March 18, 2023
An asylum is an awful place to seek asylum, and it's an even worse place to go for protection. A true asylum, as it was always meant to be, should act as a sturdy shelter from the dangerous storms that can harm one's body and mind - a place of love and sanctuary, a place to be welcomed into arms that'll hold you until your entire self is brought to peace. As it were meant to be, an asylum should be your anchor in your hurricane of distress. If this asylum was a true asylum, it would be similar to those fancy retreats for the rich, all about soothing and calming. It would be a manifestation of empathy so your entire person, including your ill mind, would be cured of disorder.
We love ourselves when others love us. We value ourselves when others value us. Those are simple human traits that seek to be filled without every really thinking about it, and a true asylum should be no different. Unfortunately, that was never the case. A true asylum, one filled with empathy and caring, never existed in this world. And thus, this asylum, along with all others, would've been more aptly named as a house of torture. I thought of the bare walls and bare floors as reflections of what the place really was, as if the building itself was trying to tell the staff what they'd built and perpetuated was, in itself, a place to house evil. With the inclusion of windowless rooms, the lack of real light, doors without handles, hidden tunnels and rooms, asylums were the world's most obvious constructed metaphor for the containment of the unnatural.
And the unnatural truly lived within the walls of St. Bernard Asylum. As humans, live beings, we can't see that which is invisible to us. But as spirits, we see all the rest. It took us a while to recover from The Wolf's attack before we made it into the back to the Treatment Center, but once we arrived back there again, Blake and I were utterly shocked at the number of souls just in this room.
The first one to notice us was a middle-aged man. He ran his hands through his hair, which was stuck in clumps, the paths of his fingers still visible right down to the scalp. His outfit was thrown together rags that looked like they hadn't been washed in a decade. The man was a fixer-upper at best.
"Roses are red, violets are blue, I'll burn to ashes, and so will you," he said to us through the four teeth in his mouth before laughing hysterically back to a corner of the room.
Next to him, on a table, was a woman, elderly, twitching around. She carefully double wrapped a sandwich using her flip flops as the bread inside cling film, with a dusting of flour in-between. I assume she took those measures as a method of knowing if anyone had tampered with her food, seeing the disturbance in the flour and knowing not to eat it.
She mumbled, "I am not enough, I am not enough, I am not enough. I rock back and forth."
All of this was done on a loop, and she acknowledged nothing around her, like she was a recording. In supernatural terms, she was part of a residual haunting, meaning it was a scene or image played over and over again through the years.
Another example of this was a nurse, dressed in decades-old scrubs. She carried a tray full of medicine around the room and gave the pills to nonexistent patients, only to disappear once finished and restart her route minutes later from the counter door.
The last spirit hung out at the back of the room, sitting at the piano. The estranged individual seemed to notice us and waved for us to come over. He was a tall man, lean, with the slight hint of the typical muscle that often accompanied youth. He had long, copper-colored hair tied with a black silk ribbon, save for a single lovelock that curled slightly to frame his pale face, and warm green eyes that seemed accustomed to the act of smiling.
As he stood in the dark shadows in his long black coat, with his large black bag, a traditionalist demeanor about him, I was instantly reminded of my grandfather's strange brother.
"Yeah. That guy looks suspicious," I whispered to Blake.
"Suspicious of what? The only thing that man is guilty of right now is waving minors over to him," Blake teased, jabbing me in the shoulder. "Come on, let's see what the child predator wants."
We made our way over to him and stopped a meter away, giving us enough room to leave if the situation called for it.
"What do you want?" I asked.
He smirked. "I just noticed you two in the corner… new bloods." He reached out to shake hands. "I'm Doctor Caduceus. Once, I was a doctor here."
Blake obliged his handshake. "Okay… and?" he egged the man on.
"I want to give you some advice. Have you heard talk of The Wolf?"
Blake cut him off. "Trust us, we met him. Not too friendly."
"Hah. No, he isn't. I take it you strapping young lads know to stay clear of him."
"That much is clear," I said. "I was mostly shocked he was able to hurt us--" I gestured around my body, "--with us being spirits and all."
"It's quite a simple reason, really. Spirits can damage other spirits and, consequentially, also cause them pain."
"You're kidding?" Blake face jumped with surprise.
"Afraid not." He nodded his head slowly and repeatedly for a few seconds.
"Is there anything else, or--?" I said.
