The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Note: We have elected not to post any stills from the film. They are easily accessible online.

Prolog

Two men were sitting by a wall when the girl walked by, her eyes ringed by dark shadows of want as one leaned over and said, "The spirits, they are everywhere. Surrounding us. We cannot see them. Do you see that girl? She was once my fiance! Ah yes, I will tell you the story of what I have gone through. But you may not believe it!"

And so he began. And he began with the coming of Caligari, who was a curious, stooped figure in a great stovepipe hat, with round glasses perched atop his nose, and whisps of white hair pouring out of the sides of his hat. He walked bent over, with a cane pick-pick-picking the ground like a hungry dog's forepaw, and his white-gloved hands had three lines drawn on each side, giving his hands a weirdly skeletal appearance.

He had already gotten the necessary permits to perform his somnambulist act during the fair, which was held on one of the sloping crests of Holstenwall, and which was accessible to the townies and others by a steep staircase leading up, up, up. "I met him there, or my eyes drank him in, and then, taking a handbill he offered me, I went to see Alan.

"Now, Alan was a studious young man who lived in a garret room, studying German philosophy all day. He had scant furnishings, but one piece that did stand out very much was a certain high-backed chair with FIVE slats, going straight up. The damn thing could not have been comfortable. His only look-see out to the world beyond the tottering old roofs and leaning crazily devil chimneys of Holstenwall was a single high attic window, that let in the moonlight, soberly.

"It was in here that Alan would studiously pour over the small print of his old philosophical texts, studiously taking notes, living on bread and cheese and water, and pining for a day when he might escape, one supposes. To that end, I brought him the handbill that Caligari had given me, the one that blared, in huge bullhead lettering "SOMNAMBULIST! Eighth Wonder of the World! Come and SEE! Cesare! Asleep for Seven Years! He will perform feats while sleeping that many men cannot perform awake!"

And Now Let Us Switch the Narrative from First to Third Person...

"Oh it is nonsense, surely!" said Alan. But Francis said, "Oh, don't be so sure. I know of many, many strange and unsettling things, or at least, I have heard of them. Come, doesn't your German philosophy tell you there are many strange things undreamed of in Heaven and Earth?"

Alan retorted, "Shakespeare tells us that!"

"All the better!" quoth Francis, stuffing the handbill into his pocket. "Now, do you want to die like a rat in a trap in this musty room, or do you want to come with me for a little, and see what the outside world looks like? What you're missing!"

And so they went. Earlier, Caligari had been to the office of the town clerk to get the necessary permit and was astounded to see two men, both sitting high up in a couple of chairs, perched over a wooden table that was the tallest table he had ever seen. Why, it was almost scraping the roof!

He handed up his handbill. The bespectacled and foul-looking old gent took it in one annoyed hand and glanced it over quizzically. He screwed up his nose and narrowed his eyes, and said, "What sort of a show is this, a 'somnambulist'?"

Caligari, in a croaking voice that sounded like baby bones being broken, said, "A sleepwalker!" (But, it is important to note, that this was only ONE of Caligari's voices; and that he could boom like an elephant when on the bally platform, or drop to a low, murmuring hypnotist's voice, when trying to entrance his prey.)

So it was done.

Alan and Francis walked through the cobbled darkness of the street until they met up with Jane, who was their mutual girlfriend. Francis knew Jane would favor HIS attention in time; Alan was too enthralled in his studies to make much of a suitable suitor. Be that as it may, he never pressed the issue very hard, and let things progress how they would.

"Oh my two friends," she said, standing between the both of them, her hands pressing their respective chests lightly. "Let us to the Biergarten repair, ja? It is late; and hot, and I am a little thirsty!"

And so they went to have a drink. But first Francis told her, "Yes, Jane my dear, we will go. But then we want to go and see the somnambulist act at the fair. Isn't that a charming idea?"

Jane agreed. "It sounds positively enthralling! What a way for three old friends to spend an evening!"

And so they went. And after a cold stein of beer each, they made their way through the cobbled streets to the fairgrounds, and up the steep steps to a place where Caligari had parked his wagon.

Outside, a large painting of "Cesare the Somnambulist" was unfurled. it depicted an exceedingly thin man in a black leotard, with long skinny arms, a long, pale face, and a strange haircut that made him look as if someone had stuck a bowl on top of his head and lopped the sides of his hair off. Around the eyes were the tell-tale familiar black marks of the vampire. But, Francis reminded himself, this was NOT the undead.

Was it?

