Dan found them waiting at the bottom of the stairs. A phone call from his parents had almost made him late, but when he assured Paul and Sandy that he’d arrived just fine, and that his friends Jordan and Abby were waiting for him downstairs, his mother had let him go with a happy little chirp.
Behind Jordan and Abby, a few lights flickered in the entrance hall. Jordan leaned against one of the tall white columns that supported the archway. He waved at Dan’s approach, swinging a flashlight in his other hand.
Abby had changed into a turquoise sweatshirt and pulled her hair up into a loose ponytail.
“Hey,” she whispered, glancing around. “We saw a hall monitor go by a few minutes ago, but nothing since. You ready?”
Dan nodded and joined them under the arch. Jordan tested the flashlight, shining a beam of light at each of them in turn.
“Last chance to go back and do something sensible,” Jordan offered, “like drink in my room and watch Thundercats.”
Abby’s nose wrinkled as she leveled a soft punch at his shoulder. “You are not chickening out now. Besides, we can do that after.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” Jordan murmured, following them into the dim, silent hall. “Because I’ll definitely need a drink after this.”
Dan knew what he meant. Now that he was here, he was so beyond nervous it was like he was giddy. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling exactly, but it was markedly better than the kind of anxiety he was used to.
Softly, they crept across the empty hall, passing the notices and activities corkboard, the vending machines, and a rickety elevator that was out of service. Fewer lights shined overhead the deeper into the hall they went, and when they reached the old office door they found themselves in almost total darkness. Jordan lifted his flashlight from their feet to the door, and Dan’s heart sank: it was clearly locked. And the sign Felix had mentioned turned out to be a poster board that said KEEP OUT in rather serious red letters.
“I thought this was an unfettered access situation,” Jordan whispered.
“I swear . . .” Had Felix lied to him? What would the point even be in that? “They must have figured out students were going in and locked it up. Damn it. I’m sorry for dragging you guys here.”
“All right, all right, don’t look so sad.” From his pocket, Jordan produced a paper clip, which he proceeded to straighten. When he’d finished, he put one end into the padlock and started to wiggle it around gently. “Just know that you owe me a lot more than Thundercats for this.”
“Pretty impressive,” Dan whispered. He had seen lock picking on TV, but it didn’t compare to the sneaky thrill of watching someone do it in real life.
Jordan smiled, pausing for a moment. “I can do it with a hairpin, too.”
“Would you two keep it down?” Abby looked over her shoulder.
“You’re breathing louder than we’re talking.” Jordan bit down on his lower lip with an impatient sigh, the padlock shaking in his grasp.
“Maybe hurry it up just a little,” Dan murmured.
“I’m going as fast as I can. This is an art. You can’t rush art.” A light sheen of perspiration broke out over Jordan’s forehead, soaking the ends of his bangs. “Just . . . almost . . .” Dan heard the softest of clicks. “Gotcha.” Jordan pocketed the paper clip in his hoodie and looped the open padlock through the ring on the door frame. He pushed the door. It didn’t budge.
“Damn, it’s stuck,” he said. “Give me a hand. . . .”
Dan and Abby put their hands on the heavy door and pushed. The door felt like it was pushing back at first, but then it started to give.
After one final push, the door shuddered open. A cloud of dust swirled up and blew out to meet them like a relieved sigh, as if some pent-up force had finally been released. As quickly as the dust came it dissipated, presumably less potent after Felix’s trip inside.
“Ugh, that is foul.” Coughing, Abby reeled back, covering her mouth to keep the dust out.
“It smells like my grandpa’s house,” Jordan said, his voice muffled through the fingers clamped over his mouth.
“They probably don’t clean in here anymore.” Dan squinted into the dark behind the door. Beside him, Jordan flicked his flashlight around, illuminating a wide reception-type room.
“When do you think was the last time someone worked here?”
“The Stone Age, maybe?” Abby joked. She and Dan turned on their phone lights as all three of them moved into the darkened room. Their lights made little pools of blue and white, but were hardly bright enough to fight the darkness.
