by Adam Bennett
The man and wife were tied to the burning stakes holding hands and chanting. They were asked if they would like to repent of their sins. Instead they spoke in unison, cursing their accuser, saying that they would haunt the dreams of every girl born to his family from that time forth. The haunting dreams would begin when they were small girls and would continue until the deaths of the men that they would marry. They would only get to be together for the number of years that they were allowed to have together. The husband would die by a large, shiny knife that was presented at the trial and said to be bewitched.
The curse has haunted our family for many generations and still does today.
My daughter grew up; the same dreams terrified her, and the Finger Lady brought the Knife Wielding Man. She fell in love with the man of her dreams and got married.
Life goes on.
For his sixth birthday, David Temrick's father gave him a leather-bound copy of Treasure Island. At the time, he says, "I remember being disappointed that it wasn't an action figure of some kind." After reading it, though, the story lit a fire inside of him and the joy of reading was born. Shortly afterwards, he began reading as many classics as he could get his hands on.
www.davidtemrick.com
BLACK LAKE RED
David Temrick
Dan sat quietly looking out of his window. It was still early, and mist was drifting off the nearby lake. It had, until recently, the dubious honor of being called Blackwater Lake. Like all small towns, everything had a colorful history, though, and this lake was no exception. Since the founding of the town, Blackwater Lake had been the site of public hangings, lynch-mob justice and racial unrest, and it was only natural that some enterprising county commissioner had made it the site of the prison in 1843.
It was ironically fitting that the facility would then take its name from the lake; Blackwater Prison.
Over the years, the buildings and the grounds had been expanded until a new maximum security facility was built to replace it. Most of the staff had been transferred to the new facility along with the inmates.
In the decade that followed, Blackwater Prison had fallen into disuse and neglect. In fact, until eighteen months ago, the only people to enter the former prison in some time had been a group of ghost hunters, or paranormal researchers, as most preferred to be called. Regardless, they believed the entire grounds were occupied by the spectres of former inmates, murdered guards, and victims of racial hatred.
Dan didn’t believe in the paranormal. In fact, while supervising the gutting and repurposing of Blackwater Prison into Blake Lake Psychiatric Hospital, Dan had experienced none of the phenomena that the paranormal community claimed existed here. However, once word circulated that the jail and the grounds were to undergo a massive renovation, letters had arrived by the thousands requesting one last chance to investigate the grounds.
Not one to step on people’s beliefs, Dan had agreed. His only stipulation was that they stick to the structurally sound areas. Therefore, two years ago, as his first official order, he’d opened up Blackwater for a one-night-only ghost hunt for one hundred lucky people. Some of the groups had claimed that they’d performed strictly scientific experiments, while others operated Ouija boards and held séances. Frankly, Dan didn’t care. The few who sent him reports of their “findings” had their work filed away with the rest of the recycling.
His sole concern was the rejuvenation of a relic of brutality.
To that end, his plans called for unification of three single cells into a solitary cell. Many of the patients who would occupy this facility couldn’t clinically be in contact with other patients. Their conditions were such that none of them could be housed in a traditional, dorm-style hospital. Each of the new rooms was equipped with a full bathroom, a living area and a bedroom. The bars and cast iron doors that had once served as the entrances to these cells had been replaced with thick acrylic, which was transparent and incredibly strong.
The pointless barbed wire was removed from the interior of the huge windows that stood opposite the cells in the 19th century-style prison block. Those windows were then replaced with the same acrylic, as were the catwalks. The end result was eleven cells on each of the three levels with a central guard tower for each of the eight wings. Each wing was complete with security monitoring systems and automated riot control. The security concerns Dan had left up to the hospital’s warden, Victor Deynor.
Victor had been the warden here when the prison had still been in use. That had been when the pair of them had met. Dan spent his internship and pre-doctorate here, when the jail still looked like an archaic dungeon. The pair of them had conceptualized the rejuvenation of the facility, Victor with his eye on security and Dan with his eye on the mental health of their charges.
The Waddell Company had budgeted $30 million for the renovation of the castle-like administration building and the eight wings. By the time the hospital opened, they would still be six million dollars under budget, making them heroes to the board of directors.
Thankfully, last week had been the last board meeting Dan and Victor would have to attend, unless, of course, there was an issue of some sort.
As Dan understood things, Victor had hired two guards and four orderlies for each wing. Each wing could hold thirty-three patients, all on treatment rotations with the eight staff psychiatrists. With the administration staff, the technology that was being used at Black Lake Hospital enabled the hospital to run with minimal staff.
Dan sighed as he set aside two years’ worth of stress and anxiety. Today, Black Lake Hospital would take in its first group of patients. It was a mixed bag of clinically depressed sociopaths and true psychopaths who were unable to process their actions. Every patient that Black Lake would take in was a murderer. The courts had sentenced each and every one of them to multiple life terms. It was unlikely that any of them could be ever treated sufficiently to make them productive members of society or even safe inmates at a correctional facility, but the days of locking up crazy people and throwing away the keys had long since passed.
