Woman on Ward 13: A haunting gothic novel of obsession and insanity (Iris Lowe Mysteries)

by Delphine Woods

  Marion was waiting for me when I came into the room. She helped me undress, but I put my nightgown on over my drawers so she wouldn’t see anything.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better.’

  I flinched when she placed her cool hand on my forehead. ‘Sorry, I just want to check you don’t have a temperature.’

  ‘I am fine.’ We both knew it was a lie. ‘I am tired, though.’

  She put me into bed and patted the sheets in close. ‘If you need anything, wake me.’

  I smiled at her before she blew out her candle.

  Then I lay there, thinking of the bruises, the stinging, the wounds. Hands had been on me, I knew it. Someone had made those bruises. Someone had caused that dreadful sting.

  24

  1956

  The walk home was a blur. The only thing Iris saw was Kath, staring up at the ceiling, sighing as if the whole thing had happened to somebody else.

  Iris had shut the diary and whispered an apology.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Kath had said. Her chin had trembled for the briefest of moments. ‘I think I’d like to sleep now.’

  Iris had tucked her up. She had wanted to say how angry she was for Kath, how she would put things right if she could, but she could not put anything right now. She was too late, so she had closed her lips and had left Kath alone, as she wanted.

  Iris’s footsteps echoed as she walked into the alley at the back of her house. Fred the cat jumped in front of her and meowed, demanding attention. She stroked him and let her head hang down, let her vision cloud with nothing but Fred’s ginger face, his long white whiskers, his glittering green eyes, his little pink tongue.

  Blood throbbed against her skull. Tears prowled behind her eyes. Pressure built, her brain threatening to explode.

  Fred dashed away. She felt the cool, soft tip of his tail slip out of her hand, then a blow to the side of her body.

  She was jerked upright. The blood that had pooled in her head rushed downwards and she was blinded for a few seconds as the ground swirled. A hand came about her throat and held her against the wall, not tight enough to stop the air but firm enough to keep her still. She blinked the dots out of her eyes and saw John’s puce face inches away from her own.

  ‘Shirley doesn’t want to see you anymore.’ A bit of his spit landed on her cheek.

  ‘You think I believe that?’ Sweat prickled down her back. Bricks scratched against her bare arms.

  He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I’m telling you to stay away from her.’

  ‘You don’t scare me.’

  He squeezed. The pressure in her head built as his grip tightened. She felt the pulse in her neck and opened her mouth to suck in a bit of air. Her tongue pushed against her tonsils, nauseating her.

  ‘I could have you sacked.’ John laughed, and the stench of stale cigarettes blew into her nostrils.

  It was getting harder to breathe. Her eyes were stinging and watering. Her gaze slipped sideways, and she saw Fred perched on the yard door, watching them both.

  ‘I’ll tell you one more time. Stay away from me. Stay away from Simon. And stay away from Shirley.’

  He shoved hard against her throat, then dropped her. Iris’s knees buckled, and she crashed into the floor. Her hands flew to her neck, gently prodding it, reassuring herself with her own touch. As oxygen returned to her brain, it made the world clearer and brighter once more.

  She lifted her gaze. John was gone.

  Rolling onto her backside, she hugged her legs to her chest. Her knees were grazed where she had fallen on them, her stockings split, blood seeping between the fine ridges of her skin. She tried to pick a grey piece of grit out of the wound, but her fingers were shaking too much. She clutched her hands together, dropped her head into her chest, and sobbed as Fred came purring up to her, nudging his soft head against her arm.

  She didn’t wait for Shirley to hang up her bag. She grabbed her arm and pulled her into the corner. Shirley struggled a little, but Nurse Carmichael was too busy talking to the night nurses to take any notice of them.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ Shirley snatched her arm away.

  ‘Don’t go back to him, please. Please!’ She held Shirley’s hand tight. ‘He’s bad, Shirley.’

