Chapter Fifty. Helen, 1964
CHAPTER FIFTY
Why had her friends done this to her?
It was hard to walk; the floor before Helen was shimmying like the rippling surface of a lake. She stumbled and nearly fell.
“Be careful!” Dr. Trimble snapped as he led her back to the cots where the others had gotten to rest while Helen sat alone in a far corner of the basement, her eyes and ears sealed and her hands tied down.
“Kathleen and Betty both voted for you,” Dr. Trimble had told her before taking her away.
Helen had grown to hate the Ganzfeld experiment—all the girls did by now—but always before, she’d been comforted by the knowledge that she was physically close to her friends.
But were they her friends? It was hard to know what was real.
In one vision brought on by the experiment, Betty had screamed at her, her face red and hard-looking.
Helen heard distant laughter, and a chorus of voices telling her she’d done something terrible, that she was a bad girl and needed to be punished.
She saw bursts of orange and red so intense they felt like they burned her eyes. Maybe it was hell, she’d thought.
Helen shuffled toward her bunk, still not trusting the ground beneath her. She released a small, surprised sound when she saw all the others were there, even Ivy.
Kathleen was sitting on the edge of her bunk, staring at her hands like they were foreign objects.
Ivy lay on her cot in her white dress, her eyes open and her face slack.
Betty seemed to have twice her normal energy; she was frantically organizing her things, as if she couldn’t get them neat enough.
“Betty, you can worry about that later. Sit down,” Dr. Trimble ordered.
Betty immediately followed instructions, perching on the edge of her cot with ramrod-straight posture. She kept blinking rapidly, as if trying to clear her vision.
Dr. Trimble sucked on the stem of his pipe. A faint haze of blue smoke hung in the air.
“I have devoted myself to the study of the extraordinary, to what ancient cultures called the Third Eye. In years ahead, my work will be scrutinized. Debated. Remembered.” He began to pace around the cots, not looking at any of the women but at a different, imaginary audience.
“Consider the possibilities: The human brain could influence physical matter without touch. Communicate across vast distances without speech. Once we can harness its hidden powers, it can transform reality as we know it.”
Helen watched as Kathleen tightened her body, tilting her head down and drawing up her knees, as if she were trying to make herself smaller. Betty still seemed fidgety; she smoothed the sheet beside her repeatedly as her eyes kept sweeping the room, as if she were desperate to bring order to it.
Then Betty reached forward and Helen saw her pick up a square of paper from the floor.
“Did you drop this, sir?” she asked.
Betty’s voice sounded strange to Helen’s ears. It was distorted, as if Helen were listening to her speak underwater.
“I did not,” Dr. Trimble replied.
Betty unfolded the paper and gasped. Her eyes rose to meet Helen’s. And in that moment, Helen knew Betty had found the note.
Betty held it up and Helen saw the message she knew by heart, the one she would have given anything to erase.
Douglas is so dreamy. And their initials, entwined in a heart: DS it radiated from her and swirled thickly in the air. Trying to guess the cards was impossible. Helen had no clarity; it was as if her gift had been extinguished.
“Five correct,” Dr. Trimble said when she finished. “Exactly the percentage chance would allow.”
Was he smiling? It made no sense that he’d be pleased. She’d performed terribly.
“Now Ivy and Kathleen.”
The magic had been drained away from each of them. Ivy had to be prompted several times to even make her guesses. Dr. Trimble finally announced Ivy had gotten six cards correct. He made them repeat the experiment a dozen or more times, with similar results.
A crack of thunder announced the imminent arrival of rain.
It poured down, heavy and gray, as the tests stretched on.
Dr. Trimble paired them up again and again, mixing up the combinations, and told them to focus on sending and receiving images he showed to the sender.
Helen’s mind felt blank; she couldn’t pick up a single image.
All she could think about was the look on Betty’s face when she discovered Helen’s terrible secret.
Every time Helen failed to summon an image, Dr. Trimble smiled and jotted something down in his notebook. “Extraordinary,” he breathed, his voice caressing the word.
He wanted them to fail, she thought. She couldn’t fathom why.
Helen could no longer distinguish day from night.
The storm grew angrier, throwing bolts of lightning.
Helen jumped at the strongest eruptions of thunder, but Ivy didn’t even flinch.
She seemed so listless. Perhaps she needed to eat something.
Maybe, if the girls were permitted to eat dinner, Helen could beg Betty’s forgiveness.
Kathleen had the strongest will, the only one brave enough to challenge Dr. Trimble. Helen leaned forward and put her hand on Kathleen’s upper arm, intending to whisper a suggestion that Kathleen ask for a break.
Kathleen whirled around, her face filled with rage. “Don’t sneak up on me and touch me like that!”
Helen’s hand fell away. She blinked back tears. They all hated her; she’d ruined everything. She hung her head, too ashamed to look at anyone.
“This concludes our time together,” Dr. Trimble finally told them. “You’re going home first thing in the morning. Go to sleep now.”
Instead of relief, Helen felt panic. In here she could try to beg for Betty’s forgiveness. In the outside world, Betty could simply avoid her forever. Unless they would be together in the lab all week.
“Will you need us in the lab as usual tomorrow?” Helen asked.
Dr. Trimble looked at her in surprise, as if he’d already forgotten she was there.
“No, I’m finished with you girls,” he said.