The Asylum (23 page)
Authors: Johan Theorin
This is some kind of laboratory; it looks as if it has been closed up and abandoned for decades.
Jan looks around the tiled walls and feels his heart pounding.
He has found his way into St Psycho’s.
PART TWO
Rituals
Madness is a sad, grim business. Loss of control is hardly romantic
.
Instead of bringing a release from reality, it becomes a more complex trap
.
Julian Palacios,
Lost in the Woods
Lynx
Jan couldn’t see much of the forest in the darkness, but he was surrounded by all the sounds of the countryside at night. His boots scuffed rhythmically over rocks and gravel, the night breeze soughed in the fir trees, an owl hooted down by the lake. And the drums kept on beating, but that was just inside his head.
It was almost half past nine and he was on his way out of the narrow ravine. The hillside looming up on his left was no more than a black, shapeless lump, but Jan had found his way easily.
He reached the path down below the bunker a few minutes later; he stopped and listened intently. He couldn’t hear any shouting or crying.
He crept up the slope like a cat, silent and wary. When he reached the steel door he lifted away the branches, placed his ear to the metal surface and listened again. Not a sound.
Slowly he drew back the bolts, opened the door and looked in. He heard nothing, felt nothing. It was neither hot nor cold inside the bunker.
Nor was there the smell of fear.
Jan held his breath. Nothing was moving, but in the stillness he could just make out the faint sound of someone breathing.
He tiptoed inside. Slowly and carefully he took out his mobile and switched it on so that a weak white light illuminated the bunker. Roboman was in the middle of the floor, switched on, its little lights flashing away. Jan noticed a couple of empty drinks
cartons
in one corner, along with open packets of sweets and crumpled sandwich wrappers.
That was good; William had eaten and drunk during the evening. And if he had needed to pee, there was the bucket Jan had placed at the far end of the room.
A little body was lying on the mattress: William. He was moving very slightly in his sleep. At some point during the evening he must have felt tired, and settled down next to the wall. He was now sleeping peacefully beneath a thick layer of blankets.
Jan crept across the room, took the bucket outside and emptied it a few metres away. Then he went back inside and lay down on his back to listen to William’s breathing.
At this particular moment Jan felt a fantastic sense of calm suffusing his body. He felt victorious, almost happy that everything had worked out so well today. William had been lured away and locked up, but no harm whatsoever had come to him.
Jan could do this, no problem. Forty-six hours would soon pass.
William’s parents were in the worst position; Jan knew they would be suffering agonies right now. Anxiety would have turned into fear, then into sheer terror. They wouldn’t sleep tonight, not for one minute.
Jan sighed and closed his eyes. All was well in the forest.
He would just lie here for a while and keep watch over William, even though he was under no obligation to do so – no adult had kept watch over Jan when he’d been locked up.
33
JAN TAKES SHORT
steps through the basement of St Patricia’s, stopping frequently, like an explorer in an unfamiliar system of caves. Slowly he gropes his way through dark rooms and corridors turning this way and that, his only support a small torch. The Angel in his right hand has not gone out yet, but the light is growing weaker all the time.
The room he came to first doesn’t appear to have any other exits, so he turns back and continues down the corridor. It bends to the right after a few metres, then right again, then left and into another big room with tiled walls and floor. Something crunches beneath his shoes: there is broken glass on the floor.
The Dell seems far away right now; a part of him longs to turn around and head back to the familiarity of the safe room. But instead he keeps on going.
The darkness around him remains silent, which is reassuring.
Jan can see four black doorways leading out of this large, tiled room. He walks over and shines his torch through them one by one, but beyond each opening there is only a dusty passageway leading to a rusty metal door. He decides to ignore three of these passageways, but there is less dust on the floor of the fourth, as if someone has walked on it fairly recently. The door also looks less rusty, so he turns the handle.
Behind it is another corridor, lined with a series of doorways. He peers into the first opening and sees a small, bare room with an old
iron
bed, but no mattress. When he steps inside and holds up the Angel, he can just make out faded and yellowing postcards pinned to the walls, and some illegible graffiti. It seems to be an old sick room, or a cell.
Jan remembers the Black Hole at the Unit, and quickly backs out.
He glances into each cell, but sees only more bare walls and old iron beds. His steps are getting shorter and shorter. He has never been particularly afraid of the dark, but he is beginning to feel more and more alone down here. The doorways gape at him like black mouths, ready to swallow him up. Are they really empty?
