The Asylum Chapter 6

Chapter 6 “What next, do you think, Pete?”
“Well, we’re agreed that we can’t get that interface off you until we get these gauntlets off me – it’s another two-person job. So do we get this suit off me or let someone else out first?”
“Not Amelie!”
“No – but Jonas or Elise? What do you think? I don’t think Elise will be much help – and Jonas’s hands are steadily getting worse.”
Olaf thought for a bit.
“I think we probably ought to do Jonas first. He really didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“None of us did,” Pete retorted, with a sudden flash of anger.
“So you haven’t heard Jonas’s story then? I’ll let him tell it to you…But those three cells are on a totally different locking system, and it might take me a while to hack into it. We’re going to have to choose: Jonas or your suit.” Pete had originally meant to go with getting the suit off himself first, but as he stood outside Jonas’s cell and listened to his story, and looked at the metal slowly but surely attaching itself to Jonas’s hands and feet, he changed his mind.
“That’s what we’ve all got in common here, you know,” Jonas said a little bitterly. “No family to miss us. The others because their families are dead, and me because mine want me as good as dead.”
A sudden thought struck Pete. “How did they know about this place? How did they know to come here, to Dr Wolvercote?”
“I don’t know. I’d never heard of him before. But as they were leaving – my two uncles – one of them said something about someone way back in the family past. Aloysius, I think his name was.”
Maybe there would be something in the journals. He’d tell Ariadne to look out for the name. The combination of sympathy for Jonas and relief at having that helmet off his head made Pete unusually approachable for the next few days. While Olaf tried to work out how to open the doors, he and Ariadne continued their research into the history of the asylum.
“There’s someone called Francesca here. It says he used the garden treatment on her, and it seems to have had the desired effect, but it is sadly unscientific, and there must be a way to change people without having to resort to such crudely physical methods. Then he’s onto something else…”Ariadne flipped over the pages, looking for more details.
“Francesca Wallington?”
“Yes! I’ve just found the whole case study.” “Always, they bring me such silly girls! No strength of mind or purpose, and any conclusions I can draw from their behaviour is, of necessity, flawed. For this one, I shall consider what the Ancient Greeks called Panic, or fear of Pan. I will see what I can do by exposing her to Nature’s own elements – and we will begin with a night planted in the ground like a tree.” “A promising beginning. I am now surrounding her with such a dense hedge of plants that she cannot move nor see beyond it. It will be interesting to see if Panic does indeed set in.”
“Truly successful, I feel – after three days she is starting nervously at every sound. Naturally, she has been given food and water – starving someone into submission is so primitive. But I still find these methods lack true scientific principles. I have great hopes for my new machine, when I have finished designing it.” “I have returned their ward to them, now as pliant as could be wished, and ready to accept that her only role in life is to go and be a governess. It seems that she is far prettier than the daughters of the house, and too attractive to any would-be suitors.” “This is her fate, and she has to accept it. Truly, though, women are such encumbrances, and so little use, except for producing children.” “Honestly!” Ariadne said. “What a chauvinist! But how did you know her name?” Pete put his book down, and she copied him as he began to explain.
“That was what brought me here. I found my great-great etc. grandmother’s diaries. Sarah had been a “patient” of the first Dr Wolvercote.” As he talked, Sarah began to take shape in Ariadne’s imagination.
“She was passionate, wilful, headstrong – yes, but also loving and warm. But this didn’t suit her parents. They needed her to be compliant and obedient – they didn’t want her as she was. So they brought her here, for Dr Wolvercote to ‘treat’. She describes it all in her diaries.”
“He’d just built his new machine – ironically, the same one that was used on me – and she was his first subject. She describes it as feeling like the sands of her personality were trickling away between her fingers. I felt as if everything was being sucked out of me.” “She wasn’t the only person in these attics at that time. So when she was – finally – released, she made it her business to track down as many of them as she could.” “She’d seen their despair, and had determined that she would do what she could to pay back the people who’d done that to them.” “But how did she get away? Did she escape?”
