The Scream

The brick walls of the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Hospital overshadowed the baby-blue Acura where Sylvia and Theodore sat. He’d parked where there weren’t trees to block their view. Sylvie looked up at that cold, black building, her eyes affixed upon the window on the third floor, three over from the end. The window was full of yellow light. Suddenly, she thought she saw a hunched figure standing in it. But at that moment, Theodore made a dull, half-drunk joke and she instinctively turned and playfully thwacked his shoulder with the back of her hand. When she turned back, the figure had disappeared.

“Let’s get back to campus,” Theodore said. “How about it?”

“No, not yet.”

“You’ll get in trouble. You’ve gotten two demerits and they won’t let you go out if you –”

“Then I’ll sneak out,” she told him. “I’m having a good time sitting here.”

“Why?”

“I want to sit here,” she said. “I might hear something.” She squeezed her eyes shut and held herself stiff. Often, there would be low moans or screaming coming from the hospital. “I’m trying to listen.”

“There’s nothing to hear.” Theodore coughed. “I’ll need to get you home now.”

“Not yet,” she said, trying to chuckle, as if she knew well as Theodore that she was being foolish and sentimental. “I might see her, you know?”

Some time passed as they watched for something to happen. Theodore sighed a little, and there was tension in his voice when he asked, “Did you have a good time at the party?”

Sylvie tried to soften. “Sure, it was a fun time.”

“I thought the band played well. And you looked beautiful tonight, Sylvie.”

“I hope you didn’t have too much to drink,” she sniggered.

“I didn’t.”

Sylvie laughed. “I had three of the grapefruit-champagne’s and that might’ve been one too many.”

“Are you feeling alright?”

She shrugged and only stared at the hospital. The cheery drunkenness from the champagne had worn off, and she was now only feeling resentful that they were going back to campus. Once she got back, she would eat saltine crackers to settle her stomach and tell the other girls on her floor about the party. She would tell them on how romantic the music was and on how gentlemanly and decorous Theodore was. Those girls like to hear of such things. Not all of them got asked out on dates and none of them were getting married anytime soon.

“Sometimes there’s screaming, isn’t there?” she asked Theodore. “Isn’t there?”

He looked away. “I’d better get you home.”

“What for?”

“If I don’t, they’ll give you a third demerit and I won’t be able to take you out anymore.”

Sylvie shook her head. “We’ll wait a moment longer. Something will happen. I feel it.”

“Maybe someone will jump,” he said dryly.

“Maybe so.”

“I was joking,” he said and cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to say it.”

“I wouldn’t mind it,” Sylvie said. “That would make this an A+ night, wouldn’t it?”

“Wasn’t it already?”

“I guess it was alright,” she told him, touching the inside of his arm. Theodore was looking a little down, and she didn’t like him like that. “It was a nice evening,” she murmured. “I liked the band a lot. A nice, old-fashioned A, but let’s make it an A+.”

“Everyone liked you right off the bat,” Theodore said into her ear.

“Shush! So, I can hear them?”

After a moment of quiet, Theodore turned on the car. “I don’t even know why you make me drive you out here. You don’t even know –” he stopped. “I’d better get you home. Your dad will get angry with me if you end up with another demerit.”

“What do you care what my dad thinks?”

“I sure care a lot,” Theodore said. “He won’t like me if I keep getting you in trouble.”

“I’m getting myself in trouble. It hasn’t anything to do with you.”

“Well, I’m with you and that’s the important thing.” Theodore shook his head.

“What do you care what my dad thinks?” Sylvie said, trying to josh him.

“Well, when I graduate –” Theodore said boldly and intimately. “I’ve already told my father about it.”

“Marriage? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“That’s right. I’ve told my dad and I’ll tell yours soon.”

“Have you?” she teased him. “Don’t I have a say?”

“Maybe or maybe not,” Theodore said in such a funny way that Sylvie laughed. “I don’t even know why you like coming out here. There’s no point to it.”

“None that you can see.”

“Well, I’ve got to get you back.”

He was readying them off when Sylvie sat up and pointed her finger at the third-floor window. “See her? I see her!” she said with a shock in her throat. Theodore was too busy trying to pivot the car around towards the main road. For a moment, Sylvie heard a low, cool moan from within the hospital walls. She couldn’t tell if it was the one she was used to but she figured she could pretend it was so. It swelled into a scream and Sylvie laughed a little. She rested her head on Theodore’s shoulder as he sped the car back to campus.

***

Hunter Prichard is a writer from Portland, Maine.