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  Asylum Bound

  Part I

  Analeigh Ford

  Asylum Bound by Analeigh Ford

  © 2020 Analeigh Ford

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of including brief passages for use in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For permissions contact:

  [email protected]

  Ebook ASIN: B083DHQMJG

  Contents

  1. Thalia

  2. Price

  3. Thalia

  4. Thalia

  5. Thalia

  6. Thalia

  7. Ives

  8. Thalia

  9. Thalia

  10. Kingsley

  11. Thalia

  12. Thalia

  13. Thalia

  14. Price

  15. Thalia

  16. Thalia

  17. Thalia

  18. Price

  19. Thalia

  20. Thalia

  21. Thalia

  22. Ives

  23. Thalia

  24. Thalia

  Author’s Note

  Also by Analeigh Ford

  1

  Thalia

  When we were young and my brother and I would throw rocks at the high brick walls of Ashford Asylum, never once did I imagine one day I’d be inside them.

  But here I am.

  Ashford was built to hide society’s greatest embarrassments. When all the other asylums closed, replaced with mental hospitals and out-patient care facilities, Ashford stood strong—supported by the politics and the pockets of old money’s richest families.

  As children, we watched them carted in one at a time to the asylum…but we never saw them leave. We learned that this was not the kind of place where people were sent to get better, it’s where they go to be forgotten. It’s where you’re sent when all other hope is gone.

  Light spills into the front office from the long thin windows overlooking the lawn. Other inmates are roaming around outside, clothed in that characteristic white of those who have lost their minds. From a distance they look the same as anyone else, as sane as anyone else. Even from here I can hear the dull thrum of their conversations on the other side of the glass, as dull and ordinary as if this was just another school, another place to shove me out of sight and out of mind; not the very mental institution that has haunted my nightmares since I was a girl.

  No amount of light and boring conversation will hide what this place really is. This is a prison, and these are its prisoners. And now, shortly, I will be too . . . if my brother has anything to do with it.

  “I’m not crazy,” I say, again. And again, my words fall on deaf ears.

  My brother, Kemper, leans forward across the desk in front of us to look over the documents spread out there more carefully. One hand stretches out across the papers meant to legally bind me here, in this place, and the other rests in what is supposed to appear as a supportive position on the end of my knee.

  What the director doesn’t see, however, is the way his hand grips me tight enough to bruise. Like all the other signs of mourning, his unshaved beard, the unkempt hair, the slightly wrinkled black suit—he’s let his nails grow longer. Long enough to press through the thin fabric of the dress I wear until it threatens to break through the surface of my skin.

  “As you can see here, here, and…” he thumbs through several pages until he finds one in particular, “here, she was institutionalized for three months as a girl. She never was quite the same again.”

  The director nods his head. From the way he barely glances at the papers, I assume he’s already looked at these ahead of time. Like everything my brother does, it’s never as spontaneous as he makes out. When he finally told me where we were headed this afternoon, I knew there was no way he’d just thought it up. This was no last-minute solution. Nothing with him is ever so simple.

  “And afterwards, was she medicated?”

  I cannot roll my eyes hard enough. If I could, they would have already up and rolled away from the madness going on these last couple of days.

  “I’m right here,” I say, once again reminding them that I’m an adult who can answer basic questions about myself. I worry my grandmother’s ring with my other hand, turning it over and over on my finger until the skin feels raw and tender. Anything to keep my mind off the treachery that’s unfolding before my very eyes.

  The director takes out a slip of paper for me to write down the medications I was prescribed all those years ago, but since I have no idea what the doctors tried to give me back then, I begrudgingly have to let Kemper take it from me to fill out. His perfect, looping handwriting, courtesy of the elite prep schools we begrudgingly attended, spells out a series of medications I swear I’ve never even heard of before.

  I lean in closer, watching him scrawl out yet another name.

  His memory of that time is completely different from mine. The only time I remember being sent away from home was to summer camp. Sure, when I got home I had to take all kinds of medications, but I swore they were for some bacterial infection I got swimming in a stagnant pond, not anti-psychotics.

  If it weren’t for the oversized orderly standing by the door, I would have long-since booked it out of here.

  Kemper finishes writing out the impressive list of medications I was once supposedly on, and then starts handing back the paper.

  “So, I take it there’s some kind of program here to help determine the exact nature of Thalia’s condition. Therapy or psychiatric care, that sort of thing?”

  “Condition?” I say, incredulously. “What condition am I supposed to have? Isn’t that something that should’ve been figured out before you lock me in here?”

  The director offers me another one of his patronizing smiles. “Of course, Thalia. Our primary concern here in the beginning will be looking for an accurate diagnosis, and then after that, treatment. If all goes well, there’s a chance you could be out well before the sixty-day review.”

  “Wait, sorry…” I say, holding up a hand to stop him before he can drone on about something else I’m going to have to do while I’m imprisoned here against my will. “What’s that about sixty days?”

