The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls Read online

  Yawning, Veronica lay back.

  ‘Takes the bodies to be buried in the ditch each night. No, not the ditch, that’s wrong . . . what’d she say it was . . . the Pits! Yes, the Death Pits. ‘Eard it for the first time last night when you was out like a stone. After you left, they shut down the Gallery . . . bad press, they said, which addled me as I was always taught there weren’t no such thing as bad press.’

  ‘It comes every night?’

  ‘We dies every day.’

  I had hoped, against all reason, that our bodies were hidden away in a forgotten churchyard, buried with some version of dignity . . . and all this time, the Death Cart had been making its ghoulish rounds. It did not pass by the Eastern Wing of the Asylum housing Ward A, and so I had never heard it until this night.

  From the cell next to Veronica’s and mine, a girl is sniffling. She is repeating a name.

  ‘Jenny . . . Jenny . . . Jenny . . .’

  ‘Oh bother, Penny, it weren’t bleedin’ Jenny,’ says Veronica, without raising her head. ‘I saw ‘er myself bein’ led to ‘er royal bedchamber.’

  ‘She could have died in her cell,’ whimpers Penny.

  ‘For the last time, it weren’t Jenny. I’m goin’ ‘ome tomorrow and I needs my beauty rest.’

  ‘You’re always going home tomorrow, V,’ comes another voice—one I recognize from Ward A. ‘You’re not going anywhere. None of us are.’

  Veronica says nothing; she is still, then turns to face the wall. The ward is silent again, and I can hear Veronica whispering to herself as though half asleep.

  ‘I’m goin’ ‘ome . . . I’m goin’ ‘ome . . . I’m goin’ ‘ome . . .’

  Asylum Letter No. XXXVI

  The days are grey and gloomy, the sun having forfeited its place in the sky to the vultures that can be seen swooping in and out of the brume rolling in from the city below. Often, the great birds disappear in the direction that the Death Cart travels each night, round the side of the building to where I cannot see. I know that there is a field, bordered by the forest of barren black trees, and it is in this field that I suppose the vultures must find sustenance of some sort, for I hear them hissing and screeching, their signature steam engine growl reaching all the way up to my ears through the barred window. I refuse to consider the possibility of what they could be fighting over . . .

  Whilst I fight to keep my wits, my heart breaks for those who have lost them. A Chaser is prodding a girl with his baton. She huddles further into the corner, and, despite the torment, makes no sound.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ I ask the inmate across from me.

  ‘Don’t know . . . she never speaks. “Silent Sarah” we calls her, don’t know her real name. Deaf mute. Don’t try and touch her, she goes wild at that. Best stay clear altogether. She’s a thief too. Protect your valuables.’

  I laugh at her last words, but not at the inmate in the corner, for, when at last she rises, I see that she is the tallest woman I have ever beheld.

  Day after day, Silent Sarah sits in her corner, ignoring all, her towering frame hunched to the size of a child, long, unruly hair pulled over her face. But when the inmates round her surrender themselves to their drugged slumber, she goes to them, one by one, and searches the straw beneath them for their stolen spoons. Thieving any she finds, she then retreats, hiding the utensils under her own bedding. If a girl should wake to catch her in the act, Silent Sarah will lunge forwards, hissing ferociously, then rush back to her corner, the spoon still in her possession. Most are resigned to the loss of the occasional treasure rather than incite her to violence, for her height alone intimidates.

  Sleep is a luxury I do not often indulge in, for Silent Sarah scrapes at the ground to no purpose, making rasping noises into the wee hours. I wish she may find peace so that I may find it as well.

  I have begun to hear the grinding of the wheels even during the day, when the Cart is nowhere near. I also find myself counting heads at breakfast each morning. It could be any one of us, at any time, and there are so many ways to die . . .

  Asylum Letter No. XXXVII

  The shaving of the Captain’s head has made a profound impact upon the inmates of both wards as word spread of the shocking scene. Every girl wonders if it could happen to her, for our hair is all we have left.

