by Rick Hautala
“Look, Frank!” Elizabeth snapped as she slapped the table with the flat of her hand. It echoed like a gunshot. “I’ve already taken longer for lunch than I was supposed to, so why don’t you just leave and let me get back to work, okay?”
“Sure,” Frank said, as he backed up, feeling behind him for the door. “I’m sorry if I —”
“Forget it, all right?” Elizabeth said. She tore off a paper towel from the dispenser beside the sink and used it to wipe her eyes.
“Sure — okay. No sweat,” Frank said. “Catch yah later.”
He turned and, without another word, left the supply room, the door whooshing shut behind him. He felt like a fool, twisting with guilt and shame for having blown it so badly with Elizabeth. If —
Big “if,” he told himself ...
— he had entertained thoughts of rekindling their romance, he knew he had pretty much put an end to that.
It wasn’t until later that afternoon that something else struck him, and once it was in his mind, he couldn’t shake it. All through their shift he never mentioned it to Norton, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it, and as tired as he was by the end of his shift, he was determined not to sleep until he found out one thing — who that man was that Elizabeth had mentioned.
What was his name? ... Roland Graydon? Frank had never heard of him around town, but he sure as hell was going to find out!
SIX
The Old Crone
1.
“Are you feeling comfortable?”
“Sure, why shouldn’t I?” Elizabeth replied. She let her gaze shift from the sky outside the office window to the man sitting directly across from her. “I mean ... no-not really.”
She had come to Graydon’s office directly from work, but the rush to get there on time wasn’t bothering her half as much as the anger left over from her lunchtime talk with Frank. She was still seething with hostility toward him, and it bothered her that she let anything he said get to her so much. It wasn’t as though he had any control over her, or that she still loved him or anything.
Graydon leaned over the coffee table that separated them and patted her gently on her shoulder.
“I think it’s safe to assume that’s to be expected,” he said, “but if at any time you start feeling really uncomfortable, just shift gears. Of course, you must realize that discomfort is often an indication that you’re getting close to what’s truly bothering you.”
Elizabeth nodded agreement but said, “Dr. Gavreau used to tell me that, and that I wasn’t going to work things through until I brought all of my pain up to the surface. “
Graydon sniffed. “That may be,” he said. “That may very well be, but at least for the first few sessions, I simply want you to talk about whatever you feel like talking about. I understand you were doing some dream work with Dr. Gavreau. Perhaps you’d like to tell me something about any dreams you’ve had recently.”
Elizabeth’s discomfort spiked as she leaned back, closed her eyes, and tried like hell to clear her mind. The image of the purple-edged letters of the Ouija board sprang into sharp relief. She recalled the harsh rasping sound the pointer made as it scraped across the board. In spite of the warm office and comfortable chair, goose bumps rose on her arms when she recalled the spelled-out messages-
“You should help her ...”
“She’s been trying to get in touch with you ...”
And the last, most frightening message, when she had asked who was trying to communicate with her:
“Caroline ... Help ... Mommy ... Help!”
Elizabeth’s hands were tingling, and, for an unnerving instant, she had the sensation that her fingers were still gently resting on the Ouija pointer, being dragged against her will by pale, skeletal hands as the pointer spelled out a new message ...
What’s the message this time? she wondered.
“Well ... “ she said, after taking a long, sucking breath. “Just recently I’ve been having this recurring dream about a room in a house ... “
She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling, allowing her vision to go unfocused as she tried to reconstruct the imaginary room, only dimly aware of Graydon sitting across from her as she searched for the words to describe the dream.
“Do you recognize the room?” Graydon asked.
Elizabeth shook her head. “No-not really. I mean, it seems kind of familiar, but when I wake up. I couldn’t say it was exactly this or that particular room.”
“But you do have a sense that this room is ... familiar,” Graydon said.
“I think so,” Elizabeth replied. “but what’s unusual about the room is-” She wondered in a frantic rush of fear if she could really trust him.
“Yes-s-s?” he said, regarding her with a steady, reassuring expression.
