Hellion_Asylum of Ash Read online

  Jenna Wright

  HELLION: ASYLUM OF ASH

  First published by Jenna Wright in 2017

  Copyright © Jenna Wright, 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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  Contents

  Disclaimer

  I. Part One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  A WORD FROM JENNA

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Karl Slominski

  I

  Part One

  1

  I’ve already murdered two people, and I swear if Doctor Kavanagh doesn’t stop looking at me with her brow furrowed in faux-concern, she’s going to be the third.

  “I’m not sure where to start,” I say, and shrug. Of course I know where to start. I just don’t want to.

  “The beginning has always worked for me.” The psychiatrist has a way about her that makes my skin itch and my throat constrict, and I want to scream until my throat is raw. I tried that once, though, and all it got me was tranquilized and tied to my bed. So I swallow my anger and sit back in my chair, tucking my legs underneath me.

  “You’ve heard this before,” I counter.

  She uncaps her pen and leans forward. “Humor me.”

  I’m not getting out of this room until I give in, so I close my eyes and re-live the worst day of my life.

  ***

  I was awake when I shouldn’t have been. It had been stormy though, tonight especially. Rainy enough to get our soccer game against our rivals called on account of the weather.

  A loud clap of thunder had ripped me from another nightmare. I don’t remember what it was about now, but it had scared me enough that I’d woken up with cold sweats and a racing heart. They’d been getting more frequent and more intense for the last six months or so, and it was seriously starting to drain me.

  I’d gone to bed early with a terrible migraine. Not exactly how I’d wanted to spend my seventeenth birthday. Mom had gotten a chocolate cake and dad had waved a card at me that looked thick enough to hold at least four or five scratch-off tickets, but when the headaches came there was nothing for me to do but down pills and pull a pillow over my head to extinguish any light and sound that might’ve tried to follow me into my pharmaceutically-induced coma.

  It had eased up a little so it wasn’t as shatteringly painful, but my forehead over my left eye was still tender and the back of my skull still ached. I’d rolled over, determined to snatch sleep back from the jaws of consciousness, when I’d heard a thump from downstairs.

  Houses always seem to make noises when you least want them to. When you’re alone. When it’s dark. When you just want some goddamned sleep. I’d thrown my arm over the pillow to press it more tightly over my ears.

  That’s when the second thump came, and this time it shook the house.

  I’d sat up, knocking the pillow away, still on edge from my nightmare and now with a certainty in my gut that something was wrong.

  I’d gotten out of bed. The hardwood was cold on my bare feet and I remember I was shivering, though now I don’t know if it was from the chill or from fear.

  Careful not to make any noise, I’d crept to my bedroom door, twisted the knob, and poked my head out into the hallway. The bathroom door was shut, as was the door to the hall closet, but my parent’s door was open.

  My parents always shut their door when they went to sleep.

  Keeping my back to the wall, I’d moved toward their doorway. I remember hesitating just outside, genuinely afraid of what I’d find. And what would I do if I found trouble? I’m seventeen. Young, and fast from all those sprints during practice, but I’d never had a physical altercation in my life unless you counted slide-tackling someone on the field in the heat of the moment.

  I finally got up the nerve to peer inside. Their bed covers were rumpled and the light to the en-suite bathroom was on, but there was no sign of either of them.

  Another thump rocked the house, and I remember sinking to the floor and covering my head with my hands, trying to crumple into a ball and make myself as small as possible.

  I needed to get to a phone. I didn’t have a cell. I’d been hoping I’d get one for my birthday. The next best thing was the landline on my parent’s nightstand. Crawling on my hands and knees, I’d scrambled across the room, yanked the receiver from the base, and held it to my ear.

  Silence greeted me.

  No dial tone.

  No beeping.

  The line was dead.

  It could’ve been the storm. That’s what any rational person would’ve told me. And I would’ve told them they were wrong. It was connected to whatever was happening downstairs. I was trapped without a way to contact the outside world.

  Adrenaline spiked my blood as I realized that I had to go downstairs. It was my only escape.

  There weren’t any weapons in the house. Aside from a self-defense class I’d taken three times and then quit when soccer practice started up, I was absolutely unequipped to handle whatever threat was rummaging around on the first floor.

  I grabbed a heavy candlestick from the mantle of the fireplace in my parent’s room, lifted it like a club, and crept back out into the hallway. Grabbing my sneakers from my room, I’d shoved my feet into them and made my way to the top of the stairs.

  A dim light had filtered up from downstairs. Enough to help me find the places on the stairs that wouldn’t squeak as I descended. It was a few short feet from the landing to the front door, and if I ran, I thought I could make it.

  I was stupid.

  I know that now.

  The moment I hit the landing I should’ve raced to the door.

