Dissent (13 page)

“What
stuff?”

“Hauntings?
Lost souls? Souls in general? God? The devil? Anything?”

“I
grew up very religious,” he hedged.

“That's
not an answer,” I shot back, deciding to skip past the first
floor altogether. It was likely to only be old offices and dining
halls, kitchens. Nothing good.

He
made a short, airy snorting sound and was silent as we slowly made
our way up the sturdy staircase that would probably still stand if
the entire building crumbled around it. I didn't think he had any
plans on answering. “I don't know what I believe anymore,”
he finally said, quietly, like he was talking to himself.

“That's
alright,” I said, pausing at the top of the stairs to wait for
him, “neither do I. Neither do most people. In a way... it's
almost easier to believe, you know? To be so sure of something.
That's easy. The not knowing is what is hard.”

I
pushed open the door to the ward, stepping right in front of a nurses
station where the hall went off in both directions, the doors to all
the patients rooms open: two inch thick with metal grated windows and
a small rectangular cut-out in the bottom. I pushed my shoe into the
empty space. At Isaiah's drawn in brows, I shrugged. “For the
food trays. For the patients who were too bonkers to go down to the
cafeteria.”

“You
know a lot about this, huh?”

“I
did a assignment in high school for my psychology class about old
methods of mental health care. In my research, I kept seeing all
these images of old asylums and I just got obsessed I guess. It's
fascinating. Like how they used to think bleeding a patient could fix
people with the flu or whatever else. It's interesting to see how the
great minds of different times got things so entirely wrong.”

I
walked into the first room, empty but a small metal frame bed with a
moth-eaten mattress on top. No writing on the walls. No personal
effects. “I mean... women would get sent to these places for
just having an emotional disposition. They were branded hysterical
and sent here to rot.”

“That's
crazy,” Isaiah said, following me in and out of the rooms,
barely looking around. I could feel his eyes on me almost the whole
time.

“Yeah,
but there was one bright side in it for them,” I said, smiling.

“What?”
he asked, looking genuinely curious.

“Well,
doctors had come up with this new treatment for hysterics...”

“What
was it?”

I
fought the smile, but it eventually won out. “They masturbated
them.”

“No
fucking way,” he said, shaking his head.

“Yes
way,” I laughed. “I mean the word 'hysteria' is the Greek
for 'uterus'. And doctors would talk to women suffering from female
hysterics and would be told about pelvic heaviness, emotional
dis-ease, unusual lubrication, vivid dreams. You know... what we
would call sexual arousal now a day,” I said, leading him down
the other side of the hall then up another flight of stairs. “So,
of course, if the uterus was what was suffering, then the uterus must
be treated. They decided that the vulva needed to be massaged or that
the vagina itself needed to be. So they fingered the women until they
had a relief via paroxysm. We call it an orgasm. And then like that,”
I said, snapping, “the symptoms would alleviate. But, female
hysterics tended to be a prolonged condition in need of frequent
treatment.” I stopped walking, noticing he wasn't behind me,
and pausing, turning back to find him watching me intensely. “What?”

He
shook his head slightly. “You're just... you're really
fascinating.”

“Oh,”
I said, my smile falling, feeling the words settle somewhere deep
inside. It was probably the best compliment I had ever received.
Anyone can be pretty or sexy or gorgeous. By nothing more than a
complete accident of genetics. It meant nothing to be called that. It
meant a lot to be told that you, as a person, the person you had
become from a lifetime of interests and likes and dislikes... to be
told that that person, as a whole, were fascinating. That was pretty
freaking incredible. “Thank you,” I said, quickly turning
away, uncomfortable. “There's nothing left,” I said,
going into another empty room, this one with a wheelchair in a
corner.

“What
do you mean?”

I
shrugged. “Sometimes you come across ones that still have
articles of clothing. Or pictures. Even handwritten notes. Evidence
of the people who lived and got better, or suffered worse, in places
like this. But there's nothing.”

“Maybe
other... asylum enthusiasts,” he said, his tone teasing, “have
come through and taken stuff back.”

“No,”
I said, shaking my head, “people like me don't take things.
It's too important. Too much a part of these places to remove it. So
either everything was cleared out when they closed down, or random
nobodies stole shit. Oh well,” I said, making my way back down
the hall toward the staircase. “Let's see if there's anything
in the basement. The basements are always the best.”

Unfortunately
for us, the door was stuck. Or locked. “Damn it,” I said,
kicking the door hard. “This was a waste of a trip.”

“Hey,”
Isaiah said, smiling. “I learned a lot. Now I can tell women
that they're moody because they're suffering from a chronic condition
that I need to treat with some valvular massage.”

I
laughed, watching as he pulled at the door. “That's why they
created the vibrator, you know.”

“Why?”

“Because
the doctors hands got tired.”

Isaiah
threw his head back and laughed, shaking his head. “That's
great.”

“What
are you doing? It's locked or stuck or something.” But he was
reaching for the exposed hinges with his hands, ignoring me. “Don't
touch that. You'll give yourself tetanus or... hepatitis or
something.”

“I've
had my tetanus shot,” he said slamming his fingers up
underneath the bolt. “And I'm pretty sure hepatitis is spread
from person to person, not metal bar to hand.”

