The Requiem Red

by Brynn Chapman

“Rumors?”

  “Come now. Rumors abound through the hospital grapevine … about a monster, roaming the corridors and the catacombs below?”

  Grayjoy huffs, but as we both remain silent, his eyes narrow. “A monster? Speak plainly, man.”

  Mason’s eyes shoot nervously to me and back. “A staff nurse told me it chased her. It was on Jane’s floor. The nurse saw it and fled. She had the dickens of a time giving it the slip.”

  My heartbeat escalates. I feel a prickle of anger that he did not tell me.

  As if hearing my thoughts, Mason turns to me. “I was going to tell you, Jane. I was just waiting for the right moment. Your whole life is vexation; I did not wish to add to it.”

  Grayjoy stands, his hand vigorously rubbing his five o’clock shadow. “Fine. If any other reports of this monster arise, I insist you contact me immediately. Mason, keep this incident between us—no other staff members. But so help me, you step one more toe out of line, and you are gone. And no amount of Jane’s pleadings will alter it. Do I make myself clear?”

  Mason nods.

  A worry shivers up my spine. I wonder why he wants us quiet. To involve no one?

  “Now, I shall take Jane back home,” Grayjoy says, tugging on the waistcoat beneath his lab coat.

  Mason’s face colors. “It is not a home. It is her room. I am perfectly—”

  “You, sir, are an orderly. I, the physick. Go to your home, Mr. Worth. I suspect you are soon expected to start your shift?”

  Mason shoots me a final look of resignation. “I shall see you on the morrow.”

  I nod, fighting the urge to grab his hand; he keeps the monsters in my mind at bay. I swallow and nod, squaring my shoulders.

  Grayjoy watches Mason go, then stalks across the room, only to return with a wheeled wooden chair. “In, Jane. We have much to discuss.”

  He eases me gently into the chair, but not before I catch sight of a painting. Chills explode from my head to my feet.

  Eyes. My eyes. With a single word beneath them.

  Colourata.

  Grayjoy

  “I must speak with you about Patient Twenty-Nine.” I stand, shuffling my feet like a ruddy schoolboy.

  How does Frost make me lose every shred of self-confidence?

  I stare at him. Despite the perfect waistcoat and the pristine, polished boots, there is a recklessness about him. The care-not expression. His impulsive decisions, which, infuriatingly, more often than not end in a work of sheer genius.

  His dark eyes nearly glow with a manic energy. He is like a spring coiled, awaiting the precise word to explode.

  I clear my throat, and the piercing gaze fixes upon me. “I have reviewed her chart in preparation to take over her case, and her records are exasperatingly thin. For a patient who has been here her entire life, how is that possible? The chart should be massive.” I waggle the barely-there pile of papers at him.

  One side of Frost’s lip curls—a sure sign of his growing irritation. I ascertained the top marks in school at deciphering people’s countenances, an essential skill for a good alienist—knowing when they are happy or sad, even if the words falling from their lips say precisely the opposite.

  Frost is oblivious to anyone’s thoughts, feelings, or mind, other than himself.

  His voice is low. “There is precious little to say about Twenty-Nine, because she is a simple person.”

  Anger bubbles in my chest, and I force in a deep, steeling breath before speaking.

  “She is far from simple. And from what I have seen of her musical prowess, the young woman is a virtuoso. She could do much on the outside, Frost. She seems ready to move to Ward One this instant, if you ask my professional opinion—”

  “I did not ask your opinion, Doctor.” Frost’s eyes blaze with cold rage. He paces before me like a tiger, trapped behind bars. Societal bars.

  Truth be told, most days the man seems one step away from a patient himself.

  “When I want your opinion, Grayjoy, I shall give it to you.”

  I grind my jaws together to kill the retort rattling behind my teeth. I force myself to sit, clenching my fists tighter and tighter, till my joints ache. Never have I allowed myself to be spoken to in such a fashion. I clear my throat and try again.

  “Twenty-Nine’s hair. I have never seen white hair on any person so young, except an albino, yet her eyes are green-blue, not pink.”

