Short Story

Ghost Asylum

I died here long ago, I don’t know when but I know I died, I remember the pain and the relief but now it seems I am still here in these walls waiting to find the answers that I so desperately seek.

I was once a patient here in the asylum, I was once known as Daniel to my friends, my family but here I was just patient number 480. I don’t remember the reason I was here but those I loved must have put me here for some reason however I gave up trying to understand after every treatment the doctor’s gave me.

As I wonder these empty halls as a ghostly orb, I feel the memories stirring in the corner of my mind, I feel as though I can touch them but they then whisk away into the many shadows of the asylum. 

The asylum itself was condemned years ago, probably the same day they discovered a patient had died in their care or that they discovered that the asylum was doing a poor job in helping rehabilitate the patients. Whatever reason, the asylum was shut down and closed off to the public and left in darkness.

The asylum has become overgrown with ivy and infested with rats, the white halls and walls are now peeling away like old scab’s, even the floor is peeling up and yellowing from the years of decay and rat droppings.

I enter the corridor where the patients once slept, each chamber white and padded, each a sad reminder of what once was, I find my cell with ease and I suddenly smell the odder of medication but it’s just my imagination, it’s all in my head.

I quickly float past, trying not to stir up more memories of the past but every place I go, everything I touch or fall through brings nothing but empty tear’s and endless sorrow.

I turn round and head back from where I just come from, I need to head to the main office where the doctors and nurses sat during their break, I remember their faces but their names elude me although one face, more than the other’s comes back again and again.

The face of is of a man, a heavily beard man in his forties, he is tall with olive like skin and his green eyes are concealed behind his glasses, this man or face, I know it well, he treated me several times during my stay here in the asylum but I don’t why his face haunts me so.

I take more measured steps throughout the many corridor’s to reach the office however I notice for the first time that I am not alone in the asylum, other orbs float around in the corridor, lost in the vast maze of the asylum, they can never be free for they chose to believe that those responsible for this mess are still here. They are all former patients, either killed by a freak accident or committed suicide when the doctors or nurses thought they were on the road to recovery or maybe they are still insane in death as they were in life.

Some take ghostly shape and just acknowledge me with a nod, other’s don’t notice I’ve even pasted them by but most are making their way back to their cell’s to find some comfort but my task doesn’t concern them, I need to find out who this man or face is, I must know how to escape these decaying walls.

After a few more twists and turns, I soon find myself at the open door of the office, I enter and I find myself strangely nervous, I shouldn’t be afraid of what I will find here but what if the answer is long gone and I will forever wonder these halls, destined to an afterlife of insanity.

I shake my head and focus, the office is clustered with more rat droppings and the original red paint is peeling away much like the rest of the asylum, the filing cabinets are strangely intact despite the fact that I thought they would have burned the medical records.

I open the drawer’s with minimal effort as it seems the signs of age have not yet corroded the metal although the contents of the paper work inside the files is nearly falling apart. I scan the file names and none of them I recognise expect for a few of the patients and my own record.

Suddenly, as I place my hand on one of the folder’s, the face of the man flashes before me and vanishes, I slowly pick up the folder and begin to read; “Charles Richard Fisher, forty-two, married, blood group AB-, no known illnesses or disabilities, doesn’t take medication, employed on the 15th of May 1900, stationed at Knockstream Asylum”.

Charles Fisher, I remember him now, I remember every injection he placed in my arm for my treatment, I remember every time I had a fit he always wore a disapproving glare although it wasn’t my fault that I reacted to the medication that they gave, it wasn’t my fault that I was their human guinea-pig. I remember each false smile as he tried to reassure me that I would get better and the treatment would end soon. I remember everything.

I drop the folder in sudden realisation that it was Charles that sent me to an early grave, it was that drug he gave me, the one he told me would help me sleep better, the one that sent me here to wonder these corridors and drive me mad.

I trusted him, I really believed those little lies he gave me, now I have my answer but I don’t feel any different. I am still here in the asylum, I thought that when I found what I was looking for that I would be free from this place, I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do, I am ghost without a purpose, without a cause, without a need to haunt anyone or anything.

Charles is dead, they hung him for his crimes and yet I am being punished by still being here in this purgatory. 

Maybe there is nothing else, maybe there is nothing for me up there in Paradise, maybe it is time to wonder these halls like the rest, maybe it’s time I let the ghost of the asylum die. 

I slowly make my way out the office and I can see the asylum how it once was in a ghostly colour vision provided by my imagination, I can hear the groan’s and the howls of the patients as they receive treatment, I can smell body odder, medical supplies, human waste and blood. I can taste the bitterness of every meal that they gave me and the rancid water that was never clean. It’s like I am alive yet my body is floating in an endless dream like state.

By the time I reach my cell, the others have already gotten back into the habit of wrapping their arms around them as though they miss their restraints, I enter my cell without any enthusiasm and shut the door behind me. I sit in the centre of the room with my eyes closed, breathing deeply, in and out, in and out wondering when if I will ever escape this hellish nightmare.