A crowd had gathered by the flickering, guttering lamps--the show, Francis observed, was happening very late. Perhaps Caligari had been so instructed by the Town Clerk to hold his exhibition late at night, to prevent children from being present. "It is not a thing fit for daylight!" he could well imagine the Town Clerk exclaiming while slapping his fat belly and liking the sound.

(Unknown to Francis, just hours before, the Town Clerk had been slain in his bed by an unknown assailant. His servant had found the body, but swore he had heard nothing the whole night. It was only when he came into the room to check on his ailing master that he found the horror of his condition. A policeman had been summoned. The Town Clerk, they determined, had been stabbed repeatedly with a weird, sharp instrument that looked like a pointed funnel. What the instrument could be or where it came from was a mystery to both men. The motive was easier to conceive: the Town Clerk was widely disliked, and they put it down to someone sneaking in with a personal grudge, and doing the man in. The policeman thought it better not to raise his whistle, but instead sent the servant to fetch the morgue wagon.)

Caligari came out, waving a huge bell in one hand, holding a poster of his exhibit in the other. A crowd began to assemble at the bally platform, as Caligari exclaimed, "Come one, come all, step right up! Come and see the Eighth Wonder of the World! The great Cesare the Somnambulist! Just twenty-three years old, and asleep for every one of those twenty years. But, as he sleeps, he speaks with the strange forces of the unknown in his dreams! He can answer any question put to him. Cesare knows the past! Cesare sees the future! Come step right up, all are welcome! All are welcome!"

And holding back the flap of the curtain, he ushered a growing crowd inside. Alan and Francis eagerly followed, although Alan sniffed that it was all probably "humbug," and Francis tended to agree. But, inside, they found a little stage, a curtain, and rows of chairs set before them. But nobody bothered to sit. It was all too exciting.

Caligari suddenly stepped forth, and pulling back the curtain, revealed a wooden cabinet. He said, "Inside, ladies and gentlemen, Cesare sleeps the sleep of the damned, hearing all the dead souls cry throughout eternity. But, see, I know the secret to arousing him from his death-like slumber! I, and I alone, can call him forth from his cabinet to answer any question you might ask. Cesare knows all! Cesare sees all! Come! Come!"

And with that, he opened first one door of the cabinet, and then another. The audience bent forward, murmuring, some gasping, women holding their hands to their mouths, covering the eyes of their children as they took in the weird, cadaverous figure standing upright, like a giant doll, in the wooden box. Caligari held his little stick or wand up and spoke some gibberish words, then exclaimed, "Cesare, hear me, I command you! Open your eyes and awake! Come forth!"

Nothing happened for a moment, but then, slowly, slowly, the figure raised its arms to the center of its chest, its fingers splayed out before it, and slowly, oh so slowly, crept forward. It was wearing the familiar black leotard from the poster, but now the audience could see the clothing was broken by what looked like white stripes crisscrossing the legs and chest. At the neck was a perfectly round collar shaped like two rings, one atop the other.

Cesare had a squared cut of hair, with longish sides, and a deep, white pallor of greyish death about him. The eyes were ringed with black, like that of a fairy tale vampire or ghoul. He slowly opened those eyes, and the crowd shuddered.

Caligari said, "Go on! Go on! He is awake now! But he is still a medium for the powers from beyond! Ask him any question you like, and see if he cannot answer you!"

Suddenly, men began to cry out questions; and a few women, as well. One asked, "Are you in any pain?" to which Cesare replied, "No." Another, "Do you believe in God?" Cesare shook his head, but the audience couldn't discern if he was shaking it as a negative or affirmative. No matter. One man wanted to know if he would ever be rich. Cesare replied, "You are rich already, in spirit." To which the irate man replied, "I'd rather be rich in Deutschmarks, my good man!" and the crowd roared in laughter.

Some asked about their ancestors, about small personal matters, and each declared with wonder that Cesare was somehow correct. Finally, Alan told Francis, "I'm going to ask him a question he'll not be able to answer. I'm going to ask him how long have I to live."

Francis felt his blood run cold. He said, "No, no Alan! What if you don't like the answer you get?"

But Alan was stubborn, stoic, and cynical. He thought it was all a charade. It was an outgrowth, Francis saw, of his studying philosophical works all the time. Alan believed the future to be undetermined, and so could not swallow the prognostications of the somnambulist.

"Alan, no I beg you..."

But already he piped up, "How long have I to live?"

And Cesare stopped for a moment, and, gaining a curious look in his strange, hollow eyes, said, "Not long. YOU SHALL BE DEAD BEFORE DAWN."

