In Darkness, Shadows Breathe

by Catherine Cavendish

She stepped forward, put out her hand and tweaked the curtain. Nothing there. She opened it wider and looked out on the deserted walkway and the curve of the drive. Nothing stirred.

  But she had been there. The woman she knew as Hester, in her Victorian guise. She had made no attempt to blend into the twenty-first century the way she had in the Royal and Waverley.

  * * *

  “You’re not going to believe what I’ve found out.” Joanna threw her handbag down on the settee in Carol’s living room and sat down.

  “I hope it’s something good, or at least something that answers all these interminable questions.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll be clearer when I’ve finished. First of all, remember the photograph I showed you of the three people from the asylum? You knew two of their names. Now meet the third.”

  Joanna rummaged in her bag and produced a small sheaf of papers. Flicking them over, she showed one to Carol.

  It was a copy of a photograph. Two familiar figures stood side by side. “Read the caption underneath.”

  “‘Dr. Oliver Franklyn and Miss Arabella Marsden. Pioneers in the diagnosis of disorders of the brain, praised for their work in treating patients at Waverley Asylum.’ Where did you find this?”

  “Well hidden in the archives at the university. And there’s more. Apparently these two had carte blanche to experiment on the inmates, all in the name of science. There’s a vague and – unfortunately – partial, report of them practicing the art of trepanning.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s where a special type of drill is used to remove a small, circular piece of bone from the skull. Back in history, it was believed this could let out evil humors, but it does have some genuine applications such as when pressure has built up on the brain. As far as Franklyn and Marsden were concerned though, it was for one purpose only and that was to satisfy their own sadistic pleasures. They performed their operations without anesthetic.”

  “They did it to me,” Carol said quietly.

  “Then my hunch was right. You are the one. The report I found must be about you. It has to be. It states that they performed an operation on a woman who insisted she didn’t belong there and that she had come from some time in the future. They deemed her to be hysterical. Typical Victorian assumption, or, in their case, a convenient excuse. Strange how few ‘hysterical’ men there were compared to the shedloads of women diagnosed with that disorder. That’s all there is, I’m afraid. It’s not even dated. I searched everywhere but the rest of the report appears to have been lost. I suppose I was lucky to find what I did.”

  “So, if this is right, then I really do slip backward and forward in time. I’ve lived in more than one time frame.”

  “The theory could be right then. Time isn’t linear. The past, present and future all exist at the same time. Wow, and I thought that only happened in Star Trek.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve been able to find out where Lydia Warren Carmody is buried yet?”

  Joanna shook her head. “Not a trace. Odd really in one way because the Warrens were, as you said, a well-respected family, but apart from birth and marriage details for Grover Warren, there’s only what I discovered a few days ago. Of course, records get lost and I may be looking in entirely the wrong place. Or, yet again, maybe the Masonic influence is at work. ”

  “They told me…I mean Lydia…she would be staying in the asylum for the rest of her life.”

  “I checked the asylum records but they’re sketchy. There was a major fire there early in 1890 and all the records up until then were destroyed. I did check the list of patients who were transferred to other asylums when that was temporarily evacuated and her name wasn’t among them, but as we don’t know for certain when she was sent there, that really proves nothing.”

  “So we don’t know when Roger Carmody died then?”

  “Oh yes, we know that. He died in 1889.”

  “And the trial would have been held soon after?”

  “Probably within a few weeks or months. To them it would have seemed an open-and-shut case, so the defense counsel probably wouldn’t have had much to say.”

  Carol moistened her lips. “If she wasn’t on the list, she must have only been in the asylum for a short time.” She wished Joanna wouldn’t look at her that way. As if there was something else she wanted to say but didn’t know how to approach it. “Please tell me. I know there’s more. Whatever it is, I need to know.”

  Joanna looked upward and took a deep breath. “I found two hospital records. One dates from 1890 and it lists the admission of Lydia Warren Carmody, whose address is listed as the local asylum. She gave birth to a baby girl and was discharged back to the asylum a few days later. The fate of the child is not recorded. The other record is later and is from 1891. I found it quite by chance but it lists the admission of a patient who was kept under close watch following a failed suicide attempt. There are a few notes and a photograph.” She rifled through her papers and picked up the ones she was looking for, making sure Carol couldn’t see them. “The notes are rather brief but they state that the patient had made an unsuccessful attempt to sever arteries in her wrists. She had been found by her landlady, resuscitated and brought to the hospital, where she complained of voices in her head, other entities possessing her body and of finding herself in the past and future. When her injuries were sufficiently healed, she was committed to the asylum. Obviously there’s no record of her arriving there, but we have to assume she did. I want you to prepare yourself.”

  “What do you mean? This is good news, isn’t it? It proves I’m not mad and that someone else has had similar experiences.”

  “It certainly proves something all right. But not what you might think. The patient’s name was Carol Shaughnessy and this is her photograph.”

  Carol stared in disbelief at the faded sepia image. The familiar features stared back at her and inside her a distant memory stirred. “My God. It’s all true then. Every last bit of it.”

