“Don’t cry. It’s going to be okay.” Nellie patted Dorothy’s hand.
“I’m scared.”
Nellie looked into Dorothy’s watery, brown eyes and smoothed down a few of the dark, brown hairs around her face that had begun to unravel from her braids. “That’s what they want. They want you to be weak and afraid. But you have to be strong, alright?”
“That’s easy for you to say. I’m not brave like you, Nellie.”
“You’re braver than you think.”
The doctor’s heavy, wooden door swung open. Nurse Ball partially emerged, holding a clipboard. “Dorothy Gale?” she motioned to the frail girl. Dorothy stood uncertainly and looked once more back to Nellie. Nellie leaned back, out of Nurse Ball’s view, and smiled to Dorothy.
“You’ll be fine.”
Dorothy stepped into the office door and Nurse Ball closed it behind them, but not without first carefully regarding Nellie. Nellie, however, had already obligingly painted a slack-jawed emptiness on her face and was fully engaged in examining the emerald green hue of the wall. Satisfied, Nurse Ball shut the door with a click.
Nellie felt a sharp poke in her upper arm.
“You saw her.”
“Ow! Hey!” Nellie’s head whipped back around to face the perpetrator of the painful jab. Standing over her, reed-like, was the pale, red-headed adolescent from the rooftop. Her long, unkempt red hair was full of knots and tangles and was held loosely back by a dirty, blue bow that scarcely clung to her head. Her sickly pallor was softened only by plethora of brown freckles that adorned her nose and cheeks. She swayed as if caught in an invisible breeze.
“What are you talking about?” Nellie rubbed the throbbing point on her arm that surely would turn into a fingertip-sized bruise.
“You’ve seen Alice.” The look in the girl’s eyes gave Nellie a sensation like an icy finger trailing down her back.
Nellie scooted a few inches away. “Who?”
The girl cocked her head to one side to listen to something to which Nellie was not privy.
Nellie found herself oddly fascinated, yet wary. She studied the girl’s face. “Alice? Who is she?” Nellie queried.
The girl looked abruptly back to Nellie and grinned. “She’s Bedlam! She’s everywhere ….” After a moment of reflection, the youth trailed off into her world again.
Nellie thought for a moment. How does one make sense out of nonsense? “Why is everyone so afraid of her?” she asked.
The girl looked instantly back at Nellie, eyes flashing with anger. She threw her hands up in the air and leapt up onto the bench with a thud. She pointed at Nellie, her fingertip within an inch of Nellie’s nose. “Stay away from Alice!” she hissed. “Are you listening to me? Stay away!”
Nellie didn’t dare move, but her body tensed to flee if it became necessary.
“Once she gets inside your head, you’re FINISHED!” The girl leaned into Nellie’s face, her head swaying left and right.
Nellie remained still. Their faces were so close that she could see the flecks of gold in the girl’s wild blue eyes.
An iron key scraped in the office door’s lock and Nellie turned, hopeful that Dorothy would emerge unscathed. Instead she was met with shock when orderlies on either side of Dorothy carried the limp girl out of the office, her head lolling to one side. Nellie stood to reach out to Dorothy, but the orderlies brushed her aside.
“What have they done to her?” Nellie fumed. This was not a girl who needed sedation of any sort.
“Dr. Braun will see you now.” Nurse Ball held the office door for Nellie. “WALK!” she loudly addressed to the red-haired girl who hummed and skipped down the hall away from them. Yet the youth continued her humming and skipping, leaving the unheeded Nurse Ball to “tsk, tsk” to herself. Jaw set, and fists clenched, Nellie turned and stepped through the door and into the doctor’s office, ready for the worst.
CHAPTER 6
It was a full moon. Even in the dead of a warm summer night, the moonlight was bright enough for Dorothy to find her way through the cornfield without a lantern. But the lantern wasn’t swinging from her hand because she needed it to see. She kept it with her because she didn’t trust him. She tiptoed through the tall, green stalks of corn that rustled and swayed in the cool breeze. All around her, as far as she could see, tiny green lights flickered through the air as lightning bugs flashed their greetings to one another. She moved cautiously through the field, listening to crickets chirping and frogs croaking. It had only been a few days since their newest sow gave birth to her first litter of piglets, so Dorothy had taken it upon herself to check in on them now and again. Tonight, she couldn’t sleep, so it seemed as good a time as any to check in on the mother and her babies.
