“You didn’t request fresh air either, Doctor, but this office is still in great need of it,” she said, sliding the stiff window upward. A small butterfly passed briefly between the iron bars of the window, carried by the fresh breeze on a sporadic flight path that led back out into the courtyard.
“Anyway, that Nellie Bly is turning out to be quite a … what are you doing?” Nurse Ball warily eyed the series of new theorems scrawled across the blackboard that she felt contained his most questionable work.
Tacked to the blackboard was what appeared to be a new photograph, which the breeze was keeping flipped upward and out of view. Dr. Braun spun toward Nurse Ball, beaming. This alone was cause for alarm. “I figured out the problem, Nurse Ball. All we needed was a control subject.”
Nurse Ball could not take her eyes from the blackboard, watching for the moment when the breeze would relinquish control over that new paper.
“Doctor,” she spoke carefully. “That is your research for Project Alice.”
“Indeed!” he grinned. “And I’ve found another test subject!”
Nurse Ball stepped between the window and the blackboard, hands folded across her skirt. The photograph floated back down to settle against the blackboard.
“Dorothy Gale.” Even as she spoke the name she had mostly expected, the shock brought on by the realization of the doctor’s intentions washed over her. Her lips twitched.
After a few moments, she finally spoke again. “We can’t possibly revive Project Alice. Not after what happened.”
The doctor, known for neither warmth nor empathy, reached out to place his hand reassuringly on Nurse Ball’s rigid arm.
“It will be different this time, Nurse, I assure you. She’s far more manageable than Alice ever was.”
Nurse Ball removed her arm from his grasp, eyes flashing. “You can’t be serious! You are messing with powers that we don’t —”
“They are not powers, Nurse Ball — merely physical manifestations from the minds of deluded young girls and their imaginary worlds.” He strode to his blackboard, flipped it over, and picked up a piece of chalk. “Dorothy,” he placed the chalk next to Dorothy’s photograph, “shares the same peculiarities as Alice.” He drew a line to the photograph of a beautiful young girl with long, silky, light hair and bright eyes. “They both exhibit physical links with their imaginary worlds.”
“Doctor, even if you understood those links, how do you intend to control them?” He flipped the blackboard back over and jabbed the chalk at the photograph of Nellie.
“This time, we have the benefit of a control subject, Nurse Ball. A third person to act as a funnel, so to speak.”
“Nellie Bly?” Nurse Ball’s pained expression illustrated to Dr. Braun that this discussion would not soon be over.
Tap, tap, tap.
Nellie’s eyes shot open. The last time she’d heard tapping coming her way, the results had been horrific. She craned her stiff neck to see the opaque window in the door. Someone was tapping a fingernail lightly against the glass.
“Nellie?” came the harsh whisper. “It’s me, Dorothy!”
“I’m in here,” Nellie replied, just loud enough to be heard through the door. The sound of the door swinging open with a creak was followed by a gasp. Dorothy was silent, overwhelmed with shock at seeing Nellie suspended by chains and pulleys six feet from the floor.
“It looks worse than it feels, Dorothy,” she sighed. “I’m okay, just sore.”
“Oh Nellie,” wide-eyed Dorothy’s fingertips hovered in front of her O-shaped mouth.
Nellie didn’t want her to worry. “Dorothy, what are you doing here?” Her body swung gently back and forth from the chains, like a pendulum.
Dorothy held onto one of the chains with a firm hand and stilled the swaying. “That mean nurse told me not to talk to you anymore, but I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine, really. I’m not worth you getting into trouble.” Nellie watched the window above her, making sure none of the observers from the other side might suddenly appear.
“Oh don’t say things like that,” Dorothy’s lower lip stuck out just a bit, as it usually did when she began to pout. “Nellie, they’re putting me in a tank of some kind in just a couple hours. I’m scared.”
Nellie tried, with great effort, to turn her head to look at Dorothy. “What tank?”
“They say it’s part of my treatment.”
“Dorothy, listen to me. They are NOT treatments, not at all. They are experiments. You absolutely must keep your mind focused. Don’t take any pills that they give you. Spit them out if you must.”
