Chapter Text
On the surface, there is not much about Gotham that sets itself apart from the rest of the world. That is the trick, you think, a disappearing act. It wears a cloth of normal to hide the underbelly of cruelty, despair and violence that the rest of the world knows exists. Gotham likes to make itself look pretty in the sun’s hours.
You've noticed though, the lack of tourists riddling the streets like in every big city. There aren’t groups and large families taking photos and standing in the middle of the road to clog traffic while they gather their bearings. There’s no obnoxiously touristy shops filled to the brim with tacky shirts and magnets and overpriced beer bottle openers. No tours and no pamphlets.
You’re on your way back to the hotel with your dinner in hand. It’s starting to get dark much earlier than you are used to after such a long summer and it had sent a shock through you when you realized it would only start to get darker earlier and earlier in the day. More accurately, it’s not the shock of sunset, but that means the darkness that engulfs the city will last longer. You know perfectly well why there are no tourists here.
This city devours its inhabitants.
You missed the turn for the hotel, you’re sure of it. You stop in the middle of the sidewalk and look around. None of the shop fronts look familiar. The directions on your phone take you an unfamiliar way and you can spot exactly where you missed your turn on the map and just how much you overshot. You’re at least seven blocks away from the hotel. The food will be cold once you get back, the perfect ending to an already stressful day.
It’s only a few minutes before you’re back on track and can confidently close the map on your phone. Still, you keep a tight grip on it, worried by the lack of people on the street. It’s so easy when you're alone to be wound up in paranoia, seeing boogeymen around each corner, though maybe seeing the boogeyman wouldn’t be so far fetched here. Nana might think you crazy and click her tongue in concern and worry every time you bring up Gotham as a potential place for a residency, but you didn’t go into this with both eyes closed. You know the stories, you’d have to live under a rock to not know about the affinity this city has for creating monsters.
There. You can see it. The neon sign is so welcoming, ushers you back to your temporary home and the promise of privacy and safety. You know what waits for you there and it makes you walk faster, not wanting to deny yourself any longer.
A vendor shuffles around in his stall, packing up all his unsold inventory into boxes. Only one title sits on the racks: the Gotham Gazette. All by its lonesome, it manages to catch your attention from the neon sign that hangs above the hotel entrance with its bold print and greyscale image of a man.
THE SCARECROW STRIKES AGAIN.
It's impossible to ignore the headline. It repeats itself over and over across the stall like it was waiting just for you, sprawled out so many times so that you would receive the message. You just can’t decipher what it’s supposed to mean.
The name Scarecrow means nothing to you beyond corn fields and farming, but the intricacies of this city are still a mystery to you. There are few you know from the times Gotham has made national news, but Scarecrow is not one of them. His influence hasn’t reached beyond Gotham. There’s an expectation of violence put on the city and with that, there’s not much national coverage of said violence unless it threatens to spill out of its confines. You don’t know all of the rogues that live here to be held off by a single man in a bat suit, but you know that Gotham has enough of them to start a trading card game filled with a roster of the people who constantly terrorize the city.
The picture though, is what really keeps you in your place, feet nearly bolted into the cracked concrete. His image is powerful, almost frightening in the pixelated edge of his form. Perhaps if the image had been sharper, you would have laughed at the ridiculousness of a man dressed up in burlap clothing to look like a scarecrow, it wouldn’t look real either, too clean and perfect as if he had been photoshopped into the hallway he stood in. But the distortion makes it real. He really does look like a scarecrow, thin and narrow and long to boot. It’s hard to look at but you can’t tear your eyes away from it.
“Hey, we ain’t open. I’m not sellin’ you jack.”
The vendor scowls at you and rips the newspaper straight out of your hands, not even flinching when the fragile paper begins to tear. He throws it haphazardly on the edge of his counter.
“Quit starin’ and buzz off.”
You duck your head, brain buzzing with white noise and ears running hot from the embarrassment of the situation. Confrontation has never been something you handled well or consistently, always too apologetic or too ill-tempered.
You’re nearly there, at a halfway point between the hotel and the vendor when you stop in your tracks—you can’t just leave it there. Whatever it is about that picture is pulling you back, and even though you can’t stomach looking at it anymore, you have a compulsion to. You look over your shoulder. The vendor has his back facing you, too busy attending to the stacks of unsold inventory. What would he do? What could he do? It’s just one lousy paper, he wouldn’t even be able to sell it after today, it’s nothing he would miss.
