Asylum

by Kristen Selleck

  A knock announced Dr. Willard’s arrival. He burst through the door and surveyed the girls with a satisfied and benign smile under his villainous moustache.

  “Hard at work I see,” he beamed.

  “Yup. Plugging away, Dr. Willard,” Sam answered quickly, snapping Chloe back into reality.

  “Excellent. Really excellent. Well ladies, what have you got for me this week?” Dr. Willard held his hands out.

  Sam climbed to her feet, gripping the folder. Chloe followed.

  “Just a few things this week, sir,” Sam was all business. “First there was Samuel Blythe. He was on your list of transient patients. We have a record of him at Eloise in 1881, and another at Pontiac in 1885. One on a patient register and the other on…what was it Clo?” Sam prodded.

  “In a doctor’s notes,” Chloe added.

  “Then there’s two records of patient groups. One is an article about the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, and it mentions Elizabeth Packard and her history,” Sam said producing the crumbling clipping from the file, “And the other…” she trailed off, glancing at Chloe.

  “The other one we weren’t sure about,” Chloe took up the narrative. “The other is a letter from a patient to her family that might possibly mention a group.”

  “Let’s have a look,” Dr. Willard suggested, reaching for the folder. He skimmed through the contents with pursed lips. Sam clasped her hands over her backpack subconsciously.

  “Others,” mused Dr. Willard, “and from which institute did this come?”

  “I think it was Traverse City,” Sam tried to sound uncertain.

  “It’s interesting. We can’t say for sure that it is a group, but let’s do this…let’s add, what was the name? Oh yes, Elizabeth Decker Mathers, let’s add her name to the list. Anything you can find out about her would be most interesting indeed,” Dr. Willard decided. “Ah yes, and before I forget-”

  Dr. Willard swung the black leather case he always carried with him, onto the bench and unzipped it. He pulled out two sheets of paper and handed them to the girls. They were identical hand-written lists with more names on them.

  “I have a few more names for you. I’m constantly tracking down and finding new material for my collection, and more often than not it always seems to make more work!” He laughed heartily.

  The girls joined in politely though with much less enthusiasm.

  “So that’s it for this week then, nothing else?” he asked.

  “We just didn’t have a whole lot of time this week…midterms,” Chloe shrugged.

  “Of course, of course,” Dr. Willard agreed. “Well, just keep moving, slow and steady wins the race ladies. Shall we say same time, same place next week?”

  “Sounds good, sir,” Sam agreed.

  “Big game tonight, first home game of the season,” he reminded them. “Do you plan on attending?”

  “Yeah, we were thinking of going. We wanted to get through another box first though,” Chloe assured him.

  “Very good. I’m headed to the rink right now, never miss a game,” Dr. Willard declared. “We have a great team this year. You probably heard we won last week in Minnesota?”

  “Yes, sir,” Chloe said proudly.

  “Well, good luck ladies. We’ll see you next week.”

  Dr. Willard nodded to them and made his exit. Chloe and Sam listened to his footsteps echo down the hallway.

  “A…M…,” Sam said in a small voice.

  “I know,” Chloe said.

  “Don’t say it’s coincidence again,” Sam warned.

  “I wasn’t going to. I wish I could, but I don’t believe that,” she admitted.

  “What do we do? How do we find out what A.M. is, what it stands for?” Sam asked.

  “I guess we should focus on Traverse City. There’s at least one earlier letter that I know of. There may be even more, we know the general time period. She died sometime between 1889 and…well, it doesn’t say, does it? But the box is 1885-1895 and he must have had some way of dating it if it’s in here. Like, maybe he got it with a bunch of papers that did have dates. So we’ll say between 1889 and 1895,” Chloe decided.

  “Do we have time to start now?” Sam asked, glancing at the round school clock on the back wall. Chloe followed her gaze.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I want to make sure we get there by face-off. I know this is important. I know it is, but I kind of remember my therapist saying something about how when your obsession takes over your enjoyment of life, that’s when you know you’re unhealthy,” she reasoned.

  “You just want to go ‘eye hump’ Seth in all his hockey gear,” Sam giggled.

