Mind Over Mind (5 page)

Sachiko was silent most of the way, but Monique, who had family in Denver, kept up the conversation about Colorado until they dropped her off at her car. As she drove off, Sachiko turned to Joshua. “You can just leave me here. I don’t need you to hold my door.” She started toward another part of the lot.

“Huh?” He hastened after her, confused, until he realized he’d taken charge of opening every door from the locker room to Monique’s car. “Oh, that. It’s habit, something my mother trained me to do. I didn’t mean to offend you or anything.”

“No, no. It’s just I don’t have a door.” She stopped at a motorcycle.

Not just any motorcycle. A Harley-Davidson FLSTC shone in the lamplight. The gas tank and saddlebags were custom painted with dragons. Joshua couldn’t help it—he gaped. “Really,” was the only thing he could say as she reached into her gym bag and pulled out a leather jacket with long fringe on the sleeves and a helmet with paint job to match the bike.

“OK. Out with it.”

“With what?”

Sachiko sighed in exasperation. “Whenever you have something else on your mind, you cover it by saying ‘Really.’”

“Really? I mean, I do? I never noticed.”

“Don’t change the subject. Out with it.”

Joshua just looked at her for a minute; the skeptical look on her face, the jacket zipped over her uniform, standing hipshot in front the Harley with her helmet balanced on one hip. He sputtered a moment before blurting out “Women with motorcycles are so sexy!” and fought against flinching at the storm he was sure would follow.

Instead, she just stared at him blankly a moment, then a small, almost wicked smile spread across her face. It was just barely visible in the dim light, but nonetheless enough to make him weak in the knees. “Play your cards right, and I might give you a ride sometime,” she said in a low, warm mezzo.

He could listen to that voice forever. He let his own smile and tone match hers. “Deal.” She rewarded him with a flashing smile and the honor of holding her helmet as she mounted the bike. As soon as she was out of sight, he glanced back at the building. The windows were darkened, the curtains drawn. No one was up and watching. He let out with a joyous whoop.

It was going to be an incredible summer!

_*

Ydrel sighed and let the curtain fall back into place. His window overlooked the commons, not the parking lot, and sometimes he liked to look out over the neatly manicured lawn with its old oaks and pretend that it was just his yard. That was easier to do at night, when the grounds weren’t used by “clients” with white-uniformed orderlies and nurses milling about, making sure everyone was comfortable—and controlled. Not that they really needed to. Most of the time when people went outside, it was to sit quietly in the sun, lost in their own thoughts. Occasionally, a client with a passion for fitness and nature would shun the gym for jogging the fence line, and there were conversations among clients or between them and visitors, but mostly the commons was a quiet, brooding area, and it always felt darker to Ydrel, as if the moods themselves blotted out some of the sunlight.

When he’d pulled himself out of his initial depression after being admitted, Ydrel had tried to get some people involved in a game of football or catch or...anything. An orderly would usually oblige him, but their minds were always on the other clients, watching, anticipating. After a while, Ydrel gave it up and spent his requisite “sun therapy” time quietly reading or brooding along with the others.

Maybe I could get Joshua to bring a football. No, a Frisbee
, he decided. He remembered diving for the ball, missing utterly and falling face-first into the dirt while his friends alternately groaned or laughed. Joshua’s memory, along with the knowledge that Joshua was on the unofficial college Frisbee golf team.

His head swam for a moment, and he wondered if it was from the alcohol or from the double-life effect of probing someone else’s thoughts. He had meant it when he told Joshua that he seldom consciously entered another’s mind; in addition to the vertigo it gave him, it made him feel dirty.

I had to do it. For Sachiko.
When Ydrel had sensed Joshua’s attraction to his friend—one of the only friends he had—he had to be sure the young intruder could be trusted. Ydrel had forged an initial link after she left the room to fetch the sweets and had found Joshua’s surface impressions confusing, but the intern had been honest enough in intentions that he backed down.

Nonetheless, when Joshua lingered after Sachiko left, Ydrel took the opportunity to probe deeper, guiding him gently into a daydream while he delved, seeking to absorb the essence and motivations of this person who was already threatening to have a major impact on his life—and Sachiko’s. He’d sensed the interest in her too, deeply guarded even from herself, yet ready to come crashing to the forefront with the right provocation.

I had to do it. I had to be sure she could trust him. Last time, I didn’t step in until it was too late and it almost killed her. I won’t let that happen again.
He knew that was only half the story. He had to know if
he
could trust him. As lonely as he was, he’d misplaced his trust before, too. But what he’d found was that Joshua Abraham Lawson was one of the most genuinely genuine people he’d ever encountered.

