Halloween Horror at the Psych Ward: A Descent into Madness and the Occult

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WARNING! All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and responses are fictional ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.

If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand the difference between fantasy and reality or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted in these stories, please stop reading immediately and move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.

Archiving and reposting of this story is permitted, but only if acknowledgment of copyright and statement of limitation of use is included with the article. This story is copyright (c) 2012 by The Technician ( Technician666@Gmail.Com. )

Individual readers may archive and/or print single copies of this story for personal, non-commercial use. Production of multiple copies of this story on paper, disk, or other fixed format is expressly forbidden.

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"It isn't that I hate Halloween, Mary, and no, I don't have a wife or family that I have to be with or kids to take Trick-or-Treating. It's just that I totally and absolutely hate being on duty at a state psychiatric facility on Halloween. That's why at the very beginning of every year I put in for a week of vacation from October 28th through November 2nd. You approve it every year, including this year. I do that because I do not want to be here nor do I have any desire to be on call at all this week."

Dr. Marion Hudson, director of the Madison State Psychiatric Hospital slowly shook her head and replied, "I know, Frank, I have always honored your request, but Dr. Wilson didn't plan to have a heart attack this week either, and until he can recover or we can get a temporary replacement it is you and me to cover as supervising psychiatrists. And since I have to testify before that congressional committee in Washington tomorrow, for the next four days, YOU are on call. There is nothing I can do about it. I am very sorry that you might be called away from your Halloween party this year, but that's the way it is."

I muttered something vulgar under my breath about not going to any Halloween parties and walked out of the office. I haven't gone to a Halloween party in years. In fact, ever since I started working at a mental hospital years ago as a lowly resident, I have had no use at all for Halloween. One of the reasons I bought a place way out in the country is so that I can totally avoid Halloween. Out there, I don't have to put up decorations; I never get Trick-or-Treaters; and I don't have to keep the porch light on. For me Halloween is a time to retreat to my isolated twenty-seven acres of land and enjoy a quiet evening at home. Unfortunately, I knew that wasn't going to be the case this year.

Halloween brings out the worst of the delusional, the drugged-out, and the just plain weird. Some of those most affected by Halloween will end up at the facility, and some junior psych on duty will decide that he or she can't handle it. Then they will call the attending super - me, and I will have to come in to the hospital to deal with whatever it was that they thought a psychiatric resident intern couldn't handle. It will be messy and difficult and will end up burying me in weeks of followup paperwork. No wonder I hate Halloween.

Exactly as I expected, the phone rang at 9:30 on Halloween just as I was settling down in front of the large screen TV with a dark ale and some of my home-made chili. It was Larry, a just-out-of- school psychiatrist who looked younger than the high school boy I have help me with the yard in the summertime. "I hate to bother you, doctor Walters, but this is way beyond my pay grade."

I hate that expression, but decided now was not the time to instruct a subordinate on not using obnoxious cliches and just replied, "Give me the summary."

"Police brought her in about two hours ago. She was turning tricks in the back room of a bar downtown and they were going to charge her with prostitution, but she didn't have any money on her and wasn't charging the johns, so they couldn't make a prostitution charge stick. Actually she didn't have anything on her... including clothing. Once they figured out what was going on, they decided she needed to be brought here. The officer who brought her in said, quote 'She was pulling a free, around the world train for anyone who would come into the room. She tried to take my partner's pants off and kept waving a little notebook at us and screaming that she only needed two more'."

"When they tried to arrest her for public intoxication as an excuse to bring her here, she went wild on them and scratched the hell out of the officer. They ended up having to call in backup and EMTs. She came in here literally wrapped in restraint belts and tied to a Gurney. She was still screaming her head off. Medics said she was maxed out on everything they could give her and it wasn't making a dent. When she came in the door the first thing she said to me was "Fuck me. Please fuck me. I only need two more and he is coming at midnight. If I haven't fucked a thousand men by then he will come and tear me apart and eat me."

I listened calmly and tried not to sound too sarcastic as I replied. "So far this sounds like just a really severe Halloween delusion." I silently added, "Even you should be able to handle this without me," then I continued aloud, "And why do you think I need to come in ?"

Larry almost shouted into the phone, "She says that she is Harold Aldridge, and the facial recognition software gives a 62 probability so she is most likely at least a relative."

That got my attention. Harold Aldridge was one of "The Thirteen." He and his buddies were investment brokers who somehow had managed to keep ahead of the market regardless of what it did. They always seemed to buy just before a stock soared and sell just before all hell broke loose. The S.E.C. had investigated them upside, downside and inside out but couldn't prove any wrongdoing. They claimed they had a secret system, but whatever it was they weren't sharing it with anybody.

A little over two weeks ago, the police found twelve of them apparently chewed to pieces in a clearing in the woods south of town. There was barely enough of them left to identify. The gruesome nature of the deaths and the charred and blackened stone altar standing in the middle of the clearing had all of the earmarks of some sort of Satanic ritual, but no evidence of who... or what tore the men apart was found. The police were baffled. One of the thirteen remained un- accounted for... Harold Aldridge. Some residue on the altar was DNA tested and the conclusion was that it had to have come from Harold's sister - perhaps a twin sister. The only problem with that theory was that as far as anyone could determine, Harold Aldridge was an only child.

