Sanctum
Madeleine Roux
Haunting, fast-paced sequel to the New York Times bestselling photo-illustrated novel ASYLUM.Perfect for fans of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.Featuring real found photographs from vintage carnivals, SANCTUM is a mind-bending reading experience that blurs the lines between past and present, genius and insanity.Dan, Abby, and Jordan were traumatised by the summer they shared at New Hampshire College, the former site of the Brookline asylum. They want to move on, but someone is determined to keep the terror alive by sending them anonymous photos of an old-time carnival.Forsaking plans to never to go back, the teens return during a weekend for prospective students, and realise that the carnival from the photos is not only real, it's here on campus…As Dan and his friends visit abandoned houses and hidden places of the surrounding town, they realise that Camford is hiding a terrible past, and the influence of the asylum runs deeper than they ever imagined.
Copyright (#ulink_e79455c5-8f60-53f7-bf2b-bae4a04ce1ce)
First published in the USA in 2014 by HarperCollinsPublishers Inc.
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2014
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB.
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © 2014 by HarperCollinsPublishers
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
GIRL © 2014 by Carmen Gonzalez/Trevillion Images; Texture © 2014 by Naoki Okamoto/Getty Images; Photo borders © 2014 by iStock Photo; KEYS © 2014 by Dougal Waters/Getty Images; Doctors Library of Congress, G. Eric and Edith Matson; Photograph Collection; ROOM INTERIOR Library of Congress, Prints & Photograph division, HABS PA, 51-PHILA, 354-106; FORCEPS © 2014 Vadim Kozlovsky/Shutterstock.com
Jacket design by Cara E Petrus and Sammy Yeun Hand lettering by Cara E Petrus
Madeleine Roux asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007538263
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007538270
Version: 2014-08-04
For my family, who never fail to amaze with their belief, support, and love. If there are better people on earth, I haven’t met them.
Table of Contents
Cover (#ufed3ae54-f324-5cd9-98e8-b693488b5d0b)
Title Page (#uf0dfab75-8709-5255-8f9c-bc05711b48b1)
Copyright (#u1b210d3a-848e-52fb-a670-582c5309b35d)
Dedication (#u8bc33f08-61bb-5741-9581-ea3978320e64)
Epigraph (#u0dda56e0-b2ce-5884-b448-d128110d0448)
Prologue (#ubb1033ff-df59-5db3-99c7-62856abd9c5e)
Chapter 1 (#u5ab44823-5983-5031-8aa6-45ece57b3b73)
Chapter 2 (#ubbc978e3-fe01-5f1c-9936-5439d47f8314)
Chapter 3 (#uf13a5700-f56b-5393-b81a-bf934e820f17)
Chapter 4 (#ud78afee3-5dee-53d9-8d8b-120b777f411f)
Chapter 5 (#u49404295-fcc0-55ac-a681-acd354b60440)
Chapter 6 (#u06824771-08ce-5baa-be9f-4b4e6f9bcf5a)
Chapter 7 (#ubc818c9c-a043-5708-86e7-b2e182fc556f)
Chapter 8 (#ue65a937f-832f-5c1b-bc75-60704c4bca0e)
Chapter 9 (#u41b7394a-6180-58e2-82e0-4cab10eb4084)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
(#ulink_997befd3-961e-5bd3-a160-8780cb407979)
It was a fantasy of lights and sounds and smells, crooked candy-striped tents, and laughter that burst like cannon fire out of the winding paths. Curiosities lurked around every corner. A man belched flames from a podium. The scent of fried cakes and popcorn hung sweet and heavy on the air, tantalizing until it became sickening. And in the very last tent was a man with a long beard—a man who didn’t promise riches or oddities or even a glimpse into the future. No. The man in the last tent promised the one thing the little boy wanted most of all.
Control.
(#ulink_ebf38f1a-6a12-55a3-b738-ff014bf3f194)
Youguys are not even going to believe this, Dan typed, shaking his head at the computer screen. A “memory manipulation expert”? Is that even a real thing? Anyway, just watch the video, and let me know what you think!
His cursor hovered over that last line—it sounded so desperate. But whatever, Dan was starting to get desperate here. His last three messages had gone unanswered, and he wasn’t even sure if Abby and Jordan were still reading them.
He hit send.
Dan leaned away from his laptop, rolling his neck and listening to the soft pops of his spine adjusting. Then he closed the thing—maybe a little too sharply—and stood up, shoving the computer into his book bag between loose papers and folders. The bell rang just as he finished packing, and he filed out of the library into the hall.
The students in the wide corridor surged forward in one long column. Dan spotted a few kids from his third-period calculus class, and they waved at him as he approached their bank of lockers. Missy, a short brunette with freckles splattered across her nose, had decorated the door of her locker with just about every Doctor Who sticker and postcard she could get her hands on. A tall, gangly boy named Tariq was grabbing books from the locker next to hers, and beside him stood the shortest guy in twelfth grade, Beckett.
“Hey, Dan,” Missy greeted him. “We missed you at lunch. Where’d you run off to?”
“Oh, I was in the library,” Dan said. “I just had to finish something for AP Lit.”
“Man, you guys have to do so much work for that class,” Beckett said. “I’m glad I stuck with regular English.”
“So, Dan, we were just talking about Macbeth when you walked up. Were you planning on going?”
“Yeah, I heard the set is amazing,” Tariq said, shutting his locker with a clang.
“I didn’t even know we were doing Macbeth,” Dan said. “Is it like a drama club thing?”
“Yes, and Annie Si is in it. That’s reason enough to go right there.” Beckett shot the boys a mischievous smile, one Dan only barely returned, and then the group started down the hallway. Dan couldn’t remember what classes the rest of them had next, but even if he hadn’t been doing any work in the library, he really was headed to the second floor for AP Lit. It wasn’t his favorite class, but Abby had read most of the books on the syllabus and had promised to give him a rundown at some point, which made it better.
“We should check it out,” Tariq said. He was wearing a sweater three times too big for him and skinny pants. It made him look a little like a bobblehead. “And, Dan, you should join us. I might be able to get us free tickets. I know the lead techie.”
“I don’t know, I’ve never really liked Macbeth. It hits too close to home for OCD people like me,” Dan deadpanned, rubbing furiously at an invisible stain on his sleeve.
Both Missy and Tariq stared back at him blankly.
“You know?” He chuckled weakly. “‘Out, damned spot’?”
“Oh, is that from the play?” Tariq asked.
“Yeah, it’s … It’s like one of the most famous lines.” He frowned. Abby and Jordan would’ve gotten it. Didn’t everyone have to read Macbeth for school? “Anyway, I’ll see you guys later.”
Dan peeled off from the group and headed upstairs. He pulled out his phone and sent off a quick text to both Jordan and Abby: “Nobody here gets my sense of humor. Help!” Twenty minutes later, when he was sitting bored in class, Jordan still hadn’t texted back and Abby had sent a lukewarm “LOL.”
What was wrong? Where had his friends gone? It wasn’t like they were that busy … Just last week, Jordan had been telling him on Facebook chat how insanely tedious his classes were. Nothing was challenging, he’d said, after the classes at the New Hampshire College Prep program. Dan sympathized, but honestly, the classes were the last thing he remembered from their summer in New Hampshire. What he couldn’t stop thinking about was what had happened in their dorm, Brookline—formerly an insane asylum run by a twisted warden, Daniel Crawford.
When he wasn’t thinking about that small detail, though, he was thinking about Jordan and Abby. When they’d first returned from the college campus, he’d gotten texts and emails from them constantly, but now they hardly talked. Missy, Tariq, and Beckett were okay, he supposed, but Jordan and Abby were different. Jordan knew how to push his buttons, but it was always good-natured and made the three of them laugh. And if Jordan pushed a little too hard, Abby was there to call him out and restore the balance. Really, she was the linchpin that held their group together—a group that in Dan’s mind seemed worth keeping up.
So why were his friends ignoring him?
Dan glanced at the clock, groaning. Two more hours until the end of the day. Two more hours until he could dash home and get online to see if his friends wanted to chat.
He sighed and scooted down into his seat, reluctantly putting his phone away.
Strange to think that a place as dangerous as Brookline had brought them together, and normal life was pulling them apart.
A half-eaten peanut butter sandwich sat on the plate next to his laptop. At his feet, his AP History textbook collected leaves. The crisp fall air normally helped him focus, but instead of doing homework, like he really ought to, he was busy going through the file he had made about Brookline. After the prep program ended, Dan had made sure to organize the notes he’d made, the research he’d done, and the photographs he’d collected, and turn it into one neat file.
He found himself returning to browse through it more than he should. Even with all these original documents, so much of the warden’s history was still missing. And after learning that he might actually be related to the warden through his birth parents—that this horrible man might be his great-uncle and even his namesake—Dan felt like this was a hole in his personal history, a mystery that he very much needed to solve.
At the moment, though, the file was just a distracting way to pass the time while he waited for Jordan and Abby to log on. What was that phrase his dad always liked to use? Hurry up and wait …
“Could I be any more pathetic?” Dan muttered, pushing both hands into his dark, messy hair.
“I think you’re just fine, sweetheart.”
Right. Better to keep the gloomy asides silent in the future. Dan looked up to see his mom, Sandy, standing on the porch, smiling at him. She was holding a steaming cup of cocoa, one he hoped was for him.
“Hard at work?” she asked, nodding to the forgotten textbook on the floor at his feet.
“I’m almost done,” he replied with a shrug, taking the cocoa from her with cupped hands, his sweater sleeves pulled over his fingers. “I think I’m allowed a break every once in a while.”
“True,” Sandy said, offering him an apologetic half smile. “It’s just … well, a few months ago, you seemed so excited about applying early decision to Penn, but here we are in October and that deadline’s coming up fast.”
“I’ve got plenty of time,” Dan said unconvincingly.
