by Colleen Anderson
Colleen Anderson says: “Our everyday language is peppered with idioms that we don’t always realize were due to the influence of such writers as Shakespeare, Dickens and Poe. ‘Oh he must have a picture hanging in the closet’ references Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. And ‘The lunatics are running the asylum,’ comes directly from Poe’s ‘The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether’. That story is considered one of his comedic works and is definitely satirical. I added a darker vein.”
* * * * *
The labyrinthine country roads, land as flat as an old politician’s speech, made a GPS useless near the Dewdney Trunk Road. It twines several cities, running the perimeter and weaving the farmlands together. The daylong search led me to think that Professor Fayther’s directions had steered me wrong. So odd a duck was he, I had never been sure what constituted alcohol-conjured ramblings and what a small distillation of truth. Perhaps it was a wild goose chase and there was no asylum. Yes, asylum. Such a quaint word conjuring images of madmen and Gothic edifices, which was what I hungered to find. My stomach growled and I peered at the scrawled directions again. Every road looked the same, leading nowhere but to another field, or an abandoned, ramshackle house. Harvest season had ended; the sun now hunkered pallid in the leeched sky, the fields wasting to yellow.
I drove on as my need grew. Except for the tongues of pavement, I could have been transported back in time. The professor had assured me that this last relic to an archaic institution for the mentally ill still existed. Beyond the government’s eye, the rich sent their embarrassments there, away from public scrutiny.
The sun was a bleary orb by the time I spied a structure in the distance. The first unusual sign in the Fraser Valley countryside was a rusted iron fence with fang-sharp spikes piercing the low lying clouds that cloaked the evening sky. Lonely birch and oak trees worked at carpeting the road with an enticement of leaves. I wanted Gothic, praying that the inhabitants were mad as loons and that the madhouse was decrepit, ghastly and forgotten. I was far from the nearest town. Should I have to stay the night I would find somewhere to sleep, even if it was on an old couch.
The road curved gently, revealing the peeling facade of what once would have been a mansion, one turret and three gables visible. I parked in a yard devoid of any cars and walked up to a sturdy wooden door. My keys went into one pocket of my jacket and I patted the other, making sure all my tools were there. I could find no buzzer, not even a knocker. I looked around, noting the tarnished doorknob, the damp smell of mold that permeated the autumn air, the reluctance of the dwindling light to touch the wood. Eventually I discovered a rotting cord and, fearing it would break in my hand, pulled it. I expected a delay at best, or no answer at worst, but the door swung open immediately.
A grinning woman with frizzled blonde hair and tattoos of feathers and waves down her bare arm greeted me. “Yes, ma’am. How can I help you?”
Her retro tortoiseshell, horn rim glasses surprised me as did her nurse’s scrubs, and I took a step back. “Is this the Rockyview? I’m looking for Dr. Canard.”
She smiled again and beckoned me into a bright butter-yellow corridor with warm fluorescent lighting. I frowned at the boring moderness, and then watched a man approach. He was tall, bearded, with a long moustache pointed on both ends, and beautiful eyes like green glass. He looked like a hipster or someone affecting steampunk fashion, wearing a pocket watch tethered to a burgundy collared vest, a white shirt with an ascot, and slim pants. “Dr. Canard,” I questioned, reaching out to shake his hand.
He stepped back from my touch, opening his arms wide. “Welcome. You must be Felicia Jones that Professor Fayther sent. You are interested in our asylum, yes?”
I licked my lips, trying to savor the atmosphere. “Yes, I’m working on my PhD in psychology, and my thesis is comparing different modes of rehabilitation used in institutions, and their effectiveness in integrating patients back into society.”
In truth, I cared less about the modes and more about madness, eagerly anticipating a diet of lunatics, and their absolute lack of inhibitions regarding social conventions. What can one gain by cracking the walnut and tasting the furrows of the meat? It was into such minds that I hoped to delve, to satiate my constant hunger. I queried about a tour and meeting some of the inhabitants.
“Of course,” replied Dr. Canard, “but we were about to eat. Join us — it’s communal — and I can give you a tour after, yes?”
I smiled at him. “All right, I am hungry… for information as well.”
