The Book Doctor: A Psychological Thriller

by Britney King

  “I—”

  “Don’t. Remember? You promised.”

  He’s right. I did promise.

  That’s how this started.

  “You finish it,” I say.

  “That would negate the purpose of all of this—of me shooting you in the knee—of me wasting my precious time trying to help your ass out of a very big jam.” He shakes his head. “And look at the thanks I get.” That smile of his, the one that has undoubtedly always gotten him what he wants, he flashes it. “You really wouldn’t want this to have all been for nothing, would you?”

  I type a few words out just to see what comes to mind. This is not how it ends.

  “You see, George. This is good.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Now you’re learning to finish what you start.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Flames lick my skin. Metaphorical flames at first and then real ones. Meanwhile, I type and I type and I type. Liam tells me he wants to see what it’s like to watch a person burn to death. Slowly, apparently.

  “That’s an okay start,” he says, glancing over my shoulder at my screen. “Now, keep going.”

  Nothing will satisfy him, I realize. I can only keep going, trying to cross some invisible finish line. He lights match after match, putting it out on my skin. At the same time, he asks absurd questions. I answer them in hopes that it will buy me some time. In hopes that it will save Eve.

  Another match lit, another flame put out. This time behind my ear. I have no leverage here, hardly a shot at seeing daylight. It strikes me as odd that all of my sunrises are now behind me. All that’s left are my words and the answers he demands.

  Liam is careful with the matches. One wrong move and the room goes up in flames. Empty lighter fluid bottles are littered across the floor. “How many ribs are in a human body?”

  I type a sentence and delete. Nothing seems right when you know the words are going to be your last. “Twenty-four.”

  “How many joints?”

  “In the body?”

  He slaps the back of my head. “You can’t answer a question with a question.” Striking another match, he says, “Of course in the body.” He puts it out, this time on my inner ear. The sound of my own skin sizzling makes my stomach turn. “Don’t fuck with me. Answer the question.”

  “Two hundred and thirty.”

  Liam exhales loudly. “How much skin does a person shed in their lifetime?”

  “Roughly forty pounds.”

  “Roughly forty pounds,” he mocks in a sing-song voice.

  I watch as he crosses the room. He sinks down on the couch. I wonder how long this can go on. How many questions can he have?

  He rests his head back and stares up at the ceiling. “How many gallons of blood flow through your kidneys in a day?”

  “About four hundred.”

  His face reddens and then he looks over at me. “How the fuck do you know all of this? You were a lit major.”

  “I read a lot.”

  “Fine,” he says, repositioning himself on the sofa. “What was the name of the serial killer who dressed up as a clown and worked charity events?”

  “John Wayne Gacy.”

  “Goddamn it.” He slaps his leg. After taking a deep breath in, he slowly exhales. “The St. Valentine's Day Massacre is associated with which famous criminal?”

  My patience is wearing thin. “What is this? Trivia night?”

  Apparently his, too. He practically flies off the couch and rushes me, grabbing the gun from his waistband in the process. He presses it to my temple. “Is that your final answer?”

  “Al Capone,” I cough. Rolling my eyes, I add, “Allegedly. Technically, it remains an unsolved crime.”

  He thinks for a moment, chewing at his bottom lip. “Who was the most prolific known serial killer in United States history?”

  I know the answer, of course. But I’m over his games. I draw it out a little, stammering as I reply, “Samuel Little or Harold Shipman. Authorities aren’t sure of actual victim counts.”

  “This makes no sense.” His face twists into a perplexed frown. “No one ever gets these.”

  “Not no one,” I say, eyeing the door as I consider making a break for it. I’d lose, but almost anything would be better than this. Even a bullet. Even my skin melting off.

  “Killer H.H. Holmes had a house in Chicago that eventually bore what nickname?”

  “Murder Castle.”

  He closes his eyes, and by the time he opens them, he doesn’t look like himself. He looks like another person. He morphs before my eyes in the way that I’ve seen Eve do during one of her manic phases. “Fuck!”

  I watch as he paces the office. He takes the manuscript I printed and lights page after page on fire. I look on as my last words disappear before my eyes. Every few steps he stops and looks over at me, hopeful. “What’s the name of the serial killer who claimed that a demonic dog commanded him to commit murder?”

  “David Berkowitz.”

  This time his face isn’t angry. He cocks his head. He’s curious. “What kind of dog?”

  “A Labrador Retriever.”

  The questions, they keep coming. I answer them all. With each question, he grows more and more frustrated. He can’t kill me until I get one wrong. Something about it going against his principles, he says. I realize that I am going to burn to death before he puts a bullet in my head. So finally, I put the nail in the coffin. “I slept with your girlfriend.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It burns. It burns and it burns and it burns. Forcing my eyes open, it’s evident the flames have grown since the last time. In and out of consciousness I mingle, going back and forth, grasping at life, welcoming death. I hear sirens, so many sirens. I think of Eve and I wonder if I’ll see her in heaven.

  I don’t think I will.

