Nellie was content to find a chair, in front of a table, where she could sit and observe. Dorothy had wanted to cheer herself up with a walk outside, so this quiet time would be a good chance to get something done. Armed with crayons and paper, it was easy enough to look busy to those who needed to see it. To the untrained eye, Nellie’s squiggles and wiggly lines would look like a child’s attempt to imitate handwriting, but it was actually a clever trick she had picked up in school. “Pitman shorthand” it was called, and it was a method of being able to safely write down her thoughts. Only someone with similar training would be able to decipher it. Similar training and the ability to speak German. It had proved the perfect method for keeping her diary private and her thoughts secret and now served her well in her career as a journalist.
“Oh that’s just lovely, Nell!” Nurse Johnson exclaimed, with an encouraging clap of her hands. “Is that the ocean?”
Nellie nodded with equally enthusiastic delight. “Oh thank you, why yes it is! And I shall draw in the scones and jam and piano just … there!” she stabbed at the corner of the page with her fingertip.
“How lovely!” the nurse genuinely beamed, her dimples accentuating her round, red cheeks and twinkling brown eyes. She patted Nellie’s shoulder and made her way to the next inmate on her rounds. Nellie decided that not everyone in this place was cruel. She continued to record her observations, which would translate from shorthand and German thusly:
We were compelled to get up at 5.30 o'clock, and at 7.15 we were told to collect in the hall. When we got into the dining-room at last, we found a bowl of cold tea, a slice of buttered bread and a saucer of oatmeal, with molasses on it, for each patient. I was hungry, but the food would not go down. I asked for unbuttered bread and was given it. I cannot tell you of any natural thing which is the same dirty, black color. It was hard, and in places nothing more than dried dough. I found a spider in my slice, so I did not eat it. I tried the oatmeal and molasses, but it was wretched, and so I endeavored, without much show of success, to choke down the tea.
Her stomach rumbled. Nellie realized that the smell of something from the kitchen was wafting into the room. “Come to the hall!” one of the cooks called out. Perhaps the lunch fare would offer something more palatable. She filed into the cafeteria with a multitude of others who each, robotically, found a place on one of the many long benches. Like the rest of this institution, the decrepit state of everything, from the peeling walls to the smell of mold on the long, pock-marked tables, made the boarders feel thoroughly unwelcome. Yet here they came, in droves, to sit beside one another, arms on the tables, and wait for the next step of the repetitive schedule that constituted each dreary day.
Kitchen staff systematically plunked down small, tin plates in front of each woman. “No dining ware, of course,” Nellie observed. She watched the inmates, with their food before them, grab at their single, small, tough piece of cold, boiled meat or their small, and slightly rancid, boiled potato. When a plate landed in front of her, with her portion of gray protein and a yellow-green knob of potato, she sniffed at it. She had actually hoped to want to eat it, but it only made her gag. She smiled weakly at the hunched, elderly woman with wiry, gray hair next to her and nudged the lunch plate over to her. This patient was not so picky, gruffly grunting her thanks and then gnawing on the cold lump with her toothless gums. Nellie felt her throat close and a cold sweat prickling upon her brow. She excused herself from the bench.
“Get your hands off me!” cried a familiar and outraged voice. Nellie turned to see the girl with the ragged, blue bow hanging from her neglected, wild, red hair. She was, yet again, at the bottom of a pile of staff vigorously trying to pin the girl to the floor.
“You’re all just a bunch of slaves!” her screed continued from somewhere on the floor amidst the scuffling and grunting of Nurse Ball and her attending orderlies.
Then the girl made her worst mistake yet. Nellie watched, wide-eyed, as the redhead grabbed a fistful of Nurse Ball’s hair and yanked. The girl dismantled the perfect bun that adorned Nurse Ball’s head causing hair pins to fall to the floor with soft, high-pitched tinks. The look in Nurse Ball’s eyes gave Nellie a chill. In that moment that the girl yanked on the roots of Nurse Ball’s hair, Nellie saw the large whites of the Head Nurse’s eyes and she observed the pinpoint rage with which she locked eyes with the girl. The effect was instantaneous; the girl’s eyes grew saucer-like and her hand dropped.
