Tales From The Rookeries II: The Night of The Storm.

Hello, and welcome back to the series, Tales From The Rookeries. Today's dark little tale from The Rookeries; 'Hospital for the Insane and Morally Dissolute,' is called 'The Night of The Storm.' I guess you could call it a very twisted little love story.

To find out more about this blog series of 'Tales From the Rookeries' and the original series, 'The Meadowsweet Chronicles' you can read the introductory post HERE. To read more stories in the series, there is a link menu in the sidebar.

Please note that these are flash fiction pieces, designed to be playful in style and genre. They have not undergone professional edit so feel free to add constructive criticism in the comments - always learning, always growing!
 

The Night of The Storm (1854)

 

It’s been raining all day and all night. The lower floor, which sits mostly underground, has bars at the high level openings that serve as windows. Once there was glass, but it was not long before the ingenuity that comes with solitary confinement caused that to become rather a fatal problem; solved easily by not replacing the windows when they became broken. Now, the barred openings lead out onto the woodland, allowing the rain to channel down the mulchy slopes and into the building, creating muddy puddles on the brick tiled floor of the cells. The lunatics appear to accept this fate, like most others; it is just another layer of misery upon the many folds of misery they already wear.

On return from my rounds, I ask the matron if there is anything that can be done. She is a woman of God and believes that such natural discomforts are fitting for creatures who have abandoned Him. When I ask if her God would abandoned his own children, she reprimands my insolence and dismisses me to my duties with the veiled threat of permanent dismissal and a dented reputation. In my situation, as a young woman with no family and no home, it may as well be a threat on my life.

Hoping for more compassion and action, I interrupt the good Doctor Carson to inform him about the situation; he offers me a face that suggests a level of concern but no actions that might solve the situation.

    “The problem is, my dear,” he replies, “we would have to move them, and there is nowhere to move them to.”
     He gives me a kindly smile and then returns his attention to his notes. After an incredibly long minute of silence as I wait for some kind of eureka moment, I take my leave, closing the door quietly behind me.

The stormy weather does something to the lunatics; it’s as if they are mirrors to the wildness of nature; its unstable and often cruel moods are reflected in their actions as if they are turning nature’s energy into some beautiful but confused choreography. I cannot imagine the primal horror they feel when the crack of thunder and lightning splits heaven open like a wound bleeding the wrath of some angry God.

I have promised Henry that I would return within the hour, when I have found a solution to his increasingly wretched position. Unlike most of the patients housed on the subterranean floor, he is lucid, even with the weather – almost too lucid, so that you might think for a moment that it is you who is mad and that it is he who is sane. He has this way with him – a cold calmness, even on the hottest of Summer days; it’s a trick of his madness; the same madness that allowed him to savagely murder seventeen people in one weekend of night-time park prowls and then return to his work as an eminent surgeon on the Monday.

 It was not the first killing spree he had committed; although he has told me he has very little recall of the actual events of the three previous times he had mutated from calm and efficient surgeon to savage and insatiable predator.

Nevertheless, of all the patients I have responsibility for, I like Henry the most. He is always polite, and he has a gently burning fire behind his eyes that suggests amusement; in a similar way that a god might look down on earth and find his creations somewhat ludicrous.

 As I walk my rounds with my leather nurses’ boots treading echoes in the halls, the cries of the sad and desperate join in melancholy chorus with the wind. I wonder if, like them, I will ever leave this place, or whether we are all doomed to spend our lives within its grey, unkindly walls.

With the lower floor flooding, the rats are spilling up the stairs, stalking their quiet shadows against the tiled skirting. There will soon be more cries of horror as they seek sanctuary within the cells and add more lace to the patients’ fears. The drafts have blown out many of the candles that usually offer some small, reassuring light, and now as I turn on my journey towards the care-taker’s office, I am entering a dark and shadowy world, lit only by the candle that I carry.   

A scream, far away and yet close, barrels through the corridors, causing the hairs on my neck to prickle and rise. I am used to cries of sadness, of woe, and of pain, but there is something about this scream that is different to the rest; in it is a perfect clarity of understanding; like waking one morning to see the face of Satan in place of your own. I stop in my tracks, waiting for it to end. It is some moments before it finally quiets, and then the silence is almost worse than the sound of the scream. I pick up my skirts and turn towards that awesome absence of noise; my soles tap quickly on the hard floor and my candle-light flickers with the threat of extinguishing at any moment. For a while, my thoughts of Henry are gone.

When I bump into Doctor Carson, also plucked from his own purpose by the sound of such a blood-curdling scream, I almost laugh with relief.