And suddenly Alan was no longer laughing and jovial and amused. He began to breathe heavily, his smile fast turning into a look of horror, as he knew the Somnambulist's knowledge of the past had been unerringly correct. But could he see the future?

Francis pulled his friend by the lapels, and said, "Come, Alan, let us leave."

Out the fairgrounds, they went, and following them was Jane, who had not been with them to see Caligari's sleeper. She wondered at the distressed look on Alan's face.

"What is the matter, my dear? Cat got your tongue."

Neither man said anything to Jane about what Cesare had told Alan concerning being dead before dawn. Alan now walked. They made idle conversation until, up ahead, they could hear a newsboy hawking papers in the street.

"A little late for that," said Jane, curiously.

"Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Town Clerk killed by unknown killer! The reward of 10,000 Deutschmarks for information leading to the capture!Extra! Extra!"

The three approached the boy, and Alan bought a paper. His face went tight with worry. It was as if, all around him, in the weird twisting streets and alleys of Holstenwall (it was rumored an ancient alchemist had built the place, based on non-Euclidian angles and occult proportions; an old legend) he could see death, in the form of the skinny, pale cadaver that had emerged from the wooden cabinet, creeping.

Holstenwall rose on top of the pointed hill like a cluster of crazily leaning little hats atop a great tit, with the steeple of the church as the marble nipple punctuating the madness. The close, narrow, stinking streets and alleyways could be hiding anybody, at any time, in their foul, dark, and throat-like passages.

"I must be getting home now," said Jane. Already, it is very, very late. Oh, or very early, depending on how you look at it. I fear my father will be worried."

"Alright my dear," said Francis, doffing his hat. "We'll see you home, safe and sound." And so they did, heading back to their dwellings, Francis told Alan, "She likes us both equally, I fear. But she can love only one of us. Whichever one she chooses, Francis my friend, we shall always remain boon companions!"

And so Alan agreed. But his mind was far away.

Later, Alan was sleeping the sleep of the righteous, the moonlight casting an evil glare over the muffled darkness of his very severe room. A shadow crept from that darkness, into the light. Alan stirred. He could hear faint, stertorous breathing, growing louder. Something was creeping forward in the darkness.

Then, hands, reaching out, pale hands, gleaming by moonlight in the darkness. A shadow against the wall showed a sharp instrument being raised. And then the screaming.

END OF PART 1

PART 2

The woman was an old maid, and she burst into Francis's room and exclaimed, "Oh, it's terrible! Oh, so terrible! Oh, murder!" She fell to weeping without explaining herself, and Francis took her in his hands and shook her.

"Oh, sir," she said, out of breath, clearly, from running all the way from where Alan was living. "Master Alan is dead! Someone has crept in in the silence of the night, and they have MURDERED HIM."

Francis felt his head swim and his heart pound in shock. His mind leaped to the prophecy of Cesare. "You will be dead before dawn," the sleepwalker had foretold. And he had been proven once more correct!

"Come!" said Francis, "there is not a moment to lose! We must go to the authorities first, and then I will go to Jane's father, Doctor Olsen. He is known to be a brilliant investigator."

And Francis grabbed his coat, and in a few moments, both were out the door.

***

"I promise," he told the gendarmes, swaying slightly with the force of his emotion. "I swear to you, I will find the villain, the blackguard that has done this, and I will make him pay!"

The two officers had been seated, one on either side of the tall desk, bent over their paperwork. It had been a hard few days in Holstenwall. Murder seemed to be rearing its ugly head where, never before, it had been known. or, not widely so.

One officer bent over, eager to see if he could smell spirits on Francis's breath. He was disappointed, but said, "There, there my dear man. We understand, both of us, that you have suffered a tremendous loss! But, you must not take on the characteristics of a vigilante. You must not go seeking justice or vengeance on your own. You might start a lynch mob, and that is an ugly thing. Now, I suggest you go home and try to get some rest. You have a funeral to attend. and that can be an exhausting experience in and of itself. Can it not?"

Francis was hardly mollified by this, but, feeling the stern hand of the gendarmes on his shoulder, he said softly, "Yes, yes...of course you're right. I'll go home now. Guten nacht, Herr Komisar."

And Francis stumbled out of the station house, and down the long, shadowy corridor, down the steps, weeping silently. He could still see the bleeding body of Alan where it lay, murdered, thrust through with a sharp instrument as he lay in his bed. Beneath the bed, dripping down the sheets and staining the nice white linen was a slick flow of Alan's precious blood. Oh, it was terrible and sickening beyond belief.

Finally, as he sat on the stoop at the bottom of the stairs, immersed in the gloom, he saw a familiar, welcoming face coming toward him from the shadow. It was Jane. His heart sank. How to tell her the tragic news?

