“PTSD?” Jan asked.
“That’s part of it,” the other therapist said. “But I meant, uh, the other alley.”
Word had also gotten around about Jan’s interest in the paranormal, or rather, in patients who blamed the paranormal for their presenting problem, but exhibited no other symptoms of schizophrenia. Sometimes they were also torture victims, witnesses to the murder of loved ones, or murderers—and who’d killed for reasons that no one would believe.
No one except Dr. Jan Sayer.
“She told me she murdered over fifty people,” the other therapist said. “But that’s not what the police report said. There was a fire, and she escaped—the only one to get out alive. At first I figured her problem to be survivor’s guilt.”
Jan said, “At first?”
“By the end of the session she told me that some kind of angel had killed them—but that she was still responsible.”
“An angel,” Jan said flatly.
The other therapist laughed. “Or something. So you’ll take her?”
“I’ll talk to her,” Jan said. “She might be right for a small group I’ve been thinking about.”
Speaking the idea aloud seemed to act like a summoning. Within days of that call, Jan received referrals for two more locals, one of them semi-famous, the other a fragile young man whose roommates had been murdered by a homeless man.
She had her five.
Then, after she got them into the same room, she wondered what the hell she’d been thinking. Every small group was a chemistry experiment, and the procedure was always the same: bring together a group of volatile elements, put them in a tightly enclosed space, and stir. The result was never a stable compound, but sometimes you arrived at something capable of doing hard work, like a poison that killed cancer cells. And sometimes you got a bomb.
She wasn’t sure what she’d created. In the first dozen meetings it was hard work just to keep everyone coming back. Stan was an expert at driving people away (he’d told her this himself). Harrison had already declared his intention to jump ship. What the members needed most was hope: hope that they could change; that they were not alone; that their suffering would ease.
With this group she was expecting a crisis call at any time. It was a miracle that it took several months for the first one to come.
She’d been dreaming, and somehow the ringing of the phone upstairs became part of the dream. Jan was a child again, and her mother was ringing the bell that she kept beside her. Jan was terrified; she did not want to go in her mother’s room. She hid in the dark, waiting for it to stop, but the ringing went on and on.
Then Jan awoke, and the dream shredded. She was in her basement. She slept down here when she had trouble falling asleep, and that had happened more and more often lately. She untangled herself from the special bed and slipped down to the cold basement floor. She made it upstairs before the phone stopped ringing.
The time and the telephone number were both a surprise: 2:20 A.M. and Mercy Hospital. The nurse told her that a patient of hers had been admitted to the ER.
“Who is it?” Jan asked, thinking: Barbara.
“His name is Martin Treece,” the nurse said.
“Has he hurt himself?” Jan asked. Of course she thought of suicide. It was a common joke among psychotherapists that you never received crisis calls from men; you only heard from their widows.
“It’s not like that,” the nurse said. “He’s been mugged.”
Martin’s glasses were gone but he still seemed to be wearing a mask. Bulging red bruises made each eye into a fist. A clear tube snaked under his swollen nose. A clamshell of bandages covered one ear. But it was his stiffness on the hospital bed—lying on his back, face pointed straight up, his bandaged left hand dead at his side atop the covers—that hinted at serious damage.
She thought he was unconscious, but then his mouth opened and he said, “Hi.” The word was remarkably clear.
She moved a seat closer to the bed, being careful of the tubes and wires that sprouted from him. Martin was in a curtained-off area that was part of the ER. He hadn’t been admitted to a room, and with his lack of insurance he probably wouldn’t be.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked.
“The frames,” he said. His hand opened. She frowned. “My glasses.” Each “s” turned to slush. His vocal cords may have been okay, but the damage to his lips and jaw would make some consonants difficult.
She looked around the bed, then under it and the chair. Usually the hospital staff put all clothes and belongings in a clear plastic tote bag. “I don’t see them,” she said. “I can ask the nurses.”
“I need the glasses,” he said.
“I know, Martin. But I can’t—”
“Buy some.”
“What?”
“I’ll pay you back. Or you can take them back to the store after I get mine back.”
Jan sat down again. “You’re going to be all right. I know you can get through this.”
Without moving, Martin seemed to sink further into the bed. In his pre-group interviews, Martin insisted that his main goal for therapy was not to deal with the trauma of the murders (he could barely acknowledge that he was traumatized), but to break his dependence on the frames. He wanted to live in the world like a normal person, to stop being afraid. But losing the frames this way, Jan thought, had to be the harshest way to go cold turkey.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked.
“I don’t remember. Not all of it.”
“Then just what you can.”
“I was walking home after the meeting.” He spoke slowly, trying to make the words clear. “I stopped because I saw someone, then . . .” He moved slightly, signifying a shrug. “That’s when they grabbed me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. They’re just . . . one was in a hoodie.”
She wanted to ask if they were white or black. Instead she said, “Can you describe them better?”
“They dragged me into an alley,” Martin said. “It was dark. The next thing . . .” His unbandaged hand moved. “Woke up here.”
“Did they rob you? Have the police made a report?” Jan asked him.
“No. I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone.”