  “Oh, of course, I thought I’d covered that already.” The director does some more shifting of documents until he produces one going over patient rights and responsibilities. This one I snatch from his hand, eagerly scanning the page for any hope I can still get out of this.

  “Thalia can only be kept here for sixty days before she’s entitled to a review,” the director says, glancing over at my brother. “Since this is her first time being committed, we have to be sure that this kind of facility is the best place to treat her.”

  Kemper loses his temper and prematurely throws down the pen in his hand so that it clatters across the top of the desk. The director flinches back out of surprise, his thick salt and pepper eyebrows shooting upwards with alarm.

  He tries to salvage his little outburst by sitting up straighter in his seat and pretending to look over the papers in front of him a second time. “I’m sorry, I thought that because she was committed before that none of these rules applied. The old director certainly didn’t share your same concerns.”

  “Well, there’s a reason I’m here now instead of him. Your sister was a minor at the time, well ove
r a decade ago now. Now that Thalia is an adult, there must be a review. Unless, of course,” and here he turns to me, holding out his hands, “you don’t think that’s necessary, Thalia.”

  “I want the review!” I blurt, before anyone can try to coerce me into saying otherwise. It all tumbles out like a single connected word, leaving me breathless and trembling.

  My brother turns to me with a look of false concern on his face while the hand, still resting on my knee, squeezes tighter. I feel the nails, separated even by fabric, dig into the skin of my knee until hot blood rushes up.

  “See, Thalia, this isn’t forever. This is just until you get ahold of . . . of whatever’s going on in there.” He waves one hand in a circle in front of my face while the other digs even harder. I grimace at him, trying to show as many teeth as possible, and he immediately turns back to the director. “Though, had I known that, I might have taken her to another specialist first. You all are certainly charging me a pretty penny for what could turn out to be a temporary arrangement.”

  Once again, I know what he actually means. He would’ve taken me to one of the doctors he had sign off on my recommendation to commit in the first place. Friends of his probably, accomplices in this poorly disguised bid for my portion of our parent’s inheritance.

  This is new. He didn’t expect this. A tiny shred of hope clings to the inside of my chest. If Kemper didn’t anticipate this, then maybe there’s still a chance to unwind all the rest of his carefully laid plans before it’s too late.

  In his bid to get me away from everyone I know as quickly as possible, from anyone who might contest the way I’m being treated, he’s opened himself up to this little complication. That’s right, Kemper. You can’t just lock me away forever so easily.

  Kemper takes it all in stride, however, as he plasters on another one of those concerned expressions on his face. His smile does not meet his eyes, however, and there’s a certain note of annoyance that makes his voice catch in the back of his throat.

  “So then, just to be sure we’re on the same page here. What is the maximum time you’re able to keep a patient at this facility?”

  He lets go of my knee, finally, letting the sting of his words do the damage instead.

  The director chuckles a little nervously. He reaches to straighten out the papers before him, pulling at the corners to line them up exactly.

  “That’s a bit premature, don’t you think? I know you’ve taken a lot of time to put together this evidence…”

  “Along with two doctor’s signatures, as you will see here and here…” my brother points out the offending documents, “both recommending commitment.”

  “Yes,” the director says, but to my glee, he doesn’t look entirely convinced yet. “But to be quite honest, Mr. Novak, Thalia even being here is a bit of an unusual circumstance to begin with. We here at Ashford are not usually the first facility a patient is admitted to.”

  “And by that you mean?”

  “We are a long-term care facility, Mr. Novak. Typically patients come to us after all other options have been exhausted. We’re focused less on rehabilitation, and more on providing care and comfort for those not typically expected to…erm…recover.”

  I can hear right through his meaning. Just as we always suspected as children, this isn’t another posh rehab facility for wayward trust-fund babies. This is the last line of defense for embarrassments better forgotten.

  But the director’s hesitation is promising. I know this is the wrong kind of place to be feeling hope, but it still blossoms in me at his words. Unless I’m mistaken, there’s still a chance I might walk out of here today despite my brother’s carefully laid plans.

  I scoot forward in my seat all the way to the very edge. Well…I actually scoot past the edge and fall down a little before catching myself. The director flinches in my direction, as does Kemper, but only Kemper’s hand catches me by the upper arm with a vice-like grip.

  I shake him off and shift my weight back onto my seat. I try to move as purposefully as possible so I don’t look like a deranged patient about to go off on a psychotic episode, but I catch the orderly taking a half step closer out of the corner of my eye anyway.

  I take full advantage of that hesitation from moments before.

  “Director . . .” I trail off and scan the desktop, looking for some sign of a name. I find one in the form of a shiny new nameplate. “Director Hedgewood, I’m not crazy. I’m just a little…enthusiastic, that’s all.”

