Bellamy

  Bellamy

  Darcy Coates

  Contents

  Bellamy

  Afterword

  “Hello, Bellamy,” Leanne whispered and turned off her car. As the engine’s rumbling faded, she began to hear the crickets and creaking trees filtering through the early evening.

  The cloistered building waited ahead. It sprawled between the trees, seeming to absorb the entire horizon. The failing sun painted its edges a bloody red as endless black windows watched the empty courtyard.

  The exterior was flat and grim, more like a warehouse than a home. But Leanne knew, inside, Bellamy Children’s Asylum was far from orderly. A nest of discordant passageways and connecting rooms created maddening patterns. Nothing fit the way it was intended. What should have been right angles weren’t, and floors and ceilings that should have been flat were bent. Even after living in the home for eight months, Leanne still didn’t know where some of the passageways led.

  Why did you leave me, Leanne?

  She pressed her eyes closed, hands tight on the wheel, and waited for the painful sensation in her chest to fade. Thirty years should have been long enough to forget the home. Thirty years should have been long enough for the dreams to stop.

  Her car door whined as she opened it. The car wasn’t old, but it seemed to resent the twelve-hour drive. Leanne flexed her shoulders as she stepped onto the pebbles of the parking area. Once, those pebbles had been like a white carpet spread before the building. Now, they were a deep, angry grey, buried under the residue of generations of weeds.

  Leanne and Henry had been some of the last children brought into Bellamy. Since then, times had changed. Children’s asylums had lost favour, and foster homes had replaced them. Two years after Leanne left the home, it had closed its doors for the last time. Evidently, no one had been interested in purchasing it. The building was dirtier and held more cracks than Leanne remembered, but otherwise, it looked exactly as she remembered.

  I waited for you, Leanne.

  She took a slow breath, removed the flashlight from her pocket, and climbed towards the front door. It had been left ajar, perhaps by human error, or age and wind had forced it open. Leanne tried to push the gap wider, but the wood was frozen in place. The gap was just large enough to squeeze through. She turned her body sideways and slipped inside.

  Leanne paused, waiting to see if her eyes would adjust. Tinted daylight came through the door’s gap, creating a streak that ran across the floor before fading into the gloom. But not before it caught on two wide eyes.

  Her pulse leapt. She raised the torch, fingers turning sweaty as she pressed the button. The corner of the room came into relief. The eyes vanished, resolving into a brass fixture. That was all.

  She turned the torch in a slow arc, revealing what remained of the building she had once called home. It was sparsely furnished, as it had been during her time there. The bronze fixtures and broken chandelier whispered of an earlier era when the home had been grand. But the chairs and cupboards were severe and unadorned; additions from an owner with less money to spare. There were no bottles or graffiti and no signs that anything had been stolen. No vandals. Bellamy had likely been forgotten by everyone who had not lived there.

  Leanne’s torch caught on a pair of bronze doorhandles. She approached, her shoes crunching in the dust and dead insects coating the floor. The bronze, tarnished and almost black, was painfully familiar. Leanne pressed on one of the handles. It left a dark smear across her palm, but the door groaned inwards, welcoming her into the dining hall.

  The massive wooden table ran the length of the room. Forty chairs crowded around it. Leanne could picture Grace, the younger warden, standing by a pot near the room’s corner and ladling soup into the children’s bowls as they approached, single file. Leanne had liked Grace. Pretty, with delicate fingers, like a fairy, she was the one bright spot in the house. She never yelled and gave generous servings. When she spoke, which wasn’t often, it was gentle and affectionate.

  Leanne remembered wishing she could ask Grace to sing her a song to lull her to sleep, just like her mother used to. But there were forty children living in the home, too many for one woman to lavish with affection, no matter how hard she tried. And Grace had been sickly. Some days, shivering and her pale face speckled with sweat, she had not even been able to rise out of her chair. On those days, Patience served the meals.

