Zena walked down the glass hallway. The years of dirt and dead leaves had built up on the floor. She flung leaves out of her way with her boots as she took her carefully placed steps. She knew there were poisonous snakes in these parts, and this place looked like a perfect hang out for them. One of her boots sunk into an unusually thick mat of moss with a squish. Zena jumped backward. She shook her head at her own nerves. There were no such thing as ghosts, she knew, but if any place could ever be haunted she was sure it was Maple Creek.

The asylum had been closed and abandoned for decades now, but she still started at every noise and movement. She wished she could understand what happened here all those years ago. How had her dad wound up in a place like this? She remembered Mom saying that her dad worked here… but, then again, who could take her mom's word for anything? She had been institutionalized by the time Zena was born. Her foster parents told her the doctors had hoped that Zena's birth would have helped her mother, Carrie, but Zena's presence only seemed to make it worse.

Carrie had gone on and on for days about Sir, who lived in the asylum. She said he'd kidnapped her when she was a child, which Zena knew. There was more than ample proof that someone had kidnapped not only Zena's mom, but many other area kids as well. No one ever found the man the public knew as Sir, and Zena knew as her father. Her mother told her that her father was not an inmate at the asylum, but a care giver.

There were so many things that didn't make sense. Zena didn't know what to think. But, when she was allowed, by Warren Chesterfield, to record a documentary for her college journalism final about Maple Creek, she jumped at the chance. When she sent the letter she never thought that she would receive so much as an answer. But, two weeks later, there she was with a letter from Mr. Chesterfield, and the keys to the front gate and the many buildings at Maple Creek State Hospital.




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