by Sam Nash
Mary opened the first envelop. On the printed card was a line drawing of a guitar. She concentrated on the picture, her eyes wandering across the shape over and over until it etched clearly in her mind’s eye. Through the window, her peripheral vision detected Dan’s hand moving rapidly. She fought the temptation to look up at what he was drawing. Simon, moved from his desk to watch them, convinced that there had to be some underhanded trick. He saw Dan sketch a small circle, then an overlapping larger circle beneath. He scowled at the paper as he drew a thin rectangle through both circles and above the top of the smaller one. Scratching his head, the object became clear to him and so he filled in the details of the guitar. When the drawing was complete, he signed the thumbs up to Mary and they both held the paper and card aloft for all to see. Simon gasped. The next few cards were easier. Dan drew a flower, a banana, a cat and a key. They were not precise or accurate drawings, but they were easily recognised and all correct.
Excited and amazed, Mary and Dan tittered and snorted their way through nine correct drawings when Parth arrived in the testing suite. By now, the other participants had completed their warm up card tests and were crowding around Simon, watching Dan and Mary like a freak show.
“It’s their final card,” sneered Sophie. “I hope he gets it wrong.” She flicked her long hair over her shoulder and into Simon’s face.
“He’s nine out of ten so far.” Simon informed Parth, as he pushed his way to the front of the spectators.
Ripping open the last envelope, Mary stared at the shape printed on the card inside. Within a second, Dan had the object in his mind and sketched it in one single stroke - a large heart in the centre of his paper. He grinned and held it aloft. Mary held up a printed stylised heart shape on her card. Everyone except for Sophie and Parth applauded, astounded by their mind reading abilities.
“I really think we should get neural output readings of these two while they repeat the test, fresh images and everything.” Simon enthused. Parth did not answer. He watched his wife leave her booth, hurry to the cubical next to her and throw her arms about the tall man inside, sniggering and bouncing around like a school girl.
“That was amazing, Dan, you are brilliant.” Mary said, finally letting go of his neck.
“It took both of us you know, I can’t take all the credit.” He patted her back and followed her out of his booth.
“Parth, did you see us? Did you see what Dan can do? Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Yes, I saw everything.” Parth replied, with much less enthusiasm. “Sorry I am late, ladies and gentlemen, an unavoidable delay I’m afraid. Why don’t you all nip to the staff room and have a short break while we set up the next experiment? Let’s say… fifteen minutes?”
Simon wittered on about incredible results from their tests and how they should be recording the neurological processes of the paired activities, but Parth was not listening. He waited until the group had filtered into the nurse’s quarters and were chatting animatedly, then he positioned himself near to the door so that he could observe his wife undetected. Mary made herself another cup of tea and sat beside Dan, who looked utterly enchanted by her unfettered zeal. Wandering back to the testing suite, Parth gave Simon new instructions for the remainder of the session and waited for the group to reassemble.
Mary and Dan listened to the praise from the other participants and then returned to their own secluded conversation, describing the sensations they felt when the images formed in their minds. The euphoria waned and gave way to a more biological urgency, with Dan asking Mary the location of the nearest cloakroom.
“Oh, I could use the bathroom too. I know there are some by the main entrance, but we wouldn’t have time to get there and use it. There must be one around here somewhere. This is the medical wing after all.” She looked about her for possible clues to public facilities.
Dan trailed after Mary out of the nurse’s room and down the corridor towards the rear of the building. Turning left, they came upon a set of double doors. Mary stood on tip toe, peering through the glass. She could see the foot of a staircase, a short corridor and a second set of security doors.
Dan stared over her shoulder. “There’s a toilets sign through those doors on the far side. Try your access card.”
She swiped the barcode of the pass card through the scanner; a red LED flashed up, denying her entry. Grabbing Dan’s card, which hung from a fabric lanyard around his narrow neck, she compared his with hers. Both read Zones One and Two. Dan tried his anyway, “Just in case. You never know.” The red light appeared once more. Taking the hint, he shuffled off in the direction they had come from. Mary cocked her head to one side, squinting at a sign above an entrance near the staircase. The angle was too acute to make any sense of it. Dan’s voice was deep and forbidding. “Mary? What are you thinking of doing?” He spun back round, having read her thoughts. “Even if you could fry the circuits in the scanner, it would alert security.”
