Tami was twenty-three. Her blue eyes were magnetic. Pale and full of pain. Her husband, Colonel Anderson, was much older than her. A stern, wealthy Korean War veteran who, after only one year of marriage, was already disappointed with it.
“I love my wife, Dr. Stolow,” The Colonel told me. “But she doesn’t make sense to me. One minute, she’s happy; the next, she’s screaming at me, accusing me of secretly hating her. I think she’s losing her mind.”
He asked me to talk to her, and so I began meeting with her twice a week.
She’d had a very traumatic childhood. Her alcoholic mother had committed suicide when she was still a teenager.
“This world has been very unkind to you,” I told her. “You’re terrified of being abandoned, and this fear affects everything you do, but I can help you manage this fear.”
We began working with her on mindfulness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation. Her mood swings began to improve but then she and The Colonel had another bad fight, and this time the fight turned physically violent.
“If anything, you’ve made my wife worse,” The Colonel told me.
“Your wife has suffered a lot in her life. Right now, she needs patience and understanding.”
“I don’t have any more patience.”
The Colonel cancelled the rest of Tami’s and my appointments. I thought that was the last I’d ever hear from either of them. But then a year later, The Colonel called me, begging for help. He’d taken Tami to Switzerland to try a new, experimental therapy involving something called a God Helmet.
He believed this helmet had severely damaged her brain.
The Colonel sat on my sofa. He’d lost thirty pounds since I’d last seen him. His eyes had sunken into his face. In his lap, he clutched a beige envelope.
“How did you hear about this Dr. Weber?” I asked him.
“From a friend of mine from the war. He’d been very depressed. He said Dr. Weber’s helmet let him talk to God and that God had forgiven him for all his sins.”
“And you believed this?”
“My friend had no reason to lie to me. I’d seen the change in him, too. He’d come back from Switzerland a different man. Happier than I’d ever seen him before. He gave me Dr. Weber’s number. After speaking on the phone, he invited Tami and me to Switzerland.”
“You said you have a recording of Dr. Weber and Tami’s session?”
“Here.” He reached into his envelope and took out a VHS tape labeled, Tami - 11/04/1992 – GODHEAD. “Please watch it and tell me what you think.”
I put the tape into my VHS player as soon as I’d gotten home from work. The recording began with a close-up of Tami’s face. She wore a metal helmet covered with wires that twisted into the circuit boards behind her.
Dr. Weber placed his leather-gloved hands on Tami’s cheeks.
“Are you afraid?” he asked, speaking with a thick Swiss accent.
“Will this hurt?”
“Not at all. In fact, you’ll feel an intense rush of pleasure once I’ve connected your brain to Heaven.”
He turned the helmet on. Tami’s body jerked backward, and her pupils dilated. Then her jaw slowly opened.
“What do you see?” Dr. Weber asked.
“My mother, sitting on a bed. She says she’s sorry she left me, but she couldn’t stand to be in this world anymore. It just hurt too much.”
Tami began to cry.
My TV flickered with static, then suddenly shut off.
I ejected the VHS. The tape had unspooled. I couldn’t get it wound again. I told myself I’d take it to the rental store tomorrow and ask if they could fix it.
My first patient the next day was a young woman named Georgia, who’d begun seeing me after her three-month-old son died in his crib.
She sat on my sofa, rubbing the cross on her necklace, her red hair tied in a ponytail.
“I keep blaming myself for what happened,” she said. “I can’t sleep. Every night, I just lie in bed, thinking about what I could have done differently.”
“You can’t keep blaming yourself for what happened.”
I knew a lot about blame. My wife, Anna, had been killed in a car crash that happened while I was driving drunk.
“You need to try and forgive yourself,” I said.
“And what if I can’t?”
Georgia spoke, but her voice sounded just like Anna’s.
The voice that came out of Georgia’s mouth wasn’t Georgia’s. It was Anna’s.
I shut my eyes and rubbed my temples.