“Oh no. But she writes: ‘It was as though my enforced sojourn in that accursed place had endowed me with great clarity of mind. It was evident that whilesoever I failed to conform to my Father’s desire for a malleable marriage counter, or my Mother’s desire for a submissive, obedient fashion plate, my freedom would be forever uncertain. Therefore, I determined to return home and act as they wished me to act.” “Did you learn that off by heart? Or have you always had a photographic memory?” Ariadne was truly impressed by the way he quoted for Sarah’s diaries. “What happened next?”
“She couldn’t cave in too quickly – that would have been too suspicious. She’d resisted him so strongly. So she had to endure another month of his ministrations, gradually becoming more apathetic and docile, until in the end she would sit obediently in the chair, and wait for him to experiment on her.”
Ariadne’s comment niggled at Pete – he hadn’t ever had a photographic memory, and yet the pages of Sarah’s diary had unrolled before his eyes. “That’s awful! What happened to her next?”
“She went home and played the dutiful daughter, married the man her father wanted her to marry. But she tracked down as many other victims as she could.”
“How did she do that?”
“Augustus Wolvercote had a secret vanity. He marked them all – a little beauty spot on their upper lip. All Sarah had to do was to ask them if they’d always had it – and watch their faces.” “And then what?”
“Oh,” Pete said calmly. “Then she set about getting her revenge. Come on, we’d better get back to these journals.” While Olaf worked on cracking the lock program, Pete completely physically removed the electronic locks he’d managed to disable – as Olaf pointed out, they didn’t want to re-activate them. Ariadne was locked in now by means of a big old-fashioned iron key. Unfortunately, it was just as effective as the electronic one. Cracking the lock code was taking a long time. Pete could have helped Olaf greatly if there had been any schematics for him to see – as it was, they were both working somewhat in the dark. Pete did manage to get the electronic wristbands off them both, which felt like a little progress. The longer it took, the more frustrated Pete grew, and the more his anger against Ariadne re-surfaced. He began to take it out on her. When he knew Olaf was busy, he would take Ariadne into the other laboratory, and force her to sit where so many test subjects had sat before. Then he would tell her stories. “I’ve just found Aloysius’s story. You should hear this.”
“Finally! I have a man on whom I can test my theories. One Aloysius – and in the prime of his life! It seems his family are willing to pay me handsomely to make him disappear into my asylum. It couldn’t be better. His physical strength is great though – the restraints I use for those feeble women will not hold him, and I have been forced to create something much more robust before I have been able to try my machine out on him.” “I am continuing my experiments on him, when I have the time. He finds it hard to believe that he will not be rescued, and this belief seems to hamper the function of the machine, so it is necessary for me to systematically undermine that belief. Putting a collar on those women went a long way towards sapping their resistance, so I am applying the same technique here. And thanks to those years of experimenting on the Norwich boy, I can be certain that this alloys is strong, and yet will not react adversely with his skin.” “Once I can break his insistent belief in his rescue, then I can truly work on his mind, and see how far it is possible to reshape it.” “When I am not testing him, then he spends his time alone in the cellar, in the dark. Eventually, he will have to give up hope. I am wondering if he might also be a useful subject for testing the efficacy of some of the cellar treatment rooms.”
“How apt, Ariadne. Without knowing it, I might have chosen the very collar Aloysius was forced to wear.” Pete also made her choose the oldest and most ragged clothes to wear. Olaf didn’t notice, but Jonas did. Ariadne didn’t dare tell him everything Pete was doing – he’d threatened to do so much worse if she mentioned it – but when Jonas asked her if Pete was making her wear that dress, she nodded miserably.
“Has he hit you?”
“No. Never that.” But she had been frightened more than once: each time though, she’d seen him rein in his anger. He was nearly there! He’d almost cracked it! Another two weeks of non-stop work, but he’d almost done it. There was one tiny error somewhere – he’d checked Jonas’s door, and it wasn’t unlocked, but it should be. But he was so tired…He just couldn’t think straight any more. In the morning though… He climbed into his bed, which was out on the landing – like Pete, he’d had more than enough of being in a cell – and fell asleep, exhausted.
In the morning, Ariadne had vanished from her cell.