Noon. Boardwalk of the town of Ayyergsoun

“In the asylum?!” said Peter. He glared at the boy. “Okay, I believe you. And you’re secretly a fairy in disguise.”

The boy shrugged. “It’s true,” he insisted. “They’re all in the asylum. I’ve seen them. Once I spent the night in there.” He shuddered. “Never again.”

“Can you tell us why they’ve gone mad?” asked Brittany.

“No, I don’t know. But I do know that they ain’t never gonna be sane again. That night I spent there-” he shuddered again. “It was a bet. Fifty pounds. The kids who bet me are in there now.”

“Can you tell us what it was like?” said Peter. The kid nodded.

“Aye, I can. It was awful.”

Eight o’ clock, Little Peak Institution for the Criminally Insane.

It was the darkest night that he had ever seen. But he wasn’t seeing it now. He was hiding in a closet, thinking that after this night he might have to join the others in the building. Cause of Insanity: Fear of being eaten by a few hundred crazy teenagers.

Everywhere he could hear shouts of pain, fear, ecstasy…the list went on. The normal sounds of night were blocked out by frantic gibbering, for each occupant’s mind was so broken, so over the brink, that their behavior was that of animals.

Of predators.

They were hunting him, he knew it. But his luck seemed to change. The sounds of the hunters were decreasing as they moved away. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Then the door to his closet flew open.

“What happened next?!” cried Brittany. The boy chuckled, humorlessly.

“They tried to eat me. Almost took my leg off, and now I have to walk with this.” He lifted a cane they hadn’t noticed before. “Then the police came. Tased the guy trying to eat my leg. According to the laws of this town, I spent a week in the slammer for trespassing, but I knew it was just stupidity.” He shook his head. “I promised never to go back there, and you know what?”

“What?” asked Peter.

“The worst part was the guy trying to eat my leg. He was my brother.”

“What happened to him?” asked Brittany.

“I don’t know,” said the boy. “He went in a couple years ago. He disappeared for a few days. They found him at the edge of the woods, yelling about red eyes and white teeth. They threw him in right away.”

Peter didn’t know what was worse-the kid’s brother’s story or the deadpan tone in the kid’s voice as he told them about his brother.

“Do you know why your brother went insane?” he asked. The kid shook his head.

“I don’t know the exact reason,” he said. “But the night he went missing, a noise woke me up in the yard. I saw him and a couple friends walking towards the woods. I got up and followed them. They went into the woods. I followed them to the outskirt of it, then hid. I sat there for an hour. Then I heard screams and howls. I ran back to my house and pretended to sleep. Two days later, a police officer tells us he’s in the asylum.” He shook his head. “I could have saved him, but I was too worried about my own sorry skin.”

“Where do you think he was going?” asked Brittany. The boy smiled.

“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “They were heading for the spot that every idiot in this town heads to for a dare or a bet.”

“Where?” pressed Peter.

“The Tower of the Raven Wives,” said the boy. “You would have seen it when you were coming here. A big black tower on the hill.”

Brittany shot a look at Peter that he ignored. She sighed.

Me, I, and myself on the same team again, she thought. Yippee!

“We have to go there,” she said. Peter threw up his hands. The boy stumbled backwards in shock.

“What the he-no, no way. No freaking way.”

“But we have to. Don’t you see? We gotta-“

“My brother said we have to. Look where he ended up. My father, the same. My mother took pills, said she had to, doctor’s orders. You think we have to, you end up with my father and brother. Or you can smoke pot with my mother. I’m not going to the tower.”

“But don’t you see? asked Brittany. “If we go there, we can find out why your father and brother went crazy. Then we can cure them, then your mother doesn’t smoke pot. You see?”

The boy sighed. “‘Fraid I do. I’ll go. But there is one thing.”

“What?” asked Peter.

“We can only go at night.” said the boy

“What?! Why? We could just go now!”

The boy threw up his hands. “Don’t you think people have done the same thing as us? Searched th’ tower? The tower disappeared every time, then they’d go back at night. They all returned, crazy as my brother. We have to go at night.”

Brittany nodded.

Peter sighed. “Okay.”

The boy smiled.

In the distance, thunder boomed.