CLANK!
Dorothy whipped around to look out the doorway toward the loud sound. “I have to go now!”
“Dorothy, wait! When I get out of here, I promise, I’m taking you with me.”
Dorothy paused for a moment, both hands worrying the end of a braid. She looked up with watery brown eyes to Nellie. “You promise?”
“I promise. I won’t leave you behind.” Dorothy smiled. In one swift movement, she stood up on her tip toes, kissed Nellie’s cheek, and darted away out the door.
Nellie sighed. Clearly no one would be leaving Bedlam anytime soon if she couldn’t find a way out of these restraints. She scrutinized each link in the solid chains that held her legs in place and followed them up to the pulley system that hung from the ceiling. With the shadows there, it was difficult to see how they were anchored.
She stared hard at the shadows. With a sickening feeling growing in the pit of her stomach, she watched the shadows move. They shifted, growing outward across the ceiling, like smoke pouring into the room. The black tendrils grew, scuttling down the chains that held Nellie suspended over the floor. Nellie thrashed her arms and legs, screaming and kicking, to no avail.
“HEEEEELLLPPPPP!!!!” she shrieked toward the open doorway.
The blackness coalesced directly over Nellie, a nimbus cloud just inches from her face. Tendrils stretched toward Nellie’s shoulders, reaching for her skin. It was hair — long, tangled, dead, blond hair, pooling in circlets on Nellie’s torso.
“SOMEBODY! ANYBODY!” Nellie’s screams reached fever pitch, echoing down the halls outside. Red eyes emerged from the blackness over Nellie’s face with the gurgling, wet sound of Alice’s now all too familiar approach.
“You think you know your little friend?” the decaying face over Nellie’s lilted, with a mocking grin. Cold, red viscera dripped from the maw down onto Nellie’s skin.
“Be careful Nellie. Dorothy is more dangerous than she seems ….” The last word hissed through broken teeth.
Nellie squeezed her eyes shut. “Go away, go away, go away, go away,” she muttered, convincing herself that this was yet another hallucination brought on by Nurse Ball’s infamous syringe cocktails.
“Nellie Bly!” Nurse Ball clomped into the room followed by the sounds of several pairs of feet. “I think you’ve learned your lesson, wouldn’t you say?”
Nellie cautiously opened one eye to look. No more Alice. She pressed her chin against her chest, looking for evidence. As she suspected, nothing.
Nurse Ball loosened the pulley’s line that held Nellie’s body aloft. The closer she was lowered to the floor, the more panic and tension flowed out of Nellie’s body. As her body finally came into contact with the gurney, she had reached a level of calm in which she was thoroughly convinced that the apparition she had invented of Alice had a pattern of manifesting itself whenever Nellie felt stress or guilt regarding Dorothy. The orderlies removed the chains from the straps, leaving Nellie to relax on the gurney. They promptly exited the seclusion room.
Clinically speaking, these new observations would have to go into her exposé. Whatever mixture of drugs they were using on the patients here, that which was intended to sedate the unruly must include hallucinogens that actually drove the inmates further from sanity. Perhaps this was on purpose? To keep patients here as long as possible in order to draw in more financ
ial support?
“An orderly will be back shortly with the keys to unlock the restraints. Once you are up again, please return to the common room,” Nurse Ball stated as she exited the room and shut the door.
Nellie closed her eyes and let her head fall painfully to the side. With her limbs suspended for so many hours, her muscles ached horribly. Nellie shrieked. She had opened her eyes and now was looking squarely into Alice’s red eyes, glowing sickly yellow at the edges. The horror’s grimy hands gripped the edge of the gurney next to Nellie and she leaned in toward Nellie’s face, her dripping, red maw opening.
Nellie couldn’t breathe. Her entire body trembled violently and, with one last shudder, she lost consciousness.
CHAPTER 15
You remember my colleague, Fred Griffith?”
Nurse Murphy observed Dr. Braun on another walk with Nurse Ball. This meant there was important business at hand and they were not to be disturbed. They stepped through the front door on their way out to the path around the courtyard. “He’s working on a fascinating new discovery: Genetic Material Encoding Virulence of Diplococcus.”
