Enter the Dead: A Supernatural Thriller (30 page)

Blackstone
Mental Health Hospital, London.

Five
years later…

‘Well,
Doctor Jarrod, how are you finding things so far?’

The young, trainee
psychiatrist shrugged her shoulders and looked at Doctor Ahmed as if to say
no
big deal
. ‘As far as first days go, it’s been fine. I think I’ll enjoy my
time here. I’m certainly looking forward to making a difference.’

The arrogance of youth¸
thought
the older, wiser doctor. ‘I admire your confidence,’ he said, ‘although you
should be careful not to take anything for granted in a place like this. My
advice would be to always expect the unexpected. I hear you were at Broadmoor
for a while?’

‘I spent a few weeks
there in my second year of med school. It’s what made me want to specialise in
psychiatry.’

‘I imagine you came
across some interesting characters during your time there.’

‘One or two.’

‘Good. In that case,
there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’ He checked his watch. ‘We’ve enough time
to fit him in before lunch. Is that okay with you?’

‘Sure. I’d like that.’

‘Great. Follow me,
please.’ He led her through two sets of coded security doors into a wide,
brightly-lit corridor that was spotlessly clean and eerily quiet. Unlike the
other wards he had taken her to that morning, here there were no patients
wandering around freely, mingling with nurses and healthcare assistants as if
they were all part of the same big, happy family.

‘This is Security Zone
One,’ Doctor Ahmed said. ‘The patients who reside here are those who pose the
biggest threat to either themselves or others, and as a result are separated
from the lower-level patients, at least until such time that they are deemed fit
enough to undertake one of our structured integration programmes. Sadly, the
majority of patients in Zone One will never become well enough to leave.’

When he reached the
third door along, he stopped and turned to face Doctor Jarrod. ‘The man inside
this room presents no physical risk to either of us. Unfortunately for him, his
predilection for self-harm requires continuous sedative and antipsychotic
medication. I thought he’d be a good introduction for you to our
high-dependency patients.’

Without waiting for a
reply, he punched a code into the keypad by the door and entered the room.
Doctor Jarrod followed closely behind, her earlier exuberance having softened somewhat
as she stared at the man sitting on a chair by the barred window.

‘Good morning, Sam,’
Doctor Ahmed said, reaching into a pouch at the end of the bed and retrieving a
document containing patient records, which he handed to Doctor Jarvis. ‘How are
we feeling today? Enjoying the sunlight, I see. A vital source of Vitamin D.’

There was no reply.

‘I’d like to introduce
you to our newest member of staff. Doctor Jarrod – Sam Railton – Sam Railton –
Doctor Jarrod. I imagine the two of you will be seeing a great deal of each
other over the coming years.’ Doctor Ahmed turned to his colleague. ‘Like I
said, we keep him heavily sedated. Sometimes we reduce the dosage, but more
often than not it results in erratic behaviour.’

‘When was he admitted
to Blackstone?’ she asked.

‘Five years ago next
month.’

‘Five years? And
there’s been no improvement whatsoever?’

‘Afraid not.’

‘What’s with the mask around
his eyes?’

‘The full details are
in there,’ he said, nodding to the document folder in her hand, ‘but I’m happy
to give you a brief outline.’ He motioned to Doctor Jarrod to take a seat. ‘Mr Railton…Sam…is
highly psychotic, displaying numerous associated symptoms including delusional
disorder, hallucinations and catatonia. He is also a paranoid schizophrenic.’

‘What happened to him?’

Doctor Ahmed sighed.
‘Do you know anything about possession, Doctor Jarvis?’

‘A little,’ she
replied, slightly taken aback by the forthrightness of the question. ‘I read an
article on it once. It’s when a person believes his body has been invaded by
some kind of malevolent preternatural being; a demon or evil spirit. It used to
be very prevalent across numerous cultures before modern medicine came up with
a rational explanation for it.’

