Shadows Rise

by Denise A. Agnew

  Where was I? Oh, yes. Tranquil View Asylum is a terrible place. It is a beautiful place. Parts of it remind me of where I grew up in the pine forest. Nature is cruel and pretty. Snows have come and gone here more than once, but I haven’t been at the asylum long. The trees and ground and everything belong to the asylum. From the moment I drove up to the building, as I came up the long drive, I knew something was wrong with this place. Evil lives here. No one will believe me, and yet they have to feel it. We are special soldiers. We are wounded in the mind and heart and not just our bodies. Could that be why this place is so evil? Does it feed on our pain? Do the ghosts enjoy our pitiful cries? We are not helpless, but I feel as if we could be. If a man ... a soldier lets down his defenses here, there is nowhere to go but down. We are isolated. Mistrusted. Pitied. The doctors think they know what is wrong with many of us. They sometimes call it shell shock. I don’t have it. At least not the part that makes a man shake and shiver and cower. For that I’m thankful. I have something without a real name. There isn’t a word for what I feel. Maybe time and this journal will explain it to me.

  He thought of Annabelle and his writing stopped. What could he say to describe what he felt about her that would make any sense? He waited and waited, then finally picked up his pencil again.

  Annabelle Dorrenti. I can credit her with being the motivation to get off laudanum the first time. I was obsessed day and night with coming here and screaming in her face, demanding why she had to live and my sister had to die.

  But now I can’t scream at her. She’s everything Velia said about her, and I don’t want that to be true.

  He closed his eyes, his words scattering, and his mind trying to give control and order to the chaos of his thoughts.

  Annabelle is light to many soldiers here and so many admire her. But they don’t know what I know about her. What Velia said when she told me what a fantastic woman Annabelle is. She is tall, perhaps five feet eight inches. I’m about six foot three, so she is still shorter than me. She’s slim, but almost everyone here is. Most the soldiers seem to have lost their appetite since the war and need to be encouraged to eat. I get ravenous and eat too fast—I wasn’t that way before the war. I build up muscle with exercise and several of the soldiers go outside with me in the morning to work our bodies. Anyway, Annabelle can distract me with her pretty dark hair, thick and wavy. I want to get my hands into it, feel it against my body. Her face is delicate, and sometimes I imagine she’s a princess. She should be wearing a tiara and a lace dress encrusted with jewels. Instead she wears a nurse’s uniform not too different from the Red Cross uniforms in France. Her eyes are like a blue sky. But who am I deceiving? Her body draws me, too. Rounded enough to show pretty breasts and hips. She is delicate and strong all at once, and that is a powerful combination to my sex starved body. Some would say I’m dying for sex and that’s why I want her. A man doesn’t need to like a woman to sleep with her.

  But there other pretty nurses here, and I don’t want them. I want only her. I want her conversation, her laugh, her gentle touch. Is it an illusion because I’m in this haunted place, or is it because I survived a war more horrible than my limited imagination could have guessed? Do I need to reaffirm life by allowing my primal side to emerge?

  Annabelle, you do things to me I never imagined you would. Why?

  The trees whispered. This time he felt the brush of the wind. He tilted his gaze into the sky and watched high clouds race across the sun. Up there, nature was beautiful and happy. Sunlight sparkled over the treetops, but a few branches lower, the sun refused to tread. Where nature used to give him peace, it didn’t now. Something ate at him in this small place where the trees weren’t friendly and nature was against him. The temperature dropped, prickling his face with ice. Time to return to the asylum.

  * * *

  “You’re having dreams?” Dr. Prever asked Annabelle as she sat across from him in his office.

  Annabelle didn’t want to admit this. “Yes.”

  “What sort of dreams?” He leaned on his desk, hands clasped in front of him.

  “Nightmares. They’re about the war, mostly.”

  “I see.” He tapped the desk in front of him with a ruler. “You didn’t say anything about them when you applied for a job here or you wouldn’t have been hired.”