  Now Frost’s hands grip—open-closed, open-closed—as he clearly struggles to keep them from throttling me. No other physick questions him. They are all cowards who bow to his ridiculous whims. But the board of directors is forcing him to relinquish several cases to me. They finally fear he is … overworked.

  And Frost does not take orders well, or more precisely, at all.

  A long, tapered finger waggles in my face. “You, young Grayjoy, should be worrying about Twenty-Nine’s wild behavior and flight risk, not her bloody hair color.”

  I cock my head. “She has not tried to flee since she was twelve.”

  “Balderdash. She tries every other week. She was trying when you insisted she not be punished. The staff have become soft and entirely too attached to her and refuse to report it, for fear of retribution. You are too soft on her.”

  I think of her face, suddenly as alabaster as her hair, as she twirled round and round on The Adjuster. The sick nickname Frost christened the whirling contraption, and swallow. I think of the cut straitjacket.

  I switch tactics. “What would you recommend for Twenty-Nine?”

  Frost tugs at his necktie, staring in the window at his reflection. Something shifts in it. “She is too innocent. Too trusting. Also too abnormal for society to accept … ”

  I cover my mouth with my hand. “Too abnormal? How so?”

  I flip through her chart to the very oldest entries. Wild temper tantrums as a child. Banging her head off the floor and walls till she passed out. I swallow.

  “In the past few years, she’s had nary a word of defiance, let alone an action.”

  “It is her eyes. I see the rebellion in them.”

  “You see the rebellion?”

  I now concur with my superiors that Frost may well be on his way to a forced, early retirement. It may be the custom of some to admit women whose husband’s have decided to trade them in for a newer model, or to lock away an overly active female imagination, but it is decidedly not my way.

  “Have you heard of Marie Antoinette Syndrome?”

  Frost’s face hardens, as stony as the gargoyles that flank the asylum’s entrance. He straightens his well-cut suit, giving the waistcoat a tug for emphasis. “Balderdash. I have never seen one in all my days as a physick—”

  “The first documented case is from the Jewish Talmud.”

  “What has this to do with Twenty-Nine?”

  “Has Jane’s hair always been stark white?”

  Frost whirls, flinging his cup. It shatters against the wall, raining down in a million tiny shards of pottery.

  My heartbeat goes wild, my mind slipping into crisis mode, quickly assessing my location. Close to a door, within calling distance of a nurses’ station. My eyes flick about, searching for a weapon if necessary. We are evenly matched. It would be a struggle to take him down.

  Frost takes a deep breath. The anger seeps from his face with an exhale as he stoops to gather the fragments of the broken cup. “I am sorry, Jonathon.”

  The use of my given name is not lost on me. He is trying to placate me, so I will excuse his lack of decorum. His lack of self-restraint is legendary.

  He stands, slowly depositing the fragments into a bin. “I do not believe in the use of the patients’ given names. It breaks down the barrier between doctor and patient. It—”

  “Makes them human?”

  Frost’s face convulses, his eyebrow twitching madly over his left eye. I have never challenged him, but the need to protect Jane forces the words from my mouth, deuce the conse
quences.

  “Affects our decision making, as she clearly has already tainted your own.”

  I scribble a note on the chart, turning toward the door. “Fine. Thank you for the consultation about Twenty-Nine. I shall see you at the staff meeting tomorrow.”

  I spin on my heel and throw open the double door, storming into the hall and down the corridor. The man is hiding something. And I shall unearth it.

  It is so very cold this eve. Despite Mason’s gift, my teeth chatter, and I slide the pillow over my head to block the draft seeping in from my window.

  Beneath the covers, Sebastian snuggles closer against my leg. I am taking a risk with him in my bed—but the night is so cold, I fear for us both.

  I think of the picture of my eyes in Grayjoy’s office. Colourata.

  The word seems foreign, but doesn’t. As if I have heard it before but cannot remember where. They were most definitely my eyes. The artist capturing the flecks of gold in the blue of my irises—even my white lashes.

  Shuffle-shuffle-shuffle.

  Oh, no. Not now.

