When she’d change his bedding following another unfortunate accident, she would tell him that he was the reason this ward stank so much. On the ground floor, one level below, elderly patients soiled themselves daily. Frankie suffered from epilepsy, was crippled by polio, but he wasn’t stupid—he knew exactly where the stench came from.
The corridor stretched ahead of him like a portent of his suffering to come. Little Johnny stood facing the wall, his quiet voice a mumbled torrent of nonsensical words. He’d forgotten to put his trousers on again, but no one seemed to notice. Johnny knocked his forehead against the wall in a slow, regular tempo, but he’d been doing that ever since Frankie’s arrival on this ward. Farther along the hall, bathed in sunlight streaming through the large windows, Albert sat on the floor and stared at the ceiling. He’d peed on the wooden floor, but the nurses ignored it, as they had with the vomit staining his chin. Frankie remembered when Albert had dominated this ward: screaming bad words at the staff, kicking them, punching those who got too close. After three visits to the doctor whose name Frankie could not pronounce, Albert now spent most of his time sitting in his own filth looking at the nondescript ceiling. The hall was quieter, the nurses more content, but Albert wasn’t Albert anymore.
The ‘content’ nurses stood near the end of the corridor, by the windows. They talked to each other, deep in conversation. Screaming came from George’s room but the nurses paid it no heed. They’d probably bound him to the bed as instructed to by the doctor. One day that man would summon George from the ward and the boy would probably come back as lifeless and limp as poor Albert; if he came back at all. A few of the boys—those whose names he’d already forgotten—had left the ward and never returned. Frankie doubted they’d been sent home to live a normal existence with their parents.
The head nurse laughed at something her colleague had said and looked out of the window. She pointed out into the world and said something. Her colleague turned to look and they both seemed excited about what they were witnessing. Frankie glanced to the window and pushed himself up on his chair, straining to see the garden. What did life beyond these dirty, stained windows now have to offer? If his silly legs hadn’t been ruined by that stupid illness, he might be able to see the grass again. Was it as green as he remembered, or had the colours been taken from the world along with his freedom? With a whimper of frustration he slumped back into the uncomfortable wheelchair, tears welling in his eyes.
Little Johnny smacked his head harder against the wall, blood dribbling onto his top lip.
George shrieked and fought against his bindings as Albert urinated freely.
A tickling sensation emanated in Frankie’s fingertips, bristling over his hands. It might have been from the way he’d just held his weight up off the wheelchair’s seat, but he knew the signs. The tingling came for another reason, flushing panic through his emotions. He breathed deep, trying to control the hyperventilation, and locked his gaze on the nurses. They’d returned to their conversation, their backs to the hall and the children under their care. Frankie glanced over his shoulder, to the opposite end of the hallway. No one stood there, save for the six-year-old boy hunkered in the shadows of the passage’s deepest corner. Maybe another nurse would enter the hall down there, notice his distress and he wouldn’t have to suffer alone. Daylight streaming into the hall stuttered into grey, and black dots ebbed through his vision. Alarm spiked inside him, his breath now coming in anxious gasps. The prickly sensation swarmed over his hands like a hundred insects.
Frankie gripped the wheels on his chair and propelled himself forward.
The chair moved a foot, maybe not even that. He tried to push forward again, yet it didn’t budge. Frankie called out to the nurses but if they heard they’d chosen not to listen. In desperation he shouted for little Johnny and for a moment the kid stopped smashing his head against the wall. Johnny glanced at him, the blood from his nose dribbling in a sticky line to his mouth. His tiny hands were curled into fists, a darkness bubbling deep in the boy’s eyes.
“Help me,” Frankie whispered.
Little Johnny spat blood to the floor, turned, and knocked his forehead against the wall.
Dark spots spiralled in quickening circles. The tingling had moved up his spine and a headache pulsed at the base of his skull. Frankie pushed on the wheels, but the chair remained rooted to the floor.
