The Crowlands

by T M Creedy

  I’ve seen enough. I sprint up to the second floor, intending on protecting the children somehow but having no idea how I’m supposed to go about it. The hallway is quiet and hushed; airless as if in a vacuum. I walk to the end, calling out the names of the children and begging them to come out to where I can lead them to safety. I slide down the wall in between the dormitories, resting on my knees, exhausted.

  The air thickens around me, swirling in a cloud of dust, and I hear a whisper of words, a stifled giggle.

  ‘Gregory? Is that you? Are you there? Malinda? Alice? Babygirl? Come out where I can see you.’ The light is dim. I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting on that cold bare floor but the sun is casting long shadows through the windows, indicating that it’s late afternoon. ‘Children?’ I call out again. ‘I won’t hurt you, I promise. I saw some of you in the photo today. I guess you saw all the other kids and wanted to be outside with them. Can you show yourselves to me now?’ I can feel them. They’re just on the other side of the walls. They’re listening to me, I know it. ‘I’d really like to see you. I feel like I know you all already. Dolly told me all about you. Do you remember Dolly?’

  ‘……Dolly.’ The word is faint, only just there.

  ‘Yes! That’s right. Dolly! She kept a diary and wrote down everything that happened to you. I know now. I know what he did to you. You don’t have to hide anymore. I’m going to help you.’ I wait, holding my breath.

  ‘Sara?’ She’s standing just inside the door to the girl’s dormitory, pale hair and freckled skin. She wears a washed out nightgown, cut down from a much bigger size and it trails limply on the floor.

  ‘You must be…. Ivy?’ I hazard a guess and she rewards me with a big smile. ‘Dolly said you were always the brave one of the girls.’ Ivy turns away, beckoning to the empty room.

  ‘Come on. It’s Sara!’ Slowly, from the air, more hazy forms take shape. I couldn’t tell you if they came through the walls, or from behind the door, I can only describe it as one minute there was no one there and the next minute there was. There’s shy Malinda, holding her bump awkwardly and looking through lowered eyes, through her eyelashes at me. Alice hangs back, still holding onto her swaddled infant and looking unbearably sad. Babygirl toddles over to me and plonks herself heavily in my lap. She feels so warm, and slightly damp, but there’s no difference between holding her and holding a real, living child. Babygirl sticks her thumb in her mouth and looks up at me wide-eyed. There’s a creak from my right hand side and the boys creep timidly out from their room. Gregory’s dear little face with his mutilated eyes peeps out from behind the doorframe. He’s holding his bunny toy by one ear. He holds it up for me to see, rubbing it on his cheek.

  ‘Billy bunny!’ he smiles. ‘Look! You made him good again.’

  They inch towards me, all of them. Thirteen children. Fourteen, if I include Alice’s baby. They sit in a semi-circle around me. They wear a motley assortment of men’s pyjamas, vests and long nightgowns but their eyes dance and their skins glow with the freshness of youth.

  ‘Are you the only ones left? I speak to Ivy; she seems to be the one they all look up to. Ivy nods.

  ‘There were more of us. Before some of us came here, there were others. But he took them away and we never saw them again.’

  I think of the long list of names written on the wall, hidden under the wallpaper in the girl’s bedroom.

  ‘We were the ones who were left. On that night.’ This from another girl, who coughs chestily. She must be Kirra. The one Dolly let go of, let the doctor take to the bathroom.

  We sit on the floor, all of us, and they tell me their stories. Malinda doesn’t say a word but Ivy speaks for her.

  ‘Malinda says her family are looking for her. She’s waiting for her ancestors to come and get her, and take her away from here.’

  They all chip in with stories of family, of mums and dads who never stopped searching for them, and of the family pets they can’t wait to see again. I tell them a little bit about my life in London, and their eyes grow round with disbelief when I tell them about airplanes and television. I forget they’ve been dead for over a hundred years. One of the boys, Peter I think his name is, asks me if I have seen Queen Victoria. I tell them of the two World Wars which stain the previous century’s history and they nod as they remember the men in green uniforms, who stayed here for a time. I tell them of man landing on the moon, and try to explain the internet but the best way I can describe it is like a big encyclopaedia in the sky, which holds every single bit of information in the history of the world, and they just look confused and sceptical. They teach me some of their rhyming songs and Malinda is encouraged to sing a dirge about her people in the Dreamtime. The haunting melody resonates around the hallway.

