Fan Fears: A collection of fear based stories (16 page)

End of the bridge. Just get to the end of the bridge.

It was all he could hope for, all he could wish for. The smart move would have been to run, to flee to the cold Canadian wilderness and hide out there, but he couldn’t do it. Not when he could potentially be responsible for the deaths of countless people.

End of the bridge then.

It was as good a place as any to start. There was a pipe on the ground, a piece of wreckage from his collision with the truck. He picked it up, testing the weight in his hand. It was good. Sturdy, and hopefully enough. More screams came from the city and a fresh crackle of gunfire. Keith picked up his pace and walked towards it.

SUBMITTED FEAR: ROAD RAGE / ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE COMING TRUE

FAN FEAR EIGHT:

SANE

(Submitted by Christina Cooper)

****

I know Christina quite well. Firstly through the personalised story MONSTER that Matt Shaw and I wrote for her, but also because she runs a horror review blog / website and is incredibly supportive of our business. The fear she submitted was interesting, and one which I thought I could do a lot with. I wanted this to be a story about questioning what a person does or doesn’t know to be right, and how easy it is for the human brain to become conditioned to certain circumstances. I was struggling with an ending for this until my wife suggested something that was so perfectly fitting I couldn’t resist.

***

“Just start again from the beginning,” the doctor said, folding his hands as he looked at her.

She looked around the room. Bare concrete walls and floor. Steel table. She wasn’t sure if it was deliberately designed to feel uncomfortable, but it did. “What else do I have to say? You’ve made me go through this already.”

“Let’s just do it again. I’m trying to help you, Lorraine.”

“My name is Christina,” she snapped, sure he was doing it on purpose, yet when she looked into his eyes, she didn’t see any malice or intent. Just concern. “I’m sorry, I just… I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

“I understand. We want to help you. Tell me what happened. We can fix it.”

“I don’t understand what I’m doing here. I don’t know why you keep calling me Lorraine.”

“That’s your name. You’ve been with us for two years now. Don’t you remember?”

She shook her head, giving a desperate glance to the giant orderly at the door. “This makes no sense; I was at home last night buying concert tickets for Courtney. We were booking online for tickets to see her favourite band, and then…I was here.”

The doctor smiled, straddling the balance between humour and empathy with ease. He was in his fifties, his hair salty, eyes blue and kind. “Lorraine, I have to be firm here. You were admitted here two years ago by your daughter. Sarah put you in here for your own good, remember?”

“My daughter’s name is Courtney, and she’s only fourteen. She couldn’t have done that. This isn’t making any sense.”

The doctor took a deep breath. He was obviously used to situations like this. He was calm, frustratingly so. He opened the folder on the desk and took out a photograph. “Sarah gave us this to show you whenever you insisted on this ‘Courtney’ story. This is your daughter.”

The doctor slid the photograph across the table to her. She picked it up and looked at it, then at him. It was of a woman with mousy hair. Unlike the doctor, her eyes were tired and afraid. She looked exhausted.

“I’ve never seen her before; I don’t know who she is.”

“You know, Lorraine. She’s your daughter. The two of you were close. She said to remind you of the camping trip when she was ten.”

“That woman is not related to me,” she said, slamming a fist on the table. “Look at her, she must be a similar age to me in her thirties, do I look old enough to have a daughter of that age? Besides, I’ve never been camping. I don’t like camping. None of this makes any sense.”

“Your daughter is thirty years old,” the doctor said.

“Exactly. I’m only thirty-seven, do I look like I had a kid when I was seven years old? You have to let me out of here, I need to get home and see my family.”

“Fifty-seven, Lorraine. You’re fifty-seven. You were admitted here when you were fifty-five.”

