The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife

(Based on a True Story)

Dr. Mandieux and his wife were the toast of the town, enough so that their eccentricities were looked past by those who sought the vicarious vogue their social circle afforded. Thus, for example, when the elegant Madam Mandieux saluted her guests in the middle of a ball, instructed the band to continue playing, and then went upstairs in their old New Orleans home - which thing was considered shockingly gauche - she was never reprimanded for her apparent lack of courtesy, and no one turned down the invitation to the next party at the Mandieux home.

Such a status, in reality, is not too hard to come by. Dr. Mandieux was young, very intelligent, very good looking, and very well-to-do. His wife, a handsome woman with her own family wealth, wore only the latest fashions direct from France, served only the finest wines, and patronized only the finest restaurants. And what is more, they invited only the most elite of guests, and there is an assured cycle of perpetuation in that. If a person receives an invitation to a Mandieux party, that person must be elite, and therefore attendance at the party is mandatory, lest by a notable absence the would-be guest falls from elite status and loses favor in the sight of all of glamorous New Orleans. And so a Mandieux invitation was never refused.
The couple had come straight from France, under circumstances known to none but themselves (although speculation was rampant, if surreptitious), not five years previous, and had quickly inserted themselves into society, before coming to dominate society. No one in the city could recall a couple so consistently at the center of society, and none would appear after the Mandieux family.

The Doctor was a very serious man, and it was clear to most that the famous Mandieux parties were done entirely at the insistence of Madam. And truly they were glorious occasions! Nearly the entire ground floor was a single room, saving only a small kitchen and adjoining quarters for the cook, and every Wednesday all the furnishings on the ground floor were either removed or repositioned so that the maximum amount of floor space would be available for the revelers to dance or mingle, sample delightful cheeses, salted meats, freshly sliced fruits, carefully seasoned vegetables and aged wines. The musicians were the most expensive available, and worth everything they were paid. Sometimes the party was a masquerade, in which the revelers became peacocks, devils, angels or monsters. Other times it was a formal ball, with black ties and tails, tophats and spats, tightly-cinched corsets, tall heels, flowing gowns and petticoats, sparkling tiaras. But always the guests wore the most elegant clothes they could muster, and given the nature of the Mandieux guest list, elegance was always in abundance.

And every Wednesday, precisely in the middle of the ball (which ran from eight o’clock to midnight), the musicians would pause, and the splendid-looking Madam would raise her glass, toast her guests, instruct them to continue in the festivities, and then ascend the staircase. The music would resume, louder and more festive than before, and the bewildered guests (none of whom would ever dare to comment on the rudeness of such a thing - not while in the Mandieux home) would resume their light-hearted diversions. And again, every Wednesday, after an absence of some time, Madam Mandieux would descend the stairs - and always in a different gown! This singular aspect of Madam’s behavior never went unnoticed, but again, none of her guests would comment on such a strange thing.

And so things went for a long time in the Mandieux home, and because of the centrality of the Mandieux family to the New Orleans social machinery, their eccentricity was excused, and their invitations were universally (absent some sickness or other pressing concern) accepted.

Now it happened on a Wednesday, in the year 18--, that the usual party was being given, the usual appointments and fixtures set up, the usual guests, the usual sumptuous delights, the usual music. And as expected (although no one ever mentioned that it was expected), as the hour struck ten o’clock, Madam Mondieux ascended the first few stairs, raised her glass to the air, and stated with a broad smile (her lips red as blood): "Continue to dance, well-beloved friends, and let the music ring through the night!" And then she sipped from her glass and continued upstairs, beyond sight, and the music increased in volume and tempo, and the revelers shrugged off the circumstance they had witnessed and danced with virtually uninterrupted relish.

Perhaps three quarters of an hour later, Madam was in her room in the northeast corner, wearing a gown different from that in which she had started the party, when she called for Anika, a young servant girl, to come and brush her hair. Anika, frightened, approached her mistress from behind with a brush of purest silver, crafted delicately with patterns of flowers, images of animals frolicking in sylvan settings, and craftily smiling satyrs peering from behind bushes and tree trunks. And young Anika began to brush Madam’s hair, her tiny hands trembling in fear of her stern mistress. And so it was that when Anika hit a snag in Madam’s locks, she pulled on the snag a little too hard, enraging the woman.

Madam Mandieux leapt to her feet, seized the silver brush from the child, and began to strike the poor girl with it. Anika shrieked, but knew that her small voice would be more than drowned out by the volume of music from the party below. In a panic, the child stood and ran from the room, Madam following closely behind.

When Anika emerged out into the hall, she knew she had to decide quickly where to go. To the right was a short hall and the staircase down to the fete below, but she was strictly forbidden from descending that staircase during a party. Straight ahead was a longer hallway, and for some reason unknown even to her, Anika choose this direction to flee. Strange indeed it was that she should choose to take the hallway south, because there was only one door, even more strictly forbidden to all the servants, and also locked and barred with iron. But tonight, as fate would have it, the iron bar was out of place, and the door slightly ajar. And so, driven to irrationality by her perfectly rational fear of Madam, she ran for this door, thrust it open, and disappeared inside.

As these events transpired, a sudden noise arose from inside the house, from the revelers on the ground floor. Fire! Someone had detected thick smoke pouring from the kitchen, and while a few stout-hearted men ran towards the source, most of the guests fled outside to the safety of the streets. In the kitchen, the men discovered that the cook was shackled to an iron bedpost with a chain that was only long enough to let here get from her bed, to the iron stove, and back. She was no true servant, but a slave who was permanently bound to this house, and bound to her cruel masters. And it seems that in desperation, the cook had started the fire, having determined that if her fate was to be burned alive, it would be no worse than to continue under such circumstances as she had endured for nearly five years now, in the service of the Mandieux family.

