Page 2 of Into the Dark

She sounded crazy, she knew it, but what else could she do? Other nurses grabbed her arms; she tried to fight, biting and scratching wildly until she felt the sharp sting of a needle in her biceps.

No. No, this had been her one chance. Suzette’s one chance. They’d watch her from now on, make sure she swallowed her pills, maybe even confine her to her room. She struggled to get free, but already her limbs felt heavy and her thoughts began to fuzz.

“Call Dr. Dixon,” ordered one of the nurses restraining her. “She needs to go back to the fourth floor. And lock that door!”

The nurse closest to the door shut it, never realizing she stood only inches from a dead woman. Through the crack as it closed, Barbara saw the phantom nurse nod firmly, as if at a job well done.

One more life ruined.

CHAPTER

TWO

44 years later.

“Ho-lee shit,” Chris Saito said, peering out the van’s window. “That place is fucking huge.”

In the passenger seat, Nigel glanced at his notebook. “The building is 1,295 feet long,” he reported. “Almost a quarter of a mile, built from hand-cut stone.”

Oscar Fox slowed the van to a halt on the cracked, two-lane road that ran along the upper edge of the valley. Below lay a small river spanned by an old stone bridge. On the other side, directly across from the road they were on, loomed what had once been the Howlston Lunatic Asylum.

The building where his grandmother had spent her final years. A medium like himself, weakened by drugs, trapped amidst a century of pain, terror, and death.

He’d seen pictures of the asylum while prepping for this trip. But no picture could come close to the impact such an enormous structure made in real life. Its upper stories towered over the trees and underbrush that had grown up over the decades since its abandonment. The spring green of honeysuckle and grape vines crawled up dark stone walls. Sunlight flashed only dullyfrom the grimy windows, and the white paint on the clock tower above the entrance had flaked away like diseased skin.

Had Mamaw glimpsed the place before she was taken inside? Maybe not, if she was brought in an ambulance. Otherwise…

He couldn’t imagine. It was overwhelming enough just to look at. Knowing you were about to be locked away inside would be nightmarish, even if the place had been in better shape at the time.

Tina took off her glasses, rubbed them on her flowing orange skirt, then put them back on, as if that would help her take it all in. “I don’t want to be a downer, but that place is enormous, and there are only four of us. What exactly is Ms. Montague expecting us to do?”

Oscar wished he knew the answer. Patricia Montague had become their benefactor when they investigated a haunted house—or rather, she’d paid for the grant to fund Nigel’s research at Duke University’s Institute of Parapsychology. She’d come through for them again, when the team found themselves confronting the ghosts of Oscar’s ancestors, during what had originally been planned as a simple Christmas visit to his parents’ house.

This time, she approached them directly. Oh, she knew Oscar hoped to come here eventually and do what he could to free any spirits still trapped in this place. But he’d imagined some future version of himself undertaking the task, one with more experience as a medium under his belt.

Ms. Montague either had more confidence in him than he did, or this was a test of some kind.

No, that was ridiculous—he was letting his own uncertainties make him paranoid. Turning away from the grand spectacle of the decaying building, he eased the van back on the road.

The GPS guided them onto a street that dropped steeply down toward the river. The moment they were off the highway,the pavement turned into an unmarked surface that was just as much pothole as asphalt. Trees and shrubs grew wild, obscuring the doors and windows of collapsing houses.

“We’vegotto take a day so I can get some shots of the town,” Chris said, patting their camera case. “Is the whole place abandoned?”

“According to the brief Ms. Montague sent,” Nigel replied. “Howlston began life as a coal town—the asylum even had its own mine to supply its boiler, apparently. The problem is, coal isn’t an infinite resource. The mines dried up, and the only jobs left were in the asylum. After it shut down in 1994, the last few hold-outs left.”

“West Virginia is full of ghost towns.” Oscar rolled through a stop sign in what had been the old downtown, now just a row of brick buildings with boarded-up windows. “Lots of places started off as coal camps, or shipping points on railroad lines.”

“Mining is great for boomtowns, less so for long-term settlement.” Nigel put his notebook away into his backpack. “Unless there’s some other reason for people to stay, of course.”

“So the nearest anything is out on the interstate?” Tina asked.

Oscar nodded. “Pretty much. No quick grocery runs for us, so let’s hope Ms. Montague was as good as her word and set us up for the next few days.”

The road took them over the railroad tracks, which was the only thing that still seemed to be in use for miles around. Beyond lay an old stone bridge, built from the same dark brown stone making up the walls of the asylum. The small river beneath looked shallow, its clear waters tumbling over smoothed-out rocks.

The cracked road beyond led a short distance uphill until it reached an iron fence overgrown with honeysuckle and wildgrapevines. A great iron gate stood open, the wordsHowlston Lunatic Asylumworked into the arch spanning the road.

Beyond lay a disintegrating asphalt drive, cutting through what had once been open lawn but was now a mix of wild field and young forest. The asylum loomed directly ahead, its immense bulk like a crouching animal waiting to pounce on them.

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