by Mark Lukens
“Zach,” Alicia said.
I looked back at the camera.
“Have you ever hurt Michelle?”
“God, no! Why would you ask me something like that?”
“Do you know where Michelle is?”
I shook my head no. “Someone took her.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“We went to a restaurant last Friday night. We went inside. I went with the hostess to our table while Michelle went to the restroom. But she never came back. I looked for her, but she was gone. An old lady said she saw Michelle leaving the restaurant with a man.”
On the video I was definitely distraught by what I was saying. My eyes drifted to the kitten crawling around inside the cage, rustling the newspaper inside. Why was that cat there?
“Zach, do you see that kitten on the counter?”
My video self glanced at the counter and nodded. “Yeah. It’s a cute kitten.”
“I’d like you to place that cage inside the oven.”
My heart leaped as I watched myself pick up the cage and carry it over to the oven. I opened the oven door and took out one of the grates, moving the other one all the way to the bottom so I could fit the cage inside. Then I gently set the cage in the oven.
“You’re doing great,” Alicia said on the video.
I couldn’t see her on the laptop screen because Stan had zoomed in on me setting the cage in the oven. But I could hear that Alicia’s voice was trembling. It seemed like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, like she’d caught a glimpse of something she never believed could have existed, some mythical creature.
“Please shut the oven door, Zach.”
I did.
“Zach,” Alicia asked from the kitchen archway that led into the dining room. “Do you remember going across the street to the empty house?”
I shook my head no.
“Do you remember sending emails? Series of numbers?”
I frowned on the video, Stan zooming in on me. I shook my head, looking confused.
“Zach, I want you to turn the oven on,” Alicia said on the video. “Three hundred and fifty degrees.”
“I can’t watch this,” I whispered, looking up from the laptop at Alicia. “What the hell did you make me do?”
“It’s okay,” Alicia said, nodding toward the laptop in front of me.
I looked back at the screen, watching myself set the oven, the oven beeping when it was set.
“Okay, Zach,” Alicia said on the video. “You’re doing great. But I’ve changed my mind. I need you to turn off the oven and take the kitten back out. I want you to set the cage back on the countertop, right where it was before.”
I followed orders without question.
“Let’s go back into the living room and sit back down,” Alicia said.
The camera followed us as we went back to the living room. I sat down on the recliner again, hunched forward, almost mimicking Alicia’s posture.
“I want you to close your eyes and relax,” Alicia said. “You’re in the pool again, floating on the raft.”
I sat back and closed my eyes, breathing deeply.
“You’re safe, and you’re going to slowly wake up now. I’m going to count from one to ten, and when I get to ten and snap my fingers, you’ll come fully awake and conscious. Is all of that clear, Zach?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Alicia said and looked at Stan.
Stan came over and stopped the laptop before she started counting again, freezing the video.
I got to my feet and backed away from the coffee table, staring at Alicia. “How is that possible?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“How is that possible?” I asked again.
“You’re a highly suggestible person under hypnosis,” Alicia answered.
“You had me put a cat in my oven,” I spat out. “Why did you make me do that?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Where did you get a cat? You brought it here to do this?”
“It’s my friend’s kitten. Her cat just had kittens.”
“Where was the kitten before? I didn’t see you bring it in.”
“I left it in my car,” Alicia said. “I left the car running with the air-conditioner on. Stan went out and grabbed it right after we started our session. We shut the camera off while he got the cat.”
I didn’t say anything; I was still stunned by what I’d just seen myself do on film.
“I know it seems cruel,” Alicia said, “but the kitten was never in danger. I would have brought you out of hypnosis if you failed to follow my instructions or deviated from them.”
I swore I saw nervousness in her eyes, and doubt. I also sensed relief from her, like she had nearly averted a disaster.
“I needed to see if you would do something under hypnosis that you would never do while conscious.”
“It’s sick,” I muttered.
“You wouldn’t put a cat in the oven normally, would you?”
“Of course not. What kind of question is that? Why didn’t you use a rat or a Guinea pig or something? Isn’t that what scientists normally use for experiments?”
“Because, to some people, killing a rat is no big deal; it’s like killing a cockroach to them. But a cat is usually different. Most people wouldn’t harm a cat or a dog, especially not a kitten or a puppy.”
“Except for a psychopath,” I said. “A serial killer or something.” I let out a trembling breath. “Oh God, what am I? Is that what I am? Some kind of psycho?”
“No,” Alicia said. “Please, just sit down and try to relax.”
I felt the pull of her words, of her voice. I wanted to pace around my living room, but I sat back down in the recliner, suddenly unsure if it had been my own decision or if it had been a suggestion from Alicia that I had no choice but to follow.
“It doesn’t mean you’re a psychopath; it just means that you’re highly suggestible under hypnosis,” Alicia said.
“So somebody can hypnotize me and make me do anything they want? If somebody told me to jump off a bridge, I would do that?”
