Bed of Nails Read Free Page A

old asylum, FPH resembled a gated residential enclave in an upscale rural neighborhood. Sixteen buildings set in seven and a half landscaped acres surrounded by fields, like those around the lot out front, where the Goth parked the van.
    A walkway approached a gate wrought out of vertical bars and a connecting circle. Beyond the gate stretched green lawns, with Fir Hall located in the center. There, patients went to school and attended chapel. Radiating from the hub of the hall, spoke-like paths joined it to residences ringed around the wheel’s rim: the Birch Unit, the Cottonwood Unit, Dogwood House, and such. This side of the gate, the walkway was bordered by the Golden Willow administration building on the left and Central Control in the Birch Unit opposite. Hidden behind Central Control was Ashworth House, where the hospital’s high-security psychos were confined. Ash 2 had the wards reserved for the homicidal maniacs of FPH. Ash 2 was the destination of the Goth.
    Everything about FPH bored the Goth to death. Just the occultist’s luck to be trapped in such an insipid era, when all aspects of dark mystery were bled from life and in their stead was substituted pablum for the mind. Milieu therapy. That’s what this snooze of a pleasant, peaceful place had devolved into. A curse upon these banal, mundane times. Gone were those malevolent trees haunting the eeriest mile. Gone were those caws of “Nevermore!” from dark ravens on Poe’s House of Usher. Gone were those gibbering screams from brains mutilated in the name of weird science.
    Gone, gone, gone …
    So that’s why the Goth was here.

     
    While the Goth was clearing security at Central Control, a nurse named Rudi Lucke was making rounds in Ashworth 2, checking the patient rooms on both ground-floor wards. Five staff worked the three-to-eleven shift, and each knew from past experience that tonight would be more testing than usual. The word “lunatic” had been removed from the Mental Hospitals Act in 1940, but as with later attempts at political correctness, that didn’t exterminate lunacy from real life. For whatever reasons—psychological, physiological, or a mix of both—patients committed to mental hospitals worldwide got more agitated or psychotic on nights when the lunar disk was full.
    Nights like tonight.
    Yorick wasn’t the real name of the man in A2-5. The name on the card in the holder beside the door was “Burton, Percy.” First name last, last name first.
    “We call him Yorick,” Rudi said, “on account of the skull.”
    The remark was aimed at the young nurse who accompanied Rudi on rounds. A recent arrival from the outback of Australia, Jock Ogilvie had been commandeered from Ash 1, the wing responsible for assessing any unstable accused remanded by courts to see if they were fit to stand trial. On full-moon nights, extra muscle was imported into Ash 2, the higher-security ward that treated NCR-MDs, those determined by law to be Not Criminally Responsible on account of Mental Disorder. The Australian bodybuilder dwarfed Rudi and was the perfect muscle for the job.
    “Listen,” Rudi said, cupping an ear.
    A stentorian voice boomed so loudly from A2-5 that there was no need for Jock to amplify.
    “Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy …”
    “Recognize it?”
    “No.”
    “Shakespeare’s Hamlet? ”
    “Sorry,” said Jock with a shrug of his gorilla shoulders. “Not my cup of tea.”
    “ Hamlet. Act V. The graveyard scene. The prince of Denmark and Horatio are onstage when gravediggers accidentally unearth a skull. The skull is that of Yorick—”
    “Is Hamlet the Danish prince?”
    Rudi blinked. Were there actually people in this world who didn’t know that? “Yes,” he said evenly, like he did with the vacuous patients. “Hamlet’s the prince.”
    The Aussie smiled, pleased with himself. Brawn but no brains, Rudi thought.
    “Hamlet takes the skull and holds it