  If there is such a thing, I don’t think that’s where I’m going.

  I feel lucky that we’ve had these years together. Lucky that we met in the first place. It’s a great big world, and yet, somehow by mere chance, the two of us were thrust together. What are the odds of that, being in the same place at the same time on any given day, falling in love, and spending your life with a person?

  Maybe it’s the closer I get to death and the further I get from life, but suddenly it all feels like a dream. As though my mind has been sucked into a time machine. A vortex of thought, seemingly related and unrelated, I am like a clock winding down.

  It’s early, and I see her there in the library, her nose scrunched up, her finger entangled in a loose strand of hair. She twirls and unfurls the same piece of hair over and over for hours. After a while she looks up at me and smiles. She must have felt me watching her. I smile back and she offers a little wave. I go over to her and I say, “I have a story to tell you.”

  Her face is eager as she leans across the table and pulls out a chair. I sit down and she says, “Tell me everything. I want to hear it all.”

  So I tell her the story of us. As I speak, she inches closer, propping her elbow on the table, resting her head in the palm of her hand. I see the whole world in her eyes, and I know that’s where the future is.

  After I get through the beginning and the heavy middle, finally I come to the end. I tell her I’m sorry. I tell her that if she were to ask the people who knew us, they would say we lived a full life. We loved. We went through it. They’d say we weren’t perfect, but man, we were something.

  She looks at me all funny-like when I thank her. She laughs in that shy way she used to before the end, before the heavy middle, back before things got rough. She says, “You’re crazy.”

  I tell her she’s wrong.

  “Why would I agree to dinner with you?” she asks. “Let alone fall in love?”

  I tell her that since I can see the future, that she has no choice.

  “What’s in the future?”

  She wants to know, so I tell her. I say, “You made me feel safe. Safe enough to be who I wanted to be.”

 
; I say, “Your love gave me such a platform to go and make an impact on the world.”

  I tell her our marriage gave me the energy to go out there and do the things I wanted to do.

  I say, “I made a bigger impact on the world because of the energy your love gave me.”

  “So you want to be famous,” she says. “That’s what this is all about?”

  “No,” I tell her. “I just don’t want to be obscure.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I want my life to have meant something.”

  “Well,” she says finally. “Did it?”

  “Yes.” I reach for her hand. I expect her to pull away, but she doesn’t. “You made me feel like I wasn’t alone in the world. And I don’t just mean because we had each other. I mean because you saw me. You got me.”

  “Anybody could do that.”

  “No,” I say. “They can’t. There’s a certain existential loneliness in life. Your ability to see me made me feel less alone in the world.”

  “This is getting sappy,” she says.

  “But we’re going to die,” I tell her. “So what does it matter?”

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “We don’t have a choice. We invited him in, and this is what happens when you aren’t careful.”

  Just then, Liam barges through the door. It doesn’t make any sense, because he isn’t supposed to be there in that library. He belongs in the future.

  “Time means nothing,” he says. He sticks the gun to my head and he pulls the trigger.

  “George,” Eve calls out. “Oh God, George.” She clasps one hand over her mouth, her words muffled, filtered as they come out. “Oh God, what have you done?”

  It’s him, I try to say, but can’t because most of my face is blown off. He does bad things. I need her to understand, but I don’t think she ever does.

  She opens her mouth to speak but all that comes out are screams.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I don’t remember being pulled from the fire. The last thing I recall was Liam putting the gun to my chin and firing. And Eve’s face. I remember that. I recall hearing the sirens. God, there were a lot of sirens.

  Maybe there was Joni’s voice. I hear she’s the one who found us. My memory of the events of those early morning hours is questionable. My memory of most things is hazy.

  There’s a lot of white in this place. It’s like a hospital, but different. Austin Lakes Hospital, they call it. All dressed up, it sounds fancy. Like a spa. Believe me, it isn’t.

  The doctor comes in to see me. There are a lot of doctors here, but not like the kind in a real hospital. They don’t fix you. They only want to talk. This guy is new; I haven’t seen him before. At least I don’t think.

  He sits across from me and studies me intently. He crosses and uncrosses his legs. He watches the door, like he’s running down the clock. When he does speak to me, it’s pointless. I can’t speak back.

  But then, I suppose a lot of his patients are that way.

  What I can do is chicken peck at keys, when I’m allowed, but even that is iffy. I have burns over seventy percent of my body, my fingers and hands included.

  “Shall we get started?”

  I would laugh if I had the part of my face required to do so. Him with his formalities. Him with his fancy pen. I don’t like the look of him. I don’t like the look of any of them. It’s a problem that can be remedied, unlike the rest of them. He probably won’t come around again.

  He introduces himself by name. I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, but he looks like Liam. Same hair. Same funny clothes. I don’t want to see Liam in this place.

  He’s everywhere.

  Suddenly, I hear Eve’s voice. So he’s like a book doctor, then?

  I don’t think it’s supposed to make me sad, but it does.

