by SJI Holliday
She takes her make-up bag from the holdall on the floor and lays it on the dressing table. She thinks about putting on some eyeliner and mascara, maybe some lipstick, but decides against it. Maybe later – for this party thing. She’ll make more of an effort then. The dressing table has a long, narrow drawer with a small porcelain knob. She pulls it open and finds a folder inside.
The Book of Light.
She flicks through the pages. There’s an introduction – ‘The Essence of Us’, then a page with a list of things under the heading ‘Guidance for a Bright Existence’.
Ali sighs. ‘Well, I suppose there had to be something like this,’ she mutters.
‘What?’ Jack says, muffled. She glances across and sees that he has disappeared under the blankets.
‘I found the Twelve Steps.’ She tosses the folder onto the bed and it lands in the approximate place where she assumes his head to be. ‘Give yourself something to do while I’m out. See if you can connect to the higher power. Work out what exactly it is we’ve let ourselves in for.’ She shakes her head, but she’s smiling.
Jack pokes his face out of the covers. ‘Your idea,’ he says.
She’s about to let the door bang, but decides it would be better to close it quietly, just in case someone is listening. Paranoid, maybe, but despite the niceties, she has the feeling they don’t want her wandering off on her own. Not until she knows the rules.
She locks the door with the giant key, locking Jack inside. She definitely doesn’t want him roaming around on his own. Not now, and probably not ever. She’s never going to be able to relax, and wonders again if the sacrifice is worth it. She’s spent so much time with Jack these last few months. She could do with a bit of time to herself, but it’s hard to switch off when she’s spent so much time being switched on. Looking after her patients. Looking after Jack. And for what? This life? Is it ever going to be enough?
They’ll find out soon enough.
She glances left and right along the dimly lit corridor. She knows where they came from – the entrance, the main stairwell. She decides to go along the corridor in the opposite direction. See what there is to see that way. From what she knows already, there are eleven people living here, including themselves, which isn’t a lot for the size of the place. She did plenty of research on the building before they agreed to come, spending hours on the internet, scrolling through websites, being taken from one thing to the next: the history of the hospital; pictures from when it was abandoned on one of those urban explorers’ sites – those people who sneak into disused properties and snoop around. It’s an illegal and dangerous activity, one that, she discovered, was going on long before people got the ability to share photos of their finds on social media. Quite fascinating though, she imagines. She read a book about people who did it, a crime novel written by a Scottish author, where a body was found in an old tunnel. It’d been the first time she’d heard the term ‘urbexing’ and she’d been vaguely interested in it since. Smeaton moved here in 1995, and prior to that the people who’d managed to find their way into this place had reported rooms left abandoned, still filled with medical equipment and files and all sorts – their posts were full of glee, at finally having places to share their information with fellow enthusiasts. Where is all of that equipment now? Presumably someone eventually came and took it all away. She’d love to come across some old paperwork, something more to read about the place. There’re bound to be some interesting cases – the kind of things she used to spend her time researching. She’s supposed to be leaving that all behind, but she can’t quite let go of her curiosity just yet. She must visit the library. Smeaton sent her a photograph of it when she first emailed him, reassuring her that she would never run out of things to read.
She’d read up on the history of the commune, too. Decided that as far as communes went, it wasn’t too hippy-ish and extreme. Hence the rules. Although seeing the list like that had given her a shudder. Made her think of cults and brainwashing and crazy ideologies. But this place was meant to be different.
She has a flashback to the welcome meeting, when she’d been half dazed, not really thinking about it all, not really taking it in when they had talked in the small sitting room about finding the light.
The light.
What did they even mean by that?
Ali walks slowly down the corridor. There are only two other doors, one on either side. Unlike her room, which has a solid door with panels, these ones have a boarded rectangular space where she assumes there was once a pane of glass. Could they have been wards? It would explain why there are only two doors, and lots of wall space. Wall space that is peppered with holes where various noticeboards must have been placed. One still remains, the cork dried and crumbling at the edges. She hesitates outside the door on her left, the one on the same side as her bedroom. She has no idea what might be in there, whether it is someone’s room or not. Should she open it, have a look inside? Knock? Just in case someone is in there. She presses an ear to the door and holds her breath. She tries to listen for any sounds. Nothing. Maybe she should leave it; wait to be shown around properly. For all she knows, it might even be dangerous in there. Unsafe. She has no idea how much of the building is habitable. Don’t these old places have asbestos walls? She hears a faint noise. Scratching. She pulls away from the door, fast, as if she’s been burned. Is someone in there? She takes a deep breath and tries to control the panic in her chest. She turns back towards her room.
Leave it. Just go and get ready for the welcome party.
But still she stares at the door, as if expecting it to open – for someone to come out, startled by her presence. Both of them laughing at the fright they’ve given each other. She swallows and walks back along the corridor towards her room. The lights flicker, briefly, as they did earlier, when she was with Angela and Jack.
As she’s taking her key out of her pocket, she hears that sound again.
Scratching.
She whips around, but there is no one there. Nothing. She closes her eyes. Opens them again. Glances back along the corridor once more … And what is that? She squints in the dim light. The floor. Something is on the floor.