“Are you okay, Dr. Stolow?” The voice was Georgia’s voice again.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I just have a bit of a headache.”
On my way home from work, I stopped at the rental store. They’d managed to fix the VHS.
I sat on my couch and tried watching the video again.
“My mom and I left her bedroom,” Tami said. “We’re in another room now. A much larger room. Everything inside the room is white. My mom’s face looks strange, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her face is changing. Distorted. Oh, it looks horrible. Stretched horizontally. Her mouth full of fanged teeth. No, no, I don’t like this! Please make this stop!”
She screamed.
Dr. Weber shut the helmet off.
Tami’s pupils shrank back to their original size.
My phone rang. It was The Colonel.
“I need your help,” he said. “I think Tami’s had some kind of psychotic break.”
“What’s happening?”
“I’m not sure. She’d gone to bed early, but then she woke up and started screaming. She’s been screaming for nearly an hour now. I can’t get her to stop.”
I told him I was on my way, and I drove to their house. Their housekeeper let me inside.
“Thank you for coming, doctor,” she said. “I’ll take you upstairs to their bedroom.”
Tami stood near the bed, pressing her face against the wall. Every few seconds, she’d let out a blood-curdling scream.
The Colonel stood a few feet behind her, trying to calm her down.
I slowly approached her. “Tami. My name is Dr. Stolow. Do you remember me?”
I touched her shoulder. She turned around. She had a horrible smile on her face. Her lips stretched nearly to her ears.
It couldn’t be real.
I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, her smile was gone.
She slammed her head into the wall, splitting her forehead open. Blood dripped down her face.
“What’s wrong, Tami?”
“I’m very confused.”
“About what?”
“I’ve been walking around this house for hours, but I can’t seem to find my way out of it.”
I asked The Colonel to call an ambulance.
Once he was gone, Tami sat on the edge of the bed.
“You told me it’s a virus, or a parasite maybe,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
I sat next to her. She took my hand. “When you said you loved me, you meant it, didn’t you?”
“I never said I loved you.”
“You did! You promised you’d love me forever.”
“You’re my patient, Tami. I care about you, but not like that.”
She laughed.
The Colonel walked back into the room, and she froze again, staring into space.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I stood up. “I managed to calm her down.”
“The paramedics are on their way. They should be here soon.”
Once they arrived, they sedated Tami and took her to the hospital. I requested she be placed on a three-day psychiatric hold.
“What happens now?” The Colonel asked me.
“The doctors and nurses will keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.”
“Did you watch the video I gave you?”
“Most of it. I’ve been having trouble with my VHS machine.”
“Do you think it was Dr. Weber’s helmet that caused this?”
“How soon after this God Helmet experiment did you notice Tami’s behavior changed?”
“Just a few days. As soon as we’d gotten back to Boston, she started staring at the walls, wandering the house, and talking to herself.”
I got Dr. Weber’s number from him. Then I called Dr. Weber the next day, from my office.
“Tami’s experience with the God Helmet was very unusual,” he said.
“How?”
“Every other person who’s worn the helmet, me included, has seen the same thing. Grassy fields, a dense forest, and a deep, male voice telling them things about their lives that nobody else could possibly know. Tami’s experience, though, was a nightmare.”
“I watched your recording of the session. Tami talked to her mother, but then her mother’s face became monstrous.”
“I still don’t understand what went wrong.”
“How does your helmet cause these hallucinations?”
“These aren’t hallucinations, Dr. Stolow. The God Helmet emits low resonance, low frequency radio waves directly to the center of a person’s brain. I’ve discovered the exact resonance required to activate the pineal gland.”
The pineal gland. He was crazy, or worse, a conman.
Back at home, I tried watching the recording of Tami’s God Helmet session again.
Her face filled my TV screen. Her pupils dilated.
“I ordered my men to hold the line,” she said, but she spoke with The Colonel’s voice.
“If I let them retreat, more of them would have lived, but then I might have died, too.”
“You’re afraid of dying?” Dr. Weber asked.
