Maryam gave a light laugh. “You could put it that way. I’m not sure I would. It highlighted the problem though, even if it presented us all with an enigma. All sorted out now of course. We’ll be sending you home in a few days if you keep making good progress. Then it will be checkups in the clinic every four months, which we’ll run in conjunction with Moreton Grange so we’re covering all angles. I have more news as well. The results of your MRI are in and that’s good news. There is nothing to indicate anything abnormal is going on inside your brain.”
“Thank goodness for that.” The strange, unwelcome sensation in my head seemed to swim around a little, making me feel momentarily nauseous. I swallowed hard and chose not to mention it. A minute ago, I had been told everything was fine. I must have been imagining the odd feeling.
“It was better to be cautious.” Maryam performed her usual physical examination, pronounced herself delighted with the way my skin was healing and left me.
I promptly had the urge to visit the bathroom. The Movicol was doing its job.
Twenty minutes later, freshly douched and dressed in a caftan Paul had brought in for me the previous day, I even managed to put on a little makeup. For a woman who rarely went out without at least a bit of lipstick, eyeshadow and foundation, it made me feel more like me. Carrying a light shoulder bag, I made my way down the corridor to the bay containing six beds, one of which I knew must be Carol’s. Three of the beds were unoccupied. Friday. Kicking-out day. Those beds would probably remain empty until Monday when a new influx of patients would arrive.
Joyce had just finished tending to a patient.
“Do you know where Carol is?” I asked.
“She’s been moved to another ward in the main hospital, I think. I’m not sure really.”
Damn.
I made my way to the elevator, intent on going down to the shop next to the cafeteria.
But never made it.
Chapter Fourteen
The lights snapped off, plunging me into darkness while the entire elevator shook once and stopped.
“Vanessa…Vanessa….”
The whispers were all around me. More than one voice, overlapping each other. I clapped my hands to my ears to shut them out but they invaded my mind and came from within me.
“Vanessa…Vanessa….”
“Stop it!” I screamed out into the darkness. Not one chink of light anywhere. No sound except the interminable, infernal whispering. Female, male, child. A whole throng of people all whispering my name.
“What do you want from me?”
No response. More murmuring.
The blackness bore me down. Its weight crushed me. I tried to curl myself into a ball but the pain refused to allow me. I sobbed louder, trying to drown out the spectral sounds.
“This isn’t real. It isn’t happening.”
When all the while I knew it was.
“Vanessa…Vanessa….”
“Who…are you?” I was choking. I couldn’t get my breath, every gasp a supreme effort of will. “Let me out of here.” Frantically, I scrabbled along the wall, trying to find the control panel. My fingers found only smooth metal and then…buttons. I pressed one after the other. Nothing worked. One was larger than the rest. I had found the alarm. That had to work, didn’t it? I pressed it once, twice, again and again. Either it was out of order or I was pressing the wrong one after all. I ran out of buttons. Nothing.
I cried out for help until I thought my lungs would burst.
Without warning, a dazzling white light lit up the compartment. It blinded me and I shielded my eyes. Something grabbed my arm but I couldn’t see who or what it was. Were they taking me to safety or…? The door opened.
I allowed myself to be propelled forward until I was clear of the elevator and back in the old corridor of the workhouse. This time, the women milling around could plainly see me. And they weren’t ethereal anymore, but as solid as me.
A tug at my arm. I looked down. Agnes. She seemed a little older today. Taller. And she was wearing a dark brown Victorian dress.
“Was that you?” I asked. “Did you just get me out of there?” I nodded to where the elevator was…or rather, had been. Now there was a solid wall of peeling paint.
“She says you are to come with me,” Agnes said.
“Who says?”
“Miss Marsden.”
I let Agnes lead me past the questioning faces. I must have looked completely out of place in my green and blue caftan, compression socks, and slippers. They were all dressed the same in drab brown dresses with aprons. Their eyes bored into me.
An officious-looking woman in a smart uniform of a navy-blue dress, buttoned up to her neck and extending to her feet, topped off with a starched snowy-white apron and bonnet, marched up the corridor clapping her hands. “To your work. To your work. Idleness has no place here.”
She cast me a quick, almost angry glance and promptly ignored my presence as she continued to chivvy the women along. She didn’t seem to see Agnes at all. No one did, apart from me.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked Agnes.
The child did not answer. We had rounded the corner I remembered from my earlier visit and now passed the door I had exited through. This part of the building was quiet. Presently, Agnes stopped in front of a door and knocked.
A strident female voice called from within, “Enter.”
Agnes reached up to the door handle and turned it. She half pushed me in and closed the door, leaving me alone with a woman dressed in black from head to foot.
She stared at me and I blinked. Her eyes. I had seen them before. Pale gray, seeming to penetrate deep into my brain. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled and I would have given anything to get out of there. The woman radiated evil.
She spoke. “My name is Arabella Marsden and I have waited a long time to meet you.”
“What is this place? How am I even here?”
“Questions. Always questions. This is Waverley Workhouse and you are here because I sent for you.”
