He’d make her pay double later.
Sigmund slowly pulled the door open, creating a creak loud enough for Astrid to hear. He moved toward the landing and waited. He smoothed his dress shirt, then deliberately stepped down onto the sweet spot of the top step. It popped under the pressure.
He almost laughed out loud at the sound of Astrid scurrying toward the basement. He stood on the top step a moment longer, relishing the surge of power he felt at having so much control of her.
Her rush sent a zephyr up the stairwell. A whirlwind spun around him. He inhaled the scent of ham and toast in it.
And Astrid’s unbathed stink.
And also something foreign—something sweet and fresh—that didn’t belong in his house.
A chill tickled his skin, and the apparitional waif he had seen earlier in the bathroom mirror crossed his mind. It was like she was circling him in the breeze. The presence stopped beside him, palpable in the nothingness, yet Sigmund still searched the empty space expecting to catch a glimpse of her.
“Go away,” he whispered out loud, trying to shake off this figment of his imagination. Phantasms belonged in his laboratory taunting his test subjects, not in his home haunting him. Sigmund felt his ears pop, and the air around him felt hollow again.
The basement door clicked shut below, and Sigmund continued down the staircase toward the kitchen. He paused at the basement door for a moment to savor the fear radiating through the wood. Astrid was just on the other side. He could feel her there, holding her breath, petrified that he would open the door and escort her down into her chambers.
She would wait there for hours if she had to. She would only dare move once he pulled the chair away from the table. One step as he pulled the chair underneath him and its legs squealed against the linoleum. Then another when his knife scraped across the plate as he cut his ham. And another, when his spoon tickled the porcelain of his teacup. The rest, quiet as a snowflake, as he enjoyed his breakfast.
Sigmund knew. He knew her every move.
He sighed with satisfaction. It was tempting to play this little game for a while longer, but he needed his breakfast. It was Tuesday, after all.
He moved to the table and examined the spread laid out before him. The setting was immaculate, everything precisely in place as he required. He was surprised that Astrid had managed it. He settled into the chair and picked up the copy of the San Francisco Chronicle carefully placed to the right side of his plate. He glanced at the front page.
The Viet Cong had launched rockets into Saigon. A hurricane was poised off Florida, and five people were missing at sea. A Seattle dentist died while saving his children from the freezing cold by barricading them in a cave with his body. The presidential primary elections were being held today.
Normally, he would read the front section in depth, looking for events and details that validated his experiments, but he didn’t have the time today. His best test subject would be at the brothel soon. It was tomorrow’s paper that would have what Sigmund was looking for. He tossed the paper on the floor, giving Astrid something else to clean up when he left.
As he began to eat, he heard the springs of Astrid’s bed squeal from the basement. She was far too noisy today. Was she trying to distract him? Trying to tempt him? Any other afternoon Sigmund would not let the opportunity pass, and he would enter the basement.
But not today. Another day. Maybe a day when she’d left a wisp of dust on the bookshelf. Or when she read a book to herself, and the barest whisper aroused his keen ears. Or when there was a hint of moisture left in the yolk of his hard-boiled egg. Yes! Yes, then! That would be when Sigmund would punish her.
Sigmund grinned as he cracked the shell of his egg with a spoon, peeled it, and cut it in two. He poked at the yolk with his finger. It crumbled like powder at his touch. It was perfect.
He popped the yolk into his mouth and imagined Astrid sitting on the edge of her bed, hands cinched in her lap, toes barely touching the floor, right knee quivering as she tried desperately to dispel the hum of terror coursing through her body. Eyes closed. Eyebrows knotted. Throat clinching as she swallowed the accumulation of saliva down into the pit of her empty stomach. The whispers under her breath as she prayed to a God she didn’t even know existed.
Because God didn’t exist for her.
Only Sigmund did.
He took a deep breath, savoring the delicious tension building up inside him. It would be enough to sustain him. He had a big night ahead. Thomas Reed would be arriving at the lab soon, and Sigmund would be there.
