THE Mad Man’s Tale
By Shreya Venkataraghavan
“I walked; I walked down the road that wound up to that old place. The air was frosty, and so impudent as to raise the hairs on my body. This, without a doubt, enraged me. But nothing was powerful enough to impede my desire on that particular day; it was as if nature was excessively alive on that particular day. I continued along, completely unperturbed. My guardian angels, I was sure, were present. And all of a wonderful sudden something compelled me, no- something pushed me to stoop down on my knees and submerge my face into that vast, pretty yet shy bed of flowers that lined the entire road. I stayed there. An hour went by- a glorious, wondrous hour went by. I inhaled the angelic essence, multiple times- and yet, I was never satisfied. I had inhaled so much that I was sure I’d robbed those souls of their heavenly aromas. This possibility left me with the most painful pangs of guilt that enveloped my entire being. Oh! How would I now repent this blasphemous sin? I lay there. Yes, I lay there, contemplating this predicament whilst birds seemed to chirp away to the glorious calm and quiet of that particular day. NO! I roared as something clammy and evil seemed to grab onto my wrists. Now what wretched being was striving to destroy me? I finally opened my eyes, only to be absolutely infuriated. I had been made to lie down somewhere. I shot up, and facing me was an ugly, dilapidated old time piece that stood up against the wall. Upon viewing this, my fury morphed into a curdling rage. It was twilight, twilight I tell you! And yet, I had not been able to fulfill my desire! I wished great unrest upon the soul whose hands had brought me to this godforsaken old chamber. I stood up, and a wave of dizziness spread inside of me. But I was determined, yes- determined, to continue on my way. And in that damned moment the door creaked open. “Oh! Good evening sir! I wasn’t expecting to see you awaken any time soon! The physician insisted that you must rest adequately at least until dawn, please, have a seat”. I do not know why, but I simply complied. I suppose I was too disgusted with circumstance to react. A few moments of silence proceeded. I will make no pretenses here; I am in no position to enlighten you as to that man’s physical appearance. It was as though the fury threatening to spill from within myself was now foaming and frothing at the surface of my pupils. All I can say with reasonable surety is that he was rather old and bore countenance of my wildest nightmares. The man cleared his throat and began introducing himself, and my eyes were instantly drawn to the open window behind him. He rambled on for, well I don’t recall, for my blessed genius was already scheming away. I did eventually come to comprehend, however, that one of his men had found me unconscious on a dirt road. “Why I cannot thank you enough sir”, I cleverly said. “Really, I am forever indebted to you sir. Now, if I may be so bold, may I ask you for yet another favor?”. “Don’t hesitate another moment sir”, the old man replied. I requested a cold glass of water. Ah, if only one was there would the true genius of the moment be rightfully and truly understood! The man waddled away, just as I’d expected. I wasted not a moment. With all the strength that was left within me, I cried out loud, ran towards the window and leapt out onto the sprawling meadow! How brilliant!
I wasted no time, no time I tell you, in running towards my destination. With the passion burning within the pit of my spirit, I ran as though the ghosts of the wind propelled me. Everything surrounding me was simply a blur of color. In barely seconds, I was there. But he wasn’t. I looked. I looked again. I looked again. And again. At that moment in time, my fear was more intense than that experienced by any mortal since the inception of the humanly emotions. However, it must be noted that this particular overwhelm of emotion was not followed by the typical physical sensations. My heart did not beat any faster than it normally would. Instead, (and I swear upon some Almighty that this is quite simply true), it slowed down. It was as though I was slowing down. I recall acutely that when I first ventured to take another step forward, my foot, it was, it was slow. No, no! Ah I struggle to find words to with which to intelligently describe that experience. Well, I humbly beseech you to attempt to imagine yourself in my position. You are standing. You are standing and in front of you are two towering iron gates that lead to the cemetery. There is nothing between you and the wrought iron structures, in other words there is nothing to stop you from approaching them. You begin, as you usually would, by lifting one foot, when a sharp realization softly and slowly creeps over you. My foot, it moved as though it was immersed in some liquid. In other words, it felt as though I were wading in a pool of water. In such moments of strangeness, it is no longer a question of being rendered speechless. Indeed, such occurrences can extract the most devilish responses from the soul suffering them. Likewise, I began to dance. A rather brilliant dance I must admit. I waved my arms gracefully up and down whilst slowly kicking my feet up in the air. My dark locks seemed to sway in synchronicity with my artful gestures. I smiled very widely throughout all of this. I am certain that for some reason my teeth grew whiter and whiter as I reveled in my dance; I could simply feel it. I could. Truly. I do not recall for how long this dance continued, but I can say with extreme surety that it did not last long enough. No, not at all. As soon as my revelry was rudely put to an end, the bitter circumstance of reality hit me like a thousand acerbic leeches. He was not there. I was there. Yet he was not.” Such was the tale of the mad man who had been brought to the local police. A little over one minute passed. The mad man looked down at his feet. When it became clear that this strange man was not going to recount anymore of his grandiose tale, a huge weight seemed to spread about room. “And who is this ‘he’ you speak of sir?”, officer Joyce enquired in a voice that was unmistakably attempting to mask the trembling quivers of fear. The mad man turned to look towards the window with a jerking movement so rapid that the two officers in front of him shot up at once. There was silence, and more silence. No one dared to utter a word. Five minutes passed. Joyce leaned in to whisper into his chief officer’s ears: “What shall we do?”. The chief shot a deathly glance towards the young Joyce. No further communication took place.