  I had suggested that we ought to arrange some sort of gesture for the Captain to welcome her back to us once she was released from Quarantine. Perhaps, I thought, we might all donate a bit of our own hair, since she no longer had any.

  I have not shared this with the girls, but a strange theory has taken root in my mind, Diary, and it’s twisted branches grow stronger with each drop of attention I turn to it. I wonder if the fallen hair that convinced the maids, as well as Madam Mournington, that the Captain had contracted some disease of the scalp and must be shaved, was not, in fact, the Captain’s hair at all. Indeed, it was of a similar texture, and the colour was the same, but I suspect that the locks had been added to her own by artifice. I base this belief upon my observation that, when the hair came loose, it seemed simply to fall away as though it had never been attached. Perhaps it was indeed a form of madness that compelled her to collect stray strands and conceal them amongst her own, but, as it was clearly of such great importance to her, the cause did not matter to me.

  The girls were willing, and so we settled upon the following plan: Each inmate was to part with a bit of hair, which we could then weave together into a single braid. Offering to assist, the Plague Rats used their blade-edged incisors to sever the small amount required from each.

  I began with my own; once I had a thin braid measuring the length of my arm, Veronica wove her long, dark strands into my red ones and continued it. We kept hold of one end of the rope as Sir Edward took the other in his teeth and carried it to our neighbors. It was in this way that the braid grew in length, lacing in and out of the bars from cell to cell, a silken cord of many colours. When the last inmate had added her bit from the far end of the corridor, I reeled the completed cord back into my cell, coiled it, and hid it inside the little rat hole in the corner that was already inhabited by my precious spoon, which the league had carried back to me after I had been forced to leave it inside my mattress in Ward A. Thankfully, the rats had been good enough to bring my silver pencil as well, for, had they not, this narrative would have ended abruptly.

  Less than a fortnight had passed when we were herded through the Ward Hall after breakfast and found our Captain sitting at her usual spot before the window. She was almost unrecognizable; her hair was still closely cropped, having only begun to grow back, and her scalp showed open sores where it had been rubbed raw by a dull razor. She was thinner than ever, and her protruding spine was bent as though she had not the strength to hold herself upright. The Captain’s eyes were bandaged to protect them from the light after weeks in the pitch black of Quarantine, and I supposed that the rats had shown her this kindness, as surely no one else would have.

  Upon seeing her, the girls squealed in elated surprise, but the Captain clapped her hands over her ears; she had not heard voices in such a long time that her senses were stunned by the sudden presence of them. I hushed my sisters and went to retrieve the braid; approaching the Captain, I gently took her hand so as not to frighten her. I ran the braid over her open palm, and she closed her fingers round it.

  hospital entry 22: electroconvulsive therapy

  I have spent my life trying to stay out of Electroconvulsive Therapy, a.k.a. Electric Shock Treatment, a.k.a. ECT.

  It’s not pretty, they say.

  It’s not even humane.

  But they also say that it, occasionally, works.

  Much like Lithium, however, the doctors have no idea why it, occasionally, works. And it really doesn’t matter because, by the time you go in for ECT, you have nothing left to lose. It is the last chance of the suicidally depressed—one step before the end�
��and you’ll only get that chance if you happen to be institutionalized at the time, which is not likely to be the case for many suicidally depressed people, most of whom can’t even get out of bed.

  Besides, the majority of those prescribed the treatment refuse to undergo the process. Think of it like chemotherapy: Many cancer patients feel that the treatment is worse than the death they will inevitably face if they don’t get the treatment, and thus choose to discontinue the treatment—my own father felt this way, and made this choice, and, having watched the treatment administered and the torture behind his eyes as it was, I could not possibly blame him.

  I have never undergone ECT. I have only smelled the terror rising in those who are led down that path.

