Back To The Happy Camper - Epilogue
Part V
Dr. Shiina tapped her pen against her desk as she read Bradley Walker's case file for what felt like the thousandth time in five months. Every time she read it, it only seemed to get more confusing. When the police had found him, he had been in a cabin that was completely covered in blood for almost a week. He was catatonic, but what had caused it, she did not know. It could have been the fact that his hand seemed to have been chopped off with a chainsaw. Perhaps it was the death of one Stefani Germanotta, who's father owned the cabin that they were found in. They didn't find his remains until two weeks after the initial find
Or maybe it had been the death of the numerous other bodies found. Maybe by his own hand?
The police had ruled it as a Cult Ritual gone terribly wrong, but it seemed like something else to Shiina.
The only person she could ask about what really happened, however, had been in a catatonic state since his arrival at Reinhard Asylum five months before.
"Dr. Shiina," a voice said over the speaker. "Are you still there, Dr. Shiina?"
Shiina came out of her concentration and pressed the button for her own speaker. "Yes, Nurse Simpson. I'm here. What is it?"
"I have Mr. Walker here with me. Do you still want to see him?"
"Yes, of course. Come in."
She pressed another button at her desk and heard a large door unlock down the hall with a loud buzz. There were a few seconds of silence before the door to her own office opened and Nurse Simpson was let in by the security guard by Shiina's door. In front of her, she pushed Bradley Walker, who was staring off somewhere that Dr. Shiina was sure she could not see. "Would you like me to stay, Dr. Shiina?"
"I'll be fine," Dr. Shiina said softly, taking off her reading glasses and looking up at the blonde nurse. "Could you please wait outside the door, however, and make sure Peter knows what is happening today?"
"Of course."
"Thank you, Ashlee. That's all for now."
Ashlee bowed her head and quietly walked out, letting Peter close the door behind her. Dr. Shiina looked directly at Bradley, folding her hands. "Bradley? Can you hear me?"
Silence. Dr. Shiina listened as he took several slow and shallow breaths, not moving an inch.
"Mr. Walker, are you sure you can't hear me?"
Once again, she was met only with his breathing. She sighed and ran her hand through her short black hair. "Mr. Walker, Nurse Simpson and I have been aware of the fact that you've been faking your catatonic state for the past three months. While I am impressed with your charade, now is the time to stop."
Silence again, but Bradley slowly looked up, a glint coming back to his eye. "It was real for the first two months..."
Slowly, he shifted in his wheelchair. His posture became straighter as he leaned back in it. He rested his left arm in his lap and rested his cheek on his right hand. "So, Doctor, what tipped you off?"
"Oh, various things, Bradley..."
"Butch."
Dr. Shiina stopped and looked up at him. "I'm sorry?"
"Don't call me Bradley... or Brad," he said calmly. "It's Butch."
She nodded as she crossed her arms, smiling a tiny bit. "Well then, you may call me Ringo. And to answer your question, Butch, there were several things, but mostly because Nurse Simpson could hear you singing in your cell at night."
"And here I thought I was being quiet," Butch muttered.
"However, I have a completely different question," Ringo said, reaching for her glasses and putting them back on. "If you slipped out of your catatonic state more than three months ago, why would you pretend to stay in it?"
Butch sighed as he sunk further into the wheelchair. "I don't know. I guess I didn't want to talk about it."
"The incident at the cabin?"
He nodded slowly. "Exactly. I'm sure you understand just looking at the police report... If there was one..."
"There was," Ringo said, lifting the page in the case file. "But there's so much missing that report as well as your file. The box of your personal effects doesn't tell much either..."
"You actually have that with you? Can you even do that?"
"Yes," Ringo said quietly, pointing to box in front of her desk. "I've had it in here for a month. I just haven't thought to return it yet."
"Do you mind if I get something from it? I'll put it back if I need to before I leave."
Ringo shrugged. "I'm not supposed to until you're released, but go ahead. They are your things."
Butch smiled a little as he got up from his wheelchair and opened the box. Slowly, he sifted through the box as Ringo returned to the case file. "Anyway, the police were so baffled by everything they found that they ruled it as the results of a cult ritual."
Butch scoffed and Ringo looked up at him as he got back into his chair and with one hand, put something around his neck. "That's not it, is it?"
"Well, you could probably call it something like that," Butch said, running his good hand through his hair as soon as he was finished. "There were incantations, a sacrificial dagger, and a book made from human flesh, but believe me, it was not a cult ritual."
