by Mandi Martin
It lifted, a droplet of clear fluid clinging to the point, shaking violently as the form flickered and fading.
James didn’t want to see the result of this projection, lurching through the figure as though it wasn’t even there, just another ghost of his imagination.
He was about to give up when, finally, his eyes alighted on a soft light pouring from the upper levels illuminating the dirty stairway. Never had he been so glad to see a way to the rooms above.
“Thank the Gods,” he muttered in breathless relief, his body drooping as the tension drained from his muscles and he mounted the stairs.
His legs began to feel tired as the climb seemed, like the corridors, to stretch out beyond logical reason.
‘James?’
Looking up James saw the lovely figure of Marianne smiling tenderly at him at the top of the steps, a vision of loveliness in the dark, opening her arms to him.
‘A touch can take away the pain,’ she said softly, her smile never wavering as her voice filled his mind. ‘You told me that once before I went away.’
“I did?” James cupped her face, his thumbs lifting her head to gaze into her soulful eyes “I knew you?”
‘You know much, but perhaps not as much as you once did.’
James shook his head slowly in bewilderment, he could not respond as there was nothing to say. Everyone in this place seemed to talk in riddles and they went over his head. Instead he drew her to him, holding her close and breathing in her scent, wondering how she had been before the asylum had wasted the flesh from her bones.
A strange sensation overtook him as he held her. Her body felt as though it throbbed, the bones beginning to feel less prominent, her chest receding to flatten against her.
The surroundings suddenly seemed taller, wider.
He pulled back to view her at arm’s length, suppressing a cry of alarm as a child looked back at him.
The limpid eyes that occupied the rounder face made it clear that it was still Marianne who stood before him.
Slowly he backed away, looking down at his own hands, hands of a young boy, small and smooth.
‘Do you know me now?’
“I…” The voice that left his choked throat was unbroken. A choir boy’s lilting tone.
He lifted his gaze from her, looking over the rounded shoulder to see the ghostly woman in the near distance, her hand reaching towards him, beckoning.
And then there was white.
Chapter Twenty-Five
One…
‘James? Please come back to me!’
Two…
‘Cut his throat! That’ll shut him up!’
Three…
‘This isn’t right.’
All the way to ten.
When James’s vision finally returned, a slow process with colours leaking through blankness like oil through a canvas, slowly forming blurred images that gradually cleared, he was stood back in the corridor leading to the staff rooms.
The lack of sound, except for the wind shaking the windows, shouldn’t have been as jarring as it was. If all was run as standard then the staff were performing their assigned duties and were randomly placed around the building.
But, as James knew all too well, that seldom happened and always a handful, if not all, of the other warders were wasting their time talking or doing nothing.
“For the love of God, I have to stop thinking the worst!” James rebuked himself, flinching as he heard his voice in the quiet, adding rather diffidently, “And I have to stop talking aloud to myself.”
Through the crack in the door he could make out figures sat around the table, steam trailing from cups placed near their elbows. He squinted as he approached, trying to work out why they were so still, why no sound came from within but he could see nothing except the dull interior he was used to.
The door banged against the wall as he shoved it open as though it weighed as much as a leaf in autumn.
James stared at the scene that met him, his hand frozen on the door panel. It was like gazing on an unpleasant landscape on an unknown artist.
Several staff members stood frozen in time, still as statues as they sat or stood dotted about the room. Not a hair twitched, nor did their shadows waiver as the light shifted. It was though they were holograms or remnants of a time long ago.
James moved about them in listless wonder, pausing by the male who had caught his hand in the door, waving the self-same one before the vacant eyes but received no response. He stared ahead as though the orbs were made of glass like the stag’s heads that sometimes decorated the walls of inns.
As he traversed the figures, examining them silently, coldness fell over the room. The walls began to shake, cracks opening in them like in infected sores.
From outside the trees moaned as their branches stretched painfully, the briars that embraced them following suit. As if they were snakes, covered in venomous barbs, they slithered from the openings, their thorns clattering on the floor, cracking about the limbs of the furniture and climbing the walls.
Outside a deafening roar of thunder shook the building, the room illuminated in a sheet of blue that took his sight and skewed his vision.
James’s hand flew up to cover his eyes, waiting for the needles of pain that pierced his head to subside, listening to the threatening noises of nature continue.
When the brightness faded and his vision returned the room was empty. It was as though nothing had ever been there. No cracks, no vines.
“Just an empty room…”
His heart began to palpitate madly as he tried to keep his cool, searching his convoluted mind for some sense of logic. But there was none, the only explanation was a trick of the mind but one so vivid even that seemed implausible.
“Unless I really am losing my sanity,” James muttered in a hissed whisper, listening to every echoed syllable as if the stains of madness would be audible. But his voice was as always, albeit louder in the quiet.
All comprehension of time and all his senses seemed to fade as his mind became clouded, delving deeper into all the crevices that he could reach, far shallower than he would have liked.
