Psycho Therapy

by Alan Spencer

  Dr. Krone, Sr. poured another drink, determined to catch a buzz. He frowned when speaking, sharing his private pain. “Death is pitch-black. It’s not sleep. There’s nothing in death. Oblivion. Expansive black. I fear going back to it. I woke here after a long stay in death. My soul was commanded back to life by the machine, and I’ve returned once a week since I died of a stroke.” With a creeping smile he said, “My son has seen to that.”

  “So you’re essentially a walking corpse. But you’re real now. Why not leave the house and experience the world if you’re real? I’d go out, so why don’t you?”

  The doctor closed his eyes and rubbed them. “Ah, that’s one feat we haven’t mastered. The energy field can only reach so far, maybe half a mile from the house, if that. So I’m stuck here, Mr. Horsy. My son is working on fixing that issue. Once he dies, that’s it. Somebody else will have to work the machine to keep me alive. It all hinges on ‘action potentials’. You stimulate the right channels in the brain with electricity, the stronger the reaction you receive. The machine is so powerful, it not only creates these electrical charges, it takes them from you and replicates them on a screen, replicates them in your mind, lets others like my son into others’ minds.”

  A malignant smile demurred his face. “The machine also mimics the memories in flesh and blood for a short period of time.”

  Unable to one-up the man, Craig turned his creation into a joke. “I bet your electricity bill is insane.”

  Dr. Krone, Sr. was disappointed at Craig’s lack of appreciation for the profound. “We don’t get all of our power from the house. Electricity from nerve impulses, the soul itself, channels much of our power in this residence.”

  Craig asked, “How did you locate the soul?”

  Dr. Krone, Sr. rested on one of the leather swivel chairs, feeling tipsy. “The Krone family used to own ten asylums in the Midwest. My son finally sold off the businesses. Our goal originally was to cure insanity, dementia, and just about every mental disorder. I guess Dr. Larry Krone, the first to try in the late 1800s, already knew of the soul. He had forefathers before him who’d operated on fallen or near-dead soldiers during the Civil War and American Revolution. They discovered the nerve impulses and the electrical charges in the brain, the soul at work. The truth is the machine had already been built for decades. You see, other American asylums were very much interested in getting inside disturbed minds as well.

  “The insane are the perfect guinea pigs. The families leave their loved ones behind once they’re deemed incurable. Hundreds of thousands of victims of mental illness suffer this fate. Writing the DSM, shock therapy, drugs, none of it added up to shit as far as cures go. Treatments subdued the beast, but it didn’t send the beast packing. We wanted the infirm to live a normal life. This is the price for that privilege. The machines were banned from use and destroyed, after, let’s say, certain unwanted outcomes.” He furrowed his eyebrows up and down. “But somehow, the Krones got a hold of the last prototypes. Three machines. I’ve had to spend years tweaking the machines to do as I wish. I got them to work again.

  “At first, the machine simply projected images onto a screen. Memories. I wanted to physically enter the mind and encounter the mental illness myself. So many patients have been hooked up to the machine over the years, thousands, and it’s added up to something miraculous. The databanks alone are so prolific. The electricity, the souls were collected in mass numbers up to the point the machine gained abilities of its own.”

  His booming voice shook Craig to the core, the news shouted from a confident maniac. “How else do you think I’m flesh and blood after death? This machine made it happen on its own. I’m real again. I was taken from death and put here. My soul was copied and is exactly as the original—it looks the same, thinks the same, deduces and reasons the same, but I’m not real. I am real, though.” He waved his hand at Craig not to ask. “It’s confusing. The living soul is not aware of itself, but the dead soul is free to venture into other places if it can be awakened and brought back to reality. The soul, the brain, it has so much potential yet to be discovered.

  “That’s why we’ve taken to kidnapping people from the streets. It’s difficult to obtain enough mental patients after my son sold the business. He’s dedicated his time to locating people like you. People with rich minds to tap. Those troubled and on the verge of criminality. Admit it, you’re amazed. What I’m telling you is revolutionary.”

