Mr Wicker

by Maria Alexander

  Then one night at the bedside of a boy lying unconscious from trauma, he’d heard a name. A whisper in the darkness from the bloodied lips of innocence.

  “Mr. Wicker.”

  The boy mumbled to “Mr. Wicker” a frightening tale of his alcoholic stepfather swinging a wrench at his head as the child turned the TV channel. When the boy woke up, Dr. Farron asked him about Mr. Wicker, but the boy was puzzled and had no idea what he had even told Mr. Wicker in his sleep. Dr. Farron then kept vigil with other children, using voice-activated recording technology. Time and again, he was rewarded with the mysterious name, if not the traumatic incident itself.

  “Who is Mr. Wicker?” It was the question of the century. His research grant was to explore exactly that.

  While employed part-time at the Bayford University Hospital in Berkeley, Dr. Farron had spent many long hours researching libraries, professional journals, periodicals, and especially the web as he tried to find the source of this phenomenon. He’d thought perhaps a children’s book or television show held a key to the mystery, but he found nothing.

  He’d eventually concluded that the abused children had some kind of universal imaginary friend. Someone suggested that they might have created a folktale like the “secret stories” that the homeless children of Miami purportedly tell each other. The problem was that he’d never seen any research confirming such a thing even existed beyond a single news article. These stories included tales of Bloody Mary, also known as “La Llorona,” the Crying Woman who weeps blood from ghoulish empty sockets and feeds on children’s terror. And the Blue Lady, who has pale blue skin and lives in the ocean, hobbled by a demon spell. Supposedly, you could interview waking children about these secret stories, about how demons travel through the gateways from Hell: abandoned refrigerators, mirrors, a cemetery in Dade County, and Jeep Cherokees with “black windows.” You could ask them and they would respond, if you had earned their trust, or so the news article said. But not the children who spoke to Mr. Wicker in their sleep. They were unaware they had done or said anything. It was no wonder Dr. Farron had earned the epithet “Whisper Chaser.”

  Or worse: “Mulder.”

  None of his colleagues took him seriously until he received the research grant, and even then, he knew they didn’t appreciate his work. It made no difference. He had to find out what was happening with the children. Never mind that the measures he took to capture the nightly confessions were making him unpopular with—or at least a spectacle to—the rest of the hospital staff.

  Not everyone found him strange. Although he was single and straight, he dreaded another awkward situation in the cafeteria as he declined the company of female staff.

  At least, the newer female staff. The more senior women knew not to ask. And why.

  Today he decided to abandon play therapy and try a more traditional method of treatment. As Jesse continued a peppery monologue of cybernetic destruction, Dr. Farron walked to his desk fringed with Crayola masterpieces and withdrew a stack of Rorschach blots.

  He sat on the stool with the cards lying facedown on his lap. “Hey, Maximus, can you look at something for me? I need to know what you think.”

  Jesse reached into the bucket of dinosaurs, grabbed a handful, and threw them against the wall. “Maybe.”

  Dr. Farron sighed and picked up a card. “What do you think this is, Jesse?”

  The child paused a second. “DRAGGAMASSER OF THE EIGHT DIMESSHON!” The laser gun rattled at the card in an explosion of flashing lights.

  “Okay, how about this one?”

  “DRAGGAMASSER OF THE EIGHT DIMESSHON!”

  “And who am I again?”

  “RAFFABARF OF THE EIGHT DIMESSHON!”

  A moment of silence.

  “Jesse?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have any special television shows or movies or cartoons you like that you want to talk about?”

  Jesse ran to the corner of the room and grabbed an anatomically correct doll, leveling the laser gun at its head.

  “JESSE!”

  “Don’t move or the nasty doll gets it.”