  “Well…yeah. That too,” Chloe agreed. “Did you get the whole thing with the hat? His mom made it! Tell me that isn’t sweet.”

  “Oh, and speaking of moms again, I forgot to ask--did he meet yours? Because if he did then at least she‘s good for something. He probably took one look at her and thought, ohhhh score, if Chloe’s going to look like that in forty years, I should totally marry her,” Sam mimicked.

  “He did meet her…and then he made her leave,” Chloe smiled.

  “Wait…what? Tell!” Sam demanded.

  “He came in to drop the tickets off and was really nice and introduced himself to her and then she started ripping into me. Completely saying everything about how I was all crazy and embarrassing and how it seemed really strange that now I’m just fine, and have a boyfriend and I‘m acting all normal. Basically accusing me of doing it all for attention, and she wouldn’t leave when I told her to, and he was all like, ‘I-think-you-had-better-go!” Chloe mimicked in a deep voice.

  “He didn’t!” Sam laughed.

  “Yes, he did! I was there and I couldn’t believe it!”

  “Wow. So wait though…she called him your boyfriend? I mean, have you guys talked about it? You know, defined what you are or-” Sam trailed off.

  “No,” Chloe admitted. “I guess that didn’t even occur to me. I was kind of focused on the part where she told him I was a psychopath that acted out for attention. Thanks for reminding me though, I really needed something else to worry about.” Chloe patted Sam on the back.

  Dr. Willard cracked the door open, making both the girls jump.

  “Sorry!” he apologized, “sorry, should have knocked. I completely forgot. I think I mentioned the fact that I recently acquired some new material? I left it in the backseat of my car. I had meant to bring it in with me. Here it is.”

  He dropped another cardboard box, this one unlabelled, on top of the nearest stack.

  “When you get the chance, I’ll need you to sort through this and file away the contents by year and hospital. Most of them are Newberry papers, a few Traverse City, and you’ll need to start a new box for Waverly Hills. I made a recent trip to Louisville and followed some leads that turned out to be excellent. Alright ladies, au revoir, this time I mean it.” Dr. Willard made them a rather comical bow and was gone before they could reply.

  Sam heaved a frustrated sigh and glared at the box as though she could burn in with her eyes.

  “Great, just what we need, more to do,” she complained.

  “Well, not right now anyway,” Chloe said, grabbing her bag and stuffing Dr. Willard’s new list inside. “We’ll worry about it this weekend. We don’t want to be late for the game.”

  Sam nodded in agreement and reached for her bag. Chloe had just started for the door when she heard Sam gasp.

  “What?!” Chloe demanded, whirling around.

  Sam held her copy of Dr. Willard’s additions in her shaking hands. Her face, Chloe noticed had gone white.

  “Clo…look!” She squeaked.

  Instead of grabbing Sam’s copy, Chloe ripped her bag open and snatched the list out of it. There was that strange and elaborate handwriting again. This time it was a list that only included names. She skimmed it once, and saw nothing unusual. She read through it again, slower. She stopped. The third name down the list…she had seen it before
. Seen it a lot actually, as she had spent the past month searching tirelessly for it…George Townsend.

  “George Townsend,” she said out loud.

  Sam brushed past her and dropped to her knees in front of the box Dr. Willard had set on the floor. She ripped off the cardboard top and flung it. Without gloves, she reached in and pulled out a handful of papers, giving some to Chloe.

  “If he got these names by reviewing new material, there has to be something in here on him,” Sam explained.

  Chloe sat down beside her.

  “Did you see the letters next to his name?” she asked. “the N has to be for Newberry, of course, but he has a TCSH and an IACI with a question mark.”

  “IACI?” Sam wondered.

  “Ionia Asylum for the Criminally Insane,” Chloe spelled out glumly.

  Sam nodded and began skimming through papers. Chloe copied her, both girls reading with the same sense of urgency. Without agreeing on a system of organization they quickly began discarding pages into four piles. Those that seemed to refer to Newberry in one, those from Traverse City in another, those from the new asylum in Kentucky made up the third pile, and the last and largest pile were those that they couldn’t identify with total certainty.

