Phantoms of the Moon

by Michael Ciardi

The snowfall continued its assault upon the landscape throughout the night, leaving Belle Falls and its outskirts layered in heaps of frozen waste. In spite of these accumulations, plows and salt trucks spent the evening keeping the roadways passable enough so the early morning commuters had minimal difficulty traversing the narrow country lanes. The more urgent problems usually occurred on the adjoining byways leading out of town.

  Ryan’s choice to travel into Cloverton by way of bus this morning may have seemed like an imprudent decision on his part, but he wanted to consult with Dr. Evans while his memories from the previous evening were still freshly etched in his mind. If this meant enduring a two-hour ride in a public vehicle packed with angst-ridden proletariats, then Ryan had gotten precisely what he bargained for.

  It was approximately one mile to the Highland Medical Plaza from the bus station in Cloverton. Since the streets and sidewalks were still partially slick with ice, Ryan should have hailed a cab to transport him to his destination. But the inhalation of crisp air inspired him to exercise, and the pedestrian route afforded him with extra time to contemplate exactly what he wanted to discuss once he arrived at Evans’s office. As it was on his previous visit, Ryan waited until the evening beforehand until calling the doctor for an appointment. Fortunately, Evans’s kept his promise to keep his schedule open for any potential emergencies.

  The boy entered the building without any unreasonable expectations. If Ryan wanted to be truthful, he would have conceded that he never really gave his psychiatrist an unconditional license to help him. He now understood that nothing of substance could have been established if he continued to resist the hypnotic methods that Evans had been waiting to put into practice for nearly ten years. The receptionist, who remembered Ryan from his prior visit, seemed cordial when delivering her obligatory greeting. Immediately after Ryan hung his coat on the rack in the room’s corner, she directed him into Evans’s office.

  Melting snow peeled in clumps from the bottom of Ryan’s boots as he paced across the room’s carpeting and positioned himself in the same chair as he had on his previous visit. Evans customarily greeted each patient with a firm handshake, but Ryan’s mannerisms suggested that such formalities could have been postponed for now. Only a few days had passed since Ryan’s last visit. He no longer studied the surroundings with any sense of unfamiliarity, but instead focused the bulk of his attention on the doctor seated behind the hardwood desk.

  “I’m waiting for you to tell me that I was wrong,” Ryan mumbled as he watched Evans pick a pen off his desk and rest it on top of a yellow pad of paper. After sitting in the doctor’s office for a few minutes, Ryan noticed the room’s interior was considerably dimmer than he remembered. He then realized the windows’ blinds were already closed. “I’ve decided to give this another shot,” he continued. He hoped Evans plainly distinguished his contrition by now.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Ryan,” Evans remarked in a reserved voice.

  “Are you surprised to see me again?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “I guess I had a lot on my mind the last time I was here.”

  “I suspected you had more to tell me, but I wasn’t surprised that you were not ready to disclose everything at once.”

  Ryan simpered at the sound of Evans’s passive voice. He always marveled at the doctor’s seemingly impervious temperament. He never managed to get Evans riled in a way that seemed appropriate to the situation. Ryan welcomed an uncharacteristic outburst from Evans now and then. At times in the past, he felt pressured by the doctor’s serene gesticulations. Ryan contended that this suppression of emotion almost seemed like a contrivance on Evans’s part in order to secure leverage in their discourse.

  “Do you ever feel like you’re going to lose it, Doctor Evans?” Ryan questioned glibly. “How do you deal with everyone else’s problems all the time without becoming affected by them?”

  “I don’t think I’d be human if I wasn’t affected by them,” said Evans. “But there’s an area within each patient’s mind that I must be careful not infringe upon.”

  “So where is that area within me?”

  Evans weighed the boy’s words tactfully and said, “It’s never in the same place for every individual.”

  “Why do you even care what happens to me? I obviously can’t pay you for this session. It seems that you would’ve just forgotten about me by now.”

  Evans became reticent momentarily. He almost appeared to concentrate on a spot on the wall behind Ryan’s head. Surely, Evans mused, there must have been a time when Ryan’s circumstances were not at the forefront of his thoughts. But it was also equally valid to stipulate that the boy’s bizarre case never left Evan’s subconscious entirely.

  “Maybe the reason I care,” Evans suggested, “is because you still care.”

  “And what do you think I care about?”

  “Your family.”