  “It was dishonest of me, I’ll admit it.”

  The fact she hadn’t covered up her guilt seemed to surprise him. “I’m quite impressed. Most people would make excuses.”

  “I’m taking a chance coming in here to tell you. You could choose to tell the superintendent of my duplicity and have me fired.”

  “I could, but that would be against the doctor and patient confidentiality. I don’t feel it would be helpful. You’re well thought of at the asylum. It’s evident to me that you have a great deal of integrity.”

  Gratified, she smiled. “Thank you.”

  “You could have continued to hide your dreams ... nightmares. Why did you come here to tell me?”

  “I know you help the soldiers.”

  “I try.”

  “Most of the nurses in the asylum probably have nightmares. If not about war, then about the things they see here.” He shaped the fingers on both his hands into steeples. “There’s an excellent chance you could help them more than a nurse who hasn’t seen war. Your experiences give you a way to understand them on a level the average nurse won’t have.”

  “I feel I’m almost too sympathetic.”

  “I doubt you could be too sympathetic. You’ve shared a horrible experience. You weren’t in the same trench with them, but you might as well have been. After the artillery shell hit your hospital ..." He shrugged and stared at her, as if he didn’t know whether or not to broach that delicate subject.

  “After the fire, I understand horrors of war more intimately than many nurses.” She groaned and rubbed her forehead. It shifted her cap, and she had to rearrange it on her hair. She stared down at her utilitarian uniform. Everything seemed too clear to her. The snowstorm last night had left a frosty path of two inches of snow, but sunlight streamed in the large window behind Dr. Prever. Outside, the world was cold, but real. Inside, his serious office gave her an isolated, cut off sensation. She allowed nature outside to cut her off from the conversation, until his voice brought her back.

  “Tell me more about these dreams.”

  Dr. Prever’s request filled her with anxiety, and she hated it. “I don’t know if I can. I don’t need to clutter anyone’s head with the things I dream, or the things I’ve seen.”

  “Yet you expect soldiers to confide in you.”

  “I don’t expect it. Sometimes they just do. And I wished they didn’t.”

  “So your nursing skills are the only things you can offer the patient?”

  “It’s all I’m required to do, of course.”

  “Do you always do only what is required?”

  Irritation grabbed her by the throat. “Is this a morality lecture, doctor?”

  “Of course not. I called you here just as I have all the other staff. I want to make sure working with the soldiers isn’t detrimental.” When she didn’t respond, he continued in his usual, unflappable tone. “If you won’t talk about the nightmares, then talk about what keeps you from revealing them to the light of day.”

  She clasped her hands in her lap. “Trust keeps me from revealing them. And this feeling that it doesn’t matter.”

  “What doesn’t matter?” he asked.

  She pinpointed him with her stare. “No one outside of this asylum, unless they’ve been in war, even wants to hear these dreams. It’s better to move on. To forget it happened.”

  Dr. Prever matched her stare, and she saw kindness in his attention. “If it is better to forget it, why does it still bother you? Why haven’t you forgotten it?”

  “It will take time.”

  “True. Time can heal. That doesn’t mean it will. If you don’t reveal the demon, it can’t be exorcised. Hiding will o
nly make it fester.”

  She laughed softly, a humorless, doubting noise. “I see every day what these soldiers go through. Awake and asleep, I’m haunted.”

  “Perhaps you could talk with another nurse who’s been in war?”

  “I could, but they aren’t certain they want to talk about it either.” She closed her eyes. “You see, in the world outside this asylum, there are a lot of people who don’t understand that the nurses sometimes saw things as horrible as the soldiers did. We’re women.” She said the last two words with contempt. “Velia Hale and I used to talk about it all the time. She understood me. And when she’d get a letter from her brother and he was haranguing her about staying safe, she’d roll her eyes and we’d laugh together. Because even then we knew there wasn’t any place in France that was safe.”

  Prever’s eyes almost appeared sad. “Is Hale still blaming you for her death?”

