Hi everyone. A while ago I posted a short story for critique here and I got some really good advice. Thanks, in part, to your suggestions, I was able to get it published. My first paid story. I was very proud 
I’m hoping to replicate this success with another submission. The vibe I’m going for is part Lovecraftian and part gothic chiller, rather than outright balls-to-the-wall horror, although there is quite a bit more violence than one would normally find in such a story. The things I’m really interested in finding out are:
- Is the story readable? Does it drag anywhere?
- Are the characters believable? Are their motivations clear?
- I’ve been working to improve my descriptive skills. Are the images I try and create evocative?
- Is the story clear? In my attempts to avoid heavy-handed exposition I sometimes fall into the trap of under-explaining things. To me, the story seems perfectly clear, but I know that you guys will be far better judges of that than me. Are there any questions you feel I’ve left unanswered.
A word of warning. This story is quite a bit longer than the last one. It clocks in at nearly 6,000 words. For this reason, and to avoid wearing out everyone’s scroll wheel, I’ve put it in a spoiler box and spread it out over 2 posts. Also, you’ll probably find quite a few punctuation errors. Please don’t worry about pointing them out. My punctuation isn’t very good so it’s always the last thing I correct. Luckily my dad happens to be a former English teacher so he’ll catch any punctuation mistakes for me
Anyway, this one is called ‘Shadows and Smoke’ and I really hope you like it.
Shadows & Smoke
My carriage rolls over cobbled streets slicked with January rain. In the early morning light the wet stones seem to ripple, like the scales of a giant snake. Outside, two old men are snuffing out the gas lamps, throwing jokes and insults at one another. Their voices are loud, discordant, like neglected musical instruments. I turn my collar up against the chill and sink into my seat.
This long road leads out of the town and devolves into a country lane. At the end of the lane sits Ashford asylum. Along the way are landmarks only the guards or doctors like myself would recognise. An abandoned cottage, its north wall reduced to rubble by some great storm; a twisted oak, its branches silhouetted by the glare of the rising sun; a toppled scarecrow.
I make this journey twice daily, excluding Sundays of course, and have done for six years. I’ve learned to read the divots in the road. I don’t need my eyes to tell me where I am. Most days, I try to sleep. Today, my nerves jangle like sleigh bells and my mouth is filled with the electric taste of adrenalin. All too quickly, the rutted road smooths out into well-laid gravel. The coachman jerks back the reins of his horse and the hammering of its hooves reverts to a slow procession of echoey clips and clops. I want so much to remain inside that when I finally force myself out of my seat it feels as though the air itself is pushing me back down. I step into the courtyard, and walk hesitantly toward the asylum.
An immensity of cold stone, adorned with impudent gargoyles and spires that taper like stalagmites, Ashford asylum is somehow both stately and baroque at the same time, like a King’s seal. It radiates a funereal chill. Over the years, I’ve become inured to it, as one might become hardened to the ravages of a cold climate. Today, however, the size, the gravity of the place roots me to the spot, and only the new warden’s notorious intolerance for tardiness keeps me from lingering in the courtyard.
The hall to the infirmary is long and poorly lit, but mercifully far enough away from the patients that I can only faintly hear them. Ashford cares only for the most disturbed patients, those considered too savage or helpless in their dementia for other, lesser institutions. The lay public are only too happy to regard asylums as little more than convenient dumping grounds for human wreckage, where lunatics and idiots can be safely tucked away and forgotten. Sadly, it has been my experience that this attitude is just as prevalent within asylums as without, with many wardens content to let their patients waste away on thin gruel and, should they have the gall to persist in their sickness, simply lobotomise them into stupefaction and forget about them.
I hurry to the infirmary and stow my medical bag in a closet. Doctor Powley, as usual, is here before me, arranging his instruments with customary fastidiousness. Mornings in the infirmary are typically quiet and, were this any other day, we would make tea and conversation. He would ask me about my research or the cricket scores, I would ask him about his family, or his arthritic back, and we would prepare the room for the day’s halting procession of patients. Today, I have only one question for him.
“How are the dogs?”
Powley smiles and beckons, as if to say “See for yourself”
The dogs, two of them, had been brought here yesterday, snarling with rabies. Some months previous, I had struck up a friendship with a veterinarian and made arrangements to receive two such animals (sadly not uncommon in these parts) as and when he could deliver them. The man proved good as his word, and I was doubly pleased that he had delivered the specimens together.
Powley and I had the animals muzzled and caged in a back room. Over and over they hurled themselves against the bars. The cage had a small gap at the bottom through which I slid a bowl of water. Predictably, the dogs recoiled to the back of the cage, but even a rabid animal may drink eventually, if it is thirsty enough. Warden Stokes had observed the caging of the animals and had, in no uncertain terms, warned us that if the experiment were not concluded by today he would have the creatures killed. I had used all the good will I had to persuade him to allow the animals onto the premises in the first place. To think; my life’s work, held in the balance by two mad dogs.
Doctor Powley places one hand on the door handle and another on my shoulder, and swings the door open with a slow sweep of his arm, as though laying bare all the jewelled glories of Aladdin’s cave. Beside the empty water bowl, the dogs lie with their heads on their front paws studying us with that expression of world-weary calm peculiar to old hounds.
