Sanders walked onto the unit escorted by four counsellors and the department head. Patients followed the parade, joking about welcoming committees. Sanders was jovial; he didn’t visit often, and as chief psychiatrist he wasn’t popular. It didn’t hurt to show his good side whenever possible.
Past the communal area, reinforced doors faced each other across the corridor. Except at the far end, where one stood apart. The counsellors positioned themselves around it according to procedure, while Sanders ran back the slide set at eye level. The latest arrival sat on the safe room’s mattress, his back against the wall. The tearaway johnny was smeared from the hands he’d battered against the door. They were in his lap now, bandaged by the night nurse.
Sanders took out his keys, unlocked the food pass, and stooped.
“Kyle? It’s doctor Sanders. I hear you had a rough night.”
The man tipped his head back against the wall and laughed— a low, humourless sound.
Sanders gave it some room before he said: “Can I share in the joke?”
Without looking down, the man shook his head. “You wouldn’t want to. Trust me.”
“Humor me.”
His gaze descended. Beneath loose black curls, the face was pale and haggard. “I already told you people what I want.”
“You want sleep medication. I can help with that. But first—“
Kyle began to struggle up. “No, it can’t wait. I need—“
There was a beat of silence. Then he shot back, hard enough for his head to bounce off the wall with a dull thud. Sanders saw panic leap to the foreground, pulling the man’s face into a long, narrow mask of bulging eyes and gaping mouth, and managed to retreat a step before the arm flashed through the slot. Kyle’s swaddled hand lashed while he shrieked: “JESUS I NEED GO MAKE ME STAY MAKE IT GO AWAY GET ME OUTTA HERE GET ME OUTTA—“
“Haloperidal,” Sanders muttered over his shoulder.
Sanders followed the nurses up the empty corridor, the sound of soles squeaking on linoleum stirring the skin on his arms and back into gooseflesh.
When the call came, Sanders hadn’t been surprised. All day, he’d kept an eye on the safe room’s security feed. Despite the generous sedative, Kyle had had a rough afternoon. Screaming and pounding on the door had persisted, until Sanders ordered his transfer to isolation—again. It hadn’t helped. Things only quieted once he’d been given his sleep medication. Yet, here he was, at three AM.
He’d come in because the case troubled him. Obviously, Kyle had suffered a psychotic break: a man didn’t attack three strangers on a bus because he had a firm grip on reality. And it wasn’t unusual for delusions to persist, or even escalate, before psychotropics took hold. But watching the footage, Sanders hadn’t failed to notice the abruptness of the episodes. There was no prelude, no heightening agitation. One moment he was calm, the next he was bouncing off the walls. As if a switch was being thrown.
According to the report, the same thing had happened on the bus. None of the passengers had mentioned a preamble or peculiar behaviour leading up to the incident. Kyle had been invisible, until—
It was explosive. Dangerous. Sanders had seen how sudden and inexplicable the man’s mood could shift. Coupled with his baffling tolerance, it was a recipe for disaster. For the first time in years, Sanders felt the gravity of his surroundings pressing down.
They observed the routines, although he’d seen what he needed on the monitors. Sitting cross-legged on his mattress, hugging himself in the buckled corset, Kyle was quiet.
For now.
“Kyle,” Sanders said at last, bending down to the slot. The desperate mixture of stale air, sour sweat, and unwashed flesh wafted out. “You asked for me?”
“Doctor,” Kyle rasped, his voice spent. “You need to help me. Please don’t— I have to make this stop but I can’t without— Help. I need your help.“
“That’s what we’re—“ He tapered off when the man shook his head.
“Stop. Please stop. It’s taking— It’s too much. Too long. I can’t—”
Sanders straightened, sighing. He’d already decided not to transfer Kyle to the hospital. Doing so required police assistance, and would take until dawn. The shot had been prepared. Between the four of them, they could manage. Giving a curt nod to the sole male nurse, he returned to the slot, cutting through the continued ravings.
“Kyle, we’re going to give you something—“
“No!” Kyle croaked.
“— to help you relax.”
He motioned to unlock the door.
When it swung wide, Kyle was struggling to his feet. Dancing back across the mattress, he almost fell, but the male nurse stayed him by hooking the crossed sleeves. A mistake. Kyle lunged, had the man on his back foot until the others rushed to his aid. For a beat, he seemed to submit. His head slumped, his body deflating in their combined grip. But then he came alive again with a fury. Launching himself off the wall, he pulled the trio off-balance, one of the nurses stutter-squeaking along until she was pulled off her feet.
