Shiverton Hall (20 page)

Sutherland looked alarmed and began to struggle, trying to slip his hands out of their restraints.

‘No use, my boy.’ Thorne smiled. ‘The more you fight against it the more painful this process will be.’

‘I know about this place,’ Sutherland said, his panic audible. ‘I’ve heard about you!’

‘Then you know that I’m the only man who can help you,’ Thorne replied with glacial calm. He gestured to an orderly. ‘Please take Mr Sutherland to his room.’

Sutherland reluctantly allowed himself to be frogmarched through the hospital. The whole place was bitingly cold as the windows were constantly propped open even in the depths of winter, and dead leaves had blown in, collecting in corners and under beds. There were metal beds everywhere, filled with shell-shocked, desperate men who looked at Sutherland in quiet agony as he passed by.

Unlike the other patients, Sutherland wouldn’t be allowed to share a room as Thorne felt that he could be a negative influence on the other men. Sutherland’s room seemed more of a cupboard, with a narrow bed shunted at an angle in the corner and a tiny, barred window.

‘Here you are,’ the orderly grunted as he shoved him through the door.

‘Could you untie my hands, please?’ Sutherland asked.

The orderly sneered and slammed the door. Sutherland could hear the metallic scrape of a deadlock being pushed into place. He sat down on the bed, reeling.

The sounds of the hospital were dreadful. Disembodied moans and screams swirled in through Sutherland’s keyhole along with the teasing jangle of keys.

Hours passed and no one came. Sutherland couldn’t even rest, for his arms were beginning to cramp up. Night appeared, yet no one turned on a light or lit a candle.

‘
Pssst!
’ he heard suddenly from somewhere near the right wall.

Sutherland got off his bed, squinting in the direction of the noise.

‘Down here!’ the voice said in a distinctly cockney accent.

Sutherland knelt down and peered at the bottom of the wall. He could see now that a brick was loose.

‘Pull out the brick!’ the voice whispered.

‘I can’t, my hands are tied.’

‘Well, turn around to do it then!’ the voice hissed.

Sutherland glanced nervously at his door, but dropped to his knees, twisting awkwardly around, fumbling to work the stone away. It fell to the floor with a crack.

‘There we are!’ the voice said, pleased.

Sutherland peered through the gap in the wall and found a bright, green eye staring back at him.

‘Hello!’ the eye said. ‘New, are you?’

‘Yes,’ Sutherland said, relieved to have someone to talk to.

‘You must’ve done something wicked to be in there! What was it? Spying?’

‘Certainly not!’ Sutherland snapped. ‘I’ve done nothing at all. I only wrote a few letters to the papers.’

‘Letters, eh? Well, no wonder you’re in there. They don’t like letters. You’re a writer then?’

‘How did you know?’

‘The one before you was a novelist.’

‘What happened to him?’

The eye didn’t reply.

‘I’m Martin Sutherland,’ he said after a moment.

‘Robbie Cartwright.’

The men nodded to one another, as the hole was too small to shake hands – or even fingers – through.

‘How long can I expect to be here?’ Sutherland asked.

‘Depends,’ Robbie Cartwright said, sniffing, ‘on whether you’re good or not.’

There was the sudden clink of a key, and Sutherland instinctively turned around, blocking the hole with his back.

The door opened to reveal Doctor Thorne, wearing a blood-splattered white coat.

‘Please excuse my attire, Mr Sutherland,’ Thorne said with a tight smile.

Sutherland didn’t respond.

‘Untie the patient,’ Thorne said curtly to the nurse who stood beside him.

Sutherland tilted his body so that his hands could be freed, while his shoulder still blocked the hole in the wall.

‘This is an outrage,’ Sutherland said. ‘What right have you to keep me here?’

‘Please calm yourself,’ Thorne said with weary disdain, ‘or we’ll be forced to restrain you.’

‘I’m quite calm, I assure you,’ Sutherland replied in a careful, measured tone. ‘I’m only asking why I’m here.’

‘You know perfectly well why you’re here. To pretend otherwise only further demonstrates your confusion.’

‘That’s preposterous!’

Thorne licked his lips. ‘We have our first appointment tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’ll speak sense then.’

Thorne turned on his heel, and the nurse bolted the door.

‘Could you at least turn a light on?’ Sutherland shouted as they walked away.

Robbie sucked the air through his teeth. ‘Your first appointment with Doctor Thorne himself. They’re not mucking about.’

‘What will they do?’ Sutherland asked. He didn’t know why he bothered asking though – he’d heard the stories.

Robbie changed the subject. ‘You married?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Sutherland replied.

‘I am. Dolly, her name is. Got a kid too. Mary.’

‘I’m sure you’ll see them soon.’

Robbie laughed bitterly. ‘You’d better get some sleep, squire,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it for Thorne tomorrow.’

The following morning Sutherland was pulled clumsily from his bed by a new but similarly thuggish orderly and taken to Thorne’s office. The place was filled with archaic contraptions and had the metallic miasma of congealed blood.

Thorne indicated for Sutherland to sit. He stood defiantly.

‘Have you heard of the Babbel Bit?’ Thorne asked.