"I'll be there in about an hour," I said into the phone, and then yelled an obscenity at the wall. I think Larry clearly heard my verbal tantrum, but he ignored it and asked, "What should I do in the meantime? She is tearing through almost any restraint that we have and I can't give her any more drugs without the risk of killing her."

"Just do whatever you need to do to calm her down until I get there. And DON'T talk to the police or any reporters or anyone else on the staff about who you think she might be. Do you totally understand that?"

I got a rather stiff, "Yes, sir," and Larry hung up the phone.

I ignored two texts from Larry on my way in. Both asked, "How long?" It was like a little kid asking, "Are we there yet?"

Because I live in the country, it takes a certain length of time to travel from my house, where I wanted to be, to the high-security mental ward, where I didn't want to be on this particular night. Since I really would have preferred to have spent the evening nursing a couple of dark ales and watching old movies, for some reason I wasn't breaking any speed limits to get there.

I arrived in just under an hour. Larry met me at the door. "Status?" I asked.

"She has calmed a little. I told her that you would speak with her and help her solve her problems when you got here. That seemed to help a lot."

"It sure did, you naive twit," I thought to myself. "She calmed down for you, but a stupid promise like that plants seeds of expectation so she will melt down or blow up or go catatonic on me, and at the case review, I'm the one who will have to explain what I did to trigger it." I really felt like giving Larry a little education in practical psychiatry in a lock-down ward, but instead just asked, "What room?"

"Room 6. Full observation system is in place. It was down for about twenty minutes while you were on your way in, but all video and audio systems are up and running now."

When I entered the room, she was sitting up on the cot naked, her back against some pillows, her legs splayed, rubbing herself lightly with her fingertips. As a psychiatrist, you see everything in this place, but I wasn't prepared for this. I had expected a strung-out druggie, but instead, she was a totally stunning woman, even in her disheveled state. Her hair was a flaxen shade of blond that normally could come only out of a bottle, but the highlights, especially when it was as mussed up as it was, could only occur with a natural blond.

There was no other hair on her body, not even on her forearms. Normally, in that case I would assume that someone had done full-body permanent hair removal, but looking at the area around her vulva I could see that there were no indications of hair follicles - none of the little plucked- chicken bumps that give away dense hair removal. She looked like one of those raunchy drawings of a frat-boy's wet dream idea of a perfect woman. That idea was reinforced by her first words as I entered the room, "Are you going to fuck me?"

I stopped and looked at her eyes and then she added, "I just need one more and I will be at a thousand. I only need one more before midnight to save myself."

Maybe Larry wasn't as naive as I thought. The initial reports indicated that she was yelling that she needed two more. I guess I know what he did to calm her down. At least he knew to shut down the observation system.

"You want to tell me about it?" I began. The usual response to that question is normally a silent stare, but she grinned at me and asked in return, "Will you fuck me if I tell you what happened?"

I smiled back at her and answered, "If you tell me the complete story, I will seriously consider it, if that is what you truly need."

"It's what I absolutely need and you will understand once I tell you the whole story. A lot of what I am going to tell you will seem unbelievable, but you must believe me. My life depends on you believing me... and fucking me."

She paused like she was waiting for a response, but when I said nothing, she exhaled deeply and began speaking almost as if she were dictating case notes. "To begin with my name is Harold Aldridge and I am 243 years old. That sounds impossible - both that I am that old and that I used to be a man, but my friends and I..., we made a deal with the devil - well, actually he's a minor demon, but the effect was the same."

"His name is 'Quello Caduto,' The Fallen One, but he goes by 'Quello,' or in English,'The One.'"

"He is called 'The Fallen One' because he started out as some sort of good spirit or benign natural force somewhere over in Italy, but then a couple thousand years ago he got really pissed off when he was betrayed or turned down or rejected or whatever by the leader of a coven that followed him and drew their power from him. He became consumed by his anger and it turned him evil. Whatever he used to be, he is now definitely one, mean, son-of-a-bitchin' demon."

She laughed and drew in a deep breath. "Our deal with him was simple. There had to be thirteen of us. He gave us eternal youth and the ability to know what ships would come in with good cargoes and what companies would be profitable. In return we would supply him with a defiled white witch for him to rape and consume once every fifty-two years. I know that you are thinking that witches don't exist either, but there are more of them than you can imagine. And the true witches - especially the white, or good witches - are not the 'dress in black, cast an evil spell old hags' that the novels and movies portray. Witches are, for the most part, rather young and beautiful young women - and sometimes men - who are totally in tune with the powers of nature and the spirits that inhabit this world."

"The highest day of power for witches is Samhain, and that is NOT October 31st. The Witch's Sabbath, if you want to call it that, is the dark of the moon following the autumnal equinox. Usually that is at least a week or two before the 31st. When the Romans brought Samhain back from England, they moved it to

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