Prologue

            Ainsley Cassidy Channing wasn’t crazy.  She just happened to really love books.  Her love for reading, however, was what had placed her in a Centre for Mental Health.  They didn’t understand her there.  They kept telling Ainsley that she would be there until she got better.  Until she got better from what, she wondered.  From reading books? 

            How anyone could keep a person from reading books was beyond her comprehension.  People ought to do exactly what they like to do.

            “Not when it’s hurtin’ other people, lass.” The doctor told her when she commented on the matter.

            She never meant for anyone to get hurt. Honestly.  All Ainsley had been doing was sitting in the Loch Ness Library’s break room, reading her book, when her co-worker, Logan, had come up from behind and attacked her neck. At least, that’s what she thought Logan had been doing.  It turned out that while Ainsley had been so engulfed by her book about a vampire in search for a mate, the edge of Logan’s purse had scraped against the reading girl’s neck. 

            Well Ainsley thought…why shouldn’t she after all?  It was very natural for avid readers to get into a good story, and it was very easy for someone to not be propelled back into the real world so easily.  True, that poor Logan had to go to hospital to get fifty-seven stitches in her right arm because of the gruesome attack from Ainsley, but truly, she hadn’t meant to hurt her.

            Apparently the doctors didn’t like that reply to their question of why did Ainsley attack Logan in the first place? Didn’t she remember she was in a library? And of course it didn’t constitute for all the other times that the girl had done something because she was lost inside her book’s fantasy world.

            “Her mental health is unstable,” they told her parents, who solemnly but quickly agreed. “Perhaps some time in a facility will help her begin to realize th’ boundaries between reality and fiction.”

            Mr. and Mrs. Channing quite agreed to that as well, much to Ainsley’s dismay.  The doctor and her parents agreed that she would be medicated and be placed in a lovely centre that held many promises in bettering the Channing’s daughter’s health, but there was one glitch in all this planning.

            “The new centre has been set up in sort of a remote area.”

            “How remote?” Ainsley had asked being the last words she would speak that day.

            The doctor glanced at her then to her parents. “It’s in the Orkney Islands, within a small cluster of land.”

            Even her parents had looks slightly wary, wondering if perhaps it was too far from their home in Loch Ness. 

            ‘Yes, yes it is much too far from home!’ Ainsley thought to herself, distraught that they’d even think about sending her to an island.  She wasn’t even crazy!  It was an honest mistake, it wouldn’t happen again.  It wouldn’t matter how much she said that, however, the verdict had been stated. She would have been fine if she were sent perhaps to Edinburgh, or even Ayr, or maybe even Dumfries- at least those places were still on the mainland.

            “Do ya really think it’ll help her?” Mrs. Channing had queried, lifting up a thin, red eyebrow.

            ‘No! It won’t help because I don’t need any help!’ Ainsley thought angrily. She had to keep to herself; they wouldn’t listen to her in any case. ‘I’m a seventeen year old girl, there’s nothing wrong with me…’

            The doctor had nodded solemnly again and Mr. Channing had sighed, glancing to his daughter who shot him pleading looks.

            “Right- if it’s best for Ainsley to go, then it’s what should be done. How long do you think she’d stay?”

            “Anywhere from one to four months, perhaps longer if necessary, but I don’t think she’ll go past four.” The doctor replied, folding his hands over his desk. “If you’ve come prepared already, she can be sent within a few hours, on the next train to the Aberdeen port and ferried over.”

            The young woman sunk back into the leather seat, causing a disturbing noise as she did so.  Her fate was sealed- she could read it easily in her parents’ eyes.  They had packed her belongings early the night before and said it was just in case the Channing’s returned home without their daughter.  Indeed, Ainsley’s fate had been sealed the night before, but she had made it not too terrible by slipping in some thin paperbacks underneath and between her clothes. Her parents had never bothered to check.

            The Channing parents looked at their daughter with a look in their eyes that said they were sorry, but it had to be done. She refused to even say good-bye to them when her bag was handed to her as they got into their car and drove away towards home.  While Inverness was not far from Loch Ness, Ainsley already felt like she was a million miles from home.

