Blood Trance

by R. D. Zimmerman

  “You don't know or you don't want to say?” I asked. “Which is it, Loretta?”

  She wouldn't budge, which I took to mean she didn't want to say. I'd pushed too hard, perhaps too fast, however, and I could see her pale face redden with anger. I'd asked too many questions, cornered her even, and it was obvious she was going to give me nothing further.

  Still, I nudged a little more, asking, “What about Carol Marie? How's she?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did you say she owns a store?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here or downtown or—”

  “Here, right here. At the mall.” She eyed me suspiciously. “Are you really Maddy's brother? You don't look that much alike, really. Her hair's short and straight. Yours is curly. And she has a ballerina's body, real long, not broad like yours.”

  “Well, I'm really her brother.” I added, “She's almost three years older than me and she's my only sister.”

  Loretta moved her head slightly to the side and eyed me with such great scrutiny and suspicion that I thought she was going to ask me to prove my sibling bond to Maddy.

  Instead, Loretta asked, “Are you a shrink, too?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that's good, because if you were, you wouldn't be a very good one.”

  I deflected the criticism, adopted her bluntness, and calmly laid it out for her, saying, “You wrote a letter to Maddy, which worried her a great deal because she cares for you. She knows you have a problem with Helen, and Maddy knows something's wrong in your family, that something happened, and she wants to help. She couldn't come to Chicago to see you in person, so that's why she sent me.” I paused, hoped this would work. “So what would you like me to do, stay here for a few more days, or leave and report to Maddy that there's nothing we can do?”

  A glimmer of a grin quivered across Loretta's lips. She gazed down at her right hand, traced a vein on the back of it with her left index finger. Then she started picking at her fingernail.

  “I was wrong to doubt you. I'm sorry. Just then, just the way you said all that, you sounded exactly like Maddy, like Dr. Phillips. Gentle but no monkey business. Very matter-of-fact, you know?”

  I didn't let up, pressing, “The choice is yours, Loretta. What should I do?”

  She lifted her glass to her mouth, took a long swallow of iced tea. Her eyes looked everywhere—grass, sky, tree, hand. And finally, directly at me.

  “Carol Marie's store is called CM Fashions. It's at the Glendale Mall. Go talk to her. Talk to Carol Marie and ask her about Billy. Ask her why Billy had to run away.”

  Chapter 12

  I left Loretta sitting in the yard. She said nothing further, just turned and stared off into a neighbor's yard, and so I got up and walked toward the house, empty glass in hand. As I approached the rambler I saw the back door, the one that led off the kitchen, swing open and there was Helen behind the dark screen, just the image of her. Tall, well-preserved, cropped gray hair, attractive. And dying, I was sure, to know what Loretta and I had talked about.

  I reached the patio, spotted the path that led around the house, and recognized my route of escape. I set the glass on a round metal table, then veered off to the right.

  “Thanks for the tea,” I called to Helen as I walked toward the rear of the garage.

  She stepped halfway out the door, one foot in, one foot out, hand still on the tiny knob—such a midwes-ternly pose, I thought—and called after me, “Is… is everything all right?”

  “I think so.”

  Not satisfied, she pressed. “If something were wrong, you'd tell me, wouldn't you? I know the children aren't that fond of me, but I promised their father I'd look after them, and I've done the best I could. And I do care what happens to them, I really do. So you'd tell me if there were anything I needed to know, wouldn't you?”

  “Sure.”

  It was the first hint of softness that I'd seen, and I wondered if I shouldn't just go in and talk with her. Part of me hesitated, though. Maybe we'd talk later, but not now, not yet.

  So I lifted my hand and said, “I'll be in touch.”

  I glanced back at Loretta, who was flat on her back on the grass and staring up at the sky. What was at issue between these two women? What kept Loretta leashed to a house inhabited by a stepmother she clearly didn't like?

