The Retreat

Dedications

For the broken ones.

May you find strength in the darkness.

Your only warning...

Trigger warning.

That’s what the front entrance should say. Instead, it lies the same way the outsiders do. Week after week, it cheerfully ushers unsuspecting loved ones and visitors to the registration desk where they’ll sign day passes to visit us: the broken girls. The lost. The forgotten. The damaged. The twisted.

Every Saturday—Sundays on holidays too—outsiders will visit with no clue what really goes on in the place they’ve sent us to where nothing ever changes. With dull eyes and plastic smiles, we’ll nod, grin, and take their hopeful offerings of trinkets from a deceitful world they don’t believe we’re ready for.

When the visit concludes, we’ll return to the perverse happenings that go on seven days a week inside The Retreat. Only now, we’ll do it with new rules because they’ve taught us so well what it is to be cruel, broken, and even triggered. We have secrets too.

The difference is, unsupervised, we’ll be honest with you.

Welcome to The Retreat.

We’re waiting for you...

Prologue

Within the outer reaches of Burlington, Vermont, there was at one time a massive expanse of land inhabited solely by the imposing main edifice of the Brattleboro Retreat Hospital and Home for the Mentally Unwell. Once seen as the height of civility and generosity, the Brattleboro Retreat played host to both the destitute and the insane. Massive gothic architecture cast shadows over the vacant fields that surrounded the facility and all of its dozen less-secure buildings. From every part of the city, a person could look up and see its majestic stone and metal frame standing tall as a symbol of hope that everything was okay. Only, even back then, many townsfolk were sure things were not. That is, long after The Retreat’s residents had departed, rumors of what went on in the main hospital during its long occupancy stretched further than its gratified shadows ever could.

In the dark days of psychology, human experimentation was not only acceptable but was considered the norm. Ghastly procedures meant to push the boundaries of the human mind and chase off the spectacle of insanity were distressingly common and the Brattleboro Retreat was no exception. It was just the way things were done.

Donated in the will of one Edwin Winslow, an eccentric, wealthy man who sought to secure a legacy, the Brattleboro Retreat had one feature that set it apart from its peers: an eight-foot stone wall that completely encircled the property. It was unclear, and still is, if the Winslow North Wall was meant to keep the local townspeople out or to keep its residents in.

Psychologists also teach that there are always two deaths – the one people see and the one they do not. The latter comes first. Although the practice of keeping the poor and the ill apart from society was already starting to decline, the first death bell of the Brattleboro Retreat House was sounded on the evening of February 13, 1953 after more than a hundred years in service. Late into the night, the alarm was raised when smoke poured from the lower levels of the main high security building. Within minutes, much of the building was in flames and, although the staff fought valiantly to rescue as many of the patients as possible, more than 150 residents lost their lives.

Although stories run rampant of a revolt by patients, a formal inquiry was convened and it was determined that the fire was the result of a malfunction of the building’s crematorium; a convenience, of sorts, which rested in the heart of the building. With the main hospital ravaged by the fire and ultimately unsuitable for further occupancy, the doors to the Brattleboro Retreat Hospital were closed for good.

Although its dusty remains sat in the gut of an enviable piece of real estate, the building slept abandoned for nearly sixty years as life for those deemed insane, unfit, or even just different carried on around it. Still, the charred bones of the facility cast long shadows through the tiny city with people wondering what might have been and even what might be behind the looming Winslow Wall. Even then, life went on.

Even in its infancy, the Brattleboro Retreat was comprised of many facilities. The doors to the lesser damaged ones remained open, bringing in not only the memories but also the legacy of a place the sleepy town would prefer to have forgotten or simply sold off. And among the rubble of the original and most prominent building’s charred remains has since grown a legacy much more sinister – darker. Even now, nearly seventy years since The Retreat’s first death, and with the entire field of psychology in a whole other space, very little has changed... Inside, it is said that not only the people—but the place itself—are broken.

Chapter One

Jessie

L ullaby. Lullaby.

