by Ilana Waters
Aren’t those the rooms for permanent residents? Where Laura said she heard horrid screams coming from?
But what if the girl inside needed help? I couldn’t just turn my back. Curse it all. Maybe I could see what she wanted very quickly and then sneak away.
I didn’t have time to make a decision. In a few swift movements, the girl opened the door, grabbed my arm, pulled me into the room, and slammed the door shut. Then she spun me around and stood in front of the door, hair matted, eyes wild. Her clothing was torn, her fingernails long and dirty. I put my finger up to point in my usual senseless, defensive gesture. Was she the creature Dr. Catron wanted so badly?
But as I squinted and looked closer, I realized she couldn’t be. For one thing, she didn’t have dark skin. I also saw that no one had bothered to brush her hair, or let her near a comb. They hadn’t bothered to change or mend her clothing either. No wonder she looked like hell. To top it all off, she had scars all around her fingers, palms, wrists, and forearms. As if she’d had a lot of experience trying to fight people off.
She was just a girl, like me. An unkempt, forgotten girl, but a girl nonetheless.
By the looks of things, she had no roommate. Her room was smaller than Rose and Laura’s; what they called a single, not a double. There was only one bed. I guessed most of the reserved quarters were private ones. Catron probably didn’t want the “advanced cases” rooming with the general population, the same way he didn’t want me doing so.
But I was still trapped by the girl standing in front of the door. Maybe if I convinced her I was friendly, she wouldn’t hurt me. I lowered my finger. It was bizarre; I’d never gestured with it before I came to the asylum. I really had to stop this pointless pointing.
“What’s your name?” I asked gently.
“Francine.” She cocked her head to get a better look at me.
“Great. Ah, nice to meet you, Francine. I’m . . .” While I was debating whether or not to tell her my real name, she said it for me.
“Se-lu-na.” She grinned and drew the word out the same way Catron did, but it didn’t sound as frightening coming from her. “I know who you are. We all know who you are.”
“We? We who?”
“Lunatics. You have quite a lot of influence over us.” Before I could ask Francine what she meant, she spoke on. “It’s a good thing dear old Bonnie didn’t lock my door right. Honestly, it’s a wonder that woman can tie her bootlaces in the morning.”
“If your door’s unlocked, why don’t you try to get out of here?” If you’re not dangerous, maybe we can hide together, I thought.
“For the same reason you don’t. How long do you think we’d last on the wild moors, or in the daaark, forbidden forest?” She wiggled her fingers at me. “How long before they find us and drag us back?” I couldn’t deny it was true. This girl might have been crazy, but she was also savvy.
“Not to mention the fact that my family just up and left me here,” she said. “So I don’t have anywhere else to go. Do you?” She looked at me pointedly, as if she already knew the answer.
“I suppose not,” I replied.
“Just as I thought. No, I’m here for the duration.” Her eyes took on a dull, dead quality, and she looked at the floor. “I’ve resigned myself to fate.” Her head snapped back up. “But that doesn’t mean you have to. There’s something strong about you. Special.”
“I . . . I don’t think so. I’m flattered, though.”
She laughed a little too loudly. “Oh, it’s not just flattery, dear. You’re going to need all your strength for what’s coming.” As if on cue, a loud wind swooped through the trees around Silver Hill, rattling the windows. Francine gave a jump and crouched down to the bed’s footboard. She laughed again and motioned for me to get on the bed. Then she wrapped her dirty hands around the footboard’s thin metal rails. Now, it looked as if we were gazing at one another through the bars of a prison cell.
“The earth, the moon, they can feel it.” She glanced around the room, then looked at me with penetrating eyes. “Can you feel it? It won’t be long now. Not more than seven nights or so, I’d say.”
I shivered. That was the third person to mention the Event. Well, not mention it specifically, but it had to be what Francine was talking about.
Francine took my shivering to mean I agreed with her. “Ah, so you do feel it! Splendid. I’m glad you know.”
“Know what?”
She ignored my question. “This makes it so much easier. I mean, sometimes, I actually think you have trouble remembering.” She almost seemed to be talking to herself.
“Trouble remembering what? Why did you pull me in here? Are you in trouble?”
“Oh, I’m in trouble, all right,” she said bitterly. “But not the kind you can help with. As for why I pulled you in here, well, I just wanted to make sure it was you. After all, I might not have another chance to meet you. It’s quite an honor.”
“Ah, thanks. Honored to make your acquaintance as well.” I had no idea what Francine was going on about, but this encounter reminded me of my first time meeting Dym. “It’s you!” he’d said, even though he’d never met me before. Likewise, I was certain I’d never met Francine.
“Mind if I ask why you’re in a room marked ‘Reserved’?” I ventured.
“Because I’m crazy,” Francine said simply, as if I were already aware.
“Right, got that. We’re all crazy here.” I rolled my eyes.
Francine didn’t. “No, I mean I’m really crazy,” she said. “As crazy as they come. I’ve got schizophrenia.”
I sucked in my breath. “What’s that?” It didn’t sound good. I hope it didn’t mean she was dangerous.