“Take Wendy to her room. This instant.” The cold words were nearly hissed through solidly clenched teeth, the intensity with which she emphasized the “t” resembling a disapproving “tsk” from a headmaster.
The staff wasted no time in collecting the girl. Frightened into submission by the Head Nurse’s stare, the girl offered no more resistance, compliantly getting to her feet and moving as fast as she could out of Nurse Ball’s reach. And while no one knew for sure what fate awaited young Wendy, everyone who could comprehend what just happened knew that they would not want to be in her place tonight. They all silently watched the group exit the dining hall and sweep around the corner.
Nellie sauntered to the spot where the scuffle had taken place and swept the freed hairpins from the grimy floor and into her pocket. She smiled and headed for the common room. Dorothy sat on the floor, with her legs tucked underneath her, braiding one side of her hair. She looked up and grinned to see her companion approach.
“Well you certainly look better today. Is everything ok?” she inquired.
“Just grand,” Nellie smiled. She sat beside Dorothy to help with her other braid.
With the sun set and the moon on its ascent, the asylum began the nightly lockdown routine. Nellie and Dorothy were sent to shuffle, single-file, with their wing-mates back to their rooms for the night. With each patient in her room, staff walked the halls, unlocking and locking the outside door bolts to assure that they were fully engaged.
Nellie lay on her cold hard cot and listened as banks of lights were shut down by switches somewhere outside her room. The lights went out. Thankfully the minuscule square of moonlight from her room’s thin window provided just enough light. She got up from the cot, pulled a hairpin from her pocket and got to work on the door lock.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Whatever this sound was, it echoed in the hall. It was getting steadily closer and louder. She realized that it was coming toward her door. Nellie flattened herself against the wall next to her door and held her breath.
A small shadow blocked the scant bit of light that glimmered from under her door. Nellie bit her lip and waited, her last breath held securely in her chest.
After what felt like an eternity, the shadow dashed away. She exhaled, and, as the air escaped from its prison it carried with it some her tension and fear. With a steady hand, she returned to working at the lock.
CLICK!
“Another win for the intrepid reporter!” Nellie thought, gleefully. The heavy door to her room swung open with a groan.
Nellie froze. The hair on her arms stood up. Her mouth went dry. She was not alone in her solitary confinement.
A gurgling, wheezing sound approached from the shadows behind her. “Youuuuu — you killed the rabbit,” a grating voice rattled.
Nellie spun around. There was the girl from her nightmares. Her blond dirty, tangled hair hung limply in her face, and down over her torn, blood-spattered dress. But now, in the faint light cast from the doorway, Nellie saw her eyes. They were red. And, suddenly, those terrifying eyes widened with rage.
“THE RABBIT DIED BECAUSE OF YOU!”
The horrid apparition flew from the shadows, toward Nellie, its arms outstretched to capture her in it’s decaying grip. Her fury pulled her along the floor straight to Nellie. With a furious shriek, the girl’s mouth came at Nellie’s face, its open mouth a black hole lined with decaying teeth and rotting flesh.
Nellie fell backward and scrambled, as fast she could, into the hall. She jumped to her feet and flattened hersel
f against the wall opposite her door. Her heart in her mouth, she watched everything around her, wild-eyed.
She listened, trying to hear above the pounding in her ears and her own ragged breathing. Then … nothing.
Nellie leaned toward the door of her room. It was completely empty. Up and down the hallway — empty. There was nothing to hear except intermittent wails from the other floors and loud snores from the adjacent rooms. Nellie held her head in her hands and took several deep breaths. Was this vision a result of the medication? Or was she somehow becoming a victim of her environment? The soft step of a night nurse echoed from somewhere near the end of the hall causing Nellie to snap to attention. She didn’t have time for hallucinations. She couldn’t miss this opportunity. She shut her unlocked door and moved with swift, quiet strides down the hall, careful to stay close to the walls and in the shadows.
