Asylum

by Jack Adams

Overview

Joe was their friend; the man they spoke to through the wire fence of the Lunatic Asylum, and 10-year-old best friends, Nathan Walker and Adam Murphy, knew he wasn't insane. Then, one day, Joe was gone.

Now hitting their thirties--jobs and divorces in their wake--ex-cop, current P.I. Nate and psychiatrist Adam decide to share office space and a receptionist. That's when the letter arrives advising them that they have received 'Expectations'. A quaint, old-fashioned bequest delivered by a solicitor which amounts to an inheritance for two boys - left by Joseph O'Connell, a missing-believed-deceased former patient at the River Park Lunatic Asylum.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780994182203
Publisher:	Atlas Productions
Publication date:	08/02/2019
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Then ...

Nathan looked back over his shoulder to make sure his best friend was following; Adam usually followed. They journeyed to where the river met the border of the lunatic asylum – or to give it its full name, the River Park Lunatic Asylum. Here, spotted gums towered above them, rainforest fronds covered the ground, and the earth smelled perpetually damp – their favourite spot and a regular haunt.

'Mum said if she catches us here I'm grounded for a week, and she'll call your parents,' Nate said with a glance behind to where in the distance, his house — along with a row of new, formula suburban homes — gleamed in the River Park estate; their neutral-coloured tiled roofs and neat yards fulfilling the great Australian dream of home ownership. The estate wound around the river, and as the distance increased so did the size and value of the properties. Adam's house was a few suburbs away, in 'rich row' – waterfront with a jetty.

'It's not like we're going to catch something,' Adam said as they scampered across the old timber bridge.

'Can you catch madness? I thought you could be driven mad,' Nate said, kicking a stone off the edge of the bridge into the water below. He looked down to see it splash; Adam stopped beside him.

'That's different. Your mum's just worried that one of the inmates will try and strangle you, Natty,' he said, wrapping his hands around Nate's throat in a pretend strangle. Adam knew his parents wouldn't have cared less where he was, as long as he wasn't underfoot.

Nate pushed him off and winced at the use of his mother's nickname. 'C'mon.'

They left the bridge and disappeared into a row of large ironbark trees that formed a guard of honour along the riverbank. Nate wedged his foot into a groove on the lower trunk of one of the trees he'd climbed many times before and pushed himself up on the first branch. His hands and feet habitually sought out the best branches and grooves to a mid-level branch, he swung himself over it and sat.

'He's there,' Nate said, his voice raised as he looked across at the asylum gardens.

Adam swung himself onto the branch opposite. 'I told'ya he'd be back.'

A man with clipped brown hair flecked with strands of grey, sat in a chair in the sun. He leaned flush against the wire fence as if by sitting so close, it didn't exist. The light bounced off his white pants and loosely-fitted shirt.

Nate squinted from the glare. 'He missed two days, I thought he'd died. He's got to be pretty old, forty or so, I reckon.'

'Yeah at least,' Adam agreed. 'You got it?'

Nate responded by patting his pocket.

'Let's go,' Adam said and swung down from the tree. He waited until Nate landed near him, and followed. They ran along the river's edge until they neared the man and then Nate called out.

'Joe, it's us,' he said. He turned to Adam and lowered his voice. 'Don't want to scare him big time.'

They watched as the man looked up, recognised them and a smile formed on his face. He raised his hand in a wave; the boys went to the fence and dropped down beside him onto the grass. To a stranger, it would look like a father talking with his two sons, except for the ten-foot wire fence between them and the asylum looming in the background.

'We were worried you'd ...'

'... been sick,' Adam cut off Nate in case he said the 'dead' word.

Joe tapped the wide timber arm of his chair and smiled at the boys again.

'You're good to worry about me young fellows, but no, just a few days that I had to stay inside. Sometimes it's good to have some time in solitary, for reflection, you know?' The boys nodded. They didn't know.

'We brought you a present,' Nate said with a look to Adam.

'A present,' Joe's eyes lit up. 'Well, that's thoughtful.'

'You said you liked those cigarette lollies, those musk ones ... when you were a kid ...' Nate said.

