“Here, kitty-kitty.”
It flies to the sill, wriggling out the cracked open window.
“Odd.” But what about Soothing Hills is normal?
My eyes return to the childlike drawings.
Twenty-Nine has been here a very, very long time.
I see the set of paintings and hurry over. The woman’s form is vague. But I squint, looking beside the woman with the children. Beside her is … sheet music.
I step forward, my heart seeming to vacate my chest, lodging in my throat.
“You best be hurrying, little bird. The crazies will return soon.” The leering orderly has returned.
I shove the glasses up my nose and pick up the day dress on the floor. “Twenty-Nine doesn’t like people viewing her art?”
He laughs. “Twenty-Nine is where she belongs. In solitary.”
The walls.
I shall never forget the walls of this room. I lie on my back, my stocking-clad feet tracing the padded edges, over and over. The wails have gone, but in their stead, a black, mind-numbing gloom, thick as spiderwebs, spreading, spreading from my brain to my soul.
I may not make it back this time.
My mind flashes images, and I wince.
Ten-year-old me, hands splayed—at first on the walls, then writhing on my belly as the hunger pangs ripped through my guts. To starve is a horrible, painful way to pass.
My mind wandered when I was near death.
Memories seemed dislodged, as if a long-forgotten, long-banished part of my past resurrected for a final good-bye.
I saw my mother plainly for the first time. More than her face, I heard her music. She taught me to hum middle C.
I suddenly remember it was she who discovered the feeling it produced for me. Her ghost-memory floats over me now, humming it over and over, swaddling me in comfort—as she did when I had a fever.
My heart thuds like a kettledrum with realization. I once had a home outside of Soothing Hills.
I must have a fever once again. It is the only time I see her clearly.
My tears scald a track from the corner of my eye to my mouth, and I taste the salt. Delirium. I have delirium.
Extended isolation … picks one apart. Like invisible rooks, their veins full of lonely, peck-peck-peck, eating bits of my mind.
It has been my most irrational fear since the first incident.
Every minute, every hour, every second—tick, tick, ticking—pick, pick, picking. Panic rages as the feeling intensifies, as if an entire unkindness of ravens feasts upon my sanity.
I hear a familiar squeaky sound and roll toward the door. “Twenty?”
The squeaking stops, and I see gnarled hands grasping wheels, angling it toward my cell door. “Twenty-nine? Are you in there, my girl?” She bends to look through the food slot.
I sob but try to control my voice. “Yes, I’m here.”
“I knew when you weren’t in your room for dinner, something had happened. I used my pass to come and find you.”
I squeeze my lips and eyes tight to stifle my sob. Patients are granted passes for good behavior. Twenty not only used one of those coveted pieces of paper, she no doubt wheeled herself through each floor she was permitted, searching for me. My heart swells with gratitude.
“Thank you, but I don’t know what you might do. I am here till himself says I am free.”
Twenty knows of my fear of isolation. And there is no need to explain himself. He was her physick as well.
Her quavering voice takes on a steely edge. “We shall see about that. Hold fast, dear one.”
The squeaking resumes, and I am once again … alone.
“Jane?”
I blink. I must’ve passed out. The last I remember, Twenty had found me.
Now the wretched fever is causing hallucinations. Voices. I giggle uncontrollably.
“Why not? I hear them in music. Crazy, crazy, crazy Jane.” I giggle harder.
The sound is mad. It sounds like Ward Thirteen.
“Jane!” My imagination becomes more insistent.
I blink hard, trying to force the focus back into my eyes.
“Over by the door.”
Solitary confinement has no window, not even in the iron door. A peephole is above so that the physicks may monitor me.
Monitor me doing what? Rolling about on the ground like a serpent?
The only contact with the outside world is through a revolving tray at the door’s bottom, where food might be placed and spun into the room.
I roll toward it and whuump to a halt, my face staring at the door. A hand reaches through, searching.
“Jane. It’s Mason.”
I feel the hysteria bubble and rise. Relief, but mixed with fear of the no-longer-tethered horror breaking forth. My breath shudders out in hard, choked sobs, as if my tight throat suppresses the air.
The world wavers in and out like the heat on a summer’s day.
“Shh. Shh,” he croons, the whispered phrases drenched in his heavy accent. “Twenty sent me. Give me your hand, girl.”
“I cannot.”
“What? Why?”
“The jacket.”
A beat of silence and a string of profanities in Gaelic. His voice is gruff as he growls, “Yes, you are so bloody dangerous, you need the jacket. In solitary. I would like to strangle them with me bare hands.”
“No. Then you will be here, too. People disappear here. Not just patients.”
“Stay put. I will be right back.”
It is true. I remember when I was about eight, there was a very sweet nurse who took a shining to me. She began to ask me questions. Lots of questions.
What did I remember? What was my name? How I learned to read so very well.
In a day, she was gone. Vanished. They told me she quit … but I know better. I had dreams of her shuffling on Ward Thirteen, then into the corn. Following those ruddy birds.
I lay my head on the ground and must doze off, because his voice is the first thing I recall.
“Jane, roll your back toward me. Wiggle left now … Perfect.”
