Unspeakable (2 page)

Frowning, Olivia drew her hand back. He seemed so ashamed that she couldn't chastise him. She sighed, and patted his arm again. “Okay,
Collin
, let's get you back in this safe, peaceful place. It's a place you've been before. . . .”

He closed his eyes and nodded. “I'm there,” he said with a dreamy smile. “It's this little shack in the woods by Shilshole Bay—on some property my grandfather owns. I used to run away and hide there. I'd bring my sleeping bag, food, and some cans of Sterno. Even when it was cold out, I'd still be warm. . . .”

“That's right,” Olivia said. “You're comfortable there. You want to sleep. But I'd like you to open your eyes, and look at my hand. Focus on it.” She held her hand out, palm forward, and slowly moved it toward his face and back again. “Keep focusing, Collin. You're safe and snug, and now your eyelids are getting heavy. . . .”

As she talked to him in her soothing tone, Olivia watched him relax. He slumped a little in the chair, and his young face appeared even more innocent and sweet as he floated deeper into a trance. He closed his eyes again.

“You're in that safe, warm, cozy place,” Olivia continued. “Your friend brought you here last time, and something happened. Can you tell me what happened, Collin?”

He didn't respond. He seemed so deep in sleep, she almost expected him to start snoring.

“Collin, you can hear my voice, can't you?”

Again, no response.

In the silence, Olivia heard a door close down the hall. It was probably the chiropractor, leaving for the day. She was alone here with this boy. The room was getting dark. She glanced back at the window, and saw the streetlights were on. She turned toward Collin again.

His eyes were open. Something had happened. His face seemed to change—and not just his expression. He suddenly looked older, and his icy stare cut right through her. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked. The hard-edged voice wasn't his.

Though she wanted to shrink back, Olivia resisted any sudden movement. Slowly, she moved from the ottoman to the other chair that was facing him. “I'm Olivia,” she said, a bit short of breath. She kept her tone quiet and even. “You came to me for help, remember?”

His eyes shifted from side to side. “So where's the fat girl and the Mexican guy with the transistor radio?”

Olivia didn't understand the question at first, and she squinted at him. “Are you talking about your friends from the last time you were hypnotized?”

A creepy little smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Those losers aren't
my
friends.” Then something behind her seemed to catch his eye. “Hey, you've got a transistor radio, too . . .”

Olivia glanced over her shoulder at his cell phone on her desk. Why was he calling it a
transistor radio
? Who under the age of forty even remembered transistor radios?

When she turned toward him again, he was standing up.

She nervously shifted in her chair. “Collin, please, sit down,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Collin . . .”

He brushed past her and reached for the cell phone. “Stupid bitch,” he muttered. “I'm not Collin. I'm
Wade
.” He frowned at the cell phone as he inspected it from every angle. “What the hell is this thing? I thought it was a radio. The Mexican guy kept waving it around at me the other night.”

Half-twisted around in the chair, Olivia warily watched him. Just three minutes before, a sweet, polite, nervous kid had programmed that phone to record this session. And now, the same kid had morphed into this cocky creep standing behind her. And he acted as if he'd never even seen a cell phone before. He looked different and sounded different. He called himself Wade. If she didn't know better, Olivia would have sworn this was indeed someone different—maybe even someone dangerous.

“Please,
Wade
, sit down,” she heard herself say. “C'mon, put that back and have a seat across from me—so we can talk. I'd like to get to know you better.”

Setting the phone on the desk, he smirked at her. “Well, hey, I could really dig that.” As he ambled past her, he put a hand on her shoulder—then let it slide down until he touched the top of her breast.

Olivia felt her skin crawl and she recoiled. “That was inappropriate,” she said evenly. “If you try anything like that again, we're done here. Do you understand?”

“Hey, I barely copped a feel. . . .”

“I'm serious,” Olivia said, glaring at him.

