Dr. Kyle:Please carry on.
Caitlin:Hmmm. Well, I had a profound awakening when I reunited with my mom in Wonderland. My mother was the Queen of Hearts. At least she was under the delusion that she was.
Dr. Kyle:She was under the delusion?
Caitlin:[Pause] That’s correct. She’d been put under a spell. By some evil dude with zero fashion sense, because he supposedly wore curtains for clothes. They called him the Enchanter. AKA the Lord of the Curtain—hence the curtain fashion wear. Please note that I have never met the Curtain Dude personally—that’s just what I’ve been told. My mom is the one—under the spell of the Enchanter—who put the curse on the fairy-tale universe. She blocked out the Green Spectrum from the sun. The Green Spectrum is what gives the people of that world willpower to resist the Red Spectrum, which is full of fear, anger, anxiety, and panic. She blocked out the Green Spectrum by using her scepter to create a cloud filter in the sky. Except the scepter was really my toy wand. It was a sort of security blanket for me ever since I was a kid. This is what caused the zombie affliction . . . at least until I smashed the scepter to smithereens. The green was free to shine through again, but still not in full force because of some initial damage, so the folks in this other world were still somewhat zombified but no longer blood-eyed and dangerous. But you know what I think, Dr. Kyle?
Dr. Kyle: Please tell me.
Caitlin:I think the broken heart and mournful spirit of a ten-year-old child conjured up her dead mother as the wicked Queen of Hearts in her own mind. Get it—broken heart and Queen of Hearts? I’m not sure any of this ever really happened. Except for the part about me standing in front of my mom’s grave on Halloween night last year and confronting the truth. It’s rather difficult to deny your mother is dead when you’re standing in front of her headstone. That’s when I woke up, emotionally speaking. I think I dreamed the rest of the adventure as a way to help me cope with and overcome this deeply traumatic tragedy.
Dr. Kyle:Do you, now? Or perhaps you’re telling me what you think I want to hear. Perhaps you’re concerned that your tale sounds far too fantastical to be taken seriously. Perhaps you’re worried you might find yourself bound in a straitjacket and placed under long-term observation in some old nineteenth-century asylum in some remote corner of the English countryside?
Caitlin:You read me like a book.
CHAPTER Three
The Kingshire American School of London’s guidance counselor, Mrs. Buttersworth, had recommended Dr. J. L. Kyle to Caitlin. Her dad hadn’t been entirely sold on the idea, but after thinking about it, he figured it might be a good opportunity for Caitlin to talk out a lot of issues involving her mom’s death.
Officially, the shrink was supposed to help her deal with her outlandishly ludicrous claims about ghouls and degenerating fairy-tale kingdoms as well as how she claimed her mom, Evelyn Fletcher, had been kidnapped by some dark and devious being.
It did sound preposterous. Totally juvenile. But why wouldn’t Mrs. Buttersworth think that Caitlin’s story was merely her way of dealing with tragedy? Why not suggest that Caitlin write a book about it, as a therapeutic way to confront her inner demons?
So much had changed for Caitlin, and so much had changed in high schools around the world during the last eleven months. And all of the changes were a result of her experiences in that decomposing universe, which she had shared on her blog.
Had no one noticed all the changes?
That blog had gone viral after she had posted a few secrets that she gleaned from her experiences.
If that world wasn’t real, why was the wisdom she was posting transforming the lives of so many hurting kids across the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries?
