“He is insane, William. Surely you are aware of their often remarkable ability to create some of the most amazing fantasies. Far better than the most accomplished poet could ever dream.”
“I understand that, Dr. Winthrop. But I feel as though one must have something to draw on, some well of inspiration. I just can’t imagine what that could be for one so young.”
“Did he explain why he wouldn’t sleep?”
“Well,” I began hesitantly, “it’s his dreams.”
“His dreams?”
“Apparently he suffers from nightmares. Pretty bad ones from the way he talks.”
Winthrop coughed out a laugh. “I could be bounded in a nutshell,” he quoted, “and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”
“Yes, something like that,” I said through a frown.
“Well, don’t worry about it. I had Dr. Stevens mix up a sleeping draught. Given his insomnia over the last week, it should knock him out cold. He’ll be better for it, too.”
“I hope you’re right, Dr. Winthrop. It will be interesting to see his reaction.”
At that moment, the asylum alarm sounded. I saw the fear in Dr. Winthrop’s eyes as he realized what was happening. No doubt he saw the same terror in my own. It was the first time I heard that alarm, and it could mean only that some disaster had befallen the asylum.
For a moment we hesitated, but then Dr. Winthrop ran down the hallway, and I followed closely behind. He seemed to leap down the stairs, his key in hand. No sooner had he burst through the main door than I was there, as well, stopping only to lock the portal behind me. The curable wing, normally such a calm and peaceful place, was a-gibber with shouts and activity. My clinical mind observed it would take weeks to repair the damage of this night.
“Dr. Winthrop! Dr. Hamilton!”
It was Jacob, the orderly. He rushed toward us from the incurable wing.
“It’s in here, doctor,” he said to Dr. Winthrop.
“What is?” Dr. Winthrop asked as we rushed to the next wing.
“I can’t say, doctor. I ain’t never seen nothing like it. It’s awful. Simply awful.”
Dr. Winthrop glanced at me. I tried to give him the most confident look I could, but he could see I was shaken.
I heard the howls and screams of the patients in the incurables wing even before Jacob threw open the door. Once inside, the bedlam was almost unbearable. There were several orderlies, each struggling to keep order with the patients. Jacob led us to one of the rooms, and I realized to my horror it was Robert’s.
Jacob looked back at us both, as if to ensure we still wanted to go forward. When he saw our resolve remained strong, he turned the key in the door and flung it open.
For me, at that moment, time stood still. The noise, the violence, the insanity behind me, it all seemed to cease. In that moment, there was only me and the scene that lay before me.
I have heard men say there are things for which words are insufficient, scenes the human mind can barely comprehend, much less describe. I suppose I believed that, or at least I thought I did. But seeing is believing, as they say, and what I saw that night has never left me, though to this day I am incapable of properly describing it.
Robert sat on the floor, and I suppose if you didn’t look at his face, you might think he was just resting. But that face, oh God that horrible face. It was white, pale, the color of death. As white as his face was his hair — hair that had been a lustrous black only a day before was now a color normally reserved for the oldest of men. It was his expression, though. His expression was the most horrible of all.
His mouth was open, but not just open. No, it was gaping, like a chasm in the middle of his face. Wider and more distorted than a human being should be capable of, as if the final horror had been so great as to tear the very ligaments that held his jaw in place. But it was the eyes that were the worst, his still-open eyes. If the very image of the final thing he saw had been captured there, it could not have better told the horror he must have known than those frozen, glassy eyes. Whatever cosmic evil he witnessed, I pray God I never know.
Dr. Winthrop threw himself violently to the side and began to vomit. I suppose I might have as well, but instead I collapsed mercifully into oblivion.
* * *
I sat in one of the large leather chairs in Dr. Harker’s office. Dr. Winthrop was slouched down in the seat beside me. He rubbed his temples with his hands, and it was clear to me he had not yet recovered from what we experienced.