He plopped down in the chair, and started biting his fingernail. “Listen, lady,” he grumbled. “I'll give you a break for now. But keep in mind, the last time someone talked to me like that, I slit the bitch's throat. I kid you not.”

“Are you—are you telling me that you killed someone?” Olivia asked.

“I'm telling you to watch your mouth, honey,” he growled. “You're goddamn lucky I happen to like the way you look.” He leaned back and slung his leg over the chair's armrest. “I like the setup here, too. This is real cozy with just you and me talking. Believe you me, I was getting pretty tired of talking with that whiney fat chick and José Jiménez, Junior.”

Baffled, Olivia shook her head. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“My name José Jiménez,”
he said with a grin and a put-on Spanish accent.

Olivia remembered it was part of comedian Bill Dana's routine from the early sixties. She'd seen old clips of him on TV—and in her soon-to-be-ex-husband's favorite movie,
The Right Stuff
. It was strange to hear this teenager quote from a comedy routine that was over fifty years old.

Either he deserved an Oscar for his acting, or he had a second personality—radically different from his own. But in her four years as a therapist, Olivia had never encountered a patient with multiple personality disorder. Nor did she know any other therapists who had stumbled upon a genuine case.

Olivia stared at the young man slumped back in the chair across from her. She wondered if he'd been telling the truth about slitting a woman's throat.

“You're older,” he said, licking his lips. “But you're a lot better looking than the fat chick.”

“I really wish you wouldn't refer to her that way,” Olivia said. “Why don't you call her by her name instead?”

“I don't know her name—or the Mexican guy's name.” He shrugged. “I told you, they're Collin's friends, not mine.”

“So—you don't like Collin's friends. What's your opinion of Collin?”

“Oh, Collin, he's pretty fucked up.”

“How well do you know him?”

“I've been here with him for a long, long time—years in fact. I've just been waiting for the right time to come out.” With a smug smile, he cocked his head to one side. “This is working out exactly as I wanted. I'm scaring the shit out of him. But I've barely gotten started. I'm really gonna mess with his mind—and then I'll kill him.”

Olivia frowned. “How will you do that without killing yourself?”

He chuckled and slowly shook his head. “You don't get it, lady,” he said. “You don't get it at all.”

“Would you like to explain it to me, Wade?”

“No, not really.”

“I had a feeling you'd say that.” She cleared her throat. “I'd like to talk with Collin now. . . .” This was her prompt to bring him out of his hypnotic state. She waited to see the change in his manner as Collin emerged from the trance. But there was nothing, no transformation. “Collin?”

He chuckled again. “Shit, and here I thought we were getting along so well. Why do you want to talk to him? What? Do I make you nervous? Are you scared of me?”

“Not at all,” she lied. “I just want to check in with Collin for a minute or two. Collin? Collin, I'm talking to you now. You hear my voice. . . .”

“Collin? Collin?”
he chanted mockingly.
“Come save me from your nasty friend!”

Olivia felt a pang in her gut. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe right. She felt as if she were stepping on the brakes of a speeding car, only to have nothing happen. She realized she had no control over her subject.

She didn't want to think about the last time this had happened.

She just wanted that sweet, polite young man to reemerge. “I'm addressing Collin now,” she said, her voice a bit shaky. “Collin, when I snap my fingers, you will wake up. . . .”

“Wake up, Collin!”
he said, snickering.
“Rise and shine!”

Olivia snapped her fingers.

With the smirk still on his face, he slowly stood up.

“You need to sit down.” She snapped her fingers again. “Collin, wake up. . . .”

He wandered toward the door. “I don't think he's coming back, lady.” He grabbed a sturdy hardback chair and tilted it against the door, wedging the top of it beneath the doorknob.

Panic swept through her. “What are you doing?”

“I'm just making sure no one interrupts us.” He gave the chair a shake as if to make sure it was firmly in place.

