Mr Wicker

by Maria Alexander

  She might not bother him again. Simply because she’d caused him trouble in the past did not mean she’d create future trouble. So why was he worried? He had vowed he would never leave the Library again, which meant a repeat of the nineteenth century near-apocalypse would be avoided. If for some mysterious reason someone stole her book, this time he would let them take it and let the consequences be whatever they would be—although why someone would want to steal her book this time, he could not imagine. He didn’t even believe magicians of any real power still existed, anyway, much less one that could find the Library.

  Yet he worried. He rested a hand on the rustling pages of the mewling book, pressing them together. It muted the sound. Why would she want to remember? If she were to recall what had happened, she would kill herself outright, perhaps by far surer, more violent means. For despite the roses, this was no garden-variety memory.

  Perhaps he could watch her. And if it seemed anything was amiss, he could intervene, but only in extreme circumstances. It meant making a significant sacrifice but one that was temporary.

  He looked up to the rafters. “Huginn! Here!” After a moment, Huginn emerged, strutting to the edge of a book stack and peering down at him. She was smaller than Muninn, and owned herself in a way Muninn never did.

  “Huginn. Here. Please.” He hated saying “please.” It felt demeaning. But it seemed to work and Huginn alighted to his forearm without a squawk. She kneaded his arm, pacing excitedly.

  “Huginn, I want you to do something for me. You will enjoy it, but you have to promise that you will return. Because I need you. Do you understand?”

  The raven eyed him and opened her beak, a throaty rattle escaping her gullet. She then coyly tipped her head toward the wall through which Alicia had disappeared.

  “I want you to follow her and relay back to me what you see. Don’t enter any structures or dwellings whatsoever. Do you understand? All you need is to be able to see her. See her yet do not be seen.”

  Huginn gave no indication that she even heard him but rather seemed intent on the wall until the heavenly light tore open its surface. She launched from his arm with such ferocity that her talons ripped his robe sleeve. Her excited cawing stirred the other ravens in the Library, inciting a cacophony of clicks and screeches.

  Mr. Wicker shielded his eyes. He already missed his Huginn as she sailed into the ethers. But as the light faded, he realized that the one he truly missed was Alicia...

  ...Eliza...

  Sirona.

  Chapter 4

  DAY 1—BAYFORD PSYCHIATRIC UNIT

  With the orderly at her elbow, Alicia shuffled from the elevator to a white door with a small window. She grasped the cold metal handle, but her hands were too weak to turn it.

  “Allow me,” the orderly said. He waved a card at a security pad, cranked the handle and swung open the door.

  Her hands were fucked up. Just how badly, she didn’t know. She was fine with using the restroom this morning and eating grape gelatin with a plastic spoon, but there was residual damage from her careful cutting job. She had not intended to survive it. How on earth was she found? There was no way anyone could have known. If someone had been worried because they hadn’t heard from her and called the police, the timing was incredibly suspect. No one knew that she had been leaving the world at that one moment.

  No one but that odd character in her death dream, Mr. Wicker.

  “Here you go, Ms. Baum!”

  The orderly escorted her down a long hall lined with dirty sodium lights to the nurses’ station. A tall, thin black woman, probably in her fifties, helmed the high counter. At her direction, nurses raced to-and-fro. A hall broke to each side of the station.

  “How ya doin’, Ms. Baum?” said a young, white man, emerging from behind the desk with a chart in hand. He chewed a piece of cinnamon gum she could smell clear across the room. His tanned skin wrinkled in places with bulging veins, particularly the backs of his hands. “My name’s Arnie, and I’ll be your charge nurse.” The orderly surrendered her to Arnie’s care and left. “This is Rachelle. She’s our top dog.”

  Rachelle waved him on as she walked into an adjacent office. “I’ll top dog you all right.”

  He led Alicia down the hallway that reached to the left of the nurses’ station, explaining that this side of the unit was for women and the other for men, with the activities room in between. Above that was the ward cafeteria along with rooms for group therapy and administrative offices.