With renewed enthusiasm, he removed himself from the table, leaving a narrow slice of ham and the other half of the hard-boiled egg on the plate for Astrid to devour later. He had to keep the pet alive.
He went to the hall, retrieved his jacket from the hall tree, picked up his briefcase off the floor, and stepped out the front door into the late afternoon sunlight.
∞
“Öffne deine Augen, Poppet.”
The old man’s rasp startled her awake.
Aislen opened her eyes and found that she was standing, not lying down. A wild vortex of energy was swirling around her, and she could feel a panic so intense it turned her insides out.
A young blonde woman dashed past her. Aislen recognized her immediately. She was in that house again. This time in the kitchen, with the girl.
Aislen wasn’t awake at all. She was back in the dream, a dream she had no desire to be in. The last time had been disturbing enough.
Ahhhh, you realize you are in the dream, Lange’s voice hummed in her ear. Well done. That’s the first step to everything.
It also meant that she could escape—by waking up. Aislen closed her eyes again and tried to will herself awake.
“Nicht so schnell! Ich habe dir hier noch viel mehr zu zeigen.”
Again, she understood him perfectly.
“Not so fast! I have so much more to show you here.”
Aislen’s skin crawled, and her eyes were forced open. The young woman flashed past her again.
“Astrid,” Lange hissed. “Ihr Name ist Astrid.”
The terror the girl was emitting made the room violently turbulent, and Aislen was swept up by it, pulled into her wake. Without volition, Aislen followed her as she carefully set a plate of ham, toast and hard-boiled eggs on the dinette and made sure the silverware was aligned evenly. Aislen was then whisked down the hall to the front door, outside to a porch, down the steps to a manicured lawn to pick up a newspaper, then dragged back up the way they came. Aislen watched as Astrid carefully unfolded the newspaper and arranged it beside the plate of food: the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Dies war ein wichtiger Tag.”
This was an important day.
Aislen looked at the date on the newspaper: Tuesday, June 4, 1968.
Was she really back in time? And why was this day important?
“It was the day it all began!” Lange declared in her head. She could feel his sense of pride and excitement.
Aislen heard a door creak open upstairs. Astrid heard it too and scrambled, hiding a dirty frying pan in a cupboard under the sink and wiping debris off the counter into a napkin that she shoved into her dress pocket.
There was another loud crack of wood as someone stepped onto the stairway, and the girl bolted toward an open door behind the table. Her chaos threw Aislen into a tailspin. Her ethereal body, lighter than air, was carried off by the rush of energy.
Unable to control her own movements, Aislen was thrown back down the hallway, then lifted off the ground. She watched helplessly as stair steps passed beneath her. She was lifted higher and higher until she was sent into a tailspin around a man in a dress shirt and slacks—it was the younger version of Mr. Lange, standing at the top of the stairs.
The spinning stopped abruptly.
I don’t want to be here, Aislen thought.
You must be here, Lange seethed back.
The young Sigmund slowly turned his head toward
her. Aislen’s breath caught in her chest. There was no way he could see her, right? Not if she wasn’t really there.
This is me, Lange whispered in her head.
I know, she thought back, trying to will herself away—will herself awake.
The younger Lange searched the space where she stood; she could feel the gaze boring into her, though he couldn’t see her there.
This is when I knew you were real. I just wasn’t ready for you yet.
A chill crawled down her spine.
Young Sigmund glared into her eyes, and though he really didn’t see, he knew.
“Go away,” he snarled.
Aislen felt the magnetic hold give way and she slipped deeper, into a tunnel of darkness.
Nine
Sigmund caught a taxi at the Main Post of the Presidio and had it drop him off just outside of Golden Gate Park. It was one of those rare, mild afternoons in the city, and a brisk walk the last part of the way would help him clear his mind.
A hazy fog began to set in as he passed Hippie Hill, a mixture of the evening marine layer and the sweet smog of marijuana that always hung low in this part of town. It drifted from cafés, apartments, and the parks, escaping like exhaust from the lips of barefoot hippies frolicking along his route.
