by Wendy Walker
“Where do you want to start?” I asked her.
She was nervous and, I think, a little embarrassed.
I don’t know. Should I be on the ground? Or should I just sit here and close my eyes?
“Why don’t you sit and close your eyes. Let’s see if that’s enough.”
I let her smell the bleach disk. I played the music. I had a Baggie with some debris from the woods, and I opened that as well. Jenny took a long breath and exhaled slowly. Then she closed her eyes. I pulled out the writings that Detective Parsons had given me. I began to read the words of Glenn Shelby.
I parked several blocks away and walked to Juniper Road. From the woods, I could see everything. The house was lit up in every room. Kids were drinking and laughing. Some of them went to be alone in bedrooms. They met the drug dealer by the back door. I saw the boy inside. I knew it was only a matter of time. I could see his car parked in the driveway. It was near the edge of the woods. I knew I would take him from there.
I looked from the pages to Jenny. She was concentrating. There was no emotion yet.
The boy left, but he did not go to his car. He kept walking down the driveway and out to Juniper Road. I lost sight of him, and this made me angry. The girl came then. I heard the ground crackle as she ran. I heard her tears. I was easily distracted by her. She was so sad.
I could hear Jenny’s breathing quicken. I wanted to know what was happening, but I didn’t want to interrupt it, whatever it was. I knew these words were leading her back. I could sense it.
I walked up to her. She was startled. I realized then that I was wearing the mask. People usually smile when I walk toward them. People like me. I reached to take it off, but then I remembered I couldn’t. “Don’t be scared. I didn’t come here to hurt you. I was waiting for someone else.” She started to walk backwards, her eyes were wide like she was looking at some monster. “I told you not to be scared! Why are you looking at me like that, girl? Can’t you see I’m trying to be nice to you? Girl! Don’t you walk away from me! I’m not a monster. Girl! Girl!”
I heard a mumble then, a very quiet mumble. I looked at Jenny. Tears rolled down her face. Her mouth was dry as she whispered the word. Girl. Girl.
Through the woods I could see the boy again. He went back inside the party. My chance was gone. I couldn’t stay here with this girl knowing. And I was not going to leave without doing what I’d come here to do. She would have told someone, and then there would be no more parties, no more chances. It was not easy to do, but I have had the benefit of seeing a brilliant doctor, and I know how to stop myself from obsessing. I know how to be flexible. And this girl was making me angry. I was trying to be nice to her. I was trying to help her. She was being cruel to me. I know what that feels like. She had no right to make me like her and then push me away. Someone else did that to me, and I would not stand for it again. I slapped her hard across the face and watched her fall to the ground. I climbed on top of her and started to do what I had planned to do to that boy. I did not need to use any drugs. She was so weak and I was so strong. I did not have to put her down to finish my work. I ran my hand under her shirt. Her skin was so soft. I had not felt skin for a long time.
Girl … girl … Stop yelling.… Girl … I like your skin. I really like your skin.
Jenny was saying the words now—the words that were on the page, words I had not yet read. My heart was exploding! She was back there, that night. She had found her way back!
I took off her clothes. I put on the condom. It was so easy. She was so small, I could hold her with one hand. I made love to her then. She was crying, but I was being very gentle. But then I remembered it was not the plan to be gentle. I came here to follow a story. And that story would not be right if I was gentle. “I’m sorry, girl.” I stopped making love to her and started fucking her, hard. I tried to picture the boy, and that made it easier. I took the stick from my bag. I did not forget one word of the story. I started to scratch her. I remembered where to do it.
I stopped reading. I knew what was on those pages.
It was my story. I closed my eyes and remembered. There is so much pain as he rips into me.
It is the story I had told to Glenn Shelby, the boundary I had crossed. The bright Oregon sun is on my face. I can see my house so close. He laughs when he hears my cries.
It is the story he had remembered and savored and then inflicted on this beautiful young woman. He laughs at me and calls me a bitch.
I wiped tears from my face. I opened my eyes and read on from Glenn’s writings.
I took some of the skin from the stick and rubbed it in my fingers. It was slippery, and it began to break into little balls of flesh and then fall to the ground. I scraped some more.
Jenny opened her mouth, and the memories came out on the wings of her words.
I think he’s tickling me at first. He’s holding me down so hard with his forearm on my neck. And I think maybe he’ll stop and just do that for a while, the tickling. Maybe it’s over. But then the tickle starts to burn and then burn more and I realize he’s carving out my skin.
Yes, Jenny. Yes! And the blood starts to trickle down my back. I can feel it, warm and sticky. He tells me he’s making his mark. He tells me he’s going to eat my body, this small piece of my body like a cannibal.