Jesus, Amber! Shut up already! I screamed at my roommate. Do you have to sing the same thing all the damn time? 

Lullaby, Jessie, she sang back in her toddler sounding voice, looking toward me briefly but never making eye contact. Sitting in the corner of the room on the hard, concrete floor, she hovered on her feet and sat rocking the ratty baby doll she had.

God! Grow up! If I wasn’t already crazy, you would make me, I shouted back.

Grabbing the pillow off my bed, I threw it at her. She lost her balance when it smacked her right in the head and she dropped her baby.

AHHHH!

She was wailing like a dog that was being skinned alive. I covered my ears and crouched in the corner of my bed. Amber grabbed her hair and began to pull. Ripping out clumps by the roots, blood was starting to run down her face. She turned to face the wall and smacked her head repeatedly. The thump it made on the last smack and the pop of her nose breaking was more than I could handle. I hid under my blanket and pulled it over my head as she fell to the floor.

Keys jingled outside as the orderly tried to find the one to our room. In the panic, he kept grabbing the wrong ones. Finally finding the right key, our door flew open. My heart jumped into my throat when I saw Jasper.

What the hell happened? he gasped looking around at all the blood smeared on the wall and floor. Then he saw her. Amber was folded into a crumpled mess, blood oozing from her wounds.

He ran over to her to make sure she was still alive before he snapped his attention back to me.

What did you do? This is the third roommate you have had that hurt themselves! He stood up and walked over to me. His crooked index finger was pointing the way as he inched to my bed.

Jasper climbed up and straddled me. Pinning me down with my blanket, he got right in my face.

You know I will have to punish you again now, he said. The smell of morning breath, garlic, and tuna fish assaulted my nose. I tried to pull the covers up to block it, but he held them down tight.

I didn’t do anything, I said. Sounding braver than I felt, I stared him in the face.

No? Nothing huh? Just like the others? He was so close I could see the bits of food stuck in his teeth from the last two days easily.

Jasper! What the... Gretta, the head orderly, asked as she made her way into my room.

At first, she only saw Jasper hovering over me. It wasn’t until she turned around that she saw Amber collapsed on the floor, hidden by the door she lay still and unconscious.

The old cow was too fat to bend down low enough to check on Amber. It always looked to me like she had pillows stuffed in her uniform. None of her fat lumps matched and her right hip was double the size of her left. She had short jet-black hair that was now peppered with white and her thick rimmed black glasses did nothing to help her look younger.

Jasper, go get help, she barked in her raspy deep, manly voice. As soon as he left the room she turned her attention to me. What happened?

She placed her hands on her ample hips and glared. Her breath was coming in short puffs and with each intake, I waited for the buttons on her shirt to give up and pop open. Her E cups heaved as she tried to restore her breathing to normal.

She wouldn’t stop singing. She wouldn’t stop singing, I repeated over and over. If I played this out right, I would only get the padded room for a few days. If not, it would be electric shock or worse.

Shaking her head, she began to walk my way when Jasper returned with a stretcher and Nolan, another orderly.

Get this girl up now, Gretta said pointing at the heap that was Amber. "I will be back for you in a minute. Try to figure out words until then. I want answers on how this mess happened."

On how this happened? I was locked in here with a bunch of psychos and I shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t my fault that they, along with my parents, were weak. Why should I always be in trouble for what they do?

I liked blood and the way it felt as it ran from my body. Taking the blade to my skin was better than sex. I could control how deep it went, how fast or slow the blade would dig in. Even the taste was erotic and calming.

The day I landed in this hell was forever burned in my mind. It wasn’t so unusual, I was picked on daily. But this time was different because it was Owen.

I loved him in spite of knowing I shouldn’t have. He wasn’t the first boy I had sex with, but he was the first one I cared about. In some ways, he was a lot like me in the fact he slept with as many people as he could to feel something other than the empty void of life. Only he was praised for it, I was shamed.

When Owen had enough with me, he started to spread rumors. At first I ignored them, but that day, I couldn’t. He cornered me with a few other boys, and they took their turns grabbing my