I am writing this so that no one else may tread down the dark path as I have. As my driver’s license will state I am Jennifer Eclberg; born 1983 on the seventh of May. I am former head psychiatrist at Saint Christina Memorial Hospital in Rosewood, North Carolina. I am married to Alina McGregor, who works at the Asigee County Library in downtown Rosewood.
This all began about a month ago, when a patient was transferred to our psych ward from Canton, a small town outside of Asheville. When he arrived, he was wheeled in, strapped into a straight jacket and muzzle; with an escort of six officers of the law. The man had deep pools for eyes and long, thin, ashen hair. He gave me the impression of having thick Cherokee heritage.
His medical forms named him as Waya Thomas. A man of forty-seven, born on January 26th at the Cherokee Indian Hospital. As I flipped through his brimming file, I found records of his state of mental instability. He had been charged with the murder of nine young girls, claiming that they were sacrifices to some sort of ancient forgotten god. Surprisingly, he did not plead insanity.
He was imprisoned in the Cherokee County Jail, where every full moon he could be heard imitating a wolf. Initiating in barks, grunts, howls and yelps. The guards feared Thomas, and often refused to go near his cell at night, saying, “Something wasn’t right about him.” After he escaped from his cell one night, killed a guard with an improvised shiv and had, “painted his face with the slain guard’s blood, in the fashion of a Native Warrior”, the warden requested that Thomas be seen by a state psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist that over saw the testing, was Dr. Howard Axler from Duke Regional Hospital in Durham. He was well respected in the profession, but had succumbed to fits of madness and eventually killed himself by slitting his wrists. As I read over the notes and reports of Dr. Axler, I noticed a distinct decline in his mental state. His usual neat straight penmanship slowly became a messy scrawl.
The final diagnosis was that Waya Thomas suffered from delusions, hallucinations, Schizophrenia, and Anti-Social Personality Disorder. He was then moved from the Cherokee County Jail to the Canton Asylum, where he was treated for his diagnosis. His reason for arrival at Saint Christina’s was that the Canton Asylum was being closed and it’s patients were being moved into the new, Rosewood Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He was to stay with us at Saint Christina’s for two weeks while the construction of the hospital was completed.
After reading his file and having his prescriptions filled, I developed an interest in talking with Mr. Thomas. I had him brought into my office. He had been released from the straight jacket, though the muzzle remained. His hands and legs were bound by thick chains, and he was escorted by two armed officers. He stood stiffly in the doorway, looking at me with those black animalistic eyes. I asked him to sit in one of the chairs in front of my desk, and dismissed the officers, so that I may have talked to him as a patient, not a prisoner. He sat and stared at me. It felt as though his eyes saw through me, and a shiver swept across my back. His greying hair hung over his face, obscuring his features.
I gave him a smile, but his face remained as still as a statue. I asked him what his name was. He responded in his deep voice, saying that he was the hand of, a name that I can only inscribe as Ah’wi-se’hi. When I asked him what or who Ah’wi-se’hi was. I saw his lips part in a shallow grin, to display a set of teeth that were distinctly non-human; and now in reflection I realize that the teeth had a canine appearance to them.
He told me that Ah’wi-se’hi was an ancient Cherokee god, who had long been forgotten by the tribe. I asked how he had learned about the deity, if it had been indeed forgotten. He said that there was an old church off Highway 194.
He explained that the church was haunted, and students of the nearby college would often dare each other to spend a night in the eldritch ruin, but of course they abandoned the dare during the night, running screaming from the crumbling stone walls and back to the safety of their cars. One night he was dared to complete the task, wanting to express a crush, he accepted. I was amazed at the coherency of his telling of the story. I was enraptured as he continued.
He said that he went to the church that night, explaining that the full moon was massive, and hung low in the sky. He recalled the cold wind and the howl of a lone wolf echoing through the valley. He had gathered firewood and build a small campfire behind the alabaster alter. He prayed to his ancestors that he would have the strength to last the night.
He recalled waking in the middle of the night to the sounds of scuffling, whimpering and snorting, coming from inside the chapel. He had grabbed his flashlight and flashed it around his surroundings.
He stopped his retelling and looked at me with those black eyes. My breath had caught in my throat. I felt like a Brownie Scout sitting at a campfire as the troop leader told us ghost stories. I urged him to go on. He looked around the room, as if expecting microphones to be hidden in the ceiling or my bookcase.
He told me that is when he saw it. A great black hound, snuffling in the corner near the entrance. It turned to look at him as he shone the light on it. He said it’s eyes glowed red. He recalled that the glowing eyes seemed to burn with an unnatural fire, as if the fires of Hell burned in the beast’s skull. Then the dog disappeared into the floor. He stalked over to the spot and found a trap door to a cellar. He pulled the hatch open and slipped down into the blackness. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
He said that in the cellar he found a tunnel, that led deep into the earth. As he followed it, he could make out tribal symbols and paintings on the hewn stone walls. Intrigued he pressed on and found a cathedral-like cavern. He said that is where he met Ah’wi-se’hi. He said that he met a nude man, who’s skin was like silver light, wearing nothing but a wolf pelt across his shoulder. The man welcomed him, saying that Mr. Thomas was to be his hand, and would help him grow powerful once again, but feeding him the blood of virgins. Now the Cherokee word Mr. Thomas used appears to have fled my memory.
Mr. Thomas then said the nude man laid his hand upon Mr. Thomas’s chest, and he woke up in the chapel of the church, just as the sun was peaking over the ridge. When he had searched for the door to the cellar, he could not find it.
I had now heard enough. The man was obviously delusional, and I called for the officers to return the man to his room. As they entered, he stood in a flash and lunged towards my desk and gnashed his teeth at me, making the vocalizations of a rabid dog. As the officers dragged him away, he shouted, “You will be the final drink of Ah’wi-se’hi! You will be the final drink of Ah’wi-se’hi!”
Simply writing off the shouting as the ravings of a mad man, I pushed the obviously crafted to be disturbing story to the back of my mind. It wasn’t until that night that my thoughts fell on the black dog with burning eyes.
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