Bad Thoughts

by Dave Zeltserman

  * * * * *

  Of course, he had fallen asleep. Not really dreaming or conscious, just drifting along. Floating in a warm, peaceful blackness. Something was tugging at him, though, disturbing him, forcing an awareness within him.

  And then there he was in front of him, grinning widely, ingratiatingly. Shannon knew him instantly. He was older than Shannon remembered—a good twenty years older—as if his memories had somehow aged equivalently with time. The man’s skin now spotted and bloated and sagging slightly around the jaws. His body thicker around the middle. His hair thinner, almost nothing where the ponytail had been. But there was the same malformed chin. The same tiny, slit mouth. And the eyes, pale, almost translucent, like a rattlesnake’s. Shannon felt a coldness as he looked into those eyes.

  Standing in front of him was Herbert Winters. A forty-year-old version of him.

  “Remember me, Billy?” Winters asked, his voice the same wispy singsong that had tortured Shannon all those years earlier.

  “Yeah, I remember you. You’re older. Why is that?”

  “You got to ask yourself that.”

  “I don’t have to ask myself a goddamn thing.”

  “Sure you do. Come on, boy, give it a try. Look deep inside yourself. The answer’s there.”

  Shannon turned away, but Winters moved with him as if they were fastened together at the hips, hovering in front of him, his slit mouth grinning in an amused fashion.

  “Just go away,” Shannon pleaded. “I don’t want you here.”

  “Sorry, Billy Boy. It don’t work that way. You know why, don’t you?”

  Shannon had his eyes squeezed shut. He tried running, but he could feel Winters’s warm, rancid breath against his face. There was no use running so he stopped. And besides, he felt too weak to run. His legs had quickly become rubbery and lifeless. When he opened his eyes Winters was still hovering in front of him, still grinning like only he knew the big joke.

  “Too stupid to see the obvious, huh?” Winters asked, his grin shrinking to a thin, impish smile. “Let me spell it out to you. The reason I’ve aged twenty years since last we met is because we met twenty years ago.

  “Still don’t see it?” he asked, nodding at Shannon’s blank stare. “Let me explain it to you. I’ll talk slowly so you can follow. I’m inside you, dummy. I’m part of you. And I’m not too happy about it. But what the hell can you do, right?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Shannon started. “What do you mean you’re part of—”

  “Look,” Winters said, cutting Shannon off, his smile taking on a malicious glint. “Think back twenty years ago, the day you murdered me. Let’s try and remember what really happened, not the bullshit story you made up afterwards. Let’s try and be honest with ourselves for a change.

  “Your daddy knew what really happened,” Winters continued, winking in a good-old-boy sort of way. “He knew just by looking at you. And you know, too. Come on, admit it, boy. Who really did kill your poor mother?”

  “You did,” Shannon said, dumbly. “She was dead when I got home. You were doing things to her. You were—”

  “We were enjoying ourselves. That’s all.” Winters thin smile disappeared, leaving his mouth a tiny, dull slit. “Maybe it was a bit kinky making out on top of the kitchen table, but it was nothing serious. We even still had all our clothes on. And I guess we lost track of the time, huh? Didn’t count on you sneaking up on us. Shit, were you quiet. A little mouse, weren’t you?

  “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” Winters asked, chuckling to himself. “You remember what happened next, don’t you? How, like the little pissant that you were, you snuck that butcher knife out of the drawer and then tippytoed over to your mother and plunged it into her mouth as she lay on that table minding her own business. And then you tried to use it on me.”

  “T-that’s n-not true.”

  “Of course it is. Explains why only your fingerprints were on the knife. And why there were no other bruises on your mom, except a few along her neck when we were making out earlier and maybe got a little too rough. But nothing she didn’t enjoy. I really had her purring, boy. Had her engine all revved up and ready to go until you killed the ignition.

  “I had to break your fingers to get the knife out of your hand,” Winters continued. “It looked like you were out cold. I went over to check on your mom, see if I could save her. But I couldn’t. She was as dead as dead can be. Her eyes bulging, almost popping out of their sockets like pale blue marbles. But you weren’t out cold, were you, boy?”

  Winters waited and then went on, smiling sadly. “You did a number on me, boy. Had the knife in and out of me a half dozen times before I realized what was happening. And then it was too late. Remember what you did to me afterwards—to my head? You had it hanging off my body by a thread. That was unnecessary, boy. Truly unnecessary.”

  “Y-you deserved it! A-and t-the rest . . . nothing but a lie!”

  “Keep telling yourself that. Which brings us to why I’m here. You created me, you little shit. I’m the image that you needed me to be in. I’m part of you. Buried deep inside you. I’m the monster you had to conjure up so you could go along with your little fantasy of what happened. In all truth, I’m you. The essence of you. And it makes me sick to my stomach.”

  Shannon was overwhelmed with a sensation of vertigo. He squeezed his eyes tight as he felt himself spinning away. The invisible bond between him and Winters seemed to be weakening as he twisted upwards. He told himself that he was dreaming. That this was nothing but a bad dream. That he wanted to be far away.