  Ryan pressed his teeth against his bottom lip. At the same time, he removed his eyeglasses and cleaned the lenses with his shirtsleeve. “You might not get the reaction out of me that you anticipate, Doctor Evans,” Ryan remarked, querulously.

  Evans intentionally rounded his shoulders to present himself in a less imposing fashion. He then leaned forward in his chair, entwining his fingers and settling his arms on the desktop. Ryan’s heightened emotions were quite observable, but the doctor did not want to draw attention to anything specific. He remained silent until Ryan returned the eyeglasses to his face and assumed a casual posture.

  Evans knew he had to present his next statement discreetly. Any presumptions on his part would have ended their interaction prematurely. “Why don’t you tell me exactly where you want to begin, Ryan, and then we can revisit that time together.”

  “I’m still unsure how this process works,” said Ryan. “Can hypnosis help someone as skeptical as me?”

  “Nothing is foolproof. We’d have to give it a try before we know for sure.”

  “But if it does work,” Ryan continued hurriedly, “how will you know if what I say is true or not? More importantly, how will I know if it’s true?”

  Evans could have kept tucked behind his desk for hours and recounted multiple incidents of shoddy practices by doctors in his field. Unlike Evans, however, these charlatans were more intent on uncovering a sordid history than actually divulging the facts of repressed memories. Evans was especially sensitive to the possibility of a patient’s mind being contaminated by confabulations. Unscrupulous methods discredited the entire discipline of hypnotherapy. He was also mindful to the realization that Ryan had struggled with these same issues for years.

  As a credible psychiatrist, Evans made certain that he avoided such pitfalls, but even the most adroit doctors could not guarantee to extract only an assortment of untainted recollections. The very nature of hypnosis was subjected to the exact influences of the conscious mind—that being the truth and lies were sometimes interchangeably and imperceptibly entangled.

  The obvious question for anyone whose never been exposed to any sort of hypnotic suggestion, such as Ryan, was how did the doctor intend to initiate the procedure. Like most, Ryan was familiar with what he presumed to be a standard method. He was not entirely shocked to see a spacious couch comfortably set in the room’s decorous corner.

  “I suppose that’s where I lie down,” Ryan quipped, but his joke became less humorous as he stood up from the chair and approached the designated piece of furniture.

  “You can sit up if you prefer,” Evans offered from behind his desk. “Most people like to recline on the couch, though. It’s very comfortable.”

  Ryan smeared a few creases out of his blue jeans and plopped onto the beige leather couch. He then fidgeted around like a cat trying to pinpoint a particular comfort zone atop the cushions. After a few seconds he announced, “Okay, let’s see what magic you can conjure up, Doctor Evans.”

  While Ryan waited for Evans’s preparation, he eyeballed the credentials hanging in various sized frames u
pon the wall. One plaque in particular generated the majority of Ryan’s attention. It indicated Evans’s participation in the APMHA, which represented the preeminent medical hypnotists in the country. Of course an occasional quack still managed to avoid detection from time to time, but Ryan trusted Evans more than any other man he presently knew. As he perused these documents, Evans busied himself by fetching the primary tools of his trade from a locked desk drawer.

  After a few minutes, Evans advanced toward the couch with an elliptical-shaped medallion hanging from a chain and a palm-sized tape recorder. Ryan glanced at the disk dangling from Evans’s hand and scoffed at the sight of it. “This is going to be as predictable as I thought,” he snickered. His eyes still centered on the objects the doctor revealed as he sat down on a stool parallel to where Ryan reclined.

  “The first order of business,” Evans instructed his patient, “is to make sure you’re relaxed.” The doctor proceeded to set the recorder on a table near the couch. “It’s fairly standard to record these sessions,” he continued. “Are you okay with that, Ryan?”

  Ryan nodded his chin and muttered, “Sure.” He remained fixated on the metal piece for several seconds, even though Evans had not yet drawn particular attention to it. “How do we begin?”

  Before Ryan finished his thought, Evans suspended the silver disk in front of the boy’s eyes. It swayed gently from the chain as Evans looped it loosely around his fingers. At close range, Ryan detected a portion of his own reflection in the object’s glimmering surface, which had the circumference of a Kennedy fifty-cent coin.

  “You might be familiar with this method,” Evans told the boy. “It’s called fixed gaze induction.”

  “I think I’ve seen this done on television once or twice,” Ryan noted. “Does it really work?”

