Eyes Wide Open

by Ted Dekker

  She pushed back her fear. He was messing with her. He had to be. She couldn’t possibly be the girl she’d seen last night and still have all the memories she had of herself as Christy. The orphanage, Austin, high school…

  “Alice?”

  She walked forward and took his hand.

  “That’a girl.”

  Lawson led her from the room, turned to their right, and walked down the empty hallway. His hand was large and warm, and she felt comforted by his gentle grip.

  “You remember Nancy, don’t you? The kind lady who interviewed you yesterday?”

  “Yes.” She kept wondering if the bathroom would have mirrored walls if she took a peek now, as he’d suggested. But that was absurd.

  He stopped at the fourth door on their right, released her hand, and twisted the knob.

  “You’re doing well, Alice. Just a little deeper now.”

  He opened the door and ushered Christy into a cozy room with a couch and an armchair. Tan walls with bookcases. An aquarium on a credenza, paintings… The first inviting room she’d seen since arriving.

  Nancy Wilkins stood from her chair behind a wooden desk looking as pretty as she had yesterday. Dressed in a blue blouse with a black skirt.

  She smiled warmly and removed a pair of glasses from her face. “Hello, Alice. Good to see you again.”

  “Hi.”

  “Have a seat.” She motioned to the sofa.

  The door closed behind her. When she sat, she saw that Lawson had left them alone. His departure was more comforting than his hand. With Nancy, at least, Christy felt heard.

  The psychiatrist settled into the armchair and spent a few minutes asking her about her experience so far, not once addressing Christy’s concern that she didn’t belong here. Naturally she didn’t. Many patients felt the same way. It was par for the course in their world.

  Play along. Just play along.

  With Lawson’s suggestion still gnawing at her mind, she took every opportunity to glance at her arms and legs, reassuring herself that he was wrong.

  When Nancy asked about the night, she decided that talking about it wouldn’t hurt her. She put it out there in summary, avoiding the details, focusing only on Lawson’s conclusion that she was, at this very moment, delusional.

  “But I know he’s wrong,” she said. “I mean, really… Do I look fat to you? This is me, right?”

  Nancy smiled kindly. “Of course you’re not fat, Alice. These are only perceptions and labels. Dr. Lawson is only trying to help you see the truth.”

  “But you see me. How can I be that girl I saw last night?”

  The psychiatrist folded one leg over the other, elbows on the armrests, lightly tapping her fingertips together.

  “I don’t know who you saw last night or who you see now,” she said. “But you’re going to learn that the illusion is as powerful in its effect as the truth. When you have a delusion, it will feel just as real as any other perception of reality. Remember that.”

  Christy considered each word as she spoke them aloud.

  “The illusion is as powerful in its…”

  “Effect,” Nancy filled in.

  “As…”

  “As the truth.”

  “As the truth,” Christy repeated. “The illusion is as powerful in its effect as the truth.”

  “Good.”

  “Then how do you know which is the illusion?” she asked.

  “Very few people do.”

  That was odd. Most people were confused? But before she could think about the matter more, Nancy redirected the session.

  “I’d like to help you see into your repressed memories, Alice. Often, understanding what happened to us and why it happened helps us deal with hidden emotional blocks that imprison us.”

  Her pulse surged. “What memories?”

  Nancy hesitated, then smiled warmly.

  “Memories of your childhood.”

  “My childhood?” She had no memories. How much did Nancy really know? “I… How?”

  “Using a tool we call hypnotic therapy, which is a fancy way of saying we calm the mind enough to allow memories to surface. You’ll be entirely aware the whole time—it’s not like what you see on television. You can stop it any point you like. I will only help you relax and see into yourself.”

  The appeal of knowing more about her childhood blossomed in her mind.

  “Would you like to try?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I would.”

  —

  THE EASE with which Nancy Wilkins methodically and gently led Christy away from her current concerns and into a place of deep peace felt at once strangely beautiful and surprising.

  No swinging pendulum, no bright lights, no crystal balls.

  She’d only asked Christy to enter a room with gentle music playing, then led her down a flight of steps that led to a door which opened to a beautiful garden, where they spent some time around a pool.

  Then down another concrete staircase, even deeper under the ground into a magical place with doors. It was through those doors that Nancy asked her to see her childhood.

  “Open the door, Alice. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  She put her hand on the round metal knob and turned it. The door slowly swung open on creaking hinges.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “I… I can’t see anything.”

  “Is it dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you step inside for me?”

  She hesitated. “It’s dark.”

  “It’s okay, Alice. Nothing will hurt you. Just put one foot in front of the other and step inside. I’m right here behind you.”

  Christy took a tentative step over the threshold. Then another, and another before stopping three feet in.

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Can you see your feet?”

  She looked. “Yes.”

  “What does the floor look like?”

  “It’s hard. Concrete or maybe cut stone.”

  Nancy paused for a moment, then spoke again, tone light and low.

