Ill Will

by Dan Chaon

  JUNE 2012

  “YOU’RE GOING to be fine,” Jill said.  “I really think so.”

  “What?” I said.

  We were in bed, and she was stretched out with her head propped on the pillow, and I was kneeling at her feet. I was giving her a foot massage.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just worry.”

  “That’s confusing,” I said. “I don’t even know what we’re discussing.”

  I was pushing my thumbs against the hams of damp pink foot soles, running slowly along the ridges of skin that were as complex as fingerprints, but she only frowned.

  “You don’t look great,” she said. “You’re taking your meds, right?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m just—obviously, I’m worried. But you know: I’ve gotten very good at self-care.”

  “Dustin,” she said. “Promise me that you won’t lose it. If I die. The boys need you!”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  I closed my mouth over her big toe, tightened my lips around it, and I felt her body arch.

  JUNE 2012

  AQIL AND I had reached an impasse in our last session. I had been reading through the folders that he’d given me, and the more I looked at them the more I realized that he’d been stretching the truth—confabulating, a bit.

  One of the cornerstones of his theory was that the drowned boys’ deaths had some ritualistic significance, that the disappearances had occurred on dates that had some numerical pattern in them.  But the more I looked at Aqil’s information, the more discrepancies I saw. While it was true that Jonathon Frisbie had gone missing in the early morning of New Year’s Day, 2001 (1/1/01), and Peter Allingham had last been seen on November 1, 2011 (11/1/11), many of the other deaths didn’t fit into Aqil’s formula as neatly. Vincent Isolato, for example, was reported missing on 2/20/2002, a Wednesday, but was actually last seen on Saturday, February 16. Jesse Hamblin, who disappeared on 4/4/04, was not a drowning death but rather a missing person, since no body had ever been found. Zachary Orozco was not reported missing on 6/6/06, as Aqil claimed; he wasn’t reported missing at all. His body was found on 6/8/06, and the autopsy suggested that his body had been in the water for several days. The date of disappearance, with its ominous significance, was more or less Aqil’s invention.

  In the end, I saw, only three of the deaths—the “murders,” as Aqil called them—actually fit into the pattern he’d ascribed to them.

  “I’m trying to understand,” I said to him. “Why would you feel the need to alter the information you present so it fits your prescribed pattern more neatly? Why do you think you might have done that?”

  “I didn’t alter,” Aqil said. “I conjectured.”

  “Ah,” I said. He was staring at me hard, and his mouth had grown small. “I would say that this goes beyond conjecture.” I cleared my throat. “It’s a bit more like a kind of confabulation.”

  “I told you in the very beginning,” he said. “I said, don’t pay attention to the dates, didn’t I? I told you, that’s just frosting. All the other connections are way more important and significant.”

  “So why present the dates at all? If the way you’re presenting them isn’t accurate, doesn’t that seem like…?”

  “I think I may have exaggerated a little, to some extent,” Aqil said. “To pique your interest.”

  “And how would you differentiate ‘exaggeration’ from ‘lying’?” I said. I spoke as gently as possible, but his face grew tighter, and his lowered eyebrows hooded his eyes as he stared at me.

  “I didn’t want to make it overly complicated,” he said. “I wanted it to be clear and simple when I first presented it—”

  “Because?”

  “Look,” he said. “I stand behind all of the dates that I gave you. Any discrepancies between what I told you and what the police reports say, I think there are good explanations for. Sometimes those reports are in error. They’re sloppy, they make assumptions, they don’t see the whole picture. I mean, we can sit down and go through every one of the ones where you think I’ve been dishonest, and I can show you how I came to my conclusion logically.”

  “Are you sure that you’re not trying to impose a pattern on these deaths that isn’t there?” I said. “Think of the constellations. We look up at the sky and think we see a flat surface with these bright dots called stars that we can connect. We put that cluster together and say it looks like a dipper, or a bear. We put another together, and it seems to be in the shape of a fish, or a scorpion. We forget to imagine the stars in three dimensions. They aren’t clustered together—they’re light-years, billions of miles apart. They only seem like they could line up from our one, limited perspective, here on the planet earth.”