  * * *

  The shadows lengthened and Carol switched on the lights and drew the curtains tightly closed in her bedroom and living room. The bathroom and kitchen had no windows and she hadn’t set foot in the other bedroom or en suite since she had changed rooms. Trying to process what Joanna had revealed to her today had taxed every ounce of mental and physical strength. Joanna had let her keep the papers, and time and again she went back to the photograph. She also noted that the doctor’s signature committing her to the asylum was Oliver Franklyn. And that date, 1891. According to the attribution on the poem, the same year Lydia Warren Carmody died.

  The graffiti on the living room wall still taunted her. As soon as her stitches were out and she had healed sufficiently to be able to stretch without pain, she would redecorate. But, for now, the only thing she could do was try and ignore it as best she could. Not easy when every wall was covered in scrawls.

  She poured herself a glass of red wine, carried the bottle into the living room, and placed it and her glass on coasters on a small table within reach.

  For once there was a decent film on television and she settled down to watch The Shape of Water.

  Absorbed in the touching story, she topped up her glass and sipped from it, but not for long.

  A massive curl of writhing shadows began in the far corner of the room. It brought a torrent of wind, knocking over the half-full bottle, which spilled its contents, like blood, saturating the carpet. The force of the wind smashed the bottle against the wall, shattering it.

  Carol cowered on the settee, unable to flee. Something knocked the glass out of her hand, staining the newly cleaned fabric.

  Across the room, a shadow separated from the main one and settled into the shape of a young girl. She looked at Carol through dark eyes, set in a bloodless white face. Carol cried out.

  The girl from the window.

  The child grimac
ed, showing rotten teeth. A flick of her hand and the iPod sprang into life on its deck, pelting out Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ at full volume.

  Someone hammered on the door. The volume rose even higher on the iPod; Axl Rose screamed out the lyrics.

  The child threw back her head and laughed. The larger shadow settled itself into the form of Arabella Marsden.

  “You….” Carol’s mouth ran dry and no more words would come out.

  The noise was so loud from the iPod, Carol was sure her eardrums would burst. The hammering on the door grew louder. Someone was banging on the outer glass doors as well, but she couldn’t move. She was paralyzed and Arabella had to be responsible.

  Arabella raised her hand, fingers pointing toward Carol, her expression a snarl. “You have no place here in this time or any other. You do not belong.” Her words came to Carol through her mind rather than her tortured ears.

  Carol found her voice at last, screaming over the music, “You’re the one who doesn’t belong here. Get back to your own time and leave me alone!”

  Arabella flicked her fingers and Carol was flung off the settee and crashed into the wall. A mist descended and she passed into oblivion.

  Chapter Eight

  Carol opened her eyes. A nurse and a doctor stood over her. She was back in hospital, mercifully in her own time.

  “You’re awake. Excellent,” the doctor said, smiling at her. “I have to tell you that you hit your head quite badly and this caused some swelling on the brain, so we put you in a medically induced coma for a week while your body healed itself. We’ve brought you out of this today, but you’ll need to stay in hospital for a while so we can carry out some tests and make sure everything’s okay before we send you home.”

  Carol listened to the doctor, heard his words, but they made no sense. She surveyed the room, four beds, one of which was hers, all of which were occupied. A lingering smell of food made her stomach clutch. “I don’t remember….”

  “You were found on the floor of your apartment. It seems you may have had a little too much wine and passed out after hitting your head hard against a wall. There was quite a mess, I understand.”

  Arabella Marsden. And that child. Now she remembered. “I have to get back—”

  “I don’t think so. You’re far too weak and you need to rest. Someone else is taking care of things at home. A neighbor. Joanna Lawrenson, I believe.”

  “Joanna. Yes.” Carol tapped into a vague memory that should be much clearer. “I don’t remember what happened.”

  “Alcohol can have that effect.”

  “But I don’t drink much.”

  “The bottle was smashed so it’s impossible to know for sure how much you had drunk, but more than one glass at least. How’s your head? You took quite a bashing when you hit that wall.”

  “I was thrown.”

  The doctor looked perplexed. “You were on your own when they found you.”

  “I was thrown. I remember that much.”

  The doctor shook his head and made a rapid note before replacing the pen in his pocket. “Rest now and we’ll see how you are tomorrow.”

  “Arabella Marsden.”

  “Who?”

  “Arabella Marsden. That’s the name of the woman who threw me against the wall.”

  “Sorry, that name doesn’t mean a thing to me. All I know is the paramedics said you were alone. Officers from the Fire Brigade had to break in, but don’t worry about your apartment. Your neighbor’s arranged for it to be made secure. Now sleep and everything will seem much clearer tomorrow.”

  Carol closed her eyes. She hoped so because, right now, nothing made any sense at all. She tried to remember incidents from her recent past but her thoughts were dominated by Arabella Marsden and the hideous doctor, hell-bent on destroying her mind and sanity.

  The present seemed far away, lost in a dream.

  My name is Carol Shaughnessy and I live at Waverley…. Waverley Asylum. No. Waverley….

  It wouldn’t come to her. However hard she concentrated, she couldn’t remember her address.

  I went to school at….

