The blood Stained Parasol by James Ravenscroft. Within the room were sounds that were
unpleasant to hear. They were dreadful, maniacal shouts of command, shrill cries
of terror, and more awful, because constantly broken by hoarseness and moaning of
infinite tenderness and sadness. He is in one of his spells. The intendant
said, perhaps it would be just as well not to see him now.
It is not a picture that you want to carry with you. The attendant's
voice was one of gentle solitude and pathos. Doubtless long service in the place
had made it so. It was a private sanitarium in the national capital for
the hopelessly insane, to which my profession as specialist and alienist gained me admittance.
The sound hypnotized me. I could not turn away. The small iron
grating at the top part of the window drew me like a magnet, and
I went and looked into the room. A pale faced, emaciated, wild
looking man standing in the middle of a bare mattress on a heavy iron bedstead,
was yelling and gesticulating madly at some imaginary object at the bottom of the
door. Get away. Curse you, get away, he cried, frantically.
Be gone, you brute, out of my sight. Would to God
I had burned you as fine as ashes. Oh. Oh. The groans
which ended the fury cannot be described. They were those of a soul and
agony. His whole appearance was that of one convulsed with a terror as of
death. At first he did not see me as I peered through the grating.
His eyes, bright with the glitter of madness, were fixed in a
fearful stare at the bottom of the door. It is over now for a
while, said the intendant. The words roused the man, and he raised
his eyes to the grating. A wan smile of relief broke the expression of
horror on his face, and he at once stepped off the bed and came
to the door. A heady sweat, not the kind caused by heat,
though the day was sultry, was on his brow and upper lip, and
his body, relaxed from the tension of the spell, as shaking with a
nervous palsy. He was clad in pajamas of some coarse white material, and
his feet were bare. Pardon me, He spoke in low tones and with
an accent of breeding, but that infernal dog distracted my attention and I didn't
see you. I am glad you came. I remember you quite well.
Indeed, you were doing intern work here, were you not. I yielded
to his humor, grateful that I could help to ease his tormented spirit,
and nodded affirmatively. The glitter in his eyes seemed to be intensified, and
putting his face almost against the grating, as though he meant his speech to
be confidential, he said, perhaps you saw her. His voice was almost
a whisper. She came in when I was dissecting. I was always dissecting,
then, always dissecting. Understand, I cut things up, alive and
dead, dead and alive. That was the beginning of the hell. He
said it, so sanely, so remorsefully, that I startled. Looked close
at him. Reason appeared to be reinstated on her throne. Then he broke
out again. I cut them to pieces, but I didn't burn the pieces,
and they escaped out the windows through the keyhole. They even hid in
the pockets of my clothes until I was on the street, and then they
would leap out and dart away. He moistened his thick, dry lips with
his tongue and took hold of the bars in the grating and went on,
No, I didn't burn the pieces. They escaped. That dog follows me
in pieces at night. Its feet scratched at the bottom of the door,
and its eyes look in between the bars of this window. Its red,
dripping tongue lies on the bed beside me, and its hot, horrible breath
smothers me. Its footsteps trod up and down the floor, and its hellish
moans and wines drive me crazy. Listen, it was alive. That's why
she struck me. A soft white thing. It was, and I threw
up my hands and caught it. She dropped it, and I took it
and kept it. That's it. Standing in the corner over there, involuntarily,
I shuddered and looked toward the corner designated by his gesture. There was
nothing in any of the corners. And after the dog is gone, she
comes. She comes, slipping, slipping. I can't hear, I can't
see her. She comes to get her parasol, but when she sees the
bloodstains on it, she turns to a ghost. I tried to wash the
stains out, but I can't. Every time I put water on them,
they spread. He leaned closer to the bars, and with one eye cautiously
on the attendant, he whispered, I'm working on a solution that will entirely
remove the bloodstains, so she will take the parasol, for when she does,
the dog will leave, and then I can get a long, quiet
rest. He paused and looked furtively around the room, and then began his
awful babblings again. He called piteously after me, as the intendant took my
arm and drew me away. I remembered little else that I saw in the
sanitarium. Tell me about him, I implored, as soon as we got
out of hearing of his cries. Who is he? How did he come
to be here? The intendant hesitated. Not everyone should hear that story,
he remarked thoughtfully, as if half talking to himself. But of course,
with you a specialist, it's different. He took me to a chair on
the porch. From them, I could see into a section of the grounds
of the inmates, where benighted beings were engaged in assuming their various and fantastic
roles of madness. His name I shall not tell you he began, for
that is a secret and very properly. So I shall only relate briefly what
happened to him as it came to me from his mother. His people are
prominent and wealthy. It wrecked his mother's life, but the only thing that
could be done was to give him up into this place. When they come
here to see him, they wait until he is comparatively free from symptoms of
an attack, and then they go look in the grating as you did.