Eventually he switches the Angel’s transmitter back on. ‘I’ve gone further into the basement,’ he begins, ‘but I don’t think this area is in use any more. The lights don’t work.’
The Angel in his hand is silent, but he hopes Hanna is listening.
‘OK, I think I’m going to turn back soon …’
Then he stops; he doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with the idea of talking down here. With each word he utters, the sense that someone is listening grows stronger. Attentive ears, lurking somewhere in the darkness.
‘See you soon,’ he whispers, hoping once more that Hanna can hear him before he switches off the transmitter.
The corridor takes a sharp turn, and he edges along it. It leads to yet another large tiled room with steel benches and white plastic curtains; is this a different room, or has he been here already?
Just keep walking
. One step, then two, three, four …
Jan had been a little bit scared of encountering rats when he crawled out from under the floor, but now he realizes that he is in fact the rat. He is the one who daren’t let out a squeak as he cautiously moves across the concrete floor, alert to the slightest sound.
In the big room the shadows gather around him. Fear of the dark begins to creep up on him, so he turns to the right and tries to stick close to the wall.
At first glance these rooms also look as if they have been closed up for many years, but gradually Jan begins to discover signs of
more
recent visits. On a wooden shelf beside some dark-glass containers, he sees a rolled-up football programme from a local match, and when he opens it up he finds it is from the previous season.
There is more graffiti on the walls, in black felt-tip pen. Just below the ceiling someone has scrawled JESUS SAVE ME IN THY BLOOD, and on another wall nearer the floor are the words I WANT A HOT WOMAN! It looks as if both sentences have been written with the same pen.
It is chilly in the underworld, yet Jan is sweating.
He pulls a cracked plastic curtain aside and discovers an old desk. He tries to open the drawers, but they are locked.
He gives up and stares thoughtfully at the ceiling. Rami is somewhere up above him. There are two wards for the women in the hospital, according to Hanna. But how is he going to get up there?
And where is Ivan Rössel? Here in the darkness he feels palpably close; Jan recalls his smile on the computer screen. But Rössel and the other violent patients must be kept behind locked doors, surely?
Suddenly Jan hears a low, rumbling sound in the distance, followed by an extended cry, like an echo.
He doesn’t know exactly which direction the sound is coming from; perhaps it is just his imagination, but it makes him stop and listen, motionless.
He hears nothing more, but eventually he turns around. It’s a combination of the noise, the darkness, the isolation down here. The hour is late, and the light from the Angel is growing weaker and weaker. He shines the beam around the big room – but which of the doorways did he actually come through? He can’t remember.
He chooses the one on the right. Beyond it there is a long corridor, and suddenly he can see light. He keeps on walking, turns a corner and finds himself in a fairly large hallway with subdued lighting. On the far side is a wide glass door with a green sign that says EXIT, and through that door there is a pale-stone flight of stairs leading upwards.
Jan believes that he has found the way up to the wards, and eagerly steps forward – then stops abruptly. There is a metal box with a black, staring lens up above the glass door.
A camera.
If he walks over to the door, the camera will pick him up. So he turns around, goes back into the big room, and chooses the opening on the left.
This corridor is only three metres long and ends in a closed steel door.
Jan is lost.
There is panic in his head and legs now, but he suppresses it, turns around and slowly makes his way back across the tiled floor. It’s fine, he will find the way if he just keeps moving and tries every door. He sweeps the dying light of the Angel across the wall and chooses a doorway at random. This time the long corridor feels both alien and familiar at the same time; he passes two more closed doors, and this time the corridor ends in an ordinary wooden door.
He lowers the Angel and opens the door, to be met by a sudden brightness. Strip-lights on a low ceiling. Warm air smelling of bleach rushes towards him, and he sees large white machines with dials and flashing lights. Huge fans and electric motors are whirring and throbbing, and there are baskets full of bedlinen and clothes, as well as a rail attached to the ceiling.
This is a laundry, Jan realizes – St Patricia’s Hospital laundry.
He is not alone. A tall, thin man in grey overalls is standing with his back to Jan only five or six metres away, folding sheets. The man has an Mp3 player attached to his belt, his earphones are on, and he hasn’t yet noticed Jan. But if he turns around …
Jan doesn’t wait for that to happen; he closes the door quickly and silently. Then he goes back down the corridor and into the tiled room, heading for the other doorways. He nearly got caught just now – and yet he feels calmer. There are people down here after all, ordinary people doing their jobs.