“It means sometimes I see things that aren’t there, hear things that aren’t real. At least, other people say they’re not real.” She took a thick piece of her hair and waved it back and forth.
“What kinds of things?” I asked.
Francine shrugged. “Shapes, shadows. Sometimes people. I hear them telling me to do things.” She looked to the left and right, then leaned closer to me, as if trying not to be overheard. “But I’ll tell you a secret.” She put a hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles. “I don’t always listen!” She giggled again, and continued waving her chunk of hair.
This girl is all over the place, I thought. “When did it start? Your hearing and seeing things, I mean?”
“A few years ago.” I didn’t ask how old Francine was, but she looked about my age, maybe a year or two older.
“Do you . . . do you hurt people?” I leaned back slightly.
Francine stopped waving her hair back and forth. Instead, she shook it at me. “Now, why would I do a thing like that? Sure, some crazy people are dangerous. But not all of them. Some are only a danger to themselves. And there are plenty of people who aren’t crazy—or who the world thinks are just fine—who hurt folks every day.”
I thought briefly of Dr. Catron and his staff. “I agree with you there. But is there anything they can do for your, um, type of crazy? Like a treatment?”
“There are medicines that might help. But I fear Dr. Catron and his cronies have other methods they enjoy using far more.”
I nodded sadly. “Right you are again.” Incredible. There really is someone who needs mental help in this insane asylum. Knowing Silver Hill as I did, it seemed ironic. This was the last place such a person should be. The last place any person should be.
Could this be the goddess they were talking about? I wondered. But I quickly realized it was impossible. By the state of her, Francine had been here quite a while—long before I overheard Catron and Flack’s conversation. If they were still looking for a goddess after Francine was admitted, she couldn’t be “the one.” Or could she? Maybe Catron suspected she was, but needed proof. As I’d said to Dym, I felt Catron was waiting for proof of something. I just didn’t know what.
“But you know the most twisted thing of all?” Franc
ine asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“No, what?”
“My family didn’t send me to Silver Hill because I see and hear things.” She put down her hair and folded her arms across her chest.
I frowned. “Really? Then why did they send you here?”
“Because I didn’t want to be part of the façade anymore, the lie they were telling the world. I wanted to live a different life.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“My family occupies a particular social position. But I want to break out of it. They want me to stay by their side, to never change. They see anything else as a betrayal.”
“I think I know of someone like that,” I said, with Geraldine in mind. “This person wanted to be an artist instead of following her parents into jobs they hated. I think they were convinced she was betraying them by being true to her heart.”
Francine snorted and uncrossed her arms, digging one fist into the opposite palm. “I wonder if it ever occurred to her parents that they betrayed her. We all have a responsibility to encourage each other to be the best versions of ourselves. They failed to do that.
“And there’s more to me than just a crazy person, you know.” Francine suddenly stood straight up, agitated. “Before they pulled me out of school, I wanted to be a union organizer. You know, one of those people who fight for workers’ rights. They call us mad because we want to blow the whistle on exploitation and hypocrisy, to advocate for change.”
“I know there’s more to you than crazy,” I said quietly. My tone was partly to avoid upsetting Francine, and partly because I believed what she was saying. “Sometimes, I think madness is just the name our enemies give us. It symbolizes everything they’re not ready to face. Instead of admitting they have a huge problem on their hands, it’s easier to focus on a single person, to call them mad. Then they never have to address the real issue, which is usually much more complicated.”
“You know what beats it all?” Francine sat down on the bed and exhaled loudly, as if all the fight had gone out of her. “The worst part of being crazy isn’t the crazy. It’s the loneliness. Being in a world that exists only to you—some parts grand, some ghastly—but one others can’t experience. It’s the most horrific way of being alone. Because you aren’t, really. People may be sitting right beside you.” I was sitting right beside Francine, but she stared straight ahead without looking at me. “And yet, it doesn’t matter. For all you have in common, you may as well be on separate planets.”
Now, she did look at me. “Do you have any idea what that’s like? To be completely isolated in a universe that is perhaps of your own making, perhaps not? And it’s not the kind of place where you can just find a door and leave.” She threw out her hands in exasperation. “It follows you, envelopes you wherever you go. You can’t escape, and no one can pound their way through to rescue you, even if they wanted to. Which they never do. On the contrary: people are so repulsed and frightened by me that they usually run far and fast in the other direction.” Her voice hung heavy with agony and despair. “And there’s no relief, no relief at all.” Her throat caught on the last word, and I feared she was about to cry.
I longed to reach out to her. To take her hand and tell her that I did understand. But Francine didn’t seem like the kind of girl who appreciated being touched. Besides, she was unpredictable. She might just decide to grab my hand and spin me around again. Instead, I replied:
“It’s funny, isn’t it? I have strange dreams—one might say they’re a world of madness. But they’re not what scare me so. It’s the hellacious realm that exists just outside.” I raised my hands to indicate the room, the asylum. “It’s full of frantic and cowardly people, more willing to run each other over than contemplate a new idea, much less help a soul in need. I don’t know about you, but more often than not, my imaginary world is peaceful, calm. Idyllic.”
