His large black pupils anxiously surveyed the road, and the road watched him back. Sweat poured down his face and dripped on his yellow T-shirt. He had no idea how fast he was going, but he prayed it was fast enough. A young woman sat in the passenger seat. She wore a blue dress and was smoking a cigarette. Her composure rivalled that of the man driving, who drew in a sharp, fearful breath, drawing the attention of the sophisticated woman.

“Charlie Brown, darling, you look worried.” She observed. “Look, we’re going to make it out of here just fine, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

The man, Charlie, jerked his head towards the woman.

“Oh there’s nothing to be afraid of. Great! Really? Lucy, you’re brother is dead — Linus is dead!” He snapped. “I don’t see any reason not to be worried right now, and I sure as hell can’t understand why you aren’t with me on this one. I know we’re next on Flannigan’s hit list! He probably has his goons trailing us right now.”

Charlie sped around a corner and accelerated as they entered a long, barren highway in between two sets of vast forest. Lucy drew in a breath of her cigarette and, after a tense moment of thought, once again turned to Charlie.

“Listen dear, here’s what will happen: We’ll arrive in Vegas, meet Peppermint Patty and Marcie, then, we’ll take a plane to Germany and we’ll stay with Schroeder. There’s nothing to worry about, Flannigan can’t find us.”

“What if he does, Lucy?” Charlie asked, the tone in his voice conveyed that he was desperately searching for some sort of reassurance. “There’s no question that he’s got the entire town under surveillance. Pretty soon he’s going to expand his horizons. You know what Flannigan’s like; he’s a madman! The odds are against us, Lucy. How can you be so sure?”

“I don’t know!” She cried. “All I know is that we need to be positive about this Charlie Brown. It’s the only way we’ll have a chance.”

She buried her head in her arms and, for and hour, their car was silent. Eventually, she spoke once more.

“We may not know where we’re going, or what we’re hoping to find. But that’s just it. We don’t know. This could be the start of a new life, Charlie, a new chance to get everything right. I think to have hope is what Linus would’ve wanted us to do right now.”

Charlie did not respond, but he considered her words and thought about their circumstances. He tried to have hope, but found it too difficult. Instead, he shook his head and muttered.

“Good grief.”

What is the meaning of fear? In 1992, a not-so-well-known psychologies who went by the alias of Sigmund Rockwell began preparations for a secret experiment scheduled to take place deep in the uncharted wilderness of in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The idea behind Rockwell’s experiment remained vastly unknown and as far as I can tell, he hadn’t told a soul exactly what he doing — outside of having something to do with the human response to fear. Despite his secrecy, Rockwell had a small group of followers he planned to perform the experiment on. These three unfortunate men were to be locked in an empty underground room for an unspecified amount of time with no communication to the outside world. Rockwell’s voice would periodically come through the hidden speakers telling the participants the date and ordering them to sit facing the opposite wall when their food was being delivered. What this had to do with fear, I still have no idea. I do know I should have never accepted my invitation.

I was the only female doctor working at Aspen Valley Hospital, Colorado, and, as luck would have it, the youngest at twenty-six years of age. My life had flow and everything related to work was going perfectly. The pay was excellent, my colleagues were sane, and I even liked my boss. Regrettably, however, I made the decision to steal Xanax. I got caught and was promptly fired. This obviously put a very dark mark on my job opportunities and the anxiety problem I had been self medicating for only got worse.

I remembered meeting Rockwell at a party with a few of my former colleagues a couple weeks before I was fired. He was a tall, old, skinny man with shoulder length gray hair and large dark pupils. His rapid gestures combined with his slow speaking delivered an uncomfortable disjunct that rattled within me the whole night I was with him. He was searching for a medical practitioner to be present during an experiment. If I wanted the job, all I had to do was sit while the experiment took place, keep night watch once a week, and maybe treat a splinter or two. Despite my intuition, the number on my check if I agreed almost convinced me right then and there; although, I had a stable job and I preferred stability over a huge sum of money.

Then the firing happened and desperate measures conviced me I needed to call Rockwell back.

Seven of us were employed, not including the patients. Three maintenance workers, one engineer, two security guards, and me. How Rockwell acquired the funds to hire us is still a mystery, but looking back I wouldn’t be surprised if his financing came from illegal drug trafficking. He was the type to make those connections and his excessive use on site couldn’t have been purely medical. Rockwell used marijuana, benzodiazepines, and an ungodly amount of opioids, none of which I’m sure he had a prescription for. Still, they seemed to calm him down, which was a good thing considering most of us hardly knew him when we started the job and he certainly didn’t feel like the relaxing type.

Somewhere deep in the Rocky Mountains two cabins faced each other, separated only by the snow-covered road amongst hundreds of miles of trees. On the other side of the cabins was a small clearing where a few trucks were parked. Not at all what I expected for the work he wanted to accomplish, but I assumed it would function as necessary.