  “We’ll see,” Evans replied as he gently oscillated the medallion in front of Ryan’s face. “Just follow the disk with your eyes,” he directed softly, “and listen to the sound of my voice.”

  Ryan did as he was instructed, but did not instantaneously sense any urgency to slip into a trance. But after a few seconds, he gathered the disk was not as purposeless as he first presumed. Evans manipulated it effortlessly, balancing each sway with the cadence of Ryan’s fluttering eyes. Evans’s fluid voice matched the movement perfectly. “Relax your body…relax your mind…you are completely at ease. All your thoughts are drifting backwards…fading to a place of relaxation…you’re watching the disk… watching…as it moves in sequence with your breathing.”

  Ryan’s eyelids gradually closed, if only to barricade his mind from the pendulum-like motion of Evans’s medallion. But as nobly as he initially tried to defy the doctor’s method, Ryan could not resist a temptation of being compelled to stare upon the object. His eagerness to do so proved to be an enveloping experience. If the boy ever harbored any notion of resisting, Evans’s techniques in mesmerizing him became overwhelming. Soon Ryan’s thoughts drifted to where the doctor needed them to be. He now heard nothing other than the sound of Evans’s harmonious voice.

  “You’re asleep now,” Evans informed him, “but your mind is completely responsive to my every word. You hear only the sound of my voice…nothing more or less than what I say….”

  Ryan’s body suddenly became limp; his hands opened and the furrows seemingly imbedded in his forehead smoothed to a point where they were no longer decipherable. He breathed with an indisputable tranquility. Each expansion of his chest pushed him farther back into the channels of his forgotten past. Evans then stopped the disk’s movement and returned it to the confines of his suit jacket. After the doctor was certain that Ryan had immersed fully into a hypnotic state of being, he reached across the table and depressed the ‘record’ button on his mini-recorder.

  “You are now entirely at peace,” Evans continued in monotone. “Nothing can disturb you…you’ll respond only to my voice…do you understand these instructions?”

  Evans waited a few seconds and watched the boy’s lips part slightly. “I understand,” Ryan muttered, but with the clarity Evans anticipated.

  “And you are comfortable?” questioned Evans, being mindful to keep the pitch of his voice perfectly measured with each word.

  “I am comfortable,” Ryan repeated.

  The first stage of hypnosis passed as Evans had planned. Ryan appeared genuinely reposed in his present position on the couch. The boy’s eyeballs occasionally flickered beneath his lids as though he was engaged in a pensive sleep. All of this was necessary to determine before advancing with the procedure.

  “Listen to my voice,” Evans continued, “I am now counting backwards from the number ten. You will go back with me…a year for each number. Do you understand?”

  Ryan echoed the doctor’s instruction when he said tonelessly, “A year for each number.”

  “We’re going backwards to nine….”

  “Backwards,” Ryan mumbled. “Backwards to nine.”

  “A year for each number…eight…seven…six…”

  “A year for each number,” repeated Ryan on cue.

  “Five…four…three….”

  As Evans continued to count, Ryan’s face twitched as though he underwent an intolerable degree of anxiety. Evans paused and closely monitored the boy’s reaction. When Ryan seemed composed enough to proceed, the doctor exhaled a modest sigh and resumed the procedure.

  “You are still at peace,” Evans spoke in a whispery voice now, audibly much softer than his earlier tone. “We are going backwards, Ryan…further back to two…and one. A year for each number…and how many numbers have I counted?”

  Without hesitating, Ryan replied, “Ten.”

  “Good. We are back ten years. You are at peace. All is well.”

  When Ryan uttered his next syllable, his own voice had altered considerably. He now sounded like a seven-year-old boy—the precise age he was when his family vanished from the woods near Glen Dale. “Backwards ten years,” he said.

  “And how old are you now, Ryan?”

  “I am seven,” he answered in a child’s voice.

  “And you are safe…safe with you family.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to concentrate, Ryan, and tell me about the last night you remember being with your family. Do you understand?”

  Evans waited a few seconds for the boy to reply. When Ryan made no immediate attempt, the doctor restated his command. “Tell me about your last night with your family, Ryan. Tell me what you see….”

  Another break in proceedings followed, only this one was prolonged and obviously irritating to Ryan’s recollections. His forehead beaded with sweat and his open hands momentarily clenched into fists. Though Evans was tempted to lure Ryan out of his hypnotic trance, he fully recognized that his patient’s future cooperation with such a method seemed unlikely.

