The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  After the two-week quarantine period, it was thought that perhaps Dr. Thayer would benefit from seeing his friends and coworkers in a casual setting. But the results were disappointing. Dr. Thayer maintained his “thousand-yard stare,” only breaking from this posture to work on his drawings. The pictures themselves didn’t seem to the treatment team to be efforts to communicate with the outside world, but simply a phase in an internal narrative that Dr. Thayer was working through.

  After the initial shock of his experience was thought to have worn off and Dr. Thayer still showed no signs of improvement, a course of medications was decided upon by this doctor, in consultation with the director. We began on 2/5 with 40 cc’s of carbamazepine and continued it for a week, then increased the dose to 60 cc’s, given by injection every morning. The carbamazepine had no discernible effects, positive or negative, on the patient’s affect or behavior. The treatment was discontinued on 2/15, and after a period of three days, clonazepam was administered in a dose of 40 cc’s every morning, also by injection. The clonazepam had the effect of making Dr. Thayer drowsy for large parts of the day and prone to bouts of shallow breathing and dizziness, but no improvement in his catatonic symptoms was observed. The drug was given a two-week course of treatment, and was discontinued on 3/1. The treatment team then tried dantrolene, with similar (negative) results, and finally olanzapine, both in similar courses as with the other two drugs. The dantrolene increased the agitation of Dr. Thayer without decreasing the catatonic symptoms, and was discontinued after only five days, as Dr. Thayer had twice injured himself, the second time seriously, by banging his head against the door frame of his room. He was treated for those injuries and returned to the facility on 3/23.

  The most remarkable incidents in the last six months were the two visits by Det. John Bailey, on 4/14 and 4/22. Det. Bailey had been urgently requesting to see Dr. Thayer, but it was thought best to deny those visits, as he was intimately involved in the patient’s relationship with Ms. Prescott and any reliving of those experiences could have had a negative impact on Dr. Thayer’s condition. After being interviewed several times, Det. Bailey confirmed what had been rumored in the Northam community for many weeks, especially after the interview with the local historian, Wilbur Atkins, published in the Northam News on 2/21. Mr. Atkins detailed Dr. Thayer’s obsession with some local families and their connections to a long-dead soldier, Capt. Thomas Markham, who was hanged in the town square in the early part of 1920. Det. Bailey explained that Dr. Thayer—and he, for a time—had come to believe that local individuals had become possessed or controlled by the spirit of a man Capt. Markham had killed in Haiti during the American occupation of that country.

  Det. Bailey explained that he and the patient had initially connected a series of disturbing events with this Capt. Markham: the deaths of Walter Prescott, Margaret Post, Elizabeth Dyer, Jimmy Stearns, and Charles Godwin—in addition to the disappearance of their bodies. But the detective stated to the treatment team that those deaths had been solved in the aftermath of the events of 1/17. For example, it was determined by the Northam police that Margaret Post had been killed by Walter Prescott. In the diary found in the Prescott home after the fire, Prescott confessed to the murder, saying that Margaret Post had come to visit his daughter and that he feared Margaret meant Becca harm, so he followed her back to her college and attacked her just outside its walls. Walter Prescott had apparently killed himself subsequently, out of guilt. The deaths of Elizabeth Dyer and Jimmy Stearns remain unsolved, but Det. Bailey reported confidentially that police were questioning an employee of the morgue, Claude Roke, who had a difficult work relationship with both victims.

  As for the disappearance of the corpses, subsequent to the death of Ms. Prescott in the house fire, all the missing bodies were found—as has been reported widely in the Boston Globe and elsewhere—in two locations: deep in the Raitliff Woods and at the Prescott house (including that of Mrs. Stephanie Godwin). The clearing in the Raitliff Woods, where some of the bodies were recovered, was later determined to be the original burial site for the executed Capt. Markham. He was interred in this spot after his 1920 execution, as no church graveyard in Northam would accept his body and the authorities at that time wanted him buried as far away from the city as possible. The missing bodies were found the morning after the Prescott house fire, some of them burned in a bonfire that had been built over the grave of Capt. Markham. The newspapers have connected this gruesome fact to some kind of ritualistic or possibly even satanic activity in the area, which Det. Bailey gave some credence to. Officials at the morgue are investigating the original disappearance of the bodies.