That is when he hears more sounds, much closer this time: someone is singing, chanting quietly. Several voices in harmony. It sounds like an old hymn, but there is too much of an echo in the tiled room to enable Jan to make out any words.
Staff or patients?
Jan doesn’t want to know who is singing like this so late at night.
He
moves cautiously forward, keeping close to the wall. Ready to run.
Eventually he finds the right way. He recognizes the very first corridor with the little cells, and from there he makes his way through the first tiled room and back to the safe room. He feels almost completely at ease now.
He doesn’t need to crawl under the floor this time: from this side he can open the steel door and make his way back to the Dell.
He is in the warmth and the light once more, and Jan switches off the Angel.
It is almost midnight, but Hanna is still awake when he gets back. She stares at him intently; she seems almost excited, and for a moment he forgets Rami.
‘I heard you,’ she says, holding up the other Angel. ‘Clear as a bell.’
‘Good.’
‘Did you see anything down there?’
‘Not much.’ He breathes out and wipes his forehead. ‘It’s like a labyrinth, with corridors and old wards, and I think I heard voices …’
‘Did you find a way up to the wards? Or a lift?’
Jan shakes his head. ‘I only got as far as the laundry … There were people in there.’
‘People? Men and women?’
‘A man. A member of staff, I assume – but he didn’t see me.’
Hanna nods, but doesn’t seem particularly interested. ‘So it was a wasted visit.’
‘No,’ says Jan. ‘I’ve learned my way around down there.’
The Unit
Jan could see the fence with its barbed wire every time he sat at the desk in his room. It was impossible to avoid; it was at least twice his height. First of all there was a lawn, then the fence, and beyond it a path disappearing in the direction of the town.
The fence kept him trapped inside the Unit, he understood that – but it also protected him from the rest of the world.
What had he done to end up in here?
He looked at the bandages around his wrists. He knew what he had done.
He asked Jörgen for paper and pens so that he could do some drawing. He drew a rectangle and started on a new comic strip. The Secret Avenger, his own superhero, was fighting the Gang of Four at the bottom of a dark ravine. The Secret Avenger was immune to everything but bright light, so the gang were trying to get him with laser beams.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door, and a second later it opened, before Jan even had time to answer.
A man in a grey woollen sweater looked in. Not Jörgen. This man had a beard, but his head was completely bald. ‘Hello there, Jan. Good to see you up and about.’
Jan didn’t answer.
‘My name’s Tony … I’m a psychologist here. We’re just going to check you over.’
A psychologist
. That meant they were going to start digging away at him.
Tony stepped aside and a young male nurse came over to Jan with a stethoscope and hard hands. He took Jan’s blood pressure, listened to his chest, and pulled his bandages to one side to look at the sutured wounds along his wrists.
‘He seems fine,’ the nurse said over his shoulder. ‘Almost back to normal.’
‘In physical terms,’ Tony said.
‘Absolutely … You can take care of his soul.’
Neither of them spoke directly to Jan, and the nurse didn’t notice his burn marks. He stood up without another word when he had finished.
‘Will I be going home soon?’ Jan asked.
No reply. Tony had already closed the door.
Jan stopped drawing after only five frames. He lay back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He would be stuck in the Unit until someone let him out. Other people were making decisions for him, but he was used to that.
He stayed where he was; he had no desire to go out.
The sound of guitar music was coming through the wall. The girl in the room next door was still practising her chords, over and over again, but she was getting quicker now. And she had started to sing along.
Jan turned his head to the wall and listened. The words were in English, but he understood most of them. Rami was singing quietly about a house in New Orleans they called the Rising Sun, which had been the ruin of many a poor girl. She sang the same lines over and over again, before admitting to God that she was one of those poor girls.
The more Jan heard, the more he wanted to go next door. He didn’t just want to listen, he wanted to watch the girl singing as well.
He suddenly sat up and went over to the chair by his desk. It was made of wood with a thin seat, and he started drumming on
it,
keeping time with the chords of the guitar. It went pretty well and he managed to hold the beat – he had played the drums in the school orchestra. None of the boys in school had ever asked him to be in their rock band, of course, but at least he had played Swedish and German marching music for two years. It had been pretty good fun.
Jan had nothing to live for, but he was good at keeping the beat.
His drumming on the chair grew louder and louder. He was so caught up in the four-beat pattern that he didn’t notice that the guitar in the room next door had fallen silent. He didn’t stop until the door suddenly flew open.
It was the guitar girl. ‘What are you doing?’ She didn’t sound angry, just curious.
