Visitor in Lunacy
Stephen Curran
Copyright © 2012 by Stephen Curran
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
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VisitorInLunacy@gmail.com
Twitter: @Steeephen_
For Bob and Bernie Curran
Contents
John Seward
PART ONE
Green Tea
The Feast of Roses
Mr Utterson's Room
Magdalene in the Trees
The Visitor in Lunacy
A Conversation with Doctor David Toynbee
The Black Dog
Flying Ants
Incident of the Letter
Indigestion
The Familiar
A Vigil
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
JOHN Seward is working in his office on the top floor of the asylum, clicking a fresh wax cylinder into his phonograph and preparing to make a record of the day's events, when the Principal Attendant of Block 2 bursts in without warning. The evening's work has been progressing badly. His mind is muddled and preoccupied, dwelling too long on recent disappointments in his personal life. He has made a fool of himself. He asked his sweetheart for her hand in marriage only to be rejected in favour of one of his closest friends. Thinking of the incident now makes his stomach turn. How ridiculous he must have looked, pacing around the drawing room of her home, spilling out his rambling proposal, his nerves betraying themselves in his every gesture. Recalling the awful moment when he sat down and accidentally crushed his hat he pinches the bridge of his nose beneath his spectacles and groans, listening to the rain drum against the windows. Mr Simmons's abrupt arrival causes him to jolt in his seat and bang his knee on the underside of his desk.
“What the devil is it, man?”
“Renfield has met with an accident, sir. You must come at once.”
The journey from the Administration Block to the second floor takes only a few minutes, the two men hurrying through the gas lit, black-and-white tiled corridors and nodding at the night watchers who unlock the doors, allowing them to pass. When they reach Renfield's room Seward tries the handle and snaps open the observation hatch. Peering inside he sees rain slanting in through the open sash window and, on the floor near the bed, a crumpled bundle, something like a coal sack. A flash of lightening glances from the surface of a pool of sleek black liquid.
He bangs on the wood with the flat of his hand: “Open up!”
“I think he may have lodged something under the handle,” says Mr Simmons.
“Help me.”
Together they charge forward, leading with their shoulders. On the third attempt the frame cracks and they break inside, sending a chair clattering across the floor. Light from the corridor reveals the coal sack to be the patient's unmoving body, curled up into a loose ball. Taking him by the shoulder Seward rolls him gently onto his back. His face is swollen and distorted, his hair matted with blood. Below his hairline a deep chunk has been gouged from his flesh: most likely the result of a heavy blow from a sharp object. He is smartly dressed, in his navy waistcoat and tie. His nightclothes remain neatly folded at the end of his bed.
Mr Simmons fidgets behind him: “I think, sir, his back is broken. See, both his right arm and leg and the whole side of his face are paralysed. I can't understand it. He could mark his face like that by beating his own head on the floor. I saw a young woman do it once at the Eversfield Asylum before anyone could lay hands on her. But I can't see how a man could break his own back. And if it was an accident why was the chair pushed up against the door? It doesn't make any sense.”
“Who has been in this room since you started your shift?”
“No-one, I swear it. I locked the door as usual at nine and haven't opened it since.”
“Did you leave your post?”
“No, sir.”
A sudden thunderclap coincides with a lightning strike, the storm passing directly above the madhouse. Catching a gust of wind the wooden window shutter whacks against the wall.
“Listen. I want you to go to Van Helsing and ask him to come here at once. I want him without an instant's delay, do you understand?”
Mr Simmons hurries out, ashen faced and perspiring. Seward carefully rearranges his patient's limbs, taking the pillow from the bed and slipping it under his head to make him more comfortable. Something falls from Renfield's trouser pocket: a pearl earring. Picking it up Seward balances the object in the centre of his palm, studying it with a confused frown before slipping it into his frock coat. Pressing two fingers against the patient's carotid artery he counts the faint throbs: “Poor man.”