    “You heard it too, Elizabeth?”
I nod my head and bite down on my lip. I am hoping he is going to dismiss me to my duties and spare me the investigation that he is clearly about to undertake.
   “Come then, we had better see what awaits us,” he says, unable to hide the anxiety in his voice.

I follow in his steps. I am grateful that in this part of the building, there is no need for the candlelight as it is serviced by the gas lamps on the walls. I blow out my candle and when sure that the wick is cold enough, I stick it into one of the depths of my large apron pockets. On this dark night, I want to carry the light with me.

Now that there is nothing but the eerie yawning silence, it is hard to navigate our way, but Doctor Carson, through some kind of intuition, carries on, taking turn after turn until I can hardly believe that a scream could travel so far.

We arrive at the office of the Matron. My heartbeat trips over itself as I see the spray of blood across the glass of her office door.
    “Stay here,” Doctor Carson whispers.
I notice how a light sweat has broken out on his brow. He scans the corridor hoping to see reinforcements in the form of the male orderlies. He does not want to face the scene alone, even though he is no stranger to violence or blood.

He reaches out a tentative hand and pushes open the door. I read his face, searching for the narrative; it flickers with the crisis before resettling into some kind of blank calm.

   “Find help!” he says. I note how his voice has cracked between the words.
With morbid curiosity, I try to peer around his bulk to see inside, but he has positioned himself to ‘protect’ me.
From inside the room, I hear the death groans of the matron. He mistakes my hesitation for fear.
    “Quickly child, there may be a chance we can save her,” he says as he rushes to her side. Before the door swings shut, I see him pressing his hand to a wound that is pumping out blood like some kind of macabre fountain. She needs a surgeon.

I pick my skirts up with both my hands. Adrenalin and inspiration fuel my flight through the endless corridors and down the stairs past the rats and into the darkness. I have no time to stop and light a candle. It is not the light I need. As I reach the bottom of the stone steps, I barely notice that the hems of my skirts are damp with flood waters. I have a clear purpose. I feel in my pocket for my hoop of keys, searching out the key that I should not have but which I could not resist stealing. Maybe in my heart I had always known that one day I would free him.

I am calling out his name, as if to raise him from the dead.

    “Henry! Henry!”
My feet slosh through the water and I try not to think about the human waste and the disease that is churned up in it. By the time I arrive at Henry’s cell, the last one of the row, he is waiting for me. A look of saintly calm upon his face.
   “Elizabeth?” he asks.
He should not know my name and giving it to him was perhaps the very first turn of the key that would inevitably unlock him.
   “I need your help,” I plead.
He looks at me with eyes that tell me he has been waiting for this moment. They barely flicker with surprise. Every thought I have tells me that this is a wrong choice and yet every feeling I have confirms it is right.

I place the key in the lock and turn it, springing the locking mechanism. It is surprisingly easy, as if God is condoning my actions. A boom of thunder rattles the walls. Even in the short few minutes I have been back down here, the waters have risen, and with them, the cries of the patients. As much as I feel driven to save them, I know that leaving them here to drown is equally a kindly act.

For a moment, my hand rests on the handle of his cell as if I might have a change of heart. Henry waits. I open the door.

    “We need a surgeon,” I hurriedly explain, “and it will be at least half an hour before Mr. James can get here. It’s the Matron… someone has attacked her.”
    He nods. “It’s been a while,” he says almost apologetically.

It’s been three years almost to the day. I remember the very moment he arrived.

I lead him away from the cell, past the other patients who call for rescue too. I do not fear having my back to him – although I should. He seems in no hurry and I have to urge him on.
   “Quickly, please. She’s already half-dead.”
As soon as we are free from wading the flood waters, I trip up the stone step, hidden by the swirling waters. His hand strikes out to steady me.

When we arrive, Doctor Carson flinches before proclaiming,

   “My God, Elizabeth, what have you done?”
I do not answer. Henry is already assessing the Matron’s wounds and shaking his head. He says,
   “This is not good: the wound is too deep. The weapon has caught one of the main veins; I can tell from the spray of blood on the glass. There’s nothing to be done. It’s a priest you need, not a surgeon.”

Doctor Carson has his eye fixed on Henry in the way that venison fixes on a hunter.
   “Thank you, Henry,” Doctor Carson says gently. “Perhaps, Elizabeth could escort you back to your room if there is nothing to be done.”
   “I can try to stitch it,” he says, “but I don’t hold much hope.” Then almost as an aside he whispers, 
   “She’s dead anyway.”
The blood is still pumping out from between Doctor Carson’s fingers and then, just like lightning illuminates the sky, I see that the Matron is more to Doctor Carson than a colleague. He loves her.

