tray of sharp surgical instruments mere inches from his skull.

“Let me out!” he shouted. “You can’t do this to me!”

Dan twisted his neck the other way. Abby was strapped to her own table, and she had a gag in her mouth. A metal gurney was set out next to her. The white light reflected the stainless steel tray at her side, illuminating drills, scalpels, hooks—the horror show of tools needed to perform a lobotomy.

The overhead light flashed as if there’d been a power surge, forcing Dan to blink. When the electricity stabilized again, a shadow oozed from the dark perimeter of the amphitheater. Dan could just make it out in the blurry spots of his vision, but he couldn’t see who it was. The man with the crowbar? Ted Bittle? Jordan? Dan was shaken enough to believe anything.

Then, in the light, the reality shocked him.

“Felix?” His voice was almost drowned out by the bouncing echoes of the chamber. “What the hell is going on? How did you get down here?”

“I never left,” said Felix slowly.

“Untie us, you idiot! Get us out of here.”

“Oh, you’re not going anywhere, Daniel Crawford,” Felix said with a snicker. As Felix came closer, Dan saw that he was barefoot and wild-eyed. He wore a white doctor’s coat over a pair of boxer shorts.

“What do you think I should call my masterpiece? I was thinking: Revenge.”

His mouth twisted freakishly when he talked, moving too much over every word. And his voice didn’t sound like Felix’s; it was high and mocking, like a clown’s. He walked strangely, too, lurching from side to side as if he were tied to puppet strings and being manipulated by someone high above.

“Felix, what are you talking about?” Dan said. This was Felix, quiet, unassuming Felix. Why the hell would Felix of all people want revenge?