He put his hand to his ear and scratched. His eyes flared. "Oh, have you figured out how to manipulate the physical?" He took his fingers and pushed down the keys of the piano. "Spirits can move things."
"How?" I asked.
"It requires energy. Naturally, spirits such as yourselves build up energy over time. Elsewhere, you can look to absorb some energy from storms, electronics, and the heat in the air. That stuff often takes time to learn. But if you want to save energy by using less, you can do this, too." He picked up a broken key from the floor and set it on top of the piano. "Look." He pointed back to the ground.
We stared in shock. The same key he'd picked up still lay on the floor, while also being on the piano. Were they copies?
"I can see your confusion," Caduceus snickered. "I call this phenomenon spiritual warping. As spirits, we can, using much less energy, take a copy of a physical object and make a spiritual one that can be manipulated on our plane of existence only. And after a few hours, the copy will disappear."
"So, living people would be able to see if we moved something physically but wouldn't be able to see us moving spiritual copies?" I asked.
"You got it." He smiled. "As spirits, it's the most basic of rules you should get used to."
"Okay, that's all well and good, sir, but we want to get out of here."
"As in… leave the asylum?"
"Exactly."
"I'm afraid we're trapped in the building, as far as I know."
"So, there isn't anything we can do?" Blake asked. "I mean, with a smart man like yourself, I would've figured you, of all the people here, would know something."
"Hmm. I've heard of a woman, named The Watcher, who sits in the Tenter Grounds who can help. But I hear it's only temporary."
"Awesome! How do we get there?"
"Go downstairs from here. Go through the Visitation Center, straight down the main hallway, past C-Ward, towards the Theatre. Once you reach the end, the front door leads to the Theatre, but the one directly to the left leads to the Tenter Grounds. Good?"
"Sir, you've been so helpful. Is there anything we can do to repay you?" Blake asked.
Doctor Caduceus looked down at Blake's body. "There is one thing." He grinned.
Blake grabbed my shoulder, gesturing me away. "Oh, okay. That's enough of that, Doctor. Go see your other patients for that."
He pulled us away, and we made our way to the Tenter Grounds
⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕
We walked through the closed door of the Tenter Grounds, and Blake and I were outside. It was amazing seeing the bright, sun-filled sky. And as a spirit, I could look directly at the ball of fire in the sky without any repercussions for as long as I dared. Blake and I did that for a while.
The Tenter Grounds was a rectangular area that stretched the length of the part of the building that housed both C-Ward and F-Ward. It was fenced, with a garden brushing up against the outside walls.
Blake led me down the dirt area, past the many clothes wires that hung with torn rags and linen, all the way to the metal fence. He pushed his hand against it in an effort to phase through, but like the door leading out of the property, he was unable to go through. I figured this would be the case, so I wasn't too hurt by the realization. He cursed and pounded his hand on the fencing, frustrated.
I tugged on Blake's shoulder and pointed at the single spirit in the Tenter Grounds. She sat on a bench, hands on her lap, gazing at the birds in the distance and trees rustling past the fence. The woman definitely seemed to be watcher material.
Blake and I sat next to her and waited for her to acknowledge us, but she didn't. She just kept staring in the distance. It was just silence for a few seconds, and Blake and I looked at each other, confused. Blake then shrugged.
"Hey, Watcher. We--"
"I know why you're here," the lady said. She never once looked away from the view. "You're like many others. You seek answers. I can give you the chance to find them yourself, if you so choose."
I nearly jumped up. "Yes! Yes. Please. Get me out of here."
The Watcher blinked, and her eyes seemed to glow for a moment upon reopening them. "I've seen what you will see." She fell silent.
"And?"
"Just know, the knowledge you seek will not come without pain. Do you still wish to take this journey?"
I gazed straight at her. Sternly, I said, "I do."
"Then prepare yourself."
She touched my shoulder, and a blinding light blasted into my eyes. I couldn't see anything. White, burning light. Only a few seconds of it. Then darkness. It was all black.
Wait. I could hear! In the distance was wind, the rustling leaves of trees and bushes. The sound seemed to reverberate around me, originating around twenty to thirty meters away, though it was hard to tell.
Snap.
A twig creaked to my near right, but I still couldn't see anything. Then I heard the padding of paws poking around the ground next to me. I could feel as the soft pads pressed on my left thigh, its claws digging into my flesh. The most surprising thing about the ordeal was the lack of pain. The claws were penetrating into my skin, and I could even feel small streams of blood flowing down my leg. But no pain. It didn't even hurt.
