Midnight Lily (Signs of Love) (11 page)

Holden

I went into the woods every day for the next three days, wandering aimlessly, calling for Lily. A couple times I even tried purposefully to lose my way, but I must have started noticing things about this forest that I hadn't meant to keep track of. "How the fuck can a person fail to get lost in a remote forest when he's actually trying?" I muttered. "That proves it, Holden, you are hopeless. Completely hopeless."

Returning to the lodge, I paced relentlessly. There was so much good pacing area out here. I could pace for days and only occasionally cover the same ground. It was a pacer's heaven.
Fuck.
Lily. I ran my hand through my hair. I was going to pace a track onto the deck and go prematurely bald from all the hair raking.

How in the world had things gone downhill so fast? Fucking Taylor, the snake. What
had
I ever seen in her?

She's good in bed.

I'm sure she is. She gets plenty of practice.

The words flitted through my mind, causing my head to ache. I brought one hand up and massaged the back of my neck.
Ryan,
I'd had that conversation with Ryan. I'd had that conversation with Ryan
that
day. I shook my head. No, no, I refused to think about that day. I pushed it out of my mind forcefully.
No.

I had to explain things to Lily. I had to let her know that what happened wasn't my fault. I had to know if she'd give me another chance. Never mind that I'd need to start all over with the detoxing. I couldn't do it until I knew things were settled with Lily. And now, thanks to Taylor, or maybe
no
thanks to Taylor, I had a fresh supply. But, no, that was good because I had to make sure Lily and I were okay. I had to know she'd be waiting for me on the other side, so to speak. Knowing that would help get me through the darkness.
Her.
So if she wasn't in the forest, where was she? She'd said she lived nearby, but where?

Going back inside, I pulled my laptop out and sat on the couch with it on my lap. I used Google Earth to look up the lodge. The only building for miles and miles was the abandoned mental hospital Brandon had mentioned. Whittington, Hospital for the Mentally Insane. I did a Google search and scrolled through a couple pages of information.

The Whittington Hospital for the Mentally Insane, later renamed simply Whittington, was first constructed in 1901 on a forty-acre spread of land. The sixty-thousand-square-foot building was designed by Chester R. Pendelton who believed the mentally ill should be cared for and treated with kindness and compassion, away from the many stressors of the outside world. That translated into luxurious interiors including chapels, auditoriums, libraries, private rooms for the patients, all with vaulted ceilings, and large and plentiful windows to allow for maximum sunlight and ventilation. The expansive grounds and gardens featured beautifully ornate statues, fountains, and benches, and excellent walking paths.

I scrolled through the few black and white pictures online, not noting the exact year they'd been taken. Despite the fact that the interior was indeed, very appealing—light and airy—the outside of the building looked like something out of a horror movie. Enormous and gothic with tall, ornate towers, grandiose arches, and sweeping windows. There were even screaming gargoyles flanking the upper windows. I was sure nothing put the mentally ill at ease quite like monsters outside their rooms. I couldn't help shivering.

Whittington was built over twenty miles away from the nearest community to ensure that should a patient escape, there was no risk to outside inhabitants. Whittington was a privately owned hospital whose patients were comprised mainly of members of wealthy families who wished to keep their relative's condition private. In later years, though still privately owned, Whittington began accepting donations, grants, and some state funding for the less fortunate.

Despite the good intentions of its design and beginnings, Whittington, originally intended to treat three hundred patients, had a population of almost fifteen hundred by the twenties. The staff numbers, however, remained stable. This meant the patients were often severely neglected, becoming sick and filth-ridden from lack of care, and the staff was unequipped to offer them more. It wasn't uncommon for a patient to die and not be discovered for days, even weeks sometimes.

In 1915, Dr. Jeremiah Braun became the director of Whittington and instituted treatments that have been associated with the horrors of psychiatric facilities of the past: padded cells used for solitary confinement, mechanical restraints including straightjackets, the over-medicating of those difficult to control, insulin shock therapy, psychosurgery, and the lobotomy. The icepick lobotomy, which was essentially an icepick to the eggshell-thin bone above the eye, was a radically invasive brain surgery used to treat everything from delusions, to migraines, to melancholy, to deep depression, to "hysteria," a term used for women who exhibited sexual desire and strong emotions.
In the unfortunate patient, the frontal lobes would be disconnected from the rest of the brain by a simple, quick side-to-side maneuver, leaving the individual with irreversible effects.
In a 1941 interview, Braun described Whittington's mentally ill as docile and compliant under his direction, however, visitors to the facility told of patients wandering aimlessly in a daze, sometimes into walls, vacantly staring at their own feet, and hitting their heads repeatedly on tables with no intervention by staff.

Eventually, Braun's beliefs regarding mental illness became even more bizarre and dangerous. When he noted that very high fevers could cause hallucinations, he theorized that infection didn't just cause diseases of the body, but of the mind as well. In 1923, he began extracting patients' teeth, and often their tonsils as well, though X-rays didn't always confirm infection. When this didn't cure his patients, he began removing other body parts such as the stomach, portions of the colon, gall bladder, spleen, ovaries, testicles, and uteruses, although he had no formal training as a surgeon. Moreover, these surgeries were often performed without consent from the patient or family, and sometimes, despite their vehement protests. Braun sited cure rates of over 90%, but in actuality, his surgeries very often resulted in death. This, however, did not deter him from his "pioneering work." What made the practices of Braun more disturbing, was that he regularly published his findings in highly read psychological papers and medical journals. And no one in the psychology community did a thing. Braun passed away in 1962.