“Would you?” Alicia asked.
I sighed in frustration. It felt like she was playing games with me. “No. I mean, I don’t know now.” Dread crept through me just then. Nothing seemed real anymore. I felt like everything I’d been told had been a lie, and now I was finally awake, truly awake.
“No,” Alicia said. “Stan could tell you to jump off a bridge right now and most likely you wouldn’t do it.”
“Most likely?”
She shrugged. “You can’t predict what a person is going to do one hundred percent of the time. You don’t want to kill yourself by jumping off a bridge, do you?”
“No.”
“Then I believe you wouldn’t jump off a bridge.” She sighed, suddenly exasperated, but maybe full of pent-up excitement or nervousness, or both. “Maybe a better example is something like cutting your finger open. If Stan told you right now to get a knife and cut your finger wide open, do you think you would jump up and do it without question?”
I had to really think about it for a moment.
“What would you do if he told you to do that right now?”
“I would probably ask him why he wanted me to do that.”
“Good. Because you are in control of your actions while you’re in a conscious state.”
“I wouldn’t tell you to do that, by the way,” Stan said.
“Again, the same question,” Alicia said, still looking at me. “What would you do if I told you to go get a knife and cut your finger wide open, or cut your finger off?”
“I’d say the same thing, wondering why you wanted me to hurt myself. But if I was hypnotized, would I do it then?”
Alicia didn’t say anything.
“Alicia?”
“Yes,” she said, frowning a bit. “Based on what I’ve seen while you’re under hypnosis, I feel it’s possible you could hurt yourself.”
&
nbsp; “Or hurt someone else,” I said. “Like Michelle.”
“You couldn’t have done anything to her,” Stan said. “Remember? You went to the restaurant with her. You were there with her and then she left. You remember all of that.”
Suddenly I didn’t trust my memories so much. I shook my head, looking down at my hands. “I can’t even believe this is really happening.”
“There are others like you,” Alicia said. “It’s rare, but there are others out there.”
“You’ve seen them before?”
“Not personally, but . . .” Her words trailed off, and she looked at Stan. “Could I borrow your laptop?”
“Sure,” he said, sliding it across the coffee table to her.
She went to work on the keyboard, typing something.
“What are you looking up?” I asked.
“Something to help you understand this better. There was a psychiatrist named Carl Westbrook who specialized in this kind of thing. He did some groundbreaking experiments years ago. He’s not a household name like Freud or Jung, but in my world he was a legend.”
“Was?”
“He died a few years ago under mysterious circumstances.”
“What kind of circumstances?”
She didn’t answer. She got up and gestured down at the laptop. “All you need to do is hit PLAY.”
I got up and went over to the couch, sitting down in front of the laptop on the coffee table. Frozen on the screen was a young girl sitting in a plush leather chair that almost looked like a dentist’s chair. A tall, lean man was seated in a foldable metal chair right next to her. He wore a white lab coat over his clothes.
“This is a video of one of Dr. Westbrook’s patients. He had done some research on a patient called Girl M, which he documented in his most famous book.”
“Girl M?”
“M was the initial for her name, to protect her identity.”
I looked down at the frozen video again. Under it was the title: The case of Girl P. “This one says Girl P.”
“Yes, Girl M wasn’t ever videotaped; at least there is none that we know of. But this video of Girl P has survived, and this experiment is similar to the experiments that he did with Girl M.”
“What kind of experiments?” I asked, my skin crawling just a bit. Alicia had commanded me to put a kitten in the oven—I could only imagine what this doctor was going to make this little girl do.
“It’s better if you just watch it first,” Alicia said.
I hit play and watched the screen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The video was a little grainy and jumpy, like someone was filming with a handheld camera.
The experiment with Girl P seemed to take place in some kind of doctor’s office or research center. Girl P seemed to be about eight or nine years old. She wore a colorful shirt, blue jeans with patches on the knees, and white sneakers. She had blond hair and light skin. Her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful, almost like she was sleeping. But I knew she wasn’t.
The man next to her, who I assumed was Dr. Westbrook, had a clipboard on his lap as he watched the girl. He spoke softly to her, but there was still the tone of authority in his voice—there was no mistaking that. It was the same barely perceptible tone I’d heard in Alicia’s voice.
“Hello, Girl P,” Dr. Westbrook said to the girl.
“Hello, doctor.”
“I’m going to put you in a deeper trance now.”
The girl nodded slightly.
“You’re going to feel fine,” the doctor said. “Nothing bad will happen to you. Everything we do will be good—nothing we do will be bad. You believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes, doctor,” the girl answered.
“Good. You’re doing so well.”
The girl didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to begin counting down backwards from ten, and you will fall into a deeper state of relaxation. And when I get to one, I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. Is that okay?”
The girl nodded. “Yes, doctor.”
“Good,” he purred in his soft voice; it was so low and even, so calm and reassuring.