  My teeth chatter more violently—the cold and fear clattering them together like a bony xylophone, the sound echoing through the stillness of my room.

  I clasp my hands over them. I dare not try to shoo the cat. I pray the cold will drive him to keep still and quiet.

  I feel his claws touch my leg. He senses Cloud’s presence.

  I reach down to stroke his head, fighting the fear and dread pulsing through my veins.

  The shuffling halts outside my door.

  “Do not go in there, Cloud. You are not in the right mind.”

  “An’ who would be you, to tell me of my mind?” A bitter laugh.

  Two voices. One is Frost’s, I am almost certain.

  “I … I wish you to be gone.” Definitely Frost. He sounds … It takes a few moments for my mind to reconcile the word to the man. Because never, ever in my life would I have placed these two concepts in the same sentence.

  Frost sounds scared.

  “I do not believe you.”

  “Twenty-Nine is—”

  “You mean Jane?”

  Frost’s voice trembles with rage. “Do not speak her name. You are not fit to utter it.”

  “Ivy. Jules. B—”

  “Do not speak it. I will kill you.”

  A strangling, rasping cough issues forth, and my entire body trembles.

  Frost is going to kill Cloud. Frost is going to kill Cloud.

  Cloud’s voice: “I took her. And I shall take her again. Till I have mastery over the entire field.”

  “No. No, you won’t.” He is crying. Oh, my good heaven above, Frost is crying. “I will not let you.”

  “You know what must be done. With all who look too closely. You let me take Ivy. She has been there such a very long time. But for me, that is … convenient.”

  “You are a devil!” Frost roars. “She was … ”

  “Your wife?” A laugh, so hard and cold, my heart freezes in my chest.

  Frost’s wife’s name was Ivy. She is dead? Did Cloud kill her?

  Something clatters against my door. I believe it to be a head.

  There is struggling as a pandemonium breaks out in the hallway, and I finally sit up, chest heaving, trying not to whimper.

  “Oy, you there!”

  I have never been glad to hear Alexander’s voice—but tonight, were it Mason on duty …

  I scramble out of bed and crack my door in time to see his massive frame lumber past, one meaty paw tapping the billy club against the other.

  The exit door is swinging closed. Frost and Cloud are gone.

  Alexander turns round to leer at me. “You best go back to bed, nosey-posey. Lest you’d like some company?”

  I slam the door and slide down, collapsing at the floor. I stay there the rest of the night, listening, and freezing, trying to make sense of what I have heard.

  Could Cloud or Frost be the monster?

  The carriage rumbles to a stop at the asylum’s front entrance, and I swallow the ball of fear lodged in my throat as the footman swings the door wide.

  “Miss Frost.” He nods and extends an assisting hand.

  I smooth my dress and grasp his hand, alighting down the stairs. Staring up at the overbearing stone walls, I feel ridiculous. I have grown accustomed to coming to Soothing Hills in a nursing uniform. But today …

  Sheepishly, I stare down at my dress, which is nothing short of spectacular—navy blue, with a crisscross across my décolletage, it fastens at the nape of my neck and has an extremely cinched waist.

  “Jules, are you trying to attract attention?” was Maeve’s retort, her eyebrow arched, upon seeing me as I left the house. “You shall succeed. You are breathtaking, my dove. Should I ask toward what lucky man this attention-seeking is directed? Because I am quite certain it is not Willis.”

  Whom indeed.

  I sashay through the entrance, strategically entering the door furthest from the ward on which I work. Should any staff see me, adorned in my finest, I would instantly lose all credibility.

  The greeter stops me, checking his clipboard. The man looks ancient but is dressed as if the fact was lost on him. He’s donned the latest Paris fashions. A feather in his lapel matches the one in his hand.

  “Miss … ”

  I curtsy. “Miss Frost. I am here to pick up the paintings I purchased the other evening from a Dr. Grayjoy?”

  The old man smiles, adjusting his half-moon spectacles. His yellowing eyes scan across the page till he says, “Yes, here we are. Of course, the benefit auction. You are expected, Miss Frost.” He makes a check mark with a flourish, then, using the feather as a pointer, says, “Up that hall and to the left, you shall find the good doctor’s office.”

