Greyfriars Reformatory

by Frazer Lee

  We move on and check the refectory, and then the kitchen. Both look completely untouched, just the same as the med store. Then we go to the dormitory and find the beds neatly made and lined up in rows. No sign of Jess, nor anyone else for that matter. Not one of the beds looks like it’s been slept in, let alone used as a barricade against the forces of darkness trying to penetrate the door. The place really is empty, deserted. We’re the only living souls here. And now there’s only one place left on our itinerary.

  Principal Quick’s office.

  I can tell from Victoria’s body language as we approach Principal Quick’s office door that this is the room that scares her the most. And she has every right to be scared. I experience a vivid memory of Quick’s dead body, puppet-walking down the length of corridor we’re now standing in. I wince, remembering the terrifying way that her body dropped to the floor to reveal the insane puppet master that was the gray girl standing behind her. But I refuse to be rattled, so I don’t dwell on such things. Instead, I choose to focus on the here and now. On the facts in the warm light of day:

  The corridor is clear. Fact.

  The bunch of keys that were dropped on the floor are nowhere to be seen. Fact.

  Principal Quick’s lifeless body is gone. Fact.

  And the gray girl, too. All facts.

  But if we want to get out of here, we do have to check the office first.

  We both pause for breath at the door.

  “Listen,” I say, “we didn’t find hide nor hair of the others. So we know Principal Quick isn’t going to be in there, don’t we?”

  “Yes,” Victoria says.

  I wonder if she really believes it.

  “But if she is,” I say, “then we just get the hell out of there, together, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says, and I can see beads of sweat have formed on her brow.

  We have to do this, and now, before either of us loses our nerve. So I grip the office door handle. I twist it and open the door.

  We step into an unoccupied room.

  The musty smell is gone. Principal Quick’s manuscript lies open on her desk. Atop that, I see her bunch of keys. I walk over to the desk and retrieve them. As I grasp the keys, a passage from the exposed pages of the manuscript catches my attention—

  Girl A is presenting something new and exciting to the field and treatment must be exploratory and experimental. It is my intention to expose the subject to an extensive program of hypnosis, alongside social experimentation built around my formative thesis on nurture/nature and the role that peer groups inform the retreating (and projected) self….

  Words. They’re just words. They’re not me. I’m me. My thoughts and actions make me who I am. I’m no more a series of tests and measures than I am my own mother. And yet, I still can’t shake the feeling that her thoughts and her actions still have some kind of a hold on me.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I say, before closing the manuscript.

  “One second,” Victoria says, and then takes the phone from its cradle. She holds it to her ear and listens. “Line’s still dead.”

  We’re halfway to the door, when I see the closet door. It’s closed. I stand still.

  “Should we check in there, do you think?” I ask.

  Victoria looks at the door for a moment, then at me. “Oh fuck no,” she says.

  I grip the keys tighter and we leave the office.

  * * *

  A couple of minutes later and we reach the front door. No phantoms on our tail, no ominous gray shapes moving from the shadows. The building’s foyer feels bright and airy for the first time since I’ve been in the reformatory – starkly different to the rainy day when I made my bid for freedom and gave Principal Quick a well-deserved bloodied nose in the process. I picture her look of surprise as I outwitted her before sprinting off into the wilderness. Of course, her smug superiority had returned just as soon as I had, mud-bedraggled and soaked through from the rain. But that was then, and this is now. I rifle through the keys on the ring and try a few until I find the right one to unlock the door.

  “Hit it,” I say to Victoria, before nodding at the gate release button mounted on the wall.

  Victoria reaches up and slams the flat of her hand against the button.

  With a click of the final bolt I push the main door open and a shaft of daylight greets us.

  “Shall we?” I ask.

  “We shall,” Victoria answers.

  We link arms and step into the light.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A Gap in the Clouds

  It’s been so long since I’ve exposed my eyes to raw, natural daylight that I have to blink tears away. I glance at Victoria and see that she’s doing the same. Or maybe she’s crying? Maybe both.

  Whatever, it does feel truly wonderful to be outside and breathing the cool, fresh air of morning.

  The main gates are wide open to the sweep of wilderness beyond, which looks verdant beneath a gap in the clouds. I take another restoring breath and prepare myself for a long walk ahead. With our arms still linked, we walk down the front steps.

  It’s only then that I notice them. Five ambulances are parked at the side of the building. They look pretty old, automotive relics from a forgotten decade. Each one has its rear doors wide open.

  I stop with a crunch of gravel beneath my foot as I see two black-clad paramedics emerge from the side of the reformatory. They carry a stretcher between them. The unmistakable shape of a body lies beneath a white sheet. It has a cloud-like quality in the way it appears to float a few feet above the ground as they carry it over to one of the waiting ambulances.

  Then another pair of paramedics, carrying another stretcher, emerges. This is followed by another, and another, until there are five stretchers in total. One for each waiting ambulance.

  “Five of them,” Victoria mutters.

  I watch as each pair of medics loads the stretchers onto the ambulances.

  “Jess, Saffy, Annie, Lena – and Principal Quick,” I say, seeing the shapes of their bodies under the sheet-covered stretchers.