I feel his hands grip mine, and I gyrate with … a sawing motion?
“Lie still, I don’t want to slip and cut you. Then they will say you are trying to off yourself and keep you here longer.”
My hands pop free, and I sob, in relief this time. For some lost moments, I am rocking and weeping, my arms wrapped round my knees as I wait for the pins-and-needle sensation to subside.
“Jane. Jane. Are you alright? Come take me hand girl.”
The blackness recedes slowly, like an oppressive mist gradually lifting.
I finally scoot toward the opening and grasp his outstretched hand. It is like a warm life preserver in this cold pit of despair. Forcing me to cling to hope.
“Talk to me, Jane.”
I am quiet. I cannot speak, as so often happens when the world inside these walls becomes too great to bear. I am told I was silent for a year.
“Shall I talk to you, then?”
Mason indeed talks. The words flow in his rich, deep Scottish tones, the pitch and pace of his intonations washing over me like a deep, cleansing river.
Telling me of his childhood. Of his rich, titled childhood. Of his headstrong, arrogant father, his wicked brother.
“I knew you weren’t common,” I whisper, but then fall silent and allow him to continue.
He tells me of his father’s death and his subsequent disinheritance once the estate passed to his brother.
“I am the second son. So my brother holds the fortune, the estate. Everything.”
I finally find my voice. “Whyever are you here, Mason? I know naught of the world, to be sure. But there are other, decidedly less awful ways to earn one’s coin. I would think you fit for a barrister, or an officer?”
He hesitates. “Do you trust me?” Then, in a rush, “I know that question to be ludicrous. You scarcely know me. But
when first I saw you—you were in the airing yard, alone. The one on top of the building. Sketching the trees. And then when I saw you play the other night, heard your music, I … watched you. You looked at the music one time, and you played it perfectly. I overheard Grayjoy talking, saying it was a test. That you and the other girls had never laid eyes upon that piece before that moment. The other girls played well enough, but their eyes still tracked the music. Not you. It seemed you memorized it. He says you show great musical prowess. A virtuoso.”
“You are musical?”
He clears his throat. “After a fashion. I read notes, I carry a tune, I play an instrument. But I am more of a lyricist. Words are my siren.”
“Words? Tell me some of your lyrics.”
He laughs and is quiet, but I wait, biting my lip, happy for the wall between us so he might not see my anxious expression.
“I am not used to people wanting to hear them. My father considered it a lark. Thought I should concern myself with more serious pursuits.”
“I love all to do with music. Please. Tell me some.”
“Nefelibata.”
“What? Whatever is the meaning of that word?”
“It means ‘a cloud-walker.’ One who lives in the clouds, or their imagination, and defies convention. It is the very essence of you, Jane.”
Tears fill my eyes. “I am afraid I am a nefelibata. But if I ever wish to leave here, I am told I must learn to control these tendencies.”
Mason’s voice is quiet. “I … don’t think so. I have been here six months. I’ve … observed you. Jane, you are saner than many I have met outside these walls. Nefelibata is a gift. A protection for your mind.”
I bite my lip. “It is, I suppose.” The ghost of a smile haunts my lips. “I do like this game … tell me another.”
The intonation of his voice shines like a lantern, driving back the darkness of the melancholy. If I close my eyes and only listen to it, I can almost pretend I am sitting in a parlor with him, holding a teacup.
His whisper is tentative. “I don’t imagine you played many games as a child.”
Pain shoots through my nose, and I pinch the bridge. “No. But I used to pretend … when I was alone. I … made my own toys.”
“Alright. We shall make up for it now. We’ll play games till your heart is filled.” He is silent for some moments, thinking. “Numinous.”
“What does it mean?” I wrap my arms about my knees and keep my eyes closed, focusing solely on the warm timbre of his voice.
“It means fearful … yet fascinated. Awed … but attracted.” His breathing is the only sound filling the void. “For me, it means you, Jane.”
“Fearful? I frighten you?”
“When first I came, everything at Soothing Hills scared me. I had never been around any illness in my privileged, sheltered life. I knew not what to think of the residents.”
“What think you now?”
His voice is grave. “They are merely people. Downtrodden, unfortunate people, who could use a friend.” After some moments of quiet, he adds, “The forgotten.”
We are silent yet again, the words hanging in the air of my solitary confinement chamber, lingering like the ghosts of residents before me who had passed the endless hours in this dismal place.
Our fingers lace together through the space in the door.
His thumb traces circles on the back of my hand. “I … have secrets, mo cridhe. I would not divulge them to you, lest you be put in more danger. You have been to Ward One. That means you are being considered for discharge. Able to leave here.”
Silent tears leak again, and I am happy he cannot see my face.
I force the tremble from my voice. “I fervently wish … and fear that day. This place is all I have ever known. I would not know how to live, out there. I need to learn. And Ward One is where such teaching takes place.”
“I will teach you. I will not leave you alone. I give you my word.”
My mind and heart seem to spasm and ache—for a future unconsidered. Unobtainable to the likes of me. I never considered myself fainthearted, but the very notion of any such arrangement is stealing my breath away.
