Chapter 31
The next day, we have a leisurely breakfast, then make for the train station.
It’s a relatively short journey from Salem to Danvers, and after arriving we hire a taxi and make for Danvers State Hospital—formerly called the Danvers Lunatic Hospital.
The name may have changed, but its function remains the same.
My heart beats fast and my palms sweat as the taxi approaches the low, wooded hill the hospital stands on. Then the brilliant foliage parts, revealing our destination.
Adrian lets out a gasp. The building is enormous, a monster over a thousand feet from end to end, set atop the hill like a crown. Its clock tower and finials rake the bellies of the low clouds, the red brick of the walls dull as old blood.
My pulse races and a wave of dizziness sweeps over me. The sensation of being dwarfed by the massive architecture feels familiar—or no, like an echo. As if this is just a poor facsimile of…what?
“Don’t let any of the crazies out,” the taxi driver says jovially, as he pulls onto the circular road surrounding the asylum.
A few moments later, he halts in the drive in front of the central portion of the building.
“You want me to wait? Or are they locking you up?” He laughs at his own attempted wit.
“We’ll be here a while,” Adrian says, and pays him. The taxi roars away as soon as the doors shut behind us.
“Are you all right?” Adrian asks in a low voice, concern on his handsome features.
“I have to be.”
He claps me on the arm, and we climb the steps to the front door. Inside, the reception room is immediately to the left. When we stick our heads in, the receptionist hurriedly shuts the book she was reading and slips it into a drawer. “Can I help you?”
Adrian subtly motions for me to take the lead. “Er, Mr. Sterling Caine and Mr. Adrian Evans, here to see Dr. North. He’s expecting us,” I add quickly when she seems about to object.
“Of course. One moment.” She opens a ledger, inspects it briefly, then nods. “Follow me.”
She leads us down the main hall, then to a side-corridor which seems to contain various offices. We stop in front of a half-open door with a plaque reading Assistant Physicians on the wall beside it. “Dr. North? Mr. Caine and Mr. Evans are here to see you.”
“Send them in,” a voice calls. The receptionist gestures at the door, then hurries away.
The office is crowded, with two desks crammed inside along with filing cabinets and an assortment of chairs.
The man behind one of the desks is pale, as if he only sees the sun through windows, his blond hair receding from a high forehead.
A lit cigarette dangles from his lips as he scribbles something into the file before him.
When we enter, he glances up—then does a double-take upon seeing Adrian.
Maybe he didn’t expect a Black man to be sending him telegrams.
He removes the cigarette from his mouth and puts it out in a glass ashtray, his face assuming a friendly expression. “Good to see you, gentlemen! You’re investigating the outbreak of catatonia from tainted alcohol, yes?”
“Yes, sir.” Adrian offers him a close-lipped smile.
Dr. North glances at me. “And Mr. Caine, you’re having some difficulties with your memory?”
I want to deny it, seized with the sudden fear of being entombed in this place for the rest of my life. But I force the words out. “I’m afraid so.”
“Well, you’re in luck—my specialty is using hypnotism to treat everything from memory loss to criminal insanity.” He peers at me with watery blue eyes, as though hoping to see right into my skull. “I’m sure we can fix you up in just a few sessions.”
“We may not have time for that,” Adrian says smoothly. “But any assistance would be welcome. If you can tell us anything about the catatonic patients, we’d be most grateful.”
“There’s another patient here,” I add. “He was found raving in the marsh at Hart’s Leap? He attacked an investigator.”
“Mr. Casper Underwood, yes. I’m familiar with his case.” The doctor folds his hands and looks at us expectantly. “Would you like to speak with him first? Or would you prefer to observe the catatonic patients?”
“Mr. Underwood.” He’d asked if I was a sorcerer during our encounter in the marsh. The strange sculptures that seemed to be watching me, the mournful sound issuing from their mouths. I’d put it down to the wind and my own disturbed mind, but what if it hadn’t been?
How often in my life have I brushed against magic and never even suspected it?
Dr. North stands up and edges his way out from behind his desk, trying not to bump into the rest of the furniture crammed in the room. “Follow me, then. His is a very interesting case, though I don’t know how enlightening you’ll find an interview with him.”
He leads us out of the office and back to the main corridor running through the administrative block. “The kitchen and dining rooms are straight ahead, at the rear of the building,” North tells us, as if giving a tour. “The women’s wing to our left, and the men’s to our right.”
