A Madness So Discreet

by Mindy McGinnis

The new girl wasn’t learning the efficacy of silence, the art of invisibility.

Once the words no and stop had done nothing, the others refused to come out, their inadequacy making the effort necessary to voice them an equation too easily solved.

But the acuity of her memory was a dark artist at work in her mind, painting pictures without her permission.

The ward had returned to silence, but her brain would almost welcome strings of gibberish in the dark, anything to send her thoughts on another avenue than the one it had chosen.

Grace had learned long ago that the true horrors of this world were other people.

“You’re not the first young woman of your class I’ve seen in here, heavy around the waist. However that child was got on you, your family will want you back once it’s gone. You storing everything up on your insides won’t do you no favors once you’re past these walls. Find something outside to bring you back to the world, or you may end up here for good.”

She knew the baby would be born, and with its exit would come her reentry into the world she’d known. They would sew her back into her red velvet dress she’d arrived in. Her father’s black lacquered carriage would gather her after hours, the rolling wheels taking her back home to her own room, her own bed. Her own terrors. She had already decided she was never leaving.

It was the little battles that got them through their days. All in preparation for the bigger ones to come.

But Grace had sat through many sermons by her father’s side, heard about the perils of hell and the fiery brimstone that surely awaited her if she took her own life. She doubted that hell was hot and sulfuric. Instead, she imagined it was comfortable and smelled like her own bedroom. If fear kept her from ending herself, she’d be neatly deposited back between those sheets, as confining as any chains. An ethereal hell or the one she’d already lived through were her options.

“This one’s as cold as the water she’s sitting in, down past her bones and into her soul. Nothing wrong with her brain. It’s her heart that’s got no life in it.”

“Well . . . I guess it’s no secret that some of you are just as sane as me and maybe that works the other way around too, sometimes.”

“If you fear God, that’s more to do with your actions than mine,” Mrs. Clay said.

Horror filled the chasm that had been, and every word, every utterance, every time she had stamped down her own name or bit back a cry of pain came pouring out in an incoherent shriek as she grabbed her fork, slamming it through the web between his thumb and forefinger, straight down into the table below.

“It’s a fine mess you’ve got yourself in, little lady,” Croomes said. “You’ve had better treatment than most up till now, but stabbing a man will rouse his temper.”

She had denied language for so long, shutting down not only her tongue but her mind as well so that no thoughts could form. Her life had become a fog, one that would end soon if she found a way, yet as she writhed on the edge of true madness, her brain rejected the safety she’d made for herself, patching together a sentence to shock her into action. I’m going to die. The voice of her own thought was oddly familiar, like seeing an old friend on the street after some time apart.

“Nobody’s gonna look after the welfare of people in a place where ain’t no person able to live,” Croomes said, when they came to the cellar door. “You done sealed your fate. He don’t care who your daddy is now.”

She was a chasm, her baby gone, her revenge spent. Croomes would take her to the darkness and it would match her insides. She would blend with it, absorbed into nothing.

Her features had worn a mask of misery for so long that the slackness of peace made her almost beautiful as Reed guided her to her cell. A bandage held the hair back from her cheekbones no longer clenched in pain. Her eyes were wide and bright, the sheen of suspicion and fear vanished. She looked at ease for the first time; whatever her horrific past had been wiped clean with a flash of Thornhollow’s blade.

His footsteps receded and Grace sank to the floor, all initiative gone now that she had his attention. He would be back, and she would make her plea. “Grace,” Falsteed chided in the dark. “No.” “The roses,” she said, sighing. “The smell of the roses, it undid me. How can I call it a life when I curl in the darkness, covered in my own filth? I was once surrounded by light and smelled as lovely as a garden. I’d rather forget both than remember either.”

She hadn’t left her safe square of life in the days since she’d been brought to the cellar. She knew the stones under her feet well—her hardened soles had traced their edges in the blackness many sleepless nights. And now her cell had been opened by a man who wielded forgetfulness with a blade.

“But”—Thornhollow raised a finger in warning—“I would never claim they are happy. I think they lose the ability to feel anything. I’ve only been experimenting with this for a short while, but the asylum administrators thank me for it. They believe I’m doing them a favor by turning violent patients into timid lambs. But in truth I do it for the afflicted, to ease their suffering and the weariness of the world they’ve been born into, where we have yet to understand or truly help them.”

“That’s the game, then?” he continued. “You return home, undoubtedly back into the nest of the viper himself?” Grace nodded, all laughter gone. “We can’t have that.” She reached for him, and it was his turn to flinch. “This is why I ask for it, Doctor. I cannot go back. If you change me permanently, I won’t be wanted at home. They can say what they like about my fate, I’ll live and die here, happily unaware of the present, and all traces of the past taken from me.”

“Grace, so few people in this world have any skills worth speaking of. You’ve learned that beauty can work against you, and your build is so slight you’ll never be able to defend yourself. Your brain is your strength, your quickness of wit the one thing that will deliver you from the damnable life of the dull.”

“Doctor, it is my weakness. I see everything; I notice all and I remember—the beautiful and the horrific alike I can recall as easily as a daguerreotype that can’t be unseen. It will be the death of me, this remembering.” “No, Grace,” Thornhollow said, pulling her hand away from her face. “Utterly to the contrary, this curse of seeing will do you well.”

“I’ll take no ether, sir.” “Grace, you must understand—” “No, you must understand. I’ll not be witless for a moment.” Thornhollow frowned, his brows drawing together. “Do you not trust me?” “I trust you with my life. Nothing more.” The blade hovered in the air, the slightest tremor betraying him. “I’ll need you to be utterly still through the pain. You’re no use to me if you twitch and I accidentally put your eye out.” Grace sat straight in the chair. “I’ve been still through worse.”

“Think of the door of your own cell shutting,” he said, when he saw the tremor of her hands. “Put your thoughts and feelings away for the moment and bar them in.” “I’m long familiar with shutting out the world, Doctor,” Grace said.

Grace let her emotions leave her in a rush, all cares exiting with her exhalation, not to return until she allowed them. Even her outer appearance changed, though she hardly knew it, and the doctor watched, fascinated, as her eyes glazed over, her muscles became torpid. She slouched as if her soul had left her body, leaving behind only the warm flesh that appeared as lifeless as a bag of water.

She was a receptacle only, storing facts and impressions to sift through at a later date.

“I’ve yet to find a good way to wake someone.” “There isn’t one,” Grace complained, one hand dragging across her eyes. “It’s the black of night, besides.” “Our work isn’t done in the daylight,” Thornhollow said, rifling through the closet for clothing, which he tossed at her head.

“Doctor,” she said quietly once they were safely ensconced inside. “You said we must move quickly in order to catch them while the deed is still fresh. Who are they?” “My dear Grace,” Thornhollow said. “I thought you understood. We’re going to catch murderers.”

“I’d heard that about the asylum up on the hill,” the heavier man said, his gaze still on the driver. “That you give ’em regular jobs. I never heard the like of it.” “Yes, we do give them regular jobs, and as I said, they do them without complaint, making them much more effective than any rational workingman I know.”

“Most men are always so proper in the presence of a lady. To hear men speak to other men as they would if I weren’t there was enlightening.” “And not to my gender’s credit, I’m sure,” Thornhollow said.