Briar Ridge Sanatorium in Louisiana was a rambling old stone fort-type edifice dominating the surrounding countryside from the crown of a hill and silhouetted against the sky like Castle Dracula. In the old days, before political correctness took its stranglehold on the vocabulary of the English language, this institution would have been named by the local folk as the Nut House or the Looney Bin. Nowadays, local folks, including the staff of the Sanatorium, simply referred to it as The Ridge, as in, “I work up at The Ridge, or “Oh yeah, that killer got locked up at The Ridge.”
Jack Hanlon had worked at The Ridge for several years. At first, as a young good-looking twenty-five year old, he was caring for the simply daft ones in Sunlight Ward, which occupied the ground floor of the Sanatorium and was classed as the lowest security level, and where, in the open lounge and activity centre—warm and glowing from the orange curtains that were permanently drawn across all but the front windows—the inmates would talk rubbish to themselves and occasionally chuck chessmen across the room, or piss their pants while wearing a big stupid grin on their faces… paranoids, flat-earth society folk and those suffering from hallucinations or imagined spiritual possession, end-of-days prophets, and that sort of thing; mainly harmless, but all wanting constant care. It was a very rare occasion when one of the inmates of Sunlight graduated to the level of permanent release… unless it was their turn to take a ride in a wooden box.
Later, as Jack gained experience in dealing with folk who could not deal with their own afflictions, and as he hardened to the realities of custodial life, he was promoted to Vista Ward; a semi-secure unit on the second floor, where freedom of movement was restricted and carefully monitored, and inmates were segregated according to their levels of behaviour. As their counselling took effect and if they responded well to treatment, some of these inmates were fortunate enough to be moved downstairs to Sunlight Ward. However, also a few moved upstairs.
It was in Jack’s third year that Bill Johnston, the Chief Administrator of Briar Ridge, was instructed by State to send three custodians on a special course; a course that was held in a complex annexed to a Correctional Officers Training Facility in Alabama. Jack was one of the men selected, and it was here that he and his fellow classmates were taught such things as ‘conflict management’, ‘physical intervention’, ‘clinical restraint’ and ‘hostage negotiation’. all with a slant on working in secure and high-risk custodial environments.
Jack completed the three-month course and returned to work at The Ridge, and was immediately moved up the ladder, literally, to the Secure Unit, where his new skills might be—and often were—needed on a daily basis. It did not have a fancy name, this unit; no-one locked up in there would give a fuck what it was called… and the Custodians certainly didn’t.
The Secure Unit was located on the top floor; an isolated floor with walls painted an institutional battleship grey and all the furniture and bathroom fittings made from stainless steel and bolted down. The inmates were kept locked up in individual cells… some padded, all with steel doors and iron grids on the windows. The characters behind these doors were completely nuts. Jack knew that this was not a clinical or legal definition, but it was certainly his way of categorising them.
“Stark raving mad, half of them”, Jack once told his neighbour, Tex, as they sipped cold beer and watched hamburgers cook on a grill in his back garden, “I aunt supposed to talk about my work there up at The Ridge,” he leaked theatrically out of the corner of his mouth, glancing around furtively, “but the ones on the top floor are all mass murderers, sadistic torture rapists, serial killers, fucking paedophiles… you name it… all banged up there because they’re classed as criminally insane, and not able to spend the rest of their miserable lives in Folsom or to walk the mile at Cold Mountain’s death row.”
Jack flipped a couple of burgers on the grill. “The Hospital Wing forms part of this top floor. The Wing, as it is simply known by the staff, is headed-up by Dr. Abel Rosenbaum; a bespectacled and seemingly benign medico of the old school… but everyone knows The Wing is really run by a fifty-year-old helicon; the strict, bustling, overweight and terrifyingly ugly Matron; Miss Florence Horsley.”
Tex passed Jack a fresh beer.
“Within a week of my transfer to the top floor, I heard, to my dismay,” Jack continued, after a long pull on the cold beer, “that a retired Air Force Colonel named John McCarthy had suddenly replaced Bill Johnston, as the Chief Administrator of The Ridge.”
McCarthy turned out to be a stern, business-like authoritarian with wire-rimmed glasses and a perpetual suit; the complete opposite of the gently spoken, shirt-sleeved Bill, who used to kick his shoes off under the desk when at work in his office and eat cheese sandwiches out of a paper sack for lunch.
It was about this time—the time of McCarthy’s take-over—that Jack began to notice there were some funny goings-on at The Ridge. Almost overnight, it seemed, a steadily growing stream of professional visitors began to flow through the doors of the Sanatorium.
“There always had been visiting researchers at The Ridge,” Jack squeezed some barbeque sauce onto his burger, “medical people with different monikers… Doctor this and Professor that, or those with post-nominals—PhD, BSc, RCP, and that sort of stuff—all wearing white coats and carrying clipboards and trailing the formidable Miss Horsley around like sheep after a shepherd.”
He took a bite of his burger, washed it down with a good swallow, then continued, “they would have probably been rehab counsellors from Baton Rouge, I surmised, or psychologists and psychiatrists, and maybe some held chairs or were students at LSU or Ol’ Miss… youngsters, some of ‘em, all keen to learn and help, all coming there to study and treat and try to cure the inmates of their inflictions.”
“Why you telling me all this now, Jack?” Tex asked. “You’ve always played your cards close to your chest as far as your work was concerned.”