  “Good. Now look around and tell me if you can see anything?”

  Slowly her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Walls took shape.

  “I’m in a basement with concrete walls. It’s dark.” She could feel her heart rate begin to rise, a steady, dull thumping sound faintly echoing off the walls.

  “Take a deep breath, Alice. It’s all going to be okay. I’m right here. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s important that you stay calm, because you know that I’m right here, and we can leave any time we want to. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now I want you to walk forward and tell me if you can see anything else that might help you understand where you are.”

  Christy slowly walked forward.

  “It’s dark ahead. I can’t see anything ahead of me, only on the sides. The sides are stone or concrete. They’re wet.”

  “Is it warm or cold?”

  “Cold.”

  “Good. That’s good. You’re doing well, sweetheart. Just keep walking forward.”

  She did, one tentative foot in front of the other. She knew that she was under hypnosis, only looking into the deepest parts of her mind, but it felt so real. Almost as if she were there.

  “I can’t see anything ahead of me…”

  “Look back at the door that you came through, Alice. Can you do that?”

  She twisted and looked back. The door was there, gray. Metal she thought.

  “Yes.”

  “You see, it’s right there.”

  Christy swung back around and peered into the darkness.

  “Yes.”

  “Keep walking forward.”

  She’d taken two more steps when a faint outline emerged from the darkness. She stopped.

  “I see something.”

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “I…” She took anothe
r step. “It’s… it’s bars.”

  “You see bars on the wall?”

  “No. The bars are the wall. I… I think I’m in a prison cell.”

  “Are you sure it’s a prison?”

  The bars come into clearer focus. Beyond them was a dark hallway made from the same kind of concrete as the walls in the room she was in.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m in a prison somewhere.”

  “I want you to ask yourself where you are, because you do know. Just ask yourself where you are.”

  Christy thought about it and immediately had an answer. She felt her hands begin to tremble.

  “I’m underground, in a room. I can’t leave this place. I’m… I’m stuck here.”

  “Take a deep breath, Alice. Try to stay calm. Remember, the door is right behind you. We can leave anytime we want to. Okay?”

  She looked back again and took comfort in the door, gray against the darker walls.

  “Now tell me again, where are you right now?”

  “I’m in a big house. In the basement. I can’t leave.”

  “Why can’t you leave? Is someone making you stay?”

  “Those are the rules. I can’t leave.”

  “What will happen if you do leave?”

  “I… I don’t know. Something horrible. I don’t want to think about it.”

  “It frightens you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t need to be frightened now, Alice. We’re just remembering. It’s very safe.”

  Christy tried to calm herself and managed to do so, thinking about Nancy sitting close by.

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Now I want you to walk up to the bars and touch them.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I think you can. They aren’t real. It’s important that you touch them so that you know they can’t hurt you.”

  They were just bars. Just iron bars running from the ceiling to the floor.

  Christy edged forward, lifted her hand, and placed her fingers on the cold steel. Nothing happened.

  “I’m touching the bar.”

  “Good. See, it’s going to be all right. Can you see anything else?”

  She looked down a long, dark hall that reached into darkness in both directions.

  “No. It’s just a dark hall. Like a tunnel.”

  “You’re in the basement of a big house that has passageways and a room with bars. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me who owns the house?”

  She thought. And she knew.

  “A man.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  Nothing came to her but the dark shadow of what she knew was a man.

  “No. I’m sorry… I can’t remember.”

  “That’s okay, Alice. Now, I want you to listen very carefully and tell me if you can hear him. Can you do that for me?”

  Almost immediately she heard a whisper.

  “I hear something!”

  “What do you hear?”

  The voice became clear, thin and innocent, a girl singing just above a whisper.

  “Oh, be careful little eyes what you see.” A sweet giggle sent a chill through Christy’s bones. “Be careful little eyes what you see. For the Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful little eyes what you see.” The little girl’s voice morphed into to a low, guttural, accusing tone on the heels of the song. “Ugly girl. Still too ugly to be seen. Just as ugly as the day you got on your knees and begged for mercy.”

  The fear that welled up in Christy’s chest plunged her into a raw panic. She spun, screaming, running for the door, chased by a low chuckle.

  Beyond her scream, she could here Nancy’s voice, just barely: “It’s okay, Alice. It’s okay, just take a deep breath. You can come out. It’s okay.”

  Christy reached the door and grabbed the knob knowing that it would be locked. She twisted it anyway, awash in dread.

  The knob refused to budge.

  Fear had closed off her throat and she had to push hard to get words out.

  “I’m trapped! I’m trapped!”

  “Open the door, Alice. Just open the door.”

  “I can’t!” It refused to move. She had the horrible realization that she would be caught in this hellhole forever, and it made her want to rip the skin from her face so that she wouldn’t be so ugly.

  “I can’t!”

  Something slapped her face. “Wake up, Alice.” Again. “The door’s open, wake up.”

