The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls Read online

  The visiting staff smile and laugh.

  They ask me if I’m famous (wouldn’t they know it if I were?).

  They ask me what sort of music I play (ask Dr. Sharp).

  They do all this.

  But they don’t let me go.

  Why do I get the feeling that they are only keeping me here to find out what happens next?

  Dr. Sharp accused me of being here for the sake of research. But maybe I’m not the one writing a book.

  Asylum Letter No. LVIII

  As the doctors immerse themselves ever more into their ‘work’, the Chasers are becoming ever more vicious. The brutes are frustrated by the greater number of inmates they are now charged to monitor and control, and they are wielding their annoyance upon the only ones who can’t fight back: us.

  We have developed hand signals used to warn each other of approaching staff, and we strike our stolen spoons against the bars of our cells in an attempt to distract them once they arrive. We do not always succeed, but we do our best to minimize the damage.

  Silent Sarah has become more bold in her thievery, lifting the spoons from the Dining Hall just as the inmates have finished with them. The occasional skirmish does occur, for a spoon should rightly be stolen only by the inmate who had been using it, but Silent Sarah always wins.

  And our Superintendent? Dr. Stockill’s experiments continue day and night.

  In his presence have I passed nearly a decade now, listening to his voice as he listens to mine. I have watched his obsession consume him entirely, and he has watched me grow thinner and more unruly. I wonder that he does not kill me. I have seen too many led to the Doctor’s Laboratory never to return to imagine I could be spared much longer. Why he has let me live to this day, I do not know.

  But, where my will to survive should have decreased in correspondence to the misery in which I have existed, it has done quite the opposite. When I think of myself, I am without hope, or faith, or any such thing as one is accustomed to living for. Yet, when I think of my fellow inmates, my sisters, those I love and would indeed die for, I feel my heart beating with a strength it should not, by all medical reasoning, be capable of.

  Meanwhile, our numbers are dwindling, for Dr. Greavesly has now embarked upon the illegal sale of our corpses, either whole or limb by limb, whichever the anatomy colleges require. Thus, those of us who have not been sliced to death are nearly dead in our minds or deathly ill, suffering from infection, paralysis, and a hundred ailments that have no name.

  Those who do not mend quietly disappear, and still no Death Cart. The wards have gone silent. Terror reigns.

  Asylum Letter No. LIX

  Through our solitary view of the world outside of Ward B, we have observed that nearly all of the vultures have flown away. We cannot fathom what might have been done to accomplish this, but the Londoners are satisfied, and the inspection of the Asylum has been called off—there will be no visitors this year.

  The wind howls as it blasts great torrents of snow into our cells, rotting our beds of straw. Yet, strangely, the Wards are warmer, despite the bitter weather. The entire institution is warmer in fact, and, thus, our collective health has bettered, if only slightly. It is hoped that improvements are finally being made for our benefit.

  Still, things are not as they should be. Inmates have been disappearing at an even more alarming rate, and entire cells are empty for the first time. When the Death Cart had been making its nightly rounds, there were only as many missing from the breakfast table as the cart could hold. Now, there are twenty, thirty, forty girls simply vanishing each day, and no one knows to where.

  I must learn what becomes of the lost. Might there be significance to the recent delivery and subsequent construction? This has been the only alteration to our establishment, has it not? Whatever was in that box is now installed within the basement, which, if my assumptions are correct, also houses the motorized workings for the Asylum’s theatrical scenery. I am determined to find my way down by whatever means possible, and soon.

  Somehow, I feel certain that we are facing the final chapter of our horrific history; things have gone too far—become too monstrous—to continue on as they are. We are being exterminated. We are the laboratory rats, and we have multiplied. The public had sent in their multitudes, and the Asylum had welcomed them, along with the income they brought. But now, the facilities are overrun, the staff are overwhelmed, and we are being cut down to size.

  I suspect this means that Dr. Stockill is nearing the success of his grand experiment, and that, soon, we will no longer be needed at all.

  As if all of this was not dismal enough, my spoon, the large one given to me by Sir Edward and the League, has gone missing.

  Asylum Letter No. LX

  I return to you, Diary, after an eventful absence, during which time my raw and ragged hands were needed elsewhere. I will now endeavor to faithfully recount the three days that followed my entry above, and which blasted our world wide apart:

  It was in the eventide that Veronica began to worry me. Her spirits seemed to be falling, and, as I depended upon her to bolster my own, I must do something.

  ‘What can be the matter, darling?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’m not goin’ anywhere’, she said to me, somewhat absently, and very quiet.

  ‘But of course you are! What a thing to say! Why, surely tomorrow . . .’

  ‘I won’t be ‘ere tomorrow.’

  ‘Quite right, my sweet love. You won’t be here at all. You’ll be on the stage again, and better than ever you were.’

  ‘I won’t be on the stage neither.’

  I kissed her lips, and they were cold. I began to feel frightened.

  ‘Perhaps you could sing for us? You know how happy it makes me when you sing.’

  If she could not slip back into her delusions, I thought I should die. Too much of reality. Too much of truth. I wanted none of it. To my boundless relief, Veronica smiled, and I knew that she had returned to me.

