The Asylum Chapter 7

It was Pete who said to the others that she was missing, Pete who went down the stairs and came up again, with a piece of fabric from her tattered dress, saying he’d found it wedged in the secret door to the library, and Pete who said she must have run away, leaving them all. Olaf took it all in his stride, immersed in his code again, but Jonas was hurt. She wasn’t that heavy – it was going to be easy to force her to walk. And the click of the lock being oh-so-gently eased open hadn’t woken her. Now – the hood over the head and the gag in her mouth before she was properly awake. The collar had been a stroke of genius – she could be led like a dog. Ariadne could see nothing as she was forced down the stairs, gripped by a metal hand. Jonas? Olaf had hoped to free him last night. But then an arm guided her round a corner – cold metal again. Pete. What was he doing to her? Still unable to see, she was made to stand with her face pressed against the wall while he tied her to a hook, so close and so tight that she couldn’t move. There were subdued noises and clinking from the workbench, and a brief glimmer of light behind her. Then the hood was taken from her head.
“Your turn to see what it’s like,” a voice whispered from behind her. Hands – clumsy metal hands – reached round her, and cold metal enclosed her head and her face. She heard the catches – those complicated locks – click home – and then the hood was replaced, and she couldn’t see again.
There was a ripping noise, as a piece was torn from her skirt. A lock grated and a door creaked open. She was untied and forced to walk forwards, turn and sit. Those cold metal fingers tied her wrists up in the ragged strips of her skirt. “Don’t move,” the whispered voice said. She heard the scrape of a match, smelt it, and then through the hood she could see a faint glow.
“It won’t last long.” Another chilling whisper in the dark. The door closed, the key turned in the lock. Heavy footsteps went across the room, and then there was the faint clink of the key being set down on the workbench. The Ariadne heard metal feet on the rungs of the ladder. Desperately, she fought to pull the hood off her head, to make one last appeal, but by the time she’d freed her wrists, all she saw was one metal heel, disappearing out of sight. A wave of utter despair swept over her. She was alone, in this dark room, and no-one would hear her if she called.
And who knew what Pete would do when he came back? Her tiny cage contained a bucket, a dipper of water – and a candle that would burn out and leave her in complete darkness. And now it was her turn to wear a metal helmet as well.
“I wish I’d never come here!” she cried out. But if she hadn’t come, the others would all have died. Did she really wish that? She lay on the bench, watching the candle. Eventually, it began to flicker and sink, and then she was alone in the dark. That morning, they got Jonas’s cell door open. Jonas, who was a refreshingly normal young man, hugged them both exuberantly, and then marched up and down the corridor several times.
“It’s so nice not having to stop after three strides!”
“I was so close, last night,” Olaf said. “Only one tiny error! We can let Elise out as well – maybe she’ll be able to help get your suit off. And then we can do my helmet.” “But can you do anything about my face and hands? Or am I going to look like this forever? In which case, I might as well stay locked up.” They released Elise’s lock, but it soon became clear that she would not be able to help get Pete out of his suit – nor Olaf’s helmet off his head. Her hands shook so much. And when they took her into the lab, she stood there, frozen in panic, and then began to moan softly. With Ariadne gone, and Elise useless, the only option was to find a way to reverse what was happening to Jonas’s hands. Olaf set to work at once – but again, it was going to be slow! Jonas joined Pete in going through the files – and tried not to look too closely at how much his hands and feet were beginning to resemble Pete’s suit. The only plus was that Pete’s suit was showing no signs of grafting itself to his skin – not so far, anyway. Dr Wolvercote had been planning to try some new process – but his death had prevented him from doing so, and Pete was heartily grateful. It might have worked. Three days out of his cell, and just walking up and down the corridor wasn’t enough for Jonas any more. Pete was busy in the lab, reading out results to Olaf as he ran tests, so Jonas set off down the stairs. He’d seen nothing of the asylum apart from this attic: he’d been brought here drugged, and awoken in that little cell, to hear his uncles finalising his fate with Dr Wolvercote. The door at the end of the corridor led to a ladder going down into darkness – Jonas went to see what was down there. After all, there was no-one else here, so nothing to fear. He got to the bottom of the ladder, and was just feeling for the light switch that, logically, should be somewhere nearby, when a faint whimpering sound made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. He froze – and then, very carefully, began to feel round again. Something else was down here. He pulled the switch. Jonas looked around, and saw, in the dim light, a cellar, a cage in the corner of it, and, hiding her eyes against the sudden light… “Ariadne?” Jonas went closer. “Ariadne, is that you? What are you doing here? How did you get here?” She came towards him, still blinking after so long in the dark.
