Asylum (55 page)

            Chloe
clutched the book to her chest. She just had to look at it, had to read it
again.  She had the strangest feeling that there was something about it that
she had missed, something that would make sense now.

            Where
to go?  If she turned the light on, Sam might wake up and catch her at it, ask
her about it.  If she went back to Seth’s room, the same could happen.  As it
was almost dawn, she didn’t want to stand out in the hallway, awkwardly
conspicuous to any early risers in her nightgown, reading a book.

            There
was only one place she could think of where she could go…where no one would
think to look.

            Chloe
yanked Sam’s bathrobe of the hook and belted it around herself.  Then she
grabbed her coat off the floor and went out.

            Hoping
not to meet anyone, she made for the stairs and climbed up to the fourth
floor.  She remembered where the maintenance stairwell was and after quickly
checking both ways for any sign of life, she climbed over the chain that
blocked them off and raced up the narrow steps to the bell tower.

            It
was freezing. of course.  Open to all the winds, and above the protection of
the trees, Chloe was sure it had to be the coldest spot in the whole U.P.  Yet,
there was just enough light.  The grey dawn that was slowly rising, combined
with the orange glow of the parking lot lights afforded her just enough to read
by.

            Chloe
opened the book to it’s first page, the blank before the title page.  Here her
father had inscribed a poem, in a shaky hand with a blobby ink pen which seemed
to die and then suddenly write very dark bold-faced letters:

Methought 
I walked a disma
l
pla
c
e, Dim
h
orrors a
l
l
ar
o
und;

Th
e
air was th
i
ck with m
a
ny a
f
ace, And black as n
i
ght
the grou
nd
. 
I
s
a
w a mo
n
ste
r
c
o
me with
s
p
e
ed, Its fa
c
e of
grimm
l
iest
green
,
On
human beings used to
fee
d
, M
o
st dreadful to be see
n
.  I
coul
d
n
o
t speak, I c
o
uld
not
f
ly,
I f
e
ll do
w
n in th
a
t place, I s
a
w the
mo
ns
te
r
’s ho
rr
id eye Come leering in my face!  Am
i
dst
my scarce
l
y-stifled gr
o
ans, A
mid
st my moanin
g
s
d
ee
p, I heard a
v
oic
e
, “Wake!  Mr. Jones,
you
’re
sc
rea
ming in your s
le
ep!”

            Chloe
read it for perhaps the one hundred thousandth time, she knew already that he
had not written the poem.  It was entitled ‘Horrors’ and had been written by
Lewis Carroll in 1850.  She had been able to Google that much.  She often
wondered why he would choose to send her ‘Horrors’ as a thirteenth birthday
present.  Before, she had chided herself with the knowledge that the man
definitely had a few screws loose, and it probably was no more than some
erratic ramblings on his part.  The messy handwriting, and broken pen seemed to
confirm as much.

            Huddling
inside her thick winter coat, leaving the book open in her lap, she glanced up
into the empty belfry.

            “What
do you think George?” she whispered.  “Definite connection or wishful thinking?”

            Not
a breath of wind answered her.  Chloe sighed.

            “You
really are gone, aren’t you?” she whispered.  The absolute stillness of the
early morning seemed to tell her it was so.

            “Good
luck then, and wish me the same, because I’m going to fight them,” she said to
no one.

            She
was about to close the book when her eyes fell on the single darkened word
‘you’.  She ran her finger over the sentence, almost lovingly, and then
paused.  Quickly, she rubbed her finger across the line again, and again.  The
word ‘you’ was written so hard, it was slightly indented.  Pressing the pen
hard against the paper had caused it to be darker than the words around it. 
Not a dying, blobby pen at all, a purposely darkened word among the others, she
glanced back at the other words, many of them containing a single darkened
vowel or constant.  She could have slapped her forehead.  The poem contained a
message!  All the times she had read it over, why had she never noticed it
before?

            She
went back to the start and read the darkened letters in order:

Chloe , find Ian
rose. London.  Do not fear.  I love you.

Chloe
gasped.  Behind her eyes, tears welled.  It was as though he had come back for
a moment, come back purposely for her, to tell her for the first and only time
in her life, that he loved her, that he actually thought about her.

            “Find
Ian Rose, London,” she repeated out loud.

            It
was a start anyway, a clue.  She had no idea how she was going to get there, no
idea how to find Ian Rose if she somehow managed to travel halfway around the
world, but it was something.  She hugged the book to her chest.  It was
something.

            Over
the tops of snow-covered pines, she caught the first glimpse of a hazy orange
disk.  The grey dawn was starting to glow in shades of pink, mauve, and
purple.  If she was lucky, she still had a few hours to try and steal a nap in
Seth’s arms, and then, corned beef hash with Sam.  She wondered how she was
going to break it to them. 

            “Well
guys,” she practiced.  “I think my father was one of Abraham’s Men.  He left me
a message, hidden in a poem, hidden in a book, and it turns out I’ve got to go
somewhere in London and find a guy named Ian Rose.”

            She
smiled, realizing it definitely sounded crazy.  She was fortunate.  They were
both pretty much okay with crazy.

Acknowledgements

Thank-you and love
to: Maggie, for being the ALPHA-beta reader; my writer pals Peazy ‘
mom
’
Monellon, Anthony ‘
his infernal majesty
’ Miller, and Heather ‘
the
editor
’ Bserani for all the encouragement, editing, advice and for
inspiring me to work harder; all my lab cronies at Ingham and Ionia--but
especially Jill, Beth, and Stacy (You guys believed in me more than I believed
in myself sometimes); Ivy for the awesome photo job; Andrew & Matt--because
no friend will ever be to you what a brother is--; and for Randall ‘James’ and
Laura ‘Agnes’-- of course I would write you both into a story and not realize
it.  You’re part of who I am and everything I do.