“What’s strange is how many doors there are leading into the same room. It’s like, no matter where I go in this house, I keep coming back to that room. As if I can’t ever escape from it.”
“Do you ever go into the room?” Graydon asked mildly.
Elizabeth nodded, even as she winced with the memory. “It’s as if I can’t avoid it ... like I’m trying to get out of the house, but I always find myself back in that room. “
“Always the same room?”
“Always!”
“Are there any furnishings in the room? Or people?” Graydon asked, shifting in his chair, and something-either the chair itself or a piece of paper in his pocket-made a faint crinkling sound. The noise reminded Elizabeth of the sizzle of a flame.
“There’s an old woman-a ... a witch, sort of, in there,” Elizabeth said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized that the sound Graydon had made reminded her of something else-the crinkling sound the old woman’s shopping bag made as she opened the top.
“Come over here. Elizabeth. See what I’ve brought you . .. See what I’ve got for you.”
The words rang in Elizabeth’s memory as clearly as if the woman were standing right there, unseen, behind her. She twisted her head slightly to see if, indeed, she and Graydon were alone.
“And do you recognize this witch?” Graydon asked.
“Well-she’s not really a witch,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, she’s not dressed in black with a wart on her nose and all. I guess she’s what you’d have to call an old crone, you know? Like someone out of an old-fashioned story or play ... maybe something from a Dickens novel.”
“Do you recognize her?”
Elizabeth bit down hard on her lower lip as she shook her head. Through the haze of memory, she could almost see the old woman as a distortion of her mother, or maybe Aunt Junia, or Aunt Elspeth; possibly a combination of the three. It might also be her projection of what she herself might look like as an old woman.
“No,” she said, shaking her head stiffly, “but the last time I dreamed about her, she was trying to show me something she had in her shopping bag.”
“And did you look inside?” Graydon asked pointedly.
“I didn’t dare to,” Elizabeth replied tightly, her voice getting increasingly high-pitched. She tried to fight down the dark surge of fear.
“Why not?” Graydon asked, pushing her. “What did you think you might see in there?”
Elizabeth shrugged.
“What are you afraid of seeing?”
“What’s in the bag, I suppose,” Elizabeth snapped.
“What do you think she might have in that bag?” Graydon asked. He was obviously not going to let her off the hook too easily.
Elizabeth exhaled noisily and said, “I ... I’m not sure, but I know-even in the dream-that I don’t want to see it.”
“Okay, enough on that,” Graydon said, sensing her extreme discomfort. “I want to do a little bit of association. Okay? I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to say the very first word that pops into your head. The very first word you think of. And don’t get flustered; if you draw a blank, we can just forge on ahead.”
“Fine,” Elizabeth said, noddin
g as she clasped her hands tightly in her lap. Graydon cleared his throat and said, “When you’re in that room, tell me; how do you feel?”
“Trapped!” The word sprang from Elizabeth’s mouth even before she consciously formed it. After she said it, she felt flustered and tried to stammer out something else, but Graydon smiled, apparently satisfied.
“I suspect,” he said, “that you already realize what this dream is trying to tell you. But you tell me-what is your subconscious mind trying to communicate to you by this dream?”
Elizabeth stirred uncomfortably in her chair. She wanted to remind Graydon that he had promised her she could shift gears if she began to feel uncomfortable, but she knew-Lord, God in Heaven! Did she ever know!-he had just said that to relax her initially.
After a long pause, Elizabeth said, “Well-I think in some ways, the room probably represents myself, and that I’m-Doctor Gavreau used to use the term ‘blocking’ for not letting the conscious mind accept something that, at least subconsciously, you already know.”
Graydon nodded and, for the first time during the session, picked up his tea and sipped it. Elizabeth could tell by the face he made that it had gone cold.
“And ... ?” he said, gently placing the cup down.
Elizabeth shrugged and glanced at her clasped hands. “I figure it probably has something to do with ... Caroline ... with her death,” she said.