I
stood back, rolling my eyes at him until the bolt suddenly popped up
and he pulled it out. “No way!” I exclaimed, my
excitement reigniting. Because no one else would have been able to
get the door open, so whatever might be down there would still be
there for me to see.

“I'm
pretty good with my hands,” he said, shrugging. I felt a heat
rise in my cheeks and quickly looked away from his eyes, but not
before I saw the realization dawn there. “But you know all
about that,” he added and I wanted the ground to open up and
swallow me right then.

I
stood there in stony silence until I heard the second bolt hit the
floor and Isaiah pull the door open. “So it was locked,”
I said, looking at the place where the bolt was still attached.

“Yep,
after you,” he said, gesturing into the darkness.

I
reached into my pocket for my cell, putting on the flashlight and
carefully making my way down the narrow steps. They were slippery
with years of dust and dirt and I felt my stomach lurch as my foot
slid off the front of one and I felt myself starting to fall. I had a
second of absolute horror and acceptance of my fate before I felt
Isaiah's hand reach out and snake around my stomach, pulling me hard
up against his chest.

“You
alright?” he asked, his voice hot on my ear, making me suppress
a small shiver.

“Yeah,”
I said, my voice airy. “Thanks. You can let me go now.”

I
expected him to fight. Or for his hand to grab my breast. Or anything
completely inappropriate. But his hand slowly pulled away from my
stomach, then slid down my arm to grab my hand. “Let's just do
this to be safe,” he suggested, his big hand enveloping mine
and squeezing hard.

In
that moment, I was so incredibly grateful that I was wearing gloves.
Because if there was anything I learned about Isaiah Meyers, it was
that his bare skin on my bare skin led to all kinds of chaos.
“Alright,” I said, quickly making my way down the rest of
the steps so I could get free again. “It's so dark,” I
grumbled, flashing my light around at the walls.

“There's
a door straight ahead,” Isaiah offered, letting me pull my hand
away.

I
walked over to it, heavy and metal, making an awful screeching noise
as I pulled it open. But the next room had a fair amount of light
sneaking in through the tiny barred basement windows.

“Holy
shit,” I said, looking around at the room.

“What
is this?” he asked, looking around.

“It's
a crypt,” I said, walking over to one of the doors in the wall
and pulling the handle. “They kept the dead down here.”

“Why
are you opening...”

But
it was too late. The door was open and I was pulling the human-sized
tray out. “They did the autopsy there,” I said, gesturing
toward the metal table in the center with a drain and a huge overhead
light above it, “then they put the bodies away until they could
be moved.”

“That's
really creepy.”

I
shrugged, pushing the tray back in and shutting the door. “Every
hospital has a crypt just like this underneath it. People die there
everyday. They need somewhere to keep them until families can be
notified and arrangements made.”

“Yeah,
I guess.”

“Alright,
what do you think is through this door?” I asked, standing next
to it, my arm up high like a model showing off a prize on a game
show.

“You're
the asylum expert, not me,” he said, shaking his head.

“It's
probably just storage honestly,” I said, sounding less enthused
and opening the door. Isaiah was following right behind me as I
stepped through and I slammed back into him when I saw what was in
front of me. “Fuck.”

“What
is it?” he asked, his hand settling on my hip.

I
could feel my heartbeat in my ears. This was a one in a million kind
of find. Dark and creepy and awful. But fucking amazing. “It's
a... exam room.”

“What
the hell is it doing in the basement?” he asked.

“It's
here because it's not that kind of exam room,” I said, leaning
back into his chest slightly.

“What
kind of exam room isn't an exam room?” he asked, resting the
side of his face on my hair.

“The
kind of exam room where they did experiments on patients,” I
told him and felt his body stiffen behind me.

“What?”

“Yeah,”
I said, stepping out of his arms. “I mean... most mental
patients were wards of the state. No one knew or cared about them.
And doctors didn't really understand conditions like schizophrenia or
bi-polar disorder, or even depression or anxiety. They didn't know
how to treat it. So... they treated these people like lab rats.”
I moved into the room, past the chair that reclined and toward the
exam table. “That's why there are straps here,” I said,
running my hand over the ankle restraints.

“That's
so fucked up.”

“Yeah,”
I agreed. “And the worst part is they never really figured
anything out that way.” I walked over to the supply cabinet,
opening the door and gasping.

“What?
What is it?” I pulled the steel implement with a pointed end
and a small handle out to show him. “That looks like an ice
pick,” he observed.

“That's
exactly what it is,” I said, looking down at it. I held it up
in the light. “They used these to do ice pick lobotomies.”

“What
is an ice pick lobotomy?” he asked, sounding like he was
dreading the answer.

“Right
here,” I said, pointing toward the spot behind my eye, “is
the prefrontal cortex of the brain. It's where we have our decision
making abilities, our personality, our judgment and free will...”

“I
don't like where this is going.”

“In
essence it's all the things that doctors at the time blamed for the
willfulness of some of their patients. Their bad behavior. Their
refusal to respond to treatment. So one day, they decided that if
they took one of these and stabbed it through the eye,” I took
a breath, “that all those bad behaviors would go away.”

“I'm
assuming it didn't work.”

“Oh,
it worked,” I countered. “The problem was that damaging
the prefrontal cortex stunted intelligence, it makes people unable to
respond correctly, it made them emotionally blunted. A lot of people
who underwent the procedure ended up just... staring at walls for the
rest of their lives.”