Sigmund frowned as the first layer of skunk settled through his clothes and onto his skin. Bathing was useless.
Today is Tuesday, he reminded himself, to quell the anger at the assault on his sanitized body. He panted shallowly as he quickened his pace toward Haight Street.
A waif blithely passed by, giving him a sly smile. Her flowing skirt pressed against her thighs in the breeze. Her long, red hair dangled in curls around her shoulders and framed her face. Her eyes met his, a vivid green with sparks of fire. The scent of fresh flowers and vanilla enveloped him. Was it her again? That ghost of a girl who had been haunting him all day?
She passed by him and smiled. Her lithe body kept moving in the opposite direction, but her essence slipped in around him and shadowed him as he continued down the street. Sigmund refrained from turning around to catch her following him. He knew it was only his imagination. He could not allow himself to get caught up in the same type of delusions that his test subjects often succumbed to.
He quickened his pace even more. His laboratory was only a block away. He could see it. The 19th century Queen Anne row house, subtle in its blue-gray gingerbread, was nestled between more flamboyant, painted ladies of buttercup yellow and periwinkle. If he could just get inside, he could shake the apparition and focus on his evening properly.
Sigmund bypassed the doorbell and used his key. He stepped into the dimly lit parlor and shut the door quickly behind him. Although the hippie chick had not actually followed him, he felt as if he had locked the ethereal version of the waif on the porch.
Leaning against the door, he allowed his eyes to adjust to the parlor. Lamps draped with sheer red scarves cast a watery, bloody hue on the walls. Scantily-dressed whores in see-through nighties and stilettos smoked cigarettes and chatted with each other. Those waiting for clients picked at the cheap red acrylic on their fake nails. Those with a john already on the line lounged on the couches and shared joints with them to help loosen the mood.
The array of human product here was not dazzling: harsh peroxide blondes, the not-as-popular brunettes, broads with big tits etched with stretch marks and nymphs with small tits barely fit for a 12-year-old. These are not first-rate whores. They are on the cheap. Government rate. Literally.
A few customers lingered near the bar, too intimidated to make a move on any of the ladies. Sigmund didn’t understand how a dirty whore could seem so unapproachable. But the girls knew their job and wouldn’t let them sit there for long. They’d move in to introduce themselves by rubbing a breast against an arm or caressing their fingertips lightly across the bulge in their customer’s trousers. Some would be so bold as take the poor guy’s hand and press it against their crotch, still wet from the last chump. Where a piano player might add romance at a restaurant, the faux cat-in-heat cries and grunts of fucking from the back rooms added an erotic ambiance to the parlor. Nervous customers seemed to relax at this. They felt less perverted if they could hear other customers getting off.
“Good afternoon, Mister Sigmund,” Candy purred from the davenport. “Will today be the day I finally get to taste you?”
Sigmund choked back the bile that arose at the mere thought sharing the air he breathed with any of these creatures, let alone the idea of Candy’s vile orifice wrapped around his cock. None of these whores appealed to him. They disgusted him, which was good because it meant he was never distracted from the work.
He made his way past the parlor and up the mahogany staircase with a slight spring in his step. Today was Tuesday. It was usually a slow day for the brothel, but Sigmund’s favorite lab rat, Thomas Reed, always visited on Tuesdays.
Sigmund worked his way down the hall toward the main observation room, where Misty would bring Thomas when he arrived. The rowhouse was divided into four poorly constructed apartments. Between units, the closets and unused restrooms had been made into makeshift observation rooms, each equipped with a table, chair, and one-way glass. Sigmund could move between the various observation rooms as the girls brought in his lab rats.
He had been involved with several MKUltra projects in the past, one for the US Army, one in Las Vegas, and one in Texas near the Mexican border. But this was his very own. His expertise in manipulation tactics, learned first-hand from Vater, had impressed his American superiors. His successful results had earned him this assignment: Operation Midnight Climax. And OMC had surpassed every other project funded by the CIA.
