The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  It was . . . a boar? Some kind of boar, maybe. He walked on. He felt a slick oil painting, and then the cool touch of glass.

  Finally he came to a door, but it couldn’t be Becca’s, as this one felt rough under his hand. Something pricked his finger and he drew back.

  “Becca . . . ?” He felt to the side. His hand finally fumbled on what felt like a light switch, and he took a breath and flicked it up.

  The cone of yellow light flooded down and Becca’s door came blooming into view. Nat started, stepping back. Deep holes had been gouged in the wood, fresh hack marks glowing in long strips and cuts.

  Someone had gone at the door with a kitchen knife or a small hatchet.

  He looked at the locks. Splinters hung around them. Nat touched one of the needle-sharp pieces of wood; it came loose and fell away into the darkness at his feet.

  Five more minutes and whoever had done this would have gotten through.

  “Becca!” he said, and pounded on the door. It rattled in its frame.

  Silence.

  “I saw you in the window. Please let me in.”

  He heard a voice.

  “What?!” he cried.

  “How do I know it’s not him?”

  “Listen to me. You know my voice. This is Nat Thayer, and you and I are friends. Okay? Just please open the door. You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  He heard a bolt slide back slowly. A lock popped, and the door opened a crack. Nat could see a line of yellow light, and then Becca’s brown eye staring at him.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he breathed out. The rush of relief shook his knees.

  The door opened and suddenly Becca rushed into his arms.

  He didn’t want her to see the door or how close the attacker had been to getting the lock dug out. He murmured comforting words and pushed her slowly back into the room, leaving the door ajar. She would have to get used to having it open.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, her hair rubbing against his cheek. Her body was incredibly light in his arms.

  “Okay, why don’t you sit down. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  She found the bed and quickly sat on it. Nat sat on the desk chair and glanced around the room.

  “What the hell happened?”

  She shook her head.

  “You were locked in here?”

  She looked flustered. “I’m usually locked in here.”

  Nat frowned, but his other questions were more pressing. “Did your father try to get in?”

  “He is not my father.” Her eyes flashed angrily and her voice rose.

  “Okay. Just tell me what happened.”

  Her face, the slightly flattened nose, the rich brown eyes—he’d been seeing them in his head ever since he’d left this room, and he felt a lightness in his chest now that he was seeing them again.

  She looked at him, her eyes wide.

  “I was sleeping. That happens a lot these days. I thought I was dreaming, and it kept getting worse and worse. I don’t remember what it was now, but through it all, there was a voice talking, describing something, describing horrible things that were being done to somebody . . . and the same things would happen to me.”

  “Go on.”

  “I felt heat. I was sweating and I . . . I . . .”

  “It’s okay, Becca.”

  “I felt I was trapped, like the walls were closing in. And through it all was the voice. But not that man’s voice, the one who kept calling himself my father. Another one.”

  Nat frowned.

  “And I heard banging. The branches of the tree outside my window, they knock on the glass when there’s a storm. Maybe that’s what I heard. But whatever it was, it woke me up.”

  Becca’s eyes searched around the room. They went from object to object—bookcases, the oil painting of a jungle, the bottles of perfume on her table, and then Nat, seeming to look right through him.

  “That light was on. But not the corner lamp. I woke up . . . I was so happy to be here. Safe. The room was nice and cool. I could hear the wind outside.”

  Nat came and sat on the bed next to her. “Did you hear anyone pounding on the door?” he said.

  “I . . . I don’t know. Earlier, I heard pounding, but I was still half asleep, and thought it was part of my dream.”

  Nat watched her. “Okay. In the dream, what was the voice saying?”

  Becca’s eyes went wide, but then she shook her head a little. “He wasn’t speaking English.”

  “Really? What then?”

  “It sounded like French . . . but it was so bad I couldn’t understand it. Why?”

  “No reason. Keep going.”

  “I could catch only bits and pieces. But it was a horrible, low voice. Like a chant.”

  Nat reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. Becca’s body was tense. “Did you see anything through the window?”

  “I looked out to see if the storm was over. I saw . . . the man who lives here. He was walking down there in the trees. That’s all I saw.”

  “The man. Was he alone?”

  She looked at him, then shook her head once. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay. And then?”

  “And then I heard a scream. After that, silence.”

  Nat sighed. “Becca . . . I have to tell you something. The man who lives here—”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Good,” she said, breathing out in a rush.

  “Becca,” he said, grimacing. “The man who lives here was your father. He hanged himself.”

  She glared at him, and a vein pulsed in her throat. Her lips slowly lost their blood. She was refusing even to say the words again. He was not my father.

  “So why do you keep saying he was a stranger to you?”

