The Cane-Man

Once, in the corridors that smelled of antiseptic and detergent - in the whitewashed halls of the fearsome fortress they called the Cradle - the tapping was as familiar to everyone as the haunting screams of the mentally unstable. Yet, even now with the Cradle only existing as an empty, accursed shell, the rhythmic tap-tap the cane still echoes eerily in its abandoned ruin, amidst the wordless cries of soulless puppets.

Mr London. It was one of the names inside the visitors' record book, meticulously written in spidery script. The residents of the Cradle, however, knew Mr London by a different title. They'd nicknamed him the Cane-Man.

They say Mr London carried a cane made from the finest wood. This cane had been blessed by a secret order of monks - purportedly heretical cultists in Cambodia - and was capped with a small globe of burnished gold, no bigger than a clenched fist.

In the years to come, the villagers flinched at shadows and hid from the darkness. The men talked in hushed tones over beer and candlelight about a stiff figure roaming the village graveyard in the dark of night. The grave-keepers were afraid to ply their trade, lest this unknown 'thing' besets them with misfortune - or worse.

The last thing any of them wanted was to get the chance of having to bury their comrades six feet under.

Mr London had only one purpose each time he visited the Cradle; each visit was for a certain little boy in the nursery tower. The nurses said the child was his bastard offspring - a mistake, brought into the world by carelessness in the fires of passion. After all, wasn't the old man seen frequently in the company of 'lesser' women around the downtown zones?

They couldn't have been any further from the truth.

The little boy was, in actual fact, Mr London's grandson. The boy's parents were killed in a horrific accident, shortly after they birthed him into the world. The kid was barely one year then.

Mr London was firm in the knowledge that his grandchild should never discover the cause of his parents' death. He feared the truth would break the boy. And so, the boy was spirited away to the safety of the Cradle. Never mind the fact that the nursery tower was surrounded by maniacal beings who had ceased to be human long before; Mr London was determined to isolate the boy forever, to spare him the hurt of reality.

Thus, the boy became a de facto citizen of the Cradle, under the iron rule of its administrative board and the watchful, prying eyes of the matrons.

The eccentric Cane-Man enjoyed his visits to the place every week. Without fail, he would turn up every Tuesday afternoon, precisely at 4.05pm, at the front gate. The items he carried were all but predictable: a bouquet of tulips (courtesy of the peasants' market nearby) and a chocolate bar. The bouquets were always for the nurses ("his little boy's mothers", as he affectionately termed them), while the bar was for his little precocious darling.

The inmates' uprising two years later changed all that. Mr London, as expected, was shattered by the sudden turn of events, and would have jumped into the raging inferno of the Cradle were it not for the intervention of firefighters. He watched with tears of rage and frustration as the flames cremated his family's heir alive, the screams of the dying children to be forever etched into his memory.

Five days later, the Cane-Man hung himself from a lamp-post in a quiet suburban neighborhood. His death caused an uproar in the local community; it took the police almost a month to clear up the outrage and disbelief of the village-folk.

And as with all things related to the grim legend of the Cradle, the village was unwittingly doomed to its newfound fate.

The dark cloud came slowly at first. The night seemed more quiet, more ominous. It no longer had the same peaceful, tranquil quality the villagers had enjoyed since time immemorial. No; it had been taken over by some strange, otherworldly force, like some menacing predator creeping up on its unwary prey.

In the years to come, the villagers flinched at shadows and hid from the darkness. The men talked in hushed tones over beer and candlelight about a stiff figure roaming the village graveyard in the dark of night. The grave-keepers were afraid to ply their trade, lest this unknown 'thing' besets them with misfortune - or worse. The last thing any of them wanted was to get the chance of having to bury their comrades six feet under.

Dogs and cats howled and hissed at the silent night, while rats and vermin fled in the wake of it. Women locked their children indoors starting early evening, warning little brats that 'the night will get you', lest they mended their naughty habits to escape its wrathful punishment.

Little Tricia was no different from the many kids in the village. Like other children her age, she was cute, naive and blissfully innocent. Her smile made grown-ups grin and hearts melt. She was almost always clad in the most beautiful dresses that drew stares of admiration from other adults and kids. In fact, she was so much like other children her age that she was also unspeakably curious of everything.

