Sanity by Judy Colella (beginner reading books for adults .TXT) 📕

or two, and he pushed it the rest of the way so he could look out. At first it seemed they had left and he would have gone back inside, but a flash of something moving caught the corner of his vision. He turned toward it in time to see a girl who had been starting to head around the drive to the other side of the building. Whether or not she sensed his presence was irrelevant. What mattered was that she stopped and turned around.

He stared, paralyzed. She was young, perhaps eighteen or so, with gorgeous light-brown hair that swung away from her in a breeze, then wrapped itself back around her shoulders and throat. He could see her eye color even across the distance between them – light blue – and her features, which were even and attractively proportioned.

She put her head to one side, any shock or fear she might have been experiencing at the sight of someone else in this horrible, deserted place erased by interest. She came close enough to be heard and smiled. “Hello. Um, what are you doing here?”

A second girl, someone with short reddish, curly hair, returned from around the side of the building and began whispering fiercely into the first girl’s ear, who impatiently waved at her to be silent.

He still didn’t move closer, but now he wanted to. Only…what would he say? To answer her question would be to invite trouble, this born more of instinct than certainty. But to say nothing would cause unwelcome suspicion. He cleared his throat. “I – I used to live here.”

“Really? Were you a – hold on. That isn’t even possible! You aren’t old enough! I mean, the asylum has been closed for over thirty years, and you’re what – nineteen? Twenty?” She shook her head, exasperation distorting her mouth.

He shrugged because he didn’t know the answer. This was also the first time he’d heard anything about how long the place had been standing unused. He never bothered to count days, but after some quick figuring he realized that if this girl was right, he had to be at least….well, he’d come there with his father shortly after his mother had died when he was six…he wanted to ask her the year. That would be the only way he’d know for sure how old he was now.

The Asylum had first opened its doors in August of 1904, and he’d arrived two years later. A lot had happened on the outside since then. The garbage trucks, for instance – they had been drawn by horses then, but had changed later into strange, self-propelled monsters that had frightened him. And machines began to fill the skies at some point that made the air pop when they passed overhead, but eventually they only produced a high-pitched whine.

From the windows he had seen other vehicles out on the distant roadway, vehicles that started out a uniform black, bulky, but which soon sped by in every color imaginable, and sleek, too fast to explain, their numbers increasing each year. Clothing, too, had undergone bizarre changes. In fact, the outfit this girl was wearing was unlike anything he’d yet seen. Some kind of leggings, a layering of wide-necked, flimsy shirts covered with a leather jacket, and pointy-toed, ankle-high boots with tall, narrow heels. Her hair was beautiful, but tumbled about her in a way that during his childhood would have been considered unruly.

“I don’t know how old I am,” he finally admitted. “But I once lived here and know it isn’t safe inside for you. You should go and not return.”

“What are you doing here, then?”

He had no answer. “What year is this?” Might as well ask. It probably didn’t matter what she would think about that.

“Seriously?” She uttered a short laugh and told him.

His eyes widened. If she was being honest – and he had no reason to imagine she was not – that would mean his age was…he swallowed hard, not at all happy with the number. The experiments they’d done had apparently worked but more than ever he found himself wishing they hadn’t. Oh, he could never tell this girl his age now. For one thing, she wouldn’t believe him, but on the very slight chance she did, she’d probably tell others, and he would no longer be able to stay in the only home he knew.

“I have to leave.” He took a step back. “Thank you for talking to me.” Before she could react, he had gone back inside, pulling the door shut and locking it. “Well,” he said to whatever energy might be listening, “seems I’m a little older than I’d thought.” At least he didn’t feel that old – yet. At some point it would all catch up with him, he knew. Those changes he kept looking for would one day begin to manifest themselves. After that, they would accelerate until he fell to dust.

Judging by how he currently looked and felt, though, he suspected it would still be a while before that happened. After all, he reasoned, one hundred and twenty-two wasn’t all that old, was it? But no one had told him how much longer he was supposed to live once he’d stopped aging, and the doctors who had played God with his life were gone without leaving any clues.

He’d looked long and hard for something – anything at all – that would answer that simple question, and had discovered nothing more helpful than several notebooks filled with numbers and Latin words. Neither was scratched onto the page by their writer’s fountain pen with any key as to their meaning, or any notation that they might somehow relate to each other. He wasn’t stupid, but he wasn’t smart enough to figure out that particular puzzle. How unfair. Too bad they hadn’t experimented on a genius.

