K-Pax Omnibus

by Gene Brewer

  “Sweden.”

  “Do you like it there?”

  “Very much. They are more like K-PAXians here than anywhere else we’ve been.”

  “In what way?”

  “They are less warlike, and more tolerant toward their fellow beings than the other countries we have visited.”

  “August seventeenth, 1987.”

  “Saudi arabia.”

  “August seventeenth, 1988.”

  “Queensland, australia.”

  “August seventeenth, 1989.”

  “Bolivia.”

  “October seventeenth, same year.”

  “The united states. Indiana.”

  “December seventeenth.”

  “New york.”

  “February seventeenth, 1990.”

  “The long island psychiatric hospital.”

  “May seventeenth.”

  “The manhattan psychiatric institute.”

  “The present.”

  “Same old place.”

  “And your friend hasn’t spoken to you in all this time?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Have you tried to talk to him?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “May I try?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “I need a name. It would be so much easier if you would give me a name to call him.”

  “I can’t do that. But I’ll give you a hint. He can fly.”

  “Fly? Is his name Fred?”

  “C’mon, you can do better than that. Can’t you think of anything that flies besides airplanes?”

  “He’s a bird? He has the name of a bird?”

  “Bingo!”

  “Uh, uh, Donald? Woody? Jonathan Livingston?”

  “Those aren’t real birds, are they, gene?”

  “Martin? Jay!”

  “You’re getting waaaaaarmerrrrrr!”

  “Robin? Robert?”

  “Well done, doctor brewer. The rest is up to you.”

  “Thank you. I’d like to speak to him now. Do you mind?”

  “Why should I?” Suddenly prot/Robert slouched down in his chair. His hands fell limply to his sides.

  “Robert?”

  No response.

  “Robert, this is Doctor Brewer. I think I can help you.”

  No response.

  “Robert, listen to me. You’ve had a terrible shock. I understand your pain and suffering. Can you hear me?”

  No response.

  At this point I took a chance. Knowing prot and, through him, something about Robert, I could not shake the feeling that if he had in fact hurt, or killed, someone, it must have been an accident or, more likely perhaps, self-defense. It was mostly speculation, but it was all I had. “Robert, listen to me. What happened to you could have happened to anyone. It is not something to be ashamed of. It is a normal response that human beings are programmed to carry out. It’s in our genes. Do you understand? Anyone might have done the same thing you did. Anyone would condone what you did and why you did it. I want you to understand that. If you will just acknowledge that you hear me we can talk about it. We don’t have to talk about what happened just yet. Only about how we can get you to overcome your grief and self-hatred. Won’t you talk to me? Won’t you let me help you?”

  We sat silently for several minutes while I waited for Robert to make a move, a small gesture to indicate he had heard my plea. But he never twitched a muscle.

  “I’m going to ask you to think about it for a while. We’ll talk about this again a week from today, all right? Please trust me.”

  No response.

  “I’m going to ask to speak with your friend now.”

  In a twinkling prot was back, wide-eyed and smiling broadly. “Hiya, gene. Long time no see. How ya been?” We talked a bit about our first few meetings back in May, the tiniest details of which he described perfectly, as if he had a tape recorder inside his head.

  I woke him and sent him back to Ward Two. Cheerful as ever, he didn’t remember a thing about what had just transpired.

  * * *

  There was a seminar that afternoon in our lecture room, but I didn’t hear a word of it. I was considering the possibility of increasing the number of sessions with prot/Robert. Unfortunately, I had a meeting in Los Angeles at the end of that week and the beginning of the next, something that had been arranged months before and would have been impossible to get out of. But I suspected that even a dozen more sessions wouldn’t be enough. Maybe a hundred wouldn’t be enough to sort everything out. True, I now knew his first name, but I wasn’t sure this would be of much help in tracing his background. It was encouraging in another sense, however: It indicated a possible crack in the armor, a hint of willingness on Robert’s part to begin to cooperate, to help with his own recovery, to get well. But there were only two weeks left before prot’s “departure.” If I couldn’t get through to him by then, I was afraid it would be too late.

  “His name is Robert Something,” I told Giselle after the seminar.

  “Great! Let me check it against my list.” She bent over a long computer printout. Her profile was perfect, like one of those “Can you draw me?” advertisements. “Here’s one! But this guy disappeared in April of 1985, and he was sixty-eight years old. Wait! Here’s another one! And he disappeared in August! No, no, he was only seven then. That would make him twelve now.” She looked at me sadly. “Those were the only two Roberts.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “He’s got to exist,” she wailed. “There has to be a record of his existence. We must have missed something. An important clue ...” She jumped up and began pacing around my office. Eventually she spotted the picture of my family on my desk. She asked me about my wife, where we had met, and so on. I told her how long I had known Karen, a little about the kids. Then she sat down and told me some things about herself she hadn’t mentioned before. I shall not record the details here, but she was on intimate terms with more than one prominent figure from the worlds of sports and journalism. The point, however, is that although she had countless male friends, she had never married. I wasn’t about to ask her why, but she answered as if I had: “I’m an idealist and a perfectionist and all the wrong things,” and turned her gaze to a faraway place in the distant past. “And because I have never met a man I could give myself to, utterly and completely.” Then she turned to me. In a moment of helpless ego—Brown’s syndrome is a very powerful force—I was sure she was going to say, “Until now.” My tie suddenly needed my attention. “And now I’m going to lose him,” she whimpered, “and there’s nothing I can do about it!” She was in love with prot!

