Read That Which Should Not Be Online
Authors: Brett J. Talley
As we walked, Dr. Winthrop enlightened me with the stories of horror each of the locked doors along the corridor represented. Most had murdered, many more than once. There were cannibals and demon worshipers and slaughterers of sons and daughters, mothers and fathers.
“Obviously we will start you off with the curables. Once you have been here a while, there will probably be some more difficult cases that spark your interest. Everyone has their own personal projects. You will find yours, no doubt.
“A few other things,” he continued as we walked back into the main administration wing. “This is not a building. It is more like a town. We have multiple structures around the campus, including a pump house for water, greenhouse for food, machine shops, and extra staff dormitories. Basically everything you can imagine one might need. In other words, we are entirely self-sufficient. Particularly when the snows come in the winter.
“This place was built on this hill primarily for its aesthetic value. Unfortunately, the winter snows do not seem to appreciate our delicate sensibilities. There will be weeks at a time when the roads up the hill are blocked. Fortunately, there are underground tunnels connecting all of the buildings. If one wishes, there is no need to ever go outside in the winter. When the time comes, I will take you down there. Bit of a maze, that. There is another set of tunnels below that one, but I can’t imagine why you would ever need to go there. Very dark, small, dirty.”
After what seemed like quite a long time, we finally arrived at the room that was to be mine.
“Well, Dr. Hamilton . . .”
“Please, call me William.”
“Yes, William. I am sure you are quite tired. Take the evening. We will reconvene in the morning.”
With that, I was left to my own devices. Somewhere below, I heard a man scream.
The next few weeks came and went in a blur. It was chaos, a rush of new names and people, of learning my role in the asylum and the nature of the patients within it. Late fall gave way to winter. The snows came early, as they often do in New England, though not in such quantity that we were isolated. Not yet, at least.
Dr. Winthrop turned out to be right; I did find a project, a patient whose particular neurosis fascinated me. It was Dr. Winthrop himself who brought him to my attention.
“I’ve someone I want you to talk to,” he said, taking me aside after breakfast one day. “His name is Robert.”
“Robert what?” I asked.
“Well, we don’t really know. He's been in the care of the state for virtually all his life. He was left on our doorstep ten years ago.”
“Left here? You mean he is a child?”
“Well, he’s probably fifteen now.”
Winthrop nodded, and for a moment I looked away. I had never dealt with a child before, and I wasn’t sure I was ready.
“Anyway,” he continued, “he’s been with us for several years, and he’s always been a model patient. Quiet, keeps to himself. Completely insane, of course. Lives in a world of his own creation. But, nonetheless, never a problem. Lately, however, he’s gone into a sort of mania. He won’t eat. He barely sleeps. The orderlies find him staring into the corner
of his room, rocking back and forth and mumbling to himself. Frankly, we are not as concerned with that last bit as we are his appetite. If he won’t eat,” Dr. Winthrop said as he stopped and turned to me, “well, he won’t last. Take a look at him?”
“Of course,” I said, “as soon as I finish with some other things.”
“Excellent,” he replied, slapping me on the shoulder. “Let me know how it goes.”
Three hours later, I entered the incurables ward to find my new patient.
“I’ll take you to him,” one of the orderlies offered.
“Why is he being kept here?” I asked as we walked towards his room. “I was under the impression he wasn’t a danger.”
“He never has been, sir. But Dr. Winthrop thought, with the sudden change in his behavior, it would be better to keep him in a more secure area.” The man pulled out a large ring of keys from his pocket and slipped one in the door, opening it. “Just in case.”
I stepped inside, and the orderly slammed the door behind me. As I heard the bolt slide in place, I looked at the boy sitting in the center of the room. It seemed he had been crying. But now he was simply sitting there, staring at nothing in particular, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. He rocked ever so slightly, but there was nothing about him that bespoke violence.
I stood there for a second, letting him, to the extent he was capable, come to accept my presence in his world. But it was clear he didn’t notice me.
“Mr. Robert,” I said, still not approaching, still afraid to invoke any latent rage that might be simmering beneath the surface. We had the ability to chain potentially violent patients to the wall, but Dr. Harker was deeply opposed to the practice, and so it was used only in the wing for the criminally insane. If Robert decided to attack me, there was nothing to stop him until the orderlies arrived. That would take at least a few minutes. He was only a child, that was true. But one who has never seen it cannot imagine the fury of a human being, bereft of his reason and mind, completely uncontrolled.
