The Curator


As I reflected through the years, I came to realize there were more sad times than there were
happy times. The reason for this was that after a certain event happened my brain short
circuited, and I would be able to learn no more. Not that there was anything more I needed to
learn anyway. A cataclysmic event which turned everything that was wonderful into something
so dark and dreadful, that I to this very day find it difficult, if not unbearably painful to even
bear mention of it. After countless visits to my family doctor, I was referred to a psychiatrist.



When the shrink failed to diagnose my illness, I was put on Ritalin. Even that didn't seem to
work. They should have just taken me for shock treatments and wiped the whole slate clean.



It finally got to the point where I could no longer stay in that house. Just thinking about
it again has my emotions in a whirl. Maybe if I had talked about what was hurting me,
they could have saved me somehow. Actually, they couldn't have. I would have seen a
life preserver being lobbed at my head, and I would have instinctively thrown up my
defenses or ducked. Either way, I was going down and there would be no way of
saving me. So I let myself drown in that river of despair and awoke in purgatory. . .
A lifeless being.

As Pete went to the bathroom, I picked up the short story I finished writing
and gave it a quick going over. Time moved slower as my eyes panned over
the scribbled text, only I could interpret. Since I never really learned how to
write, I would print the words as fast as I could, thus forming a unique script.
My mother often said I wrote like a doctor, writing an unrecognizable prescription! 

Leaves blew in the autumn breeze. They danced across the street in a swirling pattern and up
the fabric of Mr. Graff's pants. Cleaving like orphaned beggars from filthy alleys, they clawed
and scratched. Down bastards, he ranted in his tirade! Managing to make it up the old marble
steps, he used his gold tipped walking stick as a means to brace himself while he grappled for
the museum keys. Like a rickety old dog with four failing legs, he maintained his balance. Much
like a man on a unicycle would at the top of a staircase with no room for error. Once inside he
slammed the heavy wooden door and cursed the wind's fury with words of steel. His life
was a repetition of palindrome words and short phrases used solely to offend. 

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There was no sunshine or laughter in Reginald Graff's world. Only thunder and lightning and wind.
He was not an evil man, but rather a very fastidious man. He was not shrouded in sinister cloak
looking for someone to abduct, but merely a man who wanted the world to adapt to his lifestyle.
He wanted the red carpet rolled out when he took his morning stroll. He wanted to be catered
to while he shouted and threw things across the room and most of all, he wanted his every word
adhered to at any cost. His voice was raspy like a baritone sax caked with rust, and his personality
was always congealed in gloom. It didn't take him long to notice that his clothes were beginning to
wear. The gentle texture like polished silk had now become harsh and stiff, and it was most apparent
that they were no longer new, but withered, worn and faded. What in Christ's Heaven, he stammered.

This is not possible! I say, this is not possible indeed!!!

Suddenly there was the sound of singing coming from on high. He looked up toward
the Heavens with exasperation and saw an angel flying over an old French village.
An exquisitely detailed painting he hardly recognized, but one which adorned
the canopy ceiling since its creation over one hundred years ago.



Since he had not looked up at it in almost twenty years, the mind tends to forget certain
things, but never things that irk one so! But the sound was not coming from the painted ceiling,
instead, it seemed to be moving north of the staircase and up. My lady, he said, you sing like a whore!
Leave here this instant or I'll smash you to bits! The girl sung even louder at the throwing of words
against an empty background of paintings hung in perfect order. That's it, he thought as he staggered
up the stairs in his belligerence. Suddenly, he was blasphemed by her words!

"Oh Mr. Graff, you wicked old spoon, you'll catch your death from falling. Down palatial stairs,
in a suit with two tears, you'll be enshrined in the tomb of the loony." How dare you put my name
in such a song you little rat of the gutter? When I catch you, I'll break your neck, and you'll be sorry!
When finally he reached the last step the singing stopped. Oh, you're going to stop now, when I was
just beginning to appreciate it? Please, sing for me some more. "Oh, Mr. Graff you old circus clown,
can't you hear the crowd roaring?" He lunged down the hallway and burst into the room where the
music was coming from. There sat a child of only nine years, dressed up in a beautiful gown,
articulately woven by her mother. He approached the young girl and put his hands around
her neck ever so firmly.

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The little girl then began to laugh! Laugh in the seconds you have sparkling, little witch. This will
teach you to have your choir in my museum! A museum it may have been, but aside from himself,
the only one who was allowed entry into the gallery was Mr. James Eegen, the caretaker. Though,
I wouldn't go as far as to call him friend. He increased the tension of his grip until he felt his bones
cracking but the harder he choked her, the more she continued to laugh. "Stop, you're tickling me!
I can't catch my breath!" Startled the curator was, he kept his hands clenched tightly around the
young girl's throat. You're not supposed to have any breath left in you! You, little bitch! Tap, tap,
tap was the knock on the fully opened door. Mr. Graff spun around quickly and almost toppled over.
Mr. Eegen was standing beside it as he spoke. "Playing a game with Mary again are you Graff?" He
then waved to the little girl who smiled and waved back so politely. I am not playing games with any
child!!! What I am doing, in fact, is simply exercising my right to rid myself of this unruly beast, if I
may be so bold as to call it that, who refuses to depart from this house, and in the future when you
are to address me, I would very much appreciate it, if you would call me Mr. Graff! "Sorry sir." Every
day without end for the past sixty two years, Mr. Graff has been trying to rid the museum of Mary's
spirit, but with no such luck. She would torment him by saying things like, "one day you will play with
me; you'll be a boy again, and you'll play with me." And he would say things back to her like, I'd burn
my own hands with fire before I ever play with the likes of you. (((and))) You had better leave this
place of residence at once, you waifing wretch!