It happens quicker than you expect it to, but with the way your heart pounds from adrenaline, you can’t accurately trace the time. All you know is that the paper is in your hands and that you need to make it through the hotel doors.
***
Arkham Asylum sits upon a hill overlooking Gotham City like a warning: be careful or you might end up here too. It’s an old building made of dark red brick, though it has been added on to in recent years, a sharp contrast of white concrete and stiff metal bars. The original structure still stands with stained glass windows and five turrets poking its way into the sky while the new structures are blocked off, painted a dull gray and without the same flourishes of the original building. They stand as boxes on the hill.
The sun sits right at the tip of the tallest turret. It’s too perfectly aligned. A bad omen, your mother would say, when things line up to the tee, something is wrong, perfection has a cost. She’s a superstitious woman, and while you may have believed her growing up, you don’t anymore.
Posted outside in a small box, is a lone security guard, bored and flicking through today’s issue of the Gotham Gazette. No Scarecrow in the headlines today, but another rogue takes his place—the Penguin. Odd names, but hardly any of your concern right now. No distractions. He hardly looks up at you when you approach the glass, just sighs, licks his thumb and turns to the next page, probably wishing he had any other job than one that constrained him eight hours a day to sit in a miserable chair in a miserable little room in front of a miserable building.
“Visitor?” His voice is gruff and you spot a section of facial hair he must have missed while shaving, just right below his jaw. He tries again when you don’t respond, irritation evident, “Are you a visitor?”
“Oh! No, sorry. I have an interview.”
“Hmph. Let me be the first to tell you—turn around, go back to the station and go back to wherever you came from,” he looks you up and down, analyzing your face and your clothing. “You’re young. There’s other places to work besides this shithole.”
You blink in surprise. “As much as I appreciate your… concern, I want to work here.”
The security guard guffaws, “You say that now.”
He presses a button on the service panel and the gates creak open, slowly pulling apart from each other and swinging inward onto the property. A flick of the newspaper and he’s back to reading, ignoring your polite smile and brief thank you. His behavior doesn’t strike a vote of confidence in your decision to intern here.
You take the stairs rather than the gravel lane out of concern for how your heels will fare walking through it but you find that the concrete stairs aren’t that different from the winding road. Pieces of rebar stick out from the steps and chunks of concrete have crumbled from most steps and leave a dangerous game for you to play — one wrong step and you’ll roll your ankle. The only thing to steady yourself is the grip you have on the flimsy guardrail. It moves when you do, swaying back and forth in the concrete with each shudder, each shift of weight, and the rusted metal flakes onto your palm when you drag your hand over it.
Maybe things aren’t lining up perfectly.
She likes to find patterns and meaning where there simply was none.
***
There’s something wrong with the building, something innate like it’s been built into the walls. True, on the surface it is a regular psychiatric facility, perhaps a tad underfunded like most others, but the way the light casts shadows against the walls, elongated and narrow even for something as bulky as the columns that line the entrance, throws you off. The wallpaper, a soothing green with vines of yellow flowers circling, peels in some places to reveal a horrible mahogany wood stained a deep, rich red and looks almost like it was burned into existence. It’s no wonder the wallpaper was put up. The wood planks irritate, make your eyes burn and force you to avoid looking at them at all cost.
To your left is a common room. The fireplace is lit and barred with a thick metal grate. A few patients and their visitors congregate there, orderlies look on, standing to the side and watch carefully, though not as careful as the nurse who sits ramrod straight on a floral print chair; her eyes sharp and moving toward any movement, hands free of distractions like the strand of hair turned loose from its position in her tight bun, she is ready to strike should the need arise. But all you hear is laughter and happy chattering. In the common room, there’s nothing but love.
Clacking on a keyboard gets your attention.
“Excuse me?”
The receptionist sitting behind the desk is a reed of a woman, long neck and long fingers and wrists so delicate with gold bangles clinking together as she types.
She continues typing and sighs, “Yes?”
“I have an interview with Doctor Crane and Doctor Carver.”
“Right. Well, sit over there,” she points to a small setup of six chairs, barely sparing you a glance as she continues typing, “I’ll let them know you’re here.”
