When Johnny Came Home
Stella Parkins cried with joy when she heard the news: Japan had surrendered, and the war was over at last. Johnny Gillis, her fiancé, enlisted in the Navy following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and except for a few brief shore leaves, she saw little of him since December 1941. Now that Johnny mustered out, the two of them could finally make plans for their wedding. After four years of fear, loneliness and uncertainty, Stella would once again know love, hope and happiness.
Sadly, the weary, disheartened veterans who returned from Europe and the Pacific were not the idealistic men who had left behind homes and families to make the world safe for democracy. The war changed many of them, some slightly but others more drastically. Johnny Gillis came home thirty pounds thinner and four years older, but the devastation of war aged him far beyond his years. When the returning hero stepped off the train at the Connecticut railroad station, his fiancée barely recognized him. The sallow complexion and sunken cheeks disturbed Stella but not nearly as much as the lost, haunted look in his eyes.
"It's so good to have you home," she cried.
"It's good to be back," he declared, but there was no conviction in his voice.
"You've lost weight. Your old clothes will never fit you now."
Johnny did not respond. His face remained blank, and his eyes stared sightlessly ahead as though his thoughts were far removed from the old train station.
"It doesn't matter," Stella said with forced cheerfulness. "My mother will fatten you up in no time. I'll bet you can't wait to eat a home-cooked meal again after living on military rations for so long."
Johnny failed to respond to his fiancée's attempts at conversation, so the two young lovers drove home in silence.
* * *
A long-awaited welcome home party was held the following evening. The Parkins house was filled with family, neighbors and friends eager to make Johnny's homecoming a joyous one. The guest of honor, however, was withdrawn and uncommunicative, and the well-wishers became increasingly uneasy as the night wore on. An hour into the party, the returning serviceman's sister-in-law pulled Stella aside while the two of them were alone in the kitchen.
"Chet and I are worried about Johnny," the woman confided. "He's not behaving like himself at all. I tried to hug him, and he pulled away from me as though I had leprosy."
"I'm sure he'll be fine once he's used to being back home," Stella predicted optimistically.
Johnny had rebuffed all her attempts at physical contact, too, yet she would not admit that to anyone.
"Perhaps he should see someone to help him adjust to civilian life."
"What do you mean by 'see someone'?"
"A counselor or a doctor. I'm sure the Navy has such people."
Stella's eyes narrowed.
"You think Johnny needs to see a psychiatrist, don't you? But he hasn't lost his mind; he's just a bit overwhelmed by all that's happened."
"Don't be so defensive. I didn't mean to imply that Johnny is crazy. He's probably just suffering from—what do they call it?—battle fatigue."
"There's nothing wrong with him!" Stella stubbornly insisted. "He doesn't need a doctor."
Over the next few days, Johnny's moods fluctuated from mild depression to complete indifference. He made no attempt to find a job and refused to discuss wedding plans with Stella. Also, much to his fiancée's dismay, he remained aloof and unresponsive to all her displays of affection. The young woman was soon forced to agree with her future sister-in-law that Johnny needed to seek professional help in overcoming his emotional troubles. When she broached the subject with him, though, her fiancé became angry.
"You have no idea what I'm going through," he cried.
"That's true, which is why I think you should talk to someone who will understand. I'm sure the Navy can provide counseling to help you cope with your problem."
Johnny laughed bitterly.
"How can the Navy help me with my problem when I don't even know what the problem is?"
Stella was perplexed.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't recall a good portion of what happened to me in the past year. I've been trying to remember for months now."
"They say the mind often blocks out unpleasant memories."
"That's not it. I can remember a lot of the horrors I saw in battle. I believe there's some memory that's eluding me, something crucial I should remember but can't."
"Give it time, dear. I'm sure it will come to you."
Hoping to jog his memory, Johnny attempted to contact his shipmates who served with him aboard the U.S.S. Danvers. It proved to be an impossible task. All of the young men, like Johnny himself, had been single and without families, and all attempts at tracing them proved futile.
As the weeks passed, the former sailor's failure to find answers resulted in further deterioration of his emotional state. He would often lapse into silence for several hours at a time. During these spells, he seemed to slip into a near-catatonic state, oblivious to everyone and everything around him.
