His walk had begun before dawn, but already the sun hung at that dangerous winter angle warning of imminent night. Terah’s initial impression of Fonthill Castle shifted more toward Mercer Museum. Instead of opening into a grand foyer, the front hall was a narrow, claustrophobic passageway. There were two right-angle turns that set him back to his original direction. That was an odd architectural feature. With no interior lights, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust. At least he was out of the wind, although the temperature in the poured concrete didn’t improve much on the outdoors. The climb had made him sweat, so opening his jacket seemed logical.
The passage opened onto rooms about twelve feet in, and then continued on toward the center of the building. He glanced into the rooms, noting abandoned equipment he couldn’t identify. Vaguely medical enough to make him squeamish, he looked across the hall to find an office with papers, damp and moldy, strewn across the floor. With any luck he could coax them into a fire, more toward the center, presuming there was some airflow there. Sticking to the passageway, he stepped by a series of rooms, not bothering to count them. His instincts paid off. The hall emptied into a large center room, quite dusky given that the only windows were in a clerestory high overhead.
Directly in front of him rose an octagonal pyramid of stairs, each emptying onto a passageway like the one in which he currently stood. Logic dictated that there would be a further halls behind the stairs, blocked from his view. What kind of factory had this kind of design? Then the medical equipment flashed in his mind. Not a factory. An asylum.
Terah had whiled away enough unemployed hours on Weird NJ to know two things about asylums: they were frequent targets of budget cuts, and they were haunted. He’d never thought much about ghosts, but if tormented spirits existed, asylums would be more appropriate places than graveyards. What could be worse than being lost in your own head, and being treated as a freak for it? Inmates were people, but they thought differently than others. If their condition prevented them from the usual interactions sometimes called intimacy, then why wouldn’t their spirits remain, confused? Not in their chemically unbalanced bodies anymore, they would wander this strangely symmetrical building unsure of where they were.
An involuntary shiver running from the base of his neck through his ribs, Terah shook the thought from his head. It was winter, he was homeless, and probably wanted. And beggars, you know, can’t be.
Standing rigid he couldn’t make out any interior sounds. He was here alone. The center space with the concrete stairway had no pieces of furniture—the place had been picked clean. But that paper back in the office might be coaxed to flame. This larger room would allow for that. The windows were high enough that he was fairly sure the light wouldn’t show. He would liked to have dragged mismatched tables and chairs into a kind of fire screen to keep the light in, but this room was a symmetrical as a kaleidoscope. Even the graffiti was strangely symmetrical.
The damp paper tried his supply of matches. They used to give these things away at restaurants and clubs. Now his frozen fingers were wasting fire stick after fire stick on paper that just wouldn’t catch. He gave up.
Shivering in his damp underclothes, Terah pulled out his one ace—the survival blanket that looked like it was made from tin foil. He’d get through the night with that.
He had no way to guess what time it was when the sounds awoke him. Used to nature prodding him to consciousness around three, he knew it wasn’t that late—or early, depending. It was fully dark. He was aware that he wasn’t alone. Sleep was impossible. He strained his ears, willing them to find the direction of the noise. This strange, symmetrical room wouldn’t allow it. It filtered down from above, that much he knew. What’s more, the sounds were vaguely obscene.
In high school locker room talk, the jocks always bragged of shit like this—getting cheerleaders into haunted locations and making up their own encouraging chants. He’d seen the graffiti on the wall. The local teens did come here then. Trying to venture upstairs in the cave-like darkness would be foolhardy. Besides, even if they knew he was here—the door squealed when he came in and a board had fallen down—they would be equally hampered by the dark. What’s more, their business was urgent and they wouldn’t want to get caught.
Terah nearly fell into something like sleep. His thoughts didn’t make sense, casting him into a location he knew wasn’t real. A warm place. Someone like Danielle smiling at him and talking about puppies. In a jarring jolt he’d realize he was in a foil blanket in a cold and abandoned asylum and the sounds of love-making continued. How long had they been at it? He remembered being a teenager, and the incredible persistence of his own biology. Only he’d not had any girlfriends. So this is what it might’ve been like for guys who weren’t timid.
He couldn’t say exactly when first light hit. He became aware of the suggestion of a pyramid. A place where the dark was darker than other dark. Slowly, over the next several minutes gray disentangled itself from black and the stairs became distinguishable. He had to admit he was curious in a prurient way. How many times had they done it? Even the starving are drawn to wonders like that.
As silently as he could, Terah unwrapped himself from the foil blanket. The cool air rushed in, but since he was already chilled he let his curiosity guide him. It was easy enough to walk silently on concrete. No squeaking floor boards, and if you were willing to go slow you could even sneak up on the angel of death. The stairs were gritty and it took care lest he should give himself away. The gloom could lift only so far in this interior space, and Terah didn’t want to be caught as a voyeur, but he simply couldn’t help himself. The groans were easy enough to follow up on the second floor. The asylum was otherwise silent. With a stab of guilt and excitement, he knew he’d reached the room. The door stood open, as if they had no shame.
Although the moans continued, peering through the doorway Terah saw the couple a good bit beyond making out. Encouraging each other at this point. Deeper, harder, longer. Despite the chill, not a thread of clothing masked the scene. Dry for weeks now, Terah couldn’t strip his gaze from the negotiations, although natural embarrassment clawed somewhere in the nether regions of his mind. They were acutely hungry for one another, demonstrated their frantic, desperate clenching. The way they moved together revealed so much more than words. So this, in a word, was love. Or so it seemed. Unbothered by, perhaps unaware of his presence, the duo finished in spectacular fashion. Terah had decided he should now look away, but the couple vanished first. Confused, he blinked hard. He screamed when he heard the voice behind him.
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