House of the Hopeless
‘In a Ward, with white tiles, blue lights, and a sleeping girl, they locked away all they did not understand.’
A young witch, dressed in her crisp and new lime green robe, waits patiently on a hard-backed wooden chair. It is early, almost seven in the morning, but the witch has wide, alert hazel eyes. She scans the empty lobby and fidgets with the wand in her lap.
A man with copper hair opens the double doors, and the witch leaps up out of her seat. A large, friendly smile, as open and trusting as her eyes, beams upon her face. The Healer with the copper hair looks tired, but the young witch with the bright smile does not seem to notice. She extends her hand, and says, “Hello, I am Abigail Resnik. I must say, I am so happy to meet you! It has been a dream of mine, since I was a little witch, to be a Healer. Well, my Muggle father wanted me to be a doctor, but when I got my letter to Hogwarts, it was settled.”
“Yes, yes,” Malone says as he tries to shake the sleep from his eyes. He, too, manages a smile and returns the young witch’s hand shake. “I suppose you already know I am Healer Malone Prewett?”
“Oh, yes! Of course! I mean, I have never met you, but I just assumed you were.” Abigail giggles and waves a hand around at the empty lobby. “There was no one else here. I mean, I am sorry if I am presumptuous, but I did just assume you were Healer Prewett.”
“Well, uh . . . I am.” Malone jams both hands into his pockets. In one, he feels his wand, and in the other, he feels a pipe, his tobacco, and a handkerchief. “Now, let’s go upstairs. I am an assistant Healer on the Sanguine-Levette Ward, which deals with magic wasting and other permanently debilitating hexes, jinxes, and charms. We have made a good deal of progress in curing some types of contortion charms and body rearrangement jinxes.”
“Just splendid!” Abigail exclaims. “I heard that the Sanguine-Levette Ward was doing some very progressive work to cope with permanent jinxes and charms. How many Healers are there on the floor?”
“I am just an assistant,” Malone says as the two of them progress, side by side, up a staircase lined with portraits. Some of the people in the portraits pear down at them, but most remain asleep. “As you may or may not have heard,” Healer Malone continues, “I am Head Healer for the Morticia Gregel Ward. It is a bit small. We have only three patients, and two of them are comatose.”
Abigail squeezes her wand tightly. Her mouth drops open, and for a moment, she appears like a fish out of water. Finally, she sputters, “Yes! Yes, I have heard. C-can I see her? The sleeping beauty, that is? It has been almost a century since a documented case of sleeping beauty sickness.”
Malone sighs as he pushes open the double doors to the fourth floor. “Do not expect much. She . . . she sleeps all the time. She still looks fifteen years old, too. Quite astounding, but amazingly boring, actually, because she literally does nothing.”
“She does not eat? Go the bathroom? Does she have a terrible stench?” Abigail peels off questions. Malone simply shakes his head as their shoes click against the white tiles. When they reach the end of the hallway, they pass through another set of double doors. A golden plague, with the words ‘Morticia Gregel Ward’ is mounted above the door.
There are two doors and four grey curtains inside of the double door. “That is the office,” Malone gestures to one of the doors, “and that is the bathing room.” He pulls back one of the grey curtains, and they enter an empty bedroom with only a single, ghostly blue orb illuminating the lonely space.
“There are four sets of three rooms. We have only one patient in each room, and all of the curtains are charmed to be sound proof,” Malone explains as they pass into the second empty room. Malone pauses at the last curtain, and then, he pulls it open slowly and gestures Abigail to enter first.
The young witch, hands trembling, takes several cautious steps into the room. She gasps as she stares down at the eternally young witch bathed in the never changing ghostly light. “S-she’s real!” Abigail squeaks as she goes to touch the girl’s shiny hair.
She pauses, withdraws her hand, and looks up at Malone. “Yeah, go on, touch her. She certainly is the least harmful thing in this hospital, and I am her technical legal guardian now,” Malone says as he waves a hand at the bed. Abigail reaches down and gently runs her hand over the girl’s smooth hair before touching her milky white skin.
“She . . . she feels like she is dead,” Abigail whispers as she pulls her hand away. A shiver runs down her spine.
“Amazing.”
The word is said in barely a whisper. Malone grins and motions the young Healer to follow him. “She is the most boring thing in this place, Healer Resnik. Trust me on that. Now, come on, I’ll show you some of our more serious cases in the Sanguine-Levette Ward.”
Malone shuts the curtain behind him. It swishes across the floor, but when it closes, the noise of the Healers walking away is instantly cut off. Morticia Gregel is bathed in silence as undisturbed as she is.
Morticia Gregel Ward, April 2, 1914
Abigail sits in her office, scribbling notes across her parchment. The young witch hums to herself as she makes notes on her patients.
From the hallway, there is shouting. Abigail drops her quill, and an ink line darts across the page like a swift, jagged wound. The ink soaks in like a blood stain, but Abigail recovers her wits and proceeds to the hallway. The unearthly sound comes from the mouth of a struggling woman, whose face is contorted so she appears more like a banshee than a woman.
