by Hadena James
He began knocking again as Lucas and Fiona headed to the back of the house. Kimberly moved to watch one side and I did the same with the other side. After four or five knocks, the door swung open again and Gabriel motioned for us to follow him and Xavier inside. Kimberly and I did so.
“We’re here about your niece, Ms. Oak,” Gabriel said after a moment.
“My niece is a very sick girl,” she snipped back.
“Here’s where the situation stands at the moment, your niece was seen fleeing from a home invasion, but we’ve already identified ourselves as being the SCTU, so you know we aren’t here about the home invasion, we don’t investigate those crimes. Which means that there was either a murder or an attempted murder where your niece was seen. We aren’t here to jam her up, we are here to talk about Martha and the fourth personality that Dr. Abernathy suspected existed that she says she told you her suspicions about.”
“Dr. Durant said that the fourth personality was a pipe dream of Dr. Abernathy’s and didn’t exist and that Martha was integrated with Caroline and destroyed.” The front door opened behind us and Lucas and Fiona entered the room.
“We don’t care what Dr. Durant said, we are more interested in what you know to be true from your experiences of life with your niece.” Lucas said gently.
“Martha’s right-handed and likes Danielle Steele novels, she also loves American Idol. Amber is left-handed, requires glasses as thick as a coke bottle bottom, doesn’t have an accent and struggled to get through a few chapters of a Harry Potter novel, but enjoys Cam Jansen books and despises American Idol. While trying to read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Amber flung the book across the room shouting “No twelve-year-old could read it without someone helping. Caroline does have an accent, but I can’t place where it’s from and it isn’t heavy. She also uses bigger words than Amber and reads classic literature and hates American Idol. Caroline likes crime shows and tells you that even though Alex O’Laughlin is old, she’s in love with him. Caroline cuts all her food into bite sized pieces, it doesn’t matter if it’s pizza or a cheeseburger and she eats all of it with a knife and fork. Martha is a pig when she eats, she even grunts from time to time because she eats so fast, she can’t breathe. Martha isn’t exactly scary, but she seems to be the oldest and she isn’t as fun as Amber and Caroline.” Connie Oak’s shoulders drooped, and she fell into a chair as she spoke. “Amber can’t seem to grasp the idea that her and Caroline are the same person and she is constantly telling me about how terrible Caroline is to her. She even accuses Caroline of kidnapping her when she wakes up and doesn’t know how she got somewhere. Amber calls it sleeping sickness, Caroline calls it amnesia disorder, Martha though, Martha calls it Multiple Personality Disorder and she talks about Amber and Caroline to me, which is the creepiest thing ever, just so you know.”
“Dr. Abernathy is correct then, integration failed?” I asked.
“It failed big time.” Connie sighed. “Martha has talked about another personality she calls Melissa and says Melissa broke during Dr. Durant’s integration therapy. I think Melissa was the original personality.”
“But Melissa killed people before integration therapy, so do you know what Martha meant when she said Melissa broke?” I asked.
“Oh, I see, you don’t have all the information.” Connie said solemnly. “You thought Melissa was the fourth personality, but the best way to describe Melissa is dead. Integration therapy essentially killed her off. She was the weakest and least well-developed personality. Melissa fractured into Martha and Amber when she was very young, less than six I’d say, so she didn’t get to fully form. Then my wackadoodle sister made it worse by taking her children to live in that cult with her where they could be abused.”
“Okay,” Lucas said. “Do you want a glass of water or cup of tea or something?”
“Yes, please, in the cabinet to the right of the sink are the glasses, there’s a pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge, you can all have some if you want, this could be a long conversation.” Lucas and Xavier headed into the kitchen. We all took seats around the living room. I ended up sitting on the floor, cross legged. No one offered me tea, which was fine, I hated the stuff. It tasted like cold, dirty water that had been brewed to ensure it tasted even dirtier.
“I don’t know where to begin,” Connie Oak said after everyone was seated again.
“Have you ever met the fifth personality?” Lucas asked.
“Not exactly,” Connie told us. “I only know it exists because I saw it the day, she showed up at my house holding the head of the guy she killed. The voice is female, but deeper than any of the others and it sounds a lot like President Kennedy sounded, it has that same accent with the weird long ‘a’ sound in it too often, as if it were raised in Boston. And its natural facial expression is a sneer. The eyes are cold, and it doesn’t blink very often. The first time I was sure it was a girl personality, but the second time I wasn’t, and I knew more about her condition by then and knew that she could have male personalities as well as female ones. I don’t know if I thought it was female because she’s female or if I thought it was male the second time because I had just learned she could have male personalities.”
“You referred to the first and second time you saw it,” Lucas latched on when she took a breath.