He glanced down, breathed out a frustrated moan at the plastic doll wedged tight against the front wheel. It prevented his movement, and he wished he’d noticed it before attempting to reach the nurses. He wished the staff would take some moments to tidy the clutter from this hall.
Frankie called out and the head nurse turned in his direction—rolled her eyes and looked away.
Albert coughed up a wad of vomit. Little Johnny stopped knocking his head, sneezed blood onto the dirty wall. George shouted obscenities in the empty darkness of his room.
Frankie’s eyes turned up inside his head, his world fading to black, and no one came to help.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The air thickened as he climbed each step to the second floor. A gasp of wind—which had probably entered through a damaged window elsewhere in the structure—sighed down the stairwell in a breath laden with the stench of mould and decay. Something cracked in the building’s heart, the sound reverberating through narrow passageways. Liam froze, raising the recorder, hoping to capture an electronic voice phenomenon. The echo died rapidly, silence creeping once more through the hallways. A shadow fluttered over the wall ahead of him, crawling towards the ceiling while he watched its passage.
Probably nothing more than a cloud shielding the day’s final attempt to brighten a world falling to darkness.
Besides, having been blessed with a sixth sense, he didn’t need his equipment to detect them. His earliest memories were the night of his fifth birthday, in his small bed, the sheets pulled up to his chin as he sat cross-legged talking to a dead girl in the darkened corner of his room. She’d only revealed herself to him briefly, towards the end of their time together, before his family had moved south to the capital. It’d been easy to visualize her beauty; hair blonde and loaded with curls. He almost pictured the dimples on her cheeks when she’d told him they made her cuter when she smiled. Death had stolen all of it.
It was the real reason why spirits seldom revealed themselves. Life gave someone magnificence, an existence buoyed with hopes and dreams nurtured by the love of family and friends. The afterlife was a desolate place that stripped away the façade of happiness and presented a tortured, wretched soul.
Highland Cove Sanatorium housed many such entities.
Stepping off the final tread he glanced to his right at windows that overlooked the island’s expansive lawn. The view revealed heavy clouds bunching over the ocean, covering the sun as it slid the final curve of its face into the horizon. Liam walked to the window and looked left down a long, uniform corridor.
It spanned almost the entire length of the building, tapering into a point of leaden shadow at the far end. Paint peeled in strips from the ceiling, light fittings exposed and devoid of bulbs. Windows spaced along the right-hand wall funnelled dying shafts of sunlight into the narrow passage. Doors lined the opposite side, most of them closed, chunks of plaster flaking from the walls. Dried leaves, slivers of flaked paint, and various lumps of masonry littered the floor’s dirty tiles. Halfway down the hallway, outside one of the open doors, sat an empty wheelchair, as grey and sombre as its surroundings.
Leaning to the nearest window Liam gazed down onto the overgrown lawn. It spread away from the old asylum, over uneven ground towards the ocean. The trio wandered in circles below: Alex keeping a step or two behind, Julian grasping the handheld camera with both hands, turning to focus on areas of the building as directed by Codie.
A sigh built up inside of him and Liam released it slowly. Every movement Codie made flowed with the grace of a dancer; nimble yet athletic. The wind caught his hair and lifted it. Codie brush
ed his hand through it as Liam had often dreamed of doing. He laughed at something and in an instant the man’s blue eyes came to life. He’d known Codie since first grade and it’d been love at first sight.
When the awful day came when Codie passed from this existence, Liam was convinced that his beauty would traverse to the afterlife.
Footsteps padded at the far end of the corridor.
Liam looked up, caught a glimpse of shadow fluttering over the grime-coated wall. The wheelchair turned a gentle arc outside the open door. Pressing the record button on his EVP recorder, he held it out at arm’s length and stared at the wheelchair as it settled against the wall.
“Hello,” he addressed the hallway. “Can you hear me? What’s your name?”