And so it was one fateful moonless night that the same little girl sneaked out of her room window into the open.

"It's alright, girl. When we're done, you won't ever be afraid of the dark anymore."

She walked the village streets, hoping to see a familiar face somewhere. She craned her neck to find the grocer's dog, the mustachioed constable, the smiling bread lady. But this late at night, they had all gone in, tucked into their beds and dreaming of a better life. So you can imagine her surprise when she turned around to suddenly find an old man standing there.

Still, she somehow managed to keep her scream in.

The old man tapped his long wooden cane against the cobblestone pavement. He tilted his head to one side as he looked at the young girl. "What's wrong, little one?" the old man croaked. "Are you lost? Where's your mummy & daddy?"

She gazed into the old man's lucid blue eyes - such beautiful eyes! she thought. She can see herself reflected in them, like the mirrors Mother keeps in her room drawer. She smiled innocently at the old man, who grinned in return, revealing rows of yellow teeth.

"Mummy says we should take care of our teeth," she quipped happily.

"Indeed," said the old man. "And did she tell you why?"

"Because teeth need to last us a lifetime."

"My, aren't you a smart little girl."

"That's what the grocer said to me too," Tricia beamed.

"To tell you the truth, little girl," the old man said thoughtfully, "I've lost the use for my teeth a long time ago."

Tricia's brown eyes widened noticeably. "What do you mean, sir?"

The old man seemed not to hear her, as he seemed to be gazing blankly into the distance. Then he turned to look back at little Tricia once more. "I think I'm hungry," said the old man. Kneeling down by his cane, he beckoned Tricia to come closer. Whispering in her ear, "How would you like to join me for a bite?"

She blushed slightly in response. "Mummy told me never to follow strangers."

"Oh yes, I'd forgotten about that," the old man grinned, a slight air of sheepishness in his shrug. "My name is... is... well, I'm so old that I've actually forgotten my name." Then he laughed at his little joke. Tricia broke into a large toothy grin. The old man smiled and twirled his cane in the air a few times. She caught a glimpse of a shiny golden ball at one end.

"So... while I try to remember my name, what's yours, pretty one?"

Again, Tricia blushed. "Tricia, sir."

"Ah, a royal name, for a little princess like you, isn't it?" whispered the old man. Tricia blushed furiously this time, turning slightly from side to side. She was starting to like this old man - and very much!

The old man extended a wrinkled, bony hand. "Come, Tricia, let's take a walk. It's a lovely night..."

She took his hand gratefully, and squeezed it a little. The old man turned to Tricia once more. "Something wrong?"

"I'm... afraid of the dark, sir."

The old man cupped her cheek in his hand. "It's alright, girl. When we're done, you won't ever be afraid of the dark anymore." And little Tricia smiled again.

He rose to his full height, steadying himself on his cane. Then he walked alongside the little girl. She swung her hand and his happily, humming a little ditty to herself. The old man gazed into the darkness ahead, seemingly unaware of the little girl clasping his arm tightly. And so they walked, his cane tap-tapping against the road, till the morning fog engulfed them and hid them from sight.

Till today, who knows what really happened to little Tricia that one night? What were her thoughts before she disappeared, leaving only half-chewed bones to prove her existence at all? What games did the old man play with her during the course of their walk? Who was the old man in the first place?

For the record, the case - like many others in the Lenev File - was never solved. But remember! If, by chance, you are out walking in the dark, and you hear the steady tap-tap of a walking stick behind you - run, run like you've never run before; run and never look back! The legend of the Cane-Man is every bit as true as each of the horror stories surrounding the Cradle - and every bit as real as the murder of the little girl, Tricia.

The Lenev File

The city lived in the darkness of the Cradle's legacy, its citizens' lives torn and shaped by the misery embodied in its charred shell, and the tormented souls that haunt it. At night even the most cold-blooded murderers dared not walk alone along the twisted alleys surrounding it - people say the very ground there is blighted by the evil that is the Cradle.

The tortured voices were its birthing cry; the rising smoke its first breath. Born out of torture, oppression, murder and a history of weeping, the Cradle was ‘alive’. They say its doors will open before you. They’ll seal behind you and as long as you live, it will never let you leave.

