A dark hall, only lit by 5 candles and a cigarette, filling the room with a faint devilish glow. But this faint glow could not illuminate neither the floor nor the walls. Even less the Gothic vaults acting as a ceiling or a capstone at the top of the vault carrying an unmistakable figure of a German swastika. The only window into the hall was covered up, but still one could hear the heavy thunder rolling behind it, as if it was emanating from the walls of the building. An air raid from the times of the World War forever recorded into the stone, only being released when the clouds were electrically charged like right now. The physics section in the library had a whole section dedicated to this phenomenon.

The man at the table flinched when the floor clock rang out, signifying the top of the hour with a rusty sound. He raised his gaze to see 4 wheels behind the dial turning to display a digital number in center. Magical mechanical piece of art, disturbing in its refusal to be understood. A floor clock needing to be wound up once every three months. Handiwork of the people from the lost physics department. A mechanism divorced from all influences that the world or other mysterious devices with forgotten purposes created in said faculty could impose. Measuring perfectly… the time. These devices had all been revealed during the excavations, enclosed into concrete sarcophagi sealed with wax, which looked like coffins at first. There were many mysterious mechanisms revealed but these wall clocks were some of the few with any actual purpose.

In the dark, this hall, the Green Hall, as it was once known, seemed to be a lot bigger than it really was. This was the room entrusted for him to use as his office. Maybe it was only a shadow of the times passed which stretched this room out. The shadow which was also revealing worlds enshrined in the times now lost and which had hidden undescribable secrets, endless halls of knowledge now walled off deliberately or by accident. The world demanding the return and throwing back into chaos everything that human had taken from it and set in an unnatural form, an order.

The heavy soul of time was everywhere. As if time was the thing which had worn the limestone floors smooth and weighed down the pillars into arches. Time had given the furniture, whiskey and tobacco the same hue. Time had faded the photos and paintings and eaten away the decorations on the facade until they were unrecognizable. Turning the former figures of greatness into mere shadows only visible in the corner of one’s eye. Still continuing their journeys unaware of any witnesses... Or were their journeys instead continuing them..?

The man gazed at the expanding ink blot on the paper. Under measured lines of words in thin elegant strokes. He gazed at the fountain pen itself. Black, made of strange stone, decorated with gold, silver and other precious metals. In the endcap there was a small ampule of mercury, while on the other end there was a small disc embossed with an alchemical symbol for both Mercury the planet, as well as mercury, the metal.

The long carpet on the floor, under a heavy wooden table and the chair, extending to the door. It also extended to the bookshelves on every wall. Shelves full of book from the floor to the edges of the vaults. The books which were so simple-mindedly trying to create a feeling of home. But without success. There was something about these walls, about this building, even the air about it. Something neither a warm floor nor live fire could destroy, something which scared all living things from the room as well as the building, everything except for man. Spiders did not put up their nets, flies did not eat your food, animals in cages would rather die trying to escape through the bars than stay in the building.

And in humans this was expressed in a strange wish… to die. To not feel or sense anything and to not move anywhere from the safety of the corner where three planes of stone met. A wish to not bear a soul or a spirit. Hell, in its purest form.

A heavy creaking which sounded like the strokes of the floor clock. The door was slowly opening, the reliefs cut into the door were accentuated by the movement. Reliefs of Judgment Day and the truth-seekers and researchers into the world left behind suffering in their own hell and abjection.

Completely countering the pressuring and disturbing atmosphere, a familiar young lady appeared from behind the door.

“Hi, professor!”

“Please.” The man at the table sighed and dropped the fountain pen. “I haven’t been a professor for a long time now.” He grabbed for the cigarettes and whiskey. “And the only two things I am now a professor of are whiskey and cigars.”

“But isn’t that all that professors and doctors of philosophies actually do?” The young woman asked. “You are still here, I see.”

“I am writing a report. To the officials. They are asking me about history, fully aware that I know nothing of it.”

The young woman stepped into the hall and tried the light switch.

“It doesn’t work.” The man said. “No electrical thing works properly in this hall.”

“What did the official gentlemen want this time? Something specific?”

“They always want something specific and it always seems to me that everything is clear for them even before they put the questions to me. Of what they want to know… they always seem to know more. This time it is about the fires in December of 1896, when the library in the Red Hall was destroyed. The first one on the 24th and the second on the 28th.”

“You mean when the Red Hall turned into the Black Hall?” The girl asked.

“Yes, that. But they are not asking about who did it or why, but about the wider plan, the astronomy of the time, the stars, what else was going here at the time, what was going on in the rest of the world. They want a short report, as if a snapshot or an excerpt of book. The actual chronicle of the Institute could be of no less interest to them.”

“Is it really relevant what they want, if in return they are willing to provide us with everything necessary for a good life?” The girl asked with a smile. “It is our job.”

“True, it is our job.” The man agreed. “But for what purpose?”

He sighed.

“Young lady you have been here for a long time now.” He said.