Genuinely genuine
, he chuckled to himself, suddenly realizing he was just a little drunk. One of the other advantages of his little probe was that Joshua didn’t notice when Ydrel had poured the other’s Scotch into his own cup.

“Genuinely genuine. Genuflect. Genouillere. Genu—” He’d run out of words, so he kept repeating genu, genu in a singsong way as he rinsed out the paper cups then tossed them into the trash. He didn’t want to get his genuinely genuine friend in trouble, after all.

He had made it to the edge of his bed, the alcohol in full effect and making the room seem to tilt just so, when the Miscria called him and he fell face-first onto the mattress.

CHAPTER 5

I am the Miscria.
I am the Seeker. I bring my Questions. I call the Ydrel. Hear me.

The words surrounded him, echoed in his mind and pulled at his soul. He was the Ydrel; he was needed.

Not this time. He fought against the sense of well being, pulling on all his stubbornness. It was like when Malachai tried to hypnotize him. He’d resisted then. He’d resist now. He forced himself to see. Everything was gray and misty, like a fog-filled gymnasium, but at least he could see.

You are the Oracle. As I ask, so you shall answer—

“I don’t think so.”

The Miscria hit his statement like a wall. In the pause that followed, he felt a momentary thrill of panic; what if it gave up? How would he get back to himself? He told himself he’d figure it out; he was not going to stay a slave to this thing. Was the alcohol making him brave, or was it Joshua’s words? Not that it mattered; he’d committed himself. The pun made him giggle and the panic yielded to mirth. Meanwhile, the Miscria was trying again.

I am the Seeker. You are—

“The Oracle. The Ydrel. Yeah, I know. Listen, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of this routine. Can we try something different?”

He felt a wave a confusion from the Miscria that made him laugh. Things were already as different as they could get.

“Well, for starters, how about showing me what you look like.”

Look like?

“Yeah. I mean, we’re obviously sharing a reality, but it’s awfully dark and misty on my end. How about a little scenery? And you—what are you? Human? A green-skinned Martian? A roach? What?”

Again, he felt its confusion, flickering with testiness. He almost heard the complaint: Why does it always speak in riddles? Then the scene shifted and he found himself in a small clearing surrounded by trees he didn’t quite recognize. The pines seemed too soft, the maples too broad in leaf. He didn’t hear any animals or birds, and the trees cut off any distant views. He didn’t mind. At least there weren’t any walls.

Walls?

He turned to where he felt the thought, and gasped. “You’re a girl!”

He didn’t need to be psychic to guess her reply. The look on her face told him she thought that was a stupidly obvious observation.

He sat down hard on the mossy ground. “They’re going to have a field day with this,” he groaned.

They? There are others like you?

The ground distracted him. He pushed on the moss and it sprang back like the memory foam pad on his bed. With a grimace, he started digging at a piece with his fingers.

The Miscria squatted down beside him and watched curiously.

“If there’s a hole in my bed when I wake up, then you’re a figment of my imagination,” he mumbled.

Are you the Ydrel?

“That’s what you keep telling me,” he snarled. He kept his focus on the growing hole in front of him; he did not want to see the long black hair that swallowed the light instead of shimmering, or the lean, hard muscles of her arms. Besides, if he glanced up now, he could see partway down her shirt and he was definitely not going there—

Then he felt that funny warm comfort that always accompanied her call and questions began to fill his mind, questions he really should answer—

He flicked the feeling and the questions away like they were bothersome insects. He didn’t feel drunk anymore, he noted. He wondered if that meant he was outside his own mind. Assuming any of this was real, of course.

We are in the Netherworld
, the Miscria offered.
It is a safe place for both of us. And my name is Tasmae. I am real.

With a sigh, he gave up his project—he had a sizable hole, anyway—and finally looked at her. She had marvelous cheekbones and the darkest eyes he’d ever seen. “So what’s Miscria mean? And can you talk, or do you have to put thoughts in my head?”

“I can talk, if that’s what you wish.”

Her voice was warm and strong, like the Calling. He wondered if it was really hers.

“Of course it is my voice! Who else’s would it be? Are you the Ydrel? Why do you not answer my questions? Why are you playing these games with me?”

Again he felt a thrill of panic, but recognized it as hers, and he suddenly felt very ashamed. “Look. I’m sorry. But I don’t think you realize what affect your questions have on me. You’re ruining my life.”