  Det. Bailey explained to the treatment team that Dr. Thayer was in the grips of a psychosis focused on a supposed “nzombe outbreak” involving these dead individuals. By speaking with Dr. Thayer, he hoped to explain to the patient the actual circumstances of the recent odd occurrences.

  The offer was initially refused, for the reasons stated above. However, when the drug courses failed and Det. Bailey insisted that he could help “reach” Dr. Thayer, he was allowed a visit, with the understanding that members of the treatment team would be on hand and would be able to monitor and observe the interaction.

  Myself and Drs. Bradley and Chalmers were on hand when Det. Bailey visited the facility and met with Dr. Thayer in the small conference room on the second floor. Dr. Thayer was seated in one of the chairs, free of any restraints, his affect still exhibiting signs of catatonia. Det. Bailey sat opposite him and began talking to him in a quiet voice. We immediately asked the detective to speak up, as we reserved the right to stop the conversation at any point if Dr. Thayer became agitated or violent. Det. Bailey was not at first willing to do so, but we soon convinced him that the interview would be terminated if he did not. He then agreed and began speaking to the patient about his son, Charlie—someone, as he’d earlier explained to us, that Dr. Thayer had been deeply concerned about in the days leading up to the patient’s hospitalization. Dr. Thayer rocked continuously back and forth during this part of the conversation, and bent his head in a listening posture. Det. Bailey told him that Charlie was safe, that he’d resumed a normal life with no adverse affects of “the thing we were worried about.” Dr. Thayer nodded, and we motioned for Det. Bailey to continue, as this was the first response of any kind we’d witnessed in Dr. Thayer in several months.

  “He’s not dreaming anymore, Nat,” Det. Bailey said, according to our transcription of the interview. “He’s not talking about this Magician guy. We’re good, buddy, you did it. Becca was the one.”

  Det. Bailey became emotional at this point, wiping away several tears and reaching out and grabbing Dr. Thayer’s hand. We considered ending the interview, but Dr. Chalmers argued it should continue, as Dr. Thayer was showing some slight response, even if he still seemed incapable of speaking. But soon Dr. Thayer broke his gaze with Det. Bailey and moved his eyes up to the ceiling. It was unclear if any of Det. Bailey’s remarks were registering with the patient. We motioned to Det. Bailey that Dr. Thayer was apparently getting tired and the interview was being terminated. Det. Bailey then disobeyed our earlier instructions and quickly whispered something to Dr. Thayer that we were unable to hear.

  Det. Bailey left the facility, and for days afterward, we observed an improvement in Dr. Thayer’s affect. He was less agitated, his rocking and jerking had lessened considerably, and there were no further instances of self-harm. His appetite increased, and we observed a general improvement in his physical health: his extremely pallid skin showed more color, and he put on a total of four pounds from 4/14 to 4/21. We then allowed Det. Bailey’s request for a second interview to go ahead. The detective indicated that he wanted to bring along his son, Charlie, to show Dr. Thayer that he was in good health. After discussing this, we agreed. The improvement in Dr. Thayer’s general outlook was considerable, and we thought that some of the agitation that he still exhibited could be connected to unresolved a
nxiety about Charlie’s well-being.

  The interview took place on 4/22. Charlie, six years old and suffering from Heller’s syndrome, arrived at the facility with his father. We explained the conditions, and both he and Det. Bailey expressed their agreement with the terms for the interview, Charlie by nodding.

  On being admitted to the room, Dr. Thayer’s affect was as positive as we had seen it in months. He greeted Det. Bailey with a handshake and embraced Charlie. Both the visitors seemed very happy to see the patient, and Dr. Thayer was equally pleased and positive in his affect. When Det. Bailey noted that Charlie had joined the baseball team at his grammar school, we noted that Dr. Thayer nodded emphatically. The treatment team was very pleased with Dr. Thayer’s affect in the interview, and noted the relaxed body posture and the normative behavior that characterized the first part of the interview.

