At age fifteen, Karen Bowerson woke up in her bedroom and started screaming. When he parents ran in, she pointed at the ceiling over her head and yelled, "the faces! The faces!" She cowered in fear.
Her father looked at the ceiling and saw no faces. He looked at his wife and then back to his daughter. "Karen-" He said, and she shrieked again. His voice, instead of the calming tenor she had grown up with, was a vibrating, splintering, chorus of her name, echoing from her father's many mouths. She looked at her parents and fell off her bed, pushing herself away, feeling the future splinters from the hardwood floor on her feet and hands. Her parents dripped, running across the room as they stepped closer. She pulled herself into a corner, tasting the fear in her mouth, feeling the mountains and caverns of the formerly-smooth wall behind her, waving her hands in the air and feeling each particle – each mote of dust, microbe, flake of dead skin.
Her parents glanced at each other worriedly. They knew what was going on. Drugs. They didn't know what kind, or how, but their crystal-clear daughter had been given some, and urged to take it. By a boy, by a bully, by a friend. When her mother put her hand on Karen's head, the girl bellowed, crying, feeling the tears tear hot trails down her cheeks – her mother's calming hand had been a claw rending her skin.
The smell of pancakes from the kitchen gagged her. Her father's aftershave strangled her. The light clothes hanging on her shaking frame were certainly built of rusted iron, the way they dug through her.
Mother called an ambulance. Father stayed with her, trying to comfort her any way he could, but his words made her cry; even moving made her weep. She tore the clothes from her body and huddled in a corner, naked and shaking. Her hands curled into loose fists against her collarbone. The hair lying on her shoulder pulled on her scalp. When she blinked – to try and block out the colors and faces her bedroom had become – they felt as if they plunged into her cheeks, leaving bloody marks. Her father shifting his weight from one foot to the other drew sandpaper across a blackboard.
She had to be restrained to get her into the ambulance. The men dressed in blue tied her to a bed with red-hot cords and sped to the hospital. The siren wailed at her endlessly. Her parents talked, adding their choruses to the attack. The ambulance's flashing lights cast white shadow in whorls.
They tortured her in the bleeding-white rooms. She felt things inside her body, spreading through her bloodstream. Spears through her arm. Lights of all colors shone into her brain. A constant rising and falling hum deafened her. She tasted dying flesh and smelled millions of entities in the air, trying to get into her body and kill her, melt her into the base elements made to form her – into dust and ash, she tasted those as the reds and blues and greens she knew were replaced by new vibrancy, coming to form beings stretching out their tongues at her, covered in hair and eyes, standing alongside her, inside her, looking out from her.
"Does she have a history of drugs?" Doctor Peter Mael asked Luke and Maria Bowerson in the hallway outside Karen's room. Their daughter was – at last – sleeping. It was not a peaceful sleep. Until the drugs had taken hold of her at least, the girl had screamed and fought, babbling about faces, colors. The words had chilled Doctor Mael.
"No!" Maria said. "Never! She knew better! What is it? Meth? Cocaine?"
Doctor Mael looked at his chart. It was painfully empty of help. "We won't know until her blood toxicity report comes back. I can tell you this: I have never seen a reaction like hers to any drug, and I have been treating overdoses for over twenty years."
"How long will the report take?" Luke Bowerson asked.
"Days. Weeks. Months. It depends on whether or not there really is anything strange in your daughter's bloodstream, and what it could be."
When the report came back, Mael opened it eagerly. A week had passed since the girl had been put inside the hospital, and she needed to be medicated on a constant basis. Mael had attempted to speak with her about what she was experiencing – she treated his gentle words as if they were foul curses. She had not died. Her vitals had not changed. Her situation had not improved. She was the same as when she had been given to the hospital.
The report was empty. No drugs--save what appeared to be a popular energy drink. Mael doubted it was the cause. He picked up the telephone and taped in the number for the girl's parents.
"There is nothing," he told them. "She's clean. There's been no change. Somehow her very existence causes her terrible pain." He paused. "I've never seen anything like this.
"But...she seems to be in no mortal danger. I promise you, I'll do what I can to help her." The Bowersons thanked him, and he hung up.
Something Mael had never encountered was happening to the girl. Her body seemed to be in perfect working order. Her mind--whatever frenzied information they could scrape from it while she slept--told them nothing out of the ordinary. Reports came back clean. Vitals were stable. The only thing he could say for certain is something caused her pain.
When Mael had tried to speak with her, she'd withered at his words. He'd tried whispering, but it didn't matter. It wasn't even as if he was speaking too loudly--she seemed to be hearing things not said. She refused to open her eyes. She kept trying to pull her clothes off of her body and throw the sheets from her bed away. She didn't want to touch anything. Her mouth seemed bolted shut. He remembered her nostrils flaring repeatedly as her shaking body brought in air the only way it had left.
Sensory processing disorder, but in no way he had seen. It was a first step, at least. He picked up the phone and dialed the parents once more. "There is something I'd like to try, if you'll permit me."
He recruited a nurse and an orderly to help him with her room. They took a heavy sheet and blocked out the sun, and removed the bulbs from the fluorescent light above her. They brought in a tub lined with soft materials and filled it with warm water. They adjusted the machines attached to her to produce no sound.
With help, the girl was stripped and gently settled into the tub of water. With the nurse and orderly present, they blocked out all light from the hallway. A number of other doctors were gathered outside, suggesting more changes. Add a clean oxygen pump, soundproof the walls, produce as little noise as possible. Their fervor grew until Mael had to silence them and shut the door to her room, throwing them into darkness.
He laid a hand on the nurse's shoulder, telling her to allow Karen to wake. The lights from her monitors were shaded, able to be seen only by the nurse. The orderly stood in a corner behind the girl, should restraint be required. Doctor Mael sat in front of the girl, in a chair, and waited for her come around.
His heart leapt when her heard the sound of her splashing, feeling the water, and then the screaming began again. He heard water slopped onto the tiled floor, and the sound of her banging the tub. It was as if his changes had been for nothing. He was about to tell the nurse to put her to sleep once more when, to his surprise, the screaming died to a whimpering sob. He leaned forward, speaking as quietly as he possibly could. In the heavy, warm quiet, he could barely detect his own voice. "Karen."
