by Alan Spencer
Her eyes rolled into the back of her head. One final breath expelled, her body sagged into itself, and she was dead. Dead for real. Dead for good.
Rachael took over the situation, motioning with the pistol. “Stand up and step away from the body. The bitch doesn’t matter now.” Her eyes narrowed on the corpse. “We can still use her brain.”
He stiffened at the image of Edith’s head being opened and her brain removed by Dr. Krone. “Why do you need her brain?”
She raised the gun to the level of his head. “You have no use for that information.” A crooked smile wormed across her lips. Whatever she was thinking, it involved him. “It won’t be long before this place is bustling with activity. You’re a danger to us, Craig, and I’m glad I caught you in time. Our imaginations run wild, and yours will too. The doctor will be pleased I caught you in time. He wanted you alive.”
“And why not Edith?—she’s a good person, and you fucking shot her.”
“She’s pitiful,” Rachael said with disappointment drawn across her face. “Edith’s another sob story. Too many children, not enough money, too much drugs and alcohol, who gives a shit? Her memories aren’t entertaining, but Dr. Krone did appreciate the time in her life where she gave blowjobs for twenty bucks. She was nineteen at the time. He saved that memory.” She shook her head, though she enjoyed the thought. “Pervert.”
“Saved that memory, what do you mean?”
“You don’t know shit, and it’ll stay that way.” She was irritated. He’d disturbed their plans for tonight—whatever their “imaginations running wild meant”. “I’m hooking you back up to the machine.”
“Where’s Dr. Krone?”
“He’s resting.” She muttered it an annoyance. “Fat ass wears out after so many hours on the machine. He’s asleep. He can’t wake up, he’s that zonked out. The machine overheats. That’s why the power shorted. Now, the device is recharging, and once it’s recharged, the party begins.” Her eyes were wide. “All the work pays off. It only happens once a week. We’ve collected so many memories. Only the best ones we keep.”
Craig’s skull ached. He was exhausted. The machine tasked the body and the mind and left both depleted. But he didn’t have the luxury of sleep or relief. Blood stained his hands, and Edith was a corpse at his feet. That’d be three children without a mother.
“Now come with me,” she instructed, keeping one hand extended with the gun. Rachael fished out a filled syringe from her white smock with her free hand. “It’s easy. I poke you with this, and that’s all you have to do.”
“You’re not a real nurse, you bitch.” His blood pressure boiled. His skin flushed red. Rachael was startled by the looks he cast her. “You want to steal my memories, huh? It’s great Dr. Krone finds my mind worthwhile to excavate. Then what?—he’ll steal my brain and leave me for dead? Why do you want our brains? Are you afraid to tell me?”
“It’s dangerous for you to know too much.” Fear weighed her words. “You have no idea what risks we’re taking with you up and walking around. Stop asking questions. You can’t possibly comprehend our work, so stop trying.”
“You won’t shoot me.” It burst out of him an explosion of words. “I have something to live for and you won’t take that away from me!”
She was shaken by the outburst and backed up three steps, her confidence vanishing. She dropped the gun and waved her hands in defeat, begging him, “No—don’t, Craig. I’m sorry. Put it down, okay? I’ll let you go—listen to me!”
He was confused until his anger subsided enough to notice that he was clutching his father’s Browning shotgun.
There was no decision-making process.
He pulled the trigger.
Rachael’s feet lifted from the floor, thrown like a weightless doll into the wall behind her. Her torso was rendered into upturned clothing and flesh. Through the lifting haze of smoke, she coughed and belched.
She peered up at him, her eyes half slits. Blood streamed down both sides of her lips. “You’ll never escape. You’re a fool.” She sneered hard. “Soon you’ll be dead…but it’ll be much worse than death…”
He was frightened at the amount of blood that spilled from her torso. She lived only ten more seconds, then she was dead, as limp as Edith’s corpse. He stood in a room with two dead corpses. And before he realized it, the Browning had vanished.
The Room
He refused to hold up in the waiting room a moment longer. He couldn’t stand so much death. Real death. He murdered somebody, and though it was in self-defense, he’d still ended a life.