A steel door blocks our path into the men’s wing. North unlocks it, ushers us through, then carefully locks it again behind us. “This first ward is for the convalescent patients.”
My limbs go weak as I stare down the hall with its walls of white plaster.
The hospital I was sent to along with some of my fellow shell-shock sufferers had been a repurposed sanatorium, meant only to house us for a brief period before being either returned to the battlefield or discharged from the army.
But the feel is the same: a long hallway with men drifting purposelessly up and down, nurses in their white uniforms, the lingering smell of Lysol.
“Are you all right, Mr. Caine?” Dr. North asks.
I take a deep breath, forcing myself to note all the many differences between this asylum and the hospital where I recovered what I could of my mind.
The secure doors, the metal grates to keep the inmates from accessing the stairway to my right, the bars on the windows.
Even the convalescent patients aren’t trusted, it seems.
“I’m fine,” I reply through a throat gone dry. “Please, let’s continue.”
We pass by the bathroom and some of the patient rooms. The rooms seem to have been designed for a single occupant, but most have two or even three iron beds within.
“You appear to have quite a few patients,” Adrian observes.
Dr. North sighs. “Unfortunately. The hospital was already over its intended capacity before the war, and every year brings more and more ex-service men needing care.”
If I find myself confined here, at least I’ll be in familiar company.
Halfway down the ward, the corridor opens up into a parlor to either side.
Men sit talking or playing cards, or in a few cases stare listlessly out the windows overlooking the wide lawn.
Even though they all seem docile, a male nurse keeps a watchful eye on them.
The next two wards, which North tells us are for “less excited” patients, are identical in structure to the first, though the patients seem to deteriorate more the farther we go from the administrative center.
They no longer play cards and gossip, but rather sit staring into nothing, mutter to themselves, or shuffle aimlessly up and down the hall.
Many are held to their beds by restraints, gazing at the ceiling or shouting to be let loose as we pass them by.
My hands are shaking by the time we reach the final ward. We pause at the heavy door while North unlocks it. “This ward is for the excitable patients, of which I’m afraid Mr. Underwood is one.”
“What’s his diagnosis?” Adrian asks.
“Dementia praecox.” Dr. North gestures to us to precede him into the ward. “I’ve had several sessions with him, and I’m certain a breakthrough in treatment will come soon.”
The differences between this ward and the ones we’ve already passed through are immediately obvious.
The walls are covered in yellow tile rather than plaster, no doubt for easier cleaning.
No one wanders the halls, and there’s no parlor or other communal space.
Only a line of doors, each with a wire-mesh window to allow the patients inside to be observed.
I swallow convulsively. “W-why is he kept here?”
“He’s been quite unmanageable, I fear.” Dr. North turns to the male nurse seated at his station just inside the ward. “We’re here to see Caspar Underwood. How has he been today?”
“Ate his breakfast nice and quiet,” the nurse reports. “Not a peep out of him since.”
“Good—it sounds like he’s having a lucid day.
” North leads us to the third cell down, and I’m careful not to look through the windows at the other poor souls kept here.
Someone at the other end of the hall begins shouting curses at the sound of our footsteps, but both doctor and nurse seem inured to such sounds, not so much as glancing in his direction.
The nurse unlocks the third cell down and swings open the door. I start to follow Dr. North inside, but freeze in the doorway.
Though in reality it’s been a year and a half since I saw Underwood, to my perception it’s been less than a week, and the change wrought in him is shocking.
His beard has gone completely gray, and both it and his hair are wild and unkempt.
He’s lost weight, cheeks hollowed out and clothes billowing around him.
A heavy leather belt encircles his waist, with a chain attached to the back.
The chain leads to a sturdy iron ring set in the tiled wall.
He’s seated on the floor; the cell is utterly barren of any furniture. Light spills in through a grate set high in the wall—it must be dark as pitch in here at night. No breath of air makes its way in, and the place stinks of sweat and yet more Lysol.
“Good afternoon, Caspar,” Dr. North says jovially. “You have visitors who’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Adrian clears his throat behind me, and I belatedly step into the room. Underwood looks up at me, and his eyes go wide.
“No!” He scrambles back, pressing against the wall as if he wants to sink through it. “This is all your fault! Get away!”