'You can't get them now,' Joe said, 'I've been told, they don't make them anymore.'

'We got some,' Adam said, his face lit up with pleasure.

Nate pulled them out of his pocket and slipped them between the wire; Joe hesitated before taking them.

'Well look at that, look at that,' he said, reaching for the pack and turning it over in his hands. He looked up at them. 'My, well, aren't you two lads thoughtful. Thank you, thank you both.'

Nate and Adam beamed with pleasure.

'We must smoke one now then,' Joe said, gently prying open the pack of musk candy cigarettes and offering one to each of the boys. When they all had one, Joe made a pretend show of lighting them, and the three sat back, sucking and faking the smoking of their candy cigarettes until they were gone. Joe chuckled at the sight.

'Can we ask you a question, Joe?' Nate asked.

'Of course, anything.'

'What do you do ... you know, for a job?' Nate asked.

'Well, today ... I am an artist. Yes, I like to draw. What do you two lads do?' Joe asked.

Nate and Adam glanced at each other.

Adam shrugged, pulling at his T-shirt. 'Nothing. We're kids.'

Joe's eyes widened. 'Oh, no, you're at a very important stage in your life. When I was a kid, I was a pirate for at least a year. Then I became an inventor when I was about ten, and for a while, I was a writer. But I found my true calling when I was about fourteen; I became an artist. I'm still an artist. How old are both of you?' 'Ten,' they said in unison.

'But I'm the eldest, by two months,' Nate added.

'We're not brothers,' Adam clarified.

Joe nodded; he briefly studied Nate with his handsome Aryan features and then turned to Adam noting the boy's finer features — the blue eyes and dark hair. 'Hmm, I see. So, what do you do then?' Joe asked, turning to Nate first.

Nate frowned as he thought about it. 'I like to explore.'

'Then you are an explorer, and I suspect you are very good at it. And you, young man?' He turned to Adam.

Adam answered without hesitation. 'I like to work out how things work.'

'Ah yes, I can see that,' Joe said, 'a student of life.'

Adam flushed and smiled, pleased with the title. He mumbled the words so he would remember them later. Someone was coming through the grounds and he nudged Nate.

'We better go,' Nate said, 'but we'll see you soon Joe, maybe tomorrow.'

'I look forward to it, and thank you, lads. A happy memory, most kind,' he said, holding up the cigarettes and studying the packet. He slipped it into the wide pocket on his shirt front.

The boys hunched over and scurried to the river bank, losing themselves behind the canopy of trees. When they were out of sight, they stopped to look back.

'You know there really are mad people in there, lunatics!' Nate said, circling his fingers near his temple.

Adam nodded. 'Mum said they should move them further away.'

'What do you think is wrong with Joe?' Nate asked. 'He seems pretty normal.'

Adam shrugged. 'Nothing, probably in there by mistake.'

'One day, we'll ask him,' Nate said, before turning and heading towards the river.

CHAPTER 2

Now ...

Nate put his shoulder against the stubborn, rusted iron door and gave it a shove; it opened with a groan. He looked behind to make sure Adam was close by — Adam usually followed — then he stepped into the abandoned building of the River Park Hospital, or as it was unofficially known, the Lunatic Asylum. The locals knew it as the loony bin.

'Christ,' he muttered, grimacing as the stale air assaulted them – a stench of urine, decay, and misery.

Adam covered his nose with his hand, trying to filter the smell before giving up and breathing it in. 'I can't believe I let you talk me into coming here. Why did we have to come at night? It's not a bloody ghost tour,' he said, doing up his jacket and trying to get the collar high enough to cover his nose. It wasn't a cold night — Autumn in Brisbane was equivalent to a Tasmanian Summer — but the abandoned building gave him a chill.

Nate rolled his eyes. 'Because I called in a favour with the security guys; they're turning a blind eye to us ...'

'What? You mean we're illegally —' Adam sighed. He ran a hand through his dark hair that was due for a haircut last month. 'Forget it, don't tell me,' he shook his head.