Olivia got to her feet. “I'm talking to Collin now,” she said, her heart racing. She glanced over at her desk—then at a letter opener by the blotter. “When I—when I snap my fingers, you'll wake up. . . .”

His back was to her. He was still standing over the chair. Olivia snapped her fingers, and then watched him put his hand up against the door. “Collin?” she said, backing up. She edged closer to her desk.

He had his hand to the door and his head down. It took Olivia a moment to realize he was bracing himself through a dizzy spell. “Collin?”

He turned to gaze at her. That innocent look had returned to his blue eyes. “What happened?” he asked.

Olivia didn't answer him. She couldn't stop shaking.

He glanced down at the chair he'd just wedged against the door, and he suddenly seemed so confused. He still had his hand on the door. “What's going on? Did Wade come back?”

Staring at him, Olivia kept thinking this was a setup or a scam of some kind. His multiple-personality act was a good one, but she didn't believe it. For all she knew, this
Russ-Collin-Wade
kid really had slit some poor woman's throat and now he wanted to lay the groundwork for an insanity plea—should he get arrested. Maybe he knew what had happened to her in Portland four months ago, and he'd figured she would be an easy mark.

“I told you before,” she said. “Except in extremely rare occasions, hypnotized subjects always remember what happens to them while they're under. They
don't
change personalities and they can't be made to do anything they wouldn't do while fully conscious. I don't know what you're selling, but I'm not buying any.”

Tears came to his eyes. “Jesus, he came back, didn't he? I'm sorry if he scared you—”

“I'd like you to leave now,” she said, cutting him off. She circled around to her desk drawer and fished out a piece of paper with a preprinted list on it. Then she grabbed his cell phone. Heading across the room, she gave him back his phone and presented the sheet of paper to him as if it were an official summons. Her hand was trembling. “I can't help you,” she said steadily. “This is a list of qualified therapists and psychologists in the area. I suggest you contact one of them.”

His mouth open, he shook his head at her. He looked so scared and lost.

Olivia felt her skin crawl as she brushed past him and extricated the chair from under the doorknob. She couldn't look at him.

“Please, if Wade came back, I need to know why he's doing this to me,” she heard him say. “You're the only hypnotist who even got me in a trance. No one else—”

“I don't care!” she yelled, pushing the chair aside. “Get someone else to help you! I want you out of here. . . .” She flung open the door.

He just stood there and gazed at her. Tears ran down his face.

“Go!” she screamed. “Get out!”

He still wouldn't move. So Olivia angrily shoved him out the door.

“Wait, no!” he cried.

Shutting the door and locking it, she'd thought she would feel better. But she didn't. That had been ten minutes ago, and he was still out there.

The pounding had ceased, but she could hear him playing back their session on his cell phone—the session he claimed not to remember. The sound of that voice again—Wade's voice—made her shudder.

“Would you go away?” she yelled to him. “I can't help you. Go to someone on that list I gave you. . . .”

She heard the cell phone recording stop. “You don't understand, it's got to be you!” He jiggled the doorknob again. “I'm sorry for what happened in there. But that wasn't me. Please! I'm scared. I think he—he might have come out while I was asleep or something. I think he might have killed some people. . . .”

Olivia felt sick to her stomach. She'd been afraid of something like this. She anxiously glanced at her desk phone. “I'm calling the police!” she warned. “I mean it—”

“No, don't!” he cried. “I'm sorry. I'll go now. I'm sorry. . . .”

Olivia grabbed the receiver, but then hesitated when she heard his footsteps retreating down the corridor. She wasn't certain about calling the police. What could she tell them? She didn't even know the boy's real name. He'd claimed to be from Poulsbo, on the Kitsap Peninsula, but he'd told her a bunch of lies. The part about possibly killing someone, was that a lie, too?

Strange how as soon as she'd threatened to call the police, he'd immediately apologized and withdrawn. Had he really gone? She couldn't hear anything out in the hallway. Yet she still didn't want to unlock her office door.