  The doctor goes through the usual spiel, saying the same thing they always say. Eventually, he hands me a tablet so that I can type my answers. It says a lot about him, that he bothers to go through the motions. As though he’s changed his mind. He’s hopeful.

  He’s determined that there will be answers.

  He is wrong.

  For a long time, they have tried. They keep asking me questions.

  I have nothing to say.

  Supposedly, Eve has told them enough.

  “You have killed people, George,” he remarks solemnly. “Can you tell me what that’s like?”

  My fingers twitch involuntarily. This question is one no one has asked. Maybe this is why I’m inclined to answer.

  I type out, Liam. They always get this part wrong, and then I can’t talk to them anymore.

  “You killed Liam?”

  I tap the question mark key. I don’t know if I killed Liam. I don’t think I did. But then, a lot of what I once thought was true is now up for grabs.

  “You’re a writer.”

  Was.

  “Maybe you could write your story.”

  No.

  “Maybe Liam could write it then?”

  I don’t know what Liam can do. He’s capable of anything. I don’t write this. He won’t understand. They never do.

  Instead, I only type one more word. But it’s enough. Eve.

  “You want me to tell you about Eve?” he asks.

  Yes. I wasn’t expecting him to say that. I know enough but they never tell me anything new.

  “Eve is in another facility across town.”

  He means another hospital, but they never say this. Eve is in the state hospital. I hear it’s worse than this one.

  She’s sick and she hates people, I type out. This is the worst thing that could happen.

  “It’s not the worst, though, is it?”

  I don’t know what he means.

  “You murdered a lot of people over many years, George.”

  No matter how many times I tell them it was Liam, they never listen. Sometimes he visits me here, but they say I’m lying about that too.

  “Has anyone ever explained dissociative identity disorder to you, Mr. Dawson?”

  They have, of course. There’s no point in wasting my energy typing that out, so I just stare at him. Even a nod would be too much to manage.

  “Dissociative identity disorder, previously called multiple personality disorder, is usually a reaction to trauma, as a way to help a person avoid bad memories. It is generally characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality identities. Each may have a unique name, personal history, and characteristics.”

  I know this. The treatment is talk therapy, which is why I’m sitting here.

  “You held your wife against her will for years.”

  I don’t know why he is saying any of this.

  Maybe I am dreaming. Maybe I am dead.

  Eve is sick, I summon the energy to type this out.

  “I can’t speak to Eve’s health. I’m here to talk about yours.”

  He shifts in his chair. I hope the clock has run out. I have a good book that needs getting back to. “I’d like to study you, George. Maybe your story could help other people.”

  Where is Liam? Is he dead?

  “You tell me.”

  I don’t know.

  “You’re a very successful storyteller, Mr. Dawson. You also committed horrific crimes. I would like to learn about them.”

  It was Liam. He framed me.

  “No, George. You are Liam.”

  They all say this. But Liam is young and…different. It doesn’t make any sense. It probably doesn’t even matter.

  I want to see my wife.

  “I have an idea. Why don’t you write to her instead? I’ll talk to her doctors, and if it makes sense, maybe you can exchange letters.”

  Even though he is lying, I write. I write and I write and I write. It takes a very long time, but once my fingers start, they don’t stop. No matter how long it takes, I have to tell Eve the story. I need her to know that I’m sorry I couldn’t read her the rest of it. I’m sorry I c
ouldn’t finish. I tell her why. Because I never wanted it to end.

  Much to my amazement, the doctor does come back. He brings me books. Interesting books. Novels I’ve read, but many I haven’t. He says he’s come to help me finish my story. But then, that’s what they all say.

  He reads my words to Eve.

  One day, he says. “Is that what you fear, George? Death? Losing everything? Is that why you created Liam?”

  I did not create Liam. He just is.

  “Nothing really ends though, does it?” the doctor says.

  I don’t know. When you rule things out you limit your focus.

  “I’ve heard that somewhere before. Maybe in one of your books.”

  Probably.

  “Eve says you were seeing another woman. That you saw lots of women. But that you always killed them. She admits to helping you plan up your crimes. She thought it was for your books. Until she realized they were coming true.”

  Eve is sick.

  “Did this start after the death of your children? Trauma can have profound effects.”

  It started when I met Liam.

  “It can also be brought on by extreme stress. Were you under a lot of stress? You had to have been.”

  I don’t know.

  “You were about to go bankrupt and lose your home. Not only were you having financial problems, but you were struggling to care for your wife. Your publisher was about to take you to court…”

  Yes.

  “We believe you created Liam to help you compensate.”

  Trying to make a crazy person understand they’re crazy is a losing game. Believe me, I know.

  You can’t understand crazy, it just is. I don’t type this. It would be disrespectful to his profession. And he holds the keys to a lot of things. My connection to Eve and my reading material being a couple of important ones. Instead I write, we want to assign motives to things but we can’t. What we would do in any given situation is not necessarily what someone else would do. Especially not a crazy person.

  “So what you’re saying, George, is you’re not meant to be understood.”