A Very Paranormal Holiday

by J. T. Bock

  Why was it so uncomfortable to think about it?

  Was I being sucked into his delusion?

  According to Scott, after Cologny in Switzerland, we’d lived in Canada and then moved to Michigan. The Athanate followed a set of principles tied up in what Scott referred to as the Hidden Path. This required that the Athanate live within the community, disguised by their apparent humanity. Part of that was to have real work and identity in a world growing increasingly regulated. Fifteen years ago, I’d chosen psychiatry and shown an aptitude for it. I had been a breadwinner for our little family. In another ten years or so, we’d have had to move on and reinvent ourselves elsewhere. In the meantime, it had been necessary to develop a ‘real’ Michigan native called Amanda Lloyd for me to use.

  Scott also mentioned we kept second identities and had plans to disappear in emergencies.

  I’d never mentioned my second identity to him. It was another hugely unlikely coincidence that I’d had to put behind me.

  As to what had happened to split us, Scott had this to say: Mirroring the real world, the shadowy Athanate world of his imagination had boundaries; or domains and mantles he called them. These were fluid and did not exactly follow the mapping of human society. We’d fallen foul of one such movement and one of us was required to make representations to our new domain masters.

  As the most highly visible professional of our foursome, it was decided I couldn’t go. Scott went. The Athanate being unrestricted by human laws and public opinion, Scott had been imprisoned.

  While he was imprisoned, the two remaining members of our foursome died in an accident.

  That was the trauma that supposedly caused my nearly complete amnesia. Finally freed, Scott returned to find our house sold and me living alone, damaged and unaware of my nature. That was partly what had caused the anger I’d felt at our preliminary session—that he’d been needlessly imprisoned while I’d gone through the trauma alone.

  It was consistent and painstakingly constructed, without input from me, but all built on a fundamental premise that was impossible. Vampires don’t exist, so the structure couldn’t stand.

  I’d made a logical map, and I was trying to distract myself by thinking rationally about it.

  Either:

  He was a vampire. If I was going to believe that, I might as well believe everything he said. Throw away everything I thought I knew. Shock and awe. End of game.

  Or:

  He was delusional. In which case, either he'd known me or he hadn't.

  If he hadn't known me, how had we come together at the bookstore over a book with a photo that looked incredibly like him—a book which I had chosen blindly and he knew well—with a caption under that photo that I'd incorporated into my secret password? The odds were simply inconceivable.

  If he had known me…

  What had our relationship been? Was it long term or short? Could he tell me about my former self? What had happened that so damaged both of us?

  This branch, the most likely branch, disturbed me even more than the thought he wasn’t delusional. What if, just for example, we’d thought he was a vampire and in the process of ‘proving’ it had killed two innocent people? What of that was the cause of the mental damage? He’d incorporated all of us into his fantasy and blamed their deaths on an accident while he’d been elsewhere. I’d just erased all my personal memory.

  Was it the dread of what waited down this branch that kept me from investigating it more? What I had gotten from him had been inconclusive. For example, he knew the address of the house I’d sold and my dates at college. Things he could have got from records.

  If I couldn’t break the logic of his delusion, all I could do at the end was to challenge him to bite me. Yes, when he couldn’t, his delusion would try to rationalize that as well, but maybe it was the nudge that was needed.

  The thing stopping me was the question as to what would replace his imagined world. We had a situation where his delusion did no one any harm and supported his whole world view. Break it up and where would that leave him?

  Of course, the exact reverse was also true.

  If I challenged him and he bit me, my whole world view would crumble. The new me, that I’d built this last year, the person I’d gotten attached to, would be destroyed, replaced by an old me that had been so traumatized by something that it had had to invent the new me.

  On the other hand, the benefit of the vampire’s bite, as he portrayed it, was health and long life, for the vampire and his kin. What a temptation to offer me now.

  I couldn’t think of an equivalent benefit when he failed to produce the vampire bite. I’d just destroy his world view when I wasn’t going to be here to help him rebuild.

  Not something you’d want to do to a friend.

  Yes, we were now friends, which was why Scott was asleep on the living room sofa.

  Tears started to flow again.

  I’d called him as soon as I’d heard the news this morning and he’d refused to let me drive out to the riding school alone. He’d been right. I’d needed him. I’d needed him very badly.

  The arson investigators had taped off the entire area.

  The heat of the fire had melted the snow cover so the remains of the stables and riding school stood in the bare earth, black, charred wood reaching up toward a baby blue sky.

  They wouldn’t let me any closer, and there was nothing more to see.

  Clipper, my beautiful, high-stepping bay friend who’d been such a support to me this year, all Mrs. Hanson’s horses, the woman herself—dead.

  Murdered.

  There was no doubt in my mind who’d done it and why. The escalation from anonymous threatening letters, to damage on my car, to this obscene tragedy came from one man, Harmon Zedous.

  So I sat crying through the night and wrote up notes that I would never review, on a case that I had rejected professionally and which I could not hope to solve in the time left to me.

  Chapter 8

  The front of the criminal court on Lafayette always made me think of cell bars. I met Willard and his team as I got inside.