Hidden by a heavy metal hatch inside the smaller cabin, a set of stairs descended far into the dim light. Rockwell had told us the hatch locked from the outside, it was the only exit, and the maintenance workers would have to take shifts sitting outside so we didn’t get locked in. At the bottom of the stairs was a sizable basement complete with locked cabinets and a large desk with about half a dozen monitors. To the left of the desk was a reinforced metal door similar to the hatch we’d just come through. We were informed the door led to a long hallway that eventually reached the chamber where the subjects would live. As professional as the basement seemed, there was something about the atmosphere that set me off. It was alarmingly quiet, as if time was slowing to a stop. I felt a foreboding presence compressing me from all sides, and a feeling of dread washed over me like waves on an abandoned beach. Judging by the looks on my colleagues faces, I was not the only one who felt unwelcome.

The cabins housed us. Rockwell, being the self-proclaimed owner of the property, took the larger cabin sharing it with his security team and one maintenance worker. The engineer, the remaining workers, and I crammed into the other dimly lit cabin with the metal hatch.

The subjects arrived the next morning. According to Rockwell they were just junkies who were willing to sell their mental stability for a quick buck. I still couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for them. None of them looked like they wanted to be involved, in fact, it almost seemed like they were being forced to participate. Their faces were contorted with sadness, they never spoke, and for some reason, they acted as if they were afraid of us. Rockwell led us to the basement and told us to wait in the main area as he accompanied the subjects into the chamber. The monitors that had previously displayed a black screen, now showed a camera feed of a dark and empty room. The door creaked open. Rockwell ushered the subjects in. He whispered to them and they shyly nodded. Then, he excused himself and locked them inside.

Rockwell returned and told us that no matter what happened we were not to acknowledge the subjects or the experiment would be ruined. We could only watch them through the camera feed. Should they yell, or beg to be let out, we could not respond. No matter their reaction, we were to let them be and only observe. He assured us that, for the most part, he would be with us in the surveillance room and that there was nothing to worry about.

The remainder of the day was spent vigilantly watching the subjects pacing around the room, chatting with each other, and resting. When dinner time came, Rockwell spoke into a microphone and ordered the subjects to sit facing the wall opposite the door with their hands on their heads. He entered the chamber accompanied by his security guards and placed two small dishes on the floor that appeared to be a sort of thick lentil stew, or porridge. Upon his exit, the three subjects turned to see their disappointing dinner. Their puzzled expressions told me that they were not made aware of this part of the experiment. Rockwell let out a half-hearted chuckle as he shook a mysterious pill bottle into his hand. I watched him with disgust and my stomach churned as the subjects divided the gruel into organized sections on the floor. The sickening sounds of Rockwell’s raspy chuckles continued unabated filling me with dread.

Ellis, our engineer, volunteered to take our first night shift. As we all retreated to our mattresses, he stayed in the basement watching the monitors. If Ellis grew tired, Rockwell offered him the Adderall that he had stashed in one of the cabinets. Knowing that not all of us were as inclined to take unprescribed medications, I entered the basement during the night and gave the engineer a bag of my favourite coffee beans that I had packed. There was no coffee grinder anywhere in the complex, so he would have to eat them to stay alert. Ellis thanked me and I went upstairs to get some rest. My mind, however, had other plans.

Questions about Rockwell’s ethics and his motivation for the experiment kept me awake for countless hours. On many occasions over the past twenty-four hours, many of us had asked Rockwell specifically what was going on, but he always found a clever way to dodge the question and give us as little information as possible, sometimes raising more questions than we originally had. Thinking through everything, I began to wonder if I regretted taking this job. I started worrying. I started panicking. My heart started to race, and I began to feel nauseous. Knowing the drill from my countless panic attacks before, I leaped out of bed, ran outside, and proceeded to puke my guts out. My hands were trembling and tears started to form in my eyes. What the hell was going on here? I was outside for a good twenty minutes shaking and trying to get a grip on myself when I saw the silhouette of a figure walking towards me from the large cabin. It was Rockwell. He asked what was wrong in a way that tole me he already knew the answer. I tried to be simple and told him I was just feeling anxious. Right as I said the last word, as if it were a cue, Rockwell reached into his coat and pulled out a bottle of Xanax. He handed it to me. I feigned reluctance and eagerly took it. I took a few and handed him back the bottle, but he held up his hand and shook his head. He told me to keep it and that, if I needed any more, he had plenty. He then asked why I didn’t have a prescription. I lied and told him it hadn’t occurred to me. He didn’t buy it. Truthfully, I felt I didn’t have the time to schedule appointments, go to the required therapy, and fill out prescriptions at the pharmacy. Even more truthful, I liked the thrill of self-medication. I liked that it was wrong.

