The Requiem Red

by Brynn Chapman

  The two other women sit, their beauty adorned and arranged to a fervor sufficient for English Court—one at the pianoforte, the other with a cello.

  I stare at the sheet music, and in moments, it is memorized, the notes dancing behind my eyes—each with a blazing, corresponding color in my mind.

  A translucent screen is assembled between us and the patrons. Patrons who have paid dearly to hear us—the nearly rehabilitated—play. The almost ready to re-enter polite society, we are a freakish spectacle. Do-gooders, philanthropists, and the well-heeled come to donate out of their excess to the asylum.

  This is a test.

  Crowds of candles flicker behind us and in chandeliers above, making our silhouettes shimmer and undulate, giving them a life of their own.

  Murmurs and gentle laughs rise up and over the screen, descending on us like wordy butterflies. I see a familiar outline through the divider, and my stomach clenches. His jaw, the ruff of unmanageable hair. Is it him?

  Dr. Frost pokes his head around, his eyes first narrowing on Grayjoy, then flicking across us all.

  His gaze halts, naturally lingering on me. “Are you ready, Twenty-Nine?”

  I bristle. The purpose of Ward One is to use our given names. But still he refuses. Why does he despise me so?

  I nod. “Quite.”

  Frost disappears to stand in front of the screen, his shadow evident before us as he addresses the crowd. His arms outstretched like a preacher to a congregation.

  Grayjoy passes by, heading for a room in the back. He squeezes my shoulder. “Good Luck, Jane.” And he too, disappears.

  “Gentle ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to the Soothing Hills Sanatorium evening recital. All of the proceeds collected tonight shall benefit our patients … ”

  I stiffen, my head inclining toward the window. What was that? My breath stops, a cold chill licking my nape.

  No, not now. Please not now.

  The corn music. It has returned.

  My palms begin to sweat as I readjust the bow in my hands.

  “I hope you will enjoy our production—”

  The corn music swirls into the room, demanding attention, words riding the melody like the four horsemen of a musical apocalypse. I shiver convulsively as the notes explode in my head in a kaleidoscope of color and sound.

  She is near. She is near. She is near.

  The refrain repeats over and over in the melody. The notes, normally multi-colored and radiant—each note with its own hue—are red. All are red.

  It is a test. I must not speak of it. I mustn’t. I mustn’t.

  I close my eyes and through pursed lips release a shuddering exhale.

  It is the reason I am here. The words in the music. No one ever believed me.

  Hmm. Hmm.

  My heart skips a beat then surges forward with a staccato beat. Someone in the front row, directly behind the screen, hums a middle C. My heartbeat instantly slows.

  Middle C is my safe haven. The sound of it produces the feel of warm blankets and soft cotton on my skin. The tone has soothed me since childhood. I hum it each and every night to lull my frantic brain to sleep. Why would someone here hum that singular note? Pick it above all others?

  The girls begin. Their music a living, organic creature, pulsing against me on the tight, narrow stage.

  “Jane,” Claire hisses. “Jane you must play. Play!”

  I shake my head and force the music out my fingertips, my other hand sawing across the strings.

  The middle C has stopped. The corn music is mercifully waning.

  I breathe deeply, minding the rise and fall of my chest.

  I give myself over to my violin, letting the music pour from my soul, saturating it with my sorrow.

  Silent tears roll down my face, as is my custom. I only give myself over to feeling when I play.

  Emotion, feeling, sentiment—all deadly inside the fortress that is Soothing Hills.

  Better to stay alone, be the proverbial island in a mad, mad sea.

  Care for no one, and they have no ammunition for pain.

  My cheeks burn as the hair on the back of my neck prickles and rises. Someone watches. I turn my head in time to catch sight of Mason, just beyond the screen. It was he. He is here.

  His wide eyes, deep and full of wonder, watch me play, flick back and forth with every movement of my fingers across the violin’s fragile neck.

  I shift my attention back to the music for a second, and when I look back—he is gone. And with him, the corn music.