“Okay, I’ll contact the police and see if there’s a report,” Jan said. “Maybe someone saw something. In the meantime, is there anyone I can call for you? Your parents, maybe?” In the pre-group paperwork, Martin had given only one emergency number, for his parents in Minnesota.
“Please,” Martin said. “Don’t.”
She expected that. There’d been some kind of break with his family that he’d not wanted to talk about.
“Then is there someone local we can call?”
He did not move. Perhaps he was staring at her in disbelief; it was difficult to tell.
“Okay,” she said, getting frustrated. “How about your employer?”
He moved his hand again, this time in dismissal. It looked like he was trying to decide what to say.
“You can tell me,” Jan said.
“Do you believe me?” he asked.
“Of course I believe you.”
“No. About the frames. What I see. Do you believe what I see?”
At their first one-on-one meeting, he had told her that his greatest fear was that he was going insane. Jan said, “I’ve told you, Martin—I believe you.”
“But why?” His voice was anguished. “I mean, Harrison I get. He’s seen this stuff before. But you never have. You never even asked.”
“I don’t have to,” Jan said. Later, she would regret not telling him why she did not question his “hallucinations,” but at the time she thought it would interfere with the therapy. “Others have reported seeing the dwellers,” she said. “I know you’re not making it up.”
“Good,” he said. Then: “Do you know what a boss fight is?”
Jan shook her head.
“It’s a gaming thing,” he said
. “Every game has a boss you have to fight at the end. But before you get there, you have to get through all these . . . minions.”
“Okay . . .”
“I’m talking about Greta.”
Jan winced inwardly. Even from his hospital bed, Martin wanted to turn Jan against her.
“The people who attacked me weren’t muggers,” he said. “They did this on her orders.”
“Greta’s orders?”
“She was there. In the bar where they attacked me. Meeting with Harrison. Holding hands.”
“Martin, did you follow them?”
“One of them said, ‘Don’t look at her.’”
“One of the attackers? And you think they were talking about Greta?”
“They’re her minions,” Martin said. “Protecting her. And now they’re going to come finish me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“See?” It came out shee? “You don’t believe me.”
“You called me here to ask for my help,” Jan said. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Kill the boss monster,” he said.
She sat back in her seat. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Didn’t think so,” he said. He seemed suddenly exhausted. “Just bring me my frames. I want to see them coming for me.”
Jan strapped on her doctor balls and forced the staff to hunt for Martin’s belongings until they turned up. The plastic bag contained Martin’s clothes (bloody, torn), shoes (fine), and backpack (full of cords and batteries and a tablet computer, as well as an inside zipper pocket containing $19—she was not too bashful to check)—but the frames were not with them.
The staff ’s information on the police was more of a mystery; the cops were supposed to arrive “any minute now.” Jan took a seat in the corridor to wait until they arrived or Martin was released; she was afraid that if Martin spoke to the cops alone, they’d soon be calling his psychologist anyway.
She knew that he was not crazy. She didn’t doubt for a second the reality of his experiences. But she did doubt his conclusions.
Jan had entered all the group members’ contact info into her phone. Greta had given her only one number, a cell phone. She clicked to call, then fought the urge to hang up with every chirping ring. What could she ask Greta—if she had “henchmen”?
After thirty seconds of ringing, an automated system announced that no one had set up this number for voicemail. It may not have even been Greta’s real number; Jan had never had to dial it before.
She stared at the phone’s screen for a while, then found another contact. After three rings a voice said, “Dr. Sayer?”
“Harrison,” Jan said. “I apologize for calling so late.”
“No, no, it’s fine.” He sounded surprisingly awake. She’d often wondered what he did with his time. On his intake form, under employment he had made a joke about being a professional “nightmarist.” Then he told her he was retired. She asked him what that meant, considering he was thirty-six years old. Was he an internet millionaire? He said, “It means I stopped doing what I used to do, and haven’t decided if I’m going to do anything else.”
He asked, “Is there anything the matter?”
Jan told him that Martin had been attacked by several people, just a few blocks from the Elms.
“Holy shit,” Harrison said. “Martin’s been attacked?”
“They’re doing more x-rays to look for more broken bones. They already think his hand is broken.”
“That’s terrible,” Harrison said. He sounded genuinely upset. “Tell him I’m thinking of him.” After a pause he said, “Where did this happen?” There was a new note in his voice.
“There’s an Irish pub on Fourth. It was right after the meeting tonight. Last night.”
The line was silent for a moment. Then: “That’s why you’re calling.”
“Yes.”
“I was there,” he said. “With Greta.”
“Did you see anything?” Jan asked. “Hear anything?”
But Harrison had seen nothing, even after they left the pub. He asked Jan questions, some of them the same ones as she’d asked Martin, and her answers were just as vague. She didn’t mention Martin’s minion theory.
“I’m looking for Greta,” Jan said, moving on. “I’m not getting an answer on her phone.”
He paused, then said, “Did you text her? Only old people call each other.”
“But you answered.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Listen, I’ll try her too. Is there a message you want me to pass on?”
“Just ask her to call me.”
