Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

Then William nodded. ‘Lynx,’ he said, his voice slightly hoarse.

‘That’s right, William... I work at Lynx.’ Jan looked up at the man and tried to sound trustworthy and totally in control of himself. ‘My name is Jan Hauger, I work at William’s nursery. He’s been missing... We’ve been looking for him.’

‘Oh, right. I see. My name is Olsson.’ The man appeared to relax. He let go of William’s hand and pointed back down the road. ‘He just turned up here a little while ago, when Charlie and I were out for our walk. He seemed to be lost, so I said we’d go and look for his parents.’

Jan looked at William, who was staring at the ground. He seemed slightly listless, but healthy. Not undernourished. His left hand was clutching Roboman’s plastic arm.

‘Great,’ Jan said. ‘But they live quite a long way from here, so I think we’d better ring for some help.’

‘Help?’ said Olsson.

‘I think we need to ring the police. They’re looking for William.’

‘The police?’ The man looked worried, but Jan nodded and took out his mobile. He rang the emergency number, and waited.

The man started to move away with the poodle, but Jan held up his hand. ‘You and Charlie need to stay here,’ he said as firmly as possible. ‘I think they’re going to want to speak to you as well.’

Obviously. Jan was in no doubt about the man’s intentions towards William, but he knew the police would look at things very differently. As a thank you for taking care of William, Olsson would presumably be interrogated on suspicion of child abduction.

‘Emergency — which service do you require?’

‘Police,’ said Jan. ‘It’s about a missing boy — he’s been found.’

As he was waiting to be put through he looked down at William. Jan smiled at him, trying to look calm and reliable. He wanted to reach out and pat the boy on the head, but resisted the impulse.

‘All’s well that ends well,’ he said. ‘I think we’d better stay away from the forest in future.’

The rattling ascent in the old hospital lift takes an hour — or at least that’s how it feels to Jan. He holds the claustrophobia at bay by keeping his eyes closed and picturing Rami; he conjures up her face and remembers her eyes beneath that blonde fringe. She was the only one he could talk to about the Gang of Four.

But the floor and the walls are shaking, and he is constantly reminded of where he is. If one of the cogs were to break and the lift were to get stuck between floors... He doesn’t want to think about that. The drumbeats reverberate inside his head.

Suddenly the lift comes to an abrupt halt. Everything falls silent.

Jan switches off the Angel’s torch and reaches out to the door in front of him. At first it won’t move. The fear sinks its claws into him immediately, but then the door slowly gives way and slides open.

It stops after about forty or fifty centimetres; there is something heavy in the way. Jan peers out. There is a faint light, but all he can see is grey metal.

Slowly he begins to manoeuvre his way out. It feels as if he has woken up inside a coffin in a big house, just like Viveca in Rami’s book.

His upper body is out now, and he can see that there is a metal cupboard in the way. The room beyond it seems to be some kind of medical storeroom, with bandages and packs of tablets on the shelves. The light is coming in through a narrow pane of glass in the door.

There isn’t a sound.

Jan tentatively lowers his feet to the floor next to the cupboard, then he stands up and looks over at the exit. Three steps and he is there, reaching out his hand.

The door opens from the inside. He pulls it three or four centimetres towards him, feels fresh air come pouring in, and listens carefully. He still can’t hear a thing.

St Psycho’s is sleeping.

Jan tugs the door further towards him. He sees a long, wide corridor with pale-yellow walls. The glow of the ceiling lights is subdued, perhaps because it is night time. There isn’t a soul in sight. He can smell disinfectant, so there must be cleaners around somewhere.

And patients.

And security guards, of course. Rettig and Carl and their friends.

Jan pulls himself together and steps out of the storeroom. The corridor extends in both directions, with rows of closed doors on both sides. The black hands on a large, round clock above the door are showing quarter to twelve.

Jan tucks a couple of the pieces of paper he has left into the lock to keep the door open. Then he moves along the vinyl floor, as quietly as possible.

Suddenly he feels like a fourteen-year-old again, back in the corridors of the Unit. There is the same silence, the same cold walls and closed doors.

A surprising sense of calm descends on him. Being here in the Corridor of the Closed Doors is almost like coming home.

He looks to the right and begins to count the unmarked doors. The seventh looks just like the rest — but to Jan’s eyes it seems to shine with a greater luminosity, and it is waiting for him just seven or eight metres away.

He moves along slowly, past all the other doors. On each one there is a steel handle, with a small metal hatch beside it.

He has almost reached his goal. Should he knock on Rami’s door, or try to open it?

Jan makes a decision: he will knock.

‘Excuse me? Who are you?’

The sound of a voice makes him jump.

He has been caught. A security guard has opened the door at the far end of the corridor, and is staring at him. But it isn’t Rettig or Carl — this is a middle-aged woman.

She takes a couple of steps towards him. ‘Where have you come from?’

Jan blinks, desperately searching for an answer. ‘From the laundry.’

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ the woman says. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I got lost,’ Jan says.

The woman stares, but doesn’t say anything else; suddenly she turns and hurries away. To fetch help?

Jan needs to get away.

He glances at Rami’s door one last time. So close, but there is nothing he can do right now. There is nothing he can give her.

No — maybe there is one thing.

He opens the small metal hatch in the wall next to her door and peers inside. The box is empty apart from a couple of sheets of paper. A menu, and information about a forthcoming fire drill.

Quickly he unclips the Angel from his belt and slips it into the box, hiding it beneath the sheets of paper. Then he closes the hatch.

The corridor is still empty, and Jan rushes back to the storeroom. He removes the pieces of paper that were keeping the door open, but pushes one of them right into the lock to hold the catch pressed in. As he silently closes the door he hears heavy footsteps in the corridor. The guards are on their way.

The lift is just as cramped as before, but this time he clambers inside without hesitation. He presses the button on the far right, and the lift clunks into life.

Jan keeps his eyes closed all the way down.

When the lift stops he quickly opens the hatch; he is impatient and less tentative now. It is well after midnight, and he wants to get out of the hospital.

He gropes his way along, out of the laundry and through the tiled rooms. He has no Angel to help him this time, but somewhere up ahead he can see a flickering light.

And he can hear singing — is someone singing hymns down here?

He fumbles his way forward, staring down at the tiled floor. Where are the bits of paper? He can’t see them in the darkness.

The light grows stronger as he shuffles down the long corridors. Eventually he turns a corner and sees a doorway filled with light; there are candles burning in a couple of wooden sconces on the walls.