Prologue
The asylum crouched behind a high wall slick with moss. Rain slid down the iron spikes and gathered in the grooves of the gate like tears. Metal bars blocked the windows. Inside, the corridor smelled of limewash and soap, of scrubbed stone and stagnant water. Edging closer to Papa, close enough that the wet wool of his coat scratched her cheek, Isabella Barrett made herself smaller. Smaller still.
He patted her hand.
“Only a consultation,” he had said that morning, his voice gentle and frayed, his gloved hand closing around hers as the carriage wheels struck puddles and dirty water fanned against the windows. She had nodded and lied with her eyes as she always did when he asked if she was afraid. She had practiced that lie in the looking glass, widening her eyes, keeping her chin steady. It was not that Papa would be disappointed or angry. It was that he would feel guilt that he had allowed fear to touch her. And that, she could not abide.
When she had been very small, the translucent people had been interesting, even pretty. Imaginary playmates, Papa had called them, when there were no real children to be had. But the years had taught them persistence, and the whispers had grown more insistent, braiding through her days and nights. New people found her when she left the house. They reached for her, touched her, pleaded with her. And she pleaded in return—for peace.
By the time she was eleven, Papa had no longer smiled or patted her head.
He had begun taking her to doctors and she had been poked and pinched and prodded. They had given her tonics. They had prescribed hot baths. Cold baths. Open windows. Closed windows. Stoke the fire. Bank the fire. She had been bled and purged and dosed with all manner of vile potions. Nothing quieted the voices or stilled the visions. Only pretending helped, and even then, just a little.
Now Dr. Hargreaves, the third doctor she had seen in as many weeks, met them in the corridor of St. Jude’s. He was a narrow man with a narrow mouth and a smile that was all teeth and no warmth. “Mr. Barrett.” A pump of Papa’s hand. “Miss Barrett.” His glance landed and lingered, his expression cold and hard.
Matron joined them, a stout woman with wide shoulders and a thick neck, rings of keys at her waist, her mouth pinched prim with importance.
Papa settled Isabella’s hand in the crook of his arm as they were shown along a row of doors, each with a small square of glass webbed with wire. Isabella gasped as a face suddenly appeared in one, nose scrunched against the pane, eyes wide and unblinking. The pane fogged with the man’s breath and cleared again, fogged and cleared, and still he pressed against the glass.
When a woman drifted along the corridor beside them, a pale seam of cold moving with her, Isabella took care not to glance her way.
A palm slapped a wired window. A howl carried through a door, answered by another that came from deep in the bowels of the building. Isabella’s pulse jumped.
From within the wall came a tapping, slow and deliberate. Tap…tap…tap. The sound threaded up her spine on icy fingers. She began to count her breaths to drown it out—one…two…three…four—then lost count and started again.
“We prescribe hydrotherapy,” Dr. Hargreaves said to Papa. “Music. Fresh air. Gentle work. We are not practitioners of the former age’s cruelties.” He smiled his all-teeth smile.
Keeping her eyes directed straight ahead, Isabella stepped past a little boy sitting cross-legged in a square of light on the tiles, a boy Matron walked straight through. The hum that began at the edge of hearing rose, a thin, needling chorus she had learned to bear over the years. Usually, it was accompanied by a drift of cold and a feeling of being watched. But today, it was muted, soft, even sad. Hopeless. The feeling wormed through her bones like a January storm. It was this place, she thought, that made even the wraiths sad.
Dr. Hargreaves brought them to his office, a small white room with a clean desk and two hard chairs. Matron crossed her arms and positioned herself at the door. When Papa moved to sit with Isabella, Dr. Hargreaves shook his head. “I will see her alone, if you please.”
“I do not please,” Papa said, and positioned himself behind Isabella’s chair. “You will see my daughter with me in the room.”
The doctor frowned, then smoothed it away and looked to Isabella. “Tell me about the things you see. The things you hear. Be precise.”
She had practiced sounding precise while being imprecise. And so, she said, “Sometimes, I dream badly and wake with a start. Sometimes, the house creaks and I mistake it for footsteps.” She lifted one shoulder. “When I was younger, I heard a woman humming in the afternoons. I told Papa I could hear Mama.”
He wrote something, nib scratching, his cold gaze flicking to Isabella then away.
“Hallucinations following bereavement are quite common,” he said.
“My wife died when Isabella was born. She never knew her mother,” Papa said.
The nib paused, then resumed. “A sensitive disposition, then. Perhaps, you have indulged a fancy, Mr. Barrett. Grief is a family ailment. It can be transmitted. I am certain that with care, your daughter can recover in time.” He rose. “I suggest we further tour our facility. To reassure. To make plain that we are a house of science, not a gaol.”
Isabella looked back at Papa. She wanted to ask him if they could leave, to say that she did not wish to tour this place.
Papa’s jaw tensed, then he nodded at the doctor.
They passed the women’s ward, all whitewashed arches and iron beds. A girl stared at the ceiling and twisted her face in unnatural ways. In the corner, a woman sat on a rumpled bed, hugging herself and rocking to and fro. Both the woman and the girl were quite real.
They turned down a narrower corridor. More doors with wired panes.
Tap…tap…tap.
“Quiet rooms,” Matron said.
“To calm agitation,” Dr. Hargreaves added.
