Douglas Howard Strang - Castle on the Edge

Castle On The Edge

Eternal Press
A division of Damnation Books, LLC.
P.O. Box 3931
Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998

www.eternalpress.biz

Castle On The Edge
by Douglas Howard Strang

Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-427-7

Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-428-4

Cover art by: Dawn Dominique

Edited by: Pam Slade

Copyedited by: Sherri Good

Copyright 2011 Douglas Howard Strang

Printed in the United States of America
Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights
1st North American, Australian and UK Print Rights

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

I dedicate this work to my late mother, Constance Lorraine Howard Strang.

Foreword

Nestled within a forest of pines and oaks and perched near the edge of a high cliff, overlooking the majestic Pacific Ocean along the central coast of California, sat Castillo Del Mar. A health resort and retreat for people of means, it is a place where one can escape the troubles of the world and find peace, tranquility, and safetyor so it would seem.

Alex Ramsey, a psychiatrist at Castillo Del Mar Sanitarium, wanted to take the hospital vehicle himself, in order to personally receive his old university professor. He drove to the train depot at San Francisco to pick up Doctor Franz Lederer. However, as luck would have it, the cars generator shorted out after arriving at the station. So together they took the Del Monte Express down to Monterey, 120 miles south. They hailed a taxi to take them the remaining thirty miles south to the facility at Big Sur. Alex would deal with the crippled machine later.

Doctor Lederer had come all the way from Zurich, Switzerland to attend a psychiatric convention. He had two days before it started, which would give him some time to visit the famous sanitarium, headed by the enigmatic Doctor Niles Calloway.

Little did anyone know what was to take place on the Halloween evening of October 31, 1937, the day after, Doctor Franz Lederers arrival.

The Arrival

The taxi left Del Monte Train Depot at Monterey with its two passengers, on the evening of October 30, 1937 at five p.m., just after dark.

Doctor Lederer and I traveled south down the panoramic coastline to our destination, a secluded piece of real estate with the faade of a fifteenth century Spanish Castle. The building itself was actually a home constructed in 1922 by a newspaper magnate, who had sold it in 1930 to a private medical firm. They had converted it into a sanitarium and retreat for clients who could afford such luxuries.

Doctor Lederer was a clinical psychiatrist who often consulted with Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud about human consciousness and its nature. However, he seemed to favor Jungs collective unconscious theory as opposed to Freuds libido theory. He was also very interested in Doctor Calloways approach to the treatment of people who are financially secure, but suffer from anxiety neuroses.

After graduating with honors from Zurich University in1936, I had returned to California to take a position with Doctor Niles Calloway, Superintendent of Castillo Del Mar Sanitarium at Big Sur, California. I had studied under Professor Franz Lederer. He had sent Doctor Calloway a letter of introduction. After my interview, I was given a position as an apprentice psychiatrist. Soon afterwards, Doctor Calloway appointed me assistant director; not bad for a twenty-six-year-old man. Doctor Calloway was inclined to favor Freuds theories as opposed to Jungs.

It was wonderful to see my professor again, and now I, Alex Ramsey, twenty-seven years old, one of nine children born and raised in Oklahoma to parents who, with all of us, migrated to Central California in 1930 to find a better life.

Now I would have the opportunity to work with two exponents of the predominant theories in psychological thought.

It was a dark chilly evening as we were making our way in the taxi, down the scenic but treacherous road that lead to our destination. Although I should have been ecstatic with the anticipation of working with two of the greatest minds in the field, I couldnt help but feel something of an ominous nature. Being of an analytical character myself, I tried to make a willful effort to dismiss such unfounded anxiety, to being overtired.

Im so glad to see you again, Professor Lederer, I said, trying to quell my uneasiness.

Its good to see you too, Alex, he said warmly.

Doctor Lederer was a striking man of forty-seven, over six feet tall with gray hair, steel-rimmed glasses and a Van Dyke beard. He was looking at me intensely with his deep sky-blue eyes. He said, Alex, I knew youd be a fine psychiatrist because you have the perception of a wise man, more than any other twenty-seven-year-old I know.

He didnt say anything else. I knew hed sensed my troubled state because he had been observing me with a quiet concentration.

The cab driver was not moving very fast, but I asked him to slow down even more, because the winding one-lane road was so narrow. We were already hugging the edge of the very steep cliff that dropped almost straight down to the roaring waters below.

Well be at the front gate in five minutes, I said.

Good, said Doctor Lederer. Riding on a hazardous highway at night, especially when its so dark can be a little nerve wracking, huh, Alex?

Yes, I answered. That really wasnt what was troubling me, and somehow I knew Doctor Lederer knew that too. After all, he was a psychiatrist with keen observation skills.

I understand youve never met Doctor Calloway before; is that right? I asked.

Not in person, Alex, but weve communicated several times by letter, and once I spoke to him on the telephone. Ive read most of his articles on electric shock therapy for the treatment of extreme anxiety neuroses.

Yes, Doctor Calloway has broadened the application of the treatment and has had many successful results, I commented.

He certainly has, Doctor Lederer said, more than anyone I know in the field, including Doctor Freud himself. Im looking forward to meeting him in the flesh and observing the results for myself with his patientsor, guests, at Castillo Del Mar Sanitarium.

At that point it was eight-thirty p.m. and we were pulling up to the main gate, at the west end of the dark gray, castle-like structure.

Pines, oaks and cypresses surrounded the building, and moss hung from many of the trees. The cliff was only one-hundred-fifty feet west of the gate. The lively current of the Pacific Ocean that lay below, was murmuring soothing sounds at low tide.

The watchman at the gate let us in and the taxi drove up the last fifty feet to the front of the structure. Doctor Lederer and I exited the automobile and walked up to the brown-arched wooden door of the Castle. The driver followed carrying Doctor Lederers two suitcases. I told him to put them down while I paid him. I pulled out my key and we stepped into the foyer of Castillo Del Mar Sanitarium.

Thats Mrs. Dudley, the housekeeper, I said, as she was coming down the stairs from the second level to meet us. She was a short, stout woman in her fifties with dyed black hair and always in good spirits. Her husband was the building and grounds keeper. Together with their staff of six helpers, they ran a tight ship.