When Van Helsing arrives his one hand is tucked inside the breast of his dressing gown while his other holds the umbrella that sheltered him on his short trip from the guest’s cottage in the grounds. Only his slippers and pyjama bottoms are wet. Mr Simmons follows, soaked to his skin.
“What do we have here then?” says the Dutchman, leaning over the body to give it a cursory visual examination. His uncombed red hair and the crease marks on his cheek betray that he has come straight from his bed. He sniffs decisively - “Allow me to fetch my things” - and leaves.
Crossing his path, Mr Simmons carries a gas lamp from the corridor. After placing it on the floor beside the patient he yanks down the sash window and fastens the shutter. Nothing in the room is out of place. The wardrobe is untouched, the bookshelves undisturbed. A leather-bound critical study of Coleridge's poems rests open on the bedside table.
“And you're certain nobody has been in here?”
“Unless they came in through the window.”
“Seems unlikely, no? We're on the second floor.” He looks around the room, stopping when he spots something. “Move the lamp closer to the bed, would you? See, there: on the corner.”
Mr Simmons casts the light over a thick clump of greyish pink matter, a deposit of concertinaed skin where Renfield's head struck the frame: “Christ Almighty.”
Events like this are to be expected in the life of a madhouse but the Superintendent has not yet lost the capacity to be shocked. He has been at Carfax for eight months, transferred from a smaller institution in Edinburgh, but is still overwhelmed by the size of the place: three wings, nine hundred inmates, thirty-five acres, like a small, walled town. Carefully, he picks a stray strand of hair from the gash on the patient's forehead. For all his wild misconceptions, Renfield is the most lucid of the inmates and one of the few he senses a kinship with. If this is an attempt at suicide, he should have seen it coming.
Van Helsing returns without his umbrella but bearing a surgical case, his movements unhurried and efficient. Kneeling by the patient he takes a few moments before making an assessment, the whisky he drank before bed still evident on his breath. Seward studies his former teacher from the corner of his eyes: the compressed line of his mouth, his sculptured forehead and the small tufts of red hair in his nostrils.
“The facial wounds are superficial,” he says. “Our real concern here is a depressed fracture of the skull. We must reduce the pressure of the swelling and get back to normal conditions, as far as can be. The whole motor area seems effected. The suffusion of the brain will increase quickly, so we must trephine at once or it may be too late.”
Two more men appear in the doorway, dripping wet: Doctor Godalming and Seward's American friend Quincey Morris. Godalming wears a greatcoat over his nightgown while his companion is fully dressed: “I heard your man call up Doctor Van Helsing and tel
l him of the incident. Is there anything we can do to help?”
After beckoning them inside Seward asks if they would close the door. A tiny reddish spider is lowering itself from the ceiling on an invisible thread. Godalming waves it away from his face.
“What happened?” asks Morris, his Texan drawl still strong after a decade in England. “Jesus.”
“He appears to have been attempting to bash his brains out using the bed frame,” replies Seward, “apparently with some success. I don't know. I can't see how his injuries could be self-inflicted.”
Van Helsing has removed the trephine from his case and is testing the mechanism, watching the circular saw rotate in the gas light: “There is no time to lose,” he says, although little urgency is relayed by his measured tone. “The haemorrhage is increasing. We will operate above the ear.”
On seeing the spike at the centre of the blade pierce Renfield's skin, Mr Simmons blanches: “Doctor Seward, sir, may I be allowed to leave the room?”
“Of course.”
Morris leans against the wall and observes, pulling at the corners of his moustache. Godalming retrieves the fallen chair, the rain still shining on his bald head. Turning the trephine's handle Van Helsing slices a circle from the patient's swollen flesh, causing the clot to burst and spill forth, rushing over his ear and soaking the pillow cover. Immediately Renfield opens his eyes and blinks, struggling to comprehend his surroundings.