You had to, he reasoned to himself, hurrying through doorway that led back into the darkened hallway. Edith’s dead and that could’ve been you. This is beyond a compromising situation. You’ve got memories coming to life, your wife coming back from the dead, and you’ve escaped certain death by a thread. Consider yourself lucky to be alive at all.
Rachael’s guarded explanation disturbed him, mentioning the machine overheating and how it was recharging. Once it was charged, she said a party would begin, and he couldn’t help but think aloud, “‘Only the best memories’…what the hell is she talking about?”
He finally stepped into the hallway, getting nowhere with ruminations about a machine he knew so little about. Entering the narrow hall, he checked every shadow for a looming person or persons. Surely Dr. Krone had heard the shotgun blast.
“All the work pays off. It only happens once a week. We’ve collected so many memories…only the best ones…”
He rushed the nearest window and yanked back on the steel bars, attacked by a surge of panic. They wouldn’t budge. Shaking in fear, pondering what the real Dr. Krone would do to him—and in all probability, the doctor would strap him back onto the machine and further raid his mind—he slid down the wall onto his butt, losing all sensation in his body, overwhelmed by the fact he had no idea where to turn next.
Moments dragged on, and he stared down the darkened hallway. The eventless minutes served to ease his nerves, and he recollected himself. Getting up off the ground, forcing himself to walk in a silent skulking mode, he became proactive. Perhaps one of the doors was a way out, he thought, and began checking. After two, each of them being locked, he arrived at the final door on this side of the house. He kept listening for movement, failing to drop his guard. Dr. Krone was hidden in the mansion somewhere, he kept repeating to himself.
“The door,” he whispered, focusing on the barrier again. “Just check it.”
He turned the cold brass knob, and opening it inch by inch, darkness greeted him on the other side. He listened. Craig searched for a light switch, and after two seconds of laborious ticking, the overhead fluorescent bulbs blinked on. He closed and locked the door behind him, happy to create another barrier between him and the doctor.
The room itself was a conference room. His eyes roamed the room and found a long pine table and five leather rolling chairs on each side. A screen was pulled down at the opposite wall and a video projector on a cart stood right next to him. Five file cabinets were lined at the wall to the left of him. The object that caught his eye the most and reeled him in was the shelf of VHS tapes.
“This man can’t keep up with the times. Hasn’t this guy heard of DVD?”
Labels were slapped on the sides with people’s names, hundreds of names. They were victims of the machine, his educated guess. The scope of Dr. Krone’s work was staggering. He checked the shelf for his name, but thinking clearly, it was too soon for him to be catalogued. Rachael said they weren’t finished with him yet. In five days, she’d said, and the machine recorded the best memories. Edith’s name wasn’t on the shelf either. Their escape put them behind schedule, he supposed.
The bottom of the shelf, that row of tapes weren’t labeled. He picked one up, sizing it up for content. Would he be watching the equivalent of a snuff film or somebody’s innermost thoughts?
“You have to know,” he muttered, blowing out a breath of pensive air. “How else can I
understand? You didn’t perform these sick procedures. You don’t get off on this shit.”
He slid the VHS from its sleeve, making his decision. The inside was also absent of a label except for the number 3/10/81 scrawled in magic marker.
“1981,” he whispered. “The Krones have been at this for decades.”
He guided the tape into the player, hitting play, and then turning on the projector device, he backed up a number of steps. A blue box formed on the screen, and then the image played out. It was Dr. Krone’s father. He was half the weight of his son, and he wore a more determined face.
“Somehow, the machine can deliver light through the retinas,” he explained, sitting on a stool in front of the camera. “The needles through the skull stimulate nerve pulses called ‘action potentials’. These action potentials stimulate ion channels and transporters. These carry an electric charge to command the brain. I’ve manipulated these channels to tap into the mind, memories, and thought processes. Once I deliver light through the eyes, we should see an image. I can use the computer to command the brain to play a specific memory. The brain has databanks of information, and I shall reference them like a library catalogue.”
The camera pivoted around, and he caught a man for a blink’s duration, who Craig assumed was Dr. Krone.
Craig muttered, “The doctor was using his son as his assistant.”
