December's Thorn

by Phillip DePoy

  I couldn’t tell if she was holding out the packet so we’d take it, or just holding it out, like a child, to show us what she had.

  “You were in the hospital in Milledgeville,” Ceri said carefully, “and then David came to get you.”

  “Yes,” Issie answered, not moving. “But he didn’t come on his own accord, he came at the behest of others.”

  I decided to take a different approach. “You weren’t raised around here, were you?” I began. “Your speech mannerisms are like ours, but there are subtle variations I can’t quite place.”

  “Well, you always had a keen ear,” she sneered, “and I never told you where I was raised up at. I don’t have a New Orleans accent at all, but I guess something like it rubbed off on me when I was a little girl. My mother was— well, you know she was from here. But we went to New Orleans when I was just little. Don’t know exactly how old, but I remember the city well. It was hot all the time, and I loved the smell of chicory. Then we moved again. You know that mother wasn’t much for staying in one place.”

  Clearly she assumed that she’d told me much more about herself and her family than I could remember at that moment, but playing along seemed the right thing to do.

  “That’s it,” I said lightheartedly. “New Orleans.”

  “Do you want me to take that packet?” Ceri ventured.

  It seemed a clumsy interruption.

  Issie thought so, too, apparently. Her hand snapped shut like a mousetrap and the packet disappeared into some hidden, black pocket.

  “Do you want me to call your mother for you?” Ceri went on in the same curiously inept manner.

  “Call my mother?” Issie laughed. “That’d be a trick. Tell her, Mark.”

  “I—I think it would mean more coming from you,” I said quickly.

  “Mother’s dead, doctor,” Issie sneered. “If you can arrange that call, I’d take it.”

  “Oh,” Ceri said. “Well. Can I sit down?”

  It occurred to me then that Ceri might have hurt herself when she jumped out of the tree, and I went to her without thinking.

  “Sit by the torch,” Issie encouraged. “You might need to warm up.”

  I caught Ceri’s eye as I helped her to sit down. There was a strangeness in her gaze I hadn’t seen before.

  “Issie,” she said, “will you sit down with me? I don’t feel so good.”

  Ceri gently pushed me away.

  Issie took several quick steps toward us and sat immediately by Ceri, close to the torch.

  The rest of the cave was black, but the torch gave a circumference of light that made our little area seem like a room. I stood apart, a little nervous about the bear.

  “What is it?” Issie asked Ceri. “What’s the matter?”

  “I shouldn’t have mentioned your mother,” Ceri said, swallowing.

  “What?” Issie asked, leaning in toward the doctor. “Why?”

  “Because I may have disturbed her energy,” Ceri answered. “She’s all around you, your mother is—all the time, you know.”

  Issie gasped and drew back. “I know!” she whispered violently. “All the time!”

  “But she doesn’t want anyone else to know that,” Ceri went on. “She doesn’t like it that I can sense her presence. She also has— she has secrets.”

  “God,” Issie said, suddenly shivering.

  “She has secrets that should have been told,” Ceri intoned, beginning to use her hypnotic sound palette. “She should have told them when she was alive. Now, she can’t rest until those secrets are uncovered.”

  “Oh, my Jesus.” Issie shuddered and began rocking. “Help me.”

  “Your mother is in terrible pain,” Ceri pressed. “And she’s visiting that pain on you.”

  “It’s like a weight of chains,” Issie sobbed.

  “Take my hand,” Ceri said, removing her gloves. It wasn’t a gesture of compassion. It was a command.

  Issie obeyed.

  I felt a return of the churning nausea the second their hands touched—with no idea why that had happened.

  “Your hands are hot,” Issie whispered.

  “Yours are ice,” said Ceri.

  Issie continued to rock, but seemed somewhat comforted by holding Ceri’s hand.

