Symphony of the Iron Underbelly, Movement No. IV – Le Phare Insensé
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[The Past – Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, USA, Spring 1992]
The rhythmic thump of rubber made a beat against glass where the wipers worked at their lazy pace, stretching fat raindrops out into greasy streaks that made the long, single-track road ahead split in two optically impossible directions. Each sweep, accompanied by a high-pitched whine of the driving motor, cleared the windscreen just long enough to pick out a slate-grey spire rising up through the treeline. Ornate, black ironwork topped its crown but the details were lost in the flicker of some beacon light which struggled to penetrate the stormy gloom.
Those same trees bucked and whipped against the powerful wind, muted from high-frequency howl outside to a shuddering, bassy groan which shook and banged the whole vehicle from side-to-side.
A loud tap on the side window made him jerk, knees spontaneously driving up out of the footwell to hit hard against the bottom of the steering wheel. He grimaced, fumbling for the rotary handle down by his side and succeeded only in turning it the wrong way. For a while he just tried harder, straining the whole door as he worked to somehow force the window even further up against its mechanical stops. A bright ring of light burst inside courtesy of a torch shone right in his face. Eventually, eyes squeezed shut in reflex, he blindly tried the other direction and was rewarded by the cool sting of a rainy gale as the glass edged open.
“Ain’t supposed to stop here,” The Guard said, staring hard from underneath a soaked, visor-slashed peaked cap, other hand resting on a brown leather holster strapped to his thigh. “You got business?”
He fumbled for the documents sat over on the empty passenger seat, gathering up ochre-coloured folders and dog-eared reams of paper and rifling through them. The torch beam wandered – blessedly away from his face – and swept through the interior, finding nothing but a scuffed suitcase and a folded greatcoat stuffed underneath.
The torch swung back forward in time to catch the laminated edge of an identity card pushed between the open glass and the doorframe.
“Doctor … DeLune … ” The Guard read out verbatim, turning the card over and checking the back. Satisfied, his free hand moved away from his hip and he stood up a little straighter, letting the torchlight drop down to make the rain-slicked, chrome wheels shine. “Fancy. What’s it mean?”
“Of or relating to the Moon,” The Doctor replied as he tried to bring order back to the mess of papers spilling over his lap.
The Guard shrugged. “Fancy,” He repeated, bracing himself against the doorframe as the wind abruptly changed direction and tried to take him off his feet. “Anyway Doc … First time here?”
He nodded.
“Ain’t no stopping on this access road – whole way down from highway turn-off to front door of the hospital. Think it reasonable you already know why.”
Flicking through the stack, DeLune gave up and dumped them back on the passenger side before glancing up. “Yes, that makes sense. I’m sorry, I just got lost in thought.”
That made the larger man with the bright torch laugh, but it wasn’t one made with humour; that chuckle owed more to something bitter. “Plenty folk lost in thought around here,” He said. “We just prefer they don’t get in your car and do it when you ain’t expecting company.”
Tapping the roof of the car with the flat of his palm and sending water splashing over the door rim, the Guard nodded and stepped back. “You’re good to go, Doc. Have a good evening – and be careful.”
Getting the winding handle going in the right direction, he nodded. “Thank you.”
Wet gravel crunched under the weight of rolling tyres, spilling out to either side to make shallow furrows that followed the car all the way through the storm. Every so often, he’d pass through a perimeter gate, manned by the same dour-looking guards in their olive-green uniforms and peaked caps. All armed. None of the walls were obvious – cleverly disguised by deliberately cultivated hedges or ivy vines, or hidden behind thickets of trees. A very modern approach; an effort to be secure without looking like a place of imprisonment or punishment.
Another guard checked his credentials, hand never moving far from that leather holster before waving him through. Make no mistake, however. There were gates and walls. And guns. DeLune glanced at the documents over on the passenger seat as the hospital loomed up ahead. From only what he’d read, all of that was justifiable. Even necessary.
There’d been some significant effort to make the fabric of the building and its grounds a little more conducive to modern, sophisticated healing methods – and a little further from its vaguely pseudo-gothic architectural origins which, with the benefit of hindsight, had not aged at all well. The original severe stonework, all sharp angles and pointed buttresses edged with sinister stone supporters, had been painted bright, gentle pastel with light blue window frames inset all along the vast east and western wings.