She glanced again at the door, desperate to be free. She hated that there were no windows, and could feel the panic start to grow. She took a deep breath, knowing that ranting and panic would only make things worse. “Look,” she said, replaying the events in her mind. “I think there has been some kind of mistake. I can prove this. It’s easy to prove. You can go online and check. Look at my Facebook page. I run a horror blog and do book reviews. There are people out there who can vouch for me. You can check with my boyfriend, Greg. Get him down here. He’ll tell you, he’ll verify it. We live with his mother, and any one of them can tell you who I am. Just let me out of here.” She knew how desperate she sounded, but it wasn’t something she could control.

The doctor put his palms flat on the table and looked at her. “Do you know my name, Lorraine?”

She shook her head. “Why would I? I never met you before. I don’t know you, don’t know where I am. None of this makes any sense to me.”

“My name is Doctor Goodfellow. You and I first talked around fifteen months ago after your last doctor retired. Do you remember Doctor Harris?”

“No, please stop asking me these questions. You have the wrong person, I don’t know anything, and I don’t know who you are, what I’m doing here or where I am. All I know is that I was at home last night then when I woke up I was here talking to you about people I don’t know. What else is there to say?”

“Calm down.”

“You fucking calm down,” she snapped. “My daughter needs to go to school, I need to be there. You can’t keep me here, you have no right. I demand to leave. I don’t give consent.”

“Lorraine-”

“It’s Christina!”

The doctor glanced at the orderly by the door who stood a little straighter as he watched the proceedings unfolding.

Goodfellow cleared his throat and looked at the woman again. “It’s important that you relax. I know you want to go home, and that’s what I’m trying to help you with. But you have to control these delusions. You need to take back your grip on reality.”

“It’s you who needs to get a grip. I know who I am. I know my name, I know my family and my life. This place, you people, I don’t know. So just let me out of here right now.”

“Legally, you have no right to leave.”

She glared at him across the table, the words taking a while to sink in. “You can’t just keep me here. I don’t give consent.”

“Your daughter had you incarcerated here for your own safety. She has given the necessary consent.” 

“She can’t have given consent she’s only-” She stopped talking, knowing that everything she said made her look more and more unhinged. She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m not insane. I know who I am. You have to believe me.”

Goodfellow smiled and nodded to the orderly by the door, who in turn relaxed. “Very good. Then please, from the top. Tell me what happened.”

She took a breath, wishing there was a window, anything so she could see outside of the cold concrete room. She looked instead at her hands, her nails chewed down to the fingertips. She let her mind drift back to the previous evening, everything so clear that there could be no question it was correct. “Courtney came home from school and asked for concert tickets. Greg and I didn’t mind her going, so we were looking on the internet. It was her favourite band, you see. Five Seconds of Summer, they are called. We found the tickets and was about to order them, but Courtney wanted to see how many of her friends were going. I had a headache, so Greg said he would deal with buying the tickets if I wanted to go and have a nap.”

“And what happened then?”

“I did exactly that. I went upstairs and slept. When I woke up, I was here in that room with the cot and no windows. The door was locked.” She started to cry, hating how weak it made her look but unable to stop. Goodfellow offered no sympathy or words of encouragement. He watched her, hands folded on the table.

“What else do you remember?” he asked.

“I told you, I don’t know anything else. I’m sitting here listening to you tell me I’m not who I say I am. You need to let me out of here. You need to let me go home.”

“This is your home, Lorraine. At least for the time being.”

“Stop calling me that, please. My name is Christina. I don’t know any Lorraine.”

“This is why we need to get through this together,” Goodfellow replied, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “I have worked here in this hospital for the last fifteen years. Never have I experienced such delusions as yours. We’ve done tests, and you truly believe you are this Christina persona.”

“That’s me, that’s who I am, I don’t understand any of this.” She was sobbing again, her eyes stinging and making Goodfellow appear as a blurred thing across the table.

“We don’t either. Which is why we will work together to fix it and put it right. The sooner you stop seeing me as your enemy, Lorraine, the sooner I can help you.”