“Yes, the first time was that day with the head, the second time was one day when we accidentally ran into Dr. Durant in a store. One minute she was Caroline, Dr. Durant stopped to talk to us and suddenly the voice lowered, and the accent was there, and it wasn’t Caroline anymore. The eyes were cold, the sneer was there, and I felt afraid. Martha can be a bitch, but she isn’t scary, this other one is though. Martha won’t talk about it. When you mention it, she starts singing nursery rhymes. Martha is aware of Caroline and Amber, she tends to sing pop songs and Disney music to them. But this other one, she sings nursery rhymes to, I don’t know why. I tried to talk to Dr. Abernathy about it, but she told me her hands were tied because Dr. Durant had proclaimed her personalities were integrated and to go against that would mean she would have to return to the hospital.”
“You claimed it got worse after your sister went to live with the cult, was Melissa exhibiting signs of mental illness way back then?” I asked.
“You know my sister’s husband died when she was young right?”
“It’s been hit or miss on finding things out,” I admitted.
“The kids’ father got cancer. During that time, my sister who wasn’t entirely stable herself, began consorting with practitioners of black magic to heal him. She told me she had offered up their kids’ souls to the devil for him not to suffer. I told her she needed therapy and we didn’t talk for about six months. Then I got a call from my sister out of the blue, her husband had fallen down the stairs and it had killed him. She asked me to take the kids for a couple of days, which I readily agreed to. After the funeral and stuff, all of them, including my sister, moved in here for three months or so. I was happy to help out with the kids, and my sister told me she was getting grief counseling. I came home one day from a doctor’s appointment to find her and some of her friends in the living room drinking heavily at ten in the morning. I didn’t like the looks of the friends, but they weren’t my friends. Words ensued and I convinced my sister to leave the kids with me for a few weeks while she checked into a rehab facility. I knew she was drinking, and I suspected she was doing drugs.” Connie stopped for a couple of moments.
“Was Melissa already showing signs of illness?” Lucas asked.
“When my sister left to go to rehab, I took all the kids for counseling. Melissa’s therapist asked me if I realized that sometimes Melissa insisted her name was Martha. I hadn’t experienced that before and told her so, we chalked it up to role play because Melissa was lonely and scared because her father had died and her mom had left her. A few weeks later, we were sitting eating dinner, and suddenly, Melissa’s expression changed, she asked who I was and she transferred her fork to her l
eft hand. Melissa was, up to that point, right-handed, but I figured she was still young, not yet in kindergarten, maybe she just hadn’t figured out which hand was more comfortable all the time and maybe the expression change was because she was thinking about her parents. Later that night, she got into a fight with her brother because she kept telling him her name was Martha. I took that information to her next appointment with her therapist, she said it wasn’t a big deal and we’d figure it out. The following day, I was taking Melissa clothes shopping when Martha seemed to reappear. Martha had different tastes in clothing than Melissa which was weird. Melissa was a pink and purple little girl and she loved My Little Pony. Martha didn’t like pink or purple, Martha liked blue, and Martha told me that My Little Pony was for babies. It wasn’t like Melissa was playing a game, I actually had to keep looking at her because it was like she was suddenly a completely different kid and she knew more than she should. Martha told me that Melissa’s mommy liked to stick heroin between her toes. She said it exactly like that too. She didn’t say her mommy liked to stick needles between her toes, she called it heroine, but Melissa wasn’t yet five-years-old, how did she know about heroin and why had she suddenly called her Melissa’s mom instead of her mom. When we left the mall, Martha told me that Melissa’s mommy pushed Melissa’s daddy down the stairs so he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. I didn’t know what to do. I came home and found a friend to watch Melissa and drove to her therapist’s office and begged to be worked in to see her.”
“I can imagine that would be difficult,” Gabriel said after a few heartbeats.
“It was one of the worst days of my life.” Connie let out a sudden sob. “Her therapist told me she was too young to display multiple personalities and that something else was going on, but we’d get to the bottom of it. She suspected one of the older kids had told Melissa about heroin and how making up an imaginary friend would scare their mom. It didn’t make sense to me, but I wasn’t sure if I could get help somewhere else or not. At least this therapist was willing to help me fight for custody of the children.”
“Did your sister know you were going to fight her for the kids?”
“I think she found out, she just showed up one morning, grabbed the kids and left. I didn’t hear from them again until Melissa showed up at my door when she was fifteen years old.”
“You don’t strike me as the type to give up so easily,” I said calmly.
“I hired a private detective to track them down. They were already living on the compound, but the kids never left there and neither did my sister. He set up long range cameras to try to get me pictures, but no one really went out very often except this one guy and he had a clean record. Eventually, the detective discovered my sister had remarried, but that was it. We tried to file complaints about the lack of education being given to the kids, but the place had status as a religious center that homeschooled the children. So it all went for naught and then a social worker got to talk to my sister and my sister convinced her I was crazy. She convinced her that the reason she had fled with the kids was because I was brainwashing them into believing that she had murdered their father, instead of the truth which was that he had leukemia and shouldn’t have gotten out of bed without an escort and fell down the stairs and died.”
Fourteen
Right before we left, Connie Oak told us she doubted Martha would be capable of committing an actual murder, but planning them wouldn’t be a problem. Once we were back in the SUV, I was back to brooding over whether locking up Amber and Caroline for crimes committed by Martha and the other was just. Then again, in many ways, Amber and Caroline were already locked up. Amber referred to it as kidnapping when Caroline took their shared body places without leaving Amber memories of it.