  I flinch at my own words. Enthusiasm might not be the word to describe a girl who, just a few days earlier, tried to climb into her own parent’s empty coffins in the very middle of their long-overdue funeral.

  As if reading my mind, Kemper and the director share a look that makes me want to lunge out across the desk and strangle one of them. Preferably my brother, since he’s the one trying to commit me so he doesn’t have to split the inheritance.

  “I told you she’d say that,” my brother says, shaking his head like I’m some lost cause for having elbows and knees that don’t like to do as they’re told.

  Before he can bury any further attempts at a plea, I quickly add, “Please. Those letters, that past commitment…” I don’t add here that the way I remember it, it wasn’t a commitment at all, “they were all from so long ago. Even if Kemper is right, shouldn’t I be somewhere else? Somewhere more trained to handle my sort of, erm, case? Grief and all that. It’s not the same as real madness, right?”

  I have to keep myself from cringing again. I don’t think I exactly came across as desperate, but that’s an edge I’m very narrowly skirting.

  For one brief second, I see the director considering my words. His eyes flit from mine to the papers in front of him, his hands fidgeting at their edges. That’s it. Any other place than this. Just not here. Not the asylum where no one ever leaves.

  “Miss Novak…” the director’s voice wavers a bit in his indecision, and my heart seizes up a bit.

  And then Kemper ruins it.

  “Sorry to burst this little rose-colored bubble, but I know for a fact that this is the best place for Thalia. Ashford Asylum is where my sister belongs. I’ve known it for a long time, and I think…” here he shoots me a patronizing look, “so does she. And I brought proof.”

  He takes out his phone and sets it on the desk. Even from where I sit, now safely positioned in the very middle of my chair, I can see what he’s pulled up for so-called “proof”. That little swell of hope that I’ll be able to prove my sanity slips away in the one horrifying, gut-wrenching moment that my calm façade crumbles.

  “What the actual fuck Kemper?”

  Hands dug into soil and stained black with earth.

  I lunge across the desk and snatch up the phone. I might have smacked it out of the director’s hand in the process, but I don’t have any other choice. I leap from my seat, crawling awkwardly over the back of the antique leather wingback chair and out of their reach.

  Hair, unkempt and wild, plastered across a tear-streaked face. Mascara rimming my lashes like the mark of a thousand sleepless nights.

  Eyes, wild and unseeing. Mouth agape, arms spread wide, fingers clutching more of that pitch-black earth.

  It’s me in the photos, I know it, but I can’t even recognize myself. This girl standing in her parent’s freshly dug graves, her voice shouting above those screaming in her head, isn’t me. She looks like me. She wears my skin like a cloak, a disguise hiding the lost creature hidden beneath.

  But she still isn’t me.

  Not, at least, the me that stands here in the sun-streaked lobby of Ashford Asylum as any last glimmer of hope that I might walk out of here today fades away.

  I barely have time to scroll through the first couple of photos, each one more sickening than the last, before I’m grabbed from behind and my arms jerked down and pinned to my sides. The phone slips from my stupid, butterfingers-for-hands, and drops with a dull crack to the tile floor.

  My ears are filled
with a skull-shattering ringing. I’m not the girl in the photos. I’m not. But why then do I hear what she heard? Why then do I remember the way my parent’s voices called out to me from inside their empty coffins? Why do I remember the way the roots stuck between the beds of my nails, and how that black-as-night dirt still clings, invisible, to the lines of my palms?

  The orderly who grabbed me is roughly the size of two regular humans, so try as I might to thrash out of his grip, I don’t so much as budge. I should have heard him coming, but I was too horrified by what I saw in those photos to react in time.

  I know I’m not the girl in the photos, mad with grief and maybe more. Wild. Untamed. Unchecked and unhinged. But for one moment, one heart-wrenching, gut-churning moment…I was. And Kemper brought the proof.

  My brother calmly gets up from his seat and picks up his phone from the ground. The screen has cracked, a satisfying branching line straight down the middle—but to my dismay, it still turns on. I’m about to open my mouth again to protest, this time with even more strongly-worded language, when I’m stopped in my tracks.

  The director is half-bent over his desk, clutching at his hand. A long gash runs across the palm, dripping dots of ruby-colored blood onto the papers below. My great-grandmother’s ring, a black diamond set among emeralds, glistens with that same blood where it caught him in my scramble to get the phone.

  The arms around me only grow tighter.

  “As you can see,” Kemper says, as irritatingly calm and composed as ever, “she’s obviously lashing out over my parent’s deaths. I mean, she’s had episodes before, but never quite like this.” Here his eyes flit over to me as he swipes to another screen and a video—with full audio of my incoherent screeching including—starts to play. I close my eyes. I don’t need to see myself again to hear the utter madness in my voice. “This went on until several members of the staff were able to restrain her. She’s clearly a danger to herself and others.”