The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick

Author:Marcus Sedgwick
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781626721265
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Thursday, March 31

I curse myself that I am still so naive.

I have been played with, on all sides it seems.

My elation over my success with Dexter’s punishment lasted only one night, and even before I slept, I found I was unsettled by the man’s poetry.

On Drowning is a strange piece of work; not all the stories concern water or the sea, though many do. The poem that gives the book its title is the third in the collection. A long and formless piece, I found, which hints at unknown things. Over the course of several pages, Dexter’s words wove some sort of terror into me, but exactly what that terror is of, I cannot say. All I can report is that his words, in some way, disturb. Everything is shadows and the suggestion of monstrosity, of horror in the water, of something dark and powerful beneath the waves, something—there is no other word for it—malevolent.

* * *

This morning, I went along the wards as lightly as I could, making one or two instructions to the warders over various patients, yet all the while I was eager to get to Dexter’s room.

I found him writing, as usual, though this time he was standing and looking up out of the mediocre window, at the sky.

He turned as I opened the door.

“Can you hear the sea?” he asked.

I listened, but all I could hear was the sound of doors clanging nearby. It seemed an odd coincidence to me that he should speak of the sea when the night before I had been reading his poetry, which appeared too obsessed with things aquatic.

“Can you?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “It’s louder the higher up the building you go.”

“Well,” he said. “What shall we talk about today?”

I smiled, because there really is something disarmingly charming about his open manner.

I decided to return his manner with playfulness of my own.

“I have a surprise for you,” I said. “Will you walk with me?”

“A surprise? You are the strangest doctor I have ever met,” he said. “And I have met one or two.”

We came out into the hall and instead of turning for the doors to the outside at the eastern end of the building, we made for the central hall. Thinking back, I should have noted a slight change in Dexter even then, but I was busy with other thoughts, for he had just asked me a very interesting question.

“Tell me, Doctor,” he said. “What is your opinion of psychiatry?”

“I would rather you tell me yours,” I said. “Do you know something of it?”

“I have read a little,” he said.

“And your conclusion?”

He waved a hand above our heads, and round about. I could almost feel the weight of brick and steel above us.

“All this,” he said. “All this matter. To try to correct the ineffable disturbances of the mind. It seems … odd, at least, wouldn’t you say?”

“You think psychiatry a more effective treatment? You think it would serve you better?”

He tilted his head toward me.

“Where are we going, Doctor?”

“A short walk,” I said.

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