Rookwood Asylum Read online

  Rookwood Asylum

  Asylum Series Book 1

  Written by David Longhorn

  Copyright © 2019 by ScareStreet.com

  All rights reserved.

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  See you in the shadows,

  David Longhorn

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: 1955

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

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  Prologue: 1955

  Annie heard them coming and tried to make herself small. She was huddled up in the corner of the rubber room. The dark cube stank of disinfectant, sweat, and worse. It stank of fear, misery, hopelessness. Yet it was preferable to what waited for her outside, in the Treatment Room.

  “Don’t come for me, don’t come for me, don’t come for me...”

  She repeated the invocation, the way she had prayed to God for mercy so often when her ordeal began. She no longer bothered with God, convinced that he had abandoned her as a hopeless sinner, just as her mother said He would. But the habit of praying was hard to break. Although she was seventeen, she still felt like a child.

  “Please don’t let them take me, not this time…”

  Annie kept her voice low, knowing that simply being heard in the corridor by a nurse would be a demerit, mark her out for punishment. The footsteps stopped outside the door of her room. She froze, became utterly silent, too afraid even to breathe. Even now, she crossed her fingers, hoping they would not take her.

  Take Big Frank, not me.

  She felt ashamed, but Annie still prayed they would take the patient in the room opposite hers. Big Frank screamed and lashed out, kicked and bit. He kept the staff occupied for hours. But deep down she knew this was impossible. Big Frank was ‘of limited potential,’ according to Doctor Palmer. Whereas Annie, she had often heard him say, was ‘an extraordinary subject.’

  There was a sharp, metallic clang as the bolt was drawn back. Then the door opened, slowly swinging outward. Two white-clad male nurses strode in, and Annie screamed in terror. She knew it was against the rules but could not help it.

  “Don’t make a fuss, Annie,” said one nurse. “You know the drill by now.”

  She did. She wanted to kick and hit like Big Frank, but could not. She was in restraints, leather manacles fastening together her wrists and ankles. She writhed like a demented caterpillar, trying and failing to bite human flesh, as the nurses picked her up and carried her out of the room like a parcel. Annie continued to scream as she was dropped onto a gurney, strapped down, and wheeled along the corridor. The green-painted walls reminded her of vomit, the dim yellow glow from the light bulbs called to mind the sun she had not seen for months.

  Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it…

  This was the next stage of the ritual. Annie knew what was coming, but in her despair and confusion, she clung to the belief that one day, the inevitable would not happen. The gurney bumped sharply over the uneven floor tiles, banging her head against the metal frame. She felt a twinge of pain, a trickle of blood. She focused on the injury, the commonplace discomfort. Again, it failed to take her mind off what was to come.

  “Here we are,” said the lead nurse. “Now, you behave yourself, girl!”

  The gurney was pushed through swing doors into the place Annie knew so well. The ECT Room. As she was lifted from the gurney onto a low cot she again tried to fight, but this time a terrible fatalism undermined her. She knew Palmer would do what he liked to her. Annie was his ‘best subject.’ She had heard the phrase often.

  As she was strapped onto the metal cot, memories cascaded through her mind. The terrible pain of giving birth, the brief glimpse of the glistening, bloodied shape of her baby, taken away forever. The man in a suit explaining, in a kindly voice, that she was ‘morally depraved,’ because she was not a married woman. Her first glimpse of Rookwood, the smoke-blackened stone walls, the dull windows. Doctor Palmer was standing in the entrance hall, white-coated, neat, surrounded by his team of subordinate physicians, nurses, orderlies.

  No, I won’t think about him!

  Annie tried to cling to what few moments of happiness she could remember, but it was not easy. Childhood seemed, in her memory, to consist largely of endless hours in a bleak chapel, the minister talking long and loud about sin. The frugal meals, eaten in silence, while her mother berated Annie for her latest sin, real or imaginary. School, where her poverty and shyness left her isolated, had been a lesser ordeal, not a place of joy.

  Something happy, I must have been happy once.

  But the one moment of kindness she had been shown had been founded on deceit. She saw again the uncle who had given her something called wine at Christmas, the unaccustomed warmth. Then came the fuzziness in her head, the fumbling under the sheets. She felt big, rough hands on her body. And months later had come the thing she had not understood at first, the changes to her body. Adult faces shouting, red with rage, or pale and purse-lipped with a kind of gloating disapproval.

  Annie’s reverie ended as the doors swung open again. A figure in green medical overalls and a surgical mask stood there, gazing down at her. Doctor Palmer was short, plump, and wore round, wire-rimmed glasses. His expression reminded her of the only teacher she had liked. It was an expression that said, ‘I find you interesting, I want to know more about you.’ At first, she had dared to hope that Doctor Palmer was on her side, that he would be kind, understanding.

  She soon learned the truth.

  “Well, well, Annie,” said the doctor. “Here we are again.”

