The Asylum (31 page)
Authors: Johan Theorin
Lynx
Jan saw street lights shimmering up ahead of him, and knew that he was on his way out of the forest.
He had been wandering around in a state of rising panic for forty-five minutes now, searching among the fir trees and even down by the lake, but he had found no trace of William. A five-year-old shouldn’t have been able to get this far, but then William could have gone in absolutely any direction.
Jan had lost control. He was tired, slightly angry, and increasingly desperate. Sometimes he thought the child was hiding from him, that he was standing behind a tree giggling to himself.
Why had William clambered out of the bunker? Didn’t he realize he was safer in there than out in the forest? He had plenty of food and drink, and he would have been locked in there for less than forty-eight hours. Then Jan would have let him go, whatever happened.
His plan. His carefully thought-out plan.
Jan stopped in the middle of the undergrowth. His shoes were soaking wet, he felt empty and exhausted.
Locked inside a bunker – with only a toy robot for company
. Jan looked around him and suddenly felt how
wrong
the whole thing had been. It had to stop now. There had to be a happy ending.
He stood there for a long time on the edge of the forest, wondering what to do. He felt safe there because nobody could see him, but eventually he moved out from among the trees and headed down
towards
the street lights. This was a residential area with long rows of apartment blocks and large, asphalt-covered inner courtyards, all ready for the coming winter. There were lights showing in many of the windows, but the streets were deserted.
Jan walked along the nearest pavement, looking around all the time. He felt the urge to call out William’s name, but clamped his lips firmly together.
If I were five years old
, he thought,
and the glow of the street lights had lured me out of the forest, where would I go?
Home, of course. When you have been locked up and then you escape, you want to go home.
But Jan knew where William lived, and it was in a completely different part of Nordbro. It was unlikely that he would be able to find his way there.
A few hundred metres away there was a main road, and Jan made his way towards it. What he really wanted was to go home too, go home and go to bed, but then he would be leaving William. Not just leaving, but
abandoning
him.
Up ahead he could see a bus stop, with a few teenagers hanging around. On the same side of the road a family was out for a walk, a man and his two children going towards the town centre.
No, it wasn’t a family. As Jan got closer he could see that the smallest child was actually a dog, a long-legged poodle on a short lead. And the other … the other child was a little boy with fair hair.
The man holding the boy’s hand looked like his grandfather, a pensioner in a cap, ambling along between the boy and the poodle. The boy wasn’t wearing a hat, but he was dressed in a dark-blue padded jacket with white reflector strips.
Jan recognized it, and broke into a run.
‘William!’
His shout made the boy stop and look around. The man tugged at his hand, but the boy pulled away, wanting to stop and see who was calling his name.
Jan was out of breath by the time he reached them. He bent down. ‘Do you remember me, William?’
The boy looked at him without moving. Everything had stopped dead. The man holding William’s hand was staring at Jan in surprise, and even the poodle had turned around and was standing there motionless.
Then William nodded. ‘Lynx,’ he said, his voice slightly hoarse.
‘That’s right, William … I work at Lynx.’ Jan looked up at the man and tried to sound trustworthy and totally in control of himself. ‘My name is Jan Hauger, I work at William’s nursery. He’s been missing … We’ve been looking for him.’
‘Oh, right. I see. My name is Olsson.’ The man appeared to relax. He let go of William’s hand and pointed back down the road. ‘He just turned up here a little while ago, when Charlie and I were out for our walk. He seemed to be lost, so I said we’d go and look for his parents.’
Jan looked at William, who was staring at the ground. He seemed slightly listless, but healthy. Not undernourished. His left hand was clutching Roboman’s plastic arm.
‘Great,’ Jan said. ‘But they live quite a long way from here, so I think we’d better ring for some help.’
‘Help?’ said Olsson.
‘I think we need to ring the police. They’re looking for William.’
‘The police?’ The man looked worried, but Jan nodded and took out his mobile. He rang the emergency number, and waited.
