Bedlam Stories

by Christine Converse

  Dorothy waggled her feet back and forth. “Pigs’ blood. That’s what I got on my shoes. Right before the barn when it caught fire. I don’t like blood,” she sighed. “Not many people —”

  The ferry horn blared so loudly that Nellie’s teeth clacked together, and the mustachioed officer shot up from the bench with a harrumphing noise. They all turned to the window.

  There it was. Bedlam Island.

  CHAPTER 4

  Everybody sit still. We’re almost there.” The head nurse folded her newspaper neatly and strode to the doorway of the ferry’s cabin. Nellie peered through the window into the distance. The tendrils of fog twisted and curled again, this time gradually dissolving to reveal a small dock at the base of a rocky inlet with a black, pebbled shore. Dorothy did not move from her place on Nellie’s shoulder, presumably still too sick to do anything but hope the journey to solid ground would end shortly. Two figures in dark-blue uniforms strode to the end of the dock to stand guard as the ferry made its slow approach. The officer who had offered up the tin of cold water rose from his seat on the bench and leisurely stretched, then slapped his mustachioed compatriot on the shoulder.

  The nurse’s voice floated in from the doorway to Nellie’s attuned ears. “There are a couple of new patients onboard that should interest Dr. Braun.”

  “Up you go, girls,” the officer next to Dorothy motioned toward the open door, watching Nellie. She noted that his hand rested on top of his billy club. Nellie waited with the others as, one by one, they shuffled out to the misty dock. Once again, the damp, bitingly-cold air seeped right through Nellie’s threadbare dress and into her bones.

  A white vehicle with four small windows appeared at the top of the hill. The words “Bedlam Asylum” arched over a circular logo, and, underneath, it read “AMBULANCE.” One orderly in dark blue slammed a boarding ramp in place and the other ushered each new patient, by the elbow, into the box-shaped bus. The towering nurse was the last to be seated before the ramp was loaded back in and the solid back doors of the ambulance were shut with a sound slam. The officers retreated back into the ferry cabin. With a violent lurch and noxious belch of smoke, the ambulance began the journey to Bedlam Asylum.

  The bonneted woman muttered to no one and stared at her feet as the ambulance swayed over steep slopes of tangled scrub grass that threatened to reintegrate the narrow tire grooves that wound their way between dense, leafless trees.

  Dorothy, finally getting color back in her cheeks, craned her neck alongside Nellie to be able to peek out the windows. It wasn’t long before the trees gave way to a clearing and they could see that the ambulance drove parallel to a broken-down iron and stone fence.

  “That looks like a …” Dorothy paused.

  “Graveyard,” Nellie whispered. It was not what either had expected to see on their way to a hospital meant to heal the insane. But, there it was, a number of broken and leaning headstones in a clearing overgrown with weeds, dead grass and leaves. Further on, the ambulance swung over a rocky knoll and began its descent past a towering, iron fence topped with jagged razor wire. The fence stretched out, curling and twisting in both directions as far as the eye could see.

  “Oh my,” Dorothy said, the color draining from her face once again.

  “In case any of you are thinking of escaping, the fence is electrified,” the nurse said with unnerving factuality. Nellie shot her an angry glance.

  “If the shock doesn’t stop you, the razor wire most certainly will,” the nurse added and looked directly into Nellie’s angry stare.

  Dorothy’s eyes filled with tears. “Is this real? I don’t want this to be real!”

  Nellie wanted to place an arm of solace over the weeping girl’s shoulders, but instead she stared toward the window. She could feel the oppressive gaze of the nurse watching her every movement.

  The ambulance ground to a halt in front of an enormous iron gate. Almost instantly, another uniformed orderly appeared from inside the grounds and with the distinct clang of metal on metal, he disengaged the lock. The heavy gate swung open with a groaning protest and ground to a halt in the crunching gravel.

  The ambulance sputtered, and, with a loud backfire, pulled slowly forward. As the gate shut somewhere behind them, Nellie observed her new surroundings through the small windows of the ambulance. Rich, green, manicured lawns grew beneath great, sprawling trees punctuated by square hedges and bright, colorful flowers.

