Into Madness

A person goes slowly mad

The heavy iron door clanged shut, the sound echoing through the sterile, preternaturally dim corridor. Elias Thorne flinched, the reverberation rattling his very bones. A guard, a stout man with eyes like chipped flint, grunted, "Rest easy, Thorne. You're safe here. And we're safe from you."


Elias said nothing. What was there to say? He was "Elias Thorne, not normal after dark." That was the official diagnosis, whispered by his horrified neighbors, confirmed by a judge who looked at him with a mixture of pity and revulsion. He wasn't a criminal. He wasn't violent. He just… changed. Not physically. Not consciously. But something happened to him, or through him, when the sun dipped below the horizon.



Blackwood Sanatorium. A gothic monstrosity carved from dark stone, standing solitary on a windswept hill. It smelt of disinfectant, old fear, and something else �" a metallic tang that Elias couldn't quite place. His room was sparse: a cot, a bolted-down nightstand, a single window barred so heavily it resembled a cage. No light. No distraction. Just the impenetrable night.



The first few hours were easy. He lay on the cot, staring at the ceiling, listening to the disembodied moans and whispers that drifted from other cells. Standard asylum fare. He was sane, he told himself. He could control this.



Then, the sun truly set.



It wasn't a sudden shift. It was insidious. The air in the room grew heavy, viscous, like breathing through water. A faint, almost imperceptible hum began to vibrate in his teeth, rising slowly in pitch until it was a thin, high whine that burrowed into his skull.



His vision, initially strained by the dimness, began to sharpen beyond natural limits. He could see the dust motes dancing in the infinitesimal light from a distant hall lamp, could trace the faint, almost invisible patterns in the stone walls. And then, he saw them.



They were in the corners first. Just shadows, deeper than shadows ought to be. They writhed, not like smoke, but like things made of compressed despair. They had no discernible form, yet he could feel their presence, a cold, hungry awareness that leeched the warmth from the room.



A whisper, closer now, slithered into his ear, thin as a razor blade. It spoke no discernible language, yet he understood it. It was the language of hunger, of ancient, forgotten things that gnawed at the fabric of reality.



He squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his hands over his ears. "No," he whimpered, "not again."



But this was Blackwood. This was different. At home, it had been vague, chilling sensations, the feeling of being watched, objects subtly displaced. Here, in this place built to contain madness, his "condition" became a gateway, not just a perception.



The shadows coalesced. From the deep blackness of his cell, something began to pull itself into existence. It was skeletal, elongated, its limbs twisting at unnatural angles. Its head was a featureless void, but he felt its gaze, a scrutiny that peeled away his skin, his muscle, his very sanity. It glided towards him, slow, deliberate.



Elias screamed. A raw, guttural sound tore from his throat, filled with a terror he didn't know he possessed. He thrashed on the cot, kicking at the air, his eyes wide open, fixed on the horror that was now bending over him. It wasn't touching him, not physically, but he felt its chill seep into his bones, felt a dread so profound it threatened to stop his heart.



He heard the heavy footsteps outside, the rattling of keys. The door burst open, and the flint-eyed guard stood there, lantern raised.



"Thorne! What in God's name are you doing?" The guard's voice was rough, but edged with confusion.



Elias pointed a trembling finger at the skeletal horror, which had paused, its head tilting as if listening. "It's... it's here! Don't you see it?"



The guard frowned, scanning the empty corners of the room. "See what, you blithering fool? There's nothing in here but you and your nightmares." He stepped inside, pushing the lantern closer, illuminating every inch of the barren cell.



The skeletal horror did not vanish. It remained, stoic and terrible, directly behind the guard. Elias watched in frozen horror as it reached out a long, gnarled hand, its fingers like dark bone. It plunged its hand into the guard's back, right between the shoulder blades. There was no sound, no struggle, no physical effect on the guard. But Elias saw it. He saw the faint, shimmering essence that was drawn from the guard's body, a wisp of grey light that flowed into the thing's hand, absorbed into its form.



The guard shivered violently, then rubbed his arms. "Bloody cold in here tonight," he muttered, shaking his head. "Get a grip, Thorne. You're disturbing the others." He slammed the door shut again, leaving Elias in the deepening horror.



This was it. This was his "not normal after dark." He wasn't seeing things. He was seeing them. And the world, everyone else, was simply blind.



The night wore on, an agonizing eternity. The skeletal thing was joined by others. Malformed things that crawled on the ceiling, chittering with sounds only he could hear. Things that pressed their featureless faces against the barred window, their silence more terrifying than any scream. They moved through walls, through locked doors, through the very bodies of the staff, drawing sustenance from unnoticed shivers, from forgotten fears.



He understood now. Blackwood wasn't just an asylum for the insane. It was a harvesting ground. A place where the fragile minds and trapped souls of the "mad" became open conduits, or perhaps simply ample sustenance, for the things that stalked the unseen edges of reality. And his "condition" wasn't madness; it was an unwanted, terrifying clarity. He was a beacon, a portal.



When dawn finally broke, painting the cell in a weak, grey light, the creatures receded. The air thinned, the hum faded, and his vision returned to normal. He was left shuddering, drenched in sweat, his throat raw from screaming.



A nurse brought his breakfast. She looked at him with pity. "Another rough night, Mr. Thorne?"



He looked at her, truly looked at her, and saw the faint, almost imperceptible grey lines tracing veins beneath her skin, the remnants of what had been siphoned from her. He saw the exhaustion in her eyes, the hollowness that wasn't just lack of sleep.



He tried to speak, but only a croak escaped. He looked at the window, the sun a pale disc in the sky. The monsters were gone, for now.



But they would be back. And he knew, with a horrifying certainty, that Blackwood Sanatorium hadn't been built to keep the madness in. It had been built to keep him �" and others like him �" here, where the true horrors could feed, undisturbed by the blinding light of normal eyes. And as the sun climbed higher, Elias Thorne felt the last vestiges of his sanity begin to fray, not from his internal demons, but from the horrifying truth of the world only he could see. He was not normal after dark, because after dark, he was terrifyingly, utterly, awake.