She stopped and used her free hand to part the stalks of corn in front of her. Yes, there was the silhouette of the red barn and the big, full moon seeming to hang just behind its roof.
The crickets and frogs fell silent. Dorothy held her breath and listened — nothing.
She turned the knob of her lantern down almost as far as it could go starving the flame inside nearly to death, it struggled to hold on to life with the merest deep blue flicker. She turned, quickly parted the corn behind her, and stood on tip toe to peer just above the tops of the plants, toward the other end of the field.
It was still there. Its black form hung limply in the shape of a crucifix, arms draped over a rough-hewn wooden pole. Again she held her breath — nothing. She moved cautiously forward, through the tall, green stalks, careful not to make a sound.
“Dorothy,” the wind whispered. She froze.
“Who’s there?” She lifted her lantern high and searched, but no one answered. “Just the wind,” she murmured, and pushed through the cornstalks toward the barn.
Something rustled in the corn behind her.
“Hello?” Dorothy stopped and stood up on tip-toe again to see over the tops of the vibrant green stalks.
The wooden pole, where he had hung just a few minutes before, was now empty. Dorothy stepped back and lost her footing. She cried out as she fell backward through the thick rough corn stalks behind her. Her lantern dropped from her hand, and, extinguishing with a hiss, rolled a few inches away into the darkness at the base of the corn stalks.
Dorothy reached swiftly into her nightgown pocket to pull out a small box of matches. Holding it up to the moonlight, peeping through the tops of the tall corn stalks, she slid the small box open and fumbled for one of the thick matches. Dorothy dragged the match head quickly over the emery surface of the box. The flame burst to life with bright, orange light and the smell of sulfur. Carefully, she knelt back down on the musty dump earth in the darkness. In the soft light of the match’s flame, she found the lantern once again. Lifting the lantern’s glass hood, she touched the match flame to the burnt cream cloth of the wick.
A small gust rustled the cornstalks around her. The match flame went out.
“No, no, no, no ….” Dorothy’s hand started to shake. She felt around in her pocket for the matchbox. Now, her legs felt rooted to the spot and she did not want to stand. She slid the box open and fished out a second match. She snapped the match smartly across the side of the box igniting the head. As the match hissed its first breath of light and life, she brought it down to the lantern’s wick.
A sudden, concentrated, hot puff of air blew directly into Dorothy’s face, blowing her long, dark hair back as it extinguished the life she held in her hand. She sat on her heels, listening. Trembling.
A low-throated, gravelly resonance issued from somewhere next to her. The sound lifted the hairs on Dorothy’s arms and neck, striking raw fear within her. It was not unlike the threatening growl of a crouched dog before an attack. But there was no earthly creature that could make such a deep, preternatural sound. The strong scent of sulfur wafted around her, overpowering the comforting smell of rich, fertile soil. She gagged and wretched.
“BE GONE WITH YOU!” she shrieked, and shoved the gl
ass back onto the lantern. The glass of the lantern rattled in her shaking hands.
The low-throated sound issued forth again, this time from the darkness just next to her. It was almost a chuckle. The moist heat of rotten breath tickled her ear. Without thought, she leapt to her feet. The house was much closer than the barn, so she ran, as fast as her feet could carry her, back toward the safety of the farm house.
The cornstalks next to her rapidly flattened as something loped through the field parallel to her. Dorothy dodged away on a diagonal path, unable to see where she was headed, but hoping her new direction would carry her away from the thing pursuing her. Her heart beat as if it would burst out of her chest, and she struggled for breath. Her mind was a flurry of electric shock telling her, only on the basest of levels, that she must run for her life. There was the house! Just a little further and —
From directly in front of her came a sudden torrent of noise and movement burst forth. It rose up before Dorothy, screeching, a deadly twister teaming with darkness and screeching. A murder of cawing crows swirled and flew upward, a whirlwind of black. The sound of demonic laughter was barely audible just beyond the cacophony that blocked her path.
