“What is your first goal, my dear?”  The doctor’s voice was laced with a faint, subtle kindness to it.

“My name is Roana Progmarter and my first order of business is for you to assist me in finding my friend, Josephine,” Roana decided to introduce herself, since she had not.  In fact, she felt a little rude for that but given the situation and her state of mind it wasn’t the first thing she thought to do.

The most important thing now was to recover her assailant.  No matter what happened, Josephine and she were still friends.  Due to her mental state, there was so much that could happen to her.  Roana worried about her and who or what she’d run into being as fragile and unstable as she was. Clearly Josephine would regret doing what she had to her when she got into a clearer mindset, and she didn’t want her out in the public trying to assault people or even getting assaulted as a result.

They had to find her as soon as possible. She was a danger to others as well as herself.

“What are the whereabouts of her disappearance?” The doctor wanted to gain as much information as he could in order to attempt to pinpoint possible locations.

“She was checking out a popular legend and talking to a mutual friend,” Roana informed him. “She fainted and suddenly vanished. I looked all over town but I couldn't find her.”

“Strange,” black, leather gloves caressed his white beak in contemplation. “If she is injured from her episode then she should have been nearby.”

He would have spotted her earlier if he had seen her running around outside, especially if she was still dressed in her night attire. It wasn’t very common for any woman to go outside dressed in such a way. They would be frowned down upon for such actions and they were considered indecent.

“Do you know anything about a woman named Gladys Goldwell?” Roana wanted to ask him that before, but she had just remembered Red’s story.

The doctor froze for a moment, and although his face was hidden his body movements said it all.  His body jerked in place like he was assaulted by some unwanted thoughts.  He placed his hand to the rim of his hat as his first finger and thumb grasped it and he tilted his head down.

“I do not deal with witches,” his voice was lower than usual. It was almost as if he were muttering it.  There was something forced about the quality of his voice that she couldn’t quite understand.

“This is something more than that,” Roana hoped she could coax something out of him if he knew anything at all. “Whatever it was, it was how I ended up unconscious. This isn’t even my house.”

Roana cast a glance to Josephine’s bed.  The pink and white covers were thrown about and the pillows lay on the ground a few feet away amongst the other things that had been displaced.  It looked as if her friend was asleep in it and flung everything off suddenly like she was awakening in a startle.

“She is gone and her room is a wreck,” dark eyebrows creased in concern.

“Her door was wide open. However, don’t you think your story is a little ridiculous?” It was his turn to question her. She spoke of possession and ghosts as if such things existed and were plaguing the people around her.  That sort of talk was questionable to say the least.

“Of course it is,” Roana shot back at him before her voice calmed. She realized that her worry was getting to her and it caused her to react irrationally. This was not the impression that she wanted to make. “That’s why I think something else may be behind it. Whatever happened, there was malicious intentions behind it. I want to get her away from whatever is hurting her as soon as possible.”

Even now, the two of them were wasting time just talking about it.  That antsy feeling of being caught in someone’s house was back.  She kept falling into a weird comfort zone with this doctor, so much that she lost sight of where she was.  He was interesting to talk to, but they could engage in small talk later.

“What if she has passed?” The masked man’s words shot through the girl like a bullet.

Her facial features lit up in shock and horror at the mere thought of that being true. It couldn’t! It just couldn’t! She had to be alive! Roana wouldn’t believe such talk until she found proof or saw a body.  Neither were things that she wanted to do.

She turned away from him and completely faced the bed as a solemn expression fell upon her. She clenched her dress with her hands. “Then at least I can find her body. With you around, I have a good chance of that.”

If Josephine truly was dead she knew that the doctor would have been able to find her corpse and at least have confirmation that she had passed and not disappeared without ever being found.  In Roana’s opinion, it was better that she knew than stagnate in question for days or even years.

“We should venture out,” the doctor’s boot clacked against the wood of the floor as he turned. The items in his pouch jingled as he walked out of Josepine’s room and relieved the bit of tension that Roana’s worry brought them.

Roana raised her mask to her face and fastened it.  She prepared herself to venture out into the thick miasma that hung in the air.  The two of them walked outside of Josephine’s house.  She made sure to shut the door so no one could just push it open.

As soon as she stepped away from the house, the air outside felt warmer on her skin.  The day was beginning and more people had come out to shop in the markets and do their daily errands and jobs.  The streets weren’t bustling, but they weren’t empty either.  She glanced around at the people who walked by them. Some of them would cast the two dirty looks, and others would smile.  A few of them even bid them good day.

However, mixed in the crowd were the sights of corpses rotting in the streets. The smell of illness and death was so strong that it nearly overtook the bundle of flowers stored in the beak of her mask.  She glanced around at the houses. Some of them were active with people in and around them, others derelict in all stages of decay and some had red crosses painted on the doors and guards who stood outside in order to keep the infected inside.

