“One-fifty. How long you think he’ll be in there for?”
“He went in at one-fifteen. Assuming the doctor sees him right away, since he was fifteen minutes late, he’ll probably be out a little after two. Shrink sessions usually run forty-five minutes, give or take. Depends on how well things go, I suppose.”
“Well, my guess is that he’ll be in there for a while, especially after whatever went down at his place this morning.”
Leonard nodded. “You could be right there. Whatever it is, he’s fessing up to it right now.”
“So what do we do after he comes out? Doctor ain’t gonna breach the patient’s privilege of confidentiality.”
“Not unless we obtain a warrant. But we can do that later.”
“So then what’s our next move?” Kevin crunched his sandwich wrapper into a ball and put it into the white paper bag it came in.
“That all depends.”
“On what?”
Leonard pulled the cell phone from his belt, dialed information and got the number for Dr Marcus Delaney, Main Street, Fairview. He punched in the number. A receptionist answered.
“Dr Delaney’s office.”
“Yes, this is Leonard Moldofsky of the Fairview Police Department. May I speak with Dr Delaney?”
“Is he expecting your call?”
“No. I have something I’d like to ask him.”
“Are you a client, sir?”
Leonard smiled, rolled his eyes. ”No, I’m not a client.” That earned him a grin from Kevin.
“I’m sorry sir, but Dr Delaney is with a client. Unless this is an emergency--”
“No, that’s all right. No emergency. Tell me, when will the doctor be available to speak?”
“Just a moment.” Leonard heard some papers being shuffled. “He will be free after his current appointment, around three or so. He has a half-hour break scheduled. He should be able to return your call at that time.”
“That would be fine.” Leonard left his cell-phone number and disconnected. “Looks as if Sparke will be in there for at least another hour. Delaney must’ve scheduled him for two sessions.”
“This Sparke’s a real basket case, huh?”
Leonard laughed. “Yeah. I told you, he’s not all he appears to be.”
“So it looks like we have some time to kill, then. What do we do?”
Leonard pondered the situation for a moment. “I think it’s safe to say that Sparke won’t be going anywhere for at least another hour. I’d like to continue tailing him, see where he heads next.”
“Sounds good. So...should we hit the Hospital?”
Leonard nodded. “And his girl’s place.”
Kevin took out the notepad he used to take information while at Richard’s condo. “Pamela Bergin. 338 Culver Place. Washington Building. Not too far from here.”
Leonard radioed in their location, then started the car. He placed the portable dome-light on the dash. The red and white beacon alerted a wave of oncoming traffic. As he pulled out, the cars in front stopped to let the sedan through, much to the impatience of a few horn-honkers further back. “Let’s check out the hospital first. If she’s not there, we’ll hit her apartment.”
Dreams
“The dream you had last night, Richard. Tell me about it.”
An odd feeling of depersonalization struck Richard at Delaney’s consent to discuss his more intimate fear, a free-floating anxiety that clouded his awareness, making everything seem as if he were experiencing the current session from beyond the confines of his own person. His head swam in eddies of dizziness, his body seeming to lift from the soft surface of the couch. He grasped the cushions, taking deep breaths in effort to control the mounting anticipation.
Delaney, cocking his head, appeared to notice Richard’s agitation. “Is everything all right?”
Richard, staring at the grease stain, defended his anxiety. “Yes, it is...for some reason the freedom to finally discuss last night’s dream has me all bundled up in nerves. I can’t explain it, it’s as if...as if something inside is trying to stop me from bringing it up with you.”
Truthfully, on the inside, Richard had been quite anxious to discuss the dreams again, yet externally, had kept himself patient until the doctor was altogether ready. On numerous instances Delaney had mentioned that rushing things along would defeat the purpose of therapy, that finding an answer and solution to Richard’s problems would be quite impossible if the proper steps hadn’t been taken. So, respectfully, he’d allowed the doctor to move along at his own, practiced pace. Today’s session had been no exception. First, the generalized discussions. Then the odd questioning. Here and now the time had come at last to talk of last night’s visions. Perhaps Richard’s surmounting fear had been in view of his conscience’s decision to not sit in on the session. Acting alone would be difficult, but he had to be strong.
“Try to relax,” Delaney said. “Take some deep breaths in through your nose, and release them from your mouth very slowly, as if your goal is to make a candle flicker.”
Richard followed Delaney’s lead.
“Are you relaxed?”
“Not really, but I’m okay.”
“Is it all right to begin?”
“Yes. Please. Go ahead.”
“Okay. Now, Richard. Did you have any visions again last night?”
He nodded. “The blue light, it’s been getting brighter. Last night it filled the room. Then my mother appeared, beside the bed. We spoke of the place she stays.”
“Do you know where this place is?”
“No.”
“Is this place heaven?”
Richard shook his head. “No, definitely not. It’s someplace else. Another world perhaps , but not heaven.”
“But your mother is dead.”
“Yes, she is--”
“Don’t dead people go to heaven?”
“I don’t know where they go. But she’s not in heaven, I’ve asked her. She’s in what she calls ‘another place’. A place I can visit. She also told me that Debra is there too.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No.”
