Asylum

by Amy Cross

  "Have you told Nurse Winter?" I ask, fighting back the tears.

  "Of course not," she says. "Nurse Winter doesn't have to know everything that happens. Some things can just be between us, okay?"

  "Okay," I say.

  "Come on," the nurse says, fetching my wheelchair from the other side of the room. "Let's go and give you a wash."

  I sit down, and the nurse wheels me out into the corridor. It's still quite early, and the ward isn't very busy. I like it best at times like this, when the place isn't too crowded and -

  "Stop a moment," calls out a familiar voice. I instantly tense up as I hear someone walking over to my wheelchair. I was hoping she wouldn't see me today, but I guess my luck is out.

  "How's Alex doing today?" Nurse Winter asks.

  "He's doing very well," my nurse replies.

  Nurse Winter steps in front of me and leans down, looking me in the eye. "Hello Alexander! How are you feeling this morning?"

  "I'm okay," I mutter.

  "That's good!" she says grinning. There's a pause, and then she sniffs. "Did you have another little accident, Alex?"

  I look down, determined not to let her see my tears. I hate that she knows so many things about me. Ever since I arrived here... I pause. I still don't really remember much about how I ended up in this hospital, or about my life before I was sent here. I have flashes of memory: I know that I was angry at someone, and I remember being in the dark, and then being in a bright gasp of light. Now I've been a patient here for a few days, and hopefully I can get better soon. The doctors and nurses all say that I'm doing well. They promise my memory will come back eventually.

  "The nurse here will fix you up," Nurse Winter says, putting a hand on my knee. "Don't you worry about a thing."

  I don't know why, but I have an irrational hatred of Nurse Winter. There's something about her that fills me with rage and makes me want to run, but I have no idea what caused this sensation.

  "Isn't it your third night here tonight, Alex?" Nurse Winter asks.

  I nod.

  "Well that's wonderful," she says. "Everyone says that their third night is particularly fun." She stands up straight and starts walking away. "See you later!" she calls back.

  As I'm wheeled toward the bathroom, I see another patient sitting nearby. He's a large black guy, and he stares at me with a look of real venom in his eyes.

  "Watch out, Dr. Lava," he says as I'm wheeled past him. "I'm gonna crush your fucking skull."

  I don't say anything. I just wait until I'm safely in the bathroom and the nurse has started running a bath for me.

  "Who's Dr. Lava?" I ask.

  She turns to me. "Dr. Lava?" she asks. She looks a little concerned for a moment. "Well... you used to be Dr. Lava, Alex," she continues. "We talked about this yesterday, remember? You used to be a doctor, and then you had a little episode, and now you're getting better."

  I stare at her. I think I remember us talking about this yesterday, but I'm not sure. Everything's been so confusing lately, and I really don't know why my mind is so foggy. It's as if there are lots of thoughts and ideas, all hidden in the back of my mind, and I can't access them. Sometimes, it's almost as if I'm not 'me' anymore. But every time I think about it, I come up against a kind of brick wall in my mind. I can tell that on the other side of that wall, there's anger and hatred and fear. Right now, though, all I can remember is the most intense flash of white light, almost as if an entire sun was exploding right in the middle of my head.

  Epilogue

  Today

  At 10pm precisely, the night shift staff arrive and the day shift staff are finally able to go to their rooms and get some sleep. The system works perfectly, like clockwork, and everything runs very efficiently. Under Dr. Campbell, there were a few problems and failings, but for the most part the hospital's arrangements are effective. The day shift people always work day shifts, and the night shift people always work night shifts, and there's very rarely any mixing of the two groups of workers. The patients, meanwhile, carry on regardless. Some of them don't even notice that there are different members of staff for different times of the day; some are simply too addled to notice anything at all.

