“The binding slipped right to edge of my thumb but I realized that’s as far as it would go because of the bone. So I didn’t think twice. I started banging my hand as hard as I could until I dislocated my thumb. I got my hand free, and pulled off the gag. I started yelling myself hoarse, calling for help.
“If Pedro had restrained me with handcuffs, I’d be dead now. But that son of a bitch didn’t count on me waking up before the drugs wore off. I found out later the evil bastard had killed his mother down there first, and then used the basement to kill three other women. Three poor women who weren’t lucky enough to escape like me. These women—they were thirty-eight, forty-one, and nineteen. I didn’t want to know more than that. How long they’d been in there. What finally happened to them. The only thing I ever asked the cops for was a picture of each. I try to imagine them smiling, in a better place. It helps me to think that somehow they helped me escape that day, as if they spoke to me: ‘You can do it, Judie. Pull your hand out as hard as you can. I couldn’t, but you can!’
“When Pedro came through the door that afternoon, I knew someone had heard my screaming. He looked scared, frantic. I started to scream again, and he jumped on the bed, knelt on my chest and punched me three times until I was knocked nearly unconscious. He told me it was time to get rid of me the way he’d gotten rid of the others, and then he told me exactly how he was going to do it, the way you rehearse a speech in front of a mirror: He was going to chop me up in his bathtub and burn the pieces, one at a time, in the house’s furnace. But since I’d been such a bad girl, he was going to gag me again, and do it all while I was still alive.
“Thank God a neighbor had heard the noise and called police. The cops knew the neighborhood. They’d been there a few months earlier when a taxi driver swore he’d seen a man carrying a drunken woman who matched one of the missing women’s descriptions, the last victim. Between my screams and the neighbor’s phone call (a young Indian man named Asif Sahid who I still call every Christmas), the police raced down. They banged on the door, and Pedro swore I’d pay for what I did. He plunged a butcher knife deep into my side—once, twice—before police broke down the door and shot him dead, with a bullet right to the forehead.”
“The scar . . .”
“Yeah. That was his final act. But of course, it wasn’t the end of the story. I didn’t sleep for six months afterward. I was terrified. The nightmares ruled my life. I’d wake up screaming, or rather, howling with fear. Completely by accident, I discovered a way round the problem: I slept at a youth hostel. Surrounded by thirty or so people snoring in their sleep—call it safety in numbers—was the only way I could manage to rest.
“But it wasn’t a cure. One night, while I was working at the hospital, I was making rounds alone when I saw a man who looked like Pedro coming down the lonely hallway. I panicked. Forget that I’d seen his death certificate and even his body. My irrational mind thought he had survived somehow. I hid in a janitor’s closet and spent the night in there, crying.
“I started self-medicating, first with prescription drugs, which were easy to get at work, and later with harder stuff. I couldn’t stand to be alone, ever. I started going to bars and making friends—the bigger and tougher the better. I became sullen and needy . . . I guess one day I woke up in some strange house, with a man I didn’t know and realized things had gotten way out of control. The hospital did the best thing they ever could have done: They fired me. My boss, a guy I used to think was an asshole but now I deeply respect, said they’d tried to look the other way, ignore my missing work or how disheveled I looked when I did show up. But he said I just was in no condition to be back at work. He’s the one who told me about Dr. Kauffman and suggested I make an appointment with him in Belfast. More than suggested, actually. He stood by as I dialed the number. And so I went to see him.
“Kauffman listened to my story and told me I need to see him in Belfast. ‘My method is intensive, but it works. I think in as little as a month, we can fix most of the damage.’
