Research & Investigations

Encyclopedias scattered across my coffee table at home, all about every single disease, every single condition from mental to physical, and every single creepy crawly from flying insects to eight legged creatures. I even went as far as old folklore tales, but those all seemed way too drastic and nothing like anything I've seen.

At that moment I had been reading through all illnesses beginning with the letter L, when my sister, Ruth, came down from the stairs of my two story home. She was dressed up in her white lab coat and  black suit pants.  She was the science geek out of the two of us and even she had no clue what this disease was, saying it was unlike anything she's ever seen before.

"Still reading through those encyclopedias, I see," she said, buttoning her coat. "Did you get any sleep last night?"

Looking up at her from my reading, I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose and replied, "I have a clinic full of ill people and I have no clue how to help any of them; of course I haven't slept." Turning the encyclopedia over on its pages to keep my page, I stood up and approached Ruth. "I don't plan on sleeping much until I have the slightest inkling of what's going on."

"And this illness, do you think it's airborne?" she questioned with an eyebrow raised.

"Well, my nurses and I have been cooped up with many ill patients and we haven't picked up this sickness, so I doubt it." I sat back down and pointed at a picture of an arachnoid on the front cover of the spider encyclopedia. "Not like the spider is what's causing it or anything, but I have a feeling this disease is being picked up by something that's carrying it and spreading it through a bite or something." I reached for my handbook and picked it up, flipping through the pages. "I wrote some stuff I would like for you to look over and research in your lab." Handing her the handbook, I rested against the couch.

"Hmmm," she hummed. "I definitely could. Anything to help, really."

"I think the bite of some kind of insect very well could be what's causing the chaos. And if not an insect, then it could be a bird of some sort. The weird thing is that I haven't found any bite marks on any of the patients, so this is just a possibility right now." I spoke unsure.

"I see. Well, I'll look into it and get back to you. In the meantime I think you should really get headed out and be careful not to screw yourself up by not sleeping. Because if something happens to you then the people will have no doctor to look after them," she said before walking out of the house.

She had a point but sleep had been the furthest thing from my mind. Really all I could thing about was the many lives at stake, and it was impossible to sleep with thoughts of everyone dying on my watch playing over and over in my head.

My sister and I were very close, having been through everything together. We're technically the same person. Though not twins, we had very similar ways of thinking.

My sister has only been living with me for 2 years though, because she got divorced from her no good husband who threw her out. Of course I welcomed her with open arms having nobody else in the family she could go to.

My sister and I are strong advocates on eating outside local farms, so we tend to eat more greens than meat. A close family friend passed away due to a bug caused from eating bad meat from the store, so my sister and I chose the better approach of eating from local meat farms instead, and it was a great decision because the meat seems to taste much better anyway. My sister had a passion for this whole meat thing, and her beliefs outweighed mine. She had such a stronger voice for this kind of stuff and even ran her own blog about it.

Me, on the other hand, I wasnt that crazy about it. Still I preferred eating greens than meat, but some people are different. I'm not a vegan, I just choose a different lifestyle.

But my sister loves food. Her relationship with food was very healthy, and she'd been studying different types of meats and diseases to see if the food had anything to do with the weird illness that seemed to be taking over, but she had no luck of course.

The whole thing was very weird, honestly.

When I got to the clinic that day, everything was peaceful. We had opened the doors to visitors because I was pretty sure the sickness wasn't airborne, so I decided to ask some of the family of these patients questions.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Klaus Reede, and I've been tending to your son, Zachery." I introduced myself, giving the married couple each a handshake.

"Thank you so much for taking care of our boy," the mother gushed.
Two weeks ago a little boy named Zachery was brought in with the illness, and his parents were in shambles. He's ten years old but he's a fighter.

"It's not a problem. I was just hoping I could ask you both some questions regarding your son's behavior in the days before you realized something was wrong." They gave each other confused looks but nodded nevertheless, and I guided them to my office where they took a seat in front of my desk.

I stood in front of my book case to the left of them before speaking. "Can you recall anything strange in his behavior a week prior to when you brought him in?" I pulled a pen from my desk and sat down with my notebook to jot down important details.

"He had gotten really sick - like coughing up blood sick." The pain in her voice was laced with shattered nerves, and I could tell she'd been shaking without even having to look at her. But pushing through her saddened posture she continued, "He came to us one day and he said that his head had been aching, but the funny thing is that it wasn't your average migraine. It was... in his own words, his head, as in the frame, was hurting."

"I think what my wife is trying to say is that instead of Zach having a small ache in his head, the pain had actually been on his skin," Mr. Johnson said while wrapping a comforting around his wife's shoulder, who had looked like she'd seen a ghost.

"Would you like a cup of water, Ma'am?" I asked, placing my notebook down on the desk.

"Y-yes, please." She put her head down and I was afraid she'd throw up at any given moment. The color was drained from her face and her eyes were glassy and empty, alone and fragile. She looked like glass that had broken into many little pieces. Already broken and abused, she looked like she'd given up on life.

I returned to them with two bottled waters and a tray of chocolates. "Chocolate is good for stress and anxiety, so eat as many as you like." I smiled at them as I handed both drinks and the tray to them. They thanked me and we sat in a smooth silence for a couple of minutes.

"Ghosts," Mrs. Johnson muttered.

"What was that?" I said, raising an eyebrow in focus.

"He'd mentioned seeing ghosts, but we didn't take that too seriously." Her eyes seemed to aspire from empty to concentrated just like that.

Writing that down, I said, "What exactly would he say about these ghosts?"

"He said they were after him, and every time he closed his eyes they'd be there, reaching for him, yelling to him. He stopped sleeping." Things began to look very different to me then, because these symptoms were insanely unlike any illness.

I looked to the bottom of my paper and read the last word I wrote on the line; hallucinations.

This is where the story gets darker.

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