Hoping the curious girls wouldn’t return, he went back upstairs. Springtime could twist itself without warning in either direction – terrible warmth or painful cold – and that generator had to be functioning at its best to get him through those changes. He started to enter the room once more, but again his hand was stayed, this time by a distraction of his own choosing.

He went to the mirrored door and frowned at himself. He could only see how he looked from the waist up, but knew the aging process had ceased for him when he was twenty-one, at which time he’d been weighed and measured, and found to be six-foot-one and a hundred and sixty-eight pounds. What the mirror did show was a well-muscled frame, a face that wasn’t outstanding yet quite pleasant nonetheless, straight, dark brown hair that had been poorly cut making it accidentally stylish (something he would learn later), and deep green-blue eyes that could only be described as haunted. Whatever those experiments had killed of the boy he’d once been was still there as a ghost, wandering through the shadows of his psyche, hissing at him in the small hours of the morning when he couldn’t sleep, screaming at him from his own eyes when he allowed himself to slow down long enough to gaze into that mirror to check for changes, prodding his heart to remember that at one time he had been a normal human boy. He made a habit of ignoring it every time, eventual familiarity with its ways strengthening the barrier between him and his former self.

Well, nothing had changed between his earlier glance and this one. He had no wish to continue disturbing himself, so he went back to the room housing the generator and opened the door. The machine rattled at him, the sound comforting. He offered a close-mouthed smile as tribute and thanks before opening the side panel to check its inner workings. Rather like the doctors used to do to him all the time, he thought absently, checking one of the switches that looked a bit loose. The big difference, of course, was that the generator never screamed.

II

“He shouldn’t be there, and I don’t believe him that he ‘used’ to live there. I think he lives there now, and that’s…creepy. You should do something about it.” She tucked annoying strands of hair behind her ear.

“Did he seem threatening, miss?”

“No, but it’s weird. That place is a death-trap, and maybe he’s a homeless guy, a derelict or something.”

“I see. When was this?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“Did he appear to be on drugs?”

“How would I know? I mean, yeah, his eyes were a little disturbing, but he spoke clearly. I think.”

The officer raised his brows. “What does that mean?”

“Well, he sounded like he wasn’t used to talking to people. You know, hesitant, and he – okay, this is what really made me come here to report him. He asked me what year it was and said he didn’t know his own age. Tell me that’s normal.”

“No, not normal.” Sitting back in his chair, the officer reached out and tapped a key on his computer. He stared at what appeared on the screen, touched a few more keys lightly with one finger, and nodded. “Okay.” He looked over the top of the monitor at the girl, smiling. “We’ll take care of this. Thanks for coming in.”

She recognized his dismissal and stood. “Thanks. Hey, could you let me know what happens?”

“Don’t worry - ”

“I’m not worried. That’s not why I asked. There’s just something about the guy…” She shrugged, shoving her hands into the pockets of her short leather jacket, causing her elbows to stick out. “I need to know he’s okay, that’s all.”

“I’ll ask. Leave your name and number at the front desk.”

She rolled her eyes. “I already gave you guys that information when I filled out that report-form thingy.”

He stared.

“Fine. I’ll give them my info.” She offered a brief smile, not necessarily a friendly or grateful one, and left.

The officer sat down again and double-checked the schedule he’d been reading. Looked like he and two others would have time between mandatory obligations to go to the old asylum and see what this girl was talking about. He got up and headed to the police captain’s office. He’d need permission, of course, and possibly some back-up. As a child, he’d attempted to break in on a dare; to this day, he was convinced there was someone or something still in there. So no way was he going to follow up the girl’s report without at least a couple of other officers. Because if ever there was a real haunted building anywhere on earth, Weatheridge Asylum was it.

Behind the huge kitchen were three massive pantries and one gigantic freezer. The doctors who took over the asylum after Dr. Jonathan Weatheridge passed away, quickly realized that they could make far more money from the families of the inmates than by raiding the asylum’s accounts. Once those funds were gone, there would be no way to maintain the facility, which meant no more income…no more power. Instead, they increased the fees, especially for long-term inmates. Those residents who would be there for a month or less for specialized treatments were only charged twenty-five percent more; they had personal doctors and psychiatrists keeping tabs on their progress, and were paying their own way.

The others came from