“It was my first time in Ireland, and I loved it immediately. On the weekends, when I wasn’t meeting with Kauffman, I’d rent a car and travel around the north. That’s when I decided I’d like to live here. One time, I ended up lost here, in Clenhburran, and that’s how I met Mrs. Houllihan. It was raining cats and dogs, and hers was the only place open. She gave me tea and offered me a place to spend the night. (In those days, there were no hotels in Clenhburran.) She was a lovely woman. She loved to travel and had been all over the world. We spent the whole night talking, and although I never told her the whole truth about me, I think she intuited it, somehow—or most of it, anyway. She confided that she hoped to retire in a few years and didn’t know who she might turn the business over to. I think she knew I’d want it, so she wasn’t surprised when I accepted right away . . . ‘But first I have some things I need to take care of. A brief trip,’ I told her.
“ ‘Of course, child,’ she said, ‘but don’t take too long.’ That night, for the first night in more than a year, I slept without any medication or tricks of any kind. The next morning, when I came downstairs and went down to the harbor and saw the old men feeding the seals, I decided I loved this place.
“In about a month and a half, Kauffman and I had made real progress. I still had nightmares, though, and Kauffman was honest with me about it. ‘You’ll most likely continue to have them. Maybe forever. They’re scars from a very deep wound. But at least we’ve stopped the bleeding.’ And that was true. The hypnosis helped me put some distance between me and the monster. The voice in my head was a muffled sound I could finally manage. That’s when I knew I was ready to grab my backpack and go. And that’s what I did. I went to Vietnam, Thailand, India, Nepal. Spiritual retreats. Meditation. I learned to control my emotions, to accept them as something inevitable, but to keep them in their proper place. When I was ready to return, Mrs. Houllihan was still waiting for me, ready to hang it up and retire to Tenerife.”
“I’m glad you came back,” I said, squeezing her hand and kissing it. “I’m glad I found your way back to Clenhburran.”
“Me too, Peter. So now you know the truth. And maybe you’re not so crazy.”
“Agreed. But in either case, I want to see Kauffman. I don’t trust myself, anymore. I have to try to take control over whatever this is. And right now he sounds like my best option. Can you help me get in to see him as soon as possible?”
“Consider it done,” she said. “I’ll take care of everything.”
NINE
FIVE DAYS LATER, Donald Kauffman opened the door to me at his home on Archer Street, in Belfast. Judie had called him on a Tuesday, but his schedule was so full that only as a personal favor to her did he agree to see me, and then on a Sunday, his day off.
He was a short man of about sixty with an owl-like countenance and tufts of hair growing out of his ears, but he was vivacious and had a commanding voice; he wore a black turtleneck the first day I met with him. He oozed genius, and, according to Judie, it’s exactly what he was: a preeminent scholar in the field of hypnotism, the author of books studied at universities around the world, an innovator of techniques that had changed the practice of psychiatry and psychology the world over. His practice was in the basement of his home, a warm and inviting space with high windows through which you could see the legs of people walking along the sidewalk outside. Shelves stuffed with books reached the ceiling. And on his small wooden desk still more books were piled beside a small typewriter with something half-written.
I started to thank him from the second he opened the door, but he just waved me off.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Come on in.”
Dr. Kauffman offered me a cup of tea and a comfortable spot on his tan leather couch. He wasted no time getting right to it.
“Judie told me you were seeking help but maybe you should tell me about your situation in your own words,” he said.
Seated cozily on the couch, I told him the story from
the very beginning. The lightning, Marie’s midnight run, the macabre apparition in the newspaper . . . all the way to the van with the three strangers . . . gangsters, assassins, whatever they were. I described each one of them making sure not to leave out a single detail.
Kauffman watched me with a penetrating stare, not saying a word or taking a single note. He leaned back in the other couch with his arms crossed over his chest and barely moved an inch in the time it took me to tell him the entire story of my nightmares. I felt better just sitting and telling him everything.
Then, he asked me a few questions about the dreams. Did I ever look at a clock? No, I told him. . . . Did I ever call anyone over the phone in the middle of the dream? My phone was always disconnected, I told him. Why hadn’t I woken up my kids when I heard someone banging at the door? I told him I didn’t want to worry them. “Tell me about that last night, Mr. Harper. When, exactly, do you think the intruders in your dream disappeared?”