The man started to move away with the poodle, but Jan held up his hand. ‘You and Charlie need to stay here,’ he said as firmly as possible. ‘I think they’re going to want to speak to you as well.’
Obviously. Jan was in no doubt about the man’s intentions towards William, but he knew the police would look at things very differently. As a thank you for taking care of William, Olsson would presumably be interrogated on suspicion of child abduction.
‘Emergency – which service do you require?’
‘Police,’ said Jan. ‘It’s about a missing boy – he’s been found.’
As he was waiting to be put through he looked down at William. Jan smiled at him, trying to look calm and reliable. He
wanted
to reach out and pat the boy on the head, but resisted the impulse.
‘All’s well that ends well,’ he said. ‘I think we’d better stay away from the forest in future.’
42
THE RATTLING ASCENT
in the old hospital lift takes an hour – or at least that’s how it feels to Jan. He holds the claustrophobia at bay by keeping his eyes closed and picturing Rami; he conjures up her face and remembers her eyes beneath that blonde fringe. She was the only one he could talk to about the Gang of Four.
But the floor and the walls are shaking, and he is constantly reminded of where he is. If one of the cogs were to break and the lift were to get stuck between floors … He doesn’t want to think about that. The drumbeats reverberate inside his head.
Suddenly the lift comes to an abrupt halt. Everything falls silent.
Jan switches off the Angel’s torch and reaches out to the door in front of him. At first it won’t move. The fear sinks its claws into him immediately, but then the door slowly gives way and slides open.
It stops after about forty or fifty centimetres; there is something heavy in the way. Jan peers out. There is a faint light, but all he can see is grey metal.
Slowly he begins to manoeuvre his way out. It feels as if he has woken up inside a coffin in a big house, just like Viveca in Rami’s book.
His upper body is out now, and he can see that there is a metal cupboard in the way. The room beyond it seems to be some kind
of
medical storeroom, with bandages and packs of tablets on the shelves. The light is coming in through a narrow pane of glass in the door.
There isn’t a sound.
Jan tentatively lowers his feet to the floor next to the cupboard, then he stands up and looks over at the exit. Three steps and he is there, reaching out his hand.
The door opens from the inside. He pulls it three or four centimetres towards him, feels fresh air come pouring in, and listens carefully. He still can’t hear a thing.
St Psycho’s is sleeping.
Jan tugs the door further towards him. He sees a long, wide corridor with pale-yellow walls. The glow of the ceiling lights is subdued, perhaps because it is night time. There isn’t a soul in sight. He can smell disinfectant, so there must be cleaners around somewhere.
And patients.
And security guards, of course. Rettig and Carl and their friends.
Jan pulls himself together and steps out of the storeroom. The corridor extends in both directions, with rows of closed doors on both sides. The black hands on a large, round clock above the door are showing quarter to twelve.
Jan tucks a couple of the pieces of paper he has left into the lock to keep the door open. Then he moves along the vinyl floor, as quietly as possible.
Suddenly he feels like a fourteen-year-old again, back in the corridors of the Unit. There is the same silence, the same cold walls and closed doors.
A surprising sense of calm descends on him. Being here in the Corridor of the Closed Doors is almost like coming home.
He looks to the right and begins to count the unmarked doors. The seventh looks just like the rest – but to Jan’s eyes it seems to shine with a greater luminosity, and it is waiting for him just seven or eight metres away.
He moves along slowly, past all the other doors. On each one there is a steel handle, with a small metal hatch beside it.
He has almost reached his goal. Should he knock on Rami’s door, or try to open it?
Jan makes a decision: he will knock.
‘Excuse me? Who are you?’
The sound of a voice makes him jump.
He has been caught. A security guard has opened the door at the far end of the corridor, and is staring at him. But it isn’t Rettig or Carl – this is a middle-aged woman.
She takes a couple of steps towards him. ‘Where have you come from?’
Jan blinks, desperately searching for an answer. ‘From the laundry.’
‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ the woman says. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I got lost,’ Jan says.
The woman stares, but doesn’t say anything else; suddenly she turns and hurries away. To fetch help?
Jan needs to get away.
He glances at Rami’s door one last time. So close, but there is nothing he can do right now. There is nothing he can give her.
No – maybe there is one thing.
He opens the small metal hatch in the wall next to her door and peers inside. The box is empty apart from a couple of sheets of paper. A menu, and information about a forthcoming fire drill.
Quickly he unclips the Angel from his belt and slips it into the box, hiding it beneath the sheets of paper. Then he closes the hatch.
The corridor is still empty, and Jan rushes back to the storeroom. He removes the pieces of paper that were keeping the door open, but pushes one of them right into the lock to hold the catch pressed in. As he silently closes the door he hears heavy footsteps in the corridor. The guards are on their way.
The lift is just as cramped as before, but this time he clambers inside without hesitation. He presses the button on the far right, and the lift clunks into life.
Jan keeps his eyes closed all the way down.
When the lift stops he quickly opens the hatch; he is impatient
and
less tentative now. It is well after midnight, and he wants to get out of the hospital.
He gropes his way along, out of the laundry and through the tiled rooms. He has no Angel to help him this time, but somewhere up ahead he can see a flickering light.
And he can hear singing – is someone singing hymns down here?
He fumbles his way forward, staring down at the tiled floor. Where are the bits of paper? He can’t see them in the darkness.
The light grows stronger as he shuffles down the long corridors. Eventually he turns a corner and sees a doorway filled with light; there are candles burning in a couple of wooden sconces on the walls.
He is standing in a narrow room with a bank of wooden benches. A few grey sacks have been thrown on the floor. It’s a small chapel, and right at the front he sees an altarpiece – an old, cracked image of a woman with a gentle smile. He moves closer and is able to read the name PATRICIA painted in angular letters on the frame of the picture.
Patricia, the hospital’s patron saint.
He turns away – but the grey sacks have begun to move.
They are patients. Three men in grey tracksuits, with grey faces. One older man with heavy jowls, and two younger men with shaved heads. They are staring at Jan, their expressions blank and empty. Perhaps it’s because of the medication.
The older man points to the altar. His voice is mechanical. ‘Patricia needs peace and quiet.’
‘So do we,’ says one of the others.
‘Me too,’ Jan says quietly.
‘Do you live here?’ one of the patients asks.
‘Yes,’ Jan replies. ‘I live down here.’
The older man nods, and Jan takes a step past the three men. Slowly and carefully. Rettig has warned him. But the patients remain motionless, and Jan goes back out into the corridor.
Eventually he finds one of his scraps of paper on the floor. And then another. They show him the way, and he hurries along, following the white trail. He hears voices in the chapel behind
him
– the men have started singing hymns again. Jan speeds up, heading towards the end of the corridor.
Into another corridor, around several corners in this labyrinth – and at last he is back in the safe room.
He shuts the steel door behind him, then scurries along the familiar corridor, past the animal pictures and up the stairs. His adventure is over.
The last thing he does at the top of the stairs is to listen for footsteps from down below. But no one is pursuing him.
He closes the door and breathes out, but he can’t relax. He checks on the children, and has a terrible shock.
Only one head is visible in the beds. It is Leo’s. Mira’s bed is empty.
Jan is utterly panic-stricken; he can’t move.
You let them down. Another child is missing. Missing, missing—
Then he hears the toilet flush in the bathroom.
Mira is almost six; she has learned how to go to the toilet on her own, without calling for an adult. She emerges from the bathroom and walks straight past him, still half asleep. She hasn’t even noticed that he wasn’t there.
‘Goodnight, Mira,’ he says behind her.
‘Mm,’ she replies, and gets back into bed.
A few minutes later she seems to have dropped off, and Jan is gradually able to wind down. He removes the other Angel from the children’s room and puts it in his locker. If things work out this will be his link to the hospital. A way of transmitting secret messages.