[Original Novella] Not Long Now, Part 9

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I recalled a journal entry about my father, in which Grandpa lamented that after “all the trouble” he’d gone through to secure a wife with whom to produce an heir to carry on his work, “the blasted boy simply hasn’t got the brains for it.”

I never brought that bit up with Dad, assuming that if he’d read this journal before me, it would be a sore point. But Grandpa wrote about everyone in his life that way, when he wrote of them at all. Always about how useful or useless they were to him. How adequate, or inadequate. Never of his feelings towards anyone, though he must’ve surely had at least some.

The entry about my parents’ death was chilling. Made me wonder, not for the first time, how I could be from the same lineage as such a cold and calculating man. It simply read “My son and his wife perished recently in automobile accident. What trouble! My grandson is said to be staying with sympathetic friends of the family.

That won’t do. I provided lavishly for my wife upon our divorce, I provided for my son and his wife to live comfortably despite his disappointing performance. So of course, I will prepare someplace for the lad to stay within my orphanage. Perhaps he’ll prove more suited to its continuation than his father?”

Not an ounce of feeling. It read like a grocery list, or an opera schedule. Here and there I’ve known boys of a similar mindset, but none so far gone as this colorless, single minded old man. At last the projector cast a discernible image on the screen.

In fuzzy monochrome, there appeared children seated in a circle within some sort of clinical environment. At first I took it for a waiting room as it was lined with comfortable chairs. Only, the film in some places cut away to a view within a room that must have been just behind a one way mirror, with grim looking researchers jotting down notes as they spectated.

A woman in plain looking shoes and a dress down to her shins, her upper half out of frame, pointed urgently to an empty chair positioned nearby. The children looked upon it with confusion, but eventually their countenance was more one of fear and awe. I studied the chair closely but could see nothing about it to account for their reaction.

The woman then left a delectable pastry and glass of milk sitting in the center of the circle of seated children, and left the room. I smiled, expecting one or all of them to gobble it down the moment she left, the way that any child might be expected to in that situation. Instead, while a few cautiously began to reach for it, in every case the other children motioned to prevent it. At the end of the five minutes, that same woman re-entered to find the pastry uneaten.

The short film then suddenly came to an end, flipping through some blank cells of film with various strings of letters identifying the contents. A stretch of blank emptiness after that. Just light from the projector’s bulb cast onto the screen, no more to see.

Being that it was a silent film, they might’ve at least included some captions to help viewers understand what was going on. It made no more sense than most of the other things I’d witnessed so far in my explorations, each discovery only further compounding my bewilderment.

As I turned to search for other film canisters, I was startled by the silhouette of a woman sitting in the shadows where the light from the room’s sole dangling bulb did not reach. “My goodness! I’m quite sorry. I didn’t realize anyone still lived in this room.”

The silhouette didn’t budge, nor did it have anything to say. After a few more efforts to elicit a response, I turned on my trusty electric lantern and brought the beam of light to bear on the darkened form.

Miss Alice! I gasped and stumbled back a ways. Oh, I’ve done it now! I’ve stepped in it alright, I thought to myself on the verge of panic. Of all the rooms to break into. What would happen to me if my transgression were discovered? But even with the light shining directly in her eyes, she sat perfectly still and said nothing.

She’d not even bothered to leave her ornate little carrier. Still ensconced within, covered in that lovely silk sheet. The light revealed some hint of her form beneath it, as delicate and whisper thin as I remembered. Eventually I worked up the courage to lift the sheet and peer underneath.

A wooden mannequin. Very carefully carved in the convincing shape of a woman, with a porcelain mask for the face. Every part was articulated like a doll, with what looked to be steel rods attached to the wrists. Very much like some large puppets I’ve seen, come to think of it. The rods protruded up through slots in the floor of the carrier, the next object of scrutiny.

Finding a panel at the base of the carrier screwed shut, I located a screwdriver from the shelf and unfastened it. Inside was a quartet of phonographs, a motorized mechanism for moving the dummy’s arms about via the long metal rods sticking up into the carriage, and a bank of galvanic cells to power it all.