By postulating a fury of unbridled energy toward a star only proved to further aggravate his condition,
for little Mary was an incorporeal being. . . The cause of all his suffering.

"I'll see you downstairs Mr. Graff, at your own leisure of course." Of course, said Mr. Graff patiently.
"Goodbye for now, Mary." See you la-ter Mr. Ee-gen, said Mary in her English brogue. Until then,
he said to Mary in the opposite direction before shutting the door to that room firmly. And no more
talking to this walking apparition either!!! "I'm no apparition," said Mary, who appeared stunned at the
harsh remark. You do not in any way belong here, shouted Mr. Graff while pointing a crooked, shaking
finger at the sensitive child. "Well, I've nowhere else to go." That, little girl or beast or whatever you
are is no fault of mine!

Mr. Graff then turned his back on the ghostly figure that has been haunting the museum, since she
passed away in the fall of 1807. "Little Mary" as her mother Adeline often referred to her, was the
posthumous child of Zachery More. Zachery was a shipping clerk who was murdered in a back alley
for a pocket full of Liberty cap half cents.



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In no way was Reginald going to open that door, for it was jammed and would not open.
Almost as if the wood had absorbed too much water and was now expanding. Tiny hairline cracks
could be seen coming from around the door frame where most of the pressure was being exerted.
Within minutes, the eerie sound of wood crunching could be heard as the old plaster began dropping
and Mr. Graff quickly began to panic! The door is stuck Eegen, and I can't get out! I say the door is
stuck shut sir! I need help getting out of here!!! He continued to pound his fists on the heavy wooden
door, but Mr. Eegen was long down the hall and well out of range to hear the curator's rantings. I guess
we're stuck with each other, said the small child who stood firmly beside the deteriorating aged figure.
He then sat on the floor facing the small window and looked up toward the sky. Upon doing so,
Reginald thought of when he was a child and how happy he was until that fateful day. As he pondered
his lost cause of a life, the stern Reginald Graff slowly began weeping, till finally, he was asleep.

The Graff's took over the large house in the winter of 1813, when Reginald was only three.
His father was a prominent businessman while his mother, on the other hand, tended to all the
chores and motherly things mother's do to make sure their children grow up to be responsible
and well off. Reginald never went to school for his mother taught him in the comfort of their abode.
Her opinion on the matter was simple."If I want my child to learn what an isosceles triangle is then
I shall send him to school. If I want him to learn practicality, then I should teach him." Once his
mother heard him talking to an imaginary friend, he named Mary. She tried and tried again to tell him
that Mary did not exist and to forget her, but Reginald simply would not. After a fair amount of time
elapsed, she felt a moral obligation to inform Professor Graff, who was undeniably Reginald's father.
Sarah felt she had been left no choice in the matter and in her own mind, washed her hands clean of
the affair. God only knows what evil monsters were funneled into young Reginald's head that night,
but for almost two whole years he sobbed under the covers come evening. As he slept, he was
plagued by nightmares of the surreal and upon waking, his father's tyrannical rants!



"You wish to dine with the devil do you," he'd scream at his little boy, who only wanted a friend.
Yes, a tale of misfortune had indeed begun. Nathaniel then said calmly to his beautiful wife,
"do not worry yourself my dear, for this will soon pass." *Eventually it did*

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Mary could not reveal herself to anyone but children in those days, so no one knew that Mary really
did exist at all. She was Reginald's only friend. The first and last friend he would ever have before
becoming a contemptuous beast of a man who would lose both his heart and mind to tyranny.
The paintings on the wall and ceilings disappeared along with the marble floor. All the furniture
became transparent and even Mr. Eegen downstairs dissolved into the ether of time, as an old man
gave himself over to dream. Little Mary held her hand on the elderly man's shoulder, and she too
dissolved into the complex fabric of a withered old man's dream where together as children they
laughed and sang and played. This went on for what seemed like years. At ten thirty Mr. Eegen left
the house, locking the door gently behind him. Goodnight Mary, he said quietly to the wind as he
strolled down the steps and into the street. Goodnight to you Mr. Ee-gen, whispered Mary from a
window in a dream. Who is Mr. Eegen, asked a young Reginald Graff? Just a friend, said Mary
running back to play. "He is just a friend." Happily, they consorted together while playing
hide and seek and other children's games.