“Thank you for coming, Officer Braddock,” Dr. Harker said to the officially-clad man standing by the door. “I know it is not an easy trip out here.”
“There’ll be no needin’ to thank me,” he said. “The Captain wanted me to let you know how much he appreciated your message. It’s not often we are involved in incidents such as these.”
“There’s no need to thank me, either,” Dr. Harker replied. “We would have handled this internally, of course, but I think it goes without saying we’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Not in all my days at least,” said Dr. Anderson, the hospital’s primary medical doctor.
Despite what had happened, there was comfort in that. Obviously, I had never encountered anything like what I saw in that room. I hoped I never would again.
I had woken some time earlier in the hospital infirmary. At first, I had no notion of how long I had been out. I had no dreams, and by my reckoning, it was but an instant. I learned only later I had slept for hours, long enough for Dr. Harker to send for a constable from the nearest town.
As he had said, it was an unusual move. The asylum was a city unto itself, a ship at sea, and Dr. Harker was its captain. Matters of life or death were under his command. When a patient died, the family of the deceased would be notified to the extent possible. If there were no family, the decedent would be buried on the asylum property with nothing but a small stone and a number to mark where he lay. The numbers corresponded to those names kept in a book in the asylum office. A fire destroyed the book containing the names of the deceased from the asylum’s first five years. Those poor souls would forever remain unknown, unremembered, and unmourned.
Be that as it was, this circumstance was unique, and horribly so. It was a real mystery, and I knew Dr. Harker was more than a little concerned that foul play may have been involved. Dr. Anderson had been accustomed to performing only the barest of examinations over the deceased, but in this case, Dr. Harker had requested special diligence. We had come to Dr. Harker’s office now to hear his report. Blame might also be cast, and as Robert’s attending physician, more than a little blame was likely to fall on me.
“Do you still believe foul play was involved?” Braddock asked.
I saw Dr. Harker glance up uncertainly at Dr. Anderson. I recognized the look immediately. Doctors tend to be practical men. They see a problem and they fix it. Or they at least attempt to understand it. So the uncertainty of this case was unsettling to him. I think it may have even frightened him.
“The truth is,” Dr. Harker finally said, “we aren’t sure what to think.”
“So, it could have been one of the other inmates?”
“Patients,” Dr. Winthrop corrected, speaking for the first time.
“Yes, patients,” Braddock repeated.
“It couldn’t have been one of them,” answered Dr. Winthrop. “I spoke to Jacob, one of our orderlies,” he explained, “and he said Robert was locked in his room, just like he had been every night. No one went in, and he didn’t go out.”
“Could the orderly be lying?” Braddock asked. “After all, if he accidentally left the door open, he would have the most to lose.”
“I’ve known Jacob for many years,” Dr. Harker said dismissively, “and he wouldn’t lie to us.”
“Besides,” Dr. Winthrop interrupted, “we were keeping Robert in the incurables wing for this very reason. For his . . . protection.”
The last phrase seemed t
o slide off of Dr. Winthrop’s tongue. He recognized the irony in his words but was too far along to change them. I saw Dr. Harker shift uneasily in his chair while Braddock twirled his pocket watch chain in his fingers absentmindedly.
“In any event,” Dr. Winthrop continued after the uncomfortable moment had passed, “Jacob would have been only one of the orderlies in that wing last night. If that room had been opened, one of them would have noticed it.”
“How did they find him?” Braddock asked while Dr. Harker pulled out a pipe and lit it.
“That’s another thing,” Dr. Winthrop said with a sigh. “Jacob said last night . . . well . . . the patients were strange, I guess.”
“Strange? How so?”
“They were quiet.”
“Quiet?”
“Yes, quiet. And, if you knew what normally goes on in the incurables ward, you would know that was unusual, indeed.”
“That they were quiet last night?”