  She looked down at her hands and shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “You know it wasn’t your fault. The artillery shell was an accidental firing. Things like this happen in war.”

  Tears flooded her eyes as he hit a nerve. “Yes, and that’s worse. It wasn’t even the enemy that killed her.”

  When she opened her eyes, the sympathy she saw in his gaze surprised her. He smiled. “I have an idea that I think could help. I’d like Nurse Summit to provide a schedule for the nurses where two or three of you could get together for a session.”

  “A session with you?”

  “No. Alone together in a room. Where you could talk. You could discuss your war experiences.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know if it would work.”

  “Trying won’t harm anything will it?”

  She sighed. “No. Perhaps not.”

  “Would you consider leading a group?”

  Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t form a word.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Just think about it. Perhaps you and Penelope could lead a group together.”

  “I don’t know. She isn’t any more interested in talking about these things than I am.”

  “Have you noticed when the soldiers gather and talk about their war experiences, they are sometimes more light hearted when they finish? It gives them an outlet. Someone understands them and is listening. They aren’t alone. And neither are you.”

  She couldn’t deny it.

  A knock on the door interrupted. He shifted back in his chair. “Come in.”

  The door opened slowly, and Nurse Summit entered. Anxiety filled her face, and Annabelle’s internal alarm awakened.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt. We need your help, Dr. Prever. Several soldiers on the ward are acting strangely. Captain Hale managed to calm them down, and the superintendent walked in on the mess, but ..."

  Dr. Prever stood. “Of course. I’ll come now.”

  They left the administration area. As they passed through the rotunda on the way to the wards containing the men, Annabelle heard shouting. As if by mutual thought, Dr. Prever, Nurse Summit, and Annabelle quickened their steps until they were trotting down the ward. The noise came from the game room.

  When they entered the room, Dr. Prever leading the way, Annabelle felt it. The mood had shifted from readiness to attack. A collective of five men, not including Cade, stood around the pool table. All of them faced down the superintendent. Jasper Antrim was outgunned by hardened soldiers. She knew in a fight, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “Calm down.” Cade’s voice went above the angry voices. Controlled and commanding, his voice required compliance. “There is no conspiracy here. MacRay is in his room recovering. He is sick. There are no Germans here poisoning anyone.”

  “Damn Jerry’s are everywhere,” one soldier said.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it,” Cade said, hands on hips and legs slightly spread apart. A look of defiance and self-assurance filled his stance. Again he’d taken control of a difficult situation. Whether she wanted to or not, she found her admiration for him growing.

  Antrim held up one hand. “I had this all handled, Captain Hale, before you walked into it. I would thank you to let a trained doctor take care of this.”

  Cade smirked. “Yeah, you had it taken care of all right.”

  Antrim’s expression balled up into annoyance. “Sarcasm will not take care of undisciplined soldiers.” The soldiers around Antrim moved closer. One raised his fist.

  Cade stepped between a soldier and the superintendent. “God damn it all to hell, Beecham, keep back.”

  The soldier ready to plant his fist in Antrim’s face took a step back. “This here so-called superintendent is tellin’ us a bunch of lies, Hale, and you know it. We ain’t any more safe here than we were on the battlefield. Damn Jerrys are everywhere in our country. Probably some Jerry patients lurking around here ready to off us at the first opportunity.”

  One of the tall, gangly soldiers shook his index finger at Cade. “What the hell do you care anyway? You’re an officer. You weren’t in the thick of it with us.”

  Cade mouth twitched, his own anger gathering in his eyes. “Watching a man get blown in half isn’t in the thick of it?”

  “We are trapped here, Captain,” another man said, his tone just as stringent. “Out there is a disease that’s wiping people out by the thousands. We gotta get out of here.”

  Cade cursed. “Never should have let you boys read any papers. Damn bad idea.” Cade threw his hands up. “That’s why we’re safer in here.” Cade kept his voice low. “If we have no outsiders to bring the disease to us, it will be fine.”