But what if you died in the suffocating grasp of the Cradle?

They were so lost in their mirth and comfort that they didn't realize the quiet road they were walking on was uncomfortably in the immediate vicinity of the Cradle.

There was no indication whatsoever that the three of them ever saw the attack coming.

The police have a special file for such people. The boys in blue call it the Lenev File. The term supposedly originated from an unnamed police sergeant, who shortened its original moniker - "Lost, Never Found" - to "LNF", then later to "Lenev". The name has stuck ever since, and the name Lenev became a curse, synonymous with the Cradle and the countless unwary travelers, vagabonds and crooks who were unfortunate enough to seek refuge within its broken walls.

Officially, the person responsible for the 'upkeep' of the Lenev File was a serial killer on the loose, a man who had escaped the Cradle in its dying days as the inferno razed it to the ground. Unofficially, however, it's a different story: the story of how the Cradle and its lingering malice murdered before, luring luckless souls to their doom.

But for the past few nights, more and more people were steadily adding to the thickness of the Lenev File, disappearing mysteriously both day and night. Anguished relatives and friends turned up by the truckload at police stations across town, demanding, begging that action be taken.

How could you expect the police, brave men and women though they are, to face up to an enemy they didn't even know for sure?

Then it started one chilly winter's night.

A family, returning from the circus in town, were enjoying the cool breeze of the night. One can almost picture them - smiling father, grinning mother, and laughing son, holding his parents' hands, walking down a quiet road home. They were so lost in their mirth and comfort that they didn't realize the quiet road they were walking on was uncomfortably in the immediate vicinity of the Cradle.

There was no indication whatsoever that the three of them ever saw the attack coming.

By the time the reporters reached the scene, videocams rolling, cameras flashing, the police weren't even done picking up the last remaining pieces of bone and skin that were still scattered all over the street. But miracles do happen - they found a little boy, drenched in blood from neck to knees, cowering inside of a nearby dumpster.

After much persuasion on their part, the police managed to get the boy away. Away from the inquisitive paparazzi and the nosy public, he was brought to Greenward Hospital nearby under armed escort.

The police were right to take precautions. The ambulance that delivered him to Greenward left shortly after on an emergency call. Presumably, it never reached its destination - the ambulance was found hours later in a ditch, windows smashed, body panels dented and shredded in an inhuman way. The only trace of its crew were the bloodstains all over the upholstery within; not that there was much of it left, anyway.

Before the ambulance's remains were found, though, at around 7.00, the lights at the hospital flickered briefly. The doctors and nurses still went about their daily rounds - electricity interruptions were frequent in this part of the city, near to the slums. Dr Kara was in charge of the operation to save the boy's life and patch up the wounds he sustained, and she was on the fourth floor briefing her crew at this time.

Fifteen minutes later or so Officer Li failed to report for duty at the hospital main entrance, much to the chagrin of his colleagues there. Repeated attempts to contact him went unanswered. Frustrated, his sergeant went in search for him on the second floor, and found him there. The trouble was, Officer Li was lying face down in a pool of his own blood, without his throat.

The alarm was sounded. The call was made to the nearest police station for reinforcements. Unfortunately it was cut off midway suddenly, and the officers and doctors and staff at Greenward came to terms with the horrible realization that they were all alone.

That realization was compounded all the more by a gruesome incident. On the third floor, a window shattered and something large and soft dropped all the way through it to the ground below. It was the sergeant who had found Officer Li.

The remaining police scrambled to the fourth floor to protect the only surviving victim that could help with their investigations. Five officers took the stairs in the northern wing up while three more took the decrepit, but fully functional, elevator in the eastern wing. The five were the lucky ones. The entire hospital echoed with the dying screech-crunch of the lift plummeting to the ground from four floors up.

Dr Kara and her team, meantime, were completely unaware of the chaos in Greenward. By virtue of the soundproof room they operated in, they were fully focused on stitching up the boy's wounds. They would only come to know of what happened later.

Meanwhile, screams were heard from a corridor in the south-eastern wing of the fourth floor. Officers Prabu and Kian went to investigate, hands quivering slightly as they held their own guns firmly. As they rounded the corner they were confronted by a veritable mass of muscle - all six feet of it.