"What are you?" She asked, and the nurse gasped. The girl's voice sounded as if it had come from everywhere. "Which one are you?"
Again speaking in his nearly-inaudible voice, he continued. "I am Doctor Peter Mael. You're in the hospital. You can hear me?"
"Of course I can hear you!" The girl shouted, anger and fright and dismay filling her words. "I can hear everything!"
"And can you see me?"
"I'm not sure which one you are."
"Karen, there is no visible light in the room. It is total darkness. How can you see me?"
He heard only the sound of water splashing. The girl sniffed. "I-I don't know. I don't know! I can see so much! I can see everything! I can see the nurse! I can see the people outside the room! I can see the man in the corner behind me! I can see all the things standing behind you!"
It was the orderlie's turn to gasp. Terror clenched Mael's stomach and he turned his head. There was only darkness. "There are only three of us in the room, Karen," he whispered.
"They're everywhere!" The girl continued, as if she hadn't heard him. "The lines!"
She lapsed into silence, but Mael seemed to hear her put her hands over her eyes, her ears, her mouth. Breath whistled in and out of her nose. A stifled sob leaked out.
He tried to calm his pounding heart. "Karen. I want you to try and describe what you are experiencing. Can you try?"
"Please..." the girl said weakly, and Mael nearly heard her lip trembling in the quiet. "Don't all talk at once."
"I am the only one speaking, Karen," he said, trying to make his voice even quieter, trying to not let his unease be heard.
In the darkness she shook her head, eyes and mouth shut, hands over her ears, feeling her face tunnel through the chemicals and dust hanging in the air. "They're all talking."
Doctor Mael suddenly felt very trapped.
The nurse ran for the door, spooked. The light revealed Karen huddled in the center of the tub, trying not to let the sides touch her, head down, hands pressed over her ears and fingers splayed wide over her head as if she had fins. The sound from the hallway made her jump and scream, tongue jabbing out of her mouth. Tears rained in the tub from her suspended face. Goosebumps rose on her back and arms and she screamed louder.
"Sedate her!" Mael ordered, and then saw Karen had disconnected the lines leading to her – even pulled the fluid feeder from her hand. "Help me!" He called into the hallway, panicking as the girl shrieked. Two more doctors ran into the room and were able to reconnect the girl and get her calmed down. She was once again dressed and placed in her bed. She had not yet fallen fully asleep, and as light restraints were placed on her, Mael saw her reach a hand up. He stopped another doctor from strapping the hand down, and watched the girl try and bat at something he could not see.
"Advances were made," Mael told her parents over the phone an hour later. "We were able to communicate with her...the things she said are not what I would call helpful, however. Yet I am hopeful. She heard us and was able to respond, despite the strange manner of the things she said." He listened. "No, there has been no other change." He paused. "The sensory deprivation worked to a degree, and I believe we could use it to help her. I know of a hospital in another city with a sensory deprivation tank. It shuts out all light, and sound, and allows the user to float in water. She will have to be notified of it before-hand...allowing her to wake up in what I assume will be an utterly quiet and dark place, with no explanation, would certainly be a terrible shock."
He listened again. "Thank you. Yes, I will certainly tell her so. Goodbye."
Doctor Mael leaned back in his desk chair. His pounding heart had calmed down; an empty cup of coffee, drained through shaking lips, was on the desk in front of him. He brought out his rolodex and rifled through it until he found the correct number. Contacting the hospital with the deprivation tank, he explained the strange situation of Karen Bowerson, and asked if an addition to the tank was possible.
After the call, he sat limply, staring at the ceiling, wondering what to do next. He had other patients to attend to, paperwork. He hadn't eaten in over twelve hours. He remembered the conversation with Karen and took a deep breath to steady himself. It would have to happen again.
He went about seeing his other patients. Mundane cases of substance abuse or trauma compared to the girl who saw too much.
In a few more hours he and two more doctors recreated her dark, quiet room, posting people outside the room to silence passers-by. The nurse who had spoiled the first attempt was told to be elsewhere. Again the room was made black, sound blocked, as little as possible. Mael experienced a sickening feeling of weightlessness when the last of the light was turned off. Mael told one of the other doctors to allow the girl to wake up. She was again in her tub.
The lines to her body had been disconnected to save her the trouble, so when she awoke, all Mael heard were a few splashes. Despite the dark, he felt he could see her clearly: small body in the center of the tub, not touching the sides, hands over her ears and eyes slammed shut, face looking down at her knobbly knees.
"Karen," Mael said in the quiet voice. He heard her jerk her body; water splashed over the side of the tub onto the floor; she whimpered and his heart broke for her. "Do you remember me, Doctor Peter Mael?" No answer. "I may have a way to help you. There is something called a sensory deprivation chamber in another hospital. No sound or light. You float in a vat of water." He waited to see if she would say anything. "Would you like that?"
Her words about the things behind him came to mind and the skin on the back of his neck prickled as if something breathed on it.
"Karen," he said. "I will only do it if you allow me. I believe it will be able to help you."
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
"I must ask you for something. During your time in the chamber, try and understand everything that is happening. There will be a microphone picking up your voice while you are inside. Describe what it is you experience. It will be able to help us. Karen."
The sound of her name elicited a response from her. "Do you agree?"
"Yes." From the sound of her voice the girl could barely get herself to say even the single word. Mael heard dire effort and pain.
"The next time you wake up while be in the other hospital. We will put you back to sleep now. Keep your eyes shut and try not to struggle." The words, in any other context, would have sounded as evidence for a crime. He took a small flashlight and helped one of the other doctors replace the fluid tube and put the girl back to sleep. As the room returned to normal, Mael realized his heart was pounding. He wondered if she had been able to hear it.
"Tomorrow," he told the doctors waiting outside the room. "We'll move the girl to Thecho SCE, and see how she responds to the sensory deprivation chamber." He took a breath and saw the room swim in front of him. "Now I need to rest."
The next morning Mael and two other doctors rode in an ambulance as Karen was ferried from one hospital to the other. He had slept little; the dreams he did have were filled with strange images, forgotten the moment he woke up. He kept his eyes on the girl drugged into endless sleep on the gurney in front of him. Her vitals remained strong as always, but he was not surprised. He took her hand and turned it up, looking at the tips of her fingers and smooth palm, inspecting the pink skin. It appeared to be nothing more than the fine, youthful skin of someone entering physical adulthood.