            The doctor had quickly made her arrangements, adding her to a small list of patients who were going to be sent to the Outer Hebrides as well along with Ainsley. Within an hour or so she and a small group of four others were being bused to Aberdeen to be shipped to a new and unfamiliar destination.  While the others showed true signs of being nutter, (for instance, there was a boy who kept speaking to imaginary people he thought he saw walking on the bus’ floor), Ainsley noted she had to be one in more perfect health mentally than they. 

            She hadn’t bothered trying to speak to them, she merely kept to herself. The only words she spoke were to the strange girl who had tugged at Ainsley’s hair and said “I like your hair, it’s so red…red like my mother’s blood.”

            Ainsley had not been too mannerly with her- in fact, she’d been quite spooked by the girl and asked politely if she might move to another area of the bus.  She’d much rather be seated next to the boy who saw the people on the floor. Fortunately, the bus director, a short and somewhat pudgy middle-aged woman, had allowed the girl to move her seat, saying that while it was proper to keep patients’ histories confidential, she ought to warn Ainsley that the particular young girl had an odd taste for blood.

            ‘Vampires do exist then…I had just assumed the wrong person,’ she thought as she hastily slid into her new seat at the front of the bus.

            The ferry ride to Orkney wasn’t too much more pleasant than the ride to Aberdeen. The waves of the crystalline blue waters had tossed the ferry a little too much for the tastes of Ainsley’s poor lurching stomach.  She had spent much of the ride with her head over the rail of the ferry, gazing into the waters which would have otherwise been quite soothing to look at. 

            When the ferry finally arrived to the port in Orkney, Ainsley was more than happy to go off board even though she was walking on unfamiliar land where the inhabitants spoke more Gaelic than anything else.  While born and raised in Scotland into a family who knew the language just as well as they could speak English in their own burring way, the young woman couldn’t quite grasp everything that constituted it.  Luckily, there were orderlies and doctors who actually spoke words she could understand.

            While Ainsley had been positive the clinic would be something like a dungeon from old horror movies, the centre proved to be squeaky clean and well furnished.  As she and the other three were shown around, all the while Ainsley tried to keep her distance from the vampiristic young girl; she couldn’t help but feel semi-impressed.  However, she wouldn’t let impressiveness change the way she felt about the place in a whole.  It was a prison, a prison where the guards would try to strip away her imagination and love for books.

            A nurse showed each of them to their rooms- each getting their own because there was space to spare and beyond inside the centre- and Ainsley was given her bag and told to unpack. The girl waited for the nurse to leave her before closing the door, which she noted didn’t have an inside lock to it, then sat down on the near rock hard bed.  It figured that as nice as the accommodations were she’d have to sleep horribly at night.  Turning proved her point of being imprisoned more so.  There was one window which faced the North Sea, giving a fantastic view of the misty horizons, but over the glass panes there were thick wrought iron bars to ensure against an escape.

            With a begrudging sigh, Ainsley lay back stretched out on the bed, her deep auburn hair splaying about her head. Why on earth was she in a place like this? Since when had reading books become a crime? Since when had getting into a tale of far away places and fantastical people become a horrible thing?

            Over the next few days she was told there was absolutely nothing wrong with loving to read or loving the stories and their worlds that had been so precociously put down in words, there was just something wrong with believing such characters could ever exist.

            “Dracula was a real person, ya know.” She tried her theory out on one of the nurses, named Molly, who was preparing Ainsley’s daily dosage of medicine. “He used to dip his bread in the blood of his enemies- he was a vampire.”

            Nurse Molly turned a wary eye on the young woman and shook her head. “I dunno ‘bout that, Miss Channing, he didn’t go ‘round bitin’ people’s necks did he? Ain’t that what vampires are supposed t’ do?”

            “Vampirism isn’t just attacking people…it’s a lust for blood, a craving for it.” Ainsley argued, but tried something else. “Well what about little people? Dwarves, they’re real! Isn’t that what little people are called?”