  It was only when Det. Bailey excused himself to visit the restroom that we noticed a change—indeed a severe change—in the patient’s demeanor. Left alone with Charlie, Dr. Thayer at first maintained a steady eye contact with the boy. The two were both silent. But about sixty seconds later, Dr. Thayer’s posture and affect changed drastically. This couldn’t have been caused by anything the boy did, as he sat there, still, merely watching Dr. Thayer, who began to exhibit severe paranoid tendencies. He stared, transfixed, at the boy, and then he began to mumble a series of unintelligible words. When he stood and began to move aggressively toward the child, the orderlies intervened and pinned Dr. Thayer to the floor, overturning his chair in the ensuing—and quite violent—struggle. Three orderlies had an extremely difficult job in restraining Dr. Thayer, and at one point we feared he would successfully attack the boy. Charlie, however, simply watched the patient calmly and didn’t move during the entire incident.

  The interview was taped, as is standard procedure at the facility, and it was only in reviewing the tape after the incident that we first noticed something odd. Before Dr. Thayer’s outburst, Charlie Bailey was leaning forward in his chair, with the patient in a similar posture, their faces only a few feet apart. We observed Charlie’s mouth move, forming words. Then, strangely, Dr. Thayer would apparently repeat the same words a second later. This rather eerie playacting went on for ninety seconds, in which neither subject moved. The treatment team wanted to know the content of the communication between the two, and we replayed the tape later, increasing the volume to the maximum level. But there was no sound. The tape was completely silent.

  The odd colloquy between the two was broken off when Dr. Thayer became agitated. When Det. Bailey, alerted to the problem, rushed back to the interview room, we observed Dr. Thayer trying to speak to Det. Bailey. The patient became increasingly distressed when he couldn’t get the words out or make himself understood. He stared with what can only be described as a beseeching, distressed gaze—a look of horror, if you will—at Det. Bailey, and his hand came up in a gesture of reaching for his friend. But the hand froze midway and stayed there, and Dr. Thayer’s body maintained this posture, almost constantly, for many days to come. It was the most unusual display of catatonic onset that we have ever witnessed or come across in the clinical literature.

  The boy, Charlie, could tell us nothing about the incident. When interviewed afterward, he shook his head when asked if he knew what had caused Dr. Thayer’s outburst. Thankfully, he did not seem upset by Dr. Thayer, and only smiled when asked if he’d felt threatened or afraid.

  On his return to the room, Det. Bailey was equally distressed by the change in Dr. Thayer and especially with the odd interaction between the patient and the boy. We felt it was time to end the interview. We have not granted Det. Bailey’s many requests for further interviews and have no plans to do so at this time, for obvious reasons.

  Dr. Thayer’s postinterview decline was precipitous. That night, he emerged from the catatonic symptoms long enough to tear apart the furnishings in his room, screaming continuously in an inarticulate fashion that frightened the other patients on the floor tremendously and even unnerved the veteran attendants who were working that night. They said that Dr. Thayer seemed inconsolable and that he was attempting to communicate something, but his powers to convey it were frozen or inaccessible. When the attendants attempted to put him in restraints, he broke the arm of Mr. Bishop and bit the hand of Mr. Marcus. He was given 150 mgs of propofol and was put back into his room in heavy restraints. A suicide watch was posted, with a visual assessment of his condition every fifteen minutes. He slept fitfully that night and in the morning the catatonia had returned, full force. He has remained in that state ever since, and the treatment team is now reevaluating the program to see where we will go next.