  I stop dead, my heart beating in my mouth. The picture of the eyes.

  “Are you quite well, Miss Frost?”

  I smile, insipid. “Oh, yes. Excuse me.” And I scurry up the stairwell like the rat I am.

  The physician ward is quite striking, I note as I wander down the hallway. There are twelve mahogany doors—at the top, their transoms thick and seemingly unbreakable against patient attack. I stop dead, chills lifting the hair on my arms as I stare at the door before me.

  “Isolation room.”

  The word, spoken aloud, seems to shatter the silence and I look quickly up and down the hallway. But I am alone.

  A peephole is fashioned for observation, and a revolving lazy Susan is at the bottom as a means of feeding the wayward patient without ever opening the door. This is an observation room, so that the physicians on this ward might observe and offer all their opinions on the offending patient.

  My hand trembles as I touch the knob and slowly swing the door open.

  My heartbeat doubles as I thrust my head inside and fight an irrational claustrophobia. Biting my lip, I fear that the door shall swing closed of its own accord, trapping me inside.

  In the hard, stone floor, there is a drain for the patients to relieve themselves.

  Chains. Two sets, in four corners of the room. Two high, two low.

  Manacles—for hands and feet, so that the subdued patient would resemble a destitute starfish when secured.

  If they should fall asleep, I picture a patient slumped, manacles cutting deep into the suspended wrists from the hanging body’s weight.

  Tears fill my eyes, and I blink them away, shutting the door.

  I hastily wipe them with the back of my hand and, with a shuddery inhale, turn in the direction of Grayjoy’s office.

  Each of my steps echoes like a gunshot in this still, cold area of the asylum.

  After a year of my life seems to pass, I arrive at his office and pause outside, collecting my reserve. I knock and wait several minutes, nervously glancing up and down the corridor. After some long moments, when it is apparent no one is coming, I turn the knob, and the office door swings open wide
.

  I step inside, intending to wait for the elusive, handsome, jaw-dropping doctor.

  The smell of books, leather, and musk fills my nostrils. The room is a personification of the man: polished, grand, but above all, interesting. The space is hard, but touches of womanly endeavors soften it. Paintings litter the walls here as well, seemingly of the same hand that sketched the one I purchased from the auction.

  My breath catches. A sketch near the floor is of sheet music, with a slender feminine hand poised overtop. I cock my head.

  Something is familiar in the tilt of that hand. The way the fingers drape.

  As if I should know it but the recognition dangles just out of my reach. I stoop down to read it. Inching closer, my eyes skim it as my hands instantly pluck the notes on my imaginary violin.

  The music roars to life in my mind, each note pulsing and blaring with red. The red. Middle C’s red. Frightening me with its intensity.

  Never has an arrangement presented itself in all red.

  My conscience whispers, Except the corn music. It is forever red.

  My hand cups my mouth, my pulse beating in my neck.

  Words. Messages in the music.

  “My doves. My two turtledoves. Fear the corn, my lovelies. Find my lost red sparrow. Never follow him. He is not whom he seems. Do not forsake—”

  The door opens, and I go rigid, standing so quickly black and white stars pop and blink in my vision. My breath quickens as I clutch at the desk to remain upright.

  “Miss Frost?”

  I whirl around, the world nearly swooning as I plaster what I hope is an innocent smile on my face.

  Dr. Grayjoy’s face pales, all the blood draining away.

  I take a step toward him, befuddled by his response. “Are you alright? Oh, good word, shall I summon another physick?”

  His mouth twitches in astonishment, his eyes drinking me in from hair to boot. He clears his throat, swiping at the rebelling curls occluding his eyes. His hands form fists, but not before I catch sight of the tremble in his hands. “I am so sorry, Miss Frost. Do forgive me, I have been ill.”

  I place my hand on his arm, and he stares at it. “Are you quite well, now, sir? I am sorry if you do not recognize me—when last we met, I wore a mask. I assure you, I am Miss Frost.”