  I, on the other hand, had no idea what was happening. I could tell that Ceri had figured something out, and was playing her own theatrical scene in order to get Issie to do or say something, but otherwise I was completely lost. I was watching a piece of theatre in a foreign language, from another time, about a story I didn’t know.

  Unfortunately, before any great discoveries could be made by anyone, or catharses delivered, there was a great, sudden chaos of snarling and cursing out in the darkness beyond the torch’s glow. The bear had attacked a person, and I was almost certain that the person was David.

  22

  Issie was up in a flash.

  “Don’t you dare hurt that baby, David!” she shrieked. “If you shoot that little thing, I swear to God I’ll kill you slow, and you know I can do it!”

  There was a rifle blast.

  Issie screamed and disappeared into the darkness. Ceri and I jumped as if we’d both been hit in the stomach. I swooped down, took Ceri by the arm, and dragged her behind me as I ran out of the cave.

  The night was darker until my eyes adjusted to being out of the torch’s light. Ceri shook off my grasp and stood, shaking, right by the cave entrance. Then, from deeper inside the cave, there was another rifle shot.

  “Come on,” I said firmly. “We’re going back to the house to call the state patrol.”

  She shook her head. “We’re not any safer in your house. Why didn’t we bring a gun?”

  Her voice wasn’t hysterical, and both of her sentences seemed like correct responses to our situation, they just didn’t sound like her normal parlance. It was hard to make out her face in the darkness.

  “Maybe you should take a couple of deep breaths,” I suggested. “And maybe you should put your gloves back on.”

  Ceri nodded and began a slow, calming inhalation. “Except that I left my gloves in the cave.”

  “We could just go on back to the house and you could put your hands right next to the hot coals in the fireplace.”

  She shook her head. “We came to get Issie.”

  “I know,” I told her, “but there’s a maniac with a gun and baling wire in there. Not to mention a bear with a grudge. Do you really want to go back into that cave?”

  “Did you see Issie when I started talking about her mother?” she asked in what seemed a curious turn of the conversation.

  “Yes,” I said hesitantly.

  “And her pulse almost doubled.”

  “That’s why you were holding her hands?” I asked.

  “Lots of reasons to hold her hands,” Ceri said absently.

  “Well, it was a good ploy, I’ll give you that.”

  “Ploy?” she asked.

  “Talking about her mother.”

  “It wasn’t a ploy,” Ceri said, turning back toward the cave’s entrance. “Her mother’s spirit, some of it, is attached to her like cobwebs.”

  I had no idea what to say to that.

  “We have to go back in there, Fever,” she said. “That’s what we do. Both of us. You look in the caves for archeological evidence of eternal stories; I investigate the caves until I know what’s down there, and then I try to find a way out.”

  “You speak as a psychiatrist, metaphorically,” I said, only a little derisively.

  “Are you going in there with me or not?” she demanded.

  I considered what she’d said: we weren’t really any safer in my house. There wasn’t a magic barrier between the madness of the two escaped lunatics and my own front door.

  “I do have a hunting rifle somewhere,” I said, “in answer to your question a minute ago. Remember? The hunting rifle that Skidmore gave me?”

  “Sorry I mentioned it,” she said. “The last thing we need is a
gun battle. I was just— I was a little disoriented for a second there. I’m fine now. Let’s go.”

  And without further ado, she vanished back into the cave.

  I stood for a second, completely at a loss, and then plunged into the cave after her.

  The torch was gone, unfortunately, and the cavern was pitch black. A splinter of light was stuck in a bend deeper in the cave, but it was fading so quickly I didn’t feel we could catch up. I bumped into Ceri without seeing her, but I could smell her hair.

  “Flashlights,” she said.

  “No!” I snapped. “I think it would be better not to alert David. A flashlight makes a perfect target in the dark.”

  “Then how do you propose we find our way?” she asked, irritated.

  “Something Melissa said,” I answered, “or reminded me of. Stand still for a minute and feel the flow of air.”

  Several heartbeats passed in silence before she said, “Oh.”