He counted down from ten to one on the film. I swore I could feel the pull of those numbers, the pull into that place I’d just been, floating on the raft in the pool, but I resisted, concentrating on the bottom corner of the screen where a time and date code were.
“You are now totally relaxed, in a safe place where nothing is wrong,” the doctor told the girl. “Everything is okay.”
Girl P nodded.
The doctor leaned over and picked up a small hand ax from the floor near his chair. The camera zoomed in on the weapon for a few seconds. I could tell the ax was real, and that it was very sharp. “Take the ax,” he said in a soothing voice.
The girl took the ax. It looked like it was a little heavy for her, but she held onto it. She sat up straighter in the chair, her eyes open.
“Your mother is lying down in a room down the hall, the first room on your right. She’s asleep.”
Girl P nodded.
“I want you to walk down the hall, go into her room, and then chop this ax down into her head. I want you to do it over and over again until you’re sure she’s dead. You can do that, can’t you?”
The girl nodded. She got up out of the chair with the ax in her hand, walking toward the door.
I paused the video, my stomach churning. I looked at Alicia. “What the hell is this? I’m not watching this.”
“Please,” Alicia said. “It will help you understand.”
“Does she actually do this? I mean, he stops her before she does it, right? Like you stopped me.”
Alicia didn't answer me. She just nodded down at the laptop.
I could feel Stan hovering somewhere near me, it felt like he was watching the video too, waiting to see what happened. I hit Play again. I tried to be rational—the doctor wasn’t going to let Girl P follow through with this.
I was wrong.
I watched as another camera from inside the mother’s room picked up the footage. The room was large and only some lights above the counters on the other side of the room were on, leaving the room in near-darkness, but the footage seemed to be filmed in some kind of night vision, aiding the bit of light there was.
A woman lay on what looked like a stretcher. She was on her back with a white sheet pulled up to her chin, just her head visible, her face placid, her eyes closed, her dark hair spilling over her pillow.
Girl P didn’t hesitate—she walked right up to her mother and lifted the ax up and swung it down as hard as she could right into the middle of the woman’s face.
I jumped back a little, expecting to see a fountain of blood erupt from the woman’s face. “Holy shit,” I breathed out, my wind gone for just a moment.
“It was just a dummy,” Alicia said quickly. “That wasn’t really her mother.”
I looked at Alicia.
“Dr. Westbrook explains everything in just a moment.”
I looked back at the video. The girl struck the dummy’s head several more times with the ax; there were no grunts of effort, no emotion on her face. When she was done, she took the ax with her and left the room, walking back down the hall to the room where Dr. Westbrook was waiting for her. The footage picked up from the handheld camera again, whoever was filming tracked the girl as she walked back to the plush leather chair and sat down.
“Good,” Dr. Westbrook purred. “You did very well.”
Girl P did not respond.
Dr. Westbrook walked towards the camera. He had a sly smile on his face. The camera followed him out into the hall and then to the first room on the right. He flipped on the overhead lights. The camera zoomed in on the woman’s head on the gurney, the flesh created from some kind of gelatin that mimicked human flesh. Alicia was right—it was just a dummy, just a mannequin.
The camera zoomed in on the doctor. “It is proven,” he said. “Under the right hypnotic state, and with certa
in triggers put in place, a person can be made to do anything. True mind control.”
The doctor left the room, walking back down the hall to Girl P. The camera followed him.
“Do you mind?” Alicia asked, swooping in beside me.
I picked up that faint scent of flowers and soap again, and I scooted away so she could sit down in front of the laptop. I got the feeling she didn’t want me listening to him counting down and bringing Girl P back to consciousness. She closed the video.
I sat there, stunned. All three of us were quiet.
“It was just a dummy,” I said, looking at Alicia. “It wasn’t really her mother, but to that girl it was really her mother. That doctor told her to kill her own mother, and as far as she was concerned, she did it.”
Alicia nodded. “Yes. That was the experiment. To prove that there are certain people who can be coerced into doing things they would never do while conscious.”
“And I’m like her.”
She shook her head, obviously frustrated. “Maybe. In some ways. But the truth is I don’t know. I’ve never worked with someone like you.”
“Someone who is so suggestible?”
“I guess. But it seems like it’s more than that.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like you’ve kind of been programmed.”
“Like the Manchurian Candidate,” Stan said.
I turned and looked at him.
“You ever see that movie?” he asked.
I shook my head no. I was pretty sure he had asked me that several times before through the years.
“It was a movie with Frank Sinatra in it,” Stan said, getting excited. “They did a remake with Denzel Washington. It’s about these American soldiers in a war, the Korean War I think, and they’re captured by the enemy, but they’re taken to Manchuria where they are brainwashed by Chinese scientists. And maybe there were Russians involved too. I can’t remember.”
“Brainwashed them to do what?” I asked, but I felt like I already knew the answer.