by Mark Lukens
“Water’s fine for me,” Alicia said.
“I’ll take a Coke,” Stan said.
I handed them their drinks.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“I’d like to talk to you for a little while,” Alicia said.
I nodded, my mouth suddenly a little dry. “I figured Stan would have told you everything by now.”
“He told me a lot, but I’d like to hear it from you.”
We went into the living room.
Stan had his “clean” laptop, as he called it, where he had downloaded clips of the videos onto files on his computer. He opened his laptop and turned it on.
I sat down in the recliner (that no longer had a lamp next to it because I had destroyed it with a baseball bat last night). Alicia and Stan sat down on the couch, but not too close to each other, a respectful distance away. I found myself wondering again how close their relationship was, and I forced myself to stop thinking about it.
“Tell me what happened,” Alicia said. “Everything you remember.”
I glanced at Stan next to her on the couch, then I looked at her again. I started from the beginning. I told her everything, even the strange dreams I’d been having.
Alicia sat patiently through my story, taking a sip of water every so often, asking a question here and there. And then, fifteen minutes later, I was done.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know telling me all of that couldn’t have been easy.”
It wasn’t, but I didn’t say so. “So, what do you think?”
“I’ve looked at the footage where you’re sleepwalking,” Alicia said. “And I’m not so sure you’re sleepwalking.”
“No? But I’m asleep, and then I get up and do things without remembering them. Isn’t that sleepwalking?”
“Yes, it can be. But I have the feeling that you’re actually in a hypnotic state when you get up during your sleep.”
“Hypnotic state?” I asked, mulling the words around in my mind for a moment, trying to understand what she was saying. “You mean like someone hypnotized me?”
“Or maybe self-hypnosis,” Stan offered. “Right?”
Alicia glanced at Stan and shook her head. “I don’t think it would be self-induced.” She looked back at me. “To me, your actions look like you’re wide awake and alert. I’ve seen plenty of footage of sleepwalkers before, and I’m not so sure that’s what you’re doing here.”
“You think I’m hypnotized.”
“Maybe. I can’t be sure.”
“But . . . how? I mean who would have hypnotized me?”
“It might make some sense,” Stan said, getting excited. “Remember that flash of light outside your bedroom windows on the first video you took of yourself sleeping?”
I nodded.
“The light between the curtains? It was like someone was outside with a flashlight. Even you thought that. Remember?”
I nodded again. I remembered.
“And you said you thought someone had been in your house a few times,” Stan continued. “Maybe whoever this is, they are the people, or the one who is hypnotizing you.”
“The same people who took Michelle,” I said.
“Yeah,” Stan agreed. “Maybe if we find out how and why they’re hypnotizing you, then we can figure out why they took Michelle and where she is.”
I looked at Alicia, waiting for her to chime in.
“You get up and go across the street,” she said. “At least you have a few times. Then you come back and turn your computer on, log in to an email account and send out the series of numbers.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know why someone would go to all of this trouble to hypnotize me just to send some numbers by email. Whey even send me across the street? Why not just send these numbers themselves?”
“These numbers have to mean something,” Stan said. “I bet they’re some kind of code.” He got up and darted to my kitchen for another can of Coke.
“Last night,” Alicia said, “when Stan was finally able to break your trance . . .”
I noticed that she hadn’t used the words “wake me up,” but instead she’d said: “break your trance.” I was also still a bit embarrassed at what I had done, trying to attack Stan with a baseball bat. That didn’t seem like me in that video—that was a madman swinging wildly at Stan, trying to kill him. Once again I was amazed (and grateful) that Stan was still sticking around, and that he had brought someone to help me.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Stan broke your trance by burning you,” Alicia continued. “But you hadn’t gone across the street last night, and you hadn’t emailed any numbers.”
That was right. I hadn’t even realized that.
“Maybe Stan woke you up before you could complete what you were supposed to do last night.”
“Maybe.”
“Did you have a feeling, after you were awake, that you had some unfinished business to complete? Did it seem like something was nagging at you, something that you needed to get done?”
“Yes,” I said. I remembered feeling that exact sensation, like I had forgotten to do something important, but at the time, it had been buried under my horror at what I’d done, and almost done, to Stan.
“It’s like you were hypnotically instructed to do something, but then you weren’t able to complete the task before you were woken up.”
That seemed to make sense to me. “But how could I have been instructed, hypnotized, to attack Stan? I wouldn’t ever do that.”
Alicia didn’t answer my question. Instead, she said: “I’d like to try something if you want to.”
“What is it?”
“I’d like to put you in a slight hypnotic state.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“You want to hypnotize me?” I asked Alicia.
“Well, not exactly. It would be a slight hypnotic state. I just want to try. It might not even work.”
I didn’t say anything, thinking her request over.
“I want to see if it can be done,” she added quickly. “Perhaps rule it out. I’d like to see how suggestible you are.”
Obviously pretty suggestible, I thought, or at least Alicia seemed to think I might be. “Okay,” I said. What did I have to lose?