A man was strapped to the machine, an exact replica of the one Craig was on earlier. But this time a different device was strapped to his head. The crown of needles was fixed on his skull. The crown was suspended in the air by steel prongs attached to the ceiling. The crown was a rough prototype.
Craig studied the man’s eyes, and it took him moments to really see what had been done to them. The eyes themselves had been removed. The sockets were hollow and surrounded by pink orbital tissue, scooped clean. The lens of a camera was inserted into each eye. It was fixed in place by thinly cut swatches of duct tape along the edges of the sockets. The victim’s mouth was also sealed with duct tape. The man’s head had been shaved down to the scalp, the patient sweating in thick beads and moaning in terror, but it was low and defeated, the victim strung out for so long that voicing his survival was futile.
“I have attached a camera’s lens in each eye,” Dr. Krone’s father explained. “I’ll flip on the switch, and I plan for an image to play out onto the wall. Daniel, flip off the light switch and turn on the lens. We’ll see his thoughts. Keep your fingers crossed, boy.”
Steps resounded in the background. The lights went out. Another switch was flicked and sparks issued in the background. The lens brightened inside the man’s eyes. For a split second, Craig could view the inside of his brain through the lens, the gray mass magnified. The piece of meat constricted, glistening and wet.
“The machine opens up ion channels in the brain and increases the electrical impulses delivered to the brain. Memories come alive this way. It’s happened before for the past fifty years. This is nothing new. Now that I’ve fixed it and tweaked the beast, it’ll do more than replicate memories for those who get hooked up to it. It’ll make memories flesh and blood. Flip the switch, Daniel!”
The patient grunted, though his mouth was covered. His face was lit up with intense white light, like bolts of lightning, the golden rays of heaven Craig experienced days ago. Moments later, the man went limp, the machine surging to its fullest potential, but the images Dr. Krone, Sr. promised failed to play on the screen.
“Damn it, this didn’t work! I fixed it. This is the six hundredth time I’ve tried this!”
And then Dr. Krone, Sr. froze, and Dr. Krone turned the camera, gasping, his hands trembling at the sight he captured. There stood the man from the machine. He was wearing a red polo shirt and chino pants. He also had long flowing brown hair and a quickly fading smile. The man had been beaming before he looked around confused. “W-where am I?”
Dr. Krone, Sr. shook his head in disbelief. “He’s real.” Stepping closer to him, he said to his child, “You’re recording this, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
The background slowly came into better focus, the camera operator an amateur. Bodies were lined up along the wall side by side dressed in straightjackets, sitting in a position where their legs were spread out on the floor, their backs against the wall. They were wrapped in plastic, see-through body bags. Rotten, fetid faces matched the freshly dead.
Craig thought, The stink downstairs. Christ, this happened in the basement. No wonder the door was locked.
The man absorbed the room in horror, and he kept turning slowly in place, finding something else new to be disgusted by during each passing moment. “Who are you people?”
Dr. Krone, Sr. touched the man’s face, and the man jerked away, horrified at his presence. “How do you feel?”
The man blasted at him, “I’m fine—other than the fact I’m here! What the fuck is wrong with you people? Who killed these people? It wasn’t you, was it?”
“Take note,” Dr. Krone, Sr. dictated, pointing at the patient. “Patient is flesh and blood. He’s nothing of his former self. This is Gregory Camp before his mental illness. Now, I can dissect his mind for the cause. He can be cured and become a healthy member of society.”
“I’m not mentally ill.” Gregory raised his voice. “I want to leave. Where’s the way out?—and don’t touch me again. I want nothing to do with you sick people.”
Gregory bound across the room, quickly putting it together that they wouldn’t let him leave. He dodged the bodies on the wall, tripping, dodging, and crying out whenever he touched one. Craig counted three dozen corpses, and that was just one corner of the room. The man frantically tried the doors and none of them worked. “You can’t keep me h—!”
Bam!
The gunshot struck the man’s head, his nose caving in the middle, and a fat bloom of gore sprayed the intricate damage against the wall. Thrown back, smacking the wall, and landing over the other dead bodies, the man lay silent and oozing blood.
