Asylum (48 page)

            “The
people…the scientists that did these things, before you were born…they’re the
bad ones?”  Chloe asked, confused.

            “Not
exactly.  Precursors to them, really.  You see, when they discovered that you
could stimulate a body to rise again, it raised other questions…other
theories.  Most governments were quick to put rules in place.  Defining what
could and could not be done to bodies.  They had their reasons.  Science
doesn’t always confine itself to morality.” he nodded again.

            “I
don’t understand.  What do you mean by other theories?” Chloe asked intently.

            “Oh,
they learned many things by trial and error.  The longer a body remained dead
before galvanization, the less mind it came back with.  This lead to the study
of the brain, experiments on how much damage a brain sustained when it lacked
oxygen, how much time could pass in death before the person, when brought back,
would lose the concept of self.  Sometimes they could force a body to draw air,
blink it’s eyes, even eat, swallow, walk…but not think…not remember.  And from
this, came another question:  What is self?  Do souls exist?” George grinned
and held his hands out palms upward.  Chloe could see through them.

            She
squirmed and the rock moved under her the way the mattress of a waterbed
might.  Did she hear someone calling her name?  George didn’t seem to notice.

            “This
question brought new trials, new theories, new…experiments.  Can we talk to the
dead?  There were scientists who put down the scalpel and picked up the
planchette,” he continued.

            “Planchette…like
Ouija?” Chloe remembered.

            “Yes,
exactly that.  Scientific minds began finding new ways to answer their
questions, and it caught on…became a movement, spread like wildfire through
America and England.  It was called spiritualism.  Mediums, clairvoyants,
séances, automatic writing….ghosts rapping on walls to answer the mystic’s
questions,” George chuckled.

            “This
is starting to sound familiar,” Chloe smiled weakly.

            “This
was in my day, you understand,” George said.  “It started, even before the
civil war, and grew, and in my time, it was a booming industry.  Elegant ladies
of the upper classes would give dinner parties that featured readings by
spiritualists or mediums.  Newspapers would report on hauntings, these things
were generalized, accepted, one might say.”

            “I
don’t understand how this ties in with the asylums, with Abraham’s Men…with me”
Chloe reminded him.

            “I’m
getting there, patience child,” George said.

            He
paused, cocking his head to the side as though he were listening to something. 

            “What?”
she asked.  “What is it?”

            “We’re
moving.  I think we’re moving,” he said, still listening.

            “What
do you mean moving?” Chloe worried.  “How can we be moving?  I thought you said
I was inside myself.  I’m in my room right now, barricaded in.  How can I be
moving?”

            “You’re
moving,” he confirmed, jumping to his feet, and looking upwards quickly.  “If
you leave, if they take you outside.  I don’t know what happens. Probably
nothing.  It’ll probably rip me right out of here and you’ll find your own way
out, but I don’t think I can leave.  I don’t think it’s that easy.”

            “You
can’t go until you explain what I’m supposed to do,” Chloe argued.  “We’re not
moving George, how could we be?  How can you even tell?”

            “I
don’t know…I don’t.  It’s just…I can feel it.  The building defines me, it
contains me.  I know the boundaries, I know when I come to one, I feel
repelled.  Now listen, listen quick.  I can’t explain this how I would like but
there are a few things you need to know.  The bad ones are still around.  Some
of them living, some of them…aren‘t.  And believe me when I say it is of utmost
importance that we stop them.  We have to-”

            George’s
arms flew upwards, two metal objects attracted to an invisible magnet. 
Something was pulling him.  He fought to lower his arms, and wrapped them
tightly around the rock. His legs shot out from under him.  Somehow he managed
to hold on while being sucked towards the brilliant night sky.

            “Don’t
go George!” Chloe yelled, throwing herself against his back trying to hold him
down.  “Don’t leave me here by myself!”

            “Don’t
think I’m going to have much of a choice,” George thought at her, keeping hold
with his teeth firmly clamped.

            “This
is my head,” she thought, “My head, I can…” Quickly, Chloe imagined an iron
cage.  One with bars as thick as a man’s arms.  Something that weighed too much
to guess.  She jumped clear of George and slammed the contraption down on top
of him.  The rock disappeared at once.  George, plastered to the ceiling of the
cage stared out at her from behind the bars.

            “Well
done,” he said.  “I don’t know how long you’ll be able to keep me here, but well
done still.  That was fast thinking.  I think we might be outside already.  I
can feel it.  It’s just like how cold used to feel.  I feel cold.”

            “What
do Ouija boards have to do with the asylum?” Chloe demanded.

            “More
than one would guess,” George said.  “The spiritualism movement in America
started with a group of radical Quakers.  It attracted many scientists and even
many doctors who studied psychology, the workings of the human mind.  And guess
who was both a Quaker and a doctor of the mentally ill?” George asked.

            “Kirkbride,”
Chloe guessed.

            “Kirkbride,”
George agreed.  “Though we can’t tie him to the movement, we can say that the
building of the first asylum based on his plan coincided almost exactly with
the beginnings of the spiritualism movement.  His building plan suggests an
awfully good guess at how to contain a spirit.  Plenty of glass, right angles,
the symmetry, the triangular shape of it, with the way the wings spread out,
angling away from the center, rough true, but there.”

            “We
talked to someone, a person who used to live in an asylum.  He claimed to be
one of you…one of Abraham’s men.  He said he destroyed the cornerstone, and it
let the ghosts out,” Chloe watched George through the wide black bars, she
spoke as though asking a question.

            “Oh
I don’t believe it’s anything so simple as that,” he disagreed.  “The building
itself is only a part of the prison.  And understand, it wasn’t a pen built
around spirits that were already there.  Ghost were created to be housed there,
to be studied.”

