The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

  “You saw the news?” she said, changing the subject.

  “I did,” he said, watching her. “What are you thinking?”

  She ran down what she knew so far, her conversations with Chris and Henry, the files Henry had sent her, her visit to the Markham house. She didn’t tell him about the crystal heart; that was hers alone. He listened carefully, rubbing at his chin.

  “Have you talked to Greg?”

  “He knows I want to follow the story.”

  “Does he know you took Lily to the Markham house?”

  She shook her head. Sins of omission. She’d been guilty of it before; it had almost unstitched them—more than once. And here she was, doing it again.

  “Why this?” he asked. “Why now?”

  Something about the way the leaves rustled brought her back there again.

  The truth was, she didn’t remember much. After that first blow, there was just a series of images, sounds, vivid but disjointed. Where the dog had bitten her, she saw the bright red of her own torn flesh, even the incomprehensible white of bone, the pain had yet to register. She heard Hank issuing a warrior’s scream that was abruptly, brutally silenced. She wasn’t even sure then where he had come from. Tess over the shoulder of a giant, hanging, a rag doll. Hank, limp and pale being dragged by the wrist. The labored sound of the big man’s breathing. The smell of rot. Her clothes growing damp. The sun sinking. The sound of birdsong. Darkness encroaching. Then the sound of her name, and Hank’s, and Tess’s. Knowing that she was the only one who could answer, but she didn’t have a voice.

  The world was far and fading fast. She’d lost a lot of blood from those dog bites; the one on her leg would take more than fifty stitches. A plastic surgeon would be called but the scar of that bite would mar her leg forever. Her jaw was broken, both eyes swollen and black; she had two broken ribs. And she was the lucky one. By far.

  Years of therapy, a career that let her dig deep into crime, trying to understand why people did what they did to each other, and yet, and yet, psychologically, in many ways, she was still where she was when they found in her the woods, twelve hours after Kreskey took her friends.

  “I’m thinking there’s a connection,” she said in answer to his question. “Between Markham and the Boston Boogeyman.”

  “And Kreskey.”

  She nodded, felt her chest tighten. “Yes. Maybe.”

  “Three men guilty of horrible crimes, all of whom escaped justice.”

  “Until they didn’t.”

  “It’s a good story,” he said. “Who will you cover it for?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  She remembered this feeling, the feeling of bringing something to her father and waiting for his reaction. Her mother loved everything Rain said and did; even her mediocre outings were met with enthusiasm from her mom. And so Rain learned to never be afraid, that it was okay to try and fail and try again. A beautiful lesson that had served her well. But her father recognized good work when he saw it. There was a special look on his face, a certain tone. Even now, an accomplished person and a mother herself, she craved it.

  “I wonder,” he said quietly.

  She waited. He paused, took a sip of that lemonade. She did the same—it was cool and tart, reminded her of days long gone—sitting with her mother playing cards at night. They never had a television. She watched nonstop at Tess’s and Hank’s, but at home it was books and art, cards and board games. They’d sit on the porch and listen to the owls, watch the stars, talk about this and that, or nothing. Sometimes they just sat. Did people still do that?

  “I wonder if this is really the story you want to tell.”

  She felt that flutter of annoyance, of disappointment that was so familiar in her father’s presence. She wanted him to say what her mother would have said: Write your way in. If the story is there, you’ll know it.

  “What does that mean?”

  He looked at her, waited. She stared at him until he dropped his gaze, took off his glasses and rubbed at his nose. He still wore his wedding band. Her mother never took hers off either.

  “You told me to lock it up tight,” she said. The words tasted like gravel in her mouth, gritty, dirty. “I did that.”

  “I did tell you that,” he said. “I’ve since revised my thinking on that matter. These days I have a lot of time to reflect.”

  There was a stack of books on the table by the rocker. The Snow Leopard, The Prophet, a volume on northern birds, The Wisdom of the Sufi Sages, Zen and the Brain.

  “A lot of the mistakes I made in my life were due to the things I didn’t want to examine about my past. There’s power in telling the story. You know that, don’t you?”

  “The story’s been told.”

  “Not by you.”

  “I’m not the one to tell it.”

  “There’s no one who can tell it better,” he said. “This story, the one you’ve brought to me. It’s that story. Surely you see. Because if these crimes are connected, that’s the beginning.”

  Lily started to cry, her voice carrying over the distance between them, as thin and distant as birdsong. But Rain felt it in her body. She got up quickly, eager to get away from the conversation. But her father put a hand on her arm.

  “I’ll get her,” he said, hopping up. He seemed so happy, she didn’t have the heart to stop him. She figured she’d hear Lily start to wail as some weird man she barely knew lifted her from her car seat. But when he came back, the baby was happily smiling in his arms. She’d go to anyone, obviously. Weren’t babies only supposed to want their mommies? He had the diaper bag over his other shoulder, looked like a natural with it.

  “She knows her grandpa, doesn’t she?” he said.

  “Ba! Ba!” Lily enthused.

  “Baba! Yes! That’s a perfect name for me,” her father said, clearly pleased.