“Pete. Pete did this.”
Jonas was shocked – but, sadly, not surprised. He knew Pete’s obsession with making someone pay for what had happened to them – and the tortured logic that insisted Ariadne had inherited not only Dr Wolvercote’s money, but also his debts. “Where’s the key?” He looked around, and spotted it on the far side of the room. “I’ll let you out.” “There’s no point. He’ll just do something else dreadful to me.”
Jonas was filled with pity for her. Like him, she was being unfairly treated just for who she had been born to be.
“What can I do?” he asked, half aloud.
“I’d love some food. I haven’t had any since he put me down here. I don’t know how long ago that was.”
“This is three days!” Jonas was horrified. “He didn’t leave you any food?”
“No. Just water.”
“I can and will get you some food – and I’ll do something about that bucket as well. That’s smelly. I can’t get you much food though, I’m afraid.”
“Anything, please.” Jonas managed to come back down again, unnoticed, with a little food, and Ariadne ate it gratefully.
“Listen. There’s one thing you could do. Take the key and hide it. If he can’t get at me, then I’m safe.”
“Leave you here? Alone in the dark? Ariadne, come back upstairs with me. I’ll protect you.”
But she was too afraid, and in the end he agreed, and left with the key, promising to return at some time tomorrow, with more food.
Alone in the dark again, Ariadne lay down on the crude bench and closed her eyes to shut out the blackness. Olaf continued his research, and Pete and Jonas continued alternately studying the journals, and helping him. Jonas felt slightly edgy round Pete, and their relationship changed subtly – but they needed to work together if they were all to get out of this place. There had to be a way to reverse the process: of that, Olaf was sure. But the crucial, up-to-date records weren’t on the lab computer – Olaf suspected that Francis Wolvercote had followed his normal pattern of making notes by hand, and then entering them when he was sure he’d finished. And he’d just started something new on Jonas. The notes were probably locked in the safe in his office, but they might as well have been on the moon for all the use they were to Olaf right now. Meanwhile, downstairs in the cellar, Ariadne remained safely locked in the little cage. At some point each day, Jonas managed to sneak downstairs and bring her some food, and talk with her a little, but other than that, she was alone in the darkness.
“Ariadne. Please let me set you free.”
“No. I’m safe from Pete in here. While you’ve got the key, he can’t reach me.” “He came down again last night. It’s every three days. I couldn't see him - I heard the scrape of metal on the ladder. He filled up the water, and gave me a little food again – but such a little! If it wasn’t for you, I’d be slowly starving to death – I think that’s what he wants.”
“Ariadne. I can protect you. It’s only at night that you’re not safe from things like this.” His gesture took in the metal helmet on her head. “If I take the key to your cell upstairs, and hide it, and if I lock you in each night, then you’ll be safe.”
“No” Jonas looked sadly at Ariadne. “You can’t stay down here in the dark forever. Please think about it, Ariadne. I’d better go now, before they miss me.”
When Jonas had gone, Ariadne lay down on the bench and closed her eyes. Jonas’s words kept echoing in her head.
“You can’t stay down in the dark for ever.” The trouble was, she felt safe here – Pete couldn’t reach her. But what sort of a life was this?
“The one you’ve always chosen,” said a little voice in her head. “Hide in a job you hated, because it was safe. Hide in a place you hate, because it’s safe.”

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.