“You don’t have to be nervous,” she said.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
She smiled and shrugged just a little. “Then it doesn’t. No pressure. Like I said, at least it’s something we can rule out.”
Alicia looked relaxed and confident, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was all an act. I could sense something just behind her façade; I just couldn’t tell if it was excitement or fear.
“Okay,” I said.
“I want to record this,” Alicia said. “Is that okay with you?”
I nodded, giving my consent.
“I just want to have this session on video so you can see it,” she told me. “You can keep the video.”
Stan was already getting his video camera turned on, holding it up to his eye so he could move around while filming.
“Just go ahead and sit back in the chair,” Alicia told me, her voice already a little lower and softer, but there was also just the hint of a sharper tone.
I sat back in my chair, getting comfortable. I didn’t know why I was so nervous. I’d never had surgery before, but this was what I suspected that apprehension might feel like right after I was given the knockout drug or a breathing mask was placed over my face, that helpless feeling of surrendering my mind and body over to someone else, trusting them to take care of me while I was in my most vulnerable state.
“Most likely nothing will happen,” Alicia assured me. “This is just like a test run. And we’ll show you everything we filmed when it’s over.”
Her words were comforting, her tone relaxing. I wondered if this was the way she’d been trained to talk to a patient, or if it just came naturally to some people.
I reclined my chair back and put my feet up even though
I still had my sneakers on. Alicia sat on the couch across from me. Stan was on his feet filming. Everything around us was quiet.
“Zach, I just want you to relax.”
I nodded.
“Go ahead and close your eyes and relax. You’re safe now. No one will hurt you. No one can hurt you. Okay?”
I nodded and closed my eyes.
“Zach, I want you to take a deep breath for me. Okay? And then hold that breath for three seconds and then let it out.”
I did as she instructed. And soon she had me breathing deeply and slowly, but not an exaggerated breathing pattern. It became like my normal rhythm of breathing.
“I want you to imagine you’re in a swimming pool on a warm, sunny day. No one else is around and you’re completely safe. You’re relaxed and enjoying the warmth. You’re on an inflatable raft, just drifting along the surface of the pool.”
For just a few seconds, I thought the idea of floating in a pool was hokey. We didn’t have a pool. My parents had never had a pool while I was growing up. But then I thought of a childhood friend, Scott. He lived down the street from us and his parents had a pool. I used to go swimming over there sometimes, splashing around and playing, but never floating.
But instead of those memories, I imagined myself in Scott’s pool. I pictured myself lying on an inflatable raft, my butt sunk down into the water, one hand drifting lazily, my eyes closed, the warm sun shining down on me. Scott and his parents weren’t there. I imagined that he had inherited this house from his parents and that I had come to visit him, but he’d had to work and I was there all day by myself. Alone and at peace.
Just floating.
Sinking down into the water.
From somewhere far away I heard Alicia’s voice. She was telling me she was counting down from the number ten. I wasn’t picking up everything she was saying, but it felt like I was sinking down deeper into the raft, little by little. Not down into the water—it wasn’t a panicky feeling, but more like I was getting more and more comfortable, sinking down into a cocoon that would protect me.
Just floating.
“Six . . . five . . . four . . .”
I didn’t hear the rest of the numbers that Alicia counted down because I was at peace. I was floating.
*
“. . . awake now, okay? Zach, do you hear me?”
I could hear Alicia’s voice coming from far away, but there was something wrong with her tone now. She sounded upset. She sounded scared.
“. . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . you’re coming out of the pool, off of the raft.”
I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, at least I didn’t think they were open. I saw myself getting out of the raft at the side of the pool, hurrying now, scrambling as the raft moved around under me. It seemed like my friend Scott had come home suddenly, or some other people, some bad people. The sun was gone, a storm coming.
Everything had changed.
“Zach, you’re going to come fully awake when I reach the number ten and I snap my fingers.”
I wanted to nod, to tell Alicia that I could hear her, but I was still in Scott’s back yard, inside of the screened-in pool area. I wore only my pair of swimming trunks. I felt vulnerable just then. It felt like something bad had just happened, I just didn’t know what it was.
“Nine . . . ten.” A snap of Alicia’s fingers, like the crack of a whip. “You’re fully awake and conscious now.”
I opened my eyes, but it was strange. It seemed like my eyes had already been open, but now a veil had been lifted and I could see everything around me. I was sitting up in the recliner, my feet on the floor. I was tense, ready to run or fight back.
Alicia was standing a few steps away from me, not seated on the couch. Stan was off to her left, near the archway that led to the hallway and the bedrooms. He had the video camera up to his eye, still filming.
“Zach?” Alicia said.
“Yeah.”
“You’re completely awake and conscious now, correct?”
“Yes.”
Alicia seemed relieved, the tension easing out of her.
Stan lowered his video camera just a bit, staring at me.
“What happened?” I asked. I couldn’t help feeling that something horrible had just happened, something I couldn’t remember.
“You okay?” Stan asked. He was looking at me like he didn’t know me.
