Primal Fear

by William Diehl

  To her, he was suddenly disconnected from the room, a body sitting in a chair suspended in light and surrounded by darkness as she subconsciously isolated him from reality.

  She could see the spasms of her pulse in her wrist and she was breathing fast and trying to modulate it. She knew what was happening, had seen it before, but it was always exciting when it happened, when she lost control of the interview and then subtly tried to get it back without disrupting the delicate balance of the moment.

  “Who are you?” she asked pleasantly.

  “Oh, you’re very cool, Doc,” he said in his flat, edgy tone. “You’re one cool lady. But I knew that already. I’m Roy.”

  “Roy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Roy who?”

  “Just Roy. Make believe I live at Savior House.” He laughed contemptuously. “What a crock that is, huh?”

  “Do you come out often, Roy?”

  He looked at her suspiciously. “That depends. How often is often?” he asked.

  “Once a day, once a month.”

  “I come out whenever I feel like it,” he said with a sneer.

  “So you make the choice?”

  “That’s right.” He stood up and strolled to the end of the room and back. He walked with a strut, an arrogant kind of hitch in his stride that she had seen in street toughs.

  “Why haven’t you come out before?” she asked. She was still standing against the wall. He turned her chair around and sat backward on it, his arms wrapped around it, one wrist clasped with his other hand.

  “It wasn’t time to meet you until a couple of weeks ago. You two were becoming such fuckin’ buddies …”

  “And that upset you?”

  “Sometimes I come out for a minute or two, say something just to get him in trouble. He ends up catchin’ shit and he doesn’t even know why.” He chuckled.

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “How about the first time? Shackles—you know about Shackles, I heard him tellin’ you about that freak—Shackles is tellin’ him how he’s goin’ to hell and Sonny’s standin’ there, shakin’ in his boots, scared to death, and I sneak out and I say, ‘If you had a dick between your legs instead of a worm, you’d go right down there with me.’ And I pop back in and Shackles goes totally apeshit and Sonny takes off like a rabbit with a fox on his ass. I used to think, One of these times he’s gonna act like a fuckin’ man. Yeah, stature.”

  “You call him Sonny?”

  “Yeah. I knew this kid in the second grade—a real sissy—name was Sonny Baxter. That’s who Aaron reminds me of: sissy … Sonny … Baxter.” He paused between each of the words for emphasis.

  “How long have you lived with Aaron?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  Is he faking? she wondered. Was he a psychopath who had invented this other personality to cover up a homicidal psychosis? She had seen a couple of patients try to fake multiple personality but they were never very convincing. Roy was convincing. If he were faking, she felt sure it would come out in therapy sessions. It would be, she believed, impossible to fake the condition for long. She had to play along, let him make the moves, and study everything he was doing: his body language, his tone of voice, his attitude.

  One thing she was now sure of—either Aaron had a multiple personality or he was psychotic as hell. Time would tell which.

  “You tryin’ to catch me up?” Roy snapped. “I know all about you, lady. You can fool him but you can’t fool me. You’re really needling your way in there.”

  “No. I’m trying to get to know him. And you, Roy.”

  “No shit. Why? Why do you want to get to know me?”

  “Because you want to know me. Isn’t that why you came out?”

  “Well, you got me there.” He smiled again, a cold, insolent smile that was neither humorous nor sincere. “You know the answer anyway. I’ve known him all his life.”

  He never took his eyes off her and he slowly flexed the fingers of his free hand as he spoke.

  “But he doesn’t know you, right?”

  The smile passed, replaced with apprehension and distrust. “No,” he said insolently. “That’s our little secret. You and me.”

  “You’ve been together nineteen years?”

  He nodded. “But I’m twenty-eight.”

  “Oh? What did you do before you met Aaron?”

  He grinned and leaned slightly forward against the back of the chair, his voice even lower than usual. “I was warming up,” he said. “I didn’t come out until when he was about eight.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “He didn’t need me until then. Then for a long time, he wouldn’t let me back out.”

