Modern Masters of Noir

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  “Yes! Every minute. All the time.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes!”

  “How does that affect your life?”

  There was anguish in her eyes. “It ruins it.”

  “How does it ruin it?”

  “I don’t want to be around anybody. I don’t want to go out, I don’t want to go anyplace. I don’t date. I’ve never had many friends. I was in college, but I quit, and now I just get up in the morning, I go to work, I go home, and I stay at home until it’s time to go to work in the morning.”

  “Not much of a life,” Laner commented, gently.

  She began to cry. “No, it’s not much of a life.”

  He encouraged her to weep the sadness out. In truth, at that point, he foresaw a long and difficult therapy, but he was not for a minute afraid of failing her.

  First, the psychologist attempted conventional therapy, fully expecting it to work.

  He began by administering psychological tests, which served to confirm his original hypothesis that Elizabeth was deeply neurotic due to abnormally deep-seated fears of undetermined origin. Or, as he commented privately to his wife, “The poor girl’s scared shitless.”

  Twice weekly, he asked probing questions and Elizabeth reacted, sometimes calmly, sometimes decidedly not. But none of them was the right question; none of her answers was the answer. Sometimes Laner felt she was telling him the truth; other times, not.

  “Tell me about your mother, Elizabeth,” he said.

  “She raised me by herself.”

  “Where was your father?”

  “Pretending I didn’t exist.”

  “Tell me how you felt about school, Elizabeth,” he suggested. “. . . about God, Elizabeth . . . about men . . . tell me about your dreams, Elizabeth . . . your daydreams, your fantasies. Tell me, Elizabeth . . .”

  Over time, it became clear that she was not getting better. Instead, to his dismay, she grew progressively worse. Her appearance disintegrated. Laner grieved at the loss of her remarkable beauty, at her frightening weight loss, at the acne that ruined her beautiful skin, at her humped, defensive posture, and the sad, grey cast to her eyes.

  “I’ve quit my job,” she announced one day.

  She lost her insurance, and couldn’t pay his fee.

  Laner adjusted his sliding scale to compensate, until finally he was treating her for free, something he had always sworn he would never do for clients because it would increase their dependency on him and destroy one of their main motivations to change.

  “You’re taking this case awfully hard,” his wife finally said. What she really meant, he knew, was that he was taking it too personally. “Watch it, Paul,” his colleagues warned, “you’re becoming obsessed by this case.” Their comments infuriated him, although he couldn’t deny them. But he couldn’t quite believe them, either.

  It was not conceivable that Dr. Paul Laner could so miserably and completely fail to help one of his patients. No one, he thought, would be able to comprehend it, least of all him. “I’m a good psychologist,” he kept telling himself; in fact, the peer recognition he had achieved over a long career suggested that many considered him to be a great one. But the doctor began to sleep less well, and to be aware of vague, unpleasant stirrings in his chest and abdomen. He did not need a psychiatrist to diagnose: anxiety.

  He was not yet ready to call it fear.

  But that’s what he was: afraid, terrified that Elizabeth Ouvray was dying before his eyes, a little more every week, incrementally every session. He could not even be sure that his “treatment,” his reknowned methods of analysis, were helping to keep her alive. It was even possible that he was—mistakenly, unintentionally, horribly—speeding the painful process of her death.

  At the beginning of the final month of his treatment of Elizabeth Ouvray, Dr. Paul Laner tried hypnosis for the first time. It was not a mode of treatment he particularly condoned, believing as he did in the more conventional forms of therapy. Indeed, he had to cram a quick refresher course on hypnosis with a younger, more holistically-inclined psychologist of his acquaintance.

  “Let your scalp relax,” he began the first time, using his deepest, most soothing and mellifluous voice, and feeling faintly ridiculous even saying the words. Elizabeth lay on her back on the couch in the corner of his office, her skeletal hands folded over her stomach, her eyes closed.

  He was seated beside her right shoulder.