  They stepped into what appeared to be a miniature hospital room. The grayish green tiles flecked with black caught the russet haze of twilight filtering through the curtains. The bed looked like a cot.

  “And this is where you’ll be sleeping, Ms. Baum. Just so you know, someone will be checking on you every fifteen minutes or so.”

  “I thought there would be a common sleeping area,” Alicia said, thinking back on the movies she’d seen.

  “Nah.” Arnie smiled, snapping his gum. “We’ll often double up on these rooms, but never more than three.” He grew serious. “Now, Ms. Baum, your grandma is here, but she doesn’t know you’re here—that is, in lockdown. She just knows you’re admitted to the hospital.”

  “Why doesn’t she know? Why doesn’t someone tell her?”

  “’Cause we can’t tell her without your permission,” he said. “You up for it?”

  She nodded.

  “Great! Normally we encourage patients to leave the rooms, but I’ll let you have a visit here for now.”

  Before he could turn away, she asked the question that had been beating its way out of her head. “Who found me?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know,” he replied, a fresh wave of cinnamon from between his lips. His compassion dimmed to worry. “Do you want me to ask?”

  Her heart pounded to the affirmative, but fear overtook curiosity. “No, not yet. Thank you. Will you open the curtains?” He did. And, promising to return, he left.

  The voice outside her door twenty minutes later was pastel, crocheted, and perfumed. When she entered, Alicia’s grandmother stopped in the doorway, puckered her coral lips, and patted her chest. She was short and pear-shaped, golden-bangle laden, a silver-haired whirlwind in a blue jogging outfit. She descended on Alicia, Nordstrom’s bag on her arm, and held her granddaughter’s head against her chest.

  “Leesha!” She pulled back to assess Alicia’s face, and then covered her forehead and cheeks with kisses. Alicia smiled. In that bathroom, the void was the last thing to kiss her cheek, and it had never baked her a pumpkin pie. In the arms of her dear grandmother she felt regretful, embarrassed, irritated. And more than a bit foolish.

  The elderly woman sat next to Alicia, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I never thought you’d do it,” she said. “Your mother...” her lip trembled. “Why, honey? Was it Eric?”

  Alicia’s gaze wandered to the window. At the mention of her ex-husband, an angry silence widened into the moment as her grandmother waited. She felt the words, the anger, and the void become the masonry of her body. They were part of the architecture in which she dwelt, not blueprints on display to explain her every step and stair.

  “I went to the house. All you had is that dreadful black clothing, so I bought you some new things.” The Nordstrom’s bag slid off her wrist over her clattering bracelets, and she opened it to show Alicia the contents. A toothbrush in a baggie. A lavender sweater. Red velvet slippers. Exercise pants. A t-shirt and some panties. A peach silk dress. The last felt smooth and cool as Alicia dipped her hand into the fabric. “I have to take them up front. I’m told they have to keep everything.”

  A thin smile. “Thanks, Grandma.”

  “I wish you’d have come and stayed with me a while,” her grandmother said. “But now it’s too late. The house is in escrow. It’s just too much for me these days, you know.”

  Sold! Alicia remembered every detail of the house that nurtured her after her mother’s tragedy: the bar in the den where she had hidden
in the cupboards; the sprawling butterscotch kitchen that smelled of honey and coffee; the upright piano in the family room, on top of which her grandfather had kept a carousel of crystal shot glasses and a prismatic decanter of whisky. She used to climb up on the piano and sneak whiffs of the whisky. Her mind assembled the rest of the house, planting every gardenia bush around the border. It had been her home.

  Her grandmother sighed. “What are you thinking, Leesha? Sweetheart?”

  “Nothing,” she said, picking at the dried blood under her French manicure, which was now pink, not white. “I was thinking of the house, the parts I loved best,” she said at last.

  The old woman’s smile was sweet yet fiery like ginger drops. “You loved the rose garden until...”

  “The rose garden?”