  “I thought you were in control.”

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Jesus. Not in the beginning, Doc. Took time.”

  “Why do you dislike Aaron so?”

  “Never has the guts to do anything. Oh, he wants to do it all right, but I’m always the one that ends up doing the dirty work while he runs and hides.”

  “Hides?”

  “Stands in the corner facin’ the wall. He doesn’t wanna watch. Holier-than-fuckin’-thou,” he said nastily. His eyes narrowed. “But he’s the one gets off. He’s the one has all the fun. So he takes all the heat, too. You blame me for that?”

  “No, I don’t blame you.”

  “Go ahead, butter me up.” He smirked. “I love it.”

  “Where’s Aaron now?”

  “Ah, he’s hiding,” he said with a disgusted wave of his hand.

  “What if he wants to come back?”

  “He has to fight for it,” he hissed, his lips curling back with scorn. “That night with the bishop and all? I waited until we were in the kitchen before I let him come back …”

  Laughter.

  “I’ll tell you, he didn’t know what the fuck t’ do. There he is, covered with blood … on his hands …”

  He wiggled his fingers in front of his eyes. “… face …”

  He stopped, held his hand up in front of his face and stared at it, as though, like Macbeth, he actually could see that brutal blade, its handle toward his hand.

  “… knife in his hand … shoes sittin’ by the door.”

  He leaned forward and whispered softly. “I whisper in his ear, ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are …’”

  Laughter.

  “Shiiit. He pops out and goes totally bananas, sticks on the shoes and runs for it. Next thing y’know, the cops pop open the confessional and he’s tellin’ them he didn’t do it! For Christ sake, he didn’t have a clue what he was talkin’ about.”

  He jumped up and began pacing from one side of the room to the other. But he never took his eyes off Molly. “He’s yellin’, ‘I didn’t do it!’ and he didn’t even know what it was he didn’t do. See what I mean, Doc? All wimp and a mile long, that’s our fuckin’ little Aaron.”

  “Then you planned to kill the bishop?”

  “Who says I killed the bishop?”

  “Then who did?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Nobody?”

  “Nobody killed him. He was executed.”

  “Executed?”

  “Don’t you understand? He let the mask down.”

  “Mask?”

  “Work it out.” His lip curled up in a half laugh, half sneer, his eyes narrowed, his voice became more threatening. “Let me tell you something, sister, I know everything he knows. Ever knew. I got a better memory than he has. Sonny couldn’t remember shit without me.”

  “Who let the mask down?”

  “His fuckin’ Excellency, who else?” he snarled. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.” He sighed and stared at the ceiling. “I’m talkin’ too much.”

  “No you’re not. Tell me about the bishop.”

  “C’mon, that’s Sonny’s story. Sonny says”—he raised his voice in a falsetto—“‘Oh he’s the devil, he’s evil. He must be eradica
ted.’ That’s the way he talks. Eradi-fuckin’-cated. Shit, he was a dirty old man. The world needed to know he was a dirty old man.”

  “Did you put the numbers back there, on the back of his head?”

  He smiled. “B32.156. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ll figure it out, Doc. You got a clue.”

  “A clue?”

  Throwing his head back, he laughed very hard. “It’s on the tape,” he said with his head still back. He peered down across his cheek at her, wiggled his eyebrows and laughed again.

  She decided to take a chance although she was not sure what his reaction might be. “You mean the altar boys tape?” she said, trying to sound casual.

  He shook his head sharply as if he had been slapped. He was obviously stunned and he glared at her. His eyes sparked with incredulity and anger, jumped around the small room almost frantically before they settled back on her.

  “You know about that?” he said, squinting.

  “Yes.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “We found the tape.”

  “Jesus!” he railed in his vicious whisper. “I told him, get that goddamn tape! But the door to the closet was locked so we had to run for it. Jesus! He can’t do anything right.”