The giant, garbed in tank top and black cargo pants, was standing over the severely dismembered body of a young nurse, a bloodied meat cleaver in hand. His face was simply disgusting to look at - it didn't seem to fit him at all. It was with horror that the two of them realized that it didn't seem to fit him because it wasn't his face to begin with.

The face had once belonged to the boy's father's.

He turned to look at them, muscles swollen to the point of being grotesque and deformed - though the two officers had no doubt about how much damage his hulking form could take, or dish out. He lunged at them, and they were caught by surprise by his amazing agility and speed.

Prabu got off the first shot, and a large chunk of meat was torn off the monster's pulsating biceps. He bellowed with rage, stepping back and gripping his wound painfully. Kian recovered first - and tugged Prabu's sleeve back the way they came. Thankfully for them, the giant did not chase them any further.

By the time more men came to take down the giant, he was gone, and so was the corpse he had been gloating over. Only a trail of blood and gore was left...

Someone's strangled cry came from the operating theaters. The boy!

They came in time to see the giant toss a bleeding doctor out the window in front of the operating room. They drew their weapons and fired at him, catching him across the chest, arms and legs. He shrieked and charged like a raging bull, tossing one policewoman into a vending machine, and one of her male colleagues into the wall. Both of them passed out from the concussions.

The police volley continued. It seemed as if they were shredding the giant to pieces but he wouldn't bleed at all! Eventually though, the giant backed off gradually away from the line of officers, before turning his back on them and leaping out the window. He screamed as he plummeted, landing on the pavement with a dull thud.

And thus, the Greenward massacre came to a grisly end.

When the coroners came, they collected the bodies one by one, preparing them for identification and autopsies. The giant still scared them the most, even though he was clearly dead.

All in all, of the fifteen officers at Greenward, seven died while three more were warded for severe injuries. The three have since recovered fully and are back on active duty. Five doctors would never see the sunrise again, while eight nurses would have their names listed in the morgue alongside their superiors. The boy lives, however, and is now in police custody at a safe house somewhere in the city outskirts.

As they hauled the monster's massive body on to the stainless steel autopsy table, the media trumpeted the force's success in killing the butcher who was 'responsible' for the Cradle disappearances. Finally, they said, the force could rest easy and close the Lenev File for good. The men and women who died within the sterile walls of Greenward Hospital were buried in a grand ceremony as heroes who gave their lives in the fight against evil.

Two days later, the Lenev File was reopened without pomp or ceremony, just as the morgue doors were thrown open in the middle of a moonless night by a six-foot tall monster, body slick with gore and sweat. Witnesses said his body never bled from all the wounds he received...

In The Beginning : The Cradle's Birth

The city is used to strangeness. The bizarre is the mortar that binds it together. Its people are a hardy sort. In a world where the dead don’t stay buried, they need to be. It hardly counts as superstition when you know what‘s out there, in the darkness, just waiting for a chance to make you join it.

Even in the city, no one loiters to long in the shadow of one particular building, which hangs of the old blocks like some facial canker. The Cradle. If there is one way of cramming more misery into one building’s history, I can’t think of it.

The Cradle’s history is a scream, stretched out through time.

They say that it used to be that sad institute for lost children, an orphanage. It’s also said that it was that sad institute for lost adults, an asylum. What they didn’t say is that during its latter days it was both at once. While safer inmates were kept in the paupers ward towards the front of the building, the murderously insane – of which, at the Cradle’s demise, there were nine – were kept in the White Hall ward, towards the rear, with heavy lockdown doors between them and the rest of civilization. Near them, the orphans, in the Nursery tower. At the buildings heart, looking over all was the Staff tower, the stronghold of the lawmakers. Children and the insane, under lock and key of nurses and doctors. Authority and oppression bound together, existing as one.

The Cradle’s history is a scream, stretched out through time.

The tortured voices were the Cradle’s birthing cry. The rising smoke its first breath. Born out of torture, oppression, murder and a history of weeping, this place was ‘alive’ ... its doors will open before you. They’ll seal behind you and as long as you live, it will never let you leave.

The tale of the Cradle rests on two children – a boy and a girl. The boy, ran away, grew up, found redemption, on the streets, and there became known as the fanatical hunter of shadows. The girl never got a chance to grow up at all.