Rockwell looked skeptical, and interested, but didn’t push. He told me to have a good night and walked back to his cabin. As I rested on my mattress, hating myself for taking the prescription, I began to fall asleep. It was the best nap I ever had.

The next day was quite eventful. Ellis, having not slept during the night, was allowed to rest until lunch time, meaning there were only five of us in the basement. When it was time for breakfast, Rockwell followed his routine of treating the subjects like war prisoners. He entered the chamber accompanied by his security guards, and put two pieces of lightly buttered toast on the ground. This time, one of the subjects decided they weren’t going to comply. The subject quickly turned at lunged at Rockwell, who timidly ran outside the chamber leaving his security guards behind. One reached for his gun, but the subject tackled him and started swinging at his face. The other guard, who was significantly slower, pulled out his pistol and fired three shots. One his the subject in the neck, who immediately collapsed on the ground. The guard who was tackled did not appear to be in good condition, and the other had to carry him out. Cowering in the corner of the room covering their ears, the other subjects started to hiss and snarl.

When I first learned about Rockwell’s experiment, I found it peculiar that he would ask for a medical professional on a project like this but, after the events in the chamber, I understood why. I spent the rest of the day tending to the lashes and bruises that covered the poor security guards face. Rockwell unlocked one of the metal cabinets revealing all the tools I needed, and proceeded to spend the rest of the day violently smoking marijuana and complaining about how the experiment was in jeopardy. I asked him if we should dispose of the subjects body, to which he stammered that it would halt the progress even further. Rockwell decided that the subjects were to go without lunch for the day, and that the uninjured security guard who deliver their dinner alone. When dinner time came, the guard entered the chamber with a bowl of lentil soup in one hand, and a gun in the other. The subjects, who ignored Rockwell’s orders to sit facing the wall, watched the guard as he carefully slid the bowl toward the center of the room. Upon his leaving, the subjects did not eat their dinner; instead, they kept their penetrating gaze fixed on the camera through which Rockwell was watching them. Their eyes, not just their pupils, were completely black, and I could tell even Rockwell started to get creeped out.

After the chamber incident resulting in a subjects death, everything the remaining subjects did in the following weeks seemed uneventful in comparison; however, their behaviour grew stranger. The sat cross-legged from each other humming a dissonant, repetitive tune that grew louder and more complex throughout the day, but would cease during the night. Occasionally, their eyes would gave into the camera and follow us as we moved about the room, which did nothing to help with the horror and unease we were already feeling. As a coping mechanism to the subjects behaviour, everybody in the basement started to open up and socialize with one another a little more. I became good friends with Ellis. He seemed to be the only one of us who didn’t have any glaring mental problems. Whenever he wasn’t helping Rockwell design a door with a hatch to safely feed the subjects, or writing in his journal during lunch, we would talk about our plans after the experiment, our lives, and how we ended up getting involved.

About two months into the experiment, I was first scheduled to take the night shift. Rockwell told me since I was the only medical professional, my night shifts would be far more spaced out than the other employees, this way my schedule remained fairly consistent with the other employees in case something were to go wront. I spent the first few hours in the dark eating my coffee beans and making eye contact with the subjects through the monitors. If it had been any night before, I would’ve been freaked out with the way their eyes followed me, but at this point, I felt nearly immune. My mind kept going to Ellis, who had become a good friend at this point. He even invited me to move to Minnesota where he lived claiming that it was a good place to practice medicine. I declined at the moment simply because I wanted to get the anxiety I felt under control before I started getting close to other people. That seemed to bum him out a bit, but I thought it was for the best. As I sat in that dark basement, deep in thought, I felt alone and I reconsidered. I wasn’t a fan of Colorado since my unemployment. I figured that after the experiment, I’d never want to see the Rocky Mountains again. Eventually, though the night, I felt excited to tell Ellis I’d changed my mind. For the first time in years, I started to feel like maybe my life might go somewhere. I put my coffee beans away since my manic state seemed to suffice in keeping me alert, and I took a few of the Xanax pills Rockwell had given me as my heart rate seemed a little high. I guess I must had underestimated the effects of the pills because I fell asleep in my chair. When I woke up, I realized something was very wrong.

I feel at this point, I am obligated to let the reasons of Rockwell’s privacy be understood. You see, if he had told us the exact reasoning behind the experiment, or let us know his hypothesis, we might’ve called him crazy and refused to work for him. The truth is, Rockwell was on the brink of proving something we had thought to be impossible. The man was deranged, but he was a genius. Unfortunately, I believe the constant observation of the subjects was one of those unexplainable rules that ought not to have been broken. Staying awake on the night shift was a law that kept our little experiment from crossing some manifold of reality and becoming something far more dangerous. I broke that rule.