"It's alright,' she said. 'I have already heard it from the Town Crier. Oh, poor, poor Alan! Why on Earth would anyone want to do that wonderful, noble, brilliant young man harm?"

She suddenly grasped Francis in both her arms. They began to weep together, to console each other. Somewhere nearby, though, murder was still afoot.

Shuffling, shambling heavily in the darkness, a huge man crept through the shadows of the coming dawn, with a poignard in his waistband and murder in his heart. He was heavy and filthy, wearing high boots caked in mud and manure, and a dirty tunic. His fat face was unshaven and his body stank. He was determined to get inside, to rob the old woman, to do her in if needs be. Sure, he might go to the gallows later--but what of it? His entire life had been preparing him for this. When he dug the graves he later came back and robbed, to sell the bodies to a doctor at the medical college--was he not also tempting fate every time? Would they not gibbet him for such an act? You could be sure, he thought bitterly, the doctor would get away, scot-free.

But now, like demonic voices calling his name from afar, he could hear, deep within his soul, the calling to commit evil, to commit a great atrocity. He could feel the burning desire to KILL deep within his flesh, and it goaded him onward, through the rapidly approaching dawn, to use the last precious minutes of shadow and night to his advantage.

Carefully, oh so carefully, he managed to make his big body fit through the doorway in near-total quiet, making as little noise as possible, as he stealthily went up the stairs, creeping like a phantom, conscious of every creak and groan of the old wood underneath his scuffed, filthy leather boots. He would go up to her room. He would try the door. if he found it locked, he would use his skills as a thief to pick the lock, to gain entry.

And so he did.

Through the close, and up the stairs went he, and when he put his huge, scuffed, filthy hand upon the door, he found it opened easily. He was careful not to rattle the handle in the doorframe. He crept forward, into the musty dark, smelling the smell of sour cabbage and old flatulence, and must, and the closed stink of air that is trapped. He saw a white shape loom in the moonlight.

Before him, on the bed, the old woman lies, snoozing in her exhaustion. Dreaming dreams no mortal ever dreamed before, he laughed to himself silently. or dreams of being young again, of being desired. He felt in the waistband of his trousers for the knife, felt his breath grow ragged as the blood began to course in his veins. His heartbeat he could hear in his ears. Just a moment's work and it would all be over. Then, as she lay bleeding, dying, he would ravish the body. And when he had slaked his thirst in that regard, he would abscond with the golden candlestick beside the bed. Yes, a memento, a souvenir. Or something valuable he could fence, later.

Closer, closer...

Just then.

Damnit! The woman had a cat. It meowed quite loudly. He froze in his tracks. A twin set of eyes opened in the white lump on the bed. For a moment, the old woman was frozen, along with him, in a moment of dream-like terror. Then, issuing forth with a strangled cry, she grasped the candlestick beside the bed in her hand and sent it swirling toward him in the moonlight.

It impacted with his skull, sending forth a dull thud, feeling as if a hammer had clocked him in the noggin. he drew back.

In a moment, possessing a speed he could never have given her credit for, the old woman had flown from her bed and was at the window.

"Murder!" she cried. "Help, oh God, help! Murder! Murder. MURDER!"

And below, he could already hear the nightwatchman blow his whistle, hear the sound of early morning laborers begin shouting, gathering in the cobbled streets below. He felt the blood trickle forth from his scalp and heard the first footfalls on the stairs as the men below raced up to the old woman.

And he knew, just then, that a gallows finally awaited. He smiled between trickles of blood in his teeth.

Francis and Jane had gone back to Jane's house, which was a very beautiful and lavish showplace owned by her eminent father, Dr. Olsen. The good doctor was a surgeon, and his taste for the finer things in life showed in every angled space.

Jane led Francis pat a dining room hanging with silk curtains, that looked like a French bistro, and whose walls were adorned with an ornate painting of clouds and the moon. She took him right to the office of her father, where the worried-looking old man was bent over a dusty volume. Francis wasted no time:

"Sir, Doctor Olsen, I must beg your pardon, but I am here to enlist your aid."

The Doctor looked at him quizzically but said nothing.

"My friend--our friend, Alan--has been murdered most cruelly by persons unknown. I thought with your expertise in such matters, we might track the culprit down and bring him to justice." and Francis continued, his voice growing low and more impassioned. He said, "Sir, there is something, some evil that has come to our fair city. I know the legends of the old alchemist that built Holstenwall, how once in every generation, evil befalls us, coming down lies a black cloud across the face of the land." Francis then thought he sounded foolish, and said no more.