  ‘You’d be such a star, Em, such a dazzler, those pretty eyes, those pretty legs . . . why not come with me tomorrow? We could make a new act of it, the two of us.’

  ‘Me? And what would I do?’ I laughed, grateful to be part of her game again.

  ‘I’ll teach you. Now, you’ve got to stand up, to begin with. Always stand up, because you’ve got to show your legs. Yes, like that, Emmy, lovely. See, the trick of it is, when you ‘old your fans,’ and here Veronica bent down to grasp a fistful of straw in each hand, ‘you’ve got to think of ‘em as an extension of your arms. Graceful-like.’

  She waved her straw, and I did so as well. Bits fell from our hands, but she did not notice. As I studied Veronica’s movements, I saw that several of the girls in the nearby cells were doing the same, mimicking her as best they could, even those whose chains restricted them.

  ‘Then, you cover the parts you want ‘em lookin’ at.’

  ‘And what parts do we want them looking at?’

  She stared at me, shocked at my stupidity.

  ‘The parts as makes ‘em pay, girl!’

  Laughter rang out round me, and I was so glad of it I could have wept.

  ‘Now, I’m not much for boys, but it’s boys who pays, an’ they like it when you start off nice and quiet-like . . . makes ‘em wait for it. In my act, the one as made my name, we start it off just so.’

  Slowly and sweetly, Veronica began to sing.

  Verse I:

  There was an English lass

  As pretty as a rose

  But chaste she was and never would she play

  From her pretty little a - - (hands)

  To her pretty little toes

  A waste it was to keep them hid away

  The gentlemen who called her she denied

  And, like a proper lady would, she cried:

  Presently, I swear I saw her fist
fuls of straw transform into great fans of jeweled ostrich.

  Chorus:

  You may paint my portrait and buy me champagne

  But don’t kiss me!

  You may pet me over and over again

  But don’t kiss me!

  You may call me ‘darling’ and ask me to dance

  For dancing is my cup of tea

  No, these lips are not for the taking

  But if you’ll only agree

  That we never should part, you’ll be breaking my heart

  If you don’t kiss me!

  Veronica’s tattered shift had become a satin corset; strands of sparkling beads splashed against her gartered thighs; her lips were red and she had feathers in her hair.

  Verse II:

  No lovers would she claim

  All sweethearts would she scorn

  But one day when a suitor came to call

  She saw that, to her shame

  Her stockings she had torn

  And at her feet the gentleman did fall

  She swished her fan to keep the hound at bay

  And, like the bless’d Madonna, did she say:

  And as Veronica went on to sing and dance the second chorus, the girls who were strong enough to join in (and even many of those who were not) attempted the few words they knew, which were, primarily, three.

  Chorus:

  You may paint my portrait and buy me champagne

  But don’t kiss me!

  You may pet me over and over again

  But don’t kiss me!

  You may call me ‘darling’ and ask me to dance

  For dancing is my cup of tea

  No, these lips are not for the taking

  But if you’ll only agree

  That we never should part, you’ll be breaking my heart

  If you don’t kiss me!

  Veronica then demanded that we all sing along with her one last round, and so, to as much as our talents allowed, we did. Two lines in and she was shouting for only the lads to sing, which was comical indeed as we looked round at one another, unsure of who should respond. Faster and faster went the piano—the piano I could now hear as clearly as my own laughter. Nearing the end of the chorus, I looked about the Ward and saw the faces now joyous, heard the voices now shrieking in merriment instead of pain, all of us transported to another place entirely by one solitary creature who, in her own mind, still lived there. If Veronica was mad, her madness was a gift to us that made us less so.

  She riled us to our jubilant close:

  That we never should part, you’ll be breaking my heart

  If we ever should part, you’ll be breaking my heart

  That we never should part, you’ll be breaking my heart

  If you don’t kiss—

  As Veronica drew the breath she intended to spend in the shouting of her triumphant last word, a hand clapped over her mouth from behind. Dr. Stockill pressed a chemical-soaked handkerchief to her face, and she soon collapsed against him, her long legs going slack beneath her.

  I screamed and clawed at the Doctor, but to no avail; a Chaser close behind pulled me away and held my hands behind my back until Veronica was dragged down the corridor and out of my sight. This the Chaser cruelly allowed me to watch before he took me by the hair and threw me headlong against the bars, striking me unconscious.

  I awoke in Quarantine.

  Asylum Letter No. LXI

  Sir Edward and Basil had stowed away in my pocket, and I was glad of it, for even Quarantine was empty. Crouched upon the damp earth and settling into the blackness, I heard a sound from directly beneath us—something like the gunning of a freight train . . . a great puff of steam followed by a low rumble. My eyes adjusting, I watched in bewilderment as Sir Edward leapt from my shoulder and flattened his furry body against the ground. Basil followed and did the same. The two rats scurried about the cell, pausing after every few steps to press their heads to the floor, their whiskers twitching. At last, Sir Edward raised himself.

