by Ann Gosslin
Legend Press Ltd, 51 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6HJ
[email protected] | www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents © Ann Gosslin 2020
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Print ISBN 978-1-78955-1-150
Ebook ISBN 978-1-78955-1-167
Set in Times. Printing Managed by Jellyfish Solutions Ltd
Cover design by Rose Cooper | www.rosecooper.com
All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Ann Gosslin was born and raised in New England in the US, and moved overseas after leaving university. Having held several full-time roles in the pharmaceutical industry, with stints as a teacher and translator in Europe, Asia, and Africa, she currently works as a freelancer and lives in Switzerland.
The Shadow Bird is Ann’s debut novel. Her second novel, The Double, will be published by Legend Press in 2021.
Visit Ann
www.anngosslin.com
Follow her
@GosslinAnn
‘Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.’
Herman Melville
1
The Meadows
Lansford, New York
February, Present Day
The dark hair, hacked off with a kitchen knife, was the only sign of anything wrong. Asleep in the narrow bed, her face scrubbed clean of make-up, she could be any ordinary girl, dreaming of boys and Saturdays at the mall. But once the drugs wore off, she would surely resurface to whatever nightmare had brought her here.
Erin pressed her fingers to the girl’s wrist and waited for the flutter of blood. Like any good doctor, she tried to keep her emotions in check, but some patients distressed her more than others. If one of the staff going off their shift hadn’t spotted the girl’s body in a snowbank by the gate, she would not have survived the night. In her shoulder bag, they’d found a four-inch paring knife, a handful of hair, and two keys on a plain metal ring. But no ID, and six hours later still no news from the police.
During those first frantic minutes in the clinic’s emergency bay, after they carried her inside, Erin had stripped off the glittery top and torn tights, desperate to rub some life into the girl’s frozen limbs. Only to find that the skin on her arms and thighs had been cut and re-cut. A network of hash marks, intricate as fish scales.
Pellets of snow ticked against the window. Erin turned her head, sensing rather than seeing the snowdrifts banked against the glass. Too dark to see much of anything beyond the spectral shrubs, shrouded in snow.
A commotion broke the silence. High heels smacking the stone floor like gunshots. Erin stepped into the hall to see a young nurse hurrying towards her, a panicky look in her eyes.
‘We’ve got trouble. I paged Dr Westlund, but he’s not here yet.’
At the far end of the reception hall, a woman in a short coat and black leather boots was arguing with the duty nurse. She slammed her palm on the counter, hissed through her teeth. Tall, taffy-blonde hair, the mouth a red slash.
Erin froze. Could it be? No. She hesitated in the shadows, her heart bumping her ribs.
‘I want to see my daughter. Cassie Gray. Where is she?’
Cassie. And this was the girl’s mother. Not the warm, suburban matron Erin was hoping for.
The duty nurse seemed to have the situation under control, but where was Niels? They had a protocol for cases like this. But he wasn’t here, and this couldn’t wait.
Erin straightened her shoulders and approached the desk. ‘I’m Dr Cartwright. Your daughter is out of danger, but she’s sleeping now. If you could perhaps keep your voice down…’
Spiky earrings, cheap perfume, that hard red mouth. The woman towered over her like a Valkyrie. ‘What are you looking at, Tinkerbell?’
Tinkerbell. Was it her size or the British accent that set the woman off?
A retort sprang to mind, but Erin stifled the urge. She was used to dealing with angry parents. ‘I’m sure this is all very upsetting, but if you’ll just try to stay calm—’
‘Calm? I get a call from some punk in the middle of the night that my daughter’s in this nuthouse, and you want me to stay calm? Screw you.’ She shoved Erin hard on the shoulder and pushed past.
Pain shot down Erin’s arm and she gasped. Before she could react, the woman had clattered halfway down the hall in those ridiculous boots. If someone didn’t stop her, she’d wake the entire clinic.
But there was Niels at last, striding through the vaulted atrium, jaunty and alert at six in the morning. His blue Oxford shirt and tan chinos were perfectly pressed, the parting in his hair razor-straight. Was that where he’d been, standing in front of a mirror combing his hair?
As he approached Cassie’s mother, his broad face was wreathed in the appropriate degree of concern. ‘I’m Dr Westlund.’ He extended his hand. ‘Please be assured your daughter is getting the very best care.’
The woman jerked back before he could touch her. ‘If you think I’m going to let you people mess with her head, you’ve got another thing coming. I want to see her.’
‘Let’s wait until she’s awake, shall we?’ Niels flicked a piece of lint from the sleeve of his white coat. ‘If it were up to me, Mrs Gray, I’d let you have a quick peek in her room, just to ease your mind. But I don’t make the rules.’
‘I have a right to see her. I’m her mother.’ Her face was deathly pale in the muted light.
‘I’m sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘Why don’t you go home now and get some rest. We’ll call you as soon as we know more.’
With a determined look, she pushed past Niels and continued down the hall, shouting her daughter’s name. But she didn’t get far before a security guard emerged from the shadows and blocked her path. For a moment, she seemed poised to lunge at the guard’s throat, but stopped short and whirled to face them.