The illusion of treatment was political currency that was spent like any other. Dan didn’t care, though; his primary concern was the treatment of the mentally unstable.
For too many years, Dan had moved from one facility to another. Along the way he’d earned a reputation for positive results with hardcases. He’d always had ambitions to be the head of a psychiatric department, though, and this hospital served as the culmination of over twenty years in the field. Black Lake presented an interesting case study for students in the medical field, as well. As a result, some of the funding for the hospital was made possible through educational grants and bursaries.
He sighed again, looking out over the grounds and the culmination of his life’s work. There were still hurdles left. Patient intake was occupying his thoughts and had been for the last couple of weeks. He’d been preparing his files for the first fifteen patients he would be responsible for admitting. After admission, they would be assigned to one of the eight wings.
Four and five were reserved for the most dangerous and unpredictable. These were patients who had a history of violence that had followed them into incarceration. Wings three and six were for slightly less violent, and so on until the least dangerous patients were placed in wings one and eight. With the exception of four and five, all of the wings had access to the grounds in turn.
The concept was to give them as much time outside as possible without creating a dangerous mix of psychopaths for the guards to mitigate. Unfortunately, some patients were just too much of a risk to allow outside without close supervision. Those patients would be granted one hour a day outside, although they would be inside a twenty foot by twenty chain link enclosure for their safety and that of the staff.
The patients Dan was expecting today were a veritable mix of textbook hopeless cases that needed a lifetime of treatment. Paranoid schizophrenics, obsessive-compulsive sociopaths, histrionic antisocial lunatics and just plai
n old fashioned psychopaths would make their way through his office over the next week. His main concern was pairing their file with the person and then placing them in the appropriate wing for their temperament.
For the most part, cell assignments had already been chosen.
There were no concerns over the gender of the patients as they wouldn’t be able to see, hear or smell one another; each cell had its own forced air intake and exhaust system. Each patient would be isolated when it was required and in the lower security wings they would have the opportunity to mingle and form friendships. Dan hoped that this would foster a sense of safety and aid in rehabilitation. Judging from his files, though, that was quite possibly an irrational dream.
As it was, Dan had three intakes today.
The first was a woman who had murdered her husband and three children after succumbing to post-partum depression mixed with a healthy dose of paranoia and sociopathic aggression. She would likely be assigned to Wing Eight. She had spiraled into depression at the last facility she’d been placed in. Her transfer was a direct result of the pregnancy her former doctor had no small part in orchestrating, though knowing the man, Dan doubted that it had been on purpose.
The second was a multiple murderer and dissociative true psychopath. From all reports, he’d managed to escape every cell that had ever been designed, including some designed specifically for him. His interview would do little to avail him of anything shy of the maximum security wings. In fact, Victor had already insisted that he be placed in the top cell of the fourth wing where the security tower would always be able to physically see him.
His third intake had come as something of a shock. It was a fourteen-year-old boy who was a product of the system, though he’d come into the system in the most horrific way. For all intents and purposes, the lad had been afforded every benefit a child could have. He was born into a wealthy family; he was handsome, well spoken, and charismatic.
Yet somewhere inside, the boy had gone awry. He’d started the way most sociopaths start; torturing small animals. His parents had quietly hired an aide, but when that aide had then sexually abused the boy, the matter had gotten considerably worse. He had murdered his entire family, included extended relations and their children, during a Thanksgiving feast.
The lad had drugged them all and then proceeded to bind and gag them; he waited until they’d regained consciousness before killing them in various, and disgusting, ways. Obviously, his crimes were such that he couldn’t be admitted to an age-appropriate facility. Since his incarceration, however, he’d performed similar murders on four separate occasions.
Still, Dan was confident that he could help all of them. If nothing else could be accomplished, he could at least see that they confronted their own personal demons and begin the long road to recovery.
But first they had to be admitted. This would occupy him and the other seven psychiatrists for the next five days; five very challenging days which would end in a group session for the doctors before they were allowed to go home for the night. This was an important part of any doctor's life, but absolutely paramount in a facility that housed these kinds of people.
A quiet buzz shook him from his introspection and he turned from the vista below to his computer monitor. A pop-up window showed him the hallway outside where a guard and orderly had his first patient in front of them. He put his thumb onto a pad hidden just below the edge of his desk. He’d paid passing attention as Victor had explained the system in detail. Suffice to say, his door lock clicked open and the orderly opened it wide to admit the guard and his first patient.
The orderly correctly read Dan’s confusion.
“The lady had to be sent to the infirmary,” he advised.
“Very well, bring him in,” Dan sighed.
The hospital board, at Victor’s urging, had insisted that while this hospital was a place for treatment, there would be some security measures that superseded Dan’s treatment regimes. One of those security measures was that each patient had to be strapped down to avoid them harming the doctor. So the guard frog-marched the straitjacketed patient into Dan’s office, laid him down on his humorously typical couch and then strapped him down to it.