  No one had seemed to know their relationship—whether they were simply friends or mother and daughter. They had been so different that it was hard to imagine they could be related. Grace was young and with hair so light it was almost gold. Patience was tall, with black hair tied back from her severe face. She walked with a cane, and the hard tapping noise could be heard long before she came into sight. Leanne had hated the noise… almost as much as she’d hated the eyes.

  What a woman to leave in charge of children.

  Without even realising it, Leanne had approached the seat she always sat on. Her fingers traced over the top, feeling the hard wood under the dust, then she pulled out the chair. As she sank into it, the memories felt so close they were almost real.

  * * *

  “I wish she’d leave us alone,” Henry whispered.

  No one at the table spoke loudly. No one wanted their voice to be the one that stood out. Patience stalked around the gathering, her cane clicking on the stone floor with every step. Her face could have been made of stone. The cold expression stayed fixed, unemotional, save for her eyes, which moved in short little jolts, flicking from bowed head to bowed head. A milky white sheen covered the irises, like blind eyes, except nothing escaped her notice. Leanne hated those eyes.

  “She’s old,” Leanne whispered back. “Maybe she’ll die soon.”

  The eyes swivelled towards her. The pupils stared through the sheen. A chill coursed through Leanne. She bowed her head, trying to escape those horrible eyes, her throat tight and her stomach squirming. Patience couldn’t have heard. She’d been careful to keep her voice soft. And yet, the clicking noise was moving closer, louder, and she could still feel the eyes on her, unblinking…

  * * *

  A touch of ice ran across Leanne’s shoulder. Cold, ephemeral, the sensation was both there and not. A dead finger, tracing her skin. She staggered out of the seat, knocking it over. The torch light shook as it raced across the walls and floor. She was alone.

  Leanne reached her spare hand up to touch her shoulder. It was wet. She held the fingers ahead of herself, rubbing the liquid between them, then turned the torch upwards. A dark stain, wider than Leanne’s arm reach, marred the ceiling. The roof had a leak.

  She breathed deeply as she backed away from the table. Her breath misted. She wished she’d brought a heavier jacket.

  I miss you, Leanne.

  There was a purpose for her visit. She wasn’t there just to call up old memories. Leanne brushed her hand across her cheek, wiping off a smear of perspiration that had formed despite the cold, and turned towards a door behind her.

  In the kitchen beyond it, the old pots still sat on the stoves. Leanne looked into one. The skeletal remains of a mouse were nestled among the dust. The space was too cluttered for her light to do more than confuse it with running shadows, but Leanne knew the kitchens well. Bellamy had survived on donations from the public, and there was barely enough money for food, let alone staff. It was run entirely by Patience and Grace. The children were expected to help with chores; the girls did the cooking, and the boys cleaned. Leanne hadn’t liked those hours. She could sneak little scraps of food—the ends of carrots or sometimes even a sliver of cheese—but being in the kitchen separated her from Henry.

  Through the back door, Leanne entered the main part of the house. The hallways were narrower than she remembered. She supposed, as a ch
ild, she had fit better. As an adult, she felt squeezed. She had to walk perfectly straight. Otherwise, one of her shoulders would scrape the discoloured plaster.

  The hallway bent. It was not at a right angle. It wasn’t far off—only ten degrees, perhaps—but it left Leanne feeling destabilised. She hadn’t questioned it as a child, but as an adult, she couldn’t make sense of it. The rooms were all rectangular. How did the hallways have the luxury of variation?

  A memory returned. On the days Patience went to town, the children would play hide-and-seek through the halls. One child would wait at the window overlooking the yard, prepared to call a warning in case Patience returned. The others ran through the building, finding nooks and secret holes to tuck themselves into. As children were uncovered, they joined the search. No matter how often the game was played, they never seemed to run out of new places to hide.

  Leanne’s hand brushed a cupboard set into the wall. She thought she remembered using it for one of the games. Cautiously, she pulled on the handle. Inside were shelves of crumbling, moth-eaten blankets. A storage space had been left empty below. Leanne glanced down the hallway, as though she were at risk of being seen, then bit her lip as she got to her hands and knees.

