..

The white-uniformed man took Dandy downstairs and into the tunnels. They took a turn down one dark, dank passage that smelled absolutely fetid. The odor was so foul Dandy could even taste it in his mouth. It was the very essence of putrefaction in air form. He could feel the fetid smell sinking into his skin and lining the pit of his stomach till he felt like he might become one with the awful scent.

When they finally cleared a threshold where the orderly had to open a door to pass through, they left the horrible smell behind. The air on the other side of the iron door was sweet by comparison; delicious. Had air ever smelled so good?

His enjoyment of the literal breath of fresh air didn't last long: Dandy could smell the horrid scent on himself. It lingered on his skin and his clothes. It was in his hair.

His expression curdled. "Will I be having a shower after this?" he wanted to know.

"Probably," the orderly grunted. "First things first."

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

Dandy ground his teeth. He didn't like being kept out of the loop. If he was being taken somewhere, he wanted to know where. Ordinarily he would throw a fit to get his way but he was a smart boy. He could sense that doing so now wouldn't improve things. He did add it to the growing mental list of resentments he was racking up against Briarcliff's staff, though.

They continued on, down labyrinthine twists and turns, finally ascending a set of stairs where the orderly had to unlock another age-distressed door to go further.

..

The hall of Ward J was alive with noise and motion. At the center of the ring of shouting faces and straining eyes, a pair of combatants squared off. To one side was a skinny man with long brown hair and a beard. He was a wild-eyed fellow who claimed to be the living reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Squaring off against him was Dandy, fists raised in a classic boxer's stance.

Both were stripped to the waist and wore only asylum-issue pants. No shoes. Dandy had his pants cuffs rolled up to mid-calf because it kept his bare feet free to shuffle and dance. He'd taken boxing lessons and understood these things.

Crazy Jesus didn't. His baggy pants dragged on the floor and slowed his steps. The two men circled each other slowly, eyes locked. Dandy's young face showed his intense concentration; Crazy Jesus grinned maniacally, showing he possessed less teeth than a Jack-o-lantern. Around them circled a ring of people, a peripheral blur of white and blue and flesh and leers and jeers.

Dandy didn't really understand why the orderlies were making him fight the crazy bearded man but he rose to the occasion. He'd trained lots but had very little opportunity to actually test the skills he'd honed. Finally getting to exert those skills was pleasurable to him, if confusing.

The younger man saw an opening. Crazy Jesus was distracted when someone in the inner ring patted reached out to pat his shoulder in support. That was all it took: Dandy nailed him with a solid left punch to the side of his face. The man's head snapped back. Spit and blood flew from his mouth in a spray that seemed like slow motion to Dandy. Reacting on instinct, Crazy Jesus threw his arms flew up to ward off another blow, leaving his body unprotected.

Dandy slammed a fist into the other inmate's gut. The wild-haired man made a 'whuff' of sound and dropped to his knees, hugging his stomach. The ring of spectators went wild, cheering and booing and, in some cases, wailing. Money changed hands between guards and orderlies.

Crazy Jesus reeled there on the floor for a moment before he tried to get to his feet, blood dribbling from his matted beard. It made him look even crazier. Wobbling unsteadily, he looked up just in time to see Dandy's fist coming right at his face. There was a sickening smack of knuckles hitting jaw and Briarcliff's self-appointed Savior was laid out, unconscious.

The spectators howled and cheered and eventually began to disperse. A couple of the orderlies scooped up Crazy Jesus and hauled him away. Three other orderlies crowded around Dandy. One swabbed the sweat and blood from him with wet rags while another staff member fiddled with numbers on a chart. Not a medical chart; this chart kept a log of the betting pool.

The third orderly, the oldest and meanest-looking of the bunch, inspected Dandy like an equestrian might inspect a the winning stallion after the Preakness.

"You did well," the orderly praised. He was a big man, muscular and possessed of an energy that seemed better suited to a military unit than a hospital ward. "Not many win their first round in the J-Ward morning fights. You box?"

