BY DR. AGONSON
There remains to me my sanity, which is more than what’s left to Ole Joe. Take some pity on him when he comes by. He wasn’t always mad. Poor Joe. He went mad, they say. I was with him. Anyone would go mad—What we saw, me and Joe—the world went mad first that such terrors exist. Anyone would go mad, I tell you, to see what we saw. It was hideous, and they all were bowing and praying to it, that thing. She screamed, that miserable woman, as it fell on her, its leathery wings encasing her, muffling her cries.
Bloodless! When it unfurled its wings and dropped her body, she was pale and lifeless, and there was no blood, just worms burrowing in her flesh. She looked like a long dead corpse; I hardly believed it was her. Dried out and eaten up she was, nothing but bones and skin when it dropped her on our heads. I don’t know if Joe went mad then. I don’t know who she was.
They all sang and danced around it in the darkness of that cavern, cutting at themselves with long knives so that the floor was slick with their blood. That was when Joe went mad, I remember now. The woman! What was a woman. The worms had burrowed deep inside her leaving her porous carcass like some fetid sponge. But the blood! As the blood came, each of those dark holes started throbbing, opening and closing like a hundred little mouths; each one sucking, awakened to the scent of the blood.
That’s how Ole Joe went mad. When they found him, he was raving about it, screaming about that giant bat and blood orgy and the woman, that poor woman, her carcass filled with thirsty worms. Never been the same, Ole Joe. I pity Old Joe, going mad. At least I have my sanity. They say what we saw we didn’t see. Don’t drink the water down there. Water! It was not water drove him mad.
I know what happened, but they can’t call me crazy. Try as they may. They’ll let me out, they have to. I’ll be more sane than the whole lot of them, and then they’ll let me out. But poor Joe, poor Ole Joe. He can’t stop talking about what he saw. I won’t tell, I won’t speak a word of it, but poor Ole Joe. All he does it talk about it, what was done down there. Even when he’s alone. All through the night, he lies awake mumbling about one little worm, just one little white worm, one thirsty little worm, that bit into him and scurried beneath his skin. Just a little worm, growing fat on blood.
I won’t talk about it. I’m sane. I’m saner than the lot of you. It’s Ole Joe, he’s crazy. He believes all this. I didn’t see the worm burrow deep into his flesh. I don’t feel it moving under my skin. I am sane. I feel bad for poor Ole Joe, he should stay here, but not me. I’m sane. I am the sanest of all men. There is not a man more sane than myself. Ole Joe tried to cut it out of him, but I wouldn’t do something like that. I wouldn’t try to cut the worm out myself, cut out that thirsty worm from my veins. That’s Ole Joe. Ole Joe, be kind to him, but he should stay here. Let me free. Let me go. It’s Ole Joe that’s insane, not me.
Tale Told 