  “Allow even your hair to relax . . . relax your forehead, feel your forehead grow smooth, smooth . . . relax your eyebrows, eyelids, let your eyes fall back in your head, feel your eyes relax, feel them relax . . . relax your cheekbones. . . your lips, relax your tongue, let your jaw relax . . . relax the back of your neck, and now your throat . . . feel how relaxed your whole head is, your whole neck and throat . . . now let that feeling of complete relaxation slide down into your shoulders . . .”

  When Elizabeth was visibly relaxed and breathing easily, he led her through a series of non-threatening questions and answers. Then he said, “Let’s go further back now, Elizabeth, to a time when you were just a little girl. Now, while you are absolutely safe and secure in the present, I will ask you to go back to a time in your childhood when you were afraid. Remember, Elizabeth, that whatever it was that frightened you then, cannot hurt you now. The past is over. It is safe for you to remember what frightened you. When I count to three, you will remember something that frightened you when you were a little girl. One, two, three . . .”

  “I’m in my bedroom,” she said immediately.

  Laner stared, surprised. This had the sound of something new, something previously uncovered.

  “How old are you in this bedroom?”

  “I don’t know. Young. I’m really young.”

  “Look around the room, Elizabeth. What do you see?”

  “Oh!” Suddenly, her voice was like a child’s. “It’s our first little apartment! I’m two.”

  Good grief, Laner thought, can this be true?

  “Are you two years old?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it night time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mother has put you to bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you alone in the bed?”

  “No.”

  “No, Elizabeth?”

  “Tubby.”

  “Your teddy bear is with you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you feel . . . how do you feel?”

  “Scared! I’m awake. I don’t know why I’m awake. It’s dark! Where’s Mommy? Mommy? There’s a noise! Mommy!”

  Laner’s own heart was beating rapidly, but he leaned forward to calm her.

  “You are safe from the noise, Elizabeth, it cannot hurt you, I will not let it hurt you. Are you calling out for your mother?”

  “Yes. No! I thought I was! But I’m not, I’m too scared, oh, what is that, who is that? Mommy!”

  The last word burst from Elizabeth’s throat as if it had broken loose from paralyzed vocal chords. She remained lying on the couch, but her head and shoulders strained upward, her eyes bulged beneath their lids, and she breathed in ragged gasps.

  “It cannot hurt you, Elizabeth,” Laner said, hoping he did not sound as unnerved as he felt. “Tell me what you see, tell me what it is that frightens you so.”

  “A face!” Elizabeth began sobbing, quick, keening sobs that sounded like a frightened child’s. She was trembling all over, and his own hands were shaking. “He’s got a flashlight. He’s got curly hair. He’s got a mean face, oh, it’s the meanest face I ever saw! He’s looking down at me, he’s angry at me, he’s going to hurt me!”

  “Does he hurt you, Elizabeth?”

  “Oh!” Her sobs caught in her throat, as if she were startled. “He’s gone! Mommy’s here and she’s holding me . . . a burglar,” she said next, in a wondering voice. “I can hear Mommy saying that. Shhh, Mommy says to me, it’s all right, baby girl, it was just a dream, it was only a bad
dream, that’s all it was, forget all about it now, go back to sleep, it didn’t happen, it never happened, it was only a bad dream . . .”

  Soon after that, Laner brought Elizabeth up out of the hypnotic trance. She remembered nothing of what had transpired, so he told her.

  “A burglar?” She was still as wide-eyed as a child. “That’s where my nightmares came from? But my mother only meant to protect me.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, Elizabeth.”

  “She told me it was only a dream . . .”

  “And it became a recurring nightmare.”

  “Is that why I’m frightened of strangers, too?”

  “What do you think, Elizabeth?”

  She smiled tentatively. “I think maybe it is.”

  He thought maybe it was, too. In fact, he was positive of it. And he felt sure that now that Elizabeth had at last delved far enough into her subconscious to uncover the source of her fears, she would begin to recover.