“What's wrong with my face?” His speech is imprecise, the words twisting clumsily from the left side of his mouth: “I have had an awful dream.”
“Try not to move.”
He recognises the accent, and it pleases him: “That is Doctor Van Helsing.”
“Tell us what your dream was about,” says the surgeon, hoping to focus the patient's mind and distract him from his injuries.
“Give me some water, my lips are dry.”
Seward asks Morris to run and fetch some brandy. Closing his eyes Renfield takes a breath and lifts his right hand to his face, using his fingertips to explore its altered contours. When he comes near the raw wound below his hairline he shivers in pain. Morris returns carrying a decanter of spirits, a carafe of water, and a glass.
Van Helsing wets Renfield's lips: “Your dream. Tell us about it.”
Using Seward's eyes as a focal point the patient struggles to gather his thoughts: “Seward.”
“Yes.”
“I don't feel at all well. This is the end, isn't it?”
“We don't know that.”
“I wish I could have been more like you, Seward, more trusting and kindly. But I never had a chance. My path was set from the beginning. I have done unforgivable things. But I have tried to make amends. You must believe it.” He swallows dryly, thinking hard. “I have had an awful dream. No, I must not deceive myself... I have something to tell you, before it is too late.”
“We may save you yet, Renfield.”
“Please, let me continue. I heard dogs barking beyond the grounds...” Sleepily he begins to ramble, his voice growing ever weaker, his pronunciation ever more slurred. The fantasy he relates is dislocated and bizarre, of a woman obscured by a whirl of blossoms, of a fierce black hound spitting hot drool, of a man with feline teeth and shiny pebbles in place of eyes. Of dirt, trees and blood and a bloated figure tapping on the window.
Van Helsing dips his handkerchief into the carafe and wrings out the excess before running it gently over the patient's misshaped and tender face, giving him time to speak. The gas light flickers. Nobody is listening.
PART ONE
Green Tea
FIRST came the constant weariness, as if my sleep had been disturbed.
I seldom altered my nightly customs. At eleven the hallway clock would strike and I would rise from the bureau at which I carried out my duties as the editor of The Mind to move my candle to the bedroom and disrobe by its light. Invariably my nightclothes would be where I left them the previous morning: my gown folded beneath my pillow along with a pair of thick woollen socks to keep my feet warm. Once undressed I would hang my suit in the wardrobe. I owned four in all, each identical, purchased over a period of years from the same Devonshire tailor, consisting of a braided navy blue frock coat, a high buttoned waistcoat, narrow cut trousers and a lilac speckled tie. My boots went by the door. Lastly I would perform my exercises and climb into bed, extinguishing my candle with a brass snuffer. I slept as I had since I was a child, as my uncle taught me: my arms by my sides and my palms down flat on the mattress. At five thirty I rose again, for many years a deep and dreamless sleeper.
The change came without warning. Accustomed to feeling energetic and mentally alert during the day I found myself experiencing periods of lassitude and melancholy, suffering irritating mouth ulcers and aches in my limbs. A dull pain around the temples was my constant companion. Aside from these minor ailments, though, I could complain of no bodily derangement and so, observing myself with a physician's eye, concluded my condition was one of the imagination and would soon pass.
Next came the insomnia itself. Waking suddenly into the gross darkness of my room I would find it impossible to return to sleep. With my spine straight and my fingers together I listened to the unfamiliar noises of the house at night: the knocking of the pipes, the creaking walls, moths tapping against the ceiling. Often I would abandon any hope of drifting off and try instead to occupy my mind, reigniting the candle and picking up the well-thumbed editions of Wordsworth's The Prelude or Goethe's Die Laiden des Jungen Werthers I inherited from my old childhood acquaintance, Oscar. Yet despite my wakefulness I was unable to make much sense of anything I read and was reduced to running my eyes uncomprehendingly over sentences again and again. Ultimately it proved less frustrating to remain still and pray for sleep to find me.
