The Lost Girls

by Sarah Painter

  Aislinn had survived her very last day in the Carlton Secure Psychiatric Unit and now, finally, it was time. She lay on her narrow bed and listened for the sounds of her roommate falling asleep. She had gone through the bedtime routine with a feeling of delicious sentimentality. The last time she would brush her teeth, the last time she would refuse bedtime milk, the last time she would undress and put on her flannel pyjamas, the last time she would docilely take her sleeping tablet, and the last time she would tuck it into her cheek to spit out the moment the orderly had left the room.

  As soon as her roommate was breathing the deep and even breath of the heavily sedated, Aislinn rose silently. She knelt on the floor, the nylon carpeting cutting into her knees, and slid her hand underneath her bedside cabinet. Her fingers brushed cardboard and then caught. She pulled out the folded emetic basin and gazed lovingly at the collection of little white pills inside. Some were furry and some had stuck to the cardboard, but they were all beautiful to her. Individually, they meant a night of sleep, ten or twelve hours of oblivion. Collectively, they meant escape.

  She gathered the pills in her hand, scraping up the dissolved bits and wiping them onto the more intact tablets. She took a sip of water to wet her mouth and then tried to think of some suitable last thoughts. Which was ridiculous, since the tablets wouldn’t work instantly. The most important thing was not to throw up. If she threw up it wouldn’t work and the doctors would know what she’d done and she would be on suicide watch and it would mean a huge break before she was free to try again.

  Footsteps, going quickly in the corridor. She leapt into bed and pulled the covers up, shoving the folded cardboard underneath her pillow and closing her eyes just as the door opened.

  Her heart was hammering and she couldn’t breathe deeply and evenly. In fact, she couldn’t breathe at all.

  ‘You’ll not wake her up, now.’ The voice was Nurse Jackson’s. She was a broad woman with grey bobbed hair and a thin line of a mouth. ‘Aislinn has to be sedated at night.’ Her voice was sour, unhappy. If Aislinn hadn’t been struggling to stop her heart from flying out of her chest, she would’ve enjoyed it.

  ‘Not a problem.’

  Aislinn struggled not to twitch at the new voice. It was a completely new voice. Male, well-spoken, with a light west coast accent. She wanted to see the man with the voice. And the act of actively wanting something surprised her. She had felt numb for so long.

  ‘I’ll need a wheelchair, though,’ the voice said. It was quiet but commanding.

  ‘Right.’ Nurse Jackson sounded flustered. ‘I still don’t understand why she has to be transferred now. This is very unusual.’ Her voice trailed away and Aislinn realised something: the man had authority over Nurse Jackson. A new doctor? A consultant? But why would they be bothering with her in the night? A stab of fear shot through her stomach. What if they knew? Somehow they knew what she’d been planning and had come to take her to a more secure hospital.

  She could hear Jackson muttering as her footsteps carried her away.

  The door creaked as it opened wider. Aislinn was desperate to open her eyes, but she kept them lightly closed.

  ‘I know you’re awake,’ the man said. ‘If you’re going to give me trouble, could you let me know now so that I can sedate you.’

  She opened her eyes and saw the shadowy shape of a man looming over the bed. She would’ve cried out, but the man held a hypodermic needle and she didn’t want to give him any reason to use it.

  ‘I mean you no harm,’ he said.

  That was a weird thing for a nurse to say. She opened her mouth to speak, and her throat made a dry clicking sound. She swallowed. ‘You don’t work here.’

  ‘I’m a friend, I promise.’

  She could hardly see the man’s face – he had his back to the door, blocking the light from the corridor. Still, he was younger than she expected. Too young to be a consultant or a senior doctor.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ She wanted to believe his words, but they made no sense.

  ‘I need you to be sedated,’ he said. ‘It will avoid questions. Can you fake it?’

  She nodded. Okay. He was not an orderly or a nurse. He was… what? A psycho who broke into psychiatric units and kidnapped random girls? That didn’t sound good.

