Day 15 - 20: The Ghosts of St Catherine's

St Catherine’s was the best residential home in all of the UK, according to various facts and figures and interviews with staff. The home was in a renovated cathedral so the outside was a strange sight. Turrets rose from the ground, looming over the flower beds below. There was a large circular stained-glass window that would have been beautiful in its prime but it was now faded and barred, like most of the windows in the upper floors.

It was a strange building to look at, dark and gothic but intricately-crafted and beautiful. Statues and columns, faces and patterns carved into the stone, it was objectively stunning. Comparable to a masterpiece in the daytime, and a haunted castle in the night. Sill, there was something captivating about it. Something that made it almost impossible to look away from.

The building wasn’t in the best area, in every car park there were empty beer bottles, broken glass and smashed windows, but St Catherine’s was always immaculate. The locals avoided it, most didn’t know what it was. They only knew to keep away from it, as if by instinct.

Carers talked about the building as if it was haunted, speaking of ghosts in hushed whispers every time they heard a door creak without opening or a voice with no source. None were afraid of ghosts, they couldn’t be to work here, they were only saddened by the fact there were poor souls stuck roaming the halls.

Bronagh was the only carer who didn’t believe any of this. It wasn’t as though she was a cynic, she just couldn’t feel the energy that everyone else claimed to sense. She would go in every day at 7am and leave at 5pm. A normal, if not slightly long and emotionally and physically gruelling, job. Her particular shift was the shift for people who couldn’t work nights, a situation she was thankful for.

She loved taking care of the elderly. Her passion had always been to help others, to look after people while learning about them. She knew the histories of her patients inside out, both medical and personal. Even when the residents themselves couldn’t talk coherently, she would talk to the families, form a full profile of their loved one, their favourite food, hobbies, their relationships, children, grandchildren, and their profession (if they had one.)

One of her favourite patients was Enid MacKenzie. She was a lovely woman, but with some form of dementia. Enid rarely spoke, and her family were almost non-existent. She had a grandson, somewhere, who only visited at Christmas, his excuse being he lived too far away, but the boy was trouble. At least that’s what the other carers thought. His clothes were always dirty, his hair greasy, eyes red and he would only communicate with the receptionist through a series of grunts.

Enid, however, thought the world of him. Most days she would sit on her wheelchair, next to the window in the room and look outside at the flowers, residents on walks with their families, and the school children playing in the playground next door. She wasn’t unresponsive, she would smile and nod or shake her head, some days she would even manage a “good morning” but it was all she would be able to manage. It would be time to put her to bed and she would greet Bronagh with a “good morning” or if she was feeling a lot of pain that day, just a “morning,” Those were the normal days, but the days when Owen promised to visit or was mentioned by a nurse, Enid’s voice sprang to life.

She would say things like “today I would like to take a trip out to see the tulips” or ask what was for dinner or “Bronagh, I can’t wait for my grandson to come home.” She began to engage in conversation a bit more and appeared to understand the routine of the day (even if she didn’t realise she was in a residential home that her grandson was not going to take her away from.)

These cognitive periods would last until Owen left, when she would return to her usual kind “good mornings” as she sat passively in her wheelchair.

The wheelchair wasn’t something Enid always needed. Ten years ago she became very ill and her legs became too weak. She stopped being able to walk and wasn’t cognitive enough to relearn how to. That was long before Bronagh’s time. Bronagh herself, who had been working in St Catherine’s for four years, had never seen Enid move her legs and various nurses, and co-workers informed her that Enid was completely unable to.

For this reason, Bronagh made sure that whatever she was doing that day, whether it was a quiet shift and some of the staff were sneaking pizza in the staff lounge or a busy shift and she had to work overtime, she would make sure Enid was able to go outside. She would wheel her favourite resident around the garden, or through the prayer labyrinth, or if the weather was adverse, at least make sure she was positioned comfortably near the window, so she can watch the outside world nearby her orange juice and sweets.

