A Hanging Madness, by Jacob Malewitz, A Chapter on Dragonlance Northern Ship

A Hanging Madness

By Jacob Malewitz

Screams in the Madhouse, 4 Blue Jacket

Eberron, 200mill, 2 meal

Blogger, 50 Unicorn Crash City 

3

Thomas John pulled up his shirt and looked at the scratch marks she’d put on him so long ago. He recalled the exorcism and especially the last rights. But Mary Light hadn’t died that day, nor had her spirit. And if this boy was doing something with her history, if he was going to find out the truth he’d hid from the world for over a decade, his soul, already lost, would be doomed in this life along with the afterlife. But Paul Light wasn’t even close to the truth .No, he would find nothing and go mad trying to make something of nothing. Just like his father.

“He came upon my shores,” and he drank some, “to see the seas and on the seas,” and more, “till he came upon what he’d searched for, “ glass down, “finding it was all a lie from the beginning.”

He frowned and tears came. If you had looked at him in a mirror at that precise moment, or if you’d looked through carved church glass, you’d see far more than a simple priest drinking his drinks and telling truths. Something else.

4

The house looked different from outside. Living here for over two decades, with his eyes on dreams and his  mind on girls and booze, he hadn’t ever given this home a true chance. No, he’d let it do its thing while he did his. Outside, it immediately reminded him of the cathedrals you could drive by down many East Lansing streets—and not all Catholic. There was the high peak, the colored glass on the front door, the windows carved from stone brick and surrounded by plants spreading like fire. The house looked well, and it looked at you. You could get a glimmer of life one moment, and then you’d lose it. He smiled, smiled and walked in.

To the refrigerator. Food. Drink. He hadn’t bought a single bag of groceries, but dad had stocked up well. Six packs and packages of hot dogs, chips and cereal, lucky to find even some pop and crackers. Dad loved pop and crackers. 

But he wanted to write on an empty stomach, and climbed the stairs, pushed into his very own room there across from his parent’s bedroom. It was small, a quiet place with a reading chair and desk. There was no good shot of outside, which itself made it perfect to write at. A small wooden desk invited him—so he went back into dad’s room and grabbed the books. He stole all his papers, grabbed his laptop, and went back to the place of youth. For a moment, he had to stop, he had to realize what he was doing  and why. Why write a book at all? There was no point in the money, there was little good feelings to be had from the topic, and even the idea of fun was entirely foreign to him.

Perhaps madly, he entered his own dream world and began to underline, scribbling, typing, cutting, cutting more, and then looking at pictures of reported institutions. One, Great Saints Home, had more than an odd name and a dark history.

This Haunting Of Saints, by Peter Gabels

There are the stories you hear at night and during day, but what are the true stories and why not let out that horror itself is now more of a  curious vehicle?

He stopped, scribbled it down, then continued, but the words seemed so old and plain to him, and he wanted excitement, he wanted demons and monsters and exorcisms and bloody battles, water therapies and shock treatments. Paul found, in this moment, why he wrote this book, why he wrote the other essays, why he stayed glued to stories of arcane and demonic possessions. Mom. It always was mom.

The institution, founded in the good years after the war, became more of a blight upon society. Governors wanted to shut it down—money going down the drain, said the republicans. Democrats wanted to spend more, let’s advance the cause of madness by stopping it with more therapies and better doctors. It is said the treatments Great Saints took acted more as causeways and instigators; they brought the demons out of them. And the nuns, and the priests, and maybe God, made a plan to stop insanity. The children wouldn’t masturbate and the girls wouldn’t touch themselves when they went through puberty. The angels they saw were in fact demons. Much like the times of witch trials, all you really needed to be crazy was one insane idea.

Perhaps more than that, Great Saints ended up evolving and becoming a place true to the people.

He skipped forward.

And when Great Saints was closed during the Kennedy era, little heartache was taken on it, few stories were told, and the boys and girls who’d been shocked, prodded, prayed over, blessed, sometimes raped, left the institution and walked the streets of Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, and the growing capital of Lansing. They, some of them, went back to school and made something of themselves. Most filled the prisons, while others found new homes in abandoned places, ending with nothing on their mind but how to get more drugs to stop the voices.  

And when did the haunting take place, when did the horrors begin for this building? We all hear stories. There is hell and heaven. But in between there is something too. The mindset for horror isn’t the thought or action, it is the idea which leads to action. There is something to be said for visiting the old asylum. You walk in it, as I did, you act like some scout for a rebel army invading a new home, and what you see isn’t blood and guts like some Frankenstein remake. No, you see horror as a vehicle, horror as blood, and horror more than all as an idea.

Closed. He opened his eyes, for he had been lost, and ended up falling over in his chair and looking at the small sticker stars on the ceiling of his room. They had been put there over a decade ago, when he wanted to see aliens and Star Wars and Star Trek, but he’d forgotten. Almost grinning, but not entirely, he pushed himself up and went to the desk. Yet he had no desire to continue, and wandered downstairs and sat at the table. The real story was people; maybe this thesis for horror being an idea put into action, which his father prescribed to, meant something to others, but being a child of Hollywood and TV, he wanted to see reality too. No ghosts and goblins, no monsters with ten eyes and mouths on their backs. Reality.