It wasn’t long before she arrived at Dr. Braun’s office and, pulling a hairpin from her pocket, made quick work of its lock. With the door open, she stepped inside. The large window next to his desk allowed the moonlight to bathe the office in soft, white light that shone through some of the specimen jars, giving them an eerie glow. Nellie wasted no time. She quickly rifled through the stacks of documentation that were scattered about on the counters and on his desk. Medical records here, patient progression notes there. Nothing of use would likely be lying out in the open. She turned and scanned the office for a prime location to contain more secret documentation. Then she spied it: the file cabinet. She moved past the desk and chair, crossing the office to the cabinet. She gave the handle a sharp tug and found it locked, and, unfortunately, locked by something more complicated than her hairpin skills could handle. She put her hands on her hips and looked around the room again from this new perspective.
There was a blackboard with a sheet over it. That was as good a place to look as any. Nellie grasped the sheet and flipped the corner up so she could take in the blackboard’s contents. It was not unlike trying to decipher her own shorthand, in that it was a series of complicated formulas and unusual drawings. But this was something she could work on later. She pulled a fresh sheet of paper and a crayon from her pocket and sketched out some of the most prominent formulas and theorems. “What are you trying to do, Doctor?” she murmured. Her hand came to a sudden halt when her eyes fell on the title at the bottom of the blackboard:
PROJECT : ALICE
Nellie left the room exactly as she had found it and, with the sketches safely in her pocket, locked the door and skittered along the halls back to her room. She slipped through the door to her cell and, after a thorough review of the shadows and the space beneath her cot, she closed the door sealing herself inside. Her new crayon-sketched findings would need to be hidden somewhere. These couldn’t be explained away as an ocean-view, particularly if the doctor himself were to find them. The cot offered no refuge for her treasures; papers would be easily discovered there with the most basic inspection. The legs weren’t hollow, so that would not do either.
She inspected the bricks in the wall of the window. Mortar crumbled away here and there, perhaps she could find a loose brick? Nellie patiently felt along each row of bricks, pushing and prying at each one in turn. She gently pushed her cot out of the way and continued until — ah-ha! — one brick in particular seemed a bit looser than the rest. Carefully, she pulled and pried at one side until the end began to give. With a begrudging scrape, the brick came out and Nellie stuffed her folded page into the hole in the base of the wall behind her cot.
She stopped as her fingertips brushed something cold and metallic in the space behind the bricks. Gently, she picked up a delicate strand with something attached, and held it up to the moonlight. A gold locket, tarnished with age and dirt, dangled from her fingers. She quickly replaced the brick, slid the cot back against the wall and scrambled atop her bed. Standing on the cot so that she could use the moonlight from the window for a closer look, she placed the locket in the palm of her hand and examined the design on the front. It was an odd design comprised of what appeared to be caterpillars. She polished the locket on her shift and looked again — yes, caterpillars.
“What in the world?” she muttered.
She used the edge of her thumbnail to delicately pop the tiny closure on the locket and swing its small door open. Inside, instead of a photograph, solid perfume, paper, strand of hair, or other expected article of remembrance or affection, Nellie found instead a small pile of powder. She touched it. It was soft and fine, like talcum powder, but if it was talcum powder, she could not smell it. Perhaps the talc was so aged, its perfume had dulled. She brought the powder closer, to give it a whiff.
“Ugh!” she recoiled at the foul scent and snapped the offensive locket shut. Instantly, she felt sick to her stomach. What had she just ingested? Her head began to reel, and she clutched at her stomach … the pain was horrid!
Before she could call for help, her eyes fluttered and she collapsed on her cot, unconscious.
Somewhere in the basement of Bedlam Asylum, pipes lined the walls and groaned, dripping orange and red with moist rust. Down at the end of the long, dark corridor, a single light bulb barely illuminated an old, heavy, dirt-encrusted vault door.
The bulb began to flicker.
And, from somewhere behind the vault door, a voice emanated, singing softly, rattling like musty air passing over dusty, decaying vocal chords:
Doctor locked me behind a great door:
Doctor left me forever more.