“My name is Christina,” she screamed, lurching for the door. The orderly was on her in seconds, wrapping his massive arms around her and restraining her. She screamed, so loud and with such ferocity it hurt her throat. She glared at Goodfellow who seemed positively unmoved by her outburst. She wondered as she watched him replace the papers in the brown folder he had brought with him if screams were the natural soundtrack to a place like this. She felt a sharp sting in her arm and flinched away, staring down at the needle hanging from her skin. She wanted to scream again, but someone, it seemed, had placed heavy weights onto her eyelids. She felt consciousness leave her, and was out before she hit the ground.

TWO

That first night was the worst. In that room, its white walls padded to protect the inhabitant from injuring themselves. The cot was functional, designed not for comfort, but with stability in mind. It was attached to the wall. She had lay there on her side, screaming for her family until her throat was ravaged and the words would no longer present themselves. Nobody came to aid her or offer her comfort. Eventually, she fell into a nightmare filled half sleep. She was roused by activity in her room as ghostly faced orderlies approached her and injected her with something that took all her worries away.

Time ceased to matter.

The next time she regained consciousness, she was in a recreational room with large windows looking out over lush gardens. It would be almost beautiful if not for the bars. She had been dressed in clothes reminiscent of surgical scrubs, a pale blue two piece of trousers and t-shirt along with slip-on laceless pumps. There were others in the room with her, fellow patients, although, unlike her, they seemed like they belonged there. She saw a girl standing in the corner counting out loud and hopping on one foot. There two boys by one of the other windows, one of them telling his friend, Jasper, that the crows couldn’t get him anymore and that they couldn’t talk to him. She looked at them, brain still a warm, fuzzy, medication induced soup and wondered how she had found herself in such a horrible place. She was sure by now Greg would be looking for her. She would have been reported missing. Courtney would be scared. She started to tremble and although she fought against them, the tears came, warming her cheeks and leaving a dark spot where they soaked into the material of her t-shirt as they fell from her cheeks. Someone approached her, a face she recognised from somewhere. It took a while for her to sift through the soup in her mind to place him as the orderly from the room who had restrained her. He stood in front of her, massive arms at his side, keychain dangling from his belt.

“Doctor Goodfellow would like to speak with you. Can I trust you to behave if I take you to him?”

She looked at him, his face blurring as she tried to focus. “What have you given me? I can’t think,” she said, aware she was slurring her words.

“Your medication. The same stuff you’ve been on for the last couple of years. Now I’ll ask again. Can you be trusted to behave or do I have to have you restrained?”

“I’ll behave. I don’t belong here. You’ll see. You’ll all lose your jobs over this.”

If her words bothered him, he didn’t show it. Instead, he grabbed her by the arm and gently pulled her to her feet. “Just relax,” he said as he led her across the room. “Everything will be alright if you just relax.”

She let him lead her, unsure if the lack of fight was due to the medication in her bloodstream or the hopelessness of the situation. She was taken down a corridor with more barred windows and security doors with keypads, and into the same room as before. It was as if Goodfellow had never left. He was in the same place, wearing the same tan suit, brown folder in front of him. He smiled as she entered and took her seat opposite him.

“How are you feeling today?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. Already she missed the windows and the view, even despite the bars. The artificial light in this room made the shadows look ugly and unnatural.

Goodfellow cleared his throat and folded his hands on the table. “Do you recall our conversation yesterday?”

His words were slow to register, her responses to them taking an age to process. “Yes,” she slurred.

Goodfellow looked to the orderly. “What’s wrong with her? How much medication have you given her?”

“They usual amount, Doctor Goodfellow. She seems to be having a bad reaction to it, which is strange considering the tolerance she should have by now.”

Goodfellow nodded and turned his attention back to his patient. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s alright, I’m not supposed to be here anyway,” she replied, laughing as she said it. Goodfellow waited until she grew silent, then went on.

“Yesterday, you talked about reaching out to your family. Your friends. Those who will vouch for you.”