Ringo lowered her glasses and closed the file, pushing it to the other side of her desk. "Will you tell me what really happened then?"
Butch looked around the room, suddenly feeling vulnerable. "Why do you want to know?"
Ringo sighed as she opened up a desk drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. As she spoke, she opened it up and began to pull one out. "Mr. Walker... Butch... I assure you that my office is the only one without a security camera in it. What you say here will only be observed by me and will be kept confidential until you feel like sharing with anyone else. I am simply asking out of my own curiosity."
She put the cigarette in her mouth and with a flick of a small silver lighter, she lit up and began to puff. She then reached across the desk and held the box out to Butch. "Cigarette?"
"Okay, one, I haven't smoked in over ten years. Two, can you even smoke in here?"
Ringo just stared at him incredulously. After a long silence, Butch sighed and took a cigarette from her. As he stuck it in his mouth, she got up, rounded to the other side of her desk and lit the cigarette for him. As he took a long draw for the first time in years, he looked the doctor up and down. She wore a silky gray dress with the kind of black heels that Greta was scared to wear when she was still alive. Over the dress was small black jacket that matched the heels. "Nice dress."
"Thank you," Ringo said quietly as she leaned against the desk, blowing a plume of smoke into the air. "Now... tell me what happened."
Butch shrugged and sighed as he blew out a puff of smoke. "It's sort of simple to explain. Or at least the beginning is. Me and some of my friends went out to this cabin in the Middle of Nowhere, Tennessee for a week. Well, it was supposed to be a week. A mix of a romantic getaway and wilderness retreat. It was me, Greta, Gabe, his girlfriend Victoria and my boyfriend Michael..."
Ringo watched as Butch's hand briefly went to the granite cross around his neck. "All four of those bodies were found at the scene. Greta's was in the room with you, but the coroner couldn't understand what had happened to her body. In fact, he was stumped by most of them except for Gabe."
Butch sighed and inhaled his cigarette slowly. "That's because they didn't possess him. They killed him from the outside for trying to escape. The others... they were from the inside."
"They? Who's they?"
"I don't really know," Butch said, his hand beginning to shake at the memories. "They were demons or something that were brought forward by this book called the Necronomicon. We accidentally played a tape of Joseph... Dr. Germanotta reading the book and boom..."
He inhaled again and quickly exhaled the smoke up towards the ceiling. Ringo held an ashtray out for him and he quickly flicked them off before continuing. "They got Greta first. She went out into the woods and... well... the trees did something to her. I still don't know what exactly, but she was never the same after that. They trapped us in with her to make sure we'd all fall. We tried to lock her in the cellar, but it was no use. They got Victoria and then they got Michael. Gabe killed Victoria before she could kill him, but he tried to escape after that and they punished him. And I... well... I was alone and I had no other choice when it came to Michael."
Butch felt a tear run down his cheek. Ringo reached behind her desk and offered him a tissue, but he declined. Instead, he wiped his tears with his hand as he continued. "I buried them all... or at least what was left. And then they tried to get me. They did. For a bit. Twice. But they didn't win."
He sighed and dropped the cigarette in the ashtray. "The rest of the next night was hell. Greta was still possessed and in the cellar taunting me. My hand went bad after it had been bitten by Michael and I had to cut it off with a chainsaw. Then Stefani... Stefani Germanotta and her party showed up. She thought I had killed her dad at first. She didn't believe me until I mentioned the tape. Then this guy who was with her... I don't even remember his name now... Well, he turned and I had to kill him."
He groaned and ran his fingers through his hair again. Ringo leaned forward and lifted his chin. "Is that all?"
"No," Butch said, shaking his head. "Stefani started working on trying to set things right, but we got derailed when her neighbor Amanda went crazy with power and tried to make us find a new trail. That's when I went bad again and when she ended back up in the house, she got eaten by Greta. Stefani tried to kill me, but I got back to normal before she could. Since the pages she had to read off of were in the cellar, she helped me prepare to go against Greta. I'm assuming that the police report mentions a chainsaw being found at the scene?"
"It does," Ringo said without turning to grab the file.
"Wow, you've read it that much?"
"Go on with your story, please."
Butch sighed and nodded as he looked down at his lap. "Well, that chainsaw was attached to my wrist. We got to the basement, I got the pages back and I killed Greta, who had mutated so much at this point, I would have never thought that I had seen what she looked like alive less than 48 hours before."