  “Tell me about that night, Roy.”

  “He never does. He never did.”

  “Roy? Tell me about the night the bishop was executed.”

  “But as usual Sonny let me plan it and do it, right? He stands in the corner and gets off on it and then he screws up and now we’re both in deep shit.”

  “Did you really think you’d get away with it?”

  He started pacing between the side walls of the room again, shaking his head. “We would have gotten away with it, wasn’t for that damn cop car in the alley. Would you believe that, a minute earlier, a minute later …” The veins stood out on his forehead and he began to sweat. “Can’t do anything right,” he said angrily. “Nothing! Never, never!” He slammed his hand into the wall.

  “Roy!”

  He whirled on her. “Leave me alone.”

  She was losing him and she was desperate to establish some method to communicate with him again—if, in fact, Roy was real.

  “Roy, suppose I want to talk to you and Aaron’s out. How do I do that? How do I speak to you?”

  “You figure that out, Dr. Bitch. How do you know I want to talk to you? You’re his friend, not mine. I know you, lady, you’re gonna tell him about me.”

  “I’m your friend, too, Roy—”

  “Gonna ruin it all, aren’t you!” He stood with his back to the wall, slapping his open palms against it. “God damn, I shoulda known better than this.”

  “Ruin what, Roy?”

  “Everything!” His head nodded and he seemed out of breath. He splayed both hands against the wall as if holding it up. He stood that way for a full minute before he looked back up.

  “I lost time,” Aaron said fearfully. His features had softened and his eyes were scared rather than wrathful. He seemed to collapse within himself, to diminish physically.

  “You had a little fugue attack,” Molly said calmly. “It didn’t last long.”

  “How long?”

  “Five or six minutes.”

  “I were layin’ on thet cot. Next thing I was over hair. Wha’d I do?” He looked up sharply. “I din’t try to harm you, did I, Miss Molly?”

  “No. It was kind of like a nap.”

  “Why’d thet happen, you s’pose?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Molly said. “Hopefully we’ll find out.” She realized she was breathing hard. “Aaron, do you know someone named Roy?”

  “Roy who?”

  “Just Roy?”

  “Did he live at Savior House? Thet why he don’t have a last naim?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s just a name that came up.”

  “Well, if I think o’ someb’dy, I’ll tell yuh, Miss Molly.”

  “Let’s call it quits for the morning, John,” she said. “Maybe we can talk again after lunch.”

  “John?”

  “What?”

  “You called me John.” He laughed.

  “My mind’s out to lunch,” she said. “Steady the tripod while I take this camera off.”

  The first person she had ever seen with a dissociative personality disorder was John Neckerson. It was when she was a senior in college, studying abnormal psychology at the state institution. Neckerson. Bank manager. Age forty-five. Manic depressive. Two suicide attempts. Institutionalized after he took thirty-two hundred dollars out of the tellers’ drawers one morning, in full view of the three employees, walked out of the bank and up the street and made a thirty-two-hundred-dollar down payment on a new Cadillac.

  One afternoon John Neckerson had suddenly changed before the eyes of the entire class. Everything changed: his demeanor, his appearance, his voice. Suddenly John Neckerson was a five-year-old girl! She was pleading with them to keep her father away from her. Sexually abused by his own father, Neckerson had invented a girl to assume his guilt and the abuse, and to rid himself of what he felt was the taint of homosexuality. She had seen many cases of multiple personality disorder since then.

  She was starting to detach the video camera when the voice spoke again. She jumped. He was inches from her, staring intently into her eyes. “You want to hear about it, doncha?” Roy whispered.

  He reached out and stroked her cheek. She did not move. She stared back at him. “Bet I know what you’d like. You’d like me to drop you right there on the floor and fuck your brains out, wouldn’t you? Shit, I know you women—you want it but all you do is talk, talk, talk.”