“Three winters come this year.” She replied. “I will finish my dissertation and then I’ll be leaving, maybe in a few months.”

“And in these snowless winters you have not felt that something is going on in here? That something is wrong? Out of order?”

“No, I have not felt like that.” The woman eyed the man with a pocked face at the table. “The Institute has clear rules for relationships with the external world. Nobody can fix the phone lines and radio is jammed by both the Substation as well as Radio Observatory which interferes with every signal in the air. The Institute seems to be just fine with it, as it seems to me.”

“There is no Institute here.” The man sighed. “At least not in the way as before. There is only a building full of endless hallways which end in sudden crude brick walls. Lots of locked doors, photos and paintings of people long since dead. From times and eras long since forgotten and only named afterwards. Offices and libraries full of books nobody will remember and nobody will ever read. High vaulted halls with thick dusty tomes. Unknown authors, of whom only their name has survived, provided that the language and the symbols used for it are legible at all. And of course people who have been old for an untold number of years, keeping all this up, taking care of it and carrying it forward. Perhaps not even knowing for what purpose, being the guardians of unknown truths.”

“This is a very negative view.” The woman smiled. “Artistic but negative. Anyway, I came to say good morning. And that in a few hours the next supply truck will arrive and the board has asked you to move your war wagon out of the courtyard before it arrives.”

“Yes, thanks for telling me.” The man sighed.

He looked at door closing. The young woman had to muster quite a strength to close it, as if the hinges had also been bent under the strains of time, taking the doors with them.

Dark loneliness descended the hall once more. And a few moments later the visit from the young lady had become a dreamlike memory, the origin of which one could only doubt. Which could have originated from his own fantasy or perhaps even the memory of the building. His gaze fell back on the fountain pen. It was their fountain pen, their envelope, their paper even. Their ink. Officials who had asked him to do this work were annoyingly bureaucratic, giving him all the equipment to write with and write on and later taking it all back. Never complaining about ink blots or grammar mistakes as if it wasn’t important, as if nobody really read any of the reports.

Still pondering various ideas, the man folded the paper and put it in the envelope, then sealed it with ink, using the seal of the Green Hall. This was an old seal of the Green Department – the Faculty of crypto-zoology. For a moment his gaze moved to the fireplace by the wall. A crude thing of red brick, with a chimney on top, built in place of an old entrance to the department. According to the old descriptions, it resided mostly underground, consisting of vaulted catacombs. Halls full of literature, but mostly samples in mineral oil, ethanol or formaldehyde.

From trivialities like petrified dinosaur droppings to unicorn horns, tentacles of a kraken, and taxidermied birds with a wingspans of several fathoms to a cornucopia of strange creatures conjured up from the nightmares of mad writers and artists which could not possible have been created by God or evolved from anything categorized by Darwin or Linnaeus.

Once more he revealed the tip of the pen, produced a new page and wrote a couple of lines of text on it. He then gathered up the pen, the sealed envelope and the note and having placed them in his vest pocket, grabbed his coat and stetson hat. He made sure he had a box of matches on him and then emptied the glass of whiskey, before placing the cigar back on his lips and leaving the room.

The door to the Green Hall was locked with a big hand-forged key, the most curious aspect of it was a swastika on the teeth. He could not but give a smile. This is how it always happened. Pureblooded Germans had come and taken over everything that others had left behind, branding it with their own symbols. And the Russians weren’t any better. This was about the clearest and easiest lesson one could learn from the history of the Institute. The signs of Himmler and Ahnenerbe were on the details only because it was one of the later segments of the cultural strata, one of the more shining ones, but also one of the thinner ones.

He lowered the key. Vaulted ceilings of stone. At its lowest point still taller than two grown men on top of one another, at the higher point maybe even taller than 4 of them. Dark wooden wall panels and electric lights on the lowest points of the vaults. A couple of low wattage incandescent bulbs every 4-5 meters. Enough to keep the hallways in a perpetual warm twilight not too dissimilar from the lighting in the Green Hall.

Nobody was ever alone in here. Regardless of if and how a person would explain different sensations and voices, pockets of cold, winds and smells inside the building. The images on the walls exchanging their position without notice. Sometimes the paintings even glowed in the night, with enough brightness to illuminate the entire hallway. Ball lightning which jumped from one bulb to another, exploding them with a loud clap and then disappearing through a wooden door without a single trace.

Even now, the smoke trail from the cigar was rising straight up and then, a few feet above his head it started to gather and dissipate, as if hitting an invisible barrier. If smoke from an open fire could be absorbed into a stone wall and soot from a candle be deposited onto a ceiling, why couldn’t a human soul soak into a building like his blood would into wooden or even stone floors? In the end, he left far more of his soul in here than he ever would his blood, even if he died here. It all remained.

Main door of dark wood lied ahead. The steps on the grand staircase reflecting dull light. A building which should have been something like a university, but never managed to function like one. Much rather being more like an archive or a library than an educational institution. Calling it scientific was also a hard press. It was a trophy room. A trophy room of a very large collective.