  All too soon, I am back on the Ward Four. As I approach my room and step across the threshold, I picture it a great, orange pumpkin coach shall now disintegrate at the customary midnight, to resume its guise as a gourd. My happiness is transitory like the many Cinderellas before me.

  Nurse Ginny bustles into my room. I immediately turn my back, awaiting her assistance to slip off the gown—to return it to its rightful world. Its sapphire undulations are too magnificent to reside in the dark, gray shadows with me.

  Her fingers unbutton it, and as I step out, I thrust it into her hands. Dropping my gaze.

  She cocks her head. “Whatever are you doing, deary?”

  I shrug. “Well, the gown. I am returning it, naturally.”

  Her smile is wide. “It is yours to keep, my love. My father is the town haberdasher, my mother a tailor, and they fashioned these specifically for each of you. Soothing Hills paid him.”

  My throat thickens for the third time in a day, and I permit my fingers to play across the fabric.

  They stop stroking as I think of all the wanderers roaming the halls, pilfering and stealing anything they might barter or sell with the outside. A regular black market operates within these barricaded walls.

  “Might you keep it for me, on Ward One? I obviously will have no occasion to wear it until next I play.”

  Ginny’s eyes are soft. “Of course I will, Jane. I will keep it safe.” After a moment, she adds, “Put it with me own effects.”

  I turn away so she shall not see the tears. She chooses to use my name, despite the fact we are back on Ward Four. A small, warm light blooms in my chest.

  She sees me as a person, not a number.

  I walk to my armoire to retrieve a drab day dress and slide my arms into the sleeves, the fabric scratchy against my skin. I decide the grayish-green is the precise color of vomit.

  Ginny’s nimble fingers are at my back, buttoning. Her hand on my shoulder bades me turn.

  “Jane.” She pauses, as if unsure what to say. She begins to smooth my shoulders instead, not meeting my eyes.

  “Yes?”

  Her hands drop as her shoulders square, and she meets my gaze. “You are quite talented. And I know it is … ” Her eyes wander about my room. “It is hard here, on Ward Four. Mind your manners, and I hope you will be transferred to Ward One soon. I am the nurse responsible for helping patients find shelter, employment. You can trust me, Jane. If you need help, just send word.”

  I nod, unable to speak.

  By the time I compose myself to murmur a thank you, she is gone.

  Hours later, I lie still in the utter blackness, awaiting the physicks’ final rounds.

  Please do not let it be him. It is not often I see Dr. Cloud, whom my mind has labeled the night physick, but when I do, each exam and conversation is yet more disturbing and bizarre.

  Muffled voices rumble out in the hall.

  I slip out of bed, shooing Sebastian out the open window. He gives me a disgruntled feline look before his puff of a tail disappears beneath the slit above the sill.

  I pad quietly to the door and incline my ear, careful not to touch it, should it creak and give away my eavesdropping. I recognize the first voice instantly. Frost. Frost is arguing with someone.

  “I care not what you say, I shall do as I please,” he says. But I hear something in his voice. Something foreign.

  Gooseflesh springs up o
n my arms. Fear. Frost is afraid?

  “You are soft where she is concerned. You know what must be done with her. And not the course of her elder, either. That, too, was—”

  A deep inhale. “I shall decide what happens within my own household.”

  “What are you doing here? You know it isn’t safe! You mustn’t be seen!” Nurse Spare has arrived.

  “I … I … ” Frost sounds befuddled, as if waking from a dream.

  “I, I,” she mocks. “You should not bloody well be here. Go. Go this instant.”

  My mouth hangs agape at the way she speaks to him. And that his sharp tongue does not cut her down. And Cloud. He has gone silent.

  The shuffling recommences, and I bolt back beneath the covers, trembling all over. I wait, holding my breath, but the footsteps recede down the hall.

  What happened to … my elder? I am an orphan.

  Who could possibly be my elder?

  I lie still, hearing Sebastian re-enter, his warm body curling up on my chest.

  Even with his comfort, it is a very long time till sleep finds me.

  Jules

  “I cannot bloody well believe it!” The woman’s hands slap the table before her.

