Dr. Mandible smiled at them, but they did not smile back. Even the most committed of them had never had merely fresh air between them and their most dangerous patients.
“Did he really pull men’s arms from their sockets?” asked Dr. Maxilla, a slight tremor in his voice.
“Not at all,” replied Mandible. “He pulled anyone’s arms from their sockets. He was never gender-exclusive and always the most egalitarian of psychotics—anything with a pulse was fair game for slaughter. He once saved the life of someone simply so he could kill him in a more imaginative fashion.”
“So the story about the guinea pigs and the kebab skewer is true?”
“All the stories are true,” replied Mandible, gesturing for them to follow, “except the one where he showed mercy to a little old lady. It wasn’t mercy at all—he had a dentist’s appointment and was in a hurry.”
He led them through the steel gate, on the other side of which three burly orderlies were waiting to escort them. They walked down a short corridor and blinked as they stepped into a large outdoor area surrounded by a high wall. The compound was laid out as a spacious garden, and they could see patients tending small areas of their own. Dr. Mandible led them down a concrete path to a beefy, neckless bull of a man who was weeding a vegetable patch.
“Hello, Martin,” said Dr. Mandible calmly.
“Hello, Doc,” said the man cheerily. “Carrots will be good this year.”
“Splendid!” replied Dr. Mandible, patting the patient amiably on the shoulder and passing on.
“Martin Gooch,” whispered Mandible. “Frustrated film director. Went mad and slaughtered a producer with an ax, then killed anyone who reminded him of the producer, and after that anyone at all. Spent the first three years of his treatment in solitary because of his violent disposition. After six years of origami therapy we reclassified him from Category B, ‘dangerously insane,’ to Category D, ‘functionally bonkers.’"
They nodded their heads agreeably and scribbled some notes with their soft wax crayons. Then they moved on, and Dr. Mandible introduced them to several other mass murderers, poisoners and pony stranglers, but it was obvious from their feeling of anticipation that these patients, while all remarkable examples of rehabilitation, were mere sideshows to the one patient of St. Cerebellum’s that made the rest seem petty shoplifters by comparison.
Dr. Mandible read the looks on their faces, sensed their impatience and led them over to a small bed of rosebushes, each one sporting a dazzling selection of blooms. The delegates gathered behind Mandible as they approached, yet not even the orderlies felt they had much to worry about. The patient, despite the outrageous and often perverse violence of his crimes, hadn’t lifted a finger against any of them during his two-decade stay at the hospital. The mellow figure snipping at the roses seemed somehow divorced from the savagery of his sadistic crimes. But it didn’t help him. Liberty, in his case, could never be an option.
The patient in question had his back to the small group. He was dressed in pale blue denim trousers and jacket with ST. CEREBELLUM’S stenciled on the back. The figure busied himself with his roses and was stooped over a bloom, carefully trimming the plant with a pair of blunted plastic scissors firmly attached by a heavy chain to three anvils on the ground. He seemed not to be aware of their presence, so Dr. Mandible gave a polite cough. The figure stood up to his full height and turned slowly to face them. A faint whiff of ginger moved with him, and Dr. Maxilla took a sharp intake of breath. Professor Palatine covered her mouth with her hand and uttered a small cry. The others all took a nervous step back, apart from Dr. Vômer, who took three.
However many photos you see or however much news footage you watch of the Gingerbreadman, nothing can quite prepare you for seeing him in all his baked glory. He was a dark brown color the shade of mahogany and seven feet tall, with weighty limbs and a large head. His jacket was open, revealing several large pink-icing buttons that ran down his chest. He had glacé cherries the size of grapefruits for eyes and a dollop of red icing for a nose. His mouth was two slivers of licorice, the corners of which rose into a smile as soon as he saw them.
“Alan!” said the Gingerbreadman with a deep yet friendly tone. “What a delightful happenstance! And most timely, too. See here, I have bred a new rose, which in honor of your work to cure me of my criminal tendencies I take great pleasure in naming after you. Behold, ‘Mandible’s Triumph’!”
He offered the bloom to Mandible in his three-fingered gingerbread hand, and the doctor accepted it gratefully. It was a flower that had blue, white and red petals on the same bloom.
“Thank you very much,” said Mandible as the Gingerbreadman gave a small bow and let out another whiff of ginger. “It’s magnificent!” He turned to the delegates. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the Gingerbreadman, veteran of St. Cerebellum’s and one of our model patients.”
They relaxed slightly at the Gingerbreadman’s apparent congeniality and stared at him as his glacé-cherry eyes darted eagerly among their faces. He recognized Frank Strait immediately.
“Professor Strait?” he asked as he took a step closer. “I read your book on obsessional neurosis with great interest.”
“How… how did you know it was me?” stammered Strait, taken aback at the Gingerbreadman’s powers of observation.
“That’s easily explained.” The Gingerbreadman smiled. “Your picture is on the book jacket.”
“Ah. Well… what did you think?” asked Strait, his voice high and tremulous with suppressed fear.
“I’ll be frank with you, Frank,” replied the Gingerbreadman, adding hastily, “May I call you Frank?”
“I’d prefer Professor Strait.”
“Very well. I’ll be straight with you, Strait. I wasn’t that impressed. The prose was dull, the research patchy. I thought that perhaps you had given over your time to listing case histories rather than proposing specific methods of treatment. It smacked of voyeurism. In a less enlightened age, people like you would be given guided tours around lunatic asylums with people like me as the star attraction. Not that it’s like that anymore, eh, Alan?”
He winked at Dr. Mandible as he said it, then gave out a cakey chuckle and another whiff of ginger.
Professor Strait twitched and raised an eyebrow, wondering how to reply to hearing his life’s work so comprehensively trashed. He paused too long; the Gingerbreadman’s attention had moved on.
“Dr. Lacrimal?” he asked, his cherry eyes flicking onto the German, who stood as straight as a poker to show that he was not in the least afraid, which he transparently was.