Doctor Carson nods, giving his permission for Henry to do whatever he can. I feel the sensation of others at my back, and turn to see two of the male orderlies crashing through the door. They are about to take hold of Henry, but Doctor Carson raises a hand and they stop. Silence fills the room as Henry works. Despite the years of confinement, the rough treatment and the pain, I watch as his hands work like the hands of an artist. I cannot imagine those same hands ripping apart bodies like they claimed.

Eventually, the blood stops to a mere trickle, but I am not sure whether this is because Henry has been successful, or because the Matron is simply empty. Then, Henry sits back on his haunches, holding her wrist in search of a pulse. I am holding my breath as we wait, and it is only when I see Henry’s shoulders rise and fall with laughter that I breathe out.

    “I can still do it,” he says. “I still am.”

With the crisis over, Doctor Carson instructs me to call for Mr. James. We all know that the Matron is far from saved. There is an awkwardness in the room. All is out of joint. This man, the lunatic, has saved her life – for the present. He is more than a creature, more than a murderer, more than a lunatic, and nobody knows how to treat him.

Finally, Doctor Carson issues the instruction for the orderlies to return the patient to his room. I begin to protest. We all know that it isn’t a room, but a cell – and tonight, it is no more than a tomb.

    “But, Doctor, surely we can…”
    “Elizabeth, please hurry with word to Mr. James.”

I am just about to leave when the room erupts. From somewhere there is a terrible yawping roar and a flash of white cottons and flesh. I try to make out the scene, but there are so many bodies. Blood splatters the walls, and floors, and faces. There seems one body too many, and as I stand somewhere between terror and fascination, I see that it is not Henry that is the painting the room red, but another patient, Joe, who has been hiding in the Matron’s office watching his crime play out like a play. There is something sharp and glinting in his hand, but I am desperate for him not to see me and so I hide behind the door frame. Dread causes my legs to turn to sculptured stone. The rich copper smell of freshly slaughtered meat.

 All at once, I am being pulled along the corridor.

    “They’re all dead, Elizabeth,” Henry says with his hand in mine. “We have to go!”
    “All?” I ask, knowing that within the last few minutes, the beast in Henry has appeared. His hands are stained with blood and his face is jewelled with blood.

As we run, I know that no matter how deeply I love him, I am holding hands with a beast that will both love and destroy me.  

Tales from The Rookeries Asylum I - New Nurse

Welcome to the first posting of  Tales from The Asylum, a blog #FlashFiction project of short stories, all less than 2000 words (a 5-10max read). The stories are inspired by location of The Rookeries Asylum, which features in The Meadowsweet Chronicles. I hope you enjoy this short little read. It's called 'New Nurse'. Don't forget to sign up to the blog for updates on the stories to follow. You can read about this blog project in the introductory post, and you can find in the right sidebar a live-link table to other stories in the series as they appear.

Tales from The Asylum I: New Nurse
(1951)

The bus dropped me off in the village of Heargton. The Asylum, I had been told, was just a short ten minute walk through the village on the East Road. The Matron had neglected to inform me that the way would be little more than a mud track through a creepy wood. I looked down at my once pristine white nurses’ shoes and sighed. Mud-spattered was not the first impression I had intended to make. I hoped she would put it down to youthful ignorance rather than carelessness.

My mother had cried when I’d left for my first day in my new job. She’d had noble and romantic notions of me being a modern day Florence Nightingale; falling for some heroic soldier who I helped heal in both body and soul, not spending my days tending to the violent and criminally insane.

I shivered with the quiet fear that was unravelling in my stomach. The wind wound its way through the trunks of the tall Scots Pines creating an eerie, mournful moan. As I walked, it became a chorus of other pitiful cries – those of human relics. I looked at my watch, knowing exactly what time it was. I had planned my journey meticulously. But there was something in the shadowy gloom that made me question momentarily if I hadn’t somehow been tricked. It read two p.m.

The Rookeries grew from some haunted looking dolls’ house into a Victorian redbrick monstrosity. Gothic revival in style, the whole thing was decorated like an over the top wedding cake, as if somehow they could hide the ugliness incarcerated within from the outside world. I wasn’t fooled. There was something sinister about the florid stone floristry – as if it might contain a hundred deadly vipers.

