The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  “I assure you, Dr. Thayer, it’s not me you have to fear.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. Straight ahead, please.”

  The two men walked single file down the stairs to the basement. Nat pointed right to the little glow outside his office. Prescott walked to it slowly, as if Nat were nosing him into a trap, then entered the office and set his dripping hat on the desk. Nat followed, walking around the desk and looking with distaste at the wool hat. A small puddle was forming around it.

  Nat pulled open a drawer and fished out some heavy paper napkins.

  “Let me get that,” he said. He wiped the desk clear of water, went back to soak up the last drops, then tossed the napkins in the wastebasket. Then he sat down.

  Prescott folded himself into the bare metal chair that sat in front of Nat’s desk but said nothing.

  Nat studied him for a moment. “You came out on a hell of a night, Mr. Prescott.”

  The old man pursed his lips. “Your family,” he said finally. “You’re one of James Thayer’s sons?”

  Nat took a breath, then gave Prescott a look and let it hang there for a second. Were they really going to play Old Yankee Social Call?

  “No. Nathaniel’s.”

  “Ah.” Prescott’s eyes sought the desktop. “A tragic story.”

  In the South, Nat had heard, they will offer condolences four decades after a “tragedy.” In New England, you get one year maximum, and then it becomes town history, and any stranger can discuss it in front of your face as casually as if he were talking about the fat dude on American Idol.

  Nat sat back in the cheap business chair that the town fathers had provided and gave the situation another couple of beats. He was an employee of the state of Massachusetts. He was contractually obligated to give Walter Prescott a hearing. He didn’t, however, have to exchange family histories.

  Prescott merely stared. Now that he was inside and had Nat’s attention, he seemed in no rush for psychiatric outreach. Finally Nat broke the silence.

  “But . . . not one we’re here to discuss, is it, Mr. Prescott? Let’s talk about what’s bothering you.”

  The look, sickness—and what else?—returned to his eyes.

  “It’s my daughter.”

  Nat nodded.

  “She’s sleeping now. I felt it was safe to come away.”

  Prescott talked like someone out of the books Nat had read in high school. The Scarlet Letter, maybe? It was interesting enough. He’d gotten his wish of company for the night.

  Prescott then stood and went to the window, just staring and saying nothing. The clock on the wall ticked away. Nat steepled his fingers in front of his face and waited.

  He was familiar with the problem. Something drives a man like Walter Prescott to Nat’s office. The man goes there full of hope, as if Nat has a cure sitting in the corner. Big old jar of Thayer’s Fear Killer. Lozenges specially formulated to melt away your childhood terrors. Jumbo shots of Thayer’s Anti-Bad-Mother Medicine. But when the patient arrives, he finds a six-foot dark-haired stranger waiting for him. A man not warm by nature who lets the patient do most of the talking. Then he has to admit the demon is inside him, and he is afraid to speak its name.

  Nat’s phone buzzed, startling them both. Nat reached over, gave the screen a quick look—another message from John—and flicked the side switch to silent mode before sticking it in his pocket.

  “Your daughter, you were saying?”

  “Becca. Yes.”

  Nat continued waiting. The ticking of the clock. The sound of rain. Prescott’s view out the office window was of the west corner of the Raitliff Woods where it met Main Street, and a street lamp whose yellow was, Nat saw, vibrating in a gust of wind.

  The radiator knocked.

  “Becca is the last of my children.”

  Nat mm-hmm-ed, glancing at the old man’s profile. Prescott’s right eye had a faraway look.

  “Perhaps you’ve heard part of the story,” he said, turning to look at Nat with a hint of disdain.

  Nat spread his hands wide. “No, Mr. Prescott, honestly I ­haven’t.”

  The man swiveled back to the window, too fast for Nat to see if he was disappointed or relieved.

  “My eldest boy was named William. He was in his junior year at Amherst when he came home for the summer six years ago. I could see that he was . . .”

  Something seemed to have gotten caught in Prescott’s throat.

  “Changed,” he said finally.