“But you want to go there.”
“Very badly.”
Delaney nodded, as if in understanding of Richard’s desire. “What else did she say last night?”
“Nothing more than that, really. But something awful happened to her. I’d never seen anything like it before. The blue light, it...it moved. Actually, now that I think about it, it didn’t really move. It was as if there was a second blue light, a smaller one that suddenly appeared behind her. It grew, covered her entire body, tried to swallow her. She reached out to me--her face was in a terrible grimace. She was yelling, in pain, trying to get away from the light. But I was too scared to reach out to her. I pressed back against the bed and then all of a sudden these frightening hands came out of the blue light. They were milky white, with a terrible black glare around the wrists. They grabbed her, twisted her, and wrestled her back into the blue light. And then she, and the light, were gone.”
“What happened next?”
“I think that’s when I woke up. That was when I heard Pam’s voice, soon thereafter.”
“Is that when the whole incident with Pam began?”
He nodded. “I think so, yes.”
“What about Debra? Was she there last night?”
“No.”
“How about the man in black?”
“No, thankfully.”
Delaney paused to write some notes. “Anyone else? Perhaps someone new that hadn’t been there before?”
Richard scanned his memory, found nothing of significance. No images, no conscience. Nothing. “No, there was no one else.”
The room fell in silence, not a tick nor a voice nor a creak interrupting the thirty seconds of motionlessness between them. Eventually Delaney scribbled something down, then placed the pen into the crook of the notebook and set it on the coffee table. He stood up, crossed the room and sat
behind his desk. Opening the top left hand drawer, he pulled out another cassette tape. “It’s no mystery, Richard, that I’ve taken a good deal of interest in your case of late. The dreams, a likely side-effect of anxiety brought on by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, have had me quite intrigued.”
Richard straightened himself on the couch, placed one foot on the floor as a million questions rippled through his mind. Would he finally obtain some answers from the doctor? Or at the very least, an admission of curiosity, and perhaps concern? Was he about to receive his ticket to normalcy? A cure-all magic potion to exorcise the demons in his mind?
“I say this,” Delaney continued, replacing the tape in the recorder, pressing ‘record’, then sitting back down, “because of the recurring characters. Two of whom you know, that being Julia Sparke, your mother, and Debra Sparke, your child. Both of whom are deceased. And then there’s this rather fierce ‘twin-nemesis’ as I like to say, whom you claim is actually yourself in guise.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Hmm. So, correct me if I’m wrong. Outside of the random appearance of an old boss, or your girlfriend, these three characters, so to speak, are the only ones that remain constants in, shall we say, the landscape of your dreams?”
Richard nodded, understanding. “Yes, they’ve all been there since the beginning. Not always are all three present at the same exact time. For the most part they arrive periodically, either in individual dreams, or all at once in the same dream.”
“When you say periodically, how often do you mean?”
“Well, maybe I should’ve said ‘often’. All three show up at least once a week, and sometimes they’re there every night for a stretch of time, even for as much as a week.”
“Do you ever go entire nights when they don’t come at all?”
“Sure, but not very often. Maybe once or twice a week I’ll have a night of dreamless sleep.”
“So you’re saying that when none of these three characters show up in your dreams, you don’t dream at all?”
“That’s right. And on these nights there is never any sleepwalking.”
“Why do you say that?”
“On the nights that I dream, there is always something disrupted in the condo. Last night I dreamed of my mother. In the morning I found the phone off the hook in the living room. Also, a table and lamp had been toppled over. Three nights ago, when I dreamed of the man in black, I found the kitchen in disarray, the table and chairs knocked over, all the plastic tumblers spilled on the floor.”
“Do you ever wake up in the middle of a ‘sleepwalking’ episode and find yourself performing the odd activities that would cause the minor disarray you speak of?”
“You’ve asked me that before, and the answer is still no. I’ve never woken up anyplace else but in my bed.”
“So what makes you think you are actually sleepwalking, then?”
“Well...because...haven’t we discussed this all before, doc?”
Delaney nodded, pointing to the tape recorder.
“Oh...” Richard ran a hand through his hair, came down with a palm full of sweat. He wiped it on his jeans. “I can’t come up with any other explanation for the circumstances, really. I go to sleep, I have these intense dreams, and when I wake up the next morning I find things moved around the house. What else could it be then, really, other than sleepwalking?”
“I ask this because many people suffering from somnambulistic activities from time to time wake up out of bed, confused and disoriented.”
Richard shrugged his shoulders. “I wish I could say that’s the case. But it’s not. I never wake up anywhere but in my bed.”
“Do you ever dream of doing these things?”
“You mean dream about messing things up in the house?”
“Yes, and then finding them as you dreamed them. For example, you dream of taking all your clothes out of the closet and throwing them on the floor, and then you wake up and find your clothes on the floor.”
“I’ve done that, too.” Richard smiled. “Actually, no, I’ve never dreamed of the things I’ve done during sleepwalking, nothing that I can recall anyway. I’m always in bed, the dream visitors are always at the side or the front of the bed. Unless you’re the man in black, then you’re on the bed with me, trying to hurt me.”