            With a short laugh, Nurse Molly shook her head. “If ya want to be politically incorrect, perhaps, but they’re called little people. Dwarves dig and delve- these people are just as normal as the rest of us. Here, take your pill Miss Channing. No more of this talk- they don’t exist. Ya don’t want the doctor t’ hear ‘bout you talking this way, trust me.”

            Ainsley took the pill and put it into her mouth, taking the glass of water offered as well. Instead of swallowing the medicine as she should have, she left it beneath her tongue then took a large and convincing gulp of water, thinking the nurse rather stupid for not checking that she actually swallowed.  Nurse Molly nodded in content and left the room, but not before telling Ainsley that access to the centre library was open to her, as long as she kept her wild tales unspoken.

            Absolutely thrilled that she wouldn’t have to sneak around reading, Ainsley decided that reading could be possible as long as she didn’t obsess over the characters.  Little had she known it was all part of the test on how to “cure” her of her ailments.  Only a week and some days had passed by before Doctor Charles Kerrigan had requested to have a session with his book-worm patient.

            The session was nothing like Ainsley imagined it would be- Dr. Kerrigan was a psychologist, but there was no comfortable leather couch for her lie in, or even a lovely chair. Rather, the young woman was escorted down a long corridor, brought to a metal door, led inside an even longer hall before coming to something of a chamber.

            The chamber had a seat in the middle of it, which looked comfortable enough in its own, but it was bolted down to the floor which was smooth black and white marble. Before the chair was an expanse of glass where Ainsley could see there was another room behind it and that was where Dr. Kerrigan sat, waiting. He pushed a button and his eerily soft voice filled the dead air of the chamber.

            “Have a seat, Ainsley, and after you are sitting, place those monitors on your wrists. Yes those sticky white circles. Good, it’s just to measure your heart rate. Shall we start then?”

            Her heart was pounding viciously- the room was too much like a dungeon chamber and she was frightened by the looks of it.  Ainsley wished this was a story she was reading, but unfortunately it wasn’t. She simply nodded at the doctor’s question and he asked her a series of questions.

            When was the first time she thought she saw a character from a book?

            A year ago, was her shaky answer.

            Who did she think she saw?

            A hobbit, or a Halfling person, walking outside in her yard.

            Did she believe in the Loch Ness monster?

            Ainsley thought about this one- it was probable that Dr. Kerrigan asked this because of where she lived, and while she often believed there was something extraordinary inhabiting the waters of Loch Ness, she’d never seen it.

            But did she believe it existed?

            Yes, was her answer, but so do thousands of others worldwide, was her defense.

            When was the first attack on a person?

            She attacked her older sister once, but only because she had believed there was a thief in the house. She’d not done much harm, just caused an ugly bruise on the older girl’s back.

            Did she believe that the characters she read about really existed?

            Not those particular ones, but races like them were possible.

            It was after that horrifying question that Ainsley felt something buzzing at her wrists. She looked down, curious, only to be jolted with electricity. The young woman gasped, her breath coming short after that.

            “Now, now, Ainsley, those creatures don’t exist- only in our minds.”

            “But I-“

            Zzzzzzzzzt! Zzzzzzzzt! The young woman felt another jolt course through her body. She let out a soft cry. Surely her parents hadn’t known of this cruel treatment- they’d never have let her go to this place.

            “That is enough for today. You may go to the library when you’ve left the corridor, but don’t let any of those creatures out of your head. You must learn Ainsley, that they are simply not real.”

            With that said, Dr. Kerrigan instructed her to take off the painful pulse monitors and allowed her to be escorted back to the main lobby of the centre. Nurse Molly gave the girl a sympathetic glance but said nothing as the frazzled Ainsley passed up the library and spent the night in her room.

            The auburn haired girl sat in the corner that night, her knees drawn under her chin and arms around her legs as she stared out the barred window. The moonlight was bright that night, and in the glowing white orb she thought she saw a face. The legendary Man in the Moon- but no, he couldn’t exist. Ainsley couldn’t believe in him, or anything fantastical, because they didn’t exist. As long as they didn’t exist, that shock therapy wouldn’t have to happen again.

            Ainsley Cassidy Channing wasn’t crazy, not by a long shot.