Chapter Forty-Eight. Kathleen, 1964
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Kathleen feared she was going be sick to her stomach. She couldn’t stop trembling. Her friends had betrayed her so completely it felt as if they’d used sharp sticks to jab at her insides.
When Dr. Trimble summoned Kathleen to a corner of the basement, she assumed it was to cast her vote.
She still hadn’t decided whether to choose Betty or Helen, but she knew both women could endure the Ganzfeld test far better than her.
Still, she was reluctant to put either of them in that awful situation.
She’d decided instead to reason with Dr. Trimble in an effort to get him to shave down the required time. Half an hour would be long enough.
But Dr. Trimble didn’t even glance up at her as he continued marking one of his typewritten papers with a lead-tipped pencil.
“Both of the girls chose you,” he said. “Wait a minute…”
Kathleen stood there, stunned into immobility, while he slashed through a line on his notes.
“There, that’s cleaner.” He put down his pencil and finally looked at her. “You’ll be going into a separate area of the basement for the Ganzfeld experiment.”
“Betty voted for me? And Helen, too?” she whispered.
He nodded. “It seems fair, doesn’t it, since they were both receivers yesterday?”
Was he lying? Usually she was perceptive about people’s motives and intentions, but her sleep-starved brain wasn’t operating at a high level. Maybe her friends had reasoned it was Kathleen’s turn.
Kathleen’s mouth was so dry it was impossible to swallow. She watched as Dr. Trimble took one of the hateful blindfolds from atop his pile of belongings.
“Kathleen!” Dr. Trimble’s tone was sharp, and it jolted her out of her temporary paralysis.
Somehow she was able to follow Dr. Trimble to the corner of the basement. She tried to suck in a lungful of air. But her chest was too tight; it prevented her from inhaling deeply.
There was a single folding chair in the corner, turned to face the wall. The space was as shadowy and dusty as the attic of a haunted house. It looked like a place where nightmares were born.
“Sit down,” he told her.
Kathleen obeyed. Even the air felt suffocating, as if it had lain here thickly for decades, never stirred by even the slightest breeze.
He handed her the blindfold.
“Please,” she begged. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Nonsense,” he told her. “All you need to do is sit there.”
He watched as she pulled on the blindfold and tested it to make sure the strap was tight enough. Her mind whirled frantically, wondering if she could loosen it when he left. Just enough to let in a sliver of light so she could see.
“Here are your earplugs,” he told her. She inserted one into her left ear. Instantly, everything sounded more muffled.
“You know what to do. Put in the other earplug. You must keep your eyes open. Then just relax and speak aloud the images that come to your mind.”
Was she crying? Her nose seemed runny, but she couldn’t feel tears on her cheeks. If her eyes were releasing them, they were trapped beneath the halves of the Ping-Pong balls.
“Just one more thing.”
Kathleen paused before putting in the second earplug.
“I’m going to secure your hands so that you’re not tempted to end the experiment early.”
“No! I don’t want to do this!” she cried. “I’m going home!”
But it was too late. He’d already tied her down.
She sat in the utter stillness and waited for the awful visions she knew would come. The darkest corners of her mind, where her ugliest secrets and deepest fears were buried, would flourish under these conditions.
Zags of light, like flashes of lightning, seemed to skim across the darkness. She knew it was a trick her eyes were playing on her, but the electric bursts seemed so real.
Was something crawling on her? She swallowed a scream and tried to brush her hands over herself, but she couldn’t move them.
It felt like fingertips tracing a line down her arm.
Nausea rose in her throat. She was desperate to thrash around and dislodge her blindfold, but fear sapped the strength from her body.
Dr. Trimble must be watching her as she sat there helplessly, just as Mac had done long ago.
Of all the dangers her mind was capable of exploring, Dr. Trimble was the worst. He had become the thing she feared the most.