“Alice …” Nellie struggled to stand, her body’s weakness having become nearly debilitating. She pulled herself up, and, using the wall for support, made her way to the stairs and up to the first floor.
Nellie found Alice amid the chaos, standing stock-still before the ornate looking glass. Nurses and orderlies alike screamed in terror and ran from the sight of the emaciated ghoul whose posture was distorted and whose limbs twisted with pain.
Nellie limped along the wall toward Alice as staff ran past her and unlocked doors to set the inmates loose. Those who had heard the stories knew that there would be little time to find a way out of Bedlam before history repeated itself.
A shrill sound like a diamond dragging across a glass surface filled the room. Nellie looked into the mirror and saw the cracks spreading. It was as if someone or something was pushing against the glass from the other side. Many Alices appeared in the broken shards, as the cracks multiplied.
A sinister black smoke rushed out of the cracks in the mirror and swarmed above the broken girl. It seemed to break apart into separate and unique vapors, and then in a rush, it enveloped Alice.
“What in God’s name …” Nellie whispered, mouth agape.
The black smoke swirled around Alice, and her whole body seemed to swell with energy. Nellie could now make out faces in the smoke as it circled and enshrouded the girl. Her demons had come through.
The Mad Hatter’s unmistakable visage, with its glinting, red eyes, erupted from the cloud and gave Nellie a wicked grin.
“We’re baaaaaaaaaacccccckkkk!” he announced, eyes flashing. The black smoke swirled about for another moment, before Alice breathed in deeply and wisps entered her through her eyes, mouth, and nose until the vapor had been completely absorbed. She closed her yellow eyes, hung her head, and swung around to face Nellie. Her matted hair hung in her face.
“I just want Rose back,” Nellie said carefully. “You said you would give her back to me.”
Alice opened her eyes. They shone white.
Nellie grabbed the wall for support.
Wordlessly, Alice turned and staggered up the stairs.
FWOOOOOOSHHHH!
With each step she took, flames roared up the walls on either side of Alice. The screams of torment from the souls on the second floor reached Nellie’s ears.
“ALICE, STOP THIS!” she cried out, at the top of her lungs, pulling herself up the stair railing toward Alice’s wake of destruction.
Orderlies turned on each other. Patients fell to the floor, howling and scratching their eyes out. Nellie reached the second floor to find an inmate who had successfully managed to pull her eyeball from its socket.
Alice continued down the hall, paying Nellie’s pleas no heed.
Nellie struggled to reach her, ducking inmates and dodging the ever-rising flames.
“Alice! Alice!” came the pleas and wails of the inmates. “Please, Alice!”
Alice stopped in the green hall and turned to face the door to a patient’s room. She stretched out her fingers and touched the name that was stenciled there: DOROTHY GALE. Her fingertips pressed into the name, and the door began to smoke and smolder under her touch. Blackness crept outward from the spot until a flame leapt up and Dorothy’s name was engulfed in fire.
With a wave of Alice’s boney hand, Dorothy’s door flew off its hinges and smashed against the far wall. Alice stepped into the doorway to find the room empty.
“Alice, don’t do this,” Nellie said.
Alice stared into the room and would not turn toward Nellie. She took another step cautiously toward Alice.
“Dorothy must be destroyed.” The raspy voice filled Nellie’s head.
“You are free now. There is no need for any of this violence.”
“Don’t you see, Nellie? We both need the same thing.” Alice’s shoulders and back rose and fell with great shuddering breaths. “Revenge.” The word resonated throughout her body.
Nellie could feel the pain of more than a decade of torment wash through her. The little girl whose ability no one else could begin to understand — abused, forsaken, forgotten. She reached out to touch the girl’s shoulder, but hesitated.
“Alice …” she said softly.
Alice spun around, and Nellie jerked her hand quickly back. A blue light shone on them both. Nellie cautiously turned and then sharply inhaled.
Dorothy stood behind Nellie, her entire body radiating a dark, blue aura.
