When Rabbit Howls

by Truddi Chase

  The stepfather shoved his hands into the pockets of the same kind of dark green work pants he’d always worn on the farm.

  “Are you who I think you are?” His voice was gritty and old.

  “I’m a lot of people.” The woman eyed the stepfather with no expression at all. Her people were being kind today; they were giving her no emotions. Just the Zombie’s one-foot-ahead-of-the-other actions.

  “You always were the strange one.” The stepfather turned to lean against the mantel.

  “Crazy, right?” The woman shrugged out of the blood-red coat. She remembered the sneer on his face. It hadn’t changed.

  “Right. You always were. Not a brain in your head.” The sneer grew larger. He’d moved from the mantel now and began to circle her, as the dog had circled him earlier.

  “It’s going to be a long night,” Mean Joe said to him. “Sit.”

  The stepfather did not want to sit down in the overstuffed chair Mean Joe maneuvered him into. But Mean Joe, after all, was big and burly and muscled. And his slanted, hazel eyes blazed.

  The woman was reading from a stack of white pages. Some of the passages caught the stepfather’s attention. He wanted to fight back. Mean Joe had him in a very tight grip. The woman stopped reading. She broke open the first of some small brown parcels. She looked so strange as she did it, so childlike and innocent, sitting there, explaining the game.

  The capsules with the quick-melting gelatin, she said in a tiny, clear voice, held delightful surprises. Just for him. He couldn’t move when she tore open the other packages and laid out their contents, one by one, on the coffee table.

  “None of it will kill you, man.” Mean Joe smiled. “You’ll just wish it had.”

  Rabbit wanted to go first. But Lamb Chop insisted that she was first, or the game would be spoiled. She outlined the plan, like a tiny gnome-biologist. The capsules containing the tiny maggot larvae which she’d been growing so long, so carefully, in the piece of rotted meat, were ready to hatch. She must, she said, insert those larvae capsules into the nostrils, placing them just so, and quickly, before the gelatin melted.

  Twelve, she said, had read it to her from a book. A big one. Twelve was busy, already fishing in the brown paper bag for her own specialty, which would find a warm, moist home inside both the stepfather’s ears.

  He objected violently and often. Then he didn’t object to anything. He just sat there, because mean Joe leaned over with his right shoulder carefully tucked and said something in the ear that Twelve wasn’t working on. Adrenaline pumped through Mean Joe’s body, a surging, rushing stream of strength that had, in his lifetime, allowed him to lift and move incredibly heavy objects, to the consternation of a lot of people. Without that adrenaline, the stepfather might have gotten up and broken everyone into very small pieces. It seemed such a long time until the woman handed Rabbit the nicest capsules of all. Rabbit got to lay them on the stepfather’s tongue and administer a tiny sip of water.

  “There you go,” Rabbit told him, daring to reach out and pat his hand. “Tapeworm babies. It won’t be long now. Isn’t that what you used to tell me?”

  The stepfather trembled quite violently, for he really was quite old. The children ignored his whines. They looked to Mean Joe when the man seemed determined to get out of the chair and defend himself, but the adrenaline only pumped harder. Mean Joe showed no fear, even when the stepfather sneered. The woman stepped forward with Mean Joe, and their hands were clenched. They looked as if they’d like the stepfather to get up and make a move. Too bad, the children thought, that they had never been able to command the respect the stepfather was handing out tonight, to these two enormous adults.

  The woman wasn’t finished reading the story, so the old man sat there and listened to the rest of it. Bit by bit, his mind began to break away from him. Because at some parts in the manuscript, Rabbit howled and her sounds grew fearsome.

  Mean Joe’s shoulder, tucked through it all, remained tucked, but this time his hands cupped the ears of the tiny thing nestled with its face against his throat.

  Twelve looked down at the stepfather and smiled.

  “You seem displeased and uncomfortable,” she said. “Have you forgotten that it’s just a game?”

  “Is he as crazy now as he made us feel all these years?”

  Lambchop looked as though she really wanted, had to have an answer. The woman gave her a smile—the collective effort of ninety-two selves.

  Lamb Chop cried with relief, holding onto Twelve’s hand. Mean Joe and the woman gathered up the manuscript pages and the wrappings from the parcels. They didn’t say good-bye. There wasn’t anybody there who could hear them, even if they had.

  The snow was still falling, in gentle, crystal flakes. The street was empty for it was very late. And the little ones scampered out into the night at the side of the tall black man.

  “Mean Joe,” Lambchop said, “thank you for the Christmas story.”

  “Thank the Irishman,” Mean Joe told her.