  But she did not.

  She began to report horrifying nightmares.

  At their next session, she reported a continued terror of strangers, along with her many other fears. Indeed, she looked as if she had slept even less that week than before. She reported that the headaches and muscle cramps that Laner suspected were a consequence of malnutrition had increased in frequency and intensity. He had been on the verge of hospitalizing her before; now he felt he surely must. But what an admission of failure on his part that would be! Still, how much worse it would be if she died when simple medical procedures like an IV might keep her alive.

  The psychologist’s own sleep was not much better than hers.

  “She looks awful,” he thought, “and what am I going to do now?”

  He decided to hypnotize her again.

  “All right,” she said, dully.

  Again, he relaxed her, although it took a long time, as he was anything but relaxed himself. Again, he led her through safe and easy memories, then back through the traumatic memory of the burglar, and then . . .

  “Go further back now, Elizabeth, back as far as you can go to the first, the very first frightening thing that ever happened to you . . .”

  “Please, I won’t tell anyone!” she cried.

  “What?” Laner was confused at the sudden and dramatic change in her voice and tone. “Where are you?”

  “In my bedroom. Oh my God, please don’t do that. I swear to you that I never told anyone, I won’t tell anyone, I swear it.”

  “Elizabeth, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  What? Laner thought—twenty-two? But she was only nineteen in the present, in the here and now. What was going on?

  “Where are you?” he asked again, trying to orient himself as much as to orient her.

  “I’m sitting here on the edge of my bed, and I’m begging him, begging him . . .”

  She began to sob convulsively.

  “Begging him to do what, Elizabeth?”

  “Begging him not to kill me. I won’t tell anyone. I swear I won’t. Please, please . . .”

  She screamed, and Laner jumped back in his chair.

  “Elizabeth,” he said slowly, “who are you?”

  “Susan Naylor,” she whispered, “I am dying . . .”

  Oh my God, he thought, my God, my God, what is this, what is this that is happening here?

  This time when he brought her out of hypnosis, he did not tell her what she had said and done. He could hardly credit it himself. How could a 19-year-old patient suddenly “become” a different, even an older woman entirely? Could this possibly be an example of past-life regression such as he had read about (and disbelieved) in some medical journals? Could it be a form of ESP? If he wrote it up as such, he’d be laughed out of his practice. The psychologist sent her home, canceled all of his appointments for the rest of that day and secreted himself in a secluded recess of the medical library at a nearby hospital. For the rest of that afternoon, he read every case study he could locate that even slightly resembled the strange events that had transpired in his office.

  He found no reassuring answers.

  Near dinnertime, he called his wife.

  “I’ll be late,” he told her. “I have to see a patient.”

  Elizabeth Ouvray lived in the second-floor rear apartment of a brick fourplex in a shabby neighborhood. It was twilight and getting cool outside by the time he rang her doorbell.

  “Dr. Laner?” she said, when she saw him.

  She was pale, exhausted-looking, shaking, and so was he.

  “May I please come in, Elizabeth?”

  “I’m . . .” She looked as if she were trying to come up with some good reason to turn him away. He suspected he was the first person to enter her apartment in a very long time. “I . . . all right . . . yes.”

  The doctor followed her into her living room, which was starkly decorated with furniture so nondescript it could have been rented. He sat down in the middle of her couch, but Elizabeth remained standing, propping herself against a wall as if it alone gave her the strength to remain upright.

  “Elizabeth, today . . .”

  “I don’t want to know!”

  “You’re aware then, that something happened . . . something unusual . . . during hypnosis?”

  “I think so . . . yes.”

  “Elizabeth, who is . . . was . . . Susan Naylor?”

  The doctor held his breath, hoping she’d come up with some explanation, some conscious recognition of the name that would explain how a 22-year-old dead woman’s memories got into Elizabeth Ouvray’s brain.

  She looked blank. “Who?”