He ran his hand over his face and rested it back on the wheelchair arm. "Stefani took the pages back and began reading these incantations. One made these stupid demons manifest and one of them broke in the door and almost ate me because my stupid hand killed Stefani while she was in the middle of the second one."
Ringo raised an eyebrow at Butch. "Your... hand? The one you cut off?"
"Yeah," Butch said quietly. "It came back to life and stabbed her in the back, believe it or not. Probably not."
"No... I believe you," Ringo said calmly. She stamped out the cigarette in the ashtray and took Butch by the hand. She crouched down and looked him in the eye. "So... if one of these things almost ate you, then how did you escape?"
"She finished the incantation," Butch said quietly, looking right into Ringo's eyes. "With her last breath, she finished it and sent the demons away to... someplace... I don't know where. It tried to suck me in to, but I hung on for dear life. When it stopped, I killed my hand, took Stefani in my arms and the next thing I remember, I was here two months later in a padded cell and all the blood was gone. Well, at least physically..."
For a few seconds, the two of them sat in silence with Butch looking at his left wrist and Ringo looking at Butch.
Finally, Ringo laughed. "Oh, you really are The Chosen One..."
"What?"
Butch looked up at her as she began to rise. Slowly, she walked to both sides of her desk and kicked two boxes out in front of Butch. One was the personal effects box, but the other was a mystery to him. She then stood back in front of Butch and pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. He suddenly felt a jolt of dread in his stomach. "What are you doing?"
"Fulfilling your destiny," she said quietly. Before Butch could say anything else, she began to read off the paper.
"Silikhxn... Salanda... Nimhe... Chwistrellu Mij!"
Suddenly, Butch heard a gust of air come in behind him. He turned and gasped when he saw a small portal begin to open up behind him.
And it was growing bigger.
Quickly, he jumped up and grabbed onto the desk as Ringo slowly picked up the boxes and tossed them into the portal. He looked up at her in disbelief. "What the hell are you doing?!"
"Helping you fulfill your destiny," she said quietly as she waved her hand over the portal. It grew even wider and slowly sucked the wheelchair in.
Butch's grip on the desk grew even tighter. "What destiny? That I'm supposed to be in whatever Hell dimension Stefani sent them off to! I won't do it!"
Ringo sighed and calmly took Butch by his wrist as the portal's pull grew bigger. "Butch... it's not like that. There will be hardships, but you will come out of this a hero. Didn't you even notice your place among the page of the Necronomicon?"
Butch gasped as he remembered the page of the figure with the shotgun. "No... you don't mean..."
Ringo just smirked as she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. Butch just looked at her even more strangely as she pulled away. "Chosen One, you are meant for much bigger things than this asylum. The world will be safe because of you. Just please... stop being afraid of your destiny and let go."
Butch stared up at her as he felt his feet begin to lift off the ground. He swallowed and slowly, he relinquished his fingers from the desk. Ringo held onto the desk as she held on tighter to Butch's wrist. He looked back at her. "Okay... on three... one..."
"Give my regards to the Queen."
"Wha-"
Before Butch could finish though, Ringo let go of his wrist. She watched as he screamed and was sucked into the portal before she could even blink. As his screaming got further away, the portal began to close. Finally, Butch's screaming stopped as the portal dissolved from her office wall entirely.
Slowly, Ringo straightened herself out and walked to her door, opening it. She stepped outside to look at Nurse Simpson and Peter, the short and tattooed security guard she had made sure was assigned to her. "Well, he's through," she said in a quiet voice.
"What now," Peter asked, looking between the two women. "How long to we wait?"
"He'll be waking up in the English countryside in two weeks, if I remember correctly," Ringo said, looking down at her watch. "Right now, however, we have to cover up his disappearance. Nurse Simpson, I hope you were able to prepare the paperwork already?"
"Just give me ten minutes to retrieve it," said Nurse Simpson with a short nod.
"Good. Please go retrieve it."
As Nurse Simpson turned to leave, Dr. Shiina turned to look at the security guard. "Peter, if you wouldn't mind walking me to the garden. It's a lovely day outside for forging paperwork."
"Yes, ma'am," Peter said as he began to lock the door. "So... where do you think he is right now, Dr. Shiina?"
"Well, if it's anywhere else besides Kandar in the year 1300 AD, I'm sure we'll be dead within the hour," she said bluntly. "If not by Deadites, at least by decapitation by one of the Queen's descendants."
"So, we can only hope that he got there?"
"Not hope, my dear Peter. We pray,” she said quietly as they began to walk down the hall. “Because we're not the only ones depending on him..."