  ‘If you wish to see into the basement, my Lady, I believe we can be of some assistance, for we are directly above it.’

  Sir Edward led me to the far corner of the cell where the boards below the soil were thin and weakest. I cleared a layer of dirt from the area quickly enough, and the rats set to work, shredding the wooden beams with their astonishingly powerful jaws. Not an hour later, an opening had been made, and a shaft of light infiltrated our cell from below. I brought my face to the ground.

  The hollow beneath us was cavernous and unfurnished, as though it had only recently been occupied. Hanging gaslights encircled a wooden slab in the center of the room, coarse and stained. Deep within the surrounding shadows, I could faintly distinguish the outlines of machinery—enormous gears and wheels, levers, cogs, and chains surrounded an iron vault.

  A curtain hung round the shoddy operating table, drawn open and tied off to one side. I saw Dr. Stockill and another man bending over the slab, engaged in the inspection of something a third had just deposited there. When the men raised themselves, I could see the body of a girl I recognized from Ward B. She was clearly dead—her limbs limp, her face blue and bloodless. The third man, whose identity I could not yet decipher, divested the dead girl of her striped stockings, then tossed them into a copper coal scuttle already overflowing with such garments.

  ‘I don’t mind touchin’ the live ones,’ he said, ‘but I’m not too keen on strippin’ the dead. ‘Course, that’s just me.’

  ‘Your delicacy is admirable, young Charles,’ remarked Dr. Stockill in his vacuous intonation, ‘but there’s no need to burn the stockings. We pride ourselves on wasting nothing here, don’t we, Greavesly?’

  The second man stepped into the light, and I saw that it was indeed our own butcher, as I had suspected.

  And then, horror . . . horror such as I can never describe . . . several more bodies were piled nearby, naked, one on top of the other. Stockings removed, the girl upon the table was tossed onto this pile like nothing more than a piece of discarded meat thrown out by the kitchen staff. I felt faint, but I could not look away. The bodies were fresh, as though they had been alive only an hour before; their eyes were open, their blank stares like dead fish at market.

  ‘Stockill,’ objected Dr. Greavesly, ‘I don’t know why you insist upon killing the sluts before tossing them into the furnace, especially since you refuse to have any fun with it. It’s a waste of time, I say, not to mention a waste of those precious chemicals you spend every penny on. We’d be stinking rich if you didn’t squander so.’

  So that’s where the Asylum’s profits go, I thought.

  ‘Your vulgar methods, Greavesly, disgust me immensely. You would no doubt have me slit the things open and roll about in their innards if you could.’

  ‘I’d respect you for it! You’re too delicate to be a proper doctor, I say.’

  The butcher slurred his speech as though he had been drinking, which did not surprise me.

  ‘I am not delicate,’ shot Dr. Stockill with a sudden intensity that startled even his opponent, ‘and you would be wise to curb your tongue whilst you continue to work under my protection.’

  Protection? What did that mean? Was Dr. Greavesly hiding?

  ‘Oh foxpiss, Stockill, calm down . . . you’ll spill your cyanide.’

  ‘Furthermore,’ the Superintendent returned his attention to his subject, ‘I have not the slightest interest in the bodies of these . . . abominations.’

  He snapped his fingers. Charlie, the very Chaser who had led a chained Veronica to my cell upon that first day in Ward B, brought forth yet another inmate, this one still living. Her hands were bound across her chest; a gag was tied over her mouth. Tangled hair fell forwards over her bowed head.

  ‘On the table!’ Dr. Stockill directed, stepping backwards.

 
Charlie forced the struggling girl onto the wooden slab, then retrieved a set of straps from a nearby shelf.

  ‘No, no, that won’t be necessary. Leave us.’

  The Doctor bent over his patient.

  ‘She won’t be going anywhere, will you, my dear?’

  The inmate shook her head, her dark hair still concealing her features.

  Charlie moved to step away from the scene, then paused to look over his shoulder at the girl, seemingly concerned. The moment over, he obeyed, turned his back, and left the basement.

  Producing the elegant weapon from his breast pocket, Dr. Stockill stroked the trigger; the blades sprung open, and he selected the glinting razor attachment, deftly employing it to sever the prisoner’s bonds.

  ‘I can kill them . . . I can cure them . . . but I cannot understand them.’

  His voice grew distant as he spoke, as though he were slipping away into some other world—a world that he alone inhabited.

  ‘A scientific mind does not do well deprived of comprehension. Not well at all.’

  Leaning over the girl, he brushed the black strands away from her face, now shielded from my view by the Doctor’s long shadow.

  ‘Look closely into her eyes when she is afraid. Her pupils dilate . . . it is quite beyond her control. See her tremble . . . contractions of the musculus mentalis . . . an involuntary reaction to a single emotion: fear.’

  Dr. Stockill lifted his blade to the inmate’s cheek and passed it before her view.

  ‘What causes the eyes to glisten? What causes the heart to race?’

  He raised himself and his shadow retreated with him.

  ‘Veronica!’ I gasped.

  Dr. Stockill glanced furtively towards my present location.

  ‘Did you hear something just now, Greavesly?’