Part of this oath is meant to reinforce the ideal that patients must be protected from harm and that it is forbidden to administer a deadly drug to hasten death or provide a woman with an abortive remedy. But like many things in life, ideals are often put to the ultimate test. Take, for example, the following incident, which because of its extreme nature altered my personal views on life and death and forced me to question the very foundations of the oath to which I swore—body, mind, and soul.
Several years ago during an unusually damp and chilly September evening and well past the hour when most people are sound asleep in their beds, a knock came to the front door and upon opening it, an old man stood in the threshold or perhaps I should say leaned hard against it, for his clothes reeked of alcohol and his breath bore the sweet odor of brandy or cognac. It was also apparent that he had walked a considerable distance since his shoes and the cuffs of his trousers were splattered with black mud.
From the perspective of a doctor, it was clear that this late evening visitor was not long for this earth, due to the distension of the blood vessels in his hands and face, an indication of advanced arterial disease, and yellowing of the sclera of his eyes, a sure sign of jaundice and liver disease. But what I found most intriguing about him was the presence of a tattoo on the left side of his neck, a triskelion inked in black, the ancient Celtic symbol for rebirth and the renewal of the soul. Since the old man was quite intoxicated, it took several minutes of prodding to find out where he had walked from on such a dreary evening. Between some mutterings, he mentioned the name of Whitewood, a village less than five miles to the north, a grim and desolate place of shuttered houses, narrow cobblestone streets, dim alleyways, and a church known as Blackchapel, reputed to have been the sanctuary of a coven of Celtic witches some three hundred years ago.
I must admit that I was not eager to visit Whitewood, but when the old man related that his granddaughter was in need of medical assistance, I agreed to accompany him to his house to render whatever I could to help her. Odd as it may seem, the old man insisted that it would not be necessary to bring along the traditional "black bag" of instruments and concoctions since as he put it, everything I would need was already at hand and in the care of his wife.
When we arrived at the old man's house, wedged between two other dwellings with thick black curtains covering the windows and facing one of those dim alleyways, an old, arthritic woman dressed in not much more than rags opened the door and waved us inside. At first, it was impossible to make out the interior of the room, but once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could tell that this was a place of suffering and morbidity, of death and lingering illness that pervaded the entire atmosphere, almost as if standing inside of a morgue or near the open doorway of an embalming parlor.
The room itself was painted flat black and in a corner some twenty feet away, a wrought iron table held six flickering votive candles and amid the candles stood a gold statue of Ankou who rose from the primordial grave of chaos to form the great Celtic gods from the dust of the earth. As to the old man's granddaughter, she was nowhere to be seen, but I assumed after taking a few steps toward the iron table that a narrow door near the opposite corner would soon pivot open as an invitation to enter whatever might lie beyond it. This assumption proved to be correct because a few moments later, the door did open up and the old man's wife beckoned with a nod of her head.
I then found myself in a small, windowless bedroom, heavy with the perfumed fragrance of burning incense and lit by a single yellow candle that illuminated a beautiful young girl, perhaps sixteen, lying in a bed of straw. She was obviously pregnant in her eighth or ninth month, and although her skin was ashen and her breathing shallow, she did not appear to be in any immediate danger. But as an added precaution, I checked her pulse and found it slightly intermittent. She must have felt my hand on her wrist, for she turned her head and looked at me with an expression of utter helplessness. As I was about to place my hand on her forehead to determine if she had a fever, the old man burst into the room and pulled me aside.
"Don't touch her! You must not touch her! She belongs to Ankou, the god of death and rebirth!"
"But I was only checking her condition," I replied. "I have to touch her. How else can I find out...?”
"She is sacred to Ankou! Only He can touch her body!
"Then I guess I'm not needed here. If you refuse to let me help her..."
The old man's wife then seized my arm. "You cannot leave us! It is your destiny to help my granddaughter."
"But how? She seems normal enough, except for how pale she is. But I am somewhat concerned about the child she's carrying."
"You must help my granddaughter to die. It is the will of Ankou!"
"Die? But I'm a physician. I cannot hasten someone's death. I'm bound by my oath not to bring harm upon anyone, especially an unborn child."
The woman's grip on my arm tightened as her other hand placed a gleaming straightedge razor against my throat. "You will stay and do what is necessary," she said. "My granddaughter must die, and you will assist her."
To admit that I was overwhelmed with sheer terror at the possibility of having my throat slit like a ripe melon paled in comparison to thinking what I might be forced to do to end the life of the young girl lying helpless in the bed of straw. A reptilian smile then came to the woman's face, and when she removed the straightedge razor from my throat, she pointed to a chair next to the bed and without hesitating, I sat down and drew a deep breath in anticipation of what might come next.
In preparation for some kind of bizarre ritual, the old man knelt by the bedside of his granddaughter and unbuttoned the top of her gown, revealing the black-inked tattoo of a triskelion over the region of her heart. He then raised his hands in the air and began to chant in what sounded like Scottish Gaelic, a language once spoken by the people of Whitewood but now forgotten as a dead tongue. In the meantime, the old man's wife opened a tall wooden box near the bed and brought forth a calvaria or the upper portion of a human skull used by the ancient Celts as a drinking vessel to celebrate victory over their enemies. She then poured a gold liquid from the calvaria into a large silver cup and handed it to me.
