Highland Cove

by Dylan J. Morgan

  Clearing her throat and shrugging her rucksack higher on her shoulders, she nodded, gave a nervous chuckle. “I’m fine. I guess this place is kind of spooky.”

  “It’s the final resting place of thousands of tortured souls. It’s spooky as hell.”

  Liam gave her a subtle wink, but if he was teasing her she didn’t need it right now. The rhythm of her heart had yet to settle, hairs rigid on the back of her neck. Liam stepped to the entryway, his hand almost at the door.

  “Be careful, Liam.”

  “What is it?”

  She hesitated, swallowed hard. “I thought I heard something from inside, that’s all. A bang, like a door closing.”

  “Really?” Liam said, and raised his eyebrows. “They know we’re here, then.”

  His smile widened, and he pushed through the door into the asylum.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The entrance foyer spread before him, cavernous and echoing. Grit and debris from six decades of disuse littered the tiled floor, and cracks resembling lacerations in dry skin snaked over the walls. A grand staircase, flanked by intricately crafted timber balustrades, dominated the open area and gracefully curved upwards to the second floor. No longer decorated in finely-cut crystals, a chandelier hung low into the room, its branches draped with threads of spider web. The lobby had been cleared out when the place closed; paintings taken down, rugs and furnishings removed, leaving only a few desolate benches bolted to the far wall. On the filthy reception desk, a solitary telephone shared space with a vase of flowers that had long-since withered into dust.

  Bleak, forsaken, and harrowing, this place was everything Liam Butler had hoped for.

  Walking slowly into the lobby, aware his jaw hung low in awe, he looked about the room. The life that had once existed here almost revealed itself in his mind: the gentle hum of conversation between staff, the insane mutterings of low-risk patients enjoying the foyer’s tranquillity—the occasional shout of a more disturbed resident, echoing along the hall. The chandelier would shine with brilliance in the evenings, the ornate staircase colourful and splendid. A lot of money had been disbursed renovating the building and it would have looked extravagant; no expense spared by the asylum’s Polish doctor. Cash earned from Second World War inheritance some had said, but it didn’t really matter, the professor had spent heavily to create an isolated holding in which to conduct his mental illness research. But Liam wasn’t here to reminisce over times gone by, or marvel at an institution that had amounted to nothing more than a torture house controlled by a sadistic mind.

  He’d travelled all this way to meet the residents who lingered, those whose violent deaths had cursed them to remain here forever.

  Shrugging off his rucksack, he dropped it in the middle of the floor. His wet clothes clung to his skin, breath still tainted by the odour of vomit, but none of that mattered to him now. He eyed the tall windows set into the facing wall—big enough to allow sunshine to lighten the foyer, but high enough in the wall so that the insane patients couldn’t see the mainland or be reminded of the families who’d sent them here. His gaze carried upwards to the vaulted ceiling, its hand-painted design ruined by cracked masonry. Rubble disturbed by his steps echoed in the large space. Having turned a full circle inspecting the area, Liam’s gaze settled on the front door as Kristen crept into the building.

  She glanced around the impressive lobby, but her expression held an air of trepidation instead of wonder. Searching out all the shadowed corners—and there were plenty now the sun was relinquishing its hold over the day—she took each step with care, as though ready to make a break for the front door. It amused Liam, how stories of the afterlife instilled a heightened sense of unease in ordinary people. Ghosts could be mischievous, some loud, but they’d never seriously injured anyone. It was safer here than in a pub at closing time. Eventually, her eyes locked with his and she smiled.

  “I’m going to place some of my equipment around the asylum,” Liam said. “You can join me if you want.”

  She shook her head. “No, thanks, I want to get out of these wet clothes and into something dry. Then I’ll stay here and wait for Codie.”

  He gave her a smile. “Okay, if you’re sure.”

