Part V

 

Amy marched back into the room. Will was still reading through the files, scanning them all mercilessly; the blur of information being absorbed by cold wide-open eyes of fascination.

“Will. We need to go. I heard something,” she announced.

“Jesus Christ…” Will muttered, wholly unnerved by what he was looking at. He barely heard her. He flicked through black and white photographs of extreme electro-convulsive therapy, forced hydrotherapy, inhumane stress positions, and gory operations; all the graphic images of the patients’ ordeals streaming over each other in a smear and merging into one terrifying realization. Will suddenly felt sick too. He looked away from the photographs in his hand and groaned heavily.

“Will, I heard something.”

“Hang on,” he said, holding his finger up to her.

Amy began pacing up and down the length of the desk in front of him, desperate to leave and forget about the voice in the atrium and the odd footsteps she’d definitely heard upstairs. Her patience lasted for five seconds.

“Will, listen to me,” she said.

“What?” He replied with a distinct tone of annoyance in his voice.

“I heard something. Footsteps. Above us. I think someone else is in here.”

Will took a moment to consider, then spoke again. “They’ve done this for a long time, you know?” he said as he stared at the photograph in his hand. “Since 1860. There are hundreds of files in here, all with the same shit…”

He reached for yet another file and began reading it thoroughly.

“Look, I don’t know what to say… but we should go now,” Amy mewed.

“Bloody hell, this one was lobotomised in 1981,” Will said, not hearing her again. “That practice was banned in ’67,” he said and slammed the folder shut before discarding it onto the pile of others he’d already read. “What the fuck were they doing here?”

“Did you know about this place?” She asked after a pause.

“No! I mean, I just Googled abandoned places in the UK… What the hell were they doing here? Maybe this is why the locals stay away from here?”

“Maybe. Look, Will, can we…” she began but was cut off by Will’s feverish scavenging.

He’d started rummaging through the rest of the filing cabinets and cupboards, rifling through and scanning each new file as he did like an addict in search of their next hit. He’d pulled out all of the drawers from the desk and emptied their contents onto the floor. In the last drawer, Will found a VHS tape. It dropped onto the tiled floor with a distinct hollow crack that only plastic can make.

“Here we go…” he said, leaning over it. “Jackpot.”

“What?” She asked.

Will leaned down and picked it up.

“There’s a VHS tape here. I haven’t seen one of them since I was a kid,” Will said, standing up with the tape in his hand.

“So?” Amy challenged and was about to prod Will to leave again when he interrupted her.

“—So, it has ‘Patient 475’ on the label. This is a recording of one of their trials. This is a recording of that file there.”

Will then gestured to one of the documents still on the desk, but Amy didn’t follow the direction. Instead, Amy stared at the old plastic tape in his hands then and looked up and finally met his gaze, knowing only bad things would be on the video.

“We don’t know what’s on that,” she said earnestly.

“We should find out,” he replied.

“There’s no power, Will,” Amy pleaded, just trying to get him to forget about it more than anything. “Come on.”

Will was not satisfied though. He thought about taking the tape with him and playing it back at the hostel. But, instead, as he turned to face her and argue, he saw it. He’d looked over Amy’s shoulder, across the room and at the retro TV in the corner, and saw a small steady red light glowing in the dimness.

“Yes there is,” he said as he pointed to that circular glow at the base of the television. He brushed past Amy and switched the television on.

“There’s power. This whole building must be connected to the grid still. Try the light switch too.”

“Will, come on…” Amy pleaded apathetically. “This is not a game.”

“Just, let me see what’s on it? We can’t play it back at the hostel. We don’t know what’s on it. Turn that light on, would ya?”

Amy sighed and reluctantly headed over and tried the light switch and, to her dismay, it worked. A bright amber halogen light twinkled on and bathed the cramped room in an unnatural colour of warmth, a stark contrast to the gloom and decay of everything outside the doorway.

“How is that possible?” She asked.

“I don’t know.”

Amy huffed and Will glanced across at her.