  She suddenly became aware that she was back in the office, bent over her knees, sobbing and retching. Nancy was gently stroking her back, comforting her.

  “Shh, shh, shh. It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe. You’re here with me. It’s okay.”

  Christy caught her breath and forced herself to calm down. A steely resolve slowly began to replace the terrible emotions that had thrown her into hysteria.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. Let it out. Everything is going to be okay.”

  Anger more than resolve. Bitterness.

  “That’s better. You see? It’s all okay.”

  But Christy wasn’t hearing anything that comforted her, because she now knew some things about herself.

  She knew that the room she’d seen was real; she’d been there in the dark days, before she’d turned thirteen. She’d been a victim with a tragic past.

  She knew that she really was ugly, inside and out.

  And she knew just how deeply she despised herself.

  Beyond that, she didn’t know too much.

  ON HIS fifteenth birthday, July 10, Austin traded his childhood for whatever freedom his modest trust fund stipend could buy. He was free, and he had an official court document that said as much. No longer a ward of any state, person, or organization.

  Paul Matheson, the orphanage headmaster where Austin lived in New Jersey, had insisted on going to the courthouse with him, but after a long discussion, Austin convinced him that he should go alone. Figure it out.

  He was an adult now, after all.

  The bus trip across town was short. He’d navigated the courthouse halls without getting lost and, dressed in dungarees and a button-down shirt, stood before a judge who was quite taken with the articulate teenager.

  All told, the proceeding took precisely fifteen minutes. Fitting.

  On the way out, a portly woman in a loud flower-print dress snapped a photo of him that she promised to e-mail as soon as she got home. Just her way of paying it forward, she’d said. “It’s a sad shame that no one had the decency to be here on your special occasion.”

  She told him with great enthusiasm how she and her rail-thin husband were there to finalize the adoption of the blue-eyed five-year-old who clung to the man. Sweet Bethany, their angel from God. The kind of child every family wanted to adopt.

  The e-mail never came, of course. He didn’t expect it to.

  Austin thanked her for the photo and wished her well, suddenly overwhelmed. What family did he have? None. Never had, never would. Sweet Bethany didn’t know how good she had it.

  He’d sat on the courthouse steps for a long time, fingering the embossed seal on his document, staring at the world as it flitted by—people coming and going, rushing about like mice in a field. How many of them sensed the meaninglessness of their lives—here today, gone tomorrow, forgotten the day after that? The boredom of such an existence might kill him.

  And yet, they all belonged. To someone, somewhere.

  In that moment, in every way that counted, Austin had felt strangely lost. Lost to his past. Lost to the world. Lost in thought. He was free, but he wasn’t sure what that really meant.

  For a brief moment he considered turning east and just walking until he hit the ocean. Then taking a boat to the far side of the world and walking some more, all the way around in search of nothing, or something. Sooner or later, though, he knew that if he walked long enough he’d end up exactly here again, in the same place he started.
<
br />   Here.

  Here, where he was no longer a child but not yet old enough to be considered an adult. Living in two worlds but belonging in neither.

  That thought boiled his emotions until hot tears welled up in his eyes. He’d wiped them with his sleeve before anyone could see and left the courthouse steps chiding himself for breaking down so easily.

  Allowing emotions to control him was ridiculous. Irrational. How many times had he explained this to Christy during one of her many emotional tailspins? They were dangerous. Master your thoughts, he’d told her, time and again, and the emotions will follow.

  That was then.

  Here he was now, drowning in emotion, unable to hold it at bay. Smothered by his own weakness and totally lost to the world, he was without friends or family to even know he was in terrible trouble.

  Trouble so deep that he was unsure he could survive it.

  Fisher had secured him to the wheelchair with straps and wheeled him down a vacant hall with checkerboard floors to the room adjacent to the morgue, which he’d accessed by pressing his right wrist against a security pad. He’d checked Austin’s restraints and left him without explanation.

  Austin found himself in a stark white operating room. Why would a psychiatric ward have a surgical space? Lawson had said they employed progressive therapy, but by invasive means?

  Medical equipment on mobile stands lined the far wall. Heart monitors and ventilators. Something like a dentist’s chair sat in the corner behind a state-of-the-art operating table, which was surrounded by clusters of light stands.

  A door on the room’s far side suddenly swung open and Fisher entered, pushing another wheelchair.

  At first the operating table blocked Austin’s view. He couldn’t see who was in the wheelchair, only that it wasn’t empty. But when Fisher rounded the operating table in three long strides, the wheelchair came to a halt directly in front of him, six feet away. The solitary figure sat motionless, hands cupped almost prayerfully in his lap.

  Jacob.

  The boy’s pale face was neither surprised nor perturbed. His slight frame and slumped shoulders made him look weak. Jacob was oblivious to the world around him.

  Fisher engaged the wheel brake and walked toward a cabinet across the room.

  Austin tried to steady his trembling hands, but they weren’t obeying so well. The air conditioner hissed too loudly in the cavernous room.