  A cold chasm sprawled within Alicia’s memory. No rose garden. She shook her head.

  “It’s for the best,” her grandmother said, looking away as she patted Alicia’s knee.

  “What? Why? Grandma, please remind me.”

  Alicia’s grandmother shook her head and bit her lower lip. “Sorry I brought it up,” she said. She kissed Alicia on the cheek and left.

  Don’t you want to read your book?

  “Mrs. Rains!”

  Dr. Farron hurried after the elderly woman as she hustled down the hallway to the elevator with an orderly. He pulled a card from his pocket. “I’m Dr. James Farron. Do you have a moment?”

  “A moment only,” she replied, taking the card. “What do you want?”

  The slap of attitude reddened his cheeks. “I understand you’re busy, ma’am. I just wanted to speak with you a moment. Does she have anyone? A husband maybe?”

  “Oh, heavens, no!” the grandmother snapped. “She drove off the poor man. And now her memory! What are you going to do about that? She can’t remember a thing!”

  “Memory loss is normal with severe depression,” he said politely.

  “Well, I don’t care!” The powder, perfume, and crochet gave way to wooden hairbrushes and early bedtimes without supper. Her eyes narrowed to dark, wrinkled fissures, and she raised a gnarled finger to his face. “You people did nothing for her mother.” Then, with a sniff: “You’d better take good care of her.”

  Chapter 5

  Alicia examined her prison.

  The room had a door that opened outward and was propped open by a spring lock. No chance of anyone barricading themselves in. She had heard stories of agitated crazy people being put in isolation; she suspected the room served a dual purpose. Fold up the bed, close the bathroom, and restrain the patient: voila! Isolation. The miniscule restroom had no shower or mirror, just a toilet and sink with a retractable sliding door with no latch.

  As her eyes swept the sterile room, her mind kept returning to Mr. Wicker. Why had she been so attracted to him? Something in his eyes perfumed his appearance. He was revolting, yet so familiar and provocative that it was paralyzing. Like the boyfriend who was not only bad for you, but from whom you could not get away because the sex was both insanely hot and as powerful as religion. That boyfriend, but in a Halloween mask. She wanted to figure out why she was attracted to Mr. Icky and get over it pronto but wasn’t sure how.

  She brushed her teeth and tried not to think about it. Instead, her thoughts turned to writing. How for the first time in a while she felt like writing but had no means. She could use a voice recorder if not a laptop—Will my fingers be able to type again?—but she doubted they would let her have either. About three years ago, her creativity had fled as the Godzilla foot of depression eclipsed her. When her words left her, she was at such a loss because she’d always defined herself by her writing. What was she now? A sad crazy woman? A pathetic loser with no life skills whatsoever? That’s what her husband had called her.

  “Ms. Baum!” The cinnamon gum nurse leaned into the doorway, checking his watch as he spoke. “You got a therapy appointment now.”

  She’d just had some boring talk with a therapist whose skin reminded her of desiccated oak. Questions about her suicide. Questions about her failed marriage. Questions about work. Questions, questions, questions. These people asked the same damned questions. They even wore the same clothes. So many of them had turned out to be crazier than she was that she’d given up on them. There’d been one good one, but she moved to Connecticut. There was no winning in this department. “Another one?” she asked.

  “Another doctor,” Arnie replied, initialing a box on the front sheet of her chart. “We’ve got to leave the ward. So, come on now.”

  She would go but not cooperate, no matter what they wanted. Her damnation belonged to no one. Her guilt, should she be able to conjure any for her deed, would remain firmly in hand. She didn’t want those fucking know-it-alls to get their analytical bullshit all over her dream, the one thing God saw fit to give her. Even though the previous therapist had explained to her that suicide was not necessarily an indication of mental illness, she didn’t want to give them any further reason to detain her. Especially since she could, at odd moments, still feel Mr. Wicker touching her. Still wanted to feel Mr. Wicker touching her.