‘It still is prevalent
in many parts of the world. Even in some western Christian cultures, there are
still people who would rather place their faith in the hands of an ordained
exorcist than a qualified psychiatrist. The physical symptoms of possession include
fainting, lesions, convulsions such as pseudo-epileptic seizures and severe
anxiety attacks. All of which tend to result from a patient’s inability to cope
with a particularly stressful event or series of events, such as the sudden
loss of a loved one or the diagnosis of an incurable disease.’

‘Is that what happened
to Sam?’ she asked, opening the document folder and flicking through the notes.

‘Yes,’ replied Doctor
Ahmed. ‘At least I believe so. When Sam first came here he was distraught. He
believed – and probably still does – that he is possessed by the spirit of his
dead father, a Mr William Railton. William Railton died when Sam was only a
young boy, but not before he’d caused the death of Sam’s little sister, Lucy.
I’m guessing Sam didn’t have the happiest of childhoods. The records show he
underwent several courses of therapy in his twenties and thirties. Despite his
troubles, he managed to lead a relatively normal life. He had a wife, Sarah,
and a son called Max who is still alive. He must be around sixteen or seventeen
years old now. I believe he’s living with foster parents somewhere in north
London.’

‘Poor kid.’

‘Yes. He visited once
but never came back. Sam didn’t even recognise him. Anyway, as I was saying, to
the outside world Sam didn’t appear noticeably troubled or mentally unstable.
He worked in London for a big design agency, and by all accounts he was good at
his job. According to a statement that Max gave to the police shortly after his
father’s hospitalization, Sam was a good dad and appeared to have a happy
marriage. Sarah evidently didn’t see it that way, as she’d been having an
affair with Sam’s friend and work colleague, Tom Jackson; an affair that she
managed to conceal from Sam for four years.’

‘Four years?’

‘It’s a long time,
isn’t it? Sam found out in the end, of course. People always do. Apparently he
caught them together outside a hotel near to his office. I believe that’s what
triggered his sudden breakdown, but as you’ll see from the notes, it’s what
happened next that most likely brought him here. To cut a long story short, in
the days that followed Sam finding out about his wife’s affair, the most
bizarre series of tragic events took place. Tom Jackson killed himself and murdered
two of his work colleagues; Max’s childminder, Gracie, fell to her death down
some stairs, and to top it all off, Sarah ended up committing suicide in the
family bathroom.’

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘Afraid not. I admit it
beggars belief, but that’s what happened. When Sam found Sarah lying in the
bathtub, he proceeded to try and end his life by stabbing himself with the same
pair of scissors that she’d used on herself. Hence the mask. Luckily the next
door neighbour, a man called George Gransham, heard the commotion and called
the police. They managed to get to Sam before he could cause any further harm
to himself. Sometimes I think it might have been better for him if they’d let
him finish the job.

Doctor Jarrod looked
across to Sam, who continued to stare out of the window, seemingly oblivious to
the conversation going on around him. ‘Can he hear us?’

‘If he can, he
certainly won’t show it. He hasn’t said a word to anyone in years. When he
first came here, he was understandably hysterical. He was convinced that his
father was the reason why all these people had died; he believed that this
William Railton was somehow using Sam as a conduit through which he could get
to the others. Once they were dead, his father would reappear and enter Sam
until such time that he was ready to kill again. It’s nonsense, of course: there
was a room full of witnesses who saw Tom Jackson killing two people before
turning the gun on himself, and the pathologist who examined Sarah’s body
certified that she’d committed suicide. But Sam wouldn’t listen; he was
convinced that William Railton had possessed him. That’s why he blinded himself
– so that his father would no longer be able to use him as a conduit. He didn’t
want anyone else to die, especially Max. I had intensive conversations with him
for several weeks after he arrived here, but he wouldn’t listen to me. And then
he stopped talking. He hasn’t spoken a single word since. As a psychiatrist,
maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t think there’s any way back for him; no
matter how intensive the therapy or the medication. Believe me, we’ve tried
everything.’

‘So why did you bring
me to see him?’