Without opening his mouth, Dr. Olsen arose, and picking a note off of his desk, he handed it to Francis.

It read:

Dear Doctor, I request you to be present at the interrogation of a suspect we have apprehended in the murder of the Town Clerk and the young man this early morning hours. Please come within one-quarter of an hour if at all possible. We humbly acknowledge your brilliance in such matters.

Signed,

Gerhard von Knockwanger

Chief Inspector, Holstenwall Polizei

The two men were out the door as soon as the Doctor grabbed his coat.

***

It was soon that they were at the station. Doctor Olsen leaned forward, and said, "My dear fellow, what could have possessed you to commence an attack on such a poor defenseless old woman? She had no money, no great possessions, and had done you no wrong.

The man, the would-be murderer, sat in the center of the room in a high-backed chair with five slats going up the back. Very uncomfortable. He was sweating and shivering at the same time. Dr. Olsen turned and looked at the officers and Francis with a bemused look on his face. He continued.

"Tell me, are there voices compelling you forward, to commit these terrible acts?" He was met with stony silence from the man and continued: "Sometimes, it is all we can do to unburden ourselves of our guilt. And, my you seem to have quite a lot to be guilty of!"

At this, the man retorted, "Alright, alright, I admit. I was going to do the old woman. But I swear to you: I had nothing to do with the other murders! The Town Clerk, or the young fellow, what's his name? Alan, you say? No. I never touched either of them. But I of course knew of the Town Clerk being killed, and I hoped they would find the one who did it, and hang the crime of killing the old woman on him. Not the other way around. Look, how could I possibly commit two murders in one night? Do you see any blood on my clothes, my boots?"

And indeed, Dr. Olsen and Francis, and the assembled officers had to admit they did not.

Outside, the wind howled like a lonely banshee through the empty streets.

***

Jane sat reading a small book of poems. She could hear the ticking of the clock quite loudly like Jane sat reading a small book of poems. She could hear the ticking of the clock quite loudly, like the beating of a baby's heart. Where were Francis and her father? She was starting to worry, it seemed as if they had been gone so long.

She tried to concentrate on the words on what she was reading.

"Lay me down love and let life fade away, I would sleep in that somber field. Turned into darkness, from darkness we turn, and to darkness forever we yield..."

Oh, very gloomy sentiments. She didn't like that. Not presently. The clock ticked. Shadows moved across the wall. What was keeping the men?

"Making the most of our sorrow and pain, and shrugging away tomorrows. Lay me down lover, I'll feel no more pain, in this field choked with sobering sorrows."

Very bad to be reading such stuff at this time, she thought. Not in the throws of her bereavement for Alan. it was as if she was casting ashes across his grave.

Still, she continued, despite herself.

"And Hell is eternity icy and cold, I would breathe in the dust of the ages; and lay down my body with roses and mold, a death for sin is the wages. Looking toward God in my funereal sleep, I am icy and cold in my plot; I wonder if Jesus Christ's love ran so deep, he might bleed a new life into rot."

She shuddered. Icy fingers seemed to creep down her spine as she read. Loneliness and gloom filled her soul. She thought of the handsome, noble face of Alan, gone too soon. His face would begin to decay, the flesh creeps away until all that was left was the blue funk of memory. The decayed flesh of one who had met death while young. Food for the worms.

She cast her glance downward as the letters crawled across the page.

"And here in my sepulchral city of tears, I am pauper and prisoner in pain. I pine for my love in the wastelands above, may she lay down and be mine again. The nights are unending and daybreak is torture, and loneliness my only boon. Lay down my love and let life breathe its last, sleep in this somber field, come, but not soon."

It was not an hour later she had closed the book, and, grabbing her shawl, was out, into the night.

***

The man denied he had had anything to do with the murders. He said, "If you want to go and find out who is responsible for them, well, I'd look long and hard at that Caligari, that showman who has blown into town. His freak he keeps in a box, well, I've heard the talk! I've heard the rumors!"

Dr. Olsen leaned forward, asking "What rumors?"

The fat would-be killer simply smiled.

Meanwhile, Jane had walked to the top of the staircase leading down, from the bally platform where Caligari had exhibited Cesare just last night. the scene up here was beautiful, the weird, conical little houses of Holstenwall marching upward like roosting white birds, leaning crazily, tilting at odd, obtuse angles, punctuated by the stone steeple of the church. And could she hear the bell ringing in the distance? She progressed down the steep stairs, holding firm to the rail. Below, the wagons of the carnival were assembled, and, as if hiding away in the shadow from the rest, she spied Caligari's crazily tilting old wagon, a weird conveyance that looked as if a strong wind would blow it to pieces. A strange, trapezohedron of a window was crossed by several slats that looked as if they were mimicking the Cross of Lorraine. She knew it to be Caligari's wagon from the poster on a stick of Cesare, left outside.

