by Mira Gibson
And Roberta’s harrowing point was inescapable. Why had Maude been shot in the head when the others had been held, tortured, and dumped, dead and faceless, in Opechee Park?
By the time the dawning sun—tangerine sharp and blazing—pierced through the living room, expelling shadows that had seemed to promise answers all night, Gertrude was resigned to her exhaustion. Today would not be an easy one to get through.
As she rose from the couch, the fact of Jake’s arrest hit her like a sandbag to her chest. He was the sixth. In Charlie's stead, Peter was mastering the strategy of taking out anyone who got in the cult's way. Had Jake been one of them then turned? Was that the reason behind setting him up?
Drinking coffee was futile. After two cups she felt no more awake. The eerie sickness that had plagued her sister growing up, the hospital visits and blood tests her father had performed in the secluded corners of his private practice across the street from Laconia Mercy, cloyed at Gertrude with nightmarish logic. In waking hours it didn’t make sense. It couldn’t. But in dreams the connections were ironclad.
And underscoring the swirling fragments that wouldn’t fit except insanely was her bizarre longing for Jake. It wasn’t simply that an innocent man shouldn’t have been arrested. If that were the case, she might be able to function with a sense of pragmatic determination. It was that he meant something to her now. Their kiss, those fleeting five minutes alone with him, had elevated her feelings into the realm of undeniable clarity. He thrilled her and she wanted him.
In the bedroom, Roberta was a murmuring lump embedded under a heap of blankets when Gertrude stepped soundlessly towards her closet. It irked her to leave the girl unsupervised for the day, but there was no getting around it. Aspects of Roberta had been honest during their panicked conversation, but Gertrude had also seen red flags. Was Roberta right about Jake or was Gertrude being conned?
It was the dilemma stemming from this that compelled her to make the short drive over to Lakes Region Mental Health as soon as she’d dressed and slipped out the front door.
Wanda Trentwell had been admitted last year on the grounds she was mentally unfit to be tried for the murders of Thomas Black, Jordan Holloway, and Miles Tanner, who each had brief, messy rap sheets laced with misdemeanors of a sexual nature according to what she’d been able to pull up last night in her worst hours of insomnia, logging into the DCYF database where it intersected with police records. It had been Roberta’s laissez-faire response—Just sex—which had given her the idea to check.
If the cult had killed the men, then they had to have either seen something or played a role in it in the first place. And if Wanda had been arrested and had faced the possibility of a trial prior to the court determining she wasn’t mentally sound, then Wanda had to have gleaned the particulars of the case built against her.
But more than anything, Gertrude needed to hear it from Wanda whether or not Jake had in fact worked with Peter plotting to destroy her life.
A three-story brick structure with dormers overlooking the lake, the facility looked more like an asylum from the forties than a government regulated institution funded and monitored by state officials. Originally, the building had been used as a school for feeble minded children—an antiquated term for the mentally disabled—a place where children with Down Syndrome and other genetic disorders affecting mental health could be raised and cared for, forgotten by parents who couldn’t afford the crippling stigma that came with not rearing a normal child.
Dismal though it looked, the staff appeared to be doting, as an orderly walked Gertrude into one of the common rooms where he believed Wanda was doing some of her art.
“She hasn’t had a visitor,” he explained, pausing at the edge of the room to point her out.
“Ever?”
He confirmed with a frowning smirk then added, “This isn’t where she belongs, but considering the alternative she’s probably better off.”
Gertrude wondered if he thought Wanda had manipulated the system.
“There’s nothing in her chart, no behavioral evidence that I’ve seen that would leave me to believe her capable of anything she was accused of,” he added grimly. “Which is to say you shouldn’t feel intimidated, but if you are, I’ll be right over here.”