"I've had training," Dandy said proudly, drawing himself up and squaring his shoulders. He didn't really care about the man's opinion but it was nice to have the admiration of someone who grasped physical fitness. His mother never understood his desire to work out and gain muscle mass. "But I've never gotten to use the training before. Not really."

The man grinned then, an unpleasant expression on his pitted face. "Well, Dandy... You will now."

...

Putting the mask on felt like many things. It felt cool. Soft. It conformed to the shape of his face and settled there, drinking up his body heat till it was as warm as he was. It felt sheltering. Alien.

Oliver looked in the mirror but he didn't see Oliver. He didn't see the person he'd taken the face from either. Despite the care he'd put into preserving it, the skin hung in strange and loose ways so that it no longer resembled the woman he'd removed it from.

Not that he wanted to look like that woman necessarily. He would have been satisfied if the thing had at least looked human. The face looking back at him drooped hideously at the eyes and the chin sagged so much, the thing looked like it had a Glasgow smile.

He stared at his work for several silent seconds while Bizet played in the background.

Then in a sudden fit of unbridled rage Oliver tore the ruined thing from his face and flung it across the room. His heart was pounding with the force of his rage and he knew he needed to calm down. Lighting a cigarette didn't help. His hands were trembling so badly from the flood of adrenaline, it took three tries just to get it lit. Then he stormed to the kitchen to pour himself a tumbler of bourbon.

Typically he tended to keep to wine when he imbibed-to avoid hangovers-but the failure on top of the stress from work had him on edge. He gulped down some of the searing liquid and thought of Dandy and the 'show' the young man intended to put on. Oliver still needed to catch Sister Jude alone so he could discuss it with her. He didn't like the idea of giving so much leeway to a patient, especially a new one who wasn't even stabilized yet. Not that his opinion would matter if Harmon returned and reclaimed his caseload-which included Dandy.

Oliver couldn't think of a worse direction for that young man. He added the Reverend Monsignor to his list of people to talk to the next day. He wanted to ensure that Dandy would continue to be his patient regardless of the outcome of the Tate Langdon fiasco. Optimally, Oliver would like to have both of the young men under his personal care alone but he wasn't sure if that would happen. It certainly wouldn't if they couldn't locate his missing patient.

...

Sara was just thirteen when she was brought to Briarcliff in a straight jacket, kicking and screaming. The wild-eyed, red-haired girl was raving. Violent. Kicking and cursing and laughing maniacally. Beyond reason and control.

She had been raped by a man twice her age and her parents, in misplaced shame, blamed her for what happened. Traumatized and treated like trash by her own family, the girl started acting out. Her grades dropped drastically and she stole alcohol from the house. She started sneaking out at night. She met shady people in the night that young girls shouldn't.

Things went from bad to worse when her parents tried to punish her for her behavior. She rebelled more: Screaming and cursing at her parents. Smoking. Rumors flew around that she was having sex with strange men. One day during a particularly nasty screaming match, she attacked her mother. Sara bit her on the arm when the exhausted woman tried to grab hold of her daughter, to physically force the unruly girl to go to her room. That's when the family knew they had to send her away.

Sara's stay at Briarcliff was grim from the very beginning. One of the youngest patients and one of the most volatile, she was often subjected to beatings and electroshock therapy. The shock treatment would render her docile immediately but after the wooziness wore off, she was even more aggressive than before. She was began to truly hate life like an enemy. She simply couldn't understand what she'd done to deserve such a relentlessly horrible lot.

But life at Briarcliff wasn't all bad . She made friends with a girl named Viola who was close to her age. Viola made her feel safe. Viola told her stories and sang songs with her. Sometimes they drew together when they were allowed Art Therapy. They became fast friends. Like sisters, only without the fighting.

And then one day Viola vanished.