One day, Bronagh didn’t have time to wheel Enid around the garden as Mr Bowman in room 12 had passed away. It was an emotional day for all the staff, Mr Bowman was a very kind man who was physically unable to take care of himself, but otherwise mentally well. She was in the room when it happened and continued talking to him as if he were still breathing until the coroners came, two hours after her shift.

That was the first day she felt something….peculiar in St Catherine’s, a shiver down her spine, a prickle on her neck, a tug in her heart. She would never admit this to anyone, wanting desperately to believe that every resident who passed on was now at peace. Yet, the twisting in her stomach told her otherwise.

As per tradition after a death, many of the staff were going for coffee after their shift, to mourn the resident and to support each other. Life in the care home could be overwhelming if not for these conversations. However, at that moment, Bronagh was already feeling the weight of her emotions, although none to do with Mr Bowman’s death. She felt nauseas, her brain feeling as though it had been turned to liquid. Perhaps she was ill, that the prickling underneath her skin was just sickness after a long, gruelling shift.

Feeling too unwell to join the others for coffee, she began walking out the door, her body in a cold sweat that caused her to shake. Strangely, the further she walked towards the door, the worse she felt. The corridors began to spin, moving up and down, getting bigger then smaller. She tried to convince herself it wasn’t real, but her shaking legs made every step feel as though she was walking on sand. One step at a time….she had two more turns to make and she would be out the door, in her car, and back home in no time.

She half stumbled through the second last door, which is when she saw the door to Enid’s room, lying wide open. A muffled cry came from it, and everything inside her told her to run, to get away from the door, St Catherine’s, as fast as possible. But she couldn’t do that. Not to Enid.

Bronagh never realised how dark the corridor was. All the lights were on but only emitting a dim glow. It made the pale white light from the half open door of Enid’s room stand out all the more. There wasn’t a sound from outside, a quietness that caused her ears to buzz, but then, after a moment it came again, that low moan. It was the sound of someone in pain.

Forcing one foot in front of the other, she crept towards the door, one hand clutching the handle as she ever so gently nudged it open.

The first thing she noticed was Enid. Standing only a foot away from her. The woman’s hands were clutching the bed and she stepped with bent legs closer towards the door. Her wheelchair, which she had been in for ten years was at the very back of the room, turned towards the wall as though she had pushed it there herself.

This wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

Bronagh didn’t know what to do. She stood, staring at Enid as the woman, whose legs didn’t work, took a step towards her, then another.

“Are you alright?” A stupid question. A really stupid question. But what else could she say?”

 “I need to get home, back to Inverness.” Enid demanded. There was something that resembled fear upon her face. Despite all her years of training, all her years of working here, Bronagh felt herself reaching into her pocket for her keys.

 “Please, help me.” Enid’s voice was unmistakably panicked, “I need to pick up Owen.”

“Where is he?”

“I need to pick him up. I need to get back to Inverness”

“Okay.” Bronagh nodded. “Take my arm.” She offered the woman her arm.

It was so dark outside, and icy, and she was about to take a resident from their room and drive them across the country. Her head was screaming at her to stop, to turn back, but she couldn’t. Her body wasn’t hers anymore, she was just a passenger, and she watched herself open the final door with her keycard and take Enid into the parking lot.

“Bronagh?” A voice called behind her. She ignored it, walking faster, Enid dragging behind. They only had to make it to the car and they would be gone.

“Come back!” Another voice yelled, and although the car was only a few feet away, the woman on her arm just couldn’t move fast enough.

“Leave us alone! She needs to go back!” Bronagh said in a voice that wasn’t hers. She heard someone running towards her and she started to drag Enid to her car. The woman didn’t seem to mind of course, she was also desperate to get out of there. They had almost made it, the door well within her reach when, Liam, another carer who worked on her floor was stood in front of her, his cheeks red as he panted for breath.

“What are you talking about?” She had never seen Liam look so afraid. He was shaking and she knew it wasn’t entirely from the cold.

“I need to go home.” Enid said louder, this time with tears in her eyes, “Please, I need to go back.”

“You are sick Bronagh.” A voice as soft as velvet sent shivers down her spine. She couldn’t see the woman behind her but it was if every anxiety, worry and concern left her body. “Give Enid to Liam.”