At least, kids had been telling her over the last few months that the posts helped. She’d been inundated with emails and comments from bullies who gave up bullying, nerds who were making friends with jocks, and jocks who were making friends with stoners. And now the stoners were giving up the drugs because they were getting a natural high by forming new friendships with people they never dreamed or imagined ever being friends with. They were living the words of Lord Amethyst, mastering techniques for igniting the violet-blue end of the spectrum. These included resisting their fears and insecurities and no longer worrying about what other people thought. That temporary pain or embarrassment was like a bar of soap that washed away anxiety. She had written to kids about the power of performing random and totally uncomfortable positive actions instead of just making their lives all about themselves. These actions aroused light that vanquished the darkness of panic and anxiety. And it was eye-opening for Caitlin to learn that so many kids from all walks of life suffered, to one degree or another, from some
aspect of anxiety, fear, pessimism, or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Caitlin never wrote about the literal color spectrum. At least she hadn’t yet. She’d only shared that with Dr. Kyle. But she shared basic concepts that she herself had experienced in a language others could understand without having to reveal its origin as being from some transdimensional fairy-tale realm.
All these conflicting thoughts gnawed at her brain as she rode her bike along the sun-splashed streets of Central London and a mild September wind tossed her hair around. Caitlin nevertheless kept pedaling toward Audley Street, near Hyde Park, for her weekly visit at the office of the prosecuting attorney—er, rather, her behavioral therapist.
She didn’t care for the man. Didn’t trust him. Didn’t like his questions. Or his condescending manner and suspicious tone, which he seemingly tried his hardest to conceal but couldn’t.
And then, in one single instant, Caitlin’s worst suspicions about her shrink were confirmed. It happened in a flash, a single heartbeat, as she rode right by Foyles Bookshop.
Caitlin slammed on her brakes.
Her bike burned rubber as it skidded to a stop.
She backed it up until she was parallel with Foyles’s window.
Caitlin glared at the display of new book releases, her eyeballs narrowing. She clenched her fists. Then she locked her bike and stormed into the bookshop. She purchased the book that had seized her attention and returned to her bike, then rode off as her blood boiled like lava.
She soon arrived at the office of her psychotherapist, short of breath from the furious pedaling, heart racing in her still-rising anger. She locked her bike and entered the building.
“Good afternoon, Caitlin,” Mrs. Caruthers, the wrinkled, ninety-year-old receptionist said. “Have a seat, and Doctor Kyle will be with you shortly.” The reception area smelled of Mrs. Caruthers’s old-lady floral perfume.
Caitlin took a chair and immediately opened the book she had just purchased. She turned the pages hard and fast, flicking the paper as she digested the content.
How could he do this?
“You can go in now,” Mrs. Caruthers said, interrupting her thoughts. Caitlin shut the book, slid it back into her bag, and walked into Dr. Kyle’s office.
He was yakking on the phone. He gestured for her to sit, making a face that suggested he’d be off momentarily. Caitlin sat there waiting, biting her lower lip, and trying to calm herself.
Dr. Kyle finally hung up the phone.
“Good afternoon, Caitlin. How are we doing today?”
“We are not doing well at all,” Caitlin snapped. Her accusatory tone seemed to catch him off guard. He tilted his head.
“Is there something wrong?”
She wanted to tell him, wanted to scream. But she held her breath for a moment, and then she let it out in a major huff.
“I’m fine.”
He smiled. “Well, okay . . . that’s good to hear.” Dr. Kyle got up from behind his desk and sat on the leather chair next to the sofa where she was sitting. Dr. Kyle took out a notepad.
“How are things since we last met?” he asked.
&n
bsp; He patted her on the leg, right by the tear in her jeans, his pinkie finger touching her bare leg.
That is, like, totally inappropriate and borderline illegal!
“Okay, I guess.”
“Are you still experiencing the feeling of being watched?”
She was. She had told Dr. Kyle after her third visit that she often felt that a single eye was keeping watch over her. Or perhaps it was more like being spied on, or being monitored. She wasn’t sure if it was a creepy kind of thing—like his pinkie grazing her flesh—or protective. But the one eyeball was ever present. At one point, Caitlin thought it might be Jack. Or Rapunzel. Or maybe even her mom. But then there were times when she was alone at night in her room, in the dark, and that feeling of being watched felt intrusive and frightening.
Anyway, Caitlin was too angry to start opening up to him.