  Instead, I’d dropped the candlestick because suddenly I couldn’t feel my limbs, but you tell me how you’d have reacted if you’d seen your father ten feet ahead in the living room, mouth bloody and eyes wild, tearing into the eviscerated body of your kindly next-door neighbor.

  He’d stopped chewing when he saw me and cocked his head to the side like a curious puppy.

  “You can see me, can’t you?” he’d said. It had to have been rhetorical, because we both knew my jaw was dropped in horror and I was frozen at the sight of my father, an apparent cannibal, feasting on Mrs. Mance’s intestines.

  He’d dragged his forearm across his mouth, staining the rolled-up sleeve of his white button-down shirt a bright crimson.

  My legs wouldn’t move. I’d willed my body to run, and it had betrayed me. “W-what are you?” The moment the question left my lips I remember thinking how ridiculous it sounded. Why did I ask what he was, as if there was another option besides human?

  Looking back now, it’s because I knew. Subconsciously, I’d picked up on some shift in his appearance, or tonal change in his voice, that registered deep within me as not my father.

  And I was right.

  He stood, and he was too tall. His limbs thinner than I remembered, the
angles in his face sharper, and his skin was stretched too tight over his bones. His eyes were fathomless and fully black. There was a tearing sound, and massive black wings unfurled behind him, tearing through his shirt.

  Still, I was frozen.

  I did not move as I watched his skin go ashen, turning mottled and gray.

  I remained still as his joints bent at impossible angles.

  I watched as his jaw snapped open and closed, his teeth sharpening to filed points.

  He darted toward me, blocking my access to the front door, and finally, finally, I ran.

  My sneakers had slapped on the old linoleum as I sprinted toward the back of the house and into the kitchen. The table was overturned. It must’ve been one of the thumps I heard earlier. Perhaps another had been Mrs. Mance’s body hitting the floor in my living room.

  Running on instinct, I had grabbed a wickedly sharp carving knife from the butcher block on the counter and spun around, brandishing it back in the direction from which I’d come.

  My father the monster had ducked under the doorway to fit into the kitchen.

  His black claws had sliced at the air between us as he’d advanced on me.

  “I had hoped it wouldn’t turn out this way,” he said, and his jaw had clicked and spittle had dripped from his lips as he’d spoken. “But your headaches started and I knew…”

  My hand had trembled and I’d had the overwhelming urge to drop the knife.

  “Put it down,” the monster had purred, gesturing to the weapon, “and join me for dinner.” He’d glanced over his shoulder, back toward the living room and Mrs. Mance’s corpse. “We have much to discuss, and she’s getting cold…”

  ***

  “The next thing I remember there was blood on my hands and my father was dead.”

  Doctor Kavanagh sets her pen on the yellow-lined tablet and moves her glasses to the top of her head. “You always gloss over the murder.”

  “It was self-defense, and it’s not glossing,” I counter. “I don’t remember what happened.”

  That’s not exactly true, but I’m not going to reveal everything to this woman. I’ve remembered bits and pieces. My father’s body at my feet. A butcher knife jutting from his torso. His blank, glassy eyes and the growing crimson puddle beneath him.

  “Perhaps next session, we’ll need to dive a bit deeper.”

  She’s said that at every session we’ve had.

  Her gaze flicks down to my wrist, and I realize that I’ve been scratching the scab where they injected me with a tiny microchip when I arrived here at Ash City Asylum two weeks ago. The skin is red and raw, and if I could I would dig my index finger in the wound and tear the chip out with my fingernail.

  They’d know, though, the people that watch our sessions behind the one-way glass on the far wall, and I can’t have that.

  They won’t get more from me, and neither will Doctor Kavanagh because she looks at me the way my father did the night I killed him: like there’s something wrong with me, something evil inside me, and they can’t wait to make me worse.

  2

  The floor sways like the deck of a ship in a storm as the orderlies march me back to my room. My cell, really. I don’t know why they pretty it up when they talk about it. I’m a prisoner here, not a guest. After each session with Dr. Kavanagh, they inject me with something. The first time, it knocked me out cold and I woke up in my room what must’ve been a few hours later, though I can’t be sure of exactly when. There are no clocks here.

  Each time since then the injection has had a lesser effect, but I play the part of the wasted patient, letting the orderlies drag me down the hallway, my legs limp and my head lolling, their rough hands holding me up between them.

  They push me into my room and I go sprawling, landing hard on my twin mattress. The metal frame clanks against the cement wall as my body hits the bed, and I pull myself into a ball as if it’s the only thing I can manage. They lock the door behind them with an iron clunk and I wait until the sound of their footsteps disappears before I sit up.

  Bed springs squeak from the far side of the room, and my roommate leans forward out of the shadows. She hasn’t said more than a handful of words to me in my two weeks here, preferring to sit cross-legged and mumble nonsense to herself, but there’s a spark of curiosity in the way she looks at me now.