She approached it, her heart thumping in her chest. Outside the door, the coffin-like cabinet of Dr. Caligari stood upright. She well guessed what was in the cabinet, but she had to see it with her own eyes.

She approached. She could see a face dimly peering at her through the weird, skewed glass (the entire trailer leaned crazily to one side as if a strong wind might knock it over), and she could see the strange, whispy white hair and round little glasses of the stooped, heavy man in the stovepipe hat. He was eyeing her through the filthy glass. Soon he was out the door, and standing on the steps leading below.

"Ah!" he said, rubbing his hands together. "I see you have come for a private exhibition of my little sleeping pet, Cesare! Well, asleep he may be, but he hears you. Do You doubt? Ah yes, I tell you, he hears the beating, the hammering of your heart, and he hears the breathing in your chest, your lungs. And he can hear the blood coursing through your veins. And he knows, my precious pet. He knows you are here, and he wants to ....meet you. So very badly. So very, very badly!"

And with that, Caligari put out one gloved hand (she noted the lines on the back of his gloves, that made his hands seem like that of a skeleton), and thrust open the cabinet door.

Jane put her hand to her head. She felt as if she might scream.

There the man himself stood, in mocking repose, a thin, cadaverous male ballerina in black, with a medieval mop-top haircut and deep black circles for eyes. His mouth was a stiletto slash of black, and his skin bore the pallor of fresh cream. His head pivoted on his neck, and his eyes opened. Both he and Caligari wore the same expression of mocking cruelty.

Jane ran, screaming, her heart pounding in her chest.

Francis had been to spy on Caligari at night. Peering through the window of the old weirdly-leaning trailer, he saw Caligari preparing mush. He saw the mad freak owner open the coffin-like cabinet as it lay on the floor. Slowly, the dark, skeletal form of Cesare raised itself, and, Caligari bending over it, began to slowly chew the sloppy stuff being ladled forth from the wooden bowl. Cesare ate reflectively, chewing with his eyes closed. Alan could not watch it for very long. He put his arm to his mouth, feeling his gorge rise. Something was sickening, animal-like, brutal somehow, in this display, and he recoiled from it, nauseated.

He remembered this. And he felt certain that Caligari, and Cesare, were the one factor that had entered Holstenwall that could account for the strange sense of spiritual doom that had descended, like a plague of locusts, upon the already mad little town. He told the gendarmerie, "We must go to Caligari's at once."

But before they could move their muscles, a man came rushing into the police station. He was wild, frothing at the mouth, and had quite a tale to tell.

***

Cesare crept across the shadows and moonlight like a ballerina. Before him, huddled in bed, lay the sleeping Jane, tossing and turning from her uneasy slumber, her wild and delirious dreams of a realm where the dead lived, celebrating their birthdays and eating their cake as they lay in their hospital beds, with rotting, infected mouths. It was the other side of reality, perhaps, but one cannot often divine where the dream ends, and "real life" begins. It is all one continuum, perhaps.

Closer, closer. The silent night was marked outside only by the occasional clatter of hooves on the cobbles. Otherwise, not even the cicadas were wont to bring their peculiar music to the stillness of this dark and spectral hour. Closer, closer, he crept, his breath growing ragged, his heart beating within his thin breast like the tick-tock workings of some vile timepiece, counting down the moments till annihilation. Closer, closer, and he could hear her snoring, her little gasps, and murmurs, and he felt his hands grow rigid, his fingers claw-like, as they reached out, his cadaverous flesh painted bone white in the misty light from a pale and waxing moon. Closer, closer.

Suddenly, she cries out. She is in his grasp, struggling. HE subdues her. HE feels her flesh go limp as she faints away. Soon, she is thrown over his shoulder. He leers maniacally, and if anyone could have seen his face at that moment, if another, perhaps hapless or helpless soul had been there, he might have thought he stared straight into the face of the Devil himself. But no matter.

Cesare was out the window, climbing up the rickety rain gutter to the roof, where he bounded over the dangerous distances between buildings, Jane bundled over his shoulder. Below, in the streets, he could hear a man cry out, suddenly. He knew what that meant. The normal men hated him. And they would not like what he was doing now.