  Willard Morton, the public prosecutor, was a slightly built black man, just under six feet tall, with white beginning to season his closely cropped hair. With his rimless spectacles and quiet voice, he looked like a benign schoolteacher. Many defense attorneys had regretted mistaking him for what he appeared to be.

  “Are you ready for this?” he said. He was trying not to peer at me with concern, given the intensity of surveillance from the scrimmage of media watchers on the steps outside.

  I leaned on the cane I’d had to start using. “This case has been the thing that’s kept me going.”

  I saw Willard’s eyes flicker, looking over my shoulder, and I knew where he was looking. Scott was there. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but recently I just knew when Scott was nearby. It was as if I could feel the light pressure of his hand on my shoulder.

  We laughed awkwardly.

  “One of the things,” I amended, color rising in my cheeks. “My version of the condemned’s hearty breakfast, I suppose.”

  Except I only get to look at it. Some breakfast.

  “He knows?” Willard said. We tried to speak of my condition without saying any words like sickness or death.

  “Of course.”

  “Hmmm. Okay, down to business. Schaeffer’s pulling one last stunt,” Willard said. “He’s changed his expert witness. Do you know a Dr. Friegmann?”

  “Friegmann? He’s an academic with a specialty in the psychology and physiology of memory.” I felt the first stir of worry. Friegmann was the sort of specialist I might have approached to investigate what was causing my own memory problems.

  “Anything to change our approach?”

  I shook my head. “I’m the only psychiatrist to have interviewed Zedous before they launched this claim about temporary insanity. Friegmann is a lecturer and writer; he’s not a working psychiatrist. As far as I know, he’s not even any ki
nd of expert on psychoses. Get him to admit that, and his opinion on Zedous is immaterial. I don’t really understand. They have genuine psychiatrists who could have assessed Zedous and who’d be more use on the stand.”

  Willard took that in with a frown and a nod.

  He had a lot to think about. It wasn’t as if my testimony was a factor in the principal charges. My opinion that Zedous was competent to understand his own actions and aware of the morality of them was purely to defuse Schaeffer if he tried to claim any form of diminished responsibility. If we couldn’t stop Schaeffer from doing that, then he could delay for further intensive analysis of Zedous, or return to the bargaining table for a reduction in sentencing. None of that was palatable. Witnesses had already disappeared or denied their earlier statements. Give Zedous a couple more months and the slightest glimmer of possibility that the charges weren’t going to stick, and the whole case would fall apart for lack of witnesses.

  Willard excused himself, then walked across and shook Scott’s hand warmly before we were all called in and the final day’s circus got under way.

  I had known she was going to be called as a defense witness, but Frances’ testimony was hard to listen to without grinding my teeth.

  She’d had her hair done in a new style. Symmetrical, chin-length and blunt cut, with the ends coming to perfect tips half way down her jaw line. Not a hair out of place.

  She sat there, looking like a better-put-together, more professional version of me while Schaeffer herded her down the path he wanted, which was basically to undermine my testimony later in the day. She wasn’t struggling so much as actively helping him.

  Scott’s hand squeezed mine gently. It was unfair to him for me to lean on him like this, but I’d take the support at the moment.

  “So how would you characterize Dr. Lloyd’s mental state at the time she undertook my client’s psychiatric evaluation?” Schaeffer said.

  Frances pretended to think about it.

  “I believe Dr. Lloyd was suffering. She gave every indication that she was going through a very bad period. She had personal issues which she seemed unable to confront and which she didn’t bring to us, her colleagues—the very people who might have been able to help.”

  She had her concerned, sympathetic face on.

  Gods, she’s trying for an Oscar.

  “And is it possible under these circumstances that her analysis would be flawed?” Schaeffer said.

  “Yes, it is possible.” Frances paused, and went on as if reluctant. “Under the circumstances, I don’t believe she should have been sent to do this evaluation. She certainly wouldn’t have been my choice.”

  Something flickered across Schaeffer’s face. I might think Frances had gone off script there, if I were so cynical as to think the witness had been coached by the defense.

  Willard didn’t miss it. When it was his turn to cross-examine, he began, “You said, Dr. Langley, that Dr. Lloyd wouldn’t have been your choice to send to perform the psychiatric evaluation of Mr. Zedous?”

  “Yes,” Frances replied.

  “There is an implication there that Dr. Lloyd was ‘sent,’ but that’s not the case, is it?”

  “No.” She shuffled uncomfortably, tugged at her scarf.

  “In fact, you and your colleagues are all equal in the practice. The request came into the practice, not to any named therapist, and there wasn’t any suggestion that anyone could be ‘sent.’ Dr. Lloyd volunteered to do this out of civic duty and you did not.”

  “Objection,” Schaeffer said.

  “I’ll rephrase,” Willard said. “Did you volunteer to perform a psychiatric evaluation of Mr. Zedous at the time when the request was made to your practice?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was too busy.”

  “Busier than Dr. Lloyd?”

  There was a pause which seemed to stretch. She was under oath. She could lie and later claim to have forgotten, but Willard was just waiting to leap on that.

  “No,” she said.

