Hidden Company

by S E England

  I think what is most sad of all is that her parents have never visited. It is quite as if she has been removed from their life and forgotten. “I’m inconvenient, Flora – an embarrassment. I don’t know why no one will believe me.”

  How her words resonate.

  “And I was with child.”

  She has no recollection of how she came to be with child, except to remain convinced that some foreign entity had crept into her brain while she slept and made her do unseemly things, turned her into a village harlot. And it was this entity which had set about slowly destroying her mind in order to take possession of it later.

  “You see,” she explained. “I know what caused it all. I have told them it is the devil’s work and my mind is being destroyed in order for him to take it over and make me do unspeakable things. It is why I stood up in church and shouted at the vicar, why I slapped a boy in the street. The child was laughing at me, smirking – the devil’s helper. Only if I try to explain it all comes out wrong.”

  “And yet you speak so eloquently now?”

  “Yes. So you see it’s true - they have to get him out of my brain, make him stop destroying it, or he’ll take over.”

  “And you really believe this?”

  “Yes, oh yes, of course. But Flora, he comes more often to me now too…I see him all the time - in the shadows waiting. I can smell him. He smells of sulphur and follows me everywhere. Just waiting… I’ve told Doctor Fox-Whately, but he won’t believe me either, and now I fear no one will ever come for me. I will die here.”

  “Oh, Diane!”

  Yet she is often rational too, explaining the secrets within this living tomb, and it is only when I see her drifting away into melancholy with that silent, vacant stare that I know her period of lucidity is coming to an end once more and I will not see my friend again for a while.

  Through Diane I have also come to understand about the rooms upstairs. Often I have lain here puzzled, wondering where the blood-curdling screams are coming from, and the plaintive, almost inhuman level of sobbing. Perhaps now it makes a little more sense. Although, what she tells me is far more alarming than anything I could imagine.

  She recalls waking up one day in a padded cell, filthy and manacled to the walls. There is a peep-hole in the iron door, which is bolted on the outside, and there was a pervasive smell of smoke, of fire. She had no idea how long she had been there or why her nightdress was smeared with blood, but she does recall a violent dream.

  “I was gagged, retching with a rag in my mouth, and those bitches had me pinned down while a snake was pulled out of me. I was screaming and screaming, choking on the vomit and blood was pouring out, but they kept pulling it and pulling it…”

  “You gave birth, Diane.”

  “To a snake.”

  “But you said you were with child when you were admitted? So you came in pregnant and then they delivered you in here?”

  “Yes, but it was a snake.” She shows me the stretch marks on her thighs, breasts and still protruding abdomen.

  This is my worst fear. The very mention of the blood stained mattress and the pulling, dragging pain was enough to make me cry out and Diane slammed a hand across my mouth to stop me from attracting Myra’s attention. “Shush. When will you learn to stop calling out? You have to stay quiet.”

  I do not always know whether to believe Diane but I do believe in her advice. To remain silent - do whatever it is they want or it will be so much worse.

  Worse than you can ever imagine.

  Up to that point I thought I had been chosen for the harshest punishments, but after listening to Diane, that is patently far from the truth.

  A month later when they come to unstrap me at the end of the day I can no longer straighten up, the muscles utterly wasted and unable to support the bones. Bent as an old crone, my legs wobble and give way on the rush back along the corridor. Ivy and Myra almost carry me between them. I have reached the end. My heart flutters and dances as a leaf in the wind, most days blacked out with faints. Yet I draw breath.

  I am still here.

  Perhaps they know I am near death? This night there are to no manacles in the crib, and one of the kitchen staff brings brandy and a slice of bread and butter. Have they done with me? Have they? Finally?

