Alice

Voodoo Inspired

The sterile scent of disinfectant, once Alice Dodgson's professional comfort, now clung to her like a shroud of failure. Fired. The word echoed in the empty halls of her mind, amplified by the memory of Mrs. Thorne’s final, rattling breath. A misdiagnosis, a critical oversight, a life extinguished. The hospital had been right. She was a liability.

With her career in tatters and her reputation ruined, the peculiar offer had seemed less a lifeline and more a desperate grasp in the dark. A private medical contract in Jamaica. Caring for a young man, Wesley Claybourne, afflicted with what his family’s remote, dispassionate agent vaguely described as "severe encephalitis." It was a retreat, a penance, and a chance to escape the judging eyes of London.

The Jamaican heat hit her like a physical blow the moment she stepped off the plane �" a viscous, living thing that wrapped around her, pulling the moisture from her skin. The Claybourne estate was even more isolated than she’d imagined, nestled deep within a lush, humming jungle, miles from the nearest town. The house, an old colonial relic, felt heavy with secrets, its verandas veiled by climbing vines, its rooms cool but never truly fresh.

Wesley Claybourne was a tragedy. He lay in a grand, mosquito-netted bed, a skeletal silhouette against the soft glow of a perpetually dimmed lamp. He was young, impossibly so, perhaps twenty-two, but his eyes, when they occasionally flickered open, held the ancient, terrified wisdom of a dying man. His fever spiked irregularly, his body wracked by tremors, and his speech, when it came, was a garbled symphony of English and patois, peppered with chilling visions: "The drums… always the drums… they want me… the Shadow-Man…"

Alice, clinging to her medical training like a drowning woman to a spar, administered IV fluids, sedatives, and a cocktail of antibiotics and antivirals. But nothing seemed to fully break the fever, nor quiet the delirium. She charted Wesley’s symptoms meticulously, searching for patterns, for a definitive diagnosis, but the illness seemed to defy conventional medicine.

Days bled into weeks. The initial professional detachment Alice maintained began to fray. In his lucid moments, rare and fleeting, Wesley was a revelation. He spoke of art, of the vibrant life of the island, of his dreams of escape. He had a gentle wit, a captivating smile that transformed his gaunt features. Alice found herself drawn to him, not just as a patient, but as a man. She read to him, told him stories of London, and for the first time since Mrs. Thorne, felt a flicker of warmth, of purpose, that wasn't tainted by guilt. She fell in love. A desperate, hopeful, utterly doomed love.

But the isolation of the estate, the unspoken fear in the eyes of the quiet, watchful staff, and Wesley’s increasingly disturbing ravings began to chip away at Alice’s scientific resolve. The cook, a stern, elderly woman named Ma’at, would subtly leave small bundles of herbs by Wesley’s bedside, muttering prayers in a language Alice didn't understand. The night air, thick with the scent of jasmine and decay, carried the faint, rhythmic pulse of distant drumming.

One evening, Alice found a small, crudely carved wooden doll, impaled with rusty nails, tucked beneath Wesley’s pillow. Her blood ran cold. Superstition, she told herself, just local customs. But then she started seeing things: fleeting shadows darting in her peripheral vision, the distinct scent of sacrificial blood where none should be, the chilling whisper of voices just beyond her hearing. Her medical instruments, her sterile knowledge, felt useless against this insidious, creeping dread.

Wesley’s condition worsened dramatically. His fever soared, his body contorted in unnatural ways. He no longer spoke, only screamed �" a guttural, inhuman sound that tore through the night. His eyes, fixed on some unseen terror, were wide with a primal fear. Alice tried to sedate him, to cool him, but her touch seemed to burn him. Dark, intricate symbols, like chalk drawn on a blackboard, began to appear etched into the dirt beneath the house, beneath the trees bordering the estate.

The drums grew louder, closer. They thrummed in her bones, in the very foundations of the old house. Alice ventured out one night, compelled by a terrifying curiosity. Through the dense foliage, she saw a clearing, bathed in the flickering light of a bonfire. Figures, cloaked and chanting, moved in a hypnotic circle. And in the center, struggling against unseen bonds, was a effigy, an offering. She heard the name, whispered through the night by dozens of voices, a name that chilled her to her core: Wesley.

Panic seized her. This wasn't encephalitis. This was something ancient, something malevolent. A voodoo cult. And they wanted Wesley. Maybe they had always wanted him. And now, she, the foreign doctor, the intruder, had become entangled.

She tried to flee, to take Wesley, to outrun the encroaching darkness. But the old house seemed to have clamped down on them, its doors locked, its windows barred from the outside. The quiet staff had vanished, replaced by silent, watchful men with eyes like obsidian.

The final night came with a storm. Rain lashed against the house, mirroring Alice's escalating terror. The drumming was deafening, resonating through the floorboards, shaking the very air. Wesley was seizing, his body arcing off the bed, his screams swallowed by the tempest. Alice clutched him, helpless, her medical bag lying uselessly on the floor, its contents impotent against this horror.

Then, the door to Wesley’s room creaked open, revealing not men, but shadows that writhed and coalesced into figures. They moved slowly, inexorably, towards the bed. Alice screamed, a raw, animal sound, pulling Wesley tighter, trying to shield him. But they were inexorable.

They took him. Not his body, not in the physical sense, but they took him. Alice watched, screaming, as the light in Wesley’s eyes dimmed, replaced by a vacant, terrifying stillness. His body, wracked by the last convulsion, finally went limp. His face contorted, not in pain, but in a grotesque smile, his lips moving soundlessly, whispering.

The figures vanished back into the night, the drumming fading into the distance, leaving only the sound of the rain and Alice’s ragged gasps. She clutched Wesley’s lifeless form, but it wasn't Wesley anymore. The skin was strangely cold, the eyes open and blank, yet somehow, she felt watched. Occupied.

Days later, Dr. Alice Dodgson was found by a passing fisherman, wandering aimlessly on a remote Jamaican beach, her clothes torn, her eyes wide and unseeing. She spoke in fragmented sentences, a bizarre mixture of medical jargon, panicked pleas, and terrifying whispers of drums and shadows. She was taken to a local infirmary, then eventually repatriated to a facility for the mentally unstable.

They called it tropical psychosis, a stress-induced breakdown. They kept her dosed, restrained, and sedated. But Alice knew. She knew the sterile white walls of the asylum were just another prison. She saw the shadows in the corners of her room, heard the faint, rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of drums in the distance, a sound no one else could hear. And sometimes, in the dead of night, she saw Wesley, not as he was, but as he had become: his eyes black, his smile unsettling, beckoning her to the darkness of the island, a darkness that had consumed them both.

Mrs. Thorne had been a tragedy. Wesley Claybourne was her damnation. And there was no escaping the endless hum of the drums, nor the knowing, empty stare in her own reflection. Not anymore.