  Setting his equipment bag on the floor, Liam unzipped it and checked inside. His four high-definition infrared night vision camcorders were secured in their compartments, each one fully charged. The tripods were folded in the bag’s outside zippered pocket. He had two Olympus EVP recorders, and took one out and slipped it into his jacket pocket. The battery life would allow them to record all night, so he decided he’d hide one away in the old surgery room and check the recording in the morning. Satisfied he had all he needed, he zippered the bag shut, stood, and heaved it onto his shoulder.

  Kristen spun in a small circle, bag clutched to her chest, eyes searching the room’s corners, glancing towards the area behind the reception desk.

  “You looking for somewhere to get changed?” Liam asked.

  She chuckled. “Yeah, I am.”

  Liam pointed down a short hallway opposite the grand staircase. “Down there, second door on your left.”

  Stepping forward she glanced into the dark passage, looked back to him, and he saw the question in her eyes.

  “I’ve researched this place a thousand times, there’re maps of its interior online; I know where every room is in this building and what they were used for.”

  He smiled; pleased to see she returned the grin. She didn’t conceal her growing fear very well, but he didn’t mention it. They’d been friends for a long time and he didn’t want to upset her. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t a believer, openly claiming ghosts didn’t exist. After tonight she’d change her mind, Liam was certain of it. Turning from her, he stepped towards the staircase.

  The remaining sunshine bathed the second floor in golden light. Up the stairs were the children’s wards; young minds not allowed to grow and blossom because they were different. The end of those corridors led to the third floor, surgery rooms where the doctor spent many years experimenting on his residents. Behind the grand staircase, in the ground-floor hallways already draped in deepening shadow, lay the adult wards. The mildly afflicted were located in the hallways nearest the foyer, but further into the darkness the more demented the mind became until, at the very end, they met the asylum’s chapel. Eventually, one day, almost every resident made one final stop there.

  Liam had already made up his mind that he’d take the stairs first, set up some gear on the second floor. The third-floor surgery rooms would probably require two static cameras, and he’d place the final one in the chapel. He’d planned where the cameras would go weeks in advance.

  Fishing into his jacket pocket he pulled out his recorder and activated it.

  Childlike excitement gripped him as he placed a foot on the stairs and began to ascend.

  ~~

  She waited a beat for Liam to turn his back and head up the flight of stairs, before taking a deep breath and pushing into the ladies’ room.

  The door creaked on ancient hinges, scraping through a layer of dirt on the floor. She eased through the gap and took a cautious step inside. Time had deteriorated the bathroom into a shambles of broken timber and littered debris. Two stall doors lay on the floor, a third hung precariously on one set of hinges. Abandonment had darkened the wood, the doors warped and misshapen. The nearest stall was missing its side panelling, the porcelain toilet broken in half. Rubble and roof fragments were strewn across the floor; the dried bodies of leaves layered the debris like desiccated skin. Thin windows, high in the exterior wall, no longer contained glass, the island’s weather whistling a haunting moan through the gaps. A thick odour of wet timber hung in the room, tainted with an underlying stench of old plumbing.

  She listened, hearing nothing other than the occasional sigh of wind’s breath against rotten frames. For some bizarre reason she’d almost expected to hear the drip of a tap, but doubted this room had seen water in sixty years
, save for the rains that passing storms dumped through the damaged windows. Distant, outside on the island’s lawn, came the soft call of Codie’s voice. She hoped, for his sake, that this trip would be a success and they got the footage they needed. She’d have worried about him all weekend had she not been here, but at least now she’d know he was safe. The fight with Mum had forced her to come here, so maybe something good had come out of the argument.

  Not that much good came from their relationship anymore.

  Closing her eyes, she sighed with despair at the hurtful things her mother had said, the way she’d thrown her out without remorse. The woman laid all the blame for Jenny’s suicide at Kristen’s feet, had done so for the past half a year. She accepted her part in the tragic event, but none of it would have happened had their mother not become a drunken tyrant since their father’s death two years previous. For the past six months Mum would tell anyone who cared to listen about how badly her heart had been broken when her youngest daughter took her own life. She’d scream obscenities to her surviving daughter and admit that she wished Kristen had died instead. Her mum had sought sympathy from the entire community, claiming that no mother should be forced to hold the lifeless body of their child.