  “How do you know that?” another soldier asked.

  “Because any fool who pays attention will know if we isolate ourselves, disease isn’t as likely to form here.”

  “He’s right.” Prever spoke up. “I’ve put in a proposal to the state, with the superintendent’s permission, that we close off the asylum to any contact with Simple until the sickness is eradicated.”

  One of the men next to Cade was Jonah Talbot. Talbot had gotten rid of his shakes, but his voice trembled a little. “Listen to the captain. He knows what he’s talking about.”

  The superintendent brushed by Annabelle and almost knocked her down. Cade reached out and grabbed her by the upper arm and kept her steady. Antrim, always polite in the past, simply glared at her.

  “You all right?” Cade asked her.

  Flummoxed a bit, she managed, “Yes. Thank you.” Cade released her, but the concern on his face remained.

  “This gathering is finished. Everyone back to what they were doing,” the superintendent said as he walked out of the room.

  Quiet lasted a few seconds. Then Nurse Summit said, “Men? Is this under control?”

  The soldiers nodded.

  Prever seemed to relax. “Very well. Nurse Dorrenti, will you stay here and chat with the men?”

  She opened her mouth, not wanting to comply but knowing it was an order. “Yes.”

  “Very well then, take it from here Captain Hale.” Annabelle watched Prever leave with Nurse Summit.

  The men who’d argued returned to their occupations. Cade, though, stayed nearby Annabelle. “That Jasper what’s-his-ass is one of the rudest damned men I’ve met,” Cade said between his teeth.

  She suppressed a laugh. “He’s always been polite to me. Very formal, of course, but polite.”

  His gaze danced over her, curiosity plain. “Humph. Do you like him?”

  Did she actually hear jealousy in his tone? Not possible. “No.”

  “Good.”

  She made a scoffing noise. “What is it to you?”

  Instead of answering he asked, “Do you think they’ll barricade the asylum?”

  A little surprised that he’d asked her, Annabelle said, “Very possible.”

  He didn’t smile; his gaze stayed grim and purposeful. He lowered his voice. “Nurse Dorrenti, do me a favor.”

  Wary, she glanced around the room. No one paid attention
to them. “What?”

  “Do you have a way to lock your door at night?”

  Fear crept up her spine. “There’s no lock on the doors. Nurse Summit has asked the superintendent to allow us to order them.”

  His dark eyes were serious. “Good. In the meantime, put a chair under your door.”

  “Why do you think I need to?”

  “A feeling I have.”

  “We’re back to your feelings and ghosts again.”

  He didn’t look as if he was jesting. “Something like that. Mostly I’m concerned about the living.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m already putting a chair under my door. I have been for a while.”

  He frowned. “Good.” He leaned closer. “Whatever you do, be careful here.”

  “You said the men are being paranoid. Aren’t you?”

  “I agree with Prever. We should shut the asylum down to future guests until this influenza is gone.”

  Tiny prickles of fear darted up and down her skin. “First it’s ghosts and now it’s influenza. What have you turned this place into?”

  His smile held irony. “If I thought you were teasing me, I would laugh. “There are things happening here that don’t make sense. Events. Happenings.”

  Frustration bit at her. “You are talking in riddles again.”

  “Riddles to someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “You aren’t providing me any evidence.”

  The men at the pool table erupted in to hearty laughter, startling her. Annabelle noticed the sound created a lighter mood. It was if the darkness had never been there.

  Nurse Summit returned to the room. “May I have your attention please. Thank you. It is official. The superintendent received word from the state. As of right now, the asylum is closed to the outside until further notice.”

  Nurse Summit’s face looked crestfallen, as if she didn’t agree at all with the decision. Glancing around the room, Annabelle noted the men all appeared stunned. She wondered if they would become angry again, but they didn’t. They returned to their pool game, though it turned quiet rather than the boisterous affair of a few moments ago.