My heart raced as I tried to comprehend what was on the monitor. The things I was looking at were no longer human. The first thing I noticed were the length of their limbs and appendages. Their legs were not disproportionately long, and their arms were twice to size they used to be Sharp, dangerous, spider-like protrusions replaced what were once their fingers, and long, terrible, fangs took the place of their teeth. To make matters worse, the subject who had been decomposing on the ground of the chamber no longer appeared to be dead. He was standing perfectly still in line with the others and staring through my eyes into my soul. They all started to hum that awful, dissonant, repetitive tune that they had been composing for the past weeks, only this time, the volume was already getting louder. I was overcome with terror, and started shaking. My heart was beating outside of my chest. The subjects started moving around the rooms like giant spiders trying not to wake up a predator. They scratched the surfaces and tapper on the giant metal door. One of them put it’s wretched, gruesome head up to the camera and suddenly, all six monitors turned to static.

An incessant banging interrupted the terrible tune the creatures had been humming, and I knew they were trying to escape. I also knew from the violence of the metallic destruction, that there were going to succeed. I ran upstairs, through the hatch, and made my way towards Rockwell’s cabin. My regret is that, in my panic, I did not even stop to wake the others. I figured if there was one person who knew what to do, it would be Rockwell. Just as I got to Rockwell’s cabin door, I heard what sounded like an explosion, and I knew the creatures that escaped the chamber. The tune started to grow unbearably loud, as if they were somehow rejoicing at their escape.

I ran into Rockwell’s cabin and, when I found his room, I knew I had to get the hell out of the site or I wouldn’t live to see the consequences.

For those of you who don’t know much about medicine, let me tell you a bit about opioids. These substances bind directly to the central nervous system to decrease the feelings of physical pain. If a patient took opioids without feeling any pain, they would get a sensual feeling of euphoria all throughout their body. This sensation of euphoria is where the potential for abuse comes from, and if you’re anything like Rockwell, you might even develop a dependence on substances that give you this high. The negative side effects of opioids can include: itchiness, drowsiness, constipation, and nausea. The nausea is where the real issues come from. Of course, there is always the possibility of developing a tolerance to opioids and taking so many pills that you experience respiratory depression, but what often happens before that stage is the user takes more pills than they are used to, falls asleep due to the drowsiness, and because of the nausea, they start puking. I think we all know how that would end. If someone who falls asleep on their back starts puking, their going to asphyxiate and die. So when I found Rockwell laying on his bed pale and covered in his own vomit, I ran out of the cabin without looking back.

I heard the screams of my fatal mistake before I even got outside. When I saw the blood covering the windows of the cabin, my heart dropped. Ellis was in there. I didn’t want to believe it; I didn’t have time, not yet. Tears were streaming down my face as I ran to my car, started it, and sped away from the site. Through my blurred teary vision, I could see in my rearview mirror, the horrible monsters exit the cabin like spiders and watch me as I drove away. I drove as fast as I could. It took an hour of driving before I stopped hearing that god-awful music that they hummed.

————————–

I live in Minnesota now. I moved here shortly after the experiment some twenty years ago. It’s gorgeous here, I can understand why Ellis was so fond of it. I found his journal in the passenger seat of my car while I driving home back then. I’m not sure why he put it in my car, I guess he had the foresight to know that, by the time I needed to drive, it would have been too late. Perhaps he knew more about the experiment and it’s dangers than I knew. In his journal, he had pages detailing how he felt. I held on to it for a long time. It brought me some solace in the traumatic memories of those few months. I kept hold of it until my husband made me throw it away. That was years ago. My husband’s deployed in Iraq, and I work as a nurse in a small clinic here in Maple Grove. The pay is alright, and the doctors are nice. My anxiety has been gone for a long time. I guess things are going a lot better now. truthfully, I don’t think about that experiment, Rockwell, or Ellis much any more. Until recently.

Why am I writing this? The paragraphs preceding this one detail everything I know about Sigmund Rockwell and his experiment on the human response to fear. Everything in these pages is true and the events I have described did take place. The coordinates of the site and the bodies of the people involved are printed on the back of this sheet. Thank God for Google maps, am I right? I didn’t write about this sooner because I wasn’t scared then, not any more. But I’m terrified now. Just an hour ago, I started to hear something in the distance. At first, I had no idea what it was. I didn’t think about it, it didn’t bother me. Then, it started getting louder. I started to remember. I recognized that horrible dissonant humming very clearly. The pounding on the door has only been going on for a few minutes now, but I already have the solution. Those creatures aren’t going to give up until they kill me. Unfortunately for them, I swallowed an entire bottle of Oxycodone while writing this, and right now, I can barely feel my failing heart. They won’t have the pleasure of killing me. I’ll already be dead.