At that same moment, several of the guests were congregating excitedly on the street outside. And as it happened, some of them were looking upwards at the second story of the Mandieux residence, and they saw through a window the fleeting image of a young servant girl dashing through a hallway. Then the image was lost to them, as she entered a room with not a single lightsource, that they could see. And then, strangest of all, they saw the girl again, although the dark room was the southernmost of the home, because the girl burst through a pair of shuttered doors, out onto a small balcony, and over the thin iron railway, causing her to fall head first into the walled courtyard below, where they again lost sight of her, but from the bottom of which they heard a sickening thud, and nothing more. Some of the witnesses would later note that, curiously, the girl appeared to be running faster after emerging from that dark room than she had been before entering it.

The small group in the kitchen secured the release of the cook and ushered her quickly to the street outside. The fire crews arrived and began to control the blaze. Rumors and all manner of wild speculation circulated throughout the crowd. And it occurred to all that no one had seen either the Doctor or the Doctor's wife since the onset of these strange events. As it now appeared that the fire in the kitchen would be defeated, a small group of men who had not yet lost their nerve re-entered the house and climbed the same staircase used by Madam Mandieux not an hour and a half previous. A thorough search of the upstairs showed that neither Mandieux was still in the house, but everyone quickly forgot about them when some hapless adventurer came upon the southeastern room, the one with the iron bar that was not in place, that was still slightly ajar. For inside that room were unspeakable horrors, the kind of sights that would lead a young child to leap to her death on the pavement below rather than linger an extra moment among such terrible visions.

Before any portable lamps were brought in (the room had no lights of its own, it seems), those who entered thought they trode upon some oily substance. But when all was revealed to them, they saw that they had human blood upon their shoes. "My God!" one cried. Chained to the walls, with arms outstretched, were human figures, all unmoving, but all in different states of macabre torture. One had long, iron spikes driven through his torso, but with such medical precision that they missed every vital organ, so that the man must have bled to death over a period of long days. Another’s eyes and mouth had been sewn shut, and he was left to perish in hunger and darkness. Most terrifying of all, however, was a man pinned to the western wall. The skin on his face had been carefully incised down the middle, from the top of his forehead to the tip of his chin, and thence carefully peeled back and pinned to the wall behind him. His eyes peered out from a meaty face with no lids to wet them; his teeth grinned maliciously with no lips to cover them. And the muscles of the face seemed to writhe and twitch, until it was noticed that this was simply an optical illusion caused by tiny maggots crawling sightlessly about. Most awfully, it was quickly discovered that this last man - unfortunate soul! - was still alive!
Also in the room was found a heavy oak chest, and inside it was a lad, perhaps fifteen years of age, whose every bone had been broken and set at impossible angles. He, too, was alive, although living in the stifling chest and shaped more like some evil crab than a human being. Propped up in a corner was a woman whose arms and legs had been cut off and the wounds cauterized with some hot metal, so that she would not bleed to death. It appeared that she had survived primarily by eating the flesh of the dead man who hung, arms outstretched in the shape of the Christ, nearest her. But her sanity was gone, and for the rest of her days she would never utter a single intelligible word.

Alas, this tale does not end with the terrible revelations of what went on in that room. The poor discoverers of the Mandieux secret quickly left that gruesome charnal pit and the house to get back to the street and inform the frightened constabulary of the demonic happenings within. But no man there had the courage to re-enter all that night. Hours later, when the noise from the crowd outside had died down somewhat, the frightened people heard the gasping moans of the ghosts of the dead emanating from inside that accursed house. Everyone heard them, and none could deny the sound of the unnatural wailing, the pleas for help, the muffled cries. And because of the ghosts, no one would enter until the voices all faded away, and ceased four days later, on the Lord’s day, when a merciful God brought silence back to that unholy place.

After much investigation, the constables determined that the victims of the Mandieux family were primarily orphans or people otherwise without family who arrived on the ships from France. The Doctor would meet them down at the wharves and invite them to his home with promises of food, lodging, and work as it became available. Although they were never heard from again, their social status was such that no one ever raised any inquiry.

Several weeks later, investigators in Florida contacted New Orleans with news that a carriage owned by the Mandieux family had been discovered there, and that two family servants had been found murdered and locked inside. This puzzled inspectors in New Orleans, because the wealthy Mandieux family employed many servants, none of whom (other than Anika and the cook) had been located after that dreadful night.

The Mandieux house was condemned by the state, as there was no private citizen who could assert proper title to it (nor anyone who would think of doing such a thing), and as the city was unable to sell it, they eventually decided upon a plan to turn it into a hotel, as few guests from out of town would know it’s awful history. Reluctantly, crews of workers entered the house to refurbish it and make it fit for its new function. During the course of this work, one of the workers discovered a hidden trap door in the floor. On further inspection, he was horrified to find a large number of human corpses in the crawlspace beneath. It seems that, as they prepared to depart, the Doctor and his wife had executed one final crime. In order to keep their flight a secret, they had shut up all of their servants but two within the crawlspace and then abandoned them to their fate. It had taken four days for the last of them to give up the ghost - before the last one stopped crying desperately for someone to release them from that house!