  Lying in the dark, listening to the screech owls in the forest and the unearthly moans from hidden rooms upstairs, my breathing even to my own ears is rattling and heavy. Where is Diane? My guardian angel? I have come to love this girl, who held my hand during those long, lonely nights when I was manacled – a whole month - protecting me from Cora and Beatrice. At first I was surprised to feel the contact, but soon came to understand. Diane is ill only part of the time. Sometimes she is completely lucid, alas these periods are becoming more and more infrequent, but when she is free of torment I find her to be quick minded, observant and kind. Such a warm-hearted soul I have never had the pleasure to meet and I reach for her now.

  It is because of Diane my fears regarding Gwilym Ash are validated. I was right to be fearful. Right to sense the danger and secrets within these walls. Alas, the reality is far worse than my imagination would allow and I feel his eyes on me constantly, sense him watching and waiting, almost slavering. I must escape from here before he can do me harm. The more weak and fragile I am the more concerned I become. I will endeavour to write to Amelia again, persuading her most pressingly of the imminent threat to both myself and Diane.

  Two mornings come and go with no straitjacket. And two nights without a manacle.

  Have they finished with me?

  They must have.

  Then on day three, not yet breakfast time and with Diane banging her head against the window - becoming ill again, descending rapidly into her terrifying world of torment and imaginary devils - the creak of the dormitory door causes us all to wing around. Ivy and Myra are walking towards me. For the briefest of moments Diane catches my eye. She is lost to me, almost, but the spirit in her reaches out. This time they mean to finish me. And she is saying goodbye.

  The women grab my upper arms with vicious pinches and we march from the dormitory once more. No allowance is made for my weakened limbs and stumbling gait. Yet hurry we do, along the corridor towards the main stairwell, then along more corridors and down more sets of steps. Down and down. The air becomes markedly colder. Through another door now and into one of the turrets. The steps spiral further and further down, below ground level and still we descend.

  To the basement? Underground? Christ!

  “Nearly there, Madam,” says Myra.

  Ivy laughs. “That’s about the size of it. Called the others an inferior class – didn’t think she should have to share the same air! Well you’re not so superior now, are you Madam? Not giving out orders now, is it?”

  Their grips tighten as the hostility builds, fair shoving me through the last door into an unlit tunnel that drips with damp and smells of the sewer. Gritting my teeth to stop the screams coming out, I tell myself over and over that I can and will endure this. Whatever is coming, it can and will….pass.

  One of them wraps a blindfold round my head and ties it tightly. They whirl me round and round until I don’t know which way I’m facing, then tie my hands together.

  “Now walk the plank,” Ivy says.

  I don’t understand.

  “Give her a shove.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Deaf, is it? Get walking, Flora.”

  Stumbling, I put one foot tentatively in front of the other.

  Cold as a crypt, underfoot is slippery and squeaking with rats. Slime coats the walls. There is nothing to grip.

  Suddenly the rock underfoot becomes wood.

  “Stop!”

  A low groan now like that of an old door creaking open. Then the slamming of wood on stone.

  “Now step back.”

  There is nothing there. A cavity opens and I plunge backwards into a freezing tank. Icy water rushes into my lungs in a frozen scream. An iron rod slams har
d across my neck making it impossible to surface.

  Lord Jesus Christ I am going to die. Lord Jesus please wash away my sins. Take away my pain. Whatever I’ve done…please… Lord Jesus, I will let it go, let go of this life, whatever I have done…

  My lungs are full and bursting with pressure, the pain blackening and deafening…. My heart kicks out one solid thump…

  Then fingers pinch into the flesh of my upper arms and yank me out, a sopping dead weight of teeth chattering and bones. And they are laughing. Laughing like hyenas.

  “Enjoy your bath, did you, Madam?”

  Afterwards they leave me in sopping clothing strapped to a chair in the basement. Hour upon hour, with the chill seeping through skin down to the marrow.

  Will this be every day? A week? A month?

  I will die of consumption.

  They mean me to die. Of course they do.

  But I am still here.

  And I think the only reason I am is because of hatred. Such a hatred seethes in my veins as almost to claim my very soul. I have become it and it has become me. There will be no peaceful death into the hereafter, I can promise that. I will haunt these bitches and that sanctimonious creep upstairs in his comfortable office until the end of their days. And beyond.

