The Bleeding Ruby

by Mark McAnaney

friend,

  I do apologise, but I fear that I had hidden away information of extreme importance on that day of your visit. It is thus that I send this package, and a letter explaining my reasons for hiding all of which I know. I knew one day someone would enquire of the damned ring, and my case with a patient linked to it. It has been a hard fifteen years of retirement dealing with the things I've known and the terrors I have seen because of this unholy gem. I have found that many have died or have lost their sanity because of this cursed ring, and I had hoped that by hiding all evidence of it, I would be the last of the victims. Nancy clearly must have passed the ring on as a family heirloom to your patient, her grandson, before I could get my hands on it to destroy its entire existence. Oh had I had the chance!

  Because another few lives may be lost to the bleeding ruby, so I have named it as I had worked with it, I feel it is my duty to aid you in the unravelling of it. The box I have posted you contains a few items that belonged to Nancy. Several of these are wild, disorganised notes, obsessively rambling on in every which direction about the gem. Second, is an odd totem of a featureless black figure without a face, or any other features of a human, beast, or otherwise at all. The type of rock used for this totem escapes me, and I have tried to no avail several times to have an expert identification of the mineral. The scripture upon the base of the horrid sculpture is in a language that I've also failed to have translated, as all experts I have involved in its study were quite perplexed. The final object of relevance is a strange rock of some sort. All I could tell you of it is that an astronomical expert that is well versed in the art of chemistry has let it be known to me that it originates from space, for it bears traces of elements only found in meteors as well as remnants of the burning of entry into mother Earth's great atmosphere. My expert has sent the rock to a geologist colleague of his, who has found strange results upon its study. The rock itself seems to be very young, perhaps a mere few days according to the dating measures taken by elaborate laboratory reading, and yet the remnants of the burning from re-entry seem to have happened many countless millennia ago! He did not want to say such delusional things, as they are impossible, but it appears that the object is from both the past and the future, and yet it is a new present day object!

  One more thing you must know, is the secret of the scars. Nancy had one, as did her husband Reinhardt, and another patient of mine did as well. They have a scar carved into their skin, right above their hearts, of the constellation Gemini. I never did solve the riddle of these scars, as neither of my patients ever revealed this to me and Nancy took it to her grave, but the possibility of counselling that other patient of mine of relevance to this is lost to us all. I assume that Jacob does not have the scar, as he is not a member of the same cult that his grandparents and my other patient were. The only way to solve this puzzle is to somehow reach the highly disturbed mind of Brutus “The Butcher of Bainsfield” Piers.

  Brutus is so severely disturbed that his entire existence has been kept a secret from the entire Rockview staff for some twenty odd years now. He suffers from the highest extreme of disturbance that may be possible within the limits of the human mind. The Butcher of Bainsfield has been locked away in a secret wing of the asylum for two decades now, possibly more. The wing is hidden behind the bookshelf of the study, and reinforced by three sets of locked bars with steel reinforced walls. The monster is fed one time a day, and only one staff member does it. Old Rusty is the only employee of the asylum that was there long enough to remember any trace of Brutus, and no one hired since has had his existence revealed to them. Rusty throws his food through the three sets of locking bars to him once a day and that is how Brutus lives. He passes his time bouncing frantically around the entire wing of the asylum, falling and thrusting himself upon the hard brick walls for so many mad days and nights at a time, breathing heavily and grunting with the most evil animal-like madness I have seen in all my career as a physician at Rockview. He has been in a straight arms coat since his intake, and yet still he has managed to kill several staff members over his first five years as a patient, crushing and gnawing at their throats under his massive, cannibalistic girth. One would think at his appearance that Brutus must be severely mentally retarded, but the opposite is truth. Brutus is a genius! At least he used to be. Upon intake, he tested among the highest I have ever seen on the intelligence part of the testing. His condition was one of a deteriorating nature.

