▶The Beginning of The End
I have always been fascinated with the maniacal.
Serial killers, madmen, the ones so unhinged from reality that it's basically impossible to understand their motivations.
You know that they’re cruel and awful and violent - but you’ll never know why.
Thankfully, I’m not a serial killer. I’m just a lowly, freelance investigative journalist - fresh out of San Diego State - with a little bit of a curiosity complex.
I study the serial maniacs in order to learn what drives them, and then I make stories out of them for the ones that are rightfully hesitant to step into the same darkness that I am willing to bathe in if it means that my story benefits.
Over the course of my studies at SDSU, I ventured into this darkness on many occasions and engaged with some of the most haunting individuals across the state of California; people trapped inside of their own minds, confined to padded cages and surrounded by steel bars - but there was always one that I could never get close to.
In my not-so-common line of work, our kind would consider him the big one - and that may just be the reason why he’s always been so out of reach.
Until today.
After receiving word that he was being released, for the third time, from Masonic Ridge Psychiatric under strict supervision, I managed to get in touch with one of the senior attending psychiatrists - who ultimately granted me the opportunity of an interview.
An interview with one Ozric Mortimer.
Truly a monster, but strangely a legend in the same breath. You don’t typically come across a schizophrenic who committed everything from inspiring arson to kidnapping - who also became a true warrior inside of a wrestling ring. The news stories that you’ll find on Ozric Mortimer will tell you a different story - and those stories are likely why he’s spent so much time inside one of those padded cages I was talking about.
But then there’s others that look at him differently. They don’t see a monster. They see a man that never had a chance to actually live; a man who was raised in such a volatile way, surrounded by terrible people, and had no choice but to inherently continue to carry out the chaos that those before him started.
When Anna Blackmore barged through the front doors of that police department - after missing for nearly six months, she told the officers exactly where Ozric was keeping her. Hours later, after he was captured - Anna confessed that she didn’t tell police where Ozric was so that he could get caught.
She told them where he was so that they could save him.
Little Anna Blackmore never expanded on what this meant - no matter how many people intensely interrogated her 8 year old mind. In the time that she went missing - and with Ozric - Anna claimed that she was never harmed or mistreated.
From this, everything exploded. I can’t explain why it happened - but the weirdos started to come out of the woodwork. There was a strange division of people - some hated Ozric Mortimer and pushed to make sure that he never saw the light of day again. Then there were others - a slew of people that suddenly started to support the supposed monster.
These fanatics were like an army of their own and they stood hand in hand, day in and day out, at Masonic, protesting Ozric’s imprisonment. To these people - and for whatever reasons - this was no monster. This was an innocent, misunderstood man that just needed to be given the chance to be heard - to be a free civilian like all of them.
And wouldn’t you know it - whether it was from all of the division, or fueled by all of the publicity that kept a psychiatric hospital with crooked operations constantly at the center of the map - the supposed monster was getting an opportunity to see the light of day again, with some conditions.
Strict supervision. From what I’ve gathered, guardianship will be mandatory. 24/7 guardianship - by his long-time doctor, Jack Raleigh Klingman. This guy has a story of his own - juicy all the way down to the bone. I must find a way to engage with him.
He’s going to… wrestle. I don’t know all of the details - being the lowly freelance journalist, as I mentioned earlier, but there’s an entire arrangement between this wrestling promotion, the hospital, and likely several shadow powers so far behind the veil that I’d have to sell my own soul to get to them.
Basically, he’s given one final chance. To adhere to the normal policies of living life in the open world. If he chooses to rebel against these policies, he goes away for good. Forever.
Before those doors open and Ozric walks out as a free man again, I finally get my opportunity to sit down with the big one and get the story that I’ve always dreamed of. Maybe being forced to listen to everyone that doubted my abnormal career choice will be worth it in the end.
—
“How can we help you?”
This wasn't an ordinary facility. You didn't walk through a set of double-doors and into a lobby to sit with a bunch of other people that walked through the same double doors.
At this facility, you stopped at a gate - with barbed wire dressed around the top of it in perfect curls - and then spoke into a metal, cylindrical intercom attached to the gate itself.
