Asylum Daughter Page 2

  Many years later, as a grown woman — there’s new energy coursing through her veins; the thirst for revenge. A beast of her own demanding to be fed, just as he sated his monster through repeated vicious violations of her young body and the lives he took. He had left a piece of himself buried inside — a putrid parasite that had matured and was now clawing to get out.

  2 Bishoploch

  The village of Bishoploch was tough, corrupt, though simple if you knew the language. A language spoken in lazy slang, drawling with harsh accusing tones, dipped in poison, steeped in hate, anger, passion, love. A twisted tongue that was regarded as alien by fellow Glaswegians. Indifference was non-existent. They battled amongst themselves, drawing territory lines down streets in youth spilt blood, between schools and convenience stores. Marital disputes could cumulate into vicious stabbings, and that wasn’t the end of it. Many would make up over the crumpled, blood-stained A&E bed, and the cycle would continue — till death do they part. It was rather curious what kind of lunatics the asylum housed, given the barely sane, sprawling wild nearby.

  Annabelle Summers lived in a small block of flats that sat hexagonal around a ramshackle courtyard, a short walk from the asylum woods and the area’s namesake Bishop’s Loch. When the village development was built, in the 1950s, the internal courtyards were supposed to offer a safe place for kids to play. Back then, builders and councillors propositioned ‘dream country living’ when the political aim was to filter undesirables from the inner cities to the far suburbs. On borderlands, no one wanted to claim these people as theirs.

  To the new settlers, it could be just like in the movies. Perhaps it was in its younger days. But when Annabelle lived there, the courtyard was ‘the bins’ with excess dumping space, reeking of rotten food, dog shit and the odd decomposing animal carcass — and this was not exclusive to the courtyard. By the 1980s that is what it became, worsening into the 1990s. Sporadic green spaces became popular fly-tipping spots, not exclusive to careless, crude locals. It was a rural slum.

  Instead of playing chase and rounders, the kids around this particular block sought adventure in the woods. Frolicking through all seasons on the edge of the village until they got a little older, restless, and pushed each other to go deeper towards the ‘loony bin,’ towards the eerie silence that turned to chilling screams come nightfall.

  The rich, wild woodland just beyond their backyard boasted a spectacular sprawling gothic mental asylum within it, fully dressed with a grand manor house, private nurse lodgings, mortuary and even a cemetery — one marked at least. The estate of Lochwood Asylum was vast, ancient, full of intrigue and mystique. Its regal air contrasted with the debauchery and depravity occurring within its body. Approaching its centennial year as a functioning hospital only added to the impressiveness of Lochwood. Astounding, considering the countless tales of horror that seeped from the place. An asylum for the poor and insane, notorious for off-the-wall experimental approaches. Everyone turned a blind eye to the stories; it was under the care of trusted authorities after all. In truth, the professional mad led and manipulated the lesser-educated mad — subordinate lunacy. The power-hungry could play here, on the quiet. Reputation untarnished, as this was altruistic work helping the lowly and needy. No one really listened to the deranged ramblings of the certified insane. Their pointed fingers can be easily dismissed — it’s the illness talking — they know not what they say.

  Beneath the romantic, gothic grandeur of blackened turrets, lights peeked through the trees; eerie illuminations and shadows danced and screamed – wailing into the night. Deathly moaning and shrieking pierced through the woods and battered the windows of the free close-by. Terrors of the mad rippling through the branches, reaching towards the sane.

  The morning sirens raised from the asylum doubled as an alarm for the nearby village, coinciding with their own institution’s authoritarian call. Filling all who woke to them with the dread of a pending air raid. Only it was just another day. The alarm for the school kids running late, the one-hour countdown to the school bells chiming them in.

  3 Mother

  Annabelle lived with her uncle and aunt — Mike and Trisha, and younger cousin, Gracie. Mike was her mother’s older brother. In truth, Mike and Trisha were the only parents she truly knew. They unofficially adopted her as a toddler. Being with them gave her some sense of stability and safety that her mother couldn’t offer.