  It was enough. Willard had defused her testimony in the jury’s eyes, and he sat back down.

  That was a sideshow. The main attack came from Friegmann late in the morning. It was so personal that Willard didn’t understand its importance. I did, but only once it was underway.

  Friegmann sat in the witness stand, looking every bit the nearsighted, wispy-haired academic he was, and lectured the court on the psychology of memory.

  Willard frowned. He didn’t challenge the relevance, because he thought all Schaeffer was achieving was bemusing the jury on a defense issue. As long as Schaeffer didn’t stretch it out too long, Willard would let him keep digging his hole.

  I suspected where he was heading. It wasn’t possible to completely hide my memory failure from my colleagues, though I thought I’d concealed the extent of it. Maybe I hadn’t convinced Frances; I couldn’t think of anyone else who would have told Schaeffer my memory was unreliable. I sensed Schaeffer was laying the groundwork for revealing it.

  What impact would that have on my testimony?

  It was difficult to assess how many of the jury grasped the full impact of what was being said, but while Schaeffer was using Friegmann’s testimony to build a picture about Zedous’ mental state, he was sharpening a weapon that could be turned on me.

  He’d clearly established that trauma, like the death of his mother, could impact Zedous’ memory, and without the memory and that knowledge of who you’d been…

  “It’s as if you’re a different person?” Schaeffer said.

  “Yes.” Friegmann replied.

  It wouldn’t save Zedous. Willard knew that. The judge and the jury knew that, but Schaeffer didn’t care.

  By this time, I knew he was coming after me. Exactly how, I’d have to wait and see.

  Willard was unaware of the hidden threat against me. I could have passed him a message, but I decided against it. We were about to stop for lunch and I’d be first up in the afternoon. I’d have to explain to Willard during the break and hope I could convince him to play it my way.

  Meanwhile, Willard kept his cross-examination brief.

  “Dr. Friegmann, are you an expert on psychoses?” he asked.

  “I have full qualifications and training.”

  “If a legal team wanted an opinion of psychoses, you wouldn’t be on the list of experts recommended by the Michigan Psychology Board or the Psychiatric Society, would you?”

  Willard held the list in his hand. He’d had it printed out as part of his briefing on the expert that Schaeffer had originally chosen.

  “Objection,” Schaeffer said.

  Willard shrugged and accepted it. He’d made his point to the jury.

  “Dr. Friegmann, do you practice psychiatry? I mean do you have patients consulting you on a regular basis?”

  “No.”

  “And your opinion of Mr. Zedous was formed only after his claim for diminished responsibility due to temporary insanity?”

  “Yes.”

  Willard sat down, and Schaeffer stood again. “Dr. Friegmann, just one last question. During your assessment of my client, did you take notes?”

  “Yes, of course. All the time. An evaluation of this type is too complex to rely solely on memory. You see, the notes themselves serve as triggers…”

  He lectured us for another couple of minutes on a tiny, seemingly irrelevant point, and now I knew exactly where Schaeffer was heading.

  After that, we were released for lunch.

  The look on Willard’s face in the corridors was as cold as the wind outside the building. His whole year-long, carefully planned and executed prosecution was being threatened by an attack on me, and I hadn’t warned him of the possibility. I should have been the sideshow and this afternoon I was going to be main stage, just before the jury made their final decision.

  By the time I’d explained everything and we’d agreed that my plan of action was the only option, we were being called.

&nb
sp; I gave Scott my keys, vaguely surprised at how utterly I had come to trust him.

  He smiled, his eyes twinkling, and then he left at a run.

  Willard and I needed to slow the session down until Scott returned.

  Willard went back in looking like he was on trial. Maybe he was. The public prosecutor is only as good as his last major case.

  Chapter 9

  The afternoon started easily enough with a standard question and answer exchange highlighting the summary from my evaluation of Zedous. The man himself sat and watched me, his eyes glittering and his face blank as a snake. He wouldn’t have showed any more emotion when he’d given the orders to murder Mrs. Hanson. He knew the difference between good and evil; he simply had no understanding of why it should apply to him.

  Schaeffer started badly. He tried arguing both sides of the same coin: that my evaluation had been too short in comparison to the formal procedure which called for sixty days under observation, and then countering his own thread by saying that I’d subjected Zedous to longer interrogation than was correct on the days I was assessing him.

  I responded to that by saying that the length of the interviews had been useful in that they showed the number of times Zedous contradicted himself. Once he’d had a rest, he’d always tried to come back with the best interpretation that could be put on it. That hadn’t been so easy while he was in front of me.

  I wasn’t the expert, but I felt the jury were on my side so far. So far.

  Then Schaeffer changed tack.

  “Dr. Lloyd, have you taken a vacation this year?”

  My heart missed a beat. The real attack was starting. I looked up into the courtroom. Scott wasn’t back.

  “Objection.” Willard rose. “What possible relevance can this have?”

  “I am hoping that I will see the relevance shortly,” Judge Nelson said, peering over her glasses at Schaeffer. “Please answer the question, Dr. Lloyd.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  Where was Scott?

  To delay, I started to explain the pressures of work, but Schaeffer cut me off.