  “You made him understand that we should have it.” Lambchop was working her way around a giant Hershey’s candy kiss.

  “Candy rots your teeth. Brush and bed, OK?”

  “M’ throat,” the Irishman complained when all the children had been tucked in. The night lay around himself and Mean Joe like a soft, dark blanket. “M’ throat is sore from readin’.” He peered into the depths of an empty bottle.

  “Here.” Mean Joe set down a full one. “Something to get us through our own night.” He took out a tray of ice cubes and his hands on the scotch bottle as he poured were huge and steady.

  “M’ heart is sore.”

  “We can’t have everything, can we, now.” Mean Joe had started to grin.

  “Ah, but what I would n’a give f’r real blood, a sword in m’ hand. A hearse.”

  Mean Joe knew he meant a horse. He also knew something else. “Days o’ yore?” Mean Joe laid the words out, one by one. He was still grinning. “You going to talk to Stanley about that?”

  “M’ condition has no place in the manuscript,” the Irishman said.

  “Hypocrite.” Mean Joe took a long swallow and waited until the warmth flooded him. “You’re the one who preaches individuality and the expression of self. What about your own?”

  “M’ own.” The Irishman’s face lit up. “Well, ’tis minutes only ’til Christmas day is over. I suppose . . .”

  “C’mon.” Mean Joe took a second swallow as the ice clinked in the Irishman’s glass. “You can’t hold her back, any more than you can hold the rest of us. Try and tell me you didn’t hear that.”

  In the darkness of the night as it enveloped the warehouse, there had come the sound of hooves from a long way off . . . then nearer.

  “Listen,” Mean Joe said.

  The Irishman smiled. His eyes got brighter. “I d’ na hafta,” he said. “She comes from a distance as great as m’self—m’lady, m’ companion.”

  And she did. The Irishman moved aside to let Mean Joe see: a lady with raven hair and a body as slender as a single stalk of cornflower—who shook out her skirts as she stepped down from the waiting carriage.

  Mean Joe was looking into a forest glen as dark as this midnight hour, with only the moon for light. In the glen, the carriage and eight horses had halted, on a road with no beginning, no end. Mean Joe heard the horses snorting, their hooves pawing the earth with restless urgency.

  “The horses,” Mean Joe said with a note of astonishment in his voice. “They’re not like the horses of today. They’re built for . . .”

  “F’r speed, Mean Joe. The hearses ’r’ built f’r speed.”

  And the Irishman was moving now, in a line straight as an arrow, toward the lady with raven hair.

  Mean Joe’s voice followed him.

  “You can go,” Mean Joe called, “but you can’t stay. Ean, there’s barely a minute u
ntil this day is over!”

  The Irishman did not stop. He merely looked back with the expression of a thousand warriors down through time.

  “Who,” he asked, “d’y’ think elongates the time when the Outrider plays her music? Barely a minute will do. I’ll be wringin’ it dry, Mean Joe.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE story of the unfolding of the Troops in therapy has now been told. For the first time in print, multiple persons have allowed us inside a most amazing awareness and process. In an important way the Troops differ from other multiples who have been described in the professional and popular literature.

  They offer a new option for resolution. After I became aware of the multiple persons I fully expected that the goal of psychotherapy would be to find the central person and to integrate the others into the process of that one. However, I discovered that the “core” was dead, and that the process of healing would most likely result in a number of persons who spoke through the “shell” of a woman. The task became cooperation of many, rather than the integration into one. This book has been the result of that cooperation and demonstrates the efficacy of this means of resolution. Increasingly, therapists who work with multiple personalities report more than one type of resolution.

  In the case of the Troops the first-born is dead and the decision is to maintain multiplicity. The developing resolution for the Troops has meant increasing awareness of each other and a sharing of those important and traumatic experiences that resulted in the development of multiple persons. Communication among the Troop members has been enhanced, and there is evidence of an increased ability to cooperate and work together. This book became both the catalyst and the vehicle for encouraging healthier working relationships among Troop members.

  The final chapter of this book has probably raised many questions for the reader. Was this the story of an actual trip to wreak revenge on the stepfather? A careful reading of those pages indicates that this passage is in fact the story that Ean reads to the children. The rage of the children cried out for revenge for the brutality many of them experienced. In effect the ending helped the children release their pent-up rage at the stepfather without putting themselves in legal jeopardy. Therefore Ean’s Christmas gift to the children is the story of revenge—their revenge.