“But I don’t belong here.”
“You’re wrong. You belong here every bit as much as you belong in your own time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
“What did you do to Carol?”
“That is none of your concern.”
Strange that I had lost all sense of the peculiarity of the situation. That I could be here, so far out of my own time, talking with…a ghost. She had to be, didn’t she? Or was I the ghost here?
The woman continued to stare at me. She clasped her hands in front of her and said nothing.
“The poem,” I said at last. “In darkness, shadows breathe. What do you know about it?”
“It was written for you.”
“How could you know that? It was written over a century before I was born, and who is Lydia Warren Carmody anyway?”
“You have a limited sense of time and space. You see time as linear but it is not. It is fluid. I knew about you long before you were born. We too are linked, as you are to Lydia Warren Carmody. All of us are linked to the spirit that sought us out long ago. The One and the Many. Old as time itself. Older even, since time does not exist as you know it.”
My back ached from standing. “I need to sit down.”
“Ah yes, your operation.” She indicated a chair and I lowered myself into it, trying not to wince.
I tried again, calmer this time. “There was a woman here…. Last time I came. Agnes called her the madwoman. She was screaming and they sedated her, but the way the doctor was talking, she wouldn’t be sedated for long. I’m certain he was planning to kill her. Somehow she escaped from where they were restraining her and followed me. She spoke to me and said, ‘you’re next’. And there’s another woman who I’ve met in my time and this. Her name’s Hes
ter and she claims to be psychic. She also keeps telling me I’m next. I need you to tell me what’s going on here, and what your role is in this.”
This time I did get a reaction. “Hester is a transient spirit. To put it in language you might understand, she moves across time as easily as you move from your time to this. It is she who brings you here. As for the other…. Her name is Susan Jackson. Unfortunate case. She could have been so much more, but we learned a great deal from her and her soul will soon be free.” She closed her mouth. I would get nothing more out of her.
She turned back from me and I felt an overwhelming tiredness. My eyelids grew heavy and I could no longer keep them open. I tried to speak, but my mouth wouldn’t obey and I slipped into a half-conscious world where phantoms moved silently along endless hallways and the woman’s eyes stared at me from every angle. Silent, unblinking, waiting.
* * *
I came to in my bed. Margie was bustling around with her cleaning cloths.
“Had a good sleep?” she asked.
It took me a second to realize where I was. I looked down at myself, still dressed in my caftan, my slippers on the floor beside my bed. I sat up, glanced at my watch and found it was almost lunchtime.
I shook my head. “I had another one of those…I don’t even know what to call them. Experiences, I suppose.”
Margie paused, cloth in hand. I noticed my bag, perched on the visitor’s chair – something I never did. For reasons of security I always put it in the bedside cabinet, but I ignored it for the moment.
“What happened?” Margie asked, her attention firmly diverted away from her work and onto my story.
I told her, watching her expression change from curiosity to something like familiarity. “You’ve heard all this before, haven’t you?” I asked.
Margie nodded so vigorously her hair threatened to escape the clutches of the loose bun.
She hesitated as if uncertain whether she should say anything, then made up her mind.
“You need to leave here.” Her voice was low, as if she was scared someone might overhear her. “You need to ask them to discharge you. Tomorrow. Today if you can. It’s too dangerous for you here. Someone else—”
The door opened. Joyce popped her head around the door. “Margie, when you’ve finished here could you pop next door with your mop and bucket?”
Margie nodded and Joyce shut the door.
“What do you mean it’s too dangerous?” I asked. “Besides I can’t leave until next week. Maryam said so.”
Margie came closer. “Look, I don’t know everything, but there have been instances over the years when women have simply disappeared from here. Every time, just before it happened, they had a story like yours to tell. The last time I heard it was yesterday evening.”
“You don’t mean…Carol?”
Margie nodded. “After she had that funny turn, they took her to X-ray and the next anyone knew she was bundled off to another ward, except she never arrived. It’s all being hushed up at the moment, but she is officially a missing person and she’s not the only one. A woman called Susan Jackson has also disappeared. Same ward as Carol.”
“Susan Jackson?” I didn’t tell her that I very much feared I knew exactly what had happened to her. “What about the families? They must be going crazy with worry.”
“I don’t know anything about Susan but Carol hasn’t got any. There’s a friend, I believe, but that’s it. No one to kick up any kind of stink as far as I can see. The official line is that she simply walked out, but I have my doubts, especially with her ankles so sore and bandaged. These past few days Carol has had a similar story to tell as all the rest of them. As you have. And now she’s gone. When your husband comes in, get him to help you pack and then discharge yourself. Please. It’s for your own good. You’re a nice person and I don’t want them to get you as well.”
“Who, Margie? You said ‘them’. Do you know who they are? Apart from Hester, I’ve only seen ghosts of people from the old workhouse, a doctor, Agnes and a woman called Arabella Marsden.” I didn’t mention Susan Jackson.