  Shortly after my imprisonment, I had entered my communal bedroom to find a new inmate huddled upon the bed next to mine. She was clearly anorexic (she, unlike myself, admitted this to the staff, which automatically put her on their good side whilst I remained a dishonest child), but still pretty, with short black hair in a somewhat androgynous cut, which I particularly liked. The girl was reading a book about ECT, one of many on the subject she had stacked upon her bed. She did not look up when I came in.

  I understood this perfectly; when coexisting with the clinically depressed, one must get used to being ignored—it is all part of the isolation process, and I am no exception. There are some days when I simply cannot speak. There are a lot of days like that, actually. And, despite my social criticisms of the general approach toward the mentally ill, I do pity the friends of the severely depressed. Despite faking it for the comfort of others most of the time, there are months out of the year when I cannot help but isolate myself, and so I am aware that I will be apologizing constantly for the rest of my life; it is a horrible feeling.

  Later that afternoon, I plied a nurse for details about my new roommate. She told me that the girl’s name was Chloe, and that Chloe was scheduled to undergo ECT the following morning. The nurse warned me that Chloe didn’t talk to anyone, and that I shouldn’t be offended when Chloe didn’t talk to me.

  Back in my room that night, drugged yet no longer reacting to the drugs, I lay awake in the hazy black, waiting for the morning alarm to sound just as I always did. Then, Chloe spoke to me. I was not surprised—I knew that she would.

  “You’re Emilie, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Chloe. I just wanted to tell you that, at four o’clock this morning, the nurses are going to come in and take me to ECT. I wanted to say I’m sorry, ‘cause you’ll probably wake up with all the noise.”

  “Oh lord, don’t even worry about that. It’s more than likely I’ll be awake anyway. Four o’clock is the witching hour for manic depressives.”

  “Oh, OK . . . thanks.”

  Silence. And then it came.

  “I’m really, really scared.”

  I told Chloe about the session I’d once had with my psychiatrist during which he’d told me all about ECT. He had said that the process (I didn’t mention the word “occasionally”) worked wonders on people who simply hadn’t responded to medication of any sort. I told her that he had also said it didn’t hurt at all, and that it really wasn’t so bad, which was a lie—the shrink had never said anything of the kind. In fact, he had described how brutal, how painful, and how ineffective the treatment often was, but I didn’t see the point in relaying that bit of information. What she needed now was hope.

  I asked Chloe why the doctors felt she needed ECT in the first place.

  “I’m just really depressed, and I can’t function anymore. I can’t do anything, and I can’t make this depression go away.”

  “Did anything happen to trigger your depression?”

  “No, nothing. I just . . . got sad. I can’t go back home because I’ll just lie in bed all day and cry. Nothing has helped, and the doctors don’t know what else to do. I want to get the treatment—people say I don’t want to get better, but I really do. I wasn’t always like this, you know. I actually used to be a really happy person. I don’t want to be this way, but I’m still really scared. I’ve read all these books about ETC, but they haven’t made me feel any better. Oh god, I am so scared . . .”

  Chloe began to cry.

  “Listen to me, sister,” I said. “You are going to be OK. In fact, you are going to be better than OK. You are going to go into that ECT room tomorrow, and you are going to kick ECT’s ass. You are going to be so tough, and so strong, and so OK, and I will tell you why: because I need you to be OK. I need you to come back and tell me that it was fine, and easy, and that you feel better, because someday I will need to get ECT, and I’m going to be scared, and so I need you to be OK so that you can tell me that it’s OK. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Chloe calmed down and began to talk more freely, just as any normal person would who wasn’t about to get her brain violently shocked into oblivion. She asked me why I had been committed, and, this time, I could tell the story like it really happened. Chloe had never attempted suicide and couldn’t imagine doing so, even as depressed as she was. She thought it was sad that I had to go through this alone, a fact that seemed as though no one else had even noticed. At least her family supported her, she said, and was waiting for her to come home as soon as she possibly could. They hadn’t given up on her.

