“I know,” I said, “He’s harmless. It’s what he doesn’t tell you that’s dangerous.” I let my hands relax and fall to my sides as I turned my back on the doctor.
Behind me, the doctor got back to his feet with Katie’s assistance. His nose was bleeding and he gripped it tightly. “It seems your friend the detective is one to hold a grudge,” he said.
I spun around quickly, causing Merill to step back defensively. “Of course I’m going to hold a grudge! You let me wander into the heart of madness without even a warning! You knew this was going to happen, but all you could say was ‘I don’t want to talk about it!’ Come over here, I think I need to hit you again!”
Katie stepped between us again. “Whoa whoa whoa! Nobody’s fighting here, no matter how much you two boys need to show off your testosterone. You both need to calm down. John, he’s not the enemy!”
“No,” I said, “but he didn’t do a damn thing to keep me away from the enemy either! He let me walk into all this!”
“I didn’t…” started Merill faintly, “I didn’t know for sure that this was going to happen. I thought there was a chance this might happen. Without the proper drugs administered, there was the possibility for a new anomaly, maybe even a backlash like this. But I didn’t know for sure.”
“You could have told me your suspicions,” I said. “This isn’t a ‘I could tell him, but the information might be used against me in a court of law’ situation. This is a ‘I should tell him so that he doesn’t end up a dead body lost somewhere in time’ situation.”
“Would you have believed me?” he said. “I’m still not sure I believe it myself, and this is when I’m in the midst of it. How could I have explained it and you believed it?”
“I’m sure there could have been a way,” I said, “You could have…” I trailed off. “I don’t know.”
“Exactly,” said Merill with an air of victory that I didn’t like.
I opened my mouth to speak, but then I heard a faint crash in the distance.
“Did you hear that?” I said.
Both of them looked at me, and I could tell that they did hear something, but neither said anything.
“It’s the monster,” I said.
“That can’t be,” said Katie. “No one has died yet. He comes after the murder. That’s the rule, right?”
“Unfortunately, that’s right. But I stumbled over the body already,” I said grimly.
“Oh,” she said with a frown. “Who?”
“The girl from the circulation desk at the library.”
“That’s a shame,” she said glumly. “I guess there’s no future for her and that boy Brad.”
“He’s dead too,” I said, looking in the direction I heard the noise, searching for a glimpse of the monster. “Found him in the library bathroom.”
“Wow, you seem to find all the bodies. Sure it’s not you who’s doing it?”
I turned and glared at her. She held my glance sheepishly at first, then broke into a smile which turned into giggling.
“You do seem to keep finding them,” she giggled.
“Yeah, that seems to be my lot here.” I stared beyond the trees, squinting my eyes for a better look.
Watching my eyes, Merill stood next to me, trying to look where I was. “What do you see?”
“I think the fog is coming,” I said.
“Fog?” he asked.
“The whiteness. The disappearing. That whiteout that happens.”
“Ah yes. The erasing,” he said.
“Erasing?”
“It’s not a technical term by any means,” he said, “but that’s the term I have been using for it. I’m sure eventually I’ll have a much more appropriate term. Perhaps once I write this whole experience and anomaly up for a journal. If we survive long enough for that to happen.”
“There you go again, alluding to our lack of survivability without giving any specifics,” I said. I turned to Katie. “You know him, right? Was he always like this?”
“He was my doctor,” she said.
“Good doctor, bad doctor?” I said, watching Merill’s face for a reaction.
“I honestly don’t remember,” she began, “because I was –“
“Yes, the catatonia,” I said, receiving a nod from her. “I’m surprised you remember him at all.”
“Yeah,” she said, lost in thought, “Me too. I guess I remember some things. Maybe Katherine told me.”
“Ah the Katherine persona,” said Merill with sudden enthusiasm. “I admit, Kate, that I have more experience speaking with Katherine than yourself. I hope that you will not hold that against me.”
“No,” she said. Then after a pause, “Should I?”
The whiteness had come dramatically closer. It would overtake us soon.
“No,” chuckled Merill, “There is no reason too. Just courtesy.”
She gave him a strange look, but I spoke before she did. “That white is almost here. We should join hands.”
“Really, detective, is that necessary?” asked Merill.
“You were travelling alone, weren’t you?” I said, grabbing Katie’s hand.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then you wouldn’t know if it was necessary either. But if you like, try not holding hands. Good luck on your own if you don’t come with us.”
He turned and looked at the rapidly approaching whiteness, then back at us, standing with hands joined. Then he reluctantly took Katie’s hand. Katie and I shared a smile before the whiteness, Merill’s “erasing”, overtook us and we stood in a white world devoid of depth.
It was as before, a blank world lacking any depth, empty of ground, sky, or a horizon. I let go of Katie’s hand and waved my hand in the air. No air resistance, no sense of solidness. It was a strange feeling, not at all like moving my hand through air. It was moving my hand through absence, through void. I looked down at my feet, seeing us standing on nothing as before. It is not as if we stood on a white floor. We stood on an absence of anything. I touched my hand to what we stood on, feeling resistance as if there was something solid, but not seeing anything.