“That’s her. Arabella Marsden was in charge of the workhouse at one time, along with a man, a Dr. Franklyn. My great aunt knew of them because she spent part of her childhood there. They were praised by the medical world for pioneering work in the field of mental illness, but they were evil, cruel. They terrorized the female inmates, conducted experiments on them, treated them worse than animals. Great Aunt Florence used to say the Marsden woman was the devil in person, without one ounce of compassion or humanity in her. But she was clever. Very clever. She could be your best friend one minute and your murderer the next. She had some plan. I don’t know what it was but she swore she and the doctor had discovered the source of the soul. She said the truth had been revealed to them and they were guided by the hand of another. Something supernatural. My aunt didn’t believe any of that but there was someone else she used to speak of. Oh, what was her name? Double-barreled surname, Warren something.”
“Lydia Warren Carmody?”
“That’s it. Aunt Florence said it was rumored that Arabella Marsden was in league with a she-devil who had possessed a patient in the asylum – a woman who had tried to commit suicide. Then there were rumors about this Warren Carmody woman, who was a convicted murderer I believe.”
“I need to show you something.”
I removed the poem from the book and handed it to Margie. She read it and handed it back to me. I read it again.
“It makes you shiver, doesn’t it?” Margie said. “That’s the woman’s name all right. Not long before she died, Arabella Marsden went mad. This was after Dr. Franklyn passed away in strange circumstances. The story goes that he and Marsden were conducting some experiment where they summoned the she-devil that possessed the woman who wrote this poem. They wanted immortality and they said the demon could grant it to them in return for all they had done for her. They were arrogant as always. Anyway, there was a strange fire one night. Staff heard the Marsden woman screaming hysterically from the laboratory and they had to break the door down to get to her. That’s when they found the doctor. Incinerated on the floor. Not much more than a pile of ash. Great Aunt Florence called it a load of stuff and nonsense, but my grandmother – her sister – wasn’t so sure. She’d read some folk story about a wandering wrathful she-devil called the One and the Many who possessed the bodies of women, heightening their emotions of anger and revenge. It was her belief that the doctor and Arabella Marsden had overstepped the mark and the demon had struck out. Arabella Marsden spent the rest of her wretched life in a padded cell.”
“That’s quite some story.” I pointed to the poem and read it aloud.
“In darkness, shadows breathe
Though the earth be still, with graves,
The mourning yearn for solace
And the dead shall hear their cry,
Sending spirits on winged flight,
To comfort and console,
But one among them bides behind,
Her soul of ebony and granite,
The fires of life long since quenched,
Replaced with voids of emptiness.
In darkness, shadows breathe
And death their only reward.
“You know, the first part is quite gentle,” I said. “But I’m seeing the rest of it differently now. It’s as if she’s talking about something evil that will triumph over the innocent, who can now only look forward to an eternity in death.”
The door opened again. Joyce didn’t look happy. “Margie. Please could you go next door? There’s a big puddle there and Kerry’s going to go mad if she sees it.”
“Coming. Sorry.” The apology was to both of us. Joyce left again. “Don’t stay here any longer or you will be next.”
I nodded at Margie. “Thank you for telling me all this.”
Sh
e gave me a quick smile and left.
My thoughts tossed themselves around my head. None made much sense unless I completely abandoned every rule of the natural world I had ever grown up with. The questions grew until my head felt as if it would explode at any moment.
I decided to take myself off for a short walk. Maybe I would stand at the main entrance of the hospital and get some air. Perhaps that would help unclog my overloaded brain.
It didn’t.
* * *
“I’m not happy about letting you go quite so soon,” Maryam said. “You’ve had such a big operation, I would prefer we left it a few more days. Just to be sure there are no more complications. You’ve been through such a lot, Nessa. I don’t want us to undo all the good work by making rash decisions now.”
“I really want to go home, Maryam. I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”
She hesitated. “I’m a little concerned as to why you want to leave us so suddenly.”
“I’m feeling much better and I just feel ready.”
“Give it another three days. Providing your temperature and blood pressure remain steady and there are no further setbacks, I think we can look at that.”
Not the immediate discharge Margie had urged, but at least I had something to work toward. Only three more days. Then I would be home.
Safe at last.
Chapter Fifteen
I don’t know how I ended up there.
After Maryam left I drifted off to sleep. A combination of relief that I would be able to escape Margie’s predictions and the fear I had been under for days rose to the surface and left me exhausted.
A fusty smell invaded my nostrils and I opened my eyes. The noise of women milling around outside wafted through the keyhole of the solid metal door. I didn’t need to wonder where I was. I knew. The only questions were how and why.
My heart plummeted. I was alone in a filthy room, lying on a bed that consisted of a bare board partially covered with a moth-eaten and threadbare gray blanket. Another bed lay empty beside me and there was plenty of evidence of Victorian medicine all around – white china or porcelain bowls of varying shapes and sizes, a trolley with vicious-looking instruments laid out neatly and covering the surface. Stands, rubber tubes, bottles, machines for goodness alone knew what purposes. A galvanized bucket stood in one corner. No prizes for guessing its purpose.
In Darkness, Shadows Breathe Page 19