The nurse grinned widely, as if I’d just accepted an invitation to a ball, and led the way, her floral tunic like a small garden. Dr. Canard brought up the rear. He chattered as we moved down the hall, his voice drifting airily behind me. “We’ve been trying a new way of rehabilitating our patients. We have two areas, as you will see, and they can choose in which area they spend their time. Only those with the more excitable conditions are kept confined.”
We passed what could be considered a living room with a big screen TV, several computers on tables against one wall, a collection of books, and various board games. People were engaged in assorted activities and dressed in T-shirts, jeans, skirts. It completely contradicted the outer facade. I was disappointed by such ordinary attire, and I was famished. I sniffed the air, sifting the stale odors of bacon, sweat, tobacco and onions. There was the underlying tang — a frisson of copper and blood and charcoal — that told me madness lived here.
“Why does the Rockyview look so old on the outside and so very modern inside?”
There was a pause, and I looked back. Dr. Canard wore a thunderous frown, but he smiled when he noted me watching. “We use the facade to keep the curious at bay. They are less likely to… interfere.”
But as we moved farther into the asylum’s interior, the hallway narrowed and the color slowly changed so that when I noted the drab institutional green and the grey and white linoleum beneath my feet I blinked, wondering if I’d only imagined the brighter corridor.
The building went deeper than I had surmised and we entered what must have been the original structure. Dr. Canard flickered into my peripheral vision and I turned. He seemed pale, as if recovering from an illness. He gestured right, toward a large room with wooden tables and simple utility chairs. “That’s where our clients eat. And through here…” He now moved into the lead as the nurse who had followed us went off calling others to dinner. “…is where we eat.”
The ornate room was ribbed in dark wood. Several Tiffany lamps painted rainbows on Persian carpets, and numerous candlesticks adorned a plethora of cabinets and side hutches. An oval mahogany table was at the heart of the room, with seating for twenty. People entered from several doorways, some dressed in scrubs, others in street wear. As they sat, tureens and platters of food were brought in. Someone pulled a chair out for the doctor and he gingerly sat on the edge of the seat; his overly-stiff posture made it look as if he would take flight at any moment.
He smiled at me and nodded. “Go ahead, we don’t stand on form here.”
The food was peculiar: peaches on mashed potatoes, carrots mixed with grapes, and a whole roasted animal carcass, disturbingly the size and shape of a skinned cat, including a long tail, withered little ears, and the feline face with remnants of claws on each foot. The deep red meat was displayed on platters heaped high with a sprinkling of colored marshmallows. I scooped a bit of the tamer food onto my plate. I nibbled a carrot but tasted only copper. I tried a slice of safer looking meat, most likely ham, and tasted charcoal.
Putting my fork down, I asked, “Does your staff stay through the night?”
The doctor nodded. “They do, but not all. They have to eat after all, and someone must bring in supplies.”
Several of the staff nodded. “Eat,” one small woman said.
“Yes,” smirked a hawk-nosed man. “Eat.”
They started to laugh. “Eat. Heh heh. Oh that’s good. Eat!”
The room rumbled with laughter and the nurses and aides pointed forks of food at each other and screamed “Eat!” They laughed and guffawed until they were nearly falling from their chairs, tears streaming down their cheeks, food spraying from their mouths.
“Enough!” shouted Dr. Canard, and immediately they all fell silent. The overhead lights flickered and dimmed, the glow of the candles adding to the ethereal glare.
I looked at the doctor but he glowered down the table, his food untouched.
I quivered. The energy that seemed to infect the staff ran through me as if a lightning storm were near.
“You’ve barely touched your food, Miss Jones.”
I stared at the bizarre concoctions and watched a woman with freckles nearly the color of the carrots shovel marshmallows and meat into her mouth, barely stopping to swallow. “I’m just not that hungry.”
Which was a lie. I was famished, and had been hunting a long time for just such a place as this. Out of the way, forgotten, filled with the delectable strangeness of those who untether their minds from reality’s shores.
I looked up at Dr. Canard and again noticed flickering. But it wasn’t the lights. I likened it more to bringing an image into focus, one that had faded over time. “You’re not eating either.”