  Babygirl has fallen asleep in my lap and my legs have gone numb with the weight of her. The light has long gone from the windows and we sit in the semi-darkness. The children are full of chatter and questions and for a minute none of us hear the squeak of rubber-soled shoes on the worn lino.

  ‘I did my best for them you know.’ Nurse McKay stands at the end of the corridor, uniform pristine, head whole. The children regard her with suspicious eyes. After all, she was present when the doctor committed his crimes on their exposed and vulnerable bodies. ‘You have to understand.’ The nurse implores me. ‘You don’t know what he was like.’ Her eyes fill with tears and she bows her head. I look around at the children. If they don’t want her here I’ll tell her to leave. Ivy gives me a small nod and the children bunch up, creating a space for Nurse McKay. She sinks gracefully to the floor next to me and begins her tale.

  ‘I was a novice when I came here. Newly qualified and this was my first position. Silas’s reputation was exemplary. His work with genetic diseases of the mind was ground-breaking. He convinced me that he was working for the greater good; that sacrifices needed to be made if we were ever going to fully understand the workings of the human body. He was a very commanding presence.’

  ‘When did you start to see that things weren’t right though?’ I press. ‘I mean; you must have had some idea of what he was doing to these children?’ They look at the nurse, waiting for her to explain why she turned a blind eye to the abuse. ‘You must have noticed that underage girls, in your care, were having babies for God’s sake!’ My voice grows louder as I take in this pathetic woman’s tears and I have no time for her weak, self-serving excuses. ‘You let them down. They needed looking after, needed protecting, and you LET THEM DOWN!’

  ‘Things were different then.’ She insists. ‘He was a doctor. I was just a nurse. I had no say in what he did to the children, but I had no part in it either.’

  ‘Was he the one responsible for making the girls pregnant?’ I look over at Malinda, awkwardly holding her baby bump, and poor little Alice, as lost and bewildered in death as she was in life. Nurse McKay’s eyes flicker over the girls before looking quickly away in embarrassment.

  ‘I believe so, yes. But there were others as well. Men from the town. Silas had a way of befriending the influential people - local councillors, the police chief, men of the church, and he quickly discovered which of these men had……unnatural desires. He used that knowledge to gain advantage over them, offering them the opportunity to fulfil their fantasies in return for looking the other way when Silas’s experiments became rather……. extreme.’

  She sags against the wall, her face collapsing with guilt. ‘If only I had had the courage to speak up.’

  ‘Dolly, the maid, she kept a diary. She wrote down everything that went on in this place, about the abuse, and she described what happened on that last night. No one knew she was in the house, you see. She’d come back after she was supposed to have left for the night, and hid in the girl’s room. The doctor and the Matron had no idea she was there but she saw everything, and put it all in her journal.’ I tossed her a small crumb of comfort. ‘You were the one who taught her to read and write didn’t you?’

  She looks thought
ful, musing on how the sequence of events had played out. She had taught Dolly to write, and it was Dolly who had been the one to document the crimes and corruption of the doctor.

  ‘Yes. I was. She was a quick learner, Dolly. I thought I was giving her an opportunity to better herself. So she could leave this evil place and get a better job. I had no idea she kept a journal. Although if it means the truth can finally be told after all these years, then I’m glad.’

  Gregory has inched himself around so he is next to Nurse McKay. He smiles his big, easy smile and holds up Billy bunny.

  ‘Billy!’ He says, sticking his thumb in his mouth and forming the words around it. ‘Sara fix him for me.’

  The nurse looks down at Gregory, gently smoothing down the sticky-up hair on the crown of his head.

  ‘You were very attached to Billy bunny, weren’t you, my darling? Quite a fuss when you lost him and couldn’t find him.’

  ‘Didn’t lose him. Hid him. Kept him safe.’

  You were very clever, weren’t you Gregory?’ I tell him. ‘You banged on the floor until you got my attention and I found where you kept your treasures.’ Gregory grins up at me triumphantly.