  But the inmates living on the grounds stood in stark contrast to the grounds themselves; female inmates ranged in age from those in the prime of their youth to hunched and gnarled figures knocking at death’s door. Each wore the same, shapeless gray dress. Most unsettling were their vacant stares as each, in turn, stopped in their tracks to watch the ambulance approach. Their eyes looked toward the ambulance’s occupants but did not acknowledge them. Their eyes were empty; their faces, empty. Some of the women talked to no one at all. Others struggled futilely in their strait jackets as they were dragged along by impatient nurses.

  The ambulance pulled up to the front of the enormous, granite building. It stood six stories tall with smooth stones and dormer windows streaked with sea salt and years of neglect. The sound of the ambulance doors opening and the boarding ramp being put into place must have been a familiar one. The asylum’s windows filled with even more faces, some grotesquely distorted, pressing against the glass, all staring down at the new arrivals. The head nurse disembarked down the ramp, turned and waved for the new patients to follow. Nellie started down the ramp next, holding her handcuffed wrists out before her. Then she paused, took a deep breath, and glanced back up to the windows. They were all empty.

  “Out! Out! Come on. We don’t have all day.” The head nurse waved Nellie toward her and tapped her foot. As Nellie took her place beside the nurse and Dorothy stooped to exit the ambulance, a line of patients shuffled past, each attached to the next by one long, thick strand of rope.

  Nellie quickly sucked in her breath and held it; the gasp that had begun to escape her lips would surely have alerted the nurse, whose observation of Nellie’s every movement was becoming oppressive.

  “Inhumane,” Nellie thought. She looked up again to the windows, troubled, but her thoughts were interrupted by an eerie wailing sound coming from somewhere above. A nurse cried out and pointed to the roof.

  Perched impossibly high on a ledge on the asylum rooftop they saw a young woman. Her long, wavy, red hair whipped violently around her in the stiff ocean winds that buffeted the sixth floor. The girl’s arms stretched outward as if to welcome the sky to her bosom.

  “Alice will rise again!” she screamed into the harsh wind. “Alice! You promised ME eternal life in exchange for my soul!” She leaned toward the open air, stretching even farther toward her inevitable demise.

  Dorothy put her shaking hands to her mouth, the chain of her handcuffs clinking with the trembling of her arms.

  “I’m here to do your bidding!” the girl cried. She began to fall slowly forward. “I will —” The red head quite suddenly disappeared in a flurry of movement as several orderlies and nurses yanked her back from the ledge.

  “No!!! You cannot make me!” the blood-curdling screech carried on the ocean wind down to the courtyard below.

  “Yes, yes they can,” whispered someone near Nellie.

  Nellie turned quickly to find the whisperer. All around her, patients hunched over, moaning and trying to hide in their hands. “She’s not real … Alice is not real ….” Moans echoed from the grounds around her. Others fell to the ground to curl up into protective balls and weep. “She’s coming back … she’s coming back … Alice is coming back ….” The whispers and wails surrounded Nellie.

  An inmate with snow-white hair and gnarled hands dropped to her knees. “I didn’t do it, Alice. I was a good girl!” She clawed at her eyes, drawing blood and tearing flesh from her face. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “I promise I was good! Leave me alone!” A nurse appeared at her side and strug
gled to pin the patient’s arms and save what was left of her eyes.

  Nellie stood rooted to the spot, not daring to move, as the pandemonium around her worsened. “Who … was that? The roof …Who is Alice?”

  “ALIIIIICCCEEEE!!!” howled the inmates, clawing at their ears and falling to the ground.

  “What in the name of —” Nellie breathed, spinning around.

  “Nellie?” Nellie turned back around just in time to see Dorothy’s eyes roll up into her head and her faint form crumple to the gravel walkway. The head nurse shoved her sleeves up her arms and pulled a whistle from her pocket.

  TWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETTTTTTTTT!

  The sharp penny-whistle sounded throughout the courtyard and carried across the lawn with immediate effect. Patients dropped their arms, returned to upright positions and began to shuffle and mill about as if nothing had happened at all.

