As Dorothy walked into the doctor's office, she admired the wall of dark-wood bookcases with glass doors jammed full of books and knickknacks from all over the world. A large blue and white Victorian urn stood on a bookcase.
"What do you use that for? It's too big for cookies." Dorothy asked with childlike curiosity.
"It's from my parents' home. Big enough to hide a kid, isn't it?" the doctor teased her.
Dr. Ribner escorted Dorothy to the seat in front of his gilded Empire desk. Vicaro sat next to her. Ribner assumed command from behind the desk.
"Dorothy, how are you feeling?" Ribner inquired softly.
"Nervous. Very scared, to be honest. I was hypnotized recently, for the first time, and I assure you, I was plenty frightened."
"I can appreciate that. But you don't need to be frightened now," he reassured her. "At least, not of hypnotism. I imagine your visions might be frightening, though."
"Yes, I can't begin to tell you. My whole life has not been the same since December third."
"We'll get into that in a moment." Dr. Ribner leaned forward. "I see your gifts are not only psychic, but that you are gifted with beauty, as well."
Dorothy felt her head pound. The vibrations are right, she thought to herself. This man is on my side. Much of her fear slipped away and she began to ease into her surroundings.
The doctor became serious. 'To be honest, I don't exactly know what role-hypnosis can play in helping you or anyone else understand what you're seeing. For the most part, psychic phenomena are outside the realm of scientific data and research. That is not to say that there isn't research going on, because there is. Not as much attention is being given to the workings of the mind as, let's say, physical diseases like cancer. But scientists - mostly physicists - have been trying to apply their branch of science to ESP, telepathy, and all the other varieties of parapsychological wonders."
He paused, looked into Vicaro's eyes, then Dorothy's, waiting for questions. When there were none, he concluded, "Just believing in it is the first and most important breakthrough to understanding."
Dorothy reached out and touched the doctor's hand. "I think I love you," she said. They all smiled. They all understood.
Dorothy looked around the room toward the only window, which offered a view of other buildings and a great expanse of New York winter sky. A large assortment of coleus and dark green snake plants cluttered the window-sill. Between the window and the desk stood a soft, yellow leather reclining chair. Dorothy gulped.
"That's right," Ribner smiled. "Every psychiatrist has a couch."
Dorothy smiled nervously. "Does every patient have a dream?" she asked.
"No," he replied.
"Good, then you won't mind working on one more."
"Dorothy, why don't you excuse Patrolman Vicaro and me for one moment. We'll step into the waiting room."
"Go right ahead. I'll sit right here and stare at this beautiful desk and rug," she looked down. "My God, it's so clean!" she exclaimed. "Don't you ever have patients with muddy feet?"
"Not many, I suppose," the doctor replied as he closed the outside door behind him.
Dorothy looked at the diplomas on the wall and thought about the Latin she had heard as a child. Latin meant church to Dorothy. Latin was everything she had been forced to learn by her mother and oldest sister as a youngster. Latin was the language she aspired to know so that she would be accepted, like everyone else in the church. Latin was the unintelligible language of God, the language that drifted from her mother's bedroom as she and her friends prayed in the afternoon. In the afternoon, Dorothy smiled to herself, so that my father wouldn't see them.
She sighed nervously. I had enough Latin to choke a horse when I was a kid.
"Okay, Dorothy," Dr. Ribner's voice interrupted. "Why don't you lie down on the couch and we'll proceed. I've asked the officer to remain outside while I hypnotize you, so that you aren't distracted. Later he will help me in the questioning."
Dorothy plopped into the reclining seat, her legs not quite making it to the end. She looked to her right and saw a small black rectangular box with two large dials on it. She read out loud, "Dose ... Output ... Frequency."
"This little machine helps you to focus your concentration," Dr. Ribner explained.
"I'm not mechanical, but if this little box can help me focus, I'll marry it," Dorothy announced.
"It's really very simple. What I'm going to do is prick your ear a tiny, tiny bit with this," and he held up a small clamp connected by one red and one white wire to the box, and touched it to his ear.
"What you will feel is no more than a slight run of electricity in the ear. We use this rather than an acupuncture needle."
"Don't explain it to me," Dorothy warned. "I get too nervous around doctors and neediest
"Do you have any questions?" Ribner asked as he pulled the window shade down, covering half the window.
"Nope. Let's get going."
The clamp was applied to Dorothy's ear, and soon she felt a slight buzz of electricity. "Now, I want you to think of the word relax. I want you to think about its meaning. Spell it out. Feel it. Just relax now," Ribner's voice was smooth and firm.
"Close your eyes and relax your body. Concentrate on the feelings in your ear and relax. Just relax."
Vicaro could barely hear muffled voices from the waiting area. His ear to the door, he strained to hear what was happening in the doctor's office. He wondered what methods the doctor used for hypnotizing. He felt embarrassed to discuss the topic. As he strained closer to the door, it opened and caught him by surprise.
