The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,61
ground floor, the Cooked Ghost suddenly and uncharacteristically took the lead. It fluttered nervously ahead of Echo as if trying to urge him on.
‘Hey,’ he called, ‘where are you off to, what’s the rush?’ He quickened his pace without waiting for an answer. They were in one of the creepiest parts of the castle - the old wards dating from the time when it had been a lunatic asylum - and Echo didn’t relish being down there on his own. They hurried through a series of big, lofty rooms with whitewashed walls and ceilings only dimly lit by the rays of moonlight that slanted down through windows here and there. Still dangling from the rusty bedsteads that littered the wards were the straps with which patients had been restrained. Many of the huge iron chandeliers originally suspended from the ceilings had crashed to the dusty floor and lay there like dead birds’ skeletons. The air was filled with a high-pitched hum whose source Echo could not identify.
He was involuntarily reminded of the mysterious mental illness that might still be lurking there. He pictured it as a gaunt, shadowy figure on spindly legs - one that might emerge from the gloom and pounce on him like a vicious beast - so he redoubled his efforts to keep up with the Cooked Ghost and leave the wards behind him as quickly as possible.
They soon came to the area where medieval psychiatrists had administered forms of treatment of which many were crazier than the symptoms they purported to cure. Their disintegrating contraptions and machines looked more like instruments of torture than medical equipment. Echo saw huge, mildewed alchemical batteries to which patients had been attached, iron cages that could be lowered into vats of cold water, rusty hand drills, blood-encrusted saws. He dreaded to think what use the lunatics had made of these facilities after they seized control of the asylum.
The rooms eventually became smaller and less intimidating. They had evidently been the staff quarters: bedrooms, a hospital canteen, a dilapidated kitchen cocooned in cobwebs. The Cooked Ghost came to a sudden stop. After fluttering for a moment like a flag in a gale, it flew straight through a wall and disappeared.
Abruptly left on his own, Echo was overcome with terror. He had never been in this part of the castle before and had no idea how to get out - except by retracing his steps through the ghostly wards on his own.
To make matters even worse, he now heard a whole chorus of plaintive sounds that pierced him to the marrow. Why did they seem so familiar? Could they be made by the spirits of the deranged patients who had died here? A ghost that had lost not only its life but its mind as well - what atrocities was it capable of committing? Or had he himself gone mad, infected by the mysterious disease that haunted these premises?
There! He could see a light coming from one of the nearby rooms! No, not moonlight, but a fitful glow like that created by an open fire. With his heart in his mouth, he crept to the door and peered inside.
It was a musty old library filled with ancient tomes and festively illuminated by dozens of candles. In the middle of the room, hovering above a stack of mouldering volumes, was the Cooked Ghost. Echo breathed a sigh of relief. The plaintive chorus sounded even louder than before, and he now realised that the candles were Anguish Candles - more of them than he had ever seen together in a single room.
Everything fell into place: Ghoolion had been here a short time ago - Echo could smell his vile perfume and see his footprints in the dust. He had probably been conducting some form of research with the aid of the psychiatric reference books of which the library consisted. Books explaining how to desiccate patients’ brains or suck demons from their ears, banish hallucinations by opening their veins or cure them of hysteria by plying them with thorn-apple tea. Having lit all those Anguish Candles in order to be able to decipher the ancient ledgers’ illegible handwritten entries, the Alchemaster had then left the room without putting them out of their misery.
Even though the Cooked Ghost had no ears, it seemed capable of empathising with the pain to which the Anguish Candles were being subjected. It clearly found their torments unendurable, because it was fluttering more restlessly than ever before and revealing glimpses of