  As I backed out of Loretta's driveway and made my way along the edge of the park, I gazed off into the thick woods. That was connected to Loretta's family somehow, all that business in the park last night. I knew that now; it hadn't been a random attack out there. No, I sensed it and was quite certain it all tied into whatever Loretta's family had done, whatever had happened, whatever they wouldn't tell me. I sensed that Helen had come slashing out of the night not simply in defense of the screaming Loretta but also to protect something else, which had to be that secret, the familial one.

  “Yes, that's quite possibly true,” called a voice with more perspective than I had. “Now I want you to shift a bit, move your thoughts elsewhere. I want you to think carefully: When you were driving then, as you were heading to the mall, did you notice if anyone was following you?”

  I had to be chased and my car slammed into only once; I wasn't eager for it to happen a second time. I wasn't that dumb, and I wasn't more than a house or two away from Loretta's that afternoon when I checked my rearview mirror the first time. I saw some car, a blue thing, way back there, and was relieved when it pulled into another driveway. No other vehicles appeared, but I kept my attention on the street behind. Too much attention, really, because I missed a stop sign at the first corner and nearly broadsided someone. I slammed on my brakes, skidded to a quick, short stop.

  “Watch it, jerkface!” shouted some young guy in a convertible.

  I waved my apologies, turned right, accelerated, and hurried on, relieved that no one was after me a second time.

  “What then?”

  The Glendale Mall, a huge, sprawling affair built in the middle of nowhere, was close to my motel, and I'd passed it earlier that morning. It was only a few miles, five at most, and I'd be there in ten, fifteen minutes. Then I'd look up Carol Marie, who I hoped would fill in some of the blanks. It all seemed simple.

  Once I reached that main road, I was no longer concerned with the idea of someone tailing me. It no longer seemed a possibility. Besides, it was broad daylight, the traffic was light, and I just disappeared into conjecture, tried to figure out what this was all about, why Loretta was sending me to Carol Marie's store.

  “Now Alex …” beckoned my faraway trance coach, who then breathed in, breathed out. “Just picture that you're mesmerized by the hum of the wheels, transfixed by the white stripe on the road. Don't worry— you can still drive. In fact, your driving skills are better than ever. Much more sharp and reactive. There's no worry about how you're going to reach your destination. Another part of your brain has clicked on and is directing you there.”

  Everything seemed to disappear from around me. I spaced out, let my body be carried along by the car that seemed to be magically driving itself. My mind seemed to detach itself, turn into something else. A gust of wind. A soaring bird. All my thoughts flew upward. High. Way high. Rushing through the wind.

  “That's right, Alex. There're two parts of you. The conscious part of you that stays switched on and takes care of all the mechanics of operating the car.”

  Switched on autopilot, I thought. Highway hypnosis. Virtually every single person had been similarly mesmerized by the road.

  “Exactly. And the other part is the subconscious part of you that disappears and flies away. Now, can you tell me what that soaring, birdlike part of you notices?”

  Cars, concrete. I was flying somewhere above my own rental car—the second one—and down below me I saw machines on wheels that rushed down bands of concrete.

  “But you see more, don't you? Of course you do. You see much more. It's all recorded somewhere in your mind, so just let the film replay. See it again. As the
conscious pan of your being drives the car down the road, there's another part of you that's thinking and noticing lots of things. Things that you saw once and never gave a second thought to, such as…”

  The lady with the two shrieking kids in the backseat.

  She was turned, looking right at them, and screaming. Jesus Christ, I thought, keep your eyes on the road. And the flower truck. A big purple thing with a flower tied to its side mirror. There was a man driving that. A big fat man with a cigarette.

  “Anything behind you?”

  Two motorcycles at a big intersection about a half mile from Loretta's. A man and a woman on these monster choppers. Some fun that must have been. And a semitrailer plastered with an enormous picture of a boy and a girl drinking milk. Lots of cars coming down a road on my right. I could have come that way, I realized. I remembered looking at the map, and that other road was another route from Loretta's.

  “What color cars do you see coming from that direction?”

  Red. Black. Yellow. Maybe blue. I really didn't notice. There were just a bunch of them.