“Maybe for the essay, but don’t you think the admissions people will find it odd that you stopped doing all your extracurriculars your senior year? Couldn’t you get an internship? Even if it was just one day on the weekends, I think it would make a big difference. And maybe you should visit some other campuses, too—you know, early decision isn’t the best choice for everyone.”
“I don’t need more extracurriculars as long as I keep my four point oh. And besides, NHCP will look great on my apps.”
Sandy’s pale brow furrowed, a chilly wind ruffling her shoulder-length hair as she looked away from him, staring out at the trees surrounding the porch. She hugged herself and shook her head. This was how she always reacted when NHCP came up; unlike Jordan and Abby, who had been able to spin and massage the truth for their parents when it came to Brookline, Dan’s parents more or less knew the whole story. They had been there when the police questioned Dan; they had listened as he recounted being attacked, pinned to the ground … Just mentioning that place in their presence was like whispering a curse.
“But sure,” Dan said, blowing on the hot chocolate, “I could look for an internship or something. No sweat.”
Sandy’s face relaxed and her arms dropped to her sides. “Would you? That would really be amazing, kiddo.”
Dan nodded, going so far as to open a new browser window on his laptop and Google something. He typed in “zookeeper internship” and tilted the laptop slightly away from her.
“Thanks for the cocoa,” he added.
“Of course.” She ruffled his hair, and Dan breathed a sigh of relief. “You haven’t gone out much lately. Doesn’t Missy have a birthday coming up soon? I remember you going to her party around Halloween last year.”
“Probably,” he said with a shrug.
“Or your other … your other friends?” She stumbled over the word friends. “Abby, was it? And the boy?”
She always did that, asking about Abby as if she didn’t remember exactly what her name was. It was like she couldn’t believe or accept that he had actually gotten a sort-of girlfriend. To be fair, Dan could hardly believe it sometimes himself.
“Yeah,” he said with a noncommittal grunt. “They’re busy, though, you know … school and work and stuff.”
Dynamite job, Dan. Your Oscar’s in the mail.
“Work? So they have jobs?”
“Subtle, Mom,” he muttered. “I can take the hint …”
“I’m sure you can, sweetheart. Oh, before I forget—the mail came. There was something in there for you …”
That was unusual. He never got snail mail. Sandy flicked through the various envelopes that had been tucked in her jacket pocket before dropping one in his lap. The letter looked like it had gotten run through a washing machine and then dragged through the dirt. Dan checked the return address and a cold pain shot through his stomach.
Sandy hovered.
“It’s probably junk mail,” Dan said lightly, tossing the envelope onto his books. She took the hint, giving him a thin-lipped smile before turning away. He hardly heard the door close as Sandy disappeared back into the house. Dan scrambled for the letter.
Lydia & Newton Sheridan
Sheridan? As in Felix Sheridan? As in his former roommate, the one who had tried to kill him over the summer, either because he went crazy or because he was, what, possessed? When he closed his eyes Dan could still see Felix’s maniacal grin. Possessed or not, Felix had absolutely believed he was the Sculptor reincarnated.
Dan’s hands shook as he tore open the envelope. Maybe it was just an apology, he thought—it was entirely possible that Felix’s parents wanted to reach out to him and say they were sorry for all the trouble their son had caused him.
Dan drew in a deep breath and double-checked to make sure he was alone. Through the half-open window he could hear Sandy washing the dishes in the kitchen.
Dear Daniel,
You’re probably surprised to hear from me, and I’d hoped to avoid sending this letter, but it’s become clear that this is the only option.
I really have no right to ask this of you, but please give me a call as soon as you receive this letter. If you don’t get in touch … Well, I can’t say I would blame you.
603-555-2212
Please call.
Regards,
Lydia Sheridan
(#ulink_f30ba6c1-9bbb-5151-ba97-0839e176812d)
Dan couldn’t decide whether to chuck the letter in the garbage or dial the number right away. Inside, he could still hear the quiet clinking of his mother washing and drying the dishes. He read the letter over again, tapping the paper against his knuckles as he weighed his options.
On the one hand, he would be perfectly happy to forget Felix altogether. On the other …
On the other hand, it would be a lie to say that he wasn’t curious about his old roomie’s condition. They had left everything so unresolved. The cold sensation in his stomach refused to go away.
Felix probably needs your help. You needed help, too. Is it really fair to say that anyone is a lost cause?
He looked to the window on his right. His mother was humming now, and the music of it drifted softly out to where he was sitting. A few leaves floated down from the maple tree that lorded over the porch. No matter how many times Paul cut back the branches on it, it kept reaching for the house. But that didn’t stop his dad from trying.
Dan picked up his mobile and dialed Lydia Sheridan’s number before he could think of an excuse not to.
It rang and rang, and for a moment he was certain she wouldn’t pick up. He almost hoped she wouldn’t.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Lydia? I mean, Mrs. Sheridan?” His own voice sounded high and strange to his ears.
“That’s me … Who is this? I don’t recognize the number.”
She had Felix’s same soft-spoken manner, but hers was a more relaxed and more feminine version of the voice he could still recall.
“This is Dan Crawford. You sent me a letter asking to get in touch. So … Well, I’m getting in touch.”
The line went quiet for what felt like a lifetime. Finally, he could hear Felix’s mother drawing in ragged breaths on the other end.
“Thank you,” she said, sounding like she was on the edge of tears. “We’re just … We don’t know what to do anymore. It seemed like he was getting better. The doctors treating him really thought he was improving. But now it’s like he’s hit a wall. All he does is ask for you, day in and day out—Daniel Crawford, Daniel Crawford.”
This news was more than a little unnerving.
“I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m not sure what you want me to do about it,” Dan said. Maybe that was cold, but what was he supposed to do? He wasn’t a doctor. “It’ll probably pass. I bet it will just take time.”
“What about for you?” Lydia demanded.
Dan jerked his head back, startled by the sudden chill in her voice.
“Has it passed?” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m … I’m not sleeping. I’m just so worried about him. I really hate asking this of you …”
“But?” Dan prompted. He didn’t need to. He saw the question coming from a mile away.
“If you could just go to Morthwaite. See him. See … I don’t know. I’m begging at this point, do you understand? Begging. I just want him to get better. I just want this to be over.” Dan could hear the tears cracking through in her voice again. “It’s not over for him, Dan. Is it over for you?”
He had to laugh. Did it feel over? No, not by a long shot. The dreams persisted, as terrifying as ever, often featuring the warden himself. It wasn’t over, and as twisted as he knew it was, Dan felt a little relieved to hear that he wasn’t the only one for whom that was true.
“This might not work,” Dan said slowly. “It could make him worse. You realize that, right?” I don’t want that on my head. I can’t have that on my head.
He felt guilty enough for having dragged Abby and Jordan into the mess at Brookline. At least with Felix, he’d been able to tell himself that he was blameless—that that two-faced Professor Reyes had all but admitted to luring Felix down to the basement, where his mind—well, where his mind had stayed, is what it sounded like.
“But you’ll go?” Mrs. Sheridan sounded so happy. So hopeful. “Oh, thank you, please, I just … Thank you.”
“So where exactly am I going?” Dan asked, his stomach still one giant knot of dull fear. “And how am I getting there?”
(#ulink_36396a2f-cdec-557f-bd2b-009cf038398d)
The following Saturday, Dan found himself sitting in the passenger seat of Lydia Sheridan’s charcoal Prius. Tall and willowy, she hunched over the steering wheel as she clung to it. Tight brown ringlets kept escaping from a tortoiseshell butterfly clip that struggled to keep a grip on her hair. Thin-rimmed spectacles crept down the steep slope of her nose.
“Are you sure your parents are all right with this?” Mrs. Sheridan had asked when Dan walked up to her car that afternoon.
“Yeah, of course,” he’d replied, waiting for her to unlock the passenger side door. “It’s just, they’re remodeling the house. Trucks everywhere. We can’t even park in the driveway right now. But they were happy to hear I was headed to see Felix.”
After these awkward pleasantries—exchanged in a McDonald’s parking lot—Dan had gotten in the car, and the ride had been silent ever since.
Not that he wasn’t dying to know more about what he was in for, exactly. He just couldn’t muster up the nerve to ask.
Instead he stared at his phone, reading responses from Abby and Jordan to a message he’d sent that morning, informing them both that he was going to visit Felix. This proved they were still reading his messages, at least. But right now, Dan was wishing he had gotten their responses sooner, before he was trapped in someone else’s car.
Lipcott, Jordan
to me, avaldez
So I read your message and thought, “Are you sure about this?” And that was before my mom brought in the mail. Somebody mailed me a photo, Dan. Abby got one, too. It feels like some kind of sick joke. Circuses and sideshows and crap. I’ll attach the picture for you, but there was no return address. What the hell is going on?
—J
PS Wait until you see the back, blegh.
[Download Attachment 2/2]
And Abby’s response proved even more surprising …
Valdez, Abby
to me, jlipcott
I’ve been trying to move on, Dan, but I got a picture in the mail, too. I really, really don’t want to rehash the past, but … I don’t know. Did you get a photo? It seems weird that only Jordan and I did. This is freaking me out, Dan. It feels like someone is targeting us. Be careful, okay? Let us know how it goes with Felix so I don’t worry so much.
Why can’t we just be allowed to move on?
Abby
[Download Attachment 2/2]
It was all well and good to want to move on, but that was such an abstract, nothing phrase in his head. How was he supposed to forget that he had been strapped down to a gurney and almost killed? Forget that after he broke free, he was almost the one doing the killing? How did a person move on from something like that? Abby’s use of the word just was especially cruel. Just decide to move on. Just decide to forget. Just stop having nightmares. As if it were as simple as unpacking a bag of groceries and putting the milk and juice away in the fridge.