  “You’re totally fine, aren’t you?” It’s less a question than a statement, and her emerald green eyes narrow. I get the feeling that she’s waiting for me to lie to her.

  In response, I stand and begin to walk an imaginary tightrope, touching my index fingers to my nose in a bastardized take on a sobriety test, and finish it off with a twirl and a flourish. “I’m better than fine.”

  “If that were true you wouldn’t be stuck in here. You’re broken, or betrayed, just like the rest of us.”

  The pain in her voice speaks to my own, and suddenly I want to know more about the stranger I’ve been living with. “I’ve been here for two weeks and you’ve barely said hello. What changed?”

  “The fact that you’re still here.” She scoots forward on the bed to let her legs dangle off of the side. “I’ve never had a roommate last more than thirteen days.”

  “They what? Got better?”

  “I highly doubt that,” she says, tossing her dark curly hair over her shoulder. “All I know is that they never came back.”

  “Well, that’s ominous.”

  “You’re telling me. I was starting to take it personally.” A sly smile creeps across her face, and I find myself smiling back. It seems a dark thing to joke about, but my life is nothing but darkness these days and I’ll take the humor where I can find it.

  I take a seat on my bed and face her. I can’t help but be wary, but this is the most human interaction I’ve had in weeks and I didn’t realize how starved for conversation I’d become. “Can I ask why you’re in here?”

  “I’m a witch.” She says it like she’d tell me the sky is blue or that water is wet. Three weeks ago I’d have thought she was making fun of me. Then I started seeing demons and so sure, I’ll believe just about anything she tells me. “What kind of witch?”

  Her laugh rings out like a bell. “You really are broken, aren’t you? I mean, I told you I’m a witch and you just took it as fact. No questions asked.”

  “I see monsters, so I’m not really in a position to judge what you are, or aren’t.”

  At that, her smile falters and she stares at me intensely. “Seriously? Monsters? I thought you just killed your parents.”

  “They weren’t my parents when I killed them.”

  “Holy shit,” she breathes, and slides off of her bed. In three steps she’s at mine and she sits right down next to me, pulling her legs up underneath her and pinning me with those too-green eyes. “I’m Mad.”

  “At me?” I say, confused. “What did I do?”

  She laughs again and holds out her hand. “Mad. Madeline Alexander. My name.”

  Relief washes over me. “I’m Gray. Carver.” I shake her hand, and I don’t feel so alone anymore.

  “I was named after my grandma, which is fitting since I think she’s kinda the reason I’m in here. Indirectly, anyway.”

  “Yeah?” I turn to face her, getting comfortable. For two weeks, all I’ve done is talk about myself to people who don’t actually care, at least in the way they should. It’s nice to get out of my head and hear about someone else for a change.

  “I’m a blood witch. At least, I think I am. That’s where you’re born with the magic in your blood and it’s passed down from generation to generation. Except,” she says, and her voice goes quiet, “I think it skipped my mom. And she tried to play it off like she was worried about me and the things that started happening, but I think she was angry. Angry that it passed over her and went to me.”

  “So she brought you here?”

  “It had been coming for a while. Last straw was when I accidentally brought our cat back from the dead.”

&
nbsp; “Like, Pet Sematary-style?”

  “Minus the burying, yeah, I guess so.” She’s watching me carefully, like she’s afraid I’ll bolt. Where would I go? We’re locked in here together. Besides, this girl can bring things back from the dead.

  “Tell me your story and I’ll tell you mine,” I say, because I’m not scared of her or what she can apparently do. Once you’ve seen demons, or whatever my parents were, there’s not much that’ll phase you. I’m fascinated.

  Her shoulders relax and she lets out a breath. I think she’s relieved. “I’m an only child. Both of my parents worked. I used to stay with my grandma after school, and I’d play with my toys or watch tv while she baked and stuff. As I grew up, I grew less interested in whatever sit-com was on and more interested in what she was whipping up in the kitchen. She’d have visitors, people I didn’t recognize, come to her door. Each one would hand her an envelope. It’d have instructions and cash. And she’d get to work, pulling out these jars of herbs and liquids, and it seemed weird to me because they had no labels. An eyedropper into a pot of soup, and it’d smoke and bubble. A pinch of an herb and the room would smell like roses, or burnt rubber, or sandalwood.” She flicks her gaze up at me. “It seemed so cool to me, watching her make these concoctions, but one day my mom came to pick me up, and she was furious.”

  I lean forward, rapt.

  “One of her friends was sick, and I think it was because the friend had eaten something my grandma had made. They did that sort of quiet yelling that adults do when they don’t want their kids to hear what the argument is about, but from where I was sitting in the living room I heard something about poison from my mom, and my grandma saying that the person must be getting what they deserve, because that’s how that dish worked. I very distinctly remember hearing my mom call grandma a witch. At the time, I thought she was just calling her a name.”