  “So you turn and which of these cars continues after you?”

  Ah…

  “While the conscious part of you is driving, Alex, the subconscious part is busy flying around and taking in all sorts of things. Things that you might not be aware of.”

  I couldn't tell. Didn't know.

  “Watch this film a second time, Alex. Look at it carefully. What do you see?”

  Nothing that I could remember. Perhaps a green sedan. Maybe it was a truck.

  “Get completely involved, Alex. Let the fragments of memory flow together. Was there a big brown car behind you like the one that rammed you the previous night? Did a big brown car pull out from the other road? Could he have gone the other way and caught up with you at that intersection?”

  I was being asked for something I didn't know. Stop it, I wanted to yell out. You're focusing me too much. Hypnosis could do only so much, and it certainly couldn't perform miracles. Hell if I knew if there was a car like that big old brown thing behind me. I'd checked near Loretta's. I was as careful as I thought I needed to be. Other than that, I didn't notice a blessed thing. Nothing!

  “Okay, just relax. Just take a deep breath. Hold it, then let it slip out …”

  Chapter 13

  I didn't like this. Didn't care for the way things were going. As I was driving, an uneasy sense of paranoia began to filter through my head and contaminate my thoughts. I feared another attack like the one last night. I feared—rather knew— that I'd entered someone's territory, and that that person would attempt to kill me. An odd image filled me as I crossed a highway and drove into the huge parking lot of the Glendale Mall. It was sketchy. Quite vague, actually. But the memory of that guy in the car last night, combined with some fearful vision of a person cloaked in gauze and pungent with violence, made me shiver.

  “Yes, you are in danger, and, yes, someone will make another attempt on your life. But not yet. Not till the evening. Just stay with that moment, that afternoon. You are driving into the mall and it's cloudy and—”

  No, the sun broke through the clouds, brightening and warming the June afternoon. As I drove on, I checked the sky, noticed how it was clearing, and I disregarded the thought of someone tailing me. I continued on, followed a tangle of roads and loops until I arrived at a large building that looked like a huge, fancy bomb shelter with skylights. I steered off to one side where I saw a bank of black glass doors, above which was posted MALL ENTRANCE.

  The interior was as generic as the entryway. Plunging inside, I gravitated toward the stereotypical central courtyard, resplendent with a massive fountain, of course, and some very non-midwestern palm trees. I looked around and realized I could be anywhere in the United States. In an odd way, I had instant orientation, for there really wasn't much difference from the last ten malls I'd visited, and I knew that there'd be a map by the money machine I spotted.

  Though CM Fashions was one of the few non-national stores in the mall, I found it by one of the chain bookstores, the one with all the orange shelving and fluorescent lights. Carol Marie's store was bright as well, with white walls, strips of clean, smooth pine for shelves, and racks full of pastel clothing. A lot of cotton, I thought, and then realized that was their specialty, clothes of natural fabrics. There were two women working in the store, one in her early twenties with frizzed blond hair, who was folding clothing, and another woman, early thirties, who was going through some papers behind the cash register.

  As I approached the counter, I could see the woman's resemblance to Loretta. Same oval face, same tall forehead. The general characteristics were similar between the two sisters, but this woman was not just ten or fifteen years younger, she was also quite attractive. It was as if someone had taken the plain, dowdy Loretta and softened her eyes, heightened her cheekbones, made her nose a bit more petite and her hair rich and brown. Yes, this is exactly what Loretta would look like if she hadn't collapsed inwardly. Furthermore, in Carol Marie I instantly recognized a person who both internally and externally was not gray and pale and withdrawn, but someone who was lively and social, someone with vibrancy.

  I stepped up, but before I could say anything, the woman I was sure was Loretta's younger sister looked up, put on a pleasant though slightly forced smile, and said, “You must be Alex Phillips.”

  I couldn't hide my shock. “How did you know? Did Loretta tell you she'd sent me over?”

  “No. Helen just called and told me you were coming.”