  “Not yet!” Winters ordered angrily, thick lines all of a sudden lining his stubby neck. “You don’t leave me now! I’ve got too much to tell you, you little shit! All about Phyllis Roberson. You don’t dare leave now—”

  * * * * *

  Shannon swung himself up in the easy chair, momentarily in free fall, his heart pounding, a cold sweat breaking over his face.

  He was wide awake, Herbert Winters’s image vivid in his mind.

  He was alone in his living room, but he could feel Winters’s presence. He could almost still smell the sourness of his breath. He could almost still feel it against his face. A draft from the window sill made him shiver.

  Other than the one he had months ago with Janice Rowley, it was the first time he remembered any of his nightmares. In the past, there was nothing he could really hang on to except a vague sense of dread. If these were the type of dreams he was having, no wonder he’d been going nuts.

  Shannon looked down at his right hand. He curled his fingers and felt the dull discomfort in his joints. In the cold weather the discomfort was closer to someone hammering nails into his bones.

  There was no doubting they had been broken severely and worse. The torture he had undergone was real. The memories he had of that day were real.

  So what about that dream?

  Why was he conjuring up that murderer?

  And what the hell did Winters mean about Phyllis Roberson? An image of the dead woman slid into his mind. In it he could picture the knife sticking out of the woman’s throat. He could see her eyes staring into oblivion.

  Shannon forced himself out of the easy chair. He was surprised to find himself as shaky as he was. He moved slowly to the bedroom and lay down on the bed. He couldn’t keep from thinking about Phyllis Roberson. He couldn’t keep the image of her out of his mind. Of that knife sticking out of her throat.

  Chapter 13

  Elaine Horwitz looked unnaturally pale, especially against the soft pink rim of her glasses. Part of the reason was her normally light complexion, partly that she had no makeup on; mostly, though, she was suffering from a wicked hangover. The type a cheap bottle of wine will cause. She sat staring at Shannon’s folder, her fingers impatiently drumming along her desk.

  Sonofabitch.

  The night before she had waited nearly twenty minutes before getting the message that Shannon had run out on her. The sonofabitch had even
left his coat at the table. Horwitz took the news with a polite smile and then ordered dinner and a bottle of wine. She was too humiliated to get up and leave, so she sat there with her high-gloss lipstick and her Giorgio perfume and her tight, sexy evening dress and tried not to look like as big an idiot as she felt. And she drank every last drop of the wine. She had even put black lace panties on for him . . .

  On leaving, she took his coat with her and shoved it into a Dumpster behind the restaurant. It seemed the least she could do.

  Sonofabitch coward.

  She wanted to call him now and tell him to go fuck himself. That he could find himself another therapist. She caught herself in the middle of the thought and let a bitter smile pull up the corners of her mouth. A woman scorned, she chided herself angrily.

  Of course, she got only what she deserved. She never thought about getting involved with a patient before, well, maybe thought about it, but not seriously, at least not to this degree. And this was not only a patient but a married one. So what did she expect? You play with matches, you get burned. You play with married men, you get dumped. And, what she had to keep telling herself, you play with patients, you lose your license. So she got off easy . . . But what the hell was it with him? Why couldn’t she keep him out of her mind? Probably the pheromones he put out, making it completely physical and beyond her rational control. That had to be it.

  He was already ten minutes late for his appointment.

  Lousy, stinking sonofabitch . . .

  Successful therapy requires both human interaction and caring, but she had let things go too far with him. Even going shopping to buy those black lace panties for the sonofabitch. From now on her relationship with Shannon was going to be completely clinical. Nothing else.

  There was a knock on the door. She felt the butterflies rise up in her stomach as she stammered out for the person to come in. At that moment she felt more like a fraud than ever in her life.

  The door opened and Mark Bennett, the hypnotherapist, shoved his face in.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he apologized, out of breath. “Parking out on Beacon Street now is murder. I ended up five blocks away.”

  “That’s okay,” Horwitz said. The butterflies settled back down like lead weights. “My patient hasn’t shown up yet.”

  Bennett nodded, took his overcoat off and folded it over a chair and sat down, crossing his legs. With his fleshy face and receding curly hair and pear-shaped body he looked a little like Larry Fine from the Three Stooges. This is what’s always interested in me, Horwitz thought, fucking stooges.

  “Maybe you could tell me about the patient,” Bennett asked, smiling pleasantly.

  “He’s a thirty-three-year-old police officer. As an adolescent he found his mother after she’d been brutally murdered. It seems that repressed guilt has manifested itself into both clinical depression and extended blackouts.”

  “What’s he guilty about?”

  “He feels if he’d come home earlier he could’ve saved her.” Elaine Horwitz smiled joylessly. “He wouldn’t have been able to.”

  Bennett settled back into his chair. “It sounds like you already figured it out. What do you need me for?”

  “I don’t have it all figured out,” Horwitz said. “There’s something else. I have no idea what it is.” She sighed heavily and let her shoulders slump. “There’s a yearly pattern to his breakdowns. I want to dig deep and see what we can find.”