Jenny continued as if she could hear my thoughts, as if we were one. And in that moment, we were one, sharing the same story. My remorse was profound. But I did not let it in.
Jenny continued telling our story.
I feel the nerve, he’s reached a nerve and I cry out again. He stops and then …
I picked up our story then, reading on.
“I’m sorry, girl.” I have to follow the story. I stopped carving her and I fucked her more. She yelled again. I wasn’t enjoying this. This was not an easy story to follow. It was not the boy, and I didn’t like how long I had to do this. I started to wonder if the story had been remembered wrong. An hour is a long time. My arms were getting tired. And there was so much yelling! “Girl! Stop yelling!” I had to stop many times so she would calm down and be quiet.
Jenny joins in. We are like an orchestra, two instruments playing the same song.
Girl … stop yelling. Girl … Oh God!
I think quietly to myself. I know, Jenny. The pain is unbearable as he thrusts into me. I am only twelve years old. My body is small. He is seventeen. He is a man. He brought me here to look for snakes. He told me I would catch a snake. See, he says. You caught a snake. I cried then. I just cried. It wasn’t an hour. Glenn had asked me how long it went on, and I told him it felt like an hour. I did not say it was, actually, an hour before we saw my mother’s car pulling into the driveway. He pulled himself out of me and left me there to bleed.
I read another passage.
I took a long break, checked my watch. I let her catch her breath.
Jenny spoke more words, more memories. They came out quietly, almost in a whisper.
It’s almost over. Only seventeen minutes and eight seconds left.
Jenny opened her eyes and met mine, just inches away. We were both crying, our memories now fully before us.
I remember it. Jenny said, I remember him.
“I know. I can see it in your eyes. I can see it!”
And I could. I could see everything. I could see myself. I was no longer alone.
Chapter Thirty-six
My parents did not want to report the rape. They did not take me to a doctor until the school nurse made them, and then it was just to stitch up the carving. They were afraid the state would remove their foster children, including the one who had taken me into the woods behind our house. My mother said this was something that we could work through. That this boy had a very sad story and needed our help. His behavior—that’s what she called it—was a result of his difficult life, and we should not judge him too harshly. The school nurse saw blood from my shirt, and I told her it was from a fall. There was a report, but that was it. The pain of this s
ecret, of having shared it with no one, was brutal.
I remember the day I shared my story with Glenn Shelby. We were having a session at the prison in Somers. He was telling me about a boy he had stalked. How he’d stood outside his house, watching him from the woods. How he had thought about touching him. I started to tell him that these urges were bad. That they could hurt people. He asked me how this could be when it felt so good to imagine it. He recounted examples from the inmates. He recounted things that they did to each other and to him. He had been with hundreds of people, men, women, teenage boys. They were mostly prostitutes. Some were just heavily intoxicated. A few had been drawn in by his charm and so desperate for love that they failed to see the psychosis in his attachment to them.
I had been trying to explain to him that boys should be off-limits, even the ones working as prostitutes. I did not want him to develop a taste for youth, so I started to tell him the story. About the boy lured into the woods. About the fear and the pain. He asked me for details. He asked me why it hurt this boy. I shared my story in great detail. I had not told anyone this story. Not one person. Not in my entire life. Before me was a wide-eyed consumer of my tale of horror. I could not resist the urge to finally say the words out loud. He was so very skilled at luring secrets from their vaults. And I had been so pathetically weak. I told him about the physical pain. I told him how it stole this boy’s will. And I told him about the carving. I told him that I was that boy.
Glenn followed this story like a road map when he stumbled upon Jenny in those woods. The rest of it—how he knew the ways to protect himself, the shaving, the condoms—he learned from the other inmates and the endless stories they divulged. I try not to dwell on the fact that he had gone there to rape my own son. That he had gone there to punish me, but then perhaps to give me a gift, the bond of empathy with this girl he had stumbled upon in the woods. With Jenny. How he thought this gift would bring me back to him. The gift in lieu of the punishment. This is what he told me that day in his apartment. That he had been flexible.
I was honest at the start of my tale. When I began to treat Jenny, my desire to give her back her memory was grounded in concepts of justice, and in my belief that it would heal her. Everything changed the moment I read about the carving in the police report. I have described how shocking information enters the brain and wreaks havoc. How it takes time to make the adjustments to the new reality. It was that way for me when I read those words. When my mind adjusted to the facts, the truth was undeniable. It could not be a coincidence. I knew with absolute certainty that Glenn Shelby had raped Jenny Kramer. And I knew he had done so because of me and the story I had shared with him.
