Chapter 23: The End of the Mess
What was left of Frederick Paol came to reside at the Louisiana State Mental Hospital. The Franklin family name was never officially linked to this new patient, in large part due to the effectiveness of their law firm. Huge sums of money were laid out, and the crafty old doctor who’d taken over administration proved as well-schooled in politics as medicine. There was a need to dispel the tensions the previous Director had let take root; now that the head had been, unfortunately, cut away, the rest of the weakened body could not live. The staff’s disquiet became no more than vague grumbles and a silent unease that coursed through the hallways but was never spoken about in official meetings. But it was also equally evident, the relief everyone showed by having the witch taken away. Laughter could occasionally be heard in the lunch room…on occasion.
Frederick came in by ambulance late one night months after the witch had been whisked away in a very similar manner. The patient’s history was unclear, or why also for the seeming need for secrecy that such subversive entrances tended to lend themselves privy to. Of course, there was talk of money changing hands, and everyone on staff knew the old doctor’s reputation. All these things further fueled the unease that had become a constant figure.
The sick man had been cleaned up as much as possible, and even though he didn’t smell quite so bad, the stench of decay perpetually clung to his body. Soon, his very name became the lever to illicit a case of nerves, or a sudden need for a cigarette. Anything to prolong the inevitable tending. Because such visits brought about visions of the departed witch, as if she’d somehow managed to manifest herself again.
By the time the old doctor resigned for the second time, the worried talk had simply become background hum. The staff would not let itself be led to public admissions of demonic possession, and the orderlies and janitors gritted their teeth and prayed all the harder. Times were hard and even a bad job was better than no job at all. The old doctor was replaced by a young firebrand fresh out of college.
The money continued rolling in for the maintenance and care of the stinking, almost-corpse in the basement rooms, so no questions surfaced. The status quo was tended carefully. Some said the demon’s skin was too dull, and if its mouth were open the smell of the tomb reached from underneath doors. Rebecca Smith, the ward matron whose brother had told her late one night of the Skinwalker, suddenly retired in the summer of ’13. She had twenty years under her belt by then and enough pension to chain-smoke the rest of her life away. Because she could no longer work at the institution. The similarities between the witch and the demon were too much, the nightmares brought on by the bestial eyes far too vivid.
Sometimes the patient would appear semi-conscious for short periods of time, although his posture never changed. To keep their charge free of bedsores, he had to be physically moved. Other times he would mumble or groan loudly, his face contorted with hideous straining. Its only nourishment was intravenous. The fingers were nail-less and swollen now, carrying the tint of bruising deep within that never quite went away. But the hospital’s keep never showed the slightest hint of simple understanding, or anything else vaguely human.
It did finally speak, but only once, at least as far as anybody knew. And afterward the rumor persisted that the voice had been empty of anything human, that it grated as if issuing from the very throat of the devil himself. The revelation it contained was directed at William Franklin on his first and only visit to the institution since his argument with the late Dr. Marshall.
By that time most of the features that had distinguished the drug-runner had melted away, leaving only a shrunken shadow stuffed back in the corner of the cramped basement. The visit had not been a long one, and the now gaunt Franklin had been turning to leave when something had made him double-take the figure lying on the bed. Legend had it that the doctor and orderly, along for any hint of danger, had sworn the thing’s eyes cleared, if only for a moment. That he’d seemed to gesture with its fingertips. The rest was legend.
“Something for you,” the thing had said. Then, “Your brother burns in hell inside me. Just like you will.” Then the eyes filmed over and the laughter started.
According to an orderly, William Franklin had slowly backed away. He eyed the creature on the bed for a moment before beating a hasty retreat to the door. It was rumored the horrible, grating laughter continued for several hours afterward.
William never visited the hospital again. He became increasingly reclusive and committed suicide in his lakefront home the following year. He left no note and pulled off the job with a goose gun, apparently to make sure the mess of his life was finished. His mother lingered on another ten years to the day of his death, the sole heiress to the Franklin empire. She continued her infrequent bouts of screaming, and some of the help talked amongst themselves about how her pupil’s would spread across the surface of her eyeballs until nothing else remained. Like looking into a depthless, black pit, they said.
The money continued by decree of the Old Man’s will; the lawyers tended their garden, and time crept along.
P’molo, now a young warrior himself, had the little children enthralled beside the fire. He had his father’s eye for detail but proved far more articulate when it came to telling tales. This made him very valuable. His fiery intensity colored all he did, affecting all those who were near him. His wide-eyed audience, listened enraptured as he related the Tales of the Tribe.
Tonight’s lesson was one of fear, of the danger inherent in disobeying elders. As example of the doom awaiting those youngster’s incapable of rendering up the necessary respect due their elders, P’molo whispered of the Walking Thing: a creature made up of both shadow and smell, a thing that lurched its blind way through the jungle darkness incessantly, thirsting for the blood of little girls and boys. This ghoul had only recently evolved in the Tribe’s pantheon of gods and demons, but its reputation had already achieved legendary proportions. The children hunched closer to one another, promising themselves to do good, to gain the care of the protective jungle gods that would afford them protection in the wild, vast, and unceasingly mysterious jungle depths where the monster walked.
The gardener William had seen pawing at the ground the day of his argument with Dr. Marshall was arrested three years after William Franklin blew his head off with the goose gun. The man’s neighbors had complained of a stench surrounding the man’s dilapidated house, and when it was investigated, animal bones were found scattered throughout the ramshackle abode, littering the wood-fenced back yard.
The authorities found him digging in the same garden William had once seen him in and under questioning the man had initially revealed nothing. But throughout, his eyes held a far-off gaze. When he was searched, a clutch of small, severed fingers was found in his possession. And as they took him away, he finally began to rail about unfinished work.
His yard turned up the decayed evidence of far worse crimes during the course of the next two eventful weeks. Eventually he came to speak of a woman who came to him in dreams and bid him do this work. Sometimes, he said, a man was with her.
Sometimes two.
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