  Nancy was unstable — frequently spending long periods hospitalised. Even falling pregnant, curiously, while an inpatient. When discovered, it was assumed to be a result of relations with another patient and was not spoken of. No truth was ever going to make that wrong right. She was promptly removed from Lochwood and cared for quietly by her parents. Much to the dismay of Nancy. She was just a girl of seventeen then, in the winter of 1983. After birth, the mother and child remained together for the first two years. Postpartum depression bore into the fragile mother, evolving into dangerous episodes of increasingly unpredictable psychosis. The final straw came when she tried to drown the toddler in the bath; luckily, they were living with her parents at the time, who managed to rescue the flailing, drowning infant from Nancy’s psychotic grasp beneath the water.

  Nancy, unmedicated, was a dangerous, unhinged young woman, and that was not the first time she had tried to kill her child, though it was the last. She was readmitted to the asylum once again. And Annabelle was taken in by her aunt and uncle. Being younger and having a baby of their own, it was thought that they could provide a closer to ‘normal’ family upbringing, and make her feel somewhat wanted, which was beyond the capabilities of her grandparents. The child’s existence was the source of great shame and sin upon the family.

  For Nancy, treatment courses varied in approach, and at that time, she received regular electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as part of her regime. The challenge with her various mental ailments was that correcting one knocked onto another, creating new battles to come charging to the forefront.

  All Annabelle was ever told was that her mother had to ‘go away for a little while to get better.’ Though she never did.

  For months at a time, the girl would see or hear nothing of her mother. She would see her on birthdays and Christmas on visits to the hospital with her aunt. They even spent one Christmas (1989) together at Mike and Trisha’s when Nancy was given a few days release, the last before she died. The girl had vague memories from this day. She remembered her mother helping hang golden foil decorations and colourful paper chains as she hummed along to The Cure on the radio. The song, ‘Pictures of You’ always made her think of Nancy’s brilliant smile that Christmas, which was the closest to a normal Christmas she had had with her mother. She remembered the smells of the meal, the softness of her mother’s hair, how it smelt of Vosene when she hugged her tight, snuggling into the crook of her neck. She recalled being told, firmly, that she wasn’t to call her ‘Mum’; it was just ‘Nancy.’

  Nancy’s body was found hanging from an old sycamore tree in the asylum’s woods on the afternoon of Tuesday, 8th May 1990. Death came on one of her, seemingly, good days. It was the girl’s 6th birthday. As far as Annabelle was told — her mother had a bad reaction to some medicine and died in hospital. Suicide was such a shameful thing that it was hidden from the child and as many others that they could get away with the lie.

  A tarnish of suicide on top of illegitimate pregnancy and lunacy was one that the Summers family didn’t want against their name.

  4 Esotericism

  Annabelle had a good group of friends in some of the neighbouring block kids, who all went to the hilltop nursery together, then on to the little village school nearest the block. They had each other’s backs through new milestones, boundary crossings, squabbles at home. Mike and Trisha frequently argued, more so since Nancy’s death.

  One such evening towards the end of spring 1994, Annabelle found herself alone as her friends one by one returned home for supper, assuming she would do the same. As she circled around the bl
ock, gazing up towards the flat window, angry shadows waved towards one another, pointing in accusation. She hoped Gracie was asleep and chose to avoid home until the dust of their anger had settled for the night. Annabelle headed back into the woods....

  Swinging her body forward, tiptoes taking her sharply off the lip of the wee hill, her small palms and dainty fingers held firm around the well-worn, tightly weaved, greying fibres of the thick rope. Her palms were often rubbed red from the amount of time she spent swinging here, as were the inner tops of her small pale thighs. She never minded. The area around the tree hummed low from this time of year as the bees busied themselves around the ample selection of wild flora. For this reason, some dubbed this place The Buzzing Tree. The girl watched the birds fly overhead, beyond the sprawling canopy. The glimpses of wings between the gaps and intermittent flickers of direct sunlight temporarily stole her sight, giving her a peculiar feeling. She wasn’t alone.