"Step quietly," whispered Ribner. "She's perfectly fine. An easy subject."
The doctor sat directly in front of Dorothy, one arm on the windowsill. Vicaro sat next to the door, in front of the desk. He caught sight of the clamp connected to Dorothy's right ear and felt a shiver go up his spine. Brave lady, he couldn't help thinking.
"Dorothy, how do you feel?" the doctor began.
"Fine. I think."
"Do you know where you are?"
"Yes, with you."
"Okay, Dorothy, breathe easily for a moment and describe to me how you see Michael Kurscics."
Dorothy's heavy-lidded eyes appeared relaxed to the observer. Behind the eyelids, distance melted into nothingness, time lost its meaning. Images flickered before her as she reached for an image of Michael Kurscics.
"Michael Kurscics," the doctor repeated.
The image of the little boy, now dead six weeks, glimmered before her.
"I see him now," Dorothy's calm voice stated. "He looks awful. He's still stuck in the pipe. I don't know if it's the same place."
"Can you stand above the pipe?"
She paused as she realigned her vantage point.
"I see the pipe. I see the water rushing over the pipe and the little boy's body."
"Describe for me what you see above the pipe. What can you identify in the area?"
"I see snow. Tall trees with no leaves. There's a large square thing with blue in it. It looks painted, but it's meant to be water, I think."
"You mean the stream?" asked Ribner for clarification.
"No, this is different," Dorothy said.
"A swimming pool?" Vicaro interjected. "Do you see a swimming pool, Dorothy?"
"Yes. It's up on a hill."
Vicaro nodded his head approvingly to the doctor. He recognized the pool as the one directly above the spot where the little boy drowned.
"What happens to Michael Kurscics near the pool?" Ribner queried.
"I see him falling into the stream. He's poking around for something, a can of some sort, and he's falling as he reaches out for the stupid can. It's slippery and cold. The water is very cold. It stuns him, shocks him."
"Is he there now, Dorothy?"
"No, he's stuck now. But he was there awhile ago."
"Where?"
"In the pipe."
"Which pipe? Where is the pipe?"
"Which pipe
?" Dorothy repeated. "Well, I see ITT. I see a school. There's a lot of water, like a bigger river, or something. Bigger than the stream. And I see something poking out of the water, it looks like a chimney. Like a smokestack."
"Okay, Dorothy," Ribner stopped her. "You say you see the boy in a pipe. Right?"
"Right."
"Has he been in the same place for the whole time?"
Dorothy thought for a moment. "I don't think so. It's hard for me to say. I know I keep seeing him in different places, though."
Vicaro was trying hard to put all the landmarks together. It didn't make sense. Most of the time she was describing things along the path of Booth Park and the stream. But the haunted house was nowhere near that stream. Anyway, the stream had been searched several times and had produced no body and no pipe. Chief Buel's notion that the kid's body was somewhere in the Passaic or Hudson made more sense with every passing day.
Vicaro was beginning to sense that there was something strange about the sequence of Dorothy's visions. The spot she described in her first dream, on December 3, was yet to be found. Now, for the first time, she was seeing the beginning of the boy's accident. Was it because she had overheard details during the investigation? Because she had become familiar with Booth Park?
Vicaro sighed. I'll bet the kid she saw isn't Kurscics at all, he thought. Then a voice in him said, But what about the clothes and the timing?
Dr. Ribner was pleased with Dorothy's work. He looked at Vicaro. "Is there anything you would like to ask?"
"No, not right now," Vicaro replied.
"Fine," the doctor concluded. Within seconds, Dorothy was out of the trance and able to remember everything she had said.
She looked at Vicaro. "Where is that pool?"
"It's near the place where the two little kids were playing. I'll shew you tomorrow."
"Dorothy, how do you feel?" asked Dr. Ribner.
"Never felt better. Got to find that little boy before my heart breaks."
"We will, and I think soon," Dr. Ribner predicted. "I would like to hypnotize you again next Saturday. Perhaps with time, we can desengage the little boy in your head. I don't know if he is stuck, or perhaps it is your own thoughts that are stuck. Only time will tell."
The following Saturday was agreed upon for the next session.
Tuesday evening Dorothy and her husband had dinner at Don Vicaro's house. Vicaro was anxious to have his wife meet Dorothy. Present at the meal was Mrs. Vicaro's sixteen-year-old brother, Robert, a tall, handsome boy wearing a high-school jacket.
Dorothy asked the boy if he liked motorcycles.
"Yes," he muttered.
Dorothy asked him if he knew anything about a "brand new red motorcycle with V-shaped ornamentation on its front?" She described the motorcycle in detail.
Robert said he had never seen one like it.
"Well, if you do," Dorothy warned, "be careful, because it could cause you injury."