You nod and mutter a quick thank you. You hover over the seats. Which one to choose? Will choosing the right chair make or break whether you get the internship? The chair to the far left of you and facing towards the reception desk seems the best and only choice. You can see the elevator that he would get off of or the stairs he would wander down. A good decision. Completely solid. Wait, no, maybe —
“Doctor Crane will be down in just a minute.”
Only Crane? You’d been told that the interview would be conducted by the head of Arkham and the head of therapy. It’s better than being tag teamed , you think, there’s not so much pressure in a one on one.
A minute turns out to be twenty. In those twenty minutes you have: contemplated making a dash for the bathroom for five minutes and worrying yourself that if you get up from your chair will the moment Doctor Crane decides to make his appearance, crossed your legs at the knee and then switching to crossing them at the ankles, sat up straight anytime something in your peripheral vision moved, and managed to convince yourself that this was not the right Arkham Asylum and that you were not meeting with the right Jonathan Crane.
Just as you’re about to get up to walk around the small gathering of chairs, the elevator dings and off walks Doctor Crane. There’s nothing particularly striking about him at first, just another man you wouldn’t even look twice at on the street. He’s slender, really just a stick of a man, and could probably stand taller were it not for the slouch in his posture. A shock of black, unruly hair and pale blue eyes hidden behind a set of glasses with a silver frame. You don’t pay that any mind though Doctor Crane extends his hand and smiles.
“You must be Miss Rohl. I am sorry about the delay.”
You take his hand, squeeze gently and shake it briefly. If there’s one thing that stuck with you from high school, it’s how to give a proper handshake at job interviews—thank you, Mr. Solomon. “That’s alright, Doctor Crane. I understand. It’s nice to meet you. I’ve read a few of your papers on fear for my graduate thesis.”
“I’m sure it served you well.”
He glances at the receptionist who huffs and rolls her eyes. She pushes away from the desk, spins the chair and trails behind a passing nurse into the nurses station.
“She thinks I’m insufferable.”
A lame “oh” is all you can offer. What else are you supposed to say to your potential supervisor who makes it clear people do not like him? Agree? He doesn’t leave much space though for a proper response anyway. Doctor Crane takes hold of the conversation easily.
He talks very briefly on the way up to his office about Arkham Asylum to fill the silence. “True, it is legally Arkham Psychiatric Hospital now, but asylum has unfortunately stuck with the Gothamites. There isn’t a lot of superstition here, but with this place, our reputation and our patients, people think we sit right above the mouth of Hell.”
***
His office is not big nor well organized, if it was, you are sure there would be a lot more room to move around. It could be a very beautiful room with its high ceiling and tall window that sits right behind him.
“This residency, as I’m sure you understand, will have you working with low security patients. It used to be that we would assign residents to maximum security patients. It’s better to learn the hard way before the easy way.” He clears his desk, shuffling papers back into folders. There’s at least five folders on his desk and each with a different thickness once he’s cleared them all and opens the filing cabinet. “It’s better in theory but in practice creates burnout and residents are too green to handle our patients effectively.”
He pushes the bridge of his glasses up his nose. You see something then, just the reflection of light on his glasses or your imagination playing tricks on you, but his eyes shine with malice. Just as quick as it came, it vanishes with a quick, placating smile.
“I was under the impression that Doctor Carver would also be interviewing me. Is she busy too?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, one of her patients died this morning. Tragic.”
You don’t like his tone of voice, it’s something decidedly uncaring and almost nonchalant about the loss of life. It’s not that you expected much different — in this field, people tend not to care, they like the power and the vulnerability of the patients — there are unsympathetic people all over but to be in a position of power and choose not to help? You despise it.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Is that, if you don’t mind me asking, the reason for the delay?”
“I will be frank with you, Miss Rohl, this is the nature of this place. People die. Mouth of hell and all that.” Dr. Crane waves his hand and shrugs his shoulders.
“I’m not superstitious.”
His sharp eyes are on you in an instant, peering down at you through his glasses. He’s a smart man, he knows what you’re saying and it’s a challenge, a mistake to say something so low about the institution you're interviewing at. The staff is what killed the patient. You tug at the collar of your shirt. What were you thinking? The wave of embarrassment is already hitting you. He seems to grant you mercy though, leaning back in his chair and, if you didn’t know any better, you’d say he was smirking.