Hesitating, Gertrude studied the woman who had been the center of so much controversy last year. Wanda’s mousy brown hair was a touch greasy at the roots and tucked slick behind her ears, which gave Gertrude a clear view of her profile. She had broad drooping eyes with heavy lids, a long scooping nose, and narrow mouth. Her skin was ruddy and her overall demeanor seemed masculine—her shoulders rounding into a hunch over her sketchpad, her elbows planted beside it like a vulture protecting its scraps. Whereas the other patients rocked and hummed and cast sideways glances, looking but not quite seeing each other, Wanda functioned with a distinct sense of clarity as though she knew where she was and why she was here. There didn't seem to be a shred of psychosis behind her sharp hazel eyes.
When she leaned back in her chair, glimpsing through the window at the lake to rest her eyes, Gertrude started for her, passing patients who were muttering and rocking in their chairs.
She came to Wanda’s table, which was barely long enough to contain her sketchbook.
“Hi Wanda, I’m Gertrude.”
With clear eyes, she glanced up at her as if taking stock of the visitor she didn’t recognize.
“You're here to see me?” she asked, interested.
“I am. Can I sit?”
Pulling her sketchbook into her lap, Wanda stared at her with unblinking eyes and a curios smile formed at the corners of her mouth.
“What’s this about?”
“Your name came up a few times in a case I’m working, child protective services.”
“Okay.”
“Peter King,” she stated and watched as the name washed over Wanda like a bucket of ice water.
“Something happen to those kids?” Her face pinched into a prolonged wince, anticipating the worst it seemed. But the fact that she’d asked at all, told Gertrude that she probably hadn’t heard about Maude. “I knew it would.”
“Maude was killed.”
Hanging her head, Wanda took a long moment before she met her gaze again, and in the interlude Gertrude saw how easily she herself could wind up in a place like this. Wanda was sober as a judge. She hadn’t been severed from reality.
“I was hoping you could tell me what you know,” she went on when she had Wanda’s attention.
“It won’t hold up in court,” she said. "Since I'm crazy, apparently."
“That’s not something I’m worried about right now. I heard you were involved with Peter King and also Jake Livingston, and I’d like to know about those relationships.”
“I didn’t kill those men,” she stated.
Keeping her tone very quiet and striped of all judgment, she asked, “Did Peter pay you to get rid of those bodies?”
“He didn’t pay me, not after the first time he rolled through the park and that was only for some time with me in the cab of his truck. Normal shit. Nothing I ever thought would’ve led in the direction it did.”
“So he was blackmailing you into helping him?”
“If you want to call it that.”
Gertrude knew the bodies had been found poorly buried at the park so she didn’t ask about the details of Wanda’s role in that aspect.
“Did you interact with the kids at all? Did Peter ever bring you to Charlie King’s house?”
So subtly that she appeared to vibrate, Wanda nodded. “When I didn’t want anything to do with it anymore.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Again her face tensed, wincing as though she was trying not to taste something bitter in her mouth.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” she said finally once the memory had left her.
“I promise you I will.” When after saying as much Wanda still looked reluctant, she leaned in, explaining, “They g
ot into my house. It looked like they’d performed a satanic ritual in my living room. All because I’ve been assigned to make sure Roberta King is safe. Maude King’s death was chalked up to a suicide. The more I know, the more likely I’ll be able to stop them.”
Interrupting, she corrected Gertrude. “There’s no stopping them. All that Satanism stuff is bullshit. It’s a smokescreen. They’re not trying to conjure the devil or perform black magic or live by a dark code.”
“But there have been accounts-”
“That’s what he wants. Peter wants whoever knows or finds out, to actually believe that group of fuck-offs is into that shit, because it's outlandish. You go off to some other county, some other police station that isn’t knotted up in Peter’s corruption, and you tell them there’s a satanic cult in Laconia, they’ll look at you like you’ve got two heads then they’ll throw you in here with me.”
“What is it a smokescreen for?”