He walked down the steps of the staircase. On either side of the stairs there was a massive pillar on which ha vertical bar of black granite stood, listing the name of this institution: Balto-German Esoteric Institute of the University of Yuryev.

His gaze stopped on a mirror by the wall. The wardrobe on the left was almost derelict, only dust lingered. In this fashion it looked as ghostly as an abandoned children’s playground with no children playing. Where only rusted helmets, old gas masks and broken dolls remained.

He focused on his own reflection. Slicked back almost black hair, strong brow line dark eyes and a wide yet high nose. Slightly fallen cheeks revealing his true age. The end of the cigar on his reflection grew brighter and he turned away from the mirror, heading towards the front door. He could already see the Official through the window squares, leaning on his car. Black suit and tie, white shirt, spotlessly clean as if new black shoes and a bowler.

“Professor Kotkas.” The man raised his hat, but did not smile. “Do you have the report?”

“Yes, mister...” he started but then looked at the vehicle the man was leaning on. Deep piano black paint, similarly blackest of black leather interior, looking similar in material to the shoes this man wore, and that similar faintly neon glow to it.

“Mister.” the Official stopped him. “You know we don’t use names, don’t you? And the writing implement, please?”

“I thought I could keep it.” The professor said, giving a faint smile, he took the cigar out of his mouth. “I mean, as long as I am in a working relationship with you.”

“Unfortunately this is impossible.” The serious visage of the man did not change. “I am under strict orders to retrieve everything that was released to you. When we have a new assignment for you, then new equipment shall be released.”

“In that case… can you deliver a note to the head doctor at Luiga?”

“Yes, this is possible.” The Official said.

“Very good.”

He handed the man the pen, an envelope and a folded note.

The car that the Official was using, not only had almost brand new paint, it also had brand new chrome with almost mirror quality. Even the accents and lettering on the rear fins. Even the hub caps on snow white whitewalls.

“Fifty eight was a good year.” He said, still admiring the car.

“This time this machine was produced for us.” The man said. “When we return, it too shall return...”

The man stopped talking suddenly as if he had said something he hadn’t wanted to. He tried to smile, but could not, as if his whole face was paralyzed.

“Until we meet again.”

The man raised his hat and then got into the car, which then drove off without making a single sound.

For a few moments, the professor looked at the car leaving and how it managed to float over the pot holes in the road without the slightest disturbance. He then went to get his own car out of the one remaining courtyard of the Institute.

*

Professor Kotkas or doctor Jaan Kotkas, he wasn’t particular about how he was addressed. Now he himself was leaning on a dark green four door car. This one with its truck-like sound, size and looks disturbed the locals as the Northern Official’s finned limos. And why should it not have? The brand was the same, but the era was slightly different. And now he was also looking as if he was waiting for somebody, having parked it in front of the main entrance of the Institute. He looked at the sky, a uniformly gray morning cloud cover. No way had this been the source of the thunder he had heard inside.

He was now drinking coffee, looking at the destroyed embellishments on the facade of the building. There weren’t many buildings where sickle and hammer stood side by side with SS runes. However the reason was not that the met here as equals. Here, the content was far more important than form. And thus some of the signs and marks from the upper area were missed when removing others. The stone eagle sitting on the side wall of the observatory on the main building was reportedly removed pretty quickly.

It was an early morning hour and yet the street were full of people. Even more so than usually, when the town looked abandoned. Silent people shuffling around, eyes empty, gathering towards their holy place, the post office, to receive their monthly state pensions. This happened every 30 days and every time there was something disturbing and alien about this sight. As if a large number of patients had escaped from Luiga. Wandering the streets, looking for the first shining connection to make, an idea or object, which could be a reason for cracking open the nearest skull. Never mind that standing on this street, everybody seemed to walking around the corner, onto the street which passed the hospital and headed straight towards the ruins of the old Gothic church and the disused cemetery. Through which the Russians built a railway, because it was “necessary.” Of course nobody had ever seen any trains using these rails.

And thus it was that the yellow grass was now taller than most tombstones. So that in strong winds one could only see bent and askew iron and broken stone crosses. Abandoned and cursed land where nobody wanted to go even in daylight, never mind darkness. In darkness there was also the danger of stumbling and being badly hurt or outright skewered by some old yet sharp a piece of funeral plot decoration. There were times when people could hear screams for help coming from this old forgotten cemetery… and only come morning would the ghastly sight reveal what transpired in the night.

His gaze had stopped on the faded hood of the car, but now he was being roused from his thoughts by a familiar noise. An old Soviet three-axled military supply truck. As it was built to traverse terrain with no roads whatsoever, the potholed main street repaired with crushed rock and cold asphalt was not much of a challenge to it.

The truck stopped by his car and two young men in military uniforms jumped down form the cabin.

“Professor Jaan Kotkas?” one of the men asked.