A murmur, indistinct and barely audible, drifted from shadows at the end of the passage. Liam’s heartbeat spiked, although he told himself, as always, it might be his own voice echoing off the enclosed walls. He’d check the recording later, after setting up his equipment, to see if there was something more. With a nod he decided to place the first static camera at the far end of the passage, focused back along the hallway towards the wheelchair. Ignoring the view beyond the window, he ambled slowly down the hallway. Shadows accumulating in the corridor’s depths crawled over the walls as the sun finally sank in the distance.
Keeping his movement unhurried, breathing normally so as not to alarm whoever shared the hallway with him, Liam spoke softly.
“Can you tell me your name?”
The crunch of grit under his shoes sounded unnaturally loud in the narrow hall.
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
The wind answered against the window, a harsh whisper touching the single pane of glass.
“How old are you?”
Something mumbled in the gathering darkness. Ten? Had a child just told him they were ten years old?
Liam made a mental note to check that particular section of playback closely, get it enhanced further once they returned to the mainland. A grin pulled at his lips. He’d already had more success in this place than his previous three investigations combined.
With the sun gone for the day, night bled into the building. Soon he wouldn’t be able to see anything, not that darkness scared him, but the crumbling building would become a danger to a man walking blindly. He considered getting the thin torch from his inside coat pocket but refrained.
Reaching the wheelchair he slid his hand over the torn leather, dust coming away under his fingers. It had come to rest next to the room’s open door and Liam took a step through the entrance. Darkness settled deep within, the windowless room sucking night into its furthest corners. A bed sat against one wall, its mattress pocked with mould and dirt. A dresser leaned at an angle against the opposite wall, the broken figure of a forlorn chair kneeling in the room’s centre. A doll head protruded from under the damaged dresser, the rest trapped underneath.
He turned his attention to the end of the corridor, to the darkness where he suspected the child was hiding.
“Is that your dolly? Are you a girl; a ten-year-old girl?”
Silence greeted him, and even the wind outside had died into nothing.
“Did your mother give you the dolly?”
No answer, and Liam decided it was time to move on. He wanted to get his gear set up in the other rooms first before they began their documented tour through the asylum. Perhaps the child would show herself to them all when they came here later. He’d ask Kristen to speak to her; another female might entice greater contact. Maybe other children played in the darkness as well, and might serve to embolden the girl. With measured movements he unzipped the front pocket on his bag and pulled out a short tripod. Setting the bag down for a moment, he pulled out one of the camcorders and screwed the tripod into place. He hummed a soft nursery rhyme, hoping to pacify the child’s spirit as he walked over to the wall and placed the camera in position. Checking through the LCD screen to make sure he recorded the wheelchair and as much of the hall as possible, he hit record, stood, and gathered his bag from the floor.
With a final glance into the hall’s dark corner, Liam turned away.
~~
Sixty years ago, heavy padlocks had barred the doors leading to the chapel, but previous ghost hunters had torn them free. Fractured timber protruded from the doors, the metal locks buried under accumulated debris. The figure of Jesus on the cross lay broken on the floor near the entrance, as if it were a reminder of faith lost and devotion shattered.
Liam pushed open the doors and stepped into a room that stank of mould, rotten timber, and millions of unanswered prayers.
Constructed in the building’s south-eastern corner, the chapel stretched away from the door, with two rows of wooden benches lining the room. Some of the pews were damaged from a section of collapsed ceiling, and dust coated everything. Gothic arched windows decorated the wall to his left, most of the glass splintered and cracked. At the far end of the chapel, the altar stood largely intact, but a small organ to one side had its face split open and pipes bent at angles. Behind the altar the stained glass windows remained undamaged, the colourful image depicting saints, martyrs, and a divine light from heaven. Pulling a torch from his bag, he switched it on and directed the beam into the rafters, cobwebs glinting as the thin threads ensnared light.
The entire building enthralled him.