Healer Prewett comes through the double doors, and they clang shut behind him. “Abigail . . .” he says before he catches his breath.
“What happened?” Abigail shouts because she cannot whisper over the unholy shrieking. Healer Prewett pats his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Cassandra Trelawney “ you know the famous seer “ was performing a séance . . . something happened. Her husband tried to help her, but she’s completely out of her senses. I told him we could restrain her on our Ward.”
Abigail nods as the group of Healers holding the mad woman take her behind one of the steel grey curtains. Immediately, the silence closes in upon the two Healers, although the bone chilling shrieks still seems to linger in the air like ghostly finger prints.
“I’ll naturally try and handle her myself, but I think one of us should be here at all times just to make sure nothing happens to her. I must admit, I’ve never dealt with anything like this before, but cases that involve spirits tampering with the living are never described as being very . . . manageable.”
Abigail nods enthusiastically in response to Malone’s explanation. She cannot remember the last time he has explained something in this must detail to her, and although she is terrified of the rabid woman, she finds herself able to give her Head Healer a reassuring smile.
“Of course I can manage her,” Abigail’s voice is steady as she masks her fears of whatever caused the woman to make such ferocious, hair-raising sounds.
Malone nods vigorously as he stashes his handkerchief and draws his wand. “Good . . . good. Let’s go fix her up then, shall we?”
Morticia Gregel Ward, April 13, 1914
The hour is late, and outside, a spring rain pounds against the pavement. Like bullets, the droplets of water slam against the window pane of the room where Morticia Gregel rests. Tonight, however, she does not sleep alone. At the foot of her bed sits Abigail Resnik, her long, fair hair wound up in a bun.
The rain does not seem to disturb Abigail as she sits with her legs crossed and makes notes in her patient’s medical files. Learning from Muggle medicine, Abigail takes notes and makes detailed patient histories that some of the other Healers do not bother with because they simply prefer to remember “ and incidentally forget “ the details of their patient’s case histories.
Scratch . . . scratch . . . scratch.
Abigail’s quill remains the only sounds in the room, even though she keeps the grey curtain open so she can hear out into the Ward. However, she does not expect to hear much tonight. The only major patient is in another section of the Ward and behind several more sets of closed, soundproof curtains. A shiver passes down Abigail’s spine as she thinks about the wailing and shrieking of Trelawney.
Thudthudthudthud.
Abigail stops writing to watch the rain upon the window pane. It seems like a cold night, and Abigail wonders if the damp from outside is what is causing goose bumps to break out across her arms. From somewhere far away, she hears the distant chimes of a clock striking midnight.
“AHHHH!”
The blood-curdling scream causes Abigail to drop everything. The mess of parchment flutters to the floor and lands like feathers scattered after a bird has been devoured. Abigail draws her wand, and with a shaking hand, pulls back the curtain and proceeds out into the next empty bedchamber. She pulls back the curtain to the third bed chamber.
Nails dig into her arm, and Abigail drops her wand. Blood shot eyes, set in a wrinkled, growling face that is framed by frazzled, unkempt hair, bore a hole into her forehead. She struggles to throw the woman off her, but the mad woman seems unnaturally strong. She flings the girl against the wall, and the room spins in bursts of colour in front of Abigail’s eyes.
“Do not wrong the dead,” the woman says in a deep, raspy voice. In truth, Abigail has never heard such a sound. She panics and scrambles to stand and find her wand, even though her entire frame is shaking.
“The dead will come for those that did them wrong,” the deep, hoarse voice sounds from within the woman, and as Abigail looks at her, she thinks she sees a set of red, fiery eyes glaring down at her.
The woman gives a mad howl. Abigail shrieks as the woman seems to burst into flames. As the woman’s burnt form collapses to the ground, the fiery demon seems to float in the air. Its mouth opens to reveal a mauling pit of darkness before it flings itself down on the helpless Healer.
The Office of Justus Pilliwinkle, The Head of Magical Law Enforcement, April 15, 1914
In his lime green robes, Malone Prewett appears ashen, pale, and somehow shrunken in frame. He sits quietly before the Auror and the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, Justus Pilliwinkle. Pilliwinkle looks over his round spectacles as he waits, hands propped on his desk. Malone runs a hand through his thinning, cooper hair as he begins to speak.
“I . . . we knew it wasn’t safe “ where would they have put here otherwise? I didn’t think . . .”
“A witch is dead,” Pilliwinkle interrupts Malone’s stammering. He runs a hand over his pointy chin before he answers Malone. “I cannot think we can keep the Ward open. We will shut it down for a time. When all of this blows over, and there is a Healer who wants to work on the Ward, reopening it will be considered.”
Malone sighs, and then, the image of the comatose girl bursts into his mind like an explosion. “Sir . . . Morticia Gregel, the girl who the Ward was named after, what of her? There really is no place for her.”
The Head of Magical Law Enforcement shrugs. “I suppose she can stay. Is she harmless?”
“Very much,” Malone replies in a worn voice. “She seems almost dead.”