  I looked at him earnestly. “We think about our own problems that way, too,” I said. “We look at them in one dimension, and it seems that they are all connected. We think that there’s some image we can make out if we connect the dots. But more than likely the dots are not connected. They’re on separate geometric planes, light-years apart.”

  I had made this speech to patients with obsessive thinking patterns before, and I thought it was a good one. I thought the metaphors were nicely turned, and it wasn’t accusatory, it wasn’t saying that they were lying, or crazy. But Aqil’s face had turned frankly hostile.

  “Damn,” he said. “You know, I really thought you were different.”

  JUNE 2012

  I THOUGHT THAT Aqil and I might have a turning point. After he’d had a week to think things over, I thought, we could begin to reframe and refocus our sessions together. We could begin to look behind the curtain of this obsession he had and see what was driving it. I’m not saying that you have to completely give up on your case, I would tell him. I don’t disbelieve you, I would say. Which was true. I thought there were some genuinely troubling aspects to these drowning deaths, and I found some of the connections he’d made convincing. But! I would say. I don’t think it would hurt to approach this with a clearer eye. And a greater self-knowledge. I considered this last part. Did that sound condescending?

  Of course, there was the possibility that, having been called out, he wouldn’t come back at all. I may have been too forceful in challenging his belief system; it may have been too soon.

  But I hoped not. I liked Aqil. I liked talking to him, and I thought his “investigation”—his mystery—was actually pretty fascinating.

  —

  So I was relieved when he showed up the next week at his regular time.  Smiling. Seemingly not upset, showing none of the signs of sullen anger and hurt that he’d displayed when we’d ended the last session. He settled comfortably into the sofa across from me and gave me a hopeful, determined look.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what we talked about last time, and I think you’re right. I need to be more up front with you.”

  “Good!” I said. “I look forward to that.”

  He nodded. “I want to show you something,” he said. And he handed me a sheaf of papers that I at first assumed was another “dossier” of a dead college boy.

  Then I glanced through it. It was about me.

  —

  I always assumed that I would not be an easy person to research on the Internet. I’d once done a Google search, and there were a lot of Dustin Tillmans in the United States. There was one in Weeping Water, Oklahoma; one in Minerva, Ohio; yet another in Milton, Florida; and another in Leander, Nevada—in all, easily more than a hundred of us. I’d never felt particularly visible.

  So it was unnerving when Aqil showed me the information he’d gathered.

  There was, of course, the famous photo of the crime scene from 1983 and articles about the murders. This surprised me—though it had been widely reported on at the time, I thought it was mostly forgotten, buried under the steady, unceasing accumulation of sensational American killings. How many of them are there every year, in every state?  Some of them rise to national attention f
or a few days and may linger in local newspapers for a bit longer. But as time passes they vanish.

  How many people recall the most famous massacres of ten or twenty years ago, even when they were covered widely by journalists?  A select few become legendary, of course, but most sink silently beneath the constant waves.

  But apparently there were little dark corners of the Internet where people hoarded all kinds of forgotten things, and Aqil had discovered the blog of a person who had obsessively collected stories about Satanic killings. There were crime-scene photos on this website that I had never seen.

  “You probably don’t want to look at that,” Aqil said, when I turned over a photo of my father’s body on the floor of the living room.

  “What is this?” I said. I flipped the picture over quickly, and I felt sudden heat in my face.

  There was a very loud, metallic tinnitus in my left ear. “Fuck,” I heard myself say.

  On the next page was a printout from—a blog? The heading said: TILLMAN FAMILY. ST. BONAVENTURE, NEBRASKA, 1983.