“We’ll be quick. I just want to see what they were doing here,” Will said as he lifted the VHS tape to the player.

“You know what they were doing here already. It’s in the files.”

Will dismissed the comment. The cassette tape slid into the television and the ancient thing whirred into motion for the first time in over 20 years. The pair then watched on as the grainy black and white film snapped on and flashed across the small screen.

Will sat on the desk with folded arms and watched intently.

On the television was a close-up night-vision recording of a young man sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back against the brick wall. The video was time-stamped in the bottom right of the frame with: 02/07/1987. The young man was staring wild-eyed into the camera, the lights of his irises were glowing, like a hyena caught on night-vision. He never blinked. Only a vague hint of a grin gave his face any semblance of emotion. The shine of his shaven head caught the waning of the swaying halogen light above him. He never blinked. He just stared at the camera with haunting intumescent eyes, like two glowing white fish eyes that now proclaimed him to be absent of all human thought. It was as if he was staring through the lens, through time itself, back at Will and Amy. Amy gasped and watched on utterly horrified.

The patient was frenzied. Sweat rolled down his steaming face and his rapid breaths made his head bob back and forth, yet he never opened his mouth. He never blinked. He just stared into the camera, sucking in through his nose like some rabid dog with a broken jaw. His heart rate must have been at least 180. The camera zoomed out slowly and the young man’s whole body came into frame.

The pair saw why he was panting. He was holding a small mass of red gore in his hands, a collection of slippery tendrils and slick blood. His hands were resting on his crossed legs and he sat there with an eerie calmness, breathing through his nose, unblinking, unmoving; Patient 457. Above the pile of slick organs in his palms was a small laceration across his abdomen, as if done surgically. A small river of blood seeped out from it and into his hands. Amy wheezed as she realised that the young man had been disembowelled, yet was still alive somehow.

“I can’t watch this,” she said. She clamped her hand over her mouth like a vice to stop herself from vomiting and quickly turned away from the video.

Will, on the other hand, could not look away. He stared back at the young man, completely enamoured by patient 457’s presence and penetrating glowing eyes staring right back at him.

“My God… How is he still alive?” He whispered with a hint of intrigue in his voice as Amy shuddered in the corner. “He looks bloody possessed!”

Will watched, completely aghast, as patient 457 then began painting with the blood from his wound the visage of a four-armed deity of sorts, sitting cross-legged on the bare white wall next to him. Surrounding it, like a bird murmuration were hundreds of tiny symbols and glyphs, all rendered in the same crude blood strokes as the entity itself. When the mural was complete, patient 457 sat in front of it, mimicking its pose; all the while panting, stoic. The camera zoomed back slightly then the tape ended and hissing static took over the screen.

The room fell silent once more and Will stood up from the edge of the desk, too disturbed to even blink himself now. He ejected the VHS tape and placed it on the desk absently.

Then, he’d turned to the files once more. He read through each one obsessively like a mad scholar absorbing a forbidden thesis. Amy sat nearby, desperate to leave.

“Let’s go,” Amy whispered.

Will did not reply. He picked up Patient 316’s file and read all the notes with it. It was another few minutes before he spoke again.

“Amy, listen to this…” he muttered gravely.

Amy stood up and faced him. Will slowly read the doctor’s notes from the file out to her. “‘After the conclusion of the trial experiment, patient 316—who was previously catatonic—suddenly became lucid and rational. She expressed complete awareness of where she was and even described how it felt to be comatose. Note: the patient was admitted with severe brain damage and had not been responsive for over two years prior to this trial’. They had done something to her brain that made her wake up,” Will said. He continued reading cautiously. “‘Patient's first statement: “It’s him. It’s always been him. He has always lived here. He’s the first one. The conduit between this universe… and theirs. He is the Pale Man. The eater of time and souls. He is the architect of this construct. I’ve seen him. The four-armed demon of scars. Alpha and Omega. He is Death… and we shall remain here forever with him…”

Will put the folder onto the desk and just looked at Amy with hollow dark eyes.

