Spider Light(99)
Maud stared down at the woman, and saw she was wearing a cotton petticoat under her uniform. Within minutes she had torn three wide strips from it. One strip tied Higgins’ hands behind her back, a second tied her ankles together and the third formed a gag over the woman’s mouth. With the sheet pulled up, the gag and tied hands and feet could not be seen from the door. Now, even if Higgins came round quickly from the blow she would not be able to yell for help. Maud was very pleased with the way everything was working out. She looked down at Higgins again, wondering if she should put on the drab gown and apron, but thinking it might take too long. There was the cap, though: she could take that. She unpinned it from the woman’s head, and pulled it over her own short hair. She made sure the stored-away pills she had pretended to take were safely tied in her handkerchief, and tucked the handkerchief in the pocket of her gown.
Then she wrapped her own cloak around her–the cloak she had been wearing the night they brought her here–and holding her head high as if she had nothing to fear, she walked into the dim passage, shutting the door of her room and drawing the bolt across.
As she stole down the passage, she had the feeling that her mother was quite close to her, warning her to be careful. There were things inside spider light that you did not know existed–things that could suddenly pounce out on you.
She found her way to the ground floor by a narrow staircase. Probably it had been a servants stairs in the days when Latchkill had been a privately owned house. It was difficult to imagine a family ever living here–children and parents and ordinary life.
There was no-one around, and Maud thought she had chosen the time well. The nurses would still be serving the suppers or having their own meal–there was a big kitchen at the back where they all ate. But she still could not see any doors leading to the outside world. She hesitated at the foot of a wide, shallow staircase. Beneath the stairs, fixed to the wall, was a big notice and, although she was aware that anyone might come out and catch her at any minute, Maud paused for long enough to read what the notice said.
The orders for the governing of the hospital, Latchkill, in the environs of Cheshire County, are exceeding good, and a remarkable instance of the good disposition of the governing Trust, especially the rules laid down, viz to wit:
That no person, except the proper officers who tend them, be allowed to see the lunaticks of a Sunday.
That no person be allowed to give the lunaticks strong drink, wine, tobacco or spirits, or to sell any such thing in the hospital.
That no servant of the house shall take any money given to any of the lunaticks for their own use; but that it shall be carefully kept for them till they are recovered, or laid out for them in such things as the committee approves.
That no officer or servant shall beat, abuse or offer any force to any lunatick, save on absolute necessity.
It was the most terrible thing Maud had ever read in her life. It was as if whoever had written it thought people would come to Latchkill to view the patients just as they might go on a day-trip to a fairground to view the freaks in the sideshows. And worst of all, it gave sly permission for the nurses to ill-treat any of the patients.
She could hear a faint clattering of crockery nearby, that must mean she was near the kitchens and therefore surely at the back of the house. There was the sound of a door being opened, and a cheerful voice calling out something about only another hour before going off duty, followed by the sound of quick footsteps on the stone floor. Maud glanced frantically about her. Several doors opened off, and one of them looked like a broom cupboard. Dare she risk opening it? Yes.
It was a broom cupboard–there were pails and mops, but better still, two nurses’ cloaks hung on a peg. Maud discarded her own cloak, and donned the Latchkill one. With the cap, she could surely pass as one of the staff.
The sounds of voices had faded, and she stepped out into the passageway again. There, a little further along, was surely the door to the outside world she had sought. A huge heavy door it was–too heavy and huge to be an ordinary inside door. There were massive hinges and black iron bands across it–was that to keep people out, or to keep them in? No matter. Maud reached for the latch, praying it would not be locked and it was not: the handle turned easily, and the door opened.
It was not the door leading outside! She was in another of the soulless passages and there was a stale, too-warm smell, like rotting vegetation. Maud beat down a wave of panic, because there was something dreadfully familiar about this.
Something remembered or heard, or even dreamed.
Dreamed…her old childhood nightmare of the black iron door that began to swing slowly open, and that you knew must be slammed back into place, because it was there to shut in something terrible.
Maud pushed these thoughts away, and went determinedly on. But it was as if something that crouched at Latchkill’s heart had stirred into life, and the nightmare was closing around her again, like a huge knuckled hand gripping her throat so she could not breathe. I’m inside the nightmare again, she thought. Only this time I’m awake, and I shan’t be able to escape.
She turned a corner of the passageway, and there it was: the black iron door. It was real; it was in front of her, massively hinged, and with a thick bolt drawn across.
Maud was not going to open the door; of course she was not. But a little silvery voice deep inside her mind whispered that it would be better to know what the frightening thing was. Wouldn’t it be better to confront it once and for all, to stare it in the face and banish this nightmare for ever?