Again, Graydon nodded understandingly. “That’s entirely possible. Either that or, perhaps, something you’ve been thinking and feeling since then.”
“Like guilt, maybe?” Elizabeth said, surprising herself with the sudden intensity in her voice. “Because I couldn’t-because I didn’t save Caroline? Because I feel as though I let her down by allowing her to die?”
“That, too, would be entirely possible ... and normal,” Graydon said, in low, measured tones.
Elizabeth looked up at him and found him staring intensely at her. For just a flickering instant, before his expression softened, she experienced another wave of discomfort and distrust. She had the distinct impression he had been ...
What had it looked like? she wondered, fighting back waves of rising panic. It was almost as if he had been leering at her, gloating over her discomfort, actually enjoying her misery! Great way to start out our first session, she thought, with a biting twinge of guilt. Getting paranoid about my doctor!
Graydon cleared his throat before saying, “My impression, Elizabeth, is that in some ways-in many ways-you’ve been very open and honest about how you feel about what happened to Caroline; but there are still some things that you have buried deeply inside your mind. Your recurring dream indicates that. Whenever anyone has a recurring dream, what a friend of mine calls ‘psychic indigestion,’ it indicates there are still some things you haven’t been totally honest about.”
Oh, great! Elizabeth thought. First my mother, then Frank, and now him-all pushing me to be so Goddamned honest about what I feel! Can’t they tell? I’m feeling lost, alone, and scared!
It was only with great effort that she didn’t get up, tell Graydon to fuck off and die, and storm out of his office. She’d had these feelings many times before with Doctor Gavreau, and she knew what they signaled.
“I think it’s-” She halted, as if strong, unseen hands had suddenly wrapped around her throat.
“-fairly obvious,” Graydon finished for her.
She looked at him with fear-widened eyes but could make no sound other than a gasp.
“I suspect what you’re ‘blocking’ is not what happened that night,” Graydon said. “You seem to have the sequence of events fairly clear in your mind. If anything, perhaps too clear. I think what you haven’t dealt with is how you handled Caroline’s death. What you did afterward.”
“I did what any parent who loves a child who dies would do,” she said. Her voice rasped like ...
... Like the felt-padded legs of the Ouija pointer, scuffing over the board.
“I was devastated! It ruined my life, my marriage, my hope for the future ... even what little faith I had in God. It ruined everything!”
“Were you hospitalized after the accident?” Graydon asked. His voice was still even and measured, and that only increased Elizabeth’s feeling of hostility.
“Do you mean was I thrown into the looney bin?” she shouted.
Graydon calmly shook his head and said, “No-I mean were you hospitalized as a result of your own injuries ... the night of the accident?”
“Only overnight,” Elizabeth said. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My husband-I might have told you-was seriously burned when the car and truck exploded. He was trying to get down to the wreck because he-we--could see Caroline in the backseat, trying to get out of the car.”
Graydon nodded as he listened.
“More than half of his face had third degree burns,” Elizabeth continued. “Even after plastic surgery ... well, he isn’t back to normal yet. The damage was extensive-a lot of nerves were destroyed.”
“So he doesn’t look-” Graydon said.
“Normal,” Elizabeth said, interrupting him. “No, he doesn’t. The left side of his face is all twisted scar tissue.” She shivered.
Graydon stroked his chin and nodded thoughtfully. •• And do you feel responsible in any way for what happened to him?”
Elizabeth cringed back into her chair as a cold rush swept through her. An uncomfortable silence filled the room. She knew she had to say something.
“Is what happened to-your husband’s name is Doug?”
Elizabeth nodded silently.
“Are you still blaming yourself for what happened to Doug, as well?”
Closing her eyes momentarily and shaking her head tightly, Elizabeth said in a raw whisper, “No.” When she opened her eyes and looked at Graydon, her vision was blurred with tears.