Why, then, did I not run to Detective Parsons? Why did I not give Tom the vengeance he craved? Why did I deny my new patient her justice? How can I explain it now if you don’t already see? I had been alone for so very long. Yes, some of my patients are victims of assault. Of rape. But none of my patients had been so young. None of my patients had been carved, branded like an animal. There was no one else on this planet who could understand. I walked alone. Until Jenny Kramer. The sudden need to have her remember was more powerful than my conscience. And they would have taken that from me if I had told them the truth.
I went to see Glenn at his apartment when I thought I might need another plan to save my son. And to make sure he never came near my family again. There was more than one way to accomplish this.
It was not until I went through my son’s phone that I realized Glenn had gone to that party to harm Jason, that he had been stalking him through social media. Before that moment, I had naïvely believed that he had simply gone where there were children so he could find a victim, any victim. It had even crossed my mind that Teddy Duncan, the twelve-year-old boy next door, had been the target. Glenn knew I was twelve when I was attacked.
I am a better doctor to borderline patients now than I was when I first met Glenn. I understand the depths of the disease, the extent of their obsessions with an individual. And the lengths they will go to affect us. Before I left Glenn alone in his apartment, I told him poisonous things. And the poison is what killed him.
“You failed, Glenn. You did not hurt my son, and this gift you think you gave me was unsatisfying. Jenny is a girl. I was a boy. She was fifteen. I was twelve. I will not see you again. After today, I will not see you. There is nothing you can do that will ever change that. There is nothing you can do that will ever make you important to me.”
There was another story I had told Glenn. It was about a patient at New York–Presbyterian. It was not my patient. I was doing my residency, which involved more observation than actual treatment. One of the patients I had been observing killed herself. I recall being concerned about her but saying nothing to her primary doctor. I did not want to be wrong and look foolish. She tore her gown into long pieces, tied them together, and hanged herself from the hinge of the bathroom door. I told Glenn that I had never forgotten this woman, even though she was not my patient. I told him that she would weigh on my conscience until the day I died.
Glenn Shelby was a dangerous man. A monster. My monster. I know that I helped to create him with my indulgence. With my carelessness. And then, I suppose, I killed him.
I could not cure Glenn Shelby. Maybe God can.
I am guilty. Hate me if you must. I have tried to show you the mitigating facts. Charlotte, Tom, Sean. I gave them back their lives, and none of that would have been possible if we had not had the collision. If I had not told my story to an unstable patient. If Jenny had not been in those woods with him. If I had confessed the moment I learned the truth. Hate me. Despise me. But know that I have weighed everything on the scales. And know that every night I fall asleep. And every morning I wake up and look in the mirror without any problem whatsoever.
I do not see the Kramers for therapy anymore. After a productive summer with Jenny, she was able to go back to school. Like Sean, the memories she found hiding within her helped to put the ghosts to bed, and she began to respond to more traditional trauma treatment. By that fall, she was ready to move on with her life.
I always find joy and pain when a patient is cured. I miss them.
I see the Kramers in town. We are all very friendly. Tom and Charlotte seem happy. Jenny seems happy, normal. I see her laughing with her friends.
Sometimes when I am with my wife, when she wraps her arms around my waist, she will touch the scar on my back. Sometimes when she does this, I picture Jenny and I know I’m not alone anymore. The pain is gone. I have healed myself.
My practice has picked up now. I have become a memory-recovery expert of sorts, and I sometimes get patients from across the country. I am thinking of opening a clinic. The trauma treatment continues to be used. I have written papers, spoken at conferences. I have become somewhat of a crusader against its use, and I have done my best to curtail its administration. I see its appeal. It seems so easy, doesn’t it? To just erase the past. But now you know better.
I always say the same thing to these patients when they first come to me, convinced they are doomed to a life with their ghosts, with their lost car keys never to be found. It gives them comfort when I tell them. It gives them comfort to know that all is not forgotten.
Author’s Note
While the drug treatment in this novel does not currently exist in its entirety, the altering of both the factual and emotional memories of trauma is at the forefront of emerging research and technology in memory science. Researchers have successfully altered factual memories and mitigated the emotional impact of memories with the drugs and therapies described in this book, and they continue to search for a drug to target and erase those memories completely. While the original intention of drug therapies to alter memories was to treat soldiers in the field and mitigate the onset of PTSD, its use in the civilian world has already begun—and will likely be extremely controversial.
About the Author
WENDY WALKER has worked as an attorney specializing in fam
ily law. She lives in Connecticut, where she is at work on her next novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