Before coming here he’d climbed the stairs to the third floor and gone into the operating theatre. There he’d set up a pair of static cameras and placed his second EVP recorder on one of the operating tables. That room contained no windows, darkness within the space heavier than out in the third-floor corridor. It’d felt different than here in the chapel; the theatre ripe with misery and an intense loathing. So much pain and suffering gathered in one place, all the failed lobotomies and dissections of many minds—the room broiled with an intense energy. Liam would enjoy returning there later.
But the chapel was more sombre, its atmosphere heavy with a different sense of emotion. Wind from the approaching storm moaned through window gaps like a desperate plea for salvation that would not be delivered. Thick darkness settled in the room, as though the lost souls of a thousand mourners were crammed inside this place.
Using the beam to guide him, Liam walked slowly over rubble strewn between pews and advanced on the altar. He whispered a soft prayer, his voice almost inaudible, hoping to calm any spirits lingering here. An unusual chill settled in the room, confirming the chapel was probably the most densely populated section of the entire asylum. Liam regretted leaving two cameras up in the surgery room; perhaps the chapel would see the most activity during the night. He decided that tomorrow he’d reverse the setup, position a static camera at each end of the chapel. Reaching the front row of pews, he shrugged the bag from his shoulder.
Emptying it of the final camera and tripod, he fitted the equipment together and stepped to the nearest unbroken pew. He placed the camera on the wooden bench, directed the lens at the altar, and pressed record. Sweeping the narrow beam over the chapel’s rubble to the dais, he picked his way to the front of the chapel.
Standing for a moment in silence, he crossed a hand over his chest. He flipped the switch and the torch expired into blackness. Liam sank to his knees, bowed his head, and clasped his hands together in further prayer.
Disturbed air flowed through the darkness, the soft murmur of wind against windows becoming nothing more than a background hum. Timber groaned high in the vaulted ceiling, but he doubted the building was settling on its old foundations. The soft chatter of rolling debris trickled out in the hall, its sound amplified by the enclosed space. He opened his eyes to darkness as the pressure of a footstep crunched over masonry on the floor behind him. A smile pulled at his lips, a charge of anticipation flushing through him as he tried to control the tempo of his heartbeat. The weight of a hand pressed upon his shoulder.
Liam reached up and touched it, the area beneath his fingers buzzing with cold electricity.
/> He stood—not rushed or full of panic, but with a calm assuredness—and turned slowly. Only shadows dragged into the chapel by dying sunlight stared back; he saw nothing, not even a pale silhouette. Yet he wasn’t alone, and whoever had touched him stood mere inches away. Who had this person been? Perhaps one of the many children sent to this place to die in agony from the plague. Or possibly an adult with failing mental health, who’d been physically restrained and subjected to torture and abuse by the asylum’s psychotic doctor.
The urge to reach out almost swamped him but he resisted, not wishing to alarm or provoke his visitor. A gentle chill fluttered down his left cheek and Liam sucked in a sharp gasp. His imagination displayed a young woman, possibly in her late teens, fingers stroking his face as she reminisced over her life’s lost love.
“Don’t be afraid,” Liam whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to get to know you.”
A door slammed outside the chapel, further along the corridor, echoing like a gunshot. It startled him and he looked towards the room’s broken doorway, the connection lost. A cloud of dust dwindled into falling grains in the hall, a slab of masonry slumped against a wall.
“Shit,” he breathed.
Liam waited for a few minutes, hoping the connection would be remade, that her fingers would touch him once more, but all that came was a change in temperature as the storm breached the island.
Moving from the altar, he stepped to the front pew and gathered up the camcorder. He stopped the recording, pressed play and wound back through the digital file until he found the right spot. Hitting play again, he leaned in close to the LCD display and watched himself stand from his position near the floor. There—the faint outline of a shadow passing over his cheek in the moment before he flinched under the spirit’s touch. Liam’s heart thumped with excitement, and he resisted the urge to watch his reaction a second time. He didn’t need further proof that he’d made the most real kind of contact he’d ever experienced.
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