by Tanith Lee
“No one will prevent you, if you go,” said Leocadia.
“But they will. They’ll spank us. It’s an awful place. You know something terrible happened there. You’re not scared? I dare you, Lucie.”
“Of course, something terrible,” said Leocadia. “What else, there?”
The old lunatic asylum. Not like the modern Residence. There had been a story about it, but then was that not the other story about the shells – that the sea had washed in over the building? No, this could never be right.
Leocadia got up as Mademoiselle Varc tugged at her like a ferocious moth.
They hurried by the summerhouse, passing Thomas the Warrior. The young spider man was creeping along and raised his face in delight to Mademoiselle Varc, saw Leocadia and lolloped away.
They rushed across the walk, and over the grass. Oak trees and gray cedar towered above them. Then there was the dilapidated fence.
It was like a boundary in a dream. But Leocadia reasoned she had perhaps already, the previous night, crossed whatever boundary there was.
Mademoiselle Varc tottered over and sat abruptly in the uncut grass the far side, but laughing.
Leocadia followed more easily.
The sun burst on the ruined hothouse and the raisin vine, black, as if mantled with bursting tarantulas.
“We have to go among the old buildings,” said Mademoiselle Varc.
“Very well.”
Marigolds grew wild in the long grass (and Leocadia thought of the marigolds in ice, which had prevented nothing) and pure white daisies.
Mademoiselle Varc stumbled, but she was a little girl again, only about ten, and she made nothing of it.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked Leocadia. “If you look at the windows you might see them. Even by day. Women in a row.”
Leocadia shrugged. She raised her eyes to the foul blank windows, seen closer now than ever before, but they were dead as ever, the optics of corpses.
Pipes thick with rust coiled from the walls of the buildings like flexible bones which had pierced the skin.
They came onto a paved place sprung with weeds. The buildings loomed above.
“This way. Down here.”
Mademoiselle Varc led Leocadia toward a sort of alley between the light biscuit walls.
There was no sound. That was, one heard the sizzling chorus of cicadas, and the tweets of passing birds; insects buzzed among the rogue flowers. High, high in the sky, a plane purred almost silently over, a silver cigar with fins. All these ordinary noises. And yet, it was like the loud singing in the ear of utter soundlessness. And everything so still, as if, rather than stunned by heat, the area had been frozen.
The alley was drowned in shade.
Mademoiselle Varc darted along it in quick marsupial spasms.
Above, the ranks of corpse windows, black with grime and weather and time. From the pipes hung cakes of filth.
The alley opened in a square, around which the buildings of the madhouse reared and onto which the windows continued to stare without sight. Three big doorways seemed shut like the gates of hell.
And in the center of the square was a great heap of rubbish, stretching up five meters or more, as if constructed over some more solid base.
“See – see –” Mademoiselle Varc sprang at the garbage mountain eagerly.
Noises were fainter here, and though the sun splashed in between the roofs, it was like being in a new block of bright, thick atmosphere.
Mademoiselle scrabbled at the grisly pile.
“There!”
Leocadia observed.
She saw Mademoiselle Varc was holding up a gleaming rope of syrup, a necklace of amber beads.
How bizarre. How could such a delicacy have been overlooked? Unless Mademoiselle Varc herself had deposited them here, in order to “find” them.
Leocadia glared into the coalescence of rubble. And as she did so, she felt the eyeless windows watching, as if sudden specters had gathered behind their masks.
A pile of garbage. Old newspapers, a destroyed chair raised high as a throne. And lower down, slabs of tin and wool and corrosion.
“Look!” squeaked Mademoiselle Varc.
She raised a wooden doll with jointed arms and legs and black cotton hair.
How was she finding these things? She must have placed them here, her treasures.
“Here’s another,” said Mademoiselle Varc, and pointed Leocadia into the heap of debris. A wooden limb poked out, and sure enough another wooden maiden emerged into Leocadia’s hands. This one had flax hair and cool glass eyes.