  I was beyond being jealous—I have no real feelings anymore. I am growing more anesthetized with every passing day, and it terrifies me. Will the numbness go away once I get out of here? And what if it doesn’t? Will I ever be able to create again?

  “Do you feel like being here is helping you?” Chloe asked.

  “God, no. If anything, it’s making me worse. I have to fake that I’m all right all the time just to get through the day. Everyone is flipping out around me, and I refuse to give in to that. Observing the freak show only forces me to stay collected.”

  “But have you tried just being open? Letting yourself ‘flip out’ if you need to? That’s what we’re all here for—to let it out, to be completely natural in a safe place. It might actually help you.”

  “That’s the problem though. This isn’t a safe place.”

  Had Chloe remained in Ward B for more than a single night, she would have known that. But I didn’t want to defend myself, and I didn’t want to argue. And besides, she was right. We are here to give it all up—to be naked (sometimes literally), open, free of social constraints, and even free of the laws that demand that we contain ourselves, not hit people, not throw things, which is ironic because, for many of us, it was the law that demanded that we be here in the first place.

  But I can never put down my shield as the other inmates do, and, no wonder—I never feel safe; most of the others are either too witless to feel the danger, or else they are the cause of it. And maybe it all makes more sense than I had thought: Take a suicidal girl and put her in a war zone—some place where she can think of nothing but survival just to get through breakfast. Maybe there’s method in this madness after all.

  Chloe and I didn’t sleep that night. We talked about everything from what kind of music I made to the Hollywood goth clubs that she used to frequent when she had been happy. I told her that I always ended up dancing on a table, and she told me that she always ended up taking off her shirt.

  At four o’clock, the nurses came. Chloe got out of bed, and so did I. She was shaking. I held her tightly and told her that I loved her. She told me she loved me too. Then, Chloe switched off; she put her head down, went limp, and let the nurses fold her into the wheelchair they had brought to take her away.

  Once Chloe was gone, I tore the corner of the previous day’s Asylum letter into the shape of a heart. Upon the heart, I wrote Chloe a note. I told her that, soon, when she got out of here, she was to go directly to the club we had talked about. There, I wrote, she would find me dancing on a table, and she’d better be prepared to take her
shirt off.

  I never saw Chloe again.

  Asylum Letter No. XXXVIII

  Much of what Dr. Stockill does in his Laboratory remains an utter mystery to me. I know that he is mixing his chemicals and composing our medicines, our sleeping pills, our purges, our injections, our strangely coloured—and even more strangely smelling—tonics, yet I also know that there is something more than this.

  The Superintendent is always watching us. When we are out at the Bathing Court, I never fail to spot him looking down at us from his Laboratory window high above the wards.

  Since my incarceration, Dr. Stockill has rarely visited our wards, instead ordering the Chasers to deliver us to him for ‘treatments’. But there has been a change. When we are locked up for the night, Dr. Stockill is now heard stalking the corridors, his step slow and deliberate as his speech, shining his torch into our cells with all the covertness of a grave robber. There, he searches for, and snatches away, any girl who suits his unknown purpose.

  The inmates that the Doctor selects never return to the wards, though it took us some time to determine this with absolute certitude, such is the vastness of our establishment. During our peregrination to the Bathing Court one morning, we witnessed the bodies of several recently disappeared inmates being hastily removed from Dr. Stockill’s Laboratory by a bevy of Chasers. The dead girls were covered in bloody lesions, their faces twisted in anguish almost beyond recognition; they had not died peacefully. No, there is no doubt of it—being selected by Dr. Stockill is a girl’s last stop.

  What does he want?

  I have studied his interactions with the other doctors—not only with Dr. Lymer, but also with our visiting surgeons who perform the necessary removal of things that are not . . . wanted. Dr. Stockill feels superior to them—I can see that. He is disgusted by their vulgar methods—I can see that too. And yet, he cares not what the others do with us so long as it does not interfere with his experiments, nor does he care what is done with us once these experiments are carried out and we are no longer of use to him.