“You can’t help who you are,” Orson said and I looked away sharply. God, why did he say these things? How could he just accept it like that? Shit, I liked him. I really fucking liked him.
“Go home and eat something rare. Maybe it’ll help with that bloodlust of yours,” he said teasingly.
“Stop that,” I hissed, my face heating. I hated how easily he talked about my strange fetish for blood. He chuckled at my reaction.
“It’s cute how ashamed you are,” he said and my eyes bugged.
“You think I’m cute?”
“No,” he said quickly, looking perturbed by himself. He grimaced before running his hand over his mouth. “Go home. You did good tonight, Bree. I’m proud of you for texting me. For letting me help you.” The words soaked into my skin.
He turned around and walked back towards the apartment complex where his car was still running with the door still open. He’d raced here for me. To stop me, to help me. He didn’t even go to check on Katie, just stood there by his car, waiting until I finally got into mine.
She could live another week I guess.
I slipped into my car and drove home. Then I flopped in bed, gripping my wrist where he’d touched it, and replayed theconversation again and again. Sleep never came easy for me, not any night. But at least tonight I had pleasant company. I imagined the shape of his mouth and the color of his eyes. I listened to his words replay in my head.
He had every opportunity to get rid of me tonight if he wanted to and he didn’t. Instead, all he did was help stop me from ending up shit’s creek. Then he complimented me, commended me… fuck. I really did like him a lot.
I wanted to see him again—right now. I wondered where he lived.
It was driving me even more crazy that I couldn’t find anything about him. Really, the only place I’d seen his name written down was on my court papers. I needed to look through his stuff, find something, anything because he was too good to be true, wasn’t he?
I liked shitty dudes and he appeared to be the opposite of my type so why him? Because he smiled and told me I did good when I opened up? Because he was off limits as an older man who was also my therapist?
Okay, yes because of that. And because of helping me out. What kind of therapist did what he did tonight? What kind ofcourt-appointedtherapist also has no website, no online presence, no nothing. And the whole Katie thing was weird to me. She really didn’t seem to know who I was. Was she on drugs?
I rolled over in bed and unlocked my phone. Again I searched his name. Again it appeared to be a dead end. I kept at it for a while regardless, forever hopeful I’d find a little scrap of information. This was turning into an obsession. A bad one.
On a whim, I started to search all the psych offices in the area. The first thing that popped up shouldn’t have been surprising. Verfallen Asylum was notorious. I tried not to think of it much because I’d always had the oddest sensation that oneday I’d end up there. Everyone else was intrigued by it in the same way as a car wreck or a horror movie. They wanted to leer in and see just how bad it was—give themselves a fright. Verfallen wasn’t a mental hospital, it was a prison—an archaic asylum for the criminally insane. People thought it was haunted and there were rumors the patients ate each other.
Nibbling my bottom lip I typed in Verfallen Asylum followed by Doctor Orson. I jolted up in bed, shocked when Google fed me a result right at the top.
Holy fuck.
Chapter
Three
“You’re fucking nuts,” Mary hissed, trying to grab my arm and stop me in my tracks. I danced away from her hand.
“You just realized that?” I asked with a laugh. Her concern was palatable—shining along with the moonlight in her eyes.
“What if they have big guards and those big guards have big guns,” she said, looking to the others for help. I’d dragged a few work friends with me to go check out Verfallen. Mary was nervous but the other two were excited while telling her to calm down. They traded stories about Verfallen.
“Apparentlyeveryonehere is a serial killer,” Thomas said in excitement.
“They say you can hear howling on full moons,” Emma said with a wide smile. We all looked up at the sky and saw a round, white moon.
“Is it full?” Mary asked, attempting to sound excited instead of terrified. Before any of us could answer a noise came from behind the trees. It started low and slow so I couldn’t be sure what it was until it reached its crescendo. Goosebumps popped up on the back of my neck as the howling continued. It didn’tsound like a wolf, it sounded like a man—a maniac who was howling at the moon.
Mary, the scaredy-cat, remained silent.
“Fuckkk,” Thomas said.
“Freaky,” Sara commented. They looked at each other with big giddy smiles even though you could see fear shining behind the elation. We walked into the tree line, it was only five feet of bushes and trees but it was thick. Branches snagged my stockings, creating pale lines in the black fabric. When we spilled out the other side there was a moment of silence. It was one thing to see this place in pictures and an entirely different experience to have it looming in the dark right in front of you.
My hands slipped around the bars of the cast iron fence. Verfallen Asylum was old, with Victorian architectural flourishes, whatever that meant. It was gothic-looking to me. The place was huge and old and looked more like a museum than a hospital.