  “You are safe,” Evans reminded the boy. “Think about your family…you are all safe together.”

  “Together,” Ryan muttered. Perspiration from the boy’s forehead spilled over his brow and collected on his cheeks in these moments, but he seemed composed enough to respond to Evans’s mellow intonations. “We are safe,” said Ryan. “We are driving.”

  “Good. Who is driving?”

  “Daddy.”

  “Good. And who is driving with you and your daddy?”

  “Mommy…and Robby.”

  “Good, Ryan, and you’re all safe…driving. Now—where are you driving to?”

  With each passing second, the hesitation before Ryan’s response increased, but this was a typical behavior as far as Evans was concerned. The doctor detected nothing in Ryan’s mannerisms that caused him alarm. He espied no reason to stop the session now. “Tell me where you are driving?” Evans asked again.

  “Home,” replied Ryan meekly.

  “Very good,” Evans noted. “Now listen carefully to my next question. I want you to tell me what happened to your family on your way home.”

  Ryan paused again.

&n
bsp; “Ryan, I’m going to ask you again—what happened during your drive home?”

  “We never made it home,” Ryan responded in a hypnotically induced voice. Evans of course already knew that Ryan and his family had never returned home on the evening in question. Filed police reports unmistakably indicated the circumstances surrounding the missing people as well as the location of the vehicle and Ryan at the time of their recovery. However, Evans still needed to assess the boy’s ability to communicate lucidly while under hypnosis.

  “Can you remember why you didn’t make it home that night, Ryan?” Evans asked gently. “Did your daddy stop the car for some reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did he stop?”

  “The road. It was dark,” Ryan responded obediently.

  Evans realized that he could not pace each inquiry so rapidly and expect any accuracy from the boy, but his immediate instinct was to present a question with the same urgency in which he sought an answer. Even though the temptation to treat Ryan like his own son was consuming at times, the doctor constantly reminded himself once again to not overstep the doctor-patient boundaries.

  After monitoring his own actions, Evans continued. “Ryan, can you remember why your father stopped the car on the road?”

  “I…I can’t remember.”

  “Concentrate harder,” Evans persisted. “It’s important for you to remember.”

  The boy’s mouth jittered at the sound of Evans’s command. Ryan wrestled with the ideas filtering through his mind, and this caused him to sweat more uncontrollably. Though the boy was visibly traumatized, Evans refused to move away from the stool and end the trance.

  “Did the car stop on its own?” Evans remarked, feverishly rubbing at his own temples. “Couldn’t your father get it started?”

  After several seconds, Ryan nodded his chin and replied to the later part of Evans’s question. “No.”

  “Good, Ryan. Now you must really think hard about this next question.” Ryan stopped thrashing in his place and settled into position with the doctor’s tone. “After your daddy was unable to start the car, what did you do next?”

  Ryan’s features contorted freakishly as he expelled an irregular breath. His fingers clenched the couch so forcefully that Evans saw his knuckles reddening. Through all of this, Ryan uttered three words that provided the doctor with a deeper level of perplexity.

  “Beware of the Moon,” Ryan stated, still using his youthful voice.

  Evans repeated the words silently before asking, “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not afraid,” Ryan insisted. His responses seemed as swift as Evans’s interrogation now. “I’m looking for Robby—”

  “Your brother? You’re searching for him?”

  “Uh-huh,” Ryan said, sulking with the syllables of his confession.

  “Your brother is out of the car—is that right?”

  “They’re all out,” replied Ryan frightfully. The tone of the boy’s voice caused the hair to stand stiff on the back of Evans’s neck and forearms.

  “Then you are alone,” Evans stated as though it should have been obvious to him to infer as much. “You are in the car…alone. Where did your family go?”

  “To the woods.”

  “And you followed them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find them?” Evans knew that he strayed precariously close to infringing upon the rules of conduct during hypnosis. His exploration into Ryan’s memories coerced the boy into a set of predictable responses that logically translated for the doctor’s own purposes of comprehension. The rapidity of Evans’s questions contributed to his sloppiness. In order to avoid recording responses that were merely convenient avenues of escape for Ryan, Evans needed to withdraw and permit the boy to convey all events in their purest form—whether they were permissible to the doctor’s rationalization or not.

  Evans delicately asked his next question. “I need you to be specific as possible. What happened immediately after you got out of the car?”

  “Beware of the Moon,” Ryan whispered, and then continued in succession, “beware of the Moon…beware of the Moon.”