  ‘He’s not. He got me this.’ She beamed as she reached for the chain around her throat and pulled out a ruby necklace. ‘He’s sorry for what he did. He just gets a bit of a temper sometimes.’

  ‘He came to see me last night.’

  Shirley clamped her lips together.

  ‘Did you know?’

  She shook her head, but Iris’s stomach dropped. Had Shirley known what John was planning to do?

  ‘He put his hand around my neck. I couldn’t breathe.’

  ‘John wouldn’t do that.’

  Iris pulled down her collar to show the bruises.

  ‘Why, though?’ Shirley said. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘To scare me. He doesn’t want me to speak to you anymore.’

  ‘He thinks you’re a bad influence.’

  ‘Me?’ Iris barked. ‘Shirley, he is trying to control you. He doesn’t want you seeing me because he knows I care for you.’

  ‘Iris.’ Shirley patted her hand. ‘I know you think you’re helping me, but you’re not. I love John. Why can’t you be happy for me?’

  ‘Because he’s beating you black and blue! For God’s sake, Shirley, wake up, will you? You might love him, but he doesn’t love you.’

  ‘That’s enough.’ Shirley prised her hand out of Iris’s grip. ‘I won’t have you speaking to me like that. I think John is right, and it would be best if we kept our distance from now on.’

  Iris gaped at the girl she had once considered to be her best friend.

  ‘Miss Temperton, is everything all right over there?’

  Shirley turned. ‘Yes, everything is fine. Miss Lowe was just filling me in on what I missed when I was ill.’

  ‘Iris!’

  Heavy feet sounded behind her. Someone tugged the sleeve of her uniform. She screamed, crouched down, and hid her face with her hands.

  ‘Woah!’ Simon backed away. ‘It’s only me.’

  Iris’s breath caught in her throat. She smoothed her hair with the flat of her palm, straightened.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You shouldn’t sneak up on people in alleyways.’ She checked to see if anyone else was in the alley with them, but found they were all alone. Though she hated herself for it, fear knotted her stomach, and she crept closer to her back gate so she could make a run for it if needed. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I didn’t have a clue about John. I need you to believe me, Iris.’ He stepped towards her, and instinctively, she edged backward, her fingers straining for the latch on the back gate.

  ‘How could you not know what he was like? You’ve been friends nearly all your life.’

  ‘I know he has a temper at times.’

  Iris looked to the heavens. Calling it a temper was a massive understatement.

  ‘I’m not excusing him; I just can’t understand why he would do what you say he’s done. He has no need to.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t mean to sound crude, but John could have any woman he wanted falling around after him. Why would he need to beat them into it?’

  ‘I don’t pretend I understand a mind like his. I am only a nurse, after all.’ Bitterness sizzled from her.

  ‘You can understand where I’m coming from, though, can’t you?’

  ‘So, you don’t believe what I said about Shirley?’

  ‘It’s not that…’

  She unfastened her collar. She’d checked her neck in the toilet mirror at lunchtime. Her bruises were only faint – she hated to think how hard he must have punched Shirley to leave such deep ones – but they were visible nonetheless; four fat marks under her left ear where his fingertips had dug into her skin.

  ‘He did that to me last night, right here.’

 
; Simon tried to touch her, but she pulled away. ‘Iris…’ He rubbed his wandering hand over the stubble on his jaw. His skin had paled.

  ‘Believe me now?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ His eyes were glassy. His voice had softened.

  ‘He warned me to stay away from you all.’ Her voice broke. She bit on her tongue and stared hard at the bricks, concentrating on the crinkles in the cement. She would not be frightened of a bully like John. She would not cower and check over her shoulder each time she walked home. She would not let him do that to her.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Simon wipe his cheek and get something out of his jacket pocket. ‘I came to give you these.’ He handed her a thin stack of photographs. The first one was of her and Shirley at the picnic. ‘John’s not in there. I… ripped that one up.’

  ‘Don’t you want to keep them?’