“I wonder what else we shall get?”
It was a festival. It was a barrel of goodies into which you must plunge your fingers.
Something was dislodged from higher up and swiveled down the rubbish with a frantic sound.
It fell at Leocadia’s feet.
“Oh just see. It’s given you something.”
Leocadia bent down and raised the artifact.
It was an old brown bottle, curiously shaped, square, with a four-sided neck and a four-sided mouth. On the front, a label. It showed clearly a weird landscape of ice and glaciers, and before them a black and white penguin with a marigold flash beside its beak. Above, the name. Penguin Gin.
Leocadia examined the bottle in a trance. It was very old. It was clean, and bright. The penguin pleased her, for it was realistically portrayed, and into her head came the thought: I have a model now. I can paint penguins.
“Yes, I’ve heard of it,” said Mademoiselle Varc, peering over. “There was a slogan for that gin.” She held a wooden doll in either hand, the amber beads about her neck, along her whiteness. “Penguin Gin, it eases pain.”
“Not in your youth, surely,” said Leocadia.
“Oh no. Long before. Long, long ago.”
Something shuddered in the pile of rubbish. A thin black smoke uncoiled from it.
“That’s enough,” cried Mademoiselle Varc. “We must go.”
She sprinted back into the alley.
Leocadia turned slowly, watching the deadly walls above. Nothing was in the windows.
But she would take the bottle. She would paint penguins.
Someone knocked on the door to Leocadia’s room, the way the female attendant did when she brought a hot meal.
“Yes,” said Leocadia.
The door was opened.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and the doctors, when they came, arrived at five in the evening. Yet here was Van Orles, all alone.
“What do you want?”
“Why, to see you, mademoiselle.”
Leocadia wore her cream housedress, which had so generously been sent to the asylum for her. She had no makeup on. She had been about to don her working smock and prepare a canvas.
Van Orles looked at her insidiously.
“Here I am, as you see,” said Leocadia.
“Well, shall we have a little talk?”
“If we must.”
“Always so bristly!” merrily chided Van Orles, and he came bouncing into the room. He wore another of his pasty cravats. Sitting down on the couch he lit a pipe. Leocadia opened the second window. “You never ask for cigarishis,” said Van Orles. “Don’t you miss them?”
“I seldom bothered with them. They had no effect on me.”
“Yet still you drink.”
Leocadia propped up a canvas on her table.
“And you began to drink when you were eleven years old, I understand.”
When Leocadia did not reply, Van Orles puffed away at his pipe as if considering her silence an answer.
Leocadia was irritated. She did not like to work with anyone near her, as all her lovers had soon discovered. She went to the dressing table and began to brush her curling hair with harsh strokes.
“What a lovely girl you are,” murmured Van Orles. “Don’t you miss other things? Companionship? Dalliance?”
A faint livid light was ominously blooming up from nowhere. She tensed
. The distasteful man seemed to be making a pass at her. Leocadia swung slowly around and smiled at him. Van Orles appeared taken aback. Leocadia lifted the brown bottle off the dressing table where it had lain through the afternoon and night.
“Look at this, Where do you think I got it?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“In a junk heap in a yard of the old building.”
“Which building is that?” he inquired innocently.
“The madhouse.”
“Ah. How quaint. The lunatic hospital. Really, that place should be walled off. The masonry isn’t safe.”
“Don’t you think it’s a pretty bottle?” said Leocadia. “Quite old itself, I should say, from its shape.”
“Very likely.” Van Orles got up carefully and came to stand over Leocadia. “And you are interested in such items?”
“Oh, yes. Why don’t you tell me about the madhouse?”
“Now, we shouldn’t call it that. They were awful days. The poor sick people weren’t treated well. Sometimes they were even displayed to the public, to make others laugh. Immorality and disease ran rife –”
“But what happened?” said Leocadia.