Still unable to convince her fiancé to seek professional help, Stella decided to contact the Navy on his behalf. She was certain that if she could discover what had happened to the crew of the Danvers, she would be able to help Johnny regain his elusive memories. To her surprise, less than a week after posting a letter to Washington, she received a visit from Captain Wilfred Atwater of the Office of Naval Intelligence.
"I didn't expect such a quick response to my letter," Stella declared when the captain introduced himself.
"I want to make sure that your fiancé is the man he claims he is," Captain Atwater said mysteriously.
"Who else would he be?"
"May I speak to him then?"
"He's not home right now."
The captain took a photograph out of his uniform pocket and asked, "Is this him?"
Stella glanced at the snapshot.
"Yes. That's Johnny."
"Are you absolutely certain? There is no doubt in your mind whatsoever?"
"I'm positive. I've known him since the third grade, and while he's been acting peculiar since he's returned from overseas, I'd stake my life on the fact that he is Johnny Gillis."
Captain Atwater put the photograph back in his pocket and sighed.
"Exactly what did he tell you about his naval experiences, Miss Parkins?"
"Nothing," Stella replied truthfully. "He told me he doesn't remember a lot of what happened, and what he does remember he won't talk about."
"While he was in the Navy, did Johnny write to you?"
"Sure. We are engaged, after all."
Captain Atwater silently cursed the incompetent officer who cleared Johnny for the mission. Hadn't the dimwit checked for a fiancée?
"Did you keep those letters?" he asked hopefully.
"Yes."
"May I see them?"
"Wait a minute. I'll go upstairs and get them."
Atwater did not bother reading the earlier letters; he was only interested in those postmarked after July 1944. Still unconvinced of Johnny's true identity, the captain compared the handwriting to a sample he had brought with him from Washington. He then scanned the contents of the correspondence.
"Good. There's nothing here," he muttered.
"Did you say something?" Stella inquired.
"I was just thinking out loud."
Over a cup of coffee, Stella told the captain all that had transpired since her fiancé arrived at the train station in late August. The officer seemed most interested in the young man's trance-like states, but their conversation was interrupted when a car pulled into the driveway.
"That must be him now," Stella announced.
When Johnny walked through the door, he stared in horror at the man sitting on the sofa with his fiancée.
"It is you!" Captain Atwater cried in awe.
Johnny did not utter a word, but a look of agony crossed his handsome face, and he grabbed his head with both hands. Then he turned toward the woman he loved. His eyes, full of grief and pain as he finally remembered the terror his subconscious mind had desperately tried to forget, temporarily softened with love as they met hers.
"Johnny," Stella sobbed.
She walked toward him with open arms, but before she could embrace her anguished lover, he vanished before her eyes.
* * *
The doctor, a Navy man Captain Atwater had called in, administered a sedative to the hysterical woman. Once Stella was asleep, the captain contacted Admiral James Lyncott, his commanding officer.
"Ensign Gillis was here, sir," Atwater told the admiral. "I saw him with my own eyes."
"Bring him to me," the commanding officer ordered.
"I can't do that, sir. He disappeared—literally."
There was silence on the other end of the line.
"Sir?" Atwater said when the admiral failed to respond.
"Were there any witnesses to his disappearance?" Lyncott asked.
"One," the captain replied. "A young woman, the ensign's fiancée."
"Where is she now?"
"Here at her parents' home. She was quite distraught, so I had one of our doctors sedate her."
"Good thinking. You better bring her in," the admiral reluctantly suggested. "We'll have to debrief her as soon as possible."
* * *
Throughout the debriefing, Stella stared at a painting on the wall as Admiral Lyncott and Captain Atwater bandied about phrases such as "a matter of national security" and "top-secret defense project." Through all the patriotic mumbo-jumbo, one message rang loud and clear: what the Navy wanted out of Stella was her silence.
"You expect me to keep quiet about Johnny's disappearance?" she asked incredulously. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I intend to find out what happened to my fiancé and the crew of the Danvers if it takes me the rest of my life."