Dan tapped on the two attachment links and waited for the network to kick in and download the images. His foot shook anxiously as he watched the black-and-white pictures fill his screen—first Jordan’s, then Abby’s.
He squinted, turning them this way and that. They looked like they could have been taken on the same day at the same place—they were even torn as if maybe they had been ripped from the same photo. When he examined the backs of the photos more closely, he understood why Jordan was so creeped out.
A single word in black ink was scrawled on the back of each picture. Jordan’s read, “You’re,” and Abby’s read, “finished.”
You’re finished.
Dan glanced up and away, then focused on Felix’s mother. She didn’t notice his darting eyes. Why did they get photos and not me? If it’s some kind of warning, why would I be left out?
That’s a good thing, Dan, he reminded himself wryly. Nobody should want to get a note saying “You’re finished.”
Though it was orange and red now instead of green, the densely wooded terrain outside the car triggered a memory. He could practically smell the cheap air freshener from the cab that had first brought him to New Hampshire College.
“How much farther?” Dan asked, glancing up from his phone.
“Half an hour,” Mrs. Sheridan said. “Maybe forty minutes.”
Dan’s knee bounced; they had been driving for an hour already. The only way to Morthwaite Clinic, apparently, was through miles and miles of forest far from any main traffic arteries.
A text message arrived from his mother.
Hope you are having fun with Missy and Tariq. Please be responsible but call if you need a ride after the party tonight! Love you.
At last there came a break in the trees and Dan pressed himself closer to the window, watching as they drove up a steep climb that brought them to a wide-open field, fenced and gated. Dan had hoped to find a cheerful, modern clinic, but Morthwaite looked like it could be Brookline’s twin. It was cleaner, at least, although nobody had bothered to clear the vines overtaking the stone facade. Gray and tall, the building perched like a weary sentinel on the hill, and even at this distance Dan could make out grates protecting the windows.
Mrs. Sheridan stopped the Prius at the gate and a security guard asked to see both of their IDs. The pimply, heavyset guard scrutinized Dan’s license with hooded eyes, looking skeptically from the card to Dan’s face before finally calling up to the main building to confirm their appointment.
“Looks like you check out. Here’s your guest badge,” the guard said, practically tossing Dan’s ID and a plastic name card back through the window. “Have a nice day.”
Dan tucked his license away and clipped the visitor badge to his coat. The car slowly navigated the gravel driveway, then idled under the stone overhang that enclosed the entrance to the clinic. Dan wiped his slick palms on his jeans and looked across the center console to Mrs. Sheridan.
“So this is it,” Dan murmured.
“If you need a minute …”
“No,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Gravel crunched under Dan’s shoes as he got out and stared ahead into the clinic. He shuddered, struck by the same sense of foreboding he’d felt when he first set foot in Brookline. He couldn’t believe this was an actual, functioning mental hospital, where people still went for treatment and even, in some cases, long-term stays. Maybe this summer he had been one more fainting spell away from just such a fate. He put his hand in his jeans pocket and closed it around the familiar shape of his pill bottle. It felt like an anchor, like a ward. He was seeing a counselor and keeping up with his meds; there was no reason he couldn’t live a normal life.
Why couldn’t Felix do the same?
Right. Normal. Because having nightmares every night and obsessing over your dead great-uncle is completely normal. And bonus! Your best friends are receiving threatening messages.
As he walked up the driveway to the front entrance, Dan glanced at the windows on the first floor. A face peered out at him, stark and white, and for a second he could swear it was Warden Crawford’s, smug smile and all. But another step closer, Dan realized it was only a docile old man.
A nurse in tidy blue scrub pants and a chunky-knit sweater greeted them just inside the door. There was another series of gates here, though smaller, and the nurse asked Dan to empty his pockets and step through a metal detector. He handed over his wallet, his keys, and his water bottle, then gave her his medicine quickly, hoping she wouldn’t ask him about it. The nurse just took his things and put them in a plastic bag, then labeled it.
“You can have these back when you’re all done,” she said.
Another wave of dread overcame him, this one harsher than the last. Without his things, Dan felt that much closer to being a patient instead of a visitor. But the nurse smiled and directed him through the security gate, chatting amiably as she led him down the brightly lit halls.
“I’ll wait here in the lobby,” Mrs. Sheridan told him. “You go on ahead.”
Dan paused. “Are you sure? He probably wants to see you.”
She shrugged her tiny shoulders and looked anywhere but at him. “No. He’s seen enough of me. He only wants to see you, I think.”
“You’re the one Felix keeps asking for?” The nurse furrowed her brow, giving Dan a closer look. Her name tag said “Grace.”
“I am, yeah. We know each other from summer school.”
“He was doing so much better,” she said with a sigh. They rounded a corner, leaving behind the lobby and Mrs. Sheridan. “Nobody really comes to see him except his parents and the occasional teacher. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see a friend. His room is just down this way. You’re Daniel, right? He talks about you all the time.”
“Dan,” he corrected instinctively, “but … yeah. He does? That’s … really something. What does he say about me?”
The nurse was slightly shorter than him, and had to look up to meet his eyes. She leaned against the doorframe and chuckled. “All good things. That you were always so kind to him, and one of the only real friends he’s ever had.”
Dan’s face burned. Felix rarely entered his mind these days, and when he did, it wasn’t for pleasant reasons. His pace slowed, his hands sweating again as he hid them in his pockets. Maybe he should’ve visited sooner, cared more.
Nurse Grace coughed politely, nodding toward the door.
“Ready to go in?”
“Sure …”
“There are a few rules, obviously,” she said, taking out her passkey. “Don’t touch the patient, don’t accept anything from him to take out of here. We’ll be observing, of course, in case he becomes overstimulated or upset. I need verbal confirmation that you understand these rules.”
“I understand,” Dan said.
He swallowed uneasily. The last time he had seen Felix face-to-face, it had been in an operating theater, and there’d been a scalpel flashing between them. The door beeped softly as the nurse used the passkey over the electronic lock. A soft hiss, a click, and the heavy white door swung open. They stepped into a small antechamber with a few plastic chairs and a glass window that looked into the adjoining patient room. There was Felix, sitting behind the observation panel, dressed in crisp white flannels with blue pinstripes. His hands were folded in his lap, resting on a checkered blanket. He was looking out the actual window, the one with bars over it, his eyes far away.
This was not the same tidy, upright Felix Dan remembered—it seemed as though he had shrunk, now just a frail husk of the muscle jock he had become over the summer. All the weight Felix had put on from his strict diet and exercise regimen seemed to weigh him down now, his whole body drooping toward the floor.
The nurse let Dan through another electronically locked door into the room with Felix. Dan heard the door whisper shut behind him and lock into place. It seemed as though all the air rushed out of the room, leaving them in a cool, hermetically sealed box.
Felix didn’t even turn at his entrance, though Dan saw the beginnings of a smile tug at the corner of his thin lips.
“Hello, Daniel Crawford,” Felix said calmly. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
(#ulink_229c72c6-0a55-576d-8993-ba73acb79f28)
An empty chair waited not far from where Felix sat gazing out the window.
It wasn’t a padded cell, exactly, but Dan would hardly call it a living space. An antiseptic scent permeated the room—it smelled like every high school bathroom Dan had ever been in. The only object with any personality whatsoever was the blanket draped over Felix’s lap; everything else was either white or pale blue.
“Hi,” Dan said, meandering awkwardly to the chair. He sat down, fidgeting. “Your, um … your mom sent me a letter. She said you wanted to see me. Or maybe want is a strong word. You were asking for me, is what she said.”
Felix swiveled to observe him. No more glasses, just his mother’s thin, steep nose. Were Felix’s eyes always so huge and staring? Dan saw his own face reflected back at him, glinting in Felix’s stare.
Felix twitched as if to shrug. “No more spectacles. The frames, you see, could be snapped and used for self-harm. I now use contacts instead.”
Dan nodded, clasping his hands together and forcing them down on his leg.
“Personally, I think sawing through the carotid artery with a piece of jagged plastic would be a crude and inefficient way to die, but I’m told it has happened before and so …” Felix tapped just under his right eye. “Safety first.”
“I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”
“You don’t look well, Daniel,” Felix observed matter-of-factly. “Sleep proving elusive?”
“Nightmares,” Dan explained. He didn’t see any point in being coy. Felix wasn’t coping with the aftermath of Brookline and neither was Dan, no matter how much he might try to pretend otherwise. “But I bet you know that already.”
Felix nodded, looking out the window again. “I do, I do … The nightmares are what hurt the most. I dream of all the sculptures I had yet to make, and even though when I have control over my mind, I know that wasn’t really me, those failures still haunt me. But I’m sure you understand. You’re special, too, special like me. You see things you shouldn’t be able to see. You know things you shouldn’t be able to know. Things like other people’s memories …” He paused, smoothing the blanket across his legs. “The doctors here do what they can. The violent urges are gone. But the dreams, the burning in my head, that will never go away. A bright burning star … It burns when my eyes are open and when they’re shut. It burns right now when I look at your face.”
“I’m sorry? You lost me for a second there. You know what? Never mind. Honestly, man, I don’t know what to tell you. I thought once we left that place the nightmare would be over for good.”
A short burst of laughter almost caused Dan to fall out of his chair. He hadn’t expected Felix to laugh, let alone so suddenly. Then Felix fell silent, pursing his lips.
“That was very naive.”
“I guess so,” Dan admitted. “Still, there are worse things than being naive.”
Felix leaned forward, gesturing for Dan to do the same. When he did, a waft of strong soap smell hit him hard. Felix grinned, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. He laughed again, almost gleefully, as if a secret waited to burst out from behind that toothy grin. “Are there?”
“What do you mean?” Dan whispered. He glanced over Felix’s shoulder at the observation glass. Felix burbled out another high-pitched laugh, then squinted, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come here,” Dan added.