I can see all the things standing behind you. What could she have meant by such a thing? What could she have perceived? Her senses had become so finely tuned as to see nonexistent things. Was it her brain, painting pictures with colors only she could see? In the darkness, did her own personal light show her things no one else recognized? He carefully put her hand back the way it had lain, and looked at her face. Noticing something and sitting forward, he gingerly eased her eyelid open. A tear spilled down her cheek, soaking into the pillow under her.
Mael sat back as the ambulance pulled into the bay of Thecho SCE. Karen was taken to a room while the sensory deprivation chamber was prepared; her parents arrived shortly after. They sat, and Mael went into full detail about what would happen.
"As I told you, the earlier attempt at limiting sensory information seemed to help her. Hopefully, this will allow her to take stock of the changes to herself."
"What if she doesn't know?" Luke Bowerson asked. "What if she can't tell?"
"I think she'll be able to tell," Mael replied. "They are adding a microphone to the tank as we speak. I have instructed her to tell us everything she can about her experience. What she sees, what she hears, what she feels – everything."
"But you said there would be no light, or sound," Maria said.
Mael inhaled slowly. I can see all the things standing behind you. "To us, perhaps." He leaned forward, unsure what to say next. "Your daughter...Karen seems to have extra-sensory perception. ESP. It's called a sixth sense, but it means many different things. Sometimes it means x-ray vision, or clairvoyance. I have nothing to back this up, no sort of data...but it seems your daughter--over the span of a single night--has developed a range of senses far beyond our own. At least hearing, sight, and touch. Smell and taste are harder to verify, not to mention senses such as equilibrium, thermoception, nociception--the sensation of pain--proprioception--the relative position of the body."
"How do you know this?" Mr. Bowerson said.
Mael rubbed his hands together, staring at the ground between his feet. He felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. "She said a number of things to us in the dark room. I will not mince words; they scared us. A nurse was frightened enough to ruin the experiment. She told us there were things in the room with us...we did not see them. My voice, despite a near-inaudible whisper, seemed deafening to her, and she asked us to stop all talking at once. She went so far as to pull out the feeding tube in her hand; I believe it caused her severe discomfort."
"And you're sure it isn't drugs?" Mrs. Bowerson asked.
"You have searched her room?" Mael asked, telling himself not to get angry. They were only trying to help. "Told her friends of her plight? Asked them, begged them, to come forward with any information to help her? Offered clemency in exchange, if only your daughter could be healed?" He stared them down. Maria nodded, hands going to teary eyes. "And?"
"Nothing," Luke said. "Nobody knew anything. She didn't even go out the night before. Just stayed in and did her homework."
"What about something mental?" Mrs. Bowerson asked. "Psychosis?"
"Is that something you want?!" Mael said, voice growing. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I apologize. Surely, you don't wish a debilitating and oft-incurable condition on your daughter?"
"No," Maria said, cowed.
"No mental illness has ever presented the way your daughter acts," Mael continued. "As far as I know. Perhaps in some corner of the world there is another person with the same symptoms, but I have heard nothing. I don't know much, but perhaps we will learn more when she is inside the tank." Mael looked up. "Speaking of."
A native doctor waited in the doorway, and told Mael the tank was prepared to his specifications. "We'll go to your daughter now."
He took them to the room where Karen slept. She had lost weight, and her mother went to her side upon seeing her. Her father turned to Mael. "There is nothing else you can do?" Luke asked.
"There may be," Mael said quietly, as Maria sat be her daughter. "I cannot promise you anything. As it is, if we cannot understand her infirmity, we will not be able to help her."
Luke nodded, and Mael snapped his fingers at a nurse. "After me, please," he told the parents.
Mael, Luke, Maria, and a dozen other doctors, all talking seriously, chins in their hands and brows furrowed, stood inside a room with what appeared to be a covered hot tub. A hatch was open, and aside from muted sounds of water rising from it, the hole appeared to go down forever into nothing. Karen sat in a wheelchair, asleep, but she would be waking up in moments. Quickly, she would be reminded of her task and lowered into the tank.
As the girl began to stir, her whimpering grew, and her parents held on to each other to keep from rushing to her and taking her away from this place. Mael knelt in front of the wheelchair as Karen's senses began to pick up. "Karen," he whispered. The lights were down and the others in the room had been instructed to make as little noise as possible.
Karen's eyes pulled open as if to let them spill from her head. Her hands shot to her ears and her lips split, curling. Her pupils danced around Mael's head until landing somewhere on his nose. "Do you remember what I asked you?"
Shutting her eyes, trembling, she nodded. "We will lower you into the tank now. We'll be able to hear you inside. If you need help or want to stop, tell us. Otherwise, just say what you experience. Do you understand?" She nodded again, still shaking – as if cold, and about to be let into the warmth. "Then come with me."
The girl was shown the open hatch for the tank. She wore the swimsuit her parents had brought with them; even the thin material looked as if it was cutting wounds into her skin from her reaction to it. With Mael's help, Karen went into the tank, finding the water and floating in it. With another doctor's help, Mael closed and sealed the tank, shutting out all light and sound.
They retreated to where the others stood, where the microphone was attached to a speaker. From the grated surface came the sounds of water in a closed space, and the girl's frenzied breathing.
"She...won't suffocate, will she?" Maria asked. Mael shook his head. "You're sure she's safe?"
Before Mael could answer the girl began speaking.
"Is it supposed to be dark inside here?" She asked. She waited, but those outside the tank had no way to respond. "I can still see."
The doctors present exchanged surprised looks. "It should be fully sealed," one of the doctors said. "Maybe we did it wrong."
"I can still see," the girl repeated, and her tone told everyone she was responding to what the doctor had said. "But it's strange. The light looks sort of like it's red or purple or something like that."
"Karen," Mael said. "Can you hear us?"
"Yes."
Those present muttered to themselves about what they had done wrong, but Mael held up his hand for silence. "How do you feel?"
A long silence. They heard the water lapping. "I don't like it," Karen said at last. They waited for her to say more. Eventually, they heard sniffing. The girl was crying. "There's so much." Her voice cracked. "I don't understand it all. I know I'm not supposed to be able to hear you, or see anything...I know I'm supposed to be alone in here."