The two men excused themselves and went to Captain Atwater's office to converse privately.
"Do you have any idea how many others may have come into contact with Ensign Gillis?" the admiral asked his subordinate.
"Dozens, I'm afraid. Miss Parkins held a welcome home party for him and invited friends and family from as far away as Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania."
Admiral Lyncott lowered his head, closed his eyes and massaged his temples. He suddenly felt as though he were suffering from an excruciating migraine, one that stemmed not from any physiological condition but rather from the stress and strain of having to deal with the fallout of an incident that took place in July 1944 at the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia.
"I was foolish enough to believe we contained the problem," he sighed.
"Why don't we just deny everything, sir?" Captain Atwater suggested. "Miss Parkins and I were the only two people to witness the ensign's disappearance. If she goes to the press with her story, I'll swear it never happened. We can portray her as a jilted lover, anxious to believe in some bizarre phenomenon rather than admit to being rejected."
Lyncott shook his head, tired of all the subterfuge. As an admiral, his duty was to the Navy and his country, but as a human being, he sympathized with Miss Parkins, a woman the same age as his own daughter. The poor girl had lost the man she loved, not to a hero's death on the battlefield but to a failed experiment whose very nature had become an embarrassment to the U.S. military and a matter of utmost secrecy.
"I don't think it's in the Navy's best interest to make Miss Parkins look like a woman scorned," Lyncott declared. "Besides, Ensign Gillis might suddenly reappear in the future and remember what happened aboard the Danvers."
Captain Atwater shuddered. July 25, 1944, was a date far more infamous for him than December 7, 1941. He had been stationed at Pearl Harbor and witnessed the dreadful attack firsthand. He lost several close friends on the Arizona, yet tragic though the deaths were, they fell under the category of casualties of war in Atwater's mind. As a career military man, he had learned to accept such losses, painful though they were; but what happened aboard the Danvers went beyond his understanding. Such things were more in the realm of science fiction.
"How are we to handle the situation then, sir?"
Admiral Lyncott focused his tired, troubled eyes on the captain's face.
"We tell Miss Parkins the truth."
* * *
Stella sat with Captain Atwater in the back seat of a long, black limousine, the kind frequently used by top-ranking military and political figures. They were en route to a secret military installation in northern Maine, a rural coastal area far from civilization. The car's windows were darkened, yet even if Stella were able to view the rustic New England countryside, she would not have been able to take her eyes off the file Captain Atwater had given her to read.
"I don't understand any of this," she cried, exasperated by the technical jargon and scientific theories that traveled far beyond the boundaries of her high school education.
"Simply put," the captain explained, "the Navy hoped to create an energy field around our fleet that would make our ships impervious to enemy fire and torpedo attacks. Had it worked, we might have won the war in the Pacific a year earlier. Unfortunately ...."
The word hung in the air, a harbinger of the tragic tale of the U.S.S. Danvers and its doomed crew.
Stella continued reading the report, skipping ahead to July 1944. When she saw her fiancé's name, the typed words seemed to jump off the page. Her heartbeat quickened with dread. She momentarily glared at her companion, but Atwater had his face turned toward the darkened windows. She read on to the end of the file, which abruptly terminated before the conclusion of the ill-fated experiment.
"So, the men aboard the Danvers were nothing more than human guinea pigs," she declared bitterly as she closed the folder and returned it to the captain.
"They all volunteered for the mission, I assure you. Your fiancé was well aware that there might be risks involved."
"How like Johnny! He always did like to take chances."
Captain Atwater took another folder out of his briefcase and handed it to Stella. She stared at it, afraid to open it, not sure she wanted to know what had transpired aboard the Danvers, what had made Johnny Gillis vanish before her eyes like an optical illusion created by a clever magician.
"If you'd rather not read the report ...," Captain Atwater said, reaching for the file.
Stella firmly clutched the manila folder.
"No. If I don't learn the truth—no matter how painful it may be—the unanswered questions will torment me for the rest of my life."
Captain Atwater sat quietly beside the trembling young woman, his heart aching with compassion each time she raised her tissue to wipe away a tear. Finally, she closed the file, put her hands over her face and wept.
