The Red Hand of Fury

by R. N. Morris

  Such transactions had to be conducted furtively. If Mr Ince caught you playing games like that, you’d feel the heavy end of his key chain and no mistake.

  Lunch was more often than not some kind of stew, made from an indeterminate meat. It was served either with or without dumplings or a pie crust and potatoes. As the potatoes came from the asylum’s own plantation, they were often the best part of the meal. There was fish on Fridays, served with rice. It should have made a welcome change. But it invariably had a bitter, slightly tainted taste.

  What the food lacked in flavour it made up for in heaviness. If you could bring yourself to eat it, you did not feel hungry afterwards.

  Supper was always bread and cheese, again served with beer. He was more inclined to drink it now, in the hope that it would help him sleep.

  Mr Ince and his subordinates patrolled the tables making sure that order ruled. A certain level of quiet conversation was permitted, although most patients showed little inclination to talk to their fellows.

  Most mealtimes, therefore, went by in silence, apart from the clatter of spoons on the tin pannikins. They were not allowed knives and forks, and had to learn to spread their butter with spoons.

  Of course, there were those who could not control themselves.

  He could always feel it building, the tension in the air. It was like a storm breaking. And the first yipping shriek was like the first roll of thunder. Mr Ince would come down heavy on the perpetrator. Especially those who turned the air blue with obscenities, or who hurled their food across the table.

  Sometimes, in severe cases, violence alone could not quell the agitation. One lunchtime, Silas witnessed three orderlies close in on a mountain of a man, a real prizefighter by the look of him. The man had tipped his dining companions from their bench, which he had smashed against the wall. He was now swinging a bench leg to ward off any attempt to subdue him.

  Even Mr Ince with his chain could not get close to him.

  The dining hall was in uproar. The orderlies blew their alarm whistles. The inmates shrieked in panic.

  It was left to the medical staff to resolve the situation.

  There was always a nurse on hand with a trolley of meds. On the day of the incident it was Drummond. He was brandishing a hypodermic needle. The difficulty was getting close enough to use it.

  The man was backed into a corner. Anyone who dared a frontal approach would no doubt receive a solid clout around the head.

  Nurse Drummond conferred for a moment with the orderlies. Then moved to one side.

  At a signal from Drummond, the orderlies ran at the man, stopping short about three or four paces in front of him. This was enough to draw him out. He committed to a defensive lunge. Drummond seized his opportunity and nipped up behind him, stabbing the needle into the side of his neck.

  The man let out the howl of a wounded animal. A cry that was picked up and echoed by the other inmates.

  The man wielded the bench leg weakly behind him to ward off his unseen assailant, but he seemed to know that he was beaten. A moment later, he thudded to his knees and then collapsed with a roll on to his side.

  It was all over in a matter of minutes. Naturally, attention had been focused on the violent lunatic. It was only Silas’s developed policeman’s instincts that made him think about the meds trolley, left unattended all the while.

  He caught Timon Medway’s eye just as he turned away from apparently contemplating the contents of the trolley. Medway granted him the privilege of a sly wink. For all Silas knew, Medway may even have taken something off the trolley.

  He preferred to be outside if he could. For one thing, he escaped the pervading smell of the interior. But it was good, too, to be reminded that there was a world beyond the asylum, even if it was a cruel delusion to think that he might ever one day rejoin it. On a simple animal level, he liked to feel the sun on his face and a fresh breeze disturb his beard. For, yes, he let his beard grow. And kept his head cropped short. Like almost every other man in there. He welcomed the anonymity.

  He asked to work in the vegetable garden.

  He found the work both exhausting and soothing. He knew nothing about horticulture but discovered that he was a quick learner and a willing labourer. A few words of encouragement or praise was enough to sustain him for days. What pleased him most were the honest, wholesome dirt under his fingernails and the gentle twinges in his back.

  When he was not at work, he often found himself gravitating towards a small building about 150 yards from the main building, at the far north-west corner of the grounds. From a distance it might be taken for a strangely austere, brick-built bandstand. It was in fact the pump house, where the water that supplied the asylum was drawn up from its subterranean source. The throb of the steam-driven engine was strangely comforting, more so than any brass band playing strident marches would have been.

  It was here that he would sometimes meet Timon Medway. It was strange. He came to think of this man – a man he had once hunted down as the incarnation of pure evil – he came to think of him as something like a friend. Indeed, he hardly spoke to another soul, other than when he was required to address a member of staff. It’s true that he also spent time with Henry Hicks. He enjoyed the young man’s company. But trying to talk to Henry was a largely unrewarding experience.

  Silas and Medway would walk around the pump house, as if they had gone there for the exercise. They would converse all the time in low murmurs, their voices inaudible to hidden eavesdroppers over the noise of the engine.

  On every circuit of the pump house, he was granted a view of the weird twisted tree whose limbs seemed to be frozen in the midst of a violent seizure. He had the impression that each time he progressed to the other side of the building, and the tree was out of view, it would begin to thrash its branches wildly, holding its petrified pose only when he could see it, like a variation of the children’s game of statues.

  Thus they laid their plans.

