Journal found on the body of Dr. Daryl Hawthorne
March 27th
It's a thankless job working in an asylum. The way movies and comic books paint us you'd think we're all a bunch of sadists and authoritarians with no better outlet. The warden will probably have some kind of fascism fetish and, invariably, there'll be an electric-shock therapy scene set up to look like some kind of medieval torture. Then of course the patients will all be cured when some eccentric newcomer crashes down the walls and teaches them how to live again. Bonus points and maybe an Oscar nomination if they tack on some half-baked philosophy about how the outside world is the real asylum and we're the crazies with our consumer culture and internet-induced ADHD.
People look at me funny when I tell them I work at Arkham Asylum, like the expect some kind of evil supergenius. It's gotten to the point where I just tell women I'm a doctor and leave it at that.
I'll give them this much credit, though: all the urban legends and pop-culture stereotypes are a hell of a lot more interesting than what we actually do for a living. In truth I pack a bag lunch and a briefcase to work like anyone else, then I play nanny to a bunch of grown men and, day after day, make a futile effort to help them change their lives. I might sound ungrateful, but believe me, I'm not. Less than a year ago I was fetching coffee and double-checking paperwork for the people who had my job. I was Dr. Crane's intern when I started. He hand-picked me after reading my post-graduate thesis on the fear-inducing properties of certain sub-species of the red monkshood flower. It was the biggest honor of my life to get that kind of distinction from my idol. Ironic, in a way, that he's my patient now. It's always the sad ironies that put things in perspective.
I had Crane for a session of hypnotherapy today. We sat across from each other in my small, drab office. It was one of the few rooms in the upper levels of the asylum that didn't carry the emptiness or the gothic feel of a Victorian mansion. He sat in the psychologist's chair while I took the couch. He likes to pretend that he's still the one running the asylum, and I humor him or else it's all tantrums and night terrors. “You've been getting thinner,” I remarked, observing his slimming frame. His skin was impossibly pale and his hair a starker black by contrast. He resembled the Jonathan Crane I once knew in the same way a fresh corpse resembled a living body: all the components were there but something vital was missing.
“I can't eat while it watches,” he whispered, staring nowhere in particular. “Have you tried the food here? You'd lose a few pounds yourself,” he replied with a suddenly cool expression, glancing my way. He had a way of making even passing eye contact feel like piercing stares. He asked how my research was coming along and I indulged him. We didn't talk long; he loathed idle chatter and I didn't like the idea of getting too personal with my patients, especially one with whom I had such a history. I lulled him into a trance using a simple countdown, and once asleep he told me about his childhood and his family's farm.
“I was always quite fond of crows,” he explained, “They were clever, elegant creatures that just fit perfectly into the mysterious quietude of the night. Sometimes when I couldn't sleep I'd stare out my window and watch them scurry around the cornfield.” There was a childlike calmness about his face that lacked the arrogance or the piercingly cold demeanor that I was used to. “I had an issue of Superman that I hid between my volumes of Goethe and Chaucer. My father disapproved of such base entertainment, but sometimes I read it by candlelight. I had imagined,” he paused to laugh, “This will sound dreadfully silly but I always imagined that if I were a hero, I'd wear a black cape and fight crime by night, like a human crow.
My parents, of course, didn't share the same appreciation for crows. My father put up a scarecrow in the center of the cornfield to keep them out of our crops. After that the crows stopped coming. It was only then that I was aware of the vast loneliness on those sleepless nights, and there were many. I could feel the scarecrow stating at me, taunting me. Even when I slept he'd be there watching me in my dreams. And when I didn't sleep I'd imagine him in my exhausted state, with a voice stern like my father's, but with a hollow echo like there was nothing inside. It was then that I had my first inklings of an idea: an idea that I wouldn't put into action or even into coherent words until years later. I knew that one day I would master fear, perhaps even become it, and then my own fears would be solved.”
It was a touching story, I'll admit. It was also the third touching story he'd given me in less than a month, each contradicting the last in some major way. I still haven't quite figured out which pieces are true and which ones he either subconsciously believed or just made up in retrospect. What I did gather, though, was that there was always a watchful father figure that preceded the nightmares and hallucinations. I think that's why he trusted me, insofar as he trusted me at all. He saw me as more of an adopted son, as someone outside the Asylum's strict patriarchy. Though sometimes I get the feeling that, even from the depths of his subconscious mind, he's just having a laugh at me, spewing out one cliched Freudian riddle after another just to keep me off his trail.