  ‘This isn’t a hospital transfer but I swear you are safe. I need to get you out, though, and if you resist I will have to use this.’ He held up the needle before slipping it into his jacket pocket. Aislinn stared at him, fumbling for a decision. She had the impression of broad shoulders, black clothes, and the face of an angel. If angels were tense-looking, handsome men with grey eyes.

  The sound of the door at the end of the corridor and footsteps stopped her from speaking. She closed her eyes and forced her body to relax. She sincerely doubted that this guy was going to be allowed to wheel her out of the hospital in the middle of the night. And if he did, she was going to make a run for it the first chance she had. And if that didn’t work, and he chopped up her body into little chunks… You were going to top yourself anyway. Although that plan seemed utterly remote to her, now, as if it had been dreamed up by a different girl entirely. Even the tiniest possibility of getting out of the hospital was enough to reignite her will to survive.

  ‘Do you need help?’ Nurse Jackson’s voice was surprisingly loud and Aislinn realised how softly the man had spoken.

  ‘No, I’ve got her.’ The man leaned closer. He spoke in a louder voice, now, using the professional tone that made him sound like every healthcare professional Aislinn had ever met. ‘Aislinn, I’m going to lift you into this chair. We’re going for a little ride. Okay?’

  Aislinn let her eyes flutter half open. She made a sleepy murmur and shut her eyes again. When the man slid one arm behind her shoulder and sat her up, she kept her body floppy.

  ‘Come on, dear.’ Nurse Jackson shoved an arm underneath Aislinn’s armpit and hoisted her upwards.

  Aislinn let her head loll forwards and made a couple of unintelligible moaning sounds. It was a virtuoso performance, she thought. Once in the wheelchair she dropped her head to one side and commenced fake sleep-breathing.

  ‘She’s really out,’ Nurse Jackson said doubtfully. ‘Perhaps we should check her blood pressure.’

  ‘She’s in safe hands,’ the man said.

  Aislinn could imagine Nurse Jackson’s expression and had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself smiling. The chair was moving backwards. The motion made her feel sick so she risked cracking her eyelids open. Nurse Jackson was walking ahead, aiming for the security doors. She punched a code and held the door open. Inside the first set of doors was a kind of antechamber. Aislinn remembered being signed in there three years ago but hadn’t seen it since.

  ‘I’m not happy about this,’ Nurse Jackson said. ‘I want that on record. And I will be speaking to your supervisor in the morning.’

  ‘That’s your prerogative, hen,’ Aislinn heard the man say. He sounded completely relaxed. Bored, almost.

  ‘Buzz them out.’ This was to the night security guard, who tapped on a keypad until a loud buzzing noise sounded. Then he got up and, with maddening slowness, manually unlocked the double doors.

  ‘You’ve got a minute and then the outer door locks. If you’re too slow, push the button by the camera and I’ll buzz you again.’ The night shift guard was obviously feeling chatty. Probably he didn’t get much of a chance to show off his excellent security skills.

  And then Aislinn was moving again. The doors closed behind them, and after a stretch of identical beige corridor they arrived at the second door. It had a camera mounted above the top corner and a numerical keypad with a small flashing green light.

  The buzzing was still going and the man spun the chair around, opened the door and backed through. Aislinn watched the corridor disappear as the door swung shut, locking with a snap.

  This was the time to run. Part of her knew that, but the vast majority of her body and mind was processing the weir
dness of the last few minutes and the shock of the cold air. Cold, moving, outside air. The pavement outside the hospital was quiet. Yellow lines ran next to the kerb and cars moved past on the road, tyres splashing through puddles. ‘It’s been raining,’ she said. She wanted to take the words and stuff them back into her mouth the moment she had spoken. She sounded like a halfwit.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  The man was in front of her, and in the orange glow of the streetlight she got her first proper look at him. He was much younger than she’d thought. There was no way he’d pass for a consultant or even a senior doctor. He was wearing a black jacket over a black shirt and jeans. He had a light dusting of stubble and looked like bad news. Suddenly the unreality of the situation clarified. There was no way this man had convinced Nurse Jackson that he was official hospital staff. ‘How did you do that?’ She waved in the direction of the secure unit.