  “Oh,” I replied, a stunned, stupid smile on my face.

  Scratch anything positive I might have started thinking about Helen. What a bitch. That confirmed it. How had Helen gotten that out of Loretta, with ease or had she threatened her stepdaughter, somehow forced her to reveal where I'd been headed and with whom I hoped to talk? And if Helen had found out that much, she could have found out everything we talked about. As I stood there, my mind whizzing ahead, I had to wonder if that meant that Helen knew everything about my being here, specifically that Maddy had sent me down here because of Loretta's desperate note.

  “Why don't we go in the back room?” To her employee, Carol Marie called, “Beth, I'll be in back. Let me know if you need help.”

  “Gotcha,” the young woman replied.

  I followed Carol Marie, who wore white pants and a pink cotton sweater, past the dressing rooms and then through a small door and into a rear room that was packed with clothes and boxes and paper. There were several racks crammed with clothes, and in one corner there were a couple of chairs and a small table with a coffee maker.

  “Want some?” Carol Marie asked, pointing to the brown liquid that looked as if it had been on slow-cook since morning.

  “I'll pass, thanks.” The way Carol Marie just said something rather surprised me, and I asked “You call your mother by her first name?”

  “What, Helen?” Carol Marie sat down, poured herself some coffee and added a couple of packets of sweetener. “No, she's my stepmother. She raised me and Billy, my twin brother, or she did the best she could anyway, which wasn't all that great. But, no, she's not my real mom. No way, thank God. She used to be our cleaning lady. My real mother died a week after I was born.” She laughed nervously. “So what can I do for you? Please, have a seat.”

  Interesting. Carol Marie and her brother had never known their real mother, so for all intents and purposes Helen would have or could have easily filled that role. Helen, after all, had been in their lives since they were born and had married their father when they weren't even six months old, yet Carol Marie made her relationship with her stepmother perfectly clear. Definitely distanced.

  As I sat down in one of the folding chairs, I said, “My sister, Dr. Madeline Phillips, used to be Loretta's therapist, but then—”

  Carol Marie, now seated across the table, stirred her coffee, then leaned forward, eyes wide. “That's right. That terrible accident. God, Loretta found out about that and crie
d for weeks.” A sense of morbid curiosity —the one I'd seen all too often when the subject of my sister came up—crossed her face, and she asked, “Is she all right now? I heard she was paralyzed. How awful.”

  “She's doing fine. Actually, she's worried about your sister. That's why I'm here.”

  “Loretta? She always has everyone worried. Bless her heart, she was the best big sister Billy and I could have had—she was more like a real mother to us than Helen—but something happened. She just never moved on, grew up. She's just stayed stuck in that stupid house, even though she and Helen hate each other.”

  “They do?” I probed.

  “Oh, God, yes. They always have. I think Loretta never left, if you want to get right down to it, because she thought she needed to protect our dad from Helen. And maybe she did. I'll tell you one thing, the two of them are going to go to battle over the house. Loretta says that the house was never supposed to be sold, that it's supposed to be coming to us kids, but Helen says it's hers to do with as she pleases.”

  “I'm not sure I understand.”

  Carol Marie shook her head. “Helen's planning to sell the house. She wants to get rid of it and move to Florida. None of us would mind seeing her go, but the problem is Loretta. It would mean throwing her out on the street.”

  “Yeah, it would.”

  “And there's no way in hell Daddy would have wanted that to happen. Confidentially, I've met with the lawyer to see if there's something we can do, if there's not some little clause in our father's will or something so that Loretta at least has a roof over her head.” Carol Marie sipped her coffee, rolled her eyes. “Oh, family. What did Loretta do, write your sister?”

  I didn't know what to divulge, how much, how little, and in any case I was dumbfounded that Carol Marie had asked. If that much was obvious to Carol Marie, had Maddy and I merely been duped?

  “She did, didn't she?” pushed Carol Marie, a sly grin on her face. “Oh, God, and she probably sounded all dramatic and worried and scared.”