  Nurse Winter pulls her office door shut and smiles for a moment, satisfied that everything is going smoothly. The terrible tragedy that befell Dr. Lava has shocked the hospital's administrators, who were still coming to terms with Dr. Campbell's sudden death. Speaking to the administrators by phone earlier in the day, Nurse Winter was able to reassure them that she had everything under control. She has been placed in temporary charge of the entire hospital following Dr. Lava's difficulties, and her plan now is to prove to her superiors that she's more than capable of taking the top job on a permanent basis.

  She walks confidently along the corridor, feeling for the first time that everything is going according to plan. She has worked hard to get herself in this position, but her plans were almost interrupted by the arrival of Dr. Lava. Getting rid of him required the development of a hastily-designed plan, which meant fooling the man into believing that the 'special treatment' process could be easily understood and controlled. The plan worked perfectly, but Nurse Winter is now keen to ensure that no more 'new bosses' are sent to interfere at Lakehurst. After more than a decade here, she considers the place to be her own private facility. Her rules are the rules that must be followed.

  As she reaches the end of the corridor, she spots Nurse Perry signing some reports sheets, ready to hand them over to the night staff.

  "Good night," Nurse Winter says, pausing in the doorway.

  "Good night," Nurse Perry replies, not really looking up.

  "Thank you for your assistance earlier," Nurse Winter continues. "Your help will be remembered."

  Nurse Perry looks a little uncomfortable. "It's fine," she says. "I'm glad I could help."

  Nurse Winter turns and keeps walking. Eventually, she reaches a door at the very far end of the corridor. Next to the handle, there's a sign warning all staff and patients that they should not even attempt to gain access to this room. Retrieving a key from her pocket, Nurse Winter unlocks the door and slips inside. She leaves the light off, preferring not to disturb the figure sleeping in the bed.

  "How are you doing today?" she asks, walking over to get a closer look. She knows he won't answer, though she also hopes that one day he might surprise her. It's been a long time since he said anything, and her greatest fear is that he'll simply die one day without ever speaking again. "Are you comfortable?" she asks.

  The figure doesn't move, doesn't respond in any way. This ritual takes place every night, and although she hates to see the old man like this, Nurse Winter could never keep away. She wants to be here in case he wakes up.

  "I'll come again tomorrow," she whispers, leaning down and kissing him on the forehead. After turning and walking over to the door, she glances back at the bed. "Good night, Rolf," she says before leaving the room and locking the door.

  Alone again, Rolf stares at the ceiling. He's been in this catatonic state for more than a decade, unable or unwilling to respond to any form of outside stimulation. His only visitor is Nurse Winter, who comes to see him every night. Although he can't acknowledge her presence, he does notice that she's here. He tries to smile, to give her a sign that he's deep inside his own mind, but it's always too hard. Sometimes he manages to force a smile onto his face, briefly, but it's always too late. The smile never comes until after his visitor has left the room again.

  And she never notices the third person in the room.

  Part 3:

  Husk

  Prologue

  A room. A dark room in the basement of Lakehurst Psychiatric Hospital. When the building was originally opened, the basement was used for storage; over the years, as the above-the-ground hospital grew and grew, the basement was left increasingly empty. Gradually, certain individuals began to use this overlooked space for certain things. In 1999, for example, Nurse Kirsten Winter found herself down in th
e basement late one night, dragging a dead body from room to room as she searched for somewhere - anywhere - to store the corpse of the man who had died in her bedroom. More than thirteen years later, a construction engineer named Jim DeMont wandered from room to room, looking for a water heater that was causing problems; DeMont wasn't supposed to be down here, because his work was supposed to be confined to the upper floors, but he'd identified a problem and had made his way down to the basement under his own steam. Thirteen years apart, Nurse Kirsten Winter and Jim DeMont were wandering through the same spaces.

  Back in 1999, Nurse Winter finally reached a small room beneath the west wing of the building. This room was so dark and small, it felt like nobody had been here since the hospital was built. There were some old sheets and chairs left dumped in the corner, and they seemed rotten and useless. Clearly the place was forgotten, which was exactly what Nurse Winter wanted. She needed somewhere to store the dead body while she worked out how she could dispose of it permanently. Fueled by adrenalin and fear, she glanced around the dark little room and decided that this would be perfect. Thirteen years later, reaching the same room, Jim DeMont figured he'd tried every other room in the basement, so he might as well look to see if the water heater was in here. Couldn't hurt, right? He pulled out his flashlight and stepped through the door.