  He moved closer again and flashed his Cheshire cat smile. When he spoke it was in a breathy whisper she had to strain to hear.

  “You’d like me to talk, talk, talk, wouldn’t you? Maybe next time, Doc, huh? Maybe next time I’ll tell you what you wanna hear. About His Excellency?”

  “You’re a real tease, aren’t you, Roy?”

  “You oughta know.”

  “I think you’re making it all up.”

  His hand shot out before she could move and the fingers wrapped around her throat again. His lips pulled back from his teeth.

  “I could kill you right now and stop you,” he said, his voice trembling. “You live lucky, Doc.”

  He let go of her again and jabbed his forefinger at her.

  “Don’t pull that shit on me, tryin’ to trick me into somethin’. Listen, lady, if I want to tell you somethin’, I’ll decide when.”

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped.

  “Hurt a little that time, din’t it? Huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember that. You wanna get along with me, you watch your ass.”

  “We should stop for now. Why don’t you come back out—”

  “Tryin’ to get rid of me?”

  “You hurt me,” she said firmly. “I don’t trust you.”

  “You trust him but not me?”

  “He’s never hurt me. Never wanted to hurt me. Roy, this is all your doing.”

  “Okay … okay.” He smiled up at the camera. “Next time I’ll be a good boy … Dr. Camera.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Three A.M.

  Vail’s house was dark except for a single light that burned in his first-floor office. Anyone who might have passed the place at that ungodly hour could have seen him through the half-open blinds, pacing the room, stopping occasionally to jab a finger at an imaginary jury, like the childhood Vail addressing a command performance of his pals. Yellow legal pads covered with hand-scrawled notes, open legal books, medical journals, newspaper clippings, all littered his desk. Occasionally he would stop, move to the desk and root through the piles of information looking for some obscure reference and then scribbling it on a fresh page of a fresh yellow pad.

  Strategy.

  Instinct told Vail that, more than law, more than facts, more than truth, strategy a
nd colloquy would win this case.

  The tape changed everything. For weeks he had been developing his case, scrutinizing every report, every photograph, every detail he could find, searching for discrepancies no matter how minute, digging into the backgrounds and credentials of the expert witnesses the prosecution would call. Now, in the space of a one-hour tape, everything had changed. Three weeks from the trial and he might have to start over.

  The postscript on the end of Molly’s interview with Aaron and Roy had sent his mind tripping. She had returned to the chair and sat facing the camera, slightly out of focus and almost out of the frame. But her voice was clear and concise.

  “Martin, I realize this tape will shock you just as the appearance of Roy shocked me,” she began. “So I want to pass some quick thoughts on to you while they’re fresh in my mind. I’ll try not to be too technical.

  “This could be—and I say ‘could be’ because I can’t make a reasonable analysis on the basis of one interview—but this could be a classic case of multiple personality disorder. What lay people call split or dual personality. Very often, the initial reaction to this kind of exposure is disbelief and rejection, so it’s important for you to understand that this is a specific and recognized mental disease.

  “It’s easy to understand how this could have happened, considering what we know about Aaron’s childhood and his teen years here. There are strong possibilities that he has been abused, sexually, physically and mentally, and that he could be sexually and religiously disoriented—which are the two main causes of mental illness.

  “A simplified assumption is that Aaron created Roy to assume the guilt and responsibility for acts which he, Aaron, could not perform himself. In other words, Aaron transferred his guilt to Roy. As I said, this is an oversimplification of a very complex problem, but it is not psychiatric hocus-pocus or black magic or voodoo. One thing we can be sure of—if he’s faking or for real, this boy is very sick. And if Roy does exist, he’s very dangerous.”

  She stopped for a moment and looked away from the camera, then added, “Either way, he is obviously suffering a serious mental disorder. It raises the question of whether he should stand trial.”

  The tape went blank.

  Nice.

  Was he faking?

  Was this other personality for real?