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COHEN

T he towering iron gates flanked each side of the town car, the name Briarwood Sanitorium dangling from a broken chain as we pulled up the long driveway that curled around the front of the abandoned mental hospital. I would say it was the thing of nightmares but that’d be a lie.

I saw far worse shit than this every time I closed my… eye. Every time one of the wounds on my face oozed and my poorly sutured fingers bled. Every time I poked around the empty socket in my head with a pair of sterilized tweezers and tried to locate what was left of my optic nerve. So if Mr. Fancy-Ass Surgeon was looking to intimidate me, it would take a lot more than some rundown looney-bin in the middle of nowhere.

I stepped out of the military-looking SUV and onto the gravel walkway, not believing for one second this was a government-sanctioned facility. The large metal double doors appeared to open the moment we approached. Which told me they were automated or we were being watched. Maybe a little of both. I glanced up, noting row after row of barred windows before following the suit and his silent henchman inside.

The place smelled of death. But not like formaldehyde and cadaver bone. Not old death. No, it smelled like blood. Fresh blood and newer flesh. Like an operating room more than a former sanitorium. It was clean too. Sterile. A blinding white from floor to ceiling. Much more modern than the exterior would suggest. There were doors stretching out in every direction in front of me, cameras staring down at us from every angle.

This was some serious surveillance system for a simple mental hospital. Though something told me these fuckers weren’t looking for a quick consultation. If they were bringing me here to pick my brain, it would definitely be in the more literal sense. Full-on lobotomy style.

“Who we got here?”

I looked up, towards the sound of the disembodied voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. My boots squeaking on the tile floor as I pivoted in time to watch a shadow jump down from one of the rafters in the ceiling. Spring off his fingertips into a cartwheel and push to his feet in front of me. Silent. Not a sound echoing off the walls. No footsteps, no audible inhalation of breath. Nothing that would indicate the guy was more than a visual hallucination if it weren’t for the fact I was certain everyone else saw him too.

He stepped around me, his movements still soundless and half his face done up like someone forgot to tell the guy Halloween was over a few weeks ago. “Those are some gnarly scars, Frankie.” He grinned.

“That ain’t my name,” I grunted as the fucker continued to watch me with a slight cant of his head.

“It is now.”

“Casper, enough.” Adrian cleared his throat, his glare flicking from The Skeleton King back over to me. “Dr. Michaels, why don’t I give you a tour. Show you a bit of what my facility has to offer…”

I nodded, following his lead as he stepped through the first door and made two quick rights down a long hallway. I guess you could say my curiosity got the better of me. And truth was I didn’t have fuck all to lose.