Neither his nor his comrade’s uniform had a name tag.

“A message from Luiga.”

The man produced a folded paper form his front pocket and handed it to the professor, climbing back into the truck afterwards.

The professor continued to sip his coffee. This building and the peculiar properties it possessed had not yet managed to cool his drink down. He unfolded the paper and locked at the familiar handwriting and an affirmative response. He finished his coffee and placed the mug n the corner of the step on the entrance stairs. If nobody else collected the cup in the mean time, then he would do it himself when he returned.

So, to Luiga. Hospital for Experimental Psychiatry named after Juhan Luiga, as it was officially titled. Before that though, there was one other place he had to visit. He walked around the car, got in and started the engine. He needed fuel. And for that he needed to turn to a local guy nicknamed Village Dude. As he had almost the monopoly of supplying the locals with gasoline, potatoes, grain and animal products, he had exclusive use of the nickname. In a stroke of fortune his ancestral family lands had remained untouched and uncontaminated from the activities of various surrounding Soviet Era “proms”. Therefore he was the largest local employer and all the food products the locals did not consume, he traded for fuel. Damned if anybody knew why the Northern Officials needed that grain, as they should have had far better ways of sourcing it. Still, it was suspect. What was also suspect, was the disappearance of the Village Dude’s family. Nobody had seen them for a long time. Not in town, not around the man and his household. The man himself also said little about the issue. Maybe they had already left for some larger settlement, but suspicious still.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

*

Some time later he was back on the road. With a full tank, full canisters and two bottles of fire water which Peeter the Village Dude distilled himself. As per his own words, “every batch was as pure as can be, and checked with a chromatography afterwards.” The rusty color was reportedly from the vats he used for maturing the product. However the professor could not get a straight answer whether these were wooden or metal vats. However the taste was not too bad.

This lonely and unearthly road which lead to the hospital. Relatively easy corners and good road surface quality, with the road in between fields with no trees anywhere nearby. Only a row of towers for high tension lines heading towards the horizon. A place where the landscape played a trick on human organs and what looked like a long shallow descent was in reality a sharp climb. How such a phantasm was even possible in this area looking like a steppe, was a mystery to him. Perhaps the good doctor could cast better light on it.

The turns became sharper until the road finally ended with a massive wrought iron gate and a tall fence area. In addition to the steel rods, there was also small-gauge chain-link added and the top of the fence had coils of razor wire on top of it. This would have been quite a secure facility if the massive gate were not wide open. And from the slight sag on both halves of the gate and the bottoms of the gate having sunken into the road surface, it seemed that the gate had been wide open for decades now. Behind the fence there was a large overgrown park in the middle of it was a long alley leading to a pale gray complex of buildings and a large tarmac courtyard.

Dark green, almost off-black old car rolled into an empty courtyard in front of a pale five-story building reminiscent of barracks. The tarmac in the yard was patchy and broken with grass and shrubbery growing in the cracks. There was nothing noteworthy about the building. This wasn’t some 19th century facility, not even a Stalinist one, it looked like something erected in the 1980s out of pre-fabricated concrete panels. Or maybe there was one thing – all windows on the top floor were crudely bricked off. All other windows were barred, even the smallest ones used of ventilation, through which maybe only small children could escape.

The tarmac that was still intact, was as dull as the old car on it. A bit further away, by the rusty windowless doors, there were several old ambulances. Smaller and bigger ones, some with a more rounded and older design, and some of them newer, relatively speaking, for example one particular one was a minivan made by Riga Automobile Factory. Wheels rusty, tires flat. There was no way of telling whether any of them were in use. Whether anybody had moved them at all during these past decades or not. Whether these was there any motive components like engines and such left underneath the bodies or were there merely museum pieces deliberately creating an abandoned look for the place.

His sight was then attracted by on old bell tower at the distance. The belfry was still intact, but the spire was half-collapsed. He then realized the old Stalinist main building was behind the newer and simpler-looking buildings and there was another cracked tarmac road leading to it. He could already see the tall parade doors of the hospital, and a nurse in a standing at the door, herself being less than half the height of the door. As he got closer and finally parked the car he saw that the door between the massive pillars really was over 3 meters tall.

The nurse was also something to behold. She was of average height, wearing white open stiletto shoes. Her figure and looks were more than perfect almost dreamlike, with the right amount of curves, along with a surprisingly narrow waist. Her uniform as well, was more of a parody of a nurse’s uniform rather than actual uniform of a hospital. It accentuated her body in all the right places and barely covered her upper thighs. Her face was likewise impossibly beautiful with large olive-colored eyes, sharp nose and chin and high cheek bones Her long loose hair was black. There were however small shaved areas on her temples on either side of the head. She also had a peculiar smile on her lips.

“Hello.” The man raised his Stetson. “I’m the professor, I sent the note via courier. Is the doctor ready to receive me?”