  As Ryan rambled through these words, his movements became increasingly animated. He squirmed on the couch as if hot coils were set beneath him. Despite the boy’s apparent agony, Evans refused to release the grip he had on the boy’s subliminal mind. At last, the doctor had attained the advantage of solving a mystery that stupefied him for the past decade. He simply could not stop himself from probing further into Ryan’s buried memories.

  “You are safe,” Evans reminded Ryan. “Nothing can harm you. You are in the woods…perfectly safe…now what do you see?”

  “There’s something in the Moon,” Ryan exclaimed. He still shivered and emitted a cold sweat that Evans normally found unusual.

  “What do you see in the Moon?”

  “Something is flying.”

  “A plane?”

  “No.”

  “What is flying?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan responded in a childlike voice. “It’s in front of the Moon.”

  Evans delayed his next statement briefly in order to check the tape recorder situated on a table beside Ryan. Once that the doctor was satisfied that his session was being recorded efficiently, he turned and noticed that the boy had literally soaked through his shirt with perspiration. In an effort to ascertain the level of Ryan’s stress, Evans clasped the boy’s wrist and monitored his pulse. He counted a heart rate of 160 beats per minute, which was fairly high for a state of physical inactivity, but not yet perilous for a boy his age. Still, in an effort to spare Ryan any sustained trauma, Evans waited until his pulse subsided to less than 90. He then resumed dialogue with the mesmerized boy.

  “We know you are in the woods,” Evans clarified, “and we know that you’re searching for your family. Is this correct, Ryan?”

  “I can’t find them,” Ryan muttered worriedly. “They’re gone—”

  “Are they lost in the woods?” Evans asked, again disregarding his own rules.

  “No. They’ve gone somewhere.”

  “Somewhere other than the woods?”

  Ryan nodded his chin as his closed eyes flickered spasmodically. “There’s a light—a silver light,” he then declared, which contributed further to the doctor’s bewilderment.

  “Is the light coming from the sky?”

  “No.”

  “But you just told me there was something in the sky,” Evans countered, while trying to keep his own emotions grounded in logic.

  “No,” Ryan corrected. “Something is in the Moon.”

  Rather than debate the intention of Ryan’s words, Evans disregarded the present observation in order to return to the boy’s prior remembrance. “You mentioned a light—a silver light,” Evans started. He spoke slowly when he asked, “Can you tell me anything else about this light?”

  “It’s warm…it glows…it’s pulling me—”

  “Pulling you? Pulling you where?”

  “It’s pulling me closer…to…to—”

  “Your family?”

  “Mommy! Daddy! Robby!”

  Ryan’s body buckled convulsively during these seconds. Evans no longer denied the psychological ramifications of this session. He reached out with both hands and attempted to stabilize the boy’s shaking arms and legs, but the effort seemed futile. In this current state, Ryan’s physical potency intensified. It required the strength of at least three men Evans’s size to control the boy’s muscle spasms. The doctor leaned all of his weight upon Ryan, but the boy knocked him to the floor with a single shift from his torso. As Evans toppled to the floor, the recorder also fell from the table.

  “You’re safe,” Evans told Ryan. “You are completely safe.” Evans thought about jarring Ryan from his trance through unconventional methods, but he then decided to reserve this method for an extreme emergency. If a level of urgency existed, now was the time for the doctor to deliberate it.

&nbs
p; Ryan’s voice squealed as his fists pounded against the doctor’s back. “Don’t let them go! Don’t let them take them away! Please…somebody help me!”

  Despite the commotion, Evans refused to deviate from his tactics. “Listen to me, Ryan—nothing can harm you. We are moving forward now…a year for each number…one…two…three—”

  “Stop them! Please—help me stop them!”

  “Four…five…six…you’re moving forward…moving forward to seven, to eight, to nine—”

  By the time Evans counted to ten, Ryan’s body grew limp in his arms. The boy’s erratic breathing dissipated in seconds. Before the doctor released his hold on Ryan, he realized that they were both covered in a cold sweat. When the boy opened his eyes fully, he initially appeared devoid of any expression. It took him a few moments to realize that the doctor was on his knees in front of the couch. This circumstance by itself indicated a bizarre occurrence; it was confirmed by the amount of perspiration drenching his skin.

  Evans moved back to his stool, but not before snatching the recorder off the floor. Ryan watched the doctor cautiously during this time before uttering, “What happened to me?”

