Please Read:
The Darkness Between the Stars
Excerpt:
The sanitarium reeked of urine. It was a dark place, like a prison, but I had seen better prisons. Some of the madmen were chained to columns or manacled to the wall. They were the violent ones. Whether made this way by the years of their torment or whether it came naturally from their malady, they lunged murderously at me as I passed, mumbling incoherent phrases to themselves or shouting obscene threats at me. The silent ones, less dangerous, held more terror for me. I saw one, dressed in a nightshirt and long, white socks, just standing there, still, unmoving—a stone, a sculpture would move more than he. It was like, if indeed it was not the same, as if I were looking at a dead man standing right in front of me. His head was tilted upward. It was when I saw the eyes of the other one that I knew they were truly the living dead. This was seated in a worn wicker chair, an old crone, and I walked into her line of perpetual, unblinking sight. There was a spell in it, as if her great lethargy would spread from her to me by the invisible beam of her gaze. I shivered as we passed, as I was taken further down into the place.
Tale Told 