“Look at them,” says Powley, “Quiet as Church mice”.
I kneel next to the cage door.
“May I?”
“Be my guest” Powley says, “I don’t think we have anything to fear from these old brutes.”
My heart thumping in my throat, I unlock the cage. I reach out to unmuzzle the dog closest to me, the one Powley had Christened Cerberus. I slide the muzzle off his snout and gingerly stroke his head. He accepted my affection as though it were nothing more than his due and, after a moment, closed his eyes and fell asleep.
I lock the cage and stand back up on trembling legs.
“My friend”, Powley says, “I think you may have just put us all out of a job.”
Apprehension is a peculiar emotion. It doesn’t seem to matter if the cause is fear of failure, or the thrill of success, the symptoms are the same. As I enter Warden Stokes’ office I can feel my heart beating in my temples, my lips are dry, and the air feels thin, as though I’m standing on a mountain top. Without lifting his eyes from his paperwork, the warden gestures to an empty chair.
“Well?”
“Thank you for seeing me, Warden. I know you’re a busy man so…”
“So you’ll get to the point?”
I smile wanly, take a deep breath. “The serum seems to have worked as Dr Powley and I predicted. The dogs…well, they seem much calmer now, sir.”
“Cured, are they?”
“No, they are still technically infected, but…”
“So they’ll still need slaughtering.”
It was a statement, not a question. “In time, yes. However, I would respectfully request we be allowed a few more days for further study.”
Mr Stokes frowns, and folds his hands across his belly.
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. An asylum is no place for a rabid animal.”
“I agree sir, but the loss of my subjects would make further experimentation…difficult”
Mr Stokes’ thin frown changes into an equally thin smile, and, for the first time since his appointment just before Christmas, I hear him laugh. It’s a bully’s laugh, mirthful and sour at the same time.
“Doctor,” he says, “There’s no need to worry on that account. For as long as you’re here, you’ll never want for test subjects. This place is full of them.”
“But Warden, I couldn’t possibly…”
“Return to your infirmary, doctor. I’m making an appointment for you to see Mr. Fisk.”
Eldon Fisk is one of Ashford Asylum’s first patients. He has lived here so long the guards sometimes joke that the asylum had been built around him. Despite this, in the past six years I had only met him once, to extract a rotting tooth, and on that occasion he had, for both his comfort and my safety, been heavily sedated. I had never conversed with him, or glanced more than fleetingly at his papers, but stories float through these halls like spirits in a ruin, and, by the time of his fateful visit to the infirmary that day, I knew as much about him as any man. I knew that he was born on a farm, the youngest of five brothers. I knew that his mother had died birthing him. I knew that he was born with a club foot, and that both his physical and psychological ineptitude for the rigours of farm work had earned him the abiding scorn of his surviving family. And I know that, one night when he was fourteen years old, he crept from his bed, took his father’s wood axe, and visited each of them in turn. He was found by a neighbour several days later, sitting by a loose pyramid of mismatched limbs, absorbed in his work. Apparently, he had been using the parts to build scarecrows.
“Of course,” Powley says when I return, “it’s rather canny of him, really.”
“In what respect?”
“Well, it’s what they call a win-win proposition, isn’t it? Look at old Cerberus and Baskerville. Happy as a couple of sandboys, aren’t they?”
I couldn’t dispute the observation.
“If this panacea of yours works as well on the patients as it did on those two…”
“Which it may very well not” I interjected.
“Granted, but if it does, it could save this place thousands of pounds a year.” He nodded towards the kennel. “Remember when that fellow dropped them off? The great rumpus Warden raised? All those assurances he made you give?”
“I could hardly forget.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if it were all just for show. It seemed a little excessive at the time, even when they were howling and snapping at the leashes. I think,” he paused for effect, and took a sip of tea, “I think he knew just what he was doing. He makes it clear that no more suitable animal subjects will be allowed on the premises, then he pledges to destroy the only two we’ve got, thereby guaranteeing the only way to carry on is jump straight to a human trial. He knows as well as anyone how much work you’ve put into this. He’s not giving you any choice, is he? No, he’s no fool, our Warden.”
“But what if it doesn’t work?”
“Well, that’s why it’s so damned canny, isn’t it? After all, who among us has less to lose than Eldon Fisk?”
An hour later Fisk is wheeled in tethered to a gurney, his head whipping back and forth like a flag in a storm, the tendons in his neck fanned and rigid as tent poles. Doctor Powley clicks his fingers and the guards hold Fisk’s head as still as they can. He steps forward with an etherised pad and, a few moments later, Fisk relaxes and we all breathe a sigh of relief. I step forward with a vial of Galene, holding it as gingerly as an altar boy might hold some sacramental oil.
Galene, named by my ever whimsical associate after the goddess of calm seas, represents the apex of my professional career. It is a serum which targets the centres of the brain responsible for aberrant and violent behaviour. Unlike traditional sedatives, there ought not be any drowsiness, and, unlike lobotomisation, higher brain functions remain in tact. That, at least, is my design.