  The woman had no idea, because she hadn’t seen what Kristen had seen.

  She’d been the first to wake that morning, to notice the shed door standing ajar. She wanted to take back the moment when curiosity forced her to step into the cold day and inspect the outbuilding. With all her heart, Kristen wished she hadn’t discovered her baby sister hanging from the thin rafters. Each night when she closed her eyes the darkness revealed her sister’s face, distorted by death. The girl’s tongue, thick and bulging from her mouth; eyes wide and staring as if in accusation—her young neck misshapen with broken vertebrae. The note, still grasped in her ice cold fingers, had blamed their mother for everything, but Kristen had sown the idea a week previous.

  She’d have to live with that forever.

  Kristen sighed and pushed the sorrow deep, as she always did.

  Dropping the bag at her feet, she turned to the bathroom door and pushed it shut.

  Sinks lined the wall to her left, grime-covered mirrors bolted to the wall above them. All of the basins contained debris, their white porcelain clouded under a layer of dirt. Some were broken, but those nearest her remained intact.

  Shrugging her shoulders, she let the rain-soaked jacket drop to the floor. It felt good to lose the sodden coat’s weight, but the bathroom’s cold air wrapped tighter around her. A shiver coursed through her as she stooped to search her bag. Retrieving a long-sleeved shirt, bra, and a thick woollen sweater, she brushed dust from the nearest sink and laid the garments out in a pile. Turning her back to the door she pulled her fleece top over her head and dumped it in an adjacent sink. Unclipping her bra, she let it follow, and although she stood alone she covered her breasts with one arm as she retrieved the clean bra and fastened it. The shirt, soft against her cold skin, added an extra layer of warmth under the sweater.

  Relaxing heat bloomed through her torso under the comfort of dry clothes.

  The sweater hung low over her thighs, legs aching with a chill that bled through her saturated pants. Kicking off her sneakers and unzipping her jeans, she peeled them off and dumped them in the sink with the rest of her dirty clothes. She pulled off her socks, and winced at the unpleasant sensation of her bare feet pressing onto decades of fallen dirt. From the bag she retrieved fresh socks and donned them immediately. Having packed in a rush, she’d brought more pairs of underwear than she’d need for a weekend, and grabbed the top pair from the pile. Folding it out on the space where she’d laid the other clean garments, she hesitated at a sound.

  It’d probably emanated from outside, something disturbed by the wind, but she had to admit this building creeped her out more than she’d thought it would. She glanced around the bathroom, into every corner and the areas of broken stalls that she could see; at the darkening sky beyond the smashed windows. The noise came again: a branch groaning against the wind, as if the bushes were warning her of the approaching storm’s severity.

  With a sigh, Kristen leaned towards the door and listened carefully to the passageway beyond and foyer further in. She couldn’t hear the others, and suspected they remained outside recording the final sliver of sunlight dropping into the horizon. Moving swiftly, she reached under the long sweater, hooked her thumbs into her panties, and pulled them to her ankles. Stepping out of them, she left them lying in the rubble and snatched the clean pair from the sink. She pulled them up, relieved to be covered once again. Grabbing the wet panties from the floor she stuffed them into a plastic bag with her other damp clothes, reached into her rucksack, and dragged out a pair of sweatpants. Not exactly high fashion, or particularly flattering, but at least they were warm and soft to the touch. Already she felt better, calmer, and a touch more optimistic that this weekend wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  Kristen grabbed her rucksack and placed it on the sink. Unzipping the external pocket, she reached inside and found her phone. Having placed it inside a small plastic bag for the voyage across the strait, she removed it and opened its case. She pressed the home button, the screen coming to life to display an image of her and Codie, huddled close and smiling into the camera. She remembered clearly when they took the photo: a fourth date selfie, down by the River Thames near her home. They’d made love for the first time that night, too.