Footprints. Small. Wet.
Leading away from her room, down the corridor.
Disappearing in front of her eyes.
7
Angela
Assuming they are both having a sleep, I decide to leave them to it and not make any noise that might alert them to my presence above. Back in my own room, I rummage in my bedside drawer for the mobile phone and the charger, and plug it in. I have to wait a few moments for it to charge enough to be able to use it, even when plugged in. It’s an old phone. Pay-as-you-go sim card on the only network that gets a decent signal around here. Mobile phones are certainly ‘not advised’ but they aren’t outright banned. No one uses them much though. Even if I didn’t keep mine hidden away for the occasional times I need to use it, even if I left it out, carried it around for all to see, what would I do with it? It doesn’t connect to the internet. And I have no one to call or text.
Well, that’s not quite true.
I have Mary, at the local shop in the village, who sells everything that most people need, and orders in anything that people ask her to. She lets me use the internet in the back of the shop, too – and sometimes her son, Chris, helps me find what I need. Smeaton has made it clear that the internet is definitely something that we don’t need at Rosalind House, but he doesn’t expressly forbid anyone using it elsewhere. Now and again. Given that I don’t have a car and it’s almost five miles to the shop, I don’t visit the village very often, unless I can persuade someone to give me a lift. And when I do it feels like the biggest adventure. Sometimes I do miss living in the village, but I wanted to come to Rosalind House, and here I am.
It’s a far cry from my old life. I grew up in one of the third-wave new towns, full of London overspill and roundabouts. I’d like to say I had a happy childhood, but it was forgettable from the
start. I knew I didn’t belong there. I spent my time daydreaming and trying to avoid the bullies who could smell my indifference and were intent on destroying it. They started off wanting to make me like them, then they moved on to attempting to make me miserable. Neither plan worked. I drifted through my school days quite at ease with myself, knowing that it was all temporary and that as soon as I could, I would be gone.
I was fascinated by the paranormal, folklore, the seventeenth-century witch trials. I read all about Cromwell’s witchfinders, and Harry Price’s search for ghosts and I knew that I had found my calling. I trained myself to read tarot, dabbled with Ouija boards, kept hoping that if I cast enough spells I would find a link to the other side. I was desperate to become a medium, but it was pretty obvious that I didn’t possess a channel. I was never going to become a link to the undead. So I went back to Price and his followers, read up on parapsychology and decided to make it my life’s work to prove the existence of ghosts.
My parents accepted this, having long given up trying to find another path for me. I used to joke with them that I’d become a stripper. That’s where that comment to Ali had stemmed from. To be honest, I think they’d have seen that as a more viable way to live my life. They died before I had a chance to prove anything. Head-on collision with a fallen tree, on a dark and winding road. I was in the back seat, and aside from whiplash, I was completely unhurt. The police were stunned. The doctors said it was a miracle. It hadn’t felt like that, as I’d sat there in the car, the radio still playing an old fifties song that my dad loved, and the hiss of the engine escaping from the crumpled bonnet. I wanted to help them but I was trapped – both by the jammed seatbelt and by something in my mind that just couldn’t compute what was happening. I waited there until I saw the blue lights of the approaching ambulance, and then I started to scream. I screamed for them and I screamed for me – because I couldn’t see their souls as they passed, and so what hope was there that I could prove anything at all?
I could’ve given up then. If I had no link to my own parents while watching them die, then what chance was there that I’d find a link to another passed soul? But I was convinced it had to be possible. There couldn’t just be nothing. I needed to find evidence. I carried on trying to hone a craft that quite possibly didn’t exist, but I was determined. I wasn’t going to give up. I’d cheated death that day and there had to be a reason for that.
But then I saw something on TV, about the villages on the fens. About some uproar over an old hospital that should’ve been condemned, but was now housing a community of off-grid spiritualists. That’s when I knew I wasn’t alone.
I wasn’t able to move there straightaway. They were asking people to go through some convoluted process, spending time on a daily basis, getting to know their ways. So I took a shop job in a nearby village, which happened to come with a room. Just temporary, the owner said, while her son was working away for a while. Mary became a surrogate mother, and the villagers became my family.
They didn’t want me to move to Rosalind House; Mary and the other villagers tried to sabotage my attempts more than once. They told me that bad things had happened here, that the place had a tragic past. But none of them knew the true reason why I wanted to live here. It wasn’t just the alternative-community lifestyle, although that, of course, appealed. It was because I had done plenty of research of my own. I already knew about the hospital’s past, and more importantly what happened before that … a long time before, when superstition and fear ruled the land. I knew that the old hospital was said to be haunted.
And that is exactly why I am here.
8
Ali
‘So, Ali. Jack. How are you finding things so far? Probably a bit strange I imagine…’
Smeaton leans back into his high-backed leather chair. Ali and Jack sit opposite him on the other side of his desk, which looks as if it’s been made from an old door. Interesting, Ali thinks. She doesn’t know why but she had expected something a little more grand. She has no idea why she thinks that because this is not the kind of place that is grand. Was it ever? She’s still confused in her head about the building; from the outside it looks like a country mansion – its crumbling brickwork bound together by ivy. But on the inside it is very much an old hospital. She’d noticed the engraved brass map on the wall when they came in, a layout of the whole hospital and grounds. She hoped they’d get a tour soon, so she could get her bearings.