“Yes ma'am, Adam. My name is Adam Landing. I spoke with a Dr. Klingman briefly on the phone. We arranged an interaction with Nicholas Brocken.”
Adam waited for a response as he sized up the gate in front of him, but there was nothing but silence. For a second, Adam thought the intercom didn't pick up his voice
.“Hi, It's Adam…” (He clears out the awkwardness from his throat.) “I am a journalist? Nicholas Brocken, also know as Oz–”
“Approach the center of the gate and look towards the camera directly above you sir.”
Adam nodded his head, “Thanks!”, and then moved into the designated position. He stared intently at the eye in the sky until there three sharps beeped. This was followed by the sound of metal grinding into metal.
Or in this case, the entrance gate sliding open. And then the voice returned. Possibly even louder than before.
“Walk through the gate and stay straight through the corridor. Dr. Klingman’s office is halfway down on the right. They are anticipating your arrival.”
“They?”
Adam didn't respond. It seemed like a one-way directional type of conversation anyways, so he took a deep breath and opted to just follow instructions - starting with the long walk down the corridor.
This corridor, much like the facility itself, was not ordinary. It was long, dreary, half-lit - the air felt heavy, tainted, abused. By the time Adam finally made his way to the appropriate office - one with a gold plate on its door that appropriately said “Jack Klingman MD”, he was mentally spent.
It felt like voices were chasing him - screaming at him to turn away now before things only got worse. Even when he raised his fist towards the door to knock on it, Adam could feel a rush of energy attempting to sway his hand away.
But of course, all of this was just placebo.
Right?
Three knocks on the door was met with a few staggered footsteps, the opening up the door, and the reveal of a very, very old doctor. It wasn't the spiry Jack Klingman from years ago, who caught public fire when he decided to take Nicholas under his wing as a patient to help him fight the wicked evil that became of his counterpart, one Ozric Mortimer -
This was a doctor that was clearly worn down by the time he spent inside of Nicholas' bubble - in a physical and psychological retrograde like a war veteran just arriving back home from a long stint at the epicenter of the battlefield.
His eyes, protected by thick, tinted reading glasses - and his right hand pressed into a black cane that supposed that staggered walk Adam heard before the door opened.
Jack nodded towards his visitor. “You must be Adam Landing.” Jack half smiled, and Adam half-smiled back.
“Pleased to finally be able to meet you, Dr. Klingman”
This made the doctor laugh.
“Perhaps I am the one that should be honored. Your name has become quite household as of late.”
Adam furrowed his eyebrows, somewhat confused. “Mine?”
Jack signals for Adam to come into his office, which Adam cautiously obliges.
“Oh yes indeed.”
“Oh, well…” Adam chuckles it off casually. “I’m just a nobody journalist. No Larry King here, ya know?”
“Well, that's interesting…” Klingman slowly closes the door behind Adam once he's all the way in the room. Adam is looking at something - Perplexed - maybe even a little frightened - and the doctor resumes.
“Because the sparrow thinks differently.”
…
….
…..
Water dripping.
Darkness.
Heavy breathing.
And through that darkness, a pair of eyes and a set of teeth appear.
“The evil rested quietly in its own eternal isolation. It calcified in place and remained motionless in black for many years. Mortal beings will describe this as death - an inescapable eternal rest - but that's for those tethered by the ploy of living “
“When living no longer becomes the rooted obligation, the rest merely becomes the transition. It's the place where evil reassesses the playing field, where the entire world can be observed with one glimpse - but a glimpse that's long enough to know what has to be destroyed next.”
“Once the evil has finally reached the conclusion of its transitional phrase, there is only one step that remains.” “To be reborn - not as the same entity as it once was - but a stronger, wiser, more inventive evolution of what it once was.”
“That - and only that - is the obligation.”
“I am that evil.” “
It is my obligation to serve that evil.”
“And now that I am awake, the victims before me are in endless numbers. Standing in front of me like a wall that was only ever put in place for a certain kind of evil to drive straight through.”
“I can smell them.”
Suddenly, the eyes disappear and all that remains is an eerie smile.
“I can taste them.”