What little rest I was granted came accompanied by dreams so shapeless and obscure that I could seldom recall them, but which left me with a sense of great exhaustion, as if I had survived a period of intense mental effort. By the morning only the memory of a voice remained, speaking at a vast distance and bringing forth muddled feelings of fear, regret and shame.
I mentioned all this to David Toynbee when he made his regular Thursday evening visit to my home.
“I'm sure it's nothing serious,” he said, having already commented on the dark rings around my eyes. “Have you made any changes to your diet recently?”
He was planted in his usual chair in my drawing room, one long leg dangling over the other and occasionally nudging against the low table which stood between us whenever he grew animated. My friend was possessed of the most singular features: a hooked nose, a tapered chin and unruly red hair that proved invulnerable to even the most generous application of Macassar oil. His eyebrows were arched in a way that gave him the appearance of being eternally astonished.
“Not that I can think of. I may have been consuming more green tea than usual.”
One of his remarkable eyebrows rose at this: “Green tea? Really?” Picking up his decanter he filled his wine glass for the third time, his movements suggesting a frantic nervous impatience despite him being perfectly relaxed. “How funny you should say that. Have you ever heard of Martin Emerson?”
“Should I have? Is he a medical man?”
“Absolutely not, although he's certainly quick to describe himself as a doctor. I came across him when I was staying in New York, in the dining room of the Hotel Chelsea.”
For much of the previous year David had been touring the United States with his family, making a study of their lunatic asylums. On his return he was full of disturbing reports of retrogressive behaviour by our American counterparts, of the mistreatment of patients and the systematic overuse of mechanical restraints. But try as he might, he could not conceal how much pleasure he had taken in the trip. More than once he had stated his desire to move there with his family, where he had a sense of something new being created, something thrilling. He longed to leave the fog and drizzle of London behind: the grea
t city had, in his opinion, entered a state of terminal decline.
“He makes his living giving what he calls 'trance lectures', where he claims to commune with spirits. We got along rather well so he invited me and Sarah one of his performances at Union Hall. It was quite the spectacle. His trick is to encourage the audience to suggest difficult topics – when I was there, for example, people proposed primitive rocks, evolution theory and, I think, the Neapolitan War – then proceed to speak on them at length and in impressive detail. His seemingly boundless knowledge, he suggests, is imparted to him by a band of ghosts who bring him information from the other side.”
“A very diverting piece of theatre, I'm sure, but what does all this have to do with my diet?”
“I'm getting to that. It is his assertion, both on stage and off, that humans possess a kind of sixth sense, something he calls 'interior vision', quite distinct from ordinary 'exterior vision'. Rather than being situated in the eyes, it is located immediately about and above the eyebrows, in the nervous tissue of the brain.” He tapped his forefinger against his temple. “Learning how to use it gives a person insight into a non-corporeal world which exists parallel to our own: the domain of angels and demons, an entire unseen realm. This extra sense, usually dormant, can be awakened in a variety of ways, using meditation for example, or prayer, or extended periods of solitude. It can also be awoken in error, through various abuses, the chief of which, he says, in the overconsumption of green tea.”
“So if you take what he says to be true then my bad dreams are, in fact, glimpses into another world?”
“It might explain why you seldom remember them: because your waking mind is incapable of processing the non-sensual.”
“You'll forgive me for saying this all sounds rather unlikely.”
“Yes, I'll grant you that.” He smiled self-indulgently and took another sip of Amontillado. “No doubt the man is a charlatan. But when he's in the footlights I must admit he can be highly persuasive. He talks of a whole new world, an unknown Earth. When he's getting particularly carried away he swears blind he has seen the Apocalypse, although he prefers to call it 'The Renewal'. It's coming soon, he says. Society is collapsing. Civilization is on the brink of a catastrophe. We are living in the end of days. You can see why so many people flock to watch him perform. It's made him a very wealthy man.”
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