Recently Amber gave me a boxed set of YA chillers that would make purrrfect Halloween reads. Madeleine Roux's The Asylum Series has all you need for spine chilling horror: a now shut down mental hospital for the criminally insane in which patients were subjected to cruel experiments at the hands of a demented warden, mysterious papers, gruesome photos, legends of ghosts and menacing beings, powerful evil secret societies...
In Asylum, the first book in the series, readers learn that the derelict building that formerly housed the notorious asylum has been acquired by New Hampshire College. They're intent on rehabilitating it. In fact when the high school students arrive for the summer prep program it's their dorm for their five week stay.
Not all of the building has been transformed. A rather large section is shut off by only a flimsy lock--a regular maze of stairways, corridors, offices, patient rooms, and a operating amphitheater in the bowels of the building. Furniture, objects, and a plethora of papers are intact.
Dan, one of the students, finds a strange photograph and learns that there are more in the shut off part of the building. He and new friends, Abby and Jordan, sneak in and explore. Abby finds a disturbing picture of an aunt she's never met as a child. Dan, who was adopted, may be descended from the demonic warden.
When a man is found murdered all hell begins to break loose...
After returning home Dan, Abby, and Jordan can't seem to shake the effects of their summer trauma as Sanctum, the second book in the series, begins. Insomnia, nightmares, hearing voices. They each get a piece of a picture of a creepy old fashioned carnival...
...Three guesses where it's being held...
...And when Dan visits Felix, his former roommate at the psychiatric hospital he's confined in he gives him a series of numbers (GPS coordinates) to follow.
Knowing that there's no way their parents would allow them to investigate further, they sign up for an innocuous prospective students weekend.
When Dan, Abby, and Jordan check out the addresses they are all long abandoned houses that all have something to do with the dreaded Warden Crawford. Through documents they are able to find they learn much more about his reign of medical experiment terror.
And they come in conflict with the Scarlets, a brainwashed red caped secret society that their college student hosts belong to.
It all comes to a climax on Halloween as drunk students shamble through the streets, the creepy carnival ramps up, and our threesome is captured by the heir to Warden Crawford's legacy of evil.
In Catacomb, the third and final volume of the trilogy, Dan, Abby, and Jordan have finally graduated from high school. They're taking a road trip before the start of college or a gap year. Abby and Dan are helping Jordan move to live with his Uncle Steve in New Orleans. They're planning on fun times and memory making...
...After all, their destination is about a thousand miles away from the New Hampshire college where they almost met gruesome ends--not once, but twice. Happy days are finally here for the intrepid trio...
...or not. There are chilling experiences almost from the beginning. A mysterious being seems to be following and taking pictures of the teens.
Dan has reason to believe he can learn more about his birth parents. He's located a journalist who worked with them. In the course of his research he makes connections with potentially sketchy characters...
...and comes to the attention of the Bone Artists, an underground group obsessed with historical killers and their legacies.
Have the friends survived close encounters of the grim reaper kind, only to meet untimely deaths in a recreation destination? Only one way to find out.
Affecianados of YA chillers will take to the Asylum trilogy like precious Tobago to Fancy Feast entrees. The three friends and their relationships feel genuine. The blend of reality and fantasy is plausible. The plots are gripping, building up to terrifying climaxes...
...And there are the many pictures--real found black and white photographs taken in places such as old time mental hospitals and carnivals--that add to the total terror and creepiness of the narrative.
On a purrrsonal note, in central Maine the weather is the news. We're in the third day of a noreaster. It's supposed to clear up by tomorrow. And we certainly did need the rain after being at a deficit all summer. It looks like Senator Susan Collins has been using her position to play let's make a deal with a defense contractor. I most definitely do not approve that behavior.
A great big shout out goes out to the people who are bringing that news to light.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my Galaxy