“How did you…? Wow, we really are in tune, aren’t we? If we get caught, I’ll say it was an accident. I’m just not sure how to make it happen. It usually takes me by surprise.”
Bemused, Dan stood by and watched as Mary placed both palms squarely on the scanning device. She closed her eyes and imagined energy flowing from her to the panel. Nothing happened. Dan chuckled. “Come on, let’s go back.”
“No. I can do this.” Gritting her teeth, she adjusted her grip.
“There are bound to be loos elsewhere.” He let his arms swing, meandering back the way they had walked. “Come on…”
“Wait… I can do this.” She felt a challenge was being set, a thread of disbelief detected in his tone. He thinks I’m making all this up. “I’m not mad, I promise you.”
“I believe you. Come on.” His speech altered again. Now it was soft, an intonation reserved for confused old ladies in care homes. Mary felt her temper mounting. She was accustomed to her husband patronising her. She couldn’t bear it from Dan too. Distilling her indignation into a pure fluid force, she directed it through her hand into the access panel. There was a loud pop, a fizzle and a thunk, as the door catch released.
“See, I told you I could do it.”
“Bugger me – You really did! You are going to get us into so much trouble.” He pushed her through and closed the door behind them. They rushed past the staircase and opened the second set of doors, keeping a watchful eye for any evening security teams. “Here, grab that fire extinguisher to prop the door open. I don’t want you to break anything else with your laser vision or whatever else you can do.”
“Just a minute…” Mary stopped in front of a cardboard sign, tacked on the skew above the entrance she had spied earlier. In marker pen, someone had scrawled “THE CRYPT” on the corrugated board, concealing the official insignia.
There was an additional sheet of frosting on the reinforced glass panel of the door. It obscured all but the edges from sight. Peeping through the slim gap, Mary recognised a wall mounted collection of trip switches, power circuits and gas connections familiar to any well-equipped laboratory.
“Must be more labs down there.” Mary remarked, catching up with Dan in the doorway. Something was nagging at her; the bat of bad omen taking flight during her waking hours, goading her to release it from its underground cave. Something incongruous about the makeshift sign, amongst all the high tech gleaming white sterility, spurred her curiosity. Something was forcing her to investigate, the growing sense of foreboding sneaking into her mind. “Dan, can you pull that sign down for me, please? I can’t reach it.”
A tired request, perpetually made of the lofty, his response was one of instinct. Reaching up, he dislodged the cardboard and handed it to Mary. They scrutinised the printed label hidden beneath.
ZONE SIX – SACMILL
“Mary? What are you doing down here? This is a classified area. How on Earth did you get past security?” Parth was standing behind them, hands on hips, incensed.
Mary slid the card behind her b
ack. Dan quickly mastered the situation. “We were trying to find some toilets and saw the signs through the windows.”
“The toilets are behind the nurse’s staff room. You had no need to come poking around in this Zone.”
Parth herded them out of the corridor and back into Zone Two, examining the charred remains of the security scanner as he passed. She could sense his fury as he marched into the nurse’s quarters.
“The toilets are that way and to the left. I’d like everybody to return to the testing suite in five minutes – please.”
In the Ladies’ Restroom, Mary took the opportunity to collect her thoughts. Having thrown ‘The Crypt’ sign in the waste bin, she sat clumsily onto the toilet, rubbing her face in her hands. Well at least it’s definite now. Parth’s classified studies involve the use of hallucinatory drugs in a basement. So, his big secret is Project Sleepwalk, is it? What the hell is SACMILL?
Inside the lavatory cubicle, Mary listened to the sound of depressed taps and water gushing out. A metallic handbag zip fizzed and the unmistakable hollow popping noise of an unsheathed lipstick.