  ***

  Chapter Twelve

  The comfort of Diane’s small hand wakes me from the aftermath of fever. Has it been days or weeks?

  “Shush, now.” She lays her cool touch on my forehead, wipes my brow with a handkerchief and whispers low, “You are alive and through the worst, Flora. Shush, keep quiet, lie still.”

  Through fitful dreams come stories that make sense of the madness in here, the curios, and the demons. How Cora, who scrabbles around on all fours and eats grass and dirt in the outside yard, believes she is an animal. “She had fifteen children and her husband beat her black and blue, they say. I think she lost her mind altogether. You know how she searches, all the time searching and rummaging through drawers and cupboards?”

  “Mmm…”

  “She’s looking for her children. Thinks she’ll find babies in there. I swear it’s true. That’s why she keeps bits of bread in her apron from breakfast – it’s to feed them with. Poor thing.”

  “Hit me–”

  “Oh yes, she’s very violent. Her old man hit her and she hit the children. She probably thought she’d found one of her children and hit them. Only it was you. Who can say?”

  She tells of Ada, who paces constantly, repeatedly dresses and undresses, jerks her neck in great spasms, and rips up the sheets. Before coming here she was frequently to be found in the town quite naked, performing the most bawdy, lewd songs imaginable. They say she was chained up in a local prison, left without clothes, filthy and out of her wits. No one knows where she’s from or who her family are – she seems quite cast out, a woman of over forty. And then there is Beatrice. “She was too much, her mother had enough. One day Beatrice went and stuck her head in the fire. They had her swaddled in bandages and still she threw knives and scissors across the room. Her family couldn’t cope. She’s dangerous, like a demon. You have to watch out for that one.”

  “The old lady, the blind one, what of her?”

  “Oh, you mean Violet? No, she’s not blind. She can see everything although most of it’s in her third eye. Violet’s a witch, they say. A medium.”

  Somewhere in the fog of my brain I wonder how she knows all this because neither Cora nor Ada speak. And Beatrice reminds me of a little monkey the way she crouches, watches, sniggers and squawks. Certainly she would not have told anyone she was ill in any way, or what happened before she came here.

  My voice sounds slurred, and my chest wheezes with every word. “Diane…how do you know all this?”

  Her face is close to mine. Without opening my eyes I know she constantly glances at the door for any sign of a hovering shadow or the dim glow from a lamp. Small and slight, she moves quickly when there’s trouble and in light of what she tells me next, I realise why. Indeed, the more I come to understand the more I too am alert to the hidden perils in this place. Cora and Ada, in their incontinent lunacy, are in many ways safe. Diane and myself, however, are not. Now, I must make best use of her lucid phase. She is about to tell me something.

  There is a little intake of breath and when she finally speaks it is with whispered urgency. “I started to pick up some of the Welsh between Ivy and Nesta. I knew a little before because my village school was on the border with one foot in Wales, the other in England. Some of the local children spoke Welsh so you see I learned a bit. Anyway, listen to them chatter away because they think we’re either mad or we don’t understand, but soon enough you’ll come to recognise some of the words and then you get the gist. Nesta’s a gossip – you’ll hear plenty from that one. Pretend you’re asleep and let her prattle on.”

  “Llyn. What doess that mean?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. That’s Lake. You’ll hear that a lot. There’s Llyn Mynachlog behind here – you can see it. That’s Monastery Lake behind the church.”

  “So this was once a monastery?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I think there might have been druids, I’m not sure. But that’s what they call the lake, anyway.”

  “What is gwynt?”

  “Wind.”

  “And cwtch?”

  “Cuddle.”

  “And twp?”

  Diane giggled. “Daft! They point to their heads when they say that, don’t they? That means they’re talking about one of us.”