  My head snaps up from the charts I am sorting.

  A beautiful older woman stands, her hands shooting out to grasp the table as her body quivers all over, sending her chair clattering to the floor.

  I stand alert. Is she having a seizure? What is happening?

  Three elderly matrons cower by the Ward One sign. One snuffles into a handkerchief and begins to cry in earnest. Alexander, the burly orderly, is on the beautiful one in a flash. “Mrs. Smith, you must not excite yourself. Sit down.”

  But the matron’s eyes are blue fire—her perfectly arranged bun falling in large blond clumps as she disobediently shakes her head. “I shall do no such thing. How dare he? Who does he think he is?”

  Nurse Sally bolts from my side, sliding herself between Alexander and the disintegrating Mrs. Smith. Her eyes scan the table and narrow. A local society page lies open to an obituary.

  The nurse’s lips press into a grim white line. “How did she get this? Who gave it to her?”

  She scans the room, spinning in a circle, her beady eyes impaling every staff member—a scrawny bird of prey.

  Her spindly neck muscles pull tight, reminding me of a rabid snapping turtle. “You all know the rules. No contact with the outside, and that includes publications.”

  My face flushes with anger.

  The feeling is too familiar and my skin dots with gooseflesh. Like Father and his endless rules. These patients are like me—suffering loss of freedom. Others dictating what they can and cannot read, say, and do every blasted moment of their days.

  The ward is tomb-quiet under the glare of Nurse Turtle, save the sniffling of the elderly matrons in the corner.

  The nurse’s beet-red face rivals that of Mrs. Smith’s as she says, “If no one confesses, I will dock everyone’s pay. I expect it in writing by shift’s end—or so help me, I shall do it.”

  Mrs. Smith’s chest heaves, hitching with a crying fit. She seems to disintegrate; her eyes look everywhere but see nothing. “I hate him. I hate him.”

  She lurches, springs away from the orderly and hitching up her skirts, leaps a settee to bolt directly for the open door.

  “Seize her!” Nurse Sally commands, tearing toward her drug cart. Her shaking hands snatch a syringe. In what appears a singular movement, she bites off its cap, bolts, and covers the space in seconds.

  “Let me go! You know I do not belong here!” The patient’s fists pound Alexander’s chest again and again like rapid rifle fire. He catches them in his meaty paws, twisting them behind her back. “Unhand me! Someday I shall make you all pay! Pay!”

  “Jules! Fetch the white jacket! Hurry, girl!” Sally ejects over her shoulder, wrestling with Mrs. Smith’s writhing limbs.

  I sweep up the jacket and hurtle back to the grappling trio.

  Alexander’s arms now encircle the woman like a muscled vice. She jams her foot down hard, smashing Alexander’s toe.

  “Oh, you shall pay for that one.” He leers through the pain.

  I shudder. He is a horrible man. I have no doubt she will pay.

  “Slide them on, now, girl. Make yourself useful.”

  I grit my teeth and thread the woman’s hands into the straitjacket. I am mere inches from her face; her sour breath puffs across my lips.

  “Dear girl. Help me, please. Do you not know who I am?”

  Our eyes meet; her pupils so large they block out the sky-blue that surrounds them.

  “I am not who they say.”

  “Quiet!” Sally shrieks.

  I slide the sleeve up to her shoulders, and her body jerks as Alexander tugs the jacket hard, securing it behind her.

  She shrieks, eyes wild, spittle hitting my cheek, “I am—”

  Sally plunges the syringe into her thigh, and her eyes roll back to reveal the whites—her entire person slumps, giving way like a life-size rag doll to hang in Alexander’s arms.

  Sally stands, her head whipping back and forth, instantly assessing the room for an uprising. She confided on my orientation, “They are like pack animals. When a rebellion begins, it often whips others into a frenzy.”

  But all is quiet on Ward One. I suspect, if it were any other ward, we might be in danger.

  Turtle-bird nods to me. “Well done, Nurse Frost.”

  Nurse Sally nods, heading immediately back to her med cart.

