1906 [h.s.]

fourteen

As we reached the common room, I started to grow a bit wary of the eerie silence of the building.

"So, when were you born?" I asked him just to make conversation, knowing that I couldn't show him I knew already. If I had, he would've understood that I had casually opened his file.

He cleared his throat before replying. "1st February, 1883" he replied. Somehow, considering everything I'd just discovered, it made way more sense than when I'd first found out.

"Woah, that's a long time ago. How was it like to live in the eighteen hundreds?" I asked him curiously, trying my best to distract him.

"I am not quite sure of what you want me to reply" he simply said before entering a dark corridor. "It will get darker and darker from now on. Take my hand..." He let his voice drift away as soon as he realised what he'd said. "Follow my voice" he corrected himself faintly after a long few seconds of silence, the quietness in his voice breaking my heart. I tried to think of how he must've felt in that moment, but I didn't think I could truly realise the extent of the distress he was in. I couldn't picture how it would've felt to know I was no longer alive - I didn't even think we were made to cope with something like that. To still be here, but know you truly aren't, seems a way too cruel fate to pin on anyone in general, especially on someone like Harry. I barely knew him, but I knew he wasn't a bad person - I wondered why had such a fate downed upon him, and nobody else. Who could've wanted to punish a soul in such a way?

I walked behind him in silence for a while before deciding to talk again. I couldn't do anything to fix what had happened to him, but I would've for sure tried my best not to make him think about it. "Have you ever had a girlfriend?" I asked him, shaking my head to myself, thinking of how fast things had changed. Just a few hours before, I was ready to run away from him. But now, after having realised that he wasn't a danger to me, I was trying my best to comfort him. I hoped I wouldn't have made the situation worse by mistake though, I seemed to have a knack for fucking things up when it came to him.

He hummed. "Not quite sure of why you are asking me. My attention was usually focused elsewhere but, to answer your question, I did have a girl I loved" he replied quietly.

"Tell me about her" I asked, and he stopped in his tracks, causing me to, or at least so I supposed, walk right into his back, a shiver running down my spine as a sudden coldness enveloped my chest. I took a quick step back, slumping against the wall as I tried to catch my breath and regain my warmth. If it hadn't been that dark, I was quite sure I would've seen him glare at me.

"Stop it" he said, the closeness of his voice letting me know that he'd turned around. "I feel myself burn when you touch me." A small silence followed, as he took in my previous question. "Why are you asking me?" He asked, his voice low, but firm.

"Because I'm bored. And I want to talk. And I mean, we're stuck in an asylum and we had psychos run after us just a few hours ago. Needless to say you're from the damn eighteen hundreds while I'm from the 21st century. I'm quite sure we can throw our reservations out of the window at this point. I know nothing about you, and from the looks of it we'll be stuck together for a very long time, so I want to get to know you" I replied fast, trying to make something up to avoid telling him I was just trying to distract him, widening my eyes when I was midway through my speech as I realised that it wasn't a complete lie. I did want to know something more about him, despite everything that told me I really shouldn't have cared that much, considering I'd seen his name written on a headstone just a few hours before. He was the definition of a goner, and yet I still wanted to find out something more about him. It made close to no sense, but I wasn't in the place to start saying what made sense and what didn't, given the situation I was in.

He sighed and went back to walking. "Her name was Effie. She was beautiful. Her parents did not approve of me, she was of the upper class, and I was not. We used to meet in her garden when the moon came up in the sky and her parents went to sleep." A small silence followed, as he thought back to that period of his life.

I smiled, thinking of Harry doing something like that. So cheesy, but so pure at the same time. "Did you ever marry her? Or did her parents not allow you to?"

"I would have gone to the end of the world for her. We wanted to run away together" he said, his reply way shorter than the one before.

"And then what happened?" I asked him.

"She got sick. Soon, she didn't have the strength to meet me outside, and her parents didn't allow me to visit." He made a small pause, before continuing. "She died barely a month later."

I stopped walking, making him stop with me. I stared into the darkness, trying to take in what he'd just told me. "I'm so sorry, I had no idea... I'm sorry for asking."

"It's fine" he only said.

Without adding anything else, we went back to walking in silence. After a while we stopped, and I heard a screech as the door was opened. I hesitantly walked in, glancing around.

The Main Office had a huge window, from which the bright light of the day was coming in.

"Where should we start searching?" I asked Harry, but he shrugged.

"Don't know, pet. You wanted to come here."

I snorted at how unhelpful he was being, and I walked towards the big desk in the middle of the room.

"Alright" I told myself. "What should we search for?"

What we needed was some kind of map of the building, with all the exits shown. The thing was that I didn't have the slightest idea of where to find something like that. I glanced at what was on the shelves. Each shelf had a letter, repeating the same scheme I had found in the office close to the front door.

I took a few folders out, noticing that they were all, in fact, personal information about the patients. Realising that I wouldn't have found my answers in there, I decided to check the desk, and turned around.

I moved the chair away from the desk, frowning in disgust as I saw the many cobwebs on it, to step closer to the table. There were a couple of papers on it, all talking about directives and such, and clearly none that could've been of any help. Feeling a hint of nervousness starting to settle inside me, I opened the first drawer of the desk, noticing that there were a lot of papers on it. I flicked through them, they seemed to be lists of the people who used to work there. Irrelevant. I shook my head and put them back in, slamming the drawer close.

I hissed, my nervousness starting to show, standing up and glancing around the room, trying my best to make sure that I had checked all I could've checked. I met Harry's dark gaze, and I just shook my head, not needing his negativity in that moment. I sighed when I realised that I'd almost looked at everything I could've looked, sitting back down on the dirty, dusty floor. Maybe I should've just come to terms with the fact that that room wouldn't have helped me in my search, despite how promising it had sounded when Harry had first brought it up. I had to blink away tears of anxiousness when I understood that, if I wouldn't have found my answer there, I wouldn't have found it in the rest of the asylum.

The more I tried to find a way out, the more I realised that maybe Harry was right, and there just wasn't one. I felt stuck, trapped like a bird in a cage, and I couldn't help but wonder what would've happened when my fate would've caught up with me as well.