The light went out. Cool.
I was starting to locate the green blips in my mind, wanting to find my guy and listen in on the vampy drama, when I heard him shout, “Sam!”
I was up and running across the room before I had a moment to evaluate the likelihood of Clive shouting for my help. Halfway down the hall the sconces flickered and went out. The hall was pitch dark, but I kept going. Clive needed me.
A few steps later, I realize that the sound is all wrong. The hall is carpeted and yet I hear the echo of my shoes slapping against stark tile. There’s a sickly, yellowish light. The electric sconces are gone. A gas lamp stands on a side table that wasn’t there a few minutes ago.
I’m surrounded by the same industrial white tile floor of the asylum, the white walls, the white metal doors with scratches and dents. A scream makes me jump. I turn to see an old woman through the small square of glass embedded in her door. Her withered face fills the glass as she curses at me in Hungarian.
Frantically rattling the knob, she bangs her head against the door, over and over again, making the glass crack. Blood trickles down her face as she shrieks.
A wail behind me makes me jump. I spin to the door opposite the screamer’s and find a woman whose face is burned. It looks as if hot grease was thrown on the left side of her head. The wound isn’t new, but it’s angry and red. The desperation in both women’s eyes makes me break out in a cold sweat.
“Nem, Apa!”
Wait. I know that one. Nem means no. Apa? I’m walking again. The voice seems to be coming from the reception area. Isn’t apa father? Or is that Korean? I remember something in a book…
Another woman bangs on her door and curses me with words I don’t understand.
I move faster to the end of the hall and turn right, almost running into a gurney left against the wall. The woman strapped on it stares blankly up at the ceiling, her jaw hanging open, revealing discolored teeth. The stench of death overwhelms me. She’s been left here to rot for hours.
Another woman, this one an attendant in a long gray gown stained with sweat rushes past me and down the hall I just left. She makes a fist and bangs on the cursing woman’s door, shouting something in response, and then goes down to the screamer’s door, taking a large ring of keys out of her apron pocket.
She pounds the door, shouts something, and then unlocks the door and opens it. The screaming gets louder before it cuts off with a crack.
Stomach twisting, I turn back to the entry. A teenaged girl, well-dressed, is clinging to an older man in an overcoat. They appear to be the only two people who don’t work here, the only two not wearing some type of uniform.
The man in the overcoat has the same blue eyes and reddish-brown hair color as the teenaged girl, who has succumbed to tears, her words lost in sobs. He yanks his hand away from her with a look of disgust as he turns to speak with the man in the white coat.
It's the leering man who was leaning over me in that nightmare, the one who was standing on the front steps of this building in the bleeding photo. The man in the overcoat hands the white-coated man an envelope and shakes his hand. The white-coated man nods to a woman bent over the counter, writing something behind the reception desk.
She, like the other attendant, is wearing a long gray dress, this one with stains at the hem. Moving forward, she speaks quietly to the teen, hooking an arm tightly around the girl’s shoulders and turning her toward the hall where I’m standing.
Two men, also dressed in gray, stand in the entrance to the hall on the opposite side of the reception area. Presumably, that’s the way to the men’s dormitory. I don’t like the way the men are watching the girl, their gazes predatory.
One of them pushes off the wall with his shoulders, sauntering over to the desk and checking the book the female attendant was writing in. Grinning, he taps something on the page and turns to the other attendant, nodding and walking back to the men’s side of the building.
The teen struggles with the attendant, trying to get the attention of the man leaving her at the asylum. “Apa! Kérem,” she pleads.
He never looks back, striding out the door into the night.
“Shh, Léna. Mi gondoskodunk rólad.” The doctor? Director? Superintendent? The man in the white coat shakes his head, pocketing the envelope and walking into an office behind the reception desk.
The girl— Léna—screams and I follow her. She’s taken to the room Clive and I were first taken to. The cell is white with only a thin, soiled mattress on a metal frame. Terrified, the poor girl is looking everywhere at once, clearly trying to find an escape, to find anyone who can help.
Her gaze slides over me. Everyone’s has.
Two female attendants strip off her coat and shoes, throwing them out into the hall. One pulls off Léna’s ring and pockets it, ignoring the girl’s tears. The other takes the silver comb holding back her hair, letting it fall loose to her waist.
The ring thief goes out to the hall and returns with a pair of large shears. Léna’s eyes get big as she fights to get away. The comb thief wraps her meaty arms around the waifish Léna, holding her in place while the other hacks off her hair to above the shoulders.
Léna closes her eyes tightly, as though this is all a bad dream and she’ll wake soon.
One of the women laughs and the other rolls her eyes. They strip off Léna’s dress, leaving her shivering in only a chemise and drawers, then march her barefoot down the hall, dropping her dress on the pile they’ve created of her belongings.
I follow them down the hall, unable to break away. They turn right down the larger main hall and go almost to the end before slipping through a door on the left and down a flight of stairs. Léna is stumbling, but they have her arms locked in their own as they drag her down.
At the bottom, they push through another door and take her down a cold, dark passage. The sounds coming from behind the locked doors fill me with dread. This poor girl shouldn’t be here. No one should.