The doctors told Sara that Viola wasn't real; that had never existed. They said Viola was an imaginary friend the girl had dreamt up to help her through the stress of being institutionalized. Sara knew they were lying. She had secret notes Viola had written to her, hidden in the underside of her cot. She had a snippet of Viola's honey-colored hair, braided with a brown lock of her own, made into a charm for a friendship bracelet in Art Therapy. They made it together back when they swore to be friends even after they were released from the asylum. Little things that the staff couldn't possibly know about proved to her that they were all evil liars.

Sara rebelled. The doctors retaliated by forcing more medicines on her and more treatments. She was beaten, raped, neglected. She spent a lot of time locked in padded cells and strapped to her bed, forgotten. She started talking to herself, just to hear words. Her voice didn't sound like Viola's. Not even when she tried. A janitor took pity on the malnourished, deranged youth and slipped treats to her when no one was watching.

At some point Sara died.

It was a devastating shock to her when she finally realized it. She found herself having to navigate a whole new terrifying side of Briarcliff, one that was somehow even uglier and more callous than it had been in life.

She tried to leave the asylum a couple of times but there were keepers that made sure she couldn't leave. Some looked just like orderlies from the living hospital and they would lock her up just like when she'd been alive. Those were scary times. Even though she knew she was dead, Sara couldn't get out of the locked cell or the quiet room. Or the restraints the ghastly staff would sometimes use. The drugs they forced on her were more disorienting than the ones she'd experienced while living.

The keepers that didn't resemble hospital staff were worse. They were monsters, twisted and violent, beasts that thrived on inflicting pain and suffering. At their mercy she discovered a ghost could experience both. Being unable to die only made the agony more hellish.

But worst of all was not knowing what happened to her. How had she died? Did her family know?

She couldn't remember anything of her death or the time period leading up to it. She didn't feel like she was missing her memory: As far as she could recall, she had woken up every morning, just like she always had. She remembered going to sleep, just like always. Only at some point when she woke up, things were different.

One thing that was different for the better was that she could usually roam the asylum as much as she wanted, provided she kept away from the dark things that would hurt her and she didn't try to leave the property.

In her explorations she found in a mail storeroom full of boxes with names on them. One of the boxes had her name on it. Inside were a few letters her family had sent her, along with her personal items that had been confiscated when she arrived. After reading the letters, she felt even worse. Her mother had written her several times and so had her sister. In the last two letters her sister sent, she wondered why Sara never wrote back. She asked if Sara was mad at them for putting her in the asylum. There were no more letters after that.

Sara put the mail back in the box and never went back to that storeroom.

Most of the time, the girl ghost found herself alone. Miserably, desperately, painfully alone. She would spend days and days searching the asylum and grounds for someone to talk to. Anyone. Anything. Most times she couldn't even find a bug outside to watch. Sometimes whole weeks would pass without her seeing another soul. When she finally did, half the time it was something terrifying.

Then one night Sara entered her room and found Billie Dean there. That was a surprise in itself but when the woman saw and spoke to her, the girl was instantly fixated. The ghost was starved for nurturing contact and Billie Dean fairly glowed with positive energy and the desire to offer it to Sara. Unfortunately the spirit world wasn't reliable in where and when it overlapped the real world. It would be a while before Sara saw Billie Dean again.

..

The women's shower was a wide room tiled in dark gray that sucked up the meager light cast from wan bulbs set into the high concrete ceiling above. The row of shower heads set into the wall hissed and steam billowed in the section where trustworthy patients were allowed to wash themselves in door-less stalls, without direct supervision, instead of in the large open communal area.

Over the sound of the running water from the stall next to hers, Billie Dean heard what she thought was crying. She tried to ignore it as she rinsed the shampoo from her hair but when she cranked the water off, she heard another soft sniffle. Her compassionate nature wouldn't allow her to just walk away.

She grabbed her towel from the bench and wrapped up in it before poking her head into the other tile stall. She could see Heather's bare back-she was facing the shower head though the water was off. She had both hands braced on the wall. Her skinny shoulders were hunched miserably and Billie Dean's heart broke just looking at the poor thing.

Without consideration for propriety, the medium moved closer. "Heather?"