Sickened by what I'd just read, I skimmed down the article a little more and found that by 1988, all but one wing of Whittington was closed. The entire hospital had been shut down just five years ago.

I sat on the couch for a little while longer, staring at the screen. Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I closed the cover of my laptop. Jesus, it was a fucking house of horrors. Or it had been. Something about the fear and anguish of those who had been locked inside . . . I didn't want to dwell on it for very long, didn't want to consider the details.

But I suddenly had a deep curiosity to see it in person—to find out if the pictures online really did it justice. Mapping it out, I found that Brandon had been right. It was about five miles away and a straight walk through the woods.

It was only mid-morning. I gathered some supplies—food, water, a sweatshirt—and set off in the direction of Whittington. The terrain was deeply wooded for the most part, but there were no cliffs to scale or rivers to cross—thankfully—and it took me a little over three hours to make the walk through the misty forest. I called Lily's name intermittently, but received no answer.

I came out of the trees and was standing before what I recognized as Whittington, the gargantuan, gothic, stone building. My heart began to beat more quickly. It looked like a living, breathing thing and I shivered. Now that I was right in front of it, I couldn't help but imagine all the pain and unfathomable suffering that had gone on behind those walls. All because no one had been willing or brave enough to help. Those people had been invisible to society, deemed throwaways because of something they weren't responsible for. The weakest of the weak. And in that moment I felt the terror and hopelessness of that down to my bones, in my very marrow.

And
yet
, as I stood staring at it, tilting my head very slightly, it also exuded a strange sort of magnificent beauty, some hidden sorrow that lay just beneath the stone surface, as if the building itself wanted to say,
what happened here was not my fault.

My gaze traveled upward until it settled on the highest window, something stirring deep inside, the grandeur of the structure stealing my breath for a moment.

I looked to my right and drew back slightly when I saw what must have been the asylum cemetery. I walked toward it, taking note of the crumbling gravestones, some topped with angels, reaching toward the heavens. This must be the oldest part of the cemetery. The farther I walked, the newer the stones looked, the dates carved into them corroborating my observation. Weeds thrived, almost completely covering some of the smaller markers. I wondered who was buried here—patients who had died with no family? Otherwise, wouldn't they be in family plots or closer to the homes of loved ones? Feeling totally creeped out, I turned around and walked back to where I'd started.

The massive, wrought-iron gate creaked loudly as I pushed it open and walked through. The walk from the gate to the front steps of the asylum was about a quarter of a mile. My feet crunched on the gravel, what had originally been a very long driveway, now overrun with weeds, grass and wildflowers growing in random patches. The sky overhead was a grayish-blue and filled with billowy clouds. Off in the distance, I could see a few approaching rain clouds, but nothing that looked like it would produce much of a storm.
Hopefully.
I still had to make it back.

When I finally arrived at the front steps, I climbed them slowly, glancing around. Everything seemed very still. I tried to turn the doorknob of the massive, double wooden front door, but it was locked. Looking around, I spotted a broken window on the first floor and it was easy enough to lift myself up to the windowsill and duck through. When I stood and had brushed off my jeans, I was standing in a dirty hallway. It was cluttered with debris, had paint peeling from the walls in large strips, and a rusted wheelchair lay overturned in front of me. I moved it aside with my foot and walked down the hall, craning my neck to see into rooms before I'd walked in front of the doorways. In one, there was an old gurney against the wall and in another there was a standing harp, most of the strings broken and curling wildly in every direction like the hair of some wild shrew. This place was creepy as shit. I expected Freddy Krueger to turn the corner toward me at any moment.

"Lily?" I yelled loudly, not truly believing she'd be inside this deserted place but finding a strange comfort in hearing her name echo through the empty halls. I walked through corridor after corridor calling Lily's name.

As I walked past one of the large windows, I caught movement. Far away, at the edge of the forest, Lily was on her knees doing something on the ground in front of her.
Lily!
My heart sped up and I turned and walked as quickly as possible through all the debris on the floor toward the front door. I was able to open it from the inside and I took the stairs two at a time, running back down the long driveway and out the front gate toward Lily.

"Lily," I said breathlessly as I finally came up behind her. She jerked slightly and turned, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Hey, what's wrong?" That's when I saw an owl on the ground in front of her and I went down on my knees beside her. "Oh shit, is he okay?"

Lily shook her head. "No, he's . . . dead." She heaved in a shuddery breath and used both hands to wipe at her tears. She shook her head. "I just found him out here, lying on the ground. He must have just . . . died of old age. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with him." She sniffled.

"I'm so sorry."

She nodded and used a sweater that was tied around her waist to scoop him up. "I don't think owls have very long life spans. I have to bury him."

"I'll help. Do you have a shovel?"

She shook her head. "No, I'll have to use a stick or something. The ground is very soft in certain parts of the forest. It should be okay." I walked a little ways into the woods with her, and as she held the owl, I dug the small grave in the soft earth of the forest floor. We didn't speak, which made me aware of all the sounds around me: the birds twittering in the trees, foliage swishing in the breeze, and Lily's occasional sniffles. When I was done, she lowered him into the ground, the sweater wrapped around him, and stood as I covered him up, another tear rolling down her cheek.

"You must think I'm so silly crying over an owl," she said. "It's just that he used to come sit on the fence over there, every day, and I kind of got used to him." She shrugged. "Whenever I passed by and saw him, I came to think of him as good luck, a sort of wise sentry who might show you the way if you were lost and afraid." She tilted her head, looking sad but thoughtful.

"I don't think you're silly."
I think you're the most beautiful, tenderhearted girl I've ever known.