INTERVENTION (32 page)

She bicycled to her shrink session, going the long way around Occom Pond and approaching the Mental Health Center via Maynard Street. She arrived with ten minutes to spare, dismounted in a shady spot by the main entrance, and took slow, deep breaths.

I am not resisting therapy. It will help me. I need help and welcome it. I am glad to be here...

She lifted her eyes, looked across Maynard, across the big Hitchcock Hospital parking lot, across busy College Street. And there it was, not five hundred feet away, an old gray saltbox building that hulked among spindly birches and dark evergreens like a haunted house out of a Stephen King novel, its windows blank-eyed and sinister.

You won't put me off! I'm not afraid of you. To hell with you and your Coterie. I
defy
you!

Recklessly, she hopped back on her bicycle and zoomed across the road to stand in the very forecourt of 45 College Street. There were only two cars parked beside the saltbox—Glenn Dalembert's old Mustang with the odd-colored door, and a spiffy new Lincoln with Massachusetts plates, no doubt belonging to some visitor.

You see? I'm back. You couldn't scare me away. I don't need you and I won't let you harass me. You can't recruit
me
against my will like you did Donna Chan and Dane Gwaltney. I'll live my own life, thank you very much ... and I'll integrate my freak brain without surrendering to any mind-worm collective!

The saltbox building was utterly still, without telepathic response. And then Lucille realized that she had been using
his
private wavelength, what the mind-worms called a "mental signature," perceptible to him alone. Obviously, he wasn't even here today. Her gesture of defiance was futile.

Or was it? She felt quite a bit better inside! For good measure, she gave Dr. Denis Remillard's laboratory the finger, and then she rode her bicycle back to Maynard Street, parked it in the Mental Health Center rack, and went inside to keep her appointment.

***

DR. SAMPSON:
I'm very glad you decided to resume therapy, Lucille. I presume this means that you've decided to remain at Dartmouth rather than transfer to Rivier College for your senior year.

LUCILLE:
Yes. That idea turned out to be a mistake, Doctor Bill.

SAMPSON:
Would you like to tell me why you changed your mind?

LUCILLE:
We—you and I—didn't seem to be getting anywhere with the therapy last term. And I was miserable here anyway, worrying about Mom having to cope with Dad all by herself besides teaching at the high school. I thought I'd solve that problem and help my own feelings of anxiety and guilt by simply going back home. I could day-hop to Rivier and complete my degree, and help Mom with Dad and the housework just like before. When I went back to Nashua for the summer break I felt pretty good for a few weeks ... but then the old shit started all over again.

SAMPSON:
The anxiety and insomnia?

LUCILLE:
[laughs] Don't I wish that was all!...Look, Doctor Bill, I've got a confession to make. I haven't been completely honest with you. I didn't tell you all my symptoms.

SAMPSON:
Why not?

LUCILLE:
I was afraid to. If the college found out, they'd want to bounce me.

SAMPSON:
[mildly] You know our relationship is confidential.

LUCILLE
: Even so ... it's so weird, you see. And it would interest—never mind. I didn't think I had to mention it because I hadn't
had
the thing for a long time. Not since I was thirteen, bucking the puberty blues.

SAMPSON
: Would you like to tell me about it now?

LUCILLE
: I've got to. It's back. Going home again, living with my parents this summer, triggered it. I didn't say anything to them—they would have been scared to death, like they were the other time. You're my only hope now, you see. I won't go to Remillard!
I won't!

SAMPSON
: [nonplussed] Denis Remillard? Of the parapsychology lab?

LUCILLE
: It's his fault it's come back! Damn him and his meddling! If he had only let me alone—

SAMPSON
: [making a note on his pad] Lucille ... Stop for a moment and relax. Then let's try to concentrate on this mysterious symptom you neglected to mention.

LUCILLE
: All right. It goes back to when I was thirteen. The attacks of creepiness, nerves, anxiety—they really began then. And I also had nightmares. And then ... the house burned down. I did it.

SAMPSON:
You deliberately started the fire?

LUCILLE:
No, no! I didn't mean to! But ... it was a time when I was feeling all mixed up. Nobody understood me, that kind of adolescent bullshit, but something else, too. They really
didn't
understand! I couldn't talk to them ... Dad was just starting to come down with the sclerosis thing and he was—was hard to live with. I was so sorry for him and wanted to help, but he was so angry all the time and didn't want me around him. Then I started to have these nightmares about fire. I was Joan of Arc and they were lighting the pyre and I was all noble and forgave them and the flames came roaring up to swallow me and my skin would burn and even my bones and I'd be nothing but clean bright sparks flying up to heaven
if only I wouldn't be afraid.
But I was afraid. So the flames hurt horribly because I wasn't Saint Joan at all, and I'd wake up yelling and get the whole house in an uproar, Mom and Dad and my kid brother Mike. It was awful. It was even worse the time I woke up and found my bedroom wall was all in flames.

SAMPSON
: Good God! ... I'm sorry. Go on.

LUCILLE
: I got out the door and woke Mom and Mike and we got Dad into his wheelchair and made it outside safely. But by the time the fire department came, the house was too far gone to save much. Dad's piano burned. It was a Steinway grand he'd got years ago, before he was ever married, when he was going to be a concert pianist and studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston. It cost thousands of dollars and he kept it even when he gave up his classical ambitions. Then, when he got sick and couldn't do lounge gigs or even give lessons anymore he wanted to sell it, to help out the family. But Mom wouldn't let him. He loved that piano more than anything. And I burned it.

SAMPSON
: But you said you didn't start the fire deliberately. Why do you blame yourself?