Dr. Shiina tapped her pen against her desk as she read Bradley Walker's case file for what felt like the thousandth time in five months. Every time she read it, it only seemed to get more confusing. When the police had found him, he had been in a cabin that was completely covered in blood for almost a week. He was catatonic, but what had caused it, she did not know. It could have been the fact that his hand seemed to have been chopped off with a chainsaw. Perhaps it was the death of one Stefani Germanotta, who's father owned the cabin that they were found in. They didn't find his remains until two weeks after the initial find
Or maybe it had been the death of the numerous other bodies found. Maybe by his own hand?
The police had ruled it as a Cult Ritual gone terribly wrong, but it seemed like something else to Shiina.
The only person she could ask about what really happened, however, had been in a catatonic state since his arrival at Reinhard Asylum five months before.
"Dr. Shiina," a voice said over the speaker. "Are you still there, Dr. Shiina?"
Shiina came out of her concentration and pressed the button for her own speaker. "Yes, Nurse Simpson. I'm here. What is it?"
"I have Mr. Walker here with me. Do you still want to see him?"
"Yes, of course. Come in."
She pressed another button at her desk and heard a large door unlock down the hall with a loud buzz. There were a few seconds of silence before the door to her own office opened and Nurse Simpson was let in by the security guard by Shiina's door. In front of her, she pushed Bradley Walker, who was staring off somewhere that Dr. Shiina was sure she could not see. "Would you like me to stay, Dr. Shiina?"
"I'll be fine," Dr. Shiina said softly, taking off her reading glasses and looking up at the blonde nurse. "Could you please wait outside the door, however, and make sure Peter knows what is happening today?"
"Of course."
"Thank you, Ashlee. That's all for now."
Ashlee bowed her head and quietly walked out, letting Peter close the door behind her. Dr. Shiina looked directly at Bradley, folding her hands. "Bradley? Can you hear me?"
Silence. Dr. Shiina listened as he took several slow and shallow breaths, not moving an inch.
"Mr. Walker, are you sure you can't hear me?"
Once again, she was met only with his breathing. She sighed and ran her hand through her short black hair. "Mr. Walker, Nurse Simpson and I have been aware of the fact that you've been faking your catatonic state for the past three months. While I am impressed with your charade, now is the time to stop."
Silence again, but Bradley slowly looked up, a glint coming back to his eye. "It was real for the first two months..."
Slowly, he shifted in his wheelchair. His posture became straighter as he leaned back in it. He rested his left arm in his lap and rested his cheek on his right hand. "So, Doctor, what tipped you off?"
"Oh, various things, Bradley..."
"Butch."
Dr. Shiina stopped and looked up at him. "I'm sorry?"
"Don't call me Bradley... or Brad," he said calmly. "It's Butch."
She nodded as she crossed her arms, smiling a tiny bit. "Well then, you may call me Ringo. And to answer your question, Butch, there were several things, but mostly because Nurse Simpson could hear you singing in your cell at night."
"And here I thought I was being quiet," Butch muttered.
"However, I have a completely different question," Ringo said, reaching for her glasses and putting them back on. "If you slipped out of your catatonic state more than three months ago, why would you pretend to stay in it?"
Butch sighed as he sunk further into the wheelchair. "I don't know. I guess I didn't want to talk about it."
"The incident at the cabin?"
He nodded slowly. "Exactly. I'm sure you understand just looking at the police report... If there was one..."
"There was," Ringo said, lifting the page in the case file. "But there's so much missing that report as well as your file. The box of your personal effects doesn't tell much either..."
"You actually have that with you? Can you even do that?"
"Yes," Ringo said quietly, pointing to box in front of her desk. "I've had it in here for a month. I just haven't thought to return it yet."
"Do you mind if I get something from it? I'll put it back if I need to before I leave."
Ringo shrugged. "I'm not supposed to until you're released, but go ahead. They are your things."
Butch smiled a little as he got up from his wheelchair and opened the box. Slowly, he sifted through the box as Ringo returned to the case file. "Anyway, the police were so baffled by everything they found that they ruled it as the results of a cult ritual."
Butch scoffed and Ringo looked up at him as he got back into his chair and with one hand, put something around his neck. "That's not it, is it?"
"Well, you could probably call it something like that," Butch said, running his good hand through his hair as soon as he was finished. "There were incantations, a sacrificial dagger, and a book made from human flesh, but believe me, it was not a cult ritual."