  “Alright, the show is over!” The head nurse turned back toward Nellie and motioned for another caretaker to quit her current charge and instead assist the prostrate Dorothy back to consciousness. As the young nurse waved smelling salts under Dorothy’s nose and patted her tear-stained cheek, the head nurse motioned to Nellie.

  “Follow me. Dr. Braun would like to see you.”

  Dorothy blinked and took a shuddering breath. With a sigh of relief, Nellie turned her attention back to the windows to look for the crush of inmates that had been there just minutes before. All of the dark windows were empty. All except one.

  There, in a dormer window, a small figure looked back at her. Nellie’s breath caught. The girl was slight, her face covered by stringy, blond hair. Her gray dress covered in dark red spatters hung down shapeless from her shoulders. The hair on Nellie’s arms stood up, her blood turning to ice. The girl’s face … Nellie could not see her face. Where one would expect to see features or some form of familiar visage, there was no form, just pale, white nothingness, a masque of death. The small form vanished backward into the darkness. Nellie stumbled backward the strength drained from her legs.

  “Hurry up! What’s wrong with you?” the head nurse chided, impatiently.

  Her heart pounding, Nellie searched the window again. The little girl was gone without a trace. The head nurse wrapped her long, bony fingers around Nellie’s upper arm and simultaneously lifting and dragging her along, her iron grip pulling Nellie off her feet as the nurse strode toward the building entrance. The nurse behind them had brought the shaken Dorothy to her feet and they took small, fleeting steps to keep up with the head nurse’s great strides. The gate buzzed long and loud. Nellie and Dorothy were pulled roughly across the threshold and into Bedlam Asylum. The gate slammed shut behind them and the sound echoed eerily throughout the many halls of the vast madhouse.

  CHAPTER 5

  Welcome to Bedlam Asylum,” the head nurse’s crisp voice cut through the thick, musty air.

  At last, Nellie began her first reporter’s assessment of Bedlam. The last rays of afternoon sunlight broke through stained window panes and revealed the building’s age and neglect. Dirty, gray paint had chipped and peeled from the walls, leaving large cracks that exposed the brickwork beneath. The tiled floors, had, at one time, been checked with cheerful, bright white, and rich, black squares, but the white had become so dingy, and the black so worn away, that both colors of tile were now nearly the same gray that barely adorned the decaying walls.

  Patients moved through the dreary halls, dragging their feet, shuffling endlessly to and fro without purpose or destination. One such patient reached the far wall, and, without pause for problem solving, bumped repeatedly into the wall. Dorothy’s nurse left her side to offer the inmate assistance, gently turning the patient until she faced the opposite direction and began her shuffling journey, back the way she had come.

  And so I have reached the end of the world. Here it is. Where it all begins. And where it will all end.

  A flight of stairs rose up before them, separating the east and west wings. One piece of décor seemed completely out of place in this massive gray stone pit of despair. On the wall next to the stairs hung an ornate looking mirror, of such exquisite detail that Nellie found herself drawn toward it for a closer examination. It was of a make from a century before, its decaying, antique, gold frame intricately etched with petal patterns encircled by curling gold scrollwork. As Nellie examined the scrollwork more closely at the top of the frame, a hidden detail revealed itself: a golden skull had been cleverly worked into the elaborate frame design. Nellie’s gaze shifted from the curious frame to the looking glass itself. There, reflected back at her, were the peeling walls, the dingy floor, and Nellie standing before the glass, her hands still handcuffed together as she awaited admittance. Something was not right.

  Nellie whipped around, looking left and right. There was the head nurse, speaking with an orderly, and only a little further away was Dorothy. Against the wall, a woman stood, hunched over and muttering, while another moved slowly toward the east wing. Two orderlies passed behind her.

  Nellie turned sharply back to the mirror and her stomach lurched. Only she was reflected; no one else. She closed her eyes and counted to three, then opened them again. The reflection remained the same, even as another patient passed behind her and down the hall. Then, in the reflection, the main door to Bedlam began, gradually, to swing open.

  Nellie glanced over her shoulder to the actual door behind her and verified that it was indeed shut. Yet, back in mirror’s reflection, it was unmistakably opening. Nellie held her breath. From the darkness beyond the door, a face emerged — a small, pale face that could not be seen through the mass of stringy, dirty, blond hair.