A sharp smell of burning broke the spell he had cast upon himself, piercing his nostrils and painting his throat.
Wisps of grey smoke were seeping underneath the doorway and through the keyhole, carrying with it a deathly silence. No sound of timber crackling as flames ate into it or cries of terror from enclosed inmates echoed.
To some that might have settled them, that perhaps it was controlled, but to James it simply made the situation even more unsettling. Even when Morbridge burnt the deceased in the grounds there was still some noise, even if the life was only from the blaze.
He couldn’t ignore it though; his own life could depend on it if there was a fire somewhere. And also Marianne and Silas, all the lives here mattered. Even Morbridge, even if he resented thinking it.
“If this is nothing then I don’t know what to do,” James headed towards the smell, pushing the door open forcefully in his frustration, “except admit that my mind is lost to the darkness in this place.”
The stench heightened the further he went as if the very walls themselves were pulsing it from within the stone. The smoke was becoming thicker, beginning to resemble the gauzy mists that hovered about the damp earth outside when heat managed to get through.
As he passed through the vestibule the fog from beyond joined the smoke, the doors ajar and allowing the air to kindle the hidden flames further and chase the heat that was sure to come.
The doors of the cells hung open, swaying on breaking hinges coated in coppery rust that hadn’t been there before. The rooms behind were hazy, even without the smoke, and seemed to be set between worlds.
James’s brow wrinkled in confusion but he disregarded it for the time as pulled himself away from the first door.
His heart nearly flew from his chest as the door slammed shut with a cavernous crash, the others following one by one in a deafening performance that echoed
on in his head and throughout the building, the floors seeming to pulse with the ferocity of the noise.
James clasped his hands over his pained ears in an effort to drown it out while it subsided, it barely dulled it, the clang resounding for what seemed like an eternity, morphing into a low ring before it ceased and left him feeling as though his bones trembled beneath his skin.
Taking a moment to calm himself he looked forward through the ever thickening smoke into a dismal beyond. Shapes seemed to form, humanoid and featureless, morphing and curling with the greyness.
‘I have to go on,’ he thought more stolidly than he felt as he fixed his concentration on the two faces he held dear, made easier as the singing voice of Marianne filled his head, chanting a verse in languid tone.
‘Sunlight chases darkness
But the shadows still remain.
Reaching through the crevices
To choke all hearts insane.
The sadness reeks eternally
And the reaper reaps his toll
The pyres ever smoulder
At the whim of those who claim control.’
He quickened his pace.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The heat became stifling the further James moved, seeming to come from the centre of the building, rising as though from the pits of Hell themselves.
The air was thick and choked his straining lungs which frantically throbbed in search for oxygen.
He refused to allow that to slow him. If anything it pushed him forward more quickly, his mind fixed only on those he wanted to take from this place, to save from the lingering death and decay. However that might come.
He forced onward, through the oppressive climate, through each identical corridor that seemed even longer than before, stretching like an endless serpent, but finally relief flood his tense tendons as his eyes alighted on one door that remained shut.
‘It makes sense,’ he thought as he made his way towards it, leaning his weight on the walls as his body struggled to filter air through to him, ‘that if Silas remains the door would be shut.’
Sense or logic seemed to have no power though and the closer he edged the more he began to doubt himself, his hands trembled badly as he reached for the handle, the metal heated and painful to grip.
Fighting the sting he wrenched the protesting door open, balking at the fury of the heat from the fire that had eaten through the softer bedding Silas was afforded.
Silas himself remained as the fire grew around him, the tongues licking about the heavy wood chair, examining his nails as though it was a normal, mundane day and showing no sign of feeling the effects of the scarlet fury.
At James’s entrance he lifted his lidded eyes and rose elegantly, brushing the flaming embers from his hair as they if they were nothing but dust.
He smiled faintly as he sidled over, offering an eerily pale hand.
“Come, my friend, let us leave this accursed place.”
“But Marianne,” James said, taking hold of the proffered hand “we can’t leave her here, she’ll…”
Silas placed his free hand lightly on James’s cheek, hushing him with a soothing gaze and the continuous, idle smile.
“Fear not, she will meet us, there are ways to break any chain and we have finally weakened ours. Now you just need to release your own.”
The window behind gave a scream, the glass shattering into brilliant shards that littered the floor to reflect the growing flames that were consuming the desk.
Silas nudged James through the doorway with his elbow, following a few steps behind as though on a morning stroll.
As the door swung shut on its own accord James scanned the corridor in search of the clearest route to take, the smoke confusing his sense of direction and filling his head and sinuses, making it hard to remember anything.
His eyes fell on a figure half hidden in the grey and immediately recognised the shape and form of Marianne, her features becoming clearer as she glided with ghostly grace towards them, that esoteric smile still on her lips.
“The island is falling. It began to crack some time ago, when figures that were never here began to walk; now it is failing and how beautiful it shall be!”
