There's something very rotten in the State
of Denmark!
The ground beneath the state hospital is ancient marshland where
the bleaching ponds once lay. The bleachers wetted their great
spans of cloth in the shallow water before laying them out to
bleach. The steam evaporating from the enormous expanses of wet
cloth enshrouded the place in permanent fog. Then the hospital
was built here, and the bleachers gave way for doctors and researchers,
the best brains in the nation and the most up-to-date technology.
To crown their work they called the place "The Kingdom";
now life was to be defined and ignorance and superstition never
to shake the bastions of science again.
Perhaps their arrogance became too pronounced, and likewise their
consistent denial of the spirit, for it is as if the cold and
damp has returned ... tiny signs of fatigue have started appearing
in the otherwise solid, modern edifice ... no living person knows
it yet, but the portal to THE KINGDOM has begun to open once again!
The Kingdom Hospital has seen a range of strange, inexplicable
occurrences. In particular, Professor Moesgaard, the head of neurosurgery,
has his hands full, primarily with his Swedish import, neurosurgeon
Stig Helmer, perpetrator of a none-too-successful brain operation
on a little Danish girl and desperate to destroy the evidence:
an anaesthesia report drawn up by Rigmor, the mature consultant
anaesthetist with more than a crush on the Swedish exile, and
a fascination for Haiti and voodoo magic.
Cancer research drives Professor Bondo to the most extreme measures,
and junior registrar KrogshØj is worried: Judith, the love
of his life, pregnant by a former liaison, is expanding at an
abnormal rate. But the action mostly focuses on eternal patient
Mrs. Drusse's attempts to solve the mystery of Mary, a little
girl who haunts the elevator shaft, and who died a ghastly death
in 1919 at the hand of her father, Dr. Aage Krüger. Meanwhile,
Operation Morning Breeze, Moesgaard's well-meaning attempt to
increase patient communication, has attracted the attention of
the Minister of Health.
Stig Helmer abandons Rigmor and heads for Haiti on his own, while
Judith gives birth: to a baby boy with an unmistakable resemblance
to Mary's father, the demonic Dr. Krüger ...