“It’s … It’s all right now. I … The star burns but I … Yes, I can hold on for just long enough.” Felix leaned in even closer—any closer and his chin would have brushed Dan’s shoulder. Dan was so riveted, he almost didn’t feel the object that fell on his leg.
“Don’t let them see it,” Felix hissed. “Cover it with your hand. There. There, that’s good. Don’t let them take it from you. If they take it, you’ll never find your way, and then it’s trouble for me. So much trouble for me. More burning.”
“What is it?” Dan pressed his hands over … a card? A letter?
“Follow them, Daniel. You’ll see. You’ll see!” Felix rocked back into his chair, covering his face with both hands. A half-choked cry escaped. “Forgive me, Dan. What we did to you … Awful. Terrible. I don’t know if it can be undone.”
“What? Are you okay? Are you in pain?” Dan looked around frantically, and just as he expected, he heard the lock mechanism on the door click. The nurse was coming. “I think we need help here!”
“Follow them,” Felix sobbed through his fingers. “Follow, Daniel!” Every word sounded as if it were being tortured from his throat. “It’s okay to be afraid!” he cried. “I’m afraid all the time.”
Nurse Grace rushed in behind Dan, pushing on his shoulder. “You’ll need to leave now,” she said, then kneeled down in front of Felix. “Please,” she said as an orderly appeared to escort Dan out. “It’s time for you to go.”
Dan stood, numb, and backed away, watching as Grace tried to sooth the frantic Felix, who clawed at her shoulders, pushing himself up until he could see Dan again.
“Follow, Daniel! Follow! It’s time for me to wake up now. Wake up, Felix! Wake up!”
The sound of Felix’s screaming echoed in his head, following him out into the corridor. A male nurse guided him back out to the main hall and Dan slumped along behind him, carefully palming the note Felix had slipped him. He flicked it into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie just as they reached the lobby. Mrs. Sheridan stood up from a low, worn couch. Dan didn’t say a word, but the corner of her lips began to tremble.
“Do you think it helped?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Dan said. His cheeks burned with the lie. “No, I don’t think it did. I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Sheridan nodded, placing a shaking hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for trying.” Without another word, she turned and led him to the security gate. Dan picked up his bag of personal items, lost in a haze.
Nurse Grace appeared just as they reached the doors to the outside. She pulled Mrs. Sheridan aside, speaking to her in hushed tones. That was Dan’s chance to sneak a look at the card Felix had given him.
He turned to face the wall, his nerves buzzing with excitement and fear as he reached into his pocket and drew out the note.
No, not a note—a photo on heavy card stock. Black-and-white faces stared at him, vacant—two little boys in front of a striped circus tent. He was sure of it now: Abby’s and Jordan’s photos were connected. The photo in his hands was the missing link.
“What the hell is this?” Dan mumbled.
He flipped the card over to find rows of numbers scribbled hastily on the back. Felix’s voice echoed in his head.
Follow them, Daniel. You’ll see. You’ll see!
“Follow what?” he said aloud. “And to where?”
Under the numbers he found a single word: not. He imagined this photo in a line between Jordan’s and Abby’s, and he realized the message was only now complete. Felix must have sent them those pictures, then. Or maybe he had some help.
The hairs at the back of Dan’s neck stood up as he pieced together the sentence.
You’re not finished.
(#ulink_2d41f12c-2b46-52a6-acef-209fd6f7bf66)
Dan peered at his friends as, in two pixelated windows, they blinked into their webcams, momentarily mute. Abby pushed a piece of black hair behind her ear, flashing a thin wrist blotched with ink and paint stains.
“Poor Felix,” she murmured. There was a half-second delay between when her mouth moved and when Dan heard her. In a normal conversation, the effect might be comical. “I was sure he’d be at least a little better by now.”
“No way,” Jordan cut in, tossing his head of shaggy curls. He took off his thick hipster glasses and wiped them on his shirtfront. “I wasn’t hoping for anything with that kid. He tried to kill us, Abby. And now these pictures? Frankly, I almost liked it better when they just said ‘You’re finished.’”
“It sounds to me like he’s still haunted by what he did. You heard what Dan said—Felix wanted forgiveness. Even if he’s still … Even if he’s not better, it does sound like part of him is sorry.” She yawned, leaning closer to her camera, just close enough to show the dark smudges under her eyes. “Be cynical if you want, Jordan, but it’s not like you’re getting much sleep either.”
“Nope, but my calc grades are ridiculous. Who knew insomnia could be so great for your work ethic?” He forced a laugh. “Listen, Dan, I’m taking a look at these numbers for you, but I’m not promising much. It sounds to me like Felix has gone way, way off the deep end. Probably best just to forget we ever met the guy and move on. We can burn these pictures and never think about him again.”
“You didn’t see him,” Dan insisted. “He wasn’t just urgent … He was … possessed, almost.”
What we did to you … Awful. Terrible. I don’t know if it can be undone …
An icy stone settled in Dan’s stomach. Felix didn’t know if what could be undone?
“Not a word I like to think about in conjunction with that creep,” Jordan muttered. The camera caught a head full of hair while he looked down toward his lap. Over the microphone, Dan heard the scratch of a pen on paper.
“Jeez, I have got to get some sleep. These stupid numbers keep turning into blobs,” Jordan said with a sigh. “I swear the pattern looks familiar, though. It’s like it’s on the tip of my tongue … Freaking frustrating.”
“You can do it, Jordan,” Abby said, perking up in her video window. “If anyone can figure them out, you can.”
“I don’t know,” he replied. He really did sound exhausted.
“Let’s start from the top,” Dan suggested. “You said it’s probably a code of some kind, right? This is Felix we’re talking about. He was a wackjob, sure, but he was smart. A genius. We have to assume he gave me the code knowing it was something we could figure out.”
“I’m not even sure it’s a code anymore,” Jordan said. “They’re groupings, but there are so few of them. The way they’re spaced looks intentional, but …”
Dan had been so sure Jordan would know what to do with the numbers. The kid could solve a master sudoku puzzle in his sleep, or ace the kind of calc test that made Dan sick with stress. If Jordan couldn’t crack this puzzle, they’d be left with nothing.
“But what?” Abby prompted. She squinted into her webcam. Dan had emailed them both a copy of the numbers on the back of Felix’s photo, along with the image on the front.
“But I don’t know. Sometimes these things are crazy complex. Not like A equals one, B equals two,” he explained. “Maybe it can’t be solved on its own. We might need the cipher—”
“Did you guys hear that?” Abby suddenly whispered, glancing over her shoulder and into the dark bedroom behind her.
“Hear what?” Jordan asked absently.
“That voice.” Her eyes grew wide and she shrank back in her chair. “You really didn’t hear it?” she whispered.
Dan leaned closer to the computer screen, brows knitted with concern. “Hear what? Abby, I mean, are you okay? I didn’t hear anything.” He hadn’t. “Did you, Jordan?”
“No …”
Abby’s head flew to the side. “There it is again!”
Dan was beginning to worry. He didn’t hear anything but the impatient tapping of Jordan’s pen on his desk. “I really don’t hear it, Abs.”
She blinked, hard, trembling a little in the window on Dan’s screen. “It sounded like … Never mind.”
“Like what?” Dan prompted.
“No, it’s idiotic,” she said, sighing. “Forget it.”
“Abby. What did it sound like?”
She looked away from the camera. “My aunt. Lucy.”
All three of them went quiet for a moment. Four months ago, when they first met, Dan might have been tempted to crack a joke to fill the silence. But hearing voices wasn’t a joke to them anymore, not after the summer they’d shared, and Abby wasn’t the kind of girl who got scared easily.
“Has this happened before?” Dan asked.
“Maybe once or twice,” Abby said, looking down at her lap. “Maybe more than that. Ever since we left … I don’t know. I just hear her sometimes. Whispering.”
“Abby,” he started to say, his stomach tying itself in knots, “that’s not—”
“I’ve got it!”
Both he and Abby jumped a little at Jordan’s sudden shout.
“I’ve got it,” he cried again. “I mean, I don’t got it got it, but I think I know what we need to do.”
Dan wasn’t ready to leave behind the possibility that Abby might be hallucinating mysterious voices. This was probably the point when a real boyfriend would give her a hug, or at least sit with her until she calmed down. Stupid distance. Stupid webcam.
“Go on,” Dan said, tearing his focus away from Abby. “What do we need to do?”
“He said to follow, right?” Jordan said, speaking quickly, excitedly. Tip-tap-tip-tap. Jordan typed so noisily Dan almost couldn’t hear his voice. “I didn’t see it at first because of what’s missing. Look at the photos again, all three of them—mine, then yours, Dan, then Abby’s.”
Dan slipped the picture off his desk and steadied it in front of the monitor, comparing it to the photos his friends had received. They made a complete panorama, one wide carnival tent and a bizarre group of people, posed in a vacant tableau. What did a weird old carnival have to do with this code?
“See?” Jordan cried. “Right there, behind the tent and the Ferris wheel. Do you see it?”
“See what?” Abby said flatly. “A blurry smudge and, I don’t know, a roof maybe? I can’t make it out …”
Dan had already pored over the photos a dozen or so times since returning to his house, but now he tried to study the panorama with fresh eyes. Abby was right—it looked like a roof, a tall, slanted roof. “A steeple?”
“Nope,” Jordan replied. “Here. Look at this picture I’m sending.”
The messenger window below the videos flashed, and Dan scrolled to check out the image Jordan had found. It was almost impossible to describe the hard jab of excitement and dread that hit him like a punch to the throat. It felt like he might choke on his next breath.
Sloped, white with dark trim, falling to pieces …
“Brookline,” he whispered, his eyes mere centimeters from the screen. “That’s the campus. That carnival—it’s on the green in front of Wilfurd Commons.”
“I thought it looked familiar, so I checked the college’s website and voilà! It’s hard to see at this resolution, but it’s definitely Brookline,” Jordan explained.