  Palmer nodded to someone out of Annie’s field of vision. She was unable to move at all now, her head held rigidly in place, like her body and limbs. But she knew the routine, and tried to brace herself for what came next. She still flinched from shock as someone dabbed surgical alcohol onto her arm. Then came the sting of the needle, followed almost at once by the weird, floating sensation. Annie’s fears receded, the entire room seemed to fade. Palmer, talking to his assistants about ‘scopolamine,’ was a distant echo.

  “There, there, Annie, soon be over.”

  The round face looked down at her, the mouth under its sparse little mustache turned upward in a smile. Annie knew what came next. Tried to twist her head, escape from the leather, brass-buckled straps across her neck and forehead. It was useless. More alcohol was dabbed onto her, this time onto freshly shaved skin around her temples. A mouth guard was inserted to stop her biting her tongue.

  Then she felt the gentle pressure as the electrodes were fixed in place, the instructions given by the harmless-looking doctor. Annie lost all sense of self, all awareness of who or when or where she was.

  And then came something totally unexpected. For the first time in months, perhaps for the first time in her life, little Annie Semple was not scared of anything.

  ***

  “Splendid, splendid!”

  Doctor Miles Rugeley Palmer felt a familiar exultation, a sense of power and triumph that only came when in total control of a subject. And in this case, the pleasure was all the greater because Annie Semple was his prize guinea pi
g.

  I’ll show them all, he thought, as he watched the scopolamine take effect. All the scoffers, the snobs, the closed minds of the British Psychiatric Association. Crank, am I? We shall see who has the last laugh.

  Annie stopped thrashing and whimpering. For a moment Palmer feared the increased dosage of the drug had knocked the girl out. She was small, underweight, and had been through a lot. Palmer had seen the look in some of his colleagues’ eyes; the concern that the girl might actually expire if the experiment continued.

  But I’m too close to stop now.

  He nodded to his chief assistant and the man placed the electrodes carefully on the sides of the girl’s head. Palmer’s resentment at those who had mocked or belittled him gave way to pride, an all-embracing pride in his own genius. He imagined himself accepting the Nobel Prize from the King of Sweden, his modest acceptance speech, the chagrin on the faces of his enemies.

  And all that stands in my way is the so-called suffering of a worthless girl, some little slut who couldn’t keep her knickers on when a man gave her a sip of sherry.

  Any doubt about Annie’s fitness evaporated. He snapped out a command.

  “Twenty-five milliamps, for three seconds.”

  The operator of the ECT machine looked up, eyes wide. The man’s hand hovered over the black dial that regulated amperage. Palmer glared at his subordinate.

  “If you want to continue working in the field of medicine,” he said slowly, “give her the required amount.”

  The operator lowered his eyes to the controls, unable to face down Palmer. The man twisted the dial, held it for a count of three. Annie Semple arched her back, insofar as she could within the heavy restraint. Her eyes rolled up into her skull, and a trickle of drool appeared at the corner of her mouth. Then the count of three was up, and the slender body slumped, inert under her stained cotton gown.

  “Bring her round!” Palmer barked.

  A nurse sprang forward, began slapping the girl’s pale cheeks. Annie recovered consciousness, looked around her in puzzlement. Then Palmer saw recognition dawn on the delicate features.

  “Don’t worry, my dear,” he said. “We will soon be making history, the two of us.”

  Palmer was already contemplating the next session in the Experiment Room. He confidently expected Annie would provide the best evidence of her powers yet. He had been documenting her extraordinary abilities for nearly three months now and had hours of film footage. That, added to sworn statements from his compliant staff, should be enough.

  But it might not be, he thought, as the girl was unstrapped and lifted onto the gurney again. I might need to go further, stimulate her strange talents even more.

  As the nurses were about to secure Annie to the gurney the girl began to jerk and flail her limbs. Impatient, Palmer stepped forward and grabbed one thin arm, held her down until she was secured. When he let go he noticed the red bruises left by his fingers and thumb.

  Just the sort of thing do-gooders would condemn as ‘inhumane.’ Such people never grasp the big picture.

  He made a mental note to make sure the film camera was aimed at Annie from the other side so the marks would not show.

  “Come on!” he snapped. “We need to get the tests underway before the drug leaves her system.”

  The nurses began to wheel the gurney towards the swing doors of the ECT room. But suddenly the gurney swerved, struck Palmer a painful blow on the thigh. Cursing, the doctor reeled back, colliding with a tray of instruments, knocking several onto the floor.

  “Sorry, chief,” said one nurse. “This bloody thing has a mind of its own.”

  Palmer was about to lambast the man for his idiocy when he felt the words dry on his lips. His collision with the wheeled instrument tray had spilled, among other things, a pair of surgical scissors onto the floor. The scissors were not lying where they had fallen, though. Instead, they were standing up on their points, the finger-loops slowly turning like absurd owl eyes.

  “What the hell?”

  The ECT operator was looking around him, eyes rolling with alarm. Now Palmer could feel it, too, the vibration that seemed to be passing through the floor, the walls, rattling fixtures, causing a loose tile to fall off a wall with an alarming crash.

  “It’s an earthquake!” exclaimed the operator.

  “We don’t get earthquakes in England, you moron!” Palmer retorted. “It’s probably subsidence – this whole area is riddled with old coal workings.”