Dr. Krone, Sr. met the camera with a smoking pistol loosely in his clutches. “Note that the patient still sits in that chair. This other body bleeds on the floor. He’s flesh and blood, but now watch this…”
The camera followed Dr. Krone, Sr. to the actual machine. He punched the keys on the computer monitor on the side compartment of the machine. The device shut down with a gradual diminishing whuuuuuuuuuuuum. The lens in the patient’s eyes went dark, and then the room went dark as well. Dr. Krone, Sr. flipped on the overhead lights, and Gregory’s body on the floor was missing, including the blood that spattered the walls.
“This is miraculous.” His face lost its vigor and turned solemn. “I can bring back Mom, Daniel. She can be alive again. I’ll find a way for me to be safely strapped into the machine. All I have to do is perfect the ocular lenses, and it’s a sure win.”
Craig turned away from the screen. He needed a breath. The information was swarming him at once. So much he’d seen, and there wasn’t a soul to properly explain it to him. He stared at the shelf and counted the blank VHS tapes. “There’s no way in hell I’m watching twenty tapes of this twisted shit.”
The VHS tape was stopped, and the screen went blank. Craig whipped around, his body clenching, his legs ready to run, his mouth ready to plead with whoever might attack him next, but the intruder beat him to the punch.
“I’ll explain everything to you, Mr. Horsy.”
Dr. Krone’s father stood behind the video projector.
Dr. Krone, Sr.
Craig backed up to the other side of the room, creating more space between him and the strange man. He was the same person in the video—lab coat, red fingerprint stains caked along the front, faded beige pants, and a determined and hungry face. Murderously intelligent.
He couldn’t speak. The doctor’s presence robbed him of words. He simply shook his head and mouthed, “No…”
“This is reality, Mr. Horsy, and I am flesh and blood.” Dr. Krone, Sr. rais
ed his arms and took a slow spin around. “I’m a body, and I’ve been dead for many years. Amazing, don’t you think?”
Craig spat it out, “What the fuck are you talking about? This is murder you’ve participated in, not a scientific breakthrough.”
“But it is a scientific breakthrough. Ah, I’ve skipped ahead of the explanation. Forgive me.” He walked to the corner with a metal pushcart stocked with glass bottles of booze. He poured himself one and raised an empty glass at Craig. “You want a drink?”
He shook his head, refusing to believe this conversation was happening, but what choice did he have?
“You're persistent—you and that woman, what’s her name? She broke free of the restraints on her own. She’s the first to escape, besides you.” His face hardened. “You see, the machine turns itself off before it overloads. The power goes out, and the patient usually can’t move or doesn’t move. But that lady, she’s one tough bitch. We only have three machines. I don’t think the house can support anymore electricity use. The rest of the mansion usually sits in the dark to conserve. You’re the first to escape ever for this long.”
“Hurray for me,” Craig snapped. “You realize you’re a murderer, right? I’ve seen you in action. You steal mental patients from the asylum, and now you’re kidnapping innocent people from the streets. I take it nobody walks out of here alive either, or cured.”
Dr. Krone, Sr. poured himself a scotch and drank it straight up. He was more concerned about the drink than Craig's accusations. “This is the first thing I do when I wake. It’s the best way to come out of death. A good stuff drink down the hatch.”
He was confused. “Wake up from death?”
Dr. Krone, Sr. was enjoying the Q&A session. He sipped the scotch contentedly. Patting his belly, he sighed, “Ah, that’s better. Yes, I’m dead—remember? But the brain is a powerful vessel. It doesn’t have to die. It has many abilities the human race has yet to decode. I’ve simply discovered a special feature of the brain. My great, great grandfather located this phenomenon, this special feature. I’ve simply harnessed it. Turned it into something worth exploring. My son discovered the soul is in the brain. The soul itself is the electrical charge that occurs when nerve impulses called ‘action potentials’ command the body to function—to remember, the move, to act, to feel, to hate, to love, and so on. The soul is capable of anything if instructed, including returning to life after death. I am living once again.” He turned his head to the side, trying to read Craig. “I’m not completely alive, but once a week is better than never in eternity, I’ll say.”