Lets Drink To The Dead

by Simon Bestwick

  “How far are we?” she asked.

  “Close now. There, see?”

  The moon came out from behind a cloud and she could see the place. It was three or four floors high, brick-built, with a clock tower and wide concrete steps under a portico leading to the main entrance.

  “What is this place?”

  “It used to be a hospital,” said John. “This was the admin block. The Warbeck building.”

  “What kind of hospital?”

  “One for soldiers. War veterans. It’s been closed for years, but...” he shrugged. “I worked here. When it closed, I...” He stopped, sighed, gazing at the building. “I’d never married, you see. And my parents had died. There wasn’t, really, anywhere else to go. I had my quarters here, and... well. The local authorities have tried to sell the place, but without success. I don’t think they know I’m here. Or if they do, it’s cheaper than paying a caretaker.” He went up the steps – limping slightly, she saw now – and opened the door.

  Dani looked at him again. His clothes might have been worth something once; now they were worn and rumpled and faded. Much like him. Poor old sod; all he’d got left was his dignity. “Is it just you living there?”

  “Mm. All the other staff found work elsewhere. And the patients were transferred to other hospitals. I don’t mind. I’ve always liked my own company. Shall we go?”

  “OK.”

  The lobby was cold, dark, the floor littered with plaster and flakes of fallen paint like desiccated leaves.

  “Don’t worry,” said John. “It’s a big place. Far too much for me to keep it all up, especially with what little I have. I’ve got my own little bolt-hole, a few other rooms I try to keep in good order. The rest, I’m afraid, you’ll have to take as you find. This way.”

  Dani followed him up a staircase to a row of rooms with wooden doors. The doors all had panes of frosted glass.

  “Administrative offices,” said John. “And here’s mine.”

  There was a cot-bed in the corner, and a fireplace full of glowing embers with a few chunks of wood beside it. John fed the flames and watched them brighten, lit an oil lamp on the desk.

  “This is cosy,” Dani said at last.

  John chuckled. “‘Be it ever so humble’. Some stew? I just made a fresh pot. It’s more or less what I live on these days.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I have tea and coffee. Only dried milk, though.”

  “Coffee’d be fantastic.”

  John settled back, watched her eat. “Where are you from? Yorkshire?”

  She nodded.

  “A long way from home. Did you say you were hitchhiking?”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t look up; she kept eating. The stew was OK – not brilliant, but it was hot and filling and that was all that mattered right now.

  John didn’t say anything else, just waited. Finally she put down the spoon, started talking. Felt good to tell someone.

  “Dad lost his job when they closed down the pit. Bloody Thatcher. There’s nowt back where I’m from. No jobs, nowt. Mam’s trying to keep everyone fed. Dad–” She took a breath. It was hard to think of Dad. “He’s just struggling. Can’t find work, can’t feed his family. He’s proud. Was. And I’ve got two brothers, a sister, they’re all kids. Too many mouths to feed. I tried to get a job, but like I said, there’s nowt. So I decided I’d head for Manchester, see if I could get summat there. Mebbe make enough to send a bit extra back home.” John was staring into the fire; she wondered how much he’d even taken in. “You know?”

  He nodded. “It can be good to have a family. It’s not always easy, being on your own. Then again, sometimes it’s better. Would you like a cigarette?”

  “Ta.” She had a couple left in her bag, in a crumpled packet. She’d probably have to give them up soon. But it was nice to indulge now, while she could. John lit their cigarettes with a battered Ronson lighter. She took a drag, then a sip of her coffee and settled back. He wanted to talk now. That was alright. Least she could do was listen. It wasn’t a big price to pay.

  John leant back, blew smoke from his nostrils. “I’ve been here a long time. More than thirty years now, in fact.”

  “Thirty?” Jesus.

  “After a while... after a while you get used to living like this. Institutionalised, almost.” He chuckled. “It actually becomes difficult to leave. But... well, I remember how it used to be. This is the main building. The admin block, where Ash Fell was run from. There were five main blocks around this building, where the patients were. Psychiatric cases and facial injuries, mostly. From the First World War.”

