The demonstration had to wait until Willow had at least finished her shift. She'd agreed to meet Crane at the entrance to the park as soon as it was over. She had no idea what he was intending to show her and spent the rest of her shift distracted by her own curiosity. By the end, she was practically hopping with it, much to her own annoyance. She hated that he'd now gotten her so interested
She was determined at least not to show it. So when she reached the park's main entrance, she slipped back into her usual bored state. "Let's get this over with then. What did you want to show me?"
As before, Crane wasn't bothered by her display of disinterest. "I can't show you here. You'll have to follow me."
Willow made a show of sighing, but she followed him nevertheless. He'd already hooked her in – she wouldn't be satisfied now until she'd seen whatever this demonstration was. But when he led her over to a discreet-looking white van and opened the door for her, she faltered, feeling apprehensive.
Even she knew better than that. It was the kind of thing that most people had drilled into them from childhood – don't get into cars with strangers. And the fact that it was a van rather than a car just made it seem all the more shady.
Crane had already moved round to the driver's side and gotten in. He gave Willow a mildly questioning look when he saw her still stood beside the open passenger door. "You won't get anywhere standing on the sidewalk."
"I was always told not to get into vehicles with strangers," said Willow dryly.
"Well, then that's up to you," said Crane, unperturbed. He leant back in his seat, looking perfectly confident that Willow would still get in.
Annoyingly, he was right. Willow sighed properly this time and climbed into the van. She really was a glutton for punishment. She certainly wouldn't be able to blame anyone but herself if this turned out to be a bad move. But the adrenaline was all in the danger, right?
She wasn't really one for small talk and it turned out that Crane wasn't the best conversationalist either, so they spent the main leg of the journey in silence. After a while, Willow started to feel even more restless. She didn't recognise any of the surroundings outside. She wasn't even sure of what direction they'd taken.
She reckoned she could put up enough of a fight to get away if Crane did turn out to be some kind of creep, but that didn't help the fact that she had no idea where she was.
When they eventually did pull up at the side of the road, Crane went for his briefcase before anything else. He didn't seem in a rush to get out. Willow took the opportunity to peer through the window and try to make sense of where they were. It didn't really help.
She looked back to find that Crane had put his mask back on. "Err, what are you doing?" she asked, eyebrows raised. "I really hope you didn't bring me all the way out here just to show me your mask again, because that isn't really all that exciting..."
As she was speaking, she noticed a second too late that he had something else in his hand. It looked like some kind of spray canister.
"Wait, what is that?"
"Consider this the encore," said Crane from behind the mask and sprayed the contents of the canister in her face.
Willow coughed and spluttered, waving her hand in a desperate attempt to disperse whatever toxin he'd just sprayed into the air. "What the hell are you..."
She stopped abruptly as a shadow flashed through the van, obscuring her vision momentarily. Was there someone else in here with them? It then happened again. And again.
There were faces, figures, pressing in on all sides. The van had suddenly filled with people without her even realising. Crane had vanished amongst the tide of spectres. She was left alone in the swarming crowd of contact that she didn't want.
Willow squirmed in her seat, backing away as much as the seatbelt would allow her. She hadto be hallucinating. "Wait, where did all these people..."
She stopped again as she realised that she recognised a lot of the faces. Family, colleagues, old teachers and classmates, people she passed every day on the way to work... And strangers. So many strangers...
All of them – people she knew, people she didn't – breaking the space that she'd fought so hard to keep everyone out of. A hand on her shoulder, someone's leg pressing up against hers, arms attempting to encircle her out of or some pity or attempt at comfort.
She desperately tried again to push away from them. Surely this wasn't happening. It was impossible. There couldn't be so many people trapping her into one tiny space. She couldn't keep them all at arm's length.
Willow snapped. "Stop it, leave me alone! All of you!" she cried suddenly, pulling frantically at the seatbelt that was restraining her. It took her several valuable seconds of panic to remember that she had to unclip it.
She flung it away from around her and grappled with the door handle. Was it locked? Was it jammed? Why wasn't it opening?
The door suddenly swung open. Willow scrambled backwards out of her seat, unwilling to turn her back on the crowd of spectres, and tumbled out of the van in her crazed attempt to escape. She felt a brief sense of falling, like what you get when you jolt yourself awake from a dream, then everything cut out and she didn't feel anything. Only darkness.