  Bennett was frowning, making his long, rubbery face seem even more comical. “Yearly breakdowns? How consistent are they?”

  “Very consistent. Every year around the anniversary of his mother’s death. Same pattern of symptoms climaxing to a prolonged blackout, usually lasting a week, and without the patient having any memories of it.”

  Mark Bennett was frowning deeply and shaking his head, a perturbed look spreading over his features. “Lasting a week?” he muttered to himself.

  Horwitz nodded. It sounded a lot worse when spoken out loud. Bad enough, actually, to make her regret not trying to have Shannon hospitalized. It made her wonder how much she’d let her personal feelings interfere with her treatment. A sick feeling crept into her stomach. She glanced at her watch. “He should be here by now,” she said uneasily. “He’s already fifteen minutes late. Let me try giving him a call.”

  She dialed his number and let it ring until the answering machine clicked on. When she put down the receiver she offered Bennett an apologetic smile.

  “He could be on his way,” she said. “I don’t know. I hope so. He did have a setback yesterday.”

  “How so?”

  Horwitz paused for a moment, and then explained about Shannon’s latest homicide case and the similarities between it and his own mother’s death. “All in all, a bizarre coincidence,” she added.

  Bennett shook his head. “One thing I’ve learned from years of hypnotherapy . . . there’s no such thing as a coincidence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Bennett said, pausing, trying to smile. “I have to admit I’ve never heard of anything like this. This is pretty bizarre stuff. And now during the time when your patient suffers from his blackouts, a woman is murdered in the same freakish way as his mother—”

  “You’re way off track,” Elaine Horwitz cut in, annoyance pushing some color into her cheeks. “First of all, my patient hasn’t blacked out yet—”

  “Excuse me, but how do you know?”

  “Because—” Horwitz stumbled, trying to explain the obvious, partly because it was no longer so obvious. “Well, for one reason, his blackouts last a week.”

  “How do you know he doesn’t have shorter duration ones, also? Does he remember them when they happen?”

  “He knows when he has them,” Horwitz argued. “Anyway, this wouldn’t fit his pattern—”

  “Again, how do you know?”

  The thought left her stunned. “This is ridiculous,” she said, her voice rising. “There’s physical evidence tying a boy to the murder, and besides—”

  “Elaine.” The hypnotherapist had both hands up in an exaggerated sign of surrender. “I’m just talking. You know, just trying to kill some time.”

  “That’s okay,” Elaine Horwitz offered grudgingly. They sat in silence for the next several minutes with Bennett’s attempts at small talk falling flat. Finally, he glanced at his watch and asked if it was safe to assume the patient wasn’t showing. That got to Horwitz. Pretentious little prick. Couldn’t just say that it looked like the patient wasn’t showing up. Had to ask if it was a safe thing to assume. Horwitz told him it appeared to be a safe thing to assume.

  Bennett stopped at the door before leaving. “When you hear from him again give me a call,” he said, pausing as he stroked his chin. “I’m curious.”

  * * * * *

  February 7. Night.

  It didn’t surprise Susan Shannon to find an empty apartment when she arrived home from work. When ten o’clock rolled around and Shannon still hadn’t come home it didn’t faze her a bit. It was what she expected and all she felt about it was a heavy weariness. For the last few days she knew it was inevitable. So she called Joe DiGrazia, apologized for waking him, and told him that Shannon had disappeared. After that she had her first good night’s sleep in weeks.

  When she woke it was as if a hundred-pound weight had been rolled from her back. She pulled suitcases out of the closet and started packing her clothes. She had them filled when Joe DiGrazia called. He just wanted to tell her that he’d been out all night looking for Shannon, hadn’t had any luck yet, but was going to take the day off and see what he could do. After she hung up the phone the weariness that had hit her the night before fell back on her like cement. All her resolve, her determination, crumbled away. She just sat on the edge of the bed and started weeping. It came out of her like a faucet.

  It seemed a long time bef
ore she could slow it down, before she could breathe normally. Her lungs and chest ached from the crying. The thought struck her how a friend of Shannon’s spent the night driving the streets for him while his own wife was all set to bail out, and as the thought stuck in her mind the sobbing started again. This time, though, it was silent and tearless. There wasn’t anything left inside for tears.

  When she was done, she stood up and unpacked the suitcases. After that she got the phone book and found a number she had circled months earlier.

  * * * * *

  Phil Dornich knocked on the door at eleven o’clock and Susan Shannon showed him in. A short, round man in his middle fifties wearing a cheap suit and a stained overcoat. As he smiled at her, she noticed he didn’t have many teeth left in his mouth and what was there was in pretty bad shape.

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he greeted her as he extended a hand. He had a handkerchief balled up in his other hand and was mopping his forehead with it. A cold winter’s day and the guy was sweating like a pig. It nauseated her. Susan Shannon took the extended hand and let go on contact. She asked if he’d like a seat and maybe some coffee. He accepted both. First thing in the kitchen she washed her hands under the kitchen faucet.

  When she brought the coffee in, Dornich was perched on the sofa in the living room, his overcoat opened and both a large paunch and a holstered revolver showing.