  Sam was still tearing through the writing when Chloe remembered the game and glanced up at the clock.

  “Sam, we’re gonna be late,” she said, pointing at the time.

  Sam nodded and continued reading.

  “We can come back, or we can do this tomorrow,” Chloe insisted. “Sam, I know this is important, but I don’t want to miss the game.”

  “Let’s take the box!” Sam decided.

  “We can’t, what if he comes in and notices it’s gone? What are we going to do, take it to the game with us?” Chloe demanded.

  “He’ll probably think we’ve just sorted it out into other boxes, and he won’t come anyway. We’ll take the box back to the room, and then we can spend all weekend trying to find George,” Sam suggested. “Besides, we’re already going to be late, what’s another ten minutes?”

  Chloe glanced nervously at the clock and nodded her agreement. Arguing with Sam would take more time. Sam stacked the piles one on top of the other and shoved them back into the box which she hauled up onto her hip. The girls took off for the elevator at a speed walk, Chloe setting the pace.

  Outside on the street, it was full dark. Sam and Chloe hurried towards the bus stop. In the distance, where the library road joined the main campus drag, Chloe could see hundreds of red flickering lights where an endless line of cars inched towards the arena.

  “Come on, come on,” Chloe whispered under her breath. She stepped out into the street, looking for the bus.

  “It’s all the traffic to the game,” Sam called, “it’s probably stuck trying to cross Seller road. Hey wait! Chloe? Doesn’t that guy live on our floor?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Sam raced toward the parking lot, the cardboard box bouncing against her hip at every step. Chloe took one last look for the bus and chased after her.

  Ahead, Chloe saw Sam come to an abrupt stop. She back-stepped, and almost began to turn around when a dark sedan pulled up in front of her and rolled the window down. Chloe was too far away and it was too dark to see who was inside. The only thing she knew for sure was that Sam had not wanted to talk to or be seen by the person in it.

  Chloe crept up behind Sam stealthily, trying to get a look at who was in the car.

  “-And we just wanted to get a head start on sorting through what was in here, so we thought that if we took it home, we could go through it tonight, after the game…” Sam was explaining.

  It was Willard, of course. Chloe couldn’t hear his reply.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. I guess we were just so excited to get started that we…uhhh…we didn’t think of that,” Sam apologized.

  Great! thought Chloe, Another thing we need, now we’re in trouble with Dr. Willard for snatching his papers. We are never going to get to the game!

  “Sure, that’d be great!” she heard Sam say and she opened the rear door of the car and climbed into the backseat with the box. Dr. Willard motioned to Chloe.

  “Get in, I’ll give you a ride to your dormitory,” he offered.

  Chloe ran around to the other door and got in. The road was empty the way they were headed, the exact opposite direction of the arena.

  “I really appreciate your enthusiasm for this project ladies, truly I do,” Dr. Willard began, “but I’ll have to ask you not to take home materials from the collection anymore. Most of them are very delicate, they could easily be destroyed or lost.”

  “Sorry,” Chloe apologized, glancing at Sam.

  “If I might ask, is this something that you do a lot, or were you hoping to find something in particular?” Dr. Willard wondered.

  “There was a name we recognized on the new list you gave us,” Sam answered without hesitation, “it was a patient we read about in an old newspaper clipping. We just felt bad about not having much material for you the past couple of weeks and thought that if we could find more information on the guy we might be able to actually impress you next week.”

  Chloe saw Dr. Willard glance at them in his rearview mirror. All she could see of him were his eyes, but they seemed surprised. She hoped that it was all Sam would tell him. It didn’t seem smart or healthy that they were now mixing their extra-curricular obsession with their schoolwork, or to include Dr. Willard in their secret.

  “What patient was this, and what newspaper?” he asked, his eyes in the mirror sparkled with interest.

  “George Townsend,” Sam answered promptly, “there was an old article about our dorm that mentioned him. The name just kind of stuck with me for some reason…”

  Chloe noticed that now Dr. Willard’s eyes were screwed up in thought. She couldn‘t get Sam out of that car fast enough. Outside, she could see Kirkbride Hall growing larger. They were almost home. She begged Sam silently not to say anything more.