  At night he slept in a dormitory with around fifty other men. The beds were closely packed in, some almost touching, others crammed in at right angles to the rest so that no space was wasted. Silas’s bed was along the wall, beneath a window. There were bars, but no curtains or blinds. On a moonlit night the dorm was flooded with an eery silver brightness. And, except for the catatonic patients, who never stirred from their beds, they generally all woke with the dawn.

  He made no effort to become acquainted with the men nearest to him, nor they with him. Their enforced proximity made any such intimacy an affront.

  They slept so close to one another that if you turned in your bed there was a danger you would roll into the bed next to you. It was a wonder their dreams did not become contaminated with each other’s terrors. Perhaps they did.

  For Silas, the nights were the worst. The constant snoring and farting did not trouble him much, nor even the frantic thumping tremors of masturbation; such sounds had to be expected in any large congress of sleeping men, and were in their own way comforting. What shook him was the whimpering and sobbing, the screams of terror, the panicked gasps for air, and most of all the meek, fearful whispering of names – ‘Mildred!’, ‘Mother!’ – by those who had been abandoned by their loved ones.

  He slept on a narrow horsehair mattress as solid as a seam of clay. The trick was to make sure that he was physically exhausted by the time he lay down.

  His work in the vegetable garden helped. As did the tumbler of cloudy, brackish-tasting liquid he was given to drink before retiring.

  He had heard nothing more about the possibility of Dr Leaming treating him.

  He had mentioned Pottinger’s suggestion to Timon Medway, who had welcomed it as an opportunity for Silas to infiltrate the programme. Though what he would be able to achieve by this was not clear.

  Then one morning as he was making his way out of the dining hall after breakfast, Mr Ince appeared from nowhere to block his way.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ It was the kind
of question Mr Ince specialized in. Every conceivable answer that could be given to it would inevitably be the wrong one. Silas felt his stomach knot with anxiety.

  ‘Outside. I’m due to work in the vegetable garden this morning.’

  ‘Oh no you’re not.’

  ‘Am I not?’

  Mr Ince smiled with satisfaction. ‘No. You’re coming with me.’

  ‘W–where are we going?’ Silas regretted his slight stammer, which felt artificial, as if he was deliberately trying to signal his weakness.

  Mr Ince lapped it up, of course. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’

  Mr Ince led him at a brisk pace along the endless corridor.

  Every now and then Mr Ince would stop and wait for Silas to catch up, with a chivvying: ‘Keep up now! We ain’t got all day!’ And he would treat him to a cheerful cuff about the ear with the back of his hand as he drew level.

  At least he did not brandish the key fob.

  After ten minutes or so, they came to a door at the far end of the East Wing. Mr Ince barged in without knocking.

  It was a small treatment room, dominated by a large, elaborate chair, something like a dentist’s chair, in the centre. Dr Leaming was seated at a narrow desk against one wall, reading through some notes. He looked up when they came in, and took in Silas with an avid gaze.

  ‘Here he is,’ said Mr Ince. There was something insolent about the way he dallied there, as if he was checking up on the psychiatrist. He pursed his lips critically.

  ‘Oh, right, very good.’ Dr Leaming spoke with a slight Yorkshire accent. The homely incongruity of this no doubt did much to throw patients off their guard, even if it did not quite put them at their ease. From the moment he saw him, Leaming could not take his eyes off Silas. He was drinking in his distress. And it seemed he wanted it all to himself. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Ince. That’ll be all.’

  ‘You want me to leave you alone with him?’

  ‘I’ll be fine, don’t you worry. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your duties.’

  ‘On your own head be it.’ Mr Ince stomped from the room with ill grace, slamming the door behind him. Silas was in no doubt that someone – most likely he himself – would bear the brunt of Ince’s displeasure later.

  Dr Leaming gestured towards the massive chair in the centre of the room. ‘Take a seat, won’t you.’

  Silas eyed the chair uneasily. It looked comfortable enough, upholstered in green leather, with a headrest, arm rests and even an extension at the bottom which could be lifted up to support the legs. But there was something undeniably sinister about it all the same. Small circular metal discs, about the size of a penny, were attached to various points around the chair, by what seemed to be adjustable bars.

  A control panel stood on a podium to one side of the chair, apparently connected to it by wires.

  Dr Leaming noticed Silas’s reluctance. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. On the contrary.’

  Silas lowered himself gingerly into the chair. Dr Leaming sprang up from his seat and busied himself over the controls. At the push of a button, the chair began to throb gently. There was then a series of alarming noises, a strident screeching followed by clanking and knocking and the sound of gears grinding. The whole chair shuddered violently as some kind of hidden machinery went into operation. He felt his legs raised and straightened by the trembling leg rest, at the same time as the back reclined.

  Finally, after what could have been as long as ten minutes, he was almost horizontal.

  As if all that wasn’t unnerving enough, he now saw himself reflected in a full-length mirror set into the ceiling.

  ‘There! You see? Very comfy, isn’t it?’

  Silas nodded his head tensely. ‘Comfy’ was not quite the word he would have chosen.