They moved farther in. Slowly, details appeared—a low counter to the left where the secretary might have sat, a cushioned bench fixed into the wall on the right, austere overhead lights long bare of working bulbs. Across from them, along the far wall, was a slim door with a frosted glass window.
“This is crazy,” Jordan whispered, huddling closer to them. “It’s like . . . it’s like it’s all just frozen in time. Like they just got up and left one day.” He passed Abby and Dan, going to the counter and peering over it. “Phones, typewriters, everything.”
“It must have closed suddenly,” Abby said. Together, she and Dan walked ahead of Jordan and approached the inner office door. The flashlight beam shined over Dan’s shoulder, giving them all a better view of the letters that had flecked away on the door’s glass.
W D N RA F D
“What do you think?” Dan leaned closer, studying the letters and trying to mentally fill in the blanks. “Is this the warden’s office?”
“Most likely,” Abby agreed. “Think it’s open?”
“Only one way to find out . . .” Holding his breath, Dan reached for the knob, noticing that it showed visible fingerprints in the dust that disappeared under his palm. Traces of Felix, probably, who must have gone farther in since Dan hadn’t spotted any pictures so far.
The door gave with a quiet squeak, swinging inward on tight hinges.
“Whoa,” he heard Abby breathe.
“My thoughts exactly,” Dan whispered.
Wiping his hands to get rid of the clinging dust, he went first, shoved a little by Jordan at his back. It was only fair, given that this whole trip into the unknown was technically his idea. They stepped into an office that might have been spacious if not for all the bookcases and filing cabinets crowding around, not to mention the piles and piles of loose papers. Dan tripped over a fallen lamp stand, catching his balance by grabbing the edge of a large desk.
On the desk, Dan noticed an old rotary telephone next to a stack of worn journals and notepads. Then he realized that what looked like an in-box of papers was actually a pile of faded photographs, less dusty than everything around it.
“I think I found the photos Felix was talking about,” Dan said.
He shined his phone on the top one—a tall man in a long, white coat, with glasses Dan recognized. He squinted to make out the other details of the image. It was the same man from the photo in his desk drawer. He quickly flipped to the next picture and let out a yelp.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Abby said.
“Nothing,” Dan replied. If he admitted the connection he’d just made in his head, he could no longer pretend that he was imagining it.
The next photo in the stack showed a group of physicians standing around a gurney. Lying on the bed, oddly placid, was a young man in a hospital gown. One of the doctors was cradling his head in his hands, while another was buckling a heavy leather strap across his forehead. Nearby, a nurse was holding a syringe.
Abby sidled up next to him to stare at the picture, both of them trying to make sense of the image.
“It must be a treatment of some kind,” Dan said finally. “He must have been a patient here.”
“He’s so young,” Abby said. “He could be our age.”
He could be me. Dan shook the thought from his mind, peeling off the photo and aiming his cell phone at the next one.
This picture showed a woman restrained on a table. Fitted over her head was a helmet with wires coming out of it. A wooden bit was wedged between her teeth. Between the helmet and the bit, she looked like she was being tortured, like some kind of martyr.
The photographs were horrible, but Dan couldn’t stop flipping to the next one, and the next. Each picture showed a patient enduring some kind of treatment, from painful-looking shots to solitary confinement. A photograph depicting hydrotherapy turned Dan’s stomach. Orderlies were aiming hoses of water at a patient, who was huddled and shivering in the corner of the room, completely naked. A doctor stood to the side, arms crossed, indifferent.
Dan had read about this kind of outdated treatment before—he had a morbid fascination for the subject, really. Growing up in the foster system had given him an interest in social machines, systems that made decisions for people instead of with them. Not that he was comparing his life to the plight of these poor people—if anything, the system had made a good decision for him, all things considered. He wouldn’t trade his family for anything.
“Wait, you guys, come take a look at this. . . .” Jordan said, and the catch in his voice got their attention.
He was standing on the far side of the desk, his flashlight pointed at the wall, where there were even more photos, hanging in frames.
“How awful,” Dan said.
“Quiet.” Abby spoke in barely a whisper.
