Ward 13

Chapter One: The Detour

Avery spotted the sign half-buried in ivy just as the last of the sun slid through the treetops. The metal was rusted and bent, the letters ghostly under grime: C—D—W— Asylum. Dylan leaned over from the passenger seat, squinting. “Cedarwood?” he said. “Dude, that’s the place they closed after the flood. Or a murder. Depends on which podcast you believe.”

“We’re not actually going in,” Priya said from the back, pulling her cardigan tight. “We’re already late.”

Jess had her head against the window, watching the woods fold in. “Come on. It’s ten minutes. Quick peek. Then tacos.”

Marcus grinned, and that was that. He lived for this. For shortcuts and closed roads, for rules that bent when no one was looking. “We’ll just drive up, take a picture, post it. #urbexweekend.”

Avery hesitated, fingers tight on the wheel. The air through the open window smelled like rain and damp leaves. Something in the chilled dusk felt expectant, waiting. She could say no. Follow the map back to the highway, and in an hour they’d be crowded around a sticky table, laughing over cheap margaritas. But Dylan had already snapped a photo of the sign, and Marcus had his own navigation app open, tracing the thin gray line of a service road that cut deeper into the trees.

Avery turned the wheel. Gravel pinged the undercarriage as they bumped past the sign and onto the service road. The canopy drew tight over them. Even the birds went quiet.

“Just a peek,” she said, as if the words would keep the scope of their choices small. “We’re not going in.”

The service road dead-ended at a rusted chain-link gate. Half the fence had collapsed under the weight of climbing vines; a path had pressed itself through the brush as if many feet had already come this way. Beyond, the asylum’s main building sat like a dead ship beached in green. Windows were broken teeth. The slate roof sagged. A pigeon lifted from a gutter and vanished into a hole. At the center, a narrow tower rose, and behind it, an annex spread in shadow.

“Creepy,” Priya whispered. She said it like a prayer.

Marcus had already slid under the slack chain, his backpack bumping his shoulders. “Ten minutes,” he called. “Don’t be wimps.”

Avery killed the engine. The sudden quiet was absolute. The ticking of the cooling car sounded too loud.

“Ten minutes,” she agreed, because it felt better to put a number on it. “Then tacos.”

She left the keys in her pocket like a talisman as they followed Marcus through the fence and into the grounds. Moss swallowed the old pathway, and weeds had erupted through cracked concrete. In the courtyard, a stone fountain leaned, dry and full of leaves. On its chipped rim, someone had spray-painted a crude mouth with too many teeth.

They crossed to the main entrance. The doors were gone. Inside, the lobby yawned, dim even in the last light. A fallen chandelier lay like a giant’s broken ribcage. Papers, reduced to the thickness of old snow, drifted when they stepped.

“Okay,” Avery said, forcing brightness. She lifted her phone. “We snap our spooky, we bounce.”

Her signal bar winked to nothing.

“Same,” Jess said, tapping her own screen. Dylan made a face and shoved his into his pocket. “Unplugged adventures,” he said.

In the lobby, the hallways diverged into three. A directory sign hung askew, its letters half-pried off. Admissions. Records. Theatre. Wards.

“And gift shop,” Marcus said, brushing dust off ‘Records’ with his sleeve. “Left or right?”

“Left,” Avery said, thinking it would take them toward the light of the windows still unbroken. Thinking of short, direct routes.

They went left.