Mael felt a shiver down his spine. Maria put her hands to her mouth. "I don't know what I'm seeing. I don't think they're real. They're watching me." Her voice had dropped back down under her control for the moment. "Covered in eyes that see the same things I do. When I was awake before...there was too much for me to look at, or smell, or touch, or taste. The hearing was the worst. Everyone who spoke to me sounded like a hundred people talking at once. I think the things in here with me were making sounds too."
Mael took a deep breath. "Karen, what do the things in there look like?"
They waited for her to respond. Mael could tell both of her parents longed to open the hatch and retrieve her; their bodies leaned towards it, but they kept themselves rooted. A minute had passed since the question was asked.
"I don't know," she said at last. "I can't touch them." Another pause, shorter this time. "What's it like to describe a color no one else can see?" Another pause. "They...shimmer, sort of. It kind of looks like they're covered in gauze, but-" her voice cut off suddenly, and they heard water splash. Luke and Maria gasped. They heard nothing.
"Karen," Mael said. "Are you still there?"
After some time had passed--during which Mael became tenser as he imagined her drowning--she responded. "They said something to me."
"The things inside with you?" Mael asked. "Could you understand them?"
"I...yes. I don't think they spoke English, though. They just...spoke. They're speaking again."
They waited. Mael began counting his breaths and got over one hundred before they heard crying from the tank. "Karen!" Her mother shouted. Mael made a motion to bring her volume down.
The girl couldn't stop crying. She sobbed unhindered. "Karen," Mael whispered. He felt as if he was chained to where he stood in front of the speaker. He felt even getting her out of the tank would only increase her emotion. He felt there was nothing to be done for her, no way to help her.
"I can hear them." She shouted. "They're all talking! They're all trying to tell me something!" They heard splashing, and bumps came from the speaker and the tank in front of them. "They're all inside! They're all here! They're coming through the walls! They're inside me! They're inside!"
"Karen. Karen! Tell us what's happening!"
"They're all talking at once! They're all trying to talk to me! Stop! Stop!"
Finally her mother broke away, running for the tank. Mael intercepted her as her daughter yelled. "Stop yelling! Stop! Please stop!" Maria fell limp in his arms, pressing her wet face into this shoulder, arms trying to reach around him to her daughter. "I can still hear them when I cover my ears!" Karen shouted. "I can still see things when I close my eyes! I can still feel things on my skin even when I'm floating! I can taste the air, and the metal, and the water! STOP SHOUTING AT ME!" The girl screamed, making the speaker squeal. "GET AWAY FROM ME!"
"Let her out!" Luke Bowerson shouted. "They're killing her!"
"Don't let him near the tank!" Mael ordered, handing Karen's mother off to another doctor. "Karen, hear me. Are they hurting you?"
"There's too much! Too much!" The girl shouted. "They keep making noises! I shouldn't be able to hear them but I do! They're trying to tell me things but they're talking all at once...thousands of them all speaking at once!"
"Are they hurting you, Karen?"
"My head's going to split!" The girl screamed.
"Get her out of there!" Mr. Bowerson shouted.
"No!"
The word from the speaker sent the room into silence. Mael felt his body reaching to free her, but they waited for her to say something else.
Her crying had stopped. Instead, they heard labored panting, as if the girl had just escaped drowning. The breathing began to slow. Mael closed his eyes and saw a jumping heartrate monitor returning to a normal speed. The sound of the water, pounding against the edge of the tank, died.
"Karen?" Her mother said quietly.
Nothing new came from the speaker.
Is she even still inside? Mael thought. His eyes drifted to the tank. Has it become her tomb?
The voice made them jump. "Let me out."
Mael and the other doctors ran to release the latch on the tank. Light split the darkness and showed them the girl's face, inverted, staring out unblinking. Mael reached in despite the almost electric feeling the tank seemed to possess, taking her hand and helping her out. In a moment the girl stood on her own two feet for the first time in over a week, eyes closed and hands hanging by her thighs.
Her mother stepped closer, reaching a shaking hand out. "Karen?"
Her eyes opened and drew in the woman. Her face began to change, and Mael knew she would begin to scream again.
But it was laughter. A smile, where before only a shocked and painful grimace had been, took her lips up and revealed her teeth. She stumbled forward, arms hanging like an undead body, wet and tangled hair draped down her shoulders, pale skin nearly glowing in the light, and collided with her mother, laughing, and crying, and griping Maria's body tight. The mother cried and hugged her daughter, believing it was all over.
"But it isn't all over, is it, Karen?" Mael asked the girl, a few hours later, in her room. They were alone for a moment; her parents had taken to their phones, telling family and friends their daughter was finally better. "Karen?"
She shook her head, looking at the floor. She sat in bed, dried off, appearing warm and comfortable in the bed, but Doctor Mael saw her hands sometimes stray to her ears, her eyes sometimes stay closed, her limbs writhe under the material of the sheets. "But you are better?"
"Better." She looked at him and smiled.
"Will you tell me what happened?"
She shook her head again. "I want to, I just can't. I don't know how to explain it."
"Like describing a color no one else has seen," Mael remembered. She nodded. "Tell me the truth if you can...where there other things inside the tank with you?"
"Yeah. I remember them. There were a lot of them."
"We certainly got that impression. You told us they said things to you."
"They helped me figure out what was happening to me," she said. "I don't know how, but I understood it." She put her hands to her head. "They helped me focus."
"And how do you feel now?"
"My head hurts. A lot." Her fingertips brushed her scalp. "But..." She looked at him again, and her smile broke through. "I think I finally understand."
"And what is it you understand?" Mael asked.
Karen Bowerson looked past him, at those populating the halls beyond him and her, the songs they sang on the air they could not breathe, the touch of the people they could not feel. The crowd of ghosts – of creatures humans could not, would not see – watching her. "I'll have to ask them."
Doctor Mael watched Karen and her parents walk to the car. The family was elated--a crises had past. Just before they stepped out of sight Karen took her hand from her mother's, and saw her stretch out her hand, to touch something he could not see. "Come on Karen!" Her father said. "How about some Dairy Queen on the way?"