“Jacob said they were as quiet as the grave. He and the other orderlies discussed it. They thought something was wrong, so they kept a close watch. Jacob said he looked through the bars in Robert’s door at least three or four times. He was asleep each time, but restless. Tossing and turning. But then, as if on cue, as if they had planned it, every patient in the asylum started howling, screaming bloody murder. The orderlies tried to shut them up. It was as they ran up and down the ward, banging on every door, screaming and threatening, that Jacob glanced into Robert’s room. It was then he saw him.”
“Strange,” Braddock said in the evening’s least perceptive comment. Dr. Winthrop simply sank down further in his chair. In his mind, it seemed there was nothing more to say.
“Do you have anything to add, doctor?” Braddock said, turning to Dr. Anderson.
“I have many things to add, but I am not sure any of them will answer your questions.”
“Please, doctor, whatever you have will be helpful, I am sure.”
“I examined the body as soon as I could,” Anderson began. “I served in the 28th, you know, as a doctor during the war. I was with them at Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam. I’ve seen a lot of men die, cut down by cannon shot and bullets, disease, and infection. I’m not proud to say there’s not much that moves me now. But I’ve never seen anything like this. Not in war, not in peace.”
“Could it have been a murder? Or maybe a suicide?”
Dr. Anderson shook his head.
“No. There are no signs of trauma, no outward signs of a struggle. There are no stab wounds, bullet holes. No indication he was strangled or suffocated. There’s no poison in the blood, and no suggestion he was hit in the head or beaten to death.”
“I’ve heard,” I said, speaking for the first time, “if a man dies in his dreams, he dies in his waking life, as well.”
Dr. Harker looked unblinkingly at me for a moment and then said, “With all due respect, Dr. Hamilton, of all the possible theories I have heard, that is the one I am least likely to believe.”
“Well,” Dr. Anderson interjected, “actually, the young doctor is not far off.”
Dr. Harker chuckled. “How can you say that? We don’t even know how he died.”
“No, we know how he died. I was just getting to that. When I opened him up, his entire body cavity was filled with blood. It didn’t take me long to see why. His heart had exploded.”
“Exploded?” Dr. Harker exclaimed, sitting forward in his chair. “How is that possible?”
“Given what we know, that there was no outside intruder, that Robert was asleep but struggling each time the orderlies looked in on him — that there was no sound from the room, no screams, nothing. He must have been asleep when it happened. He had a dream, a horrible dream by the look of things. It frightened him so that his heart couldn’t take it. Somehow, through some sort of extraordinary sense we don’t understand, the other patients knew when it happened. That’s the only explanation I have, as insane,” he said with a chuckle, “as it might sound.”
“Well,” Braddock said, flipping closed the little book on which he had been keeping notes. “I think I have heard enough. Like I said, we appreciate your keeping us informed when something like this happens at the hospital. But it sounds to me as if there is no evidence this was anything more than a death by natural causes, even if it was caused by the victim’s own unstable mind.
“It is my understanding the boy, known only as Robert, had no family to speak of, so there will be no one to ask any more questions after I leave. I’ll report back to the Captain, but I would be very surprised if anything more comes of this. Now, if you will excuse me, I’ll be getting back. Doctors,” he said as he raised his cap.
Dr. Anderson walked out with him, leaving only Dr. Winthrop and me to answer whatever questions Dr. Harker still possessed.
“Dr. Hamilton,” he began, “please understand no one blames you for what happened to poor Robert. But I must ask if you said anything or did anything that may have helped to cause this unfortunate accident.”
“I can’t imagine I did, sir,” I replied. “It was a very simple introductory interview. He did most of the talking, explaining what he saw and why he was having trouble sleeping. Dr. Winthrop and I prescribed a sleeping draught to help him, but nothing out of the ordinary. If I had any idea something like this was going to happen . . .”
Dr. Harker raised his hand. “As I said, no one is blaming you or Dr. Winthrop. These things happen, and more often than not, when a patient dies no one bats an eye. It was only because of the . . . unusual circumstances we even went through this formality. Don’t worry. There will be no inquest, no notation on either of your records. It will be as it sadly always is — as if poor Robert never existed.”