  Yeah, that couldn’t be healthy. She’d have to keep mum. It was her best bet if she wanted out. What she really wanted, though, was her memory.

  The missing memory.

  What if I told you that everything terrible in your life happened because of these missing memories?

  It seemed to her the reasons for her suicide attempt were obvious: unbearable depression brought on by a series of significant misfortunes. But “Mr. Wicker” had said she’d died because of her lost memories. Or did he say the things that had happened to her were the result of her lost memory? She supposed they were one in the same. But if there was a deeper explanation for what had pushed her life off the ledge and into a swan dive, she wanted to know. It made her crazy thinking an invisible hand was not only steering her life, but straight toward another cliff—a cliff that was no longer comforting.

  If only he hadn’t seemed so real. That library. Even the ravens. It didn’t feel like a dream but rather something that just happened in the other room.

  Mr. Wicker haunted her. She couldn’t think for more than a minute without his face, his hands, that voice welling up in her memory with baffling clarity. And since she’d stabilized in the medical ward, the black waters had fled. She no longer felt a stone lodged in her chest but rather a lightness of being, as if she’d just emerged from the mists into sunlit shafts strafing the ground. Her encounter in the Library seemed to cause some kind of essential shift within. She wanted to liken it to being a survivor on the Titanic, but then thought better of it because those survivors were cursed.

  After exiting the high security elevator, they entered a hallway decorated with Disney characters and anthropomorphic fire engines. Just past a large room where children played—some together and others alone with blocks, books, and toys—a blond woman in a white cotton skirt led a girl with wide eyes from one of the office doors. Alicia felt far too big for the hallway, as if she should stoop or hunch like Snow White in the dwarf house.

  Arnie halted before a door plastered with children’s drawings. One had fallen over the office nameplate. He pushed up the drawing, pressing the corners to reinforce the Scotch tape, to reveal two black birds scrawled with black crayon on white construction paper. The nameplate that had been hidden read: “James Farron, M.D. M.F.C.C.”

  Alicia stared at the drawing of the ravens, the eerie coincidence slipping between her ribs and prodding her insides.

  “Are you all right, Ms. Baum?”

  She nodded.

  Arnie knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” said a man on the other side.

  They entered to find a white, middle-aged man scrubbing the wall with a sponge, removing the crayon scribblings of his last patient. It looked as though the marks had run over the edges of giant, self-adhesive poster paper he had stuck to the wall. The man dried his hands on the towel and stood as the cin
namon gum nurse opened the door to admit her. He extended a damp hand to her. “Hi. I’m Dr. James Farron. Please call me James.”

  Arnie winked at Dr. Farron, who smiled back. “Thanks a bunch, Arnie,” he said, and the nurse closed the door.

  They were alone.

  Alicia’s eyes wandered over the play therapy room. Toys of every description, including some bloated dolls that appeared to be handmade sat on a gargantuan beanbag. Each doll wore a different expression on its swollen face. The rest of the office was strewn with trains, planes, balls, Barbies, dollhouses, Legos, dinosaurs, militiamen, and space rockets. A half-washed wall of rainbow scribbles loomed over a sudsy bucket full of water with a dirty sponge floating on the surface.

  “Won’t you please have a seat, Alicia?” he asked, gesturing toward a metallic desk with a white skirt of crayon portraits taped around the sides. Beside the desk sat an overstuffed loveseat, just big enough for a parent and child. After rifling through the papers of what looked like her file, Dr. Farron wheeled his big black desk chair out from behind the desk and turned it to the loveseat.

  Looking around his office, Alicia thought about how she had never wanted children, never had the desire. She’d learned years ago that the whole biological clock thing was nonsense—a media creation by Time Magazine journalists from an undercooked behavioral study. Thankfully, she had not had any with that bastard Eric. Her novels and stories were her children. They grew up and moved out, one by one. Some did better than others and occasionally younger siblings outshone their elders. She could never predict. But those were her children to groom to maturity and then let go. Real children made her nervous. They seemed fragile and beastly at once.