  Caught between disappointment and relief I said something stupid: “I’ve got a son you might like.” I was thinking of Fred, who had just landed a part in a comedy playing at a dinner theater in Newark. She smiled warmly.

  “The pilot who decided to become an actor? How old was he when that picture was taken?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “He’s cute, isn’t he?”

  “I suppose so.” I gazed fondly at the photograph on my desk.

  “That picture reminds me of my own family,” she said. “My dad was so proud of us. We all became professionals of one sort or another. Ronnie is a surgeon, Audrey’s a dentist, Gary a vet. I’m the only dud in the bunch.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Not at all. You are one of the best reporters in the country. Why settle for second best in something else?”

  She smiled at that and nodded. “And that picture of you reminds me of my father.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. He was nice. Kind. You’d have liked him.”

  “I probably would have. May I ask what happened to him?”

  “He committed suicide.”

  “Oh, Giselle, I’m very sorry.”

  “Thank you.” Dreamily: “He had cancer. He didn’t want to be a burden.”

  We sat in my office thinking our own private thoughts until I happened to glance at th
e clock on my desk. “Good grief—I’ve got to run. We’re going to go see Freddy perform tonight. He’s playing a reporter. You want to come with us?”

  “No, no thanks. I’ve got some writing to do. And some thinking.”

  As we got into the elevator I reminded her that I was going out of town for a few days and wouldn’t be back until the middle of the following week.

  “Maybe I’ll have the case solved by then! I’m supposed to get the locations of all the slaughterhouses tomorrow!”

  She got off on Two and I stood there in the empty elevator feeling the tug of gravity and a profound sense of sadness and not knowing which I understood less.

  Session Fourteen

  I didn’t get back to my office until the following Wednesday morning. As soon as I walked in I detected the fragrance of pine trees, and I knew that Giselle had been there. Perched on top of the great mound of work piled on my desk was a note neatly handwritten in green ink:

  There was only one disappearance in 1985 that occurred in a town where a slaughterhouse is located. It was in South Carolina, and the missing person was a woman. Am spending this week in the library going over newspaper files for that year.

  See you later.

  Love,

  G.

  While I was reading it I got a call from Charlie Flynn, the astronomer, my son-in-law’s colleague at Princeton. After he had returned from his vacation in Canada, Steve had told him about the discrepancy between his and prot’s account of the orbit of K-PAX around its double suns. He was very excited. The calculation, he said, had been done by one of his graduate students. Upon hearing of prot’s version he had recalculated the orbital pattern himself, and it turned out to be exactly as prot had described it: a pendulum-like back-and-forth motion, not a figure eight. All the star charts prot had drawn up were quite accurate as well. I thought nothing would faze me anymore where prot was concerned, but what this trained scientist said next shocked me as much as it fascinated him. He said, “Savants are basically people with prodigious memories, aren’t they? This is different. There is no way anyone could guess that orbital pattern or intuit it. I know this sounds crazy, but I can’t see how he could have come up with this information unless he had actually been there!” This from a man who is as sane as you or I. “Could I talk to your patient?” he went on. “There are several thousand questions I’d like to ask him!”

  I rejected this idea, of course, for a number of reasons. I suggested, however, that he send me a list of fifty of the key questions he wanted to ask prot, and assured him that I would be happy to present them to him. “But make it fast,” I said. “He claims he’s leaving on August seventeenth.”

  “Can you get him to stay longer?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Can you try?”

  “I’m trying my damnedest,” I assured him.

  The rest of the morning was taken up with meetings and an interview with the third candidate for the directorship. I’m afraid I didn’t give him the attention he deserved. He seemed capable enough, and had published some excellent work. His specialty was Tourette’s syndrome, and he suffered from a mild form of the affliction himself—nervous tics, primarily, though he occasionally called me “a piece of shit.” But I was too preoccupied with trying to formulate a way to get through to Robert to listen. At last an idea came to mind, and unforgivably I sat up and blurted, “Ah!” Thinking I was referring to his discourse, our guest was quite pleased by my outburst and went on and on with an even greater display of facial twitching and name calling than before. I paid no attention to him—I was absorbed by the question: Could the host personality be hypnotized while the secondary alter is already under hypnosis?

  “Okay, ready for anything,” prot said after finishing a huge mixed fruit salad and blowing his nose on his napkin. He tossed it into the bowl and looked for the spot on the wall behind me. Knowing he would jump the gun, however, I had covered it up before he could throw himself into a trance.

  “I’m not going to hypnotize you for a while.”