His smile creased his face. “I don’t often. That is, I take my meals later.”
A food fight began at the other end of the table until he cleared his throat.
“Tell me,” I asked, trying to ignore the strange food orgy. “What is your success rate for returning your patients to normal society?”
“Alas,” he sighed. “What is normal? You see, our guests are of an unusual disposition. They will maintain to their last breath that they are fine, and refuse to see their behavioral flaws. The worst of these must be confined so that they do no damage to themselves or us.”
“Indeed,” called out the hawk-nosed man. “They walk like a chicken,” and he jumped up and strutted around the table with his hands tucked into his armpits. “And talk like a chicken.” He crowed and clucked until Canard yelled, “Silence! You give me no rest. My only boon is that you’ll die or move on, and leave me in peace.”
The dining room doors slammed shut. I was as much amazed by this display as I was by the doctor’s outburst. In all other institutions quiet and behind-the-scenes reprimands would have happened. This was as refreshing as it was unorthodox. I couldn’t help but inhale deeply, my tongue tasting the air.
A plump little woman to my right laughed. “That’s nothing. Mere pranks and antics. Why, a more absurd and disturbing sort was the woman who howled and snarled and thought herself a werewolf.”
I reached for a bun, thinking it the safer sort of meal from the menagerie of food, and she growled. I snatched my hand back and she lunged towards me, jaws snapping, and then leaped onto the table on all fours and howled.
I couldn’t completely stifle my smile. The lunatics were running the asylum but it mattered not to me. “Dr. Canard!” I spoke loudly for the raucous staff was gaining in volume as they indulged in the one-upmanship game. “Do I take it that you have no criminally insane here?”
He steepled his fingers, glaring across them at his unruly personnel. “Oh very few, Miss Jones, very few. We have a few personalities that could be dangerous, but we take care of them.”
“Might it be possible to get that tour before it gets much later? It’s a long drive back from here.”
I noticed he had not touched his food at all. That tang of madness was becoming thick enough that I thought I would be able to sip it straight from the air.
“All right. I think you are ready, yes?”
Just then someone shrieked and the cacophony continued. As I turned back to Dr. Canard, I blinked. Did his hand just pass through the chair?
“All right, everyone! Dinner’s over. Clean up the mess, please.”
As we turned away, there was little to indicate the nurses and orderlies were different from children at a birthday party.
Canard moved into the hallway and away from the brighter rooms, explaining, “These next suites, isolated from the others, offer a more sedate environment.” The air felt weighted as if it hadn’t moved in years.
Canard’s white shirt seemed to stand out wraithlike as the shadows absorbed the color from his clothing. He never stopped to turn on a light; in fact there seemed to be no switches, just lit sconces along the walls.
“We like to keep this institution private, with little interference from the outside world.”
As he prattled on, I had to clasp my hands to keep from fidgeting, my need growing greater, almost unquenchable. “Where do you keep those with the more excitable conditions? I’d like to examine them.”
Canard grew silent. I followed behind his ghostly figure that seemed to fade into the ever-darkening hallway. I had to reach out, feeling my way along the walls. A door creaked open ahead and he replied, “They’re down here. You might want to grab a lantern.”
“Where?” I asked, unable to locate the door he had opened. A lantern? Gone were the last vestiges of modern conveniences.
I bumped into a hall table. Barely able to see in the murky corridor, I patted along the surface until I felt the base of a small metal lamp, and next to it a box of small wooden matches. I fumbled one match out and struck it, causing shadows to caper up the wall.
I thought it unusual that he didn’t help me and that no other staff were present. I turned the knob of the antique glass chimney, adjusting the flame, and it settled into an amber glow. Turning toward the door, Dr. Canard seemed to materialize in the light. “After you, Miss Jones.”
A cool breeze wafted up from the dark mouth of the door’s interior, causing the light to dance. With it came a complex odor.
I hesitated but moved toward the doorway, inky shadows dancing before me. The dark maw led down steep stairs to an underground chamber. The smell of rotting socks and something sharp and stinging assaulted my nose. I licked my lips and ran my tongue over my teeth.