"Here," she said, "drink heartily. You will need it to steady your nerves."
And just as I had assumed, it was cognac—strong, sweet, and yet acrid. After I had drained the cup, the woman refilled it and gave some to her granddaughter, now breathing heavier and sweating profusely from the stifling atmosphere of the room still lit by the single yellow candle with a flame like the edge of a scalpel. The old man's chanting soon ended, and after pouring fragrant cedar oil over the young girl's face and neck and guzzling what was left of the cognac, he reached inside the tall box and brought forth a scroll bound with gold thread and stamped with a red triskelion.
"This is the Scroll of the White Lady," said the old woman as she untied the gold thread. "Here are the words of death that will allow my granddaughter to die. Every ceremony needs a witness, and you shall witness this one."
Boldness was never one of my strong points, but I must admit that I was more than tempted to seize the chair beneath me and fling it across the room in the hope of escaping through the same narrow door that had opened into this world of utter madness. But this was not possible because the chair in which I was sitting was bolted to the floor, as was the bed of straw. To my astonishment, the old man leaned over the bed and proceeded to remove the young girl's gown until the glow from the single yellow candle accented the ghastly paleness of her skin and outlined the roundness of her pregnancy which as far as I could tell appeared normal and unremarkable. After tossing the gown in a corner, he poured more of the cedar oil over her nakedness and for several moments, no doubt due to the oil interacting with the girl's sweat-drenched body, the sweet aroma of cedar filled the air.
Everything I had observed and experienced up to this point—the poor helpless creature lying in the bed of straw, the gleaming straightedge razor set against my throat,
the black-inked triskelion over the young girl's heart, and the old man's chanting and his use of the oil—was more than sufficient proof that he and his wife were insane and that their granddaughter was a central player in this ceremony of the perverse. However, I was still unable to determine exactly why she had to die unless as the ancients of old, her death was sacrificial as an appeasement to Ankou, the Celtic King of the Dead, the collector of souls with the face of a living skull.
And when the old woman unrolled the scroll, the perfumed atmosphere of the room dissipated and the scalpel-like light of the single yellow candle dimmed, making the flat black surface of the bedroom walls appear even blacker. "I shall now read the words of the White Lady," she announced, "and when I have finished, you as our witness must make certain that my granddaughter is dead." Here, to the best of my recollection, are the words that she spoke:
"Oh, pale lady who guardest the secrets of the gates
Over the domain of death. Here I am, who cleave open the earth,
Entering and coming forth out of the Netherworld.
Grant that I may come and acquire birth over death as the
Serpents crawleth over me,
As the serpents of Corchen slither over me.
I am Seta young of years; I lay myself down in death,
And the unborn is born.
I am Seta at the confines of the grave; I lay myself down in death,
And my unborn soul is renewed.
Let the path be made for my soul into the womb of blackness
And a new life!"
During the several minutes that had passed while the old woman read from the scroll, my eyes remained focused on the naked body of the young girl which to my horror had transformed from a ghastly paleness into a translucent, sickly yellow, much like that of a corpse exposed to the elements for a long period of time. Her hair had also changed from a deep auburn into a shade that closely matched the single yellow candle, now burning with greater intensity and throwing an eerie incandescence over the entire room, bathed in swirling shadows and somber tones of gray and burnt umber. And at last, I knew the name of the poor girl, the victim of this absurd nightmare that was to continue to unfold—Seta, a pretty name for a once beautiful young lady reduced to a cadaver that either still lived or had died during the reading of the Scroll of the White Lady.
"You may now touch her," said the old woman as she rolled up the scroll, "to make certain she is dead."
When I placed my hand over Seta's heart, I felt nothing except for the slightly raised texture of the black-inked triskelion, and when I rolled her eyelids back and passed my hand across her line of sight, there was no reaction, simply a cold marble stare that chilled my blood to the point where I could not look at her face. As a last resort, I checked her pulse and found it non-existent.
"You have murdered your granddaughter," I said to the old woman, "and the unborn child within her."
In response, the old woman grinned like a jackal. "The child is not dead. It is the living soul of Ankou, the great god of our Celtic ancestors."
"And you," said the old man, "will help us to appease Ankou. The child must be born in the black womb!"
With his eyes bulging in anticipation of what was to come, the old man disappeared behind a planked door that I had not noticed earlier and emerged dragging a hinged wooden box about three feet in width and six feet long across the hardened dirt floor of the bedroom. He then placed the box next to the bed of straw, slid his arms under Seta's lifeless body, lowered her into the box, and closed the lid.
Here, I thought, was the definitive moment, the culmination of all that had occurred up to this point. If indeed the child within Seta's body still lived, then it was the intention of the old man and his deranged wife to bury it alive in some hideous fashion. Recall that dense and odious mantle of despair that cannot easily be removed when a patient is dying from an incurable illness? The same could be said here, but the mantle this time was denser and more odious because I instinctively knew that the term "black womb" was a metaphorical reference to the grave.
