by Lauren Dawes
He framed her face in his hands, holding her eyes with his even though it was his wolf peeking through. ‘If you ever see him again, run the other way. He’s … he’s …’ He. Is. Death. ‘He’s bad news, alright.’
She frowned, but didn’t pull away. ‘He seemed okay the first time I met him. I mean I didn’t trust him or anything, but he seemed okay.’
Rhett’s world tilted. ‘You’ve met him more than once?’ he hissed. Indi broke away from his grip and backed up a step. Her expression hardened, her eyes becoming as cold and as sharp as glass.
‘Yeah, I have met him more than once. But don’t worry Rhett. I can look after myself. I’m not as fragile as you think I am,’ she spat venomously. She stalked away from him, setting his protective streak alight. He caught up to her, spinning her around and forcing her to hear him out.
‘I know you’re not fragile Indi.’ He ran his fingers through his hair roughly. ‘Jesus, you’re the toughest woman I know, but there are some things in this world that want nothing more than to hurt you.’ He caught her face with his hands again. ‘Dammit, can’t you see that?’ Can’t you see that I want to protect you from everything?
‘I can look after myself,’ she growled into his face before turning on her heel and marching up the steps of her apartment building.
Rhett barked a curse and kicked a trashcan in front of her place. How could he have been so stupid and careless? Nox had attempted to kill her twice before he managed to get the job done. Had it just been pure, dumb luck or was there some other reason why he’d not done it as soon as he’d seen her? With a growl on his lips, he stalked away from Indi’s apartment before he did anymore damage.
Chapter 25
James sat in the waiting room of his psychiatrist’s office with a nervous tension building around him. On the seat next to him was his blue-covered diary. Casting a wary glance down at the book, his eyes darted back to the oak-panel door in front of him when he heard it being opened.
His shrink’s smiley-faced secretary popped her head through. ‘She’s ready for you now,’ she chirped. James automatically shrank in on himself, trying to make himself look smaller than he actually was.
‘Th-th-thanks,’ he stammered. He picked up his diary and walked through the open door. His therapist, a woman named Doctor Zara Baker, was waiting for him behind her oversized desk. She smiled at him, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
‘How are you feeling today?’
‘F-F-Fine,’ he replied nervously. She gestured to James to be seated with her hand. Looking down at the leather armchair he’d always sat in, he suddenly felt like he shouldn’t be there. If she read the diary, if he talked about it, then that would mean he was crazy.
‘James?’ Zara said. James looked up into her soft dove-grey eyes. ‘It’s okay,’ she assured him.
He sat down, resting the diary on top of the desk in front of him. Zara’s eyes followed his every move like he was an animal at the zoo, which only added to the feeling of insanity.
‘What have you got there James?’ Zara prompted when he said nothing.
‘M-my d-d-diary,’ he replied without looking at her.
‘Oh good. You’ve been writing things down. Have the blackouts become less frequent?’
‘N-No. W-w-worse.’
‘Well, that’s a pity,’ she replied, scribbling something down in the notebook that sat in her lap. ‘So what did you––’ Zara fell silent. When James looked up to see what was wrong, he quickly pulled down the sleeve of his Oxford.
‘Where did those scratches come from James?’
With his fingers still on the cuff of his shirt. ‘It h-happened in a d-d-dream,’ he stammered painfully.
‘Who did that to you in a dream?’
He swallowed hard. ‘I-I did.’
‘But why, James?’
‘I-I w-was being a d-d-dirty b-boy,’ he stammered, embarrassment flushing his cheeks.
‘Who told you that James?’
‘I-I did.’
‘Do you understand why?’
James shrugged––knowing that his stutter would almost be incomprehensible if he opened his mouth to answer. Besides, he didn’t have the answer to that question. All he had was a confusing dream in which he saw himself cut his arms to ribbons with a razorblade. He watched as Zara scratched a few more notes down before reaching for the diary.
‘Do you mind?’ she asked, her palm already resting on the cover. James shook his head and watched her manicured fingers slide the book closer to her side of the desk. She flipped the diary open and found the last entry. She bit her bottom lip as she read, and James focused on that one action. He’d never noticed how red her lips were before. He suddenly felt light-headed.
‘James, can you tell me about when you were small?’
He glanced up at her; the question sucking him back into his body. ‘N-No,’ he stammered.
‘Why not?’
James exhaled, his eyes sliding shut, his eyelids fluttering uncontrollably as panic set in. ‘I c-can’t r-r-remember it,’ he replied still fighting the feeling. This was how it started.
His mind splintered, taking him to a memory—a memory that seemed faint and fuzzy and unreal. He was at the beach with his dad. The sun was hot on his bare shoulders, but the water rushing over his feet was cool. He wanted to go further into the water, but he couldn’t swim so he only went in to his knees.
A wave crashed into him, sending him face-down into the shallow water. Before he could stand again, the tide pulled away from shore, taking James with it. The water dragged over his skin, trying to pull him with it into the vast ocean. Panicked and gasping, James dug his fingers into the sand, hoping that he could hold on while the ocean pulled at his body.
