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.
There’s no light without the dark. 