“That’s what patient 457 was painting on the wall with his blood… All of these files, every patient, mentions in one way or another this ‘pale man’.”

“What the hell does that mean? What were they doing to her?” Amy asked.

“Experimenting,” Will replied. “They’d induced a wake-up from a coma.”

“But, why?”

“Just give me a minute. I’ve got a really bad headache coming on,” Will said as he massaged his temples.

“Why would they do that to patients they’ve supposed to be treating?” Amy asked timidly.

“I really don’t know, but it just sounds like experimenting to me. Their patients clearly weren’t able to tell anyone, and…” Will said but trailed off. He then solemnly picked up the VHS tape and put it in his backpack. Amy watched.

“What are you doing?” She asked.

“I’m taking it.”

“No! You can’t.”

“I have to. Every patient’s file has mentioned this entity in one way or another. These doctors were doing something to them all.”

“Can we please leave now? This place is not right. I’m hearing things all around.”

“Amy, we can’t just leave…”

Amy reeled back with astonishment. “What? I don’t understand…”

“This is wrong,” Will said. “They were doing this to their patients and no one knew about this. Do you realise how important this kind of information could be? There could be families out there who never knew what happened to their relatives. We can’t just turn-tail and leave this! The media, the news, everyone needs to know what was going on here.”

“I’m sorry, but, there are bad things in this place. And, I just want to leave right now!”

“We will! But not before I get some more evidence,” he said, stuffing more of the patient’s records into his rucksack. “I’m not turning my back on this. What they were doing is barbaric! And I will not let it stand. We need to get everything we can.”

“This is insane.”

“Bad joke, Amy,” he grunted.

“You know what I mean!” Amy barked back.

“They were torturing people here, Amy… Experimenting,” Will retorted. “What if it was one of your relatives they did it to? What if it was your mother? Your father?”

The thought of that made Amy sick. It harpooned her right in the heart and all she could do was stand there and focus on not crying in front of him. Maybe this is where he ended up? She looked up to Will, teary-eyed, and was about to retort when a great crack of thunder shook the building and the dull halogen light above them snapped off. The television went off too. Suddenly the room was cast in pitch black. Amy yelped and grabbed hold of Will in the plunging twilight.

“What done that?” Amy cried out.

“The power’s gone off.”

“… Why would the power suddenly go off?” She asked. She’d practically wrapped her arms around him and shivered nervously like a lost dog.

Will looked down at her, barely able to make out her form in the tenebrous gloom. “… I don’t know,” he was finally able to say.

Amy turned to face the doorway. “Maybe the storm knocked out the power lines?”

“We need to get out of here,” she whispered.

 

 

Part VI

 

After they had composed themselves, both Will and Amy left the dark room slowly. They took out their phones and used the torchlights on them to navigate the dim inky-blue hallways together. Everything was silent. They crept forward through the stillness and only their subdued breathing could be heard by each other. Two beams of white light probed into the blackness of the hallways and the rooms like headlights on the same car. Night had fallen with practised bravado. There was no light coming through the holes in the ceiling now other than the various flashes of lightning that vaguely illuminated the rooms for a spilt second each. Everything apart from their torches was drenched in a haze of dusty black and moulted grey, like staring down a well.

“What’s the time?” Will whispered.

“5:32 pm,” Amy replied quietly.

“Shit. I didn’t keep track of the time. I forgot the sun sets at 4 around here.”

“I told you we should have left sooner.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I got caught up in… what I was looking at.”

“You seemed very interested in it.”

“I was. It was a lot to take in.”

“You looked like you were enjoying it,” Amy accused.

“I wasn’t…”

They took a few more steps forward and Amy wanted to reach out to him once more. She wanted to hold his hand. For the next five minutes, she tried to dismiss the thought of asking him. But the question inside relented.

“Did you… really mean it what you said back there?” She asked sheepishly.

“About what?”

“… About you… liking me.”

He looked across at her. “Yeah. I really do,” he nodded. “I mean, as bad as this is, there’s no one else I’d rather have by my side right now than you.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I don’t know. Shy, I guess,” he said.