"Okay," Karen said, smiling, looking at the thing holding her hand, covered in eyes and hair and smiling back at her.
Her father looked at the ceiling and saw no faces. He looked at his wife and then back to his daughter. "Karen-" He said, and she shrieked again. His voice, instead of the calming tenor she had grown up with, was a vibrating, splintering, chorus of her name, echoing from her father's many mouths. She looked at her parents and fell off her bed, pushing herself away, feeling the future splinters from the hardwood floor on her feet and hands. Her parents dripped, running across the room as they stepped closer. She pulled herself into a corner, tasting the fear in her mouth, feeling the mountains and caverns of the formerly-smooth wall behind her, waving her hands in the air and feeling each particle – each mote of dust, microbe, flake of dead skin.
Her parents glanced at each other worriedly. They knew what was going on. Drugs. They didn't know what kind, or how, but their crystal-clear daughter had been given some, and urged to take it. By a boy, by a bully, by a friend. When her mother put her hand on Karen's head, the girl bellowed, crying, feeling the tears tear hot trails down her cheeks – her mother's calming hand had been a claw rending her skin.
The smell of pancakes from the kitchen gagged her. Her father's aftershave strangled her. The light clothes hanging on her shaking frame were certainly built of rusted iron, the way they dug through her.
Mother called an ambulance. Father stayed with her, trying to comfort her any way he could, but his words made her cry; even moving made her weep. She tore the clothes from her body and huddled in a corner, naked and shaking. Her hands curled into loose fists against her collarbone. The hair lying on her shoulder pulled on her scalp. When she blinked – to try and block out the colors and faces her bedroom had become – they felt as if they plunged into her cheeks, leaving bloody marks. Her father shifting his weight from one foot to the other drew sandpaper across a blackboard.
She had to be restrained to get her into the ambulance. The men dressed in blue tied her to a bed with red-hot cords and sped to the hospital. The siren wailed at her endlessly. Her parents talked, adding their choruses to the attack. The ambulance's flashing lights cast white shadow in whorls.
They tortured her in the bleeding-white rooms. She felt things inside her body, spreading through her bloodstream. Spears through her arm. Lights of all colors shone into her brain. A constant rising and falling hum deafened her. She tasted dying flesh and smelled millions of entities in the air, trying to get into her body and kill her, melt her into the base elements made to form her – into dust and ash, she tasted those as the reds and blues and greens she knew were replaced by new vibrancy, coming to form beings stretching out their tongues at her, covered in hair and eyes, standing alongside her, inside her, looking out from her.
"Does she have a history of drugs?" Doctor Peter Mael asked Luke and Maria Bowerson in the hallway outside Karen's room. Their daughter was – at last – sleeping. It was not a peaceful sleep. Until the drugs had taken hold of her at least, the girl had screamed and fought, babbling about faces, colors. The words had chilled Doctor Mael.
"No!" Maria said. "Never! She knew better! What is it? Meth? Cocaine?"
Doctor Mael looked at his chart. It was painfully empty of help. "We won't know until her blood toxicity report comes back. I can tell you this: I have never seen a reaction like hers to any drug, and I have been treating overdoses for over twenty years."
"How long will the report take?" Luke Bowerson asked.
"Days. Weeks. Months. It depends on whether or not there really is anything strange in your daughter's bloodstream, and what it could be."
When the report came back, Mael opened it eagerly. A week had passed since the girl had been put inside the hospital, and she needed to be medicated on a constant basis. Mael had attempted to speak with her about what she was experiencing – she treated his gentle words as if they were foul curses. She had not died. Her vitals had not changed. Her situation had not improved. She was the same as when she had been given to the hospital.
The report was empty. No drugs--save what appeared to be a popular energy drink. Mael doubted it was the cause. He picked up the telephone and taped in the number for the girl's parents.
"There is nothing," he told them. "She's clean. There's been no change. Somehow her very existence causes her terrible pain." He paused. "I've never seen anything like this.
"But...she seems to be in no mortal danger. I promise you, I'll do what I can to help her." The Bowersons thanked him, and he hung up.
Something Mael had never encountered was happening to the girl. Her body seemed to be in perfect working order. Her mind--whatever frenzied information they could scrape from it while she slept--told them nothing out of the ordinary. Reports came back clean. Vitals were stable. The only thing he could say for certain is something caused her pain.
When Mael had tried to speak with her, she'd withered at his words. He'd tried whispering, but it didn't matter. It wasn't even as if he was speaking too loudly--she seemed to be hearing things not said. She refused to open her eyes. She kept trying to pull her clothes off of her body and throw the sheets from her bed away. She didn't want to touch anything. Her mouth seemed bolted shut. He remembered her nostrils flaring repeatedly as her shaking body brought in air the only way it had left.
Sensory processing disorder, but in no way he had seen. It was a first step, at least. He picked up the phone and dialed the parents once more. "There is something I'd like to try, if you'll permit me."
He recruited a nurse and an orderly to help him with her room. They took a heavy sheet and blocked out the sun, and removed the bulbs from the fluorescent light above her. They brought in a tub lined with soft materials and filled it with warm water. They adjusted the machines attached to her to produce no sound.
With help, the girl was stripped and gently settled into the tub of water. With the nurse and orderly present, they blocked out all light from the hallway. A number of other doctors were gathered outside, suggesting more changes. Add a clean oxygen pump, soundproof the walls, produce as little noise as possible. Their fervor grew until Mael had to silence them and shut the door to her room, throwing them into darkness.
He laid a hand on the nurse's shoulder, telling her to allow Karen to wake. The lights from her monitors were shaded, able to be seen only by the nurse. The orderly stood in a corner behind the girl, should restraint be required. Doctor Mael sat in front of the girl, in a chair, and waited for her come around.
His heart leapt when her heard the sound of her splashing, feeling the water, and then the screaming began again. He heard water slopped onto the tiled floor, and the sound of her banging the tub. It was as if his changes had been for nothing. He was about to tell the nurse to put her to sleep once more when, to his surprise, the screaming died to a whimpering sob. He leaned forward, speaking as quietly as he possibly could. In the heavy, warm quiet, he could barely detect his own voice. "Karen."
"What are you?" She asked, and the nurse gasped. The girl's voice sounded as if it had come from everywhere. "Which one are you?"