I rang the bell and waited. I didn’t have to wait for long. It was opened by a squat woman with a sour mouth. Her eyes coldly and slowly appraised me from head to toe. Her lips twisted at the sight of my shoes. There was something in her look that made me feel naked, as if I were little more than meat on a butcher’s counter.

   “You’re late,” she said by way of welcome.
I glanced down at my watch. It was three minutes past two.
   “I’m sorry,” I said doing my best to hide my irritation with a look of contrition.
   “Well, you’d better come in. Doctor Mappin is waiting for you,” she said, turning her back on me and leading me into the cave-like hallway.

I scanned the room, taking in the heavy oak furniture and black and white tiles. It looked like the hallway of a country house, rather than an asylum, although I was soon to learn that like everything else I had seen of the place so far, it was a front to the inner horror.

A scream came from somewhere deep inside the hospital and startled me. As if the nurse had eyes in the back of her head, she said,
  “You get used to the noises after a time.” She led me up the sweeping staircase and along a corridor of glass windowed offices. Some of them had a row of sorry little metal chairs outside, which I guessed were for waiting relatives. I was instructed to take one of them outside an office which had the title of MATRON painted in gold on its window. The nurse walked further down the corridor before knocking on what I presumed must be the office of Doctor Mappin. ‘Strange’ I thought, that I should not have been asked to sit on one of the chairs outside of his office.

*

“The girl has finally arrived.”

Doctor Mappin peered over his papers. His half-moon glasses glinted in the afternoon grey winter light.  
   “Good, good.” He nodded.
Nurse Mary waited for the doctor to enquire more, but his attention was clearly drawn to whatever reading material he was holding.
   “She seems quite perfect. I’m sure that she will meet his specific requirements,” Mary said, trying to engage the doctor.
He flicked her a look, and Mary thought she saw the slightest shudder run through his shoulders. Doctor Mappin was essentially a good man, although The Rookeries Asylum was a world within a world in which the usual laws of good and bad were somewhat skewed. He was certainly, of the four doctors that worked here, the best of them. Mary had heard the rumours amongst the patients and other nurses; she’d walked past the locked rooms. No signs instructed, ‘No Entry’ but the keys could never be found.
   “Quite,” he said dismissively, although Mary knew that it was not disinterest but an unwillingness to be too deeply involved in the dark matter.
   “So shall I call her in?”
   “No. Take her straight down to him.”
Mary’s forehead crumpled. “But won’t she find that… strange, doctor?”
  “I really think that is the least of her problems, don’t you?”
Mary nodded and padded silently out of the room.

She smiled at the girl, whose name escaped her. It didn’t matter. In some ways it was better for her not to know. The Matron would take care of contacting her parents; informing them that she hadn’t turned up for her appointment and that her job offer had been withdrawn. They might contact the police and trace her steps as far as the bus station but that would be it. The Rookeries was owned and protected very powerful people.

*

The nurse came out of the office and smiled at me. It was the first time she had smiled since we’d met. I preferred her scowl; there was something over sweet about her smile, as if her teeth were fashioned of sugar cubes. She apologised on behalf of the doctor, who was ‘very busy’ and had requested that she show me around. She informed me that I was to work primarily with one of their patients; the son of a very wealthy family, although he was not, as he would no doubt claim in his conversations, a prince.

  “No, no, no – imagine the scandal!” she exclaimed in such a way that I immediately suspected that the man may be a prince. “The poor man suffers from delusions of grandeur – he’s very convincing.”

I nodded sagely, hoping that my inexperience and excited curiosity was not too obvious. “Why is he here?”
She flinched, and I wondered what horrible malady the man must suffer to make even an experienced psychiatric nurse recoil.
   “He has…” she struggled with her words, clearly not wanting to tell me and yet feeling compelled to answer a question she’d been asked. “Perhaps it would be an interesting exercise to see what your own assessment is after you meet him.”
Excitement flared. “But he’s,” I cleared my throat, “he’s safe for me to work with, yes?”
   “Aubery is a perfect gentleman,” she reassured.

She pushed open the door and we stepped into the twisted soul of the building. It was a soul made of iron bars, soiled stiff calico and tears – some silent, some screaming. I couldn’t help but look in at the wretched creatures held in their cells. Regardless of their crimes, there was something inhumane and cruel about their plight. My presence caused a ripple of eerie catcalls and outpourings of desperation. As if sensing my horror, the nurse explained,
   “This ward is for the most criminally insane. They are here because their crimes are so awful that Satan himself would have reservations over allowing them in to Hell. Don’t let them move you to pity. If you knew their stories, you’d feel entirely different. Female nurses never work in here. Only the Matron and I are allowed access so that we might tend to Aubery.”