The woman said nothing, just gave a slight nod and gestured the professor to follow her. The walked along the main hallway of the hospital. The building was deathly quiet. The interior reminded him the most of the Institute in the town, as if the decorations in both buildings were chosen by the same people. However here, the floors were mostly of stone, large rectangular concrete tiles. On the walls there was dark wooden paneling to about a meter of height, with high vaulted ceilings in simple roman arches.

After the hallway they continued through a gallery 2 floors high with tall windows ending in archways. Through the windows he saw a small park in desperate need of a gardener. Or perhaps even complete overhaul. Maybe once in the past had it been very beautiful and a fitting addition to the hospital with its restrained design, but by now it was something feral, a place where one could find animals even, or... possibly some other fauna even more appropriate for a mental asylum.

A long open gallery, full of chairs, furniture and dried leafy tropical plants, but otherwise neat and clean. But to him there was something repulsive about it. Maybe it was the daylight through the high dirty windows being smeared across the walls and floors, this careless clinical aura. Or perhaps a large wooden crucifix which seemed to have fallen off a wall and was now leaning against it at an angle. Strangely it was half-burnt.

The woman stopped in front if a tall but narrow pair of white wooden doors. She pushed them open and revealed a much less of a grand office than the professor had expected. Sure, the ceilings were high and there was parquet flooring but it had but one window and most of the furniture was Soviet era chipboard, with the corners on the table slightly worn. Behind the table the was a man with graying slicked back hair in a lab coat. High forehead accentuated by a receding hairline, especially on the sides, cold pale blue eyes, close by and sunken in. No eyebrows and a narrow slit of a mouth above a pointy jaw.

“Doctor Sare?” the professor asked.

“Oh?” the doctor raised his gaze from the table.

“Oh-oh.”

He put the glasses back on.

“It is you?” he asked in a suspecting tone.

“Jaan Kotkas, yes.” the Professor said.

“Yes.”

The doctor turned around on his chair for a second and started reaching for a file cabinet. He then turned back and finally recognition appeared on his face.

“Hello, old friend! Damn it, I did not even recognize you at first. I‘m getting old!”

“Happens to the best of us.” the Professor replied.

“Please take a seat. You want something? Tea, coffee, rotgut?”

“No thanks.” The Professor said. “Wait, rotgut?”

“Well, yes.” He glanced at the nurse. “Doctor Toomik, you may go.” The woman left the office without further interaction.

“So rotgut, yes. I myself for years now…,” he revealed a tea glass and a bottle of vodka, then filled the former to the brim, so that the surface tension was holding the very last bit on top of the glass. “I myself for years now cannot get a the workday properly started until I have had my regulatory tea glass. This is of course a prophylactic measure. Helps me deal with the inevitable day to day crap.”

“Crap?” The professor asked. “Something more than a daily routine?”

“The crap is the daily routine.” The doctor smiled. “Too many patients, too few employees. In addition, sometimes, some of the few remaining patients manage to get out of their rooms and go for walks. Some merely walk, others get violent. Some hit their head against the wall until they break their skull open, or cause organic damage to their brain. Usually, we get them back to their cells relatively quickly, but we still have not apprehended the culprit who leaves door open of forgets to latch them properly. Simply, a lot of headache.”

“These Officials,” he continued. “Have given us the necessary equipment all required information to do our jobs, but they simply cannot understand our need for a few good strong young men to do the work of the orderlies.” The doctor gave a deep sigh. “It was even worse at the beginning, naturally. There was only me and ms Toomik. We had to hunt for the patients with a rifle all over the building.” He twisted the cap back on. “You sure, you don’t want any?”

“Okay then, pour some.” The Professor smiled. “Makes one aim straighter and driving more fun.”

“Why worry about driving? There’s no police anyway.” He leaned across the table. “Truthfully, I should not drink, but...” he then straightened back up. “but nobody has complained yet. Speaking of driving, how’s your boat?”

“Drives, moves.” The Professor laughed. “How about yours?”

“To be honest, I sold mine when I came here. I have no need for it, there’s just so much work. And If I want to go anywhere, I can take the ambulance or requisition a car from the Officials. I live on the premises here, in the old house of the head doctor, with ms Toomik. It has been updated slightly as well. The Crazy Woods are a scary thought though, but we have our weapons.”

“The Crazy Woods?” the Professor asked. “I’m sorry, I haven’t bothered familiarizing myself with the local points of interest, despite staying here for so long.”

“Oh, yes, it is your first time here after all!” The doctor said, getting up. “I apologize for not offering this at once!”

He walked to the map on the wall and started point out various features.

“This is the territory of Luiga. About 40 hectares in total. The building itself.” He pointed at the H-shaped complex. “This is the defensive perimeter that people would not get out. Three meter high brick walls. This part here,” he pointed at a small circle behind the rear bell tower, “is the graveyard. There’s about a hundred unmarked graves there for deceased patients whose body nobody has come to reclaim.”