Already regretting his decision, Sanders joined the press. Kyle was a live wire, his broken howls ringing in his ears. Then, without warning, he went slack again. While the nurses went for his legs, Sanders held him up. His eyes touched the young man’s stare… and snapped back with a painful pulse stabbing down his forearms.
Face to face with his patient, Sanders had watched the wild, rolling eyes settle, pupils devouring green iris. In the growing black holes he should have seen his own stunned expression. Instead he found a mountain vista framed by the curve of a jagged cave mouth. Outside, the arthritic fingers of spired rock formations stood against a sky the color of blood and fresh bruises.
It was a glimpse, there and gone. The trio swivelled Kyle up, and he started trashing again.
“Please,” he panted, “don’t do this. It doesn’t help. It only makes it easier.” His desperate stare was reserved for Sanders.
Together, they lowered him onto the mattress. Kyle kept screaming, shifting beneath him. Craning, he glared up at Sanders, told him he was making a mistake. Halfway through another repetition, he fell silent. The anger drained away, his expression growing smooth. Against his will, Sanders found himself drawn into Kyle’s dulled gaze. What he saw spun a numbing web out from his heart. When the flailing resumed, he was almost bucked, until a grunt signaled the needle had found its mark.
“You don’t get it,” he said. “I’m safe. I had it. I figured it out.” His voice fuzzed out.
Sanders watched his eyes slip closed before he moved to the door. Kyle’s voice caught him.
“Don’t know what you’ve done,” he said, words spooling out in a narcotic drone. “But you’ll see now, doctor. You’ll see.”
Sanders blood pulsed in a deep, slow rush. His tongue unglued. “See what?” he all but muttered. “What will I see, Kyle?”
A string of seconds passed before he was answered by a thick, purring snore.
Returning, the nurses murmured amongst themselves. Sanders trailed after, cloaked in silence. Even his goodbye had to be dragged up from the sunken place inside. He kept telling himself Kyle was just another confused soul, another mind insistent on pulling threads until it unravelled. Only—
Only what to make, then, of the strange reflection he’d seen in the young man’s eyes not once, but twice? A scarlet sky outside a cave, sketching what he’d taken for hoodoos, lining the next rise. But the second time, one of its spindles had stood forward, a single bar set into the cave’s entrance. Right before the vision disappeared, twin cavities had opened high on its blackened chimney shape. Burning the same inflamed red as the sky behind it, the eyes had lit on his just long enough for his brain to digest them.
Ludicrous. He was pushing it. Sixty-hour workweeks, patient after patient testing boundaries. And Kyle— His was a peculiar case. In his professional curiosity, it was possible he’d let him come too close. But—
Is there a documented case of folie-a-deux manifesting in mere days?
Sanders didn’t know, was still mulling it over when he made a beeline for his BMW in the underground garage. Pulling out the fob, he unlocked the doors. Then stumbled. The key ring shot from his hand, slid across concrete in a metallic whisper.
Straightening, Sanders eyes flitted around, his heart picking up the pace. Flaring nostrils pulled in the familiar aroma of old exhaust and unburned gasoline. One betraying hand found his chest, travelled down to the arch of his ribcage before falling away. Everything was fine. Everything was solid.
Hitching forward, he paused long enough to stoop for his keys. Then he strode towards the car, determined to believe the world hadn’t just blinked, and his steadying hand hadn’t touched warm rock painted a deep, infected red.
It almost worked, until he got home and it happened again. One hand leaned on cool porcelain, the other moving the electric toothbrush. An eye flutter later, he fell facedown into warm, moist earth. Scrabbling up, black dirt squeezed between his fingers, wetness seeping through the knees of his pyjama bottoms. Lifting his gaze, he saw he was in a forest, the trees pressing close as dark as the soil they stood in. In between them, dull red teased.
When something touched his shoulder, Sanders yelped and threw himself back, wincing when his head struck a hard surface. The looming figure leaned in.
“Lis—“
Starting, Sanders faced himself in the mirror, parted lips coated with toothpaste. The toothbrush itself lay humming in the sink. He didn’t notice. His mind was caught on the face he’d seen drifting down from the shadows.
It had been Kyle’s.
At breakfast, his wife asked if the landscaper’s check had been sent. Before he could answer, his chair disappeared and he sat down on springy soil hard enough to drive air from his lungs. Charcoal forest crowded in, thin flaring lines bleeding between the trees.
