The Victorian Asylum
Short Story
August 18, 1887
Robert
Winters entered his beloved’s bedroom to find her hanging from the heating pipe
with the sheet from her little cot bed.
His heart stopped beating as he looked at her lifeless body just hanging
there, cold and dead.
“Why,
Elizabeth? Why?” He asked out loud.
Then
he remembered she kept a diary that would hold all the answers if it were
found. Before reporting her suicide, he
ransacked the room, looking for the leather bound book.
Where could she have hidden it? He wondered, looking for it in the
dresser that she shared with another girl, Nicole. It was nowhere to be found. Could it be that she had given it to Nicole?
They were roommates after all. Time went
by quickly and Robert gave up his search for the diary.
He
left the room and headed down to the nurse’s station to report Elizabeth
Dwyer’s suicide. It would get quite
frantic after that and he wouldn’t have the time to find that diary with all
the orderlies coming in to get her down from the pipe. Robert didn’t know if he could clean her up
for the shroud. He thought about leaving
that job for one of the other orderlies.
Then he grew concerned at what they might think and decided to do the
deed himself.
“Yes
Robert, may I help you?” Nurse Becker
asked as he approached her.
“Yes,
I’m afraid we’ve lost one. Elizabeth
Anne Dwyer has taken her life.”
“I
see,” said the nurse nonchalantly. The
nurse looked for Elizabeth’s
chart among the other charts and began writing something in it.
“I’ll
send for Dr. Hartford. In the meantime, you and Samuel can clean her up. You’ll find the shrouds in the back of the
linen closet,” she said coldly.
“Yes,
Nurse Becker,” he replied.
With that,
Robert went looking for Samuel Richards to have him help cut her down.
Already the
news had spread and the girls watched and cried as Robert and Samuel prepared Elizabeth’s body for the
shroud. Nicole pulled Heather aside and
whispered something to her. Heather
nodded and they turned back to the morbid scene.
Robert tried
not to cry as he washed her delicate body. The body he fell in love with. The
body he made love to. She wasn’t really
there anyway, he thought. She was
probably in limbo floating around with no place to go because she committed
suicide. Or perhaps she was burning in hell for her sins in which he were
responsible for, the courting, the love-making, all with a married man. He was coming to see her to tell her that he
committed his wife, Angela to the women’s ward on grounds for excessive sexual
desire. What did Dr. Hartford call that—The
Wandering Womb? He couldn’t
remember. Whatever the case, his wife
was gone and now so was his lover.
Elizabeth’s
preparation was nearly complete. Robert
found her brush and brushed her hair.
Then with Samuel’s help, they put on the shroud.
“What a
waste,” said Samuel. “Wonder why she did
it?”
“I’ve no clue,”
Robert lied. He had a feeling it was his
fault.
They put her
on the gurney and began the dirge down the hallway of the girl’s ward. All eyes
were on them, all with tears. The girls
had been close to her. Robert tried to
look at them to see if they knew anything.
Just the heartfelt stares of the
girls stared back at him.
The doctor
was waiting for them up at the nurse’s station.
“Is this the
girl?” The doctor asked.
“Yes, Dr. Hartford,” Robert
answered.
The doctor
turned to the desk and signed a paper.
It was more than likely the death certificate. Then Nurse Becker signed the same paper.
“Take her to the
morgue. I’ll send word to Ravenwood Hospital that we have organs for their
anatomy classes,” Dr. Hartford said.
Robert and
Samuel wheeled her body down the rest of the hallway, past the other girls who
were not ‘Ophelia’s’. Their rooms were
dark and damp, with cot mattresses lying on the floor for their beds. They were treated terribly, but not as bad as
someone who was sent to isolation. They
were sent to a cage in a dark room in the basement where the plague rats
roamed.
The morgue
was down in the basement too, underneath the surgery auditorium. No one went down there alone. It was said to be haunted by the asylum
inmates that died. Robert wondered if Elizabeth’s spirit was
there.
There were
two other bodies down in the morgue when Robert and Samuel arrived with Elizabeth. The mortician and his assistant looked up
from the body they were working on.
“Wheel the
body right over next to the man that’s draped and prepped for organ removal,” ordered
the mortician. “Oh my, a busy day we
have here and it’s just an hour after lunch.” He placed his scalpel down on the
table.
He walked
over to the fellows and looked at the grey colored face of the eighteen year
old girl.
“Pity, tsk,
tsk,” he muttered, shaking his head. He pulled the shroud down to expose the
neck.
“The bruises
around her neck indicate suicide by hanging; poor girl and such a pretty girl,
indeed.”
“Yes,” Robert
said absent mindedly. “She was one of
the Ophelia’s.”
“Ah yes, our
dear beautiful crazy girls, the good doctor’s pets. He will be sad that this one had taken her
life. My heavens, what a beautiful creature she was.”