She really did dream then, but it was hard to distinguish anything from that overwhelming press of darkness. A road, a sea of faces, a strange man come to kidnap her. Books, tools, row upon row of bottles and beakers. Warm hands, a voice... And cold. Everlasting cold...
XXX
When Willow did finally wake, she found herself on a cold hard surface. Her back felt cramped, as if she'd been lying uncomfortably for a long time, and her head was throbbing – both behind her eyes and at some point close to her temple.
She rolled over to try and ease the ache in her back and whatever she was lying on clattered loudly. She opened her eyes wearily. She seemed to be lying on a metal table. What the... Where the hell was she?
She sat up a little too abruptly, causing her head to whirl. She closed her eyes again and manoeuvred her legs round more slowly so that she was sitting on the edge of the table surface. She kneaded the side of her head with her fingertips, trying to remember what had happened.
"I wouldn't move too fast if I were you," said a voice. "You likely still have a light concussion."
The voice was all too familiar. Everything came back in a hazy, disjointed recollection. Driving to nowhere, a mask, too many people, the sense of falling... Well, that was likely a clear indicator as to where her headache had come from.
Willow opened her eyes again and looked around, making slower movements this time. She was in what looked like a bizarre mix between an ordinary, if a little rundown, kitchen and a rather grisly science lab. Crane was sat in the corner, reading what appeared to be some kind of textbook. Well, that pretty much explained why she'd woken up in such a weird place.
She gestured pointedly to the room around her. "So is this your way of telling me that you are a creepy kidnapper after all?"
"Well, I could have just left you unconscious at the side of the road. Take your pick," said Crane mildly, without looking up from his textbook.
Willow grumbled to herself, still rubbing her head. How the hell had she managed to knock herself unconscious? She remembered the feeling of falling, but her memory was still hazy. And who was to say it had been her own doing anyway? "What did you do to me?"
"Actually, you did that to yourself," Crane pointed out. "You were suddenly so eager to get away that you fell out of the van and hit your head on the sidewalk."
And there was clearly a reason for that. Willow could remember faces flashing before her eyes, the feeling that the van was full of people... But not really the reason why.
She narrowed her eyes. "You still did something to me." Why was it so hard to remember? "That stuff you sprayed... It was some kind of hallucinogen, wasn't it? What the hell was it?"
"I call it fear gas," said Crane, seemingly not at all bothered that she'd figured it out. "You're right; it is a hallucinogen. It causes people to envisage their worst fear. And from the sounds of what you seemed to be experiencing, I'd guess that yours is claustrophobia."
"I'm not claustrophobic," Willow scoffed. "You could put me in a box or a coffin if you wanted and I really wouldn't give a damn."
"So... crowds then?" Crane guessed instead.
"No," said Willow shortly. "I work at a fairground that gets pretty busy at this time of year. Do you really think I could do that if I was scared of crowds?"
He was a little nearer to the mark, however. People getting close to her was more the issue. Emotionally, physically... It didn't really matter. She'd been a bit of a head case from quite a young age. Any shrink would have a hell of a time psyching her out. Though she was most definitely never going to allow that.
"So it's more specific," Crane continued. He made it more of a statement than a question.
"Look, I'm not gonna tell you, so you may as well just quit guessing," said Willow point blank. "And this whole thing can't be possible anyway. No drug could be so advanced as to target every individual differently on such a personal level."
Crane finally closed the textbook and set it to one side. "Couldn't it? So you're telling me that whatever you saw wasn't your worst fear? Is there something else that you fear more?"
Willow scowled. There was barely anything that she actually feared. But this so-called 'fear gas' had managed to hit the one thing that she did fear right on the head. It wasn't like it was an altogether common phobia either, like fear of spiders or fear of heights. Crane was really onto something with this.
"How the hell did you manage to make something like that?" she asked as way of answering his question, trying not to sound impressed, even though she really was.
"Because I'm a master of fear," said Crane simply. "I've put years of research into it. But... everything can still be improved on. There are viable antidotes out there for this, so I want to make it incurable. I have plans for other experiments too. Which is where you come in."
"Yay me," said Willow sarcastically. "So why exactly is that where I come in?"
"You said yourself that you know what scares people," Crane reminded her. "Maybe even more than I do. If I can start off knowing exactly what is and isn't likely to work, then hopefully I can achieve faster results."
"Well, maybe I don't want to be a guinea pig for your experiments after all," said Willow.
"You said quite the opposite before."
"Yeah, well, that was before I woke up in some weird-ass kitchen/lab hybrid after you made me knock myself out," Willow pointed out dryly.