Jack has said practically nothing since they left the room. He wasn’t particularly interested in her story about what happened in the bathroom, making her think that she was overtired and imagined it. He was probably right. She thinks about bringing it up now to Smeaton, just to find out if anything similar has happened before. Strange occurrences might only be strange if you’re a newcomer. Strange occurrences like dreaming that you’re being drowned in the bath. Rationally she knows that it didn’t happen.
‘Well, you are right about it being strange,’ she says. ‘I’ve spent most of my adult working life in hospitals, but this place doesn’t feel like one. I know it’s not been used as one for a long time, but I thought that there would still be the sense of ward life, the patients. I’m probably being silly. As well as that, it’s messing with my head that from the outside it looks like an old country house, the kind of place that I could only dream about going to as a kid with my parents, for a walk around the gardens and a cream tea.’
Smeaton nods and smiles. ‘I know exactly what you mean, Ali. When I first heard about this place, I had the same feelings as you. I actually wondered if there might be a way that I could raise enough money to turn it into the kind of place you remember. From what I’ve learned of the history of the area, there was once a grand mansion here. But it burned down, and the land was nothing but brown fields for years. Then it was rebuilt as an asylum.’ He laughs and shakes his head, but his eyes don’t meet hers. ‘I don’t know all the details. The villagers, when you meet them, they’ll be overeager to tell you many stories about this place. Don’t listen to everything they say. They seem to exist on myths and legends…’
Ali twitches; she hasn’t voiced any of her concerns, but it’s as if Smeaton is reading her mind. He seems a little cagey too – suggesting he doesn’t know all the details when maybe he does. Stop it Ali, she mentally chides herself, you’re letting your imagination run away with itself.
Smeaton continues, oblivious to her distress. ‘You might not know what these places are like, coming from London, but where I’m from, up in the north of Scotland, things can feel very different – it’s the sheer isolated nature of existence there. So I can fully understand why these places are like they are. Unfortunately, there are no full records for the building and the details of what was here. That is unusual in itself, but from what I’ve been told there was a fire at some point. I believe the records room was damaged. Some of the wards too. One of the patients—’
Jack speaks at last. His voice is groggy, tired. ‘I don’t think we need to hear about that Smeaton, if you don’t mind. We came here to get away from the bleak realities of the modern world, the nightmare job that I had to deal with, all the stresses that I brought home.’ He glances across at Ali and she looks away. He continues: ‘We just need a simple life here. Doing manual things maybe. Things that I didn’t used to do in my old job, in my old life.’
‘Of course! Please accept my apologies. This is a peaceful place and people are happy here. I just get a little carried away sometimes, when I start talking about its history,’ Smeaton says. ‘And you know, if you ever want to talk … You don’t need to tell me anything right now. You don’t need to tell me anything ever. But if you want to, I’m here. Others are, too.’ He looks at each of them in turn, trying to be inclusive, drawing them both into his gaze. ‘I imagine you’ve seen the book in your dressing table by now: The Book of Light?’
Ali feels a brief flutter of irritation. Yes, she thinks. I’ve seen your book. This is the deal, Ali, you’re going to
have to grin and bear it. She gives him a small smile of encouragement, and he carries on.
‘As I explained to you before, I am not a religious man. This is not a religious commune. But over my years I have opened up a path of spirituality that I would like to share. The beliefs are fundamental, particularly the belief that we should all live in happiness and in light. That may sound idealistic, especially to two people with the jobs that you had, living in a city like you did, experiencing the life that you have. Of course the opposing element to light is the dark. I don’t really want to say that I believe in evil, but I think that that is the fundamental nature of what I’m saying. Ali – you mentioned to me before that you’re interested in psychology? Or was it psychiatry? That perhaps if you stayed working as a nurse, you may have moved into this area?’
Ali nods. ‘I’ve been interested in psychology and psychiatry for a long time, actually. I started a professional development course, with the plan to take my studies further, perhaps retrain as a psychotherapist. I’m fascinated by the human mind and what it can do. I’m fascinated by certain aspects of group behaviour, you know – such as herd mentality. I’m interested in things such as coercion, the impact of controlling behaviours. Your thoughts about evil – I’m not sure I fully agree with you. I do think that we are all capable of being bad. I think we all have a shadow side. What interests me is what makes that side reveal itself. What prompts people to do the things they do, when they do the most awful things?’
She feels Jack’s gaze boring into her cheek but she refuses to turn and look at him. The energy, the heat coming from him, is a physical thing. Please Jack, she thinks, please don’t say anything. Not now. She takes a breath. She has got carried away, that’s all. This place has an extraordinary history and it already seems to be feeding her mind. Stimulating her too much. She needs to calm down – after all, they have come here to remove stress from their lives. Make a new start.