She clasped her hands together in an excitable silent prayer, her eyes sparkling intensely in the gloom. Silas smiled and stepped forward, each step he took cracking the floor as though it were the most fragile glass. The splintering sound hurt his head, thumping in his skull as if that too was breaking.
Marianne saw the flinch and held out her hand, clasping his fingertips to draw him to her, guide him across the unstable flooring. He kept her gaze, focused on those knowing eyes that dispelled his fears with the glow of friendship and compassion.
He didn’t feel the sensation of walking, lost in those eyes and unaware of anything except the occasional tickle from the silvery locks of hair as Silas walked near him, wafting by the fiery air. Every sound about him paled into nothing; the crackles, the echoes, nothing reached his ears for some time.
When it did it was a frantic hiss of confused voices and sentences that made little sense and yet he knew he’d heard them all before.
‘James…Behold the titanium ghost…Where are we going…This isn’t the right way!’
Louder and louder they filled his head, a trickling rivulet turned into a furious cascade, the sound of his own cry of pain barely rose above them.
Faces flashed before his eyes, those he knew and those he thought he knew.
White stars covered Marianne’s face and his legs crumpled beneath him, his hands releasing hers to clamp over his ears. He didn’t feel the floor as he fell, just emptiness and soothing, cradling darkness.
The next thing he felt was the soft feel of mizzle clinging to his skin, a combination of weeping rain and spray from the violent sea that rocked the island, making it moan as it tore at the rocky tendons. A warm hand covered his right cheek as Marianne leant over him, urging him silently to get up.
“We cannot dally here,” Silas said quietly as he stood nearby, concern in his brilliant green eyes. “This is your chance and you must seize it. Otherwise we begin again.”
“Wh-what do you mean?” James drawled, his tongue feeling slack in his mouth as he rolled his head over weakly “what do you mean that we’d begin again? You make no sense, nothing makes sense!”
Leaning down Silas took his hands, urging him to his feet. They were outside, the sea visible, thrashing against the corroding cliffs. He watched in awed silence as the thick greenery that had shielded their view for so long fell into the vortex of water, consumed by ravenous waves.
Bones of former patients that had been discarded beneath the verdure crumbled as they were unearthed by the heave of the earth, the skulls grinning mockingly towards the trio before they too fell away.
“You don’t belong here, James, you never did,” Silas said calmly, looking to Marianne who nodded in agreement. “Look in your hand.”
James tentatively opened his fingers which he had not realised until then had been clenched, a sticky substance clung to them but he barely felt it, staring in wonder at the silver key lying in his palm.
“It was yours to craft and unless you use it then all will be lost.”
He swept his arm towards the distance. Tiny lights, like thousands of fireflies, were stirring from the earth and the churning waters. They rose slowly, coming together as if forming an intricate jigsaw, creating a shimmering bridge to stretch across the sea and to the vast beyond.
“You must go. Before the islands falls and history repeats itself.”
James looked over his shoulder at the smouldering grey walls as the flames weaves higher towards the glow of the pagan moon. Stagnant silence came from within, if any were still held captive in the blackening stone they felt no pain as fire peeled the skin from the flesh.
He felt Silas take hold of his upper arm and turned to meet the languid eyes.
“I-I can’t,” James looked from him to Marianne “I cannot le
ave you, you will perish!”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” came the patient answer, spindly fingers sliding down his limb to take his hand, “but trust me as your friend when I say it is for the best. Neither man nor beast should be ensnared in such a prison.”
As he spoke James felt his hand burn as the key began to glow, his uniform fraying at the seams and the colour bleeding away from it, melting into the mud beneath his feet.
He took an unsteady step towards the translucent structure before glancing back to them, his heart aching with anxiety and a sense of loss.
“Will I see you again? Either of you?”
“It is not for me to predict,” Silas smiled cryptically. “Life, much like the mind, is a strange thing. Truly I would go anywhere with you, we both would, but it would cause more havoc.”
His hair wafted around him, concealing his features like a sheer veil, he shook his head to fend it back, the glow from behind him making him seem transparent.
Marianne stood a few paces behind, her eyes smiled but she sent no words, merely bowing her head gently in James’s direction.
“All will become lucid once you have found your way.”
James held back from replying that he doubted anything would make any sense. His entire life, of which he remembered, seemed to have been blighted by confusion.
Silas sensed the words but he didn’t say anything, looking away to dust the embers from his person which glowed like fireflies as they clung to him.
Their eyes held for some moments before James’s head dropped resignedly. Slowly he took a step towards the glowing bridge, seeing lights dancing in the distance.
Below the structure the sea still raged but no sound came from it, something that made the situation more terrifying and foreboding. But those lights, so white, so bright, they beckoned, warm and peaceful as if they were the lure to the gates of paradise.
With one final look towards Marianne and Silas he began forwards, the bridge fading away behind him.
The pair turned in tandem, walking away towards the burning asylum, the flames reddening the dead air about them.