5

Paul went to the dining room table and sat with the book, “Madness of Babylon,” and began reading it loud. This triggered a brief memory: mom reading Revelations in this very spot. How could he remember? And how—

But it didn’t matter. The demon had returned. The phone was ringing. He coolly waited for the demon to depart, for the sound to say something to it, yet this female “Transylvanian Scarecrow” as he would sometimes call her, simply sat there, eyes open but entirely dead or in deep sleep. An odd apparition; he picked up the phone in fear.

“Yes.”

“Paul? It’s Joe.”

And by the time, about ten minutes later, Paul sat down and asked for a virgin drink, Joe had several in him already. Drinking real stuff, the good stuff, the watery grave, better than smoking cigarettes and surely better than letting the pain drive you insane.

“I rationalize this, but your dad is dead, and I can’t get  the picture out of my head.”

“What picture,” Paul said, sipping on the tasty fruit juice with small bits of strawberry and orange. “What are you talking about, man? What’s the problem?”

“Bro, you gotta listen to this. I don’t know who else to talk to.”

He sipped, Joe told, and he began to dream of beers and a free life on some distant shoreline, out of Michigan and the cold; down to the Caribbean like a Miller or a Hemingway.

“See, I just, I don’t know.”

“Spit it out, man.”

“I saw something.”

“We all see things.”

“No,” and Joe took a gulp. “No, I saw something I haven’t seen my entire time on the force. I wanted to tell you; you and your damn book—well maybe I shouldn’t damn  it—but I saw something strange and I wanted to ask you what it was.” Another gulp. “A ghost.”

“A ghost.”

“Yes.”

“What am I the ghost detective now?”

“You’ve seen things too.”

“How do you know that?”

“Men who spend half their time chasing demons tend to see things.”

“Where did you see this ghost? What did it look like?”

“It was,” and he slowed, slowed down, and tears hit his eyes. “I saw my mom and I wanted to tell you. I was at her grave—you know, she died of some cancer in the head—and I saw her spirit below me, in hell, screaming out for me to save her.”

Paul didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything, but could question the thought in his mind. He looked in Joe’s eyes and saw that glazed over look you see in alcoholics, sometimes crackheads too. He simply looked Joe in the eyes and waited for him to continue.

“Ya, I was drinking, but god damnit how else am I supposed to keep that shit down? I saw her when I was 22, just finishing my first year at the  academy, and I got messed up on some pills and I saw her. So am  I mad or am I mad?”

“People see things”

“Right.”

“I see things.”

“What do you see?”

“A demon, I named her Scarecrow because she rarely speaks. Her eyes are red and her skin is red. She has the oddest of complexions and the pain of a person in hell.”

“You see demons?”

“I see demons sometimes, or at least since dad killed himself.”

Joe pushed the glass of beer back. “I don’t think you’re crazy. You could tell me you saw  God, and after what I saw, I might be inclined to follow you up the stairs.”

“To heaven.”

“Right. Jacob’s Ladder. I believe in these things, but these days you either get  a TV show or go to the asylum, so you can’t really say you see ghosts and monsters, but in reality we all know they exist on many levels.”

“I  am researching a book,” said Paul, “and it’s getting hard to find concrete stuff.”

“I know what you need.” Said Joe Santiago.

“And what’s that?”

“You need access to the mental institutions of Michigan. You need to know where the serial killers went and where the  mad rapists were tied down. Right? Am I right?”

“Yes. But you’d get fucked if I did that. Forget your job.”

“I’ve been a detective for a decade. You’re my friend, and I don’t have many except the different colors in beer glasses. So I can help. I can get you access. I got people.”

“Right,” And Paul seemed as scared as excited. For a moment, a rush of happiness filled him and then fear. He would, he would have to go into each of these places, but first, he had to go see his mom and her final moments before she walked the ladder.

“And I can get it for you.”

Chapter 4

Returning to the ward where he’d first visited his friend Christopher Light’s wife, Mary, Father Thomas John stepped out of the elevator with his eyes open and his nose ready for the smell. You always get the kind of smell, the kind of sweat, tears, blood, and especially pills in places like this. Over the years, he visited dozens of them, helping girls and boys see the light and showing them God still cared, God  still existed, and God hadn’t forgotten them. Surely, he was the messenger of hope. He loved it.

“Father John,” said one of the orderlies, a black man with a wrist full of gold and excitement in his eyes, “how are you?”

“Good my dear man, very good.”

“Haven’t seen you in 2 years.”

“My apologies, but the life of a priest changes as he grows. He writes more and visits less.” Thomas put his hand out, shook the orderly’s, who motioned for him to follow into another room. There, sitting down amidst a pile of drawings but in an entirely clean and sanitized room (you could smell cleaner and blood combined), sat Alice Amy,  the young girl with such spirit. 