  The draw of air was clear as the needle of a compass.

  “One hand on the wall to your right,” I told her, “and one up toward the ceiling. I’ll take the left and the ceiling, and there’s a good chance that we can feel our way along if we go slowly enough.”

  She took a moment to understand, and then locked her left hand onto my right elbow. “Got it. Let’s go.”

  We made our way like sightless moles, locked side by side, feeling our way along. I tried not to think about the things I’d found as a child in caves like this one: mutant flesh-eating grasshoppers, leeches, bats the size of pheasants. I also tried not to think about an encounter with David Newcomb. I only wondered what earthly relationship the Newcomb family could have to this poor, terminally troubled girl.

  So I performed my version of whistling in the dark: I reminisced. I traveled backward through time.

  I was beginning to remember things about Issie Raynerd. She’d been, I suddenly knew, the kind of person other students couldn’t help but make fun of. Her enthusiasms were odd to most people her age. She liked old music, European puppet theatre, and thrift store clothes. She’d been an A student in my classes, but not the sort I’d favored. She always seemed to retreat when I would ask her a specific question. She’d been shy to a nearly pathological extent.

  “Funny,” I opined aloud at last, “but I’m beginning to remember Issie as she was when I knew her at the university. Why would that happen now? And why didn’t I know her when I first saw her?”

  “She looks different?” Ceri ventured. “No. You said she looked about the same, and then when we saw the photograph—she doesn’t look any older now than she did then.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “That in itself is eerie. But tell me, if you can, doctor, why are these images of her coming back to me now?”

  “That’s the right question,” Ceri said. “What’s your answer?”

  “I have to answer?” I demanded. “Who’s the psychiatrist and who’s the patient here?”

  “Yeah,” she sighed, “that’s hard for me to tell sometimes.”

  “What?”

  “I mean I’m finding out things about myself while I’m finding out things about you.”

  “I don’t understand what that means,” I mumbled. “But I don’t understand a lot of what you say, if I’m being frank.”

  “Don’t you— or, didn’t you sometimes have the impression,” she asked, “when you were teaching, that you were learning more than the students were?”

  “Oh.” I slowed just a little. “Well. Yes. I’ve said that before. Saying something out loud lets you hear what you really think. You see it new again, even stodgy old ideas or objects you’ve had on your desk for years—they can take on a brand-new…”

  I trailed off because I suddenly felt something crawl over my hand. Then several things pelted my arm, my chest; something hit my face. Ceri must have felt these sensations, too; she let out an involuntary gasp.

  “Christ,” she swore.

  “Yeah,” I agree, “let’s just go.”

  I quit touching the wall and ceiling, crouched low, and tried very hard not to picture what might be all around us. We both shot forward blindly. I was absolutely convinced that we would run headlong into a rock—until a thin hope presented itself. I saw a tiny thread of light in the distance.

  I could hear voices coming from the direction of the light, but there was no way to make out what they were saying.

  Without thinking, I began moving slowly toward the light. Ceri was moving forward, too, and as we both progressed, the light grew, slowly, stronger; the voices came more clearly. Issie and David were arguing, but it wasn’t a violent confrontation. They were having a disagreement about—unless my hearing was playing tricks—what to have for dinner.

  “I can’t eat that goddamned Ramen noodle packet one more night, David,” Issie was saying.

  “If you mix it with the Campbell’s soup, the chunky soup,” David whined, “it’s good.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not. It’s slop.”

  “Well,” David countered, “we could have had venison stew if you’d let me take that deer like I wanted.”

  “In the first place, deer stew is greasy,” she said, “and in the second place, that bloody carcass did us more good than anything else we’ve tried so far. You should have seen what it did to Fever. Lord, he was shook up.”

  They both laughed.

  I stopped all forward motion. Ceri did, too.

  I could hear the difference in Issie’s voice. I could hear that the winsome lost girl was gone. Hers was now the voice of an extremely calculating tactician.