  For Nurse Winter, the old blankets provided an excellent covering for the dead body. Back in 1999, she dragged the body to the corner and pushed it against the wall before pulling the blankets over. The body was quickly covered, and she grabbed some of the old chairs and piled them up to provide an extra barrier. She sighed, finally relaxing a little. She still had to find a way to get rid of the body permanently, but this room would keep her secret for a few days at least. Thirteen years later, Jim DeMont shone his flashlight around and finally noticed a pile of blankets in one corner, with a bunch of old chairs lined up in the way. There was no way a water heater would be placed under blankets, but as Jim turned to leave, it occurred to him that there might be a hidden access panel that would lead to a heater set in the wall. It was a crazy idea, but old buildings like this could be crazy sometimes. He figured it was worth a try.

  Back in 1999, Nurse Winter was about to leave the little room when she noticed that the blankets had slipped, revealing part of the dead body's head. She rushed over and, just as she was about to re-cover the corpse, she pulled the blanket back a little further and looked at the dead man's face. The wound on his forehead still didn't look very bad, but it had been enough to kill him. She reached out and closed the man's dead eyes, to prevent them staring at her. Feeling a cold chill run through her body, Nurse Winter arranged the blankets over the corpse and made sure that this time they wouldn't slip. She told herself that she'd leave the body here for a few days, no more, and then she'd move it and get rid of it permanently. Thirteen years later, Jim DeMont moved the chairs and then reached down, pulling back the blankets. For a moment, he didn't understand what he was looking at, but finally the abstract shapes under the blanket resolved and he realized it was a dead body. Severely dehydrated and almost at the point of mummification, the corpse had clearly been here for a while. As he ran from the room, Jim dropped the flashlight, which rolled across the floor and then lay in place, with its beam pointed toward the body. Finally uncovered after all these years, the dead man's face stared into the light. His eyes were open.

  Detective Thompson

  Today.

  "I'm just... horrified," says Nurse Kirsten Winter, sitting at her desk. It's a cold autumn morning, and the high-ceilinged office is a little chilly. "The thought that some poor soul was down there for all that time," she continues, shaking her head in disbelief, "and that we all went about our daily business up here without realizing..." Her voice tapers off. She seems genuinely a little shaken. "Do you have any idea exactly how long the body had been down there?"

  I shift a little in my seat, which is both uncomfortable and rather low to the ground. "We're waiting for the lab results," I tell her. "The condition of the body was such that we weren't able to make any accurate estimates from a visual inspection. Usually we can get a rough idea just by taking a look, but on this occasion, the atmospheric variables were too great. We took a good sniff, but the smell didn't tell us anything either. Gonna have to wait for the lab to get back to us."

  "Poor soul," Nurse Winter says softly.

  "Indeed," I reply. I flick through my notebook, trying to find some items I wrote down earlier; all I find, though, is my grocery list and some ideas I jotted down for a possible screenplay. I really need to organize my notebook better. "I... checked your personnel files," I continue, "and there are no patients or staff members reported missing since the hospital opened, is that correct?"

  "I believe so," Nurse Winter replies.

  "And no-one had been down to that store-room, because it was out of use. Is that correct?"

  "That is correct," she says.

  I sigh. "And it was only by complete fluke that this engineer, a Mr. James DeMont, happened to go down looking for a heating pump, or something of that nature, and he came across the body. Correct?"

  "Correct."

  "So really," I say, trying to get the whole situation straight in my head, "were it not for Mr. DeMont's rather unusual decision to go down there on a whim, that body could have ended up staying undiscovered in the basement for... well, forever. Right?"