Without thought or hesitation, she had sprung in the opposite direction, back through the corn, toward the other possible refuge: the big red barn. From the back of her mind, Dorothy watched herself running, pell-mell, toward the looming red structure. She could not feel the cornstalks lashing her arms, legs, and face as she flew, but they left miniscule, razor-thin cuts that oozed fine streaks of blood across her exposed skin.
Dorothy erupted from the last row of corn, the small, hard pebbles beneath her slippers crunching as she pounded across the path to the big, red, double doors with white trim. She grasped the barn door handle with her free hand and, with the herculean strength of fight or flight, threw one door open, ducked inside, and slammed it shut again.
She was greeted by the sounds of hogs snoring in their pens and horses chuffing quietly in their stalls. A large square of blue-white moonlight shone on the hay-strewn plank floor. Dorothy knelt in the patch of moonlight and quickly went to work retrieving a new match from her pocket. Striking it firmly across the emery, she used its life to bring new light to the lantern. Once the ghost of the blue flame appeared, she cranked the lantern knob all the way up and illuminated her immediate surroundings with the bright yellow light of the unrestrained lantern flame.
The roof creaked. Dorothy swung around and lifted the full power of the lantern to bear on the source of the sound. Her eyes wide, she stood silently and listened. A horse stood and pawed at the ground with a soft whinny.
Silence.
Dorothy spun back around and lifted the lantern toward the hayloft. A black shadow moved. Misshapen and low to the hayloft floor, the shadow slunk and retreated from the light. Or had the darkness swallowed up the light?
Dorothy gulped, and, struggling to suppress the quaking in her voice, exclaimed, “I am NOT afraid of you!” Did she mean it, or was she just trying to convince herself?
She listened, staring holes into the place where she had last seen the shadow move. From somewhere on the floor ahead of her, the low, rumbling, unearthly chuckle answered her. Her shaking was uncontrollable. The light from her lantern jiggled across the barn walls, creating an array of shadows crawling up the walls and across the ceiling behind her. She stared hard toward the unearthly sound, determined to gain back control.
Two glowing, red embers peered back at her. After a few moments, they disappeared.
A scream came from her left.
“NO!” she cried out and swung her lantern toward the hog pen. With a squeal, like that of a small girl screaming, one of the hogs was lifted from its pen, the sound of ripping and tearing quickly silencing the animal. With a hard, wet splat, the dead hog landed at Dorothy’s feet. She quickly stumbled back, still holding her lantern. The new mother hog’s blood gushed from its nearly severed head and pooled on the floor, the puddle growing larger and larger as it rolled toward her silver slippers. She shuffled quickly backward, the toes of her slippers just an inch away from the growing pool of blood. The sow’s tongue lolled and its eyes rolled back in its head. Its body jerked abruptly as the vile thing in the darkness tore pieces of the hog away.
“How dare you … how dare you …” Dorothy’s raw fear began to take an altogether different shape. She had retreated as far as she could and now her back touched the barn wall. There was nowhere else to go.
She looked from the dead, white eyes of the hog back down to the toes of her favorite, sparkling, silver shoes. Poor mother. The warm hog’s blood oozed forward and rolled over the tips of the shoes that sparkled in the lantern light. The sparkles slowly consumed by the thick blood, the light on her shoes ceased to dance.
Defiled. That thing had tainted the one treasure a poor farm girl could call truly her own.
“How could you ….” She said through gritted teeth.
The newborn piglets cried softly from the pen for their mother.
“How DARE you ….” Dorothy growled, the ice in her arms melted, turning to heat. Her blood began to boil. The fear in her stomach drained. She stared at her shoes — at the blood that ran along the sides and swallowed the silver sparkle that gave them life. The rage swallowed her fear whole.