  ‘Greg clever!’

  ‘Yes. Very clever!’ I tell him and he laughs delightedly, but his blind eyes are eerily empty. ‘And what about what she wrote? Dolly. She said you discovered the doctor performing surgery on the boys to castrate them.’

  Nurse McKay averts her eyes from my confrontational gaze and stares into the distance.

  ‘Silas was so sure he could find a cure. For the……condition. Mongolism.’ I open my mouth to correct her but remember that this was the accepted word back when she was alive. The term Down syndrome didn’t become common until the 1970’s. ‘His research, his writings on the disease, they were some of the most highly regarded works of our time. I fervently believe it was his failure to find a solution that sent him into his decline into utter madness.’

  ‘But it’s not a disease. It can’t be ‘cured’. It’s a genetic condition, and most people who have it go on to live normal, happy lives. To lock them up and subject them to experiments bordering on torture…. it’s barbaric! And why castrate the boys?’

  ‘I believe it was due to professional embarrassment.’ She says, matter of fact. ‘Silas had recently returned from medical conference in Melbourne. He had no new findings to present, no success to boast about, even though he was so convinced of his own greatness he had sworn to the medical council that he would have a cure by then. Of course, he didn’t and his colleagues lost faith in his proclamations. He returned in an absolute fury! He’d decided during his journey back that if the disease couldn’t be cured, then they only way to control it was by the forced sterilisation of its sufferers. By not allowing them to breed, the disease would die out of its own accord. It wasn’t just the boys he planned to sterilise – the girls were due to be next. Only, thankfully, the government intervened before he could begin.’ She smooths down the folds of her skirt, tutting at a loose thread. ‘They were closing him down. Stopping the funding. I wrote to a former colleague who worked in the Department of Health, and begged him to bring to light what was happening here. But I was too late. By the time the Medical Council reacted Silas was past redemption. I watched him, you know. Him and that woman who called herself Matron. She was nothing but a cruel and selfish woman, and she worshipped him. She thought Silas was the closest thing to God ever to walk this earth.’ The nurse’s voice is bitter with hatred. She stands abruptly and moves to the window at the end of the corridor. ‘I saw what they did to you, children. And I’m so very sorry. Forgive me. I was weak with horror; struck dumb by what I was witnessing. I could not save you.’ The children stare silently at her. Her failure to help them is unforgiveable. When she sees they will not give her the reprieve she so desires her whole body sags with defeat. ‘Forgive me.’ She says again. ‘I could not live with myself after that night. I was a coward. I took my own life. Just as yours were taken from you. And now I’m trapped here. We all are. As long as Silas Baldwin remains in this house he will keep us imprisoned here with him.’

  As if the very mention of his name invokes the doctor’s dormant spirit, a sudden blast of freezing cold air gusts from the open door of the long abandoned bathroom. A ripple of alarm and fear runs through the children like a wave.

  ‘He’s here…’

  ‘He’s back…’

  ‘The doctor….’

  ‘He’s coming….’

  ‘I’m scared…’

  ‘The doctor……’

  ‘He’s looking for us….’

  ‘He’s here!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  They’re up on their feet in a heartbeat and scatter like mice, disappearing into the walls and floors of their bedrooms. Apart from the nurse and myself the long hallway is empty and stark. The bare bulbs above us flicker and flare, casting their sickly pale light in pools on the worn lino floor, but they cannot penetrate the darkness of the shadows in the desolate rooms. There’s a moment of complete silence, nothing stirs, like the house is holding its breath.

  And then.

  Clang. Rumble. Hiss.

  From inside the bathroom we hear a clanking of pipes, a rush of water. That can’t happen, I think. Drew and I checked the taps when we first came up here and the water was turned off. But the sound of water filling the empty tub is unmistakeable. The noise is enormous in our ears. Fearfully, we look at each other and Nurse McKay takes my hand in hers.

  ‘He must be faced, my dear. We have no choice.’