“Nope,” she replied. “No more peering eyeball.”
Dr. Kyle jotted in his notepad and then said, “Do you have any new dreams to report?”
Yeah . . . I married Barton Sullivan last night, and my zombie BFFs crashed the wedding!
“Nope.”
Not a chance I’m sharing that dream with creepoid Dr. Jekyll!
And then something registered as she shifted anxiously in her chair. The recollection caught her totally off guard.
A dream.
A second dream she had dreamed last night—before the wedding dream.
Wait.
It wasn’t just an ordinary dream. It was a recurring dream. She had also dreamed it last week.
Whoa!
Like a budding flower bursting out of the soil in a time-lapse video, dream memories began to surface in her consciousness.
“Actually, I did have a dream last night,” Caitlin said, feeling strangely compelled to talk about it, even though she absolutely did not want to.
“Tell me,” Dr. Kyle said.
Absolutely not, Caitlin thought.
“There was a girl,” she answered. “Older than me. Beautiful. Wearing all white. Lots of lace. She was waving at me. Calling for me. She stood by a forest . . . No! She stood by a black gate that led into a forest. Her stark-white body
outlined against the polished black gate was extremely breathtaking.”
Caitlin’s initial thought was that the girl had to be a grown-up Alice. But it wasn’t. It absolutely wasn’t. Caitlin didn’t recognize her . . . and yet, she seemed oddly familiar in a way Caitlin could not explain. It had made sense to her in the dream, but she could not articulate why now.
Dr. Kyle fiddled with the clip on his pen. “Is this the magical Zeno’s Forest that you’ve been telling me about? Where the properties of time and space are nonexistent?”
She detected the tone of condescension in his voice. Nevertheless, the question was valid. Caitlin sensed that the forest could indeed transport her to a faraway place. Yet it didn’t look or feel anything like Zeno’s Forest.
“I don’t think so. Not sure.”
“Let’s move on. Tell me about your daily routines. Are you still taking ten flights of stairs in order to avoid the lift in your building?”
Her eyes blinked rapidly. “As a matter of fact,” her lie began, “I took the elevator down this morning.”
He smiled slyly. “Did you, now? You know, Caitlin—your particular situation regarding irrational fears, social anxieties, and OCD are disturbingly rare in the annals of the psychiatric profession. I have yet to see or read about a case as extreme as yours. You’re an anomaly, young lady. Therefore, I need you to be forthright if we’re to make progress.”
His eyes stole a quick glance at her bare leg again.
She shifted in her chair. She glanced at her Foyles bag. Her fingers drummed the armrest of the sofa. Then she directed her eyes back to Dr. Kyle.
“You don’t believe me? You think I imagined riding the ‘lift,’ just like I imagined that boy Jack Spriggins . . .” Her tone sharpened. “And my mom, and all the dead people . . .” She cranked up the volume. “And that whole evening last October at Mount Cemetery?”
Dr. Kyle waved his pen. “Let’s not raise our voice. Have you been taking your meds regularly?”
“Every day.”
“Good. I want to prescribe a supplementary treatment. A new antidepressant.”
“But I’m not depressed.”
He wrote up a prescription as he spoke. “They’ve proven extremely effective in reducing intense anxiety and stress. And they will help you sleep better, hopefully curb those recurring nightmares.”
“They weren’t nightmares.”
How does he know they’re recurring?
“Besides, all these meds . . . they make me feel . . . different. Not myself. I don’t like them. I don’t think I need them anymore.”
And that’s when Dr. J. L. Kyle patted her on the knee again. That same pinkie touched the flesh of her thigh.
“I think you should let me prescribe the treatments best suited for your condition. This will help with your agitation as well.”
Caitlin had already clenched her hands into fists. “You mean, I’m now under the control of the Red Spectrum, ruled by anger and fear and negative emotions that shine from the red side of our character?”
She whipped out the book she had bought at Foyles. Waved it in his face. Tossed it onto the coffee table in
front of the sofa, where it landed with a thud. Dr. Kyle’s face reddened.