“At the time of construction, the hospital itself was the cutting edge of psychiatry. The first line is for rare afflictions, lower floors hours the most tame patients, it only gets more violent when moving up the stairs. That’s why the fifth floor is called the Red Floor. The rear-most line of the building was originally for the criminally insane, that’s why the name Alpha-block. Women in the left, men in the right.” He turned, still in thought. “I think that is all. Oh, one more thing. This hospital was of a level so high that each section had its own helipad, plus two on the main building. And the Crazy forest is this patch of forest here.” He pointed at the upper left corner of the map.

“And what’s the story behind that?”

“As I mentioned before, at there was only me and Toomik. When the Union collapsed, this hospital of natural significance lost all semblance of order. Some patients revolted and killed the personnel, others remained locked in their cells and died of starvation. Others escaped into the wider world, but a lot decided to take up living in the Crazy Woods. By now, we have recovered most that survived, but by our estimates, there may be 5 to 10 people still at loose in the Woods. And I am in no mood to actively go looking for them. It is much easier and safer to… hunt them, when they are out in the open. Tranquilizers, we only use tranquilizers, unfortunately. You still carry your cannons around?”

“Cannons.” The Professor grinned, nodded when the Doctor wanted to top off his glass. “Yes, I have one on my and the other in the car. Same caliber.”

“May I have a closer look?” the Doctor suddenly seemed interested.

“Why not?” The Professor produced a massive revolver from under his waistcoat, opened the cylinder and removed five rounds.

The doctor took the silver gun with wooden handles into his hand, examining it from every angle. He opened the cylinder.

“And the ammo for it..?”

He handed the gun back and took a single round,

“Wow, it more than a centimeter in diameter and nearly seven long. Pretty heavy also.”

“The bullet on top of the round is 32 grams of lead. Will travel a couple of kilometers out of a repeating rifle.”

“And the repeating rifle is in your car?” The doctor gazed at the round between his fingers. “A nice piece of artillery you have there.”

He watched as the round went back into the revolver and the gun back under the waistcoat.

“Hows the work in the Institute?”

“I think we lost the most interesting items when all the witch doctors’ remains were delivered to your establishment.”

“Yeah, those Northern Officials seem to have a very profound interest in this. I can’t even fathom why.” The doctor grew quiet for a few moments. “I apologize for asking you now, but what is the exact subject you achieved your doctorate in?”

“Modern Satanic Philosophies.”

“Oh yeah, right. And one can specialize into this subject so much that a doctorate can be attained?”

“Are you doubting that what I study and research is a true science?” The professor asked.

“Well. I have great respect for how you earn your keep, but it is not exactly a classic science. And pulmonary science seems like a very wide field, while yours looks quite narrow. And utterly uninteresting.”

“Pulmonary science? In a psychiatric hospital?” The professor asked.

“The board for medical ethics severely overestimates its competence.” The doctor sighed. “They were of an opinion that I drink too much and no longer allowed me to practice in a mundane hospital.”

“My condolences.” The professor said with indifference.

“No need.” The doctor smiled. “Here I have a much better a position than I would there. Although it is not exactly my field, I have complete freedom to arrange things as I see fit. For example, me and Toomik have with singular success resurrected several medical techniques previously discontinued due to being perceived as barbaric. Lobotomies, insulin shock therapy, electro-convulsive therapy. Dunking is freezing water… Even some techniques considered abject torture with no medical benefits have shown great success on our patients.”

“Experimenting on patients like the Germans when they were looking for racially pure Aryans?”

“No of course not!” The professor said. “Doctor Toomik works in that field. And those are not experiments, at least not the kind of exploring terra incognito that the Germans did. Wir haben Regeln und Ordnung. The treatment procedures have been created in concord with the Northern Officials, to work with equipment they supplied, based on the data they collated. So there would be no doubt that these procedures are beneficial.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” The doctor smiled again, although his smile looked more like an evil grin. “Come on, lets go and have ourselves a little tour. I will show you some of our patients and what we have achieved with them.”

“Why not.” The professor said, getting up. “And yes, I still have some deep doubts concerning your claims.”

“Let all of them be toppled. Can you wait for a moment, I will bring ms. Toomik along.”

*

“The introduction I am planning is actually quite short.” The doctor explained when the three of them were walking towards the central section of the building. “With timed precision something always happens here. I cannot understand, whether it is about the ingenuity of the patients or a rogue employee working in opposition to us, but we have too many people who end up getting loose.”

“I think my one gun and 15 rounds may not be enough. I am also starting to doubt the sign on your office door.”

“I may be a head, but if there is nobody to head up...” the doctor grinned. “...Then none of the newer or older gods can help you. Don’t worry about it. Me, Toomik and the orderlies can handle ourselves. And speaking of your cannon, we have much better things to play with, should the need arise. The only ordnance we have are tranquilizers, but a fully automatic smoothbore with a 20 round drum.”

“Nice.” The professor said.