“Nice catch,” Abby said.
“Thank you, thank you very much. I’m here all week.”
“Okay,” Dan said, leaning back in his chair. He stuck his thumbnail in his mouth and worried it, his eyes shifting from the color photo on his screen to the black-and-white one on his desk. “Okay, so that’s Brookline. That’s the campus. What are the numbers then?”
“They’re coordinates,” Jordan said, his voice punctuated by the staccato of his speedy typing. “They don’t make any sense without the cardinal indications, but I looked up Camford’s coordinates and they’re close. Really close. If you substitute in the right letters, you’ll see what I mean.”
“Slow down, Jordan, we can’t all be misunderstood geniuses,” Dan teased.
“No, I see what he means!” Now Abby sounded just as caught up, just as thrilled as Jordan. Dan couldn’t match their enthusiasm, not yet.
“Like this,” Jordan said, and a new message appeared.
43°12′24″N 71°32′17″W
“Holy crap. Forget misunderstood, you’re just a genius.”
“Oh, that’s not all. With coordinates this precise, we can get pinpoint accuracy. Give me five minutes with Google Maps and I can have a list of addresses for you.”
So the first part of the mystery was solved, at least. Coordinates. You’re not finished. It couldn’t be any more obvious that Felix was handing them a map.
“Dan? What’s the matter?” Abby asked. She peered into the screen at him, her brow creased with worry. “You got quiet there.”
“I’m just thinking.”
“As usual,” Abby said with a laugh. “Come on, fill us in.”
“It’s not a happy thought,” he warned.
“A happy thought? Dan, we’ve all been so sleep deprived and stressed lately, I’ve forgotten what a happy thought looks like. Between these photos and senior year, I’m this close to checking myself in to the loony bin.” She coughed, scrunching up her eyes before squeaking out, “Sorry. Poor choice of words.”
“But not the worst segue, actually.”
“Oh boy, here we go,” Jordan said.
“It’s just … Felix said ‘follow,’ and it was … I don’t know. A cry for help, I think. I was sure getting away from Brookline would help him, help all of us, but that hasn’t been the case, has it? We’re still messed up and I keep wondering if maybe the only way forward is to go back. ‘You’re not finished’—that’s what the photos say, right? Well, maybe we’re not.”
“I was worried you were going to say that,” Abby replied, pursing her lips. Her skin, ashy from an obvious lack of sleep, didn’t at all match the bright homemade paintings decorating the room behind her.
“But not surprised,” Jordan added. Abby gave him a warning look. “What? It’s too late at night to worry about feelings and crap. Meanwhile, I’m all finished with these coordinates. Survey says ten-twenty Ellis is the first address. Thirteen-eleven Virgil is address number two. Then we’ve got nine-twenty-two Blake and finally thirty-nineteen Concord. They’re all, surprise, surprise, in spitting distance of the college.”
“So what’s it going to be?” Dan asked, trying his best to keep the undercurrent of excitement out of his voice. “Do we forget today ever happened and hope this all goes away? Or do we see what’s behind door number two?”
“And by door number two, you mean the place where we almost died,” Abby said. “I don’t know, Dan. What are you thinking, we’ll just waltz back onto campus with a set of directions and say, ‘Excuse me, sir, do you know why our psychotic sort-of friend might have sent us here?’” Abby took a deep breath. “I mean, no offense. I just really don’t follow.”
For once, Jordan didn’t have anything snarky to add. He was clearly awaiting Dan’s answer, too. But Dan had thought this through already. Really, he had Sandy to thank for the inspiration—she was the one to suggest he look at other colleges.
“How would you guys feel about a prospective students’ weekend?”
In the dream, Dan could actually feel the heat of the flames as they spouted out in front of his face. He began to sweat, ducking the gout of fire just as it left the performer’s mouth. Then he spun to glare at the man—didn’t he see him there? But the man was laughing, wiping the fuel off his lips and slapping his thigh. The whole carnival began to tip slightly, the ground shifting under Dan’s feet. This was probably what being drunk felt like, he thought, wandering aimlessly through the striped tents.
No, not aimlessly … Something was guiding his path. He didn’t know what he was heading toward, only that he had to get there. Answers. Answers to questions he was only now brave enough to ask. What if he could make his family do anything he wanted? What if mind control wasn’t magic, but science?
He was getting closer, just barely staying upright as he left the last of the tents behind and approached a ragged stage. In his sweaty hand, Dan clutched a slip of firm paper. “Admit One.” The old coot waited for him onstage, patient, watchful. He really didn’t look like much, but appearances could be deceiving …
A shrill bell pierced the vision, and just like that the dream vanished.
Dan sat up fast in bed, instantly dizzy. The dinging outlived the dream, and he scrambled, trying to find his phone on his bedside table. In the process, he knocked over the bottle of Benadryl, which he’d left open after taking a pill to fall asleep.
Bleary-eyed, he found the phone next to the overturned bottle. He rolled onto his back, bringing the screen close to his face.
Missy had texted him.
Wish u had made it 2 the party. We all missed u!
Dan groaned and dropped the phone back on the bedside table. He probably should have at least texted her to say happy birthday, but it had slipped his mind. Too tired to reply, he pulled the blankets up over his head and tried to fall back asleep.
A single thought kept him awake, and for once, it wasn’t a bad one: soon he wouldn’t have to worry about Missy and Tariq. He would get to see Abby and Jordan, his real friends.
(#ulink_2ef92f3b-72d1-5e2e-801e-f1f283e5352e)
Chill drizzle flattened his hair, and Dan parted it and combed it with his fingers again. He fidgeted on the sidewalk, cold and anxious, drumming on his legs from inside his pants pockets. Cars drifted by, filling the air with the soft shhush-shhush of tires slicking across wet pavement.
Finally, a new bus pulled up, brakes squealing, and he could see Abby’s bright face peering out at him from above.
He waved, adjusting the heavy laptop bag slung over his shoulder. Already he had checked three times to make sure he had packed all of his meds, but now he checked the laptop bag again, almost as a nervous tic.
Just like when they first got to NHCP, Jordan and Abby had taken the same bus. The smell of diesel wafted over Dan, mingling with the wormy petrichor scent lingering on the pavement. He hunkered down into his jacket and stamped his feet to get warm. It was slightly colder here than at home, already wintry in late October. Tiny filaments of rain clung to the cold trees, benches, and cracks in the sidewalk. Down the block from the bus stop, the town businesses had put jack-o’-lanterns and twinkling purple lights out to decorate for Halloween.
Mist rolled down from the hilltop campus, blanketing the town in a milky glow.
“Hey,” Dan greeted. “You guys finally made it.”
Abby was the first one off the bus, and he hurried forward to help her with her bags. She wore a bright yellow peacoat with a sprig of peacock feathers pinned to the lapel and a floppy knit cap. Sometime since the last time he had seen her, Abby had dyed a chunk of her hair electric blue. They hugged, and Dan gave her a light kiss on the cheek.
“It’s good to see you again,” she said, blushing. “Here, let’s get Jordan’s stuff.”
She turned to assist Jordan, who wore his usual dark, stylish clothes—a leather jacket and skinny jeans, with woolly socks just visible above the tops of his scuffed ankle boots.
Dan had forgotten how tragically unhip he felt in their presence. He also noticed slips of scrap paper poking out of Jordan’s jacket pockets.
“I don’t suppose those are hangman games?” Dan asked.
“These?” Jordan pulled out one of the slips. “Just messing around.”
From what Dan could see, “just messing around” meant hundreds of rows of mathematical calculations. He had to wonder what it was like inside Jordan’s genius head. They picked up their bags and waited for the street to clear, then they crossed to the paved path winding up toward the college itself.
“How was the trip?” Dan asked, walking as close to Abby as he could without tripping her. “It’s been raining like this since the second I stepped off the plane.”
“Jordan wouldn’t shut up about his host,” Abby replied. “He looked him up on Facebook. Very rich. Very athletic. And very handsome with a capital H-O-T.”
Dan laughed nervously.
“And probably very straight with a capital Disappointment,” Jordan added.
“I doubt we’ll see much of them anyway,” Dan pointed out. “We’re here on a mission.” He tried to say this lightly, like it was all a funny joke, but neither Jordan nor Abby laughed. “Besides, they probably don’t have time for lame high school students like us.”
“Yeah.” Jordan tossed his curly hair and gave Abby a sideways look. “Let’s hope they don’t pay too much attention to the Scooby gang sneaking off.”
“I don’t remember this hill being so steep,” Abby said, puffing. “Man, this place must get freezing in the winter.”
With every step they took up the hill toward the college, Dan felt his breath becoming shorter and his mood darker. It was one thing to talk about coming back here; it was another thing entirely to be here, to be back. Felix, possessed or inspired by the Sculptor, had tried to kill them. Dan had seen an actual dead body. But as anxious as the place made him, it was as if someone had opened him up and hidden a magnet in his chest—he felt pulled back to this place and its as-yet-undiscovered secrets.
A buzz in his pocket jarred Dan out of his thoughts. He pulled out his phone to find a new text message from Sandy.
Hey! Make it to Jordan’s safely? Just checking in. Have fun on your visit!
Dan chewed the inside of his cheek, his finger dodging over the screen to type back a vague if reassuring message.
“Jordan’s?” Jordan himself eyed the phone over Dan’s shoulder as Dan typed a quick reply. “What exactly did you tell your folks about this weekend?”
“Not the whole truth, if you want to be technical about it.” It hadn’t felt good to lie to his mom, but it hadn’t exactly been hard, either. “I mentioned you were checking out a tour at Georgetown this weekend and said I was going to tag along. And then I might have changed my flight with the emergency credit card.”
“At least I’m not the one obscuring my whereabouts this time,” Jordan said with a wry smile. “I’m sure we’ll have a blast at Georgetown. But seriously, Dan, let me know if you need help paying back that credit card.”