Again speaking in his nearly-inaudible voice, he continued. "I am Doctor Peter Mael. You're in the hospital. You can hear me?"
"Of course I can hear you!" The girl shouted, anger and fright and dismay filling her words. "I can hear everything!"
"And can you see me?"
"I'm not sure which one you are."
"Karen, there is no visible light in the room. It is total darkness. How can you see me?"
He heard only the sound of water splashing. The girl sniffed. "I-I don't know. I don't know! I can see so much! I can see everything! I can see the nurse! I can see the people outside the room! I can see the man in the corner behind me! I can see all the things standing behind you!"
It was the orderlie's turn to gasp. Terror clenched Mael's stomach and he turned his head. There was only darkness. "There are only three of us in the room, Karen," he whispered.
"They're everywhere!" The girl continued, as if she hadn't heard him. "The lines!"
She lapsed into silence, but Mael seemed to hear her put her hands over her eyes, her ears, her mouth. Breath whistled in and out of her nose. A stifled sob leaked out.
He tried to calm his pounding heart. "Karen. I want you to try and describe what you are experiencing. Can you try?"
"Please..." the girl said weakly, and Mael nearly heard her lip trembling in the quiet. "Don't all talk at once."
"I am the only one speaking, Karen," he said, trying to make his voice even quieter, trying to not let his unease be heard.
In the darkness she shook her head, eyes and mouth shut, hands over her ears, feeling her face tunnel through the chemicals and dust hanging in the air. "They're all talking."
Doctor Mael suddenly felt very trapped.
The nurse ran for the door, spooked. The light revealed Karen huddled in the center of the tub, trying not to let the sides touch her, head down, hands pressed over her ears and fingers splayed wide over her head as if she had fins. The sound from the hallway made her jump and scream, tongue jabbing out of her mouth. Tears rained in the tub from her suspended face. Goosebumps rose on her back and arms and she screamed louder.
"Sedate her!" Mael ordered, and then saw Karen had disconnected the lines leading to her – even pulled the fluid feeder from her hand. "Help me!" He called into the hallway, panicking as the girl shrieked. Two more doctors ran into the room and were able to reconnect the girl and get her calmed down. She was once again dressed and placed in her bed. She had not yet fallen fully asleep, and as light restraints were placed on her, Mael saw her reach a hand up. He stopped another doctor from strapping the hand down, and watched the girl try and bat at something he could not see.
"Advances were made," Mael told her parents over the phone an hour later. "We were able to communicate with her...the things she said are not what I would call helpful, however. Yet I am hopeful. She heard us and was able to respond, despite the strange manner of the things she said." He listened. "No, there has been no other change." He paused. "The sensory deprivation worked to a degree, and I believe we could use it to help her. I know of a hospital in another city with a sensory deprivation tank. It shuts out all light, and sound, and allows the user to float in water. She will have to be notified of it before-hand...allowing her to wake up in what I assume will be an utterly quiet and dark place, with no explanation, would certainly be a terrible shock."
He listened again. "Thank you. Yes, I will certainly tell her so. Goodbye."
Doctor Mael leaned back in his desk chair. His pounding heart had calmed down; an empty cup of coffee, drained through shaking lips, was on the desk in front of him. He brought out his rolodex and rifled through it until he found the correct number. Contacting the hospital with the deprivation tank, he explained the strange situation of Karen Bowerson, and asked if an addition to the tank was possible.
After the call, he sat limply, staring at the ceiling, wondering what to do next. He had other patients to attend to, paperwork. He hadn't eaten in over twelve hours. He remembered the conversation with Karen and took a deep breath to steady himself. It would have to happen again.
He went about seeing his other patients. Mundane cases of substance abuse or trauma compared to the girl who saw too much.
In a few more hours he and two more doctors recreated her dark, quiet room, posting people outside the room to silence passers-by. The nurse who had spoiled the first attempt was told to be elsewhere. Again the room was made black, sound blocked, as little as possible. Mael experienced a sickening feeling of weightlessness when the last of the light was turned off. Mael told one of the other doctors to allow the girl to wake up. She was again in her tub.
The lines to her body had been disconnected to save her the trouble, so when she awoke, all Mael heard were a few splashes. Despite the dark, he felt he could see her clearly: small body in the center of the tub, not touching the sides, hands over her ears and eyes slammed shut, face looking down at her knobbly knees.
"Karen," Mael said in the quiet voice. He heard her jerk her body; water splashed over the side of the tub onto the floor; she whimpered and his heart broke for her. "Do you remember me, Doctor Peter Mael?" No answer. "I may have a way to help you. There is something called a sensory deprivation chamber in another hospital. No sound or light. You float in a vat of water." He waited to see if she would say anything. "Would you like that?"
Her words about the things behind him came to mind and the skin on the back of his neck prickled as if something breathed on it.
"Karen," he said. "I will only do it if you allow me. I believe it will be able to help you."
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
"I must ask you for something. During your time in the chamber, try and understand everything that is happening. There will be a microphone picking up your voice while you are inside. Describe what it is you experience. It will be able to help us. Karen."
The sound of her name elicited a response from her. "Do you agree?"
"Yes." From the sound of her voice the girl could barely get herself to say even the single word. Mael heard dire effort and pain.
"The next time you wake up while be in the other hospital. We will put you back to sleep now. Keep your eyes shut and try not to struggle." The words, in any other context, would have sounded as evidence for a crime. He took a small flashlight and helped one of the other doctors replace the fluid tube and put the girl back to sleep. As the room returned to normal, Mael realized his heart was pounding. He wondered if she had been able to hear it.
"Tomorrow," he told the doctors waiting outside the room. "We'll move the girl to Thecho SCE, and see how she responds to the sensory deprivation chamber." He took a breath and saw the room swim in front of him. "Now I need to rest."
The next morning Mael and two other doctors rode in an ambulance as Karen was ferried from one hospital to the other. He had slept little; the dreams he did have were filled with strange images, forgotten the moment he woke up. He kept his eyes on the girl drugged into endless sleep on the gurney in front of him. Her vitals remained strong as always, but he was not surprised. He took her hand and turned it up, looking at the tips of her fingers and smooth palm, inspecting the pink skin. It appeared to be nothing more than the fine, youthful skin of someone entering physical adulthood.
