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Entry #2: Saturday, January 19, 1925 ~ 1:39am
Another late evening, courtesy of my chronic insomnia and my encroaching worry about the events of the past week and a half. I suppose I shall take this time to write a short autobiography of myself. Assuming, of course, that anyone will stumble upon this and read it; I'd like any readers to know a bit more about the author of this tome, if you will.
My name is Amelia Brigid O'Neill. I was born on the 28th of April, 1897, in South Boston in an area known as Dorchester. My father was - is - a foreman at one of the local textile mills, and my mother was a seamstress. There were six children, five boys and myself. Admittedly, my three eldest brothers are half-brothers: Junior, Kevin, and Michael. Dad had two wives; my mother Anna was the second. Dougal, Joseph, and I were her children.
Dad was very happy to have a daughter. I had always imagined that men would fancy a carful of strapping, athletic boys to carry on their family name... but Dad doted on me. He and my mother, according to Kev, had a bit of an argument regarding what my name would be. Mother wanted it to be very Irish; Dad said "I'll have none of that; she's an American and she'll have a proper name," or something to that effect. Obviously, I wasn't there to listen in on that debate! Eventually they came to a compromise; hence Amelia and Brigid, respectively.
I think what Dad meant, knowing him, is that he wanted myself and my brothers to have the same opportunities as anyone else born in America. Living in Boston, the moment people find out you're Irish, you're relegated to domestic help, firefighter, or policeman. They've been that way for the last eighty years and it hasn't changed appreciably. I heard from Junior last I spoke to him that a lot of the old prejudices against those of Irish extraction are beginning to lift; they're too busy discriminating against darkies and krauts now. And let's not forget those dirty, dirty Communists.
Yes, reader, that was intended as sarcasm. I'm fully aware that I have my own prejudices, but none of those are words I would use in public. Social progress notwithstanding, I have no intention of returning to Boston. I have too many painful memories there. I love my family, but when I was seven everything fell apart. I came home from school to find a paddywagon on our apartment doorstep and my next-door neighbor, old Mrs. Murphy, sobbing like her heart was fit to break. Two men were lifting a cot with something on it, a body covered with a white sheet, and another was talking to her. My brother sat on the doorstep with a white face, tight-lipped.
That was how I found out my mother was dead.
And scarcely two years after...
All neighborhood children have a rite of passage, if you will, a way to initiate yourself into their social circle and prove yourself worthy - customarily by way of some idiotically reckless stunt that would shock one's parents. Which I suppose is the entire point, to do something radically out of character in order to prove your moxie... at any rate, near our little street of row-house apartments, there were the gutted remains of an old tenement building that had been destroyed in a blaze which occurred probably twenty years before I was born. It was reputed by the locals (mostly the adolescents who took no small pleasure in frightening the younger members of our social circle) to be haunted. The "test", if you will, was to enter the building and remain for a period of twenty minutes. Naturally, not being a child of cowardly disposition, I agreed to this along with the other children my age.
When it was my turn to enter the building, I did so without hesitation. The door clicked shut behind me and I walked through the hallways. I was disturbed by the stench of old smoke and rotten timbers, and secretly worried as to whether the very floorboards would collapse beneath me; nevertheless, I maintained my composure.
After perhaps five minutes had passed, I took it into my head to explore the building. I wanted to see why people assumed it was haunted, and perhaps dispel some myths if they could be brought to light. Most of the rooms were either emptied, so devastated that there was little left to study, or otherwise unremarkable. Ten minutes had passed by the time I worked my way around to the third floor. There was one room to which the door stood ajar. I slipped through to look around. As with the others, there was nothing. As I turned to leave, a flash of color caught my eye. Upon the blackened floorboards lay the remains of a child's rag doll, but amazingly intact for all the damage it had suffered.