“Don’t you think Dr Arora is well fit?” Sophie proclaimed. The taps squeaked again. Paper towels rustled from the metal dispenser.
“S’pose. Not really my type.” Her friend replied.
“What does he see in that dowdy old wife of his? Do you think she even brushes that mop of hers? Bet she hasn’t shaved her legs all summer.” The lipstick clicked shut.
“Huh, yeah. Probably. I like that bloke she’s partnering though, Dan, is it? I reckon his shoe size is a promise of things to come” there followed shuffling boots on granular flooring and a giggle.
“Wasting your time there. I think he’s gay.” The door creaked open.
“Pity.”
Mary waited until she heard them leave before flushing the loo and venturing out to wash her hands. She stared at her features in the mirror. The blue capillaries visible through the rice paper skin under her eyes, the scattered white hairs highlighting the contrast of her dark curls. Her hands ravaged by the spilled chemicals and multiple handwashing throughout an average workday. Well Sophie, I can’t argue with you there – dowdy is an understatement. I look old, I feel older. Maybe I should let Yelena take me for a makeover. Can’t go to a ball looking like a sea hag in my one and only black dress – no, that won’t do at all, would it Parth? Perhaps he’d prefer to go with one of his nurses, or Sophie or whomever he is having his affair with. She threw a scrunched up paper towel in the swing bin and returned to the testing suite.
Mary was last to arrive back at the psychology suite. Simon was orchestrating the test that she and Dan had conducted prior to the break, with the remaining participants. Dan was standing with Parth. They both wore serious expressions and the light-hearted giddy atmosphere had long since evaporated. Parth handed Mary a two-way radio and sent her out of the Neurosciences building.
Grumbling to herself in the twilight, she wandered down steps, across grass patches and jumped over raised flower beds until she was at the opposite side of the campus. Some of the street lights carried cost cutting motion detectors, restricting illumination to paths that were in constant use. A delay between detecting movement and switching on the light left Mary in darkness for some of the alleyways between buildings. At this time of the year, few students remained on campus beyond five in the afternoon. Amid the dank isolation, she could hear leaden footsteps echoing behind her. They fell out of sync with hers, a man’s stride.
The only buildings she could access without security hassles, was the Student Union bar or the Library. She chose the library and pushed her way past the turnstile into the main foyer of the seven storey structure. Random, he said. She walked into the lift and chose the sixth floor. Random, pick something at random. Phew it stinks in here. A whole day of smelly, sweaty students enclosed in a metal cube. They should be automatically sprayed with deodorant before gaining entry to the lifts.
“Mary? What are you doing?” It was Parth’s crackly voice on the radio. She pushed the button on the side of her walkie-talkie to reply.
“What do you mean? I’m finding something random like you told me.” She breathed in through her mouth to mitigate the smell.
“You are making Dan laugh. What are you up to?”
“Oh, um…nothing. Nearly there, won’t be a tick.”
On the sixth floor, she wandered into the shadowy isles. It was not a floor she had ever visited. The seventh floor housed science related books. The body odour gave way to a musty smell of hardback books. Volume after volume of enormous texts, encyclopaedias and periodicals. The age of the tomes, set the atmosphere to sombre.
Mary felt uncomfortable. From the silence, she surmised that she was all alone amongst the texts on architecture. There were no other noises apart from the mechanical workings of the elevator, grinding and halting in a repetitive and predictable way, and her own muffled footsteps on the worn carpet. Her scalp tingled and the hair on the nape of her neck bristled, making her shudder. Was someone watching her? She lowered her head, squinting between the shelves in the dimly lit racks, but all she could see was the dusty ridges of hardback books. Picking out a large tome with a navy blue cover, she flicked through the pages until something caught her eye, a black and white print of London’s Tower Bridge. She clicked her walkie-talkie button.
“Ready.”
“Okay, concentrate, Mary. We’ll let you know when to come back.”
