“A little. It’s not something I felt compelled to watch. Reading about it was bad enough.”
He doesn’t even seem to hear me. “There’s a young mother frantically racing with her stroller, trying to get away. It’s all captured perfectly on mall security cameras. You see this woman running, but she’s going too fast to control the stroller, and it topples, spilling her baby to the floor. Her instinct, her only option, of course, is to save the baby. Shield it. But she loses time in doing so, and as she bends to collect her child, Raymond walks up from behind and puts a bullet into the back of her skull, releasing her blood and brains on the tiled mall floor. She collapses next to her child, at whom Raymond then points the barrel of his rifle. The muzzle seems to actually touch the baby’s forehead. Raymond pauses, seems to reconsider, and then he moves on. The baby was the only victim spared in the killing spree.”
I had heard this story as well. Nearly as disturbing as hearing it recounted by Eaton is the fact he chooses to call the shooter repeatedly by his first name, and not even the shortened version of it. As if Eaton knew him.
“By the time he made his way into the hotel lobby, you could hear the sirens growing closer. Gunfire and screams louder. People in the lobby running for cover, and there I was at the front desk, not knowing what to do. He hadn’t entered the lobby at this point, but I left the desk. Left and just pressed myself up against a wall. Seconds later, he entered the room and walked past me, sweeping his gun sights in front of him. He didn’t see me as he walked past.
“In that moment, I could have done something. Rushed at him from behind, knocked him over. Who knows? Maybe he would have turned around before I could get to him. But I had the distinct, immediate sense I could do something. Yet I didn’t.”
“Few people would have,” I say.
Eaton now makes eye contact with me.
“Perhaps,” he says. “Perhaps not. But it doesn’t matter what other people would have done. I was the one there. Only my actions matter, and I did nothing. I had a responsibility, but I did nothing.”
He draws out the word responsibility.
“Raymond shot the front-desk clerk in the head. She had just been checking me in, and now she was gone. I watched her die in a split second.”
“I’m sorry, Eaton. I can’t imagine.”
“No, you certainly cannot.”
“You shouldn’t feel responsible.”
“But I am responsible. I’m to blame, Jake.” There is pain in his gaze, desperation. “People are dead because of me.”
I want to assure Eaton he bears no burden of Ray Higgins’s violence, but there is a confessional tone to his voice that keeps me silent.
“I remember hoping he would turn around and kill me,” he continues. “I was ready for it. Ready for death. I think part of it was the shame of doing nothing. But part of it was…it just seemed like my time.”
“Because of…your condition,” I say.
“Yes.” He closes his eyes, looking fatigued. “But he didn’t shoot me, of course. Among the shouts and the screams, the sirens and the chaos, Raymond casually walked through the lobby, away from my view, and into the ballroom. I’m sure you know what happened in there.”
“Yes.”
The shooter had calmly walked into the ballroom, where a group of nearly one hundred real-estate agents were holding a luncheon. He didn’t want to take hostages or make demands. He had come there to kill, and did so with devastating efficiency. It was only when he needed to change clips a second time that he was taken down by two men attending the conference, one of whom wrestled his rifle away. As Higgins tried to raise his pistol, the real-estate agent shot him through the left eye.
“All told,” Eaton says, “Raymond killed twenty-three people and wounded eleven more. No suicide note, no manifesto posted on social media. He had a wife and three kids, a ranch home in Arlington Heights, and his own successful dental practice. No one even knew he owned a gun, much less an assault rifle.”
I haven’t typed a single note since he began speaking. I’ll have to go through the recording later, but I’m thinking the memoirs have to start with this story. Eaton’s thematic direction is nestled somewhere in these words.
“What did you do next?”
“I just left.”
“Did you talk to the police?”
“No. I looked around the lobby. The front-desk clerk was dead; the shooting was just commencing in the ballroom. The screams were unimaginable. But there was nothing to do. No one I could help. I grabbed my suitcase and left through the front door. Hailed a cab. Went back to the airport. Took an early flight home.”
“Just like that?”
Rather than answering, Eaton stands and walks slowly over to a small wet bar where he pours himself a glass of water. As he stands there, I appreciate how frail the man looks. It’s not just that he’s thin. It’s the way he holds himself, as if each of his bones is barely connected, and only the right amount of balance keeps them all from tumbling into a heap on the floor. How is it he’s just a few years older than me?
As he walks back to the couch, he finally answers.
“That’s something you’re going to learn about me, Jake. I’m exceptionally private. I’ve been able to do some great things because I keep my secrets closely guarded. Which, again, is why you’ll appreciate what a huge departure this is for me, telling you such things. Putting them in a book. But there is a time in all our lives where our secrets must be told, and that time for me is now.” A sip, a slight grimace as if the water is foul. “I wonder when that time will be for you, Jake. I imagine you have some pretty interesting secrets.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Simple,” Eaton answers. “Because we all do. Raymond Higgins had some secret, one we’ll never know.” He leans forward and locks in tight on me, so fiercely I want to look away but don’t. “We are all capable of doing what Raymond did.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
His head weaves ever so slightly, side to side, as if he’s mulling my comment.
