The River of Night's Dreaming by Karl Edward Wagner Read Free Book Online Page A

spreadeagled body, held to the brass bedposts by padded leather cuffs.
    Images, too chaotic and incomprehensible to form coherent memory, exploded in bright shards from her shattered mind.
    She was being forced into a straitjacket, flung into a padded cell, and they were bricking up the door . . . no, it was some bizarre corset device, forcing her neck back, crushing her abdomen, arms laced painfully into a single glove at her back . . . Camilla was helping her into a gown of satin and velvet and lace, and then into a hood of padded leather that they buckled over her head as they led her to the gallows . . . and the nurses held her down while Dr Archer penetrated her with a grotesque syringe of vile poison, and Mrs Castaigne forced the yellow tonic down her throat as she pinned her face between her thighs . . . and Camilla's lips dripped blood as she rose from her kiss, and her fangs were hypodermic needles, injecting poison, sucking life . . . they were wheeling her into the torture chamber, where Dr Archer awaited her ("It's only a frontal lobotomy, just to relieve the pressure on these two diseased lobes.") and plunges the bloody scalpel deep between her thighs . . . and they were strapping her into the metal chair in the death cell, shoving the rubber gag between her teeth and blinding her with the leather hood, and Dr Archer grasps the thick black handle of the switch and pulls it down and sends the current ripping through her nerves . . . she stands naked in shackles before the black-masked judges, and Dr Archer gloatingly exposes the giant needle ("Just an injection of my elixir, and she's quite safe for two more weeks.") . . . and the nurses in rubber aprons hold her writhing upon the altar, while Dr Archer adjusts the hangman's mask and thrusts the electrodes into her breast . . . ("Just a shot of my Prolixin, and she's quite sane for two more weeks.") . . . then the judge in wig and mask and black robe smacks down the braided whip and screams, "She must be locked away forever!" . . . she tears away the mask and Dr Archer screams, "She must be locked inside forever!" . . . she tears away the mask and Mrs Castaigne screams, "She must be locked in here forever!" . . . she tears away the mask and her own face screams, "She must be locked in you forever!" . . . then Camilla and Mrs Castaigne lead her back into her cell, and they strap her to her bed and force the rubber gag between her teeth, and Mrs Castaigne adjusts her surgeon's mask while Camilla clamps the electrodes to her nipples, and the current rips into her and her brain screams and screams unheard . . . "I think she no longer needs to be drugged." Mrs Castaigne smiles and her lips are bright with blood. "She's one of us now. She always has been one of us" . . . and they leave her alone in darkness on the promise, "We'll begin again tomorrow," and the echo, "She'll be good for two more weeks."
    She moaned and writhed upon the soiled sheets, struggling to escape the images that spurted like foetid purulence from her tortured brain. With the next explosive burst of lightning, her naked body lifted in a convulsive arc from the mattress, and her scream against the gag was like the first agonized outcry of the newborn.
    The spasm passed. She dropped back limply onto the sodden mattress. Slippery with sweat and blood, her relaxed hand slid the rest of the way out of the padded cuff. Quietly in the darkness, she considered her free hand—suddenly calm, for she knew she had slipped wrist restraints any number of times before this.
    Beneath the press of the storm, the huge house lay in darkness and silence. With her free hand she unbuckled the other wrist cuff, then the straps that held the gag in place, and the restraints that pinned her ankles. Her tread no louder than a phantom's, she glided from bed and crossed the room. A flicker of lightning revealed shabby furnishings and a disordered array of fetishist garments and paraphernalia, but she threw open the window