  The most mysterious part of the book is the final passage. Its meaning remains to be fully plumbed, and at this time might only be resolved by a trip with Ean to an Irish pub in order to help loosen his tongue w’ a taste o’ mead. We see the figure of a man with a brogue—a man surrounded by the aura of mystery. Who is Ean, really? He seems to be part of the Troops—yet also is separate from them. It is said that Ean sits “above.” He works powerfully behind the scenes to choreograph the comings and goings of the Troops, and he emanates great energy. It is also said of him that he is not only of this time but also timeless. The power of Ean appears to be beyond this time and place, but what does that mean? Are we seeing into the realm of what modern persons call psychic phenomena, or are we viewing the vestiges of past lives? Perhaps we are peering into a world of which we cannot conceive, and are privileged to go beyond our senses into the world of the spiritual.

  The appearance of the lady with the raven hair in a carriage pulled by powerful horses suggests another world, a world long past, but also a world that knows no time. There is more than a hint that Ean has an awareness and a life beyond the Troops—a life that calls him, if only for a moment that has to be stretched. Yet who he is and where he is from remain a mystery yet to unfold.

  The reader may wonder where the Troops are now in their process of finding health. In October 1986 I spoke to the Troops in order to help them to assess themselves. They sent me a written response which speaks for itself. They write:

  Where are we now? Until the publicity for this book begins, we are working for a well-known corporation in a position of somewhat autonomous nature, and we are very much in the public eye. No one knows, as they pass our desk each day, that we hate and fear the rules and regulations others take for granted as part of their lives, or how scared we are that within society’s system, our mistakes will someday get us killed.

  Trust? Some of us keep daring to, and then run in the face of it. Relationships bump along under our fear, suspicion, and the old anticipation of pain. Victims usually expect pain, are too willing to accept it, and never learn to like it. They either make the wrong choices in a bonding partner (where some pain is only natural), or they choose their partner wisely and well and then destroy what they are fearful of losing.

  More often now we raise our heads, look around in shock that everything is going so well. It feels wonderful.

  Our Mean Joe can’t protect us from everything; there are times when we try to protect him. The children are trying to grow up, some of them against all odds. The Irishman cries at night for what he refers to as the “old sod,” and perhaps we shall go there for a visit. Perhaps through whatever happiness the Irishman seeks under his long-ago sky, the rest of us shall find the key to our own.

  For the most part, Ean is still a mystery to us, but in writing this book we were forced to acknowledge his power. After that final wrestle which every writer must face as the work draws to a close, we sighed with absolute relief but were then shocked to find ourselves once more at the typewriter, a fresh page in front of us—and the keys were clattering, describing something from one of the therapy sessions—except that Ean seemed determined to take things where only he can go. So the last two pages of this book, as they materialised that day, not only exposed Ean’s deep relationship with Mean Joe, but showed us why the Tunnel walls reverberate each night with an awful wailing. As Ean wrote, it became ever more plain. He stood there in that silent, moonlit glen that was not of this time, and he stared at the waiting carriage and the eight horses and at his lady—and in his mind he was taking her to him and his cry made us want to scream with his emotional pain.

  “A’garoon a’fain,” he bellowed. “M’darlin’, a garoon a’fain!”

  Somewhere, some old scholar of Old Gaelic will understand what he meant. We do not; we aren’t even sure of the spelling, only the sound of the rolling r’s and the torment behind the words. It was not until the manuscript had been delivered to our literary agent that we began to wonder: was our Irishman in his final scene going off to steal a long-delayed tryst with the woman who has obviously been his down through time—or was he going with her at his side to do further battle? What further battle was there? Somehow as we write this now, we feel Ean saying that beyond one war there’s always another . . . and that’s why the road has no beginning . . . no end.

  This reprise of the current state of the Troops gives me an excellent indication of the progress that has been made since I first saw them in September 1980 in the woman who I was told was Truddi Chase. There is evidence of increased functioning since that time and a greater acceptance of who they are and how their multiplicity works for them. Their decision to write in order to enhance their therapy is the prime example of their gravitation toward health. Fears are still present, and at times the experience is almost overwhelming, but when the resources of the Troops are called into play, they are able to overcome those fears and go on. The energy that has led them toward life and empowered them to survive, and then begin to thrive, will be a major asset in their decision to confront life and explore relationships. Trust will remain an issue for the Troops, but for good reasons. A positive note is that they are no longer as often paralyzed by their fears of others.

  Although the Troops are in another metropolitan area and I remain in Washington, D.C., and Chevy Chase, Maryland, we maintain regular contact both informally and therapeutically by phone and occasional plane trips. The prognosis is good for further growth and exploration, and distance will not hinder our therapeutic alliance. For as with Ean, our communication has gone beyond words, and time, and space.

  —ROBERT A. PHILLIPS, JR., PH.D.


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