The girl jumped and shot a wild-eyed look over her pale shoulder. She hugged herself modestly.

"I'm sorry," Billie Dean said, taking a step back. "I heard you crying..."

The younger woman's expression softened and showed some of the misery her muffled sobs had just been broadcasting.

"I hate it here," Heather said tearfully but so quietly that Billie Dean had to close the distance again to hear her.

"It's not a nice place," the older woman agreed. "But you're not like most of the people here. You're not a patient. You'll be out of here in no time."

"I don't have any place to go," the younger girl said, her words thick with emotion. She stared at the dingy floor and tears slipped from her unblinking eyes. "No family. No way to provide for myself. That's what the doctor said when I asked him when I could leave. He said..." She swallowed and forced herself to continue. "He said without those things I would just end up in the streets. Or worse, in jail. " She shuddered and muffled a sob with her fist.

Billie Dean couldn't stand by any longer. She rushed to the girl's side and wrapped Heather in a gentle, sheltering hug. She half-expected the girl to pull away but she didn't. She just trembled with the force of keeping her restrained sobs.

When she could finally speak, Heather's voice was quivery and small. "They're never going to let me leave."

"Shh," Billie Dean soothed, stroking her wet hair. "They can't keep you. There's nothing wrong with you."

The younger woman looked at Billie Dean, distraught. "The doctor said there was no point in releasing me only to have me end up someplace worse. He said... He said if I followed the 'program', eventually- eventually I could work for a salary like- like the electrician." She hiccupped on a stifled sob. "He's not an employee here. He's a patient they didn't want to let go!"

Heather took a deep, steadying breath to calm herself. When she spoke next, her words were quiet and intense. " He tried to quit once, Billie Dean, and they came after him. They got a court order and went and picked him up at his home, even though he didn't do anything wrong. But because he'd been a patient here before, nobody asked any questions. He can't quit. He can't leave. Ever."

She scrubbed at her eyes and pulled away from the other woman, suddenly conscious of her nudity. Grabbing a towel, she wrapped up in it without lifting her numb gaze from the wet gray floor.

..

Sara could hear water running and a girl crying. The sounds echoed eerily in the dark halls of the asylum. Sara tracked the source to the downstairs shower room where she found the air warm and damp. She could smell shampoo and it was the sweetest scent, if only because she'd smelled nothing new in ages.

She heard soft voices coming from one of the shower stalls and, intensely curious, she crept closer. Peeking into the stall, she was surprised to see Billie Dean and some other young woman there. Sara started to say something to them then hesitated. What if they couldn't hear her? The last time she'd encountered Billie Dean, the woman obviously couldn't, though she could see her.

"Hello?" she said experimentally.

Neither of the living women seemed to hear. Glancing about, Sara caught sight of the steamy aluminum mirror and got an idea.

..

Billie Dean was first out of the shower so she saw it first. It wasn't until Heather gasped behind her that the medium knew it wasn't one of her psychic visions.

Scrawled in the steam that had gathered on one of the aluminum mirrors, childish handwriting read: "My name is Sara. Please help me."

"Sara," Billie Dean murmured, feeling the name out. Then, a little louder: "Sara?"

"If yer done," the orderly near the front of the showers said. "Move out."

The two women looked at each other then reluctantly left the baths.

...

Author's Note:

I've researched the history of asylums across the globe and there's no shortage of source material for the subject. This is not to say that there weren't places that helped people; there were. But the atrocities routinely committed by some are jaw-dropping, to say the least.

Everything in this chapter, with the exception of the ghost-writing, was inspired by actual events that happened in asylums in England, Spain, Italy, Canada, and the northeastern USA. I don't think I could've imagined this stuff on my own, frankly. Some of the cases I've read about are so shocking, it never would have entered my mind that someone would do something like it to another human.

Case in point: Waverly Hills Sanatorium (which AHS largely based Briarcliff on) has a huge cemetery of over 63,000 dead patients. Some of the grave markers are engraved only with a patient ID number and the word "Specimen".