“I’m Dr. Hamilton. I’m here to help you.”
Up until that point there was no indication he was aware, in any way, of my presence. But now he stopped rocking and looked up at me with a thoroughly blank look. Then, he smiled.
“You can’t help me, doc,” he said. “I’ve been here as long as I’ve been alive. Do you think you are the first?”
“Well, no,” I said, taking a step closer, “but Dr. Winthrop told me something has changed recently. You’re not sleeping or eating. We can’t have that, Robert. We want you healthy.”
The blank look had returned. He stared at me dumbly, as if nothing I said had penetrated his mind.
“My mother always told me, when I was little, before she brought me here,” he said, looking up at me earnestly, but his voice had that unnerving sing-song chant the insane will often have, “if I shut my eyes and counted to ten, they would be gone when I opened them. And they always were, but now . . .”
His voice trailed off, and he simply shook his head. Then, he closed his eyes and started counting. “1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . ” He counted in time, and I could feel a strange sense of anticipation building inside of me. I’m not sure what I expected to happen. “4 . . . 5 . . . 6 . . .” The air grew heavier, thicker, denser. “7 . . . 8 . . . 9.” A shadow seemed to fall upon the room, a gloom, as if darkness were a thing itself rather than the mere absence of light. “. . . 10.” Then, he opened his eyes.
For a moment he looked in mine, but then, his gaze shifted. It landed somewhere above me, somewhere beyond me. Then, his mouth fell open, and the blood left his face as he went as white as a New England winter. He scurried backwards across the floor, not stopping until his back slammed against the wall.
He buried his head in his hands, moaning and crying a string of unintelligible words. For a moment, and only for a moment really, I felt as if there was someone else in the room. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. It was ridiculous, my mind said, but I nevertheless found myself turning around to see what was behind me.
As I did, I thought I saw a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision, as if a bird had just flown across the back of the room. But it must have been nothing. We were, indeed, alone. I turned back to where Robert was cowering in the corner.
“Robert,” I said calmly, “there is no one there. No one but me and you.”
For a second, he stopped shaking, and the color came back into his face. He looked sternly at me and said, “You should say what you mean, doctor.”
“What?” I asked, honestly confused.
Robert shook his head and said, “You say there is nothing there, but you mean you see nothing. It’s not the same thing. I know you felt it, too.”
I considered challenging him on this point, but decided such a move would not be productive.
“Alright, why don’t you tell me what you see?”
Robert began to laugh, and soon that laugh had turned into a cackle. “You want me to tell you what I see?” he asked dismissively.
“Well, yes. I can’t see it, but I would like to know what it is. Describe it to me.”
It was a tried and true method for dealing with Robert’s particular kind of psychosis. Make him describe what he saw, or what he thought he saw I should say, and the construct would fall apart. It was always easier to imagine a thing in one’s mind than to describe it to another.
“Tell me, doctor,” Robert began. All of the sudden, there was a coldness to his voice, a determination that was not common with the other patients I saw that suffered as he did. The insane, even those who were older, are all too often like children. And, like children, it is easy to grow attached to them, to feel as if you must protect them. My first impression of Robert was he would stay true to this form. But somehow, he was different. He had changed.
“How would you describe love to a man who has never known it, or fear to one who has never felt it? No, what I see, your mind is not capable of comprehending.”
I admit, although I had been trained to control my feelings in situations such as this, at that moment, I was angry.
“You would be surprised what I can comprehend, Robert. Why don’t you just try?”
He nodded once, and I saw some of the coldness, some of the distance, melt away. When he spoke, the fear had crept back into his voice.
“I see clearly,” he began, “what you see darkly.”
“What?” I asked softly. It was an answer unlike any I had ever heard. He spoke now in a whisper
“The shadow in the night,” he said, raising his hand and waving it in front of his face, “that moves across the room, that you catch in the corner of your eye. But then you turn your head, and it’s gone. You have seen it. All men have. You saw it earlier, just now.”
“No,” I lied, even though I wasn’t sure why.
“Yes. You did. I saw it in your face. The wind blows. You see the trees bend at its touch, but you are blind to the force that moves them. I see the wind. I see the hand that smites.”
“Can you describe it for me, what you see?”