Chapter 6
We followed a strict if unconscious structure in those early meetings: We took turns, giving each a share of time to talk about our lives and deliver our spooky stories. We might as well have been sitting around a campfire.
Dr. Sayer told us this commonly happened in groups. Eventually, she said, the group would stop telling, and start working. Most of us did not know what that meant, and the rest of us pretended not to know; telling was risky enough. A crisis in the group can speed that process along, like a shock that starts the heart beating.
Martin’s attack was the first of several shocks to hit the group. Barbara learned about it the next day, when Jan sent out an email to the group. Stan, who never checked his AOL account, was the last to know; Jan had left a follow-up message on his answering machine.
Harrison, of course, was the first to know. After Jan called, he hung up and sat on the bed, thinking hard.
“She’s looking for me?”
He turned. Greta was sitting in the armchair across from the bed, her arms around her knees. She was still naked except for the boy’s jockey shorts.
“I think she’s figured out you’re here,” he said. “She’s intuitive like that.”
“So what did she say about the attackers?”
“Nothing much. Martin doesn’t seem to remember, or else he didn’t get a good look while they were beating him.”
“I’m going to have to tell the group about the Sisters,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Like you said, Jan’s intuitive. She’s going to ask me sooner or later. It’s time to tell the story.”
Harrison and Greta’s relationship—their offline, outof-band, extracurricular relationship—started after the second meeting, when she finally accepted his offer to drive her home. They barely spoke during the drive, the silence broken only by Greta’s monosyllabic directions, then a final, awkward “Thanks.” The next week he took her home again, and it became a regular thing. They began to talk, her short questions always aimed at getting him to talk about his childhood, and because he would not talk about that, they talked about the only thing they had in common: the group. Soon their comments became post-meeting debriefs, which became all-out dissections. The drive home became too short; they would sit in his car outside of her apartment building (a grim chunk of poured cement allocated for student use) and perform the weekly autopsy.
Harrison wasn’t sure whose idea it had been to go to the pub their first time. They’d walked out of the meeting to his car and Greta said, “Maybe we could . . . ?” and Harrison said, “I know a place.” And that became their new regular thing. He drank doubles of Kilbeggan. She ordered Sprite.
Greta saw things that he missed entirely. Barbara was clinically depressed, she said; you could tell in the way she talked about her family. “All her stories are about how the boys did this with their father, or did this other thing on their own. She doesn’t seem to be in their lives. She’s watching them, like they’re on TV.” And in the next meeting Harrison would surreptitiously study Barbara, and sure enough he would see the deep sadness behind the mask of helpfulness and empathy.
Yet in other ways, Greta was hopelessly naïve, especially when it came to the men. For example, she’d noticed that Stan’s eyes were permanently glued to her chest, but found this to be completely innocent. “He’s an old man,” she said. “With no hands!
How does he even masturbate?”
“I’m not sure he has even the basic equipment anymore,” he said. Her eyes went wide; this hadn’t occurred to her. He said, “So how about Martin, then? He’s got the hots for you.”
“What? No. He barely looks at me.”
“Because he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He flushes when you come in.” Later, after Martin told the group what he was seeing through the glasses, Harrison wondered if he was wrong about this.
“How about you?” she asked. “Are you looking at my tits?”
“That’s beside the points. Point. See what I did there?”
“Everybody thinks I’m the quiet one,” she said. “But you’re the one who never talks.”
“I do so. I talk all the time.”
“No, you comment. What have you shared about yourself? We don’t know you, we just know that guy in the books.” She always turned the conversation back around to the paperbacks. “Jameson Squared,” she said. “Monster Detective.”
“And that is such a misleading title,” he said. “It makes the kid sound like he’s the monster. Like ‘child psychologist.’”
“Child psychologists are monsters,” she said.
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean. Jesus, Harrison.”
“Now that would be a good series character. Jesus Harrison, Divine Detective.”
“You also deflect through humor,” Greta said.
Every pub session, after they’d finished diagnosing the problems of the other people in the group (including Dr. Sayer), Greta would hound him about the books, trying to nail down what was real, what was made up, what was only exaggerated. She seemed to have memorized the entire series.
The mundane facts—the NPR facts, he called them—were that the town of Dunnsmouth was reduced to kindling by a hurricane. Hundreds dead. It was quite a story for perhaps a week, and then the world moved on. Then, two years after the tragedy, a wife-and-husband team of “paranormal investigators” published a “nonfiction” book about the true, unreported supernatural intrusion that was only interpreted as a hurricane. One of the main characters was a teenage boy, the transparently named Jameson Jameson. Harrison had made the very bad mistake of talking to the couple while he was recovering in the hospital. Soon after, he made it a life goal to someday punch the paranormal investigators in their pair of normal faces. The list of punchees later expanded, first to the editors at Macmillan who ginned up a “fictional-but-what-if-it’s-not-eh?” series of adventures featuring a character named Jameson Squared, then to the producers at the Sci-Fi (now SyFy) network who created a homegrown movie he would have called unwatchable if so many people hadn’t told him they’d watched it.
We Are All Completely Fine Page 6