  “You don’t remember?” Evans asked, catching his breath in short gulps.

  “No. Was I really hypnotized?”

  “Most certainly,” Evans remarked. “Do you care to tell me what you’re feeling at this precise moment?”

  Ryan pondered the doctor’s suggestion and rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his hands. He then almost yawned his response. “I’m tired.” Ryan had regained his senses to a point where he detected a degree of anguish etched into the doctor’s expression. “I knew this was a bad idea,” Ryan continued. “You look as confused as me right now, Doctor Evans.”

  “We’ve made real progress here today, Ryan—more so than we’ve accomplished in eight years together,” said Evans in his own defense.

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  Evans held the tape recorder in one hand and revealed it to Ryan before he said, “It may be difficult for you to accept at this point, but I think after we listen to the tape together we’ll have many more things to discuss.”

  A hint of curiosity invaded Ryan’s tone as he sat passively on the couch. “Maybe you’re right,” he said lowly. “Let’s hear the tape.”

  After both doctor and patient had settled back into their assumed roles, the tape recorder reminded them both why they were here today. Evans monitored Ryan’s facial reactions with a scrutinizing persistence while they listened to the playback in its entirety. Ryan shifted in his seat uncomfortably during this period, and perhaps examined the doctor’s countenance just as rigidly. Following the last recorded syllable on the tape, Evans stopped the electronic device and waited for the boy’s feedback.

  “Well,” Ryan started sheepishly, “none of what you’ve recorded shocks me.”

  “But does any of it make sense to you?”

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  “Obviously, we’ve uncovered something pivotal,” Evans countered. “What we must now do is establish if this recording is an accurate depiction of your past or a subconscious misrepresentation of what truly occurred.”

  Ryan appeared insulted by the doctor’s skeptical nature. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he complained. “I’ve done what you’ve asked of me. You finally got me to submit to this silly hypnotherapy, and now you sound disappointed with the results.”

  “On the contrary, Ryan,” Evans avowed. “As I told you, we’ve made incredible progress in this session. But we can’t jump to any hasty conclusions. After all, you were under hypnosis only one time. We have nothing to compare it to yet.”

  Ryan motioned to his dampened clothing and simply shook his head in disgust. “I’m sorry to inform you, Doctor Evans, but I don’t plan on going through this crap ever again. Besides, I think if you listen to that recording once more, you’ll have a pretty good idea about what happened to my family.”

  “What do you think happened to them, Ryan?”

  Ryan did not want to be disrespectful, and perhaps he should have appreciated Evans’s benevolent approach more than he did, but the evidence was rather blatant in the boy’s mind. The therapy had helped him more than he fully comprehended at the moment. Still in order to pacify Evans, Ryan decided to point out what he deemed as extremely obvious.

  “I’m not an actor, Doctor Evans, and I certainly didn’t come here to play games with you. Did you or did you not hear my voice on that tape?”

  “I heard you clearly,” replied Evans. “All I’m asking from you is your interpretation.”

  Ryan rolled his eyes as he stood up from the couch. He had to remind himself to not become so easily provoked by the doctor’s tenacious efforts. “You know,” said Ryan in a tone that Evans had endured more times than he cared to recount. “I really have no business getting mad at you. You’re only trying to help me figure things out—right?”

  “Nothing has changed since I’ve known you,” Evans verified.

  “That might be true, but I’m old enough now to understand that people don’t just vanish into thin air. Can we at least agree on that?”

  It made no sense for Evans to debate an irrefutable point, so he simply remained silent as he watched Ryan pace back and forth in front of the couch. The boy moved at a dizzying speed, seemingly to wear a tread in the carpet. To the doctor, his actions seemed nearly as scatterbrained as his thoughts.

  “People are murdered and never found,” stated Ryan, “they run away from bad situations, and they might even get kidnapped. Others die in virtual obscurity. They all have one thing in common: they’re classified as missing. But there’s another kind of missing person, and that’s the one that nobody really wants to believe or talk about.”

  “It sounds like you thought about this for awhile, Ryan.”

  Ryan startled himself on how fluently the words slipped from his mouth. It was as if a channel had opened within his mind in which all of his previously forbidden thoughts flowed ceaselessly.

  “We can stop pretending now,” Ryan declared. “We both know that my family’s disappearance was reported by the police as an unsolved mystery. In truth, there are plenty of people out there much smarter than me who’ve already settled this matter. My family’s whereabouts may still be unexplained, but it doesn’t take a Rhode Scholar to figure out what happened to them.”