  “Tell me something, Doctor. What success have you had?”

  The question interrupted his proud reverie of success. “How do you figure?”

  “You wanted to cure mental illness. Well, have you?”

  The question lingered, and floated, and dissipated. Dr. Krone, Sr. motioned to speak, but he stopped himself. The man was puzzled. Nobody had pointed out the flaws of his reasoning before. It also occurred to Craig their guinea pig picking pool comprised of the insane. The souls charging this machine were disturbed, irrational, violent, and terrified.

  “That’s why my memories were turned against me,” he said as a private revelation. “And that’s how come your son is talking to my friends and loved ones and convincing them to conspire against me. That’s why my dead wife tried to murder me. And the walking corpses at the mausoleum, it makes sense. You’ve allowed pandemonium to take over science.”

  Dr. Krone, Sr. was clearly offended. He clutched his empty glass as if to chuck it at Craig. “Maybe you’re right. But maybe it’s because I don’t want to share what we’ve found with the rest of the world. Nobody would understand. The machine would be trashed, and forgotten, and banned like it was half a century ago. I’ve made many friends, been to many foreign countries, have had sex with thousands of women, and I’ve experienced the world after death.”

  Pleased with the sound of his own words, his mouth quivered as if on the verge of weeping. “It’s worth every drop of blood shed to reach this point. I’ve lived so many people’s memories. Sadly, the patient does die after the fifth day strapped to the machine. The soul is completely removed and turned to energy for the machine. Each soul is catalogued into a computer database. I can type the dead up, and they can be flesh and blood again once a week, if I so chose. Once the machine has enough soul energy built up, it can do anything.

  “Once a week that machine rests. It takes stock of the new souls, and when it comes back on—and you’ll hear it—for twelve hours, my son can program that computer hooked to the device to play out any memories he wants. Flesh-and-blood memories, Mr. Horsy. Your memories. Anything in your mind can be recreated by the machine. You’ve been strapped in for three days. That’s long enough for the machine to know an awful lot about you.”

  His smile was threatening. “And the memories in your head were harsh. We’ve tweaked your past a bit. Since you escaped, it’s the least we could do to send you off according to the trouble you’ve been to us. But I have a feeling I won’t bring you back to life again once you’re dead. Your soul will be lost forever.” He pretended he had Craig’s soul in his hand, and he dropped it, looking around, and he couldn’t find it. “You’ll be oblivious in oblivion.”

  The glimmer in his eyes shined like a diamond. “We like to have fun. Being strapped to the machine for so long, we can hear your family and friends cry for you. They have things they want to share with you. Unfinished business. Why not let them have their way with you? It’ll be therapeutic.”

  “Wait, my memories will come to life?” Craig was confused, watching the walls, the doors, and listening hard for what the man was talking about, what could come out and attack him at any moment. “No, you can’t do that. Don’t do this to me. Don’t bring them back. What can I do to convince you to stop this?”

  Dr. Krone, Sr. stole the scotch bottle. He exited the room, content with what he shared with Craig, but before the door closed, he whispered, “You’ll have visitors soon, and I’ll be watching.”

  Lake Jacomo

  The blink occurred shortly after the door close
d. Craig was wrapped up in below-freezing winds that flanked him in all directions like a whirlwind of sharp stabbing ice. He was standing on Lake Jacomo’s surface, but he was soon thrown off balance, landing on his palms and knees. Standing up, he scanned the area, though the air was hazy white with moving snow. The distance was impossible to penetrate by the naked eye.

  He shouted over the wintry din, “Where are you, Krone?”

  The son of Dr. Krone was suddenly behind him. He stood unaffected by the weather. Dr. Krone was covered in beads of sweat, his expression radiant despite the fact his eyes were heavy with purple bags.