But then Connie had told us that Caroline didn’t drive yet, was afraid to learn. Meaning it was Martha or the other that was actually responsible for the so called kidnappings. The other was incredibly careful, not so much as a slip of the name in all the time Connie had been responsible for the shared physical body.
Was it possible that it wasn’t a fully formed identity like Martha, Caroline, and Amber were? I supposed so, I didn’t know much about the condition. I did agree with Connie though, she had been displaying symptoms of it for a long time. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if while talking to Cassie a totally new personality took over.
“May I ask you a professionally insensitive question?” Gabriel asked. We all shifted in our seats to look at him because we weren’t sure who he was talking to.
“Sure,” I finally said when no one else spoke up.
“Detective Alwood,” Gabriel said.
“Sure,” Kimberly answered. I’d gotten used to calling her Kimberly very quickly, mostly because this was not the Florence I remembered from college.
“Why wasn’t something done about this cult before they killed a bunch of teens?”
“You realize I was in high school at the time right?” She asked.
“Oh, no, I guess that would be about right,” Gabriel stammered a bit.
“I’ve only been detective for a few years and I wasn’t brought up here. The only things I know about the case were what I read in the file after being given it, same as you. But my father-in-law might have some ideas. He has always been active in the community, and while he might be a voodoo priest, his brother was a cop and he’s still good friends with people on the force, it was an issue when I first started there because people thought I might be given special treatment.”
“Were you?” Xavier asked.
“Not unless working my butt off for every promotion counts as special treatment.” Kimberley answered without bitterness or attitude in her voice. “What about you, were you given special treatment?”
“We all were,” I answered her. “I don’t know that any of us could pass a psych eval without coaching from Lucas, including Lucas.”
“Well I knew you were, I didn’t imagine it applied to everyone.”
“It does,” Fiona chimed in. “Most of us were selected for the position we now have because of special skills and experience with serial killers in our personal lives.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot that I just read that big article about you guys where they listed off your personal connections to killers. It was your sister, right?”
“Yes,” Fiona answered without hesitation.
“The one they did after Raphael Henders was captured?” Xavier asked.
“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t think before I blurted that out. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable or open old wounds.”
“No worries, life is more interesting when the closet has skeletons in it,” Gabriel told her. “And I started it by assuming you would know why the department you work for now didn’t stop this before Melissa...” he paused. “What exactly do I call her Lucas?”
“They, them, she, the plural describes it best,” Lucas told him.
“Before they got to point of committing homicide. Besides, I doubt anyone can predict that someone would create a psychopathic personality.”
“That’s true, it’s incredibly rare for someone with dissociative identity disorder to be violent towards others. It’s usually aimed at their other personalities.”
“Does that mean most people with multiple personalities know about them?” Kimberly asked.
“Yes and no. Sometimes one personality is aware of all the others like Martha and, I suspect, the other one. Usually, though, they don’t. They often talk about feeling possessed or different, and I’ve heard of cases where the personalities could talk to each other like schizophrenic voices in the head. For this particular case, I think Amber’s phrasing works best, she feels as though her body has been kidnapped by Caroline without realizing that others may be involved. But mentally speaking, Amber is still very young, as is Caroline. I believe both of these personalities suffer from the same form of narcissism that nearly all children experience. Understanding anything beyond themselves is nearly impossibl
e and so understanding Martha and the other is not within their capabilities.”
“Why would Martha know about heroin when Melissa didn’t?” Fiona asked.
“That is anyone’s best guess. Everything we don’t know about the brain would probably fill the universe as if it were the home of a hoarder. Why is one personality right-handed and the other left? Why does one personality have an accent but not the others? Why does one personality have a limp or is a savant at the piano or can replicate masterpieces in art while the other one can’t draw a straight line even with a ruler? We can ask why all we want, but the answers are still beyond our grasp. Maybe one day we’ll figure it out, but until then, it’s just a bunch of question marks with meaningless words in front of them.”
“Was her mother’s mental illness a contributing factor?” Gabriel asked.
“Possibly in the passing of mental illness genes as well as in allowing the emotional trauma to be heaped upon her daughter caused the fractures. But we can’t tell you why one person develops this mental illness but a different one doesn’t. In Melissa’s case, there’s the death of her father, her mother’s mental illness, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and the murders of her older siblings. However, if a different person had endured those exact same circumstances, it doesn’t mean that person would break in the same way Melissa did. Maybe they’d only develop PTSS or depression or anxiety or they’d become a sociopath or develop BPD. Exposure alone doesn’t guarantee dissociative identity disorder in the same manner it exists in Melissa, it could be a different manifestation of DID even. Severe personality or affect disorders are not well understood, including why do they happen to some and not others.”
“Where are we going?” I asked after I realized we’d been driving around in circles for a while.
“I’m not entirely sure. I’m not sure where we should go. I’m open to suggestions.”