Rather than come out with it, Wanda led into a lengthy explanation that at first blush had Gertrude entirely thrown in terms of what in the hell Wanda was talking about and how in the hell it tied into Satanism and Maude’s murder, but she listened intently anyway.
“The human mind has these built in preservation mechanisms that safeguard you for survival. If something’s too traumatic, if something’s so horrific it threatens to shatter your psyche, your mind will sever it off, burry it. You won’t remember. Like a car accident. People don’t remember the impact. They don’t remember the aftermath. Children are particularly susceptible to this phenomenon. If you take a three year old and strangle them within an inch of their life and they truly believe they’re going to die, they won’t remember it afterwards, especially if it's their parent doing the strangling. Those rituals are just their way of getting those kids to forget.”
“Forget what?”
“They’re not a cult of Satanists. They’re a cult of pedophiles. And they’ve found a way to get away with it.”
Shocked, Gertrude asked, “How do you know this?”
“Saw it with my own eyes. Peter dragged me down there. Out in that field there’s a trap door leads down into a room. I tell you in my whole life I’ve never been so scared as I was down there. I didn’t do a thing except stand there trembling, but the biggest mistake I ever made was believing Peter when he threatened me. He took photos of me. Told me I’d go down for every act they’d ever committed. So I did what he wanted.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, saying, “The things they did to that girl.” When she returned her gaze to Gertrude, she added with an edge of delirium, “They rip her apart and then her mother puts her back together like Betty-fucking-Crocker cooking a shepherd’s pie.”
Gertrude felt sick, but pushed herself to collect every last answer she’d come for.
“How does Jake fit into this?”
“Jake was my second biggest mistake. I believed him, too.”
Wanda turned lax, a far away look clouding her sharp eyes, her face drawing long and slack until she swallowed hard, tensing. As removed as she appeared, her words came clearly.
“I thought he loved me. He swooped into my life, cleaned me up. I felt like his wife. It felt like things were heading in that direction. Then we got together with Peter. Jake used me. I never would've guessed he was one of them, but then he went with me to Peter, and had me act like we wanted in on their sick operation, like Jake’s into it, anything to get down into that room, that's when I knew he'd been one of them the whole time.”
When Gertrude tore through the common room, knocking into empty chairs and clipping her hip on tables to get the hell out of there, it wasn't a conscious decision.
As soon as she fell into the driver’s seat having thrust the car door open, nearly dislodging it from its hinges, she screamed, clawing index cards off the steering wheel and dashboard in a guttural outpouring of sickened rage. Wanda was crazy, she told herself. Wanda would say anything. Wanda used to be a prostitute and an addict and couldn’t possibly remember the past with even a fraction of clarity.
But Gertrude believed her.
And the torment that resulted was ripping her mind and heart apart like they were as fragile as paper.
Peeling out in Reverse, her Audi stalled, jolting in abrupt death. She twisted the key in the ignition, pumping the gas and it caught, vehicle bucking forward, but then popped out of gear and died. She jammed the gear shift, yanking it down into Reverse, popping and pressing the clutch and gas, forcing the thing to life and when it caught again, she swung fast around and gunned it out of the parking lot, swerving around parked cars and orderlies who were making their lazy way to the entrance.
The second she merged onto Route 12, its smooth asphalt and absence of vehicles, its blue skies and crows hunting in circles overhead, she slipped into dark remembrance and it wasn’t until she jerked off the exit, barreling towards the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Center that she came back into herself.
She cut into the parking lot then as soon as she angled into a spot, she jumped out and ran at a sprinter’s pace.
“I need to see Dr. Hagstaff,” she yelled breathlessly when she came to his assistant’s desk, her eyes glued to his door, which was shut.
“I’m sorry, he’s with a-”
She was already pushing the door open, his assistant objecting and starting after her, the wilted man on Dr. Hagstaff’s couch cowering at the intrusion as though a bomb had gone off.
“I need to talk to you,” she blurted out then yelled, “out,” at the stunned man on the couch.
