Decades ago, possibly when I was in my teens, I read a
short story about a doorbell and painkillers. It was during my science
fiction/science fantasy days, I reckon. I've tried to find it, or some reference
to it, on the internet, but without success. Stripped
of its gothic atmospheric detail, the story, as I remember it, was
this:
Whenever visitors rang the bell at the door of a
remote, castle-like edifice, a strange, piercing sound arose, seemingly from far
away - the bowels of the castle? - and an uncommunicative man-servant opened the
door to them.
I forget the rest of the story, except that we discover
the macabre and cruel secret of the working of the bell. - There are other
people somewhere in the castle, underground maybe, or housed in a distant wing.
They are in great pain. They are being cared for - nursed/doctored/spoken to
solicitously - by person or persons who appear to care about their welfare. The
treatment for their pain is pills - soothing pills - painstakingly concocted by
their carers.
When they take the pills, the pills appear to help a bit;
the pain subsides a bit. They perhaps allow themselves to relax a little. There
is occasionally talk of becoming well enough to leave the castle, well enough to
return home. But however they may appear to improve, and maybe to rest or sleep
fitfully, there are terrible, anguished relapses, when, in concert, the patients
scream in agony, clutching their stomachs, as though suffering the torments of
the damned.
In brief, dear Reader, the pills they are being given
contain tiny metal pieces, and the doorbell governs immensely
powerful magnets, cunningly positioned. And when visitors ring the doorbell, the magnetism is engaged,
and the tiny bits of metal within the innards of the 'patients' are
pulled/attracted by that inhuman mechanism, and tear at the delicate,
long-troubled tissues and nerves of those doomed victims of ill-conceived
medication. And it is the sound of their screams that alerts the man-servant that there is someone at the
door, someone waiting to be admitted...
And the moral of this story is: Put not your trust in
painkillers! They may cause you great harm...
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