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As I promised myself, I braved the halls of Asylum in the night. It is as if the whole place transforms without the weakest of daylight streaming in to keep its horrors at bay. Doors open and close with no one to handle them. An old medical cart with one squeaky wheel pushes itself along the corridors and I swear that I can hear an old woman mumbling to herself when I dare too near the nurses' station. Since the sun went down, I can hear a child crying. At first, the sound came from down the hall and I went in search of it, wholly expecting a trap but unwilling to let the possibility – however faint – of a suffering innocent to go unaided. Venturing near with brick held at the ready, I edged around the door jamb and peeked inside. Nothing. The room was empty, save for a rusty set of bed springs and a bent IV pole. The sound vanished as soon as I searched the room, proving to my satisfaction that nothing could be hiding from me. A few minutes later, it began again. Every now and again, I caught a glimpse of something out the corner of my eye as I passed an open room – a woman standing beside a bookshelf, a man sitting alone in a wheel chair, a young couple kneeling next to a bed. Time and again when I turned to see if my eyes had deceived me with some trick of the shadows, I found nothing. It sounds mad, but the walls of this place mumble at night, whispering back bits of ancient conversations; diagnoses and prognoses and the mournful responses of those who received them. And then there are the locked doors. Something is behind them – something that stirs only in the night. A gentle hand that can be heard brushing over the metal, while a plaintive (and dare I say wholly corporeal) voice begs to be set free. They promise to behave themselves, offering all manner of apologetic cries and whispering offers they cannot keep. Truth be told, I am unsure if whatever dwells behind those doors is addressing me, or the cold metal which imprisons them. I cannot stay here any longer. It's just… There's too much here. This is the first time since my arrival that I have considered the possibility of madness. If this were all just the workings of a mind driven beyond the edge, or the illusions of some feverish dream, then none of this is real. I could forget all of it, all the people and creatures and terrors which have stalked my every moment for the last two months and just go back to sleep without worrying about the consequences of a slip in my vigilance. But, no. The dreaming do not know they are asleep any more than the madman recognizes that he is mad. As much as I wish it were not the case, I am here, I am alone and I must do whatever I can to survive. I am following a the highway towards Altar. God help me. |