  “You still haven’t told me,” said Evans. “Say what you mean.”

  Ryan removed his eyeglasses from his face and wiped another line of sweat from his forehead. To Evans’s amazement, the boy did not seem as flustered as before. “I suspect you have an idea of what occurred. The recording made it perfectly clear.”

  “Did it?” questioned Evans, doubtfully.

  “They were abducted,” Ryan stated bluntly. “And before you start playing devil’s advocate, let me make it simple for you, Doctor Evans. My family was taken hostage by something not born of this world. I’m prepared to live with that fact.”

  “You’ve had this figured out in your mind before you came here today, didn’t you?”

  “Just like you, I’ve heard all the rumors. Of course I didn’t believe them at first. Let’s face it, ever since I was a kid I was conditioned to believe otherwise—by you and my grandmother.”

  “It was never my goal to coerce your thoughts in any way,” Evans rebuked his patient.

  “Hey, I’m not upset about it. From your point of view it made sense. We all know that abduction isn’t imaginable by anyone who hasn’t been impacted by it directly.”

  Evans had regained enough of his own composure to thoroughly process the boy’s confession now, but he was not wholeheartedly satisfied that Ryan offered him a similar courtesy. The doctor realized that anything he tried to convey to Ryan at this stage required skillful handling. Evans assumed a relaxed posture in hopes that the boy mimicked his disposition long enough to listen to his advice with an unfettered mind.


  “Do you want to hear what I have to say about all this?” Evans asked, politely folding his hands across his lap and crossing his left leg over the right.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me anyway.”

  “Trust me, Ryan, I’m not trying to discredit any of your beliefs in regard to your family’s disappearance. Circumstances surrounding the event were, as we both know, mysterious. I don’t yet have a logical explanation for what happened, but I’m not willing to sit here and fabricate one out of mere convenience either.”

  “You have the tape now,” Ryan reminded the doctor. “Isn’t that proof?”

  Evans shook his head reluctantly and replied, “It’s only one recording of an event you think you remembered. The process of hypnosis can uncover facts, Ryan, but only after numerous observations and extensive analysis.”

  Ryan felt exasperated by Evans’s rejection of what he viewed as indisputable evidence. Consequently, his anger peaked as he plopped down on the couch again. “And to think that I actually volunteered for your hokey brand of therapy,” he grumbled. “I understand you good intentions, Doctor Evans, but there must be a stopping point to everything. I feel like any further treatment from you is destined to do me more harm than good.”

  Evans leaned forward on the stool and gently clasped his hand on Ryan’s shoulder. His voice mellowed as he proceeded. “I don’t expect you to appreciate the subtleness involved in hypnotherapy as I do, but I’m disappointed that you don’t trust my opinion. Isn’t it fair to assume that we don’t always recognize the truth within our minds right away?”

  “I’m not insane,” said Ryan, steadfastly maintaining his position. “Why are you so quick to deny what I revealed to you while I was hypnotized?”

  The best way Evans answered Ryan’s question was by presenting one of his own. “Ryan, have you heard of false memories? In my profession, they’re referred to as confabulations. During a hypnotic state, it’s particularly essential to rule out incidents that may have been influenced by our consciousness.”

  “I know what you’re getting at,” mumbled Ryan with discontent. “You’re suggesting that my memories have been contaminated by what has already been said about my family.”

  “Were not you aware of that possibility before we started today?”

  Ryan reacted somewhat submissively to the doctor’s point. He remained silent long enough for Evans to reaffirm his position. “I’ve been conducting this type of research for over seventeen years now, and I’ve learned that individuals can be susceptible to a variety of outside influences, particularly to ideas purported by a mass majority of people. In this light, it’s not unusual to think you’ve witnessed something that never actually occurred.”

  “Is that what you believe is on the tape—false memories?”

  Evans hesitated with his response only because he knew better than to interject any speculations on the likelihood of an otherworldly abduction. “I’m not ready to make a decision on that tape’s content at the moment, Ryan.”

  “I figured you wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”

  “There is no definitive answer,” Evans affirmed, “but I propose we investigate this tape further and then perhaps we’ll be able to delve a little bit deeper into your subconscious memory.”

  “I’ve already told you, Doctor Evans, I’m done with hypnosis. You know I never agreed with the process anyway.”

  “Because you’re afraid.”