  Nurse Winter nods. "I imagine someone would have gone down there eventually," she says, "but it could have taken many more years. Our basement is very large, with a great many rooms. There's far, far more space down there than we could ever use."

  "And the basement is primarily a storage space," I continue. "Is that correct?"

  "Yes," she says. "We have a few items of equipment down there, but really it's used as a storage area."

  I jot down a few more notes. "So who do you think it is?" I ask. I don't seriously expect her to have any ideas, since she seems as baffled and surprised as everyone else at Lakehurst, but I figure she might have some insight that could prove useful.

  "The body?" she replies, seeming surprised that I asked. "It could be... I don't know, perhaps a vagrant?"

  "A vagrant?" I ask.

  "Well, someone without a home who wandered into the building and took up residence down there. It's implausible, but not beyond the bounds of possibility."

  "I guess," I reply, "but I noticed you have some pretty sturdy alarm systems. It wouldn't be easy for someone to just wander into the hospital, would it?"

  "Not now," she says, "but ten years ago, our systems were a little more primitive. If the body has been down there for that long, it's certainly possible that they could have snuck in when no-one was looking."

  "I guess so," I say, closing my notebook. "Still," I continue, "I think it's worth considering the possibility, even the probability, that the deceased was known to someone at Lakehurst. A patient, a staff member, or perhaps even both." I tuck the notebook into my jacket pocket. "As a general rule, people don't usually just appear from nowhere. They leave a trail. Financial. Emotional. Whatever. Like snails. They leave this... slimy trail as they move through life. My job is to find that trail, and follow it back to some earlier point that allows me to see what really happened." I pause for a moment. "On the other hand, there are rare occasions when snails are carried by birds and then dropped. They land, and there's no trail. To all intents and purposes, they just appear out of nowhere. Of course, they also usually happen to be dead if they've been dropped by a bird." I pause, as I realize that the analogy has unraveled.

  "Fascinating," says Nurse Winter, with a tone of voice that I can't quite decipher. Is she patronizing me, or is she genuinely interested? I've been waiting to use the snail analogy for some time, and this case has finally given me a perfect opportunity.

  "The point is," I continue, "if the snail is dropped into place by a bird, and leaves no trail, then obviously we have to ask who that bird was. To take the analogy to its
logical conclusion, the only way someone can end up somewhere without leaving any kind of trail, is if they're being very careful. That, or someone's moving their body. Do you get where I'm going with this?"

  "You want to know who this person is," she replies, smiling.

  "Exactly!" I say. "Thank you! I'm glad you see where that somewhat torturous analogy was headed. Not everyone 'gets' me, Nurse Winter, but you do, and I'm really grateful for that." I take a deep breath. "Did you see the body?"

  "No," she says calmly, "I did not."

  "I tell you," I say, shaking my head, "it was a hell of a sight. Dried out like a cereal rusk, like one of those unwrapped Egyptian mummies. I bet if you ground that body down, there wouldn't be a single drop of moisture. Completely dry."

  "Really?" Nurse Winter says, looking a little less comfortable than before.

  "And the eyes," I say. "Oh, the eyes. The way they stared up at us, shriveled but still... Just very spooky, if I might use that word. Like there was something we needed to know, except the poor fucker was unable to say it."

  Nurse Winter stares at me for a moment, looking rather surprised. "The eyes were open?" she asks.

  "Yes," I say. "Staring at us like -"

  "Are you sure?" she asks.

  "Very sure," I reply. "Why?"

  "No reason," she says, frowning. "Perhaps the engineer tampered with the body?"

  "No," I say, "I don't think so. I guess the victim just had open eyes at the point of death."

  "I suppose so," Nurse Winter says, but she's clearly not happy about something. Her reactions are quite interesting to watch: I get the feeling that she's very much 'on edge', as if she's performing for me. Now, I'm not saying that a beautiful and professional woman such as Nurse Kirsten Winter is in any way involved in the death of our victim, but I do think she's a textbook case of how some people can just seem guilty even though they're not.