“I do apologize, we have been having problems with the air conditioning lately. Can I offer you some water?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He’s gone, only for a moment, but it gives you enough time to calm down and reel yourself back in. You can’t get flustered, you can’t trip up, you need this job. He offers the paper cup, bending at the waist and gets close. You raise an eyebrow as you take the cup.
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
He rounds back to his seat and watches you. You look down at the water. Something is telling you not to. You don’t have any reason for it, this man is giving you the time of day to interview for a position that you shouldn’t have gotten an interview for, so you smile and swallow down your gut feeling and take a small sip. You try not to choke on the metallic water. It’s overwhelming and unexpected. The water tastes, for lack of better words, awful, like something has crawled into the pipes and left to die. You try your best to smile through your teeth as you try to bat away the grimace. The paper cup is quickly put on his desk.
“Old pipes. Most money here is invested in security, not on maintenance. The board favors good PR.”
You are trying so hard to be the perfect candidate, the perfect interviewee, but it’s so hard. You take a breath and fold your hands on your lap. “Isn’t that what it always comes to? Image. Quantity over quality.”
“I’m trying to change that. Dr. Carver and I both are. That’s why we’ve opened up residencies again. Slowly adding more to our roster to test the waters. What we want is to change Arkham at its foundation. We need people willing to endure the hardship of that change.”
“I’ve heard. It’s part of the reason I applied here.”
“So, Miss Rohl,” he leans forward on the desk and smiles sharply, “tell me about yourself.”
So, it begins.
***
You dream of him, the Scarecrow, moreso the rigid outline of him and the shadow he cast in the photo. It still feels unreal to you, that out there, somewhere on this island, he is prowling through the darkness, waiting to strike. He captivates you, and when you shift again in bed, sleep alluding you as your thoughts return back to the man in the burlap hood, you find yourself reaching for the newspaper you kept on the nightstand.
Passing cars on the street and the orange light of street lights provide enough light to just catch the outline of the Scarecrow. You look at the shadow in the corner of the hotel room, just by the door and wonder, however briefly, if he is standing there, watching and waiting, looking to snap up a new victim. You would be a good one, perhaps, as morbid as the thought is of being a test subject, but you have too many fears to count.
Master of fear, indeed.
You look down at the newspaper and catch your index finger tracing over the photo. Your lips curl in disgust, at yourself or the man printed on the page you aren’t sure, and toss the newspaper out into the room. You’re only satisfied when you hear the thunk of the pages hit the carpet. It does not last long. The moment you bury yourself beneath the scratchy, unfamiliar comforter, you feel a pair of eyes on you and the suddenness in which you push yourself up makes you dizzy, but you can’t stop searching for the eyes watching you, sharp and carnivorous. They wait for you in the dark.
You’re frozen when you hear a creak. All you can do is stare into the dark corner of the room, the darkness growing with each passing second like a shroud of fog.
Another creak, another flash of eyes. Or is it just moonlight reflecting off something? You take a breath and count to five.
“Good night.” you say to the shadow.
***
You’re home and it’s so lonely.
Everything is pristine and sits in its designated spot, just the way it has to be. It’s a small comfort at least but does nothing to combat the part of you that feels the growing seed of loneliness. There is no sign of life in your apartment, no hint of love or brightness, just walls scrubbed clean and left bare.
You always were too serious for your own good, even as a child.
Some things never change.
You grew up as a child with little to hang on your walls and grew into an adult with nothing to post on the walls.
The suitcase will have to wait to be unpacked; you are too tired.
***
DAY ONE.
“You have zero new messages.”
***
DAY TWO.
“Sorry I missed your call. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you!”
“This is Gloria Simon. I’m calling about restructuring your home loan—“
Message deleted.
***
DAY THREE.
“Sweetheart, are you doing alright? Have you been eating, drinking water?”
“Yes, Nana, I’m eating. I’m alright. Just tired is all. Anxious too.”
“About the residency?”
You hum.
“Why do you want to go all the way out there? It’s hard enough that you're four hours away from me, but moving to the other side of the country? I don’t know if I could handle that!”