  “No, I’m not scared—I never was.”

  “Then why do you continue to resist my therapy?”

  Ryan pondered the doctor’s words briefly before admitting, “I guess I’m just confused about their disappearance.”

  “We’re all baffled by what happened to your family on that night.”

  “You misunderstand me,” Ryan retorted. “I’m not confused about what happened to my family. I’m only wondering why I was left behind. Why didn’t the aliens take me with them? I was at least as vulnerable as my twin brother.”

  Evans owned no words or theories to assuage Ryan’s guilt regarding this matter. He wondered how long the boy had actually felt this way. As much as he tried, Evans found it impossible to entertain the notion of an alien abduction, especially since the media had pursued such propaganda for years without substantiating a solitary fact.

  “Just do me one favor, Ryan,” said Evans in almost a subservient tone. “Think about what happened here today. Consider your thoughts as well as mine, then write them down in a journal of some sort so we can review them at another time.”

  Ryan rejected the doctor’s proposal even before the man finished stating his recommendation. “I’m sorry, Doctor Evans, but I won’t make you any promises.”

  “You’ve obviously come to me for more reasons than you’re willing to reveal,” Evans surmised. “If you ever expect me or anyone else to help you, then you’ll need to cooperate fully and be completely honest.”

  Ryan stood up from the couch again with no intention of resuming conversation with the psychiatrist. Perhaps Evans jangled a nerve that the boy was not willing to explore. Once Ryan was on his feet, Evans realized he had little chance of sharing any additional information today. In typical fashion, Ryan scampered toward the office’s doors in a huff.

  Before Ryan departed, Evans offered him a final remark. “I wish we could reach a point in our sessions where we didn’t end them so abruptly.” When the boy neglected to respond, Evans let him walk away without instigating him any further. After Ryan was gone, Evans remained seated on the stool for a few minutes to reflect upon his strategy, if indeed he still had one. A part of him hoped the boy experienced a sudden change of heart and burst back into his office to resume their dialogue. It did not happen. With that matter at least temporarily disposed, Evans decided to listen to the recording of their session again. This time he jotted some notes into his yellow-papered pad and became particularly mindful to any repetition in Ryan’s phrasing. Even after playing the recording back several times, the doctor’s original opinion remained unaltered.

  Evans eventually decided to end his deliberations for the morning in regard to this patient, but then his eyes noticed the couch upon which Ryan was situated. In addition to the moisture from the boy’s perspiring body, remnants of an unfamiliar substance coated a portion of the caramel-colored leather. Evans first adjusted the room’s lighting by opening the window’s blinds. With a gray morning light seeping in a sliced pattern throughout the office’s interior, Evans exposed an unusual material plainly layering the entire surface of both couch cushions and a portion of the headrest.

  Since Evans customarily had the furniture wiped down before each new patient, he conjectured that the leather couch had no foreign matter dirtying it prior to the boy’s arrival. The silvery material seemed partially embedded in the couch’s covering, but after touching it, he determined that it collected on his fingertips in solid chunks and felt cool to his immediate sensation. He rubbed the particles between his thumb and index finger before sensing a minor grittiness to it. Then, upon closer inspection, he detected an unusual sheen to the granular substance. Although the doctor had never personally encountered such a thing, he recalled reading about something vaguely comparable.

  After a few moments of contemplation, Evans dashed back to his desk and feverishly perused the content of Ryan’s file. He paged through various documents scattered throughout the manila envelope, including detailed accounts of at least seven years of accumulated studies surrounding Ryan’s development. Finally, he revealed one paper of specific interest. It was a copy of the original police report filed by the Glen Dale Police Department on the evening of the family’s disappearance. The investigating officer, Chief Gary Wescott, had been quite meticulous with his description of circumstances.

  One item in the report, which had not merited Evans’s undivided attention until this moment, verified the presence of the silvery particles in question. Wescott had found the material curious enough to make a notation in the rep
ort’s margins. Although none of these findings were ever investigated with serious intent, the detail suddenly seemed pertinent to Evans. Astonishingly, Wescott indicated that the substance was found on the surface of Ryan’s skin and clothing immediately following his recovery on the roadside. In Evans’s mind, the coincidence was too unordinary to overlook.

  Obviously, more questions needed to be asked, but not to whom the doctor originally intended. Perhaps Wescott served as a better source of information for the discovery of what happened in the aftermath of that fateful evening ten years ago.