Orange-painted trestles, bolted a little off the outer cladding, gave green curtains of Clematis purchase to sweep all across and up over the grey-slate, triangular roof spaces. Inset into the walls at regular intervals were empty alcoves, presumably where stern statues of better examples stood in silent judgement over the unwell with their faces set in permanent, marble disapproval.
Instead, there were sculptures of polished metal, varnished wood and bright composite plastic scattered all around the immaculately-kept lawns. None of them looked like anything specific; all very subjective for the eye of the beholder. Designed for thinking. DeLune nodded as he shut the engine off, struggling to push open the driver’s side door in the gale and lever himself up and out. What else was there to do for the kind of people lost in thought here?
The central spire of the hospital, though … That had escaped whatever process of gentrification had transformed the rest of the structure into something slightly less oppressive. None of the soft hued paint made it to the summit and with his neck craned up to see beyond the gutters overflowing with rainwater above, the Doctor could just about make out cold stone faces looking back down from positions of absolute moral and religious authority.
He could see the details of the ironwork now that surrounded the dome at the tower’s peak, illuminated by the pseudo-lighthouse; images of angels and other celestial heroes extending sculpted hands down towards the ground, offering a path of salvation for the sinners presumably wandering the lawns, lost in thought. Just lost. Age and neglect had let corrosion set in, and orange lines of oxidisation trailed from the eyes of the angels and made them look like they were weeping.
Pulling the folds of his suit jacket over the stack of documents awkwardly clutched against his stomach, DeLune hurried up wide, slick steps to disappear under the angels’ gaze – buffeted all the while from seemingly random direction by the relentless wind. He had no doubt in the hundred years plus of operation of this hospital, they had seen sights craven enough to make even celestials sob in sympathy.
And he was right.
Sister Superior Esmarelda could tell a brand new visitor from a more regular one just by the sound their shoes made on the polished floor of the vestibule. That distinctive, irregular tap-tap-tap that betrayed a brisk pace brought to a sudden halt by confusion – was this the right way? – and then stuttering, hesitant footfalls. A squeal of heels in the about-face, back the way they’d come … And then, eventually, certainty and a regular rhythm of shoe leather on lime green tiles.
She rose from her position at the Nurse’s Station, setting a silver pen in her hand down in its proper place perfectly parallel to the Daily Occurrence Log. He came into view a moment later, dripping wet and struggling to keep something tight against his gut.
“May I help you?” She said, and in his surprise he dropped a coat full of papers and folders down to spill in a lazy spiral around his damp feet. Outside, the wind banged hard against the roof tiles.
Dropping down onto the tiles, making muddy trails with the edges of his shoes, he smeared documents through earthy rainwater as he tried to gather them in. She watched, arching an eyebrow before stepping around the station, sweeping up the washed-out pink hem of her dress and stooping down to help.
“I am Sister Superior Esmarelda,” She tried again.
He looked up, eyes narrowed in confusion. “I’m sorry?”
She smiled, handing him a sodden stack of paper. “Esmarelda. I assume you know where you are?”
“What? North Palladium Psychiatric Hospital …”
“Very good,” She nodded. “Do you know why you’re here and who you are?”
Accepting the papers, he froze in mid-handover, confusion giving way first to a frown, then realisation. “Of course I know … I’m not a patient!”
The Sister Superior smiled. “Of that I’m quite sure – none of my patients would ever be out in such a storm unaccounted for. But … We are occasionally visited by prospective patients …”
“Doctor Markus DeLune,” He finally managed. “I’m neither a resident here nor looking to become so.”
Climbing up to her feet, Esmarelda nodded and smoothed the wrinkles of her dress back down. “Of course, Doctor. We weren’t expecting you until …” She glanced up at the large chrome-circled clock over the Nurse’s Station behind. “ … Much later this morning. After dawn, preferably. Breakfast is a very busy period.”
“My schedule was adjusted at short notice.” A lie – he had nowhere else better to be. With a grunt of effort, he stood and swung the stack of slick paperwork over onto the lip of the Nurse’s Station window. The shiny wet fabric of his trousers, stained brown with trodden mud, stuck unpleasantly to his knees. “I felt it better to come as soon as possible after receiving your referral.”