I can see all the things standing behind you. What could she have meant by such a thing? What could she have perceived? Her senses had become so finely tuned as to see nonexistent things. Was it her brain, painting pictures with colors only she could see? In the darkness, did her own personal light show her things no one else recognized? He carefully put her hand back the way it had lain, and looked at her face. Noticing something and sitting forward, he gingerly eased her eyelid open. A tear spilled down her cheek, soaking into the pillow under her.
Mael sat back as the ambulance pulled into the bay of Thecho SCE. Karen was taken to a room while the sensory deprivation chamber was prepared; her parents arrived shortly after. They sat, and Mael went into full detail about what would happen.
"As I told you, the earlier attempt at limiting sensory information seemed to help her. Hopefully, this will allow her to take stock of the changes to herself."
"What if she doesn't know?" Luke Bowerson asked. "What if she can't tell?"
"I think she'll be able to tell," Mael replied. "They are adding a microphone to the tank as we speak. I have instructed her to tell us everything she can about her experience. What she sees, what she hears, what she feels – everything."
"But you said there would be no light, or sound," Maria said.
Mael inhaled slowly. I can see all the things standing behind you. "To us, perhaps." He leaned forward, unsure what to say next. "Your daughter...Karen seems to have extra-sensory perception. ESP. It's called a sixth sense, but it means many different things. Sometimes it means x-ray vision, or clairvoyance. I have nothing to back this up, no sort of data...but it seems your daughter--over the span of a single night--has developed a range of senses far beyond our own. At least hearing, sight, and touch. Smell and taste are harder to verify, not to mention senses such as equilibrium, thermoception, nociception--the sensation of pain--proprioception--the relative position of the body."
"How do you know this?" Mr. Bowerson said.
Mael rubbed his hands together, staring at the ground between his feet. He felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. "She said a number of things to us in the dark room. I will not mince words; they scared us. A nurse was frightened enough to ruin the experiment. She told us there were things in the room with us...we did not see them. My voice, despite a near-inaudible whisper, seemed deafening to her, and she asked us to stop all talking at once. She went so far as to pull out the feeding tube in her hand; I believe it caused her severe discomfort."
"And you're sure it isn't drugs?" Mrs. Bowerson asked.
"You have searched her room?" Mael asked, telling himself not to get angry. They were only trying to help. "Told her friends of her plight? Asked them, begged them, to come forward with any information to help her? Offered clemency in exchange, if only your daughter could be healed?" He stared them down. Maria nodded, hands going to teary eyes. "And?"
"Nothing," Luke said. "Nobody knew anything. She didn't even go out the night before. Just stayed in and did her homework."
"What about something mental?" Mrs. Bowerson asked. "Psychosis?"
"Is that something you want?!" Mael said, voice growing. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I apologize. Surely, you don't wish a debilitating and oft-incurable condition on your daughter?"
"No," Maria said, cowed.
"No mental illness has ever presented the way your daughter acts," Mael continued. "As far as I know. Perhaps in some corner of the world there is another person with the same symptoms, but I have heard nothing. I don't know much, but perhaps we will learn more when she is inside the tank." Mael looked up. "Speaking of."
A native doctor waited in the doorway, and told Mael the tank was prepared to his specifications. "We'll go to your daughter now."
He took them to the room where Karen slept. She had lost weight, and her mother went to her side upon seeing her. Her father turned to Mael. "There is nothing else you can do?" Luke asked.
"There may be," Mael said quietly, as Maria sat be her daughter. "I cannot promise you anything. As it is, if we cannot understand her infirmity, we will not be able to help her."
Luke nodded, and Mael snapped his fingers at a nurse. "After me, please," he told the parents.
Mael, Luke, Maria, and a dozen other doctors, all talking seriously, chins in their hands and brows furrowed, stood inside a room with what appeared to be a covered hot tub. A hatch was open, and aside from muted sounds of water rising from it, the hole appeared to go down forever into nothing. Karen sat in a wheelchair, asleep, but she would be waking up in moments. Quickly, she would be reminded of her task and lowered into the tank.
As the girl began to stir, her whimpering grew, and her parents held on to each other to keep from rushing to her and taking her away from this place. Mael knelt in front of the wheelchair as Karen's senses began to pick up. "Karen," he whispered. The lights were down and the others in the room had been instructed to make as little noise as possible.
Karen's eyes pulled open as if to let them spill from her head. Her hands shot to her ears and her lips split, curling. Her pupils danced around Mael's head until landing somewhere on his nose. "Do you remember what I asked you?"
Shutting her eyes, trembling, she nodded. "We will lower you into the tank now. We'll be able to hear you inside. If you need help or want to stop, tell us. Otherwise, just say what you experience. Do you understand?" She nodded again, still shaking – as if cold, and about to be let into the warmth. "Then come with me."
The girl was shown the open hatch for the tank. She wore the swimsuit her parents had brought with them; even the thin material looked as if it was cutting wounds into her skin from her reaction to it. With Mael's help, Karen went into the tank, finding the water and floating in it. With another doctor's help, Mael closed and sealed the tank, shutting out all light and sound.
They retreated to where the others stood, where the microphone was attached to a speaker. From the grated surface came the sounds of water in a closed space, and the girl's frenzied breathing.
"She...won't suffocate, will she?" Maria asked. Mael shook his head. "You're sure she's safe?"
Before Mael could answer the girl began speaking.
"Is it supposed to be dark inside here?" She asked. She waited, but those outside the tank had no way to respond. "I can still see."
The doctors present exchanged surprised looks. "It should be fully sealed," one of the doctors said. "Maybe we did it wrong."
"I can still see," the girl repeated, and her tone told everyone she was responding to what the doctor had said. "But it's strange. The light looks sort of like it's red or purple or something like that."
"Karen," Mael said. "Can you hear us?"
"Yes."
Those present muttered to themselves about what they had done wrong, but Mael held up his hand for silence. "How do you feel?"
A long silence. They heard the water lapping. "I don't like it," Karen said at last. They waited for her to say more. Eventually, they heard sniffing. The girl was crying. "There's so much." Her voice cracked. "I don't understand it all. I know I'm not supposed to be able to hear you, or see anything...I know I'm supposed to be alone in here."