  A smile pulled at her lips with the memories, a flutter of nervous excitement rippling through her belly. He’d made the last four years perfect, and she couldn’t be happier with him. If it hadn’t been for Mum’s venom and Jenny’s death, everything would be wonderful.

  The phone showed no carrier, the signal non-existent. There were no mobile phone masts along the mainland coast, she’d been told, this area of Scotland so remote that not many people required service. She didn’t know what she would have said to her mother anyway, so the lack of a reception did her a favour.

  Kristen dropped the phone back in the rucksack’s pocket, zipped it closed, and stepped in front of the nearest mirror.

  Pulling the sleeve over her palm she gripped it with her fingers and rotated it across the glass to swipe at the dust. She stared at herself; cheeks flushed red from the journey across the channel, hair swept into a tangle around her face, eyes settled above dark patches of tiredness. The mirror reflected the last rays of daylight which illuminated cracked walls stained with grime, and the ashen figure of a young girl standing in the corner.

  Kristen spun on her heels, pressing her hips into the sink, eyes wide and locked on the angle of the room.

  Gloom coiled around rubble, shadows climbed up the walls, but she couldn’t see any trace of a figure.

  “Jenny?”

  Had she really been there or had the advancing night played a trick on her mind? Kristen was already unnerved by the look of this building and the sound she’d heard before entering. Fatigue hung heavy in her body, hunger gnawing at her stomach, so maybe her emotions had conspired to twist the light into something it wasn’t. She’d been thinking of her sister, and her mind had probably manufactured an image born from sorrow. But perhaps it had been her sister, trying to make contact. Kristen dismissed the idea; Jenny had died far from this place, and ghosts weren’t real. She’d seen something, was certain of it, and the bathroom’s quiet, gloomy atmosphere became more sinister than before. Snatching up the plastic bag containing her dirty clothes, she stuffed it into her rucksack and didn’t bother closing it. Curiosity caused her to glance back into the room’s corner, but darkness had flooded the area and she saw nothing.

  Kristen grabbed her shoes, yanked the door open, and hurried through the exit into the narrow shadow-filled corridor. Reaching back, she gripped the handle and pulled the door closed. In the final second before it settled into its jamb, the bathroom echoed with the sob of a distraught girl.

  CHAPTER SIX

  73 Years Previously.


  Silhouetted against the clear sheet of a cobalt sky a bird took flight and glided seaward. Gusts buffeted its wingspan but it moved effortlessly through the turbulence. The bird gave a call, and the wind stole it.

  Frankie Wells wished he could escape as easily.

  He gazed through the window, yet his eyes didn’t even reach the windowsill. From where he sat, Frankie couldn’t see the surrounding ocean, or the gardens stretching around them. Convinced he heard other children playing on the lawn, it may have been false noises created by desperation. He longed to feel the wind on his skin, smell the scent of the ocean; to taste the freedom avoiding him beyond this building’s walls. But the nurses never let him leave this floor. His disfigured legs wouldn’t carry him and these wheels were not wings.

  By the time he settled his thin frame back into the wheelchair the bird had gone. He scoured the sky searching for more but the gull had flown a lonely path. Much as he’d done for most of his life.

  Dad was a mystery, a phantom; a man who’d vanished into the darkness of an uncaring world before Frankie had even known him. It’d left him with nothing. Mum had stuck around but had looked upon him as a burden. He’d been left to cope alone when the drinking left her incapable of looking after him. Friendships were a pleasure he’d never experienced; no one wanted to play with a boy who couldn’t run. He’d sit in his room, looking through the window at the children playing in the streets, and wish he could join them.

  As he wished he could join the bird.

  Anywhere would be better than here. Even back home, in the squalor of the terraced estate where his mother continued to live, was a more appealing option. He would return to the verbal abuse and punishment administered for no good reason, if it meant he’d no longer have to suffer within these walls. Frankie remembered the day he’d arrived at Highland Cove Sanatorium. The head nurse had greeted him with a smile and a handshake; told him they were sure to become best friends. Now, she only glared at him with abhorrence, and the handshake had become smacks across the back of his head.