“I’m not sure. I guess the moment I got back inside my house.”
We took a short break, and he went out for a smoke while I used the restroom. I called Judie from the hall to see how everything was going. Jip and Beatrice had been a little worried when I told them I wouldn’t be going with them to the Belfast zoo because I had to see a doctor.
“They’re having a great time, don’t worry,” she said. “How are you doing? How’s Donald?”
I told her he was smoking his pipe, and that made Judie chuckle.
“That’s a little trick he uses to force a break in the conversation. He always does it.”
She told me that she and the kids were on their way to Burger King and later they were thinking of catching a movie. Kauffman said we were in for an intensive session, and we might be at it until five or six.
“Tonight when I get out, we’ll all go to dinner together,” I told her.
I headed back to the basement. Kauffman was reviewing some notes he’d scrawled in his notebook. I sat back down, accepted another cup of tea, and asked him what he thought about all this.
“An unusual case, to be certain,” he said without looking up. “I’ve heard of similar cases, but much more fragmented. Yours is like an opera in full. You have a truly interesting brain, Mr. Harper.”
I smiled, although I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment.
“Forgive the joke, Mr. Harper. When you spend your life hearing peoples’ stories, you can’t help getting somewhat excited when you hear something out of the ordinary. Something like your case. Undoubtedly, the electrical shock caused by the lightning strike is at the root of your visions. It seems to have acted as an emotional amplifier. Perhaps, it is psychosomatic, which would explain why all your brain scans came back normal. I honestly don’t think there is anything physically wrong with you.”
“You mean to say I’m imagining the pain in my head?”
“Not so much that you’re imagining it. Rather, we’re looking in the wrong place for the source of your pain. The medication you’re taking is having no effect, a classic sign of a psychosomatic disorder. On the other hand, before we go any further, I’m going to give you the name of one of the best neurologists in Dublin. If you want a second opinion, go and see him. Tell him I referred you.”
As for the visions, Kauffman was sure they were a kind of parasomnia.
“I’m practically certain of it,” he said.
I’d come across that term during my Internet searches and learned it was very similar to a sleepwalking disorder.
“How do you explain the fact I can remember everything?”
“Well, to begin with, that’s what you believe to be true,” he said. “There’s no way of knowing whether you actually experienced what you think you did. No one saw you do the things you remembered doing. How can you be sure you actually threw yourself down the side of a ravine? Perhaps you simply bumped into a door inside your house and your mind interpreted it as something else. The sand you say you remember could have come from anywhere. All of these things could be constructs of your mind, Mr. Harper. Interpretations your somnambulant mind created to explain the sensory input. These things are often confused for ‘lucid dreams’ or ‘astral voyages.’ ”
“But . . . the first time it happened, I actually drove my car to my neighbors’ house and woke them up. That was no recreation. I was there.”
“I don’t doubt the events, per se. But there are many verified cases of sleepwalkers driving vehicles. There are even cases of people having sex while in a somnambulant state. Why, I had a patient who cooked while she was asleep and dreamed she won several cooking contests. Don’t torture yourself, Mr. Harper. Your visions are simply a result of your mind creating terrible rationalizations to explain your nighttime adventures.”
“But, how did I come up with this crazy explanation? The van, those three characters who felt so real. I could even hear their voices.”
“Believe me, you could have taken it from anywhere. They could be people you met briefly in real life—in another city, on the train. . . . The brain can take information, like someone’s face, store it away for decades and bring it back in a dream as if you had conjured it out of thin air. Have you heard of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams? There’s quite a famous story in it where a man dreams he can cure animals with a medicinal herb whose name he remembers upon waking up: Asplenium ruta muralis. The man, by the name of Delboeuf, is amazed to learn the next morning that that is the name of an actual medicinal plant. Moreover, it’s more amazing because he doesn’t know anything about plants or botany! Not until sixteen years later does the mystery solve itself. He’s visiting a friend in Switzerland when he stumbles upon a book of medicinal plants and opens it to find writing in the margins—in his own handwriting! Sixteen years ago, he had come across this book, made a note, and his brain filed the name of that plant away until one night his mind dusted off the information from some forgotten corner of his mind and presented it in a new light, within a dream.
