Shadows Wait Read online

  Shadows Wait

  Asylum Trilogy #1

  Denise A. Agnew

  Denise A. Agnew

  Contents

  Evil has a beginning…

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Evil has a beginning…

  Lilly Luna’s mother gave birth to her in an asylum for the mad. Growing up in an insane asylum exposed her to horrors few could imagine, and yet her compassion and ability to heal frightens the broken and the healthy alike. The town fears her. The sane shun her.

  * * *

  Morgan Healy’s father runs the creepy and rumor-maligned asylum. Morgan’s lineage is filled with insanity. Morgan holds together his crumbling family, hoping to escape his father’s legacy and the terrible secret it holds. When Lilly is hired as companion for Morgan’s sister, Morgan and Lilly form a reluctant alliance to corral the evil that seeps from Tranquil View and threatens not only the town, but also their growing love.

  Copyright © 2016 by Denise A. Agnew

  Cover design and editing by Stacy Chitwood at NimbleForce Creations.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  * * *

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ISBN: 978-1-942583-33-2

  Created with Vellum

  Author’s Note

  In researching my trilogy set in and around an insane asylum, I learned many things about the Kirkbride built asylums constructed in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Although Tranquil View Asylum in my novel is an evil infested establishment, this in no way implies that most or many of the institutions built in the 1800’s were like my fictional asylum. The basic ideas, principals and intentions behind many state and private insane asylums far outweighed alternatives at the time. Before these asylums were built many of the insane lived horrible lives locked up in private homes, or they languished in prisons. May those who suffered rest in peace.

  Dedication

  To my husband Terry for the love and support that keeps me going.

  Acknowledgments

  Whenever an author starts a new venture, they take a risk. This story was a great ride into the unknown, and I’m so glad I took it. Several people deserve a thank you.

  To Rose Ortiz, thank you for the brainstorming session in Bisbee that helped propel the Asylum series to a whole new level and made me extra excited to start these stories.

  * * *

  To Selena Robins, you’re a fantastic friend and writer. Your support has always inspired me.

  * * *

  To Eileen Dreyer, thank you for the brainstorming and the medical information. Your expertise was invaluable.

  Prologue

  Some places are born evil. They are ugly from conception, drawn from the wildness of the land where no human should reside. Or perhaps they are haunted by what was—what exists in the dimension between this world and the next.

  No one really knows. And maybe they are better off not knowing.

  Tranquil View Asylum, built in January 1888, may have sprouted from the impurity existing in that year. Those with a sense of humor say 1888 was bad because it was a leap year. Many talk in hushed whispers about several events that stained the year and perhaps grew the malady that stalked Tranquil View Asylum.

  Remnants of Krakatoa’s volcanic eruption in 1883 painted blood-red skies over the world.

  Two major blizzards caused hundreds of deaths.

  Jack the Ripper started his reign of terror.

  Vincent van Gogh cut off the lower part of his own left ear.

  Who can say what strangeness may have created the abomination at the top of the hill that looks down on Simple, Colorado? Whatever brought forward the disturbances that would occur at Tranquil View and in Simple, Colorado, one can debate that twenty years of pain, death, torture, and anguish within the asylum walls sealed its fate. For this building oozed with the stench of past misdeeds, and erasing the smell wouldn’t be quick or easy.

  As Lilly Luna and Morgan Healy soon discovered.

  Chapter 1

  Tranquil View Asylum

  Simple, Colorado

  West of Denver

  October 1908

  * * *

  Lilly turned off the gas lamp in her room, opened the door, and peeked outside into the solid darkness. She curled her toes in her slippers, feeling the cold that seeped even through the carpet. Everything within these walls was icy, like the breath of a glacier. If the devil lived here, as so many claimed, he hadn’t seen fit to bring the fires of hell to warm his abode.

  Even the forced hot air pouring into her room didn’t warm her tonight. She listened to midnight as it whispered around the third floor. Lilly’s room stood at the very back of the eighth ward, the single window in her room facing the east and the huge mountain beyond. Nothing moved in the night—at least nothing alive. She smiled. Nothing alive or dead prowled, and that pleased her. She wanted peace and quiet. She left her room, closed the door, and stood absorbing her surroundings. As she waited in the center of the stygian blackness, she gloried in seeing so well in the dark when others required light.

  Even here, tucked away in a single-loaded hallway, she could hear patients in their rooms. Some of them had nightmares and would shriek, disturbing her peaceful sleep. She waited, not yet ready to slip past the other two rooms before she entered the wide main hallway.