The effect was hardly the best way to begin treatment, but perhaps over time Victor would allow certain patients to forgo this measure. He knew that this was likely wishful thinking at its worst. These patients — even the “low security” ones — were extremely dangerous and each had proven that they had a taste for death.
Only the patient's head was free to move around. His legs, kept in chains, were shackled to the floor and his torso was held fast to the couch. One of the few psychological games Dan played was giving the illusion of confidence to his patients. This is why he chose a chair and footrest, placed beside the couch so that his knees were in line with the patient's head. He was far enough away to avoid spit, though close enough to give the illusion that he could be touched.
For unknown reasons, this put patients at ease. Their doctor was close enough to touch, though kept at a respectful distance. It had been Dan’s practice for years.
“Now, Mister…?”
“Howard.” The patient answered quietly as the guard and orderly left the room with a nod to Dan.
“Ah, yes. Mr. Howard.”
Dan retrieved the relevant file from his desktop, along with a notepad and pen, before settling into his chair and kicking his feet up.
“Now, Mr. Howard…”
“Jon.”
“Very well, Jon.” Dan settled in, grabbing his pen and clicking the retractable tip into place. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?”
“Why bother?” the man said dejectedly. “I’m sure it’s all in my file.”
“You’re probably right. What more could you tell me about yourself than total strangers?” Dan admitted with a grunt. “Well, if that’s all, I’ll admit you.”
“Wait,” Jon said in confusion.
“Hmm?”
“That’s it?”
“Jon, we’re only going to make progress if you want to,” Dan explained. “I can’t force you to talk about anything, so why bother? I’ll only upset you and that will cause more problems than solutions for both of us.”
Dan had reviewed the files of all of his patients extensively and had a plan of action for each. Jon Howard was brilliant, well read and outwardly rational. None of his previous doctors could understand how he could commit such bloody murder so easily. Rather than proceed in the usual way, forcing the patient to deal with his inner turmoil, Dan had decided to allow Jon to come to him on his own terms. After all, they had nothing but time.
“Why am I here?” Jon asked.
“Metaphysically, or…?” Dan replied coyly.
“Things happen and I always seem to be the only one there,” Jon asked, lowering his mask of calm.
Dan took a deep breath and maintained eye contact. There were sociopaths who thought they knew best, psychopaths who were certain of it, and yet here was a man that could only be called bewildered.
“I’m going to be honest with you,” Dan said. “Your previous doctors agree that you have a dissociative disorder.”
“What does that mean?” Jon asked, allowing his fear to peek through.
“It’s a diagnosis that is widely disputed,” Dan began quietly, taking another steadying breath. “Some believe that a person’s personality can be supplanted with another. They believe that a normally quiet, introverted family man can be dominated by a murderous second personality.”
“Is that what’s happening to me?” Jon asked in open fear.
“Possibly,” Dan admitted. “I don’t discount things out of hand. I want to spend some time with you, learn about you and your life before I can make my own diagnosis.”
Dan watched Jon’s reaction closely, while feigning the air of a helpful friend.
“Unfortunately, the proof against you is insurmountable. So it’s possible that you have a disorder, though the nature
of it remains, at this point, a mystery.” He continued, “Hopefully together we can piece it together.”
Dan crossed his hands and held his left wrist with his right hand while Jon thought about what he’d been told. In truth, Dan had expected either ignorant acceptance, or hostility.
“All right, doctor,” Jon concluded.
It took every ounce of self-control Dan possessed to hide his surprise. Ultimately, he pressed the signal button located on a clear bracelet he wore on his left wrist. His door clicked open and the orderly and guard entered his office.
“The assigned room, please.” Dan instructed. “I’ll see you soon, Jon, I promise.”
The guard and orderly unlocked Jon from the couch as Dan walked around his desk. He glanced towards the trio in the reflection of his office window and dropped everything in his hands in terror. The reflection was one of absolute horror. In the place of Jon, a tall, lithe black figure stood. It was very much unchained, its angry red eyes narrowed in absolute hatred, and it lunged towards him. Dan spun in place, his heart pounding in his ears, to see a lucid and calm Jon being escorted willingly from his office.
Dan shook his head and glanced back towards his window. Jon, the guard and the orderly were walking quietly out of his office.
Over the course of the next week, Dan admitted the rest of his patients. A “settling in” phase over the course of the next eight weeks was now in effect as each doctor became accustomed to their new charges. Each doctor would work in an ever-evolving shift; they would maintain two to three patients and the others they felt they were not making a connection with would be reassigned to another doctor.
Despite the unease of the conclusion of their first meeting, Dan had already chosen Jon Howard as his sole retained patient. While the others had their unique attributes, he felt little connection with them that would benefit their treatment in the long run.