The flames on the walls had been extinguished, leaving them only smoldering. The victims of Alice’s whims, who had fought against one another, who had crawled upon the floor, wailing in pain, all now lay quietly on the floor, asleep in the calming blue light of this girl.
Nellie stepped back from Alice. The black smoke came pouring from her to swirl and build behind her.
“Dorothy Gale of Kansas …” the ghastly voice intoned.
Faces emerged from the billowing black cloud that continued to swell behind her like an ever-increasing shadow. The wisps and curls of its tendrils enveloped Alice’s shoulders and arms as each demon’s face emerged. Snapping claws, pointed teeth, glowing eyes — all were trained upon Nellie and Dorothy.
Then, out from the towering shadow, emerged a set of shiny blades, followed by an arm, followed by a top hat containing a caged brain. The Mad Hatter grinned maniacally and took his place next to Alice. The March Hare was the next to emerge. One by one, each of Alice’s demons took their place behind Alice, whose eyes shone white like the center of molten rock.
“Dorothy, you had better do something,” Nellie’s voice cracked. The Cheshire Cat’s wicked grin appeared — the shiny, metal, razor-sharp teeth materializing before the rest of its mangy, diseased body could cross through the portal of smoke and shadows.
“I can’t do anything against demons!” Dorothy hissed, stepping backward as the Queen of Hearts emerged in her dress made of stitched human flesh held by chains and hooks. “This isn’t Oz!”
The Cheshire Cat leaped over Alice to land with a heavy thud in front of them. It flashed its razor sharp talons and emitted a deep-throated growl that transformed into a hair-raising hiss. Its body lowered and tensed, ready to spring.
“Oh God … RUN!” Nellie cried and grabbed Dorothy’s wrist.
They broke into a sprint, the impact of each footfall firing blinding pain up through Nellie’s calves. It felt like knives twisting between her muscles and bones.
The Cheshire Cat’s backside wiggled playfully, as its crazy smile stretched from ear to ear. It pulled back and readied to pounce on the fleeing girls.
“Cheshire,” Alice’s papery voice interrupted.
It paused and turned patiently to its mistress, rolling its inky eyes.
“We’ll get them later. Right now, we have other matters to attend to. He is closer to us now.”
The enormous cat-demon growled menacingly in the direction of the prey that had been allowed to make its escape. It swung its massive head around and slunk into dark shadows after Alice and her army of horrors.
CHAPTER 25
Find an outside line. Someone! Anyone!” Nurse Ball’s voice wavered. “We need someone to reverse the lockdown from the outside!”
Nurse Murphy’s fingers flew across the telephone switch board panel, pulling connections from ports and shoving plugs into open ports, each time listening for the click of an external line.
With all of his might, Dr. Braun used one hand to pull on the cage door of the operator’s station while his other hand desperately twisted the key in the lock. The difficulty came chiefly from the three inmates who clung to the cage by their fingers and toes, screaming, “ALICE HAS COME! ALICE HAS COME!”
Nurse Ball pulled on the cage door along with the doctor, and the key engaged, allowing them to open the door.
“Belay that!” Dr. Braun strode to the operator’s panel and yanked three of the cords from their receptacles. Nurse Murphy turned to protest, but Dr. Braun cut her short. “We cannot risk extern
al contamination!”
And that was Nurse Ball’s last straw. In the many years that Nurse Murphy had been in Nurse Ball’s employ, she had seen countless scoldings and reprimands, the likes of which could make a drill sergeant weep. But never had she witnessed the head nurse lose control. Nurse Murphy’s mouth fell open at the sight. The color in Nurse Ball’s face resembled that of a beet, her eyes bulged, and the veins of her neck and temples throbbed.
She marched over to Dr. Braun, grabbed his lab coat and shirt in her fists, and nearly lifted the man’s feet from the floor. “You!” she bellowed, all composure thrown to the wayside. “This is all your fault! You should NEVER have resurrected Project Alice! Your selfishness and incompetence has killed dozens of helpless patients and now endangers all of us. We are trapped in this godforsaken stone tomb with no way to get help. There are wildly insane THINGS wandering our halls killing without mercy or reason. Your crazed experiments and wild ideas will be the death of us all and for what?” She leaned into his face until she was nose to nose with the wide-eyed man.