San Francisco was the perfect place to set up shop. It was outside the norm in every way, especially since the beginning of the psychedelic heyday they called the Summer of Love. Timothy Leary, the flowers-in-hair spokesperson for irresponsible excess, had called all fringe, intergalactic beings to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” And Sigmund had no problem persuading the CIA to capitalize on the craze and set up a faux brothel here.
In the spirit of “Don’t beat them, join them,” Sigmund embedded with the hippies and hid in the counterculture. The clients were naturally less conventional. They let their guard down easily, tried his drugs, and readily experimented with deviant sexual acts.
It was not Sigmund’s goal to exploit a subject’s suppressed appetites. All subjects became uninhibited enough to stray into the fringe sexually. It was not unusual for them to allow themselves to be spanked, penetrated, peed on or even defecated on. But this was not what Sigmund was looking for. The gold mine lay in what the subject could be manipulated into doing–things that would usually be completely unthinkable to them.
The chime at the front door rang. Sigmund glanced at his watch. 9 o’clock. Thomas was always on time.
Sigmund took his seat in the room connected to #6. He had about an hour to prepare. Unlocking his briefcase, he pulled out four pens–two blue and two red. The blue was to document Thomas’s idle chit-chat with Misty as the drugs took effect. The red was for when he started hallucinating. He always had an extra of each color. If one ran out, Sigmund could change pens without missing a transmission. He used another key to open a hidden compartment in the briefcase and pulled out a notebook labeled “Thomas Reed – DOB: June 10, 1948.”
Sigmund browsed through the file on his lap while he waited for Misty to prep his subject. Like a good scientist, Sigmund had meticulously documented Thomas’s behaviors and conversations over the past year.
During an engagement with Viet Cong militants in the Tây Ninh Province, Thomas had been grazed by a bullet. Though the bullet was deflected by his helmet, it rattled his skull enough that he lost consciousness. Because everything else about the soldier was perfectly healthy, Thomas was sent back into the field after a short rehabilitation. But a severe, near-constant headache plagued him, and visions of light blinded him at unpredictable moments. Perplexed, Ar
my doctors finally sent Thomas back to the States to be evaluated by the Presidio doctors and to investigate whether he was malingering in order to get relieved of duty. If they had believed he was, he would have been sent back for another tour. But their findings were inconclusive, so they sent him to Sigmund and Operation Midnight Climax where they could still reap some benefit out of their investment.
While most johns came to the brothel to fuck, Thomas was addicted to the magic. He was one of the few who came for the tablets of acid the brothel dropped for free. He wanted to talk, then sleep, then talk some more; things he wasn’t doing outside the walls of the brothel. It was what he spoke of that was unique and that interested Sigmund.
Thomas would sit in the parlor and wait for Misty to make him a cocktail. He always chose Misty, the oldest, least attractive whore in the brothel. Her qualities of listening were what Thomas sought out. A therapist in a threadbare robe and crotchless fishnets.
While the US government was the real madame of this house, Misty was hired to act the part. She took care of the busier girls, playing confidante, peacemaker, and cashier. She knew very little about Sigmund’s research but was paid well enough to not care.
Misty would mix Thomas his cocktail, usually laced with LSD, but tonight she had instructions to make him a straight drink and ply him with BZ instead. Sigmund wanted to up the ante on what Thomas might reveal tonight. BZ was a super-hallucinogen, which was why Sigmund had been itchy with excitement all day. Thomas was going to trip hard tonight.
It was hard to say who was more addicted to these journeys, Thomas or Sigmund. Thomas realized something unusual was happening. He understood what he was doing and seeing was incredible, even frightening. But he didn’t know that he was being watched from a little room behind the large picture frame mirror on the east wall of room #6. Only Sigmund and Misty knew that.
He didn’t know that his trips were being documented and validated or that he was being used.
Time Walker: Episode 2 of The Walker Saga Page 6