“Oh yeah.” the doctor raised his arm around the shoulders of the woman. “We had to fight for it, but we got it.

“It is possible we have a lone saboteur and sooner or later they will be revealed. Probably sooner. Also, I am only showing you our White wing where some of the locals have ended up in. I know you like everything ghastly, but I would not like to traumatize a long-time friend with the details on various complicated pathologies of the mind. Sometimes it is quite magical how colorfully and creatively a boring diagnosis may actualize.”

“Do you have something more dreadful?” the professor asked with interest. “Something pertaining to my interests?”

“I have plenty of stories.” The doctor grinned.

He opened a door to a long narrow hallway with no doors or windows, only dirty skylights in the ceiling.

“Years ago, when the hospital was closed down, nobody really cared what happened to the patients. As I said before, many escaped to the forest, some died on the mine fields, some were shot by rich tourists who thought them to be peculiar cryptids.”

“But then there were some weird ones, who bricked up almost every window and doorway in that rearmost Black Wing. This crested a maze of horrors, where insane people acted like… I cannot say like animals, because animals could never do anything so disturbing to one another… A total of seven floors of hell, especially for anybody sane.”

“On the most bottom floor, the second sublevel of the basement, we discovered a mouth of a tunnel, which seemed to descend to passages even deeper underground. And I could swear, that at the mouth of that tunnel I heard faint singing, chanting. As if some strange congregation was in worship… I cannot even imagine what. We sealed the tunnel up the first chance we got.

The doctor fell silent for a moment.

“It is possible we sealed in many of the patients alive, but I had no people to go exploring. And I had to think of my colleagues first. Here we are, the white wing.”

“If I may ask, what’s over there?” the professor pointed at a dark hallway the opposite way. “That’s the Black Wing you mentioned?”

“Yes, there it is.” The doctor nodded. “After what happened, I no longer wanted to keep any patients there. It would have probably been as traumatizing for them to live there as it would have been for me to discover it. Most of the patients I found on my first expedition are still in the hospital as patients. But the Northern Officials had a wonderful idea for the building. And now these are used to raise pigs. They are experimenting with raising human organs in pigs.”

“So it’s possible?” The professor asked. “Last time I head, there were scientists working on it far away in America and Switzerland.”

“Quite possible.” The doctor agreed. “our little republic has some of the most cutting-edge technical applications which are experimented with in my hospital, among other places. This also solves the need for pork both for our hospital as well as for the towns nearby. All the pork available there comes from here.”

“So you’re keeping the livers for yourself, sell off the rest of the organs and whats left over you throw on the grill?” the professor joked. “I may lose my taste for pork like this.”

“You’re going about it like I did at the beginning, aren’t you? That we feed medical waste to people? That somewhere there is a hospital of horrors where every kind of an unpleasant joke about medicine is a daily routine? Where the canteen indeed does offer fresh cancer daily?” The doctor asked with a smile. “I can personally assure you that this is the cleanest and most sanitary slaughter house within a couple of hundred miles. The product here, be they human organs or meat product for food, has to pass the strictest available screening. I trust in it so much that I have discovered a whole new variety of culinary delights. Which miss Toomik can prepare most aptly.”

“So. The white wing.”

The doctor opened the door into another narrow hallway. In the right side wall, there was a door every five or six meters, some of them kept banging as if something heavy was repeatedly being thrown against the doors. Here, the Professor finally saw another employee, a strongly built male orderly whose bodily proportions made well over 2 meters tall. Indeed, he had to bend slightly to not hit his head on the ceiling.

On the wall opposite the doors, there were benches, and on one of them, there was a girl or a young woman wearing all black. With a skirt just short enough and boots just tall enough to only reveal her knees. Next to her was a plastic bag.

“And this here is where our dear doctor Toomik works.” The doctor said, pointing at the first door in the room.

“A Lobotomicum?” the professor asked.

“It is not as bad as it looks. It is more of a disturbing private joke between us two and the orderlies. On the other side of the Lobotomicum is the Anatomicum. This perfectly unites both specialties of the dear doctor.” Doctor Sare smiled, as if wishing to insinuate something. “Of course in neither area can one discern that the other is merely a door away. We do have some civilities left in us. Let’s move on.”

He walked to the next door, opening a small sliding cover in front of a small view port with no glass. He then took a look inside.

“For a time, this was our local super star. Have a look.”

As soon as the doctor neared the view port, a strong smell of human excrement assailed him. It looked like the patient was using his nose and face to paint strange shapes onto the walls, using his own feces as the medium.

“There is a sad story accompanying him.” The doctor said, closing the cover on the view port. “He was violent, so violent that orderlies often left him in the strait jacket for up to a day at a time. One time an orderly tightened the sleeves, ropes and the belts so intensely that to save his life, doctor Toomik had to perform an emergency amputations of the upper limbs. He has been painting these figures since.”

The continued to the next door.