Then he says, “But you are, aren’t you, Jake?”
“What?”
Eaton doesn’t answer. Instead, he offers a grin, maybe a twisted I’m just kidding kind of smile. But I don’t think Alexander Eaton is a man prone to jokes.
I’m about to say something, remind him as I did yesterday the subject of these discussions is him, not me. But there’s a sudden depth in Eaton’s stare that shakes me. I get a distinct sensation, a nudging in my brain. It’s happened a few times over the eleven months, ever since I visited Landis.
I usually get this sensation when I’m trying to remember something but can’t. This happened just the other day at Starbucks, the same one I go to all the time in Boston. I was making small talk with the barista, Sally, who was wiping down the counter near where I was sitting. I got this same sense I’m getting right now when Sally asked what grade my daughter was in. Just like that, I couldn’t remember. I stammered for a few seconds before guessing one grade wrong, and then remembered with perfect clarity a few minutes later. But…minutes. It took me minutes to remember something I should have known immediately.
This feeling consumes me, and this time, it’s significantly more powerful. What’s normally a slight feeling of brain freeze suddenly erupts into the pain of smashing headfirst through a windshield. This time, it doesn’t just cause me to shake my head, trying to jog my wiring back into place. This time, it collapses me. Actually collapses me, right to the fucking floor.
All I can think is I’m having a stroke. Blood must be filling my head.
Then, as I feel myself crumbling, something new happens.
I don’t lose a memory.
I find one.
Twenty-Two
The Book of Clara
10/11/2018
When it first struck three
weeks ago, the memory collapsed me, physically in the moment, mentally for days. How could it not? There I was, a child among other children, looking down upon mutilated bodies in a bed as a little boy shrieked and cried.
How had the people died? Who killed them?
The memory was real, but did the event actually happen? Or was it a trick of my fractured mind, a horrid effect of the book and the pills? If real, it goes a good way toward explaining my isolation as an adult. Imagine the impact of such a thing on a group of children!
Where were we, and what became of the others?
As horrible as it was to experience that recollection, something wondrous came from it. I believe having that memory was a breakthrough for me. Whatever the book and the pills are supposed to do, I think it culminated in that moment. Landis told me I had a chance to remember my past and, in doing so, expand my mind in the process. Shape my future.
It was after I had this memory that I knew there was no real clinical trial. No plan to study the human mind. Landis was not a doctor. He was an angel, sent to me to lead me to my final destination. My ultimate responsibility.
How does one reconcile the preciousness of life with a desperate hunger for death? I’m not depressed, in pain, afflicted with a terminal illness, nor, I think, mentally ill. What a waste, you say. To just throw your life away.
But that’s the thing. I believe I’m more enlightened than you. I know things you don’t, which means you can’t comprehend wanting to kill yourself. But that’s where you get it all wrong. I don’t want to kill myself.
I need to.
It’s a final piece to a puzzle I don’t yet fully see. Perhaps I’m supposed to be in another world, another life, and I can’t get there until I leave this one.
I won’t know the answer until I get there.
Back to my twenties, to see if there are more memories left to recover. Once I’ve remembered back as far as I can, this book will be over, and so will I.
I have a sense of loneliness regarding the third decade of my life. I’d earned a liberal arts degree from Wyland University in upstate New York, had been fortunate enough to receive a partial academic scholarship. Wyland was a prestigious yet bland school, though it had claimed some notoriety years before I attended due to a handful of students attempting to start a religion on campus.
There were some deaths.
I made some friends in college who quickly fell out of touch once we all scattered throughout the country. I returned to Maine, where I had lived before college, to my adoptive parents and an unknown future. They were happy to have me home, having always struggled with my decision to go away for college.
About my adoptive parents. They will be reading this, I’m guessing, so it’s important for my words to truly reflect my feelings toward them.
First and foremost, I do not love them.
They are caring and supportive people who always provided for me. Never raised a hand to me, hardly ever scolded me. I’ve considered the possibility I do not love them because, perhaps, I am incapable of love for any real person. Certainly I will go to my grave having borne out that hypothesis, for if I’ve ever experienced the kind of soul-twisting love I’ve read about countless times in literature, it has only happened during a period of my life that I have forgotten. And, dear god, what a horrible shame that would be.
I do not love my adoptive parents, and that is little fault of theirs. Perhaps if I were to find points of blame, I would say they were too passive in their approach to parenthood. I was their only child, and our conversations were dull. Tedious. Every day was a routine, and even our brief vacations seemed perfectly scripted from some travel brochure. A cruise to Acapulco was the most exotic of any trip we took, and even in that case, we never strayed from a detailed itinerary meant to shield us from anything out of the ordinary or unplanned.
