I took off my coat and hung it on the coat rack, then glanced in the desk drawers. Completely empty. I headed toward the supply closet, only to find I had mixed up the doors and I was staring into the bathroom. I noticed a shower in there, as well as five lockers. There were names on four of them—Tad, Wren, Hank, and Caitlin. I assumed the fifth was mine.
Backing out, I turned to the other door and found myself in a room almost as large as the main office. The room was filled with shelving, and the shelves were filled with lidded boxes. There were several spare computers on the shelves, and three big cabinets labeled “Supplies” in big black letters. I opened the first and began loading up my arms with notebooks and pens and tape and whatever else I could find that looked useful.
I headed back to my desk, feeling as though I had just successfully plundered a treasure chest. Like all writers, I had a thing about office supplies. I was just starting to put things away when Caitlin shouted and jumped out of her chair.
“I found another one!” she said, turning around, her eyes wide.
“Another what?” I asked, dumping the supplies on my desk.
Tad moved forward, frowning. “You mean for this year?”
Caitlin nodded. “Yeah, last week, old man, also found dead on the grounds. He was one of the regular drifters around town. Cops chalked it up to hypothermia, which yes, it could be, but otherwise the autopsy showed absolutely nothing wrong with him. He was known to frequent the shelters when the weather was too rough, so what the hell was he doing out in the middle of the woods, falling asleep under a tree?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, frowning.
Tad motioned for everyone to gather around the table in the corner. “Here’s the case we’re working on. Yesterday, a real estate developer called us and we met with them this morning. They are looking to buy a plot of land outside the edge of town. They want to turn the old asylum there into a new housing development. However, a woman was found dead on the grounds last evening. The autopsy can’t pinpoint a cause of death. There was nothing on the tox screen. No sign of blunt force, or anything like that. She was just…dead.”
“I heard on the news last night. I knew her in high school—Arabella Jones,” I said. “So they decided she didn’t die of hypothermia?”
“I’m sorry—I didn’t realize you knew who she was,” Tad said. “And no. Of course, she was frozen by the time they found her body, but the ME said that wasn’t what killed her.”
“I hadn’t talked to her in years, but still…it was a shock to hear. Could she have gotten lost?”
It didn’t seem likely, although the forested areas around the town were magical—especially the Mystic Wood. There were odd happenings in the forests around the city all the time and sometimes it seemed like the paths through the woods shifted and changed at will.
“No, that’s doubtful. She was found less than two hundred yards from a street. Her car was found parked near the entrance to the building—the gate leading into the grounds was open. It’s usually kept locked. The lock didn’t look broken, and nobody knows who has the key. We’re talking about the Stellarview Institution for the Criminally Insane.” Tad paused.
I vaguely remembered mentions of it from my childhood. “I don’t know much about the history of that place. I barely remembered it existed,” I said.
“Right, well, here’s a brief background: The institution opened in the 1940s, but by the 1950s, rumors were circulating that inmates were being brutalized and underfed. While these were hard-core criminals, they were also so mentally ill that it would be dangerous—for them and others—to house them among the general penitentiary population. However, it came to light that the owners of the institution dabbled in dark magic.”
“Oh, lovely,” I said. “The most I remember was my mother telling me to stay away from it. By the time I was born, I think it had closed.”
“Oh, I’m sure it was closed—while the building still stands, the institution has been out of commission since the early 1960s. But at one point, it was home to an inmate named Psy Schooner,” Caitlin said. “Psy was a seriously deranged killer. He had basically staged a home invasion and taken a family hostage. They lived out on Cambdon Road with no neighbors for a mile or so. Anyway, the family wasn’t all that friendly and they didn’t come into town often. They stuck to themselves—the mother, father, and three kids.”
“I don’t think this has a happy ending, does it?” I asked.
Hank snorted. “Not so much. One December, Psy was skulking around and he invaded their home at night. Before the father could fight back, Psy shot him point-blank. He also shot the mother. Then he tied them to chairs in the kitchen. The kids woke up and he forced them to sit at the table, and he tied them to the chairs, then proceeded to make breakfast for everybody, including the dead parents. He made the kids sit there and eat.”
I shivered. “No wonder I never heard about this. My parents would never have told me that story. What happened?”
“The next few days, Psy made the kids eat regular meals with him and the corpses of the parents. He only untied the kids for bathroom breaks. He never assaulted the kids, but he propped their parents up on the sofa, and he tied the kids up near there and made them watch TV with him, and forced them to play boardgames with him. He made them call him ‘Uncle Psy’ and pretend that they were all one big happy, albeit partially dead, family.” Hank sorted through some papers near his desk and pulled out several glossy black and white photos, pushing them toward me.
I blinked. The photos were horrifying. They showed two very dead adults who were starting to decompose, propped up on the sofa. My stomach churned. “Please tell me the kids got away.”
“Unfortunately not,” Caitlin said, joining us. “They tried to escape. Over the next couple of days, it’s thought that they hatched a desperate plan. Psy’s recollection could be false, but what he told police was that the little girl pretended to be sick, and the older son begged Psy to untie him so he could help her. Psy did, and the boy tried to attack him.”
“Brave kid,” I said, worrying my lip.
“He was, but Psy was just too strong. The twelve-year-old had no chance. Enraged that his ‘brothers and sister’ would ‘betray’ him, Psy tied the kids up by their parents and shot them. He made the mistake of doing so just as the mailman was bringing a couple packages to the door. The mailman drove off, flagging down the nearest police car he could find. He knew gunshots when he heard them.”
I closed my eyes. “So they found Psy with the family?”
“Yeah, and he had completely lost it by then. They took him into custody. All the time, he was crying, insisting that his father had killed everyone. When the cops looked into his background, they found out that Psy’s father had clubbed Psy’s mother to death. Psy was eleven when he witnessed the murder, which took place on Christmas morning. The father got the death penalty, but that morning forever warped the kid’s mind.” Hank shook his head, showing me a mug shot of Psy. The man looked haunted, like he was living in a different world.
“He looks…” The man had demons torturing his memories, but they weren’t the demons that you summoned in. No, these demons were all created by his memories.