“You should’ve just told them the truth,” Abby said.
“Then I wouldn’t be here talking to you two. My parents don’t want me to have anything to do with this place.” And maybe they’re right.
They reached the top of the hill and Dan stopped abruptly, stunned as if someone had punched him in the gut and knocked out what little breath he had left.
“What the …” The words died on his lips.
They’re the same, he thought, staring dumbly at a sea of tents set up in the grassy central area of the campus. They’re just like in my dream. Or really, just like in the warden’s dream. And more alarming still: just like in their mysterious photos.
He tugged the picture out of his coat pocket and held it up for all of them to see. Jordan and Abby did the same, standing in a row and completing the panorama.
“What’s stronger than déjà vu?” Jordan whispered.
“Whatever this is,” Abby answered.
The carnival tents were only just visible through the gaps between brick buildings; from where they stood, they could see the broad orange, purple, and black stripes. Dan half expected to smell the scent of burned fuel—to see the fire breather from his dream, and the man on the stage … But all he could smell was the mud clinging to their shoes and the unidentifiable cooking-meat stench that always seemed to float over from the Commons.
Dan tucked the photo back into his jacket pocket.
“I wasn’t expecting a carnival,” Abby said. “Do you think it’s for the prospective students?”
“There was nothing about it in the pamphlet they sent out,” Jordan said, leading them forward and deeper into campus. Tall trees sprang up on either side of the path, their fall leaves shiny with wetness. “Kind of a big thing to leave out, don’t you think?”
Dan wouldn’t know; he hadn’t bothered to read the pamphlet. It said it was for prospective students, not people pretending to be prospective students.
“At least it’s twenty percent less creepy than the pictures,” Jordan muttered. “Can anyone explain to me why every vintage photo looks like they used the Macabre filter on Instagram?”
“Doesn’t look like they put up any rides, either,” Abby said, squinting toward the tents.
“You’re right.” Jordan shrugged. “No Ferris wheel … Kind of dumb to have a carnival with no rides. Still, seems like we should check it out anyway. Who knows, Dan, it might have a big, important clue.”
“If we have time,” Dan said, choosing to ignore Jordan’s sarcasm. “And only after we’ve checked out every address. We might not even be able to get to all of them, or we might have to split up.” It was then he realized neither of his friends was responding, and both were staring at the ground.
“Not trying to be a killjoy,” Dan assured them. “But that is why we’re here.”
“We’re here to figure out why we’re all having nightmares and hearing voices. We’re here so we can get some closure and move on with our lives.” Jordan zipped up his jacket against the wind as they walked. “That may or may not involve Felix’s scavenger hunt, Dan. You have to be open to the idea that maybe that kid is just off his nut and those houses don’t have anything creepier in them than Republican voters.”
“You think Felix just picked a bunch of random addresses for his own amusement? No way,” Dan insisted, reasonably, he thought. “I think whatever … possessed Felix … gave him these coordinates. They’re linked. I can feel it.”
“Yeah? Are your Super Warden powers activating?”
“Jordan, that’s not funny.” Abby halfheartedly elbowed him.
“You’re right. Shit. I’m sorry, just … being back at this place … I knew it would be weird, just not this weird. The carnie vibe isn’t helping any.”
Dan couldn’t fault him. All three of them grew quiet as they walked the path snaking through academic buildings and fraternity houses. The admissions building where they were supposed to meet their hosts was on the far side of the campus and had its own separate driveway for cars of parents dropping off their kids. It looked like Dan, Jordan, and Abby must be the only three students who’d come by bus.
The walk took them past a small, gated cemetery. Dan had never given it much thought over the summer, since it was little more than a manicured patch of grass, the gravestones haphazardly arranged in no real line or pattern. Some of the grave markers were so old they weren’t much more than crumbling stubs. But now, a bright flash of red on one of the newer markers caught his eye. At first he thought it was just an ordinary flower arrangement, but when he looked closely, he saw that it was a wreath of red roses shaped, more or less, like a skull.
A thin carpet of mist wound through the headstones.
“That’s an odd choice,” he muttered, thinking aloud more than anything else.
Jordan followed his gaze. “Yeah. Real tasteful. Jeez. Why didn’t they just put a big blinking arrow that said: ‘Hey, look! A dead guy!’?”
Abby paused to look at the wreath, and Dan bumped lightly into her back. “Oh, sorry,” she said distractedly, “I was just thinking it almost looks like an ofrenda.”
“Huh?”
Jordan and Dan had said it together.
“For the Day of the Dead?” Abby asked. She drew closer to the cemetery gate and leaned forward, studying the flower wreath. “An ofrenda.”
“Just saying it over and over again doesn’t explain what it is,” Jordan said.
“Right.” She rolled her eyes a little and pointed to the flowers on the headstone. “Basically, it’s like the flowers you take to the graves of loved ones, the offerings. Usually you bring marigolds, but skulls are a big part of the Day of the Dead, too, so maybe somebody combined them? I’ve never seen a design like that.”
“Maybe he left it,” Jordan said, nodding his head down the path to where a stout college-aged boy was curled up against the cemetery gate. His head rested on an empty rum bottle. Someone had covered his face in marker.
“Man. Looks like someone had either the best or the worst night of his life,” Dan said.
“Ugh. Hazing. I don’t get that crap,” Jordan cut in. His suitcase left narrow, wet tracks on the path as they continued on toward Wilfurd Commons, leaving behind the snoring frat boy. “Why would I pay a bunch of roided-out jocks to be my friends just so they can get me completely wasted, write all over my face, and leave me in a graveyard? What’s the point?”
They stepped into the tall shadow of Wilfurd Commons just in time—a light rain had started to fall, and the mist Dan remembered from the summer was rising in full force. Other prospective students were mustering outside on the grass, herded this way and that by NHC students in bright orange T-shirts. “I don’t know,” Dan said. “I sort of get the appeal of a frat. Everyone wants to feel like part of something.”
“Sure, but what’s the point if you have to pay your way in?” Jordan snorted.
“We should hurry up,” Abby said. “It looks like most people already dropped off their stuff inside.”
“Yup, we need to blend in,” Dan said, following her and Jordan into the big blob of high school students pushing their way into Wilfurd Commons. A knot grew in Dan’s stomach as he realized just how many student chaperones were there to keep an eye on them.
He tightened his grip on his bag, eyeing the chattering high schoolers with suspicion, even annoyance. Over the summer, making new friends had been one of his top priorities; now, he wanted to do everything in his power to avoid it.
(#ulink_c45322bb-7aa7-56fd-8ee5-5fb8678839a5)
“Don’t worry about your friend there.”
“Hm?” Dan hadn’t noticed he was staring, but apparently he was—at Abby. She was walking close to her host, and the two girls were laughing as if they had known each other much longer than ten minutes. Abby just had that way with people. Dan strained to hear what they were giggling about. “Oh, I wasn’t worried.”
“Really?” His host, Micah, lifted a thick, dark eyebrow and clapped Dan on the shoulder. “’Cause you look plenty nervous from where I’m standing.”
“We’re, um, sort of dating, that’s all,” Dan said. He and the other prospective students—“coolly” called “prospies”—were being marched back across the academic side and down the short road that led to the dormitories. Paired off with their hosts, most of the students were busy getting to know their campus buddies for the next few days, no one more so than Abby.
“Hey,” Dan called, waving to her. A few steps ahead, she smiled and tossed back a quick twiddle of her fingers.
“Who’s that?” he heard her host say.
Abby’s response was too soft to overhear.
“I think your girl is busy,” Micah said gently. “Don’t sweat it, man, you can catch up with her later. Do you two go to the same school?”
“Not really,” Dan said. “I mean, no, no, we don’t. We actually met over the summer at the program they have here.”
“Really? Well, come on now, that’s great. So y’all just couldn’t get enough NHC? Had to come back?” He chuckled, and even his laugh seemed to have a Southern accent. Dan would almost guess his host was exaggerating the effect in an attempt to be funny or something, except that Micah didn’t seem like the type to be ironic, as far as Dan could tell.
“We met Jordan there, too,” Dan explained, pointing, half trying to rope Jordan into the conversation. Jordan didn’t appear to be warming up to his own host, Cal, with anything resembling enthusiasm, despite Cal’s previously hyped good looks. It couldn’t help that Cal seemed to be doing all the talking. “The three of us sort of became inseparable,” Dan said, unable to keep a note of pride out of his voice.
“Think you’re keen to apply? I don’t mean to be nosy, but when you intern for the admissions office it kind of comes with the territory,” Micah said. They were passing back by the frat houses now. Dan wondered which one was missing a pledge.
Dan redirected his attention to Micah, still unsure whether his host was making fun of him or not. Who said “keen” in earnest, anyway? Well, Dan supposed maybe Micah did, with his neat, modern glasses and a goatee that he reached up to rub every time he spoke. “Maybe. I’m mostly into history and psychology—do you know Jung? Yeah, him—but I have a few different interests. I still have to see if NHC is a good fit.”
“You should talk to Professor Reyes in the Psych Department. She’s running a senior seminar in the old asylum on campus, but I have her right before for Psych 200. I can ask her tomorrow if she’d let you sit in on a session,” Micah offered.
Dan tried to think of something to say, but his mind blanked.
“The asylum’s called Brookline, but you probably read about it already this summer,” his host continued amiably.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “I’ve heard of it.”
“Damn it.” Micah snapped his fingers at the host walking next to him, a short boy with scraggly red hair. “We got stragglers already. Grab that prospie before the frat boys eat her up.”
The redheaded boy responded without question, peeling off from the group and trotting over to a girl who was caught up in conversation with a little huddle of fraternity brothers clustered near the sidewalk.