“How do you mean?” Van Orles crouched closer.
Leocadia hit him quite hard on the hand and stood up. She moved away.
Van Orles looked happy. He presumably thought he was being teased, a preliminary.
“I mean,” said Leocadia, “something curious took place, didn’t it? The madhouse was suddenly closed down.”
“Oh, there is some story – a warder was killed, and someone disappeared. Perhaps the inmates attacked the staff for their brutish treatment. But one shouldn’t set too much store by tales.”
Leocadia held the bottle labeled Penguin Gin up to the window. For a moment a screaming and contorted face seemed to writhe inside it, but it was only the action of sunlight and the shadow of ivy on the wall.
“Is that all you know, or all you’ll say?” asked Leocadia.
Van Orles chuckled. He seemed to think Leocadia’s prurient intriguement was a form of foreplay. Gruesome details of the lunatics might arouse her.
“There was a rumor of a ghost. A great dark thing. Very tall, gliding through the corridors. And something about a bad winter. I can’t recall.”
“Then,” said Leocadia, “I think I’ll go out for a walk.”
“Now, now, not yet. I must perform a small check on your physical well-being.”
Leocadia turned from her worktable, the palette knife in her hand. The glare of light was around him like a halo, the warning phenomenon that had come before.
“But I am violent,” she said. “And I might not care for this small check.”
“Ah –” Van Orles stepped away. He was still smiling, the smile a daisy left behind by a retreating tide. “Now, Leocadia –”
“If you touch me,” said Leocadia, “if you come in here again alone, I will set on you.” She was tepid, easy. She had had to threaten others. Generally they accepted her terms. And so did Van Orles.
“You are being most unreasonable, Leocadia. Merely because I can’t satisfy your ghoulish curiosity about the lunatics.”
“But I’m a lunatic,” said Leocadia. “How can you trust yourself with me? What would the other doctors say if they knew?”
Leocadia walked to the door ahead of Van Orles and opened it. She went into the corridor. Van Orles stood lost in the middle of the room. Leocadia threw the knife back there, so it whirled past his head. He yelped and ducked low, and his pipe fell on the floor.
“I shall have to report this,” said Van Orles.
“And also, of course, that you came to me by yourself, for how else did it happen?”
She did not want to leave him in her room, and sure enough, when she stood right back, he came hurrying out.
“You’ve turned nasty, Leocadia.”
He hastened away.
Probably, she had been ill-advised. She was not free now, and doubtless to make such an enemy was unwise.
Outside, it was hot, the sun going up to the zenith. In the summerhouse the old ones lay like spoilt seals. Thomas was not at his garden. No one was anywhere.
Leocadia looked across the grass and gravel, between the trees to the buildings.
Cries in the night – of course. The sheer misery and abjection of that place had been recorded in its stones. But she, had she now come to the hiatus, the point where she must, even physically, pass over into her new life? The low fence symbolized this.
She could kill herself. They must mean her to, leaving all the handy knives and glasses for her. But first, there was the landscape with the penguin to paint.
Leocadia walked along the fence, not crossing it.
Large chestnut trees arose, and under their canopy she came upon the spider man sitting, looking where she looked, toward the madhouse.
Seeing her, he jumped up.
“Wait,” snapped Leocadia.
He gave a wild cry. He ran, not like a spider now but a wounded hare. He rushed at the fence and sprawled across it and charged on toward the madhouse walls.
Leocadia got over the fence also, and holding up her long skirt, she ran after him grimly. Her legs were long and slim and strong; she was soon close.
“Stop,” she commanded, but he shrieked and bolted away.
He chased along the paved space under the windows.
Swearing, she caught him in both hands, letting her skirt go.
He hooted, went down, and crawled at her feet.
“I won’t,” he said. “I won’t.”
“You will,” she said. “Why are you afraid of me?”
“Weasel,” said the young man. He touched Leocadia’s sandaled foot, tore back his hand as if she burnt.