I fiddled with one of the phonographs until it began to play. “....-If you find yourself overwhelmed, do not fear. Life here is simpler than it first appears. It obeys a particular rhythm and structure, as well as-....” the familiar raspy, deep voice distorted and slowed down as the power ran out.

I studied the carriage more closely, walking about it with my lantern, and found it was plugged into a wall socket to recharge the batteries. I must’ve just missed the team which normally carries her from place to place, depositing her in this room for a few hours of “beauty sleep”.

It reminded me quite a bit of those novelty fortune telling machines with the simple animatronic upper body of a wizard, or a turban wearing mystic encased within. The sort where you insert a coin, watch the jerky figure’s gesticulations, listen to its scratchy pronouncements about what lay in store for you, then receive a printed card from a slot near the bottom. “The Great Zamboro” or some such nonsense.

But why? For what possible reason. Agnes was commanding enough. Despite her slight frame, her abrupt, authoritarian mannerisms made her an imposing person. Why go to all the trouble to deceive the children such an elaborate way?

I found the answer within a second film canister. When I watched the film itself it was just more of the same, except that it appeared to have been of a control group. There was no empty chair sitting adjacent to the circle of children, no urgent pointing from the woman, and as soon as she left the room the kids all began fighting over how to divide the pastry and milk.

It’s the torn out page that lay tucked just under the reel of film which enlightened me as to the meaning of what I’d seen. Judging by the size, the type and assorted diagrams doodled in the margins, I realized it came from Grandfather’s journal! Something he didn’t mean to fall into just anyone’s hands.

“I have followed with rapt interest the behaviorological experiments of one Andrew Williams. Working in facilities supplied by the local university and with grants from wealthy parties interested in methods for cultivating more agreeable attitudes among factory employees, he undertook to study the influence that belief in unseen actors may have on the honesty of small children.”

He’d jotted a diagram I recognized as a scene from the films, of children sitting in a circle with an empty chair to one side. No sign of the woman, nor the pastry. The text continued below.

“The children in Williams’ experiment, excepting those in the control group, were told of a beautiful invisible fairy princess who watched them from a chair placed nearby. She was said to see and hear everything which the children did, keeping close tally of their good and bad behavior.

At some unspecified point in the future, the children were informed, she would reward them handsomely with whatever their hearts desired. If they behaved well, that is. If they didn’t, she would come for them in their beds and gobble them up.”

What a dreadful thing to tell children! What an altogether appalling experiment, for that matter. I’ve heard of worse, but usually inflicted upon the morons and invalids living in mental asylums. To torment the imaginations of little ones in this manner seemed inarguably wicked.

“Like a great many other innovations which have sprung from the minds of comparably talented men, when I read of this experiment I realized at once that I could improve upon it. For one thing, older children were not as susceptible to the effect. In many cases they cautiously felt around in the chair to ensure nobody actually sat there, then carried on as they pleased, realizing they’d been lied to.”

I never saw that film and scanned the room briefly for any additional film canisters before returning to reading.

“For the purpose of deterring unionization and keeping factory workers awed, fearful and obedient, an invisible fairy princess will hardly do. No grown man, however dim witted, could be made to believe in such an obvious fable.

Even for the unwashed, uneducated urchins sent to my orphanage, a more convincing ruse is needed. I’ve applied my mechanical skills to fashioning an electrically motivated automaton which, with careful presentation, they might mistake for a supernatural mother figure.

Immune to those skeptics among them which would see through an empty chair, or which might come to challenge the authority of a plainly human administrator. Though if the limiter works as expected, there should be fewer and fewer of those bothersome doubters over time.”

I sat there, breathlessly reading over the last few paragraphs over and over, finally grasping at least the dim outline of the terrible truth. But the more I thought about it, the more pragmatic and clever it seemed. Nobody here stood any realistic chance of a normal life, after all.

If they arrived on our doorstep it meant they’d already failed to be placed with a family. Usually too old, too ugly, or out of options like me. They have no future outside these walls. Nowhere else they can go but the streets, the prisons or the graveyard. Here at least, they are fed and clothed. Put to some productive task, and made to feel as part of something larger than themselves. Thanks in no small part to this matronly mannequin, ‘Miss Alice’.

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^{Stay tuned for Part 10!}