  Stacks of papers towered on Dr. Leonard Dulac’s desk like stalagmites, stalwart against the long exhalations of the air conditioning. The accreditations and accolades of a psychiatric department chairman spackled the dingy walls of his office, the epitome of adulthood. Dr. Dulac sat without speaking for a moment as Dr. Farron struggled to understand what his mentor and superior was saying. He’d guessed something was wrong when Dr. Dulac had closed the office door and asked him to have a seat.

  “James, I understand your frustration, but you need to rely more on drug treatments.”

  “My ADHD cases are not under-medicated!”

  “But then that leaves one answer as to why your patients are not responding. You.”

  Silence.

  “Have you been seeing Stanley?” Dr. Dulac asked.

  “Of course! I’ve done everything that’s been suggested.” That last phrase bit so acridly that he crossed his arms and looked away. The therapist was considerate, professional, and perceptive, but the weekly sessions were discouraging, especially when they dragged on to a third year. He should know better, he told himself. He should not need this. Every principle of healing stood monolithic in his intellect along the road to recovery. But the same way skyscrapers are invisible to New Yorkers, he had ceased to notice the principles as he hurried toward a destination that never arrived. Why did it seem so hopeless?

  “I have to put you on probation, James. It’s just a thirty-day formality. I have to do it because of the parental complaints.”

  The words slipped under his skin like a clumsy injection and stung with unfairness. “You can’t do this,” he said. “It’s not my fault that they’re talking to him and not me!”

  “To him?” Dr. Dulac leaned forward and adjusted his glasses.

  “You know who I’m talking about.”

  “Humor me, James.”

  Dr. Farron crumpled. “To Mr. Wicker.”

  Dr. Dulac shook his head and settled back in his leather chair. “Why don’t you pick up an extra shift tonight in ER?” he suggested.

  Goodbye support or protection from Dr. Dulac for grant work! He was on his own. The ER gig wasn’t an unusual practice. Some of his psychiatric colleagues moonlighted in ER from time to time, all having been through the rigors of a medical degree and residency. Dr. Farron had done it more often when his practice was just starting. He just thought he was way past that in his career, that he’d never need to do it again.

  “Just see how it goes,” Dr. Dulac said, pushing the probation paper toward Dr. Farron.

  The younger doctor signed it. Thirty days of humiliation. ER could not be worse than this.

  “Suicide, fifteen minutes!”

  The radio room PA system beeped with the paramedic call for the latest trauma patient. Triage ushered the gurney through the double-layers of automatic glass doors and into the trauma room. Dr. Farron scrambled to swap out her I.V. alongside nurses in blue cotton scrubs. He examined her wrist wounds: this woman had drawn in ink where she needed to cut lengthwise on her wrists. “She’ll need a bilateral unit laceration repair,” he told one of the nurses. “And a transfusion.”

  The woman’s lips moved ever so slightly. Another nurse gathered her matted blond hair and swept it aside. If it weren’t for her dire condition, she’d look something like a Botticelli painting. She was certainly not an anorexic fawn that had limped into her mother’s bathroom in a miasma of teenage angst to swallow a bottle of pills. Usually older women ended their lives as an angry statement. Suicide was a last “I told you so” to whoever they wanted to get back at—husbands, families, the Universe. Her mouth worked in silence to communicate with her inner demons. Nothing audible. She swallowed hard, and then her jaw stopped moving.

  “O-R?” the nurse asked.

  “Nah, do it here,” he replied. The wounds weren’t that deep.

  Sidelong wou
ld she bend, and sing a faery’s song...

  A line from a Keats poem drifted through his thoughts. He grabbed the chart clipped to the gurney. Name: Alicia Baum. Age: Unknown. He guessed she was in her mid to late thirties. He replaced the chart, and nurses rolled her into another room to be anesthetized.

  Alicia Baum.

  Why was that name familiar?

