Jordan started to feel wrong as soon as he laid eyes on the building that was going to be home for the next week. He heard people say it had been some old loony bin called Brookline Asylum. If it had been anything else; it may have looked more cheery; but he rather doubted it. The windows even though some were lit up; still seemed dark and foreboding. He shook off the chill he was getting; chalking it up to the cold New Hampshire weather; he followed Abby as she chatted on to the new kid Dan. He was not bad looking; but totally not his type, Abby didn't seem to mind the awkward shy guy. Jordan was looking forward to this time away from his over religious parents that figured hours of prayer and counseling would make him no longer gay. Why couldn't they just be happy about who he was; a terribly good looking math genius who was going to have his pick of Universities. So what that he was attracted to other guys, did that really matter? To the adults in his life and community around Richmond it seemed that was the only thing anyone cared to know about him. He was surprised he hadn't been burnt on a cross or something by now. Abby and Dan were still talking as they crossed the threshold; none of them had time to notice the change in their air, as they were given packets and hustled off to their rooms. Before dinner Jordan sat at his desk and finished a dozen or more Sudoku puzzles; Abby had watched him on the bus fly through one after another; it was his way of dealing with nervousness, being alone in his head with numbers was cathartic to him. His roommate was a real nice guy who had a cello, so nothing to be nervous about there, and he defiantly was not anxious about being away from his home. Before eating the trio met up and decided to take some classes together; it wasn't a bad idea, but Jordan noticed Dan looked a little more jumpy then he had earlier. He figured the other guy maybe was over medicating himself; he seemed the type to rely on anti-anxiety pills. The food and company was good, and everyone had a good time describing their roommates. Then Dan mentioned something about a locked wing; with old pictures and what not. History was not Jordan's or Abby's thing, but Abby seemed energized for an adventure. This whole time away from home was going to be an adventure to him; away from the small minds in his home, at his school, and perhaps he would meet someone. His sense of adventure did not include sneaking down to old dusty rooms; for a trip into the past, or whatever.
He had never much of a follower, but after some convincing Jordan found himself later that evening, picking the padlock on a room that was supposed to be unlocked. What they found was really creepy; old pictures, old glasses with what looked like old blood stains on them, and old files. Dan was in his niche; Abby became mesmerized by a sad looking little girl with a horrendous scar on her head. Dan was looking through pictures, and papers like a dog on a scent. Besides general curiosity he wondered what else was going on in Dan Crawford's head; it was a little more than just idle interest. Finding the door behind the filing cabinet, was more annoying than surprising especially when Abby and Dan started pushing it noisily away from the wall. Jordan was sure their gooses would be cooked, and they would be shipped back home for this little breaking and entering trip. The filing unit's shrieks of protests on the floor sounded like haunted screams to Jordan; the noise pierced his eardrums; and rattled down his spine. He was just freaked out by the stories he heard from Dan about the Warden who seemed to be more butcher than healer. Jordan hung back as the two other intrepid explorers vanished down the hidden dark stairway; it was bad enough being IN this place without being UNDER it.
When adventure hour had finally concluded, they scampered back to their rooms. Jordan's night was full of horrendous dreams. He was strapped to a table; someone was talking to him, the voice was not soothing at all. They showed him pictures; they were old, they were of families, kids, and young men. They asked him questions, and when they did not like his answered or reaction he was given a powerful shock. He couldn't make out any faces, but he could feel their disdain, to them he was sick, a delinquent, and a deviant. The shocks got worse and worse until it he felt like his brain was being scrambled. He awoke with a start despite the soothing tones of his roommate's cello. He made an excuse and got up to use the communal bathroom. Dan and Abby looked like they hadn't gotten much sleep either, and Abby was drawing pictures of the hollow-eyed little girl it was becoming a bit of an obsession now. Jordan was too tired to make light of it, but he kept his dreams to himself. He figured his dreams had been from all the talk about the old asylum and the gory details of the so called treatments that had been in practice in the old days. His classes were great, even the art class he was taking with Abby, he tried to convince her that even art had deep roots in advanced mathematics.
The next night he found himself dreaming but this time he was receiving aversion therapy, they gave him shocks to his genitals, as well as drugs that made him ill anytime they did not like his answers or actions. He felt as though he wasn't the same person he was last night. No matter what he said or did he was given pain; the Doctors and nurses looked down at him in disgust. They told him he was filthy, and bad; when he denied it or tried to say anything else he was given more intense shocks or stronger drugs that left him feeling like he was dying. This dream was clearer in many ways he could make out the hate on the faces around him, except for the Doctor who kept insisting that this was for his own good. The man's face was always blurry thanks to the bright reflection glinting off the man's glasses.
He started to withdraw from Abby and Dan; he spent most of his time trying to solve an unsolvable math problem. Abby would text him but he would ignore it; he spent his time going from class back to his dorm. He started to drink; thinking that dulling his mind would make the nightmares stop, but night after night they got worse. Electroconvulsive treatment, ice water submerging, and out and out beatings; sometimes the room was small other times a larger room with other people staring down hatefully at him, each time he felt like someone different, Chip, Mark, Kevin, Desmond, and others. Some he felt just gave in and left, and other many other never left this institution alive.
Abby had grown tired of his odd behavior, so he finally blurted out what he had been going through, seems like Dan and Abby were having strange occurrences too. Dan was trying to find out more about the warden who had the same name as his own, Jordan did the math and silently reasoned that both his first and last name were quite common. Daniel being a biblical moniker made people feel like their offspring was going to be pure, noble, and good. Crawford was popular last name thanks to celebs old and new like Joan, Michael, Cindy, Chace, Jamal, etc. Dan figured since he had been adopted it maybe likely that his family was perhaps related to the old warden. Abby's relationship to the old mental institution was more of a reach, she had found the little girl's patient card and thought that she was her long lost Aunt Lucy that her family rarely spoke about. Jordan had no relationship to anyone at this place; he was plagued by nightmares despite that little fact, so he felt the other two were grasping at straws. The wild theories from them concluded in a fight; Jordan was too tired and annoyed to deal with these wild fantasies from them both.
Jordan was now alone with his nightmares, and numbers. Dan sat alone, and Abby stuck close to the other art students. The next night he was in the operating theatre, the man with the blinding light reflecting glasses had him strapped to a table; even his head was belted down. They were in the larger theater again; the table was standing up and he could see an assortment of glimmering surgical instruments. Stern looking nurses glared at him; ape like orderlies stood by waiting for something. The man in the round glasses was disappointed that he had been resisting the treatments he had received. He called his life style and others like him blights on the world; and that only radical treatment would cure the sickness plaguing him. He called that he was about to do; a stepping stone for something greater. The man then nodded and the operating table was lowered until he was laying staring up at a bright old surgical lamp. The Doctor hovered over him; telling him that due to lack of funds the procedure he was about to endure was going to be without any anesthetic. The man held up a scalpel and he felt it cut through the skin in his head; the blade dragging along his muscles and skull. Hands held him down as the whirl of a bone saw took over; instruments were picked up and then tossed in a bowl. Blood dripped and oozed off every discarded tool as his brain exposed and then discombobulated. He woke up; in a panic he touched his forehead. He could still feel the blood and the gouge; the location had been right where the scar on the little girl had resided.
When one of the regular college students and one of the towns folk got killed, and posed like a sculpture it seemed like the Asylums' past was starting to repeat. Dan, Abby, and himself decided to come together and solve whatever this was that they had been pulled into. They couldn't trust anyone else but themselves as they ran around the college trying to find clues that could solve the mayhem that was ensuing. All Jordan knew was, that they had to be quick and smart before the old Asylum consumed them all.