The smile on Esmarelda’s face wavered for a second, its brilliance spinning on the edge of losing lustre, before stabilising. “We didn’t want to go out of state, not simply because of the expense of course; it’s also difficult to build trust in such circumstances with strangers but …”
They walked together, shoes clicking loudly in-step against the lime green tiles. “ … She’s not progressing, Doctor and with her familial situation, discretion is essential. There is significant pressure from the Governor’s Office … I’m sure you understand.”
He did, but found the whole circumstance around that necessary discretion distasteful. Marcus didn’t care for it – all he was interested in was the syndrome. The illness. The problem. Whatever the circumstances were which made it more pressing simply gave him the necessary expediency to move forward all the more quickly.
The corridors began to narrow as they passed through the first treatment and accommodation wards. This area was bright and airy and every room was open – or lacking any visible external locks to keep their incumbents inside. In the early morning it was quiet but the soft tones of radio chatter crept out to sing from thin slits of light, leaking underneath every other closed door. Artwork and stories were pinned up on cork boards. Sunny fields, happy families. He thought he recognised a particularly beautiful watercolour of the planet Venus, stopping to admire sulphuric-acid rain clouds brooding high in its molten-lead furnace skies.
“Any support from Baton Rouge?” He asked idly, still studying the tesserae formations on Earth’s so-called “twin”.
The Sister Superior nodded. “We’ve had several consultants – specialists in their field, I’m told – from the State Capital. None have made any significant progress.”
He walked on. “Specialists in failure,” Marcus said simply. She didn’t reply.
Eventually, the corridor they walked came to an abrupt end at a double-set oak door. It was painted a soft blue, but DeLune could easily pick out several less-than-disarming features. It was thick, with obvious metal plating bolted onto its varnished surface to reinforce and resist brute force. The hinges were thick and utilitarian, and in the narrow gap where the doors met he could just make out the radii of multiple deadbolts strung between.
Esmarelda reached into the folds of her dress to produce a set of tarnished silver keys, swinging them on a wide brass ring and sorting through each one with a forefinger. “Did you review the case notes? Or at least … What’s left of them?”
The Doctor nodded, studying the door. “Of course, but if they were written by your “specialists” then they’re worthless. Filled with all the things they tried that didn’t work and all the things they were going to try, that still wouldn’t work.”
Again, she didn’t say anything in reply; instead focusing on unlocking the doors ahead and heaving one open with the meat of her shoulder. They both stepped through and she secured them again behind. The boom of deadbolts sliding into place made the oak rattle against its hinges.
Here, the decor became more restrained. Still pastel-light, but the plastered walls gave way to painted brick. The windows on either side of the corridor still looked out onto the lawns but they lacked any obvious latches, except partitions far too high up for anyone to reach for let alone climb. There were locks now on the external faces of every room.
Marcus ran a hand through his damp hair. “How long has she been here now?”
“Admitted a year ago on Tuesday,” Esmarelda replied. “Just before her birthday, actually.”
“Any personal visitors?”
The Sister Superior opened her mouth, but hesitated. “ … Are you talking about family members?”
He nodded, she still hesitated. “ … I’d have thought, considering the sensitivities, you’d know that was unlikely.”
That made him pause, right in front of a table and chairs set into an alcove off the main corridor. He gave it a gentle heave but it didn’t move – bolted securely to the tiled floor. Same with the chair. “ … Unlikely?”
Esmarelda pursed her lips, stopped and turned until they were only a few feet apart. “Once. Seven or so weeks after initial admission. Her mother, and …”
He forgot the table, using it to push himself off and around to face the Sister Superior. “And?”
She swallowed, looking over her shoulder as if somehow staff or patient had used the build in their conversation to sneak up unawares. Rain sprayed against the window nearby, firing machine-gun droplets driven by the gale in a wide arc that rattled every pane. For just a second, the overhead lights flickered.
“ … Her sister.”
DeLune blinked in genuine surprise, beginning to flex the fingers of a hand. “That was not mentioned in the case files.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t officially recorded.”
“Yes – because it wasn’t a very good idea. Not at all.”
“I know,” Esmarelda conceded. “They didn't speak for long–”
“They spoke?” He interrupted, fingers snapping closed repeatedly to loudly tap against his palm. “She and her sister were face to face?”
“Face-to-grill-to-face,” She corrected, beginning to move off again down the corridor.
He followed. “That was not a very good idea at all.”