“You are the Ydrel. You came to our people in our greatest need. You bring us the knowledge we need to survive. That is your purpose, just as mine is to ask the questions, and learn the answers. I am the Miscria.” He felt her shoving aside her fear and replacing it with determination, and he realized she could be as stubborn as he was.

“OK. I’m the Ydrel. Fine. But up until now, all that’s meant is I pass out for no reason at all, whenever and wherever, because you find it convenient. Then I wake up with a weird compulsion to study some bizarre topic that no one on my world cares about any more—well, not many, anyway—and I never know why. And it makes it very hard for me to live a normal life, whatever that is.”

“We need your knowledge.”

“Fine. I’m not saying I’m going to abandon you.” He felt a wave of relief that almost made his eyes water. “But we need some ground rules. Because I can’t continue like this. And maybe, maybe, if we actually talk to each other instead of this compulsion-thing you do, I can help you better?”

She settled herself cross-legged in front of him. “The Miscria haven’t always understood your answers,” she said. “Explain your riddles, and I will find other ways to contact you.”

CHAPTER 6

Joshua was nodding over his latte—his second of the morning. He’d bought an extra large on the way to work, but it had barely cleared away the cobwebs.

And staff meetings sure don’t help
, he grumbled to himself.
Well, that’s what I get for staying up most the night.

Still, he couldn’t help it. He’d been keyed up, and the radio had accommodated his mood with upbeat love songs so that he had sung all the way home. Once there, he fought off the urge to call his parents. (What could he have said? His first “session” with Ydrel had been inconclusive but promising, but there was this nurse with the most awesome bike—?) So he had puttered around his little flat until he was tired enough to doze.

Even then, his sleep had been light and fitful, full of dreams of Sachiko. They were on her bike, but it was parked in a meadow, up on some kind of double kickstand that held it steady while they—

“Well, Mr. Lawson?”

Josh snapped out of his reverie. He took a long sip of coffee to cover his confusion as he scanned his short-term memory for Malachai’s question, while the rest of the staff stared at him expectantly. Something about what he was doing last night?

“I’m not sure what you’re asking, sir,” he finally confessed.

It actually seemed to be the answer he was hoping for. With a slightly smug look on his impassive face, Dr. Malachai reached under his mammoth Day Planner and pulled out a sketchbook. Joshua got the impression that he wanted to fling it in his direction, but he simply passed it around to Joshua—the long way, so that as many people as possible could see its contents as it was passed. Whatever was on the pad elicited some smirks and a few raised eyebrows. When it finally got to Joshua, he understood why.

The top page held a sketch of the face of a young woman. Wide set, dark eyes shone intently in a narrow face. With high cheekbones and not-quite-full lips, it was more interesting than beautiful, though there was something indefinable about it that captured Joshua’s attention. Across the top corner were the words THE MISCRIA and on a lower corner, TASMAE.

“As you can see, Deryl’s delusion now has a face,” Dr. Malachai announced.

“More than a face,” Joshua murmured as he turned to the next page. This was a full-body drawing, and the one that elicited the most reaction.

Although slight and fully clothed, she was obviously a body-builder’s dream. Her sleeveless tunic showed off broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms. Her pants were tight—she had runner’s legs—and although her tunic bloused, one surmised that the rest of her body was just as well-toned.

“My point,” Dr. Malachai continued above the snickers and coughs, “is that we have spent the last five years trying to rid young Deryl of this ‘Miscria’ delusion. You spend two hours with him and suddenly ‘it’ is a ‘she.’ What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Lawson?”

How about “Score one for Joshaham.”
Joshua bit back his first caustic reply and instead put his energy into looking thoughtful. He let the silence hang a moment, then leaned back, a trick he’d learned from his father. “There’s this woman in Manitou Springs, a real favorite of the local radio shows. Claims she’s psychic. She’s got not one, but four spirit guides: an angel and a devil who were apparently best friends before the Fall, a native American spirit whose nature she doesn’t know or won’t disclose, and a deceased plumber named Harvey.”

“Now these spirit guides, they sometimes help her, but sometimes, they just take over. She’ll be in the middle of an interview on some morning show and all of a sudden, there’s silence and she’ll start talking in some ancient tongue—or maybe she’s just babbling, who knows? Afterwards, she’ll say one spirit or the other ‘called her away’—”

“Your
point
, Mr. Lawson?”

“My point is she has a nice house in Manitou, a condo in Vail, and a beach house in the Bahamas. And she’s been carrying four delusions—faceless and otherwise—for twenty years.”

“So you plan to offer Deryl career advice?” Dr. Hoffman, a large man with a cutting sense of humor, asked. His comment drew chuckles.