  Jesus Christ, were they going to do the whole family?

  “I thought you came here about Bec—”

  “Her story is their story,” Prescott said, and there was a note of steeled anguish in his voice.

  Nat frowned. Buenos Aires, he thought, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Buenos . . .

  “Changed how?” he said.

  “His spirit was gone. He was a rower, rowed lightweight at Amherst. Debate club, treasurer at Chi Psi, he was a joiner.” Prescott dropped his head, as if he were reading off his son’s résumé. “Glee club even,” he said, his voice almost embarrassed.

  Is that his way of saying William was gay? Nat wondered.

  “But when he came back that summer, he seemed like he didn’t have an ounce of energy left in him. He walked around the house in a daze. He didn’t have to get a job, but I would have preferred it. Both summers previous he’d worked in a Boston law firm . . .”

  Something in his throat again.

  “He was losing weight. Wasn’t eating right, or eating at all, and he couldn’t sleep. I’d hear him roaming around the house late at night, just walking from room to room. I even heard him banging his head on the doorpost upstairs one night. Scared me to hell.”

  Prescott looked at Nat; then his gaze fell to the floor.

  “And then, one day in August, when he should have been getting his things together to go back to school, he came to me in the kitchen . . . and he told me . . .”

  Silence. Five more ticks of the clock.

  All you can do is wait them out.

  Prescott gave Nat a ghastly smile.

  “He told me that I wasn’t his father. And that his siblings were not what they appeared to be. We were all imposters.”

  A name flitted in the back of Nat’s mind, a French name from his postgrad course in psychoses. But he couldn’t quite remember it.

  Prescott paused. Oh, don’t stop now, Nat thought, suddenly interested. Every psychiatrist is a prospector. And what Prescott was describing was gold. Rare, extremely rare.

  Prescott continued. “He insisted we weren’t his real family, and what’s more is that he didn’t appear to be shamming. He truly believed that we were strangers to him. I’d catch him studying my face from the side, as if he was trying to recognize me, actually wanting me to be his father. You see, William was a dutiful boy, never gave me trouble.”

  “Did he get treatment?”

  “I made an appointment with a psychiatrist in Boston. A friend of the family. We were scheduled to drive up on Friday. On Thursday, William jumped off the Drammell Bridge.”

  Nat had expected something dramatic, but in that little office, it was like a blow to the chest.

  He stared for a moment. And then his mind rebelled. Really? The rain-swept night, the frightening text messages, the man facing the dark woods, and now the perfect little gothic ending. Was John Bailey outside the door, laughing? Was Walter Prescott just some cop buddy he’d sent in with this macabre story? He looked like an ex-cop. If that bastard John—

  But one look at the old man stopped Nat’s thoughts dead. Prescott wasn’t faking anything. In fact, at that moment he looked like he would gladly slip his neck into an executioner’s noose. His neck muscles were strained, and his thin lips were twisted into a false smile that expressed the opposite of mischievous pleasure.

 
“I’m so sorry,” Nat said.

  “And then the same thing happened with Ch—” Prescott said mechanically, his voice falling away.

  Nat felt a small chill run through his blood.

  “Were you going to say Chase?”

  The old man met Nat’s gaze, and suddenly Nat understood. Nat could feel fear seep into his bloodstream and shoot straight to his heart. Jesus, he is the father of Chase Prescott.

  But he had to make sure.

  “This is the Chase Prescott who . . .”

  Prescott looked down. “Go ahead and say it out loud.”

  Nat’s face grew cold.

  “Who shot those men in Williamstown.”

  “And?”

  Prescott seemed to enjoy dragging the details out of Nat. His eyes were lit up. What pleasure could a man get from hearing about the people his son murdered? Nat wondered.

  “And then killed himself.”

  “That’s right. That was my Chase. I knew you’d have heard something.”

  Nat shrugged. His lack of empathy—his weakness at the comforting side of psychiatry, the bedside manner and all that—was showing. He knew it, and it didn’t bother him.