The session ended and I had Crane escorted back to his room. “Thank you, Dr. Crane,” was all I said before the orderlies took him back. Of course his doctorate had been revoked after last Halloween's incidents, but it's the only name he'll answer to. Well, there's also the the other name he'd given himself, but I make a rule of not humoring my patients' alter egos. It only gives them an inflated sense of pride in the crimes they've committed.
My break dragged on longer than I hoped. I sat in my office trying to make what I could of Crane's story. I tried to draw parallels between Crane's own breakdown and the psychoses found in rats exposed to his fear gas, but the differences were too extreme. I read through some of Crane's own papers from his years working here looking for any signs of mental instability; whatever killed time until my next appointment. When the clock read more or less five I left to meet with my next patient: Edward Nigma. Today I had orders from Gotham PD to ask him some questions in relation to a recent spree of crimes.
Two security guards accompanied me down the lift to the lower levels of the asylum. The basement floors were the servants' quarters back when people lived here by choice, though one would never guess from looking that the place wasn't made to be a madhouse. I braced myself for the smell but somehow it always caught me off-guard. It was a graveyard smell of death and fresh earth. To the inmates it probably smelled like home. The place was a maze of rooms and corridors under hazily dim fluorescent lights. I got the usual mix of profane jeers and suspicious looks from the patients as I passed one room after the next. Waylon Jones gave me a hungry stare when I walked by. He sat perfectly still, basking under his heat lamp; only his bright red eyes moved, following me like a portrait's eyes in a bad horror movie.
The smell got worse as we passed Solomon Grundy's cell. Grundy's appearance always baffled me. His massive build seemed impossible, almost surreal, as if a child had drawn him to life and taken some liberties with the proportions. “Born on a Monday,” he greeted me in a low rumble. I returned with a nod. That scared the hell out of me the first time I was down here. I was born on a Monday myself and no one had told me about his, um, condition yet. That coincidence between us was the reason he liked me more than the other psychiatrists. I mean, he'd still try to strangle me if I got too close, but by his standards it counted for something.
“You're early,” Edward taunted as I approached his room. Nearly every inch of wall around him was covered in puzzles, mazes, riddles, and cyphers. In isolation he only had himself to outsmart.
“Well, Mr. Nigma, maybe I was just so eager to see you,” I quipped back. His eyes opened wide. He sensed a challenge.
“You're a terrible liar. If I had to guess, you're early because Crane just told you about his childhood.” He had a foxlike grin on his face as he said it.
I'd like to say that I was shocked by Nigma's perceptiveness, but after months of working with him it had more or less become the norm. “Alright Edward, I'll bite,” I replied casually, “How did you know?”
“Well, it's really quite obvious, isn't it?” he said. It never was to anyone else, which is why he always said it with such relish. “Why else would you be down here even two minutes early? I've seen the way you recoil at the sight of us, to say nothing of the smell. In all probability you had a little journey inside your former role model's mind and didn't like what you saw. You didn't want to be alone with your thoughts afterwards so you came down here to the safety of our sick and depraved but nonetheless familiar company. Seeking asylum, if you'll pardon the pun. You figured as ugly as exorcising our demons can get, it's better than facing your own. Am I right?” He knew he was right no matter what I might say. Asking just gave the illusion of fallibility, which he loved to use as a lure.
“Now where's the sport in me just telling you?” I replied. It spoke to his love of competition. He moved in as close as the thick glass screen between us would allow.
“So then,” he said, “Another futile foray into the mind of yours truly?”
“Not today, Edward,” I answered flatly, “We need your help with something a little more pressing.” I slid a playing card through the slot in the glass and pushed it his way. “Gotham police recovered it from the scene of a murder. I think you know what it means.” I knew immediately that it would pique his interest.
He picked up the card and studied it carefully, grinning back at the grinning joker's face on its front. He scrutinized it, holding it so close he could all but taste it. “A little bit too heavy to be a real playing card,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “The slight imperfections in the cross-hatching would be too obvious a tell, so clearly not from a trick deck. Definitely inked by hand, and painstakingly so. This isn't from any kind of deck at all; probably made by request for a customer with very particular tastes. And this tiny spot of red here, doesn't quite match with the rest of the color scheme. An inking mistake or...” He held the card to his tongue and then lingered on the taste for a moment as if evaluating a fine wine. “I stand corrected: it's blood. And not fresh blood either. How recent was the killing?”
“A day ago at most,” I replied.
“This is older.” He paused, staring into the card's face with a familiar hatred. “It's unmistakable. The chance of this being the work of another imitator....less than 0.5 percent” He slipped the card back into the slot and shoved it my way, face frozen in a curious expression. “He's back.”
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