He leaped perilously over chimneys, leaning rooftops, trying to maintain his delicate purchase as he felt loose and rotten shingles give way beneath his feet. He knew he must come down from these heights, or risk death. Soon he found a rickety metal ladder leading into a dripping, filthy alleyway. He descended to the gravel; already he could hear the tumult of a lynch mob developing, hear his name being called. "Look, it is Cesare! And he has a girl he's killed!"

It was not true. She was not dead. But, where could he run to now? He did not know, but he blindly went down the length and width of the alleys until he came to level ground. Behind him, he knew, they were searching; he could hear the voices go up in the streets, the many voices blending into an excited chorus of babbling. All eyes peering around for him, all hands willing and able to clutch his throat. He ran blindly, toward the city gates, to the countryside. Soon, he was being chased by a mob ready to lynch.

***

At one point, amid the crooked, bare branches of the trees, he dropped his burden from his shoulder. Exhausted, barely able to keep himself upright, he moved down the narrow strip of country lane, but he could hear the barking of dogs, the babel of excited voices, and footfalls behind. They had chased him across the field and now to the hillside above the water. He could hear then, suddenly: "Look! There he is! There is Cesare!"

Was that the report of a rifle?

Perhaps he thought, in his final moments, it was the snap of his soul, making a pop like a gun, leaving his tormented, slave-like being, and ascending to new lands. On his dying lips, one word:

"Futility."

And then there was no more.

***

The breathless messenger related all this to Francis and the gendarmes. Quickly, donning his hat and coat, Francis and the officers went with the man to where the body of Cesare lay like a brittle, broken, black-clad doll amid the sparse shade of the barren trees.

"Well," said Francis. "I can confirm that the suspect in these murders has been locked up in jail while all of this was occurring. Cesare is the guilty party! But, come: we must go to see his master. To Caligari!"

And with that, Francis and the police headed for Caligari's wagon home.

***

"Quickly, step to the side. Hans, keep an eye on him. We will quickly see to this!"

The Polizei pointed down at the box. Inside was what appeared to be the body of the somnambulist. The Polizei poked it with a stick, but, as expected there was no movement.

Francis ran after the hunched little figure as it flew down the country lane. Where was he going? thought Francis wildly. Suddenly, twin gates seemed to loom in the distance. The figure of Caligari ran through them, the attendants recognizing him and granting him entrance. Francis then saw the sign on the gate: SANITORIUM, it read. He approached more slowly, his arms raised. He cried: "A man that has gone in there is guilty of murder! Murder I tell you!"

The two attendants looked at each other with puzzled amazement. One of them asked, "If we let you inside, what will you do?"

Francis curled his fingers and said, "I will lay hands on the filthy killer!!" he rasped, gritting his teeth. The attendant at the gate asked, "And you can point him out to us, this man?" To which Alan replied, "Certainly! It is a matter of a moment!"

And so the gate swung open. Francis went into the courtyard cautiously. he saw what seemed to be almost familiar faces milling about, coming into the court from triple arching doorways in the distance. A strange pattern seemed to have been painted on the floor, coming to a central point and radiating outward like spokes--or, perhaps, rays of the sun. Alan saw Caligari disappear beneath one of the central arches, after looking at him half-hidden in the shadows of the arch. Francis followed.

Down a slim corridor with weird, creeping vine-like tendrils or tentacles painted across it, like streaks of errant shadow. Into a door and up a flight of stairs he could hear the feet pounding. He heard a door slam. he approached it, slowly, cautiously. He didn't bother knocking.

In he went. A balding character with wild, whispy hair, blazing eyes, and round glasses sat at a desk amid clutter and debris, piles of old books, and human skulls. The face looked up. It was--

"The man Himself!" cried Francis, pointing. Behind him were the attendants at the gate. One of them approached Alan and whispered in his ear.

"Ah!" cried Francis. The character at the desk looked as if he didn't understand what any of them were doing there. (And perhaps he didn't.)

"Forgive me, signore'," began Francis, "But I had you mistaken for someone else, someone I thought had run in here. Excuse me!" And Francis retreated with the attendants at the gate, who told him, "We will search this place as he sleeps. We will keep him under observation. And, if it is as you say, we will--"

The man drove his fist loudly into the palm of his hand and made a sound as if he was splatting a giant vermin. or perhaps a boisenberry pie.

Caligari (or the Herr Director of the asylum, take your pick) slept soundly while the three men crept to his office and rifled his things. Finally, they brought forth both his diary and a huge old book about...a somnambulist. Both were eye-opening finds, and both relayed this tale:

In 1683, a showman came to Florence to exhibit a sleepwalker, a somnambulist named "Cesare,", who slept in a cabinet only to be called forth to predict the future. This mountebank made a nice killing in profits, before being run out of town and disappearing before they could lynch him. For you see, Cesare predicted death to many prominent members of the town, and invariably, they ALWAYS MET SUCH A GRIM END IN A SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME."