  The low buzz ceased, and the whispering began then.

  When Annabelle couldn’t see, she could hear — the distinct voice was not of this world, of that, she was sure. It was one voice, though it sounded like many. A whispery tone echoed in a loop. As if one whisper had been recorded over another of the same, each one slightly out of time with its predecessor, a ghostly reverb. If it wanted to frighten, it could easily up the tempo. As it was — reminiscent of a mother’s gentle hush. The voice wanted to connect, breaking through energy cracks like the sun splicing between the wisps of cloud, branches and leaves; veins of light squeezing between the dark.

  That night back at home, as she slept in the upper bunk, Annabelle dreamt of Nancy, her mother. In her dream, she walked within her dead mother’s living skin. Sitting by the foot of the tree, she pulled a red Walkman from her baggy pale blue cardigan pocket. New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ piped through her brain as she scribbled in a notebook. A swirl of colour spun her through the leafy sycamores into a starkly beige room. A voice before a face was visible said, “Ok Nancy, it’s just as we’ve done before, only a little tweak higher.” A nurse smiled in warm, friendly, confident reassurance. Blinking away the colour, she couldn’t speak. Her mouth was packed, so she nodded up and down in understanding. Yet the dreamer could not understand. Tweak what? She wondered. But that was agreed without her; she was just passing through.

  Annabelle-Nancy’s body jerked back hard. She was shot spinning through an orbit of starbursts. She was catapulted at speed beyond human comprehension of any earthbound body, far beyond her flesh. She became part of interconnecting tendrils of light energy. She became the spectrum. A pause in the endless eternity in which she whirled would have anyone utterly spellbound. Veins of psychedelic colour laced around her and rained a storm through her blood—tendrils of energy, life, death. She could feel everything possible and impossible. Divinity, infinity contorted and deliquesced around and within. Breathless, weightless, she was the eye of a multitude of starbursts. A black hole where all matter collided and exploded through her core. Until she was back at the foot of the tree yanked from catatonia.

  The track had switched to ‘Age of Consent’ at some point when she was gone. Inside the notebook, her eyes strained to focus on the words, reach through to the source of thoughts that brought about their creation, but there was a filter, of sorts — a closed-door, out of bounds.

  Then, she was laughing, eyes towards a spectacle of dancing clouds. Annabelle could almost feel her belly skipping in ghostly glee. The light white fluff transformed, rolling grey and solid. Plaster-like faces began to bear down from the sky — cheerful, chubby-cheeked cherubs laughing and taunting. She couldn’t hear the words; she felt the blows like boulders to the mind. A mind being stoned for sin.

  Annabelle woke, shuddering in tears, inconsolable from what she did not know.

  5 Ouija

  “Have you heard of a Ouija Board?” Annabelle wasn’t entirely sure where the idea or even the words ‘Ouija Board’ came from — a dream? All she knew was that she felt compelled to put it out there. The girl wanted answers, and she didn’t want to cause her Aunt and Uncle unease by probing them about her parents.

  “It’s a spirit board type thing, isn’t it?” Donna screwed up her face as if reaching into some depths of her mind for the answers.

  “Aye, well, I’d like to try it to contact my mum...”

  The others shuffled, scuffing feet amongst the crisp leaves, sucking teeth in awkward silence but for the gentle hush of the breeze through the woods.

  “I’m game for some spook,” breaking the tension, Scott was always the first to speak up, and when he did, it was a sure bet the others would follow. The matriarch of the young group at 13-years-old.

  “Where would we even get one?” She could tell Johnny, Scott’s brother, wasn’t keen, so he’d be looking for ways to avoid but wouldn’t clearly back out.

  “Well, I don’t believe in that stuff. But if you’re all up for it, then, sure, count me in.” Suzie was twelve with moon-eyes for Scott, which guaranteed her agreement.

  “We could probably make one. It’s just a board with the alphabet, numbers, and yes, no, isn’t it... Yeah, I’m sure that’s all it is,” Scott, unsurprisingly, took the lead.