“Me too…” Amy blushed and looked away. “What way do we go now?” She asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s try to retrace our steps and find the way we came in again.”

The pair shuffled down the same hallway together like two nervous little voles manoeuvring through the corn fields at night. Both felt exposed, both felt like something was watching them, yet neither spoke of it. There was something else there with them. The power had gone off for a reason. Will could buy the notion that the television could’ve blown a fuse, but the fact that every single power source in the building tripped off at the same time meant that someone must've flipped the switches. But who? And why was the power on in the first place? Amy had mentioned that she’d heard footsteps. She said someone else was in the building with them. Was she right?

They talked quietly about escape plans and maybe getting up to the roof, or trying to kick out a window, but all the windows were boarded shut with thick plywood and all the stairs to the roof had collapsed through neglect. There was no way out but the way they’d come in.

They crept forward in silence for the better part of half an hour, sometimes stumbling over a broken chair or piece of debris as they did. Amy looked across at Will and saw that he was wincing. Every few steps he’d take his fingers and rub his eyes lightly.

“Head still hurting?” She asked.

“Yep. It’s getting worse, I think…”

Amy reached out and was about to comfort him when suddenly, she heard something; amorphous and indistinguishable at first, but it soon grew louder, clearer. Amy stopped walking. Her hand fell to her side and she waited.

Will, agitated then stopped too. “What is it, Amy?”

Amy didn’t reply. She stared ahead into the thick cavernous air and her eyes went rigged with fear. It was that same voice again. Rising out through the ruddy ether of blackness ahead, or maybe even above them, she heard it. A thick anguished wailing echoed somewhere. ‘Oh, god… What have I done? What have I done?’ It whimpered. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. What have I done?’

Then the cries dwindled into the emptiness once more, just like the first time. Amy stood there immobile, too frozen by the possibilities of who was making the sounds to think of anything else. The voice was so familiar yet Amy could not place it.

“Did you hear that?” Amy eventually asked Will shakily.

“I can’t concentrate on anything but the pounding in my head, Amy.”

“I heard that voice again… It was—”

“I didn’t,” Will replied, too overcome with the burning pain just behind his eyes to say anything else.

The first time Amy heard the voice, it could well have been the storm, but this time she’d heard words, sentences, confessions. Thunder can’t make those sounds. Something else was making it and Amy trembled at the thought. What was that?

“I heard a woman’s voice. It sounded like she was confessing something.”

“Please. Let’s just get out of here,” Will answered and walked ahead.

Amy looked over her shoulder, then followed him.

They then moved down lengthy narrow corridors and through small damp rooms, trying to retrace the route they’d taken earlier, but in the dark, it was proving difficult. They eventually found their way into the main bathrooms which were accessed only through the locker rooms.

“I don’t remember going through here,” Amy said apprehensively at the sight.

“We didn’t. We must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. Let’s keep moving.”

It was a long porcelain-tiled wet room with rows of industrial bathtubs running along one wall. The aggressive stench of bleach and something else hung in the air and itched the back of their throats as they moved through. Above each of the tubs were a series of pipes and valves that fed down the walls and into them. Hanging over each tub, like flaps of dead skin, were large waxed tarps that could be zipped up through the middle to create a cover over the baths. Will shuddered as his light cascaded over them all. He knew exactly what they were used for. He’d seen it in the files. If an inmate had been particularly hyperactive, the asylum staff would force them into one of those tubs and boil them until they were calm once more. The process could last hours, even days; sometimes causing death. When Will caught a glimpse of someone’s nail marks scrapped on the inside of one of the bathtubs he immediately averted his gaze and pretended he hadn’t seen it.

“What are all these for?” Amy asked.

“Hydrotherapy…” he replied through tight lips.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Let’s keep moving,” Will replied absently and refused to look back at the bathtubs now. Amy was correct. This place was not right. But, beyond that, there was more to the building than Will previously thought.