  Her mouth opened, and she gave him a wounded look that turned to disbelief. “What, you think I’m crazy? Do you think I don’t dream of my father coming and taking me away from here? Don’t you think I’d recognize my own father if I saw him? I would jump into his arms and never let him leave me again. But he deserted me . . . and he left me here to be murdered.”

  Nat stood up and walked to the window, feeling his craft escape him. She wasn’t responding in a normative way—even for a psychiatric patient.

  “Becca, growing up . . . did the man who lived here . . . did he ever touch you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, touch you. In a way you didn’t want him to.”

  Becca was staring at him with an icy look that bordered on hatred. “What . . . do . . . you . . . mean?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “No,” she said finally.

  “What about the man who . . . who attacked you on December twenty-first. Did he do anything else to you?”

  Her eyes went cloudy, and she frowned, looking down at the bed. “He took things away,” she said.

  Nat’s eyes closed for a moment. “What things?”

  She only stared.

  “Organs?” he said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  She stood up, a look of horror spread across her face. “How . . . how did you know that? Are you with the people who killed me? I thought you were—”

  Nat took her hands in his. “Becca, I want to tell you something. I want to show you that your fears, as real as they appear to be, are not real. Will you let me do that?”

  Becca watched him, distrust in her widely spaced eyes. She’s so young, Nat thought. I have to remember she’s only nineteen.

  “Will you give me a chance?” he said.

  The slightest nod.

  “I know these things because other people have believed them, too. There is a psychiatric condition that is very rare and I believe you have it. It’
s called Cotard delusion. It was discovered in the late 1800s by a French doctor named Jules Cotard. A patient came to him and said that she had died. I wouldn’t normally tell you . . .”

  “So it’s happened before,” Becca said.

  “Listen, she wasn’t dead,” Nat said. “She only believed she was. She woke up one day and couldn’t recognize her family, and so she was under the mistaken impression that she was actually dead.”

  Becca’s face was unreadable. But she was composed, her dark hair falling over her eyes. She had the stillness of a painting.

  “Others have gone through this, Becca. They believe people have come and stolen their organs and that they’ve passed away. But it never really happened. It was all in their minds. And they’ve been cured.”

  “What was the name of Dr. Cotard’s patient?”

  “I don’t really know. He called her Mademoiselle X.”

  “Nobody knows?”

  “No, and it’s not important.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

  Becca turned away, sudden bitterness in her face. “She died, though.”

  “Yes.”

  “While under the doctor’s care?”

  “Yes. But he didn’t know what to do with her. I can help you.”

  “What did she die of?”

  Nat cursed himself for ever bring up Cotard. “She hated herself, so . . . she stopped eating. She starved to death.”

  “Nobody cut her open?”

  “No.”

  “They didn’t take her liver? And her kidneys?”

  Nat winced. “No, Becca. Like I said, it was a delusion.”

  Her eyes looked hopeful for a moment, but then they moved to his right and Nat knew she was looking at the door.

  “Who was trying to get in the door?”

  “Perhaps your father.”

  Becca’s eyes looked at his, and he felt her intelligence alive in them. “Or no one,” she said, her voice low. “Perhaps I heard the voices myself.”

  “I don’t know that. In a way, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Dr. Thayer, if I show you something, will you believe that I am not delusional?”

  Nat studied her face. “You can try. But I’ve seen the door. Yes, someone attacked it with a knife.”

  “You’re thinking I did that, too.”

  “No.” He took a deep breath and released it. “Honestly . . . I don’t know.”

  Becca smiled. He felt his body growing lighter, as if helium were filling his chest. He felt their closeness.

  “You can’t help me, Dr. Thayer. If I’m not really dead, that means I’m crazy—and not in any way you can fix.”

  She wore a smile that almost mocked him. But in her eyes there was something that contradicted the smile. Hope. A silent appeal.

  “You’re very much alive,” he said. “And I can help you. We’re going to get you better. I promise.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The classroom at St. Adolphus was quiet Monday morning as Ms. Elizabeth Sena made her way through the desks. Her first graders were so bad this year, so unruly and so loud, that she considered moments like these—when all the little heads were bent over their papers, coloring—a kind of triumph. She didn’t want to break the spell by even speaking.

  It had been a long day, and it was shaping up to be a long year. There were going to be a lot of assignments like this one in the months ahead.

  Today’s assignment was to draw one friend as you saw them. It could be a parent or a grandma or a crossing guard, so long as the person was your friend. She’d made sure to include those categories because if she didn’t, God only knew what the loners like Matthew Fudderman and Charlie Bailey would draw. Matthew had no friends because he was a fat, odorous bully. And Charlie . . . well, Charlie was just different.