Robert coughed out a laugh. “I told you I cannot. It is not of this world. A bending, curving line, a plane turned in on itself. It is an impossibility, a thing that cannot be. A shimmering darkness, a three-lobed, burning eye. That which is and is not, that was and will be.”
“And you see this here, now?”
“No,” he replied. “It is gone now.”
“Does it see you?”
“No,” he repeated, “it does not see me. It sleeps. They all sleep. We view this world through a glass, darkly. But when the sleeper is awakened, we will all see them, then. We will all see
him,
then. Clearly.”
“Him?” I asked.
Now his voice fell to the barest of whispers. “The one who sleeps beneath the waves. That rests in the citadel of that ancient city, spoken of now only in legend and song. He walks in other realms, dances beneath the Beltane moon. His mind is vast, and he comes to me in my dreams. Horrible dreams, they are. Filled with violence and darkness. They hurt me,” he said, his voice growing more feverish.
“Just relax, Robert.”
“No, you don’t understand,” he screamed. “It’s too much! His mind is too vast! The pain has become unbearable!”
“Become?”
“It wasn’t always so,” he continued, his voice falling back towards normal. “Before, it came only in flashes, only in moments. An image, a shadow. Then, it was gone. But now it fills me, it fills my mind and rips at my soul. He is the molder of dreams, and though he may sleep, the power of his intellect does not rest.”
“That’s why you don’t sleep.”
He didn’t speak then, only nodded.
“Why does it grow? Why do you see it more now than you did before?”
Again, he was silent. I thought for an instant he wouldn’t answer me, that I had gone too far or he had told me all he knew already. But he nodded again, as if agreeing to an unspoken request.
“That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons, even death may die.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
He only smiled. “And that, doctor, is why you cannot help me.” He put his head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. I knew he was done with me. I tried to ask him more questions, but he had no more answers. I left him with more mysteries than when I had first entered.
“So how did it go?”
I’d barely slept the night before. I had been anticipating Dr. Winthrop’s visit with much trepidation. My encounter with Robert had not gone as I had expected, and frankly I didn’t know what to think. His mind was clearly broken, but I had not expected the clarity of his hallucinations, the detail with which he spoke, or the authority behind his words.
“I don’t know what to make of it, Dr. Winthrop,” I said as we walked down the hallway towards the cafeteria.
He arched one eyebrow. “Really? What do you mean?”
“Well, the way he spoke. It was unlike anything I have ever heard from a fifteen year old, particularly one who is mad. Does he have any education?”
“Education?” Dr. Winthrop repeated, sounding somewhere between surprise and disgust. “Some of the nurses may have taken pity on him at one point and taught him to read. Other than that, no.”
“I just don’t understand how he could manufacture the things he was saying.”
“He is insane, William. Surely you are aware of their often remarkable ability to create some of the most amazing fantasies. Far better than the most accomplished poet could ever dream.”
“I understand that, Dr. Winthrop. But I feel as though one must have something to draw on, some well of inspiration. I just can’t imagine what that could be for one so young.”
“Did he explain why he wouldn’t sleep?”
“Well,” I began hesitantly, “it’s his dreams.”
“His dreams?”
“Apparently he suffers from nightmares. Pretty bad ones from the way he talks.”
Winthrop coughed out a laugh. “I could be bounded in a nutshell,” he quoted, “and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”
“Yes, something like that,” I said through a frown.
“Well, don’t worry about it. I had Dr. Stevens mix up a sleeping draught. Given his insomnia over the last week, it should knock him out cold. He’ll be better for it, too.”
“I hope you’re right, Dr. Winthrop. It will be interesting to see his reaction.”
At that moment, the asylum alarm sounded. I saw the fear in Dr. Winthrop’s eyes as he realized what was happening. No doubt he saw the same terror in my own. It was the first time I heard that alarm, and it could mean only that some disaster had befallen the asylum.
For a moment we hesitated, but then Dr. Winthrop ran down the hallway, and I followed closely behind. He seemed to leap down the stairs, his key in hand. No sooner had he burst through the main door than I was there, as well, stopping only to lock the portal behind me. The curable wing, normally such a calm and peaceful place, was a-gibber with shouts and activity. My clinical mind observed it would take weeks to repair the damage of this night.
“Dr. Winthrop! Dr. Hamilton!”
It was Jacob, the orderly. He rushed toward us from the incurable wing.
