F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 (23 page)

           
Gates shrugged. "Very well.
Detective Harris, if you'll excuse us, I'll begin the—"

           
"I'm staying," Rob said.
"I'm her witness."

           
Gates' eyes swept back and forth
between the two of them.

           
"I see. There appears to be a
lack of trust here."

           
You
might say that
, Rob thought, but said nothing. He was going to sit right
here and watch. No way was Gates going to make "an unprecedented
discovery" by fabricating a second personality or by planting any
post-hypnotic suggestions. Rob was going to make sure it stayed clean and
simple.

           
"Don't be offended,
doctor," Kara said. "Would you allow yourself to be hypnotized by a
person you had never met before yesterday and never heard of until the day
before?"

           
Rob thought that sounded pretty damn
logical, but Gates' expression was grim as he thought about it. Then he smiled.
The effect was startling—it was the first time he had done it all afternoon.

           
"
Touche
, Miss Wade. Your policeman friend can stay."

           
The actual hypnotism procedure was
nowhere near as dramatic as Rob had expected. No watch swinging back and forth
on a chain, no spinning spiral to gaze into. As Kara sat there not four feet
from Rob, Gates dimmed the lights and pulled out a metronome. He started it
ticking, then told Kara to close her eyes and listen to the tick. He spoke to
her in a soothing voice, telling her to relax different parts of he body, and
that was it.

           
"Kara Wade," he said,
"I want you to think back, back to your childhood. Do you remember when
you were six years old?"

           
"Yes," Kara said in a
dreamy voice. Her eyes were closed and she appeared totally relaxed.

           
"Do you remember being alone
with your father at any time?"

           
"Yes."

           
"Do you remember him undressing
you and touching you in places he didn't usually touch you?"

           
"No," she said, as if the
question were the most natural thing in the world.

           
Rob was convinced then that Kara was
in a trance. He knew how she felt about her family. If she were awake she'd be
on her feet and raging after a question like that.

           
"Is anyone else
listening?" Gates said. "Is there anyone named Janine listening? If
she is, I'd like to speak to her."

           
Janine
.
Rob had heard Kara mention someone named Janine. He held his breath, half
expecting to hear a voice like the one that had come out of that little girl in
The Exorcist
. But Kara kept quiet,
thank God.

           
Gates sat there twirling a key ring.
Twirl-twirl-stop. Twirl-twirl-stop
.
It was getting on Rob's nerves.

           
"Janine!" Gates said in a
sharp tone. "Are you there? Speak to me if you can hear me! Don't play
games! Speak to me now!"

           
Still no answer. Rob exhaled.

           
Gates scribbled on a memo pad and
handed Rob the sheet.

           
I'm
going to my files for more past history. Watch her.

           
Rob nodded and Gates slipped out
through the flush door behind his desk. He watched Kara as she sat with her
eyes closed, looking like she was asleep but sitting upright. If he didn't know
better he'd have said she was stoned out of her gourd. He let his eyes roam
about the room, taking in the antique furniture and the hundreds of books
lining the walls.

           
Something drew his attention back to
Kara.

           
Her eyes were open.

           
They blinked once, twice, then her
head turned toward him, slowly, smoothly, like a gun turret rotating atop a
tank. Her eyes fixed on him, vacantly at first, then they seemed to focus.

           
Then she smiled.

           
Rob nearly jumped out of his seat.
He had never seen a smile like that before, at least not on Kara. It was little
more than a pulling back of the lips. There was no warmth, no humor in it. In
fact there was nothing in the eyes to confirm that it really was a smile at
all. Maybe it was just a baring of the teeth. Whatever it was, it drove a spike
of icy fear through Rob's gut.

           
Whatever it was, it wasn't Kara's
smile.

           
And then, still smiling fixedly, her
head rotated back the other way. When it reached its previous position, the
rictus faded and Kara's eyes closed again. She made no further movement.

           
Gates returned a few minutes later
with a folder in his hands. He took one look at Rob and stopped in his tracks.

           
"What's wrong? Did something
happen?"

           
Kara answered first. "No."