“Don’t want you folks wandering off,” Micah explained lightly. “’Specially not to any frat parties. Those things get out of hand fast. We’ve been complaining to the new dean about their parties, even made a petition. I think this year a few houses will get their charters yanked.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Dan asked, his eyes roaming across the front lawns of all the frat houses. Some of them had yards that were littered with trash.
“Reasonable folks,” Micah answered directly. “You’d know what I meant if you went here.”
“I bet,” Dan replied. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the way they’d come. “We saw a guy passed out near some gravestones. He didn’t look too good.”
“Sig Tau douche bags can’t hold their liquor. Sorry, pardon my French. Just don’t like those guys. They’re always throwing ragers and one kid or another is getting alcohol poisoning. It’s a damn disgrace. Like I said, we’ll make sure they get gone this year.” Micah motioned to the same redheaded boy who had collected the wandering prospie. Out of breath, the boy jogged up to them as they continued their way across campus. “Dan here says there’s a Sig Tau pledge passed out near the cemetery. Get someone to check on him, yeah?”
“Sure,” the boy said, nodding eagerly. “As soon as we—”
“No, Jimmy. Now. We got prospies all over the place—trying to set an example here. Don’t want them thinking we’re just a bunch of drunken morons.”
Jimmy nodded so hard Dan could hear his neck crack.
“Wow,” Dan said, watching Jimmy trail off behind the group. “Are you like head host or something?”
“Who? Me?” Micah laughed, throwing back his head. “Nah, nah … We just like to keep things orderly is all.”
It struck Dan as more than orderly, but he wanted to disappear, not call attention to himself, so he nodded politely and kept his eyes forward.
“Hey!” Abby dropped back to walk next to him, bringing her host with her. “This is Lara. Lara, this is Dan. She was just telling me about this art installation she’s working on for her semester project.”
“Oh, cool.” Dan reached across Abby to shake the girl’s hand. She was short, only just clearing Abby’s shoulder, and her dark, glossy black hair swung back and forth, cut into a severe wedge around her face. “Nice to meet you, Lara.”
“Seriously, I can’t wait to see her installation,” Abby raced on. “It’s a mixed-media room with statue pieces and music and live models. She’s going to take me to check it out tomorrow!”
“Actually, it’s an auto-destructive critique of the masks we wear as people of color to erase our heritage and become white,” Lara said in a flat monotone. She was either a master of deadpan humor or deadly serious. Maybe all college students just spoke a different language.
“That … sounds complex,” Dan said.
“Complex. Don’t get her started,” Micah bit out from clenched teeth. “She’ll talk your ear off about Dada futurism mumbo jumbo, who even knows what all.”
“Despite what your folksy Southern upbringing told you, ignorance is not becoming. Much to the contrary, in fact,” Lara said darkly. “Much.”
“Jeez. Tense much?” Jordan popped up between Abby and Dan, leaning his elbows onto their shoulders. “Relationship gone wrong?”
“I’d really rather not talk about it,” Micah said tightly. “Anyway, like I was saying … If you want in on any particular classes, Dan, you just let me know. I’ll make it happen.”
“That’s really nice of you, thanks,” Dan said, brushing off Jordan’s elbow.
“Hope you guys aren’t too hungry,” Micah added. “We’ve got a bit of an orientation planned before we eat. It’ll go down in Erickson, but I s’pose you know where that is since you stayed there over the summer.”
“Actually, we stayed in Brookline,” Dan said.
They crossed one last street that separated the row of fraternity and sorority houses from the main circle of dorms.
Micah looked at him funny, and Dan realized he’d acted like he hardly knew anything about Brookline a minute ago. He was going to have to do better keeping his stories straight.
“You’ll have to tell me all about that. I’ve heard crazy stories about that place,” Micah said finally.
And then, as if on command, there it was.
Dan thought he would be prepared for this moment—it was just a building, after all, and he had no reason to go in it now. Felix’s addresses were all off campus. But it didn’t matter. Dan stared up at its chipping white facade and the sagging columns struggling to support the roof and he shivered. And yet there was that magnet in his chest. It pulled him not just to the college but to Brookline itself, and a serpentine voice in the back of his head whispered, “Welcome home, Daniel.”
(#ulink_660123c1-e1e5-513b-b636-ada72dd5f536)
Inside the newly renovated, warm Erickson Dormitory, Dan finally felt the chilly influence of Brookline break. The volunteers led them up to the third floor, where a bank of overstuffed couches had been set up along the walls in a U shape. A few students disappeared down the hall, taking piles of luggage to a room to be sorted and divvied out later by host and dorm building.
Dan grabbed a seat between Abby and Jordan, who clambered out of their coats and scarves, red-faced and sweating from the jump in temperature. It was almost too warm in the spacious common room, overcrowded with bodies and furniture.
“My host seems nice,” Dan whispered to them.
“Mine’s okay,” Jordan replied with a shrug. “Not very bright, and a little WASPy, but okay.”
“Lara is awesome.” As if to prove it, Abby gave her host a little wave. All the student volunteers stood near the archway leading out into the hall. There was an elevator on the right side of the room and windows all along the wall behind where the prospies sat. Dan felt the cold from outside seeping in when one of the hosts finally opened a door. Jordan’s host began pulling orange folders from a few cardboard boxes and passing them out to the various rows.
“You don’t think she’s a little … frigid?” Jordan asked. “I’m getting some serious robot, type A vibes off of that one.”
“She’s serious about art, Jordan,” Abby muttered. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Find your folder, please,” Jordan’s host instructed. “They’re all labeled.”
“At least you two got paired with hosts who have stuff in common with you. Don’t ask how I got paired up with Cal because I have no frakking clue,” Jordan whispered. “He’s an economics major.”
“Economics involves math,” Dan suggested. “Right?”
“Maybe for most people. I get the impression Cal is just trying to learn how to handle a trust fund.”
“How could you know that already?” Abby whispered. “I say give the guy a break.”
“I will not. He’s wearing boat shoes. Ugh. Boat shoes and he is nowhere near a stupid boat. Justify that, Captain Tolerance.”
“What are you even—you know what, never mind.”
Abby handed him one of the orange folders, and then Dan quickly located his before passing the remaining stack along. He cracked open his folder to find a long schedule of events he did not plan on attending. Abby had been right—the “Campus Carnival” for prospies took the top spot in a huge font.
“If you have an emergency,” Cal was saying at the front of the room, “you’ll find the list of campus numbers in your folder. Any phone on campus can connect you easily to the main switchboard if you just dial 555 …”
He droned on about safety precautions and campus policies, but Dan had stopped paying attention. A small, sharp elbow was prodding him repeatedly in the ribs.
“Ouch. What?”
“That kid,” Abby murmured, nodding discreetly to a boy just down the row from them. He glared back at Dan through a curtain of stringy black hair. “He’s been staring at you ever since we walked in here.”
“So? He’s probably just socially awkward.” Dan would know. He couldn’t rightly say he was completely out of his shy nerd phase himself. “Or is there something on my face?”
“Dan, it’s not funny. He’s … off. I don’t think he’s blinked for the last five minutes.”
“She’s right,” Jordan hissed, chiming in so suddenly Dan jumped a little in his seat. “His eyes are all glassy.”
“He’s a host, too,” Abby pointed out. “He’s wearing one of the volunteer shirts.”
“I’m calling it now,” said Jordan. “Dude’s wasted.”
Carefully, Dan turned his head to look at the kid again—he didn’t even seem to be breathing he was so still. And Dan had to admit, that look did make him feel unsettled. There was no mistaking it—unless the kid was bird-watching out the window behind Dan, he was staring unblinkingly, intently, directly at him.
“Maybe Jordan’s right, he’s stoned or something. Anyway, we’re not here to worry about that crap, or Jordan’s problem with Cal’s stupid shoes—”
“Hey,” Jordan said.
“So let’s keep some focus,” Dan finished. He didn’t want to look at the staring kid anymore. Between him and the cold air radiating against the back of his neck, Dan was starting to get a distinctly creepy vibe about their weekend residence.
And this is supposed to be one of the good dorms.
“I hope you all plan on coming to the carnival,” Cal said, flashing them a trust-fund-worthy smile. “We’re bringing it back this year and you lucky folks are just in time to see it. Usually Student Affairs just organizes some half-assed trick-or-treating thing for the weekend.”
“The volunteers here and the college faculty really went all out,” Micah assured the room. “Food, entertainment, the whole nine yards. The Dance Department volunteered a few kids to do acrobatics, and the fencing club is doing a demonstration. We hope all of you find the time to make it down with your hosts—we haven’t had anything like this on campus in, well, definitely not since I’ve gone here, so who knows.”
“Any questions?” Cal didn’t seem much interested in Micah’s clarifications. Jordan, apparently bored already, had taken out a slip of paper with a sudoku puzzle on it and was solving it against his leg.
“Good. Now, if you could all find your hosts again we can help you choose which classes you’d like to sit in on and make sure you find your luggage and room.” Cal beckoned for them to come and reunite with their hosts. Dan stood up and stretched, watching as Abby shuffled forward to reconnect with Lara.
Over the fireplace to his left hung a giant black-and-white photograph of a man, ironically, standing in the exact spot where the picture now lived. The subject bore a vague resemblance to Cal, he thought, same privileged smile and casually coiffed hair.
“Daniel Crawford?”
Dan started, feeling a clammy breath rush right against the side of his neck. Turning, Dan found the staring black-haired volunteer standing so close to his shoulder they were practically touching. His breath smelled of an old tuna sandwich.
“Can … Can I help you?” Dan stammered, finding that even when he took a step back, the boy followed. His eyes, Dan noted, didn’t just look glassy but hollow.
“Daniel Crawford.” It wasn’t a question now, but a statement.
“Uh, yes, that’s me. What’s up?”