There was something incredibly wrong with Denbigh asylum, a heaviness in the air that felt like wet smoke when Will breathed it in. He’d broken into many abandoned buildings in his life, yet none of them harboured the same unmoving ominous presence that Denbigh asylum had. It felt like someone was constantly walking too close behind him. He couldn’t explain the feeling to himself, he could only acknowledge it as a coldness at his back. The place was evil and they needed to leave as soon as possible. As the nervousness matured in his stomach, and the burning throb in his head grew, Will’s mind started to play tricks on him. He started to think that every shadow seemed to move and the things that made those strange noises out of sight were alive. Every brick appeared to be conscious, silently waiting for the opportune moment to pounce on the naive pair who’d gotten lost. It was the building doing all of this to them, Will was sure of it.

Amy was not handling the situation much better. She skittishly darted her torch around in all directions, trying desperately not to betray her sheer terror to Will. At some point, she knew she’d catch the author of those footsteps square in her torchlight, or the howling woman huddled in a corner. And what she would do then was what she was afraid of.

Time dragged forward like a stone and neither one spoke for a while. Thunder rumbled in the far distance like a great battle was being waged with artillery and canons. The rain continued to fall. Now and then they would hear an odd noise inside the building: a clanging of metal, or the squirming of old water pipes, or gargling below their feet. They would freeze in their steps when they did and both would wait for some form of retort to the alien sounds, but it never came. All they could hope to imagine was that the building was somehow squirming in the storm. Everything in the place was morbidly old and must have been reacting to the unrelenting heavy winds and rain outside, much like an old sailing ship on heavy seas. That was what they told themselves anyway.

Will and Amy reluctantly moved deeper into the darkness.

Will’s headache had gotten so bad that he would tense up involuntarily with each jolt of pain. Every throb made him twitch in agony and he’d avoided talking wherever possible because that only made it worse. It was like something was trying to claw its way into his mind. It was as if someone had lit a fire in the middle of his head. He clenched his jaw and tried to focus on something, anything, other than the unbearable pain in the centre of his skull. He started to imagine voices spurring him on. At first, they were motivational. Then the voices soon turned against him. They cascaded over each other and mocked him. Will gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the intrusive thoughts.

 

Part VII

 

It was much later when the terror truly began to sink into the pair. They had been walking for an indeterminate amount of time when they found it. There were no more excuses for the strange happenings around them. Up until that point, all the bizarre events could have been explained away with logic and reason, but now they could not deny that something else was truly at work. It was as Will and Amy came back into the same large hallway together, back to where they’d had lunch and found the gory files in the filing room earlier that day, that they saw something else; something new. Hanging from the ceiling of the dilapidated rooms now, were hundreds of eerie wooden effigies swaying gently in the draught. Little figurines of glyphs and symbols made from twigs and adorned with feathers, all in rows like an upside-down forest.

“Holy fuck…” Will gasped and looked up to the roof. “What the hell are all these?”

Both shone their torchlights upward and saw the sea of crude wooden figures hanging above their heads like stalactites. The sprawl of them was endless. They hung in every room, in every corner, from every square foot of ceiling. Every now and then the exhibition was illuminated by the immense flashes of lightning beaming through the holes in the roof. Amy’s stomach churned at the sight of that lurid mass of archaic symbols before her.

“Oh my God, look… there are hundreds of them,” she whispered.

“These weren’t here before…” Will then said gravely.

Amy turned and faced Will. “Where did they come from?” Will didn’t reply. Instead, he could only stare up at them, vaguely horrified, as if looking upon a swarm of bats hanging there. He seemed to be quietly analysing them.

“Will?” She pressed.

“I don’t know. They look Pagan…” he said after some consideration. “Looks like some kind of ritual… or warning.”

“What do you mean?”

Will looked at his feet and wondered whether he should tell her. It would only scare her even more. But, after considering it, he decided it would be unfair to withhold the facts from her.

“… I saw those same symbols on patient 457’s video. He’d painted them on the wall with his…”

Amy’s face went flush with the statement. Her shoulders dropped and every ounce of her being had to fight the desire not to give up completely. “Will, I don’t like this place.”