There was no way to disguise the way this ward came to its abrupt end, and they both stopped before a heavy steel door flanked by wide ribbons of four inch-thick, toughened glass. Depressing a button on the intercom mounted into the wall space, Esmarelda stepped back until a loud buzzer screeched in two short, sharp bursts of gibberish noise. Motioning for him to do the same, she pressed her identification card up against the reinforced glass. The panes were coloured, translucent – hard to get a clear view but he could see someone beyond. Moving.
Another shriek of white noise, and the door slowly swung open.
They stepped into something that looked more appropriate of a submarine or spacecraft, where equalisation of vastly different atmospheric pressures prevented your constituent body parts being reduced to a fine, misted jam. A short chamber with an identical steel door at the opposite end, between which a security station ran the whole length of one side. A guard wearing that familiar olive-green uniform – armed, naturally – stood expressionless through more protective glass.
“Sharps and potential weapons in the tray,” She said, beginning to divest herself of the key bunch, pens, earrings. He nodded and did likewise, carefully folding the silver-plated arms of the reading glasses drawn from an inside pocket. Patting himself down, he turned straight into an arched eyebrow.
“Do you mind?” The Sister Superior said. He frowned, and she spun her finger in a circle above his head. DeLune did as he could best divine, turning to face the back of the Guard’s head who had likewise shifted around. He was dimly aware of the working of a zipper and the ruffle of fabric.
“There,” Esmarelda said, dropping her bra onto the tray. Her severe french twist was gone, the bobby pins thrown in to leave her hair loose and about her shoulders.
“Potential weapons,” She said simply. “You’ll need to lose your tie, Doctor.”
Tugging it free, he nodded. Finally satisfied, the Guard raised his thumb, sealed the door in and opened the way through with another piercing, grating, metallic bark of pure speaker noise.
“It’s certainly maximum security,” The Doctor ventured as he followed the Sister Superior through. She shook her head as they climbed over the raised lip of the reinforced doorframe. As soon as they cleared the threshold, the hatch began to close and slammed shut with the muffled bang of steel-on-rubber dampeners. Deadbolts fired in a multimodal thump.
For the first time, he couldn’t hear the storm carried on that maddening, incessant, howling wind.
“We don’t use that term here,” She said. “Welcome to Critical Care, Doctor DeLune.”
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[The Rapture]
The summit is so very high above your head, My Rose, that it must seem conceptual – a thing you are told about, that you crane your neck up towards and yet never see. The Promised Land. Described, watched, externally understood but never experienced. The frame of your reference is always observer, never participant. Up there, a Resplendent Hurricane – the SCW Bombshells’ Champion – continues to break all comers and return them to the slopes gasping for air; twisting in the tightest nooses of their pathetic and reaching excuses, unfulfilled. Failed. Defeated. Miss Ryan becomes more dangerous, more impossible with each passing week. Unassailable. Untouchable. Unstoppable. It is so very fortunate that you do not have to become her latest victim. Instead, you will be safe all the way down here at the cold, lonely base. With me.
We shall revel in the snow together.
I understand your torment. Because she is up there in a whirlwind and you are down here, frustrated and ignored. Marginalised. Desperate for attention but sidelined and disrespected. Attention that I am so very pleased to give to you, now.
We are all products of the things we say and do. Sometimes it is metaphorical – a dangerous, powerful champion who through relentless strength of will, skill and obsession has become a force of nature such that none in this company or a multitude of others can hope to pass through and survive her. A hurricane painted red that twists and kills about the mountain peak. Alternatively, it could be allegorical. The sum and meandering story of a mysterious stranger, with a sing-song cadence, who chooses to hide her face in the ultimate irony given how much she chooses to show the world; revealing every otherwise hidden detail as plainly as the colour of the masque she wears.
And then there is my newest, most beautiful flower girl. My Rose. You are literal. It is after all, in your name. Beaufort. Damage. You measure risk, suffering – wounding. While I choose to inflict misery, apply the agony as a force pressing down on a lever, you are so very essential in categorising it. Besides, without a means to quantify pain, what purpose does it fulfil? Hurt without a lesson to learn would only be cruel, and I have so very many things to show you beyond such callousness. The company believes it is the one teaching you a lesson, but they are wrong. Mistaken. These are my lessons and I give each one to you, freely.
I do not think you will be a difficult student, and I am eager to begin your education. Are you ready? Time to study.