“You stole my ideas!” Caitlin shouted. “You wrote about everything that I shared with you in confidence! And yet you’ve been telling me, and my dad, that I was making all of this up? And you’ve touched my leg twice today!”
Dr. J. L. Kyle’s Adam’s apple jiggled as he swallowed.
“I’m telling everyone,” she declared. “Everyone! I’m telling my dad. Calling the newspapers. I’ll call your publisher. I am going to post the truth on my blog.” Her bitterness boiled over.
Just then, a black crow landed on the window ledge directly behind Dr. Kyle’s desk.
It was as if someone had suddenly plunked an ice cube into her simmering soul.
Caitlin gasped.
Dr. Kyle sneered.
He slid his pen into his pocket and closed his notepad.
“Session’s over,” he said in a grim tone. “Time to leave.”
Caitlin didn’t need any coaxing. She snatched the book from the table and leaped up from the sofa. She stole a nervous glance at the black bird perched on the window ledge as she opened the door to leave the office.
It cawed.
Dr. Kyle grabbed her arm firmly before she opened the door. “I’d think twice, young lady, before doing something you’ll surely regret.”
Caitlin jerked her arm free. “You don’t frighten me.”
But he did.
He moved in close and put his hand under her chin, softly but firmly. She pulled her head away.
“I’m your therapist,” he said. “I’m here to help you, if you’ll let me.” He inched closer. She smelled the pipe tobacco on his breath. “But if you carry on ranting about all these absurd allegations, I’ll see to it that people categorically believe me—your psychotherapist—and certainly not you, the unwell patient with the rarest degree of an anxiety disorder ever recorded!”
Caitlin turned and opened the door. She suddenly felt a maddening compulsion to sneak a peek at one of the four corners of the ceiling.
He’s right! I’m a freak. So don’t look at it.
She did. But just one corner.
Okay—done.
Then she eyeballed a second corner.
No more!
Then a third—
Somehow she willed herself to stop her compulsive habit of making eye contact with all four corners of the ceiling. Instead, she glared at Dr. Kyle.
�
��You messed with the wrong person,” she said, then fled the office.
She scrambled out of the building onto Audley Street, unlocked her bike, rode off, and pedaled at a breakneck pace.
Ghost-gray clouds began gathering over Central London.
CHAPTER Four
Caitlin could almost hear that creepy crow cawing behind her as she rode swift and hard toward Hyde Park. She thought about the fact that she hadn’t looked at the third and fourth corners of the ceiling of Dr. Kyle’s office even though she desperately didn’t want to. But what choice did she have?
She never canceled them out by looking at them.
Now these obsessive-compulsive thoughts would torment her to no end. And she was almost certain that she’d never again step foot inside that Dr. Jekyll’s office. Which meant she’d never get another chance to cancel out the remaining ceiling corners. Which meant she’d never rid herself of these obsessive thoughts.
I thought I was over all this freaking OCD crap!
And what about the black crow on the window ledge? Beyond freaky. And Dr. Kyle’s face? Wickedly unsavory.
The crow and the shrink seemed straight out of the zombie universe. Caitlin’s dread and discomfort over that turn of events made her forget all about the corners and ceiling in his office. She was also busy stealing quick glances behind her to see if that ghastly crow was following her.
She finally arrived at Hyde Park. She rode past the grand entrance and pulled up next to a bench, where she parked her bike. Her breathing began to slow and her shoulder and neck muscles relaxed as she settled in among the crowds milling about. She sat on the bench to gather her thoughts, comforted by the fact that she was one among thousands. The air was late-afternoon cool.
She pulled out a nutrition bar from her pocket. She squished it with a firm handgrip, then tore open the crumpled wrapper and poured crumbs into her palm. She tossed the crumbs onto the pavement to feed the pigeons skittering about.
The Lord of the Curtain Page 3