“Let’s just get to the lobby and we can climb back out,” he squirmed as a reply.

And, right at that moment, a loud banged issued from behind the pair that sounded like a heavy metal door being slammed shut. Both gasped and turned to face it. But there was nothing there. Amy stood motionless apart from the torch trembling in her hands.

“What was that?” She whispered and her voice cracked. “Thunder?"

“No. That was inside… Maybe the draught slammed a door?” He said and didn’t believe the statement any more than Amy seemingly did. No way any amount of wind could force an iron door shut. Neither had an answer for what it might have been.

The pair had no choice but to continue creeping further down the halls in search of the atrium with the revolving door. As far as they knew, that was the only way in, so it still had to be the only way out. All they had to do was get out of the building and they would be fine.

“If we get out of this, I’m never doing anything ever again,” Will said.

“Huh?”

“Seriously, I’m going to become the most beige and boring person you’d ever meet. I just want to sit in a chair and do nothing for the rest of my life,” Will chuckled.

“Me too,” Amy smirked. “I’m going to get a cat and wear slippers for the rest of my life,” she said as her whole body quivered.

Will and Amy moved forward. It seemed to take all night and Will was sure they must be getting close to it. But the further down that hallway they moved, the more and more the numbing realisation sank in that the atrium was no longer there. Like a swimmer caught out at sea, Will lied to himself that the entrance to the atrium was just up ahead, just a few more steps. Yet it never appeared. Instead, they passed the same series of rooms over and over. The time drew out like a blade and left behind only the stinging cut of anxiety. The walk went on for at least another twenty minutes and only the quiet sounds of rainfall could be heard.

“Will, this is not right. I’ve seen that exact room at least seven times now,” Amy said after a long and laboured silence.

“I know. I saw it too. We’re going in circles,” he replied, pointing his torchlight aggressively into each corner as he searched for the exit. The fear had mutated into frustration and Will’s temples pulsed.

“How is that possible?” Amy wept. “There’s the main lobby and two wings. East and West. Everything else is outbuildings.”

“I know. But, maybe we’re getting confused and accidentally getting turned around.”

“This hallway is a straight line, Will. It’s only the padded cells down here. We saw that during the day. We can’t get turned around. Instead…”

Will stopped pacing down the hallway and put his hands on his hips. With one long sigh of exhaustion, he muttered through gritted teeth. “It just keeps coming… We keep on going around in circles through the east and west wing. Over and over. Something is playing with us.”

He shook his head and thought for a pause as to how that was even possible. Amy stood next to him and couldn’t think of anything to say.

“The junction box must be in the basement,” Will announced. “They usually are. We need to get down there—”

“What?” Amy exclaimed, completely taken aback by Will’s change of plan.

“We can flip the switches and get the power back on,” he continued coldly.

“Let’s just go!” Amy protested.

“Amy, I can’t see the way out in this darkness. There was only one entrance in here and we need to get back to that lobby. But all these rooms look the same. It’s a fucking maze down here. I don’t know which way it is…”

“… My phone’s only got 20% battery left too,” Amy sighed, looking at the hollow blue screen glowing in her palm.

“We need to hurry then. The basement must be back the way we came somewhere.”

“But, we don’t know what else is back there. I keep hearing voices of people. There’s someone else in here!”

“We don’t have a choice. I am not spending the night here with this fucking storm,” he said and turned around and walked back in the direction they had just come from. Amy closed her eyes in disbelief.

 

By midnight, they had found it. They had doubled back down that same awful hallway to find an opened black doorway near the end of it. And it led down into the basement, into the underbelly of Denbigh asylum, into icy doom. There was a corroded brass plaque on the wall next to the doorway that simply said ‘Basement’. When Amy saw the monolithic black rectangle of the empty entrance before her, she gulped and felt her legs tremble. The doorway was vacuous and draughty. She stared at it for what felt like minutes, haunted by its emptiness.

