Why'd you have to go and make us faint, Rosie?" Emmett grumbled, as she finished up her story.
"Aw, hush up. I know you'd never pass out in real life. It was just a story."
Rosalie's consolation only went so far, but Emmett allowed her to whisper some sweet nothings in his ear to make up for it. Everyone else had been into Rosalie's story, and they were eager for more.
"Me! Me!" piped up Alice. "I'm next. My story is a little different though. It's actually true..."
"It was originally known as Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic. It was supposed to be a hospital and school for the mentally disabled and physically handicapped, but what went on inside those walls was a horrific stain on the field of medicine and the treatment of mental illness. It opened in 1908, but it is over 30 years later when our story takes place."
They didn't know what we do today about disorders of the brain, so everyone who displayed any sort of abnormal behavior was treated the same way by the hospital staff. People who were under-developed mentally were housed with people who heard voices. People with melancholia were treated alongside people with violent outbursts. The only criteria for dividing the "students" was based on "intellect." The tests administered were biased and absurd, but in order to keep its status as a school, they needed some type of objective data, so intellect it was.
Eventually, the school became an asylum, a place to put any young person society didn't know what else to do with - orphans, the poor, petty criminals, and immigrants. By the end of the first year, the asylum was at capacity, full of people who didn't need hospitalization, but who mainstream society wanted to hide away.
Alice was somewhere in the middle.
She was a teenager in 1938 when her parents took her to Pennhurst. She had always been a bit out of step with those around her, and she never had any friends her own age. Instead of worrying about their daughter and encouraging her, her parents tried to cast her aside and hide her away from the public.
They started out with a boarding school, but it soon became obvious that Alice wasn't getting along there. The headmaster contacted them repeatedly, informing them that Alice was scaring the other students, and the school just wasn't equipped to deal with someone like her. He never said outright that Alice was mad, but it was implied between the lines.
The thing about Alice was that she wasn't insane.
She could see the future.
For years no one believed her. That all changed when she went to Pennhurst.
Her parents were desperate to get rid of her after the boarding school kicked her out, so after she returned home on the train, they took her immediately to the asylum. The doctors at Pennhurst examined her like all the other patients. They still tended to divide the students at the asylum based on intellect, and then by their disorders. Alice was polite, friendly, bright, and well-spoken, but there was something about her that seemed off to the doctors, so they kept her for observation. Soon they would have their answer.
They locked her alone in an exam room and then watched her from the two-way glass pane in the door. It took about an hour before she started calling out for the nurse or the doctor to come back. It took another hour for them to finally understand why her parents had brought her to Pennhurst.
After she realized that shouting would not work, she sat down on the exam table, swinging her legs back and forth, humming songs to herself for amusement. Then suddenly her back stiffened. Her entire body went rigid, and her pupils went almost completely black. She sat on the exam table as if in a trance for five minutes. The only sign of movement was her shaking hand.
It was almost as if she were possessed, and if the the doctors hadn't fancied themselves men of science, they probably would have seriously considered bringing in an exorcist.
Instead, Dr. James and Dr. Victoria went into the room and asked Alice what had happened.
"Nothing," Alice said at first.
"We know something happened, Miss Brandon," Dr. James snapped.
"It- it was really nothing," Alice said. "It- it happens all the time."
"What happens all the time?" Dr. James raised his hand as if he was going to strike Alice across the face.
She shrank back in fear and whispered, "I was having a vision."
"A vision?"
"Of the future."
"And what did you see in this vision?"
"You're in danger," she whispered. "Something terrible is going to happen to you."
They immediately admitted Alice and put her into a room.
Her parents signed the paperwork, giving their daughter to the asylum.
They never said good-bye.
Even though they separated the boys from the girls in their sleeping quarters, they were still allowed to interact. It was lucky for Alice they had this policy, because the only comfort she found at Pennhurst was in a young man, a little older than she, named Jasper Whitlock.
He was in the asylum because of his melancholia. He didn't have parents. They had passed when he was a child. It was his older sister Maria who raised him, and it was she who took him to Pennhurst.
Jasper had been admitted to the institution almost a year before Alice. He knew how disorienting it could be at first, so he took it upon himself to get to know all the newcomers. He noticed Alice immediately. During group hours in the common room her first full day in the asylum, he went up to her and reached out his hand.
Before he could introduce himself, Alice spoke sadly, "Hello, Jasper. You've kept me waiting."
"My apologies, ma'am," Jasper said with a grin.
Of course, Alice had seen him in a vision. It was he who was the reason she did not put up more of a fight with her parents. Alice knew many bits and pieces of the future. For as long as she had been alive, her visions had never been wrong exactly. Sometimes they hovered between possibilities until someone made a decision that set the course with certainty. She had seen enough visions to know that Jasper Whitlock had a good reason to be sad. She also knew her own time in the asylum would be unthinkable, but the moments she spent with Jasper would be the happiest of her life.
She quickly fell into a routine at the asylum. She would be given therapeutic treatment in the morning. This treatment included all types of behavioral studies and experimental therapies, including the very newly invented electroshock therapy. After these treatments, she would have lunch with Jasper. The afternoons would be spent in "classes," because Alice was highly intelligent and able to function well in spite of the visions. Not all the admitted patients were so lucky.