“I am not a weasel. I wish I were. Or are you supposed to be? You’re a spider.”
He glimpsed up at her face. He said, experimenting, “You look well today.”
“I am. Tell me something about that.” And she pointed at the madhouse.
“All gone,” said the young man. “They went in a night. All the doors were locked. A great wave.” He got up and bowed to Leocadia. “Your highness is so powerful. Do take care,” he said. Then he flung himself off again, racing back at the fence, away from the buildings.
Leocadia looked up at the rows of dead windows. They were now familiar. She thought she could hear a bell ringing somewhere, but perhaps this noise was only in her ear.
The crickets were silent, and the birds. The marigolds had scorched in the grass and the daisies withered.
Gone in a night. A great wave.
Shells left behind, but that was the other story.
What had gone on here?
Leocadia turned down an alley between the buildings. It was not the way she had come with Mademoiselle Varc. Yet the alley looked just the same, the deep shade, the walls and pipes.
And sure enough, the alley led into a courtyard. Here there was a stone block. It was featureless and gave no indication of its use. Three doorways (hell gates), as before.
Leocadia crossed the yard, which had no rubbish heap, climbed a short stair, pushed at the black door. It was shut, forever.
The madhouse of Paradis.
Something fluttered on the edge of her eye.
Leocadia turned and stared up. Above, in a window, stood a feminine form with bright marmalade hair.
Leocadia’s blood seemed to sink through her. A great wave … it hit her feet and vertigo made her drop her face into her hands. Then it was gone, and looking furiously up again, unsteady and sick, she beheld the window empty.
As she came back over the gravel, Leocadia saw Thomas the Warrior sitting under his Medusa, in the flower bed.
“Wait, mademoiselle.”
“Everyone talks to me now,” she said.
“You have been there.”
“There. Where?”
“What did you see?” asked Thomas. He was elderly and gnarled and his voice was cracked.
“What could I see? Some deserted buildings.”
“Once full,” said Thomas the Warrior.
“Gone in a night,” said Leocadia.
Did she imagine it? Was the tongue of the Medusa longer?
“You must understand. In your great-grandfather’s time. The doors were all shut. The inmates packed in for the night. But in the morning, all the lunatics had gone.”
He stopped. He looked like old men from her childhood. This annoyed her. She said, “Aren’t we all lunatics?”
“Oh, no, mademoiselle. You are only mad.”
“What’s the difference?”
“One day you’ll know. Or perhaps not.”
“Tell me anyway,” she said, “about the madhouse.”
“They vanished,” he said, “But not the warders. There were twenty of those. I can see them now – in my mind. All were found dead. Some were in corners and some pressed up against the ceiling like flies, stuck fast. Can you see it, too?”
“Dead,” she said.
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
“How?”
“They drowned. And they were drunk to a man. Drunk and drowned.”
“But meanwhile,” she said, “these may be lies. Why did you tell me?”
“You asked.”
“That’s no reason.”
“True. I told you so that you can see all the way around the great circle, of which you are now a part. My congratulations. Now you’re one of us.”
“No,” said Leocadia.
“Then,” said Thomas, “what are you?”
He rose and came to soldierly attention as she walked away.
The new canvases were gone. That must be the doing of Van Orles, his repayment.
The rest of her equipment – paints, brushes, knives, and rags – were still there. Even the easel. Even the brown bottle with the penguin.
Penguin Gin, it eases pain.
Nothing to paint on.
Her frustration was boiling and immense.
In one of her notebooks – on the surface of which it would be impossible to apply paint – she wrote down what the spider man had said to her, and the words of Thomas. But not what she had seen in the window, the maiden with orange marmalade hair.
Penguin Gin, Penguin Gin, drink it up –
She poured vodka slowly.
The walls of the Residence seemed to be breathing. The gray screens of them must try to shift, and other barriers pass behind them, through them …