  ‘I’ve got the one I want.’ He stepped closer, and this time she did not back away. ‘I miss you, Iris.’ His gaze slipped to her neck and hardened. ‘I’ll sort this.’

  25

  1901

  Friday, 18th January

  There is something inside me. I feel it when my mind is distracted – it brings me crashing back to Friday night.

  I cannot sleep. I lie there, and I can feel it wriggle, as if it is a fat slug stuck up inside me. I can feel its skin as it slides in further, and I grab at myself, trying to pick out its tail and rip it from me, but I scratch myself instead and add fresh wounds to older ones.

  In the morning, I sneak to the bathing rooms before the others wake. I run the bath, hotter than allowed for patients, so that the steam rises and leaves the room in a fog. I sit in the water, watching my flesh turn pink then red, as if I could burn it out of myself.

  I cut chunks off the carbolic soap and rub it down there. My God, how it smarts! But I keep rubbing until the chunk is worn down, and I am raw.

  I do it again at night, when the patients are in their beds. Miss York knows I am in there, but she says nothing as I pass her in the corridor, walking like there is a fire under my skirts.

  And still, the slug survives.

  Friday, 25th January

  Two weeks since it happened, yet it seems like a year.

  Persey keeps prodding my memory. She tells Alice to get Miss Wade to read to her in the afternoons, so that we may take our seats by the fire alone, and there, she makes me repeat the ordeal over and over again.

  ‘Something will come to you,’ she says. ‘It is there; it just must be found.’

  I feel like a storyteller now, spewing the words but taking no notice of them. It is like a tale from a book, not my own life at all.

  Nothing new comes. I think Persey is more frustrated than me. I would forget it all if I could. I would forget the demonic figure of Bertie, for that is not my sweetheart. I would forget how the trees came alive, how the world moved around me. It is something from a nightmare, though it plagues me every minute of the day.

  ‘The marks on your face must mean something,’ Persey said.

  I have not told her about the bruises on my legs, the wound inside of me. She does not need to know everything, and I must remember that her mind is more easily disturbed than most.

  We talk of it until it is time to change for dinner, and then we go to the dining room as if nothing at all is wrong. I sit in the same seat, a foot away from Daniel, but I keep my eyes rooted on Persey’s back until everything but her is one big, unfathomable blur. I think of “Persephone’s Melody” and let the tune play in my head, so that I do not hear the voices around me.

  ‘Hey.’

  There was a tap on my elbow. The room came back into focus. The tune fell silent.

  ‘Katy?’ Daniel whispered.

  I would not look at him; I tried to set my gaze on Persey, but it kept sliding off, finding different faces around the table.

  ‘Katy, will you not talk to me?’ He coiled his fingers around my forearm.

  It was like a snake had bitten me. I yanked my arm free, then found him staring at me, his dark eyebrows stitched together.

  ‘Sorry.’ He rested his hand on his leg. I couldn’t stop staring at it.

  He had such great big hands, the same width as his thigh. His skin was darker than mine, but his hairs caught in the candlelight and gleamed golden. His fingers bulged at the knuckles, the tips of them rounded and stumped.

  Slug.

  ‘Is something wrong? You have not been yourself lately.’

  ‘You do not know me.’

  ‘I do.’

  I looked at his face. The frown had gone, the smirk had returned. He knew me.

  He knew me.

  I could not run, though my legs were ready for it. I had to stay for Persey. She was conversing with Mr Merryton, laughing at his words. His face in profile was suddenly horrifying – the cragginess of his loose neck, the giant crop of his nose. His lips parted into a smile, showing yellowed teeth. He was leaning in too close to her. I thought how his breath would stink of rancid meat and imagined the slime of his tongue pushing into my mouth.

  I swallowed and tried to listen to the sound of my breath, but it was coming too quickly and still not loud enough to drown out the laughter.

  The other men around the table. Bald heads glimmering with sweat. Fat cheeks wobbling. Skin clinging to bones, as if death was hanging onto them. All of them laughing, all of their teeth showing, like the trees.