‘Of course,’ Sutherland replied. ‘It’s a very cruel device used to subdue prisoners.’

‘Cruel,’ Thorne agreed, ‘but very effective. Do you know how it works?’

Thorne opened a drawer and brought out the Bit. It looked rather like a horse’s harness, but with leather straps to tie it to a human face and a metal bar for suppressing the tongue.

‘These screws here,’ he said, indicating them, ‘press down on the temples, creating nausea and affecting coordination, and the metal bar makes it difficult to breathe. The wearer has to spend all of his energy fighting off the adverse effects of the Bit and therefore has no time to cause trouble.’

‘It’s medieval!’ Sutherland said.

‘It’s interesting that you should say so, because its roots are indeed from that time. Have you ever come across a scold’s bridle?’

Sutherland shook his head.

‘It was an instrument similar to this one. It was used in the sixteenth century to silence heretics and hysterical women. It was a muzzle with a blade inserted into it. It could be worn completely painlessly so long as the wearer was silent, but if they spoke the blade would cut their tongue.’

Sutherland dared not speak.

‘There are those who want you silenced, Mr Sutherland.’

Thorne retrieved something from a cabinet behind him and caressed it affectionately.

‘I had it made specially with you in mind.’

Two orderlies burst into the room before Sutherland could react and held him down. He shouted and kicked out, fighting against the arms that pinned him to the chair.

‘Don’t struggle, Mr Sutherland,’ Thorne said. ‘It’ll only hurt you more.’

At some point during the fitting Sutherland must have passed out, because he awoke to a throbbing pain in his jaw and was lying on his bed.

Sutherland felt the bridle. It wasn’t just buckled but bolted to his head. The blade, a whisper away from his tongue, already had blood on it. Sutherland tried not to panic as he groped at his face, but he was desperate for some release.

‘Oi.’ He heard Robbie’s voice through the crack.

Sutherland staggered up with some effort and slumped down next to the hole, the bridle glinting horribly in the thin light. Robbie’s green eye widened.

‘What’s that?’ he gasped.

Sutherland shook his head.

‘Can’t talk?’

Sutherland carefully opened his mouth to reveal the vicious blade.

Robbie tutted and his green eye narrowed.

‘Thorne’s gone too far now,’ he muttered darkly. ‘Don’t you worry, lad, we’ll fix this right up for you.’

Sutherland lay awake in bed that night. The harness was agonising, and he didn’t dare sleep in case he spoke in his dreams and cut off his own tongue.

In the middle of the night, Sutherland heard a commotion outside his room; the sound of running and the smell of smoke. He sat up. If there was a fire he would be burned alive.

He kicked at his door and was surprised to find it open. He shrank back as an orderly ran past, but the orderly ignored him. A few others ran past after him, screaming and turning to look behind them as though they were being chased. Sutherland saw that the doors to all the other rooms were open too, and that patients were beginning to walk hesitantly into the hall. Sutherland followed the stream of bodies running away from the unknown terror. The smell of smoke was stronger now.

As another nurse passed him, he grabbed her sleeve.

‘Let go of me!’ she squealed, battering his arm.

He held fast.

‘Let go! They’ll catch me!’

Sutherland tilted his head questioningly.

‘The morgue,’ she whispered. ‘The morgue is empty. It was full this evening, but the bodies are gone. They’re coming to get us.’

Sutherland let go, shocked, and the nurse fled.

There was a clanking and a wet crunch, and Sutherland turned to see the bodies, the stench unmistakable, as they walked blindly down the hall. Some were wearing the Babbel Bit; others trailed chains behind them; all looked as though they had been tortured to death. They groaned and shuddered down the hallway, ignoring the patients, towards Thorne’s office. One of them, whose face was burned beyond recognition, turned a bright, green eye to Sutherland, and winked.

The police didn’t believe Sutherland, and nor did they believe any of the other astonished witnesses, when they arrived at Shiverton Hall Hospital the following day. It was a hospital for the disturbed after all; why would they believe Sutherland when he said that Thorne’s patients had come back to life, murdered him and his workforce, and set half the hall on fire? It was exactly the sort of gobbledegook that a madman would say. It looked like a straight-up riot to them; the prisoners were the culprits and had made up some cock-and-bull story to cover their tracks.

The police were just about to reapply Sutherland’s bridle and boot him into the back of the truck, when a small, bespectacled man in a bowler hat arrived. The gentleman seemed very agitated. He was from the government, and was concerned that the riot might draw the public’s attention to the hospital’s unsavoury methods. The police were given no choice but to discharge all of the patients.

Sutherland wrote his most famous poem,
The Scold’s Bridle
,
about the event and it was dedicated to the late Robbie Cartwright, with all proceeds going to Dolly Cartwright, his widow. It was hailed as an excellent piece of fiction, but Sutherland maintained its veracity until the day he died. Whenever a critic asked Sutherland what proof he had, he always replied with a question:
what other hospital morgue is filled with corpses who are smiling?

Shiverton Hall was waiting for them in the darkness as the taxi dropped them off at the main entrance.

Penny looked up at it and shivered. ‘If only we had an army of the undead at our disposal,’ she sighed.