She gazed for a long time - falling, floating, steadying only to dive again, her body on a strange journey, the room sometimes acting similarly, rolling to the side, righting itself. She lifted an arm, but it didn’t move, more than heavy, it seemed to be fastened down. She tried the other and then her legs, all impossibly heavy, unmovable. More flickering light on the ceiling when she looked up, flickering lights when she closed her eyes, and the sound of voices murmuring, some crying.
“Hattie,” a clear strong voice broke through the jumble of sensations, a man’s voice. She lolled her head to the left and there was the man, the doctor, with his winter blue eyes searching her face. “It’s begun to take effect,” he said.
He walked to a bag and dug through it. His body seemed to shrink and grow, a monster man with hunched shoulders. Hattie remembered a show that Jude and Peter used to love, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When he turned around, the doctor’s eyes would have gone from blue to black and he’d be holding a knife.
But no, he turned, stepped toward her, the light played tricks - ghoul’s face, man’s face, ghoul’s face like he was taking off a Halloween mask so fast she couldn’t see the flicker of his hand. He held a framed picture. He pushed the photo in front of her, held it too close, she tried to recoil, but her head pressed into the bed and stopped.
Her eyes couldn’t focus, the glass reflected firelight, the images within the photo were tiny little particles moving, colored nonsense.
“Water?” she asked him, blinking, slipping into the void, returning some time later. The man stood as if no time had elapsed, his eyes angry, the frame clutched in his hand.
“Look at the photo,” he hissed.
She looked, saw a woman in a long dress with a cold smile and colder eyes. It didn’t register in Hattie’s mind, she swam through the darkness, flickering orange light, the woman’s face mean, grinning, sneering.
More sounds, whispering voices, someone was crying. A little girl was crying, and now there were shadows in the room, darting, faster than Hattie’s eyes could follow.
“Call her here, call this woman,” the doctor snapped, jabbing a finger at the glass frame. “Speak to her! Tell me what she says!”
Hattie blinked, and every blink took hours and catapulted her into a space and time where the world was fluid, darkness and light streaming, pulsing. She tried to focus on the man, so angry, but the shadows grew thicker, surrounded him and then dissipated like bursts of vanishing powder from a magic show.
And then the woman was there, standing just behind the man, long slender arms, but something wasn’t right. Her head looked funny and Hattie stared and stared because she couldn’t make sense of this woman’s strange head. It was not round, but flat on the side and when the woman shifted, Hattie saw the side of her head was caved in, blood matted her hair and stuck to her neck with little bits of white and gray. Bone and brains, Hattie thought though she couldn’t imagine finding those words on her own.
“You killed your mother…” Hattie murmured, eyelids drooping.
The doctor’s eyes flashed, fear, and then triumphant rage. He gripped the picture in his bony hands so hard the glass in the frame shattered. Still, he held it, and blood flowed from his cut fingers and dripped to the floor.
“What does she say?” he screamed into Hattie’s face.
“Who?” Hattie mumbled, already losing track of the conversation.
“My mother! What does she say?” He shook the frame at Hattie. She felt a droplet of his warm blood hit her cheek.
The shadows in the room seemed to be shifting closer to the blood, wanting the blood.
One shadow, a young man, darted towards Kaiser and nipped him. Kaiser dropped the frame, spun around, and then stared at his bleeding hand. Had he felt the spirit’s bite?
Hattie tried to follow the man’s shadow but it disappeared into the darkness. Another shadow darted forward, the woman from the photo. Kaiser yelped and stumbled back, his eyes shifting from anger to terror. His hand was bleeding more now, dark rivulets seeping over his wrists.
Sophia
They piled from the car and Sophia ran into woods, ignoring the tremors of anxiety that rose as she spotted the asylum looming in the distance.
“Hattie!” she screamed, pushing through a wall of bushes and searching for the trail Kaiser had taken her down months before.
“Wait, Mom,” Jude called, wincing as her arm jiggled in its sling. “Maybe she’s in the asylum. She might be talking to a nurse or…”
Sophia shook her head.
“I know, Jude. Dr. Kaiser has her. But I can’t remember how to find the hidden doorway.”
Damien ran ahead shouting Hattie’s name and plunging in and out of a dark grove of trees.
The moon rose, but offered little light, even less through the thick boughs of leaves soon to fall. A half hour went by, and they searched. Sophia realized she’d seen that tree, that stump - they were moving in circles.
“Alice,” Sophia shouted, grabbing Damien as he trotted past her. “Go to the hospital and get Alice!”
“Dr. Kaiser’s nurse?” Damien asked, bewildered and already shaking his head ‘no.’
“It’s the only way. She took me there. She can find it again,” Sophia said, urgent, shaking him.
Jude appeared, squared off against him, her eyes so filled with anger and hurt that Sophia wanted to wrap her in a hug, but couldn’t - there wasn’t time.
“I’ll expose you, Damien. I’ll print the most horrifying story about you imaginable if you don’t get that fucking nurse, now! I swear to God I will devote my life to ruining you,” Jude spat.
Damien looked between the two women, eyes wide and then he nodded.
“Okay, no, you’re right. I’m not thinking clearly. I’ll go.”
He turned and ran for the hospital.
Jude and Sophia hid in the trees. If Alice saw them, she’d never take them to the secret chamber where Kaiser and his sick group showed off their patients.
Sophia held Jude’s hand, watching the trail. After a lifetime of counting seconds, Damien appeared on the path, pulling Alice along.
“Damien, Dr. Kaiser never mentioned that you were aware of the Brotherhood. I’m breaking an oath, I….”
“Alice, I’ve been here with Dr. Kaiser only once before. He’s in danger, I’m telling you. The patient who escaped-”
“Sophia?” Alice hissed.
“Yes. She lured him out here. His note was cryptic, but I’m telling you, that’s where she took him.”
Sophia knew Alice’s jaw would be working, sorting through the possibility Damien lied.
“It’s this way.” Alice picked up her pace.
Sophia and Jude slipped onto the trail behind them and kept their distance. They walked along a patch of old-growth trees, stepped over a tiny creek and hurried up a broad grassy hill. Alice took a sharp left at a wall of bushes. They plunged through, down a hill, and Sophia saw the strange trees from her previous visit. They sprawled along the earth, crawling, rather than raising into the sky.
Alice ducked beneath a large bone-white trunk. Sophia started to follow, but Jude held her back. A dirt mound rose out of the earth, and Alice pushed her hands into a mass of brambles. Sophia heard a click.
“This way,” Alice whispered rushing into the tangle of branches.
Damien disappeared behind her. Jude and Sophia followed.
Sophia clenched her eyes shut, the sounds of the dead swirled through the tunnels. Dark pools of emotion - pain, anger, despair assaulted her senses. She stopped, put her hand on a wall and whipped it back when a howl of rage burst in her skull.