  ER was exhausting. Almost, in fact, enough so to make him forget the forlorn morning he’d spent referring his patients to other doctors so they could continue their care on his probation. He’d been busy intubating another patient two hours later when an orderly pushing a gurney toward him mouthed, “Nice tie,” and gave him the thumbs up. Dr. Farron smiled. Today it was SpongeBob SquarePants. When he realized the gurney held—what was her name? Alicia Baum?—he finished up what he was doing and checked on her. Nylon restraints lashed her to the gurney. A loosely woven white nylon blanket was pulled high over her chest. Leaning over her gurney, he once again examined her chart. She had been clinically dead in the emergency vehicle for a couple of minutes. Rubbing his chin, he tried to remember how he knew her name.

  “Celebrity crush, eh?” the orderly said, patting him on the back as he passed.

  Mortally embarrassed, he tugged his tie loose with one hand and replaced her chart. “What celebrity?” he asked, but the orderly only winked.

  The woman gasped, neck twisting as if avoiding the sight of something. Her mouth opened with fright, and her fingers flexed as she grasped the air. Then, she relaxed, and with the voice of the wind she sighed as if reciting a terrible prayer:

  “Mr. Wicker.”

  Icy floes of fear slid through Dr. Farron’s veins as she repeated the name, a mantra of madness.

  No grown man or woman had ever spoken the name “Mr. Wicker” in his or her sleep as this woman did. At least, none of which he’d ever known.

  He snatched her chart from the bed and wrote in it.

  She stirred and opened her eyes.

  “Ms. Baum? Ms. Baum, can you hear me?” he asked, hopeful that her faculties were intact.

  She nodded, tugging at her restraints. Tears leaked from her eyes.

  “Ms. Baum, my name is Dr. Farron and we have you restrained until you are medically stable. We can’t have you trying to hurt yourself here. Do you understand?”

  She whispered.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “Did you save my life?”

  “Yes.”

  “You...BASTARD!” A geyser of rage erupted behind her eyes. “What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m a doctor. I’m sworn to save lives.”

  “Promises are made to be broken.”

  Dr. Farron made notes in her chart. It wasn’t unusual for patients to react strongly. He just hoped that she’d be amenable to talking to him later. “So, if we let you go, will you try to kill yourself again?”

  More tears. She rubbed her cheek on the pillow to dry them.

  “Do you plan to do this again?” Dr. Farron asked.

  Her eyes drove a look deep into his that revealed not just keen intelligence but bottomless heartache. “You think I’d tell a fuckwit like you? Fuck—OFF!”

  He made another note in her chart. “Okay, Ms. Baum, you have the right to representation at your first inquiry.”

  “What?” Her head lifted off the pillow.

  “As soon as you stabilize, you’re going to lockdown.”

  Chapter 3

  Brooding at his antiquated desk in the lavender twilight of eternity, Mr. Wicker recalled the unspeakable delicacy of Alicia’s skin as he’d inhaled the fragrance of blood on her slashed wrists. Her book sat before him. He stroked the cover as he reminisced about how his fingers had left ash on her skin where he’d held her. As always, one taste of her had inflamed him more than any opiate.

  Perfectly composed if not completely collected, he’d tried not to show how powerful the encounter was for him, that it had shaken him to his core. He’d been expecting her. He’d spun the whole act as an erotic joke lest she remember what happened a century or more ago. She remembered nothing. After the 9-1-1 call, he’d collapsed in his chair and hadn’t moved until now.

  “Muninn!”

  A pother of rustling feathers. A squawk. The raven alighted on his shoulder, an obsidian creature with glassy eyes, big beak, and claws that curled sharp as thorns.

  “Muninn, it’s her. You remember, don’t you?” Mr. Wicker had not seen her since she was a child. Even then he had suspected, but it was difficult to tell for certain the identity of another’s soul when looking at the eyes of one so young. Besides, he hadn’t been ready to see her again at that time. Every time he’d encountered her in previous incarnations, it had meant catastrophe for him of one sort or another.

