We walked the labyrinth of exhibits, weaving our way through the industrial space. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. Some of the rooms were art; walls twisted with metalwork, or entirely crocheted in a walk-in tapestry.
I wandered over to a sculpture installation, a forest of tall, abstract pieces that surrounded me. They looked like trees or people, depending on the angle, copper and nickel mingling together, towering over my head. I was amazed at the scale of it, the amount of effort it must have taken the artist to create something like this. And Noah brought me here, knowing I would love it, arranging the whole day for me. I wanted to run over and give him the hug of his life.
“Noah?” My voice bounced off the walls in a hollow echo. He didn’t answer.
I turned around. He wasn’t there. The giddiness I’d felt slipped away, replaced by a low buzzing of fear. I walked to the far wall looking for a way out and registered the soreness of my calves and thighs for the first time. I must have been walking for a while. The vastness of the space swallowed my footsteps. The wall was a dead end.
I needed to go back the way I came, and tried to remember which way that was. As I passed the trees—or were they people?—I felt their faceless, misshapen trunks twist in my direction, following me. I stared straight ahead, even while their limbs reached out to grab me. Because they weren’t reaching. They weren’t moving. It wasn’t real. I was just scared and it wasn’t real and maybe I would start taking the pills when I got home later.
If I got home later.
I escaped the metal forest unscathed, of course, but then found myself surrounded by enormous photographs of houses and buildings in various stages of decay. The images stretched from floor to ceiling, making it seem like I was walking on a real sidewalk beside them. Ivy crept over brick walls, and trees bent and leaned into the structures, sometimes swallowing them whole. The grass might have edged on to the concrete floor of the Convention Center, too. And there were people in the pictures. Three people with backpacks, scaling a fence at the border of one of the properties. Rachel. Claire. Jude.
I blinked. No, not them. No one. There were no people in the picture at all.
The air pressed in on me and I quickened my pace, my head pounding, my feet sore, and rushed through the photographs, detouring at a sharp corner to try and find the exit. But when I turned, I faced another photograph.
Thousands of pounds of brick and concrete rubble were strewn along the wooded grounds. It was a picture of destruction, as if a tornado had hit a building and all that was left was a pile of rubble and the vague sense that there were people beneath it. It was reverent—each ray of sunlight that filtered through the trees cast a perfect, distorted shadow on the snow-covered ground.
And then the dust and bricks and beams began to move. Darkness pressed in on the edges of my vision as the snow and sunlight receded, leaving dead leaves in their wake. The dust curled back in on itself and the bricks and beams flew and towered and reassembled themselves. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. I lost my balance and fell, and when I hit the floor, my eyes flew open at the shock of the impact. But I was no longer in the Convention Center.
I was no longer in Miami at all. I was standing right beside the asylum, right next to Rachel and Claire and Jude.
31
BEFORE
RACHEL HELD OUT THE MAP SHE’D PULLED from the Internet, which showed a detailed blueprint of the facility. It was huge, but navigable if you had enough time. The plan was to enter through the cellar door, make our way through the basement storage area, and climb up to the main level, which would bring us to the industrial kitchen. Then, another staircase would lead us to the patient and treatment rooms in the children’s wing.
Rachel and Claire were giddy with excitement as they pried open the basement door with a groaning creak. The Laurelton Police Department had mostly given up securing the place, beyond some cursory CONDEMNED notices, which suited Rachel perfectly; she was itching to write our names on the blackboard inside one of the patient rooms. It bore the names of other thrill-seekers—or idiots, flip a coin—who had dared to spend the night.
Claire was first to walk down the steps. The light on her video camera cast shadows in the basement. I must have looked as freaked out as I felt, because Rachel smiled and promised, again, that everything would be fine. Then she followed Claire.