You’ve felt guilty about it. You’re not sure if you could leave her behind, after all, she’s the most important person in your life, the only reason why you stayed so close to home for college. It’s time to go out on your own, be your own person after years of living as just a fragment of another. “It’s just something I have to do.”
“But Gotham? It’s so… It’s dangerous! And your mother—”
“Hold on, Nana, I’m getting another call,” you glance at the new number on your screen, heart nearly dropping to your stomach at the familiar area code. “I’m sorry, it’s Arkham. I’ll call you back soon. Love you.”
“I love you too.”
Your phone buzzes once more in your hand before you answer, “Hello?”
***
He watches you walk through the waiting area and out the doors, smooth and confident steps only betrayed by the tightness in your shoulders and the white knuckle grip you have on the strap of your purse. Yes, there is something about this applicant that feels familiar. If he was a man of more romantic notions he might even say a kindred spirit, but he is not, he’s a man of science before anything else. There’s no use in romance in the plans he has. He will have to keep his eye on this plucky girl.
He turns on his heels and catches the eye of the gaudy receptionist. “Miss Cliffe.”
“Crane.” Her voice is full of contempt and eyes watching him in disgust. Oh, yes, that will have to be remedied, but that will need to be saved for a later date, there are more important things to focus on.
The list of applicants sits square in the center of his desk, just short of two dozen names and more than half already crossed out. Crane knows what he is looking for, and while Carver might think she knows what she wants, she won’t get her way, not with how his plan is coming along. He needs a new guinea pig, one that can be controlled and watched carefully, preferably one that doesn’t irritate him at each interaction as this will be a sustained experiment. His rationality is lost on you because of that desire for connection, something he thought he had killed inside off years ago when he realized that connection was hardly even second to the high of others fearing him. There are plenty of other applicants more inclined towards manipulation, easier to control. If he is to choose you, he will need to have some evidence, some kind of grip on why. Tonight, he will see if you are worth this leap of faith.
***
The hotel room is spotless, far surpassing even just a regular cleaning at a hotel to a noticeable point. It’s been combed over. Each surface has been wiped down: the nightstand, the mirrors, the desk pushed near the corner of the room, all sides of the television and its nooks and crannies, he even runs a gloved finger over the top of the mini fridge and there is nothing, not even the slightest residue picked up. The bathroom reeks of bleach and even the sheets do not belong to the hotel, those are stored neatly in the small closet and the ones you made the bed with are a deep yellow, nearly a shade of orange. The bed is made perfectly, not a crease or lump in sight. Jonathan is sure that if he lifted the fitted mattress he would find your own mattress protector.
Anal retentive clean freak or something better for him? The need for control would be fun to break down in you.
He waits in the closet, a risky gamble he knows, but there’s little else to hide in a hotel room. The bathroom will be used, the bed is too low to the ground to crawl under, there are no shadowy corners to hide in, yet. If you do discover him, it would be only a momentary inconvenience but a rather big disappointment in the scheme of his work.
His rationale for his decision is lost to him. There’s no way to quantify it but he knows, he can feel it in his bones that you’re the right person. All reason is out the door on this. There’s a battle to be won with Carver over hiring you. She’s all about procedure and it will be hard to convince her to take you on considering she hasn’t met you. It would be so much easier to bypass all this, he’s done it before — practically breezed through his graduate thesis because he knew better than anyone. It would be easy, he’s sure of it.
***
You look right at him, eye to eye, and though it’s impossible to truly see him as he is, you can see him through the haze of fear. All sorts of wild thoughts and shapes you could conjure up in your mind, he’s just giddy with excitement at the thought.
But you, you stare into that corner he resides, eyes fixated right on his, and say good night. He frowns. No, this is never how it goes, it’s not supposed to, every interviewee shakes in the night because they know subconsciously that there is something watching them, too frozen in fear to turn on the lamp to shine light on the dark recesses of their own imagination. Then again, they were never imagining what they saw. The only part of imagination was what form he would take.
Even with the dose of fear toxin he’d given you in the water, you don’t so much as quiver when he stares right back.
You slide down the bed, pull the covers up to your chin and bend a pillow beneath your head and that’s the end of it. He waits until he knows you are truly asleep, too stunned to do anything else, and makes his exit out the door. If he had any doubt about making you his new subject, it was gone now.
He has to have you.
And he always gets what he wants.