To love …
To love such as I believe he is proposing, should I choose to try, will be the most dangerous undertaking of my life.
With love, you give power to others. The power to hurt you.
“I am frightened.” My voice breaks on the word.
His grip tightens. “As am I. We shall be frightened together.”
Together. My lips wrap around the word like a promise. Never have I had together, with any soul.
“That is even more terrifying.”
He doesn’t speak. I almost hear him holding his breath.
“But … I want that. I want together.”
“Then you shall have it.” The smile is plain in his voice. “Now, you should sleep. We need to get you out of solitary. I could steal the key, but that would do naught but get me dismissed and you, most likely, more solitary. We must play their game, Jane. At least for the present. I will let you know if the time comes to renege, if I feel we cannot win. If I cannot release you properly … then rules will be broken.”
I wrap my free arm around myself in the dark and slide closer to the slot—my other gripping his hand, curling it to my chest.
He begins to hum, a beautiful tune.
“You are a tenor. The C one octave below middle C.”
The smile-voice again. “That is correct.” And he hums again.
My mind slips, riding the notes in my mind. Some red, some blue, but all warm. The curtain of consciousness closes, and I sigh in relief.
Jules
I head to the laundry and proceed to tend to my duties. It is, quite possibly, the longest six hours of my life. Finally, when I return to Ward Three, Ginny grants me leave to depart. I explain I relieved Miss Frost, as she had to leave unexpectedly. Ginny barely spares me a glance as a horde of patients descends upon her medicinal cart.
Ginny slides a sweat-drenched lock from her forehead and tucks it behind her ear. “You are welcome to work this ward anytime. I always can use an able-bodied, no-nonsense woman. Pray, what is your name again?”
I hope the wig I’ve donned is still intact. I keep my fingers from tracing the nameplate I found in the laundry room. “Alice.”
If I am ever to have answers from this place, I must move with anonymity. Not as Dr. Frost’s over-monitored daughter.
Nurse Ginny’s perceptive eyes flick to the nameplate, then back to my face. “Alright, Alice. You best be off. Carriages depart the asylum every hour till eleven. If you miss the last one … it is two long, dark miles to the entry gate. I do not recommend walking it, especially at night. We have had few break-outs, but one can never be too careful of who or what one might run into.”
I wonder at her tone, if it be earnest or sarcastic.
Regardless, I give an involuntary shudder. “Yes, I will be sure to catch it.”
My stomach clenches as I catch the time on the clock face. One hour.
The asylum is vast. Over nine hundred employees, let alone the residents. Its gargantuan nature will allow me to slip around unnoticed, once Alice becomes accepted for her person and position.
I quicken my pace. To make it to the main entrance on time shall take a quarter hour to be sure.
Then there is the risk of meeting Father. I know the wards he is to work, but he may be anywhere within these walls. I wonder if he would recognize me, disguise and all.
He is often here overnight when his duties call.
I hope and pray he is here, because I am entirely, completely past my curfew, and he does not have me on the schedule to work this day. If he returns home and I am not present, he shall be frantic. Might even go so far as to contact the constable.
Maeve will cover for me as she can, but he will only be dissuaded so long.
Earlier, I saw Patient Twenty-N
ine’s file on Dr. Grayjoy’s desk.
My mind flashes to the music in the sketch upon her wall. I was interrupted, unable to have a proper look. The woman resembles my mother in a large way, but the way the woman is angled, so that one sees her side profile, I cannot say for certain.
At this rate, I am not going to make it to the office and back to catch the final carriage.
I force my shoulders back and inhale deeply, trying to fill my lungs with much-needed courage. The old man, he told me about the entrance to the tunnels. I will bet my life there is one on every ward.
Shuffle-shuffle step. Shuffle-shuffle step.
Someone approaches. I hear them, just around the corner. Ready to turn the corner.
Hide. You must hide, you fool. But there is nowhere.
I am near the ward kitchen. I smell the baking bread. I whirl, flying toward it. I enter and, out the window, see I am near the cornfield.
Shuffle-shuffle-shuffle-shuffle.
He or she is running.
A cold sweat breaks down my back, and I enter the kitchen proper and drop to all fours, scuttling across the floor, weaving out of the way of the staff voices. They are in a nearby room—the clink of bowls and cups tells me they’re loading the carts for washing.
My heart thuds so hard and fast, I fight the swoon. Blackness around the edges of my sight. I search furiously, looking all about the kitchen.
“Think, think, Jules.”
And I see my salvation. A dumbwaiter.
I scramble to my feet in time to hear the creak of the door opening behind me. I hurry inside and jam down the door. I slid it down before he saw. Please let me have slid it down before he saw.
It is a he; I smell his cologne. It’s pungent and somehow sickly.
I sit still as the stone- gargoyle sentinels that keep watch on the asylum roof, pressing my hand over my mouth to control my breathing. My heart beats so hard I only hear its sloshing in my ears.
Breathing. Ragged breathing.
Right outside the dumbwaiter.
I bite down hard on my lower lip, stoppering the low moan before it leaks out. Blackness threatens, and I shake my head. Do not swoon. Do not swoon.
The Requiem Red Page 10