Joshua smiled, but leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “I’m offering him survival advice. Isn’t that what it’s all about? If he can’t rid himself of his Miscria—whether she’s a delusion or spirit or a real woman—he can at least learn to live with her.”

“So to speak?” Again from Dr. Hoffman.

Joshua shrugged, acknowledging the double entendre. “But like any relationship, communication is key.”

“So you think these sketches are a positive sign?” Edith asked.

“I don’t think of them as any sign,” Joshua replied cautiously. “From what Ydrel told me, the biggest problem is that she calls him ‘out of his body’ at inconvenient times. I’m more interested in finding out what they said to each other, whether they set some ground rules for that.” They were listening to him, some even nodding, accepting his analysis as that of a peer. Although he kept his outward appearance professionally neutral, inwardly he was basking in the respect.

“Well,” Dr. Malachai’s voice broke the moment. “You’ve done an adequate job of defending yourself.” He spoke in a fatherly but patronizing tone. “However, in the future, if you wish to try any of your tricks, you will be sure you are accompanied by a qualified member of the psychiatric staff. I trust I make myself clear?”

Joshua glanced at Edith. They’d discussed this yesterday; would she back him up? She appeared to be studying some notes.

“Am I clear, Mr. Lawson?”

No one else intervened. Malachai expected a response. It seemed Edith’s single question was the best defense he could expect. “Clear, sir.”

The psychiatrist smiled. “Excellent. Now, if we turn to the next item on the agenda.”

Forty-five minutes later, they were on the last item of the week. Joshua had to admit he was impressed. Dr. Malachai was ruthlessly efficient with the agenda, yet managed to make everyone feel they’d had their say. Maybe there was something he could learn from the chief psychiatrist after all.

Yeah, like how to be a jerk without anybody noticing
, he thought waspishly. While part of him chided himself for childishness, another part agreed that it was a useful skill, and still another part of him justified his hurt feelings.
“Tricks.” I got your tricks…

With all the internal dialogue, he lost track of the final comments and found himself blinking in surprise as people shut their organizers and started getting up.

“You ready?” Dr. Hoffman smiled. “You’ll be joining me in group this morning.”

Joshua stifled a groan. He hated group therapies in institutions.
Let’s toss a bunch of strangers together and see if they can solve each other’s problems without infecting each other with their own psychoses.
Well, at least he’d learn more about the patients, and Dr. Hoffman.

I am feeling hostile. What’s the matter? Too much caffeine?
“OK if I hit the john first?” he asked as he stood and picked up his coffee cup. Only ice-cold dregs left.

“Sure.” Hoffman jerked his chin toward a mahogany door at the far end of the room.

Joshua ducked into the bathroom and took a quick look around. Swanky. Private. Soundproof.

Joshua hissed and paced, walking off his anger. “Sanctimonious, self-serving, pompous—! Where does he get off? I did good work, made a real connection, and he has the nerve to call it ‘tricks’?!” When he found his thoughts circling, he stopped and took a long cleansing breath, then faced the mirror, and reality. “You’re an intern. You’re here to learn what you can. Put it behind you.”

Nonetheless, he took a childish pleasure in imagining Malachai’s smug face in the toilet bowl as he emptied his bladder.

_*

Hoffman had been a therapist before getting his psychiatric degree, and he loved group therapy sessions enough to keep leading them even though they no longer fit his job description. Patients were given their choice of session times, so the resultant groups had little in common except an affinity for 9:30 or 10:30 meetings.

Carter Doleson preferred the second session. He sat in the cushioned but not particularly comfortable chair, arms crossed, with his expression even more cross as his eyes roved from the six people in the semi-circle to Dr. Hoffman and Joshua, to the walls, windows and ceiling. The more Mr. Starke talked about the pressures he’d felt working on Wall Street, the more agitated Doleson got—not that Joshua blamed him. Personally, he was feeling more sorry for the stock broker’s clients. Joshua tried to follow Doleman’s gaze, but it never focused on anything in particular but seemed to be searching instead.

“So, I’d have something when I got home—to relax, you know. But then I needed something in the morning to give me back that edge. It just became a cycle—”

“Will you shut up?” Doleson snarled. “They are listening!”

Five other clients groaned and shifted in their seats, and Starke exploded, “Dr. Hoffman, do we have to put up with this every week?”

“Carter,” Dr. Hoffman chided, his voice calm, but his body language showing signs of barely contained annoyance. “You may wait your turn—”

“What turn?” a young woman in pajama bottoms and a sequined tank-top asked. Joshua tried not to look at her too often because when he did, she’d smile at him in a way he would have enjoyed under different circumstances. “He never talks. He just comes to tell us to shut up.”