“I’ll never get used to this,” I said.
I looked over and saw Katie and the doctor still looking around. Merill still held her hand, longer than I felt that he should. A twinge of something like jealousy ran through me. I must have narrowed my eyes, because Katie saw me and let go of the doctor’s hand.
“It is a strange place, that is clear,” said Merill, oblivious to my look. “I haven’t quite figured out what this place is. Absence? An unremembered place? A staging area? A mere fermata within all that’s orchestrating?”
“You lost me, doc,” I said. “Just what are you talking about?”
“Just musing about this place. In addition to staying alive, I’ve been endeavoring to understand this place. With Ashborn gone, I would be free to publish on this.”
“Dr. Ashborn is gone?” I asked. “What happened to him?”
Merill’s face turned to an expression I couldn’t quite read. “No, no. Just a theory. It’s only a theory that Dr. Ashborn is gone. I don’t know anything for sure.”
“You seem sure enough,” I said.
“Oh no, if I give that impression, I’m sorry. It’s just a guess, really.”
“Sure,” I said, “Just a guess. So what’s your guess? You know what Ashborn had been doing. You haven’t let us know yet. We have some time until we find the door. Time for you to spill the beans.”
“The door?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “the door. Big rusted metal door. Leads to some crappy place which eventually gets us somewhere else. I’m sure you encountered them before. We have.”
I looked at Katie and she nodded.
“Sure,” he said reluctantly, “I saw one before. I just wasn’t sure what you meant. I had a different name for them. I was calling them portals or gateways. I probably should find a more technical term for the paper.”
“Yeah, yeah, the paper
,” I said, “that’s great, but stop using it to stall. I don’t think you’re clueless enough to only care about getting published in the midst of all that. But it is a professional enough a topic that you can lose us in. We want some answers.”
“Shouldn’t we get walking?” he said. “We need to find the door to move forward.”
“That is true…” started Katie.
“No, not until we get some answers,” I said, stepping into Merill’s personal space. “I’ll start walking when we get answers. You want to move forward, talk as you walk.”
We glared at each other, wills clashing as neither one of us backed down or moved away. Finally he broke the stare, looking at the ground. “I suppose you deserve some answers,” he said.
“Damn right,” I said.
“Shh,” said Katie, “let him start.” We began walking, the direction aimless.
“This whole thing begins and ends with Max,” he said. “I’m sure that’s something you have discovered on your own.” Of course we had, so Katie and I nodded mutely as he continued. “He came to us last year as one of the special cases this institute collects from other facilities. Cases related to a particular doctor’s research or interesting cases will often be moved here, typically when there is no family or when the family cannot afford it. We are supplemented with grants and revenue from more affluent families, but it is these interesting cases that this institute was founded for.
“Max was transferred here at an interesting time. We’re not sure the cause, but there was an upsurge in mental instability. We all had theories why – were they just showing their behavior at a coincidental time, or was there really something causing public health to decline? Whatever the reason, it resulted in many new cases of schizophrenia or psychosis at hospitals. There were no other commonalities in their symptoms, and this phenomenon stretched across states, a distance of hundreds of miles. Timing was the only common factor. The onset of their conditions all corresponded to the same week. Some claim to have seen a bright light in the night sky, but I feel that is just conjecture.” He paused meaningfully. “Interestingly, you arrived at our hospital just before this onset period, Katherine.”
“Katie,” she said, “Call me Katie. Don’t ever fucking call me Katherine.”
“I-I apologize… Katie,” he said, “it’s a bad habit. That’s the name I knew you as. We knew so little about you, I simply got used to the incorrect name. I apologize.” He rubbed his eyes before continuing. I looked around, seeing only whiteness, no door so far.
“Max was one of these special cases brought to our institute. That was a decision of Dr. Ashborn. I had no interest in Max’s case, but Ashborn’s research was similar. Since we had both an influx of patients and Ashborn was also the administrator, many of those patients were delegated at his whim until they proved interesting enough for him. For that reason, I was Max’s doctor. His first doctor.
“In the beginning, his case seemed typical. We received him in a heavily sedated condition from a state-funded hospital. The case notes were confused scribbles and contradictory sentences, making me wonder at the skill of the doctors at the hospital that they produced such a file. I ended up ignoring those notes and doing a diagnosis of my own. Max claimed many typical schizophrenic symptoms. He felt that some special power had been bestowed on him over anyone else in the world, but that this same power was tearing his mind apart. He often complained of his mind being turned inside out. This I took to be a mere schizophrenic symptom, the disassembling of his sense of self as his self-boundaries disintegrated. His self-boundary retracted, so that elements of himself seemed outside of himself, because they were beyond his new self-boundary. He blamed it all upon a book, which was one of the strangest parts of his account. The simple diagnosis I had come up with seemed to be correct until we decided to wean him off the sedatives the public hospital had him on so that we can better view his symptoms. That changed everything.”
He lapsed into silence, once again rubbing his eyes and staring off into space. It was Katie who prompted him. “What happened?”