  Indeed, the rest of the nursing staff looks shaken. I suspect these incidents rarely occur on the well-mannered Ward One.

  The only two unaffected are Sally and Alexander. They are floaters—traveling from ward to ward. Their presence is dreaded and indicative of the board’s displeasure, as they are the reconnaissance squad, sent to root out and subdue any and all problems in staff and residents alike. They are lifers—asylum employees till they quit or die, whichever occurs first.

  I picture Nurse Sally, decrepit as dust, her chest finally still, her bony hand refusing to relinquish a syringe despite death’s rigor mortis.

  My heart hammers for the better part of an hour as I finish cleaning the chamber-pots and delivering medications and tinctures. I try to make my way over to the table to see the obituary, but Nurse Rigid and Efficient has already disposed of it, plopping it in the center of the roaring fieldstone hearth.

  I make a mental note to ask Maeve to try and find a paper from today and smuggle it into my nearly-as-sheltered world at home.

  Making my way back to Nurse Rigid, I wind through well-dressed men and women, many playing whist or checkers. Only a few telltale signs show something may be awry—such as the man without trousers or the woman proclaiming she is Cleopatra. “Come, Marc Antony. Do obeisance to your queen!”

  I sidestep her cane-scepter to return to the medicine counter.

  “How are you getting on then?” Sally prompts.

  “Fine,” I reply. I swallow and muster my courage. “That … woman. Mrs. Smith. She seems so sane … Who is she?”

  Sally’s eyes narrow. “She is no one. Half the patients in Soothing Hills claim to be a king, queen, or the almighty himself.” She gives an absent gesture to Cleopatra behind us.

  I nod, defeated. “I have completed all my tasks. Do you have anything else I might do before I depart?”

  The nurse cocks her head, her beady gaze roving over me once again. Her bun is pulled so taut her eyes seem fixed in a permanent slant. Her stare is intense, and purposeful, as if she is trying to remember something. She seems to decide and replies, “No, Miss Frost. You are dismissed. Do not miss the carriage to town.” She opens a patient’s chart, pulls out a parchment, and quickly seals it with a wax emblem. “Might you take this across the campus to Dr. Grayjoy on your way?”

  She whips out the campus map, drawing the route I should follow with her pointy finge
r. Really, everything about the woman is pointy.

  “Do not dawdle. Do not deviate from your course. Go directly to Dr. Grayjoy, then directly to your carriage. The danger doubles at night here.”

  I curtsy. “Yes, mum. Might I return next week then? On the same day?”

  She eyes me up and down. “I suspect so. Your father will tell you for certain.”

  I open my hand, and she places the parchment in it.

  My heart beats lightly in my chest. I have only met the good doctor twice, during asylum recitals, but if I am honest with myself, I was quite taken with his looks—dark, curling hair and the frame of a longshoreman, not a doctor, broad and powerful.

  I turn without another word, glancing down at the map. The campus is sprawling—domiciles for staff, a full working farm, and a variety of wards. The higher the number, the greater the history of violence.

  I reach the door to the courtyard and halt, staring up into the dark, brooding sky. The stone path through the center of the yard is the quickest route to Dr. Grayjoy.

  Rain pelts the panes, lambasting the windows so that they vibrate, the whole of the building seeming to shudder in the late fall wind.

  My destination, Building Seven, is barely within sight. The asylum grounds are almost a mile, all told, in addition to owning the surrounding two hundred-acre woods. Nurse Turtle proclaimed if you walked each ward from end to end, the entire asylum is four square miles.

  It is indeed its own dark world.

  “You don’t have to go out there, deary.”

  I jump, my heart hammering in my chest.

  I turn to stare at an elderly man, a mop grasped between his gnarled fingers, his bulgy eyes adhered to my map.

  “There is an easier way. No need to dowse yourself through.”

  “What other way?”

  He shuffles forward and I smell the day-old spirits on his breath. He points toward a door, dead center in a long hallway. “There.”

  I cock my head, thinking him clearly mad. Perhaps he is a patient. Often patients earn the right to do labor within the grounds, as a trial before being reintroduced to society.