  The moon burst through clouds and threw silver slices through the tall window to the left of her room. Like daggers, the light spilled sharply across the dull blue carpet. Somewhere a woman cried, or at least Lilly thought the pitch seemed right. She listened. The strange sound grew, harsh and high like the mating call of a fox. She closed her eyes and braced herself to block out the sounds underlying insanity—those hideous and disturbing utterances she should be used to after twenty years. This was her home—a wicked, horrible, and beautiful abode, but her home all the same. Fear couldn’t invade here, at least not when she remembered she belonged to this place. Evil within the asylum couldn’t be worse than anything inside her. So they’d told her so many times before.

  Born here, must be a lunatic. Would prove a madwoman anywhere. She’d heard children chanting the song often enough outside the asylum. Young people who shouldn’t be anywhere near such a monster-laden building—until someone chased them away, of course.

  What did she care if others believed she was like all the rest in here? A nutter. So the English watchwoman called her. Mrs. Angel. Patients didn’t know her first name. Everyone who wondered was afraid to ask. Lilly thought her name odd and ironic, because if there was an
ything the woman wasn’t ... it was an angel.

  “Lilly Luna the ridiculous, pathetic, ignorant one,” Mrs. Angel would say when the old ax thought Lilly couldn’t hear. “A bloody frightful creature if ever there was one.”

  Lilly used to hate such a designation, but now found the classification comforting. After all, it gave nasty women like Mrs. Angel pause. Lilly thought of how afraid Mrs. Angel had looked the last time Lilly had called her bluff. She smiled.

  Lilly always told her friends at the asylum, “Luna slips inside the moon, and makes herself invisible.” Such a statement made sense to the insane.

  Tonight the full moon held magic and promise. As the silvery light bathed her, she closed her eyes once more and felt cleansed. No matter what happened, the moon was always her friend, there to banish a month’s worth of accumulated taint living in this den of heartbreak and illness.

  She thought maybe that’s what the insane people were. Ill. Not possessed. Not hopeless. Certainly many of the kind nurses and attendants believed people here should be treated with respect, and helped to recover from their illnesses. Lilly had read the manual—the tome, as it were—that outlined how all the employees, from the lowliest assistant, to the attendants, to the laundry room, to the matron, should act. Ah, but rules often faltered under the strain of reality. And reality strained her, pulled so taut it often broke.

  Footsteps echoed from the central staircase, and she knew Mrs. Angel did rounds at this time of night. She doubted it was anyone else silly enough to prowl the building so late. She heard strange whispers coming up the stairwell. Fear niggled at the back of her neck, causing the hairs to prickle. They might have come again.

  Oh, no. Not again. She didn’t want to know what those people did when they came to the asylum. They appeared around once a year. Lately, though, they’d come at least three times. Lilly would return to the basement the next night after their doings, and while she wanted to pretend she didn’t know what they’d done, she couldn’t ignore it.

  The ghosts wouldn’t let her. They always told her. Always wailed for help. Lilly. You must find justice for us. Find it now. We cannot rest without it. We will haunt you for as long as you’re alive if you don’t help us.

  Guilt ate away at her, harsh and clear. It burned in her eyes until tears threatened to fall. She knew what those people who visited the basement had done, what they continued to do year after year, and yet she did nothing about it. She did nothing because she was afraid. Cowardly. But maybe this year she would try to stop what they were doing. She crept down the stairs slowly until she’d reached the last landing. She strained to hear. Whispers entered the night, and she could barely hear them.

  “Watch out now. Don’t slam the door on her leg damn it.” A man’s voice, harsh and guttural.

  “What difference does it make? She’s dead. She can’t feel it.” The other man’s voice snapped back, filled with rancor.

  Fear sliced a new spot wide open inside her, and a cold shiver raced up and down her body. They were bringing another one to the basement.

  Lilly hurried back up the stairs to her room and closed the door softly behind her. There was no lock on the inside of her door; she couldn’t have secured it if she’d wanted. Doors here only locked from the outside, and at least Mrs. Angel hadn’t seen fit to encage Lilly in a long time. Lilly hoped, with relish, that Mrs. Angel had become frightened of her.

  Lilly stripped off her slippers and leapt into her small bed. She pulled the covers up to her chin and closed her eyes. She drew a slow breath, trying to keep her heartbeat even so it wouldn’t burst from her chest and give her away. At least that’s what it felt like it would do. She waited. She knew it took them some time to do what they came to do. She waited at least a few hours, knowing from experience that gave them plenty of time.

  After that, Lilly took a chance and left her room. She’d been caught out of her room after curfew before, and she didn’t want that experience again. That had been when she was only ten. She tried not to think about the consequences she’d suffered as a result. She reached over her shoulder and touched her back. Those scars remained as a badge of shame, of the hurt and hate she felt inside as a result. Lilly shuddered as she remembered the lashing, and the happiness Mrs. Angel seemed to have enjoyed employing each stroke of the whip. There were other scars from other lashings, too. Lilly swallowed hard and pushed the memories away. Mrs. Angel would pay for what she’d done someday. Lilly would see to it.