  And Dr Basildon at the head of the table, reaching for his wine, his long fingers gripping the glass, bringing it to his thin lips. The flash of a pink tongue as his mouth opened, his Adam’s apple moving up and down in his throat as if there were something inside of him clawing to get out.

  I was going to be sick.

  I sprinted out of the room, raced through the house and out into the night, down the stone steps, and emptied my guts on the gravel. Doubled over, I heaved until all that came out of me was clear gloop, but still I could not stop retching. My stomach ached, my mouth was sour and too wet, my eyes stung. Everywhere hurt as I knelt beside my own vomit in the stabbing January breeze.

  I squinted at the moonlit view. With the leaves fallen, I could see how the stream had swollen with the winter rains like a giant silver snake slipping through the dark fields. I followed its path but could not see the little wood that now haunted my dreams.

  I slumped onto my backside and let my breathing even out. A barn owl flew overhead, screeching. Bad luck.

  ‘Miss Owen?’ Mrs Thorpe jogged down the steps to me. ‘Whatever is the matter?’ She saw the vomit just in time before she stepped in it. ‘You look awful, go to bed at once.’

  ‘Mrs Leverton?’

  ‘I shall see to Mrs Leverton. We do not want to pass your illness to the patients. Go on to bed.’ She helped me to my feet and up the steps but dumped me when we reached the door. ‘Go around the back way.’

  I lay in bed for a few hours, staring at the ceiling, until Marion came in. She didn’t say anything; what was the point in asking if I was well when it was clear I was not?

  After reading her handbook, she asked if she might blow out the candles, but I would not let her blow out mine. I like it bright now.

  She turned her face towards the darkness. Seconds later, she was falling down imaginary rabbit holes.

  The room creaks at night. I have grown accustomed to its noises. A gentle tap of the wooden boards as they cool, the hum of the wind through the cracks in the window, the occasional drip of wet clothes on the stone floor below. There are owls in the woods who hoot, and foxes who scream and bark. Sometimes there is a scuffle outside, one of the farm cats catching a rat. I can hear the rain run down the roof tiles when it is wet or patter against the windowpane when the wind is coming from the east.

  Tonight, I heard nothing, for the air was still and dry, the laundry all done and ironed, and the animals apparently sleeping.

  I was the only one awake in the world.

  Two weeks ago, I had been there, in the woods. If
I had not written that letter…

  I was rushed. I was running down the hill, scared of toppling over. I stopped to catch my breath.

  I heard something. I knew I had heard something. I thought nothing of it, but what did I hear?

  If I had waited a moment, if I had not been so keen to see Bertie, might I have noticed a face somewhere? Had someone been following me?

  I tried and tried to replay that noise, to understand exactly what it was. Surely, it had only been an animal, a weasel, perhaps, even a rat? But it was more than just a rustling. It was a clink, like glass.

  And when I tried to conjure it in my mind, a new noise came. Footsteps.

  The footsteps were outside my room.

  I had heard them before and thought nothing of them, but now they made me shiver. I was stuck to the bed for a moment, rigid with the fear that those footsteps might come inside and repeat what had happened two weeks ago, but they continued to stalk outside.

  I would not wait this time.

  I crept to the window and saw Daniel in the courtyard, the glow from his cigarette highlighting his face, the moonlight glinting off his hair. He stopped, then turned to look straight at me.

  I jumped away from the glass. I should have been afraid of him. But in that instant, I knew what he had done, and rage consumed me. I grabbed my cloak, stuffed on my boots, and went to find him.

  He dropped his cigarette when I appeared, stamped out its orange tip, and seemed a little cowed by me. ‘Just wanted to see how you were feeling.’

  ‘Why would you care?’ I spat the words at him.

  ‘Because… I do.’ He shrugged and bit his lower lip.

  I took a step closer. He tensed, as if he might hedge away from me, but he stayed where he was.

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’ I whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did it make you feel like a man?’