The best part of Alice's day, though, were the early evenings she would spend with Jasper in the group room.
They were close immediately. They spent hours just talking to each other, about their pasts and their dreams. Jasper had always wanted to join the army, though he had no hope of doing so now. Alice had always dreamed of being a painter, but her parents never allowed her paints. They were too messy, and being a painter wasn't realistic.
Jasper was never disturbed by Alice's visions, nor did he doubt them or think Alice was crazy for having them. Likewise, Alice wasn't alarmed by Jasper's own explanation of his melancholia. She was the only person who understood what he meant when he said he could feel the sadness of others around him. He took on the burdens of everyone else on his shoulders.
The asylum was very strict about girls and boys fraternizing, so Jasper and Alice were not allowed to do anything but hold hands under tables and sit close to each other, but the they both relished in these touches. Neither had received much affection growing up, so even the slightest touch was thrilling.
Even though they both endured their sometimes suspicious treatments, Alice's first days at Pennhurst were happy for them both. That would quickly change.
Three weeks after she was admitted, Dr. James was found dead. He was alone in his house at the time, but as he was in exceptional health, foul play was suspected even though little evidence was found for the blow he took to the head.
Of course, there was no way Alice could have had anything to do with the death. Rationally, the doctors would have understood that, but it was too coincidental for them not to react. They moved Alice into a different building, away from Jasper, and put a strict watch on her at all times.
That's when the visions intensified and the nightmares started.
She woke up screaming in the middle of the night. Her nightmares all took place inside Pennhurst. She dreamed of patients being underfed and neglected by their caretakers. Those deemed "feeble-minded" had it the worst of everyone in her dreams. They were beaten for not being able to take care of themselves. The most horrific nightmares Alice had were of these patients being sexually abused by the doctors and nurses hired to care for them.
When she tried to accuse one of the other doctors, they had to isolate her away from all the other patients.
She was moved again and put in what amounted to a jail cell. It was deep in the basement of the administration building. It had a tiny window at ground level that let in just enough light so as not to drive her completely mad.
Jasper was still allowed some freedom to walk around the grounds of Pennhurst. He would sneak away and go to the window whenever he could, usually after dinner. Though the window was to high for Alice to see out of, they still spoke to each other through it. Alice told Jasper about the dreams. She was not sure if they were foretelling the future, but she strongly suspected it. She had never experienced anything like them before.
The only time she was ever allowed out of the room was when the doctors came to examine her. The examination consisted of analysis, but mostly it was a lot of hooking Alice up to machines and electrodes without telling her what they did.
This continued for weeks. Although she had long lost all track of time. The only thing she had to do in her small room was wait for Jasper to visit and sleep, but that became torturous for her as well.
One night in late December, she managed to fall asleep early without struggle. Her dreams started out pleasant enough, because they were about Jasper. She watched in her dream as Jasper was taken from his room and into an unscheduled treatment session. Alice couldn't hear everything said in the dream, but it was obvious the doctor was displeased with Jasper's progress. When Dr. Victoria strapped him to the electroshock machine, the fear was obvious in Jasper's eyes. Alice tried to call out to him in her dream, but it was to no avail. The doctor set the dial up higher than she had ever seen it go before.
He flipped the switch.
"Jasper! Jasper!" She woke up still screaming his name over and over and over until she was hoarse, but it was too late. Jasper was dead.
Alice knew, instinctively she knew, the second Jasper has passed. The electroshock therapy meant to help stabilize his mood actually killed him.
After Jasper was gone, Alice grew more and more obstinate. She refused treatment. She would scream her lungs out whenever any of the staff came close to her. They continued to bring her food, but she would hardly eat for fear of being drugged. She didn't bathe. She grew increasingly feral.
The doctors finally started leaving her alone. It was a practice they engaged in with many patients, but usually not when they still maintained lucidity. The problem with Alice was that she knew too much, and the asylum was willing to let her die in order to keep her quiet.
Then one night, the night of a new moon, there was a distinct silence from Alice's cell. Every night previously, she had spent it screaming, but this night was eerily silent.
Some patients swore they heard the sound of shattering glass during the night, and sure enough, the only sign of her was the broken mirror in her tiny room. The glass shards completely covered the floor, crunching under the shoes of the nurse who found the room empty the next morning.
The bed was stripped of its sheets. All of Alice's meager personal effects were gone. It was like she was never there. It was like she never existed.
No trace of her or her body was every found.
To this day, no one knows what became of Alice Brandon. All they do know is that every evening at seven o'clock, the ghost of Jasper Whitlock can be seen walking down the hall in the building where he lived and out the front door toward the administration building, stopping outside the window to Alice's cell.
They say he goes to visit her every night, where he waits for her return.
TuesdayMidnight is the author of Seven Minutes in Heaven, Raw and Rosy and more one-shots than you can shake a stick at. She recently posted her Twilight Big Bang fic, Turn and Face the Strange. Check out all of her wonderful words at http:/ www . fanfiction . net/u/1993632/tuesdaymidnight
Join us tomorrow when MsKathy tells us a story of real-life horror...
Until then, please show TuesdayMidnight some love.