They think you have been foolhardy, rash but they do not see what I see. Such bravery. To be willing to martyr yourself before my Rapture, to willingly give yourself to the misery you are about to experience is a selfless act. And when they see how you suffer, how you give that pain meaning, context, a sad story to sing sad songs to – a scale of measurement – they will finally give you the respect you deserve. Such a bright spot in the otherwise dark. A beacon.
You demanded recognition and I will see it given unto you. In Reno, Nevada you will become my entire world and all the stars sentinel above which by their light I wander. But theirs is a cold brightness, and it will not warm you like the Sun does. Maybe, you would have been better off trembling in the glow of the Moon. She does not pretend to be something she is not – like you do. A wind-swept twister sister.
When you are broken by my painted, thorn-wrapped hand and left for dead at the base of this windswept, lonely mountain, oh the kind things they will say about you. The reputation that will be forged in your pyre. Made at the moment of breaking.
And to the miseries you must suffer, and categorise – and scale so that all the world can see and contextualise their flinching at the sight of it – we look to your namesake. A Beaufort Wind Scale by coincidence and happenstance; a living categorisation of devastation. Something to stretch from gentle calm to hurricane force. You cannot scale this mountain, My Rose, but I will be so pleased to hurt you commensurately, to simulate the feeling of reaching that summit and facing your doom, as surely as if the Bombshells’ Champion herself were there to send you back down on a carriage of ice and snow dug furrowed into the frozen earth.
We begin placid on your scale, the sea still, like a mirror. It has been so long since you were last this peaceful – we do not succeed in such becalmed conditions and we cannot wait here. This is not a place of growth. Turn into the wind now and feel it whip against your soft skin; squeeze watering eyes closed and shield your blasted features.
Faster.
The trees that girt your path begin to sway, they have always told you where to safely step. Rustling and trembling in the strengthening gale. Lean forward now, push against it. Each movement forward becomes harder than the last. This is the way of progress; nothing easy was ever worth having and you have had such little of value in your unremarkable life thus far. Are you ready? Welcome to Beaufort Scale Five.
Faster.
Branches sag, bending under load; twigs break and scythe through the air to cut your flesh in red lines made weeping ribbons and whip the strength from aching muscles. Do not be frightened – not yet. There is so much more to experience. This is only Scale Eight.
Faster.
Down onto your knees, pull in to yourself. Huddle. You should never have come here, asking for respect. Demanding it. The trees cannot shield you now – they cannot even help themselves and they twist and break and snap. The way ahead, so carefully laid out that has served you so poorly, is swept away. Look at your beautiful potential, standing on the edge of annihilation. For just a singular moment you could be anything, but of course, you are nothing. All the detritus stirs in a whirlwind with you at its eye; sweeping and spinning, cavorting and crashing. Embrace Scale Ten.
Faster.
Do you know, My Rose, what comes at the end of the Beaufort Scale? At the apex, at a rating of Twelve? No prose, no elaborate descriptions; what would be the point? There is nobody left alive to experience it and make suggestions. Hurricane force … Devastation.
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[The Past – Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, USA, Spring 1992]
Everything was washed-out pink and it made his eyes ache. Breezeblock walls, the utilitarian, concrete-poured furniture – only the odd stainless steel duct escaped a liberal application of migraine-inducing hue. The corridor they stood in extended for fifty metres, illuminated by harsh fluorescent striplights overhead. Red, pulsing strobes gently flickered next to panic alarms spaced equidistantly out. He noticed the green tiles were gone, replaced by thick rubber matting that seamlessly rode up to meet the walls with no gaps between. For the first time, DeLune realised he couldn’t hear anything. Not the storm, not a radio … Not even the thrum of utilities. Even the striplights shone silently.
“Looks like a prison,” He said simply. It did.
“Critical Care underwent a significant redesign several years ago,” She shrugged. “Our most … Thoughtful patients no longer necessarily see any objective reality, so there’s not much point in trying to force one on them. They see what they want to see. We have seen some success with mood painting …”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to massage away the intensity of the unpleasant brightness burning its way in through his eyes, up into the meat of his brain. “How many?”
He followed her as she talked. “Just one now, the girl. The rest were beyond our ability to help and went to federal facilities with better resources.”
DeLune rolled his eyes at that. “ … But not her. Political sensitivities?”
Again, silence in favour of anything else and the Sister Superior stopped in front of the first door on the left. She pressed a thumb against the control panel, lit brightly in an angry red and mounted to the frame. “Barney, Echo-Seven please.”