The doctors had strict rules, which the matrons were to follow. Obvious rules, such as homicidal patients and the children weren’t to mix. However, rules in a madhouse tend to err, so it came to pass that the girl found herself sitting while having her portrait painted by the patient in Cell 5, known as The Watcher. He was brought to the asylum after slaughtering his previous sitters because “they moved”. He then smeared his victim’s blood over each portrait’s face, in frustration at the lack of life in the final work. The girl was a good girl. She didn’t move at all. So she lived and The Watcher made the one perfect picture of his life.

No one is that lucky twice.

The Gray Lady of myth and nightmare came to the Cradle to find a body to use for her devilish schemes. Someone discarded already. Someone no one would miss. That is, an orphan. If the boy and the girl weren’t playing in the attic that day, maybe the Gray Lady would have chosen a different victim. Would the Cradle’s cry have been stifled early? Perhaps, perhaps not. We can only speculate as to the reasons why The Watcher was close enough to the murder scene to take the girls bloody tattered dress as a keepsake before anyone else arrived. Perhaps the murder he would eventually carry the blame for would have occurred anyway. The Cradle’s birth is rife with such sick irony.

Despite the boy’s testimony that some hag-like creature butchered his little friend, the material evidence pointed to the man locked in Cell 5. Extreme measures were called for, lobotomy. Or rather, all to common measures. The staff – when not experimenting with their weirder theories such as applying red-hot bars to bare skin or testing the outer limits of electrocution – turned to the doctors’ custom silver knives that could transmute a pest into a vegetable. The ‘result’ of which could be stored cheaply with the other trash in the pauper’s ward rather than the expensive White Hall. News spread that whatever made The Watcher himself would be sliced away in Treatment Room 2.

These words eventually reached the man who hid his shattered features behind a wax mask, Patient 1 – or ‘King No One’ as he was known among the inmates, thanks to the script on his door. The fact that he was contained in the isolation chamber, at the top of an elevator shaft in the White Hall, wasn’t enough to separate him from the other patients. His poisonous whispers leaked out, fanning the flames of dissatisfaction. The Watcher was a popular madman. His fraternity owed him an attempt to stop this. After all, they could be next. Dissent sparked into a fiery riot. In an instant, the keys were with the patients. They were all free the gates were sealed, but most of the children and staff were inside, trapped and barricaded in their towers. At least the lucky ones were – those on the ground floor proved wet and scarlet sport for the rampaging White Hall inmates.

The midwife to the cradles true birth was the patient in Cell 9, The Moth. A pyromaniac, she was allowed to keep her tinderbox as part of her therapy. Now free, she had all the fuel she could wish for. She lit the matches, which reduced the Cradle to a skeleton of a building. First in her room. Then under the cover of riot urged on by King No One, the fires at the base of the Staff tower.

While the king discarded his wax mask, finally revealing his molten face, and led the dismemberment of the remaining staff, The Moth pulled up her chair at the foot of the staircase and stared into the inferno as men and women were reduced to soot and screams.

The flames swept up. The Nursery tower joined its sister in misery. The voices of boys and girls merged in an unholy choir, a shriek to empty skies. God was not there that day. The smoke rose to the havens blacking them out, forming a cloud of the remains of authority. Anything elevated was destroyed. All that remained was the base material.

The tortured voices were the Cradle’s birthing cry. The rising smoke its first breath. Born out of torture, oppression, murder and a history of weeping, this place was ‘alive’.

It pressed down upon the remaining inmates, who ruled the remains of the asylum under King No One’s malevolence. His kingdom couldn’t last, at least, in earthly terms. The doors were shut. There was no way out. The inmates sickened, withered and died.

This wasn’t the end.

The inmates rose from death, becoming puppets of the Cradle’s will and twitching in meaningless echoes of their past existence. Their bodies animated in a closed spasmodic loop for eternity, waiting for someone else to enter, to catch the Cradle’s attention, and so join its macabre dance.

They say its doors will open before you. They’ll seal behind you and as long as you live, it will never let you leave.

Even in the city, no one loiters to long in the shadow of one particular building, which hangs of the old blocks like some facial canker. The Cradle. If there is one way of cramming more misery into one building’s history, I can’t think of it.