  This was the second time Russell Bickers had been implicated in a murder, the blogger had written. His previous foster family had died in a house fire under unexplained circumstances, but the Tillmans innocently took him in, despite his history of violent and antisocial behavior. It seems clear that Bickers was part of a Satanic network long before he was adopted by the hapless Tillman family. Bickers’s biological mother, a prostitute and drug addict, had been sentenced to prison when he was five, and there are tantalizing suggestions that she may have been connected to one or more of the covens that operated a child pornography ring in the Grand Island, Nebraska, area during the 1960s and ’70s. It could well be imagined that Bickers began his life as a victim of the coven before graduating to become one of their valued servants—even as a child. The deaths (by fire) of Bickers’s first foster family bear some hallmarks of ritualistic killing, which Bickers would come to perfect later when he slaughtered his adoptive mother, father, aunt, and uncle in 1983.

  I stopped reading, but by this time I could feel the edges of a full panic attack beginning to take shape: pounding heart, tightening chest, the high-pitched razory sound in my left ear, and I closed my eyes tightly because I was not going to have a panic attack in front of a client. You will walk safely in your way and your foot will not stumble; when you lie down you will not be afraid; yes, you will lie down and your sleep will be sweet—

  “Doc?” Aqil said, and his voice was suddenly solicitous with concern. “Hey. Are you okay?”

  I took in a long, slow breath, held it for a count of five, then exhaled steadily for a count of seven. I pressed my fists together under my sternum and did it again. When it appeared that the attack was beginning to pass, I opened my eyes and looked calmly at Aqil.

  “Where did you get this?” I said, and my voice was possibly colder and more hostile than I intended.  “Who wrote this?”

  “Hey,” he said. He was taken aback and made an apologetic grope with his palms. “Doc, it’s just some crazy man on the Internet. I’m not saying I believe it. It’s just stuff that’s out there.”

  “Aqil,” I said. “This is not appropriate. I don’t feel comfortable with—this is private information.”

  “Actually, it’s not,” he said. “It’s on the Internet. Look, I’m really sorry if you’re upset; I can see now that I approached this wrong. It wasn’t my intention to piss you off. Really.”

  “Be that as it may,” I said. “I feel very. I feel a  extremely invaded right now. I don’t want to use the term stalking, but I find this very disturbing and troubling and we need to talk about professional boundaries. In any case, I think the session for today is finished.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Aqil said, and mimed a cringe, putting his hands on his forehead. “Wait—I screwed up. I did a bad thing. I realize that now! Please don’t throw me out. Please.”

  And then he did the most uncomfortable thing I could have imagined.  He got down on his knees and clasped his hands as if praying.  “Please,” he said. “Don’t freak out on me, Doc. I’m sorry, okay? I’m really sorry.”

  “Please get up,” I said. “Please take a seat, Aqil. We are in such an inappropriate place right now that”

  “Just hear me out!” Aqil said. “Just—five minutes.”

  “Really,” I said. “I need to take a break. I’m not feeling well.”

  “Doc,” Aqil said. “I’m a cop. You don’t think I’m going to do research on you before I talk to you? I’m sorry you feel disturbed, but I knew all this stuff before we even met. Honestly, this is the reason I came to you in the first place. Did you really think I wanted to stop smoking? I came to you because you know things. You know what’s real.”

  I was keeping my fists pressed to my chest, and I saw that the knuckles were blanching. “I think that we may need to discontinue”

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t do this. I’m really sorry.” He made another pleading gesture. “It’s just—I needed to be sure that you were the real thing before I got straight with you. I needed to know I could trust you. But you are, Dr. Tillman. You are the real thing.  And that’s why I’m telling you now. You are maybe the one person who will understand this case. Because I do think a cult is involved. Satanic, whatever you want to call it. And I need your help.”

  “Look,” I said. “Seriously.” And as is often the case, I was of two minds.  On the one hand I was unnerved—that he would have “researched” me, that all along he knew more about my personal history than I knew of his, that he had been playing me, in a way, I thought; it gave me bad signals and, as a therapist, as a psychologist, was very concerning.