  Their grim cargo stowed safely and silently away, the paramedics shut the rear doors and walk to the sides of the vehicles. They climb inside, almost in a synchronized dance of sorts, one in each passenger’s seat, and one in each driver’s seat.

  It’s a weird, and more than a little macabre, spectacle.

  I unlink my arm from Victoria’s and wander across the gravel toward the ambulances. As I do so, a hand grips my arm and pulls me back, almost toppling me. With a burst of engine noise, I see why. A large vehicle skids to a halt just inches from where we stand, kicking up dust and gravel. It’s the prisoner transport bus – the same one that delivered us here. With a loud hiss, the door of the bus opens. The driver – also the same one that drove us here – sits at the wheel, staring straight ahead through the windscreen.

  I look back through the dust at the ambulances. They’re already moving off, each one peeling away as the other passes by until the convoy exits through the main gates. The cloud of dust has already made them indistinct, a fading memory.

  I feel Victoria’s hand in mine, and she’s leading me onto the footplate of the bus.

  “Who sent you for us?” I ask, as I climb aboard.

  But the driver remains silent behind a pair of impenetrable aviator shades.

  I follow Victoria toward the back of the bus and take a seat beside her.

  The door hisses shut, and the entire vehicle rumbles so hard with the revving of the engine that it feels like we’re in the belly of a mechanical whale. The driver circles around, past the still-open front doors of the reformatory, and we both take a look at the building for one last time. The dark doorway into the foyer reminds me of an open mouth, screaming.

  * * *

  Greyfriars Reformatory looks much smaller by
the time the bus reaches the gates.

  I turn my attention to the view out of the window. A drab, gray sky hangs heavy with rain clouds that look too miserable to burst. Inhospitable wilderness unfolds as far as my eyes can see. Still, I’d much rather be on this road than within the labyrinthine walls of the reformatory. I begin to relax a little and lean back in my seat.

  Just then, I feel something at my breast. A little scrape. I tuck my fingers beneath my uniform and find the chrysalis there. I had forgotten all about it. I retrieve it from my clothing and cup it in my hand. It feels so warm and dry. It twitches slightly against my skin and I wonder if it’s because of the movement of the bus.

  Then, with amazement, I watch as it cracks, then splits open. The chrysalis becomes dust in my hand as a butterfly emerges from it. It flaps its new wings tentatively, testing them. They’re golden like the sunrise. I laugh and turn to look at Victoria. She smiles, seeing it too. The brilliant creature flaps its wings fully, and darts up and away from my hand. I watch it flutter above the aisle to the very back of the bus. The butterfly escapes through an air vent.

  Free.

  I turn in my seat and catch a glimpse of the butterfly through the window opposite as the wind carries it away. Just then, there’s a crack in the clouds. Brilliant sunlight washes over me, blinding me for a moment. I hold my hand over my eyes and see the countryside transformed by the sudden sunlight. It really is beautiful. So beautiful.

  I turn back to Victoria to share the moment.

  But she has vanished.

  I look around the bus, but I’m alone. I stand up and walk toward the front of the bus, gripping the backs of the seats as I go.

  “Did you see where she went? My friend?” I ask.

  I know how completely ridiculous, and pathetic, my question must sound. The driver neglects to answer me anyway. The bus jolts to one side as the driver navigates a sharp bend in the road and I’m thrown sideways. I manage to grab a hold of a handrail to prevent myself from falling. As the driver course-corrects, I decide to return to my seat.

  I hunker down in the seat where Victoria was sitting. It feels cold, now that I’m alone.

  I stare out at the wilderness.

  Dark clouds gather again.

  Dusk begins to fall.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Principal Quick

  Principal Quick stared at the blank sheet of paper, but still the words would not come. After a heavy sigh, she dropped the pen onto her desk, casting it aside like some damaged and useless limb. She put her hands to her temples and rubbed them with her fingertips in a vain attempt to subdue the tension headache that was brewing there.

  She glanced at the closet. Visualized the vodka bottle hidden on the bookshelf. Imagined how easily it would slide down, each swallow numbing the pain inside of her head. But if she started, she wouldn’t be able to stop, and she couldn’t risk that right now. It would only be another long night of self-recrimination and self-loathing. Yet another night when her word count drifted into the negative.

  Christ, why wouldn’t this headache go away?

  All the old worries started coming back. Someone else would beat her to it, pull the research rug from beneath her feet and publish their findings first. It had happened so many times before, to academics she once knew, before she had exiled herself at Greyfriars. They had tended to give up afterward. They never seemed to have the same bright spark anymore. After being usurped – by a man, it was always a man – they had settled into teaching positions that were beneath them, and took out their bitterness on the doctoral researchers under their care. Perhaps they were right to do so, let the poor saps know disappointment and critical rejection before the real world sank its teeth into them. Grooming them to fail.

  Was that what she was doing? Quick wondered if it was.