The corners of Francine’s mouth lifted into a smile. “If only these fools could see your world. Then they’d be running towards it, not away, eh? But they never will.” Her smile faded, and she sighed. “In reality, they’re the ones who are trapped, not us. Trapped under a siren-spell of madness, unable to escape the tiny world they’ve bricked themselves up in.” She looked at her dirty hands and nails, turning them over and over. “Stupid people.”
Suddenly, we heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall.
“She’s here!” Francine’s eyes went wide. She grabbed my hands, pulling me up and spinning me towards the door. As she shoved me through it, she said, “You have to get out before she sees you in my company!”
“But what about you?” I pressed.
“Don’t worry about me. It’s more important that you fulfill your mission.”
“What mission?”
“Go!” she hissed, and pushed me so hard it left a bruise on my shoulder that I only found the next day. I closed the door to Francine’s room just in time to see Nurse Bonnie walking towards me, muttering to herself.
“Well, that wasn’t a boatload of giggles, I can tell you.” She came briskly down the hall, wiping her palms together. “Thank heavens they got that there patient sedated. She won’t be causin’ no more trouble till she wakes up, if she wakes up.” She pressed her damp palms against her uniform in a final effort to clean them, then looked up and saw me.
“You! There you are. Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t. You was over there.” She pointed to Rose and Laura’s door. “Now you’s over there.” She pointed to Francine’s door.
I had to think quickly. “You told me to stand over here. Don’t you remember?”
“No, I don’t remember tellin’ you to stand—”
“You said I should look in them—I meant, these—rooms and see what happens to patients who don’t do as they’re told.”
“I . . . I did?” Nurse Bonnie looked confused.
“That’s what I heard. Good thing, too. One peek in those windows . . .” I shuddered. “I won’t be misbehaving if that’s what happens to them that do. I mean, those who do.”
“I did tell you to stand there, didn’t I? Clever of me, wasn’t it?” She straightened her skirt. “Right, then. Time for us to run along. Quick-quick, now!”
Bloody hell, I thought. My one chance to hide and I completely fumbled it. As Nurse Bonnie brusquely escorted me to the garret, I tried to think of how to get another opportunity to be alone with the Book. I needed more undisturbed time to translate page 136. Even with my reduced need for sleep, which let me translate into the midnight hours, it was slow going. Or perhaps I could gain another audience with Francine. She seemed to know more about the Event than she let on. Maybe she knew about the creature and the goddess, too.
But I was never to see Francine again.
Chapter 10
Laura was going downhill fast.
She was getting shocked more and more often, and had started forgetting things. Every time I saw her, her eyes looked a lighter shade of blue than I remembered. She’d also taken to mouthing words to herself when she thought Rose and I weren’t looking. I wondered if she was beginning to see and hear things the way Francine did.
“I can’t give the answers fast enough,” she whispered when we asked after her. “Or I think they’re the right answers, the ones he wants to hear. But it turns out they’re not. I don’t know what to do anymore.” Then she’d wring her hands back and forth so hard I thought they’d fly off.
Rose’s predicament was also rapidly turning sour. Although she managed to get out of additional shock treatments, she said it was because Dr. Catron wanted to try something different with her.
“ ‘Different’?” I asked one day while we were in the solarium. Evening socialization here had dwindled from fifteen minutes to hardly more than five. “Different as in better or worse?”
“I don’t know.” As Rose pushed the hair off her forehead, I could see her hands
were shaking. Whether it was from nerves or nicotine cravings, I couldn’t tell. “Better for him, maybe. I don’t know how it could mean better for me. They caught me smoking a few times.”
“Rose!” I gasped.
“I know, I know.” She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled at her curls. “But I couldn’t help it. Now, Catron says I’m one of his ‘difficult cases.’ He says he’ll have to accelerate treatment, whatever that means.”
“Just try not to get into any more trouble,” I begged. “Laura and I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. Right, Laura?” But Laura was gazing out the barred window, shaking her head and mumbling. Rose and I exchanged a glance, then looked away from one another and Laura.
Absorbed in their own troubles, my friends had completely stopped asking about my reanimation abilities. It was just another sign of how bad things were getting at Silver Hill. I desperately wished I had more than a parlor trick to help them. And the other patients were disappearing at a faster rate than ever. Catron wasn’t even bothering to hide the fact that the remaining ones were restrained far more than necessary. We frequently passed girls in the hall strapped to chairs and beds. I didn’t get too close a look, but I could’ve sworn one had been tied down so long the skin of her wrists was growing around the leather straps.
My visits to Rose and Laura in their room were becoming less and less frequent as well. And when we were together, we often heard screams and pleadings coming from down dark corridors. Once, we even heard something like chains being dragged over stone floors.
“Ooo, that gives me the shivers!” said Rose, remarking on the chain noises. She rubbed her arms and huddled close to Laura, who was sitting on one of the beds, knees drawn to her chest. I felt a chill run through me as well, as if I’d been showered with ice.
“It’s just like in a ghost story,” I agreed.
“But not like your ghost story, Seluna,” Laura whispered. She’d stopped mumbling for a few moments, and was almost like her old self. “This is like the bad ones. Where people end up dying.”