“This unfortunate soul...” He took a look into the chamber. “...we picked up on the road to the Trainyard. He had no idea who he was or where he was. He could only repeat that he was not himself and that one line had four ends. Don’t ask me what it means. There are some days like today when I have no idea why we’re keeping him here.”

The doctor let the professor take a look at a perfectly normal -looking young man standing in the middle of the chamber as if expecting a visit.

“But there are other days when I wish we could move him up in our treatment scheduling.”

Professor’s gaze stopped once again on the young woman on the bench. Loose dark brown hair, reaching down to her elbows, soft cheek bones and brown eyes. In her hands there was an old photography camera, which she proceeded to use to snap an image of the professor, the doctors.

“This one here…” The doctor continued without paying the woman any attention. “...is a local school teacher. He is one of our brightest examples of success. Before doctor Toomik started with her procedures, this man was disturbed and violent. He kept complaining that the ‘sky people’ came and took away his… we think it was an imaginary girlfriend. But now I am almost certain that soon we can release this man and present him to my colleagues in psychiatry as a triumph in redeveloping the old approaches.”

“Almost?” the professor asked. “So he is not completely cured?”

“I would not dare to say he is cured. Sometimes he still seems to suffer from his delusions, repeating unconnected sentence fragments, which he cannot explain nor even recollect uttering.”

As the professor took a look into the chamber the patient sitting on his bed in straight jacket did indeed speak.

“That’s why I remained, Because of that I looked, I went there early...”

The man’s mouth remained open as he stopped talking and then locked eyes with the professor, sending judders down his spine.

“...to stop him, you know? But I was late.” The young man continued.

“As you can see.” The doctor sighed. “This is the clearest part he is repeating. Sometimes he says that he is not here, but somewhere else. That his brain is in a glass jar and all of reality is an electro-chemical illusion. Non-invasive procedures have not produced a desired result so our only chance seems to be to trust his health to doctor Toomik again.”

The doctor smiled and glanced at his colleague who was spinning her preferred tool between her fingers, a silver rod with a handle on one end and a sharp point at the other.

“In any case.” He opened the next view port. “This is our current star patient. Teet Metsla, also known as the Cigar Cutter. OR as the locals know him, the Cutter of Devil’s Bog.”

“It is interesting that I have never heard of him.” The professor said.

“He is a well-kept secret, let’s be honest.” The doctor said. “This emaciated man, who… are these butterflies he’s painting?”

The professor also took a look inside the chamber. A man who seemed to be only skin and bones was standing in front of a canvas and holding a brush.

“Yes, these are butterflies above a bog, he’s painting.”

“Yes, butterflies above the Devil’s Bog. He has done this for years now. We have saved all his paintings, of course. For scientific purposes, I assure you, there is no particular variation nor artistic value to them. Other than him having learned to express himself artistically.”

“But this as skeleton-like man chopped up 37 youngsters. He let them exsanguinate. He tried his best to avoid anybody younger than 18, usually he sacrificed women on their period on moonlit nights. This is an interesting person with a particularly burdened mind. He tallied his victims by the burn scars on their faces. Every victim got one more burn that the previous one, as the first order of business.”

He pointed at the bench. “This young lady is his relative. She comes to see him every day, brings him food, and I mean proper food. I haven’t quite made out how the two are related, but it may not important after all.”

“No, it is not.” The young woman said, as she got up. “It really is not.”

“Doctor!” A male orderly suddenly approached, running. His white shirt and hands were bloody up to his shoulders. “We have a...” he looked at the people in the hallway “...a problem.”

“God damn it! I knew the tea glass of vodka was a good decision! Toomik, please go and look, what’s this about. I will escort out guests out of the building.”

The inhumanly gorgeous woman with a mysterious aura about her, gave a nod and then left with the orderly, the stiletto heels echoing on stone floors.

“Toomik can handle herself just fine when needed.” The Doctor explained, as if to calm the Professor. “I have no reason to doubt her abilities. Your lives are in no danger. But you know, the safety of any visitor is of utmost importance. And I want to make sure of it.”

“An orderly up to his shoulders in blood again makes me doubt your reassurances.” The Professor noted.

“You worry too much.” The Doctor replied. “Maybe you should entrust yourself and your paranoia in my care? I can swear that from the moment me and Toomik took over this place, we have not let a single person escape the confines of these buildings. In the name of public safety, if a drastic action has been necessary, then we have taken it.”

He stopped at the front door. “Let me know when you find more time for a visit. Maybe I can find a nice quiet evening and we can enjoy a nice little soireé and of course the unearthly culinary skills of doctor Toomik.”

“That would be nice.” The professor said.

“Very good.” the Doctor said. “But you must excuse me now. Until we meet again.”

He closed the doors and locked them. The Professor could hear how there were some more doors on the inside to be closed and locked.

“I would have never guessed that the doctor has any genuine friends.” the young woman said, now looking at the man as if sizing him up.

“And you are?” the professor asked.

“Mariann.” The woman replied. “I think this is sufficient for now.”