Something unintelligible echoed back and after a few moments, the panel shifted to green and the sound of heavyset barrel locks pulling backwards into the structure of the door thumped through.
“Now?” He asked, looking around for a clock he knew wouldn’t be in here to confirm.
Esmarelda pulled the door open with a little concentrated effort. “She won’t be asleep. You’re familiar with the contact protocol? The naming convention–”
“Annabelle,” He interrupted. He could feel anticipation building now. “Yes, I know. Don’t use her given name.”
She nodded, and they stepped through.
The actual space they had to move in was small, no more than ten feet square but it contained all the tools needed to monitor and communicate. A triple-secured access door functioned effectively as a window with a thick black cable secured to its front to carry the two-way microphone. Two comfortable, short-back chairs were angled at forty five degrees from each other in front, forming a triangle with a third on the other side looking straight-on. Suspended above on a metal bar hung a range of cathode-ray monitors, displaying various monochrome pictures of areas of the dwelling where the window couldn’t see.
He struggled for a second to settle on a name. Cell? Dwelling? Habitat? The whatever-it-was on the other side looked like any middle-class, suburban house. A sitting room, a bedroom, a parlour, a bathroom. Except everything was washed-out pink. The furniture, the walls, even the taps and the toilet. Little details clamoured for his attention – the way virtually all the sofas and their cushions and blankets dotted around the facsimile seemed like they’d never been so much as looked at, let alone sat on or disturbed. He glanced up at the grainy images on the monitors, trying to glean something more from their pixels. There. The telltale marks of use on one of two beds sat opposite each other at the rear – the one on the left. Subtle depressions in the carpet, from where the weight of a person clambouring on and off had subtly shifted the frame over the months.
The other still stuck fast in its original grooves. There were scuff marks along the skirting boards nearby to either side of the bedroom door, made by the repetitive clatter of shoes kicked off at the heel to bounce against and score wood in the same place.
A well-worn, well-treaded routine. No deviation. Endless repetition. As he expected to see.
The little girl was already sat in the chair opposite, but he hadn’t looked at her. Not yet. First, he needed to listen to what her environment was telling him and then, afterwards, he’d listen to her.
It wasn’t homely – it was pink – but the cost of preparing a purpose-built whatever-this-was reinforced the political sensitivities which kept thrusting foremost into the conversation were neither euphemisms or hyperbole. They were very real, and evidently, very resourceful. For a second his focus slipped, and he wandered off on a mental tangent about just how useful access to that kind of influence might be …
… Back to the task at hand. He’d worked too hard and too long to get this far.
“Hello, Annabelle,” He said as he lowered himself into one of the two chairs arranged in front of the observation window. Esmarelda didn’t join him, preferring to stand immediately behind.
The little girl had nothing of remark that he could see. Blonde, blue eyed in a cobalt dress and light coloured-like-sky undershirt. She had no thousand-yard stare, no gross physical deformity. He couldn’t see any nervous tic or sign of obvious trauma.
But she was still. So very still. The chair she sat in was the same as his; sized for an adult and so perched on the edge her legs dangled over with nothing to brace against … and yet they just hung limply. Children – young children anyway – fidgeted. Twitched. Moved all the time. A natural consequence of an immature nervous system still learning the subtleties of commanding limbs and associated muscles. This little girl didn’t. Her head didn’t loll, eyes didn’t wander from one distraction to the other and her hands were clasped on top of a red book sat in her lap he couldn’t make out any significant detail of.
“Good Morning,” She said.
Folding one leg over the other, Marcus leaned back and the frame of the chair creaked slightly. “Why are you here?”
Annabelle looked down at the book, then back up. “To protect me.”
Chewing on the inside of his cheek, the Doctor crossed his arms over his chest. “Protect you from who?”
“My sister.”
“Ah, yes,” Marcus nodded. “Abigayle?”
The little girl nodded, and he could see the flesh of her fingers pucker white with the effort of squeezing the spine of the book in-between.
“Are you scared of Abigayle?”
Somewhere behind, the rubber matting under Esmarelda’s feet creaked and betrayed her concern as she moved forward slightly. The frame of his creaking chair tipped almost imperceptibly back as she rested her weight on it.
“She is not well.”
“I think that’s an understatement,” Marcus replied. “She had to be taken away, for the good of the rest of you.”