  He became notoriously known as the Butcher of Bainsfield in the early 1860s, when he committed a series of unspeakably grisly murders, some against men, some against women and children and even particularly brutal ones against infants. It became clear that his ritual was to skin his victims alive, remove the heart, devour the flesh, and then sacrifice the hearts in a pyre dedicated to an entity known as the Forsaken Brother. He would often leave behind remnants of bizarre witchcraft rituals. He killed an estimate of sixty-five people before he was caught, on the night that he tried to take his own life.

  Upon intake, he had your ring of interest on a chain upon his neck. Before his demise into unreachable insanity, he claims to have given the ring to Nancy Riley. This makes little sense, as Nancy also had the ring upon her intake and committed her murder whilst wearing it as well! How is it possible that Brutus rampaged while possessing the ring, and a few years later, Nancy murdered Reinhardt whilst wearing it, and yet Brutus gave the ring to Nancy after she committed her crime? Brutus gave the ring to Nancy after her crime, and yet she had it in her clutches before she was ever brought to Rockview! It is proven on paper that upon her intake, she had it. Thinking of such impossibilities has driven me to an early retirement, and since I have sworn to hide all of these atrocities and their source from the world. The ring, however, is much too powerful, and I have failed.

  You've got to stop this thing from ending our world!,

  Wilkinson

  DICTATION: DR EDWIN WALTERS: 9th APRIL, 1894

  PATIENT NAME: JACOB RILEY

  PATIENT NUMBER: 546B

  Dr. Edwin Walters dictating on the case of Jacob Riley. I am afraid I am grieving the loss of my dear friend, Dr. Wilkinson as I write this, so do forgive me if my mind is not clear and I go off on a tangent. Wilkinson has taken his own life after sending me his package of horrors. Maybe there is more to this ring story than I had previously thought!

  I, accompanied by Jacob Riley, have since visited Brutus Piers in his locked away lone part of the asylum, and I still cannot believe that this patient was hidden away from me for so long. The ring has clearly driven Brutus into becoming a deranged serial killer, and since Jacob has the ring, I thought it be fit to show Brutus the ring to hopefully bring him out of his endless, nightmarish trance of madness.

  We approached the secret wing at about noon earlier today, knowing we were risking both of our lives, and entered the hellish black hole. The foul stench of excrement overpowered us, though we proceeded, terrified beyond measure. We could soon hear the echoing of the monster's heavy breathing and daemon-like growling, smashing off the dingy walls with a bloodthirsty intensity.

  It would not be long before we reluctantly encountered the daemon who lives in the asylum's darkest pit of hell. He immediately attacked us with a violent burst of insane speed and strength, but his lack of coordination saved our lives, as the absently raging psychotic beast smashed into the wall between us, leaving a blood mark upon the wall. Gazing into our souls with his deep yellowed and bloodshot eyes, freezing my heart with the purest of hatred that anyone can project, I felt as though my soul had died just upon feeling his level of lust for murder.

  Before the damnable monster could scrambled back to it's feet, Jacob showed him his ring. The entire demeanour of the creature changed to one of intense desire for the gem. It even spoke for possibly the first time in twenty years! “I've passed that on to its next High Priestess. My duties have been fulfilled except that I was supposed to be sacrificed to the Forsaken Brother next! Had you people allowed for my death to happ
en, the Forsaken One would have been appeased, but since you've interfered, you all must die!”

  Jacob spoke to the prisoner, “That High Priestess, or whatever she was supposed to be, was a killer like you! We need to know what you know about this ring. It brought me here without my sanity as well!” Brutus spoke again, “Fool! You and the Priestess committed no crime, the ring takes whomever it wants! It shows you your darkest moment of your miserable life, and then moves you there should you allow it. You should not have gazed so long, as I have. I have seen this moment of my life, and my morbid curiosity got the best of me and I gazed too long. When you gaze too long, the Forsaken Brother eventually stares back. It was given to me by a strange hermit that lived in the forests near Bainsfield. He bothered no one, and no one ever visited him out of fear. It was rumoured that he was a warlock of sorts. I was passing by and worried for the old man's life, so I entered his house uninvited to check to see if he was still alive. The man was fine, and quite healthy, and he handed me a ring. I thought it might be valuable, so in my ignorance I took it! All night I stared into it and it