  Dashing down the hallway, Lilly made almost no sound. Perhaps if Mrs. Angel heard her, she would think Lilly’s footsteps belonged to a mouse. God knew there were enough of those in here sometimes. Despite this gloomy knowledge, Lilly kept her steps light and quick. Her diaphanous blue gown melded with the night as it swirled around her ankles. She quickened the paced toward her hiding place. Not even Mrs. Angel was brave enough to venture there.

  The central area between the two wings featured a huge rotunda ceiling where moonlight spiraled down from heaven. She wanted to bathe in the moonlight again, but thought better of it. She couldn’t waste time. Ignoring the central staircase in favor of the far narrower, darker back staircase, she eased down the steps. All was quiet. Finally she reached the main floor. Ah, there it was. Anticipation thrilled her as she hurried to the basement door just a few more steps away. The big wooden door yawned open. She hesitated only a moment, used to the door being open for her.

  Bless Catherine Renlow for knowing when Lilly wanted to get into the basement. A ghost would though, wouldn’t she? Nothing Mrs. Angel or anyone else did to lock the door ever kept it shut.

  Her heartbeat, which always seemed so calm, raced into a horse and carriage pace. She stepped through the door onto the small landing and slid the door closed. It barely clicked as it latched shut. Down, down, the dark stairs beckoned her. She knew if Mrs. Angel tried the doorknob it wouldn’t turn now. The ghosts would do what little they could to protect Lilly. She knew this place as well as she knew her own mind, but apprehension always lingered. She slowly descended, hand on the banister. To Lilly, the walls had a strange almost green glow, her extraordinary eyesight allowing her to discern all with clarity. Twenty steps later she touched bottom.

  A long hallway ran toward a larger room. All along the hall were isolation cells—eight on each side. Dr. Masterson John Healy resorted to throwing a particularly mad inhabitant into a cell on occasion. Or simply a resident of Tranquil View who had broken the rules. She bit her lip as bitterness made her gut clench. She had understood these rooms since she was seven, since the awful event had unfolded when Becca had dared her to come down here with her. Oh, that awful, awful day. With a hard swallow, she shoved aside memories associated with the horrible time. She took the risk of glancing through each peephole as she passed. No one here. No one there.

  Finally she reached the end, pleased to find the cells empty. “Thank God.”

  “Nothin’ to thank God about girl,” a raspy old woman’s voice said right behind Lilly. “He left us here a long time ago and I don’t think he’s comin’ back.

  Lilly jumped in surprise and turned quickly. “Catherine! You scared ten lifetimes out of me.”

  The woman laughed, and the ethereal sound threaded through the basement. Catherine Renlow looked the same in death as she had in life. At least Catherine maintained she did. She’d been sixty-nine when she’d died, and looked every minute of it. Perhaps her eyes had once been blue or brown or green; in ghostly form they were black and disturbing. Lines bracketed her thin lips. A white frilled lacy cap sat upon gray hair tied up into a bun. Her gray gown had seen better days ten years ago, or so Catherine claimed. It covered a reasonable shape neither thin nor thick. Catherine once told Lilly that she was the first person to meet their end at the mansion down the hill, and the first to come to live all her ghostly days in the basement. The first person, but not the last. Oh, no. Not the last by any means.

  Catherine folded her hands. “You are a sight for dead eyes, girl.”r />
  Catherine’s biting humor never sat well with Lilly because a tiny part of her didn’t know whether to trust the apparition. “How do you know when I’m coming?”

  “Just do. You know that. Known it all your life that you’re welcome here. Come see what the Healys brought tonight.”

  Lilly rubbed her arms, wishing she’d brought a wrap. “I don’t think I should.”

  “You must. Without you, there is no one to know where we are or who we are.”

  “Who brought the body tonight?”

  “Cronies from Mr. Healy’s house. Do you realize there have been thirteen people killed in ten years? Three just this year including the one that was brought here tonight.”

  “Why do you make me do this every time?” Lilly’s gown rustled as she followed Catherine.

  “Because darlin’, you are the only witness and the only one who can see me. The only one. You’re our memory. And the killings are happening more frequently now. The killer wants more blood and wants it faster.”

  Lilly had once made peace with this ritual of coming to the basement to see the graves in the basement, since the day she’d learned what they did with the bodies ten years ago. “I’m not the only one. Mrs. Angel has to know.”

  “She does. She’s a nasty enough piece of work and relishes the gore.”

  Lilly didn’t see anything remarkably different in the huge room. Old furniture lay stacked topsy-turvy along one wall and another. There were crates, boxes, broken medical devices. Lilly shuddered at the sight of a broken chair she’d once had the misfortune of being tied to for an entire day.