Shield.
Yes, that’s it. There was always a shield, and not just around the family, but specifically around me. There was always a concern I would stray too far from home, learn of the true nature of the world at large, and most likely get destroyed in the process. They always treated me as if I had been the victim of something horrible when I was young—something even beyond the loss of my birth parents—and it was their job to keep me locked away safely for the rest of my life.
I suspect I was a victim of something they know about and I don’t remember. I’ve pressed them on this a number of times, but I was only answered with tight, uncomfortable smiles, pressed hands, and a simple, soft No, dear.
Maybe they knew about the bodies in the bed.
Still, I returned to them after college, not because I had to, but because it was a safe option. I knew how to take care of myself, and there were better career opportunities outside southern Maine, but I returned because of the grooves in my mind. I once read every time you do something, it gets literally etched into your brain, making it easier for that behavior to be repeated. The more times you repeat the same action, the deeper the groove, and like a record needle on vinyl, it becomes harder to leave that groove. Hence predictable patterns of behavior. Hence my return home.
I was miserable. They sheltered me as they always had, and I felt more like a pet than a daughter. Everything I needed was given to me, but what I wanted was to have some sense of the world. Some idea I fit somewhere, that there was a hole that could only be plugged by me. Even if that meant struggle, hardship, even danger, I wanted to be out there. How ironic that, ultimately, I would end up wanting nothing but being locked alone in my apartment.
I finally told my adoptive parents I was moving to Boston. What an upset, my father in particular. He insisted I stay, telling me there was no way I could make it on my own. That I didn’t have what it took to survive in the wild.
I didn’t understand. I had returned home of my own volition. I could easily have graduated from Wyland and struck out on my own, but after returning to Maine, it was as if they thought I’d made some pact never to leave again.
The day I left for Boston, my father said something to me. Strange, because I just remembered this only moments ago, and it’s such a consequential statement.
He told me I would never make it on my own because I had been damaged all along. I never knew what that meant, but that was what he said.
You’ve always been damaged, Clara. And damaged people, left to their own devices, end up dead.
It seemed such a horrible thing to say at the time.
But looking back, I guess he was right.
Twenty-Three
Jake
I open my eyes. I’m on the floor, and there’s an initial buzzing in my brain that quickly fades. The piercing headache doesn’t.
Not a stroke. At least I don’t think so. More of an entire mind shift.
I look up. Eaton hovers above me, leaning down.
“Jake, are you okay?”
No, I am absolutely not okay.
“I think so,” I say instead.
“You grabbed your head and just fell. You blacked out for a few seconds.”
“I did?”
“You did.”
Eaton assesses me, not reaching down to help. Not offering me water. Just studies me as if I were an insect he’d never seen before.
“I’m not sure what happened,” I say. This is partially true. I begin to stand, and Eaton backs out of the way.
As I rise, my balance is uncertain, and I make my way gingerly to the couch, where I sit.
“Can I get some water?” I ask.
“Yes,” Eaton says. “Of course.”
I massage my temples as he returns with a tall glass and hands it to me. I sip. It’s warm.
“What happened to you?” he asks.
Then the memory plays all over again, and this time, rather than collapsing me, it squeezes my stomach. Squeezes with violence.
“I…I need t
o use the bathroom.”
“Of course.” He points me to one of the dark hallways past the living room.
I scramble to a guest bathroom, shutting the door and making it to the toilet just in time to unleash a torrent of puke. There’s no way Eaton’s not hearing this, but I don’t care. My head pounds with each retch, and when I think I’m done, I reach up and feel through my hair for a bump. Maybe I knocked my head and have a concussion.
No bump. No blood.
Is this what happens when a repressed memory surfaces for the first time?
I flush. Twice.
Rise. Hold myself steady at the counter.
The soap in the tray is an ornate purple block, unused. As I splash water on my face and stare at my dripping reflection, I notice how pale and sickly I am.
I stare at myself and confront the pressing question:
What is real, and what isn’t?
Focus, Jake. Go through what you remembered. Does it make sense?
I close my eyes and see it all again. A memory I’ve never recalled until now. The imagery and sounds are so clear, it must have happened.
In the memory, I’m a child. I can’t see myself, but my certainty of age is absolute. A memory from my childhood, a time that’s been nothing but a dark void my entire life. I should be thrilled with this breakthrough, but I’m not. It’s just what I’ve always told Abby. People who can’t remember their pasts probably had something horrible happen to them.
Turns out I was right.
I was in a house, a bedroom. It was nighttime, because the only light was from the moon through the windows and glowing orange numbers several feet away.
12:34.
I couldn’t tell at first, but I later saw these numbers were glowing from the face of a clock radio next to a bed.
All of that wasn’t so unusual or horrifying. What was horrifying were the screams filling the room.
The screams of another child. Hysterical, piercing.
The Dead Girl in 2A Page 9