That sensation of someone pulling at his skin, dragging his body away was what it felt like when he lost himself.
Zara sat forward in her chair, the slight widening of her eyes the only indication she
was getting anxious. ‘James?’
‘Nope,’ said a deeper voice.
Zara gave him a tight-lipped smile. ‘Hello Buddy. I want to speak to James again. Is that okay?’
‘No. That’s not okay,’ he replied, slouching down into the leather chair and crossing his ankle across his knee. ‘If you want to talk to James, you have to go through me first,’ he replied, searching his pockets for a hand-rolled.
Zara’s back straightened at his tone. ‘What are you protecting James from Buddy?’
He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Everything.’ Pulling the hand-rolled out, he placed it between his lips.
‘You can’t smoke in here,’ she said firmly, sitting further back in her leather chair, distancing herself from him. When Buddy finally put the cigarette away, she asked, ‘Who told James that he was a disgusting boy?’
Buddy sneered. ‘I did.’
‘So you were the one to scratch him too?’ He sniffed dismissively and raised an eyebrow at her. She wrote something down on her pad of paper. ‘Perhaps you can tell me about your childhood?’
His lip curled up into a contemptible smile. ‘Sure thing doc. Our mother was a drunk and a whore. When she got drunk, she used to abuse James. We were burned by cigarettes … a lot, and she enjoyed beating us when we didn’t have another bottle of whiskey waiting for her. Her very favourite thing to do to us though, was to tie us to the bed, beat us, and then abuse us.’
Zara scribbled something down in her notes again, wiping something from the corner of her eye and smudging her mascara a little.
‘James doesn’t know about you, does he?’
His face hardened. ‘He doesn’t need to. I protect him. That’s all he needs to know about me.’
‘But you’ve been communicating with him, see?’ she said, sliding the diary over to him. Buddy leaned forward, seeing his block writing outside the neat, faint lines on the page.
‘Well, look at that,’ he replied sarcastically.
‘Why did you do this?’ She gestured down at th
e page he’d scribbled on hastily the previous evening.
‘He was losing it. I had to calm him down. I protect him. That’s my job.’
‘So what does James do?’
‘James earns the money.’
‘Do you have any other jobs?’
‘James doesn’t like being touched by women, but I have no problem with it. I look after the ladies for him.’
Zara sat back in her chair, crossing her legs gracefully. ‘Thank you, Buddy. I’d like to speak to James again now please,’ she said pleasantly.
He leaned forward in his chair. ‘How about after we’re done, we go out for a drink?’ Buddy asked. He liked the look of her mouth, liked how she bit down on her bottom lip when she was thinking. He would have her screaming for him by the end of the night.
‘I’m flattered, but I would like to speak to James again now.’
Buddy leaned back into his chair, shrugged and stepped back.
*
Doctor Zara Baker’s long fingers flew across the keys of her keyboard later that evening. Her session with one client in particular was bothering her. She’d started seeing James Vincent around six months ago. He’d been referred to her after he complained to his GP about feeling like there were people inside his head. He would find things in his cupboards and drawers that he had no recollection of buying. He’d find his bank balance low, but unable to say where the money had been spent. To her, it sounded like DID––Dissociative Identity Disorder––something she had never seen in person, only read about in case studies.
James came in today with his diary. In his last session, he’d said that his blackouts were becoming worse, so I suggested he started writing things down when he felt like he couldn’t remember where he’d been or what he’d done. So far, I’ve only had contact with one of his alters. Buddy comes out when he feels threatened or scared. It’s simply a defence mechanism James uses to cope with the stress of something strange and new, but it appears that James has no knowledge of Buddy or his role in his life.
Buddy acts and talks as if he’s the same age as James—almost as if he’s grown up with him. Generally, I would describe Buddy as aggressive. He is always on the defensive, choosing to act first and ask questions later. He’s provocative and everything that Buddy is, James is not.
Buddy claims that his job is to look after James, particularly protecting him from women, although he keeps himself hidden from James for reasons I don’t yet understand.
During this session James presented with cuts down both forearms. Buddy said he’d done it, but I don’t know whether James actually cut his own arms accidently, or whether Buddy was in control at the time. Buddy is the protector of the body, but he neither wants nor craves the accolade. He’d rather remain hidden, but he did write to James in an attempt to calm him, which indicates to me a kinder, gentler side to his personality.
James is still losing time on a regular basis. When he’s at work, he copes as he has a job to do; he has a purpose. But when he becomes idle, that is the time when he is most at risk of losing himself. James appears to be in control for the majority of the time, and I do not know how often Buddy comes to the fore to interact with people. I suspect that it’s only when women, violence and alcohol are concerned since his mother was a physically abusive, as well as sexually abusive, woman when James was growing up.
James told me about his mother’s death in a previous session. He described it as a time when he felt his entire body split in two. He had watched his mother choke on her own vomit. He recalls that she begged him for help, but he did nothing. One side wanted to help her and the other wanted to see her suffer for everything that she’d ever done to him. I believe this to be the first time Buddy held the primary personality reins of James’ subconscious.