“This is it. You ready?” Will asked, shining the torchlight onto her. Amy’s face was pale and washed out in the harsh white glow. She almost looked like a ghost herself. She took a nervous step backwards, away from the doorway. Something was not right.

“Come on then,” Will pressed.

“I can’t.”

“What?” Will snapped.

“No, Will. I am not going down there,” Amy practically barked back. “We don’t know what’s down there.”

“This might be our only chance to find our way out.”

“Will, I am not going down there,” she repeated.

Will stiffened and looked at her, realising that she meant it. The pounding in his head grew, sending him half-mad with pain.

“Well, you can wait up here for me if you want. I’ll only be a minute. It’s just a trip switch down there isn’t it,” he said and didn’t stay for a reply.

“What? No, I mean…” she said and Will didn’t wait.

Amy watched him take the first step into the pit and felt a surge of sudden desperation overtake her. As much as she didn’t want to go down there, she did not want to leave his side.

Will stepped down the staircase and wandered off into the tenebrous dark of the basement, his form disappearing into the wall of shadows. His footsteps clunked off into silence and then there was nothing. Amy was alone again. She’d wanted to reach out for him to stay, but didn’t have the courage. Instead, the words of protest got lost in her whimpering throat and her hand clutched only the cold air where he once was standing. Amy briefly had this horrible notion that she’d never see him again, and everything she’d ever wanted to say to him would be lost; just like with her father. The thought made her shoulders sink.

After he was gone, she whelped, “Don’t leave… I love you,” so quietly that she was unsure whether she’d said it or thought it instead. She stood there in the stillness and took a deep breath and tried not to let the inexorable wave of panic take her.

The rain outside continued, providing a sort of ambience to her loneliness. Realising she was completely alone now, she turned and looked at her surroundings. In both directions, were rows and rows of those dreadful padded cells that would’ve held all those patients long ago. She looked down the length and thought of them all. The vacuous draught of the never-ending hallways seemed to call to her.

After a few minutes, in a loose attempt to distract herself from the situation, Amy began wandering past them all in an inquisitive daze. She reached out and ran her fingers across the icy steel doors and peered into all the white cubes within and wondered what kind of people lived and died in them. All those people. All those poor people…

She came to one of the cells and stood in the doorway and stared at the damp mouldy walls. The sight made her shiver and she imagined herself in that cell. Was this how they treated people in need back then? Was this patient 457’s cell?

Then the air changed curiously and Amy suddenly felt colder. She stood there for a pause, wondering what was happening. The shadows of the cell seemed to move around her, like smoke in the wind, and Amy began to feel life in the room once more. She glimpsed movement in the corner and turned and saw a quick flash of a figure standing there, looking back at her. Through the noise of the storm outside, a voice of an aggravated man rose up from the emptiness and travelled through her.

‘I said I wanted it CLEAN. Didn’t I? DIDN’T I? I want to be clean. Good morning. Sir, yes, sir! Rigged. Why do I have to stand here naked? Hello. Why are you filming me? I can still hear the bombs, you know? I saw my friends die. Ka-boom. Pink slime all over me. Give me a FUCKING shower!’

Then the voice was gone. Amy stood there, frozen in disbelief.

Oh my god. Was that a patient? Did I imagine that?

Amy then moved into another cell and again heard the tangible yet ethereal voice of someone else rising towards her. As clear as the rain outside, Amy soon heard the voice of a sobbing woman. Someone in her forties maybe. She was trembling as she muttered each word as if it was to herself.

‘I can’t get better here. I can’t get better. I never wanted to hurt him. Only for him to see things my way. I scrub and cook and I cook and scrub and I go to sleep. I go to sleep. I can’t feel the air anymore. I can’t feel anything. Lord Jesus, please help me. My hands are shaking.’

Amy went from room to room and felt them all there with her. There was a never-ending stream of different voices that came down to her as she navigated them all.

‘Do you know the components of a petrol engine? I do—The tremors are too much for my brain—Hey! Hey! Look at me!— My heart burns! STOP IT! STOP IT!—How can I survive when people are constantly giving SHIT! Stop spraying me with that fucking water!—Oh, god… What have I done? What have I done? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. What have I done…?’