  Rain’s heart was still knocking with annoyance, with an odd kind of fear. She followed her father inside, his words bouncing around the inside of her skull. She was forced to ask herself the worst question she could imagine asking: Was her father right?

  To tell the story she was thinking about telling, did she have to dive into her own shadowy past, as well? Was the reason she couldn’t fully move on from that day in the woods that she’d never really told it? She hadn’t narrated her experience; she’d buried it. Now it was digging its way up and through her psyche. It was a child’s memory. Maybe she needed to face it as an adult.

  “Where did that come from?”

  Her father had placed Lily in a high chair she’d never seen before. It looked ancient but sturdy.

  He looked at her with a smile. “It’s yours. It was in the basement.”

  She put her hand on it. It was solid wood with bunnies carved into the seat, a tray that fit in neatly like Jenga blocks. No strap. She had no memory of it.

  “See, it pays to be a hoarder,” said her father. He went into the diaper bag and retrieved the little plastic container of Cheerios, her sippy cup. “All this minimalist garbage about getting rid of all your things, clutter clearing. Clutter is life!”

  “Why did you take it out?”

  Lily bounced happily, shoved a few Cheerios in her mouth. She was fixated by her “Baba”—maybe it was the glasses. The kid couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  “Last time you came, I wasn’t prepared,” he said. “I think it was uncomfortable for you. Maybe that’s why you didn’t come back until now.”

  It had been uncomfortable. But it wasn’t because there hadn’t been a high chair. Her father and Greg had started talking about politics, disappearing into their man world of conversation that seemed to take precedence over everything in their immediate environment. Lily had been fussy. And Rain’s father seemed annoyed that Lily was making noise, interrupting his thoughts. He’d looked embarrassed when she nursed. The place was a
n obstacle course of junk. The baby couldn’t walk yet, but what about when she could? The house was dirty—like really dirty, floor gritty, dishes in the sink, coffee table covered with magazines, newspapers. She suggested he get someone in to clean; he’d been offended.

  Rain felt like her father barely even looked at her, was disapproving of her choice to stay home with Lily. Then the stroller came in the mail. Don’t let this slow you down. What a clueless, male thing to say, right?

  “I did get someone in to clean, too,” he said. “Did you notice?”

  He’d mentioned it before, the last time they talked. He was repeating himself. But he’d always done that.

  It was clean, cleaner than maybe it had ever been. She opened the fridge; it was stocked and organized. There were no dishes in the sink, flowers sat in a vase on the windowsill. There was a dish towel folded on the counter. Other things started to come into focus. His sudden consideration for her; his enthusiasm for Lily. His questioning of past choices. There was a lightness to him, something new.

  “Dad?” she said. “Are you seeing someone?”

  “No, no,” he said, waving at her. “Nothing like that.”

  She waited.

  “She’s just a friend,” he said. “The woman who came to clean. We became friends.”

  She was equal parts amused and annoyed. A girlfriend? He was seventy-five.

  “You know, I think I like the idea of this long-form journalism they’re doing—podcasts and such. There’s a freedom to that—you’re not beholden to advertisers, editors who fear for their jobs, you can create your own brand. You’ve made your bones—you have a name, credibility. Have you thought about that? Why not strike out on your own with this? Then maybe—best case—it gets picked up by a bigger outlet.”

  She was embarrassingly pleased to have her father’s seal of approval.

  He hadn’t written anything in years, but he was still up on the publishing industry, was current, informed. Well, maybe he was writing; he just hadn’t published in more than ten years. Not since he’d been accused of plagiarism, right before Rain’s mother died. The accusation, made by a student who’d claimed her father had stolen his idea and work he had submitted, was dismissed in court. But the scandal, the humiliation, the court appearances, on top of losing Mom, had been too much for him. He swore off the industry, swore off teaching, and more or less became a hermit. He did the occasional interview. Last year the Times took pictures of his writing studio in the attic, the place where he’d written every novel. That last book, which critics said was his best ever, was a huge bestseller. He didn’t have to work again after that.

  She watched him dangle a set of keys before Lily, who laughed happily. The kitchen was warm and sunny; this visit couldn’t have been any more different from the last one. “What are you working on, Dad? Anything?”

  “I’m working on being a better man, Laraine.” LAH-raine. “How am I doing?”

  She couldn’t help but smile. She leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Lily laughed.

  “Great, Dad. You’re doing great.”

  She walked over to the window and stared at the metal sculpture. She really hated it.

  “Speaking of clutter,” he said. He disappeared, and she heard him move lithely up the steps to his office. It was quiet a moment and then he returned, in his arms a stack of papers and files.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s everything,” he said, putting the stack down on the kitchen table. “It’s every newspaper clipping, every courtroom transcript, every letter we received from supporters, all my notes, even my diary from that time.”

  “You were going to write about it?” she asked. Now that she thought about it, she was surprised that he never had.

  “I thought about it once,” he said. “I hoped it would be a catharsis, a way to exorcise all the demons and the pain of it. But I could never access it. And now I know why.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s your story,” he said, resting a hand on the stack. “And only you can tell it.”