  I had an odd sinking sensation in the pit of my ennui: Issie Raynerd was taking me for a ride. Everything I’d thought about her until that moment had been wrong. Nothing she’d told me was true. I’d been made an unwitting player in some incomprehensible machinery of theatre.

  I found that the sensation had a profound effect on my body. As silently and discretely as I could, I turned away from Ceri Nelson, took a few steps, and threw up for several minutes.

  When I was finished, I discovered that Ceri was at my side. I hoped that I hadn’t been too vociferous in my evacuation. I felt light-headed.

  “Fever?” Ceri whispered.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that,” I whispered back, “since I found Issie in my bed. I actually feel better now.”

  “Except for the fact that we’ve been completely wrong about everything,” she said.

  I nodded. “Except for that.”

  “What now?”

  I straightened up completely and drew in a long breath through my nose, then out my mouth.

  “Now,” I said as softly as I could speak, “we have an edge. We know she’s lying.”

  “I don’t see how that—”

  But Dr. Nelson’s querulous exploration was cut short by my shouting: “Issie! Issie, are you all right? We heard gunshots!”

  And then, absent better thought, I ran headlong toward the lighted cavern. I have no idea what Ceri did, but within ten or twelve long strides I found myself in the cave with Issie and David. They were both seated at one of the makeshift tables, oil lamps were lit, and the fire pit was blazing close to the entrance.

  David was entirely startled, and nearly fell off his perch. Issie was calmer. She collected herself in seconds, softened her facial expression, and clutched her clothing at the neck.

  Behind me Ceri spoke up. “David, did you kill that poor little bear cub?”

  “He did!” Issie shouted. “Then he dragged me back here with him! Do something, Mark! Why don’t you do something?”

  David, obviously rattled, did his best to assume his part. He slid off the chair, reached behind the table, and produced his rifle.

  “That’s far enough!” he barked. “I don’t mind if I kill either one of you!”

  That, unfortunately, had the ring of truth.

  Ceri was beside me, and touched my hand only slightly, but enough to let me know she had something in mind.

>   “You both know I’m a psychiatrist,” she said in her most soothing, hypnotic tones. “I can help. I can help you both. I can.”

  The repetition of words seemed to have an odd soporific effect, even on me.

  “We had enough of your kind of help in the hospital at Milledgeville,” David snarled, but some of the bite was out of his voice.

  “I want—more than ever—to see what help I can be to you both.” Ceri smiled.

  I turned to look at her. Whatever plan she had in mind included being completely honest. I could tell—anyone in the world could have told—that she genuinely did want to help these two people.

  That unexpected attitude filled up the room. There was a benevolence emanating from Ceri Nelson that was palpable and warm. I was certain that David and Issie felt it, too. And it made me reevaluate my fear.

  I was steeped in my own fears about Issie Raynerd, I recognized then. I was afraid of what I’d find if I completely remembered her. I was afraid of what I’d know if I learned why she was doing what she was doing. I also realized that these fears were almost entirely intuitive. I had no conscious, objective evidence to support even the smallest pebble of the mountain of dread under which I found myself—deep in a cave made entirely of overwhelming angst.

  But the fact that Ceri wanted to help, sincerely wanted, more than anything, to bring an end to whatever suffering was causing Issie and David to behave the way they were behaving—that was helping me, too. That fierce, concentrated compassion was entirely sustaining, and healing. At least a little: it was enough to keep me, for a while, from collapsing onto the stone floor.

  “I—I don’t know if anything can help me,” Issie stammered.

  It seemed a genuine sentiment, not an actor’s line; David had lowered his gun.

  “I just want to talk,” Ceri said, taking a cautious step toward the troubled couple.

  I watched as Ceri made her way, very slowly, almost floating, toward the table. David and Issie stared, blinking, as if they were watching a great light approaching, or a distant comet across the starry sky.

  “Let’s sit,” Ceri said gently.