  But it was the word that Dr Leaming insisted on. ‘Yes, that’s right, isn’t it? It’s very comfy. The most comfy chair you’ve ever sat in, that’s what it is. You’re feeling incredibly comfy, aren’t you? And relaxed. So relaxed. That’s good. That’s very good. Right. Now, today, we’re just going to have a little chat, you and me, that’s all. So that we can get to know each other a bit better. I always like to have these chats in here, in the treatment room, so patients can get used to the surroundings.’

  Dr Leaming paused and gave a confirmatory nod. ‘Don’t look at me. You don’t have to look at me. Look up at the ceiling. Straight above you. What do you see?’

  ‘Myself.’

  ‘Yes! Yes, indeed. For, after all, that is what we are here to consider, is it not. Silas Quinn. So let us keep the image of Silas Quinn before us.’

  ‘I would prefer not to look at myself.’

  ‘I know. I know. It’s strange at first. But you’ll get used to it. After a while, you won’t even notice it.’

  ‘It seems rather … egotistical.’

  ‘Do you not like to look at yourself in the mirror, Silas?’

  ‘It’s not that. I don’t have much cause to.’

  ‘An interesting answer. Good. I like that. Good man. Now, it says in your notes that you’re a policeman?’

  Silas saw himself nod.

  ‘Do you like being a policeman?’

  Silas was startled by the question. ‘It’s all I know.’

  ‘Well, that’s not true, is it? Because it also says that you trained to be a medic.’

  ‘No, I … I didn’t complete my studies. I couldn’t.’

  ‘Ah yes, that was the first time you were admitted to Colney Hatch, wasn’t it?’ Dr Leaming didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Now Silas, I’m going to ask you a question. And I want you to think about it very carefully before you answer that question. I want you to be as honest as you can. I’ll warn you, it’s a difficult question, but only because it requires complete honesty. Are you ready for the question?’

  Leaming’s voice was a strange combination of authoritative and soothing. Silas recognized the techniques and constructions of hypnotism, the repetition and the inexplicable emphasis. The way, almost, of talking about talking, of laying the ground for what is to come, of slowly, subtly aligning the will of the person listening with that of the person speaking. Soon I will say this. And when I say this, you will do this.

  It did not surprise him, therefore, to hear himself say, ‘Yes.’ He saw himself raise one eyebrow.

  ‘Good man. Good man.’

  Dr Leaming must have pushed a button on the control panel, because the chair began to vibrate pleasantly.

  ‘The question is this, Silas. What are you most afraid of?’

  He had not expected to. He had had no inkling of it coming. But as soon as he was asked the question, Silas began to sob violently, uncontrollably, as if a valve had been opened inside him.

  And he could not tear his eyes away from the sight of his tear-streaked face.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  His tears must have been taken by Dr Leaming as an honest answer. He found himself admitted to the programme.

  His treatment took place every weekday morning after breakfast. Each session lasted no longer than an hour, sometimes a lot less. He had the sense that Dr Leaming invariably brought the consultation to an end at a moment of crisis or breakthrough, which were often the same thing.

  He found himself looking forward to the sessions during the other hours of the day.

  To begin with the treatment consisted of him staring up at his reflection, as he listened to Dr Leaming’s authoritative but soothing voice, while the chair thrummed gently.

  At the start of the second session, Dr Leaming began: ‘Do you remember the question I asked you last time? I will ask you it again. And this time you will answer. What are you most afraid of?’

  ‘Myself.’

  Silas saw an expression of surprise on his own face looking down at him, which settled into a look of mild reproach.

  The answer seemed to satisfy Dr Leaming, not to say excite him. He made some adjustments to the control panel and the intensity of the vibrations in
the chair increased.

  ‘Exceptional. Ex-cep-tional! You show great insight by that answer, Silas. You should be proud of yourself. It usually takes many more sessions before we get to that. Fear of the self is the greatest block to a therapeutic breakthrough. Being able to admit it is the first step towards overcoming it. And if you can overcome your fear of yourself, you can overcome all your fears.’

  The following day, he was about to get into the chair as usual when Dr Leaming held out a restraining hand. ‘One moment please. Given the progress that we made yesterday, I feel that we are ready to take the treatment to the next level. Kindly remove your clothes and place them on the chair over there.’

  ‘Remove my clothes?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s not possible for you to confront yourself – the root of all your fears – through the barrier of clothing.’ Dr Leaming said it in his usual down-to-earth Yorkshire accent. Silas found it difficult to object. ‘Don’t you want to carry on with the therapy?’ And in that bland question he laid the threat of depriving Silas of all the consolations that he had so far experienced, as well as the promise of future redemption.

  The leather upholstery grew uncomfortably hot next to his skin.

  Dr Leaming was kneeling down beside the chair. Silas felt something cold touch the underside of first one thigh and then the other.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Dr Leaming reassured him. ‘You may feel a slight tingling sensation emanate from each of these contact discs. It is simply a small electrical current designed to reinforce the work that we are doing here.’

  Dr Leaming was on his feet again, at the control panel. He pressed a button and the chair adjusted itself to the usual near horizontal position with the same industrial din as before. Silas was shocked to see himself naked in the mirror. He hardly recognized himself.