“You’re back,” a voice said. Sanders’ head swivelled, found Kyle crouching a few paces away. His face was a pale, dirt-streaked oval hovering in the gloom.
Sanders shrank up against the trunk at his back. “What—“
“Listen,” Kyle snapped. “We don’t have time. We’ll get pulled apart soon and you need to know—
“This is insane,” Sanders chuckled. “This isn’t real.”
“Listen—“ Kyle repeated, voice trembling with frustration. “You need to—“
The coffee cup chittered on its saucer, nudged by his jerking hand. His wife was still shaping the last word of the question she’d started minutes ago.
The second came faster, delivered with a slight frown.
“I’m fine,” Sanders brought out.
He wasn’t.
Noon found him pacing outside the isolation wing. Protocol prevented him from entering the corridor alone. With staff occupied, he could only wait.
He would’ve made it sooner but passing through security, he’d run into Dr Fenton, looking to discuss a new transfer. Distracted, Sanders had tried to follow, when the man charred and crumbled into the raw meat sky along with everything else. He’d been in the forest again, just inside the tree line. Beyond, a field had climbed to a low hill. Like the trees, the grass had been a scorched black. His delusion seemed to know no color, apart from the repulsive stain arching overhead. Even the figure cresting the rise had been a dark silhouette.
Sanders had had no intention of engaging further. But disbelief hadn’t prevented him from touching a hand to rough tree bark. When his fingers sent chips falling to the ground, he saw the world didn’t just seem burned— it was burned. Beneath charred bark, the trees hid spinal columns of ash, still glowing in places.
Unsettling as it had been, it wasn’t what got him moving. It had been the realisation he couldn’t only feel the grease between his rubbing fingertips, he could smell it: the low, slick stench of charcoal. Pulling from the tree line, he’d hailed the climber.
On the hill, the figure had stopped. Turned. A voice had rolled down the slope.
“Hurry, doctor,” Kyle had bellowed, starting down. When Sanders began to cross the field, the young man had yelled: “Run. We’re separating and we may not get another chance.”
“I don’t understand,” Sanders had answered, moving through grass that crackled beneath his feet. “What—“
“It doesn’t matter,” Kyle had cut in, almost halfway down. “You’ll be gone any second and I have to keep moving. And so do you, you understand?” He’d stumbled. “We can fix it. Find me. Find me before—“
Reality had changed channels again. Dr Fenton finished his sentence. The following pause had indicated a reply was needed. The shadow lying across Sanders mind had deepened when he found he had none to give.
Part of him knew he was skating on very thin ice, even as he sped up the corridor, staff all but jogging to keep up. He ignored it, just as he ignored the looks when he told them to stand back.
Kyle was lying on the mattress, staring up at nothing. Seeing muscles twitch beneath the sallow skin of his face, Sanders crouched beside him, drawing in a breath to call for help, when Kyle muttered:
“Doc.”
“I’m here, Kyle.”
Lips curled. “Are. You?”
Sanders’ eyes shimmied. “Kyle—“
“Don’t. Too hard. Remember.”
It should’ve confused him. But it didn’t. In the staring eyes he could see the other world pulsing in time with the facial tics.
“How long?”
“Days. Weeks. Can’t. Tell.”
Sanders’ heart fell.
“Ground. Grou. Ound. No. Sleep.”
Frowning, Sanders listened to the words relayed between unseen beats of time, trying to extract meaning. And failing.
“Move,” he hissed. “Move.”
Sanders opened his mouth, and stiff grass brushed his face. The smell of old smoke filled his nostrils. Rising on weak legs, he expected to have skipped forward again. Instead, he stood on the low rise, the charcoal forest close behind. In front, scorched hills rolled towards the bleeding horizon.
Dragging his gaze across the landscape, he found only desolation. Whatever direction Kyle had chosen, his trail was gone now. All that remained was torched grass and blackened forest.
The monotony was broken by a lone tree. Tall and splintered, it leaned from the side of the hill at a drunken angle. His eyes began to move away, when a subtle change drew them back. Widening, they watched twin wounds split and yawn, forming hollows smouldering a sunken red. As it began to right itself, thin arms appeared, terminating in stiff, splayed hands.
Grass crunched as the gaunt shape began to creep forward. Between the gentle sway and the reaching hands, it resembled a tube man from hell.
Move, Kyle’d said. He did. Screaming, Dr sanders fled down the hill, deeper into the nightmare.
Brilliant! A time/dimension split fic that pulled me in to the end.
This was so strange and unnerving. I could feel Kyle's frustration and exhaustion.
Good job here.