As she was taking in the sights around her, she felt a hand grab her shoulder.  Roana whirled around; her long, black hair beat against her mask as she stared into the bright blue eyes of a girl who was about her height.

The blonde girl drew back so that she wasn’t hit with the beak of her mask.  She held her pale arms up to her face for a moment.  She was dressed brightly, with a white and bright blue dress.  Her wavy, blonde hair was pulled up in two  high ponytails on either side of her head.  Below blonde, wispy bangs were round, blue eyes and a face with all the beauty of a porcelain doll.

She was small in frame and looked to be in her teens, or even slightly younger than Roana was.

“Have you heard of the doctor with no name?” She asked in a very soft voice with childlike qualities.

 “Doctor with no name?” Roana repeated that part of her question.  What was she talking about?

“Wherever you go, if you look carefully, very carefully, you will see him. He follows everyone everywhere. If you have seen him or talked to him, then he won’t leave you alone,” the girl’s face began to morph into a frightened expression and her voice trembled with instability as she continued. “Some people say he’s watching over the sick, but others say his hollow stare will slowly turn people insane or just looking at him will make you want to die.”

The more she spoke, the more unstable her tone got.  It was as if this girl was having a very hard time trying to tell Roana her story.  She couldn’t help but feel bad and wonder what exactly happened to her to make her seem so traumatized by this man.

“My friends were being stupid about the doctor who always watches. Little did I know they were right. When I came home from a long walk, I found my brother laying dead in the front yard,” the unstable girl sounded like she was on the verge of crying.  Her pupils had shrunk and eyes widened, but she continued to talk as if something compelled her to go on. “People say he killed himself, leaving a note saying he had been cured and it was his time to go. There’s a grave marker in my front yard. He is still there now.”

Roana was left in a state of confusion and sorrow that mixed together uncomfortably in a sickening wave that washed over her body.  She didn’t know if this girl was lying or crazy, and she both sounded and looked to be a little of both.  Brows knitted and visage wearing worry like a fine veil, she continued to listen as the girl’s mental state deteriorated before her very eyes.

“He left a description of the doctor. He is a tall man dressed in black with a white mask that has red lenses. He has long arms and is very thin and willowy. I wondered what would happen if I saw him, but I decided not to find out.  Sometimes when I’m alone, I look in the mirror,” paranoia grabbed her form and took a strong hold as her pupils darted around, “I think I see him but maybe I was just seeing things. I thought I saw a plague doctor that matched that description. Sometimes I see him. I think I made it worse by trying to find him.”

The blonde looked down at her hands with a deep frown. “My life has been hell since then. I became obsessed with him. I draw pictures of him and sometimes I look for him in the middle of the night. Sometimes…I think he just wants to protect me from the pestilence…”

Her voice trailed and her shoulders jumped up and down with her instability.  Small giggles that turned into laughter before sharply turning into violent fear erupted from her in a flurry. “No! That’s how he draws you in!”

The girl took a step back with a horrified expression.  Roana was swimming in her mixture of emotion. She tried to process what this girl was going on about while she wondered if her story was even true.

“He does that and he makes you want to die,” the blue-clad girl’s voice was nearly a whisper now. “I don’t have long until I go. The doctor is a horrible man. If you ever encounter him-“

Her body jerked violently, as if a new wave of horror washed over her and she was seeing someone murdered before her very eyes.  The blonde pointed in horror at Roana and yelled in fright. “Wait! What’s that?!”

Roana glanced behind her and thought there was some type of danger around them, but she saw nothing.  She didn’t even see the doctor and she had been following him.  Perhaps he became lost in the crowd.

“What?” The word escaped her pink lips in confusion as the dark-haired girl pivoted to try and see if she could catch whatever the blonde had seen.  She saw nothing. ‘Wait…the doctor is here with me and his lenses were red…but surely that isn’t the same doctor that’s with me. Plague doctors are all called doctors. We didn’t meet in the same way. If he wanted me to die, he would have killed me when I was unconscious.’

Roana’s thoughts left her. She turned back to the other girl, who was sweating and had a vacant stare of fear, but was far less shaken than before.  What in the hell was this girl’s problem?  Was she hallucinating?  She had heard things about a girl who was regarded as the town loon, but she wasn’t sure if it was this girl or not.  She was also one to believe that there was some sort of reason that she was like this.

Dark blue eyes met light blue as the other girl sighed in relief and wiped the sweat from her brow. “I thought I saw him walking behind you, but he’s gone now.”

The girl then placed her warm palms on Roana’s shoulders and stared her down with a dire expression. “Your time is short, I sense. Please, escape the grasp of insanity before you try and kill yourself, too and end up like my brother. May God have mercy on your soul!”

The wild-eyed girl then turned and darted off as if she was being chased by a killer, leaving Roana in a state of confusion and disbelief.

Did that really just happen?