At approximately one forty in the morning the curator awakens. The moon shone brightly through
the window of the museum upon his face. Reginald gently opens the door and motions down the
wooden staircase to the entrance level turning out lights that had been left on. He exits the museum
and then stops. He reenters again and closes the door. "I forgot how wonderful it was, you know.
How wonderful we played together and yes, we shall be together one day child, but that day is not
now." He then left, locking the door behind him. Little Mary smiled gracefully and granted the old
man's wish. The final coup de grâce had come, and so with a wink and a wave she left the house
never to return. Before she did this however, she stood by the attic window and watched the merry
figure go about his way.

The snow had begun to fall heavy under the peaceful glow
of an oil street lamp that Reginald had chosen to pause under.



A horse drawn carriage came clacking down the frozen street,
and that dirt was now harder than stone. Reginald waved to the
woman inside the carriage who recognized him. Immediately,
she threw the two red curtains closed! I love you too, dear
woman, he shouted out in glee!!! Inside, she spoke to her
companion in a startled tone. "How daft, the man has gone
mad!" Who, said the gentleman she had been secretly courting?

"Reginald Graff, son of Nathaniel!"

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So happy was he now to have her back again. To remember everything this world taught him
to forget. Finally, he said, I can see out of eyes unclouded by the vanity of my own self-loathing
heart! At last, I can see past man's indiscretion's to the table where mirth and love flow like wine!



Indeed, I am free from the burden of despair! As he spoke these very words, the little girl closed
her eyes and vanished like a vapor into the night air. A few people passed Reginald Graff on the
street, and to them, he tipped his hat. They nodded in agreement and smiled back before going
about their way. Tomorrow he will return to his birth house, renewed in every sense of the word.
He will tip his hat to strangers and hold open doors for women, and yes, he will talk to Mary,
only this time she will not be able to give him an answer.

You do see the problem here.
A window has been opened that cannot be closed.

In his mind, he is dancing down the frozen lane while singing aloud a joyful hymn to the falling
snow. High and low will he search for Mary, but never will she be found, and he will talk to
shadows for she is gone. And besides, how could she even know? As time moves forward,
he will accuse her of playing hide and seek with him as they have played before, and search
the whole day he shall. In every long closet and in every crawl space from the closed cupboard
on down to the hidden room in the old basement, but nowhere will she ever be seen. In life,
he bereaved her spirit continuously, but Mary wasn't made of flowers. She wasn't going to wilt
and fall over like some infested perennial in a searing drought. No, that was simply not her.

Mary was much stronger than that.

Eventually, his heart will wax grievous, to the point of sheer lachrymose
in the most sullen of tearful plays. Never could he have ever known,
such sorrow begins tomorrow. What misery of hardship and grief have
been outlined within his every convivial step on this cold winter's eve.
Like a thousand hungry termites in a big fat wooden mind, the dinner
bell was sounding.

But for now the year is 1885, and he is happy.
Happy for the first time since time can remember.
*Home* The wind has stopped and he is going home.

If you should look very closely at the sign near the stone wall.
The sign that has been there since the beginning,
you can almost see where the paint first started peeling.
Where the wind did its real damage.
No longer does it read "Welcome to Graff Mansion."

Mister Graff, if I may be so bold as to address you sir, performs
every function as do you and I, without ever leaving the comfort
of his unbordered room. Just look at the sign that's peeling. . .



                                                         *Welcome to Lakeview asylum*

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Inkpop reviews for chapter 11

Mcrae by Nature - This was a very amazing piece. Your characters in the piece evoke such a strong sense of pity and care from the reader. I thouroughly enjoyed reading this piece immensely. Thank you for inviting me to read. Carrie L McRae


Reviews for chapter 11

Joan Rosenberg - The best way to tell which author is good and which author is not so good is how convincing your storyline is. With you it feels like you went back in time to bring the story to me and for this reason alone I would say you are an excellent writer! Keep it flowing

Susan Cantrell - I really enjoyed this chapter. It was different than chapter 6
and certainly chapter 9. Really nice work.

Margaret Weatherly - I am not much of a reader, but I do know it is improper to
begin a sentence using the words and or but. Even though I am impressed with your
style of writing, it is still incorrect usage. The strange part is, you put them both on
one page! Page 60. Care to explain to this Okie?

Charles Pendelton - Actually, madam, as a matter of fact, I would.
John Grisham » The Chamber » Page 138. . . (((I rest my case)))


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PG 55) Perhaps man created God by David Ho

PG 55) Gernsbac Isolator - Science and Invention Magazine, July 1925

PG 56) Ceiling painting of the Marble Hall - Melk Abbey, Austria

PG 57) 1793 Liberty Cap half Cent - Front

PG 57) 1793 Liberty Cap half Cent - Reverse

PG 58) The Sleeper by Judson Huss

PG 59) Street lighting and lamps in Tudor Times by Peter Jackson

PG 60) Oddment 68 by Leah Palmer Preiss

PG 60) Old Asylum by Natemasterflash