  Another blank.

  I work at….

  Maybe the aftereffects of the coma, or the swelling that had forced them to induce one in the first place. That had to be it.

  Joanna Lawrenson…. Neighbor….

  The name seemed familiar but it conjured up no image.

  My name is Carol…. Carol….

  She couldn’t remember her surname. Or how old she was. Where she had grown up. The name of anyone she knew at any time in her life. All drew a blank.

  It was as if she had never existed before this time.

  * * *

  It grew worse over the next few days. They transferred her to a Psychiatric Ward, where the days blended into each other and she spent her time staring out of the window, or engaged in endless childish board games.

  She attended group therapy but participated little. How could she when she didn’t know who she was anymore? All she knew was what they told her, but at least she wasn’t violent. “No danger to herself or others,” she had overheard a doctor saying. She had felt something pass out of her and she was glad to be rid of it.

  Three weeks later, they discharged her. She would continue her treatment ‘in the community’ as they put it. By now, she had learned her name, date of birth, address and work place. She could recite them by rote. Not that they meant much to her. The occasional flash of recognition, the odd trace of a memory perhaps.

  Carol returned to Waverley Court with Joanna, who came to collect her. She still could remember precious little of any former friendship but acted as if she could. She found it easier that way. Carol remembered to thank Joanna for having the windows repaired and also for getting decorators in to cover up the graffiti. What graffiti? The settee too had been cleaned and no one would ever have guessed the place had been in the shambles that Joanna had told her about.

  Joanna had also smoothed over the neighbors at numbers one and two by telling them Carol had experienced a seizure, fallen against the iPod and somehow switched it on at full volume. When they heard about that, they were almost sympathetic, or so she told Carol.

  Her first night back, Carol got ready for bed early, at around ten. A headache nagged at her temples so she opened the bathroom cabinet and took out a packet of paracetamol. She was about to close it when she saw something that made her gasp. She picked it up and twisted it in her fingers. A black Sharpie pen. Instantly, her brain triggered off a series of flashbacks.

  The Sharpie in her hand. Writing on the bathroom wall, scrawling over the walls in the living room. Taking a hammer to the china in the kitchen cupboards and closing the cabinet on the devastation within. Drinking red wine, deliberately pouring it over the furnishings. Turning up the iPod. Music blaring out. A fierce, white-hot rage burning inside her. Anger against the people that could afford to live in this place. Uncontrollable jealousy that they had so much and she had so little.

  Farther back her mind drifted, farther still, to a filthy basement. She wielded a hammer, bringing it down on a man who had hurt her so many times. Jonah. Unseen hands had helped to tether him and she ignored his pleas for mercy. She would show him none. The voice wouldn’t let her. Blow after blow, the sickening crunch of bones, his cries weakening and then silent. Still she hit him, with a force far more than her own. He lay there, dead, at the bottom of a derelict building she didn’t recognize.

  All her anger and thirst for revenge had been kept hidden from her conscious mind, fueled by a devil that seethed within her, urging her, feeding on bursts of negative energy, searching for more but finding nothing.

  Carol stared at the Sharpie, quietly returned it to the cabinet and shut the door.

  Almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, she found herself back in that a
wful place again. She came to in the chair they had put her in, her wrists and ankles restrained.

  A rough cotton shift, stained with blood, chafed her skin. Her head pounded and felt as if a weight had been pressed down on it.

  Dr. Franklyn’s face loomed in front of her. No sign of Arabella Marsden or Hester this time. Carol remained there long enough to see he held a bloody drill in his hand. Some sort of matter clung to it. Something that gleamed white. A sickening lurch thrust her back into the present – to a world that felt more unfamiliar to her than the one she had slipped into. She sat bolt upright, her skin crawling as if a thousand insects had taken up residence, determined to explore every inch of her body. Her raw, dry throat stung and she became aware of the staleness of her breath. The sudden chill of the room enveloped her in an icy blanket and she grabbed her dressing gown, wrapping it tightly around her. The stench hit her in the hall. She retched at the mixture of ammonia and stale sweat. It didn’t belong in this sweet-smelling apartment and, at that moment, she didn’t feel she did either.

  Disoriented, she stumbled on icy feet to the kitchen. It seemed unfamiliar. She was seeing it through someone else’s eyes. Someone not used to stainless-steel sinks and modern kitchen units. Someone who, nevertheless, felt grateful to be free and safe from whatever lay inside the walls of Waverley Asylum.

  She was still in the dream. Part of her anyway. Living the nightmare of being Lydia Warren Carmody.

  Who am I? Lydia? Or Carol? Or…?

  She sank slowly down onto the cold, tiled floor. Darkness wrapped around her, warming her after the frosty cold of the apartment. She gave herself up to it, grateful of its cocoon.

  Deeper…deeper…her mind led her down swirling corridors, past lines of women all dressed the same in their long brown dresses, all staring at her through empty, hopeless eyes.

  They vanished and she was alone in a room with only one small, barred window, too high for her to see out of, its only function to provide meager light.

  Gray slivers of it crept in, creating faint checkered patterns on the dirty stone floor.