asylum, it was difficult to forget that his grandfather had been the director of the Shire County Sanitarium during its declining years and that his father had closed down the place under circumstances that remained an obscure episode in the town’s history. If we spoke very little about the asylum and its graveyard, Mr. Locrian spoke of them not at all. This reticence, no doubt, served only to strengthen in our minds the intangible bond which seemed to exist between him and the awful ruin that sealed the horizon. Even I, who knew the old man better than anyone else in the town, regarded him with a degree of circumspection. Outwardly, of course, I was courteous to him, even friendly; he was, after all, the oldest and most reliable patron of my business. And not long after the demolition of the asylum was concluded, and the last of its former residents’ remains had been exhumed and hastily cremated, Mr. Locrian paid me a visit.
At the very moment he entered the shop, I was examining some books which had just arrived for him by special order. But even if I had grown jaded to such coincidences following years of dealing in books, which have some peculiarity about them that breeds events of this nature, there was something unpleasant about this particular freak of timing.
“Afternoon,” I greeted. “You know, I was just looking over …”
“I see,” he said, approaching the counter where tiers of books left very little open space. As he glanced at these new arrivals—hardly interested, it seemed—he slowly unbuttoned his overcoat, a bulky thing which made his head appear somewhat small for his body. How easily I can envision him on that day. And even now his voice sounds clear in my memory, a voice that was far too quiet for the old man’s harshly brilliant eyes. After a few moments he turned and casually began to wander about the shop, as if seeking out observers who might be secluded among its stacks. He rounded a corner and momentarily left my view. “So at last it’s done,” he said. “Something of a feat, a striking page of local history.”
“I suppose it is,” I answered, watching as Mr. Locrian traversed the rear aisle of the shop, appearing and disappearing as he passed by several rows of shelves.
“Without doubt it is,” he replied, proceeding straight down the aisle in front of me. Finally reaching the counter behind which I stood, he placed his hands upon it, leaned forward, and asked: “But what has been achieved, what has really changed?”
The tone of voice in which he posed this question was both sardonic and morose, carrying undesirable connotations that echoed in all the remote places where truth had been shut up and abandoned like a howling imbecile. Nonetheless, I held to the lie.
“If you mean that there’s very little difference now, I would have to agree.
Only the removal of an eyesore. That was all we intended to do. Simply that.”
Then I tried to draw his attention to the books that had arrived for him, but I was coldly interrupted when he said: “We must be walking different streets, Mr. Crane, and seeing quite different faces, hearing different voices in this town.
Tell me,” he asked, suddenly animated, “did you ever hear those stories about the sanitarium? What some people saw in its windows? Perhaps you yourself were one of them.”
I said nothing, which he might have accepted as a confirmation that I was one of those people. He continued:
“And isn’t there much the same feeling now, in this town, as there was in those stories? Can you admit that the days and nights are much worse now than they were… before? Of course, you may tell me that it’s just the moodiness of the season, the chill, the dour afternoons you observe through your shop window. On my way here, I actually heard some people saying such things. They also said other things which they didn’t think I could hear. Somehow everyone seems to know about these books of mine, Mr. Crane.”
He did not look at me while delivering this last remark, but began to pace slowly from one end of the counter to the other, then back again.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Locrian, if you feel that I’ve violated some confidence. I never imagined that it would make any difference.”
He paused in his pacing and now gazed at me with an expression of almost paternal forgiveness.
“Of course,” he said in his earlier, quiet voice. “But things are very different now, will you allow that?”
“… Yes,” I conceded.
“But no one is sure exactly in what way they are different.”
“No,” I agreed.
“Did you know that my grandfather, Doctor Harkness Locrian, was buried in that graveyard?”
Feeling a sudden surprise and embarrassment, I replied: “I’m sure if you had said something.” But it was as if I were the one who had said nothing at all, nothing that would deter him from what he had come to tell me.
“Is this safe to sit in?” he asked, pointing to an old chair by the front window. And beyond the window, unobstructed, the pale autumn sun was sinking down.
“Yes, help yourself,” I said, noticing some passersby who had noticed Mr. Locrian and looked oddly at him.
“My grandfather,” Mr. Locrian continued, “felt at home with his lunatics. You maybe startled to hear such a thing. Although the house that is now mine was once his, he did not spend his time there, not even to sleep. It was only after they closed down the sanitarium that he actually became a resident of his own home, which was also the home of myself and my parents, who now had charge of the old man. Of course, you probably don’t remember. …
“My grandfather passed his final years in a small upstairs room overlooking the outskirts of town, and I recall seeing him day after day gazing through his window at the sanitarium. …”
“I had no idea,” I interjected. “That seems rather—”
“Please, before you are led to think that his was merely a sentimental attachment, however perverse, let me say that it was no such thing. His feelings with respect to the sanitarium were in fact quite incredible, owing to the manner in which he had used his authority at that place. I found out about this when I was still very young, but not so young that I could not understand the profound conflict that existed between my father and grandfather. I disregarded my parents’ admonitions that I not spend too much time with the old man, succumbing to the mystery of his presence. And one afternoon he revealed himself.
“He was gazing through the window and never once turned to face me. But after we had sat in silence for some time, he started to whisper something. ‘They questioned,’ he said. ‘They accused. They complained that no one in that place ever became well.’ Then he smiled and began to elaborate. ‘What things had they seen,’ he