  ‘Can I explain in the car? We’re probably on CCTV out here.’

  ‘Okay.’ She got out of the chair and followed him to the kerb, where a rusting black sedan was parked on the double yellows.

  Her instinct for self-preservation appeared to be on the fritz. Or maybe I really am mental, she thought. After all, only an insane person would get into an ancient black BMW with a complete stranger.

  He opened the passenger door for her and then crossed in front to the driver’s side. She hesitated. Was this suicide? Did she want it to be?

  A muffled buzzing sound came from inside the building.

  ‘Fuck,’ the man said succinctly.

  They were coming. Nurse Jackson and the orderlies and the security guard. Aislinn could picture them rushing down the beige corridors. She dived into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. They were already motoring away as the outside door opened, and Aislinn got only the briefest glimpse of Nurse Jackson’s solid figure before the car turned a corner.

  The traffic slowed for a set of lights, and as they stopped a car pulled alongside. Aislinn stared at the shadowy face of the woman driving. Her jaw was moving rhythmically and Aislinn automatically thought ‘amphetamine’ before realising that the woman was probably chewing gum. That she was in the outside world. Where the normals lived. Where the normals did whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. No clocks. No schedule. No pills. No cabbage. A bubble of wild happiness burst up through her body. That wasn’t good. That was definitely a mental reaction. You should be terrified, she reminded herself.

  ‘I’m sorry about this. I really am,’ the man said, his voice gentle.

  That didn’t sound promising. In order to stop the panic rising, Aislinn decided she would pretend he hadn’t spoken. They were getting closer to the centre of the city and shops lined the streets. Many of them were still lit up, a host of colourful displays that seemed brighter and more interesting than anything she remembered from her life before the hospital. If she thought about shops then, all she could conjure was a dour-faced woman in the shoe shop, measuring with a little metal contraption and clicking her teeth. ‘Wide feet.’ That and the old-fashioned charm of the school uniform outfitters with its shelves of shirts and ties, and hanging rails of blazers.

  ‘What time is it?’

  He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. ‘Just gone nine.’

  It wasn’t really late. Not in the real world.

  After a moment, Aislinn said, ‘I’m being very calm.’

  His mouth twitched. ‘I’d noticed.’

  ‘So. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Mal.’ He looked across at her just long enough for her to begin to worry about a car crash.

  ‘Mal? As in Malcolm?’

  ‘If you like.’

  Aislinn smiled. She appreciated the art of question avoidance. It was one of her own specialities.

  Mal smiled too. That was alarming. When he smiled he looked more dangerous.

  She went back to looking out of the window. The car pulled off the main road, and within seconds they were in another world. Tall buildings crowded on either side and lights were few and far between. Mal took a sharp left through a narrow gap between houses and they were on a back street, a dead-end road lined with garages, padlocks gleaming on their doors, faced by the backs of the tall building blocks. Some windows were lit, and in one a woman was clearly visible, taking off her shirt. Another was a kitchen window, where an old man stirred a pot on a stove.

  Mal pulled into a space between two garages and killed the engine. He twisted in his seat but Aislinn couldn’t see his expression in the dark. ‘I’m asking you to trust me a little further. I can’t talk freely until we get inside.’

  Well, that was probably line one of the psycho’s handbook. Lies to tell to control your victim. Aislinn’s fingers tightened on the door handle. She wondered how far she could run before he caught her. She wondered if the people in the lighted windows would call the police if she screamed.

  ‘I know about the things you see, and I can help you.’

  She held herself still. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He got out of the car and opened the door for her. ‘Coming?’

  She realised that she had already decided to follow him. She’d come this far and, besides, she had nowhere else to go.

  His flat turned out to be on the top floor. She was wheezing by the time they got to the last flight of stairs, and she wondered just how unfit she was. Three years of minimal activity. A lot of sitting and staring at walls and keeping herself still and calm. She collapsed into the flat, hoping for a sofa or armchair. Instead, she found books. Piles and piles of books. There were papers and journals, too. Scattered Biros and pencils, foil takeaway cartons and used mugs were marooned on the sea of literature.