           
Rob started at the sound of her
voice and tried to gather his thoughts. His reflex was to tell Gates nothing.
He went with it.

           
"No," he said, half
choking as he waved a dismissing hand. "Everything's fine."

           
Rob had no intention of giving Gates
any ammunition. If there was something there, let Gates find it and confirm it
on his own.

           
But as the time dragged on, Gates'
best efforts turned up nothing. He asked Kara all sorts of bizarre questions
about intimacies with her father—some of them pretty foul-sounding—which she
denied one after the other.

           
After a full hour of this garbage,
Rob had had enough.

           
"I think it's time to call it
quits, don't you?" he said.

           
Gates looked at him, leaned back in
his chair, and nodded. He looked disappointed.

           
"I believe you're right."
He turned to Kara. "Kara Wade, when I count to three and clap, you will
awaken feeling alert, relaxed, and refreshed, with no memory of the past
hour."

           
He counted, clapped, and Kara opened
her eyes.

           
"Well?" she said, looking
back and forth between the two of them. "Did anything happen?"

           
Gates shook his head. "Nothing."

           
She turned to Rob, smiling
hesitantly, hopefully. "Really?"

           
Rob rose slowly to his feet, as much
to stretch his cramped muscles as to give himself a second or two to listen to
his racing mind. What to say? Tell her how she'd looked at him with that
vulpine grin, an expression that was as much at home on her face as swastikas
on a synagogue? Tell her and snuff out the relief glowing so brightly in her
eyes now as she looked up at him, make her spend the rest of her life under a
cloud of doubt? Or let it ride and see what happened?

           
Rob smiled back at her.
"Really."

           
She leaped from the chair and
embraced him, laughing.

           
"Oh, God! Thank God!"

           
And then she was crying, gripping
his lapels and sobbing against his shirt. He slipped his arms around her and
gently held her for a little while.

           
Too soon she straightened up and
back away.

           
"I'm sorry," she said,
taking a deep breath and wiping her eyes. "It's just that I've been so
worried! So frightened!"

           
Dr. Gates said, "I do not feel
we should rest too easy, Miss Wade. We have not completely ruled out the
existence of a second personality."

           
"Maybe you haven't," she
said, "but I have." She stepped forward and thrust out her hand.
"Thank you, Dr. Gates. Please send me your bill."

           
Gates rose and shook it once.
"Please be careful, Miss Wade. There remains the possibility that this
experience may have awakened something. If you suffer any unusual experiences,
black-outs, memory lapses, please do not hesitate to call me."

           
"Don't worry," she said
smiling brightly. "You'll be the first to know."

           
And then she had her arm crooked
around Rob's and was leading him from the consultation room. "Let's
celebrate!"

           
This was not exactly what Kara had meant
by celebrate.

           
She had been thinking of a bar or a
restaurant, someplace with lots of people and laughter, even if it was
desperate laughter. Instead, Rob had called in her promise to allow him to cook
her a meal. He had insisted too that Jill and Ellen join them.

           
Kara had said absolutely not, but he
had gone ahead and called Ellen's place. Ellen had demurred, but Jill had been
thrilled, leaving Kara with little choice but to agree. She had been briefly
furious, but then remembered what a good friend Rob had been these past two
days, and the anger evaporated. Leaving only anxiety about putting those two
together for so long. But Rob hadn't noticed any resemblance between Jill and
himself two days ago, so there was a good chance everything would work out
tonight.

           
So
far, so good.

           
She was sitting now in the tiny
living room of Rob's one-bedroom apartment, sipping wine and watching him as he
stood in the even tinier kitchen and showed Jill how to slice scallions. The
air was redolent of garlic and oil heating in the wok; laughter from Jill and
Rob mixed with the sounds of the St. John's basketball game on the TV.

           
Rob and Jill. It was scary the way
they hit it off. Rob, who used to say he never wanted to be tied down by kids,
must have been repressing his nurturing needs all these years. Jill had somehow
tapped into them. Maybe it was their blood relationship. Maybe somewhere
inside, on a subconscious level, they had recognized each other. Whatever the
reason, they were instant buddies.