"You had a mild concussion. Really nothing to worry about," Crane reassured, almost uninterestedly. "It was only that mixed with the after-effects of the toxin that kept you unconscious for so long."
For so long? Willow glanced around the room, looking for a clock. But she didn't find one. Only when she really assessed the aches and pains in her body did she realise that she'd clearly been out of it for a lot longer than she'd first thought.
"Just how long was I unconscious for?" she asked warily.
"I'd say roughly thirty-two hours," Crane diagnosed.
"Thirty-two hours? Are you kidding me?" exclaimed Willow. She made to get down from the table, but the sudden movement made her head swim and she swayed where she was sitting. Thirty-two hours... She'd missed an entire day of work. And they'd have had absolutely no notice of it.
"You should lie back down," said Crane, getting up. "Didn't you hear me when I said you have mild concussion?"
"I thought you said it was nothing to worry about," Willow grumbled. She didn't lie down. "And I thought you were just a shrink – not a doctor doctor."
"I don't need to be a 'doctor doctor' to know that hitting your head on the sidewalk isn't going to be good for you," said Crane wryly, stopping beside the metal table.
"Whatever. Because of you I missed a day of work and didn't even get to notify them," Willow complained. "Do you know how much trouble I'll get in for that? I'm already on a sort of probation after the whole Paget incident. I'll be lucky if I don't get a written warning."
As apathetic as Willow always seemed towards most things in life, her job was one thing she actually did find pleasure from. She did not want to risk it on some mysterious man she'd only just met and a project that she still didn't quite understand.
"I called the fairground whilst you were unconscious and told them you were sick," Crane explained indifferently. "The number was on their website."
"You did what?" Willow angrily attempted to jump down from the table a second time. "What gives you the right to..."
Crane's hand closed around her arm as he tried to push her back down. "I told you to lie down."
"Let go of me." Willow glared dangerously at him. "I was right; you're a creep. I don't want any part in this."
But apparently, it was the wrong thing to say. Before she'd even realised what had happened, Crane had suddenly grabbed her other wrist and pinned her down to the table. "Do you expect me to just let you leave now after you've seen everything?"
Willow couldn't believe he was even going there. Now that I've told you, I have to kill you. She'd seen it all the time in bad movies. But she reminded herself that this wasn't a movie. This was real life. And people actually got hurt in real life.
"What, and you think it'll be easy to just kill me without leaving a trace?" she said daringly. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but Crane was stronger than he looked.
"You think it won't be?" countered Crane. "Does anybody know you're here? Did you tell anyone you'd be going somewhere different after your last shift?"
Willow gritted her teeth. Of course she hadn't. She wasn't friends with anybody at work – she avoided even talking to them when possible. Why would she have told them anything? And as for her home life, she was always the first one back to the house. She then always spent so much time in her room that her family probably wouldn't even notice that she wasn't there.
But that didn't mean she was going to make this easy. She suddenly bucked as hard as she could to try and throw Crane off, twisting her arms round in his grasp, attempting to loosen his grip.
She may not have been strong or athletic, but she was a scare model. She often had to play the part of zombies, possessed girls during exorcisms and once, she'd even acted out going through the motions of breaking her bones as she 'transformed' into a werewolf for one of their specially themed full moon nights. As a result, she was a lot more flexible than people expected.
And Crane definitely didn't expect it. It was clear that he wasn't really a hands-on man. As soon as Willow started tossing and turning and writhing about on the table, she was able to throw him off easily. She then leapt down and ran for the first door she could find, ignoring the banging in her head.
Her movements were sluggish – either from her concussion or the after-effects of the fear gas like Crane had said – and the world was still spinning before her eyes. She wasn't going to get very far like this...
And she didn't. She hadn't even reached the door when Crane grabbed her again. This time, he wasn't allowing her room to escape. He wound his arm around her neck, pulling her back against him, pressing just hard enough on her throat to make her breath catch. She couldn't move. The more she struggled, the more his arm ground against her neck.
She desperately pulled at his arm with both hands, but she knew that she wasn't going to get away a second time. He wasn't squeezing her throat so much that she couldn't breathe, but it was enough to hurt and the struggle was making her feel even more light-headed.
"Just what the hell do you want?" Willow asked, breathing heavily. Her head was now spinning so much that she felt sick.
"I thought I made that part clear already," replied Crane, almost too calmly. "I want you to help me."
"You really think this is the best way to go about it?" Willow pointed out sarcastically. It took a lot more than the threat of death to chase away her snarky attitude.