Bronagh obeyed. She didn’t want to, not when Enid was gripping to her so tightly that it hurt, but she wasn’t in control of herself. She let Liam rip Enid from her, let him drag her back inside while she screamed something about going home in between sobs.

“Now go home.” The voice was a whisper in her ear, and she could feel the speaker’s breath hot on her skin, despite the fact she was now alone in the car park.

That was the last she remembered.

When she woke up still in her work clothes and trudged into work, she was convinced it was a dream. A foggy hallucination that came from her cold medicine or high fever. The only reminder of anything that had occurred was the faint pain in her arm where she was sure Enid had been gripping. She must have been lying against it in her sleep.

St Catherine’s seemed to return to normal and there was a smile on her face when she peeped in to see Enid, in her wheelchair, sitting placidly by the window, examining the tulips. She wasn’t talking, but that passive smile had returned to her face. The passive smile of a resident that was comfortable and content.

The other carers too, barely reacted to her presence as she stepped into reception, finding the receptionists and four other carers gathered in a huddle at the desk.

“What’s going on?” She asked, a prickling in her arm telling her to be quiet.

“We are talking about Enid.” Liam answered, without a hint of remorse in his voice. She was angry at him. Angry that he had taken Enid from her, had stopped them from escaping. But then she remembered it was only a dream and tried to calm herself.

“My mind is a little foggy,” She admitted, “Did she really walk last night?”

“Enid? She has been wheelchair bound for a decade!” One of the receptionists snorted.

“We are talking about her grandson, you remember Owen?” Liam offered.

“Of course.”

“He…he was waiting at the bus stop and –“

“He died.” The receptionist finished the sentence that Liam could not. Suddenly she began to feel very hot, as though her whole body was burning from within.

“Where?”

“Twenty minutes from his home.”

His home. His home. His home was Enid’s old home.

She felt dizzy, as though she would faint, and removed the cardigan which she had spent all night sleeping in. The room was too hot, that was the problem, they always kept the home very well heated to stop the residents freezing. Wrapping the cardigan around her waist she turned back to Liam and began to ask a question when there was a shout.

“What the hell happened to you?” The receptionist screamed, pointing at her arm.

Looking down, Bronagh saw the purple shadow of four fingers. Bruises that couldn’t be mistaken from anything else but a hand that had gripped her too hard.

////////

I had been uploading one part to this every day to instagram for NaNoWriMo and today is the day of the final instalment. I am worried that it's all going to be rather anticlimactic so I'm really interested to what people think about the ending. 

This is actually, the only thing I've written this month that is based on a true story. 

It's also the only thing I've written this month where the main character annoys me but I don't want to spend too much time analysing why that is.

One day, when I was visiting my granny in a nursing home I heard a shout from a room, and there was no one around so naturally I went in to make sure whoever was inside was alright. The door was open and there was this woman standing up, clutching the edge of the bed.

I'm not going to tell you what she said to me, or why she was calling for help, because I don't want to use what was probably a traumatic experience for her as a story to tell online without her consent. But one thing that made this encounter really harrowing for me, is the fact that after I helped her, and a carer finally arrived, they explained to me that the woman hadn't walked before, and they had thought her legs didn't work.

It really stuck with me because I do think we need to listen to people more, and it still frustrates me that she was never really listened to. I think even if someone isn't as cognitively aware as they used to be, they still deserved to be respected, because they still have needs and wants like any other human being.

I think that point stands for everyone, young and old.

And what I was trying to do with my story is have a woman who very suddenly felt the need to pick up her grandson to save him getting the bus, because by some supernatural means, she knew something bad was about to happen, and if the people around her had listened to her, they might have saved his life.

I'm not even sure if that fully comes across, as I wrote this in 300 word instalments tone was a little difficult to facilitate, and maybe I'll return to this later. But here it is for you now.

Listen to old people or be haunted by the ghost of ASMR!

//////

This was Days 15-20 of my NaNoWriMo project where I am writing a new short story every day in November! Originally all of these were posted to instagram, but the 300 word limit was a little confining so I've come here to post everything I've written and a little bit more!