Ringo lowered her glasses and closed the file, pushing it to the other side of her desk. "Will you tell me what really happened then?"
Butch looked around the room, suddenly feeling vulnerable. "Why do you want to know?"
Ringo sighed as she opened up a desk drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. As she spoke, she opened it up and began to pull one out. "Mr. Walker... Butch... I assure you that my office is the only one without a security camera in it. What you say here will only be observed by me and will be kept confidential until you feel like sharing with anyone else. I am simply asking out of my own curiosity."
She put the cigarette in her mouth and with a flick of a small silver lighter, she lit up and began to puff. She then reached across the desk and held the box out to Butch. "Cigarette?"
"Okay, one, I haven't smoked in over ten years. Two, can you even smoke in here?"
Ringo just stared at him incredulously. After a long silence, Butch sighed and took a cigarette from her. As he stuck it in his mouth, she got up, rounded to the other side of her desk and lit the cigarette for him. As he took a long draw for the first time in years, he looked the doctor up and down. She wore a silky gray dress with the kind of black heels that Greta was scared to wear when she was still alive. Over the dress was small black jacket that matched the heels. "Nice dress."
"Thank you," Ringo said quietly as she leaned against the desk, blowing a plume of smoke into the air. "Now... tell me what happened."
Butch shrugged and sighed as he blew out a puff of smoke. "It's sort of simple to explain. Or at least the beginning is. Me and some of my friends went out to this cabin in the Middle of Nowhere, Tennessee for a week. Well, it was supposed to be a week. A mix of a romantic getaway and wilderness retreat. It was me, Greta, Gabe, his girlfriend Victoria and my boyfriend Michael..."
Ringo watched as Butch's hand briefly went to the granite cross around his neck. "All four of those bodies were found at the scene. Greta's was in the room with you, but the coroner couldn't understand what had happened to her body. In fact, he was stumped by most of them except for Gabe."
Butch sighed and inhaled his cigarette slowly. "That's because they didn't possess him. They killed him from the outside for trying to escape. The others... they were from the inside."
"They? Who's they?"
"I don't really know," Butch said, his hand beginning to shake at the memories. "They were demons or something that were brought forward by this book called the Necronomicon. We accidentally played a tape of Joseph... Dr. Germanotta reading the book and boom..."
He inhaled again and quickly exhaled the smoke up towards the ceiling. Ringo held an ashtray out for him and he quickly flicked them off before continuing. "They got Greta first. She went out into the woods and... well... the trees did something to her. I still don't know what exactly, but she was never the same after that. They trapped us in with her to make sure we'd all fall. We tried to lock her in the cellar, but it was no use. They got Victoria and then they got Michael. Gabe killed Victoria before she could kill him, but he tried to escape after that and they punished him. And I... well... I was alone and I had no other choice when it came to Michael."
Butch felt a tear run down his cheek. Ringo reached behind her desk and offered him a tissue, but he declined. Instead, he wiped his tears with his hand as he continued. "I buried them all... or at least what was left. And then they tried to get me. They did. For a bit. Twice. But they didn't win."
He sighed and dropped the cigarette in the ashtray. "The rest of the next night was hell. Greta was still possessed and in the cellar taunting me. My hand went bad after it had been bitten by Michael and I had to cut it off with a chainsaw. Then Stefani... Stefani Germanotta and her party showed up. She thought I had killed her dad at first. She didn't believe me until I mentioned the tape. Then this guy who was with her... I don't even remember his name now... Well, he turned and I had to kill him."
He groaned and ran his fingers through his hair again. Ringo leaned forward and lifted his chin. "Is that all?"
"No," Butch said, shaking his head. "Stefani started working on trying to set things right, but we got derailed when her neighbor Amanda went crazy with power and tried to make us find a new trail. That's when I went bad again and when she ended back up in the house, she got eaten by Greta. Stefani tried to kill me, but I got back to normal before she could. Since the pages she had to read off of were in the cellar, she helped me prepare to go against Greta. I'm assuming that the police report mentions a chainsaw being found at the scene?"
"It does," Ringo said without turning to grab the file.
"Wow, you've read it that much?"
"Go on with your story, please."
Butch sighed and nodded as he looked down at his lap. "Well, that chainsaw was attached to my wrist. We got to the basement, I got the pages back and I killed Greta, who had mutated so much at this point, I would have never thought that I had seen what she looked like alive less than 48 hours before."