“It’s in here, doctor,” he said to Dr. Winthrop.
“What is?” Dr. Winthrop asked as we rushed to the next wing.
“I can’t say, doctor. I ain’t never seen nothing like it. It’s awful. Simply awful.”
Dr. Winthrop glanced at me. I tried to give him the most confident look I could, but he could see I was shaken.
I heard the howls and screams of the patients in the incurables wing even before Jacob threw open the door. Once inside, the bedlam was almost unbearable. There were several orderlies, each struggling to keep order with the patients. Jacob led us to one of the rooms, and I realized to my horror it was Robert’s.
Jacob looked back at us both, as if to ensure we still wanted to go forward. When he saw our resolve remained strong, he turned the key in the door and flung it open.
For me, at that moment, time stood still. The noise, the violence, the insanity behind me, it all seemed to cease. In that moment, there was only me and the scene that lay before me.
I have heard men say there are things for which words are insufficient, scenes the human mind can barely comprehend, much less describe. I suppose I believed that, or at least I thought I did. But seeing is believing, as they say, and what I saw that night has never left me, though to this day I am incapable of properly describing it.
Robert sat on the floor, and I suppose if you didn’t look at his face, you might think he was just resting. But that face, oh God that horrible face. It was white, pale, the color of death. As white as his face was his hair — hair that had been a lustrous black only a day before was now a color normally reserved for the oldest of men. It was his expression, though. His expression was the most horrible of all.
His mouth was open, but not just open. No, it was gaping, like a chasm in the middle of his face. Wider and more distorted than a human being should be capable of, as if the final horror had been so great as to tear the very ligaments that held his jaw in place. But it was the eyes that were the worst, his still-open eyes. If the very image of the final thing he saw had been captured there, it could not have better told the horror he must have known than those frozen, glassy eyes. Whatever cosmic evil he witnessed, I pray God I never know.
Dr. Winthrop threw himself violently to the side and began to vomit. I suppose I might have as well, but instead I collapsed mercifully into oblivion.
* * *
I sat in one of the large leather chairs in Dr. Harker’s office. Dr. Winthrop was slouched down in the seat beside me. He rubbed his temples with his hands, and it was clear to me he had not yet recovered from what we experienced.
“Thank you for coming, Officer Braddock,” Dr. Harker said to the officially-clad man standing by the door. “I know it is not an easy trip out here.”
“There’ll be no needin’ to thank me,” he said. “The Captain wanted me to let you know how much he appreciated your message. It’s not often we are involved in incidents such as these.”
“There’s no need to thank me, either,” Dr. Harker replied. “We would have handled this internally, of course, but I think it goes without saying we’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Not in all my days at least,” said Dr. Anderson, the hospital’s primary medical doctor.
Despite what had happened, there was comfort in that. Obviously, I had never encountered anything like what I saw in that room. I hoped I never would again.
I had woken some time earlier in the hospital infirmary. At first, I had no notion of how long I had been out. I had no dreams, and by my reckoning, it was but an instant. I learned only later I had slept for hours, long enough for Dr. Harker to send for a constable from the nearest town.
As he had said, it was an unusual move. The asylum was a city unto itself, a ship at sea, and Dr. Harker was its captain. Matters of life or death were under his command. When a patient died, the family of the deceased would be notified to the extent possible. If there were no family, the decedent would be buried on the asylum property with nothing but a small stone and a number to mark where he lay. The numbers corresponded to those names kept in a book in the asylum office. A fire destroyed the book containing the names of the deceased from the asylum’s first five years. Those poor souls would forever remain unknown, unremembered, and unmourned.
Be that as it was, this circumstance was unique, and horribly so. It was a real mystery, and I knew Dr. Harker was more than a little concerned that foul play may have been involved. Dr. Anderson had been accustomed to performing only the barest of examinations over the deceased, but in this case, Dr. Harker had requested special diligence. We had come to Dr. Harker’s office now to hear his report. Blame might also be cast, and as Robert’s attending physician, more than a little blame was likely to fall on me.
“Do you still believe foul play was involved?” Braddock asked.
I saw Dr. Harker glance up uncertainly at Dr. Anderson. I recognized the look immediately. Doctors tend to be practical men. They see a problem and they fix it. Or they at least attempt to understand it. So the uncertainty of this case was unsettling to him. I think it may have even frightened him.