“We’ve got about three minutes until that ether starts wearing off” Powley says, “Are you ready?”
I slip a hand behind Fisk’s head, raise it a few inches until his jaw lolls open, and slowly pour the vial down his throat.
One minute passes, then another. Fisk’s eyes flicker like moth wings before opening, full and fresh, and crinkling at the corners, guileless accomplices in the first genuine smile I’ve ever known to cross his face.
It is then I notice his pupils. I gesture urgently for Doctor Powley.
“Strange,” he says, “Ether shouldn’t cause this level of dilation. And…is it the light, or…no, I must be seeing things.” he pauses and looks back to me. “It seems to be getting worse.”
“I see it too.”
Eldon Fisk’s pupils are growing, spreading like inkblots on a handkerchief. They blossom, smothering the bright blue of his irises and then seeping through the capillaries until his eyes are just ghastly mosaics of black and white. I snap my fingers over his face.
“Eldon? Eldon, can you hear me?”
As if in reply, he tenses. His back arches like a cat’s. The muscles in his arms and face spasm as if galvanised by some phantom current. I rip open his shirt to listen to his heart but it’s beating too fast for me to count.
“He’s seizing,” I shout, “Potassium bromide. Quickly!”
But Powley is already mixing the solution. After so many years together we can read each other’s thoughts. He draws the cloudy mixture into a syringe. Fisk’s right arm snaps the leather restraint.
“Hold him!” Powley commands. The two guards pin down the flailing limb, leaning on it with all their weight.
Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the spasms ebb away. Fisk’s heart slows and he sinks back onto the gurney. I gesture to the guards to release his arm and Powley, ever resourceful, secures it with his own belt. We, all of us, share baffled and frightened looks, and then, in unison, we turn to Fisk. His eyes are flitting wildly from left to right. The room is so quiet I imagine can hear them rolling wetly in their sockets. Then, this man, who has been beyond articulation since he was a boy, begins to speak.
“Shadows,” he whispers.
“Jesus,” says a guard, stepping back.
“I have seen my shadow. I’ve seen the world beneath the world.”
“What’s he rabbiting about?” says a guard.
“Quiet!” I hiss.
“I’ve seen the shadows slither and pounce. All my life, they’ve been beside me. Whispering. Eating into me like worms. Enticing me to terrible acts. No rhyme or reason to it. But now, I understand!”
Powley sits and rests his head in his hands.
“The Beast and his angels will rise from the pit to make war in the kingdom of Man!” Fisk cries, suddenly ecstatic. “I’ve seen it!”
“Take him back to his cell.”
“Do you see?” Fisk jerks his head backwards, as if gesturing to the nearest guard. “Do you see his shadow?”
“We’ve all got bloody shadows, you half-wit” says the guard, wheeling the gurney back into the hall.
The infirmary once again falls silent. I can hear the rain outside slapping fatly against the bushes. “Well,” Powley says, head still cradled in his hands, “That certainly could have gone better.”
————
I saw Eldon Fisk again some hours later, to pronounce him dead. An orderly barged into the infirmary, white and trembling with shock. Barely had he spoken the name ‘Fisk’ when I snatched up my black bag and took off running to his cell. Patients and guards turned and stared but I barely noticed. All I could see was Eldon Fisk contorting on the gurney, the implacable spreading blackness of his pupils, and the thrumming of the the arteries in his neck as his heart rebelled against the poison *I* had poured down his throat!
It transpires I needn’t have run. The poor man is far beyond saving. He lies on his back, one scrawny leg bent under the other and his arms still fastened in his strait-jacket, like a creature half-emerged from a cocoon. His face is a bloody ruin. I kneel beside the body to check his pulse, more for the orderly’s benefit than mine. His skin is cold as raw pork, and in his wrist I can feel the tell-tale recalcitrance of rigor mortis.
“What happened here?” I ask.
The orderly doesn’t speak. He is a young man, barely twenty, and this is most likely his first experience with death. Instead, he points over my shoulder at the sill below the barred window. It is caked in dried blood. I place my hand on his shoulder in what I hope he interprets as a gesture of reassurance.
“What’s your name?” I ask, softly.
“Penrose, sir”
I step back into the corridor and Penrose turns with me, away from the body.
“There’s nothing we can do for him now,” I tell him, “But I need you to tell me everything you know. Did somebody hurt him?”
“N…no, sir. Not so far as I know. I come on duty a half hour ago, started doing me rounds, like. And Mr. Fisk’s room being at the end of the wing, I didn’t see him ’til just ‘fore I came for you sir.”
“Did you see anyone enter or leave his cell?”
“No sir. It was just me. I remember thinking he was quieter than usual sir. I think he may have done it to hisself. Bashed his own brains out.”
The lad is close to tears. I want to say something reassuring, but words have a habit of escaping me at moments such as this. I decide to notify the Warden. I suspect that, whatever he might feel obliged to say, he will be secretly pleased to have so cheaply been rid of such a troublesome patient. I don’t know which is more troubling, the suspicion itself or the ease with which it comes to me.
“Stay here,” I command the boy. I stride back into the cell and cover Fisk’s body with his bed sheet, and slowly make my way to the Warden’s office.