  And this document—this blog, whatever it was, the fact that this information was public and being read by

  And that photograph of my father—I hadn’t seen him, hadn’t looked at his image for…how long? Not since it happened?

  It sent a trickle of nausea through me.

  “Look,” I said. “I think it’s best for us to end this session now. I’m not going to charge you for the hour, but—we may need to reevaluate  the”

  He reached out and clasped his hand over mine. “No,” he whispered. “Dr. Tillman,” he said, “Dustin, this is important. Please. Don’t be scared.”

  And then, abruptly, he stood.

  “I’ll come back next week, okay?” he said.

  And I said nothing.  I’d glanced down to the papers Aqil had given me, and a paragraph caught my attention.

  Later, the blogger wrote, the youngest surviving member of the Tillman family, Dustin Tillman, became a student of well-known psychologist Dr. Mary Beth Raskoph and wrote a dissertation on

  —

  From: Aqil Ozorowski (Ozorowskiag@yahoo.com)

  Sent: Fri June 29 2012 3:14 AM

  To: DrDTillman@outlook.com

  Subject: Apology

  Dear Dr. Tillman,

  I want to once again apologize for my behavior today. I saw how upset you were and I realized right away that what I had done was wrong and that I crossed the line. I am still struggling with understanding appropriate boundaries; it’s been a problem for me my whole life but I am particularly sorry in this case, because I feel I may have damaged a relationship that I value as much as anything in existence. You are like a brother to me, Dustin.

  I am writing to very humbly ask for your forgiveness. I would be happy to meet with you in any form that you choose to discuss this and hopefully resolve it so that we can continue to work together.

  I can see now that it seemed as if I was invading your privacy and that it might even be construed as harassment or menace (i.e., “stalking”). This was in no way my intention. I don’t know what I was thinking when I gave you that material without any explanation. The fact that the packet contained photos and descriptions of the tragedy you experienced while a child is unforgivable, and I cringe now to think of the pain I must have caused you to be presented with such a thing withou
t warning.

  The reason I wanted to discuss this matter with you was because I wanted to appeal to your expert opinion. I know that back in the 1990s you wrote your doctoral dissertation about cults and have also given testimony in court concerning witnesses who recovered repressed memories due to cult abuse.

  I have been slowly formulating a theory that these drownings may be the work of a cult of some kind, but I really need you to help me walk through some of these ideas. I need your clearheaded intelligence and knowledge, someone who can guide me if I get off track, but also someone who is an expert on the subject. Someone who won’t dismiss the possibility out of hand. I know that if I am distorting or confabulating, you will say so, but I also know that you are not prejudiced against the concept of cults. You have researched it, and you have your own personal experience, as well.

  I realize that I have screwed up in the way that I approached this, and I only hope that you can find it in your heart to give me another chance.

  Please, Doctor, don’t abandon me.

  Yours truly,

  Aqil

  JULY 2012

  IF THE SITUATION were different, I might have gotten advice from Jill. “So I need to ask for your thoughts about a patient,” I said.

  “Oh, honey,” she said, and winced. “No, I can’t.”

  And I felt myself flinch inwardly. We were in bed watching TV, and it was a beautiful summer evening, not too hot, the windows open and the curtains moving in the kind of breeze that moths drift on, and I realized that she had been comfortable, that she had probably been dozing a little, and that before I spoke she might have been free, for a moment, of worry. I watched as she shifted her body awkwardly and gave me an apologetic look.

  “Please,” she said. “Please, let’s not talk about your patients.”

  “No, of course not,” I said. And it was that feeling of being stricken, beyond the point that the situation calls for. A feeling of awareness trickling into you and you think, I’m such an idiot, I’m so selfish, I’m so inconsiderate, a kind of deep embarrassment that you can feel in the blood rushing to your cheeks, and I said, “Do you want some ice cream?”