  Mal lurched across a teetering tower of paperbacks to reach the window and yanked the curtains shut. He flipped a switch and the wall lights came to life, bathing the squalor in warm orange light.

  ‘Cosy,’ Aislinn said. She knew she ought to be more frightened. Ought to run from this room and call for help. Instead she sank onto the nearest seat, exhaustion overwhelming her senses.

  * * *

  Mal left the girl sitting on his sofa. Her knees were together and her feet splayed, making her look even younger than she was. Her dirty blonde hair hung around her face, which was blotchy from crying. He put the kettle on and added a couple of spoons of sugar to her mug. She was in shock. Poor kid. He pushed aside the guilt and focused on the job.

  ‘Here.’ He passed the mug to the girl. She was sat in exactly the same position he’d left her in. Then Monty fluttered through the room and she flinched, spilling tea onto the floor.

  ‘Sorry.’ She made to get up, looking terrified, but Mal couldn’t tell if it was the bird or the accident with the tea that upset her most.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said, keeping his voice low and gentle. ‘It doesn’t matter. The carpet is filthy anyway, you can hardly make it worse.’

  She froze, half-standing, her eyes wide and frightened.

  ‘Sit down, drink your tea. Can I get you something to eat?’

  After another moment of inactivity, she slowly lowered herself back to a sitting position.

  ‘And don’t mind the birds. They’re just pets.’ He tried a small, self-deprecating smile. ‘For company.’

  Monty flew behind her head and she flinched again.

  ‘I can put them in the bedroom if they’re bothering you,’ Mal said.

  Finally, she shook her head.

  The tea sloshed dangerously in the cup and Mal nodded towards it. ‘There’s lots of sugar in there, give you a bit of energy.’ He sat down opposite her, careful to move slowly and smoothly, no sudden gestures. His ribs were still sore and the activity of the evening hadn’t helped but he managed not to wince. ‘I know you’re frightened and I’m sorry. All I can do is promise you that I am not going to hurt you. I need your help with something and then you will be free to go. If you want me to, I can drop you near the hospital. I can’t
take you to the door – I’m sure you understand – but nearby. The next street along. Or, if you want to go somewhere else, I will either take you or buy your ticket.’ He laughed a little self-consciously. ‘I’m not exactly rich, so I can’t promise a flight to Barbados, but I will do whatever I can to get you to wherever you want to go. I can promise you that.’

  ‘You’re going to let me go?’

  The tremble in her voice broke his heart. ‘I swear it.’

  Aislinn lifted her chin and looked at him for the first time since they’d arrived. He could see the struggle on her face; she wanted to believe him but her instincts were telling her otherwise. There was nothing he could do to convince her, nothing to ease the burden of fear and anxiety. He was a monster. No matter that he wasn’t going to hurt her, no matter that he was telling the truth and would do everything possible to release her as quickly as possible, he was still putting her through hell.

  ‘Okay,’ she said after a moment. ‘But why do you need my help? What can I do?’

  ‘You see things,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘They said you were ill,’ he said. ‘They said you were hallucinating. What did they diagnose? Schizophrenia?’

  She nodded. ‘First. Then bipolar.’

  ‘Then you started lying. Self-preservation.’

  She swallowed. ‘It was too late.’

  He nodded. ‘I know. Once you’re in the system, it’s not always easy to get out.’

  ‘They were trying to help,’ she said. ‘But the medicine made me feel weird. They play tricks with your mind and then you don’t know what’s real. Or what’s supposed to be real.’

  He nodded his understanding. ‘It’s hard to say the right things in those circumstances. You were sectioned three years ago, right?’

  Her expression closed down again. ‘How do you know these things?’

  ‘I need someone who can see things clearly, see things that most humans aren’t able to see. People with the sight are often institutionalised, diagnosed as mentally ill.’

  She shook her head. ‘I am ill. The things I see. They aren’t real.’