The Doctor Tales :Voices Of A Blade

“Salutations, dear reader,” The Shadow murmured, his voice an eerie melody that seemed to weave itself into the silence of the desolate hospital. He wandered through the forgotten halls, his presence more like a ripple in the air than a solid form. No face adorned his featureless head, but his eyes burned like twin lanterns, piercing through the gloom with an unsettling brilliance. “Such a quiet place,” he continued, his tone dripping with calm curiosity. “No one left to fill its emptiness but the whispers of what once was... and me.” 
His hand hovered over the wall, not quite touching, as if the space between him and the surface was enough to trace its faded scars. The flickering lights above sputtered, casting erratic shadows. Each time the bulbs brightened, he seemed to dissolve, vanishing entirely, only to reappear when the light faltered, his glowing eyes cutting through the returning darkness. “What stories these walls must hold,” he mused, his gaze scanning the crimson streaks that marred the once-sterile white. “Why does this place bleed with memories so dark, so violent?” The Shadow moved deeper into the hospital, the air around him growing colder, heavier. A door at the end of the hall hung open, its hinges creaking faintly as if groaning under the weight of time. He stepped inside, the dim light flickering again. Each burst of brightness erased him momentarily, yet he reappeared in an instant as the room plunged back into shadow. 
The room was chaos frozen in time. Papers littered the floor, their edges curled with age. His glowing eyes fixed on a report tacked to the wall, its ink faded but its subject clear: a patient. The document detailed a man who suffered from dissociative identity disorder. The words were clinical, but the undertone spoke of something unsettling—something that even those who wrote the report hadn’t fully understood. “A fractured mind,” he whispered, his voice a mix of fascination and quiet reverence. “Pieces scattered, yet each one holds a story. How quaint.” In the corner of the room, something glinted faintly. The shadow moved toward it, crouching with a fluidity that defied natural motion. He reached for a tape, its casing cracked, and the film unraveled like tendrils of a forgotten memory. “A curious little artifact,” he said softly, turning the tape in his hands. “What secrets do you carry, I wonder?” He stood slowly, his form seeming to stretch with the dimming of the light. As the bulb above flickered one last time, a burst of brightness filled the room. The shadow dissolved into the light, vanishing completely. When the bulb burned out, plunging the space into darkness, he was there again, his glowing eyes the only illumination. They lingered for a moment, then turned toward the door. “Let us see what the darkness reveals,” he murmured before stepping into the void, his presence melting seamlessly into the shadows. 
The room fell into an oppressive silence, the still air heavy with forgotten memories. Only the scattered papers on the floor remained as silent witnesses to what had transpired. Without a sound, the shadow now drifted through a darkened library, his form weaving between towering shelves and rusted filing cabinets. The space, once a vault of knowledge, was now consumed by decay. Drawers hung ajar, stuffed with crumpled files, their labels faded and peeling. Blood stained the cabinets, streaked across the walls, dark and dried—yet no bodies remained to explain the violence. 
“How curious,” the shadow murmured, his glowing eyes narrowing as they traced the smears of crimson. “Such chaos… yet no one left behind to claim it.” He moved closer to a wall where erratic symbols and words were scrawled on with a trembling hand. The writing twisted and overlapped, barely legible, as if the author had been battling their own mind with every stroke. “A shattered mind can do many things,” he mused softly, his voice echoing faintly in the hollow space. “It can lash out, fracture others as easily as itself… or it can offer clarity—a lens through which pain is softened, and the world is… reimagined.” 
His hand hovered inches from the wall, tracing the jagged lines without touching them. “Perhaps, for some, a broken mind is a sanctuary. A refuge from truths too cruel to bear.” The lights above flickered briefly. In that split-second of brightness, the shadow dissolved, leaving only the lingering hum of the bulbs. Darkness returned, and with it, he emerged once more, eyes gleaming in the gloom. He tilted his head slowly, studying the writing as if it might speak back to him. “How fortunate… or how tragic.” The shadow drifted onward, deeper into the library, where forgotten knowledge and bloodstained secrets waited in the dark. 
“There you are.” He says, reaching for an audio player still holding a single tape. “Let's just peek at what you hold. What name was our victim?” a voice on the other end came in, his voice deep and raspy.  
“Montana State Hospital 
ID: MSH-DJ2475 
Name: Dr. Mark Jenson 
Department: Psychiatry / Research 
Clearance Level: 3” 
“Patient name Henry Caldwell 
Date of admission October 30, 2022 
Recording date November 5, 2022 
Attending Physician: Dr. Evelyn Hartman, M.D. 
Session number 3 
Recording type: audio recording Active  
  
[Begin Medical Log] 
This is Dr. Mark Jensen conducting a psychological assessment on patient #1987-042-AX 
Patient is still exhibiting strange hallucinations and claims to be hearing voices in his head.  
This confirms the idea of having dissociative identity disorder.  
  
Patient states that a person named Linda is around, but no signs of the person are around. Others are getting scared; they are starting to believe these ideas. I'm not sure what to make out of this.  
  
Others are requesting he be isolated, I'm starting to worry that is the only way to keep everyone safe.  
For now, I’ll give him more time for psychotherapy with me.  
  
[End Log]  
  
The audio cut out with a crackle. 
“Well, it seems our friend was more than a little hurt in the head. Looks like he didn’t have the right people around him,” The Shadow said, a hint of pain in his voice. 
“Well then, our character for this tale is a Mr. Henry Caldwell, who appears to be carrying some mental pain. I’ve heard some rumors, so let’s begin, shall we? We have our place, our character, and it seems our situation has been set.” We start in Warm springs Montana  
Warm Springs, Montana was a place where time seemed to stand still. The wind carried a biting chill through the valley, whispering through the skeletal branches of pine and spruce that clawed at the gray sky. The mountains loomed in the distance; their jagged peaks swallowed by a thick curtain of fog that crept in with the dusk.