Strange to tell he recognizes only one of them, a sister, but he
believes her to be a sister who died some two or three years before he
became insane. Every possible care is given him, and every famous specialist in
the country have examined him. They say it is useless to hope that he
will be raving mad to the end of his days. Then the furies seize
him, and he will hurl at his imaginary tormentors anything he can lift.
That is why his room has nothing in it but a bed, and that
is fastened to the floor with heavy cleats. The mattress, made of a
material that resists his nails, is securely attached to steal slats riveted to the
bed frame, and there is no covering. Blankets, spreads, pillows,
and cheets were given him at first, and he rnt them to tatters fighting
the dog. In the winter, his room is kept so warm that covering
is not needed. He was accounted one of the brightest minds at the medical
college where he was a professor. It was predicted that he would do great
things in surgery. He was making a special research in the field of vivisection.
As he himself said, every time he can get some one to listen.
That was the beginning of the hell. He was engaged to marry one
of the loveliest young women of his city. From what I was told,
she was as lovely in spirit as she was in person. The woman,
it is said, was the real force that moved his work at such amazing
strides. He was eager to give her of the very best of his energies
and talents. As a quiet and close observer of life, I am sometimes
almost persuaded to believe in fate. The story is that a whim possessed his
fiancee to go through the medical college, just as I presume as a whim
possessed you to go through this place. She said nothing to him of her
intention, for she wanted to surprise him. Two girlfriends accompanied her, and
together they explored. An attendant, who must have been exceedingly careless, was
directing them, and at a certain place in their adventure, fate willed that
he should be called elsewhere for a few minutes. In those few minutes,
a man was doomed to madness, a woman's heart was broken, and several
lives were made desolate. The place where the attendant left them was in a
corridor by a laboratory where dissecting and other experimental work was done. The doctor's
fiancee opened the door of the room and peeped in. At the opposite side,
a man, with his back to her, was working over some object.
She at once recognized the familiar figure, and as fate would have it,
she was seized with a caprice to steal up behind him, telling her
companions who he was and bidding them wait in the corridor for the intendant.
She went in, softly, closed the door, and noiselessly tiptoed along the
aisle between benches. If there had been more light, but why say if
other than if fate had not taken her there that day. Her lightly slippered
feet made no sound, and she stood behind him unnoticed. He might have
heard, but he was deeply engrossed in his work. She tilted slightly on
one foot and looked past him at the object which so held his attention.
She gazed a moment, and then, as though forgetting his presence, she
sprang to his side. A dog was stretched on a dissecting How she discovered
the tactics of mystery unless she saw with the inner and more penetrating vision,
But she did see evidence of life in an animal that had been carefully prepared
by all the modern methods as a subject for the dissector. The doctor dropped
his instruments and stood staring at her, speechless. Had she dropped from above,
he could not have been more amazed and startled. It's alive, the
girl gasped, yes, he admitted, you had better not look at it.
Please come away. How did you get here? The girl never moved
nor took her eyes from him. It is in the interest of science,
of saving and preserving human life, he began to explain. No doubt,
A cold fear was creeping into his heart at the sight of her. It
is done in nearly all colleges and hospitals. You know, the animal is
under a powerful anesthetic and does not feel pain. A moment more she stood,
So the tale goes as though transfigured. And then you fiend, you
coward, she screamed, as she struck him in the face with her parasol.
She swung it with all her strength for a second blow, and he
threw his hands to ward it off. There were red smears where he touched
it, and when she saw them, she flung the parasol from her and
swooned. Her companions, from where they were waiting in the corridor, heard
the scream and the commotion, and rushed in just as the doctor picked her
up and ran after him. As he carried her to another room, he
told them that she had fainted at the sight of the dissecting table. It
was a fatal day for the doctor. In his excitement, he had forgotten
to wipe his hands before he lifted the girl, and there were red finger
marks on her white dress. Almost as soon as she revived, she saw
them and swooned again. And when she again revived, she began trying to
tear off the dress like she had lost her reason. One of her companions
telephoned to her home, and fresh clothes were brought. It was perhaps all
of an hour later, when sick and too weak to walk, she was
carried from the room to which the doctor had taken her. That is the
end. The doctor pleaded with the girl's father and mother, but in vain,
she would never again permit him to see her. She said she would
as soon marry a murderer. Night after night he paced the sidewalk in front
of her home and went away only when the lateness of the hour and the
vacancy of the street made him conspicuous. He gave up his college work,
neglected his personal appearance, and at last became like a haunted man. Many
dark tales of what had happened were whispered among friends and acquaintances of the two
families. The girl became a nervous wreck, and finally her people broke up
their home and moved to a distant city. Then something in the doctor's brain
cracked, and well, you have seen for yourself, he rose, a
gentle reminder that he could not spare more of his time. As we shook
hands in parting, he said Vivisection may possibly be of service to medical and
surgical science, but it has nothing to do with love. The end of
the blood stained parasol