'C'mon, if I went through the normal approval procedures to get in here it could take us months, and there's no guarantee they'd let us in any way. Besides,' Nate continued, 'I thought we'd get a better feel for the place at night.' He felt a strong desire not to go any further, but he wasn't going to admit it. He reached for the torch in his jacket and turned it on. 'Are you chicken?' he asked Adam.

'You think I still fall for that line?' Adam asked, and pushed past Nate.

'Apparently,' Nate said, as Adam took the lead, then stopped suddenly a few metres inside the door.

Adam retrieved his torch and listened; in the distance was a faint tapping sound.

'Hear that?' Adam asked.

'Yeah. Old pipe dripping?' Nate suggested.

'Maybe.'

The two men walked a few more steps past the entrance, allowing their senses to adjust to the smell and shadowed room. Nate ran his torchlight down the hallway of the abandoned west wing. A thump sounded upstairs and both men looked above their heads.

'Let's get a move on, it stinks in here, like a public lavvy.' Nate wrinkled his nose in disgust.

'I feel like I'm in an episode of Ghost Hunters,' Adam said, staying close to Nate.

'Wouldn't have thought you'd be the type to watch Ghost Hunters.'

'Steph used to watch it, only during the daytime though,' he referred to his ex-wife. He felt a stab of pain at the mention of her name; the pain was raw, recent enough – a blend of betrayal, anger, failure and loneliness ... a classic mix.

Nate nudged him to follow as he took the lead and moved down the hall. He glanced into the second room; Adam stayed close by, breathing down his neck and not letting the blond head in front of him out of his sight.

'Can't you just feel the misery of this place?' Nate said. 'I wonder what Joe was in here for, how he came about being in here. He never did tell us.'

'You almost asked once, remember?' Adam said. He flashed his torch into a large empty room and checked out the four corners.

'Yeah, but you wouldn't let me.'

'Like you ever did anything I told you,' Adam scoffed. 'So, are we there yet? What's the note say?'

Nate fished a folded letter out of his pocket and directed his torch to it; it was written on official letterhead from a solicitor who claimed to be representing his missing client, Joe O'Connell.

'Says Joe's diary was left in the ward he slept in ... he wanted us to have it ... blah, blah, blah, might still be hidden there ... yadda, yadda, that's the gist of it.' Nate turned it over and looked at the hand-drawn map. He looked up and then back at the map. 'This is the treatment wing, not Joe's room.' He turned and led the way down the hall, letting the light from his torch chase the edges of the high ceiling, reflecting off rooms he passed.

Sour white paint peeled from the walls, plastic flapped in the windows where glass had once been, and graffiti artists had worked their magic on the walls. He glanced into a large room where broken beds with loose straps leant against the wall as though in casual conversation with the rusted, folded steel-frame chairs stacked nearby.

'Miserable,' Adam muttered, looking over Nate's shoulder.

A door slammed and they wheeled around; no-one was there.

'For the love of God,' Nate muttered, and breathed in deeply, patting his heart through his jacket.

Adam grinned. 'Getting a feel for it?'

'Yeah, maybe the daytime might have been better.' Above them, they could hear boards creaking, again.

'Want to go check that noise out?' Nate asked.

'Hell no.' Adam said.

Nate grinned. 'Let's find Joe's wing.' He exited the doorway, with Adam close by and flicked his torch left then right. 'This way,' he said. 'Three doors up on the right, supposedly.'

'What a miserable old place,' Adam said, almost to himself.

'Should demolish it,' Nate agreed. 'Along with all its memories.' He stopped outside the third room and consulted the map again. 'This is it. If we're going to find it at all, it should be in here.'

They stepped into the room and Adam let out a low whistle. 'It'll be a miracle if anything is here; I'm guessing the place has been cased a few times.'

The room was a shell: snapped single iron bed-frames were scattered around the room like broken limbs; a makeshift fireplace was set up in the corner, deserted now even by the squatters; a row of chipped basins lined half of the opposite wall; windows were broken and stuffed with plastic or newspaper, and the few remaining cupboards were missing their doors, their shelves bare. The room smelled damp, and the floorboards felt unstable as the men tested their weight on them.

