Of Kings and Demons Read Online Free Page A

countryside into a picturesque of melancholic blue.
The air was frosty with chill and an unusual bout of snow in September had
blanketed the countryside white and deserted. The picture of melancholy was
punctuated by a solitary building, a hundred and fifty-year-old structure.
    The building’s location hinted
of poor planning, a world away from roads and amenities, but the structure was
once a mansion built for a wealthy family of maize growers in the early 19th century.
It was later abandoned in the 1950s when the family moved to the city in search
of wealth and status.
    After decades of neglect, the
aging building needed a fresh coat of paint, though the moonlight did compensate
by lending a decent cloak of respectable antiquity. Refurbished six years
earlier with congressional funding, it housed one of the key mental asylums of
the state.
    The building had some one
thousand five hundred spacious units, all occupied by men and women with
sicknesses of the mind. They had been abandoned by their loved ones to live, or
to die, in the institute.
    The third floor housed a
sensitive belt, an area designated for special patients. The mentally ill
boarded there were unique cases of prolonged symptoms that had defied medical
treatment. In layman terms, they were extraordinarily mad and beyond cure.
    At the end of the long corridor
of peeling walls, a room labeled 03-118 had been reserved for a special
patient. The occupant has for the last decade been afflicted with condition that
left doctors confounded. Despite the best efforts, his condition remained stagnant,
with his tenure in the mental institute remained indefinite.
    The patient’s dossier read:
John C Springs, New York City. Admitted when he was only thirty-four, his life
has been a soap-opera tragedy. John began his career as engineer with an
established construction firm and was happily married to his sweetheart, Susan
Hartson. Their first child, a boy, had been almost ten and they eagerly
anticipated the birth of their second—a girl, prior to John being institutionalized.
They had been a picture of bliss, the envy of many.
    Then tragedy struck.
    John met a fatal accident that
altered his destiny and that of his family: a head-on collision with an MUV
truck. He survived but fell into a coma for three long months. Everyone,
relatives and friends, had given up but Susan Hartson held on. Prayers were her
only solace, and she prayed hard and long.
    Miraculously, John regained
consciousness, but he was a changed man. The verve of a go-getter became a
thing of the past. He began to exhibit traits of a deranged man, as if he were
possessed. Insomnia plagued him, and his mental state degenerated. He often
talked to himself, and his behavior oscillated between unbridled joys to
unexplained sorrows. Once he was seen vandalizing the walls of the Church of
Nativity that he had frequented, offending the pastor, who happened to be his
mentor during  his youth.
    What follows was a taxing
period for Susan -managing a new baby, a growing-up child and a problematic
husband. The last straw that broke her came with an unexpected diagnosis of cancer.
She had only six months to live. The burden of tragedies mutilated her
rationality and drove her to the edge of a breakdown. Only thoughts of her
children kept her buoyant. As her life seeped away, she steeled herself and sent
John away to the institute. On that heart-wrenching day when John was taken
away, there was a downpour and the children wept with it.
    Susan died on a rainy day, too,
and again there was much weeping. The children were entrusted to John’s aunt,
the only relatives within reasonable proximity.
    John was quite immune to the unfolding
tragedies. He could barely manage himself as his mental malaise continues to defy
medication. He continued to a dream,  the same dream, every night for ten
years. On the walls of his room at the asylum, he had scribbled a strange
description of a sighting, a lady in long robes and flowing