  “Why am I here?” Craig demanded over the winds. He reached out to seize the man’s collar, but the burst of snow between them thwarted the attempt. “Tell me right now!”

  Dr. Krone’s boisterous laughter echoed throughout the empty lake and cut into his eardrums. “I know my father has spoken with you. He gave you a bit of a history lesson. But I wanted to let you know firsthand that I control who comes out of the machine and who doesn’t. I’ve been hooked up to the machine so long, I’m aligned with it. We are one.”

  He recalled the incident inside the fake waiting room. Rachael was dead. “You know I can kill you.”

  “Are you referring to Rachael?” He shrugged his shoulders, easily dismissing the loss. “You did me a favor. She’s a stupid bitch who I used to need to help me run my affairs. She enjoyed the machine so much, she wasn’t afraid of it. Rachael was captivated by it. She didn’t care anymore that we’d kidnapped her. She was a hitchhiker, actually. I picked her up on a back road. It turns out she was fired from a decent job. She was a radiologist. She also had a nasty Demerol habit. She’d steal it from the pharmacy wing of the hospital. Of course she was caught, and she had nowhere to go after that—rent due, boyfriend abusive without his Demerol habit quenched, and one thing comes to another, she ran away from her problems and I found her. But now she’s dead. I can run my own affairs just fine.”

  Dr. Krone studied him for a moment, doubling his voice over the battling winds. “You used to think I was an amazing man. I showed you old memories. You loved seeing Katie. You got to sleep with Susan. You told off your father. And your mother, you found out about her extra-marital affair with Parker Stevens. This machine is magnificent, are you not convinced?”

  “I won’t answer your questions!” Craig adjusted his footing so he wouldn’t tip over onto the ice again. “This is your pleasure machine. You live through others because your life is so boring. It’s an awful excuse for murder. And if I hadn’t escaped, you would’ve killed me already. This is all for your entertainment. Your soul machine is corrupt. You’ve filled it with the criminally insane, and you don’t even realize it.”

  Dr. Krone’s eyes held no understanding of what Craig had said. Like father, like son, he thought. They were both controlled by the demented souls of the machine. They exploited minds, lived through other people’s memories, and enjoyed tearing people’s lives apart.

  “The machine’s recharging, right? How come your father visited me? How come you’re visiting me like this in one of my memories?”

  “I am asleep,” Dr. Krone replied, blinking snow out of his eyes, “and the machine is on a sort of hibernation mode. My father is always the first to awake. And I’m always awake in some form or another.”

  The hairs on Craig’s arms rose. Static electricity. The doctor harnessed souls within himself. He was electrically charged. He had the power of the machine in his body.

  What other powers did this man wield?

  He sensed Krone wasn’t completely at the helm. The souls were numerous and powerful. He’d been overtaken by them in some fashion.

  “You’re not all there in the head,” Craig said, reiterating his thoughts. “You’re influenced, controlled by other people.”

  Dr. Krone’s smile was a lashing against his back. “Yes.”

  “You don’t have a soul of you own, do you?”

  “No—I have thousands!”

  “You’ve had too much of that electricity run through you.” He berated the man, though he was terrified of him. “So this is it? You’re going to release my memories against me in flesh and blood. I still don’t understand why?”

  “We do this every week. Our favorites places, our favorite people, our favorite memories, I type them out on the computer, and it happens. But this week, since nobody like you has escaped before for this long, we’re going to watch what happens to you in the flesh. That’s not to say I won’t participate.

  “You are dangerous.” The doctor gave Craig a mean glance. “You’ve used your mind to aid you. Edith did too. The machine grants special abilities once you’ve been hooked up to it so long. The machine enhances your mental abilities. You just have to know how to harness that ability. Keep in mind, you may have that ability—and this will make your death truly interesting—but I have so much more I can use against you. You’ll never survive.”

  Craig stared into Dr. Krone’s eyes, and he sensed thousand of eyes glaring back at him, sizing him up, each set planning his demise in their own special way.

