Chapter Seven
"Ashley Carr is none of your business," I say sharply, trying to drown out the sound of my runaway heart, though I'm sure that even the inmates on the other end of the asylum can hear it. For a moment of sheer stillness and infinite possibility, I cannot decide which frightens me more: The Thing That Hissed or the memory of Ashley Carr.
"Hallie," says Crane warily, "let me explain to you, since your understanding seems to fall unfailingly short in this matter: you are my business. The city of Gotham pays me to cure you of whatever mental illnesses you have so that you can be released once more as a working member of society. Is that in any way unclear?"
"Working members of society are allowed to keep secrets," I say stiffly.
"Secret," says Crane. "Faithful or cautious in keeping confidential matters confidential; secluded, sheltered, or withdrawn. Withdrawal is not a characteristic that pertains to normal, working members of society, Hallie. Even so, as you do not pertain to said demographic, you're not allowed secrets by any definition while you are living under my care."
"Oh, go to hell," I snap. "You've read my file. You know what happened."
"I know the case file," says Crane with a nod. "But you, and you alone know the details of and the reasons for the murder."
I freeze quite completely. It stuns me how good I'm getting at that.
My previous psychiatrist was rather correct—I am good at blocking painful things from my memory. Ashley Carr was one of the things that remained clear as ever, stowed away in one of the big black filing cabinets at the back of my mind. Though I try to keep the particular photographs involving Ashley Carr under lock and key, they sometimes slip forward.
Ashley Carr is someone that I can bring back to life only in memory. But the Murder of Ashley Carr… that is something that is not mine to reenact, as is the reasoning behind it.
"Tell me about Ashley Carr," says Crane.
I sigh deeply, and open the big black filing cabinet labeled Ashley Carr, not for Crane, but for me, because in times when I am feeling ungrateful for the asylum, I must remind myself why I am here. I am an inmate because I am criminally insane. I am a murderer.
Take it from the top, Hallie, baby.
The top drawer of the filing cabinet opens with a deep metallic whoosh, exactly as I remember it from the last time I decided to confront the demons within. It is still filled to the brim with paper memorabilia: letters, music tracks, and photographs that were never taken, that only I can see.
I haven't tried to remember in so long that the purity of it, the smell inside it
(his cologne)
sends the tears down my cheeks before I even realize they're in my eyes. I stare at the ceiling and try to blink them away, but they're stubborn as ever. They blur the colorful photographs in my mind's eye, which is also weeping.
"Ash," I say with a noise that is half a sob, half a remembering laugh. "No one called him Ashley."
"Tell me about Ash."
I open my mouth, breathe in, and settle myself into the scented dust of Memory, of good memories that came after the hard years that made up most of my life. Memories of days filled with so much sunshine that it dripped on me like honey, making everything sweet. And before my trip to my own personal Hell, to the murder that made it all, I can remember first:
There was a happy time before this. There was a time when I was not a pasty toothpick, when I was not grotesquely thin and sallow. There was a time when I was beautiful, and someone saw me as such. I loved and was loved.
And then I lost. Oh, how I lost.
"First and foremost," I begin, "I loved Ashley Carr. And now he is dead."
