The Journal of L.C.-1906

April 2, 1906

Morning fog still clings to the garden wall. I watched it from the third-floor window today, the one that rattles when the wind blows through it. Nurse Allen says I mustn't write these things down, that they "feed the fevered mind." But what else am I to do with all this remembering?

I found this journal hidden in the bottom drawer of the old sewing room desk. The pages smelled of lavender and something else—dust, age, or maybe secrets. I've hidden it beneath the thin mattress on my cot, behind the spring that juts like a crooked finger.

They say I am “melancholic.” That I talk too much of ghosts and God. That I faint too often and dream too vividly. Papa said it was just growing pains, but Mama cried in the parlor that day and said it was "just like her sister." I never met my aunt. Only her portrait remains; it hangs in the hall, though no one ever speaks her name. I have stared at her portrait for years; she has my eyes. I often wonder if I’m the reason Mama cries so much, because I make her remember.

Today, during the walk, I saw the girl again. The one with the copper hair and no shoes. She was kneeling beside the fountain, whispering to the lily pads. I tried to wave, but Matron struck my hand with her cane and said, "Don't engage the shadows." I wasn't meant to see her.

But I did. I always do.

April 4, 1906

They took Alice away last night. The screaming began near midnight and did not stop until the cock crowed. I pressed my pillow to my ears, but her voice clung to the walls like ivy.

This morning, her bed was made, her books gone, and the doll she carried was lying in the ash bin behind the kitchen. Her name was scratched off the ledger in Matron's office, replaced with the word 'Transferred.'

We all know what that means.

I wonder how long until they do the same to me.

April 6, 1906

In the sewing room today, Mrs. Dobbins left me alone to fetch more thread. I slipped the journal from my dress and wrote while the others stitched silently. There are twenty-six girls now. We are never supposed to speak unless spoken to. Sometimes, I think even our thoughts are monitored.

I asked Evelyn, the girl with the tremor in her hands, about the portrait they say hangs in the East Hall. "The woman with the gold frame?" she whispered. “I was told her name was Arabella. They say she saw too much. Heard too much. Died in the chapel. They bricked it shut after."

My blood went cold.

Arabella was my aunt's name.

April 8, 1906

The copper-haired girl was in the garden again; her dress soaked from morning dew. She smiled at me. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Just… knowingly.

She pressed her palm against the greenhouse glass as I passed. I placed mine on the other side. For the briefest moment, I felt warmth.

Then Nurse Allen yanked me away and said she'd write me up for "unsettling behavior." She didn't see the girl at all.

But she was there. Her name is Cora. She told me so in a whisper I heard not with my ears but in my bones.

April 10, 1906

I've begun to dream of Cora. In the dreams, she leads me through the bricked-up chapel, where candles still burn and the floor hums beneath our feet. We walk in silence until we reach the altar.

There's a mirror there.

When I look into it, I see not myself—but Arabella.

She mouths a single word: "Remember."

April 13, 1906

Today, they said I am "unwell." That the ink stains on my fingers are signs of fixation. That if I don't improve, Dr. Harrington will begin the water treatments.

I smiled and nodded. I've learned that silence is safer than truth here.

But I will not stop writing. Not until I understand what Arabella meant. What they did to her. And what they are doing still.

April 14, 1906

Cora appeared in my room tonight. I know how that sounds. But she did not knock. She did not open the door. She simply was, like breath or memory.

She sat at the edge of my bed, her feet still bare, and touched my hand.

"You are the last one," she said. "The last who can still see."

Then she was gone.

The room was cold where she had sat.

April 16, 1906

The chapel. The sewing room. The East Hall.

They are all connected. There are symbols carved behind the bricks in the chapel wall—I saw them in my dream again last night. I think they are part of something older than this place.

Cora said Arabella knew them too. That's why they silenced her. Called her mad. Bound her in linen and water and walls.

They called it medicine. But it was simply fear.

April 17, 1906

I found the bricked-up doorway behind the hedge maze. The bricks are crumbling. I scraped away moss and dust and touched the stone with my bare hand.

The symbols are real.

They match the ones I drew from memory.

Something inside the wall hummed. Like breath. Like a voice trying to speak through time and silence.

April 18, 1906

This will be my last entry. Not because I am afraid but because I know now.

Arabella was not mad.

Neither am I.

They bricked her away because she remembered—and in remembering, saw. She saw the patterns beneath the pain, the truth beneath the treatment. That this place was built to erase the inconvenient. The intuitive. The ones who listened too closely to the world between worlds.

Tonight, Cora will guide me through the wall. She says I must choose: to forget and become like the others… or to follow Arabella and carry the knowing forward.

I choose memory.

I choose truth.

I choose light, even when it flickers in shadow.

If someone finds this journal, remember us.

We were never mad.

We were awake, we were knowing.