The cover of the book begins to bow, forced into an upward arc by the applied pressure. “My sister is not sure who–”
“She’s an embarrassment,” Marcus interrupted, leaning forward. “That’s why they keep her locked in a pink box.”
Marcus felt a hand on his shoulder, urgent, pressing, trying to pull him back. “Doctor DeLune–”
He shrugged it off. “That’s why they only visited her once, talking through this window like a trip to the zoo. Have you ever been?”
The little girl shook her head. He continued. “It’s very interesting to see so much life there that isn’t really living. The animals are breathing, they make sounds, they eat, they sleep … But they’re not alive. Not really. And even then, only when someone else is watching. When the visitors all go home, and forget about them, they just stop being real at all. Like being dead without ever dying. What’s the point in that?”
Something right behind his shoulder groaned under stress, and Marcus imagined the tubular plastic was being compressed tight enough to splinter by the Sister Superior’s hand. For whatever reason, maybe in too deep now to stop it, she said nothing. Neither did Annabelle for long moments. He used the silence to continue to pick out the myriad little details flickering on the monitors above his head.
The brass-plated door handles had all begun to tarnish at their very extreme edges – she didn’t grasp them with her whole hand, only levering them with a forefinger or two. Interesting.
“What happens to the animals if they are let out? Do they come back to life? Do people remember them?”
“They can’t be let back out,” He replied without bothering to look down at her from the screens. “Not unless someone helps them to remember who they were before they came there.”
The little girl suddenly releases the pressure on the book and it springs up an inch or two from her lap, before settling back down on the blue-hued, floral-patterned material of her dress. “Could you help them remember?”
“Yes,” He replied immediately. Simply. With all his belief because it was true.
“ … And then they can be let out and come back to life?”
Marcus puffed out his cheeks, making popping sounds until almost all the air had left his lungs. “Maybe. It’s possible. That depends …”
He leaned forwards, clasping his hands together up to the knuckles. “Show me that book.”
“She won’t–”
DeLune held up a palm towards the woman behind, rudely cutting her off in mid-sentence. “I need to know I can trust you, Annabelle.”
And she did, pressing its leatherbound cover up to the thick glass. And he understood.
“Thank you,” Marcus nodded and levered himself up to standing. “We’ll talk again soon.”
It had taken Esmarelda the entire walk back through Critical Care and the lesser-protected treatment wards to finish giving her fury an appropriate release. He did what was expected of him – listened, paid sufficient attention to make it obvious at the very least that her words registered, even if he didn’t offer so much as a single acknowledgement of contrition. After all, if they’d been looking for conventional physicians, he would never have made it past the first guard in the rain.
Eventually, spent or just accepting that he wasn’t going to crumble into tearful apology at this point, the Sister Superior forced the heavy oak door shut, twisted the key in the lock and roughly shoved the bunch back into the folds of her dress. “Well?”
The wide-set windows behind rattled and shook in their frames, courtesy of a wind eager not to be forgotten in the excitement.
“Dictation for Ladies,” He said simply. “First edition, originally published in 1905.”
She shrugged, “Pardon?”
DeLune sighed. “The book – in her lap. Don’t you think that’s an odd choice for a little girl to be so obsessed over? Carrying a favourite toy is one thing but a reference guide on the proper pronunciation, elocution and bearing of a cultural archetype that’s been obsolete for over a century …”
“It belonged to her sister,” Esmarelda shrugged. “That’s why she’s so attached to it. Not the contents.”
“It was owned by the real Annabelle,” Marcus mused, leaning back against the Nurse’s Station, blinking away the last vestiges of haemorrhage-inducing pink from his vision. “How did she get it? During the visit?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Apparently while separating out their personal possessions before Annabelle–” The Sister Superior stopped, correcting herself, “ … Before Abigayle got here, there was a mix-up and a few items were mislabeled for the latter. We intercepted them all except that book. I did look into it via written correspondence – apparently it’s some sort of token family trinket that came from Annabelle’s mother, her mother, and so forth. It doesn’t have any actual intrinsic value. Not to them, anyway. It’s worthless. Probably more than a little sexist too …”
“Does now,” Marcus replied. “It can’t have escaped your notice, or those of your fine experts from Baton Rouge, that she’s modelled her speech patterns on it.”
It was Esmarelda’s turn to sigh. “Obviously not, Doctor DeLune. However, I have seen some very unwell people of all ages in my career, and all their associated peculiarities. As this one goes, I can’t say it felt particularly serious compared to the things that meant she ended up having to come here at all.”