I went to pick it up, and as soon as my hand touched the fabric... all my senses were completely swept away. What I beheld instead was a horrible sight for a mere child to witness. There was no clear scene; rather, it was a series of powerful and vivid images slipping across my field of vision. I could see and smell flames, smoke, burning timber. I perceived the wail of sirens and clanging bells. I saw the face of a child scarce younger than I, cuddling the very doll in my hands. She screamed for her mother; I felt every emotion she did: the terror of the encroaching flames and the sight of her home burning and the loss of her parent. There was a sense of flight down a set of stairs, then a fall and the white-hot pain of a fractured bone... then screams of agony as her flesh was seared from her bones by the greed of the fire.
I suppose some considerable time must have passed; my brother told me later that it was forty-five minutes before he decided to search for me, as he feared I had perhaps fallen through one of the floors and injured myself. The next thing I knew I felt arms lifting me and a sense that I was carried; still, I remained utterly senseless until awakening in my bed at home and Dougal standing over me with a cup of tea. I refused to tell him what had happened. I had heard the stories of Danvers, where you got sent if people thought you were a lunatic. In my childlike fears I thought that surely such a wild tale would either see me punished for lying or sent to the lunatic's asylum in shackles and straps, to be confined to a padded cell for the rest of my life. I had heard the older children snicker about it and threaten it far too many times to believe otherwise.
After days of agonizing over my decision, I finally told Dougal, and swore him to absolute secrecy. Dougal and I were always close. He was the only one who knew everything about me, truly, and long past the point when most people would have disclosed my darkest secrets to their companions and sworn them to secrecy, he kept them to himself. As far as I know, that particular secret would be one of them.
(Even my current companions have no idea. God willing, they never will. Perhaps I can remain quiet, and soothe the fear that sometimes threatens to overwhelm me with the occasional shot of brandy in my tea. In the same way I dispel melancholia and periods of overexcitable activity. Whether my mother's curse, the curse of my second sight, or one merely brought upon myself by alcoholic overindulgence, I cannot say. I am a physician, after all, not given to flights of childish fancy; nor do I swear by the words of that quack who fancies himself a healer of the mind by probing into the sexual escapades of his patients and charging them a fortune to tell them that they secretly wish to lie with their own mothers.)
Life continued without particular discord. I was an unusually precocious child, and my father - having harbored great ambitions for me even before this happy discovery - insisted that I should have an education. I began school at the local parish-run authority, taught by austere Ursuline sisters about the rigors of humility and whatnot, but more than that I was able to learn the classics, arithmetic, reading, penmanship... I learned quickly, and soon came to the top of my classes. It was suggested that I continue my education beyond into university, but my father could not afford such a luxury. It was only by the grace of a parish scholarship and a donation from a benefactress who had employed my mother for many years, that I was able to enroll at Miskatonic.
Miskatonic University is an Ivy League school. Though perhaps not as renowned as Harvard or Yale, Miskatonic possesses a very solid academic program in nearly all areas, as befits a university of her standing. To everyone's surprise, I chose to enter their medical program, which of course has quite the reputation for being rigorous, demanding, and at times outright insurmountable. My family attempted to dissuade me, suggesting that I take up nursing, or get a degree in literature or the like - something a woman could do fairly easily. I rejected them all in turn. I wanted to be a doctor. I've always wanted to be a doctor. My femininity posed a hurdle, not a blockade.
I had a difficult time of it - not from the subject matter itself, but from classmates and professors. Those who didn't attempt to seduce me or belittle me, harasssed me, and I admit that there were several nights I trudged home in tears and determined to quit that hell. Every morning, however, I would awaken refreshed and equally determined to prove that their cruelty would be of no consequence to me.
Not long after I began college, Dougal announced to me his intention to join the army and go to Europe, to fight in the great war. I was furious, furious beyond reason. I said so many things that I should never have said... in return, he told me what had happened to our mother.
She was a woman of mercurial temperament, always mentally high-strung and fragile. Her moods became worse and worse as Dougal and I aged; she would spend day after day huddled in her bed unmoving and unresponsive, or sometimes fly into violent rages wherein she would throw things at my brothers and my father, or excessively cheerful. Once, I do recall, she came home with buckets of paint she had bought with the week's grocery money and announced to all of us that the Virgin had told her to paint a religious mural on the wall. Not long after that, I remember she was gone for some time. I had asked Dad, who had told me that she was on a trip and would be back after a while. A month passed and she came back, seemingly back to her old self, but after awhile it would always start up again.