“Genetic? What do you mean?” Nurse Ball’s gait suddenly increased, forcing Dr. Braun to quicken his steps in order to keep pace. “It’s an amazing new science. It has been discovered that our bodies actually carry genes with chromosomes, which appear to consist of polymers of both nucleic acids and proteins.”
“And what’s that got to do with Nellie?”
Detecting the edge in her voice, Dr. Braun caught her arm and stopped to face her. He continued in hushed tones. “I sent a sample of her blood to my dear friend to look into. It turns out that she has a unique pregnancy. Normally there are twenty-three paired chromosomes made up of forty-six total chromosomes donated from two sources, a mother and a father. Her baby has twenty-three paired chromosomes, but they are all identical to her mother’s.”
Nurse Ball sighed. “Please, let’s pretend I have no medical training. What are you trying to say?”
“Nurse, the baby has no father.”
“But that is not possible!” she scoffed.
A blood-curdling scream from somewhere inside the asylum rent the air.
“Speak of the devil! She is turning into a real handful,” Nurse Ball muttered and, hiking her skirts up to her shins, rushed toward the asylum doors with Dr. Braun fast on her heels.
“She’s perfect!” the doctor retorted, nearly leaping to keep up with Nurse Ball.
She shook her head as they made their way as quickly as possible through the door and along the long, dark corridors of the asylum to the seclusion room.
Nurse Ball stopped in front of the seclusion room door and turned back to face the doctor. With one hand on the doorknob, she looked at him and spoke in a pointed tone that she had never before dared to use with him. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Dr. Braun opened his mouth to speak, but such was his surprise that no words came out. She simply glowered at him, shook her head, and threw open the door.
Inside the seclusion room, several orderlies had already begun checking vital signs and restraints. “Marcus, what seems to be the matter with the patient?” Dr. Braun stepped into the room and slid his hands into his lab coat pockets.
“Nothing, sir. We couldn’t find any reason for the episode. Everything in the room is as we left it … it could not have been more than 10 minutes ago.”
“Well then, perhaps the seclusion room’s suspension was too much for her. Give her a sedative and we’ll check her mental state again after she’s rested up.”
Nurse Ball waved toward a tray on the counter, which held a series of neatly arranged medical devices, including a full syringe. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she muttered.
Dr. Braun checked the young woman’s pulse while the orderly carried out the directive to sedate her. Under Dr. Braun’s fingertips, Nellie’s pulse slowed. He pressed on her abdomen with his fingertips and palm, feeling each muscle and organ carefully.
“No abnormalities. Vital stats are good. Nurse Alissabeth,” he spun toward the staff member hovering quietly near the medical tray. “Did you see anything?”
She swallowed and swiped her bangs away from her forehead. “Well, there was one curious note. She was babbling something about someone named Alice.”
Nurse Ball shot the doctor a hard look. “How could she know about Alice? Did you say something she could have overheard?”
Dr. Braun motioned the staff to leave, and they were all too eager to comply. Nurse Alissabeth shut the door behind her without a backward glance, leaving the prostrate and unconscious Nellie alone with Nurse Ball and the doctor.
Nurse Ball glared at the doctor as he removed his spectacles to polish them on the edge of his sleeve.
“Nellie just doesn’t fit the profile of the other Alice sightings. She has no history of head trauma. While she might be a little underweight, she’s hardly on death’s door. But she is adding a new element to the puzzle: her freak pregnancy.”
“I still don’t see how it’s possible to be pregnant without a father.” Nurse Ball folded her arms across her chest and looked down her nose.
“It's called parthenogenesis: the ‘virgin birth.’ A relatively new field of study, although, if the Bible is to be believed, the phenomenon has been around for at least two thousand.”
He watched Nellie breath shallowly for a few moments, studying her pale face. “I have a hunch that this child of Nellie's may be gifted. Maybe it has the same freak genetic mutation as Dorothy and Alice.”