‘All right, I’ll go. You can call off your thugs.’
That mouth, that sneer. Erin’s heart missed a beat. Only after the woman was escorted to the door and through the front gate could she breathe normally.
Cassie.
She hurried to the girl’s room. Still asleep, her wan face framed by the sad tufts of hair. Erin smoothed the blanket under her chin. ‘You’re safe here,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll protect you.’ A prickling sensation needled her palms.
You wish. No one is safe.
That voice again – whose?
She covered her ears to smother the sound. Cassie was safe. Of course, she was. As long as she remained within the Meadows’ sheltered embrace. Out in the world, that’s where the trouble began.
*
Curled in the window seat in her office upstairs, Erin studied the snowy grounds, silent under an oyster-coloured sky. It was quiet enough to hear a clock ticking, but there were no clocks here, nothing to show the passage of time. The scarlet flash of a cardinal provided the only bright spot in the wintry landscape. In the stillness, the stone manor felt more like an English country house than a psychiatric ho
spital.
Her eyelids drooped. What little rest she’d managed to get last night was on the hard leather sofa in the corner of her office. Not an auspicious start to what was supposed to be a day of celebration. After three months of intensive treatment, one of her patients, a girl named Sara whom they’d almost lost, was well enough to go home.
‘Knock, knock.’ Niels stood in the doorway, waving an envelope like a flag. ‘This came yesterday. I meant to drop it by earlier, but with all the ruckus last night and this morning, I plain forgot.’ In two quick strides, he crossed the space between them. ‘I had a heads-up on this last week. Pre-approved by the board.’
Erin rose from the window seat and took the envelope with a twinge of foreboding. It must be one of those pro bono things she’d agreed to when they hired her. A worthy initiative, at least in principle, but so far she’d managed to avoid any cases. What with settling into the clinic’s routines and her own patients to care for – wasn’t that why the board had wooed her away from London? – there was little time for anything else.
She glanced at the return address: Greenlake Psychiatric Facility, Atherton, New York.
Greenlake? The name rang a bell, but it wasn’t always called that. Atherton State Asylum for the Criminally Insane, that’s what it was, back in the day. Before asylums were repackaged as psychiatric hospitals to lessen the taint of notoriety, though the name change was often little more than window dressing. ‘Isn’t that a forensic facility?’
‘Sure is.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Right up your alley.’
She dropped the envelope as if stung. ‘I don’t handle criminal cases.’ She busied herself with some papers on her desk to avoid his eyes. ‘Not any more.’ Certainly not if they involved violently disturbed men.
‘Do me a favour and say yes to this one.’ He popped a breath mint in his mouth. ‘The board meets next week. It will be awkward to tell them you haven’t signed onto a project yet.’
He had a point. A certain amount of community outreach was a condition of her employment, and she’d already turned down three requests. But nothing in her contract mentioned anything like this.
‘If it helps, the director at Greenlake asked for you personally.’ Niels parked his hip on her desk and crunched the mint between his teeth.
‘Me?’ Who even knew she was here?
‘Some guy named Harrison. Said you’d be perfect for this.’
A muscle twitched near her eye. She didn’t know anyone named Harrison.
She waited for Niels’ footsteps to die away before carrying the Greenlake file to the window, where the light was better. She hadn’t meant to read it straight away, but thought it best to know what she was in for. With a letter opener, she sliced through the flap, nicking her finger. A bead of blood formed on her skin, and she licked it away.
Dear Dr Cartwright… On behalf of the State of New York, I am writing to request your services in the matter of a patient.
It was worse than she thought. A forensic patient up for release required an independent psychiatric evaluation. White male, aged 43. Incarcerated since 1978 for the murders of his mother and two sisters. The letter was signed by a Dr Robert K Harrison. How could he claim to know her when she’d only been back in the country a few months? The name meant nothing.
She sank onto the window seat and leaned against the glass. Set amongst the shimmering snowfields, the wrought-iron gazebo resembled a colossal birdcage dropped from the sky.
White male, 43. Mother and sisters brutally slain. A patient with that particular history was out of the question.
It was unlikely Niels knew about her role in the Leonard Whidby case, though it might have been notorious enough to reach the newspapers in the States. And she had no intention of telling him. Why dig up old wounds? One thing was certain, though. She hadn’t returned to America after twenty years to work with the criminally insane.
2
A knock on the door jolted Erin back to the present, just in time to greet Sara Henley as she was ushered into the room by her case manager. She shoved the Greenlake file under the desk blotter and greeted the young girl with a smile.
Close to dying three months ago, Sara had made a spectacular turnaround. Along with the entire staff, Erin was thrilled, but also relieved that her groundbreaking treatment, Family Identity Therapy, had delivered as promised. But what should have been a joyous occasion was tainted by the looming spectre of the Greenlake case.
‘Come on in, Sara.’ Erin guided the girl to a pair of oversized armchairs upholstered in a cheerful apricot paisley. Though fragile still, with legs like pipe cleaners in her tight pink leggings, Sara had made great progress at the clinic. A curated programme of music and bodywork, nourishing meals from their in-house chef, and Erin’s own brand of therapy, had pulled her out of danger.