She moved closer to one of the pictures, gently wiping the dust off the glass frame with her sleeve. It was a photograph of a little girl, no older than nine or ten, with light-colored hair down to her shoulders. She was standing up, her hand resting on what looked like the armrest of a chair, like she was posing for a formal portrait. She had on a patterned dress and was wearing fine jewelry. But a jagged scar slashed across her forehead and there was something wrong with her eyes.
“She looks so sad,” Abby said.
Sad was one way to put it. Empty was another.
Abby stood still, staring so deeply into the photograph that it looked like she was in a trance. Dan didn’t have the heart to tell her that given the scar on the little girl’s forehead and the emptiness in her eyes, it was likely that she’d been given a lobotomy. What kind of monsters would perform a lobotomy on a little girl?
The picture hanging next to it shocked him from his thoughts. It showed a patient struggling, pinned by two orderlies in white aprons and restrained by a muzzle on his face. One of the orderlies holding him looked positively evil. Dan was mesmerized by the photograph. Who had taken it, or any of these pictures for that matter, and who had hung them up on the wall?
“It’s hard to remember they were here to get help,” Jordan said.
“He was ill,” Dan replied automatically.
“So? Does that look humane to you? Those doctors wouldn’t know the Hippocratic oath if it kneed them in the balls.”
“You have no idea what was going on,” Dan shot back. Then he stopped himself. Why did he feel the need to defend the very doctors who had probably performed a lobotomy on a child? Or who were getting ready to torture a man? When he looked down at his crossed arms, a bolt of fear shot through his body, and he rushed to fill the awkward silence. “I guess we’re just lucky the field has come a long way since then.”
“Why leave these here?” Abby cried suddenly, gesturing at the photographs. Her chin was quivering. “They’re . . . horrible.”
“Well, at least it’s honest,” Jordan replied, putting an arm around her. Abby shrugged him off. “I hate when people skirt around the truth. And lest we forget, this was locked.”
“I don’t care if they locked it up.” She wouldn’t stop looking at the photograph of the girl. Dan had an urge to grab Abby away before the hollow girl in the frame could reach out and pull her in. But of course that was ridiculous. “She shouldn’t be here. She should be put somewhere safe.”
Slowly, Abby raised both her hands and pulled the frame off its hook. A light patch showed on the wall where the picture had been. Abby hugged the photograph to her chest, her arms wrapping protectively around it.
“What are you doing?” Dan said, unable to stop himself.
“I’m going to take her back to my room. She’ll be safe there.”
“You can’t take it, Abby,” said Dan, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. “It’s supposed to be down here. You need to leave it alone.”
Abby was about to say something else when Jordan spoke up. “Hey, relax, both of you. It’s not like you know her, Abs. You should put it back. Someone might notice it’s missing.”
“Who?” she demanded with a soft little scoff.
“Someone,” Jordan replied testily. “I don’t know. . . . Maybe there’s a catalog of all the crap in here somewhere.”
Abby didn’t seem to hear what Jordan had said. She stood silently, like a statue, gripping the picture to her chest.
“Please, Abby, leave her where she is. She belongs with the others,” Dan insisted. “Please.” He couldn’t believe he was arguing with one of the hottest girls he’d ever met.
Just let her have it, Dan. You want her to like you.
But the need to speak was more compelling.
Abby’s eyes seemed almost as vacant as those of the girl in the photograph. Then a shiver came over her and she blinked. Gently, almost affectionately, she put the picture back on the wall. She touched it one last time and said, “Poor little bird. I wonder if she ever escaped her cage.”
With the picture in place, Dan felt a sense of relief. He couldn’t exactly say why.
“Come on,” Abby said. “Let’s go back. I’ve had enough.”
That was all they needed. They scrambled out of the old office like it was a race, and Dan was only too glad to shut the door behind them.
“Hey, the lock,” Jordan said, just as they reached the vending machines.
“Don’t worry, I already took care of it,” Dan said, ready to be far, far away.
“You sure?”
Without waiting for an answer, Jordan turned back to double-check. The lock was still hanging on the door where he’d left it.
“My bad,” said Dan, laughing nervously. He really could have sworn he’d locked it. But then, his memory had been known to play tricks on him.
