A. L. Kaplan

Tag: Northgate

  • SUPER-DUDE

    “Stand behind me,” said Clifford. He pulled on a red hat and cape. “I’ll keep you from harm.”

    I clutched my notebook close. The beating of my heart made it bounce against my chest. All I wanted was to write a story about a modern psychiatric hospital, something that I could get published. The one I wrote about the Northgate asylum nearly got me committed. No reputable newspaper would touch a ghost story. If I survived this riot I just might have something.

    “Out of the way Super-Dude,” said a patient holding a metal pipe. “I want that pretty girl.”

    “I won’t allow you to harm her. Turn away or I will be forced to use my powers.”

    Pipe man and his three friends laughed. My stomach twisted. The guards were dead or soon would be. All that stood between me and this crazed mob was a sweet little lunatic who thought he was a super hero.

    “I’m gonna shove that cape and helmet of invisibility down your throat,” said Pipe man. He marched forward, his face twisted in a sneer.

    My friend shook his head. “You’ve been warned.”

    Clifford vanished. The inmates gaped at the empty space where he had stood. So did I. A second later Pipe guy fell to the ground. Blood streamed from his nose. When the second man fell, his friends fled.

    My hero stood guard until the riot ended. I had quite a story to tell—one that only Super-Dude would believe.

  • The Ghosts of Northgate

    Sweat dripped down my back despite the freezing temperature outside. I glanced at the frost covered window. Only inside felt like Hell’s furnace. And maybe it was. I stared in terrified fascination as flames danced across the cafeteria of the Northgate Sanitarium. Each human-shaped bonfire acted out a well-rehearsed script in a macabre ballet. One figure beat another with a rubber pipe. Another arched in spasm as electricity coursed through its body. A parody of a doctor drilled into a patient’s scull, clearly without anesthesia. Figures grappled and screamed a chorus that had probably started long before the place was shut down in the early 1950s.

    The doctors here called it experimental treatment of the criminally insane. Most people called what it was: Power hungry sadists loose in a playground, all with the approval of the state prison system. God only knows how many people suffered in this place.

    But that was old news. There had been rumors about disappearances in the past few weeks. When I decided to spent the night in this crumbling old building, I expected to find kids playing tricks or a new street gang pumping its muscles. Either of them would have made great stories, maybe even gotten me an early promotion at the Northgate Observer. If I wrote about this, my career as a journalist would end before it began.

    Notebook forgotten, all I could do was watch the horror unfold and pray I survived the night – with my sanity.