A fantastic transition had occurred, but Aiden hadn’t seen it. He didn’t recognize anything, save for the grey sea that crashed on the rocky shoreline. He stared back down the dirt road, gazing longingly towards Antham, but found only the silhouettes of the buildings standing, dark, against the night sky.
His surroundings were grey, almost as grey as the sea itself. Tall grass replaced the buildings, trees, and streetlights, but it had bent to the wind. There was no structure in sight to the east or west. Neither was there any growth in any direction nor natural creation that rose higher than someone’s thigh.
Lining the unpaved road were stone walls, space apart wide enough for streets and alleys if they had been domiciles. Once upon a time, they had been homes, but now were nothing more than abandoned piles of rocks.
Aiden looked to the south.
The silhouette of a feudal castle stood against the backdrop of the early morning sky. As the wagon drew nearer, the structure split from the land because of the sea – the medieval structure standing on an old, crumbled shoreline that allowed the ocean to move further inland.
The castle was Raychester Citadel, originally constructed to house the settlement and port of Antham close to one thousand years ago. Quite simply, the port had grown too small, and the city of Antham was moved further north to monopolize on its natural coastal bay, now taken advantage of by the upper class as a seaside retreat. After the move, Raychester Citadel became a destination for the rich as a health resort and sanitarium, but its outer walls began to crumble with the encroaching sea. Finally, the Citadel was left in the land no one wanted.
Brown stones walls rose to a height of one hundred and twenty-three feet, accented in dark grey; a portion of the eastmost wall collapsed into the sea, making an escape through there almost a promised death.
But getting inside the inner walls of Raychester Citadel was an adventure within itself. From the mainland, two small guard towers had been constructed; originally the entrance to the castle in its prime, but had fallen into disrepair. However, the focal points were between the castle gates, which now housed a zip-line bridge, a platform suspended by a series of thick wires that ran over the crumbled shoreline to the sanitarium. Where the two gates were held to the wall was replaced with two clamps that held the platform securely, on either side of the bridge in bad weather. Since the zip-line bridge functioned only in one direction, a winch had been constructed to pull the platform back to the castle gates. A proposal for a sturdier stone bridge had been requested a number of years ago, but the plans had never come to fruition.
A figure cloaked in maroon stood in the shadows until the wagon pulled up. The figure, a woman, pulled Aiden from the wagon before allowing the driver to head off back towards Antham.
“Hello, Mr. Whitebell,” she whispered in a cool, low voice, a voice so remarkable that the boy couldn’t match a name to it. Aiden was still drugged, but it didn’t impair his speaking abilities; he chose not to answer and she prodded him out onto the platform. Aiden’s torso pressed against the wind, his hands shuddering as they clung the blanket closer to his body. “It isn’t that cold,” the woman murmured, smoothly tucking some loose strands of blonde hair behind her ear.
Aiden’s teeth, nevertheless, clattered together. “Wh-where are we?” he asked.
The woman scoffed at him, and, quite gracefully, kicked the tower. Inside, metals wirred, and the clamps holding the platform to the mainland lifted. Wooden barriers at the front and back lifted. Aiden clung to the metal railings along the side as he felt the platform beneath him drop and start moving.
If it weren’t a grey, cloudy night, Aiden wouldn’t have been shivering. It wasn’t brisk, but light winds blowing off the ocean made the night colder. The overall grayness of the environment and the cloudy sky made Aiden feel like the platform was swaying more. Raychester was aglow as well, dark shadows cast up and turning the castle into a foreboding monster of stone and mortar.
But it was the platform moving that frightened him more than Raychester Citadel. It had sprung forward with such force that when it stopped at the Inner Entrance, the woman and Aiden could’ve shot forwards several feet and into the Courtyard.
The woman quickly cut the bindings on his wrists. “Stay quiet,” she whispered. “It isn’t like you can run anywhere.” Aiden whined a response, and was tugged forwards towards a woman in white. The two women mumbled incoherently to each other before the nurse gestured for them to come in. And so, Aiden was pulled across the Inner Courtyard and into the front hall of the Central Building.
The front hall, which was used as the main lobby for both the sanitarium and the health resort, were something that could’ve be preserved in museums. Its ceilings arched at least forty feet above Aiden’s head, accented in earthen colors, cream, and gold. The furniture was oversized; a tree could’ve comfortably grown in the corner. But this was the architects’ intention when they first designed the Citadel – once visitors entered into the castle’s front hall, they should have felt intimidated by the scale.
This was, however, before the sanitarium had taken over the estate, right before the outbreak of the Great War almost forty years ago. The main floor of the Central Building was primarily left intact to be used as recreational space, such as for daily worship, eating, and reading. The original second floor became two individual floors for patient housing, the fourth floor became the hospital and morgue, and the fifth floor housed more rooms.
Ultimately, floors were added for the accessibility of two elevators, central heating, ventilation, and electricity. In the end, the entire building was lost.
Aiden fidgeted with his thumbs in the overstuffed easy chair in the front hall; a nurse stood beside him as the woman and another figure disappeared behind an imposing black door. The castle was poorly lit with echoes abundant; his new surroundings staring at him like they disapproved of the outsider in their midst. Large arched windows behind his head let in streams of moonlight, but this ultimately added to the icy horror of the castle.
From the darkness of the walled-in Rose Garden just beside the front hall, a faint, yellowed light flickered just beyond, lighting up a wing of Raychester that was previously obstructed by darkness. The light, in turn, caught Aiden’s attention. He rose and peered over the high ledge into the West Wing of the Citadel. “What’s in there?” he asked curiously.
The nurse turned her head slowly and returned her gaze to Aiden. “That’s the health resort,” she replied smoothly.
Time passed. Aiden pressed his eye to the crack in the door leading out to the walled gardens.