  God. Dani huddled up, pulling her knees in close. This was pretty creepy. She wasn’t sure she liked it. Outside the wind rose; rain rattled against the windows. Better in here than out there. He seemed harmless enough.

  “A man called Sir Charles Dace built Ash Fell,” John said. “He was a wealthy businessman and landowner in these parts. He’d served in the war and encouraged a lot of the local men to join up. Most of them died on the Somme. He felt guilty. So he built this place for other survivors. People so badly mutilated they’d never be able to go home again. Or people who were incurably insane. None of them could ever have normal lives again, but at least here they’d be decently treated.”

  Firelight played over John’s face. He had to be seventy-odd if he were a day, but if anything he looked older. And very sad. Dad often looked like that, slumped in his armchair, looking at the coal crackling in the grate. Don’t think of Dad. Not now. She was warm and had a full belly and she hadn’t had to shag anyone to do it. That was happiness now.

  “When Sir Charles died,” John said, “his sons, St. John and Gideon Dace, expected to inherit his money. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out that way. They found that Sir Charles had poured all his money into the hospital. What he hadn’t spent, he’d put into a trust fund to keep the place running. He’d bankrupted the family business, spent every penny of their inheritance, and as you can imagine, they weren’t particularly happy about it. St. John Dace had no idea what to do. He was the heir, but not particularly bright. Gideon, however, was a different proposition.”

  Dani’s eyelids drooped. She forced them open again. Not polite to fall asleep while he was talking.

  “Sir Charles Dace, remember, had ruined his own family. Now Gideon Dace swore to put things right and recover his birthright. He found ways to put pressure on the people who managed the trust fund, and arranged things so that finally he had control of it. He started siphoning off the money, and conditions here deteriorated sharply as a result. But that wasn’t enough. He wanted more money, to replace what had already been spent. So he began arranging tours of the hospital – secret tours. If you had a prurient interest and could pay the price, you could stare at the deformed or maddened wretches to your heart’s content. And as time went on, Gideon found ever more inventive ways to exploit the inmates. Making them fight each other, bringing in whores to copulate with them...”

  “Christ.” Dani blinked. John was staring into the fire, dark eyes huge and moist. “Was this when you were here?”

  He nodded. “Yes, to my shame.” His eyes closed. “You have to understand, this was during the Depression. I had nowhere to go, and with this–” he patted his right leg and she remembered the limp “–not much prospect of a different job. And of course, Gideon knew that. I dealt with administration, figures. I was good at that. Useful. So I did as I was told. I did whatever I could to make sure the inmates weren’t too badly treated. Of course it wasn’t enough.” He flicked his cigarette into the fire. “Another?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  John lit a second smoke. “Anyway. In 1946 something went wrong. It happened in E Block, where they kept the most violently disturbed inmates. St. John Dace, Gideon’s brother, was leading one of the tours. He’d been away, in the war. Came back quite a mess. Drinking himself to death. Maybe it was his fault.”

  “What was?”

  “Somehow the i
nmates got out of their cells. St. John Dace and his guests were killed. Literally torn to pieces.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Our Lord and Saviour, if He exists, abandoned Ash Fell decades ago.” John took another drag on his cigarette and looked into the fire. “It all came out after that. The hospital was closed down, of course. And a lot of people went to prison. Including me. Gideon was lucky, at first. He escaped gaol. But he was ruined financially. All he was left with was this place – by then, Ash Fell belonged to him – and Kempforth Great House, the family seat. As I said, lucky at first. But then in 1953, the Great House burned down. Gideon Dace didn’t get out in time. He died in the fire.”

  “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer feller, by the sound of it,” Dani managed, though her tongue felt thick in her mouth. Christ, she was nodding off.

  John looked at her for a moment without speaking, then smiled. “Yes. I suppose. I got out of prison not long after that. And, as I said, I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. And you look exhausted. Would you like me to show you to your room?”