“Daniel Crawford … Daniel Crawford …” The host repeated his name over and over again, each time louder, a note of hysteria and then panic pitching his voice higher and higher. “Daniel Crawford. DANIEL CRAWFORD.”
Dan reeled back, knocking into the couch behind him and slamming down into it so hard his jaw rattled.
“Jeez, what the—”
The rest of the room heard the commotion and suddenly they had an audience. Dan scrambled back deeper into the couch, convinced the weird kid was going to start crawling all over him.
“Daniel Crawford … Daniel Crawford … You’re not finished. Daniel Crawford, you’re not finished, not yet …”
“Stop it! STOP SAYING THAT!” Dan hoped his own screaming would drown out the boy’s voice. For a second, it did. Then the boy went quiet, smiled a strange, sad smile at Dan, and said softly, “You’re not finished, Daniel Crawford. Time is running out, Daniel, and you’re not finished. Get out, get out of here now, go, go …” He clutched his head, grimacing.
Above the noise he heard Cal’s voice across the room, his snapping fingers … “Hey!” Cal was shouting. “Hey! Doug! Snap out of it! Wake up!”
Then as if in slow motion, Dan watched the boy scramble onto the next couch over, shoulder open the window, punch out the screen, and throw himself toward the cold open space.
(#ulink_7e2dad61-01b4-55e0-9ffa-efb43d9da23d)
Dan froze. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he needed to help, but none of his limbs responded when he tried to move.
Someone screamed, maybe Abby, and then Dan came to. The black-haired boy hadn’t quite managed to fit himself through the window with his first try, and one arm and half a sneaker were still visible hooked around the ledge. With a grunt, Dan shot forward, leaping onto the couches and grabbing what could still be seen of the host. Dan heaved backward with all his weight. The two of them crashed to the floor, and in the time it took Dan to draw his next breath, Cal and Lara were there to help wrestle the boy to the ground.
A hand closed around Dan’s right biceps and squeezed. He started away violently.
“It’s me! It’s just me!” Abby was there at his side, peering down into his face with concern. “What happened? Why was he screaming at you?”
“Back up!” Cal thundered, standing and pushing curious onlookers out of the way. “Give him some air! Give us some room … Jesus, Doug.”
Micah arrived and helped Lara pull the boy to his feet. The boy didn’t fight them, going limp as a rag doll in their hands. They dragged him toward the door, Cal herding prospies out of the way as they went. The other hosts tried as best they could to keep order, but as soon as the door shut, the room exploded with noise.
“What the hell?” Jordan trotted up to them, pale and staring. “Did he just try to hurl himself out a window?”
“I—I think so.” Shaking, Dan blinked and passed a hand over his face, feeling a cold sweat along his forehead and nose. “He just kept saying my name. I don’t get it. I’ve never seen him before, I don’t know how he knew who I was …”
“Are you all right?” Abby knelt, touching his knee gently. “Guys, this is bad. We’ve been here all of ten minutes and—”
“It’s not like Dan did anything,” Jordan interrupted. “But you’re right. This was probably a mistake, coming back here. Dan, what do you think? Should we just pack it in now? I can call my folks. It would take some explaining but they’d probably let you stay if Abby came, too.”
“No.” Even now, even when he kind of wanted to go, Dan knew it wasn’t an option. He didn’t really believe it himself, but he said, “Maybe it was a prank?”
“A prank?” Abby stood up suddenly, throwing her hands in the air. “Dan, get real.”
“What? I don’t know what to tell you, Abby. Let’s just … Let’s just all stay calm. We only just got here. Our hosts helped take him away, right? I’ll ask Micah what happened later and we can get some answers.” Dan stared up into her eyes, silently pleading. He couldn’t do this alone, even if he wanted to. And he didn’t want to. He wanted them here.
“People are staring,” Dan told them, inhaling deeply. “We have to decide now—stay or go.”
Abby chewed her lower lip furiously, twining a piece of dark hair around one finger. She glanced at Jordan, who was still worrying the puzzle paper in his hand.
“I at least want to see Lucy,” Abby said. “I want to do that much. I’m not sure when I’ll be back here from New York again.”
“And I actually do want to see what those addresses are about,” Jordan added. “Not exactly dying to get back to Richmond and the parental lockdown, so we stay, I guess.”
Dan breathed a sigh of relief and got to his feet—shakily, but he got there. The remaining hosts gathered up the prospies, preparing to take them down to the Commons for lunch. Dan wondered when he would see Micah again.
“Let’s stick with the others,” Dan said. He kept wanting to stare at the still-open window, but forced himself not to. “We can discuss how we’re going to start over lunch.”
“We’ll have to find some way to sneak off,” Abby whispered as they fell in with the other prospies. “Lucy doesn’t live far from campus, but I have a feeling our hosts are supposed to keep tabs on us constantly.”
“Maybe if we can get to her place she can tell us about some of the addresses from Felix,” Jordan suggested. That was a big ask, Dan thought, considering how fragile Lucy had been the last time they’d seen her. They shuffled out of the lounge and into the hall, following the trail of kids and hosts to the stairwell at the far end of the corridor.
“I think that’s up to Abby,” he said, giving her a quick glance. “She can judge better if Lucy is in any condition to talk about that kind of thing.”
“Thanks, Dan, I … I think that’s a good call. Give me some time to consider it.”
When they stepped outside, Dan pulled up his coat around his neck, shivering.
“I’m just saying, she’s been here for like ever, right?” Jordan said. He tried to smooth out the sudoku puzzle in his palms, then gave up and shoved it in his jeans pocket. “She might have heard rumors, or, I don’t know. She just seems like the best authority on Brookline we have right now.”
“And she also just lost her husband and had her whole traumatic childhood shoved in her face, so she probably won’t want to talk about Brookline at all,” Abby shot back hotly. “Jeez, Jordan, I want to figure this out as much as you two do, but not at the expense of my aunt’s peace of mind.”
Even if he was eager to question Lucy, Dan sided with Abby on that one; after all, the woman had been checked into Brookline as a child against her will, suffered a lobotomy under Warden Crawford, and then escaped that place only to lose her husband, Sal, at the hands of Felix. Or the Sculptor. Both, Dan decided.
“All right, all right,” Jordan muttered, putting up his hands. “Forget I even mentioned it.”
“Jordan and I could check the first addresses while you go visit her,” Dan suggested, with what he hoped was a calm, diplomatic tone. “Or maybe we can ask around to see what’s going on with Brookline’s excavation.”
“Excuse me.”
Their conversation trailed off as Abby’s host, Lara, ran up to them, slightly out of breath, her blunt haircut wild and stringy around her face. Dan felt immediately suspicious, and then tried to curb that impulse—she was probably just checking to see if he was okay, given that a kid had screamed and screamed and then tried to jump right in front of him.
“You said your name was Daniel, yes?” she asked, pushing the hair out of her face.
“No, Dan. It’s Dan.”
The other hosts and prospies continued on without them, trekking across the muddy open field in front of the dorm on their way to the Commons. Some of them looked back at Dan curiously, but most of them seemed to want to get as far away from him as they could, and that was fine by him. “I was told to make sure you were okay. Do you need to call your parents? Will you be staying?”
Dan shrugged coolly. “I’m okay, I guess. That student … Is he … Is he okay?”
“Doug?” Lara frowned, shaking her head slightly. “He’s a first year. I don’t see him around much, kind of a loner. Students get stressed this time of year, with midterms and everything. His parents will be here soon to see that he is taken care of.”
“I’d never met him before,” Dan said. He didn’t mean to sound defensive, but how could he not feel a little on trial? “I don’t even know how he knew my name.”
Abby coughed theatrically, and Dan decided not to say much more to Lara unless she really pressed.
But Lara surprised him. “That’s simple enough,” she said. “Not exactly rocket surgery, mm?” She pointed to the orange orientation folder tucked under his arm. A white sticker practically glowed on the front. “DANIEL CRAWFORD.” “Your name is right there for anyone to see.”
“So it is,” Dan said with a nervous laugh. That was fine if it was explanation enough for Lara, but it didn’t nearly satisfy Dan. Doug had been staring at him well before they had their folders. And how did he know to say “You’re not finished,” just like it said on the backs of their photos?
“I hope he feels better soon.”
“He’s not the first student to lose it a little over exams,” Lara added, starting toward the Commons and the rest of the group. “I remember my first year like it was yesterday—many lost hours of sleep, moments of panic, even delirium from the lack of rest. I even lost clumps of hair over my first final. My parents were dead set on me being a pre-med, and the pressure was significant. Then I changed my major from bio to studio art. I’m sure you can imagine how that conversation went. But that’s enough of that—I’m supposed to be convincing you that NHC is awesome all the time!” She clenched her teeth in something that resembled a smile, brushing the stray hair out of her face. “Anyway, lunch. We’d love it if you joined us.”
“We?” Abby asked.
“Micah and me. Cal may come, too, but I think he’s still assisting Doug and contacting his parents. He can be quite a talker, so I’m sure he’ll be reassuring them for the next hour or so.” The light drizzle from before began to pick up in a steady rain, and all four of them quickened their pace. Damp, cold to the bone, Dan was only too happy to make it to the white overhang outside the Commons.
He huddled under it, hugging himself. Brookline was to their immediate right. He looked up at the empty windows, rows and rows of them staring out like dozens of vacant eyes. Maintenance had only halfheartedly trimmed the weeds sprouting up along the edge of the entrance, leaving Brookline to look like it had been abandoned in decay all over again. So much for the excavation effort.
The moody clouds overhead shifted, until a stray beam of light illuminated Brookline’s top floor—the floor on which Dan had fended off a man with a crowbar, sure that he was going to die. The way the light hit the windows, it almost looked like a pale face with ragged holes for eyes was watching him from inside.
Just a trick of the light, Dan, you know better.
“Hey,” Abby said, touching him on the back. “Let’s go inside. Don’t think about that place. It’s harmless now.”
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