Static distorted Tami’s face. Her face became blended with The Colonel’s.
“I’m a Catholic,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of very bad things. I don’t know what’s waiting for me on the other side.”
“And you want to ask God what your fate is? Heaven or Hell?”
The Colonel nodded.
I paused the recording, rewound it for a few seconds, and then pressed play again.
Tami continued her story like before, describing her conversation with her mother until she reached the point where she begged Dr. Weber to turn the helmet off.
I’d imagined The Colonel’s voice. Hallucinated it maybe.
What was happening to me?
I turned off the TV and went to bed.
At 2:00 AM, I woke to the sound of my phone ringing. It was a nurse from the hospital.
“Tami’s escaped,” she told me.
“How?”
“Somehow, she managed to remove her restraints.”
I heard muffled footsteps in my living room.
I thanked the nurse for telling me, and then I hung up the phone.
Instead of footsteps, I heard gentle sobbing.
“Tami, is that you?”
I went into the living room and turned on the lights. Tami sat on my sofa. She still wore her hospital gown. Her arms were scratched and bloody.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I got lost.”
“We need to go back to the hospital.”
“Can’t we just spend a bit of time together first?” She kissed me.
“Please, don’t.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m your psychiatrist. We can’t do this.”
“We’ve done this. You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“I’ve been forgetting lots of things, too. I think that’s part of this place. What it feeds on.”
“Memories?”
The TV crackled with static. I turned and saw my face on the TV screen, the God Helmet on my head.
Dr. Weber placed his leather-gloved hands on my cheeks.
“I see blood everywhere,” I said. “All over the walls, all over Anna’s bed. Where am I?”
“I’m not sure,” Dr. Weber told me. “This has never happened. Is Anna in the room with you?”
“She’s in the corner crying. Or I think it’s her. I can’t see her face. Just the back of her head.”
Suddenly, I screamed.
The TV flickered and then shut off.
“We need to get out of here,” Tami said. “It’s close.”
“What is?”
“Come on.”
She took my hand and pulled me towards the front door.
“The only place we’re going is the hospital,” I said.
She opened the door but, outside, I didn’t see my street.
A white hallway stretched out for as far as I could see. Wooden doors were evenly spaced out across both walls, five feet between each one.
Tami led me into the hallway. We walked further into it, and then opened a door on our right.
Through my door, I saw my office.
I heard a phone ringing.
I woke up in my bed. The ringing I’d heard in my dream was real.
I went to the living room and answered the call. It was The Colonel.
“Did you hear Tami escaped from the hospital?”
“One of the nurses called me.”
“I think she’s come back to the house. I just woke up and heard someone walking around in the attic.”
“I’m on my way now.”
I got dressed and drove to his house. He was already at the front door, waiting for me, a flashlight in his hand.
He took me upstairs to a staircase at the end of the bedroom hallway. Then we slowly climbed the stairs upward as The Colonel shone his flashlight in front of us.
“Is that you up there, Tami?” he yelled.
The attic was filled with furniture and dusty cardboard boxes.
The Colonel swept his flashlight across the room, lighting up the cobwebs.
In the corner, a woman sat with her face to the wall.
Anna? No.
It was Tami, sobbing.
“We need to take you back to the hospital,” I said.
“I’m not going back there.”
“You’re sick. You need help.”
“They can’t help me. Nobody can help me.” She stood and turned round. Her eyes looked wild. Panicked. “I’ve been trapped here for months.”
“Trapped where?” The Colonel asked.
She didn’t answer. She walked toward the window.
“What are you doing, Tami?” I asked.
Without warning, she threw herself through the windowpane.
The glass shattered across the ground.
Tami screamed. Then, silence. No landing. No thud.
I went toward the window. The outside world had disappeared. In its place, I saw the same white hallway I’d seen before.
“I’m dreaming,” I said.
“This is no dream,” The Colonel told me.
“Then what is it?” I paced across the floor. “This God Helmet, did you try it, too?”
“We all did.”
