I would have to distract him long enough to get onto the fire escape and up to the roof. I dropped silently back down to the outside of the wall and stood with my back to it, feeling my backpack catch on the rough texture of the stone, thinking through my options. There was always the old ‘throwing the distraction’ gambit—a common trope in movies and TV shows when the hero is on a stealthy mission and needs to get past a guard. The maneuver involved throwing something to make a noise which the guard would then investigate, allowing the hero to slip past. I had a slightly better version I had worked up once years before. It was the one time I did a commissioned job which had involved sneaking around a well-patrolled museum. I had taken apart a particularly atrocious children’s toy called Gassy Gus, extracting from his molded rubber interior a little integrated circuit with a speaker, battery, and switch that was activated by squeezing the figure’s stomach. When the switch was tripped, the toy would emit ten disgusting fart noises spaced about two seconds apart, then fall dormant. I had hacked the circuit to include a timer that would delay the onset of farts for five minutes. During the museum job I had triggered it then hidden it on top of a molding to cause confusion while I took care of business in a nearby gallery. It had worked so well that I made a detour to go back and get it on my way out.
I found the device in my backpack, put it in my hoodie pocket, and worked my way along the wall until I was even with the far edge of the west wing. A wispy fog had started to gather, pooling in hollows and shimmering when the silver motes caught the moonlight. I used it to my advantage as I darted over the wall and across the grounds. When I reached the asylum’s brick exterior, I began working my way back toward the central building, sticking to the shadows cast by the trees planted along the periphery. When I was about fifty feet from the guard I found a good place to hide where the exterior wall made a little zig zag and a tree threw the corner into deep shadow. I crept back the way I had come, pressed the button on the device, and left it in the crook of a tree. Back in my hiding spot I waited. Right on time, the farting started. It was surprisingly loud. I had no doubt the guard would hear it. I heard him coming after the third emission of ersatz flatus sounded out. He passed my position, crouching low and peering into the darkness. As soon as he was far enough away, I slipped out and made my way to the fire escape. With a jump, I grasped the cold, fog-damp steel, and began climbing. I turned twice on my way up and saw the guard out in the grounds, back to me, searching for the source of the noise that had ceased before he got close enough to pinpoint its location.
When I reached the top, I scrambled over the edge and hid behind a low parapet, my cheek pressed against tar paper, body tense. The smell of damp, hydrocarbon sludge awakened a sense memory. The feeling was peaceful but the exact memory was elusive. To my right, glistening with droplets of fog in the moonlight, the sloping, tiled roof of the main building rose up against the sky. To my left, the vertical front wall of the chapel rose above the narthex. There were two windows in that wall, looking down into the chapel toward the transept. I lay there for a while, catching my breath but I knew I needed to keep moving and find a good hiding place. I rose and scrambled over to the door that gave access to the stairwell, staying low, then shined my little LED flashlight on the knob set and examined the lock. It was a basic pin tumbler lock made by a well-known manufacturer. It would be no problem to pick. I eased my backpack off my shoulders, set it down silently, and zipped it open, pointing the light down into the main pocket. As I rummaged, I thought I heard something and stopped for a moment, holding absolutely still for several seconds. Then I heard the sound again, closer this time, like a bit of gravel underfoot. I whirled just in time to see a dark figure silhouetted against the sky, arm raised and moving downward. A flash in my brain, a dull, thudding impact, and I was falling sideways, blackness closing over me.
****
The first thing I became aware of was bright light, orange through my closed eyelids, then a splitting headache and deep, numbing cold all down my left side. I opened my eyes but immediately squeezed them shut against the explosion of searing pain stabbing my corneas. I tried to move and managed to roll over onto my back. My left arm was asleep. I had been lying on top of it. The pins and needles started as blood flowed into capillaries. I probed my head gingerly with my right hand, running fingers lightly over my skull. Just behind my ear there was an impressive lump. Around the lump, my hair was matted with dried blood. The floor was like ice—a cold bed of concrete for my aching carcass. I lay still for a full minute and the headache began to subside to a dull throb.
I opened my eyes again. This time I was able to begin to make out shapes through the glaring pain. Above me was a concrete ceiling with a complex array of pipes