Jan froze with his hands above the chair. ‘I’m drumming.’
‘You’re a drummer?’
‘Kind of.’
The girl was still looking at him, a thoughtful expression on her face. She was tall and skinny, Jan noticed; she was pretty, but she had hardly any curves.
‘Come with me.’ She turned on her heel as if it was understood that Jan would follow her. And he did.
They went into the empty corridor and turned left; the girl opened the second door on the left-hand side, marked STOREROOM.
‘You can, like, borrow stuff from here,’ she said.
The storeroom was small but packed with shelves full of different things. There were books, table-tennis bats, and piles of board games and chess sets.
There were pens and paper and notebooks too; this must be where Jörgen had got the drawing paper from.
‘Do you write?’ the girl asked.
‘Sometimes … I draw as well.’
‘Me too,’ she said, picking up a thick black notebook. ‘There you go … Now you can keep a diary.’
‘Thanks.’
Jan had never written about himself, but he took it anyway.
There were musical instruments on a couple of the shelves, and the girl moved across to them. ‘This is where I found the Yamaha.’
‘The Yamaha?’
‘My guitar.’
Beside the shelves stood a drum kit. It was very small, just one battered bass drum and one crash cymbal, but the girl picked it up. ‘You can take this.’
She carried the drum, Jan took the cymbal and the sticks. The girl led the way back to her room. ‘Come in.’
Jan hesitated briefly, then went inside. He looked around in amazement; whereas his room was white, this one was coal-black. It looked like some kind of studio; the girl had covered the walls with huge pieces of black fabric.
She sat down on the bed with her guitar. ‘Shall we give it a go?’
‘OK.’
‘You start.’
Jan picked up the sticks and began to play. He started off with a steady four-beat tempo on the drum, tapping the crash cymbal on the first and third beats. After a while he really got into it; it sounded pretty good.
The girl was nodding her head in time with the music. She was listening – and that gave him confidence. He wasn’t used to it. The girl opened her mouth and began to sing, in the same slightly hoarse voice as when she spoke:
There is a house in Nyåker
they call the Rising Sun
it’s been the ruin of many a young life
,
and God, I know I’m one …
It was obviously the only verse she had, because she sang it twice, then fell silent. Jan stopped drumming at the same time. They looked at one another.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Shall we do it again?’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Jan.
‘Rami.’
‘Rami?’
‘Just Rami right now. Does that bother you?’
Jan shook his head. Then another question popped out before he had chance to think about it: ‘Why are you here?’
But Rami needed only half a second to consider and then answer, as if it weren’t particularly important. ‘Because my older sister and I did something … something stupid. It was mostly my sister. She took off and went to Stockholm, and she’s keeping out of the way. But I couldn’t go with her, so I ended up in here.’
‘What did you do?’
‘We tried to poison our stepfather. He’s disgusting.’
The room fell silent. Jan didn’t know what to say, but suddenly he heard someone calling his name.
‘Jan? Jan Hauger?’
He jumped, but was relieved at the interruption, and opened the door.
It was the nurse who looked like Jesus, but whose name was Jörgen.
‘Phone call, Jan.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Some friend of yours.’
Friend? Jan glanced at Rami.
She nodded. ‘We’ll carry on afterwards.’
The staffroom was at the other end of the Unit. Jörgen showed him the way, then closed the door. There was a bed, a table, a telephone.
The receiver was lying on the table; Jan picked it up. ‘Hello?’
‘Hauger? You wanker. You fucking loser …’
Jan recognized the voice. He didn’t say anything; all the air went out of his lungs.
But the voice on the other end of the phone had plenty of air. ‘So you’re alive, are you?’ it went on. ‘You should have died … we thought you were dead. You couldn’t even manage to die, could you?’
Jan was listening and sweating, just as if he were in a sauna.
His
hands were the worst; his palms were so wet that the receiver almost slipped out of his grasp.
‘Do you know what we’ve told everybody in school, Hauger?’
Jan didn’t speak.
‘We said we saw you standing in the shower
wanking
. Wanking and groaning …’
‘That’s not true.’
‘No, but nobody will believe you.’
Jan took a deep breath. ‘I haven’t said anything. About any of you.’
‘We know that … Because if you do, we’ll kill you.’
‘You will anyway,’ said Jan.
The only response was laughter. It sounded as if there were several boys standing around the phone, with different laughs.
Then there was a click as the call ended.
Jan looked down at his trousers. There was a warm, damp patch just below his flies: he had wet himself.