  But even as he said the words Palmer doubted his rationalization. And then he saw something that proved him wrong. The buckles that held Annie Semple down on her gurney were slowly being unfastened. As soon as the nurses saw it they backed off, one tripping over the cot, falling onto his backside.

  “Don’t panic, you fools!” Palmer shouted. “Don’t let her get up!”

  But the girl was already free, the thick leather straps flung back, the thin form sitting up. The nurse who was still standing lurched forward, meaty arms outstretched. A hefty brown bottle flew off a shelf and struck the man on the side of the head. Glass shattered, iodine splashed wildly across the room, and the nurse went down heavily. Palmer gawped, struggling to grasp what had just happened. The brown puddle of iodine was turning red.

  “Sorry, Doctor Palmer,” said Annie. “I don’t think you’ll be getting your Nobel Prize.”

  “Annie?” he replied, backing towards the doorway. “Annie, behave yourself.”

  This can’t be happening, he thought. She does not have this kind of power. She struggles to move a matchstick sometimes!

  The bonds that restrained Annie’s legs flew open. She swung them over the side of the gurney and stood up. Then she staggered, fell against the ECT machine, held herself up by one emaciated arm.

  “You need to lie down,” Palmer began, struggling to preserve his authoritative tone. “You must not over-exert –”

  A second bottle flew from the shelf, then a third. The nurse who had retreated to the doorway ducked, and the missiles shattered against the swing doors. Then the nurse was gone, leaving his colleague lying unconscious. Annie looked at the man who had put the voltage through her head and gave a little smile.

  “You hurt me so much,” she said quietly, almost inaudible over the continuing vibration. “But you finally burned out something useful. Quite by chance, you took away my fear.”

  A metal tray flew up into the air, rotated swiftly, then scythed across the room at phenomenal speed. It knocked the ECT operator off his feet. Stunned, he sprawled in a corner, vainly trying to ward off the attack. The metal tray descended, striking vicious blows that audibly cracked the man’s fingers. Then it struck him in the face repeatedly, pummeling his nose to a bloody mess.

  While the onslaught was maiming his subordinate, Palmer had been edging towards the doors. But just as he was about to make a dash for it, Annie’s bloodshot eyes turned to him again.

  “No, Doctor Palmer,” she said. “You told him to do it. You told them all how to hurt me. Now, I’m free from fear. I can finally give you all the results you wanted. And more.”

  “Annie!” Palmer pleaded, his self-control all but gone. “Don’t do something you’ll regret!”

  Annie grinned at that.

  “Oh, I won’t regret it at all.”

  Palmer lunged for the doorway, but invisible hands grabbed him, held him in place, one foot off the ground. Then he was turned in the air, half-dragged, half-carried over to the metal cot. He knew what was coming. He would be strapped down, subject to who-knew-what deranged form of torture. But then he felt the grip on his body slacken, and he fell to his knees.

  Palmer looked up at his tormentor. A trickle of blood was running from Annie’s left nostril.

  Brain aneurism, Palmer guessed, still a clinician despite his terror. She’s massively overstraining her mind. If I can just hold out –

  “Annie!” he pleaded, trying to sound compassionate, friendly. “Annie, you’re not well.”

  The girl la
ughed at that, throwing her head back, then coughed as blood ran into her mouth.

  “Oh, I know that, Doctor,” she managed to say, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “But you made me this way. You made all of us the way we are, all your guinea pigs. Like animals in a zoo, all in cages.”

  Her expression changed, and again blood oozed from her nose. Palmer braced himself for an attack, lifting his arms to cover his head. But nothing flew across the room. Instead, Palmer heard shouts, clanging noises, running footsteps. Annie’s eyes seemed unfocused. He took his chance and ran out into the corridor.

  At first, Palmer thought the general air of confusion was because staff were rushing to help him control Annie. But then he saw that they were running in all directions, their shouts of panic echoing in the corridors. A young doctor almost ran into him, trying to dodge around the senior clinician. Palmer grabbed the man by his shoulders, shouted into his face.

  “What’s happening, man?” he demanded. “Get a grip – I need help with the Semple girl!”

  “They’re all free!” the young doctor shouted and wriggled free of Palmer’s grip, fleeing.

  It took a moment for the meaning to sink in. Then Palmer saw two male nurses grappling with the patient they called Big Frank. As the doctor watched, Big Frank casually hurled one of his antagonists against a wall. The nurse slid down to the floor, leaving a dark smear on the paintwork. The other nurse tried to disengage from the struggle, but Big Frank snapped the man’s neck, all the while smiling beatifically. Then the maniac looked up and saw Palmer.

  “Looks like you can’t go that way,” said Annie.

  Palmer spun round to see the girl moving towards him. Two trickles of blood were now flowing down from her nose. Her eyes had no whites, thanks to burst capillaries. Yet her power was still so potent that her bare feet were hanging a few inches above the floor. She was floating toward him.

  So much power, Palmer thought, his scientific curiosity still able to function. It must be burning her out. She can’t have much longer.