  William Drake had been a wonderful supervisor at first. They had laughed a lot during their progress meetings. He had never let her dupe herself by submitting substandard research, and always picked her up on her referencing – a weak point if ever she had one. And that hadn’t been the only one. He had acted with professional decorum throughout her research period. She had fought her feelings for him at first, too, unwilling to become the clichéd starstruck student. And she was never starstruck. If anything, she felt sorry for him. He seemed only to have his work and nothing else. But he did have a dazzling mind, and that was irresistible to her magpie mentality. She had identified that as a trait during her undergrad years, when she collected a series of partners and then discarded them just as soon as she had identified what made them tick. Convincing herself that it was going to be different with William had been all too easy. The age difference framed things differently for a start. She knew this was not a partnership based on physicality. Difficult to feel aroused when he made that ‘old man’ sound whenever he sat down, the symptom of a botched disc operation when he was younger and from which he had never recovered – and never would recover. Easy to feel differently when they chatted until the wee hours of the morning, initially online in the guise of an extended tutorial, and eventually – after she had graduated – in bed. Another damn cliché, but William really had been a warm blanket.

  And then he had torn it away from her, and left her cold and alone.

  How she hadn’t seen it coming was perhaps the source of all the bile she now felt in later life. She had been so sure of him, and of her skills in reading him, that she had missed the signs. The way he often looked to the window while he was ‘listening’ to her. She had convinced herself that he hung on her every word – the curse of the researcher who is too close to her material to see anything else – when really he had just been biding his time. His endgame, of course, was to steal her research. To repurpose it and dress it up as his own. He had been so careful, and she had only made it easier for him. When they had attended a drinks reception together after a research seminar, he had introduced her to other seasoned academics as his ‘assistant’. Jesus Christ! And she stood there and smiled politely along with them. What a fucking sap love had made of her. Only now, in stark retrospect, could she see behind their sardonic smiles. They all must have been thinking she was sleeping with him for grade inflation. And she wasn’t,

  she wasn’t,

  she wasn’t.

  Was she?

  Quick stood before the closet door and realized she hadn’t been aware that she had strolled over to it. Disturbing. It was almost as though she was disassociating from the present the more she dwelled upon the past. Which was pretty laughable when she thought about it, given her methodologies toward her daughter’s treatment. Maybe she should hypnotize herself and ask herself probing questions about her motivations. She laughed, and then felt the tears forming in her eyes. She sobbed at the void in her heart and slammed the flat of her hand against the closet door, fighting what awaited her on the shelf inside. Quick folded her hurt inside of her. She had learned to do that soon after William’s rejection, and now had it down to a fine art. She imagined her tears withdrawing back into her body, an outpouring of grief in reverse. Visualized each tear solidifying and curving into a black thorn. She allowed these dark barbs to hook into her insides, gouging away at her being until she was full of blood and rage again. Like she had been that night after he had referred to her as his assistant, in public, and after all the intimacies they had shared. His introduction had rattled her, it had been so unforgivably fucking patronizing, and it had sparked a blazing row between them later. She respected him the least when he was dishonest in his answers.

  Quick had frozen him out for a couple of days after that, until he called her late one night and apologized. He had told her exactly what she had wanted to hear – that he had been floored by the depth of his feelings for her, and that he hadn’t wanted anyone to figure them out. Not yet, anyway. He had told everyone she was helping him with research not to belittle her – oh no – but rather so th
at he could justify being with her so much, and so often. She had melted, and their bond seemed even stronger after that. Because that is how psychological abuse works, by dressing up misdemeanors against you as benefits. Yes, actual benefits. It would have been more honest of him to have said, “You know, dear…”

  (She had liked how he had called her dear – up until that moment.)

  “…it really is in your own best interests to be my subordinate. Everyone will believe that our relationship is purely professional that way.”

  Well, fuck him. And fuck the patriarchal academy. Fuck them all to fucking hell.

  Where was she?

  Oh, yes. She was on to something with her research. She’d be an incendiary device going off in his face. He’d see her name everywhere. She’d be at every conference, would deliver every keynote, and he (and his new ‘assistant’, the latest in a rapid succession of other poor saps) would either have to send their apologies, or suck it the fuck up.

  She was feeling better already. The curse words definitely helped. And the closet door was remaining shut.

  After wandering back to her desk, she paused and looked at the photograph on the wall. A constant reminder of a different time, and of a different woman. She had left it hanging there for its motivational qualities. To reach. To do better. His smile was nothing more than a dark slit to her now. And she’d wipe away that smile forever when she was done.

  She reminded herself how far she had come. From the grief-stricken wreck she had been after that night. She had dressed in his favorite outfit, styled her hair in the way that she had long since outgrown, but which she knew would remind him of the first heat of their relationship. All of this because the news that she had to tell him that night would change their lives. He hadn’t seemed to even notice what she was wearing, or what an effort she had made for him. He seemed more distracted than ever, because he had been, of course. Probably lining up his next protégé. But she had been too blind to see it. She had made a show of refusing a drink – completely out of character, that should have been a big-ass clue, but nope, he hadn’t even blinked – and had sat down at his behest. He had returned to his laptop then, clearly in the middle of typing something. An email? An instant message to her incoming successor? She had already been on the off-ramp and she hadn’t even realized it. If there were doctorates in naiveté she would have defended her viva voce with flying colors.