The big, dusty old volume was quite adamant on this. It was suspected, the book claimed, that the mountebank, Caligari, was responsible for these deaths.

All of this was shocking enough stuff, but the Herr Director's diary went even further. They found an entry that read:

"I am waiting, simply waiting for the correct specimen to come forth, one that I can hypnotize and turn into such a somnambulist as Cesare. It will be my Cesare, as, everywhere, they will speak my name with wonder and terror, and everywhere, yes, people will begin to disappear."

And then he wrote:

"Everywhere, I begin to see the words floating in the air, like the feathers of a cryptic bird. 'Du Must Caligari Werden!" it calls out to me, in the mother tongue. 'You must Caligari become!' And so that is what I will become."

He described being haunted by those words, as they called out to him, in vocalizations he could hear, as he tottered, with his weird, mincing, rooster-gate, through the weird twisted alleys of Holstenwall, the painted shadows leering like the grin of a psychopath. One whose mouth, incidentally, might have been carved by the s;ashe of a rusted razor.

The Herr Direktor was brought in. The assembled men, each glowering grimly, showed him the evidence of the diary with knowing, accusatory faces. "No," he cried. "No! you'll not put me in irons! I'm an innocent man, I tell you! Stop, it's all a fraud! This young scoundrel--" and he pointed here at Alan, "has concocted it all! I'm not a madman, I'm a doctor! Do you hear me? I'll not be locked up! I'm a doctor, I'm a doctor--"

He was hustled into a straight jacket and locked away in a white sanitorium room with cracks in the plaster walls and sluggish insects crawling to their deaths across the dirty floor. Here, he raved at the shadows on the walls.

And it was here that Francis ceased his story, the older man beside him reeling a little from the shock of it, while, along the twisting path between the trees, came the pale, ghostly figure of Jane, seemingly lost beyond the reach of human contact. "So," finished Francis, "you can see that spirits are everywhere! Can you not? They are always attendants, always on the cusp--waiting, ever waiting! They have brought my life to ruin!"

And Francis got up and went to the sunburst painted on the cement floor of the court. Around him, the patients thronged as if they, too, were as asleep as Cesare.

And then Francis spied Cesare--alone, hidden in an alcove, covered by shadow. He cradled a huge white bouquet. Who had given it to him? It contrasted blackly against his dark, lithe, dancer's form. A woman sat near to him. She seemed to be playing an invisible harpsichord. Was that Jane, His Jane?

A bearded Old Testament patriarch raved: "Ye sons of iniquity and ye whoremongers! Ye wizards, adulterers, fornicators, and hewers of graven images! The Lord has told me, pouring the poison of his wrath into my ear, my very ear! Do you hear me? He tells me of the coming Judgement, the vengeance and wrath that is His, and HIs alone! Oh, ye Sons of the lawless and wicked, do not tempt the Lord Your God! Do not think to escape his Judgement! Do not think one among you will not feel the bite of his scourge, smell the stench of brimstone, or escape the flames of his indomitable fiery wrath! Not one! Not one! Not one I say!"

Francis wandered across the court, lost; disoriented. Soon, it was meal time. Some attendants in white coats came for him and led him away to the room wherein he was locked in, shadows slanting across the barred windows, in quite a fetching interplay of dark and light.

In his office, the Herr Director said to the assembled, "Gentleman, ah! It is quite plain that he thinks that I am that mystic Caligari. Yes, yes, we can laugh at the delusions of the mad. They seem to us preposterous, absurd. Beyond reason--"

"Here, here," said one of the assembled men, puffing at his pipe.

"But," the Herr Director began again, "I think instead that we must show understanding, pity. After all, were it not for the grace of God, as the old saying goes, we might suffer such hallucinations, ja? Is it not so?"

"Here, here," agreed the assembled. The Herr Director put down his great, dusty volume, got up, and with his mincing, weird, rooster-like walk, went over to the sideboard to pour himself a brandy. He drank deeply, saying, "Ja, he thinks that I, of all people, am that...mystic...Caligari. But," and his face grew grave for a moment, then seemed to break out into a mask of delight. "I...know...of a way...to cure him...of his delusion. Is it not so?"

And all the assembled agreed that, indeed, it was.

4.7 out of 5 stars at Amazon. My adaptation of Nosferatu.

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920)