Valley Hill Mental Hospital

Psychiatrist: Dr. William Branton

Professional Journal

Date:08Mar

Never in my 44 years of living have I experianced suchs highs and lows, and never have I experienced them in such a high frequency. Over the course of the previous 4 days I have taken light steps though heaven and crawled through hell. My head is spinning from all of the sights and I need to cast an anchor to hold me firm before I am swept away by the unyielding currents. This journal shall be that anchor.

First let me express the delight that I felt when Katie, my wife of 15 years, informed me that our labor (although one would not call it labor) will finally bear fruit, for she is with child. We have been trying for many years to grow our family but there have been complications. Through all the hope and disappointment we have finally reached our elusive goal. She had her pregnancy confirmed with her doctor so this is surely the real thing. Over the next few months I am sure to be busy preparing a nursery, childproofing, and whatever else expecting fathers do.

My wife is glowing with a happiness I have not seen her with in years. Her walk is more akin to a dance and her words are better described as a song. We had all but given up but now we have been blessed with what can only be described as a miracle.

We have announced the news to our family and friends who are all overjoyed as well. Our close friends Dave and Linda Sutton took us out on their boat for dinner in the harbor to celebrate. It was actually them who introduced Katie and myself years ago and since then they have had three boys of their own. It will still be a few months before we can find out the gender of our baby so until then all we can do it plan for both scenarios.

When I informed my coworkers everyone was quite happy for us. Elizabeth even bought me a small box of expensive cigars which I couldn’t refuse. She knows that I partake in the occasional cigar whenever I need to relax and dive into deep thought. There were six cigars in an old mahogany box that fit perfectly on the corner of my desk. Elizabeth and I joked around about how even though my wife and I were having our first child, Elizabeth would always be my work daughter. She would laugh and pick back at me saying that without her I wouldn't even know what the top of my desk would look like because it would be covered in unorganized papers.

As I stated at the beginning, not all has been good though. Bringing me back down from my high has been my two patients, Mr. Taylor and Mr. DeWitt. After last week’s sessions we decided to proceed with hypnotherapy. In short, it was a horrible idea.

Mr. Taylor, the pilot who suffers from Optophobia was the first go undergo the procedure. Historically speaking, we induce a sleep like state to the patient where we can then access parts of the subconscious. Here we can have the patient remember things that may have else been lost in their memory and have them describe it to us. We can uncover repressed trauma that can lead us to better treat the individual and start healing the root of the problem. While it is not an exact science, I have seen it work a staggering amount of times first hand. Mr. Taylor was not among those.

Starting off the session was normal enough. He was restrained to his bed for fear of him harming himself was still there but he was receptive of the treatment. We had no problems accessing his subconscious and getting him to answer questions about his life. We started with questions about his childhood which did not uncover anything abnormal. There was no indications of childhood trauma, mental illness, or anything else. Eventually we lead him to the day of his mysterious flight. All the details about him preparing the flight matched his previous statements including those about Jerry. We let him tell the story in amazing detail as we took notes. Two hours into the flight he described the sudden storm that overtook the plane. He recalled the gauges all acting up, the alarms that were going off, how he was trying to gain altitude to go over the storm. All of it matched exactly. But then it changed.

He had previously stated that the storm had suddenly disappeared and along with it so too did his friend Jerry. Now we seemed to get the missing parts between those two times.

As the plane ascended he noticed a crack in the sky. At first he thought it was something on the windshield of the plane but he quickly noticed that was not the case. This crack was static and unmoving in the clouds themselves and many times larger than the plane, and the storm was raging around it as if it was a bathtub drain and the storm was the water rushing into it. Imagine if the sky was a painting, something material in itself, and this is what he saw. He tried to divert the plane but it was useless as he was seemingly sucked into the crack.

What he described next was even harder to imagine. As soon as the plane went into the crack all he could see was a calm night sky with stars all around him. Everywhere he looked was all the same except below him. There was no ocean, no ground at all, just more starry sky. The only thing he could see aside from stars and the blackness of space was the crack that was still open, through which he could still see the storm raging as if it was a window back into our world. He felt impossibly light as if gravity was now turned off and he also felt impossibly slow. He could only compare this feeling as if he was submerged under water trying to run. There was almost an unseen force acting upon him that was similar, and yet so different than gravity.

Numerous stars lit up the obsidian backdrop of the new sky in patterns that he had never seen before. He could not find any similar formations that he was accustomed to in his years of navigation. The more he looked around he came to the startling conclusion that this was not the night’s sky but space itself. Aside from the crack there was nothing but stars. No land, no sky, no terraforma. As illogical as it was it was the only thing which he could accept as to his current location.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Jerry turned to him and said something, but the words were obstructed in the alien environment and Mr. Taylor could not make out what was said. Jerry unbuckled himself from the co-pilot’s seat and slowly moved to the back of the plane in what seemed like a half walking half floating manner. As he moved to the back of the plane Mr. Taylor lost sight of him, and so he turned his attention back to the stars. He was unsure how long he sat there. It could have been minutes or even hours. Without warning though, a distorted scream from the rear of the plane caused Mr. Taylor to take action. He moved as quickly as he could to the rear of the plane and found Jerry looking out of a porthole and trembling. Mr. Taylor called to his friend but there was no reply and it wasn't until he forcefully shook him did he turn from the window. And what in his friends face was beyond understanding.