The creature then climbed further up my body, its prickly fur tickling my bare chest. It sniffed my neck and used its front paws to claw at my left eye. Its sniffing reached closer to my nose, and I smelled the wretchedness of dead animals radiating off the creature. My eyelid was then forced open, and I could see the creature creeping over me.
The raccoon looming over my body was a mixture of colors; red, black, white, and gray blended together to give the sneaky beast a smoky look. The mask he wore gave a sense of irony to his actions, snooping around like a common thief. It wasn't long before the raccoon lost interest in my unmoving body and moved on to stealing food, tearing garbage bags apart, and getting into trash bins further down the lawn. His eyes were little glossy balls of light brown, like copper over honey, and his black striped tail swayed back and forth, as if he were a dog. Within seconds, he popped out of the trash, clutching a muffin tightly in his black, glove-like hands, then fled into the night.
I was left alone again, unable to move. With one eye open, I looked over the yard. I could see a flower bed, with a single tree, and it was lined with bushes and a picket fence behind the mulch bed. The grass was recently trimmed only a few days ago. I wasn't sure, but it seemed like this could be the back-right corner of my yard. Through my peripheral vision, I could see the end of my feet and legs, bare and naked. In fact, the only clothes I felt on me were some small shorts over my waist.
For a while my body went undetected, so I lay there, listening to the sounds of the night. Time ticked on for what seemed like hours, but in my boredom, I could easily have overestimated that. In the end, a passing pedestrian on an early morning run passed by the mulch on the other side of the fence before stopping in place. Her shocked expression gazed back at me. It took a minute, but the curious woman began to investigate me. I could see the poor woman grinding her teeth hesitantly before she let out a gasp as she shook my shoulders, but I was just a soul latching onto his lifeless body on a journey to see how my end came to be.
She rushed straight around to the front of the house and pounded on the door. I could hear her voice as she shouted in rapid sprawls of panicked words for the owners of the house. The front door opened in response, and I heard a fair bit of freaking out coming from the pedestrian's mouth, but nothing from the owners. Maybe he or she didn't believe the pedestrian. Nonetheless, more voices entered the scene as new people came closer to the back yard. The owners were in earshot in no time at all.
No, it can't be! No! The voices - they belong to my parents!
They continued to speak as though the lady was pulling their leg or had been mistaken. With his signature heavy boots, my father stomped closer with angry strides, muttering to my mom. The footsteps stopped when they rounded the side of the house and, I assume, they saw me. For a long, terrible moment, there was complete silence. I wanted nothing more than to leave my body right then and there. Why did I choose this? I only wanted to leave the asylum in search of answers. But this-- I didn't know if my soul could survive this.
My dad and mom rushed forward and picked me up.
"Troy!" Mom screamed, clutching me to her chest with the strongest embrace I've ever felt her give.
"Let go, Anna. Let me have him!" Dad shouted, prying me free from her and laying me back down on the wet grass.
"Terrance? Do you think he's--?" Mom wailed, her words catching in her throat. Tears began to form below her eyes, and her chin vibrated rapidly.
"I-I don't know." Dad stood still, stone cold as a statue.
"He's-he's not moving! Terrance, he isn't moving!" Mom wailed, then grabbed me and shook me fiercely. "Why is he not moving?!" she screamed. "He's not moving. He's--" her voice cracked.
Dad once again eased away her hands, then beckoned the pedestrian over and handed Mom to her. "Take her inside. Please," he said softly. "And call for an ambulance. I'll stay here and watch over Troy."
"It's just like the stories of the victims of the serial k–" the pedestrian began, but stopped mid-sentence the moment she caught a sour look from my dad. Mom moaned loudly as she said those terrible words and buried her face in her hands.
I can't take this. Why? Why did I return to my body just for this pain? It's worse than anything I've ever felt. Watching my parents like this - it's hell.
Dad shook his head softly, forcing a smile. "We don't know that."
Mom lowered her hands. "Right… you're right. We need the police!" she said half-hopefully before rushing inside to grab her phone, followed by the bystander.
Dad held his smile until she was out of sight, then bent over me, checked my eyes, and felt my wrist for a pulse. When he found no sign of life, he laid me back down, brushed strands of hair out of my eyes, then did something I'd never seen before from him.
Tears poured from his eyes down over my chest and face. He was crying.