After she bore Joe, it seemed to be the last straw for her. She refused to see him, which was a problem because he was a very young child and was not yet weaned; Dad had to find a wet nurse for him. Not long after he made that decision, Mother died. Dougal was the one who first found her, and it was he who told me that she had taken the rest of the chloral hydrate she kept in the kitchen cabinet. Her doctors had prescribed it to her for her "nervous condition," as they called it. Mother had been gone from the apartment for an extended period of time twice before she died; once before I was born, the other when I was six. Both times, those so-called "trips" were actually involuntary commitments to Danvers State Hospital. My mother was one of the very people which the older children on my street had cracked so many jokes about.
I was, as you might well imagine, badly shaken by my brother's words. I had known my mother was nervous and high-strung, but I had not expected that she was actually insane in the truest sense of the word. In addition, I was still furious with him. The day after that, he left on the steamer for Southampton. Less than a year later, we received word that he had died in France, on the western front, and was to be buried in the military cemetery outside London. To this day I have not seen the body, nor have I shed a tear for his death.
Time passed, and I graduated magna cum laude in due time. One of the few places that was willing to accept me after graduation was Arkham Sanitarium; I had summarily rejected the invitation. Despite the pay it offered, I had no desire - and still have no desire - to spend my days amongst the mad. Not out of any particular prejudice against them... I will take a moment to admit that I feel a kinship with them that frankly disturbs me. I too have seen and heard things beyond the scope of human reason, and I don't dare immerse myself in that world for fear that my visions will become not only acceptable, but normal. I would be as mad as my charges, and as a physician that would be a dire conflict of interest.
Thus, with degree in hand I made my way proudly back to Boston, sure of the respectability and reliability that medical degree would confer upon me.
Imagine my chagrin when I found social attitudes in Boston to be utterly unchanged outside my own enclave of Dorchester! Outside the immigrant areas, there was no work to be had. All I had to do in practice interviews was state my name - or in most cases, open my mouth. I had been cursed with my father's accent, despite all my attempts to rid myself of it as a child, and it was painfully obvious that I was Irish. In Bostonian eyes, should my status as a mere woman not be enough to discredit me, my Irishness certainly was.
I found myself with little recourse but to look to other horizons. It was at the height of my quickly growing despair that my brother Michael sent me a telegram. Dad had told him of my difficulties in finding employment. He was in New York City, he said, where attitudes were far different and the Irish were more accepted; surely I could find work there. In the meantime, I could stay with him. I agreed and packed my meager possessions, and caught a train to the metropolis.
At first I had similar difficulties as in Boston. The combination of female and Irish apparently was at odds with the popular idea of one who practices medicine professionally. Midwife was acceptable to them, or nurse, but a doctor? Surely not!
It was Dr. Lewis who finally decided to take a chance on me, and invited me to join his practice. Said he "needed new blood" to spice things up around the office, and that I seemed quite competent. Thus began my employment as a full-fledged physician. I harbored no hopes of running my own practice after the prejudices I had witnessed - or at least, not for a considerably long period of time. I still doubt that attitudes will change in the near future, but a girl can always hope, can't she?
My visions continued unabated in the meanwhile, and eventually, out of desperation, I took to the bottle. This continued until it came to Dr. Lewis's attention; at which point he took me aside and told me plainly that he felt it wasn't his business what I did in my spare time as long as it didn't affect my ability to work. The minute I came in to the office drunk, however, I would be dismissed. I understood his meaning right away, and resolved to quit drinking.
That was five years ago. I've struggled to stay on the wagon since then; alcohol is a mistress you don't easily forget... and I fear I might be slipping again. Hopefully not. A slip of sherry or brandy in one's heated beverage is certainly harmless. Medicinal, even.
Well, I've written enough tonight, I feel. I suppose I should go attempt to sleep, once more.
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