Jerry’s eyes were both solid black. But this was an unnatural color of black, one that was an abyss of emptiness. Both eyes were a portal of nothingness and his face was distorted in fear. As Mr. Taylor shook his friend who seemed paralyzed, Jerry’s face began to crumble like a sandcastle in the wind. Cracks formed on his cheeks and forehead that seemed to erode into his body and sand fell out of the wound instead of blood. Before Mr. Taylor could even act all that was left of his friend was a small pile of dust.

Mr. Taylor could not help but turn to the window in fear, anger, sorrow and a mix of every other emotion. What he saw he could only explain as a black hole. There was a perfect circle of nothingness in the space that stars should have been hanging. All light from those stars seemed to be pulled into the black hole giving the impression that space itself was breaking.

And something inside was looking back at him.

At this point something jolted the plane and he fell to his knees and broke his line of sight. Something was happening to the plane, as if it was moving again instead of hanging in the motionness of space. He crawled back to the cockpit and noticed that the plane was once again being pulled into the crack he passed through earlier. He manned the controls and maneuvered it best he could and somehow passed through the crack as it was closing. Back into the storm he escaped from.

As he crossed through completely, the crack snapped shut, and instantly the storm stopped. The clouds simply dispersed, the wind calmed down back to normal, full control of the plane returned to him and all the gauges returned to normal.

From here it was the same as the previous stories. He turned the plane around and went back. He seemed to have blocked those memories out of his mind, which is understandable considering how extreme his story was. If he truly believed it then this would undeniably be a traumatic and terrifying event.

In my profession though we have to accept that the mind is a greatly flawed device to begin with. If deprived of oxygen for long enough a person can hallucinate a wide range of things. If the right combination of chemicals are introduced into your body then you can get the same effect. If a person takes a hallucinogenic such as Lysergic acid diethylamide (aka acid) then they will experience a huge range of things that they themself will feel is reality and be unable to differentiate between the two. Although Mr. Taylor tested negative to every drug test administered, this does not mean that he was not hallucinating.

But there was an intangible way he told the story that makes me believe him.

Mr. DeWitt had his hypnotherapy the next day. He was still restrained like before but was very compliant. Once we had accessed his subconscious he started with simple questions about his childhood. Very standard stuff like how his upbringing was, the schools he attended, friends he had. All the questions were met with prompt and clear answers. Even when we started asking about Sarah Lawford the answers remained the same. He truly believed she existed and his responses matched all of his earlier statements.

It wasn’t until we started exploring his memory about the events of the night in the marina that we ran into complications during the hypnotherapy.

One great thing about this kind of therapy is that it can help you recall information that you yourself may not be aware that you know. Sometimes small details are overlooked when processing large amount of information and our brain stores them away without our cognitive self knowing it. So when were were going through the events of the night in question, Mr. DeWitt stepped us through everything in greater detail.

When in the basement along the Sea Window he remembered seeing what looked like a small crack in the glass. At that time he thought it was a reflection of something behind him because whenever he took a few steps the crack position would change relative to the glass, a common reflection illusion. But as he is now remembering it, it seems the crack was actually in the ocean itself. Inside of the crack was a darkness that he could only explain as ‘infinite’.

At the moment he heard the first sound, it seems that the crack grew larger and the opening increased. There was no effect on anything that he could tell. The ocean was behaving the same and everything inside the marina was unaffected. The second sound was the same where the crack became larger again but he hadn’t given it any attention because he thought it was an optical illusion with a reflection.

After that was when they were leaving and he lost sight of Sarah. At the time of the third sound he was able to better recall the shapes and shadows in the ocean. Something broke through the crack and into the ocean. He couldn't explain the form or even the movement but he was certain whatever ‘it’ was it came through the crack.

As he was recalling the time of the fourth sound, he suddenly froze and began to tremble. Tears started to stream down his face. He confessed that “I wasn’t running away from the sound. I was running to her, to Sarah. Under the noise of the drums I heard her scream for help. That is why I was running.”

He recalled that he heard her scream from that point on in unison with the drums. It wasn’t until the next day when the drumming started again that her screams were no longer mixed into the sound. He wept tears to the point that we had to stop the treatment. Mr. DeWitt felt that he abandoned Sarah without even realizing it. He blamed himself for leaving the marina to look for her when he should have stayed until he found her. It's a strong case of survivor's remorse where he is taking all the blame for an event that we cannot even definitively say ever happened at all.

I will give each of the patients time to recover and reflect before our next session. They both took it very hard and it was not as productive as I had hoped. I almost seem to be walking away with more questions than answers.

Both patients observed a ‘crack’ in what I can only describe as reality. Mass hysteria? Common Delusion? I don't think so. These two patients are too far removed from each other to come to that assumption. I will have to do more research into this. I will center my search into three key points.

1. People who claim that someone close to them has gone missing.

2. People who reported a crack or break in reality or space itself.

3. People who are tormented by unexplainable symptoms after these event.

If I can find others that fit these criteria then maybe there will be clues in how to treat their delusions.