  “Hard to avoid. It was very sad. I’m sorry.”

  Eight more ticks of the clock.

  “Can we—” Nat said, but the old man suddenly raised his head, interrupting.

  “Do you know when the Prescotts first came to this area, Dr. Thayer?”

  Nat waited.

  “A few years before your family, I’d guess,” Prescott said.

  This was the second-oldest Massachusetts game, after Old Yankee Social Call: When Did Your People Get Here? It bored Nat to death.

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “If you look at that cornerstone in the northwest corner of the hall”—his voice boomed as he pointed, his finger ­shaking—“you’ll see the first one. Jacob Prescott. 1708.”

  Nat didn’t bother following Prescott’s finger. “What happened to Chase?” he said instead.

  The name stopped the old man’s rant. His hand dropped to the armchair as he swiveled back around, his body seeming to deflate.

  “The same as my eldest son.”

  “The insomnia, the night walking, banging his head?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the conviction you were not his father?”

  “Yes. That always came last. Which is why I’m here.”

  “And now Becca,” Nat said, the name strange on his lips. “She said the same thing to you?”

  Prescott seemed visibly paler.

  “This morning. It’s the final sign, Dr. Thayer.”

  “We can get to that later. Why don’t you tell me about Chase in the meantime?”

  Prescott came around to the front of the chair and sat. He closed his eyes. Four more ticks of the clock. He opened his eyes and began.

  “One night back in 2010, about this time of year, I was asleep in my bedroom. It’s on the top floor of our house, three stories up. And I clearly remember that I was dreaming about Korea. I’d been there after the war, ’61 and ’62, a place called Pusan. Cold like you’ve never experienced, Dr. Thayer, colder than the worst winter night you ever lived through around these parts. Once, this Korean peasant came running out of his little hovel carrying some metal thing. I thought it was a bomb. I trained my gun on him and was about to blow his head off—there were saboteurs everywhere, even on the southern side—when I saw that he was carrying a pot. It was hot soup. I nearly killed the son of a bitch.” His eyes were fogged and distant. “Anyway, that night, in my dream, I could even hear the choppers that ferried in those MREs to us out in the field, or carried the officers back to base camp.” His left hand made a little cutting motion into his right palm. “Chop. Chop. Chop.”

  The hand continued cutting, but Prescott was silent, still far away. Finally, he snapped back from wherever he’d been.

  “Anyway, when I woke up, I saw that the window in my room was open, the one facing back to the woods. The cold air was streaming in. The helicopter sounds were the snapping of the curtains. How the hell did that get open? I wondered, and I wrapped a blanket around me and got up to close it. I wasn’t three feet away when I saw the eyes.”

  He stopped.

  “Chase,” Nat said.

  “Yes. Chase. Standing behind the curtains.”

  “So, he’d opened the window.”

  Prescott dropped his gaze.

  Nat could put the rest together easily enough. So that he could push you out, dear old Dad, when you got close enough.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He said, ‘Who are you in my father’s body?’ Chilling, I can tell you. Not just because of what he said, but because it was an echo of William’s words. The two boys had never sounded that much alike, but just then—”

  Prescott gave a visible shudder.

  “Chase was . . . stronger than William. A hellion to be honest. Drove a motorcycle that sounded like the coming of the Antichrist when he drove up the street. He raised Rottweilers in a little shed out back from our house. Now, we are not the kind of people who raise Rottweilers, Dr. Thayer. Setters, maybe, or Irish wolfhounds from a good northeastern breeder. But Chase was different. We butted heads, I can tell you. But that boy had grit! He was battling whatever was happening to him, and hard, too.”

  They were far beyond any diagnoses now, Nat thought, deep into Prescott’s grief-dimmed conception of psychiatry and madness. You don’t “battle” chemical imbalances or genetic tendencies.

  “Do you understand, Dr. Thayer? William let it take him over, but Chase fought.”

  “And then he went to Williamstown?”