Robert took a
chance to talk to the loony mortician who was a wise soul. Dr. Willard knew things and was full of
random knowledge, and could possibly know about the hauntings that were supposed
to have gone on down here in the morgue.
If he had seen anything or heard anything, then maybe it was possible
that he could see or hear his beloved, Elizabeth.
“So
are the rumors true, is this place haunted?” Robert asked
The dear
doctor dismissed his assistant and Samuel said he better get back to the
floor. The doctor then sat upon a stool
by a desk and started to look over the charts of the day.
“Now
let me see here,” the doctor started, “not too long ago I saw a spirit of a
young boy. He was one of my
patients. He had died of the plague and
almost a whole section of the hospital had to be shut down because of it. But yes, I met his spirit and all he could
manage to say was, Help us! I know not how to help, but I try to give him
company when I see him. I talk to him
and ask him to tell me how to help him and the others. Usually he never answers me. I don’t know if he can’t or won’t tell me. Spirits are strange like that. Then again, I’ve only met one,” he laughed.
Robert wanted
so badly to see Elizabeth’s
spirit, but he didn’t know if it was possible.
He wondered if he could sneak back into the morgue and sit it out for an
entire night to see if she showed herself.
That was crazy thinking. Or was
it?
There
was proof that spirits have been seen.
Dr. Willard said he saw one of a young boy. Maybe it was possible he could see his
beloved and ask her why she committed suicide.
That
night, when all the wards were locked down and Robert was free to go home, he
snuck down to the basement and went into the morgue. Dr. Willard and his assistant were long gone
and the bodies were put away. Robert
turned the over-head lights on and sat at the desk. He thought about taking Elizabeth out from where she was stored to
take one last look at her before they stuck her in the crematory furnace then put her ashes in the ground in the cemetery
behind the asylum tomorrow. But he decided
against it, he just didn’t want to see her like that.
He
was tired from the day’s work and wanted nothing more than to go home and get
some sleep and not think about the day’s events. The large Victorian clock above him ‘tick-tock’
away the time slowly hypnotizing him to sleep.
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
Tick-tock
Robert felt
something touch his shoulder. He stood
up so fast he knocked over the chair and fell over backwards onto the floor.
“Who’s
there?”
He
saw nothing and heard only the clock ticking away the time.
Robert
clumsily got up off the floor and fixed the chair. He sat back down on it and let out a sigh of
relief. Maybe this wasn’t such a good
idea.
CLANG!
Robert
looked up and saw a surgical tray had fallen from its stand and onto the floor.
“I’m
not here to hurt anyone. I-I-I just want
to see my beloved, Elizabeth,”
he stammered.
The
temperature of the room got colder and then the lights went out.
“P-p-please
don’t hurt me.”
“Why
are you here?” a female voice asked.
He
looked ahead of him, but didn’t see anything.
“I’m
here to see my beloved, Elizabeth.”
“Go
away!” cried the voice.
He’d
recognize that voice anywhere. It was Elizabeth’s.
“Elizabeth, please show
yourself. I love you! I’m here for you.”
A
bluish-grey light began to take the form of a young woman holding a baby. It was Elizabeth,
alright. But to whom did the baby belong?
“I
don’t want to see you,” she said. Her voice
sounded tiny and echoic.
Robert
walked toward the light and saw the baby had her looks.
“Who’s
baby?”
“She’s
mine. Her name is Victoria.
I don’t know who the father is. This is the baby that came out of me when the
doctor took out my female parts.”
“She
looks like you,” Robert said.
“I
don’t care what you say. I’m in this
place because of you. I took my life
because of you and now I’m being punished for taking my life. I shall remain a ghost in this hellish place
for eternity! The only good thing about
this is Victoria.”
“I’m
so sorry, Elizabeth. I never meant you any harm. I even came to you this morning to tell you
Angela is in the women’s ward, that we could live in my house until we found
our own. But when I went to your room
this morning to get you, you were dead.”
Robert
wished he could hold her again, but even if she were here alive and well, she
would be mad at him still. She had every
right to be. He had betrayed her and he
had no right even to beseech her now.
“Robert,
it still wouldn’t be right. I would have
not gone with you to live in your house.
You betrayed me by lying to me
and I’ve been nothing but honest with you this entire time.”
He
lowered his head in shame. “I will leave
you, Elizabeth Anne, and never search you out again. I am sorry I did this to you.”
With
that, Robert started to leave the morgue.
Elizabeth
floated off.
The
lights came on and Robert was all alone again.
The temperature began to rise and all seemed well.
Robert wasn’t well. He was sad and upset with himself. He destroyed a girl’s life—one whom he loved
so very much—in life and in afterlife.
He would leave her alone for now, but he was greedy and he would be back
to see her again.
Copyright ©
Karen Elizabeth Waters 2012
Edited by S.B. LaCroix