"You were the one who chose to make things more difficult for yourself." Crane reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a tiny black spray canister. "It's a shame... I think you would have been very valuable to my research if you'd been more cooperative."
Willow could just about see the canister he was now directing at her face out of the corner of her eye. "More of your experiments, doctor?" Her sarcasm happened to be her best defence mechanism.
"This is more than an experiment," said Crane. "I can give you a dose so concentrated that it'll destroy your mind. No human would be able to handle this amount."
Willow closed her eyes, trying to think. She couldn't see any possible way out of this, but then it was hard to try and plan when she couldn't stop thinking of the canister of toxin that was so close to her face.
She was scared. Of course she was. Who wouldn't be? But that fear was followed by a thrilling lick of pleasure. Willow loved the taste of fear. Nothing ever scared her anymore – it was as if the very notion of being able to feel fear had grown numb inside her over the years. She'd built up an immunity to all of the things that other people feared. She just found it all so... boring.
But Crane's fear toxin was like nothing she'd ever experienced. The truth was that she'd never felt quite as alive as she had during those moments in the van. Having her mind tortured to insanity by the emotion she'd spent the last several years of her life trying to find didn't sound like a bad way to go.
"Do it then," she breathed. "I can't imagine anything better."
Crane hesitated, unsure if she was bluffing. "And how do I know you're not just saying that to try and make me change my mind?"
"You're the psychiatrist. You tell me if I'm lying," said Willow boldly.
Crane was still hesitant, but he complied and very slowly removed his arm from around her neck. He kept the canister raised in case she tried anything. She didn't. She simply allowed him to lay a hand on her shoulder and turn her round to face him. She then met his gaze steadily, almost defiantly.
He studied her face for a long time. There was absolutely nothing that suggested that she wasn't telling the truth. "You're not like everybody else, are you?"
"You didn't realise that straightaway?" said Willow, nonplussed. She eyed the spray canister in Crane's hand. "So are you going to do it or not?"
Crane glanced at the canister too, before lowering it. "No, I don't think I will."
Willow automatically reached for the canister without thinking about it. She suddenly felt like she needed to feel those effects again whilst they were still in reach. "But, wait..."
Crane raised his eyebrows at her reaction, pulling the canister back away from her. "Are you telling me you want to be driven insane?"
"When you put it like that, no," said Willow stoutly. "But I do want to try that stuff again..."
Crane scrutinised her face even closer. She was still telling the truth. He pointedly put the canister back in his pocket. "Not this one. Even you wouldn't be able to handle it and keep your mind still intact."
"Fine, the one you used before then," said Willow impatiently.
Crane looked amused. "Most people would be scared senseless of the idea after having it used on them once already."
"Don't get me wrong; I am too," said Willow. "But that doesn't mean..."
"Yet you're so eager to try it again," Crane interrupted her.
"Like you said, I'm not like everyone else," said Willow simply. "I get kicks out of scaring people for a living, but nothing ever scares me anymore. Everything's too tame nowadays. I want to be scared. I miss that feeling – I miss the thrill of it. I miss the adrenaline. And this stuff that you've created... That was the first time I've felt real fear since I can even remember."
As much as Willow always gave off the idea that she was uninterested in everything around her, it was clear that there were some things that she was truly passionate about. Crane could see that even more now. And even though she clearly wasn't the most cooperative, he somehow had a feeling that she still wasn't going to walk away from him just yet. Even if she did manage to escape for real. He now felt confident enough that she'd still come back.
"Well, I guess it's nice to know that someone appreciates my work," he said, still sounding amused. "Maybe if you're good, I'll let you try the weaker version again."
Willow didn't appreciate the 'if you're good' remark. "So you've decided you still want me around then?" she asked, trying to sound uninterested again.
"Did I ever say otherwise?" Crane countered. "I think it was you who got cold feet."
"Was that the way it went? Somewhere along the lines of being told I wasn't allowed to leave and then getting assaulted, I forgot that I was the bad guy in this," said Willow sardonically.
Crane didn't apologise for it or even look abashed. Instead, he just smiled. "It's a moot point really. I think we're both bad guys here."
For once, Willow had to agree with him. So did that make her the official henchgirl to an unorthodox and quite possibly insane psychiatrist, who clearly intended to poison people with a concentrated form of fear itself? Well, she could certainly do worse.
And if she was being completely honest with herself, she actually couldn't imagine anything more exciting.