"The next day," Vicaro later reported to Dorothy, "at a local ball park, Robert met an out-of-town friend who had just bought himself a new motorbike exactly like the one you described. The friend asked Robert to go for a ride."
Robert refused, telling his friend about the prediction. The friend laughed at such "nonsense" and took off on the new motorbike.
A few hundred yards down the road, a car shot out of a side street and struck the motorbike. The friend's arm was injured.
"Robert's face was white as a sheet when he came home and told us about the accident," Vicaro told Dorothy on the phone.
Dorothy was excited by Vicaro's news, because she felt she might have saved a boy's life.
A few days later Dorothy sat in her dining room working on her charts; astrological books and magazines, papers, and charts were spread out all over the dining-room table. She had already worked out the charts of Michael Kurscics and his parents, based on birth information the police had provided, to see if they supported her psychic vision.
Michael's parents were born into poor Polish families in New Jersey. Neither parent had a very stable astrological chart, especially when matched side by side. Dorothy wondered how a little five-year-old boy could be left in the care of his seven-year-old brother in such awful weather. The charts, however, helped her to understand the craziness that prevailed in the victim's home.
Looking at Lydia's chart, Dorothy discovered a point of what seemed to be personal tragedy in early childhood. Dorothy deduced that the incident had occurred when Lydia was in her tenth year. She looked into the mirror that covered the wall in her dining room and smiled. She felt she had made an important discovery, but she needed to meet Lydia to check it out.
Dorothy sat at the large table in her green flannel housecoat, two rollers in her hair, one over each ear. She felt that her life was only just beginning. Examining Lydia's chart - a woman considerably younger than herself, whose life looked difficult and whose prospects seemed not likely to improve - Dorothy felt compassion: compassion for the stranger whose child she somehow shared.
Dorothy lit a cigarette and went into the den, put her feet up on the couch, and looked at the photographs of her three children. They all shared her prominent brow and square jawline. She felt proud of her children. The world, she knew, could be terribly cruel. Children, no matter whose, needed protection. Her two sons had been raised with the ability to defend themselves, as had Justine, who could whip any boy on the block, if necessary.
The sound of the doorbell broke into her thoughts. Dorothy looked at the clock. It was already 10:30. She had worked on charts for two hours and had expected no visitors until lunchtime.
She buttoned her housecoat. The two rollers bounced in her hair as she went to the door. From the front window she caught a glimpse of Vicaro's patrol car.
"Dorothy." Vicaro moved into the house, out of the cold January day. "I'd like you to meet Lydia Kurscics."
Standing before Dorothy was a tall, thin woman wearing a long red coat, her hair pulled back under a brown knitted cap.
Dorothy took her hand, pumping it up and down. "I am so thankful to meet you. I was beginning to think Vic had personally hidden you."
The woman looked embarrassed. She assumed everyone knew that she had left her husband and children weeks before her son's disappearance. Now, standing before this psychic, Lydia Kurscics felt shy.
"Throw your coats on the couch," Dorothy instructed them. "Vic, put some water on the stove. I've got to run upstairs and put something on," she yelled as she darted up the staircase.
Moments later Dorothy stood before the kitchen sink, her back turned to her guests. "I've been extremely busy these last few weeks," she explained. "Please excuse the mess. My children keep me on the run. What's really keeping me busy," she turned to look at Lydia, "is your little boy. He just won't let go, and we can't find him. It's really too much for me."
Dorothy gently pushed coffee cups across the table and watched them skate, stopping just Shy of their intended destinations. Each cup bore a different sign of the zodiac.
"Milk? Yeah, I can see you take milk," Dorothy said, reaching into the refrigerator.
Dorothy sat down at the table with her Capricorn cup and poured coffee all around. "Here, have a sweet roll, you're too thin." The box of rolls flew to Lydia's side.
Vicaro began. "I've told Lydia about your seeing Michael and how much time you've spent with us working on the case."
"I can't tell you how appreciative I am," Lydia said softly. "I'm afraid I have no money to repay you, but maybe my husband will be able ..."
"Money?" Dorothy cut her short. "Who said anything about money? Vic isn't charging. Dr. Ribner didn't ask for anything. Saint Anthony never charged," she said, holding the medal around her neck. "I just want to find that poor little boy, that's all."
"Do you think you'll be able to find Mm?" Lydia asked. "You know they've already said the Mass of Angels for him."
"They didn't ask me about it. I would have told them to hold off," Dorothy said. "Th
at's all right, now you know God is waiting for him and will protect him. Now that I've met you," she continued, "I know I will find him. Seeing you has confirmed for me the feeling that you are the mother of the boy I'm seeing. That's why I knew I had to meet you. Listen, Lydia, can I ask you something personal? Or should I kick Vicaro out first?" Dorothy asked.
Lydia turned red. "You can ask me anything in front of Vic, I guess," she stammered. She sat up stiffly and folded her arms before her.
Dorothy Allison - A Psychic Story Page 6