Delaney paused, thumb and index finger massaging his brow. He seemed to be gathering some thoughts. “Have you ever noticed a physical connection between your dreams, and the nocturnal disarray in your home?”
Curious question, Richard thought. Suddenly, out of the blue, Richard’s conscience appeared. Yeah, I’m curious too. Now we’re getting somewhere!
Nice of you to show up. Where the hell have you been?
“What exactly do you mean?” he asked the doctor.
“Well, I find it interesting that your mother visits you, and you find the phone off the hook. Perhaps this could be associated with a desire to be in contact with her again? Surely your dreams allude to that. And then the table and lamp being knocked over--could this be symbolic of her death? A ‘lights out’ metaphor?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “And then, on a night when the man in black comes, and tries to hurt you, your kitchen is in utter disarray. It seems possible to me that this could be symbolic of you trying to defend yourself. What do you think?”
Sounds like a load of horse shit.
In partial agreement with his conscience, he said, “It sounds like a bit of a stretch, doc. Although, now that I think about it, things are usually a bit more messed up when the man in black comes.”
Delaney nodded. “Well, it is a theory, and theories always seem far-fetched until proven valid.”
“It certainly is an interesting idea, but one I’m not ready to buy into yet. I’m not too sure if it’d really stand up in court, if you get my drift.”
“I understand your skepticism, and by all means it’s natural to feel that way. But if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like for you to let me take you down an altogether different path, one we haven’t explored yet. It’s another theory, Richard. One that ties into the first. But let me tell you, right off the bat: it’s a long shot, and it might seem far-fetched, but it’s entirely possible, and truly exciting if proven correct--which in turn is in itself quite an even longer shot.”
The doctor paused, seemingly waiting for Richard’s approval to continue. Richard stared at the grease spot. What do you think?
I’m waiting with bated breath.
Richard nodded. “Please, go ahead.”
“Richard, the circumstances you’ve described are truly consistent with events that have dated back to the turn of the century, events that are still studied today, albeit on a less than consistent basis. Now I do not doubt the possibility or plausibility of the disarray in your home to be caused by somnambulism. Nor do I doubt the nocturnal reappearances of your departed family members to be produced by a hyperactive subconsciousness sparked through a potent case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. More than likely we shall be correct to assume these postulations correct.”
“Enough with the Freudian talk, doc. What are you driving at?”
Delaney grinned. “Over the weeks I’ve held myself back from bending the proverbial rules, so to speak, to explore assumptions beyond the code of medical professionalism. But I find the possibility of such an explanation to your woes to be utterly intriguing, and stimulating.”
“Doc, you’re leaping way over my head. What explanation are you talking about?”
“Are you familiar with the term ‘paranormal activity’?”
Richard felt his heart leap. His conscience ran circles around his head, hooting and hollering. Of course he’d considered the after-death appearances of Debra and his mother as ‘hauntings’, but never once expected Delaney to regard this as a possibility, and not once considered bringing the idea up, lest the doctor think he really flew the coop. So with the help of his conscience, Richard simply faulted their materializations as visi
ons triggered entirely through the workings of his mind. His sick mind. An entirely reasonable explanation.
So...perhaps he wasn’t sick at all?
“You mean ghosts and stuff?”
Delaney nodded. “Yes. More precisely, poltergeists.” Delaney leaned forward, pinning Richard with eagle-like eyes. “Let’s look at the details, in short. Dead relatives visit your dreams in the middle of the night. Resulting factors are objects being moved around on, as we can tell, their own volition. Again, I do not doubt your own deductions, or my very own initial ones, but I’d very much like to weigh the possibility of something paranormal taking place.”
Richard was silent. So was his conscience.
“All I need is your approval. And then we can begin immediately.”
“Begin what?”
“We begin to find out exactly what it is that’s going on with you, Richard.”
“How exactly do we do that?”
“We put you under hypnosis.”
Hospital
Fairview Hospital was located in an area easily accessible from any point within the village. Adjacent to the north side Hemmingway Park, Park Avenue ran like a vein directly to the hospital entrance, continuing on as it wrapped around three quarters of the brick structure then aimed away where a series of neighborhood streets branched off. The hospital sat on a hill, thin winding driveways leading up to its four parking lots. The largest of the four lots lay sprawled out in front, a circular driveway converging with five steps just outside the front doors, enabling patients and visitors to be easily dropped off or picked up.
Once in the main lot, Leonard drove towards a smaller lot at the side of the hospital. The full-leaved branches of a large elm seated at the curb swallowed up the sun’s golden beams, painting over the harsh reflection on the car’s shiny hood. He pulled into one of maybe ten empty parking spots reserved for those in need of emergency medical assistance. “We’ll only be here for a minute,” he said, looking at the parking signs. “Looks like a slow day anyway.” Upon finishing his sentence he realized that, subconsciously, he’d just assumed that Pamela Bergin wouldn’t be here, and they’d soon be on their way to her apartment. Another hunch.
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