Amy shuddered at the realisation. They had never left. It made her heart sag and a single tear ran down her blistered cheek. All the patients and those in need of help who never left the building. They all died in there and their souls had evaporated into the air like they were never anything to begin with. What did they think? How did they feel? Will was right. In the files was clear evidence the asylum had been mistreating and abusing all of those people throughout the years. The ill and the deranged were shackled and beaten and experimented on instead of being comforted and cared for, like guinea pigs in a lab. The confusion and fear that they must’ve felt while being prodded and dissected made Amy feel sick. If they were to escape Amy knew they had to tell everyone about this place.

Amy wandered back and sat down on the bench next to the doorway. She gripped her phone tightly as if it were her only lifeline to the outside world in the centre of that hideously malevolent building. And she waited quietly for Will.

 

Part VIII

 

Meanwhile, Will shuffled down a great dark corridor that was seemingly cut into solid black stone. The ceiling was low and wet to the touch and he breathed in air that tasted like soot and wet laundry. His footsteps rapped gently in the silence and only the specific sound of dripping water somewhere in the dark was audible to him as he made his way across the length of the basement. Okay, so the junction box wouldn’t be near any water, so I can forget about this section, Will thought as he crossed rows of washing machines and sinks, tracing across them with the torch. It must be further back. Maybe there’s more than one entrance down here? And he realised his breathing was much louder than he’d originally thought. He calmed himself and then proceeded further.

When he came to the storerooms down there, he thought he’d heard something. Through the heaving black air, he heard a curious sound, faint and far. He craned his ear to it and crept forward through the haze, and as he did, the voice grew more distinct, until, soon, he understood the word it spoke—it was his own name. It crooned it from the shroud in front of him in a bizarre and metallic voice that seemed to vibrate the very air about him. The sound made his hairs rise up and his skin prickle with tingling cold. He moved forward toward it in a daze. The voice continued beckoning him to a narrow corridor that would have been impenetrable to his material eyes. Yet, he stepped into it.

Then, from somewhere ahead a pall of grey smoke drifted towards him, soon enveloping him. It wafted across his torchlight and he wandered through it as one would wander through a cloud. What is this? A gas leak? He thought.

Rising through the milky ether at the end of the corridor, he then heard yet more voices. Children’s voices now. Familiar. Fragmented memories. 1995 maybe? TV playing in the background. Paisley carpets below his feet now. Bare feet. Will looked around in astonishment. His parent’s living room. He took a step forward. The torch barely cut through the foggy expanse of smoke all around.

‘Mummy, Will stole my crisps—Now at six, the weather—sit in the beans, Will! I dare you—tonight on BBC ONE,’ Will heard. The house down by the beach. A slew of disembodied voices echoed up to him as if emanating from the bottom of an endless well.

‘Have you been sleepwalking again?—an eternal shadow, dreadfully distinct, dreadfully, DREADFU—Hurry up, Nanny will be here any moment—Dreadfully distinct. Where are you going, Pig?’

He probed into the pit of his stomach in search of something he might have called hope, and he continued through the labyrinthine tunnels. The smoke all about was acrid and burned as it slithered up his nostrils.

“Mum? Is that you?”

‘Everlasting nothingness. Endless gulfs of black tar—Where’s my son? Ha, there he is!—Come give your old man a hug! Sleeping in the massive black heart of the infinite universe. I am all—Mummy, can I play with Will’s friends too?'

Will’s head swam with all the shards of memories swarming back to him, striking his synapsis like needles. The dizzying swirl of times gone by made him feel delirious. Is this real? I remember this…

He stumbled further through the fog in search of the junction box. And the voice called to him; beckoning him further. It groaned from the empty wet dimness of the basement—all the rag water dripping down from the pipes above—and it spoke in a clear timbre voice. ‘I am all. I can stop the pain in your mind…’

Then, at the end of the tunnel, he saw it. Dreadfully distinct.