  He closed his eyes and once again waltzed with her as Eliza in that New England ballroom as he wore the skin of that loathsome dream thief who had broken into the Library with his even more loathsome cohort to steal her book. The heady swirl of the dance gave way to an even more ancient memory of her. And then another. The memories went on like a snowstorm, obliterating everything else in his mind.

  Since his imprisonment, he had only once been in the waking world. It was nearly impossible for him to escape this prison of memory and sin. He wept tears of blood that splotched the inkblots and raven scratches on his desk.

  All he knew was that she had come back.

  Never was an enticement this strong not mutual, and even as he was in this terrible state, her shade responded exquisitely to his blackened touch. And when she’d dropped her robe, the urge to consume her was almost unbearable. All he would have to do was lick her neck, touch her just so. Of all the times he had tasted her before, none had been either as toothsome or winsome. As if a wind blew a flaming seed into his parched fields, she ignited a fire that roared through every stalk and stem of his tormented existence.

  He could not have let her die without taking her book. If he had, he might not ever see her again. So, he’d had her rescued, even if it meant risking her ire. He had to have her back. Such bliss. So pure. Nothing could come close.

  He stroked his servant Muninn’s sleek head and wings. Huginn slept somewhere in the rafters, her massive beak tucked into her wing. She seldom minded him, although when he needed her most, she was useful. And right now what he needed was the most effective course of action. He didn’t know how Alicia might bring about his devastation, but he had no doubt that she could. And it wouldn’t be out of malice, but rather her unfailing curiosity and integrity.

  The gods who had bound him in that infernal repository had whims beyond understanding. Before the telephone had appeared, he tied notes to the legs of ravens and let them fly from the Library into the crossing light, but he no longer wanted to risk losing another raven in the waking world. That risk would be a calculated one, indeed, for the last incident almost brought horrendous consequences. The telephone was a bizarre yet welcome development. He knew what a telephone was from talking to his many visitors, but he had never seen one before. As demonstrated by a young boy with a harelip and bloodied cornea, he held the receiver to his ear like a conch shell and listened to the dry echoes of ubiquity. He had learned that he could request to speak to specific people with varying degrees of success. Hopefully, he would never need to send a raven into the other world again.

  He opened Alicia’s book on the desk. Golden fairy tale calligraphy. Sooty cover. His desire for her rose like broken glass in his throat, a thousand gashes in his lungs as he inhaled the ink, which warbled a sweet song of anguish, a lament of two female voices echoing through the rafters. Mr. Wicker often marveled at how human beings are both alive and dead, suffering an incomplete death over the lifetime. Death tainted the flesh to serve this odd communion of opposites. The bitter soup of the soul. The hardened crust of the body. Oh, how he could devour her, soup and crust.

  He had her book. She could still return.

  Was that the answer? To lure her back to t
he Library? What would he do then? Keep her? And how then would he do this? She was too happy to leave when she was here, and would be less happy to be here again. If he could bring her to the Library and the light were to come for her, she could leave as easily as she did before. And what if bringing her to the Library was the means of his devastation?

  Which brought up another question: did he care if he was ruined?

  The yoke of his curse crushed him at times but he had managed to cultivate a certain satisfaction over the centuries. At first, he’d found the ceaseless stories of malice soul crushing, but he eventually learned to savor human depravity and destruction. He grew to appreciate the service he performed for humanity, even if it caused people serious problems later in life.

  Brooders weep and brooders keep

  Their misery at hand

  Let Mr. Wicker wash your sicker

  Memories in sand.

  He had purpose. He took away crippling distress and later restored it to each owner. And there was no way she was going to take that from him, too.

  He slammed the book shut and the madrigal ceased. To his surprise, the pages of Alicia’s book ruffled between the hard covers and the ink mewled from the pressed pages. The spectacle could mean only one thing: in the waking world, she was trying to remember. It was not a daydream or musing but rather a concerted effort to recall specifically what was in her book. That meant she remembered him and the Library.