“Gertrude, if only you would have called ahead,” he said, quickly getting to his feet as if planning to guide her out once he reached her.
Raising a hand, she asserted the emergency and he focused on addressing his patient.
“Can I find you in an hour?” he asked the man, who’d collected himself into the assistant’s care in the doorway. When the man indicated he could, Hagstaff eased the door closed. “That was uncalled for. You’ve missed several appointments, Gerty, and you could’ve easily rescheduled.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I think I’m having a panic attack.”
He helped her to the couch then took up in a nearby chair, crossing his legs and settling into a calm repose of breathing in a slow and steady rhythm meant to inspire her to do the same.
“Are you having a panic attack?” he asked in his sharply nasal tone that she realized she missed.
She wasn’t hyperventilating. The room wasn’t spinning and the walls weren’t closing in.
“No, but I’m remembering things, crazy things that couldn’t have happened except that I know they did. I can feel it. It’s making me want to tear my skin off.”
Dr. Hagstaff pushed his horned rim glasses up the bridge of his nose then laced his fingers, observing her, his mouth curling with concern. When she didn’t dive in, her thoughts scattering like spilled marbles, her mind meshing people and places from her past into the case at hand so darkly she couldn’t trust it, couldn’t trust her impressions or conclusions, he filled the gap, asking, “Have you been taking your anti-anxiety medication?”
“Why haven’t I remembered my upbringing? It doesn’t make sense that the car accident wiped it out.”
Taking a carefully measured breath to steady the sigh that had been building, Dr. Hagstaff reminded her they’d been over this. “You have to give it time.”
“Albert was a doctor.”
“He hasn’t died, has he?” he asked, demonstratively.
“No. Is a doctor. And Doris was sick a lot. Bedridden. We were tested all the time for radon poisoning, but that wasn’t it. That wasn’t why we were sick. It had something to do with a rash, but I can’t remember.”
Furrowing his brow, he refrained from questioning the significance, but his very expression made her feel immense pressure to start making sense.
“I can remember having these moments growing up where I was baffled that I couldn’t remember anything. I knew I had these gi
ant holes in my memory. I don’t think the accident caused me to forget. I don’t think I was remembering things properly in the first place.”
“Remembering what?”
“That Albert and Marsha were abusing her. That Albert was abusing her and Zhana was putting her back together.”
“Whoa now, hang on. Who’s Zhana?”
“Roberta’s mother.”
“Roberta?”
“My case.”
“Gerty, I think you’re confusing your own life with someone else’s. This is a girl whose case your dealing with? Has work become overwhelming?”
He took a prescription pad from the inner pocket of his corduroy jacket and started writing.
“I don’t want any drugs,” she blurted out. “I’m not losing it. I’m onto something. This woman, this mother I met, she’s oblivious to what’s been happening to her daughter and it reminded me of Marsha, of my mom.”
“But you also voiced concern that the things you were remembering might be crazy,” he pointed out, which wasn’t how she recalled putting it.
“I don’t think Doris was sick. Being bedridden I don’t think my mom was keeping her ill. I think she was putting her back together after... I don’t know I can’t remember. And Doris hated herself so much for it. She used to cut herself. Just like Roberta has been doing. Whatever is happening to Roberta was happening to Doris. And I just learned what was happening to Roberta. And I’m so scared...” she trailed off, asking herself, “rashes? All over our skin...”
“Gerty, I want you to take a deep breath. I want you to center yourself.” After she did him the courtesy of leaning back into the couch and drawing air into her lungs with grand, heaving breaths, he asserted, “I think this case of yours is too much. I think you’re making connections that in reality don’t exist. It was too soon for you to go back to work.”
“No, that’s not it. I’m not making this up. It’s all the same.”
She pitched forward on the edge of the couch, desperate for him to see it as clearly as she could, and in response he jutted a flat palm at her, coaxing her to calm, but it only riled her up.