‘I realise I’m stating
the obvious, Doctor Jarrod, but you’re new to psychiatry. I, on the other hand,
have been working here for more years than I can remember. In my capacity as
medical director of this hospital, I’ve been fortunate – if you can call it
that - to have worked with all manner of murderers and paedophiles and serial offenders.
Some of them I’ve managed to help and that gives me a great deal of job
satisfaction. It’s why we do what we do. Sadly, however, for every patient I’ve
successfully treated, there’ve been at least three others to whom I’ve made
little or next to no difference. I’m afraid Sam Railton is merely one in a long
line of failures.’

‘So you brought me here
because you think I might be able to bring a fresh approach?’

Doctor Ahmed laughed
and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor Jarrod. I don’t mean to be rude. I have
every confidence that you’ll turn out to be a great asset to our hospital. But
I didn’t bring you here for that reason. Precisely the opposite. I brought you
here because I wanted to show you that the vast majority of patients in this
hospital are untreatable.’

‘Isn’t that attitude
slightly defeatist?’

‘Yes, but it’s also
realistic. I certainly don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm, Doctor Jarrod. I’m
simply trying to rebalance your expectation levels. This place is full of Sam
Railtons – people who believe they have sinister voices inside their heads
telling them what to do - and it’s getting busier by the month.  Blackstone
Hospital, just like every other high-secure facility throughout the UK, is
bursting at the seams with patients who are way beyond rehabilitation. All we
can do is keep them locked up, drugged up to the eyeballs so that they can’t
cause any more harm to the outside world. What happened to Sam was tragic, but
I’ve seen far worse. And he’s not alone. The planet is full of people like Sam;
desperate souls who, for whatever reason, are unable to cope with reality and
therefore choose to see the world as they want to see it. Did Sam have a
miserable childhood? Yes. Did this play a part in his subsequent breakdown,
pushing him over the edge of the abyss when he discovered his wife was having
an affair? That explanation certainly works for me. But he’s not alone, far
from it. I appreciate you’re new to all this, but I imagine you saw others just
like Sam during your stint at Broadmoor.’

‘I did.’

‘Of course you did.
Show me the person who hasn’t experienced at least a little pain in their life
and I’ll show you a liar. And while most of us manage to stay on top of our
issues and get on with the grinding task of day-to-day living, there are others
for whom life simply becomes too painful to bare. Hence the drugs, the drink,
the eating disorders, the affairs, the suicides; and yes, the desire to escape
the horrors of reality by blaming it all on some outside entity. We’re all
positioned somewhere along that spectrum. Some of us, like Sam, end up falling
off the other end.’

‘Do you think he’ll
ever
talk to us?’

‘I doubt that very much.
However, you can be sure of one thing: Sam Railton will have in his mind a
version of events that differ entirely from the truth. His brain will have concocted
a story which may be completely ridiculous to everybody else, but which makes
perfect sense to him. He’s trapped in a fantasy world from which no amount of
medication or psychotherapy will be able to free him. Probably for the best,
considering what he’s been through.’

Doctor Ahmed checked
his watch. ‘Lunchtime,’ he said, smiling at Doctor Jarrod. ‘You can look
through Sam’s notes later. I think we’ve had enough for one morning.’

‘Okay,’ she said,
returning the notes to the pouch at the end of the bed and following her boss
out of the room.

When they were gone,
Sam turned slowly away from the window and lifted his mask to reveal two empty,
skin-filled sockets. He shuddered as he felt the presence of his father
standing by the door.

‘Don’t listen to them,
Sammy-boy,’ said William Railton. ‘They speak their bullshit and they walk
away, leaving you to rot in here.’

Sam felt a hand clamp
down on his shoulder and a mouth being pressed against his ear.

‘I won’t leave you,’
his father whispered, his foul breath clogging Sam’s nostrils. ‘You made sure
of that, didn’t you boy? I’m not going anywhere, I promise. I’m stayin’ right by
your side ‘til the day you draw your final breath.’