  “I told you it wouldn’t work,” he said, breaking into the all-too-familiar grin.

  “I want to talk to you about Robert first.”

  The smile vanished. “How did you find out his name?”

  “You told me.”

  “Under hypnosis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, flatten my feet and call me daffy.”

  “What happened to his wife and child?”

  Prot seemed confused, edgy. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, come on. He must have told you that.”

  “Wrong. He’s never mentioned them since I found him by the river.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Either prot was lying, which I strongly doubted, or he was genuinely unaware of Robert’s activities when he wasn’t around. If that were the case the latter could try almost anything—possibly even suicide—without prot’s knowledge. I was more certain than ever that I had to get through to Robert as soon as possible. In fact, there wasn’t a moment to lose. I stood up and removed the tape from the spot on the wall behind me. Prot fell into his usual deep trance immediately.

  “We are now in the present. Prot? Do you understand?”

  “Yes. It is not a difficult concept.”

  “Good. Is Robert there with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I speak to him, please?”

  “You may, but he probably won’t speak to you”

  “Please let him come forward.”

  Silence. Robert slouched down in the chair, his chin on his chest.

  “Robert?”

  No response.

  “Robert, this is Doctor Brewer. Please open your eyes.”

  There was a barely detectable shift in his position.

  “Robert, listen to me. I am not just trying to help you. I know I can help you. Please trust me. Open your eyes!”

  His eyes flickered open for a moment, then closed again. After a few seconds he blinked several times, as if vacillating, and finally they stayed open. It was little more than a vacant stare, but it was something.

  “Robert! Can you hear me?” After what seemed like an eternity I detected a hint of a nod. “Good. Now I want you to focus your attention on the spot on the wall behind me.”

  The lifeless eyes, gazing emptily at the edge of my desk, shifted upward slightly.

  “A little higher. Raise your eyes a little higher!”

  Slowly his focus lifted, an inch at a time, slowly, slowly. Ignoring my presence completely, he lifted his gaze to the wall behind my shoulder. His mouth had fallen open.

  “Good. Now, listen carefully. I’m going to count forward from six to ten. As I count, your eyelids will become heavy and you will grow increasingly sleepy. By the time I get to ten, you will be in a deep trance. But you will be able to hear and understand everything I say. Now this is very important: When I clap my hands, you will wake up. Do you understand?”

  A tiny, but definite, nod.

  “Good. We’ll begin now. Six...” I watched carefully as his eyelids began to droop. “. . . and ten. Robert, can you hear me?”

  No response.

  “Robert?”

  Unintelligible.

  “Please speak louder.”

  A feeble “Yes,” more like a gurgle. But someone was there! At that moment I was very, very glad I had chosen to become a psychiatrist.

  “Good. Now listen to me. We are going to travel back in time. Imagine the pages of a calendar turning rapidly backward. It is now August eighth, 1989, exactly one year ago. Now it is 1988; now 1987, now 1986. Now, Robert, it is August eighth, 1985, at noon. Where are you?”

  He remained motionless for several minutes before murmuring, “I am at work.” He sounded tired, but his voice was clear, though slightly higher-pitched than prot’s.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I am eating my lunch.”

  “What are yo
u eating?”

  “I have a Dutch loaf sandwich with Miracle Whip and pickles, a peanut butter sandwich with Concord grape jelly, potato chips, a banana, two sugar cookies, and a thermos of coffee.”

  “Where did you get your lunch?”

  “From my lunch bucket.”

  “Your wife made it for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. We are going to move forward eight days and two hours. It is 2:00 P.M. on August sixteenth, 1985. Where are you now?”

  “At work.”

  “And what are you doing at this moment?”

  “Knocking steers.”

  “All right. What do you see?”

  “It is jerking around making noises. I bang it again. Now it is still.” He wiped some imaginary perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “And it moves down the line where someone else cuts the throat, is that right?”

  “Yes, after it is shackled.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then another one comes along. Then another, then another, then another—”

  “All right. Now it is just after quitting time. You are on your way home from work. You are home now, getting out of your car. You are going up the walk—”

  His eyes widened. “Someone is there!”

  “Who? Who is there?”

  Agitated: “I don’t know. He is coming out of my house. I have never seen him before. He is going back into the house! Something is wrong! I am running after him, chasing him into the house. Oh, God, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” He began to wail, his head wagging back and forth, his eyes as big as the moon. Then he looked toward me and his demeanor changed radically—an utter transmogrification. He looked as though he wanted to kill me.

  “Robert!” I yelled, clapping my hands together as loudly as I could. “Wake up! Wake up!” His eyes closed immediately, thank God, and an exhausted Robert sat slumped in the chair in front of me.

  “Robert?”

  No response.

  “Robert?”

  Still nothing.

  “Robert, it’s all right. It’s over now. Everything is all right. Can you hear me?”

  No response.

  “Robert, I’d like to talk to prot now.”

  No response.

  “Please let me speak to prot. Prot? Are you there?” I was beginning to feel a mounting trepidation. Had I been too aggressive? What if—?