A residential patient’s last day was always an achievement to celebrate. Though Erin couldn’t help but worry that Sara’s hard-won health would start to unravel, one strand at a time, the moment she left the Meadows’ cloistered domain. Fraught with taboos and tacit expectations, not to mention anxious parents who often did more harm than good, the home environment could pick apart months of careful work.
As Sara settled in the chair and tucked her legs beneath her, Erin’s thoughts drifted to the Greenlake file, lurking under the blotter like a scorpion poised to strike. White male, 43. Mother and sisters brutally slain.
She forced her attention back to the girl in front of her. Whatever she said to Sara during the all-important discharge meeting would set the tone for the rest of her recovery. She exhaled slowly. Do not blow this.
‘This is a big day for you.’
Sara’s lip trembled. It was clear she was struggling not to cry as she clutched a squashy blue pillow on her lap.
At Sara’s age, where had she been? A locked room with stained walls. The stink of despair. Disembodied faces peering through a narrow pane of glass. No soft pillows or smiling therapists.
Erin folded her hands in her lap. ‘What are you looking forward to when you get home?’
Sara’s eyes were the soft grey of a pigeon’s wing. ‘Hugging my dog. Art class with Mr Mulder. He’s the coolest teacher at school.’ She blushed and plucked at a loose thread on her sleeve.
A blast of wind rattled the windows, startling them both. Erin hurried to close the curtains against the darkening sky. Alert to the mood in the room, a shifting tapestry of anxiety and optimism, she touched Sara on the shoulder before returning to the chair.
‘We’ve been on an extraordinary journey, haven’t we?’ Battling ogres, outwitting demons, slaying dragons. Or so it seemed.
Together, they stared at the flickering candle between them. On discharge day, it was a challenge to strike the right note. Some of her colleagues opted for a matter-of-fact approach, hoping to avert a full-on meltdown. But Erin relied on intuition as her guide, and it was clear Sara needed something more than a pat on the back and a cheery ‘off you go’.
Though a final send-off it wasn’t. For the next six months Sara would continue as an outpatient, travelling once a week to the clinic from her home on Long Island. A dangerous time, the first few weeks back with the family, when the risk of relapse was high. Going home. It shouldn’t be so hard, but it always was.
As she blinked away her tears, Sara’s glance shifted to the bookcase, though there was little of interest to see. No photos. Nothing of a personal nature. Better to be a blank slate, Erin felt, lest her patients assign her qualities or quirks she didn’t have.
Was Sara reliving the events that had brought her here? Sick since she was twelve, a quarter of her body weight lost in a single year. Her mother furious (just eat!), her father distraught. Packed off to the Meadows in desperation, where she was placed in the care of Greta Kozani. A costly mistake. Under Greta’s clumsy ministrations, Sara had failed to thrive. Though she hadn’t any proof, Erin suspected that Greta’s treatment methods involved an odious form of shaming.
As i
f reading her thoughts, Sara said, ‘I’m glad they switched me to you.’
That Sara wasn’t ready to leave them was clear. But it was time.
‘I have something for you.’ From her desk, Erin retrieved a black velvet box. Gifts to patients were against the rules, but this was such a small token, she didn’t think anyone would make a fuss. A corner of the Greenlake file poked out from under the blotter. Mother and sisters brutally slain. Erin shoved the file out of sight. She placed the box in Sara’s hand. ‘Go ahead, open it.’
Nestled on a scrap of white satin, a green and gold bird of paradise, its wings aloft, glinted in the light. Sara lifted the fine gold chain and held it in the air. ‘It’s pretty. Shall I put it on?’
‘Better wait till you get home.’ Erin smiled. ‘It’s meant to remind you how far you’ve come. How strong you are.’
On a chain round her neck, hidden under the navy wool jumper, Erin had a talisman of her own. A silver pendant in the shape of a quetzal, a gift from a Mayan healer she’d met at a street market in Cordoba. Por qué estas triste? Why are you so sad? he’d asked, pressing it into her hand. Seventeen and on the run. She never took it off.
*
At reception, a man in a blue-striped shirt was chatting with Greta Kozani. Stuffed into a black crepe dress better suited to a funeral than a clinic, Greta tapped the man flirtatiously on the arm. Erin felt a twinge of annoyance. Where was Sara’s mother? That she couldn’t be bothered to collect her own daughter was a bad sign, but not a complete surprise. During family counselling sessions, she had come across as rigid and withholding. Erin could only hope the father provided the love and acceptance Sara so desperately needed.
‘I can’t thank you enough, Dr Kozani. You and Dr Cartwright, of course,’ he said, when he caught sight of Erin. ‘It’s wonderful to see Sara like her old self again. My wife and I are so relieved.’
Heat flooded Erin’s face. It was childish to care, but how typical – and shameful – of Greta to take the credit for Sara’s recovery. If Erin hadn’t taken over, Sara would have died.