He grabbed her hands and forcibly uncurled her fingers from his clothing. “You forget your place, nurse!” He put particular emphasis on the last word, and continued. “I make the calls here. After all, I am the doctor.” He did not break contact with Nurse Ball’s challenging stare as he tugged his attire back into place.
An eerie wail traveled down the halls of the dark asylum, becoming louder and louder, and then passing by, like a screech owl flying overhead in the dead of night.
The colors of rage rapidly drained from both Dr. Braun and Nurse Ball’s faces as they turned to locate the source of the sound. Nurse Murphy stood, her forgotten headset clattering to the floor, eyes searching the ceilings and high walls.
There, on the ceiling at the end of the hall, black shadows flowed and curled like smoke toward them.
Dr. Braun breathed in, the horror setting in. Alice’s demons …
“Mother!” he whispered. Then he unlocked the cage door and bolted down the hall to the stairway.
Nurse Ball grabbed the swinging cage door and slammed it shut again, locking him out.
“Good riddance!” she spat.
Nellie and Dorothy ran down the hall toward the wailing that echoed down the corridor from the west wing, bringing them to a sudden stop. This was neither inmates nor staff. No mortal could make that sound.
WAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
The unearthly keen flew from the west wing, over their heads, and down the corridor as if traveling at supersonic speed throughout the asylum.
Another blast zoomed past them from the wall, the sound so loud at its closest point that they ducked to the floor and held fast to one another.
Dorothy pointed, and Nellie saw movement from the inky shadows. A blood-curdling scream erupted from the patient’s room just beyond the moving shadow.
“Dorothy! Dorothy! Listen to me. You need to stop this!” Nellie grasped her shoulders and stared into her tear-filled eyes.
“But … I can’t.”
“Yes you can. The doctor said you have the same powers as Alice does.”
“But she’s summoning demons into this world! I’ve never done that before!”
“I think you have. Remember, on the boat ride? You told me that the scarecrow burned down your barn. How did he get there? You must have brought him over somehow. Think.”
Dorothy nodded. Closing her eyes, she tried to recall what she had been thinking in the barn when the scarecrow stood before her, arms raised. She remembered the dead, thin skin stretching over the face, the yellowed teeth, the way it grinned as if pleased by her fear. She trembled, straining to summon the blue aura that had sent the fifteen-foot monstrosity flying backward.
Nellie watched her carefully, searching every pore for any sign that Dorothy had succeeded in finding the trigger to her supernatural powers. But Dorothy’s eyes popped open and she shook her head.
“Let’s think. How does Alice bring her demons through?” Nellie sat back on her heels and counted out the facts on her fingertips. “She has to create a link from our world to Wonderland, through some sort of bridge, or portal, or —”
Chaos continued to erupt around them. The screeches and moans of the asylum’s populace, inmates and staff, rent the air as the unearthly army of shadows brought devastation and agony.
Nellie suddenly grabbed Dorothy’s arm. “I saw Alice by the mirror. She was pulling the demons through it. Maybe that’s what we need to do! Let’s go to the mirror!”
“No, no. When the scarecrow came, there was no mirror in the barn.”
“You must use a different type of bridge. Was there anything else there? Try to remember.”
“No, it’s just a barn. There was hay, and feed, and … oh!”
“Oh?”
“The sow. The scarecrow threw the sow at my feet and … it was horrible. There was blood everywhere.” Dorothy looked away.
“You created Oz from disaster and death,” Nellie whispered, recalling the Mad Hatter’s words. She turned Dorothy’s face to hers. “Dorothy, I think your link to Oz is blood.”
CHAPTER 26
Dr. Braun arrived at the base of the last flight of stairs, gasping for breath, heart thumping, knees aching, and waves of pain rolling up his legs and lower back. His doughy body fought his every step upward, but he was now almost to the sixth floor, with its precious locked door at the end of the corridor.