  Nellie gasped and stumbled back from the mirror and its deceitful reflection. She, again, looked over her shoulder to the actual door. It was shut. The head nurse continued her conversation with the orderly. Dorothy leaned against the wall, wiping away the occasional tear.

  Nellie looked back into the mirror and cried out. There stood the little girl, in front of the backward reflection of the open door. Her arms hung limply at the sides of her tattered, gray dress, still spattered with dark-red matter. Her grimy hair hung thickly over her face and shoulders.

  The girl stood motionless.

  “What is the matter with you?” the head nurse exclaimed, pulling her up sharply as Nellie stumbled backward. “You are really starting to get on my nerves!”

  Nellie gasped and pointed to the mirror, unable to find words.

  “Are you afraid of your own reflection?” the head nurse asked.

  Nellie prepared to fire back a less than gracious reply before she realized that this was a perfectly reasonable question for someone of her supposed state of mind. She simply shook her head.

  “Well, what then?” the nurse gestured toward the mirror.

  Nellie followed her sweeping hand and looked into the mirror again to see only her own reflection and that of the head nurse, who was assessing her with a raised eyebrow. Nellie blinked and checked again. Nothing.

  “Enough nonsense. Time to go.” The head nurse nodded, and motioned to a waiting nurse and an orderly. They each took Nellie and Dorothy by an arm and led them out of the room, leaving the bonneted patient and the elderly woman in the bed-ticking dress in the care of another nurse.

  Nellie glanced once more over her shoulder to the mirror, but saw only her own confused reflection staring back. Another buzzer sounded and the orderly unlocked a wooden door followed by a barred fence.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Tilley,” the head nurse nodded to a blond woman in the starched, white cap and uniform of Bedlam Asylum. The admittance nurse sat in a squeaky chair behind the counter of the room into which they had just been ushered.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Ball,” the light haired nurse nodded back. “Committal sheet?” She pulled out a long, white paper and accepted a few file folders from the head nurse.

  “Nurse Ball” — so this was the staunch head nurse’s name.

  “You
will leave all of your valuables here in this room,” Nurse Ball addressed both new inmates.

  Nellie reached into her pocket and placed its contents on the counter in front of Nurse Tilley.

  “Three pen nibs. One ten-penny piece. One bunch of keys on a single black, metal ring.” She wrote each item on a report as she listed them aloud, and then placed them in box labeled “BLY”.

  “Anything else?”

  Nellie shook her head, but the orderly gave her a gentle pat-down to assure that Nellie was being truthful.

  “Sign here, please.” Nurse Tilley slid the bottom of the form over to the edge of the counter and held out a fountain pen for Nellie. Nellie signed her name to the committal sheet.

  Dorothy placed her red-stained, silver slippers on the counter.

  Nurse Tilley frowned. “That’s it?”

  Dorothy nodded. “That’s all I have.” Her eyes brimmed with tears and she took the fountain pen from Nurse Tilley.

  I hereby commit myself voluntarily to the treatment which has been explained to me including the types of medication and examination procedures for psychiatric treatment. I understand that in order to leave before I am discharged I must have the consent of my psychiatric physician and at least 72 hours’ notice in writing to those in charge of my treatment. I confirm that my rights and responsibilities while a patient in this hospital have been explained to me.

  A tear escaped her brimming eyes to slide down her red cheek and spatter the long white form, where the young girl’s trembling hand penned her name.

  Dorothy Gale

  Nurse Tilley pulled the form away from Dorothy, nodded, and averted her eyes.

  The paperwork having been officially signed, stamped, and processed, it was time for the doctor’s official evaluation. Nellie was curious to see what sort of treatment the doctor would recommend for her “ailment”, and particularly that of the vulnerable young Dorothy. They sat on a stiff bench outside of the doctor’s office and awaited their appointments with the asylum physician, the cries of the insane interjecting occasionally into their quiet conversation. Dorothy used the edge of her newly-adorned, shapeless, gray dress to dab at her eyes and nose.