“It was the nurses that noticed it first,” continued Merill. “Since I would not have believed it on my own. They noticed there was a strangeness that was always around Max. First it was only just a difference of temperature around him. This gave way to other symptoms. I was called to see him after the walls of his room seemed to flex and contract as if they weren’t solid. I sat with him in an observation room as he ranted, raved, and screamed, all the while the air around him shimmering and shifting. It seemed so impossible as I sat there, but it quickly became apparent that he somehow could alter space around him, actually physically affect it. However, he was not be able to control it. Worse, it was growing stronger as the drugs left his system. It soon dawned on me that the sedatives were somehow inhibiting Max’s strange ability.” He paused for a moment. “Due to this, I reevaluated the skill level of the state hospital doctors.”
“You think?” said Katie sarcastically.
“As soon as he began to exhibit this ability,” Merill continued, “he was taken away from me. Now that he actually had some merit and a quality deserving of study, Ashborn yanked him and his file from me. Just when I could get something out of the damned assignments he would stick me with, he takes Max from me! Dr. Bellingham never would have stood for that, how could he leave Ashborn in charge? Since Ashborn took over, only his work has been researched, not anyone else’s.”
His ruddy face had gotten redder with anger. Katie and I exchanged a glance as Merill calmed down. “I’m sorry, I realize our internal politics are not your affair. Dr. Ashborn and I have not had the friendliest relationship. I was surprised that he even allowed me to sit in on his experiment in Observation Room 6. “
He stared off into the white space for a moment as we walked. He seemed to be talking almost to himself now, and Katie and I were willing to let him keep going. “Ah, Observation Room 6,” he mused. “Up until that point, I had never thought that I would experience something like that. Even Max’s effect on his environment could simply be called an anomaly. But what I saw in that room changed my mind about the nature of what was possible. It had me questioning the nature of reality.”
“Enough talking around it,” said Katie insistently, “What happened in Observation Room 6?”
“I’m sorry, it’s hard to talk about,” he said. “It just doesn’t make the same sense when I try to explain it. It seems so fantastic. That’s the reason for my reluctance to say anything. There is nothing that I’d say that you’d believe.”
“Spill it,” I said. “Tell us the unbelievable.”
“No,” he said, “I’d rather not be declared a liar when it is already so difficult for me to say. I’ll just say that Ashborn discovered the nature off Max’s power, the power to bend and fold space. Max had the power to punch holes into other dimensions, other worlds. Horrible places, alien places. After that demonstration, I never wanted to see it again. I wish I could erase that memory from my mind. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Ashborn. No, he wanted more.
“Dr. Ashborn’s research has always been about inner spaces, inner worlds. His research focused on exploring those worlds and helping patients to make their own explorations. In Max he must have seen the chance to explore actual worlds. I do not know for sure what went on in his mind. I had a confederate, Dr. Nealand, who worked closely with Ashborn and was my friend. Through him I was able to follow Ashborn’s work. I know that after his demonstration, Max went back on sedatives. There was no way they could keep him sober. Once medicated, Ashborn conducted a series of interviews with the man, trying to learn his secret. Max did not always have that power. I knew that for sure. It was documented.”
“Documented?” I said. “Was it in his permanent record or something? ‘Ms. Kennedy’s report confirms that little Max does not bend space and time during French class.’ How could you know for sure?”
“It was easy, because I had all of Max’s files,” Mer
ill responded. “Max has had quite the history of mental illness. When he was just a teenager, he was checked into this very hospital, back when it was just the Sommersfield Mental Hospital. After his father beat him within an inch of his life, the boy became a ward of the state and was sent to Sommersfield. He was observed quite extensively, so any power to alter space-time would have been evident. And now he somehow had this power, so he was scientifically valuable. This is the sort of thing that could make a scientific career. I know that’s what Ashborn hoped.”
“Fine, let’s say he couldn’t do this in the past,” I said. “So what did that mean?”
“It meant that it became Ashborn’s obsession. He continued interview Max, trying to find out how Max had taken on this power. It became clear that Max did not want his power, that it was uncontrollable. He welcomed the sedatives, even if they made him only slightly more autonomous than a drooling idiot. Interview after interview, Ashborn got under his skin, hearing the answer of what did this to Max, but never believing what Max said. Even after all Ashborn saw, he was still skeptical. Max told him over and over, but it was only after hearing it countless times that Ashborn believed.”
“What was it?” asked Katie.
“A book,” said Merill.
“A book?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“That book!” gasped Katie.
Both Merill and I looked at her strangely, but she did not meet our gazes nor explain further.
“Yes, a book,” said Merill distastefully. “One particular book. Some type of antique book. ‘Magic’, from what I heard. I never saw the book myself, only heard about it. ‘The ancient and powerful book written in a thousand dead languages.’ Max claims he just read from it and he was changed. Even after seeing what I saw, I could not believe this, and I still don’t. What I saw Max do was wild and unpredictable, but it could be science. Some unexplained law of science was being invoked, something mankind has not yet discovered, but there was something there that could be consistent with scientific laws. But a man reads a book and develops these powers? It seems so farfetched.”
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