Mary sighed and stared at the image of the bridge. The photograph was old, faded around the edges and the cars looked like something her Grandfather would have driven in his heyday. Don’t think of Grampy - that will confuse things. Think, Tower Bridge. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the image to send to Dan. She shivered, opening her eyes again and checking around her for onlookers. Maybe I could just take the book out and go somewhere more public, less eerie. A waft of strong aftershave hit her sinuses, the kind that required moderate use or not at all. She could taste the chemicals in the air. There is someone here. She was just about to quit the experiment altogether when the radio crackled into life.
“Okay, honey. You can come back now.”
About bloody time too. Returning the book, Mary rushed to the lift and hit the ‘down’ button several times in rapid succession. Fidgeting and biting the edge of her fingernail, she hopped from one foot to the other, waiting for the elevator to announce its arrival with a ding. She threw herself in the moment the doors started to open, scraping her arms on the retractable seals. Hitting the ground floor command, Mary pressed her back against the dirty walls, begging the lift to speed up.
There he was. A thick thatch of grey hair and green, almost feline eyes, smiling at her between the narrowing gap of the lift doors. Wide eyed, terror rising in her chest and panting hard, she was dizzy by the time she reached the lobby. Bolting as fast as her canvas shoes could carry her, she dropped her radio on exit through the turnstile making her scrabble around on the floor trying to grasp hold of it. Clearing the library building she ran and kept running all the way back to the relative safety of the Neurosciences building. Wrenching open the main doors, she ducked into the Ladies’ Cloakroom and just made it to a cubicle before retching and vomiting her panic into a porcelain receptacle.
Chapter Six
“No need to be nervous, honey, you look terrific. Told you Yelena was the woman to spruce you up.” Parth kissed the end of Mary’s nose, scanning the foyer for investors worthy of approach. “Oh, here…you forgot to take your vitamins.”
Mary grappled with the midnight blue fabric of her gown, yanking the bodice higher to better secure her bosoms. “You brought my vitamins to a ball?”
He handed her the brown unmarked bottle from the pocket of his Dinner Jacket.
“Well, I’m not going to take them now, am I? Put them away. Oh there’s Dan.”
Mary waved, inelegantly. Parth glued himself to her side as Dan piloted his slender Parisian girlfriend over to meet them
. He bowed low to kiss Mary’s cheek and offered his hand to her husband. Parth eyeballed the tall man, constricting Dan’s fingers in an enduring warning.
“Mary, Parth, I’d like you to meet Constance Cadot. She’s a freelance journalist. Connie, this is Doctor Parth and Mary Arora, I met them through the study I told you about.” Limp handshakes all round.
“Your dress is stunning, Constance, is it from Paris?” Mary examined the blushed silk. It slipped and caressed her form when she moved, a living lamina, accentuating Connie’s understated grace in a symbiosis of beauty.
“How kind. Yes, it is. Your gown is very nice too.” Constance paused, allowing the men time to deduce the disparity between Mary and herself. “Tell me, Parth, what are your views on vivisection?”
Disarmed, Parth coughed. Dan’s face coloured.
“Really Connie, you can’t go ambushing a man like that.” Dan berated.
“Are you interviewing me?” Parth said, regaining his composure and switching to a charm offensive. “Surely there are much bigger fish here for you to fry?” Constance looked perplexed, taking time to process the meaning of the English expression. “Won’t you allow me to introduce you to some very big fish indeed?” Parth took Constance’s arm and led her into the main hall, deflecting her attention on to Professor Cyril Plender and his wife, Yelena, who had already dispatched several glasses of champagne and a couple of neat vodkas.
Mary took her shawl to the coat check and allowed Dan to escort her into the ball on his arm. “This is going to be a lonnnng evening.” She said, trying hard to walk with poise on her new strappy heels.
“Uh-uh, but at least we can keep each other company. Are you feeling better today? You looked positively grim after that daft experiment we tried the other night. Parth whisked you away before I could ask if you were okay.”
“Yes, thank you, much better. I’m sorry about that. I got spooked by something, that’s all.”
A waiter floated around them with long glasses of bubbled and still liquids on a silver platter. They both took the soft drink option. “I don’t drink alcohol.” She said, sipping the berry cordial.