            “I
don‘t understand” Chloe said.

            “Not
everyone becomes a ghost.  Ask any spiritualist of the last century.  Souls
move onward, upward…unless they can’t.  Unless they suffered afflictions in
life that they can’t let go of in death. What keeps a soul earthbound?  Most of
the spiritualists believed it was conditions like alcoholism or drug addiction,
regrets and rage…often times from people who were murderers or murdered
themselves, and of course, those who were mentally sick.  They seemed to be
bound mainly to places where bad things had happened to them in life.  They
can’t let go of the experiences of the body.  There have even been famous
medium and clairvoyants who have claimed that such souls are attracted to
like-minded people that are still living. The spirit of an alcoholic, may
attach itself to a living alcoholic, watching with a dry mouth, hoping to
possess the body if the living one has too much to drink and passes out.  The
spirit of a former mental patient may attach itself to a living mental patient
who’s experiences and sickness mirrored their own.  The asylum was the perfect
laboratory for their experiments,” George explained while simultaneously trying
to push himself down from the ceiling of the cage.

            Quickly,
Chloe imagined his feet encased in heavy cement blocks.  George dropped to the
bottom of the cage like a rock.

            “They
wanted to experiment with ghosts?  I don’t see the point.  What is their
purpose, what were they hoping to do?  This is supposed to be for science? 
Just to increase knowledge?” Chloe asked.

            “Think
about it, child.  Now think about it truly.  They could force a body to live
when it had already died.  What do you think they were hoping to achieve?”
George asked her in a low voice.

            “Longer
lives?” Chloe guessed.

            “Eternal
physical life,” George answered.

            “Not
possible,” Chloe shook her head.  “It’s just not possible.  Bodies get old. 
You can hook it to a battery and make it keep going, but bodies wear out. 
Tissues will die, things in the body decay, the connections you would need to
keep the electric current going through the whole body would eventually wither
away, wouldn’t they?  I mean, we have people with pacemakers, that give their
heart an electric jump start whenever the heart can’t do it, and they don’t live
forever, a physical body just can’t live forever…right?”

            George
smiled weakly at her from behind his bars.

            “I
don’t know.  I don’t know how long they can keep a body going for.  They
started experimenting with reanimation and galvanism in the early 1700’s and
then a hundred years later…they stopped.  Why did they stop?  Why did the focus
suddenly become the human soul instead of the body?  Was it because they could
keep a body going, but not keep the soul inside?  Or was it because bodies were
wearing out, and they needed new ways to contain the human spirit?  We don’t
know.  We only have a theory,” George said gravely.

            “Which
is?” Chloe prompted.

            “This
is going to sound like the ramblings of a lunatic,” George warned.

            “Wow…I’m
sitting on an imaginary beach, inside my own head, talking to a man who’s been
dead for a hundred years, who’s explaining about an evil group of scientists
with a plot to live forever and you’re worried that now…something’s going to
sound insane?” Chloe laughed.

            “If
you can bring back a body, one that’s been dead, one that has a soul that
already evacuated it…could another soul inhabit the body?  A soul that’s been
penned close by, ready to try?” George asked seriously.

            “Yeah,
that is just a little nuts, I guess,” Chloe admitted.  “That’s what you think
they’re trying to do?”

            “We
think it’s likely,” George admitted.

            “George,
the asylums are empty now, abandoned.  They don’t send crazy people to big
isolated mansions anymore.  Things have changed, the world is different now. 
You’ve been dead a long time, there’s no way of knowing if the bad ones even
still exist,” Chloe reasoned with him.

            “That
is why it’s imperative we move quickly.  Don’t you see, Chloe?  The asylums are
abandoned, I know this.  It took me so long to figure that much out.  It’s just
like what happened with the body experiments.  Don’t you see?  The testing
phase is done, they’ve got the information they need!  They’ve moved on,
they’ve gained another step!” he insisted.

            “No!”
Chloe cut in, “No, it’s not like that at all.  I read about it.  There was this
huge swell of public opinion against the asylums.  They weren’t helping
people.  There were books and movies that came out, like thirty or forty years
ago all about how awful those places were.  How they were abusing people and
torturing them, shocking them, lobotomizing them.  That’s why they closed!”

            “Shocking
live bodies, performing electrical current experiments on living minds? 
Creating physical memories that could be attachment points for another state of
being?” George asked seriously.

            “No,
that’s nuts,” Chloe argued.  “They were mistakes, experiments to try to force a
brain to be healthy.”

            “And
did it ever return anyone to mental health?  Is that why the experiments
continued?” George pressed.

            “Aww,
geez, this really is making me nuts.  You still haven’t told me about Abraham’s
Men.  Where do they come in with all of this?” she asked.

            “A
hundred years ago, you could take a group of people, isolate them from the rest
of society, and in that place do what experiments you liked.  If any one of
those patients caught on, who would give credit to their stories?  Who would
believe them?  Only others in their same situation.  Abraham’s Men started with
one man.  Williams, they called him.  He lived in one of the first asylums
built, one that instituted Kirkbride as their head.  Williams suffered from
certain delusions.  Among them, was the affliction that he claimed to hear
voices, voices of the dead.  Shortly after being assigned to Kirkbride’s asylum
he developed a monomania, the fixed idea that Kirkbride was evil, that he had
to be killed before he could confine others to the asylum.  Williams escaped,
though he still harbored the idea that Kirkbride needed to be stopped somehow. 
Williams returned to the asylum, climbed a tree and waited for the doctor to
pass that way.  When he did, Williams took his gun and shot Kirkbride in the
head,” George said.