The nurse didn’t stop him.
The space was poorly lit again. An ugly black building loomed like a monster beyond, lacking the straight lines and bulky architecture stylings the rest of the Citadel possessed; instead, its façade was curved and slender. A boxy room at the top of the roof, made entirely of glass and steel, with a squared roof whose edges that curled towards the sky distinguished the ugly building. The room housed a powerful light that shone towards the sea, but rotated in a painfully slow manner that that lingered on the residence in both the West Wing and the Central Building. The rotation mechanism had been jammed shut so the light shined out towards the sea, to avoid the hazards for ocean-going ships crashing into the shoreline, but even then, ships had a tradition of departing for an eastward or westward voyage in the late afternoon to avoid such hazards.
Aiden sighed and returned to the overstuffed chair, the nurse unmoved over him, her gaze menacing. He found himself not upset, frightened, or confused. Aiden was deeply angered and sad at the same time. He was angry at the girls who had done this to him; he was cross that his parents hadn’t started a search party, or at least he assumed something along the sorts; he was angry at Danielle for coming up with that aerosol. He couldn’t remember so many things from when he was at school last. He was irritated at anything and everything. He hated the walls of the sanitarium, the colors, the smell of the sea air, the ineffective lights that cast a golden haze rather than actually lighting the room. Everything.
He hadn’t paid much attention afterwards; he was left stewing in his own anger and resentment. The woman departed from the facilities. Sanitarium clothes were given, relabeling Aiden as “Jacob Haverman”. He was escorted into the elevator, now an admitted patient of Raychester Citadel Sanitarium.
The elevator hummed as it started its ascent. “How are you, Mr. Haverman?” asked the nurse.
His head swirled. His limbs felt heavy. “Just shut up and take me to my room,” he snarled back.
The elevator suddenly stalled. She banged on the walls, but the box in the shaft didn’t budge. “Mr. Haverman, this sort of behavior will be unacceptable. If you act out, then consequences will ensue. But, from what I understand, you’ve traveled from Direwall, so you must be tired.”
The elevator shifted downwards only slightly, and then started its ascent upwards before stopping again. “Oh, you know these old elevators,” she mumbled, lightly stepping her right foot down on the tile floor.
“What did that woman tell you?” Aiden asked through his teeth.
“You’re mother told me about your…loss, resulting most probably from your father’s death.”
“My father is alive,” Aiden corrected.
“She also told me about your…condition.” She turned to Aiden and put her hand on his shoulder; he shrugged it off with a look of disgust clearly on his face. “You must understand that these delusions are dangerous to your life. You are Jacob Haverman, you come from Antham.”
“No. I am Aiden - ”
“Call yourself what you’d like, but eventually, you’ll have to come to terms with being who you are, Mr. Haverman.” Aiden harrumphed and turned away, waiting for the elevator to start its movement upwards again.
It took an agonizing fifteen minutes for the elevator to begin moving.
The third floor was installed after the sanitarium had taken over the building. The induction of the extra floor allowed for more patients to be taken care of at once, bringing the population of the sanitarium close to one thousand; including the health resort, it totaled over one thousand two hundred patients. The third floor was reserved private sleeping rooms; about twelve on each side of the poorly lit, bland, checkerboard-tile hallway that sagged slightly towards the middle, revealing another hallway of the same dimensions and proportions.
But none of these rooms were reserved for Aiden. The nurse took him down the obtuse hallway towards a door with three locks. She opened them quietly and slipped the boy and herself into what appeared to be a relaxation library reserved for the workers when they were allowed down time.
The nurse continued in walking, and dragging, Aiden through the room into the connection to the West Wing of the sanitarium, which housed some teacups and teapots, cold foods, and some display fruit when the resort was opened. The hallways suddenly opened up into something that could’ve been in a small-sized country manor. The floors were different colored stones, accented in soft pigments and gold light fixtures, gold and cream-colored moldings hung on its walls and ceilings. The tall, arched window at the end of the hallway let in the night’s light. The moon was gone, disappearing because of cloud cover, and the rain lightly tapped the window.
Outside, if one were to look down towards the sea, one would see a ship had run aground. The vessel, still waiting for the rising tide, was ablaze in lights, some of them waving and occasionally lighting the hallway for a very brief time.
“Your room is actually quite unique,” the nurse began, fiddling with a large ring of keys hanging on her hips. “Due to your mother’s request, and her very generous payment, you’ve received housing in the West Wing, but will be receiving the traditional treatment of the Central Building.”
“Why here?” Aiden asked curiously.
She didn’t hear him. “The health resort is closed for the time being, so we will decide whether or not you will move when we open again in the spring.” She turned to him and spoke solemnly, “You are currently forbidden to wander the West Wing. We are making renovations to the building, and we don’t want you mucking about with the repairs.” And she pressed herself against the door and allowed herself in.
The apartment space was separated into four different room: the Forward Saloon consisted of a medium-sized fireplace outlined in white marble; surrounding the fireplace were bookshelves that stretched from the edges of the hearth to the opposite walls. Hanging from the ceilings of the Forward Saloon were two glass chandeliers outlined in silver metal. A small eating and sitting area took up the remainder of the room; cabinetry and painting adorned the remaining wall space that wasn’t occupied by sconces or curtains. Through a set of white double door was the bedroom, a modestly sized room that was painted in a soft green with an attached walk-in closet and bathroom.
The apartment that Aiden had received was disgustingly decorated in different shades of blue and whites. Despite being appropriately designed, taking similar designs and colors from the hallway, there was so much blue in one place that Aiden, who had previously liked the color, found himself nauseous from the amount of it.
“If you need anything,” the nurse said, Aiden turning back to the woman, “please press this.” She pointed to a gold button close to the door, and then left.
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