  One postscript to the night of 4/22 remains to be addressed. In his room, among the papers that he’d torn apart and strewn across the floor, the attendants found the drawings that I’ve referenced before. Dr. Thayer had completed them weeks prior to the second interview with Det. Bailey and Charlie, and he’d been allowed to keep the materials, as they represented his only outward form of expression since his admission. Many of those drawings were found torn into pieces. But on the back of one, we found a few words scribbled in an agitated hand, apparently written by Dr. Thayer on the night of 4/22. We pieced together a few fragments:

  Traveler possessed Prescotts in turn, probably from 1919 on. Slowly killed off [unreadable.] Suicides in Prescotts could be attr. to genetic mental illness. Family madness his disguise. Maybe he purposefully led me to think Becca was the one. Then hid in Charlie. Lonely and vul [nerable? Unreadable.] Maybe saw that we wouldn’t want it to be Char.

  And this:

  . . . he let bodies be found . . . proof traveler died . . . will find new nzombes.

  Obviously, the paranoid delusions about the spirit of Capt. Markham had returned full force. When Dr. Thayer suffered his final seizure on 4/22, which has rendered him unable to talk or move, another piece of his writings was found in his mouth. He’d written it at some point during the night.

  The note read simply:

  WARN JOHN.

  John is the first name of Det. Bailey. We have, of course, decided not to mention any of this to him.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Ramona Best sat in the Altima at the last red light before the left turn onto 95 South. The highway, now baking in the early June heat, would take her out of the valley that held Northam and then parallel to the eastern seaboard all the way to Long ­Island.

  She glanced out the passenger window. There was a little meadow there, with a stand of pine trees, their branches so green it almost hurt the eyes. The noon sun sent the branches’ shadows straight down to the ground. A heat shimmer passed over the pines, making them appear to wave like plants in an aquarium. Ramona looked away.

  The engine fairly purred. After the stabbing, Zuela had come up for a week to nurse her back to health in the hospital and, when she left, gave her $400 as a graduation present. She’d spent part of the money on renting her purple graduation rope and cap, which she thought were resplendent. After paying her remaining bills, she still had $200 left over that she planned on spending at Houston’s, on a dinner with Zuela. Zuela hadn’t been able to make the graduation ceremony, but they would celebrate in Long Island.

  Ramona understood why Zuela hadn’t come. In the hospital, Ramona had refused to talk about what had happened, or who had stabbed her, and from her silence, Zuela had inferred the worst. She’d cried on Ramona’s cheek as she’d leaned over to kiss her forehead. “I’m not coming back, child. But I love you.”

  Ramona reached over and laid her hand on the diploma that she’d received just three hours ago. Someone had told her that Wartham was the last college in New England to still use real goatskin for their degrees, which had grossed out a few of her classmates. Ramona thought it was a nice touch. Goatskin was permanent; it wouldn’t shrivel up like parchment. As she stroked the document, it felt glossy and almost alive, like a beautiful
leather coat. The president of Wartham, Dr. Ronald Wingate, had handed it to her up on the tall wooden stage in the quad, the same smiling, gaunt man who’d come to see her in the hospital weeks ago, right after Detective Bailey’s visit.

  She’d been still groggy from the pain meds when Detective Bailey came in with his sad walrus eyes. She’d shifted in her bed, the wound still like a piece of sharp steel under her skin. She hadn’t been questioned about the stabbing and was expecting a barrage of questions about whom the attacker was and Margaret and the boy in the clearing and so many things. But the detective had sat down by her bed, asked her how she felt, smiled (but not in the sad walrus eyes), then told her that he was disappointed to learn that she’d contracted amnesia. That it was too bad she couldn’t remember the face of her attacker, but it didn’t matter so much because he’d probably died in the bonfire in the Raitliff Woods anyway. When Ramona went to object—she felt the anger rising up her chest like a streak of Icy Hot—he held out his hand and told her that they didn’t have time to discuss the details because President Wingate was there to award her the newly established Marcus R. Bateman Scholarship, funded by the Bateman family of some mining corporation or other, which went to the most improved Wartham student over four years of study and provided full tuition to any postgraduate institution of her choice, which Ramona had been awarded during her convalescence, and they didn’t want to keep a man like Wingate waiting.