The chuckling came again. Before her, the blackness that crouched over the viscera of the dead hog began to rise. Its lanky, thin form unwound, stretching impossibly high as it stood. Its red eyes shone in the darkness, watching her. She could see its face aglow with a soft, blue light. Its lips dripped blood, as the corners of its mouth stretched and cracked its dead, yellowed skin into a smile that ran from ear to ear, revealing rotting, pointed teeth covered in red.
“Go away …” Dorothy commanded, her fists clenching. She raised the lantern by the handle and then gripped it, hot glass and all, in her palms. She could not, or would not, feel anything now. “GO AWAY!” she shouted.
The thing stood fifteen feet tall before her, throwing open its arms, its hands spattering fresh blood on her white nightgown. It began to laugh, taking one long stride, over the hog’s corpse, toward her. Dorothy pitched the lantern at the creature, shattering it across the monster’s chest. The fiend howled and burst into flame, the lantern oil covering it and catching fire. It threw its hands up and stumbled. But, even as the flames licked at its skin and tattered clothing, it hunched over and screeched, its red eyes locking with Dorothy’s. She could see its rage. It sprang at her, dropping fiery remnants as it went. Flames sprang up in the pen and the stalls from the trail of fire the creature left as it strode toward Dorothy.
Dorothy was no longer afraid. In defiance of the monster before her, she stood her ground. Her hair rose up around her head, lifted by some supernatural wind. She held her arms away from her sides; she could feel the rage flowing through her like blood through her veins.
The tall creature took another long stride and Dorothy was almost within its grasp. But it was Dorothy who closed the distance. She leapt from the wall and strode toward the impossibly tall monstrosity now engulfed in flame. With her arms held out before her, she willed the creature backward with her hate. It fell to the floor — and laughed even louder. Its deep, gurgling chortles reverberated off the barn walls and ceiling.
Around them the hogs squealed and the horses bucked and kicked. The terrified animals squealed and fought against their restraints, desperate to find a way to escape the quickly spreading flames. Dorothy leapt onto the creature sprawled across the entire barn floor. She grasped at the head and scratched and clawed as it continued to laugh, its wild eyes now visibly yellow and rimmed with red in the fire-lit room.
Filled with hatred and rage, she thrust her hand claw-like through the dry, taut, dead skin that stretched across the top of its head and grasped at the viscera within, pulling out handfuls of reddish-black, dripping pieces of flesh and hay — things that had once been the various organs of other creatures. The beast�
�s yellow and red eyes rolled up into its head and the laughter melted into gurgling. Its blackening body split and cracked with the heat of the flames.
“DOROTHY!” A man’s voice broke through the clouds of thick smoke that surrounded her. Her fixation broken, she looked up and realized that the searing, hot smoke in the barn was too thick for her to see anything. The blue light had vanished. Dorothy was lost, blind, and barely able to breath in the thick, black smoke.
“Uncle Henry!” Dorothy tried to call back, coughing and spluttering. From out of the darkness, two strong arms gripped her and she felt herself sliding away from the barn. A few moments later, she breathed in sweet, cool, fresh air. Both of her uncles ran back into the barn and, a moment later, the horses and hogs came running through the door and out into the yard.
“Dorothy!” cried her Aunt Em, running to the girl, who was lying limply on the grass.
“I’m alright, I’m alright, Auntie Em!” Dorothy hiccupped. She felt the relief of a cold wet towel on her neck as her Aunt Em attended to her. Only now did she acknowledge the dull, throbbing pain in her palms where she had burned them on the lantern’s glass.
With a loud crack, a portion of the barn’s roof collapsed. “Uncle Henry! Hunk!” Dorothy screamed. Aunt Em gripped Dorothy’s shoulders with worry and watched the barn door, willing her husband and the farmhand to appear. Uncle Henry jumped out the door, followed by Hunk, both of them coughing and spluttering. Dorothy took a shuddering breath of relief and collapsed.
“… I slipped on the hog’s entrails,” she heard, too weak to open her eyes. There was a sharp intake of breath. That was Aunt Em.
Bedlam Stories Page 4