Asylum

During the #coronavirus pandemic, I am regularly posting stories and selections from my published collections and novels. Read for free! Reading is the best at this time!

This is the eighth free offering: An excerpt from "Asylum: Book Two of the Thunder Rise Trilogy," published in 2013 by Crossroad Press.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Fred, Roger and Saint Peter

Good, Saint Peter thought as he hovered in the shadows near the Victorian. Adams’s room was ablaze. Every light must have been burning.

Magnificent. He’s not sleeping, after all.

As absurd as it initially sounded, one of Nick’s big concerns was that the superintendent would be awake. Under ideal circumstance, of course, Adams and his goon platoon would sleep straight through the escape, blissfully unaware of what was transpiring; they would simply wake up the next morning and find an empty Elmwood. In reality, something was bound to wake them up — there was no way you could get everyone out without some noise, probably a lot of noise.

With such a mind-boggling array of permutations for how the whole damn thing could go down the shitter, Nick wanted the surprises kept to a minimum. He wanted Adams a screaming meemie who would be incapable of finding his own fly, let alone directing the counter-offensive that would be needed to thwart Nick’s plans once the shit hit the fan — and the shit most assuredly would hit the fan. For what Nick had in mind, the superintendent had to be awake. He had to be unrelentingly, painfully in command of all his senses when his own particular apportionment of shit flew. If necessary, there were ways to wake him, shouting or throwing rocks at windows being the two contingencies; that duty, among others, had fallen to Saint Peter. It would be better if Adams were already awake, plagued again by that vicious insomnia. A raw bundle of nerves staring into the maw of madness would be best.

Since Field Day, Adams had kept an armed sentry posted on the front porch of the Victorian. Tonight was no exception. As Saint Peter made his way toward the residence — he was slinking from trunk to trunk under the maples that lined the drive — the sentry came into view. He was sitting on a rattan chair to the left of the door, a shotgun cradled in his lap. Saint Peter could not tell if he was awake or — as the angle of his neck suggested — dozing off. There was no motion in the man at all, not even an occasional swat of a hand to ward off the mosquitoes. Saint Peter had the sudden conviction that he could walk right past the man and into the Victorian without a peep of protest.

Still... Nick had been adamant.

Don’t take chances, he’d repeated to the Mouse Housers so many times it had become a running joke. Even this week, his letters from isolation had had those words scribbled every second page. Don’t take chances. This whole thing is one gigantic chance already.

Saint Peter cut left and was swallowed by the August night. The grass was cool on his sandaled feet, pleasantly moist; tomorrow morning’s dew had already arrived. Saint Peter gave the Victorian wide berth, a course that brought him to the edge of the woods that flowed down from the Berkshire Hills. He stopped. Someone inside the house was talking. Who, about what — Saint Peter’s hearing was too poor to give him that. The voice subsided and then it was crickets, only crickets.

Saint Peter started toward the house. The switchboard wasn’t in the Victorian — it was over in a small cubicle just inside the main administration building — but Nick had remembered from Berkshire Acres that the main telephone line entered the institution at the Victorian, then split in two: one line going to the superintendent’s private phone, the other, larger, continuing on to administration.

He was at the house now, peering up. Just as Nick had said, two phone lines — one thicker than the other — were strung across poles and down the side of the house to sill level, where they disappeared inside. With the wire cutters Roger had pilfered from the shop, Saint Peter cut both wires. Two snaps and Elwmood was cut off from the world.

Saint Peter looked up. Of the myriad of unpredictables, the chance Adams — or anyone anywhere at Elmwood, where telephone access was limited and guarded — would be on the phone at such an hour was negligible.

No, it wasn’t fear that kept the old man frozen.

Not any strange new sound from within.

It was something inside of him.

Something that went beyond excitement or apprehension. Something more fundamental. Something more profound. Something someone else, but not Saint Peter, might have called sudden new strength — tinged with shame.

My whole life I’ve struggled to do good, Saint Peter thought. Every single day — even here, in this stinking cesspool of a place — I’ve turned the other cheek. And where has it gotten me? The respect, even affection, of my fellow beings... most of them, anyway. Love given and returned. But who ultimately has been served by all this? Me? My god? Certainly not Elmwood’s patients, who have borne a cross no man should ever be asked to bear.

And me the while, preaching sufferance and forbearance and the empty promise of eternal bliss.

Is not Reilly right? Should not I have emulated such a one? Would not resistance have been the better course? If I had set a different tone, one more combative, would not we have achieved more? Would we not now be free?

Yes, maybe it was me responsible for getting my grandson here, at least indirectly. Maybe I have given him everything he needs. Maybe tonight will really be the night, and this terrible dream will finally be at an end.

But him, Saint Peter thought, looking toward the second floor, where Adams’s bedroom was.

Him. Evil incarnate.

And not once did I confront him. Not once, like my chosen namesake at the hands of Nero, did I dare defy. I was content with platitudes and prayer... prayer that echoes so hollowly now.

Satan.

And where was the true light? Hidden under a bushel basket.

The church bell tolling twelve-thirty interrupted Saint Peter’s thoughts. According to Nick’s plan, he’d dallied too long at the Victorian already. Helping empty Jefferson was his next task, but that building — indeed, the rest of Elmwood — seemed distant, the barest echo from another lifetime.

The only reality anymore for Saint Peter was this building and the man within.

(Should you wish to purchase any of my collections and books, fiction or non-fiction, visit www.gwaynemiller.com/books.htm)

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