* * *
The limo passed through security clearance and entered the base. The driver headed directly to an enclosure large enough to house an airship the size of the Hindenburg. He stopped the vehicle at the side entrance, got out and opened the back door for the passengers. Captain Atwater nodded to the MP standing guard at the door; the man saluted and stood aside.
At first glance, the U.S.S. Danvers looked no different from any other American battleship, but upon closer examination, it was obvious even to a casual observer like Stella that there was something amiss. It was as though the ship had been taken apart and reassembled without the benefit of instructions or blueprints.
"Even though I read the information in your file, I still only half-believed your story," she confessed. "Now that I see the Danvers ...."
She could not continue.
"I know," Captain Atwater said. "If I were in your situation, I'd find it hard to believe myself."
The captain took Stella by the arm and gently steered her toward the main deck. The grieving young woman felt her heartbeat quicken as she passed glaring imperfections in the reassembly of the ship. She stopped in front of a porthole that had once been round but was now a lopsided oval. It was hard to believe that an energy surge—even one as great as that which occurred on the Danvers—could reduce a battleship to a collection of molecules and then unintentionally change the structure of the ship when the molecules were subsequently reassembled.
"Isn't there a way to reverse the process and correct the damage?" she asked hopefully.
"The scientists have experimented with smaller objects, hoping to repeat the accident that occurred aboard the Danvers, but they have yet to duplicate the damage that was done here."
Stella began to shake, and a lump caught in her throat.
"What about the men?" she asked, thinking about her fiancé who, when he returned home, had only partially been restored. "What will Johnny be like if he should ever reappear?"
Captain Atwater did not want to answer the question. He wished he could delegate the duty to another man. It was much more appropriate for a chaplain to break the news to the grieving fiancée. However, Admiral Lyncott had assigned the matter to him, and he was never one to shirk responsibility, no matter how difficult or painful.
"I'm terribly sorry," he began, clearing his throat before continuing, "but I don't believe Ensign Gillis will ever return."
"Why not? Didn't any of the other crewmen reappear?"
"Yes, but ...." A look of anguish passed over the captain's face, but he managed to add, "None of them lived very long afterward."
An involuntary cry escaped Stella's lips.
"But Johnny might. He came back home to Connecticut, and none of the others did."
Captain Atwater could not bear to see the look of hope on her young, innocent face.
"That's true, but if God is merciful, your fiancé will permanently remain a disassembled mass of molecules."
Instinctively, Stella reached out her hand and slapped the captain across the face.
"How dare you!"
During the four long years of the war, Captain Atwater had been forced to make decisions that sent many a fine young man to his grave. None of those decisions was made easily, yet what he was about to do took far more courage.
"Come with me," he said, desperately trying to remain calm.
Atwater led the young woman to the bridge of the ship and held his breath as he opened the door to let her enter. It was not long before Stella's shrill screams pierced the air. They were only silenced when her legs buckled beneath her and she fainted.
* * *
Two days after witnessing the horrors aboard the Danvers, Stella Parkins returned to Connecticut. It was hard to believe that only a few months earlier she had welcomed Johnny home. Tears came to her eyes, and a wave of nausea passed over her. Her parents, who had gone to the station to meet their daughter's train, were shocked at the sight of the prematurely white hair that framed her youthful face.
Stella could not answer her parents' questions. Her mind was not in Connecticut; it was still aboard the U.S.S. Danvers, locked away on a naval base in Maine. What she had seen there would forever haunt her sleep and darken her daylight hours. The image of Johnny Gillis fused with a steel wall of the Danvers's bridge would never be far from her conscious thoughts.
From time to time over the next half-century, Johnny's molecules would briefly reassemble into something resembling a human being. Soon after, though, he would vanish and return to the limbo where his soul lingered, waiting to become whole once again. But like Captain Atwater, Stella prayed—for mercy's sake—that this would never be the case, for she could not imagine what terror and agony the man she loved would have to endure, even if only for a brief time, as a freakish fusion of man and metal.
This story is based on legends about the U.S.S. Eldridge and the Philadelphia Experiment.
Talk about a freakish fusion: plaster of Paris and cat of Salem!