She wanted to say more. She wanted to tell Graydon that, if it hadn’t been for her, Doug would have died along with Caroline that night. Doug had run toward the wreck; all she had done was stop him. She also wanted to tell Graydon that she had suffered enough, and that she didn’t like him pulling everything-every dark and twisted secret out of her. She was tired of dredging up her grief and guilt like this, but words failed her, and she looked down at her hands, folded tightly in her lap.
Running her fingers through her hair, Elizabeth closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. The pain and suffering Doug had gone through because of the bums on his face were nothing compared to the mental torment she experienced as she sat by his bedside in the hospital day after day, silently grieving over Caroline as she waited to see if his skin grafts would take. She remembered too vividly the thick pads of bandages on Doug’s face-how, when the nurse came to change them, they pulled away, soaked through with sticky, yellowish fluid. She remembered how even the slightest facial movement sent random nervous impulses racing through Doug’s whole face, more often than not making what might have begun as a smile turn into a ghoulish grimace of agony.
Those months of pain and waiting were still clear and sharp in her mind. But worse than all of that were the things Doug had said to her once the bandages were removed and his face had healed well enough so that he could speak clearly. Each word had been like a razor, stinging as it sliced her, as he poured out his bitterness and hatred.
“I went through ... a lot,” Elizabeth said at last to Graydon. She wanted to push those painful memories aside, but more and more, she came to realize that they would always be there-that they had become a necessary part of her.
“I was on some pretty heavy-duty medication by then. Antidepressants. That’s when I started seeing Doctor Gavreau,” she said.
Her hands tightened in her lap until the knuckles were bloodless; then she slowly unfolded her hands, rolled her sleeves up to her elbows, and held her arms out over the table, exposing her wrists.
“That’s when I did ... this,” she said. Her voice was shaking badly, and she couldn’t stop herself from tre
mbling.
Graydon’s face was unmoved as he looked at the thick. White lines of scar tissue crisscrossing the insides of both of Elizabeth’s wrists. His breath caught for just a second, but his expression never wavered. Certainly, she thought, he’s had to deal with suicide attempts before today! When he cleared his throat and spoke, his voice sounded steady and calm.
“I think it’s ... terrible when grief can be so ... so deep as to drive a person to such an extreme act,” he said, looking Elizabeth straight in the eye with an intensity that was so strong she couldn’t help but wonder what his private pain was.
“I was ... a wreck,” she stammered. “I felt as though I had lost everything of meaning in my life, and I-” Her voice faltered. but she went on. “I just didn’t want to live any more. But do you want to know the craziest thing about it all?”
She looked at Graydon, feeling an almost overwhelming desire to burst out laughing.
“Up until the time I cut my wrists, everything I had felt and done had seemed ... seemed like the normal thing to do, if you know what I mean.”
Graydon’s silence encouraged her to continue.
“I mean, the grief and crying without stopping, and the depression. Everyone told me that it was normal-to be expected-and that, with time, I’d get over it. But do you know, after I cut my wrists and I was sitting on the kitchen floor in our house ... “ Her voice trailed away, and her eyes dimmed with the memory. “The afternoon sun was streaming into the kitchen, making big yellow squares on the linoleum. And I was just sitting there with blood pumping out, all over my legs, soaking into my jeans, just waiting to feel weaker and weaker until I dimmed out, when I was suddenly filled-I mean my whole being was overflowing-with this feeling that Caroline was right there in the kitchen with me, and that she wanted me to live! A friend of mine happened to stop by just then and found me, and he-I mean, she-got me to the hospital fast enough. But that’s when I knew I was crazy! I felt so positive my dead daughter was still there beside me, taking care of me!”
Elizabeth heard Graydon mutter something under his breath, but couldn’t tell what; it sounded something like, “Perhaps she is,” but he didn’t repeat himself, and she didn’t ask him to. Leaning back in his chair, Graydon took a deep breath and smiled sympathetically at her. Elizabeth thought his complexion had turned a shade or two lighter, and, unlike his smiles earlier in the session, this one seemed more forced, more controlled. Whatever he was thinking or feeling, he never betrayed it in his voice.