  “Please.” It came out as leeze.

  “Alright. This way.”

  John gathered up an armful of wood and Dani stumbled after him, nearly dragging her rucksack. ‘Her’ room was only a few doors down from John’s. There was a cot-bed here too. “Overnight accommodation, for attendants on the night shift,” John explained. He put some of the wood in the grate and got a fire started. “Better than the station house, eh?”

  “Yes. Thanks.” Yuh. Anks. God, she could barely stand.

  “Well, I’ll let you make yourself comfortable. You know where to find me.”

  The door closed. Dani swayed. Then she dropped the rucksack to the floor and almost fell onto the bed. There was a brief thought of undressing, but sleep came like a black tide, and it was gone.

  4

  THE COMPLEX LOOKS like a crouching crab or scorpion from above; the wide bulk of the Warbeck building is the body, long corridors snaking out from each corner and from its rear to connect with the separate blocks. Four of them like limbs to support the Warbeck’s heavy body, the fifth like the scorpion’s tail, extended behind it.

  Lower down the slopes are other buildings: on one side, a farm and watermill, on the other a chapel and cemetery.

  Inside are corridors with flaking walls. Inside are empty rooms with bare bedframes and barred windows. Some of the bedframes have perished leather straps hanging from the corners. Restraints. There are rooms with padded walls and heavy, iron doors.

  Empty, all empty. She knows this. But they don’t feel empty. They feel crowded; they make her feel the way you do when you’re on the bus and everyone’s crammed shoulder to shoulder. Even though there’s no-one there. And the air, the air wavers like the trees did on the way up, like it’s about to become something else.

  Passing a cell, and the shift she’s been dreading finally happens. There’s a man with his back to her, facing the barred window. White ridges of scar tissues carve channels through his black hair, down the back of his head. He only has one ear. He cocks his head to one side. He starts to turn. No. She mustn’t see this. Mustn’t. Please God, no, she mustn’t see his face.

  But she’s about to; she can’t move and he’s still slowly turning. The moment seems endless, the anticipation of seeing his face worse than actually seeing it. And then the door is swinging shut, slamming in her face just in time. She backs away, but can’t take her eyes from it, especially when two hands slam flat against the wire-reinforced glass, their remaining fingers splayed, and something blurred and dark presses itself to the glass between them, a single bulging eye set into it, staring out at her in forlorn rage.

  Something squeaks. Rusty metal. She turns and looks down the corridor behind her, and from one of the rooms a figure in a wheelchair emerges. It has no legs and only one arm, with a mutilated hand. At first its face looks perfect, unmarked, in contrast to its grey, disordered hair, but then she realises it doesn’t move, because it can’t; it’s a mask. And the mutilated hand is fumbling its way towards the mask, it’s trying to take it off.

  Other doors are swinging open, other shapes emerging into the corridor’s thin half-light. She turns to run but the door that was closed is now open again, and something’s lunging out–

  Running. Footsteps echo down the corridor. Clouds of dust boil up in her wake. Doors swing open in front of her, swing shut behind.

  Down the corridor, ahead of her, there’s laughter. Laughter and screams. She doesn’t want to go. But behind her are the others: the shapes, the thing in the wheelchair, the man whose face she does not want to, will not, see.

  Surely there must be an alternative, a corridor going off to the side. But her legs won’t stop pumping; she can’t control where she’s heading.

  The doors fly open. A room. Tiered ranks of seating. People are sitting there, jeering. Their laugh is a metallic, abrasive sound.

  Below the seats, in the centre, there’s a dais. A naked woman is lying on it, screaming. On top of her is a man. Or what’s left of one.

  Oh, he’s not dead. He’s very much alive, and very much a man, if his relentless thrusting and heaving between her splayed thighs is anything to go by. But Dani’ll see what’s left of his face in nightmares for years to come, maybe forever. His hands paw and claw at the naked woman’s face and breasts; drool falls from the hole that used to be his mouth. She screams and thrashes and twists her face away.