“Yeah,” I snapped. “What happened?”
Stan hurried over to his laptop on the coffee table, attaching a cord from the camcorder to his laptop so he could download the footage.
“Let me see that,” I told him, sitting up straighter.
“It’s not finished yet.”
I glanced around, making sure the living room wasn’t damaged, or the dining room. I had attacked Stan with the baseball bat when I’d woken up early this morning, but I didn’t have a weapon on me right now. Everything seemed the same; everything seemed okay, except that Stan and Alicia looked wary of me. I checked my forearms for more burn marks.
“What did I do?” I asked Alicia. “Did you hypnotize me?”
“Yes. I was able to.”
“So I’m suggestible, or whatever you called it?”
“Yes. Apparently you seem highly suggestible.”
I was about to ask what I’d done again, running out of patience, when I heard a slight noise coming from the kitchen. I looked that way. “What’s that?”
Alicia took a step closer to me, her hand out toward me like she was gesturing at me to remain in the recliner. “Zach, wait. I think you should watch the video first.”
The noise in the kitchen stopped.
Stan stood up and backed away from the laptop. “Okay,” he told me. “It’s ready to go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Alicia got me calmed down enough to sit on the couch in front of the laptop.
“Just watch this and I’ll explain everything,” Alicia told me.
The video was on the laptop screen, on pause. I saw myself sitting in the recliner, my head back and my eyes closed. I hit play.
The camera panned just a little, and I saw Alicia sitting on the couch. She told me to relax and to imagine that I was floating in a pool. I remembered her saying that to me. I remembered picturing myself floating in my friend’s pool.
“Could you fast-forward through this part?” Alicia asked Stan. “To the part where I’m past counting down?”
Stan came toward me and I slid the laptop to him. He fiddled with the computer for a few moments. I heard bits and pieces of the audio as he tried to find the right part to play again. I glanced at Alicia, wondering if she didn’t want me to hear her counting down again. Would I go back into a hypnotic state that easily, just from hearing her again?
She didn’t say anything.
Stan slid the laptop back to me and I hit play again. I saw myself sitting in the recliner, totally relaxed, my eyes still closed.
“Zach,” Alicia said on the video. “You’re safe. Okay?”
“Yes,” I answered. I expected to hear myself mumbling the words, but I spoke as clearly as if I was awake. But I couldn’t remember any of it.
“You can stay there for a moment longer,” Alicia said to me on the video. “But in a moment we’re going to go into the kitchen.”
I nodded on the video. “Yeah, sure.”
Alicia didn’t seem frightened on the video like she seemed to be now, and maybe shocked was an even better word; it was like she’d seen something terrible that she couldn’t shake. But in the video, even though her voice was calm and even, with just that hint of authoritative command to it—the voice of a doctor—I could tell she was excited. I don’t know how I could tell, it was something in her mannerisms, something in her eyes, the slightly nervous rigidity in the way she sat on the edge of the couch, like she couldn’t wait to get up, couldn’t wait for me to get to the kitchen with her.
“First, Zach, I need to tell you a few things,” Alicia said to me on the video.
&
nbsp; “Sure.”
“I want to talk about your job and the things you do there. Your responsibilities at work.”
“It’s pretty boring.” I chuckled a little.
I stared at the screen, amazed that I was carrying on a normal conversation with Alicia that I couldn’t even remember, my head back, my eyes still closed.
“That’s okay,” Alicia told me. “I’d still like to hear about it. If you want to talk about it.”
“Nothing I like more than talking about myself,” I said on the video, my head still back, my eyes still closed, my hands resting on the arms of the chair. A joke. I’d actually made a joke (and not a very good one). It was so bizarre watching myself act like that.
“While we talk,” Alicia said, “I’m going to ask you to do something in the kitchen. I’d like you to do this thing for me, okay? Whatever I ask you to do. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“I would really appreciate you doing what I ask you to, Zach. No questions. Okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Okay, Zach. You’re doing great. I’d like you to open your eyes and look at me.”
On the video I opened my eyes and looked at her.
“What do you do for a living, Zach?”
“I’m a manager at Carlton’s Lawn and Pest Service. We treat lawns with fertilizer and pest control. We also do shrubs and trees.”
Alicia nodded. “Do you like your job?”
“It’s okay. Long hours. A lot of customer complaints. I think I liked it better when I was still a lawn tech.”
Alicia nodded. “Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Who are you married to?”
“Michelle.”
“Are you happy with Michelle?”
“Of course.”
“Do you ever fight with Michelle?”
“No.”
I could see on the video that I was beginning to get a little defensive.
“Okay, Zach. You’re doing great. I want you to stand up and go into the kitchen. Okay?”
“Sure.”
I watched myself on the laptop screen get up from the recliner. The camera followed me as I walked through the dining room and into the kitchen. Alicia was still in the dining room, hanging back. I was the only one in the kitchen. There was a small cage on the countertop next to the sink. The camera zoomed in and I saw a small gray kitten inside.