  Later that night, the kids went back to Scott and Johnny’s for dinner and went about making a makeshift Ouija in the little bedroom.

  “Is that it? I mean, is this all it is?” Suzie asked, clearly unimpressed.

  “Yeah, I think so. My big cousin Andy said this was all it needed. Oh! And something to use as a pointer.”

  “I’ll grab a tumbler from the kitchen — Mum’s out back hanging the washing, so she’ll not get suss.”

  A minute later, Johnny returned with a small glass tumbler. “Got it. Will we give it a go then?”

  “I don’t think we should do it in the house. How about we do it by the Swinging Tree?” Annabelle wasn’t sure why she suggested the tree. The thought left her mouth, bypassing her mind entirely.

  “We’ve got football practice tomorrow night. It’ll have to be on Saturday if that suits you and Suzie?”

  The girls looked at one another and agreed.

  That night Annabelle and Scott wrapped up the board and tumbler-planchette in a couple of black bin bags and hid it between two huge privet hedges that filled a gap between two of the buildings around the block, next to Annabelle’s, until it was time to use it.

  6 Daughter of Mine

  The afternoon began to pour itself into the loch, further blurring the hazy horizon. Hues of colour washes popping the beckoning dusk; an intense watercolour painting. Ochre, lavender, and fuchsia bands painted the sky as the friends made their way from the village through the muddy, rocky path between the vast footprint of meandering meadows in full blossom. The musical backdrop of rustling reeds swaying, grasshopper whistles and birdsong was their adventure soundtrack.

  The area held protected status, due to the rarity of the natural wildlife and flora habitats. Maybe that’s why the paths were ‘unofficial’ corroded in by the stomping feet of inquisitive children, dog walkers and destitute wandering locals — searching for hidden nooks of shelter in the woods to shoot up, get wasted where no sane person would look. The meadows were always full, brimming with life for half and death on the other, flanking the glittering loch favoured by herons, ducks, shrews and a whole manner of abundant life flourishing free. The wild flora danced breezily, synchronising with the laughter and chatter of youth.

  Donna and Johnny kept up ahead on their bikes while Annabelle, Suzie and Scott walked.

  Beyond the meadows, the path veered into dense woodland, dominated by lanky birch, oak and sycamore. Pockets of bluebells and daisies spattered their feet. Trails through the woodland were less embedded than those through the meadows around it. These ancient giants surrounding the asylum grounds was where most walkers would turn back. Unpredictable, uncomfortable and uncertain things lay ahead. They could get you, and no one would come looking. You could be the next unnamed lab-rat. Ahe
ad were stories of fright, horror and the mad — forbidden. And for Annabelle, the whisper of a mother.

  When they approached the Swinging Tree, they jumped across the small stream. Donna lay out a chequered blanket by its base, Suzie, helped up onto the swing by Scott, laughed with her belly flipping, swinging back and forth on the makeshift seat. Scott had twisted the rope around and around when she sat on it so that when she swung, she spun — a spinning top in the air above the stream. Annabelle sat by the shallow stream, fidgeting with the amber beads she wore around her dainty wrist. Do I really want to do this? A warm rush of air caressed her back; a warm rush from the opposite side swept across her face. Yes.

  Annabelle pulled out the tumbler (would-be-planchette) and board from her backpack. The base was made using an old, discarded piece of wood they had retrieved from the bins. Annabelle had decorated and drawn the bones of the spirit board in swirly, leafy vine patterns. When making the board, Johnny had taken some glee in regaling accounts passed onto him by his older cousin, which increased the fear. As a result, the impromptu adventure suffered a couple of weeks delay from a myriad of excuses that had gone around the group; homework, visiting family, being grounded, getting held back at school, football etc. Inevitability this only increased the adrenaline for adventure.

  What the others didn’t know was that when Annabelle’s fingers touched the makeshift planchette, the world as they saw it folded in on itself like rapid forming origami; the sky, the trees, her friends, the birds — everything bent and buckled. Warping tides of time folded down to a pinprick.