  The doctor issued a simple warning, “Listen for the machine…”

  Brandon Horsy

  His body returned to the conference room. He moved about the room, locking the two doors, and then barricading the chairs against them, he prayed they would hold. There were no windows in the room. He was as safe as he could be in Dr. Krone’s mansion.

  Listen for the machine.

  He expected a grumble and then a mechanical hissing. Then what? Would he be visited by Katie, who tried to drown him in his dead child’s blood?

  Craig did his best to shrug the thoughts and relax. Impossible, but he tried for the sake of his heart not exploding in his chest.

  Dr. Krone standing there on Lake Jacomo, it wasn’t the same man he witnessed before. Even Dr. Krone’s father wasn’t there in the head. Their main objective was terror and torture, and he was the only sane person alive in this mansion-turned killing floor.

  He missed Edith. He needed her. She was his salvation, his backbone. He wouldn’t be alive now if it weren’t for her bravery. He’d be strapped to the machine until day five, and his soul would’ve been removed from his brain via electricity and recorded as nerve impulses—action potentials, whatever hoopla they drummed up to turn their madness into scientific fact—and he’d ultimately be catalogued into the computer and his body wrapped up in a plastic body bag like he’d seen on that VHS tape.

  Listen for the machine.

  He couldn’t take the waiting. Craig checked the cupboard where Dr. Krone’s father removed the bottle of scotch. That’s when he noticed he wasn’t alone anymore. The cupboard had been opened. Someone else had beaten him to the punch.

  The machine had kicked on.

  Whuuuuuuuuuuum.

  A wave of unnatural heat traveled about the room in a hot breeze, even filtering up from the floorboards. Clods of dust rained from the ceiling. Tapes from the shelves were shaken loose. The foundation rattled, jostled from every angle. Craig believed the house would tip over, the force was so powerful. Static electricity was discharged over the room, zapping everything, arching and bending in the shape of branching arteries. He yipped at each low-voltage branch that shocked him. After cursing and curling up into a ball and trying to dodge the blue daggers, the machine finally idled to a soft hum.

  The house settled.

  Getting up, he stared at the man standing at the cupboard. It couldn’t be him. Craig denied the vision, but it was real, and now he had to believe it, like it or not. The man was fishing through the shelf, searching and then claiming a high ball glass and a bottle of vintage whiskey.

  “Dad, is that you?”

  Brandon visibly trembled. He was on edge, seeking relief by downing a healthy dose of whiskey. He scanned the room, his eyes wet from crying, though they were shed in the name of terror.

  Craig’s voice caused him to jump, and Brandon temporarily raised his defen
ses, then relented, “Oh, it’s just you. Have you seen your mother?” His eyes darted to the doors. “Is she around? Is she here? Have you seen her? Answer me, son, for God’s sake.”

  Brandon reached out and shook him hard, then he slammed Craig up against the wall. “Boy, speak up! Is—she—around?” Degrading into a coward, he mustered under his breath, “I must know.”

  “No, no,” Craig spat it out. “I-I’ve boxed us in. It’s safe. Nobody’s here except us. It’s me and you, Dad.”

  The man was unconvinced. “I don’t think so. Nowhere is safe. Your mom’s here somewhere. She’s after me. Maybe you too. She’s after the both of us, I know it.”

  Brandon inspected the blockaded doors. He closed his eyes and breathed like he’d been running for a long time. Craig looked at his dad and remembered the man had been dead for over a year. Craig had to fact check his father by asking, “What month is it, Dad?”

  Brandon thought on it briefly, confused by the question. “It’s March. Mom and I were thinking about congratulating you on your new job. A garbage man doesn’t pay bad wages. It’s guaranteed work. People will always have shit to throw away.” He added in confidence, “Tina thinks you need somebody to talk to. You haven’t dated. She thinks you haven’t been able to move on after, you know, Katie died.”