“The incident with the real Annabelle?”
She nodded. “Throw in those sensitivities, with the upcoming state elections in the fall, and I’m sure you can understand that news of something like this and the associated … Illness and familial uncertainties might bring an unwelcome spotlight on the Lieutenant Governor at a time in which he is almost certain to progress into senior office.”
Marcus turned his attention to the mostly-dry stack of papers and began to peel them apart. “Governor Sanderton might win re-election.”
The Sister Superior smiled that bright smile again. “And I might have punched you in the mouth for your antics earlier.”
The Doctor nodded absent-mindedly, flicking through a stained ochre folder. “Do the case files include anything on Annabelle?”
“No – why would they? Abigayle is our patient, even if she thinks otherwise.”
Clicking his tongue, Marcus dumped the folder back onto the tabletop. “I’m assuming meeting with Annabelle is out of the question?”
“Practically on the surface of the Moon,” She smiled. “Having a psychologist snooping around the Lieutenant Governor’s family right before a hotly-contested election? Maybe you need to check yourself into this facility for a while, Doctor.”
He didn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny. “Don’t you have anything on her at all?”
Frowning, the Sister Superior moved around to the other side of the Nurse’s Station and pulled open a set of drawers. “The only thing we might have is the notification and processing form her mother filled out on her behalf when they visited …”
His head rolled around to fix Esmarelda, solitary eyebrow raising. “You had them fill out paperwork on an off-the-record visit that never officially happened so you could give them badges?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t do anything of the sort, but Barney takes his job very seriously. Here you are.”
Marcus took the proffered file, flicking through the contents rapidly until he came upon a grainy polaroid of mother and daughter – Anabelle - stapled to the very last page. His eyes widened and he tore it free.
“Were you here for this?” He urged, excitement building so rapidly he began to snap his fingers hard against his palm over and over again. “This visit?”
Shaking her head, she pushed the drawer closed. “No – I was on a sabbatical for several weeks. Never met either.”
DeLune smiled and Esmarelda took an unconscious step backwards. “You’ve never seen this file before, have you?”
“No,” She snapped, obviously annoyed and running out of patience with his obtuseness. “Why would I? It’s purely procedural and administrational. Not clinical.”
He spun the polaroid around and tapped a familiar face with his forefinger. “Because if you had, you’d have known that Annabelle and Abigayle are identical twins.”
_________________________________________________________________________________
[The Rapture]
Everything I am, every sinew – every synapse, heartbeat – is given to you, My Rose, and I do not have many left to spare. Savour them. I have heard your frustration, your anger and disbelief at how this world and all her people could be so comfortable in passing you by and I choose now, to stop. Listen to your pain; understand it. Bring it the warm comfort of sympathetic suffering. There is a place for you in the grand design being enacted at the heart of SCW: a celestial machine of gale winds and driving storms, powered by gestalt miseries to which you can contribute your own tender, personalised woe. It will be so beautiful, like you.
Adrienne, you are a tidespring of potential, but that resource cannot be spent on frivolous championship dreams and squandered on ideas above your meagre station. Look down. The summit you imagine scaling will never be seen by your own eyes in your lifetime; that is not your contribution to make. That is not what you are to power with your efforts.
Take my windswept allegory to the rocky inlet by a roaring sea – the extreme. Look on the scoured walls of a tired lighthouse, mortar swept clean between pockmarked brick, see its pathetic, pulsing lamp struggle to punch narrow beams of relief through storm-tossed skies and finally, blessedly, understand your place in all of this. Does it not bring you peace? Comfort for your pyre? Relief.
You are not the prize, or the revelation. This is not a journey of self-discovery or affirmation.
You, my Rose, are that foolish lighthouse. Le Phare Insensé. The warning, to tell others they should never have come here. When we meet in Reno, Nevada and I am content in all of the teaching of the many lessons I have painstakingly prepared to inflict, you will become a symbol for what happens when flower girls rush where metal-worked angels fear to tread. Through your desperation for something approaching relevancy, such lurching missteps on even the most gentle slopes that do not even begin to scale the mountain you so desperately wish to stand on top of, you will serve as a powerful, beautiful reminder.
You should never have come here, Miss Beaufort … But you have, and I am so very glad you did.
Welcome to the Rapture.