I fear for what Buddy could do to women. His hatred is very real and very volatile. With all the reports on the news about the Buxton rapist, I can’t help but wonder: Is it James who is responsible with Buddy steering the ship?
Zara stopped typing, re-reading over her notes about Buddy. Could it be true? Could her client be responsible for the rapes? Could the scratches on James’ arms be defensive wounds? It had happened before—a person’s alter committing crimes and the prime personality not knowing about it. She wondered …
Not wanting to risk it, she grabbed her coat from the back of her office chair and her bag and hurried out of her office.
Chapter 26
Indi’s door bell buzzed. ‘Down in a minute,’ she said into the intercom in a rush as she made sure her blade was strapped on tight. She practised pulling it out a few times, deciding that her draw had become much sharper, more precise. Pulling her coat off the hook by the door, she locked up her apartment and ran down the stairs.
Jerry was waiting outside the building; his sunshine-yellow Porsche 911 practically screaming to be stolen. After they were both buckled in, they made their way to Jerry’s childhood home on the outskirts of town.
Turning into the circular drive, the tyres ground on the gravel slowly, pinging against the undercarriage in a random pattern. He pulled up the handbrake gently and turned off the engine.
‘Are you ready for this?’ Jerry asked.
‘Are you?’
He shrugged and popped open his door. Just as Indi reached for hers, the heavy door was pulled open from the other side by one of the butlers on staff at the Beckitt Estate. That’s right. Butlers.
‘Good evening, Miss Indigo.’
‘Manuel, call me Indi, okay?’
Manuel’s dark eyes sparkled when he smiled at her. His shoulder-length hair curled near the ends, making him look a lot younger than he was. His sharp, angular face was buried under a thick growth of five o’clock shadow. He offered Indi his hand to help her from the car.
‘I’m fine, Manuel. Thanks.’
Indi stepped clear of the car and tilted her head back, taking her first look at the house in nearly six whole months. The colonial style house was like a beacon of affluence in the neighbourhood––giving the other houses around it the proverbial bird and guaranteed years of therapy for self-esteem issues as it sat atop the hill. Indi spun around on the spot to get the whole view of the house and the garden. She thought it was strange how she’d forgotten the smallest details like the exact colour of the redbrick, or the size of the rose bushes that grew under the double-hung windows especially after what had happened in there. The garden around them suddenly exploded in light, illuminating the half an acre dedicated solely to the front garden in a thousand twinkling fairy lights. Indi was sure if she looked up that she wouldn’t have been able to see the stars.
An image suddenly seared through her mind, buckling her knees. Gripping the top of the door, her stomach turned in a wave. A huge knot was clenching and unclenching in her stomach and she fought the nausea. Indi drew in deep breaths as fragmented pictures banged around her skull. Sharp images cut behind her eyes. She was haemorrhaging memories; memories of a fight and teeth, violence and blood. They were so real that even when she opened her eyes, she could see them in front of her. It was only after a long, agonising second that her vision cleared, causing her to slump back into the passenger seat, her legs hanging out of the side of the car. Cradling her head in her hands, she waited for the lingering nausea to pass.
‘Are you alright?’ Jerry asked, crouching down in-between her knees, worry etching lines into his face.
‘Yeah. Fine. I felt light-headed for a second, that’s all,’ she lied.
‘Are you sure? The doctor said that if you had any more episodes that I should take you straight back to the hospital.’
‘Jer, I’m fine. I swore I’d never come back here and I’m not planning a second trip, so let’s just get this damn thing over with.’
Jerry watched her for a moment before he stood up, giving her a few moments to herself. Something warm trickled down from her nose, and when she wiped the back of her hand across her lip, it came back red. Indi panicked, pulling a tissue from the
box hidden in Jerry’s glove box and holding it against the bleed.
Jerry’s head came back into view. ‘Are you coming Ind?’ he asked.
Shoving the tissue behind her back, she smiled. ‘Yeah. I’m coming.’ She slid from the car, shutting the door with her hip. Together, they walked up the porch steps; Indi running her hands along the huge granite columns that lined the portico.
‘Indi, you look a little pale.’ Jerry’s hand went to her forehead. ‘You feel a little hot too.’ Sliding out from his touch, she frowned at him. ‘Okay. I promise I won’t ask again,’ he added.
Jerry turned around, facing the over-sized mahogany panelled door, and knocked three times. The vibrations of the sound echoed in the giant foyer they were yet to have admittance to. Half a minute later, the door opened. Eric––The Beckitt’s most trusted valet––was wearing a crisp-looking black suit with tails.
‘Master Jerry, Miss Indigo. Welcome,’ he said cordially, making some grand gesture to allow them entry. Jerry took the first cautious step in. It took Indi a few more minutes though. She had to put her big girl panties on and say a prayer that she’d keep the lid on her already simmering anger.
Barb was waiting for them in the grand entrance. Perched on the last step of the huge spiral staircase, she was dressed in a white, diaphanous gown that seemed to flow like water around her body. She moved as if her feet weren’t even touching the ground.