“Because they’re listening. Why can’t I make you people understand that? They are listening and you people go on with your trivial weaknesses and your—”

“It’s not your turn,” Hoffman repeated. “You may share your thoughts then.”

“They can’t hear my thoughts, thank God! But they are listening—”

“Why don’t you shut up, then?” the girl growled.

“Roe, that’s not very helpful…”

“None of this is helpful—except maybe to them!” Doleson responded and kept talking over the renewed protests.

Joshua cleared his throat and cast a “may I” glance at the psychiatrist, who shrugged indulgently.

“Why are they listening?”

Carter stopped mid-tirade. “What?”

“Why are they listening? What do they want?”

He looked at Joshua as if the intern were crazy. “They’re studying us.”

“Why? What are they going to do with this knowledge?” Joshua leaned forward. “C’mon. This is important information. Share it with us.”

Carter leaned forward, too. He shrugged, yet his eyes had lost some of their nervous jitteriness. “They…they just want to learn about us. It’s their job, to learn. We’re their experiments, their subject of interest.”

Joshua nodded. “So what happens when they think they’ve learned everything they can about us? What then?”

Carter’s eyes grew wide, and he actually trembled as he spoke. “They’ll kill us. All of us. The study ends. The experiment is over. The subjects disposed of.”

Roe made a rude noise, but Joshua ignored her, and with his focus on Joshua, so did Carter.

For a moment, Joshua reflected the client’s fear, then turned thoughtful. “So the key to our survival, then, is to keep them interested? Make them think there’s always something more to learn about us?”

Carter opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He leaned back into his chair, his eyes up and to the right, lost in thought.

The rest of the session went pretty smoothly.

“Carter has never taken to anyone like that before. You’ve got a gift for reaching people,” Dr. Hoffman said afterwards, on the walk back to his office.

Joshua smiled his thanks.
Yeah, I got tricks, Malachai.
“Sir, could I join you in Carter’s private sessions? We planted a seed today and I’d like to help it grow.”

“I like that idea. We might make a good team, eh?”

“Think fast!” a voice called as a brown object hurtled toward them. Dr. Hoffman ducked, but Joshua, who had just spent the last year living in the dorms across the hall from a quarterback-wannabe, instinctively caught the football before it hit the wall.

Ydrel whistled, leaning against the open doorway of his room. “I’m impressed.”

Dr. Hoffman unfolded himself with as much dignity as possible and turned sternly. “Deryl, you know better than to throw that thing inside the building.”

Ydrel did his best to look chagrined. “I’m sorry, sir. So...can Joshua and I go out to play?” He looked at the psychiatrist pleadingly through his long lashes.

The older man’s expression softened and he glanced at his watch. “Well, it’s almost lunchtime, anyway. Just get me your notes by morning, Joshua, and remember to be in Dr. Weaver’s office by 1:30 this afternoon. And don’t forget what Dr. Malachai said at the staff meeting.”

“Yes, sir!” Ydrel answered for him. “Yippee. You’re the best!” He grabbed Joshua’s sleeve and dragged him toward an exit that led to an inner courtyard.

Joshua pulled his arm free once they were outside and handed the ball back. “‘Yippee. You’re the best’? I thought I was going to be sick watching you.”

“It worked, didn’t it? Hoffman thinks he’s some kind of indulgent uncle to me or something. Where’d you learn to catch a ball like that, anyway?”

“What? You think that’s a new trick? Live in the dorms a year and you get used to it. Whoa! It’s HOT out here!” Joshua stripped off his jacket and laid it and his tie carefully on a chair before following Ydrel out to the open grass.

“What? Doesn’t it get hot in Colorado?”

“It’s a drier heat. Besides, you’re not dressed in a professional monkey suit.” Ydrel had on an oversized jersey and long loose shorts, and looked enviably comfortable.

“It’s just for a few minutes. We need to talk.” He tossed Joshua the ball and backed up.

“Why can’t we talk inside under the air conditioning?”

“Because they’re monitoring us.”

What is this? Theme du jour?
“Well, let them monitor this.” He tossed the ball as hard as he could, so that Ydrel had to jump for it—and even then, it slipped through his fingers. He landed, stumbling, then retrieved the ball.

He moved closer and gave Joshua a dirty look before throwing the ball. “I’m not talking about Carter’s fantasies. I mean that Malachai has turned on the surveillance equipment in my room. We can’t talk there anymore. And if you’re going to be so cranky, I’d suggest you lay off the double lattes.”