  She wasn’t as young or as small as she had once been, and her joints creaked as she fit herself into the narrow gap. She remembered it. As she pulled the door closed, the sensations of that winter afternoon rushed back.

  * * *

  She had been hiding for ages. Maybe half an hour. They still hadn’t found her. Leanne rested her chin on her knees, waiting, and feeling faintly pleased.

  For a while, footsteps had thundered through the hallways, voices whispering suggestions as they tried to find the remaining hiders. Shadows had flitted across the band of light at the base of the door. The footsteps had faded, though, and she couldn’t hear them any longer. She couldn’t hear anything… except the quiet tap of a cane.

  Leanne clamped a hand over her mouth. Patience was home. She hadn’t heard the warning. She hadn’t gotten out in time.

  The tapping, a deep, steady noise, was growing closer. Louder. Matching the beating of Leanne’s heart. A shadow moved across the gap at the base of the floor. The cane thudded for a final time, loud enough to echo. The silence was agony. The shadow didn’t move.

  Leanne raised her second hand to cover her mouth. She was cold all of a sudden. So desperately cold that she wanted to gasp. She closed her eyes, squeezing them, as though she could escape Patience in the black inside her head.

  The cupboard’s handle rattled. Then it began to turn.

  * * *

  A cold, sharp tapping noise broke through Leanne’s memory. For an instant, she felt the same chill that had haunted her as a child. The dread, the fear, the need to run. She scrambled out of the hole in the cupboard and stopped, gasping, on her hands and knees in the hallway.

  The tapping came again. It was too fast and too light, she realised. Patience’s cane had been deep, almost thudding. This was the sound of a branch tapping on glass.

  She rose to her knees and looked along the hallway. At its end, a window framed dead branches that bowed in the wind. She did not remember the window being there when she’d first started along that hall.

  A hint of embarrassment brought heat to Leanne’s cheeks. She stood, her legs unsteady, and leaned a hand against the wall. It had been thirty years. Patience was long gone.

  She briefly wondered what had happened to Grace. She’d never known the woman’s surname. Leanne hoped she’d lived a good life after the home closed—but her heart sunk as she realised that was not likely. Grace’s health had been poor. Leanne imagined she could still hear the coughing, soft and weak, that seemed almost incessant on Grace’s worse days.

  The hallway led deeper into the building. Leanne let it carry her around another bend, then took an offshoot. She couldn’t remember where the path led. After a moment, it ended in one of the narrow, angled wooden staircases that seemed to fill the home. Leanne pulled her jacket tighter, trying to fight off the pervasive cold, and began to climb.

  * * *

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  She’d been hiding in the staircase, crying. She’d thought it was near the back of the house, where no one would find her, but somehow, Grace had. The woman crouched on the step below her and took Leanne’s hands in hers. Grace’s fingers always seemed to tremble, even though she was never afraid. She rubbed Leanne’s hands and smiled up at her.

  “We were playing hide-and-seek yesterday.” Leanne heaved, fresh tears falling over her cheeks. “I know we aren’t supposed to, but we did.”

  “That’s all right, sweetheart. You’re not in trouble. I promise.” Grace’s smile was warm. Like sunlight. The rest of the house was so cold, but Grace seemed to make it more bearable.

  “But-but I can’t find Andrew.” Leanne shook her head. Her hair was sticking to her wet cheeks. Mucus ran from her nose. She wanted to wipe it away, but she didn’t want to take her hands out of Grace’s. “He went to hide, but after the game ended, I didn’t see him for the rest of the day, and now, today, he wasn’t at breakfast, either. What if he’s still lost? What if he’s stuck somewhere and can’t get out?”

  “Well now, that’s something I’ll take care of.” Her voice was comforting, full of quiet certainty. “He won’t have just disappeared. I’ll find him. Here.”

