Юхан Теорин - The Asylum

‘Rami!’

She didn’t stop, but she did slow down and look at him. A slim figure in the morning light, the love of his life.

Jan’s lungs were hurting. He had hardly any strength left, but managed another ten or twelve loping steps towards her.

‘Here!’ he panted, handing over the guitar case. He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out the fifty-kronor note. ‘Take this... Now run!’

There was no time, but Rami leaned forward, pressed her cheek against his and whispered, ‘Don’t forget the pact.’

Then she flew across the grass with a fresh burst of energy and disappeared among the trees. The guitar case seemed weightless in her hand.

Jan took a few steps after her, but he had lost the impetus, and a couple of seconds later two hands seized him by the shoulders.

‘OK, that’s it.’

Jörgen was also out of breath after the chase, but his grip was firm, and Jan made no attempt to resist. They walked back across the bridge, back towards the Unit.

‘Are you going to lock me up in the Black Hole?’

‘The Black Hole?’

‘That place down in the cellar... where you lock people up.’

‘No, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Jörgen. ‘It’s only those who bite and scratch who end up down there. And you’re not going to start fighting us, are you, Jan?’

Jan shook his head.

‘Was it you who banged on the door just now?’

Jan nodded.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Don’t know.’

Jörgen looked at him. ‘Why? Did you want to get caught, Jan?’

He didn’t reply.

They walked towards the car, but Jan kept looking over his shoulder. Jörgen’s colleague had disappeared among the trees.

Once he had settled Jan in the back seat of the car, Jörgen went back across the bridge, shouting to her.

It was quiet in the car; Jan could hear the sound of his own breathing.

Did you want to get caught? he wondered. Did you want Rami to get caught?

After a minute or so he saw the auxiliary emerge from the trees, shaking her head at Jörgen. They stood talking by the bridge for a little while; Jan saw Jörgen take out his phone and call someone. Then they returned to the car.

‘OK, let’s go,’ said Jörgen.

They drove back to the Unit. Back to safety inside the fence.

Jan was locked up, and he was happy.

He knew that Rami was equally happy to be free.

Waiting in the darkness, fifteen years after their flight from the Unit.

Jan is alone, but not for much longer. He is standing down in the hospital basement, waiting for Rami. He has made his way in via the laundry, and is by the old lift in the little storeroom.

It is twenty past ten on Friday night, and Jan is really supposed to be up in the Dell. That is where Lilian thinks he is, but he has left his post and entered the hospital through the safe room. He knows his way around down here now, and the laundry was completely deserted when he arrived, just as Legén had said it would be. The only unusual sign was a series of small yellow lights flashing on a panel on the wall; perhaps they were something to do with the impending fire drill.

Jan listens for the sound of shuffling steps behind him, or voices raised in song from the chapel. But all is silent in the underworld.

He is the only one here — and soon Rami will be here too. At least he hopes so, and if he closes his eyes he can hear her singing: Me and Jan, Jan and me, every night, every day...

He blinks and gives himself a shake; he must remain alert.

The drums had been pounding inside his head when Jan drove Lilian and three men to the Dell half an hour earlier.

One of the men was Lilian’s taciturn older brother. The others didn’t introduce themselves, but they looked as if they were a few years younger than Lilian. Jan assumed they were friends of her missing brother, John Daniel.

Hanna wasn’t around this evening, and without her Lilian seemed even more tense than usual. She had put on some make-up, Jan noticed: red lipstick and dark eyeshadow. It looked ridiculous, and who was it actually for? Was it for Carl, the security guard, or for Ivan Rössel?

Jan parked in the shadows beneath a large oak tree, a short distance away from the pre-school. Well away from the hospital’s CCTV cameras.

No one spoke as they got out of the car.

Lilian quickly smoked one last cigarette in the street, then she unlocked the door and led the way into the darkness of the pre-school. She didn’t switch on the light, but turned to Jan. ‘So you’re staying here, Jan? Is that OK?’

He nodded.

‘Ring me straight away if anyone comes.’

Jan nodded again, and Lilian managed a strained smile. She fetched a key card from the kitchen, opened the door and disappeared down the stairs. The three silent men followed her, and Jan closed the door behind them.

So four people will be meeting Ivan Rössel in the visitors’ room. That means he will be at a disadvantage when Carl smuggles him out of the secure unit. Jan hopes that Lilian and her family will be able to establish some kind of rapport with Rössel, get him to talk — but there’s nothing he can do to help.

He has his own meeting to think about.

Once Lilian and the men had gone, Jan waited for fifteen minutes in the cloakroom by the door leading down to the basement. Nothing whatsoever happened. He went over to the window and gazed up at the hospital. The lights were on, but there wasn’t a soul in sight.

Eventually he went into the kitchen and picked up the second key card. He opened the door; the light was still on down in the basement.

It was time.

Jan stands motionless in the laundry, thinking about what he will say to Rami when the lift door opens.

Hi Alice. You’ve escaped from the Black Hole — welcome .

And then what? Should he tell her that he’s been thinking about her all these years? That he fell in love with her during those very first days in the Unit? He was so in love with Rami — but so scared of the outside world that he tried to get the staff to stop them the morning they ran away.

Jan had been caught, but Rami made it. She must have managed to catch the train to Stockholm and her sister, because she didn’t come back to the Unit during the week Jan remained there.

And nobody mentioned her either — she was no longer their problem.

The following week Jan was discharged. He hadn’t spoken to his psychologist after the escape attempt, but abracadabra — Tony must have decided he was fit to leave.

‘You’re going home,’ Jörgen had said when he opened Jan’s door. All Jan could do was pack his clothes, the diary Rami had given him, and the comic strip he had started about the Secret Avenger and the Gang of Four.

He had to put the drum kit back in the storeroom, of course, but he took the sticks with him.

Jan walked out of the Unit with his little bag and was picked up by his father, who wasn’t smiling. ‘So they’ve finished taking you apart, have they?’ was all he said.

Jan didn’t reply, and they drove home in silence.

The next Monday Jan went back to school. He hardly slept the night before; he lay awake thinking about the school corridors and the Gang of Four. He could see himself scuttling along the walls like a little mouse.

He walked to school alone, just like before. He still had no friends. It didn’t matter.

His classmates stared at him, but nobody asked how he was feeling or where he had been for the last few weeks.

Perhaps they all knew. That didn’t matter either.

Sooner or later Jan would run into the Gang of Four in the corridor, he knew that. But somehow the fear had gone. It was spring, late April, and the end of the school year was in sight. Jan took one day at a time. In the evenings he got out his drumsticks and played quietly on a telephone directory, or carried on with his drawing.