Chapter 1 - Part 3

A small, red-haired man had emerged from a side room and spoken. He wore a green polo top with the ‘Belle Asylum’ logo on it. Mr Khan was briefly taken aback by the sudden interruption but recovered quickly. He held his hand out.

“You must be the man I spoke to on the phone. Mr Graham, right?”

“Call me Bobby,” said the man, shaking the teacher’s hand in a quick movement. His eyes jumped from Mr Khan to the students and then back again in an instant.

“Alright then, Bobby, let me introduce you to the class and then you can lead the way.”

He turned and raised a hand to stifle the chatter of the twenty or so students. “People, this is Robert Graham, our guide.”

Bobby nodded, a quick jerk of the head, as a few tentative greetings were sent his way. He appeared to be always on the alert. His sudden movements and hair colour reminded Jonathan of a rare red squirrel he had seen once while hiking.

“Guys, call me Bobby,” he repeated in a surprisingly strong voice. “I’ll be taking you through the through the old asylum, but before we do I’d just like to remind you some areas are old enough to be considered ruins so please don’t touch anything, be careful on steps…”

He continued to give safety advice while gesturing for them to follow him through a series of narrow corridors. As they travelled Jonathan noticed a gradual change in architecture and style. It was as if every few doors they passed through took them back fifty years. The purpose of the building seemed to change with the architecture, with signs they were in a hospital appearing less and less frequently. Eventually they passed through a large door marked ‘Admin’ and the change became pronounced. They had left behind all the wards and equipment, replaced instead by offices and filing cabinets. On first arriving Jonathan had noticed that the hospital was roughly split into three separate sections and from a glance out the window he guessed that they had moved from the modern looking section to the second section, a monstrous stone affair that reminded him of images of old boarding schools from a hundred years ago.

“…section of the hospital was began in eighteen twenty, with various extensions and renovations taking it right up to the twentieth century, the addition of electricity being a crucial one of course. Now it’s mainly used for office space and teaching. Funnily enough, this whole area was considered an extension to the existing asylum; so counting that this hospital dates back to the seventeenth century, although the exact date the original prison building was converted to an asylum is unknown. Records about the place back then are muddled…”

Jonathan felt his concentration slipping. He’d been told enough by his parents and various others to know the rough history of the hospital. The hospital had been commissioned by the government and sponsored by a group of influential businessmen, an unusually charitable work at the time, although the idea to attach it to the already old asylum came as the request of the most respected doctor in the country, feeling that mental and physical aliments were deeply interrelated. As time passed the hospital grew larger than the asylum, with various refurbishments and extensions coming over the next few decades. Mr Khan had joked on the bus that the asylum and hospital ‘just refused to die’, a statement he had immediately regretted when he considered the irony.

Jonathan glanced around to see if his friends were bored. Samantha caught his eye and grinned ruefully but continued to politely listen to the guide, while Adam seemed to be off in his own little world, glancing around rapidly as if trying to drink all the detail in. Jonathan reached up and began to curl a strand of his dark brown hair around his finger, a habit he always returned to when he found his attention wandering. The group continued through the old building, Bobby’s continual narration filling them in on the various extensions and their history. Eventually they reached the entrance to the asylum, an area on the far side of the building that connected to the old ruins. The visitor centre was a large round room with information and artefacts lining the walls. In the middle of the room a large rock, shaped like a pyramid, sat in a display case, odd markings scratched across its surface.

“Okay guys, you all look around while I deal with some forms your teacher needs to fill out,” said Bobby, moving behind the help desk and shuffling some paper.

The class spread out throughout the room, reading an occasional display or examining some of the old restraints that had been used hundreds of years ago, primitive ancestors to the modern straight jacket. Jonathan moved towards the stone in the centre, fascinated by the odd carvings that were unlike anything he had ever seen before. Intrigued, he scanned the plaque. It told him that the rock had been in the asylum as far back as records went, though from its age and the symbols, not known to match any existing alphabet, it was likely moved there from another source. Its function, said the plaque, as far as anyone could determine, was similar to that of a dreamcatcher, keeping bad spirits and thoughts away. The one historical reference found for the rock backed this theory up, referring to its language as ‘the sleeping symbols’.

Samantha moved up beside Jonathan and drank in the plaque’s information. She snorted quietly to herself.

“Hoax,” she whispered.

Jonathan frowned. “And since when were you an expert on historical artefacts?”

“I’m not. I’m just cynical. I mean an old asylum’s not very interesting by itself, is it? So they put this rock here and suddenly the whole place is more interesting, all sexy and mysterious. If it was a real mystery it would be off somewhere getting studied.”

Jonathan wondered if she could be right. With this in mind the rock seemed less interesting, less old, more like a simple plastic distraction for silly tourists. 

“What’s up?” asked Adam, appearing suddenly on Jonathans other side.

“Sam’s just busy bringing me down,” said Jonathan with an ironic smile.

“What, the rock?”

“Shut up.”

Just then there was a sharp intake of breath from Samantha. Jonathan looked round to see what was wrong and immediately saw it. A man had come into the room, dressed in a similar top to Bobby. Unlike Bobby however, this man had ‘SECURITY’ written on his top. He was average height and muscled, with short dark hair. His eyes passed over the crowd, lingering for a few moments on Jonathan and Samantha, before settling on Adam. The man’s face was hard and cruel, a certain gleam in his eyes betraying his distaste. After a few moments he moved on, leaving the visitor centre without so much as a backwards glance. Jonathan let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.

“I was hoping we wouldn’t run into him,” sighed Adam, giving the first indication he had even noticed the man.

“He looked so…angry,” said Samantha quietly.

At that moment Mr Khan sauntered over, clapping Adam on the back. “Adam! Bobby there just informed me that that security guard who just came in is your uncle. You didn’t mention he worked here!”

Adam just shrugged.