Again Nurse Ball’s heart skipped a beat at the mention of the little girl’s name. She remained silent as she reflected on which words she would choose next. “What makes you think Dorothy is like Alice?”
“I have seen it with my own eyes. I suspect the answers to Project Alice will lie in the meta link between Dorothy and Nellie. We should get them into the tank immediately.” Dr. Braun replaced his spectacles and smiled. The smile was not warm and welcoming to Nurse Ball. Instead, it was cold, mechanical. What, perhaps, an automaton might use to display a gesture of encouragement.
Nurse Ball inserted the black iron key into the keyhole and twisted it, sending the tumblers inside into an organized row. She twisted the brass knob on the door labeled “HYPNOTIC INDUCTION ROOM 1” and pushed the door open with a solid thrust of her shoulder. With a resistant groan, the heavy door on rusted hinges opened most of the way before coming to a grinding halt in the groove of the cement floor.
Nurse Ball turned back to the gurney and pulled Nellie through the doorway into the mildewed room full of machinery, water tanks, gears, wires and hoses. Nurse Alissabeth pushed the other end of the gurney in and shut the door. Her key scraped in the lock, the noise reverberating throughout the large, dank, cement chamber.
Dr. Braun poured a perfect white stream of Epsom salts into the liquid solution swishing about inside the brass tank walls. The liquid’s surface appeared to be partially solid, like curdled milk, with dissolving salt chunks.
The nurses carefully connected the straps on Nellie’s prone body to a set of dangling chains, which were attached to a pulley system. Having first been suspended in the Seclusion Room, she was now to be hoisted from the gurney and into the water in the tank. With Nellie’s body hovering inches above the water, Dr. Braun slipped a mask over her eyes, nose and mouth.
Nurse Alissabeth cranked the metal ring at the top of the oxygen tank one full turn, and cool oxygen hissed through the tubing and into Nellie’s face mask. Nurse Ball poured a bucket of warm liquid into the tank and nodded to the doctor. “Ready.” She spoke gruffly to the doctor. He noted wryly, she would not make eye contact with him. He nodded to Nurse Alissabeth, and together they lowered Nellie into the tank.
Warm water washed over Nellie, the sloshing water surrounding her instantly bringing her to a panicked consciousness. She flailed her arms and legs, crying out, into the mask.
“Nellie, calm down this instant! This is your tr
eatment now!” Dr. Braun spoke slowly and loudly, yet Nellie could not hear a word.
As far as Nellie could discern, she was completely immersed in water, and naked save for the hoses and tubes connected to her limbs. She struggled desperately, air bubbles churning around her body.
Dr. Braun sighed. “Make sure Dorothy is in position.”
Nellie stopped thrashing long enough to peer through the milky white goggles of her mask. She could just barely make out Dr. Braun’s distorted form standing next to the tank, his hands on his hips.
Nurse Alissabeth stepped to the flotation tank adjacent to Nellie’s and peered through the windows.
“Patient Gale is ready,” she announced.
“Good. Let’s get started.”
Nellie watched the doctor lower his arms and step away. But there, in the void that he left, stood a familiar silhouette about the size of a little girl.
Dr. Braun and the nurses stepped out of the large chamber and into a separate room behind a glass window. The room contained all manner of switches, knobs and buttons that only the doctor knew how to manipulate. Nellie had been left alone again, trapped. Inside her mask, her heavy breathing was the only sound as she stared at the silhouette of the little girl. It stepped closer. Nellie pulled frantically at the hoses holding her in place in her watery tomb, the sound of her breathing becoming deafening inside the mask.
Suddenly, Alice’s hands pressed up against the window next to Nellie, and the shrill, raspy voice shrieked in her ears.
“She can’t take you away from me! You’re mine! … Mine ….”
“HELP!” Nellie cried out, into the mask. “Please help! It’s Alice! She’s coming for me!”
Dr. Braun pressed and held down a green button. His voice was distorted and uneven as it echoed into the tank through a tinny speaker.
“Just relax, Nellie. It’s not going to hurt. Your subconscious mind is playing tricks on you.” Nurse Ball handed Dr. Braun a writing pad and pen. He jotted the date and time.
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