“That’s how it often happens. And yet the first thing that comes to our mind is some kind of paranormal explanation: past lives, reincarnation, even visions like the ones you seem to be suffering from. But the answer is one hundred percent scientific. Memory and the human brain are vast mysteries that science is only beginning to understand, Mr. Harper. We can put a man on the moon, but we still don’t know what’s going on inside our own heads! In a creative mind such as your own, one that’s used to expressing deep sentiments, an electrical shock like the one you suffered could easily be the cause of the radical episodes you’re having. As to what these images mean, we could easily spend the next year in psychotherapy trying to figure it out.”
“You think there’s something I’m trying to tell myself through these visions?”
“Well, what do you think?” Kauffman said. “Do you have a perfectly happy and harmonious life?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. “I . . . well, I’m recently divorced. It was a bitter pill. Two kids caught in the middle. And I think it affected my professional life, too. I’m a music composer, and I’m stuck in a terrible creative rut.”
“Have you considered that all these visions might have something to do with the fallout from your divorce?”
“In what way?”
“In innumerable ways, Mr. Harper,” he said. “Your family life was shattered, your life was unbalanced. It could be that these ‘attacks’ you’re dreaming of are merely your mind’s way of revisiting the trauma. You might have tried to ‘make yourself forget’ too soon.”
Dr. Kauffman turned his head and got a faraway look, as if he were chasing an old memory himself.
“It could be your way of expressing an overprotective instinct for your children. You’ve found your role as father diminished after the divorce, and now that your children are with you again, your mind might be creating these threats so you can reaffirm your function as the family protector. Who knows . . . these are only theories, after all. We should begin thera
py to get at the root of the issue, but it will take time. Right now, the priority is addressing your sleepwalking. You’re worried about your children, and I understand the concern. But it’s more likely you’ll end up hurting yourself if these episodes continue to occur. Have you ever heard of clinical hypnosis?”
“You’re going to hypnotize me?” I said, unable to hide a small smirk.
Kauffman smiled back.
“I understand your skepticism, Mr. Harper. The media and a handful of charlatans have helped create a myth around the field of hypnosis. But believe me when I tell you that this discipline has been recognized and proven effective by the medical community, particularly as it pertains to the treatment of somnambulism. You will not lose consciousness, or not necessarily, and you won’t be ‘in my power.’ I’m not going to brainwash you and make you rob banks like in that Woody Allen movie. In any case, the entire procedure will be video recorded, and you will get a copy of the tape. Would you be willing to participate in this kind of treatment?”
“I’ll do whatever’s necessary to get better, doc.”
BY NOW, it was two in the afternoon, and the Venetian blinds were completely closed to block out the afternoon sun. Kauffman left one window half open, though, to let in a breeze and a little bit of ambient noise from the world outside. He went upstairs and came back with a video camera, which he went about mounting on a tripod and pointing at me.
“I’m not a magician, Mr. Harper, only a guide. It’s up to you to open up the doors for me. I want you to be in such a deep state of relaxation, that you forget you’re even here with me. So start by relaxing your body one part at time, breathing deeply and at a steady pace. You’re a musician, so I know you can even tell me what time you’re keeping with each breath. . . . Ah, an andante tempo, yes . . . Now, I need you to slow it a little more. First, to adagio. Now, with your eyes closed, picture your toes, your ankles . . . can you feel them relaxing? We’re giving them a little vacation, allowing them to go completely limp. Let’s move a little higher. Your knees are still too tense, relax them. . . .”
The Last Night at Tremore Beach Page 15