My instincts started a quiet warning. Questions whispered in my mind. Why was I ‘allowed’ here? ‘Why was Aubery so close to such monsters if he wasn’t a monster too?’ My nerves jangled and I felt small the small prickle of sweat on my palms.

At last, we reached the end of the corridor and the nurse rummaged her chatelaine of keys before inserting a large metal key into the lock of the barred door. One through, she locked it behind her, adding to my mounting paranoia. Here, the corridor was flanked either side with wooden doors that were still clearly cells but which offered more privacy than the ones in the previous section. She guided me down to the end and I wondered how often I would have to make this journey before it became part of normal. Here there was silence behind the doors, and I wondered if in fact they were inhabited at all. I wasn’t sure what was worse – to be locked away surrounded by the cries of the tormented mad, or to be cocooned in silence.

The nurse knocked on the door and I was surprised to see that on invite she simply turned the handle and entered: the patient apparently free to enter and leave his room as he pleased.

   “Mary,” he greeted with a voice like a velvet ribbon. “How nice of you to call.”
I smiled inwardly. At last I knew the nurse’s name, and she had been right about his gentlemanly sense of delusion. I stepped into the room behind her and saw how it was far more like an apartment than the cold brick cells I had seen on my journey so far. There were heavy velvet drapes at the barred window, which even at this time of the day, were drawn against the sombre afternoon light. The man, who was unnervingly handsome, was reclined on a threadbare chaise and dressed as if he had raided the clothes rail of the local amateur dramatics society.

Mary turned to me, beckoning me forward and I saw his eyes swivel towards me, giving the unnerving impression of a lizard. He smiled approvingly, and it seemed simple good manners to hold my hand out in greeting, even though it was the very last thing that nursing protocol demanded. I sensed Mary moving towards the door and looked to her for clarification as to what it was I was meant to be doing.

She was already half way out – her body slinking through the closing gap of the door.

   “Enjoy your meal, Aubery,” she said as the door clicked behind her.
I looked to the man and saw him smile. We had not brought a tray of food with us and as I scanned the room, I could see no other lunch set out. I backed towards the door, not taking my eyes off the man on the chaise. His impossibly pointed teeth bit down onto the cushion of his lips, and a flare of hunger flashed through his eyes.
   “Come, little lamb,” he crooned, swinging his legs off the chaise and patting the seat next to him. “Let me tell you a story before I dine.”

The realisation of my fate struck me so hard that I felt physically winded. I tried the door handle, but it simply rattled in my hand, stubbornly refusing to turn. I pummelled the door with my fists until they burned, crying out for Mary – but Mary was gone, and with her, all my hope.

Tales from the Asylum. A collection of short stories exclusive to the blog.

For those of you who have read 'The Meadowsweet Chronicles' you will be aware of a sinister little building tucked away deep in Raven's Wood, called 'The Rookeries'.

Built by the wealthy and powerful Ravenheart family as a hospital for the local village of Heargton, it caught mysteriously alight just a few years after its completion in 1879. Rebuilt, it became an 'Institution For the Criminal Insane and the Morally Dissolute; housing highly dangerous criminals in the basement floors, the wretched figures of the mentally ill and deranged on the lower floors, and a maternity suite on the top floor.

Through ages of cutting edge experimental psychiatric medical and psychological experimentation, 'The Rookeries' became stained with the sadness and sorrow of many souls. The Rookeries, a literal Hell on Earth, was made worse by the evil and wickedness of the doctors and staff, who turned a blind eye, or actively indulged, in strange paranormal practices that unleashed dark and evil forces within its many walls.

Now, in the twenty first century, it is said that the ghostly cries of the patients can still be heard winding through the skeletal pine-trees, despite The Rookeries being nothing more than a ruinous ramble of rooms and long forgotten relics.

Today sees the very first post in a series of short stories (each no more than 2,000 words and taking no longer than 5-10minutes to read) based on tales from The Rookeries Asylum of Heargton. They are #FlashFiction pieces; experimental outpourings of creativity that might one day, in one form or another find themselves woven into the Meadowsweet Chronicles, but more than likely wont.

Today's tale is called 'New Nurse' and you can read it here.

If dark and suspenseful horror is your thing, then hopefully you will enjoy this little series. Don't forget to drop a comment in the box and sign up to the blog so you don't miss out on any of the series.

You can find out more about the Meadowsweet Chronicles at the official website www.katiemjohn.com