Mael felt a shiver down his spine. Maria put her hands to her mouth. "I don't know what I'm seeing. I don't think they're real. They're watching me." Her voice had dropped back down under her control for the moment. "Covered in eyes that see the same things I do. When I was awake before...there was too much for me to look at, or smell, or touch, or taste. The hearing was the worst. Everyone who spoke to me sounded like a hundred people talking at once. I think the things in here with me were making sounds too."
Mael took a deep breath. "Karen, what do the things in there look like?"
They waited for her to respond. Mael could tell both of her parents longed to open the hatch and retrieve her; their bodies leaned towards it, but they kept themselves rooted. A minute had passed since the question was asked.
"I don't know," she said at last. "I can't touch them." Another pause, shorter this time. "What's it like to describe a color no one else can see?" Another pause. "They...shimmer, sort of. It kind of looks like they're covered in gauze, but-" her voice cut off suddenly, and they heard water splash. Luke and Maria gasped. They heard nothing.
"Karen," Mael said. "Are you still there?"
After some time had passed--during which Mael became tenser as he imagined her drowning--she responded. "They said something to me."
"The things inside with you?" Mael asked. "Could you understand them?"
"I...yes. I don't think they spoke English, though. They just...spoke. They're speaking again."
They waited. Mael began counting his breaths and got over one hundred before they heard crying from the tank. "Karen!" Her mother shouted. Mael made a motion to bring her volume down.
The girl couldn't stop crying. She sobbed unhindered. "Karen," Mael whispered. He felt as if he was chained to where he stood in front of the speaker. He felt even getting her out of the tank would only increase her emotion. He felt there was nothing to be done for her, no way to help her.
"I can hear them." She shouted. "They're all talking! They're all trying to tell me something!" They heard splashing, and bumps came from the speaker and the tank in front of them. "They're all inside! They're all here! They're coming through the walls! They're inside me! They're inside!"
"Karen. Karen! Tell us what's happening!"
"They're all talking at once! They're all trying to talk to me! Stop! Stop!"
Finally her mother broke away, running for the tank. Mael intercepted her as her daughter yelled. "Stop yelling! Stop! Please stop!" Maria fell limp in his arms, pressing her wet face into this shoulder, arms trying to reach around him to her daughter. "I can still hear them when I cover my ears!" Karen shouted. "I can still see things when I close my eyes! I can still feel things on my skin even when I'm floating! I can taste the air, and the metal, and the water! STOP SHOUTING AT ME!" The girl screamed, making the speaker squeal. "GET AWAY FROM ME!"
"Let her out!" Luke Bowerson shouted. "They're killing her!"
"Don't let him near the tank!" Mael ordered, handing Karen's mother off to another doctor. "Karen, hear me. Are they hurting you?"
"There's too much! Too much!" The girl shouted. "They keep making noises! I shouldn't be able to hear them but I do! They're trying to tell me things but they're talking all at once...thousands of them all speaking at once!"
"Are they hurting you, Karen?"
"My head's going to split!" The girl screamed.
"Get her out of there!" Mr. Bowerson shouted.
"No!"
The word from the speaker sent the room into silence. Mael felt his body reaching to free her, but they waited for her to say something else.
Her crying had stopped. Instead, they heard labored panting, as if the girl had just escaped drowning. The breathing began to slow. Mael closed his eyes and saw a jumping heartrate monitor returning to a normal speed. The sound of the water, pounding against the edge of the tank, died.
"Karen?" Her mother said quietly.
Nothing new came from the speaker.
Is she even still inside? Mael thought. His eyes drifted to the tank. Has it become her tomb?
The voice made them jump. "Let me out."
Mael and the other doctors ran to release the latch on the tank. Light split the darkness and showed them the girl's face, inverted, staring out unblinking. Mael reached in despite the almost electric feeling the tank seemed to possess, taking her hand and helping her out. In a moment the girl stood on her own two feet for the first time in over a week, eyes closed and hands hanging by her thighs.
Her mother stepped closer, reaching a shaking hand out. "Karen?"
Her eyes opened and drew in the woman. Her face began to change, and Mael knew she would begin to scream again.
But it was laughter. A smile, where before only a shocked and painful grimace had been, took her lips up and revealed her teeth. She stumbled forward, arms hanging like an undead body, wet and tangled hair draped down her shoulders, pale skin nearly glowing in the light, and collided with her mother, laughing, and crying, and griping Maria's body tight. The mother cried and hugged her daughter, believing it was all over.
"But it isn't all over, is it, Karen?" Mael asked the girl, a few hours later, in her room. They were alone for a moment; her parents had taken to their phones, telling family and friends their daughter was finally better. "Karen?"
She shook her head, looking at the floor. She sat in bed, dried off, appearing warm and comfortable in the bed, but Doctor Mael saw her hands sometimes stray to her ears, her eyes sometimes stay closed, her limbs writhe under the material of the sheets. "But you are better?"
"Better." She looked at him and smiled.
"Will you tell me what happened?"
She shook her head again. "I want to, I just can't. I don't know how to explain it."
"Like describing a color no one else has seen," Mael remembered. She nodded. "Tell me the truth if you can...where there other things inside the tank with you?"
"Yeah. I remember them. There were a lot of them."
"We certainly got that impression. You told us they said things to you."
"They helped me figure out what was happening to me," she said. "I don't know how, but I understood it." She put her hands to her head. "They helped me focus."
"And how do you feel now?"
"My head hurts. A lot." Her fingertips brushed her scalp. "But..." She looked at him again, and her smile broke through. "I think I finally understand."
"And what is it you understand?" Mael asked.
Karen Bowerson looked past him, at those populating the halls beyond him and her, the songs they sang on the air they could not breathe, the touch of the people they could not feel. The crowd of ghosts – of creatures humans could not, would not see – watching her. "I'll have to ask them."
Doctor Mael watched Karen and her parents walk to the car. The family was elated--a crises had past. Just before they stepped out of sight Karen took her hand from her mother's, and saw her stretch out her hand, to touch something he could not see. "Come on Karen!" Her father said. "How about some Dairy Queen on the way?"
"Okay," Karen said, smiling, looking at the thing holding her hand, covered in eyes and hair and smiling back at her.