Shadows of the Emerald City Read Free

Psychisches Wissenschaft .”
    Fisk smiled.
    “ I haven’t gotten my translated copy, yet.” When he saw the younger man flush with embarrassment, he waved him off. “A joke, doctor. I remember from your résumé you speak German and French.”
    Will almost mentioned that he also spoke Italian and a smattering of Russian, but thought better of it.
    “ There’s an interesting article by Friedrich Leuchte concerning what he calls ‘ erschüttern der bekannten ’, or ‘ the shock of the familiar ’. He cites numerous case studies where some catatonic individuals have been shocked or jolted from their stupor by familiar surroundings. In Dorothy’s case, I’m thinking the Gale farmhouse.”
    “ But Dorothy was returned there after being found,” Fisk said. “Doctor Walshe, the psychiatrist who initially treated her, also took her to other familiar surroundings. None of the attempts proved successful.”
    “ But those trips were taken while she was still in the process of fabricating her fantasy world. She hasn’t been outside these grounds for over fifty years. In effect, she has spent all that time ‘in Oz’. Now it’s the farmhouse that would seem new and exotic, something both known but forgotten.”
    “ A shock of the familiar.”
    “ Exactly.”
    Dr. Fisk sighed.
    “ There are many who would say the old woman is at peace, leave her be.”
    “ If that’s true, Carl, then why not just load up every patient with tranquilizers and sit them in front of the television or the duck pond?”
    Fisk considered this and nodded. He pulled a form from his desk, and began filling it in.
     
    It was a brilliant May day when Will and Dorothy set out for the farm in Dryden.
    The drive was just over an hour, and Will had gone there on his last day off to make certain there was enough of the farmhouse standing to give Dorothy the necessary jolt.
    She sat in the front seat, her large hands clasped in her lap. For all her lack of affect, she might be sitting out on the duck pond bench. She was far more animated in her room than she was now.
    Her demeanor changed only once. Will heard her gasp slightly and saw her lean forward.
    There was a young girl on a bicycle, a white wicker basket of flowers mounted on the handlebars. When it became clear it was only a young girl, Dorothy returned to her vegetative state.
    Elmira Gulch had ridden a bicycle, Will remembered. It was funny, he knew the Gulch woman had had an altercation with Dorothy shortly before the tornado hit. He had thought of hiring an actress to play the woman, perhaps to come charging out of the house when they arrived. But he could find no pictures of Elmira Gulch, and realized the shock of seeing her double might be more than Dorothy could bear. One of the lessons he had learned in his residency was that results did not always come quickly. “ Patience for patients ” was something his instructors mentioned time and time again.
    They were about three miles from the town of Dryden when Will took a dirt road off to the left. He thought he saw Dorothy’s eyes flicker, but he had to keep his eye on the rough and rutted road.
    They passed one large working farm and two smaller spreads that had gone to seed, their houses and outbuildings slowly caving in to rotted piles of lumber and nails.
    Then came the Gale farm.
    The barn was burned down, and the pigsty and chicken coops were gone, but the house stood, seemingly little changed from that infamous day in 1900.
    Will glanced at Dorothy, and was rewarded to see that her eyes were alert, her hands unclasped.
    They passed the rusted ruin of a mailbox and parked in the dooryard.
    The house was indeed crooked on the foundation, as if a giant had lifted it and then replaced it carelessly on the foundation.
    It was a sad and plain gray house in a colorless landscape. Even the brilliantly blue sky seemed bland and charmless in this barren and desolate place.
    My God, Will thought, it’s no wonder her fantasy world is so