  Prescott winced. “Yes. He said he was going to visit a friend. I didn’t know of any friends he had there. I don’t know what drove him at the end. I didn’t recognize my son. The”—Prescott’s eyes locked on Nat’s—“illness had taken him.” The ghastly smile returned.

  “You don’t think it was an illness, do you, Mr. Prescott?”

  The eyes bore into Nat’s. “No, I do not. I think it was something much more insidious, Dr. Thayer. Much, um, older.”

  “Like what?”

  Prescott looked away. “I couldn’t say.”

  Nat stood up and felt his back muscles ache. He hadn’t realized they’d tensed up until now. The wind seemed to attack the windowpane, and it rattled in its mortar.

  “And now you believe your daughter is suffering from the same condition?”

  “Yes. But with one difference.” Prescott leaned forward. “It . . . can’t . . . have . . . Becca.”

  Prescott sat there, leaning over in his chair. He seemed to be transfixed again. His sick old eyes focused on the eggshell-blue paint of the office, and his lips moved slightly, though he said nothing.

  “Mr. Prescott?” Nat said. “Mr. Prescott.”

  The old man started, his hand rising as if he were grasping at the lip of a cliff’s edge to pull himself up.

  “You need to bring Becca to Mass Memorial,” Nat said, enunciating clearly to cut through the man’s mental fog. “I have visiting hours there. I’ll speak with her, and we can get her the treatment she needs.”

  “No!” Prescott yelled, startling Nat. His voice boomed down the hallway, and Nat heard the echo from the big stone room outside. No, no, noooooooooo.

  Prescott breathed heavily, and his throat worked. “If I let her out of my sight, the same thing will happen to her. Don’t you understand that? I won’t let her leave the house.”

  Nat felt the time for gentleness had gone.

  “Your sons committed suicide because they went untreated. If you want her to get better—”

  “I’ve taken precautions, Dr. Thayer. Very careful precautions.”

  Nat
stared at the man. He had a vision of a young girl strapped to some kind of medieval halter, up in the attic, being fed slop from her father’s unsteady hand. In his present condition, Prescott seemed capable of almost anything.

  “I hope you’re not telling me that you’re restraining her in any way. If you are—”

  “I do what I please in my—”

  “If you are,” Nat said, bearing down on the last word, “this becomes a police matter. Do you understand me?”

  The old man stared at Nat like a stubborn child. Nat stared back. Finally, Prescott nodded.

  “What do you want me to do for you and your daughter?” said Nat.

  “Come and see her. Speak to her. Find out what has taken hold of her mind. Before it’s too late.”

  Prescott was more cunning than he let on, Nat thought. Now that he’d hinted that Becca was locked up, Nat had to make sure the girl was okay.

  “Today’s, what, Thursday?” Nat said with a sigh. “Will you be home tomorrow?”

  Prescott stood up. “If I’m alive tomorrow, Dr. Thayer, I will be waiting for you at 96 Endicott Street.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Nat watched Prescott leave on the little TV screen. The old man stepped outside, pulled on his hat, and stared at the woods for a full twenty seconds before starting away left and out of frame. He was heading to Endicott Street on the other side of the Raitliff Woods, the area known as the Shan. Short for Shantytown, a leftover from the waves of Irish immigration in the 1800s. Ancient history—there were some beautiful houses there now.

  Nat glanced at the clock: 10:50 p.m. Just ten minutes to go.

  Prescott’s story had unnerved him, he admitted to himself. Slightly. As a psychiatrist, he’d lost count of the competing symptoms Prescott’s children—and their father—were presenting. But his son Chase was clearly psychotic at the end. There was no doubt about that.

  Nat remembered the murders two years before, the black-and-white photo of the bloodstained sidewalk on the front page of the Northam News. He even vaguely recalled the school photo of Chase that had accompanied the article. He had his face tilted back, like Marlon Brando in some ’50s motorcycle movie, with a thick, muscular neck the width of his head, a drift of dirty-blond hair over his face, a wash of stubble over a heavy jaw. Physically, he looked like any of the linemen Nat had shared the halls with at Northam High.