  Grace slipped something small and gem-green out of her pocket. Cellophane crinkled as she placed the sweet in Leanne’s hand.

  “A little treat.” Grace’s thumb brushed over Leanne’s cheek, wiping away the moisture. “Don’t tell Patience I gave it to you, though, all right? It will be our secret.”

  “Promise.”

  “Good girl. Now, go and wash your face. Your class will be starting soon. I want you to be very brave and try not to worry. I’ll take care of it all.”

  As Leanne climbed the stairs towards the bathroom, she glanced back at Grace. The woman stared into the distance. Strands of delicate golden hair caught the light, making her seem to almost glow. Her words had been comforting. But now that she thought Leanne was no longer watching, she had let her smile fall. A worried crease ran between her eyes.

  * * *

  Leanne stopped, her hand resting on the wall at the top of the stairs. She’d forgotten all about that day. She frowned, staring into the dusty gloom ahead, trying to recall the aftermath, whether Andrew had been found. Leanne could picture his face, pinched and gap-toothed, but she didn’t remember seeing him again after that game of hide-and-seek.

  Cold prickles ran across her back. She lifted the torch and used it to disperse some of the darkness. The hall went on seemingly forever, doors recessed into each side. She recognised them. The classrooms.

  After breakfast, they’d always gone to study. The children were divided by age, eight or ten to a room, and Grace went between them, passing out old, tattered books and instructing them on which passages to read.

  Leanne and Henry were twins and allowed to sit next to each other. They would pull their seats close, sharing a book. Leanne turned the pages since Henry was the faster reader.

  They were left alone for long stretches of a time in those classrooms. They always worked dutifully and silently. Not because they wanted to, but because the doors were left open, and Patience walked the hallway.

  Leanne remembered feeling the eyes on her every time the heavy cane passed their door. She kept her head down to their book, desperate to avoid notice. When Patience passed, the rooms fell deathly still. No one fidgeted. No one whispered or turned their pages or even breathed. She would linger in the doorway, those milky eyes seeing everything, before the thud of her cane announced her progress towards the next room. Then the children would have a few minutes of peace before the cane returned.

  One afternoon, after the incident at breakfast, Henry had leaned towards Leanne and whispered, “I hope she dies soon.” She’d giggled, pressing a hand across her lips to stifle th
e noise because the cane was still not out of earshot.

  Leanne sighed, leaning against the doorjamb, staring at the desks she and Henry had occupied. She remembered the rooms being bigger. A child’s eyes had the power to magnify things. Even the windows had felt far wider and more alluring when she was a girl. Back then, they had tried to call Leanne away from her desk, to lure her into risking Patience’s notice for a glimpse outside. Now, as an adult, they seemed narrow and sad.

  Leanne approached one and stared through it. The sun had gone down. Soon, the moon would illuminate the world below. She could barely make out the trees and bushes that had grown behind Bellamy.

  Their mornings were spent in the classrooms. Their afternoons were for chores: cooking, washing clothes, making beds, and sweeping floors. Then they had dinner. And after that, they had a brief few hours to themselves, which they always spent outside. It was the best part of the day, racing through the long grass and chasing rabbits around the forest’s edge. The bell would ring at eight o’clock sharp, and they would all file back inside under Patience’s glazed eyes.

  * * *

  “Jayne!” Leanne cupped her hands around her mouth. “Jayne, come back! It’s too late!”

  Jayne laughed as she frolicked through the grass and leapt over a rotting log. “It’ll only be a minute, silly!”

  Leanne sighed and threw her hands out to her side. Henry appeared next to her, holding a stick he had been using to hunt for frogs. He looked at her curiously.

  “She says she’s going down to the river to wade,” Leanne said. “But it’s too late. The bell’s going to ring any moment, and she’ll be in trouble if she can’t get back fast enough.”

  A vivid sunset streaked across the sky. The days had been growing longer, the sun lingering, and the bell seemed to come earlier every evening.