“Well, because this new influx is different,” Jack frowned, “and a bit worrying to say the least. McCarthy’s visitors are nowadays anonymous men in charcoal grey suits, some with English accents, and others with obvious military haircuts and mannerisms; no-nonsense, reticent types, who rarely speak to the custodial staff, and upon arrival seem totally unfazed by the hands-on-hips welcoming blockade of the Matron, or even ignorant of her bulldog presence. No Sunlight or Vista for these people… it is always straight up the elevator to floor three, and The Wing.”
Yes, there were some funny goings-on behind the steel, windowless and soundproof doors of The Wing; soundproofing that could not completely deaden the noise of screaming from within.
Despite the vocal cynicism confided to his neighbour, Jack enjoyed his job; he enjoyed looking after his charges… never mistreating or abusing them, just caring for them at the levels of safety and security required to protect them and the staff, and always within the bounds of the State rules of custodial care, and therefore, even being aware of the heinous crimes they had committed, it was quite disturbing for him to see how some of the inmates in his care were now being ‘treated’, and once he finally got it into his thick skull that these new ‘visitors’ were experimenting rather than healing, Jack began quickly to lose confidence in the Sanatorium and its ethics.
Rumours began to spread among the custodial staff of The Ridge of terrible mind-changing experiments going on behind the steel doors of The Wing; electronic inserts replacing frontal lobes, gene culture and cloning, or the amputation of healthy limbs for substitution by robotic prosthetics; and, as myth does into legend, the rumours grew in substance to become fact; the military types were now definitely CIA or MI5, the boffins were from Cyberdyne or RACAL weapons development programs, and there were special ops guys from Task Force Orange practicing interrogation techniques, and all sorts of similar shit. The use of yellow Biohazard bags and sharps disposal bins increased, and many black plastic garbage sacks, bulging with unfamiliar shapes, left The Wing straight for the incinerator out there on the back lawn. Some Ridge staff even began to refer to Abel Rosenbaum as ‘Abe Mengele’ and had nicknamed the Matron – definitely behind her back –‘Aunty Auschwitz’.
Jack began to ask questions of the Hospital auxiliary staff, and even once tried to corner the Chief Administrator, McCarthy… but he was told to shut up, mind his own business and get on with his work.
Well, Jack got on with his work for a while, somehow blindfolded, or at least blinkered, but his conscience finally got the better of him, and he decided to quit. He could not stand by and watch or become a part of the awful things going on there. Sometimes, some of Jack’s charges would come out of The Wing worse than they had gone in; dragged or carried out sometimes, slavering, limp-legged, pumped full of drugs, or whimpering and trembling from the aftereffects of electric shock, secured in leather bindings or straight-jackets…. restraints that some of them had never required before they went in.
Therefore, Jack handed in his resignation. He was strictly reminded of the non-disclosure clause he had signed when he had started work there, and before he quit, McCarthy even got him to sign some versions of the Espionage and Patriot Acts. That last bit finally convinced him there was government involvement in the experiments or whatever it was they called the treatment of the inmates.
However, Jack did not just walk away and forget what he had seen and heard… oh no, he was not that callous. No, before Jack had handed in his letter of resignation, he got into the inmates’ confidential files. The Records Room, no less daunting than the Secure Unit and with almost as many steel doors, was downstairs behind McCarthy’s office. Jack had no trouble getting the keys. He was a Custodian, after all, and Sally Braintree, McCarthy’s 40-year-old administrative assistant—the only person other than McCarthy himself to hold keys to the Records Room—was Jack’s secret girlfriend… secret inasmuch as they never met outside of The Ridge and no one inside The Ridge knew they were engaged in a twice-weekly shagging session in the Records Room, while McCarthy was away at his regular twice-weekly meeting with the Warden of Cold Mountain Penitentiary.
Most of the stuff in the files was medical jargon, charts and ECG printouts, X-rays and brain scans, and so on. Nevertheless, Jack also found reports of experiments and shock treatments; many marked “Confidential”, but others stamped with ‘TOP SECRET’ and ‘EYES ONLY’ in red capitals. Jack didn’t understand all the terminology he glanced at while photocopying the pages from these files, nor did he have time to fully interpret it… but someone out there would. Someone would be interested. A keen reporter from the Wall Street Journal would start a crusade. Jack wanted enough evidence to start an investigation to expose what was going on behind the stone walls of Briar Ridge. So, he copied as much of the files as he could and handed in his resignation.
On his final day of work, with his briefcase full of the copied files, Jack said goodbye to his fellow custodians and left the building. He had gotten no further than the driveway leading to the front gate of the Sanatorium, when a siren sounded and two muscular custodians in white fatigues; former colleagues of Jack’s – ‘former’, being only by about thirty minutes – grabbed him roughly and hauled him back inside; files and letters dropping out from under his coat, and his small briefcase, now discarded on the gravel driveway, spilling out brain scans and Top Secret reports for the whole world to see… well, the whole world that was contained within the grounds of Briar Ridge.
So, the information was never leaked or investigated. Of course, Jack Hanlon could tell his neighbour Tex first hand now—from personal experience—everything that goes on inside there… well, if he hadn’t got a whole armature of wires plugged into his head, that is, and if he could escape from the leather straps restraining him to a stainless steel chair in The Wing.
[Image Credit : Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash]
by 
Steve Foreman
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