  “Thank you. I think I will understand a little more now. One hears a lot when lying still like this. Oh yes, and something else they have mentioned - tylwyth teg – what does that mean?”

  “Ah, that means fairies. They all believe in fairies here – even the cook leaves a bowl of milk and some bread out each night to keep them happy.”

  “Really? The little creatures in fairy tales? And I thought we were supposed to be the mad ones?”

  “It’s folklore. Especially in this village. They believe the fae snatch new-born humans and replace them with changelings. Crimbils they call them.”

  She laughs and it’s beautiful to hear, like a tinkling fountain on a hot day.

  “So do you know enough Welsh to pick up anything about Ivy and Nesta?”

  “It’s a very fast and thick local dialect so I can’t always make sense of it, but yes, enough. Nesta and Ivy were maids. Nesta was a scullery maid – lowest of the lot - and Ivy worked in a laundry. This is a really good job for both of them, a step up.”

  “What about him? Gwilym?”

  She grimaced. “He’s just a common thug with no brain. A workhouse officer from Cardiff. That’s where people like Cora and Ada were kept in filth and chains. Separate pens they had like cattle – padlocked into leg locks and leather masks. That’s what he’s used to doing. They say Cora was chained into a crouched position for so long that’s why she can’t straighten her legs and has to crawl about on all fours.”

  “Oh, my Lord.”

  “I know. So it is better for them here, see? Better for all of them. And the doctor even has Sunday sermon in the little church by the lake for those who are well enough.”

  “Really?”

  “Not for you and me, mind. Only for the obedient ones, the silent, the deaf and dumb who shouldn’t be here at all, and the staff. It’s so they can say we all go to church every week.”

  I squeeze her hand. “You should have stayed home with your family and simply seen a good doctor.”

  “The thing is, Flora, I am quite sane but no one will believe I’m slowly being possessed. It’s only when the demon gets a grip, usually when I’m sleeping or have taken drink, that I can’t control him. When they tell me later what he made me do it’s hard to believe. Don’t you see? I don’t need a doctor I need a priest?”

  Sleep is claiming me again now. The fever has washed out of me, leaving this body wrung out and chilled. Diane pulls up the sheeting.

  �
�Is it winter?”

  “No, my lovely, it’s the end of April. Nearly May.”

  Nearly May! “Go back to bed, Diane. You will catch your death - it is so chill in here.”

  “I wish that I would.”

  “Do not say that.”

  “Why would I want to live, Flora? What hope is there for me?”

  “But you recover, do you not? Just as I?”

  Again she presses her small, cool hand to my forehead, as if sweeping away the fret. “You have indeed recovered your mind. Your ills have passed. But mine recur ever more swiftly, each time leaving me with little to distinguish between what I saw and what I dreamed. Don’t you see? Flora, I will never leave.”

  Sweet Jesus, but she is just a child. “We must bear it. And one day–”

  “No, maybe one day for you, my lady, but not for me. And besides – there is nowhere for me to go. My family would not wish me home again. I haven’t received one single letter in reply–”

  “But that is quite dreadful.”

  Her face crumples.

  My mistake was to remind her of her family’s desertion and I hope melancholy is not about to take its fateful grip of her again. It is as if she is a shadow continually trying to escape the pull of the dark, until finally her will is lost.

  “Oh, but I am quite sure that is not the case. You see, I have not had a single reply either, so it may not be your family at fault but that our letters are unreceived? My sister, Amelia, would not allow this if only she were made aware of the conditions here. She would send for me immediately if she knew of Dr Fox-Whately and his wife’s cruelty. I am sure she believes they are good Christian people and treat us well.”

  A spark of hope flickers in her eyes and she squeezes my hand. “He has a public commendation now. I overheard Ivy saying he has a special honour from Parliament for his work with the mentally infirm. A ground-breaker he is, for integrating all social classes into a successful regime.”

  “Successful? But people here – do they ever go home? I know they vanish but I thought…” Here I raise my gaze to the ceiling.