“I don’t remember going to Switzerland.”
“You’re fucking her. The two of you made a whole vacation out of it.”
“That’s not true.”
He set his flashlight down on the floor. Then he reached into his jacket and took out a gun. “I should shoot you right here. Her own doctor. I trusted you.”
I raised my hands. “Please, let’s talk about this. Let’s be reasonable.”
He pressed the gun against his own temple. “I’m done talking.”
“Don’t!”
The gunshot blared. The Colonel’s head burst into static.
The ball of static grew until it filled my eyes.
Suddenly, I found myself driving down a street near my house.
I felt strange. Unbalanced.
“Careful, Harry,” Anna said. “You’re swerving.”
“I’m fine.”
I fixed my eyes on the road. The other cars. The traffic lights.
It never happened. I’d drive slowly, carefully. I’d get her home safe. There didn’t have to be any accident.
I saw the semi moving towards the stop sign.
I pressed down on the brake but the car didn’t stop.
The screech of tires filled my ears. I spun upside down.
“Harry! Harry!”
Blood poured down Anna’s face, her skull split open.
“It’s not fair,” she said, crying. “Why do you get to live, and I get to die?”
I woke up, but not in my bed. Dr. Weber’s face was right in front of mine.
“Do you hear me, Harry?” he asked.
“Yes. What’s happening?”
“I’m not quite sure. You lost consciousness.”
I looked back at the circuit boards on the wall. The God Helmet hung from a metal hook.
“I’ve never let anyone stay connected for so long before,” he said. “But you insisted.”
Tami walked into the room. “He’s up now?”
“Yes,” Dr. Weber said.
She ran to me and kissed me. “I’ve been so scared.”
“Why are you here?”
“We came here together.” She looked at Dr. Weber. “Is he okay?”
“Some amnesia, it seems like. Let’s let him rest.”
I sat there a while longer. Dr. Weber asked a few questions.
Slowly, everything came back to me.
I’d called Tami after Dr. Weber cancelled our appointments. I’d asked her to meet me for coffee. I said I was worried about her. She agreed to meet me.
We began our affair. Crossed a line we couldn’t uncross.
I’d heard about the God Helmet from a colleague of mine. He swore it was the real thing. He’d talked to God himself.
The Colonel had never gone to Switzerland. He was in New York on business. It was me. I bought the plane tickets. I walked Tami into Dr. Weber’s lab.
“I think I’d like to go back to my hotel now and lie down,” I said.
“Of course,” Tami said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Please call me tomorrow,” Dr. Weber said.
I promised I would.
Tami and I left the university lab and called a taxi to take us to our hotel.
At the hotel, we took the elevator up to our room on the fifth floor. But as the doors opened, they revealed the same white hallway again.
“No. This can’t be real,” I said. I stepped into the hallway and then looked back at Tami, but the elevator was empty now. She was gone.
I opened one of the doors. Inside, I saw my office.
Why?
As I walked through the door, it disappeared behind me.
Georgia sat on my sofa. I sat across from her.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“You wanted to try the God Helmet again.”
“You’ve tried the helmet?”
“It was incredible. I spoke to God. He answered all my questions.”
I saw the helmet hanging from the wall near my window, a web of wires and circuit boards behind it.
“This can’t be real,” I said.
I looked back at Georgia and her face had changed. It still was changing. Stretching horizontally. Her eyes, lips and nose all dragged out from their sides.
“What are you?” I asked.
But she didn’t answer.
The walls of my office fell backwards as if they were painted cardboard, revealing an even larger room, completely white.
The room was filled with screaming people.
I recognized some of them. Tami, The Colonel, Anna.
I heard a baby cry. I looked back at Georgia. She cradled an infant in her arms.
She opened her mouth. It was filled with hundreds of long, jagged, razor-sharp fangs.
The screams became louder, filling my ears.
Georgia brought the infant to her mouth. Bones crunched and blood splattered.
The screaming stopped.
Georgia’s eyes rolled back in ecstasy.