  She felt the weight of it, the air in the room suddenly overwarm.

  “So, what’s the story, Laraine? What are you going to tell them?”

  “I’m going to tell them the truth,” she said, surprising herself.

  Most of it.

  THIRTEEN

  When I woke up it was pitch-black at first. And so quiet; the only sound was my own wheezing breath. It was cold, too; wet concrete beneath me. I knew that stink right away, the mold of a northern basement. A persistent damp that sinks into everything.

  My body didn’t feel like my body. It shook uncontrollably. Oh, and the pain. It was like the worst earache, the worst toothache, times a million. What did we know about pain then, beloved children of the suburbs, private schools and parents who for all their minor flaws and mundane failures loved us to distraction? We’d barely been yelled at. Even our teachers weren’t allowed to be mean anymore.

  If not for the steady diet of comic books and horror movies, the ideas that got me into the whole mess in the first place, I might not have survived what came next.

  Or that cop—remember him?—the one who came into the school and told us what to do if we were taken. First, don’t let them take you. That was lesson number one. (I know you remember that one, Lara.) But if he gets you, he told us, break all the rules. Anything anyone ever told you about being good, and not making a scene, and obeying the grown-ups in your life—toss that right out the window. Be bad. Yell and scream. Fight. Make a mess. Tear things up, flood toilets and bathtubs, smash drywall. Anything that calls attention.

  Remember how he taught us to punch out taillights—if we were in the trunk of some psycho’s car. It was a surreal presentation, but no one laughed. We didn’t even joke about it afterward. Because it was scary as fuck. People were out there. People who wanted to take you and do unspeakable things to your body.

  Something weird happened to me in Kreskey’s basement. In extreme trauma, especially in the very young, the psyche can split. People generally think of this as a bad thing. It can present as psychosis, or dissociative states, even catatonia. But most trauma experts agree that this split can sometimes be a gift, as a stronger self emerges to protect the weaker aspects.

  In the fearsome dank black of that basement, a darker, stronger, bolder version of me was born. I might never have met him otherwise. I can’t say I like him, or that I’m glad we have had occasion to know each other. I also can’t say I’m not grateful to him.

  The Hank I was when Kreskey took us—he, alone, wouldn’t have survived what came next. I wish I could have left the Hank who emerged in that basement behind when I didn’t need him anymore. But that’s not the way these things work usually.

  It’s about fifteen minutes before my last session of the day. And from my office window, I see her car, a black sedan, pull into the lot and just sit, waiting.

  Patrick, my four o’clock patient, notices my attention waver and I think the last bit of the session suffers some. Children of trauma are finely tuned to shifts of expression; they see everything. It’s a survival mechanism. When raised by an unpredictably violent parent, the abused child learns to watch every movement, every microexpression, to listen for every shift in tone or even breath. They become watchful adults, unusually intuitive to the point of being empaths.

  Patrick is a gifted artist, obsessed with the human form, the face especially, the eyes. I feel the heat of his gaze our whole hour together; most of my other patients stare at their hands, the floor, the art and objects hanging on my walls. Not Patrick. Patrick’s father abused him physically and psychologically, brutally, relentlessly. He bears the scars—a broken nose that didn’t heal quite right, an arm that wasn’t set properly gives him pain, a burn on the side of his neck, still red and angry. Patrick’s father killed his mother brutally as the boy, beaten
nearly senseless, watched, helpless.

  His aunt and uncle took him in, and they are getting him the help he needs. I don’t know what lies ahead for him. He’s quiet, folded into himself most of the time.

  “How are you sleeping?” I ask.

  It’s just over a year since his mother was killed.

  He shrugs. “The night is a good time to work.”

  “Sleep is a healing force in our lives,” I tell him. “Our brains rest, skills set, our cells heal and regenerate.”

  “It’s a dark doorway,” he says.

  He has deep brown pools for eyes, a thin line of a mouth. Lately, under my suggestion and with the encouragement of his uncle, he’s discovered exercise. He was emaciated when we first started speaking. His body has grown toned; he’s gained weight. His aunt thinks there might be a girl he likes; he’s asked her to his senior prom. All promising things.

  “Nightmares still?”

  He nods, looks out the window. I follow his gaze and my eyes fall on the car.

  What does she want now?

  When I look back, Patrick’s watching me with a frown.

  “What?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Sorry.”

  He reaches for his portfolio and hands it to me. I open it.

  The images are, as always, disturbing. A woman’s face without eyes, an open screaming mouth. A boy cowers at the end of a long, shrinking hallway, just visible as a drooling monster sets upon him. A severed head. A pile of gore. Thick charcoal lines of black and shades of bloodred. He and I have talked about them in depth. Who is this woman? Why does she not have eyes?

  “These are just the images from my dreams,” he has explained. “I don’t know what they mean.”

  No wonder the kid doesn’t want to sleep. He’s admitted to feeling angry at his mother. Even after his father beat them, she always forgave him. She turned away from things that were happening to Patrick, made excuses to doctors, to teachers. It’s like she couldn’t see what he was. Like she was blind or wanted to be.