She didn’t say anything. Fear touched her mad eyes. She closed them , opened, almost expecting Thomas to disappear. I don’t want him here, her eyes said, but a small, mad smile touched her lips and she became somewhat aroused.

“Father.”

“Alice.”

He sat next to her, waiting for the orderly to leave, and when he did he pulled out his bible and went immediately to Revelations. He began reading, explaining the nature of the Anti-Christ and the beast with many heads. Again, little on hell for hell was on earth at this moment. He read only for a few minutes—tradition—and then he put his hand on her leg and smiled.

“You know the power of God’s love, Alice?”

“No, Thomas, please.”

“That’s Father John.”

“You’re not a priest! You’re a monster.”

“And you are on new pills? Do you have dry mouth? Do your eyes wander? Do you forget things? I can solve all your problems and more, Alice. Give me a kiss.”

She resisted, she stepped back from the table and her chair topped to the ground, eyeing that was within him and what would go into her. “No, not again, please, Thomas.”

“Father John.”

“What?”

“Call me Father John. Trust me, I am not going to hurt you,” And he put his hand to her back; she bit into him immediately, a tough and clean bite through the skin, and he went back, laughing.

Holding his hand and in no pain, Thomas continued laughing. “Ah, the feisty girl, the damaged goods thinking she’s far too good for this man of the cloth; oh, wouldn’t you see me and kiss me, today, Alice! We could go on such adventures.” He licked the blood off his hand, as though it pleased him. Alice, losing herself, fell to the ground immediately. He quietly pulled down her skirt and went to work, but she woke the first time he thrust himself into her and she bit him  even harder on the tongue, which had been close to her ear lobe, and he again didn’t scream out. Withdrawing, he laughed and walked out. She felt it inside her, beginning to scream and see things. She felt the demon within, and without thinking she chased him down to the elevator where he was speaking with the orderly. Eyeing him, hating him, she punched again and again. No pain, no emotion, but surprise.

“My dear, what is wrong.”

“Uuu.” IS all she could let out and fell to the ground.

Alice Amy became possessed several hours later. No one knew where it came from, but each time she screamed out in the real world and in her mind, she felt the orderly, the one from before, grabbing his heart with secret pain for her. 

Not knowing what else to do, this orderly left the ward for the day with his secret on the mind, but the extra cash in his pocket, though fleeting, was enough on his way to the bar to forget it like he always had. But Alice could never forget such an event, the same thing again and again, the demon within her pushing itself into her mind and screaming. And it had happened so many times before, him taking her, placing his burning demon inside her, withdrawing another day and leaving it up to the gods for when the demon decided to take him again. 

Amidst the screaming in the ward—which became more and more disturbed—there was also a sense of evil.

3

Paul Light looked at the first asylum in Michigan with the first recorded murder—of a priest—over a century ago. He had read this in no book, but the case file Joe Santiago had handed him along with a temporary badge. He’d come here with little idea on what phenomena he might see. Surely, in his waking dreams and in all the places he’d seen haunted, this took the cake. It had the burn marks from ancient fires, the stones in odd formation outside the tall metal fence, images on the walls, not entirely graffiti but a more maddening art. It all brought him back to the original file, one of the oldest cases in the East Lansing police records.

Oliver Jones, a member of the Knights of Columbus and a somewhat philosophical priest, had his mind on tearing down every mental institution in Michigan. He wanted the people here to be freed and treated like true patients and not as beasts who needed to be tied down and trapped in rooms for the rest of their days. This was the true horror of the older institution: it wasn’t the ghost who made you afraid, it wasn’t the nurses with needles; it was the straitjacket and the darkened room, day after day, week after week, so you wouldn’t hurt yourself or anyone else. 

And this was on his mind when he entered with the files in his hand. The lock was broken , as Joe said it would be, and a flashlight illuminated the doors and then opened up on the insides, slowly, through the broken glass windows. There wasn’t much on the 20-foot path to the asylum, but like a jail Paul felt like eyes were still on him, not guards but something from the other side in pain.

He shook his head, then gathering himself with the image of Father Jones on his mind, he entered. There wasn’t much to the place, but for what he was looking for happened to be abundant. Darkened rooms and odd odors, the kind of feeling you get when someone knocks on your door at night and you’re not expecting. His hairs went up, but his eyes kept focus and he immediately went down the first hallway. Two long hallways, one to the secretary office where visitors came and new patients were registered, and then one down “Madness Hallway” as someone had scribbled on the police record. But where would the Father have died?

To a small room at the end of the hallway, and finally to the obvious destination: a small chapel at the end of the hallway, with kneelers and  a large cross surrounded by chairs. A fort of Catholicism in hell. 

This was, according to what Joe had scribbled, where Father Jones had died, his wrists cut; some said he’d done it, others with less courage in condemning a priest to hell said one of his patients strangled him first. But there was little hard evidence, except that in a place of extreme danger a man had died as people are apt to do. 

“Phenomena?” he had asked Joe before