  Her hand is warm and firm when I expected it to be cold, and I gather a little strength from her courage. Together we creep slowly down the length of the passageway. As we pass each room the doors slam shut, hard enough to splinter the wood in the frames, and I can hear the stifled cries of fear from the hidden children, now once again locked in the rooms in a cruel parody of the night they were dragged to their watery deaths. With each loud crash I flinch and falter, wanting desperately to turn and run but there is no other means of escape, the only way out is down the main staircase and to get to this we must pass the bathroom, the only door in the hall which remains open. There is a shaft of light, sharp and angular, coming from the doorway and framing the shadow of a man. A tall, thin man, with the outline of a beard clearly defined in dark contrast to the whiteness of the tiles. My heart is pounding and my breath comes in short, jerky gasps as we both turn to face the doorway, and look straight into the evil eyes of the doctor himself.

  He is monstrous in death.

  Whilst the children, and even Nurse McKay, appear whole and untouched by the ravages of the grave the doctor has not been so fortunate. His skin hangs in grey tatters from his face, white bone glinting underneath. His eyes bulge grotesquely from their sunken sockets where they have been pushed outwards, the suffocation he endured by hanging causing a build-up of pressure behind the eyes which had nowhere to go, forcing its way out through the only available cavity. Only the pupils are the same hard, glittering stones that I recognise from the photographs. His lips, yellowed and split, draw back from his mouth in a rictus grin showing broken, decayed stumps of teeth, and when he speaks it’s like the rattle of dry, desiccated leaves on a stormy wind.

  ‘Ah. Good. I am in need of your assistance Nurse.’

  Calmly, the doctor removes his white coat, setting it down on the edge of the bath which is near full to overflowing with ice cold water. I can feel its glacial chill from here. He discards his suit jacket with the same cool precision and rolls up the sleeves of the shirt underneath. I can see the sharp ends of bones poking out from beneath the frayed and stained material. Remnants of skin, dried and stretched like old leather, still cling to his body in places where in others there are only the blue-black blemishes of rotten flesh.

  ‘Bring the first one to me please Nurse.’

  ‘No!’ The word is out of my mouth before I can stop it. The doctor ceases in his preparations and turns those dead eyes
to mine.

  ‘No?’ He takes a step towards me, dragging his cadaverous body across the tiled floor. ‘You say “No” to me, little girl? Don’t you know who I am?’ He roars. ‘I am Doctor Silas Baldwin! I am the most respected and revered authority in my field of medicine! I am lord and master here and you will not deny me!’ Even in his wasted state he towers over me, his ravaged face contorted with anger.

  ‘No.’ I say again, squaring up to this stinking pile of corrupted flesh. ‘No. I will not let you hurt the children anymore.’

  He lets out a bellow of rage so fierce it turns the world on its axis and sends my mind into a tailspin.

  ‘They are mine! I will do with them as I see fit!’ He crashes a fist against one of the enamelled sinks, splitting the skin and splintering bone but he does not stop his tirade of violent fury, not even when fragments of his broken fingers fall onto the cold ceramic floor. ‘I own them.’ He drags the words out with pleasure, gloating over me. ‘I own them – body AND soul. What you seem incapable of understanding, girl, is that I bought them. Their parents sold them to me, quite willingly I may add, indeed they were glad to be rid of such burdensome imbeciles! That makes them my property and what I do with my property is entirely up to me.’ He swings clumsily around to Nurse McKay, who is still standing next to me, unable to move for terror. ‘Nurse! Do what I say this instant. You have been insubordinate far too many times already and if you value your place here you will follow my orders! Is that clear, Nurse McKay?’

  I can barely believe my eyes when she bobs a curtsey and murmurs ‘Yes doctor.’ She turns silently on her heel and moves towards the first locked door, where the girls wail in anguish.

  ‘No! Nurse McKay. Faith. Don’t. Please!’ In frustration I grab at her arm but she is no longer the solid warm woman who crouched next to me on the hall floor. She’s a wraith, as insubstantial as a mist, and my hand passes through her meeting no resistance. I watch helplessly as, with each step she takes, she becomes less and less present before fading into nothing at all. I am on my own with the doctor. He grins manically at me, sweeping a mutilated hand through the bathwater, knowing I am powerless to stop him from drowning the children all over again, one by one.