  A minute later, Dr. Willard’s car pulled up to the curb in front of their dormitory. Chloe had the door open before the car came to a stop.

  “Wait!” Dr. Willard commanded. “I’m headed to the game, did you want me to wait, give you a ride there? I’m already late.”

  “Thanks, but no. We’re going to take the bus…with…uhhh...some friends,” Chloe added lamely.

  She jumped out of the car before Dr. Willard could insist and noticed the commotion almost immediately. Someone had just burst through the front doors of the Hall screaming, and was racing toward them, followed by a few curious onlookers. She heard a door slam as Sam got out of the car on the other side.

  It was a girl. Her eyes were huge and terrified, her cheeks streaked in lines of dripping mascara, her mouth frozen in a horrified ’O’. She noticed Sam and Chloe and changed course, heading right for them. It was Jen, and she was crying and babbling almost incoherently.

  “Jen, what the hell? What happened? What’s wrong?” Sam demanded, catching her by both her arms. “Look at me…what’s going on?”

  Chloe placed a hand on Jen’s shoulder. She was shaking.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God, oh my God, Oh my God!” Jen wailed.

  “Stop it, Jen!” Sam gave her a shake, “What’s wrong with you?”

  Jen crammed a fist in her mouth and rocked back and forth a few times. Chloe had seen this maneuver before, used this maneuver even. It was the physically-stop-your-mouth-and-give-yourself-a-moment-to-calm-down position. She stared at Sam, biting her knuckles and rocking.

  “Sssssh,” Chloe whispered. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

  Although she had never particularly liked Jen, it was hard not to do anything for someone so obviously terrified. Jen took a long shaky breath and let her hand drop.

  “It’s Mel. Don’t know. We were drinking. She’s not herself. Saw something awful. She’s not herself. Something’s in her. She’s got stuff all over the walls. She’s not herself,” Jen spoke in rapid bursts, s
ucking in quick, panicky gasps between each sentence. Hyperventilating, Chloe decided watching her.

  Dr. Willard was out of his car, standing off to one side of the crowd that was beginning to ring around them.

  “Where is she? What do you mean ‘she’s not herself’?” Sam insisted.

  “Take her upstairs,” Chloe leaned in and whispered to Sam, “take her to our room.”

  She turned back to the car and grabbed their box. Dr. Willard was still standing by his door, radiating concern.

  “What’s going on? Is there some kind of problem?” he asked, watching Sam lead Jen away. “Is there something I can do?”

  Chloe shook her head.

  “Nothing. Her…her boyfriend just ummm…broke up with her or something,” Chloe lied, “thanks though.”

  She waved goodbye at him over her shoulder. She could tell that he was still standing there indecisively.

  She caught up to Jen and Sam on the stairs. Sam had her arm around Jen’s shoulders and was walking by her side slowly. Jen’s eyes were still huge, wide…it made Chloe think of a horse being led somewhere it was terrified to go. Neither of them spoke.

  Considering it was Friday night, and most of the student body was at the game, it was pretty strange to see their hallway so crammed with bodies. All of the students were standing still, or craning their necks to gawk at something further down the hall.

  Down by Jen’s room they finally saw Melanie. She was standing with one hand against the wall, swaying like the ground was moving under her feet. Her head hung down between her shoulders, her hair hiding her face. Watching her, Chloe felt goosebumps spread across her arms.

  Instantly, Mel’s head whipped up, revealing the strangest expression Chloe had ever seen. Her mouth was slack, drooling almost. Her eyebrows were frozen in arcs of surprise or shock, and even from far away, she could see that the girl’s eyes were so dilated they looked like black circles. But still…they were glazed over eyes, eyes that didn’t take anything in. Melanie swayed once. The press of bodies around them seemed to fall back.

  Chloe could see now that she held something in her hand, a marker… a highlighter maybe? Wildly uncoordinated, Melanie flailed out with the arm that held the marker and began making slashing motions at the wall. It was horrible, like watching a giant invisible child playing with a rag doll. Melanie’s whole body seemed to hang from her wrist which was high above her head, scrawling jerkily across the wall.