After propping open the planked door with a large stone, the old man lifted the wooden box at one end and started dragging it towards the door which was sufficiently ajar to allow a view of the leaden-white moon dipping its way ever closer to the horizon amid clouds of dark azure and amber. And just beyond the door, a well-worn footpath meandered its way through a stretch of countryside lined with crumbling trees and thickets of vines intermingled with lackluster leaves and heavy branches.
And in the distance stood Blackchapel, a Gothic monstrosity of arched doorways, windows of stained glass, and a single rectangular tower with an oval door set beneath a tall spire overgrown with vines and a blanket of dark moss. This imposing structure was clearly the old man's destination and was to be the final resting place of poor Seta and her allegedly still living child, due to the presence of a fog-enshrouded graveyard just to the east of the tower.
When the old man had managed to drag the wooden box to the threshold of the planked door, his wife grinned like a jackal once again and motioned for me to help him with his task at hand, being to lift the other end of the box as a very unwilling pallbearer. But I had other plans. Since the planked door was wide open, it would have been relatively simple to make a dash for it and run headlong into the outside world, much like a prisoner escaping through a gate left carelessly unlocked. However, as Poe once observed, who has not a hundred times found himself committing a vile action for no other reason than because he knows that he should not? In this respect, I remained in the bedroom out of perversity, out of a sick need to witness what was to follow. And so, like an obedient Druidic servant, I picked up the other end of the box and proceeded through the planked door.
Once outside of the house, we began the tedious process of carrying what was now Seta's coffin along the well-worn footpath where several dozen Whitewood residents had gathered to observe what was to them nothing out of the ordinary, for I could tell by their consenting expressions that they had witnessed this morbid spectacle before, nodding their heads and smiling at one another as the procession of the dead, or perhaps the soon-to-be dead, made its way slightly uphill until reaching the wrought iron gates of Whitewood Cemetery, weathered by time and neglect and scattered here and there with Celtic crosses bearing the triskelion and other ancient symbols.
As we proceeded into the cemetery, I noticed not too far away and directly under the angling shadow of Blackchapel's cobblestone tower a freshly dug grave, Seta's final place of internment. If ever there were sufficient evidence to charge someone with premeditated murder, this was more than enough, for it was clear that Seta's death had been prearranged and that the old man showing up at my front door at three o'clock in the morning was by design, considering that two other physicians lived within a half mile of my house and were just as qualified to render medical assistance.
Although burdened with arthritis, the old woman managed to make her way along the footpath and into the cemetery and now stood at the brink of Seta's grave, gazing down into a crude rectangular-shaped pit about three feet deep.
"We must bury her now," she said while shielding her eyes from a sliver of sunlight barely penetrating through a thick bank of clouds on the morning horizon. With one swift movement and despite his drunkenness, the old man pushed me aside and dragged Seta's coffin to the edge of the pit. He then hastily lowered it into the pit, retrieved a shovel lying a few feet away, and proceeded to fill it in with glistening clumps of black dirt. If the once beautiful Seta, perhaps in a cataleptic state, and her unborn child were actually still alive, then they were suffering untold agonies in Ankou's "womb of blackness" with myself standing on the sidelines and unable to do anything to save them.
To my astonishment, the old man and his wife began laughing at the deed so far done, and within a few moments, the residents of Whitewood that had gathered along the footpath to witness Seta's burial began laughing with them amid howls and screams of delight. T
hese morbid ghouls then started chanting in Scottish Gaelic, which obviously was not such a dead language after all. About two minutes later, the chanting ceased, and the cemetery grew silent and still as if they were expecting something extraordinary to occur.
While standing less than two feet from Seta's grave, I happened to glance at a headstone engraved with the familiar triskelion symbol, and when I read the inscription, the rhythm of my heart quickened until it felt as if it would burst through my chest. It was the words of the White Lady:
Secuba. Dearest Mother of Seta.
I Lay Myself Down in Death
And My Unborn Soul is Renewed
And as the early morning sun edged its way above the horizon, the shadow of Blackchapel tower darkened and intensified and the residents of Whitewood gathered around the grave of Seta and the child that was undoubtedly dead in her womb.
"It is time," said the old woman, and then I heard what seemed to be muffled wailing, much like screams of despair coming from behind a thick wall. Dumbfounded is a poor description for how I felt at this time; it was more akin to sheer terror, knowing that Seta's child was still alive, struggling to be set free but only to exit one sort of darkness and enter a place of horrifying dimensions--the black confines of the grave. I also knew what had to be done, for as a physician, the Oath of Hippocrates demanded that I must do everything in my power to extend life instead of allowing it to sink into oblivion.
With strength I had never known before, I threw myself into Seta's grave and started clawing away at the layer of black dirt that covered the lid of the coffin. The old man and his wife did nothing to stop me and simply stood there, laughing and throwing their hands in the air as if reaching out to Ankou for praise and glorification for their hideous deeds. It was not long before my fingers touched the lid, and with both hands, I flung it wide open and almost fell backwards from the strong odor of cedar oil mingled with the onset of decay and morbidity.
Dark Light Book Three (Dark Light Anthology) Page 14