Nate looked around. 'The solicitor said Joe's bed was closest to the window in the left-hand corner if you stood at the door looking out to the field.'

Both men took in the instructions and turned towards the empty corner. They moved towards where Joe's bed would have once been. Nate pointed – a small, faded pen-drawn portrait of a man was on the wall – a self-portrait of Joe; they were in the right area. Adam shone his torch along the timber boards. He glanced back at Nate.

'Six along, bottom row,' Nate said, consulting the map again.

Adam counted and found the board; he tapped it lightly at the top, it was secure. He started from the bottom and felt it give slightly. He prised it up and moved the board slightly to the right, shining his torch into the cavity. There was something there, wrapped in an old cloth. Adam hesitated, then reached in and pulled it out.

'I think we've found it.' Adam unfolded the cloth — a large blue and white checked tea towel — and found a leather-bound book with a faded gold inscription that read 'Diary'.

He looked up at Nate standing over him. 'Ha, I can't believe after all these years Joe's diary is still here.'

'It wouldn't be if squatters had pulled the floorboards up for firewood,' Nate said, 'we're just lucky I guess.'

Adam returned his attention to the book and gently prised apart the pages. The first few were full of pen drawings and small, handwritten notes – impressive etchings of the building's façade and detailed faces.

'Look!' Nate laughed, shining his torch on a drawing of two boys in the corner of the page. 'I'm guessing that's us.'

Adam smiled and nodded. He read aloud the words written underneath: 'My two young friends. Wow, look at that.'

Nate sighed. 'Well, we've got your diary, Joe, but where are you?'

Then ...

'If you're an artist, Joe, what do you draw?' Nate asked the man dressed all in white, sitting in the timber chair. The two boys lay on the grass nearby – the wire fence a tenuous barrier between the sane and unbalanced.

'Ah, lots of things young Nate – you see I write a bit of poetry, prose, short stories, and then I do illustrations to accompany them. But sometimes, I just draw the world around me; the things I see every day ... and of course, the things that we don't see.'

'How do you draw things you can't see ... do you mean like spaceships and stuff like that?' Nate asked.

'Yes, like that. I sometimes draw angels, places I dream of going, faces of people I remember. Want to see one?' 'Yes please,' Adam said, and sat upright.

Joe leaned down and reached for the note pad that lay on the grass beside his chair. He winced as he leaned over. 'This is just a little drawing I've been working on today ... it's a work in progress,' he said. 'An etching.'

The boys studied the line drawing of the external façade of the hospital.

'Wow,' Adam said, 'so like it.'

'Wish I could draw like that,' Nate said.

'Thank you, lads,' Joe said, closing his book again. 'I love to draw.'

'We do art at school, but it's kind of boring,' Nate said.

'Do you go to the same school?' Joe asked. He was comfortable asking questions; deflecting them drained him.

Nate shook his head. 'Adam goes to the rich school and I go to the state school.'

Joe chuckled and Adam rolled his eyes. 'It's not the rich school; it's just ... well, Dad went there and so did his Dad, so I have to as well.'

'Ah tradition, I understand,' Joe nodded. 'So how did you meet?'

'Here, near the creek,' Adam continued. 'We were riding our bikes around, we live kind of near each other, and we've joined the same football club.'

Nate pointed down the river. 'Adam lives around there and I'm over there,' he said indicating the suburban sprawl.

Joe nodded. He ran his hand down his face and across his clipped beard. He sat thinking and the boys waited. He often did this.

'You could draw us, Joe, maybe ...' Adam suggested.

Joe looked at the boys. 'I think that's a wonderful idea; I'll give it some thought. You see, you have to have a passion, lads, and when you find what that is, then no matter what else happens in your life, you have to pursue it. It can save you.'

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Asylum"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Jack Adams.
Excerpted by permission of Atlas Productions.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

"Jack Adams skillfully unravels this unnerving tale of suspense with a keen sense of place and character. Asylum is well worth the price of admission." B. Michael Radburn, author of The Crossing and The Falls.

From the Publisher