The air was different than that above, more copper, less charcoal, as if down here madness grew in its embryonic stage. Edging down the steps, the light crawled over shapes behind rustic bars. A grubby hand reached through. “Please, help us. We don’t belong here.”
“Why not?” I asked, holding the lamp high, trying to get a view of the incarcerated.
“We’re not mad!” A woman’s voice whispered.
The basement cells were stone walls and floors, with the fourth wall nothing more than sturdy metal bars. There were four cells in all, two on each side of the wide central area, much like a prison. Each ‘room’ held four cots.
I set the lamp on the floor so that I could examine the lock plates set in the inch-thick bars. I ran my fingers over the metal, granular with rust. The cells must have been here a long time.
I could make out the dim shapes of three inmates, each in his or her own cell. The cloying odor of shit and sweat swirled and mixed with the copper scent.
Another, a gravelly male voice, cried out, “We were the staff here! They’ve imprisoned us. Please, call the police!”
It was at this that Dr. Canard spoke up. “You see, they have the worst delusions, believing they are sane.”
“I see. Well, perhaps you can show me some of the others upstairs now.” I turned toward Dr. Canard and he wavered into view. Of his ethereal nature, I no longer had doubt.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “You see, Miss Jones, you suffer the same malady, yes? This belief in being sane, of being above those you call insane and would study. It is here you’ll reside for awhile until we know you are cured.”
“But I’m not ill, Dr. Canard. And while you cannot leave this place there is no reason I should not.”
He smiled and it was a terrible sight to see in the dim lighting. People moaned behind me. Soft weeping began. “But you shall not.”
He raised his arms, pale and translucent, the weak light casting no shadow behind him. Yet for all his ephemeral nature, a ghostly wind blew dirt and debris into a dervish. My hair whipped about me and as I strove to see in the sputtering illumination, I was knocked off my feet and slammed into one of the cell doors behind me.
The gate crashed open, I fell in, then the door shut, the lock snickering closed. Beyond, Canard floated in the corridor, spinning slowly as he looked at each of us.
Wiping grit from my eyes, I called out, “You can’t do this! Professor Fayther will notice when I don’t return. He’ll alert the authorities.”
Canard laughed as he drifted up the stairs, leaving the light where I had placed it on the floor. “I think not, for you see, Miss Jones, he is my jailer as I am yours. He sends me tidbits from time to time to amuse me, for my… experiments.”
With that, the upper door slammed shut and I was left to view what I could of my dim surroundings. My hunger was all-consuming as I turned to survey my fellow inmates.
I had searched for years for that right blend — like sugar and spice, like sweet and savory — and it had been in madness where I found my tastes best fit. Now Canard thought he could keep me in this place that time forgot. Like him, I didn’t want the authorities snooping. In the past I’d had to take pains to make my intentions circumspect, moving on from time to time. But here we would see who would be the keeper.
Two women and a man, bedraggled in rumpled and smelly clothing stared at me, their eyes deadened with hopelessness. “We were hoping you could save us,” said the skinny balding man. “But you’re one of us, one of us… n-now.”
“Oh I won’t save you,” I said as I moved closer to examine him. In fact, I was exactly where I wanted to be. The feeding ground was ripe. They had stewed in madness long enough that it would add texture and sustenance for me. There was ample food in this building.
I would have to feed carefully but one would keep me sated for a good long while. I pulled my toolkit from my dress pocket and just laid it near the lock— first, I had other needs. I reached through the bars and caressed the man’s leathery cheek. “I won’t save you but I can release you.”
I pulled his head close to the bars and kissed him, pushing my tongue between his lips to open him up. Then I began to suck the charcoal and copper and blood that swirled in his essence. At first he was pliant, possibly surprised by my youthful exuberance and unexpected passion. But then as I siphoned the redolent vapors and he felt his essence draining he struggled and flapped beneath my grip like a dying fish.
It took some time to drain him. As his struggles lessened, I felt my strength growing, my skin plumping to full youthfulness. I should have gone slower but it had been so long, and I greedily sucked down his soul. As his body emptied, he grew lighter in my arms, skin shrinking, desiccating. I released him and his mummified body clattered to the stone floor. I barely heard the screams of the others as I fed on the madness.
I had sought asylum, and had found it!
* * * * *