And all of his nurses and all of his men,
Won’t be able to put Doctor together again.
Doctor put a hole in my head:
Doctor, can’t wait until you’re dead.
And all of your nurses and all of your men,
Won’t be able to put you together again.
CHAPTER 12
A face loomed directly over hers, its wide eyes gaping. Nellie awoke with a squawk and jerked back on her cot.
“Oh!” Dorothy stood upright. “I’m sorry, Nellie, I didn’t mean to startle you!”
“Dorothy?” Nellie said with closed eyes, her hand over her thumping heart. Her splitting headache made her eyes too blurry to trust. “Where am I?”
“We’re in your room.” Dorothy kneeled next to her and took her hand.
“What? How did you get in here?”
“It’s free time. Two o’clock. I was worried when you didn’t come out for breakfast or dinner. It’ll be supper before you know it. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. Just had a bad dream.” Nellie pulled herself up into a sitting position on her cot. “Let’s find somewhere to go sit. I’ve been in this room long enough.”
Instead of returning to the main common area, Nellie and Dorothy passed by the bustling, large room in favor of finding new places to explore. They wandered down the hall of the wing that held Dorothy’s room and, at the other end of the long, green hall, found a smaller and older common room.
This room was devoid of life in every way. It definitely had the same elements of neglect as everything else in the establishment, the cracks in the wall and peeling plaster, dingy floors, and over-used chairs and tables from yesteryear. It held a few of the same asylum-safe items that could be found in the main common room: a checker board, decks of playing cards, old books. One table even featured a dusty chess board with the white army arranged on one side and the red on the other. But this room had one unusual addition to the decay: the walls had a charred appearance, and the faint smell of burnt paper hung in the still air.
Had there been a fire at Bedlam? Nellie thought back to her worries about what might happen in this place if all of the patients had to quickly make an escape to avoid disaster. Bedlam offered no safety to those locked within its walls if a fire broke out. If this room was evidence that something nefarious had transpired, Nellie would get to the bottom of it.
But first, she needed to rest. Dorothy could see that Nellie was pale and weary, and so she found a chair
for her. Nellie smiled gratefully and went to sit, touching Dorothy’s hand in thanks.
“Oh, look,” Nellie stopped halfway to the chair and pointed to a stuffed child’s toy that had fallen from a side table. She took a few steps and bent to pick up the forgotten teddy bear. It was an odd thing to find in Bedlam, considering that even Dorothy, a girl in her teens, was supposedly too young to be admitted into Bedlam. Perhaps it had once belonged to a patient who fancied herself childlike. Nellie’s fingertips touched the soft down of the tattered, honey-brown bear.
“Those are MINE!” the child’s voice rang out, brimming with defiance. “I don’t like it when people take things that belong to me!” The room around Nellie had changed. She stood up, swimming in a sea of confusion. The large, old room was now significantly smaller and appeared to be more like a typical inmate’s cell. She looked about her and could not see Dorothy in this new place that now contained only a cot and the side table with the red and white chess set. Suddenly, a rush of inmates pushed and shoved their way through the door and into the room. They swarmed in, knocking Nellie over onto the floor and searching high and low for something. From behind Nellie, the voice continued, accompanied by the stamp of a small foot. “What is she doing here? Get her out. GET HER OUT!”
“Nellie?” Dorothy’s far-off voice floated into Nellie’s ear.
Nellie blinked. She was back in the old common room with Dorothy, who held her arm and searched her face for any sign that she could comprehend where she was.
“Are you okay? Talk to me, Nell!”
Nellie opened her mouth to speak, but another voice interrupted.
“I warned you about Alice. Now she’s in your head. And she won’t get out ….”
Both Nellie and Dorothy turned to the source of the voice. In the doorway stood Wendy, her shock of fiery, unkempt hair a direct contrast to her current predicament. She stood before them confined to a straightjacket. Her pink lips were outlined with crusty, chalky drool.
Bedlam Stories Page 7
