Read Before I Wake for Free Online Page B

push the button, Arden?” Vera pointed. “Push the button.”
    Arden pushed the button. They shook and shimmied to the basement. The door opened.
    “Turkey,” Vera muttered as she exited the elevator for the second time, seeming to have completely forgotten Arden now that the food had presented itself. “ I hate turkey.” At the last minute, she turned back. “Lock your door before you go to bed. The shadow people run up and down the halls at night.” She passed a tongue across dry lips. “And if somebody tells you they’re taking you to stay at a rest home for a week, don’t believe ‘em.”
    The elevator door closed. Arden was happy to escape to the fourth floor.
    Once there, she discovered Victoria had told her a skewed version of the truth. Arden’s fourth-floor room did overlook the front drive, but the pair of six-foot-tall, wooden-framed windows hadn’t been cleaned in years, and she could hardly see through the glass. There was also no chain lock or dead bolt on the door.
    What was it with these people? Did they think serious crime didn’t happen in small towns? Some of the bloodiest, most horrendous murders had taken place in sleepy, idyllic burgs in Middle America.
    The room smelled old. Wood and plaster had absorbed and encapsulated the air of almost 150 years. No amount of paint or furniture polish or pine-scented air freshener could cover it up.
    A piece of paper on a table near the bathroom listed amenities. For an additional fee, she could eat turkey downstairs. Also located at basement level were vending machines.
    The room had a single bed, tidily made with a smooth, beige spread. She checked the bathroom. Claw-foot tub enclosed by a white, plastic shower curtain. Clean sink. Clean towels. New bar of wrapped soap.
    Back in the sleeping area, she looked through the desk drawers. Empty except for a Gideon Bible. Those people got around.
    The room was stuffy.
    She undid the latch on one of the windows. It opened like a double door, swinging inward to expose wrought-iron bars.
    The evening air was cool against Arden’s face, but it didn’t ease her claustrophobia. Outside, construction workers had gone home, and only a few cars dotted the parking lot.
    Darkness was falling.
    Arden needed to get away. Just for a little while, she assured herself.
    She left the room, key in one pocket, cash and ID in the other. Rather than risk an encounter with the diners returning to their rooms, she took the stairs.
    The lobby was deserted, the little office Victoria occupied closed.
    Arden hurried out the front door and down the sweeping stairs. There was no sidewalk. She ran across a grassy area, clinging to the shadows of the buildings and evergreen trees.
    I’ve done this before.
    But not alone.
    Someone had been with her. A man. A dark-haired man whose name and face she couldn’t remember. Harley? Maybe it had been Harley.
    They’d run down the hill, smothering their laughter, excited and thrilled to be out of the building.
    It had been late summer.
    Crickets had chirped and fireflies had flickered in the darker areas beneath the trees.
    Years ago, patients had once farmed some of the asylum ground. They’d milked dairy cows and harvested apples from the orchard. On a slanting hillside that was much too steep to farm or graze, the dead had been buried. No real headstones. Just rows of numbers etched into four-by-six-inch granite slabs that stood upright, the numbers cross-referenced between the covers of a handwritten book.
    That other night, while running down the steep slope with the dark-haired man, Arden had tripped over one of the numbers and had tumbled to the ground.
    The man had plopped down beside her and they’d looked up at the stars.
    Now Arden slowed, then stopped. She looked up.
    The sky was cloudy. No stars.
    He’d kissed her. The night of their escape. Then, just as quickly, he’d jumped to his feet and given her a hand up. Together they’d run the rest of the way down the