For you see, the reason for this terror-saturated silence was the previous happenings of that dreadful day. The mad man had been brought in around four in the morning for he had been found unconscious atop a tombstone in the local cemetery. Nothing else was amiss but for a few fresh stains of blood on the fingertips of his left hand. Tenants in the nearby residences had reported the sight as they made their way out to the town that morning. It was a rather strange sight. His body lay draped over the tombstone, his head barely touching the yellowed grass, eyes shut tight. What was stranger was the blood. The back of his left hand and only the back of his left hand had a sheen of dried blood glazed over it. Everything else seemed in perfect order. His coat, his hair, all sat elegantly upon him as though it were a perfectly splendid morning. Soon enough a crowd of people had gathered around. No one seemed to want to disturb the oddly resting man. There was, for reasons unbeknownst to any of the folk present at the time, a strangely calm aura to the area around the tombstone. It was this aura that was preventing anyone from approaching the man upon the tombstone. Most agreed that the man was certainly alive, judging by the color of his skin and the absence of any apparently fatal wounds or injuries, save for that stain of blood. Now, when one imagines such a scene wherein overly curious crowds gather around to view some sort of unusual spectacle, one would typically associate it with noise, shouts, chatter, pushing, loud whispers, gasps, everything of the sort, really. Well, there wasn’t much of that for the tombstone man. The crowd was, by all means, large and ever-growing. However, it was silent. Very silent. Not dead silent, but very, very silent. Murders, robberies and other morbidities were not too unusual for the residents of this village and usually succeeded in stirring up commotion and mass disruption. Therefore, the silence described above seemed stranger than the tombstone man himself. It took about a half-hour for assistance to arrive from the nearby town center. A group of police officers including the chief, Joyce and a doctor forced their way through the crowd and to the body of the man. “He’s alive!” As soon as the doctor uttered those two words, it was as though the crowd was jolted out of a macabre trance. People began to approach the body, and had to be held back by the officers present. The crowd proved to be too large to handle at the time, however, hence the officers and the doctor swiftly lifted the body off the tomb and transported it to the carriages they’d left outside the cemetery gates. The chief and Joyce accompanied the doctor on the large carriage along with the body while the other two followed suit in another smaller carriage just a few yards from the cemetery gates. The man seemed to be trying to slowly open his eyes on the way to town as the doctor tried exhausted his kit trying to bring him back to consciousness. “It seems to me this man has not been in consciousness for a while”. The chief continued to eye the body almost suspiciously.
The rest of the ride to the police station was rather uneventful. As they approached the dilapidated structure that was trying its best to appear to be a proper police quarters, multiple officers rushed out towards the carriage. The mad man was carefully carried out and into the musty grey building. The chief ordered everyone to clear out except for his right-hand man officer Joyce and the doctor. It was at this point that things began to take yet another strange turn. For you see, the doctor was certain that the mad man was simply unconscious. The doctor continued to tend quietly to the madman as the chief and Joyce looked on. “I can’t seem to find any sort of trauma to his body...”, the doctor muttered under his breath. A few minutes had passed since the doctor’s remark when the statuesque body decided to stir. The mad man’s right index finger shot up for about a second before returning to its resting position. The doctor stood up and stepped back tentatively. It was a very strange and nearly questionably sudden movement. Both officers stepped towards the body lying across the cushioned sofa. The same occurrence repeated itself but this time with the mad man’s left index finger. Everyone chose to remain silent, more out of perplexity than fear at the time. After a few more seconds of uncertain anticipation, the man opened his eyes and began to gasp and cough as though he had been drowning. The man was given some nourishment which he reluctantly agreed to peck at. It was then that they saw a shift in his behavior. He went from seeming meek and afraid to going on to narrate the pompously lengthy tale of his recent adventure. Anytime he was interrupted or questioned in the least the mad man shot up from his seat and began to flail his arms about in pointless fury. It would then take a few minutes of pacifying, reassuring and restraining the man to get him to resume talking. We now return to the tense scene where the mad man describes a certain “he” that he was expecting to meet with at the cemetery. The mad man had gone silent suddenly, and officer Joyce had attempted to push him to reveal the identity of the man that he was expecting to meet. Joyce was then reprimanded by the chief who was now considerably exhausted from dealing with the mad man’s flailing tantrums. The chief sat silently in contemplation, staring the mad man down wondering whether he would resume talking. The mad man was now fidgeting back and forth in his seat with an uncanny halfsmirk on his face. Joyce noticed that the mad man had begun to make the strange movement described earlier with his index fingers. He looked over at his chief who was now visibly disturbed and at a loss for how to proceed. A beastly, almost underworldly roar-like scream interrupted the tense silence. It took both officers a moment to realize that this unearthly sound was emerging from the mad man’s mouth which was only barely open. The terrifying, guttural noise was loud enough for the chief to feel vibrations down his arm that was resting on the table separating him and the mad man.
Both officers felt frozen to their seats, neither daring to move an inch. Once the scream had ceased after what seemed like an eternity in a second, the mad-man simply smiled. He smiled, and he continued to smile. A cloud of ashes. The room was filled with ashes. So intense was the ash at first that neither officer could see through the plume in the slightest. The officers remained glued to their seats as they watched the ashes float around at an impeccably slow pace and settle down on the furniture and the floor around the old station. The chief snapped out of the trance like state he was in and fumbled about opening doors and windows in a hurried attempt to clear out the cloud. “Chief! He’s gone! The mad man! Gone!” Joyce was now looking around and around the room as though it was possible that the mad man had somehow hidden himself in some small nook. The chief did the same. He looked around and about the small station frantically and repeatedly. In this flurry of confusion, it took both men some time to realize that the ash was gone. There were no traces of it, not on the furniture, not on the floor, not anywhere in or outside of the station. They were now searching for ash and a mad man. “Chief! Chief!” Loud cries came from outside the station as multiple townspeople came rushing towards the building. “A man has been found murdered at the cemetery with two of his fingers severed from him!” Both chief and Joyce gave each other stony looks of horror.