I am ashamed to say it now, but there was comfort in that. Comfort in the fact I had dodged the day’s disaster without permanent damage to either my psyche or my career. But the day was not over, and even more wicked things were coming my way.
Chapter
24
I passed the remainder of the day as best I could, but it took most of my energies to keep that final image of Robert out of my mind. I finished my rounds quickly, seeing the last of my charges just as Tom, our resident handyman and jack of all trades, loaded Robert’s body into the rear of his cart.
“Lucky in a way,” he said as he climbed into the driver’s box next to me and Father Weatherby, the priest who lived at the asylum and ministered to its doctors and residents. “Another week, and the ground would have been too hard. Frozen solid. Then, we’d have to store him somewhere in the sub-tunnels till the dirt was soft enough to make a hole. Bad fate, that.”
“Yes,” I said simply.
We rode out into a somewhat warm, but nevertheless winter’s day. The snows had held off for the past week, and what had come before was largely melted. As I looked up at the hard gray sky, I felt this was as good a day as any for a funeral, particularly for one so young. It was only the three of us, and I suppose it would normally have been only two. Doctors didn’t normally attend the funerals of their patients.
It was, I had been told, better not to grow too attached to them. Their lives tended to be violent and short, and many of them were given to dangerous tendencies. A doctor who grew too close to one of the insane was likely to let his guard down, and death could come quickly. But Robert was different. He was a young man, a child, really. And even though I had only known him for a short time, one visit in fact, he had made an impression on me. That impression was set forever because of how he died.
We reached the hole Tom had carved, a large pile of frozen dirt sitting next to it. I took a moment to appreciate how difficult it must have been for Tom to make that hole, and despite his nonchalant attitude only a few minutes before, I think if its future resident had not been a child, the hole would have remained un-dug till spring.
Tom climbed down from the front of the cart, and I followed him. Normally, he and the Father would have served as the deceased’s lone
pall bearers, but today I gave the old priest a deserved break. We carried the wooden coffin to the front of the gaping wound in the earth, and with two sturdy ropes, we lowered it down into the blackness below. As Tom began to cover the coffin with hard clumps of dirt, Father Weatherby spoke.
“Lord, we commend this child to you. In your loving bosom will he find the peace he always lacked in life. There will be no weeping, no mourning in the world to come. So, too, will the visions of darkness that haunted him throughout his young days pass away into a brighter morning. His fate is the same as all men, for from dust we come, and to dust we must return. May we all do so in the grace of the Father’s love. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
I crossed myself silently and mouthed amen. Father Weatherby closed his Bible with a thud. We stood quietly as the pile of dirt grew steadily smaller while that covering Robert’s body climbed higher and higher, finally reaching the level of the ground before forming a small mound. The mound was all that was left to mark Robert’s existence — that and a small stone that read “777.”
I heard the rumble before I saw it, the sound of a heavy carriage being drawn quickly by several powerful horses. The three of us turned and looked as it roared around the bend. It was a police wagon, the kind with a covered and barred space in the back for carrying criminals.
There were two policemen in the driver’s box. One I didn’t recognize. The other was Officer Braddock. There was a third man, a well-dressed gentleman, older than I, but not by much. He had a familiar look about him, and I knew I had seen him before. But after only a few seconds, the carriage curved back around the bend and was gone.
I looked to Tom and Father Weatherby and said, “I think we should get back.” They nodded in agreement, and I added, “Quickly now,” though if Tom heard me, I’m not sure he cared.
We rode the cart back up the hill towards the Asylum, but it was slow progress. As the horses plodded along, I began to grow more impatient to learn what event was transpiring above. Were the police here for someone? Or were they bringing another patient? The presence of Braddock had convinced me this had something to do with Robert’s death, though I couldn’t know or even imagine, really, what that connection could be.
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