“The truth is,” Dr. Harker finally said, “we aren’t sure what to think.”
“So, it could have been one of the other inmates?”
“Patients,” Dr. Winthrop corrected, speaking for the first time.
“Yes, patients,” Braddock repeated.
“It couldn’t have been one of them,” answered Dr. Winthrop. “I spoke to Jacob, one of our orderlies,” he explained, “and he said Robert was locked in his room, just like he had been every night. No one went in, and he didn’t go out.”
“Could the orderly be lying?” Braddock asked. “After all, if he accidentally left the door open, he would have the most to lose.”
“I’ve known Jacob for many years,” Dr. Harker said dismissively, “and he wouldn’t lie to us.”
“Besides,” Dr. Winthrop interrupted, “we were keeping Robert in the incurables wing for this very reason. For his . . . protection.”
The last phrase seemed to slide off of Dr. Winthrop’s tongue. He recognized the irony in his words but was too far along to change them. I saw Dr. Harker shift uneasily in his chair while Braddock twirled his pocket watch chain in his fingers absentmindedly.
“In any event,” Dr. Winthrop continued after the uncomfortable moment had passed, “Jacob would have been only one of the orderlies in that wing last night. If that room had been opened, one of them would have noticed it.”
“How did they find him?” Braddock asked while Dr. Harker pulled out a pipe and lit it.
“That’s another thing,” Dr. Winthrop said with a sigh. “Jacob said last night . . . well . . . the patients were strange, I guess.”
“Strange? How so?”
“They were quiet.”
“Quiet?”
“Yes, quiet. And, if you knew what normally goes on in the incurables ward, you would know that was unusual, indeed.”
“That they were quiet last night?”
“Jacob said they were as quiet as the grave. He and the other orderlies discussed it. They thought something was wrong, so they kept a close watch. Jacob said he looked through the bars in Robert’s door at least three or four times. He was asleep each time, but restless. Tossing and turning. But then, as if on cue, as if they had planned it, every patient in the asylum started howling, screaming bloody murder. The orderlies tried to shut them up. It was as they ran up and down the ward, banging on every door, screaming and threatening, that Jacob glanced into Robert’s room. It was then he saw him.”
“Strange,” Braddock said in the evening’s least perceptive comment. Dr. Winthrop simply sank down further in his chair. In his mind, it seemed there was nothing more to say.
“Do you have anything to add, doctor?” Braddock said, turning to Dr. Anderson.
“I have many things to add, but I am not sure any of them will answer your questions.”
“Please, doctor, whatever you have will be helpful, I am sure.”
“I examined the body as soon as I could,” Anderson began. “I served in the 28
th
, you know, as a doctor during the war. I was with them at Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam. I’ve seen a lot of men die, cut down by cannon shot and bullets, disease, and infection. I’m not proud to say there’s not much that moves me now. But I’ve never seen anything like this. Not in war, not in peace.”
“Could it have been a murder? Or maybe a suicide?”
Dr. Anderson shook his head.
“No. There are no signs of trauma, no outward signs of a struggle. There are no stab wounds, bullet holes. No indication he was strangled or suffocated. There’s no poison in the blood, and no suggestion he was hit in the head or beaten to death.”
“I’ve heard,” I said, speaking for the first time, “if a man dies in his dreams, he dies in his waking life, as well.”
Dr. Harker looked unblinkingly at me for a moment and then said, “With all due respect, Dr. Hamilton, of all the possible theories I have heard, that is the one I am least likely to believe.”
“Well,” Dr. Anderson interjected, “actually, the young doctor is not far off.”
Dr. Harker chuckled. “How can you say that? We don’t even know how he died.”
“No, we know how he died. I was just getting to that. When I opened him up, his entire body cavity was filled with blood. It didn’t take me long to see why. His heart had exploded.”
“Exploded?” Dr. Harker exclaimed, sitting forward in his chair. “How is that possible?”
“Given what we know, that there was no outside intruder, that Robert was asleep but struggling each time the orderlies looked in on him — that there was no sound from the room, no screams, nothing. He must have been asleep when it happened. He had a dream, a horrible dream by the look of things. It frightened him so that his heart couldn’t take it. Somehow, through some sort of extraordinary sense we don’t understand, the other patients knew when it happened. That’s the only explanation I have, as insane,” he said with a chuckle, “as it might sound.”