He ran his hand over his face and rested it back on the wheelchair arm. "Stefani took the pages back and began reading these incantations. One made these stupid demons manifest and one of them broke in the door and almost ate me because my stupid hand killed Stefani while she was in the middle of the second one."
Ringo raised an eyebrow at Butch. "Your... hand? The one you cut off?"
"Yeah," Butch said quietly. "It came back to life and stabbed her in the back, believe it or not. Probably not."
"No... I believe you," Ringo said calmly. She stamped out the cigarette in the ashtray and took Butch by the hand. She crouched down and looked him in the eye. "So... if one of these things almost ate you, then how did you escape?"
"She finished the incantation," Butch said quietly, looking right into Ringo's eyes. "With her last breath, she finished it and sent the demons away to... someplace... I don't know where. It tried to suck me in to, but I hung on for dear life. When it stopped, I killed my hand, took Stefani in my arms and the next thing I remember, I was here two months later in a padded cell and all the blood was gone. Well, at least physically..."
For a few seconds, the two of them sat in silence with Butch looking at his left wrist and Ringo looking at Butch.
Finally, Ringo laughed. "Oh, you really are The Chosen One..."
"What?"
Butch looked up at her as she began to rise. Slowly, she walked to both sides of her desk and kicked two boxes out in front of Butch. One was the personal effects box, but the other was a mystery to him. She then stood back in front of Butch and pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. He suddenly felt a jolt of dread in his stomach. "What are you doing?"
"Fulfilling your destiny," she said quietly. Before Butch could say anything else, she began to read off the paper.
"Silikhxn... Salanda... Nimhe... Chwistrellu Mij!"
Suddenly, Butch heard a gust of air come in behind him. He turned and gasped when he saw a small portal begin to open up behind him.
And it was growing bigger.
Quickly, he jumped up and grabbed onto the desk as Ringo slowly picked up the boxes and tossed them into the portal. He looked up at her in disbelief. "What the hell are you doing?!"
"Helping you fulfill your destiny," she said quietly as she waved her hand over the portal. It grew even wider and slowly sucked the wheelchair in.
Butch's grip on the desk grew even tighter. "What destiny? That I'm supposed to be in whatever Hell dimension Stefani sent them off to! I won't do it!"
Ringo sighed and calmly took Butch by his wrist as the portal's pull grew bigger. "Butch... it's not like that. There will be hardships, but you will come out of this a hero. Didn't you even notice your place among the page of the Necronomicon?"
Butch gasped as he remembered the page of the figure with the shotgun. "No... you don't mean..."
Ringo just smirked as she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. Butch just looked at her even more strangely as she pulled away. "Chosen One, you are meant for much bigger things than this asylum. The world will be safe because of you. Just please... stop being afraid of your destiny and let go."
Butch stared up at her as he felt his feet begin to lift off the ground. He swallowed and slowly, he relinquished his fingers from the desk. Ringo held onto the desk as she held on tighter to Butch's wrist. He looked back at her. "Okay... on three... one..."
"Give my regards to the Queen."
"Wha-"
Before Butch could finish though, Ringo let go of his wrist. She watched as he screamed and was sucked into the portal before she could even blink. As his screaming got further away, the portal began to close. Finally, Butch's screaming stopped as the portal dissolved from her office wall entirely.
Slowly, Ringo straightened herself out and walked to her door, opening it. She stepped outside to look at Nurse Simpson and Peter, the short and tattooed security guard she had made sure was assigned to her. "Well, he's through," she said in a quiet voice.
"What now," Peter asked, looking between the two women. "How long to we wait?"
"He'll be waking up in the English countryside in two weeks, if I remember correctly," Ringo said, looking down at her watch. "Right now, however, we have to cover up his disappearance. Nurse Simpson, I hope you were able to prepare the paperwork already?"
"Just give me ten minutes to retrieve it," said Nurse Simpson with a short nod.
"Good. Please go retrieve it."
As Nurse Simpson turned to leave, Dr. Shiina turned to look at the security guard. "Peter, if you wouldn't mind walking me to the garden. It's a lovely day outside for forging paperwork."
"Yes, ma'am," Peter said as he began to lock the door. "So... where do you think he is right now, Dr. Shiina?"
"Well, if it's anywhere else besides Kandar in the year 1300 AD, I'm sure we'll be dead within the hour," she said bluntly. "If not by Deadites, at least by decapitation by one of the Queen's descendants."
"So, we can only hope that he got there?"
"Not hope, my dear Peter. We pray,” she said quietly as they began to walk down the hall. “Because we're not the only ones depending on him..."