The Gilded Cage of Saint Dymphna

My name is Elena, and I’m twenty-two. I moved to the town of Hollow Creek a year ago to take a job as a night archivist at the old St. Dymphna’s asylum, which had been converted into a museum of medical oddities. The job was simple: catalog boxes of patient files, photographs, and personal effects that had been left untouched for decades. It was solitary work, and I preferred it that way. The asylum stood on a hill overlooking the town, its Gothic spires silhouetted against the perpetual grey of the Pacific Northwest sky. I worked from midnight to eight in the morning, when the building was empty and the only sounds were the creaking of the old pipes and the scuttle of mice in the walls.

My first encounter happened on a Tuesday, about three weeks into the job. I was in the basement, where we kept the more disturbing artifacts—things that the public never saw. I was cataloging a collection of children’s toys that had been found in the walls of the old children’s ward. There were porcelain dolls with cracked faces, a tin train with rusted wheels, and a small wooden horse with one eye missing. I remember feeling a sudden, intense pressure on my chest, as if someone were sitting on me. I tried to move, but my limbs were frozen. I couldn’t even blink. I lay on the cold linoleum floor, staring up at the water-stained ceiling, my heart pounding in my ears. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small figure standing in the doorway. It was a little girl, maybe six years old, dressed in a tattered white nightgown. Her hair was lank and dark, and her eyes were empty black pits. She tilted her head at me, as if curious, then turned and ran down the hall. As soon as she disappeared, the pressure vanished, and I could move again. I scrambled to my feet, my hands shaking, and didn’t go back to the basement for the rest of the night.

I tried to convince myself it was a dream, a side effect of the stale air and the job’s monotonous routine. But the memory clung to me like cobwebs. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my supervisor, for fear of being dismissed as a hysterical woman. I needed the money, and the job was quiet. But then, a month later, it happened again. I was in the main archives on the third floor, sorting through a box of admission records from the 1940s. It was around four in the morning, and I was alone in the building. I felt a cold draft wash over me, and then that same pressure returned, but this time it was lighter, like a hand resting on my shoulder. I turned around, and there she stood—the same little girl, but now she was holding a small, tarnished locket. She didn’t speak, but she held out the locket to me, her arm extended rigidly. I reached out to take it, but as soon as my fingers brushed the metal, she vanished. The locket clattered to the floor. I picked it up. It was engraved with the initials M.K. Inside was a tiny photograph of a woman with a serene smile, and a lock of brown hair. I felt a chill run down my spine.

I decided to investigate. The records in the basement were the key. I spent the next few nights combing through boxes, looking for anything about a girl with the initials M.K. Finally, I found a patient file from 1947. The girl’s name was Margaret Kaine, age six, admitted for what the doctors called ’hysterical mutism’ and ’recurring night terrors.’ She had been an orphan, and she had been placed in the children’s ward. The file was thin, but it contained a single photograph—it was the same little girl in the tattered nightgown. There was also a note from the head doctor, who wrote that Margaret claimed to see ’the man in the white hat’ who would come to her at night and sit on her chest, pressing down until she couldn’t breathe. The doctors dismissed it as a delusion. But a few weeks after her admission, Margaret was found dead in her bed. Cause of death was listed as ’sudden cardiac arrest,’ but the nurse who found her wrote in the margin: ’She had an expression of pure terror on her face.’

I knew I had to find out more. I found a hidden compartment in the children’s ward, behind a loose board. Inside was a small box of Margaret’s belongings—a doll, a drawing she had made, and a diary. The diary was written in childish scrawl, and it was dated a week before her death. The last entry said: ’He comes every night. He sits on my chest. He whispers my name. He says I must not tell, or he will take my mother away. But mother is gone already. I think he is the one who took her.’ I felt a cold dread settle in my stomach. Then I noticed something else in the box: a photograph of a group of doctors standing outside the asylum, all wearing white coats and hats. One of them held a little girl’s hand—it was Margaret. The doctor had a kind face, but his eyes were cold. His name plate read ’Dr. Harold Vance.’

That night, I decided to go into the restricted wing, where they kept the old staff offices. I was looking for anything on Dr. Vance. The offices were covered in dust, and the air was thick with the smell of decay. I found Vance’s office in the corner. The door was locked, but the lock was old, and it gave way with a bit of jiggling. Inside, the room was frozen in time. There were diplomas on the wall, a leather chair, and a desk with a blotter and an inkwell. In a drawer, I found a journal. Vance’s journal dated 1947. I flipped through it, and my hands trembled as I read. Vance wrote about his obsession with a patient named Margaret. He described how he would visit her at night, ’to test her strength.’ He wrote: ’She resists, but I must prove that I am stronger. I will show her the power of the white coat.’ Then a month before Margaret’s death, he wrote: ’She has been telling the other nurses about me. I cannot allow that. I decided to use the treatment. It is unfortunate that she is so fragile.’

As I read the last entry, I heard a sound behind me. I turned, and there was the figure of a man in a white coat and a wide-brimmed hat, standing in the doorway. His face was obscured in shadow, but I could see the glint of spectacles. He stepped forward, and I felt a pressure on my chest, just like before. I tried to move, but I was frozen, pinned to the chair. The man walked around the desk and stood over me, leaning close. I could smell stale tobacco and a faint antiseptic. He whispered, ’You should not have come, Elena. You are not meant to know.’ I felt a cold hand on my throat, and I couldn’t breathe. Then, as suddenly as it began, the pressure lifted, and the man was gone. I gasped for air, clutching the arms of the chair. I looked down at the journal, and the last page was now blank. All his confessions had vanished.

I ran out of that office and out of the asylum, not stopping until I reached my car. I didn’t go back to work. I called in sick, and then I resigned. I tried to tell the police, but they dismissed me as a hysterical woman who had been working too many night shifts. But I know what I saw. I still carry the locket, and sometimes at night, I feel that pressure on my chest, and I hear a little girl’s voice whispering, ’Help me.’ I can’t help her. I don’t know how. But I know that somewhere in that asylum, in that hidden box, there is a drawing that Margaret made. It shows a stick figure in a white coat with a hat, standing over a small girl in bed. The girl has X’s for eyes. And in the corner, written in shaky letters, it says: ’He sits on me. He makes me quiet.’ I haven’t been back, but I think about Margaret every day. And I wonder if Dr. Vance is still there, waiting for the next curious archivist to open the wrong box.