  She turned a corner by Rita Molino’s desk, saw she was making something outrageously colorful, as usual. Smart girl, though the mother was trash from the Shan. Across from her, Marcus was gazing off into the distance, having completed just a big round head with triangle ears—was the boy drawing Dracula, for God’s sake? Ms. Sena stopped above Marcus’s straw-colored mop of hair and glanced down. Crisis averted. The boy wasn’t drawing Dracula; he was just unable to form human ears. Marcus should have been left behind a year instead of being shoved into her class. His overbearing parents, both lawyers, would be the ruin of him.

  She moved on. At least Marcus was drawing something. And the dome of silence was still intact. That was the important thing. She needed to rest her sorely tried nerves.

  Strolling again, the only sound the whisk of her feet on the polished floor and the occasional “ummmm” from a student. She eyed Matthew Fudderman, coming up on the right. Let’s see who he thinks is his friend today, she thought, the deluded little fool. Ms. Sena came up behind Matthew and turned to look down. The Incredible Hulk. The boy was actually drawing the Hulk. He was incorrigible. She’d stressed that the friend had to be a real person and not a superhero out of a comic book, but Matthew had a hard head. Ms. Sena paused over him, watching the green crayon rub furiously against the paper, the tip of the boy’s wet little tongue visible in the right corner of his sloppy mouth, coloring the big green torso.

  But no. She wasn’t about to speak to Matthew, because his arms would fly up in frustration and his screeching would begin and the little dome of quiet inside the room would be destroyed. Ms. Sena felt she deserved a few minutes of calm. She began to think about the bottle of cabernet she’d left out on her kitchen counter before she’d turned on the radio for Jacks, her Pekingese, who’d be alone all day. It was 1:16 p.m. now, so that meant in about three hours, the first delicious pour of the wine would be rolling down her throat.

  Ms. Sena walked down the last row. Charlie Bailey was at the head. Poor silent Charlie with Heller’s syndrome. At the beginning of the year, she’d had to take a class on special disabilities just because of him. His father had fought to get Charlie into a normal classroom environment—the deadly stigma of the short bus was still strong, she’d learned—and so here he was. Charlie was sweet, but it wasn’t easy accommodating him—the speechlessness, the notes scrawled in their capital letters. He tried, though. The boy did try.

  He now looked up at her uncertainly as she approached. Ms. Sena raised her eyebrows, as if to say, What do you have for me today, Charlie? He was leaning over the paper, his right shoulder blocking her view.

  She bent down.

  “How’s it looking, Charlie?”

  The boy’s eyes. As deep as an ocean.

  Something quailed inside of her. She felt fear coming off of the boy in tiny wavelets. Like low-level radiation.

  “It’s okay,” she said quietly. “Let me have a look.”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “Uh, Ms. Sena?” It was Matthew.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said evenly.

  “Yeah, but is the Hulk—”

  “I said one minute.”

  Matthew muttered something and his head went down again.

  Ms. Sena laid her hand on Charlie’s shoulder. It was trembling. The poor thing, he should really be in special ed, where they had the personnel to deal with things like this.

  She applied the lightest pressure, pulling him toward her as if to whisper in his ear. As he came back, she peeked over his shoulder. Probably another Marvel hero.

  “Good Lord, Charlie,” she hissed, her hand tightening on his shoulder. A shiver of horror ran through her.

  The face on the paper was black as coal. It had high cheekbones, a gaping mouth, and its eyes circled in, each like a whirlpool toward a center of bright orange. It looked . . . diabolical.

  “Who in God’s name is that?”

  Charlie looked at her and said nothing, ju
st stared at her with those big brown eyes.

  “Charlie. You were supposed to draw your friend. Did you not understand the assignment?” She had the sudden urge to send the drawing immediately out of her classroom. There was something . . . unearthly about it. A seven-year-old drawing a satanic figure and calling it his friend.

  She reached down for the paper. She would throw it away. Or burn it.

  Charlie swiveled his shoulders and pulled his drawing away from her outstretched fingers. She touched the corner of it, but he jerked it away, then angrily looked up at her.

  Ms. Sena stood up straight, one hand on her hip, feeling a rush of heat coming up her neck.

  “Charlie!”

  He was looking down, afraid to meet her eyes.

  “Who is this . . . person?”

  Heads popped up. She glared at them, and all but Matthew sank back down. Charlie pulled the paper out farther onto the desk. He took a red crayon and began to scribble something under the thing’s black neck. Interested despite herself, Ms. Sena watched.

  The boy crouched over the drawing, blocking her view. She tapped her foot on the linoleum floor.

  Finally, Charlie pulled back to show her what he’d done.

  THE MAGICIAN, it read.

  “Well, I don’t like the looks of the magician,” Ms. Sena said a little too abrasively. “Draw somebody else.”

  Charlie looked at her. The sadness in his face . . . Okay, fine, she would try. She bent down to him, putting a hand again on his little shoulder. “Don’t you have another friend?”

  He shook his head.

  “What about your daddy?”

  Charlie’s head went still and the brown eyes regarded her.