Behind Sanity

Chapter Fifty-Four

                The man sat down at a desk then (it looked more like a workbench actually, now that she considered it) and from a drawer, he withdrew a pocket watch.  Using tiny tools that he retrieved out of a bag, he opened up the decorative object and set to work adjusting.  She understood now: he was a watchmaker.

                He seemed so content in his work that she watched him for a long while, quite wondering what it was like to be so happy.  The closest she’d come to true happiness in a long time was the day she’d been released from Rutledge’s. 

                Her hand on the knob, she was about to turn away and shut the doorway, but a noise pulled her attention back. 

                “Who is there?” came a timid voice. 

                She knew the man was looking at her before her eyes even met his, and she felt somewhat wretched for spying.  She was about to open her mouth and apologize, but then the man was speaking again.

                “I-I have work to do,” he sputtered.  “Really, I’m running q-quite behind schedule!”

                He turned back to the watch then, ignoring her.  His humming stopped, and his shoulders revealed the tension he was trying to hide.  Alice didn’t understand this, but she was sorry she’d disturbed him so. 

                “Apologies,” she uttered lowly.

                In response, the man clamped his hands to his ears, dropping the watch and letting it clatter to the floor.

                “Stop this!  I-I am not crazy!  You shouldn’t even be here!” he insisted, and Alice realized then that he couldn’t be talking to her.  There was someone else in the room?  Well, not that she could see…

                “Yes, I know what they say!” the man shouted on. “But they are not right!  I c-cannot let them be right…”

                The man began to jerk his head around then, involuntarily convulsing.  Alice was horrified by this, thinking it true about what doctors used to say about the exceedingly ill: this man was demon-possessed. 

                Without warning then, the man slumped forward and collapsed onto the desk.  He didn’t move, save for his breathing, and Alice was compelled to go to him.  She started at the door, but when she reached the threshold, found she couldn’t cross over into the room.  It was as if there was a glass plate across the doorway, letting her look inside but blocking her path. 

                The man was still unmoving on the desk, but Alice could do nothing but shut the door, leaving him alone in his private realm of unconsciousness. 

                With a dread – yet familiar – feeling in her stomach, Alice ventured to open another door. 

                The one she chose was an old looking door, one that looked to belong on an old Victorian house like she’d admired as a child.  Inside, she glimpsed a large room with very little clutter, a lit fire in a stone hearth.  Near the fire, there was a woman, rocking back and forth in a squeaky chair, knitting.  The slow rhythm and constant sound of the chair nearly hypnotized Alice, but she managed to shake herself free.

                It reminded Alice of her grandmum, always sitting, always knitting…  Then the ball of wool yarn was falling to the floor.  The needles slipped from the woman’s hands and clattered to the wooden boards.  The rocking of the chair stopped, and the woman was silent and unmoving.