Chapter 3 - Did Daddy Like the Castle?

This one's a bit graphic, sorry about that.

Leaning against the cold brickwork of the ruin, he watched as Katie climbed higher and higher up the crumbling remains of a wall.  The man with the stitches...how could she know?

He thought over everything he knew about the Hay Hill Asylum.

It was built in 1950, six levels high and a hundred cells to a floor.  Barred windows stretched as far as the eye could see, built with bullet-proof glass and reinforced by brick walls.  The patients used to hit their heads off the jagged rocks, trying to rid themselves of the pain.

The patients...treated as animals, they had their bodies cut open and stitched back, limbs removed and replaced by the inadequate doctors.  Victims of cruel testing, they became violent.  Their mental states worsened dramatically.  Some couldn't remember how to talk, some tried to bite their way out of their tiny cells, some forgot how to feel...and then the tests became too much.  The patients were barely human; some had developed growths, some had been altered so drastically by the "surgery" they had 3 arms and a leg, or no eyes and two mouths.  Their skin started to disintegrate, leaving ugly strips of muscle and bone.  They looked like living nightmares.

All it took was one open door.  A guard forgot to double-lock the cell door of one cell, and someone broke out. They freed more...then they began to maul the guards, ripping the skin from their faces, biting off their fingers, torturing them in revenge for the years they lived through.

After the Hay Hill massacre, the patients were never seen again.  Some believe that they are still there, some believe they ran away, some believe their ghosts haunt the grounds.

Either way, there's no way of denying that terrible things happened here, and that it's unfortunate that the ruins make such a good climbing area.

"Papa!"
He is snapped out of his daydream as he looks up to Katie.  She's high...really high.  "Awright, lassie, I think you should come down now..."
"I want to go higher!"
"Katie, come down here right now."
"But Papa..."
"NOW!"

He bit on his tongue.  When she got down, he knew he had to take her home immediately.  Memories of the Hay Hill asylum still lingered in his mind, and he couldn't let a child play around on the grave of a thousand 'patients'.  

The scar on his lip began to sting again.

"Mummy will be waiting for you!"
"Oh yeah..."
"Come on, let's go."

Katie reached up to hold his hand again, before turning and waving the ruins goodbye.  "Bye bye, funny face man..."  She mumbled as she walked.

"What?"
"I saw the man again!  When I was up high, I waved at him, but he went away...and then I just saw him again!  He seems nice, I want to talk to him!"
"No.  We need to go home."  He snapped, silencing the little girl. "But..."
"No buts, Katie.  We're going home."

She bit her lip and looked at the ground.  "Do you not like the castle?"
"No."

"Why not?"
"I just don't."
There was a long silence as they approached the car outside the house.  "Look, there's mummy's car!"

Katie was silent.

Stella rolled down the window of her car. "Hey, honey!  Did you enjoy staying at Papa's?"

"Yeah, we went to the castle, but Papa doesn't like the castle anymore."
"The...castle."
"Yeah, on Hill Hay."
"Oh, Hay Hill."

"Papa, why don't you like the castle?"
"I just dinnae like it, m'dear.   It's a bit creepy."
There was another silence.

"Did daddy like the castle?"

The scar began to burn, cutting into his lip.

"Um..."
"Thank you for looking after Katie..." Stella lowered her voice.  "...I'm really sorry...she doesn't know..."
"It's...it's awright.  Pleasure having you over.  Bye the now."
"Bye..."

Stella pulled up and drove away, past Hay Hill and over the bridge.

"Did daddy like the castle?"
Yes...it was the last place anyone saw him alive.