He stood with his foot on the first step, panting, his lungs on fire. He pressed his hand into a sharp pain in his right side. The lights began to flicker. Dr. Braun gasped and looked all around him. One by one, the stairwell lights blinked out. Floor one — dark. Floor two — dark. Floor three — flicker … dark. As the light diminished, the darkness crept up the stairs toward him.
There were voices now; he knew he was no longer alone. A distinct, high-pitched giggle and a deep-throated moan echoed up the stairwell from a floor below the step upon which he currently stood. It hissed, the HIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSS swirling and curling round the stairwell and up the steps that led to his position.
The shaking man fought the paralysis that swept through every inch of his body. Pushing through the pain of his frozen muscles, he turned and looked over his shoulder.
The fourth floor light went out. And, out of the darkness, two glowing red eyes emerged, followed by a maniacal cackling. The thing pulled itself up onto the next step in a spiderlike fashion, its elbows protruding to either side.
Dr. Braun whipped around and jumped up each step as fresh adrenaline pumped through his arteries. The light on the fifth floor landing went out behind him. The sounds got closer.
Dr. Braun leapt to the top step and threw open the door to the sixth floor, the piercing giggling just behind him. Something scraped across the heel of his shoe, injecting searing pain, as he dove across the threshold. He slammed the door shut, and twisted the deadbolt.
He glanced down to the back of his shoe to find the leather heel sliced open by two razor blades. A third razor had cut directly into the meat of his heel. The tendon could be severed. Blood oozed out onto the floor.
KA-BAM!
The door jumped in its frame with a sound like a shotgun blast. A frustrated, eerie screech reached a phenomenal pitch as the things on the other side of the door tried to burst their way through.
KA-BAM! BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!
Dr. Braun hopped on his uninjured foot and bounced off the wall for support in order to make it to the end of the corridor. Blood dribbled in his wake, leaving a grisly trail in the flickering light.
The sounds of the door handle jiggling were soon drowned out by the jingling ring of keys as he unlocked the heavy door of patient White.
BOOM!
As Dr. Braun dragged his bad leg into the room and prepared to lock the door, the stairwell door blew open and the broken deadbolt clattered to the tile floor. He drew in ragged breaths and watched a giant, demonic cat head creep around the corne
r of the stairwell door, its black eyes rolling with delight. It sniffed at the pool of his blood on the landing and then lapped at it with its diseased, black tongue. The Mad Hatter crept out of the stairwell and stood fully upright next to the Cheshire Cat, who followed the blood trail to lick up every delicious drop. The Hatter’s red, glowing eyes caught Dr. Braun peeking through the doorway. The fiend giggled, bowed low without breaking eye contact, and doffed his hat and brain. The tips of the shiny blades protruding from his sleeve glistened with the doctor’s blood. Dr. Braun slammed the door shut and twisted the key in the lock.
There she lay on her white pillow, her blanket tucked in perfectly around her. Her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths; her hair lay neatly brushed and arranged on the pillow just as he had left it the night before.
He grabbed the chair, hopped with it to the locked door, and shoved it beneath the door handle. Feverishly he searched the room for anything he could find to jam under it. He found a towel, the nightstand, a pillow; he had lost all sense of reason.
“Mama,” he cried, and grabbed her hand. He pulled the small hand mirror out of its drawer and grasped it tightly in his other, sweaty hand. “Please, mama! If you can hear me, please, oh God! Save me! She’s coming for me!”
Red blood pooled around his shoe on the ebony black and pristine white tile.
He concentrated on the mirror, imagining the beautiful green forest, the blue birds, the thatched cottage. He gripped her hands so tightly that his shook, his skin turning yellow and then white.
A strange silence had fallen upon the sixth floor. Nothing happened.
Hot tears flowed freely now from the trembling man. The great and powerful Braun wept, his world finally at an end.
“She…she’s coming, mama. I’ve made so many mistakes. She’s coming for…For everything…for everything…I’ve done.”
No response came. Mrs. Braun continued to breathe as peacefully as she always had, her eyes closed, her cheeks rosy.
Bedlam Stories Page 16