  He felt like crying. It wasn’t only her life that was at stake here. His reputation, his 23-year counseling career, was about to go down the tubes because this insane young woman had memories she had no logical reason for having!

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Laner was appalled to realize he had actually spoken his thoughts aloud to her. He felt desperate enough to suggest, “I want to hypnotize you again, Elizabeth.”

  “Right here, Dr. Laner? You mean now?”

  “Please,” he said softly, gently. “Please.”

  She said she’d be most comfortable seated at the table in the kitchen, and so she led him there. She faced the chrome door of the refrigerator as he attempted one more time to relax her into a deep trance state. The contorted reflection he saw over her shoulders was of an old man who looked as if he had just been told that his favorite grandchild had been run over on her tricycle. The haggard woman reflected in the chrome bore little resemblance to the blonde beauty who’d walked through his office door at a time that now seemed so long ago.

  When she appeared to be deep in trance, he made the hypnotic suggestion: “You are now Susan Naylor,” and then he stood back to see what might happen next.

  It was instantaneous.

  “No!” she screamed, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. “Please, no! Get away from me! don’t hurt me, I wont tell anyone! Please, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me!” She lurched to her feet, knocking the stool over, still screaming, “No, no, no!” When she turned toward the doctor, she was holding a butcher knife. “Please don’t kill me!” she screamed—over and over, as she stabbed him in his throat.

  When the police arrived at the urgent summons of several of the neighbors, they found Elizabeth, weeping and bloody, still holding the knife with which she had killed Dr. Paul Laner. Her blouse was torn, revealing her ripped bra, and the zipper of her jeans was broken so that she had to hold it together with on£ hand.

  “Tell us what happened,” a detective, a woman, urged her. “Your neighbors reported hearing your scream for help.”

  “He was my psychologist,” Elizabeth whispered. “I trusted him. And he came here tonight, and he tried to rape me. I’m so afraid all the time, of everything, that’s what he was treating me for, he knew how horribly afraid I am of men, and when he attacked me, I . . . I . . . killed him.”

&n
bsp; On the way to the hospital, she whispered to the policewoman, “Somebody told me that Dr. Laner got into trouble years ago with another female patient, but he was so good to me that I didn’t believe it. Do you think it could be true?”

  “It’s true,” the policewoman called her at the hospital to say. “At least I think it’s true, although it was only a rumor at the time. It makes sense though, considering how obsessed even his wife and his colleagues admit that he was about you. What I’ve learned is that when he was just starting out, twenty-three years ago, there were rumors that he had an affair with a patient, supposedly as a part of her treatment, and that she had a child by him. Lousy bastard, abusing his power like that. They said she was blonde, like you, only 22 years old, and very beautiful.”

  “I’d like to hear her name,” Elizabeth whispered.

  “Naylor, Susan Naylor,” the policewoman said, and then, because she heard Elizabeth moan, she added sharply, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There was a rumor that she was going to file a paternity suit,” the policewoman continued, “but before that could happen she was murdered. Susan Naylor was stabbed one night by someone who broke into her apartment.”

  “Oh God,” Elizabeth breathed. “They didn’t catch him.”

  “Nope. They interrogated Laner, because of the rumors. But their only witness was the baby, Susan Naylor’s two-year-old little girl. And the only word they got out of her was ‘burglar.’ Poor little thing. After her mother’s murder, she was taken by her grandparents. Do you think Laner was her father? I’ll bet you the bastard was, and I’ll bet you he killed her mother to keep his precious reputation intact.” The cop laughed. “At least, that’s my wild theory, what do you think of it?”

  “I think you’re right,” Elizabeth whispered.

  “Well, you get to feeling better, okay?”

  “I will now.”

  “What?”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  The policewoman’s hand lingered on the receiver after she hung up the phone. On her desk lay the old homicide file from which she’d been quoting to Elizabeth. Elizabeth.

  The child’s name was Elizabeth.