I’m not sure if I’d have the guts to get behind the wheel, but knowing I’m stuck here doesn’t help my anxiety.
Given I can’t remember the accident, driving shouldn’t pose an issue, but a cold chill snaked my spine when I took the passenger seat as we set off.
Neither Dad nor the college leaflet lied about the tranquil, remote location. The closest town is half an hour away, nothing but a huge, calm lake, and woodland whichever way you turn.
The campus itself, made up of eleven buildings—mostly old, but some new—and housing twelve hundred students, is a recently renovatedasylum.
In the early nineteen hundreds, a nationwide scandal forced the place to shut down after it surfaced that the patients were being experimented on. Many died in the confines of the walls I’ll call home for the foreseeable future.
It’s a good thing I don’t believe in ghosts.
Dad parks the car in the parking lot about three hundred yards from the main building, snuggling his Ford into a tight space between two brand-new sports cars. Both cost more than our house in Florida, so maybe theelitetag Dad stuck to this place isn’t as far off the mark as I thought.
An uptight-looking woman dressed in high heels, a gray pencil skirt and a white shirt tucked into the waistband, stands on the edge of a pathway. She doesn’t move, watching us above the rims of her thick glasses, her sleek hair in a bun.
I make out the asylum—correction,college—in the gaps between the tall trees behind her back. It doesn’t look inviting, so I pivot back to the woman. Whoever she is, she’s giving off strong discipline vibes.
It doesn’t require much imagination to picture her working here some twelve decades ago. Impossible, considering she’s about forty, but I bet she’d fit right in. She’d probably have a blast torturing the poor patients.
Sporting what I believe is supposed to be a smile but comes across more like she’s curling her lips around a mouthful of unsweetened lemonade, she moves to the driver’s side window and taps it gently to draws Dad’s attention.
Dad clicks a button, letting the window roll down. Two tendons pulse in his neck—a clear indication he’s not pleased.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Vaughn, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect,” she says in a tone far fromperfect, then purposely lifts her hand, glancing at her watch. “I expected you fifteen minutes ago. I’m afraid we’ll have to move this along. The dean is an extremely busy woman. She only has another fifteen minutes scheduled for you today.”
Dad clamps his jaw, swallows hard, and releases a long breath through his nose: a temper-marshaling technique. God, it feels good that I can still read him. His tics haven’t changed and watching him makes me think not all is lost.
“There was traffic,” he grinds out, grabbing the door handle. “If you could step back—”
“Of course.” She stumbles away, her heels clicking against the tarmac. She casts a quick glance over her shoulder, making acome heregesture with her chin. “Mr. Rourke, our janitor, will take your luggage up to your room, Miss Vaughn.”
I haven’t noticed him before, but a scrawny man with long legs and even longer arms makes his way toward us, his bland clothes blending with the trees behind his back. He’s pushing an airport-style trolley, zero emotions other than carefully maintained disinterest marring his crumpled face.
He must be older than time.
While he rounds the car, heading for the trunk to unload my luggage, the prissy woman introduces herself as Melinda West, the dean’s personal assistant.
She shakes Dad’s hand once we both clamber out of the car, then turns on her pointy heel, expecting us to follow as she stilettoes away, navigating the cobblestone paths. We round the tree line that separates the grounds from the parking lot, and the former asylum comes into full view.
The main building is massive. Sitting in the heart of the campus, it brings to mind a grand, gothic prison, looming over the smaller buildings nearby and desolate wilderness beyond.
Spired towers made of darkened stone soar into the cloudy, gray sky, the façade is a combination of stone carvings and cavernous arched windows gazing onto the lake like glassy eyes. There’s a sinister breath of the olden days. Forgotten and unkempt with dark green poison ivy climbing from the ground across half the front wall.
I reallydon’tbelieve in ghosts, but I’d be lying if I said this place doesn’t give me the creeps.
My strong beliefs are tested as we near the entrance and I catch a shiver of movement in a sprawling circular upper window.
A strange chill slithers along my arms and prickles my scalp and I wonder if leaving the hospital was a good idea. Maybe I should’ve stayed longer? My imagination runs wild and the aftereffects of the swelling in my brain make me loopy.
A hundred and twenty years ago, I’d have fit right in.
The air shudders with a memory of something darker as I stare at the window.
