There was an elevator at the hospital, but he was forbidden to use it. So he lugged the heavy metal bucket and wringer and a rope mop taller than he was up and down eight flights of stairs. He emptied filthy water in the utility sink on each floor, filling the bucket again on the next. The lye soap burned the skin on his hands until his knuckles bled. At night he’d toss and turn on his thin mattress, struggling to sleep because of the pain in his back and shoulders.

Only Sister Dymphna ever showed him any kindness. An obese woman with a feathery birthmark on one cheek, she was named for Saint Dymphna, virgin martyr and patron of the insane. Sister Dymphna had given Henry a scapular of her namesake. The holy card showed a dainty red-haired girl with a halo. A bloody line indicated where her head had been cut off, then miraculously reattached, as if with red thread. Henry wore the scapular beneath his undershirt, even when he was asleep.

Inside, his room was small and hot as a bakery. A large crucifix on the wall, a single narrow iron bedstead, a small wooden desk and chair. The only window was narrow and overlooked an air shaft. An electrical bulb hung from the ceiling, but it was too bright; it hurt his eyes. He stepped to his desk, opened the drawer, and removed a handwritten manuscript bound in string. He’d salvaged the yellow paper from trash bins on the third floor, where the doctors had their offices.

PUT THAT BACK I TOLD YOU NEVER TO TOUCH THEM I DIDN’T TOUCH HER I SAVED HER DIDN’T I SAW YOU YOU LITTLE BASTARD

He clutched the manuscript to his chest and kicked out at the bad men until they disappeared. Panting, he sat at his desk, set down the manuscript. He waited until he was calm, waited for calm to bloom into anticipation, then expectation. The dim room seemed to brighten as he gazed at the stack of pages, each one a door poised to open.

HERE WE ARE! HERE WE ARE WAITING HERE WE ARE WE WAITED JUST LIKE WE PROMISED!

His breath quickened, no longer anxiety but eagerness. Brave girls, brave General Dargero! He would save them as he always did!

He leaned over the table. His outstretched hands hovered a few inches above the manuscript, the way he’d seen the colored magician conjure white doves from a brick at the freak show. He’d written the title in meticulous block letters, using a thick pencil he’d pilfered from a nurse’s desk:

THE ADVENTURES OF GENERAL
HENRICO DARGERO,

OF THE GEMINI AND THE BLACK BROTHERS,

AND OF THE GIRLS ARMY
THAT FOUGHT BESIDE THEM

IN THEIR BATTLE AGAINST THE
CONFEDERACY OF THE

CLAN OF THE AGIVECENNIANS

By Henry Joseph Darger

The author of this exciting story