  The laughter, and rising above, a high, horrible titter, infantile. At the foot of the steps, watching it all, stands a fair-haired man in a suit. A beringed hand lifts a cigarette to his mouth; clouds of smoke swirl around his head.

  The crowd laughs. The woman screams. The disfigured man grunts and the man in the suit titters.

  And then she blinks and it’s all changed. The dais is empty and the theatre is filmed with cobwebs and dust. Even the spectators, still sat there, now silent, are covered in dust and cobwebs. Slowly they turn and face her.

  She tries to scream, but can’t. The wounds that killed them gape in their grey flesh, dried crusted and black. Long dead. Long dead. One rises, turns to face her. He wears an army uniform and is dark-haired, with a drinker’s reddened, puffy face and oyster eyes. His eyes are sad, not cruel. In all of this, he’s the first thing she’s seen to strike her with sorrow rather than fear.

  But the man in the suit is turning. Shadow falls across his face and stays there as he climbs the stairs towards her, limping as he comes, and she knows she needs to run, especially when the others, the dead ones, rise from their seats in all their ruined finery – evening dress and cocktail gowns, because it had been a fine night out they’d died on – and follow. But she can’t move.

  He comes into the light, and she knows him. He wears full evening dress. His lips are loose and wet. Of course, he was younger then. They’re thinner now. And his hair’s fair, not grey, and his face is unlined. But the hair is swept into the same side-parting, falling almost over the eye, and the thin face, the sharp nose – and the eyes, the dark eyes, cold and pitiless now as a shark’s – it’s John, but of course, his name isn’t really John at all.

  And finally she breaks free of the spell and turns to run but as she reaches for the doors they fly open and hands lunge out to seize her.

  And then Dani is waking; waking to another bad dream.

  Waking to find John standing over her, bringing a reeking cloth down towards her face.

  5

  DANI YELLED AND lashed out at him, knocking the cloth aside. He grabbed at her hair, pulling her head back, and brought the cloth down again. She twisted her head side to side; the cloth missed her face and his long thin fingers struggled to get a proper grip on her hair. She got free, bit at the wrist holding the cloth. He shouted in pain; she tasted blood and threw a punch straight at his groin. John yelled and doubled up, but kept trying to shove the cloth in her face. She kicked out; he fell, rolled away, started scrambling to his feet.

 
; Jesus. He was supposed to be old and decrepit. But he was standing now, flicking his head to throw his hair back into place, passing the cloth to his free hand and reaching under his coat to draw a knife: something nearly a foot long with serrated edges.

  Dani wasn’t getting into a fight like that in a space like this. She jumped off the bed and ran. She made a token grab for her rucksack, but missed and didn’t stop to try again. He lunged at her, but he missed too. She yanked the door open and ran outside, blindly.

  Which way? Everything was tilting in different directions. She grabbed a wall for support. Had to keep moving. She ran on, nearly falling. Keep going.

  Doors. Rooms. Offices. Shapes. Standing in the rooms. One, wearing army uniform, stood, head bowed, before a trestle table on which a row of masks were laid out. Very lifelike masks, like the one the thing in the chair had worn in her dream. The man reached out and fumbled blindly across the table, touching mask after mask and discarding them. A muffled, distorted wailing came from him. Then he found a mask and lifted it, with a cry of joy that was almost as bad as the wailing, and put it to his face. He looked and stared at her. The mask studied her. Its eyes were black, empty holes. And then she was running again.

  Couldn’t think clearly. She’d felt tired before. Her drink. John had put something in her drink. Drugged her. Obviously hadn’t thought it was working. Something had woken her.

  Figures in smocks and uniforms all around, watching her. Their faces. No, she mustn’t look. She had to keep moving. Had to run.

  But which way was out? Which way was out?

  Didn’t matter. Long as she kept moving. Burn off the drug; she could think straight again then. Just keep out of John’s reach long enough to–