Read Online Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Fritz Leiber
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restaurant,” Franz told him, “and because you didn’t really invite me over until you were sure she wouldn’t be coming.”
“You writers are pretty sharp,” Saul observed. “Well, this happens to be a writer’s story, in a way. Your sort of writer—the supernatural horror sort. Your Corona Heights tiling made me want to tell it. The same realm of the unknown, but a different country in it.”
Franz wanted to say, “I had rather anticipated that, too,” but he refrained.
10
SAUL LIT A cigarette and settled himself back against the wall. Gun occupied the other end of the couch. Franz was in the armchair facing them.
“Early on,” Saul began, “I realized that Cal was very interested in my people at the hospital. Not that she’d ask questions, but from the way she’d hold still whenever I mentioned them. They were one more thing in the tremendous outside world she was starting to explore that she felt compelled to learn about and sympathize with or steel herself against—with her it seems to be a combination of the two.
“Well, in those days I was pretty interested in my people myself. I’d been on the evening shift for a year and pretty well in charge of it for a couple of months, and so I had a lot of ideas about changes I wanted to make and was making. One thing, the nurse who’d been running the ward ahead of me had been overdoing the sedation, I felt.” He grinned. “You see, that story I told for Bonny and Dora tonight wasn’t all invented. Anyway, I’d been cutting most of them down to the point where I could communicate and work with them and they weren’t still comatose at breakfast time. Of course, it makes for a livelier and sometimes more troublesome ward, but I was fresh and feisty and up to handling that.”
He chuckled. “I suppose that’s something almost every new person in charge does at first: cuts down on the barbiturates—-until he or she gets tired and maybe a bit frazzled and decides that peace is worth a little sedation.
“But I was getting to know my people pretty well, or thought I was, what stage of their cycles each was in, and so be able to anticipate their antics and keep the ward in hand. There was this young Mr. Sloan, for instance, who had epilepsy—the petit mal kind—along with extreme depression. He was well educated, had showed artistic talent. As he’d approach the climax of his cycle, he’d begin to have his petit mal attacks—you know, brief loss of consciousness, being ‘not there’ for a few seconds, he’d sway a little—closer and closer together, every twenty minutes or so, then even closer. You know, I’ve often thought that epilepsy is very much like the brain trying to give itself electroshock. At any rate, my young Mr. Sloan would climax with a seizure approximating or mimicking grand mal in which he’d fall to the floor and writhe and make a great racket and perform automatic acts and lose control of all his bodily functions—psychic epilepsy, they used to call it. Then his petit mal attacks would space themselves way out and he’d be better for a week, about. He seemed to time all this very exactly and put a lot of creative effort into it—I told you he had artistic talent. You know, all insanity is a form of artistic expression, I often mink. Only the person has nothing but himself to work with—he can’t get at outside materials to manipulate them—so he puts all his art into his behavior.
“Well, as I’ve said, I knew that Cal was getting very curious about my people, she’d even been hinting that she’d like to see them, so one night when everything was going very smoothly—all my people at a quiet stage in their cycles—I had her come over. Of course by now I was bending the hospital rules quite a bit, as you’d expect. There wasn’t any moon either that night—new moon or near it—moonlight does excite people, especially the crazies—I don’t know how, but it does.”
“Hey, you never told me about this
“You writers are pretty sharp,” Saul observed. “Well, this happens to be a writer’s story, in a way. Your sort of writer—the supernatural horror sort. Your Corona Heights tiling made me want to tell it. The same realm of the unknown, but a different country in it.”
Franz wanted to say, “I had rather anticipated that, too,” but he refrained.
10
SAUL LIT A cigarette and settled himself back against the wall. Gun occupied the other end of the couch. Franz was in the armchair facing them.
“Early on,” Saul began, “I realized that Cal was very interested in my people at the hospital. Not that she’d ask questions, but from the way she’d hold still whenever I mentioned them. They were one more thing in the tremendous outside world she was starting to explore that she felt compelled to learn about and sympathize with or steel herself against—with her it seems to be a combination of the two.
“Well, in those days I was pretty interested in my people myself. I’d been on the evening shift for a year and pretty well in charge of it for a couple of months, and so I had a lot of ideas about changes I wanted to make and was making. One thing, the nurse who’d been running the ward ahead of me had been overdoing the sedation, I felt.” He grinned. “You see, that story I told for Bonny and Dora tonight wasn’t all invented. Anyway, I’d been cutting most of them down to the point where I could communicate and work with them and they weren’t still comatose at breakfast time. Of course, it makes for a livelier and sometimes more troublesome ward, but I was fresh and feisty and up to handling that.”
He chuckled. “I suppose that’s something almost every new person in charge does at first: cuts down on the barbiturates—-until he or she gets tired and maybe a bit frazzled and decides that peace is worth a little sedation.
“But I was getting to know my people pretty well, or thought I was, what stage of their cycles each was in, and so be able to anticipate their antics and keep the ward in hand. There was this young Mr. Sloan, for instance, who had epilepsy—the petit mal kind—along with extreme depression. He was well educated, had showed artistic talent. As he’d approach the climax of his cycle, he’d begin to have his petit mal attacks—you know, brief loss of consciousness, being ‘not there’ for a few seconds, he’d sway a little—closer and closer together, every twenty minutes or so, then even closer. You know, I’ve often thought that epilepsy is very much like the brain trying to give itself electroshock. At any rate, my young Mr. Sloan would climax with a seizure approximating or mimicking grand mal in which he’d fall to the floor and writhe and make a great racket and perform automatic acts and lose control of all his bodily functions—psychic epilepsy, they used to call it. Then his petit mal attacks would space themselves way out and he’d be better for a week, about. He seemed to time all this very exactly and put a lot of creative effort into it—I told you he had artistic talent. You know, all insanity is a form of artistic expression, I often mink. Only the person has nothing but himself to work with—he can’t get at outside materials to manipulate them—so he puts all his art into his behavior.
“Well, as I’ve said, I knew that Cal was getting very curious about my people, she’d even been hinting that she’d like to see them, so one night when everything was going very smoothly—all my people at a quiet stage in their cycles—I had her come over. Of course by now I was bending the hospital rules quite a bit, as you’d expect. There wasn’t any moon either that night—new moon or near it—moonlight does excite people, especially the crazies—I don’t know how, but it does.”
“Hey, you never told me about this
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