LUCILLE
: My room was right next to the one where the piano was. The fire started in that wall—the firemen could tell. I hadn't been smoking or anything dumb like that, but the whole wall near my bed and the piano on the other side of it somehow caught fire.

SAMPSON
: An electrical short.

LUCILLE
: There was no outlet on that wall, and only an ordinary lamp near the piano ... Later on, they thought I might have walked in my sleep and lit a match. I told them it was my fault, you see. That I did it. But I didn't dare explain how! I dreamed that fire. The dream became more and more real ... and finally, it
was
real.

SAMPSON
: What do you mean by that?

LUCILLE
: I did it with my mind. My unconscious. I'm one of them—the freaks that Remillard tests over at the parapsychology lab. He hunted me out long before he came to Dartmouth, when I was eleven. Later on, he and his Coterie wanted me to come here to school. I didn't want to, but there was the scholarship and my folks put on the pressure. I came when I was sixteen, and then Remillard really shifted into high gear. I should be grateful all to hell to assist the boy genius in his researches, even if I could only do a little telepathy when the moon was right, and melt ice cubes and jiggle tables. Dumb, useless things! I told him no. He kept on bugging me for three years, though, and so did his mind-worm clique! I told him all I wanted to do was live a normal life, study a legitimate science like biochemistry instead of waste time on occult nonsense. And I will!

SAMPSON
: Excuse me, Lucille. You're an intelligent young woman. Don't you see any contradiction in what you've been saying?

LUCILLE
: Remillard and his people give me the creeps—and I won't be experimented upon!

SAMPSON
: I understand that. You want help. But why do you think I'm the one who can give it to you—rather than Remillard?

LUCILLE
: It's a psychiatric problem. It really has nothing to do with parapsychology except—in its manifestation.

SAMPSON
: You are convinced that this incendiary faculty is a genuine paranormal phenomenon?

LUCILLE
: [laughs] There's even a name for it in folklore: fire-raising. Look it up in any compendium of witchcraft. You'll find true storiesabout people who start fires without any equipment—produce it out of thin air. Some of them even manage to burn themselves to death.

SAMPSON
: You only did this once, when you were thirteen?

LUCILLE
: I'm ... not sure. We had other house-fires, small ones, when I was younger. There always seemed to be a natural explanation.

SAMPSON
: The piano burning might have had one. A freak lightning strike, for example.

LUCILLE
: It was me! My resentment of poor Dad. He only had time for his illness and the damn piano and never any time for me...

SAMPSON
: Let's suppose your self-analysis is correct. Why do you think you're playing with fire again now, at this particular time?

LUCILLE:
I don't know!
That's why I came to you in the first place, when Denis Remillard's badgering got me so edgy last February and I couldn't sleep or study. I thought you'd just prescribe some Valium, but instead you got me into this analysis that didn't seem to help at all.

SAMPSON
: You never spoke to me about being harassed by Remillard or his people.

LUCILLE
: I didn't want you to know. I thought ... oh,
hell.
Now you do know. Can't you help me? What if the fire nightmares start up here at Dartmouth like they did at home this summer?

SAMPSON
: They haven't yet?

LUCILLE:
No.

SAMPSON
: You suffered from anxiety and depression here at school last spring, and yet the really serious warning from your unconscious only came to you when you tried to return home. Does that suggest anything to you?

LUCILLE
: I had to come back here. To
you.
That's what my mind was telling me.

SAMPSON
: Are you sure?

LUCILLE
: Yes.

SAMPSON
: I want to help you, Lucille. You must believe me. But you do understand that your analysis presents unique problems. All humans carry within their unconscious a load of destructive wishes left over from early childhood. You've studied psychology. You know what I mean. The mother takes the nipple from the hungry baby's mouth and it becomes enraged. A little child is punished for being naughty and wishes its parents were dead. We all had feelings like this once and we repressed them, and sometimes this guilt or something similar resurfaces in later life to give us psychic pain. But a toddler is too weak to murder its parents. And an adult who still unconsciously resents her father's neglect will not normally harm him physically. The unconscious may rage, but unless the person is psychotic it remains outwardly impotent and must find other outlets for its revenge.

LUCILLE
: But my unconscious isn't impotent...

SAMPSON
: Evidently not. And one might ask whether your
conscious
mind is similarly empowered.

LUCILLE
: God. What am I going to do?

SAMPSON
: The only useful answers in psychoanalysis are the ones you see clearly for yourself. I can guide you, but I can't force you to set your deep fears aside ... And you
are
afraid of your paranormal powers, Lucille. You'd like them to go away so you can be just like normal people—

LUCILLE
: Yes. Yes!

SAMPSON
: But it seems quite likely that the powers won't go away. So we'll have to predicate our coping strategy on that supposition, won't we?

LUCILLE
: [hotly] I know exactly what you're leading up to! And it has nothing to do with mind reading.
Remillard!

SAMPSON
: I haven't had too much professional contact with him, but there are those on the Medical School faculty who think highly of his work. For all his youth, he's a meticulous researcher. His test subjects aren't treated like mental patients, you know. Most of them seem to be Dartmouth students like yourself—

LUCILLE
: And just
why
have so many of these psychic freaks come here? Why did I come? There was the scholarship offer, of course—but I felt an unnatural compulsion, too!

SAMPSON
: [patiently] Is it necessarily bad to want to associate with others who share your unusual mental faculties?

LUCILLE
: [despairingly] But I don't want them ... I only want to stop burning ... to be happy ... to have someone understand me and love me.

SAMPSON
: Your unconscious wants you to be happy, too. It wants you to face your dilemma honestly instead of running away from it. The unconscious isn't a demon, Lucille. It's only you.

LUCILLE
: [after a silence] I suppose so.

SAMPSON
: No one can force you to participate in Dr. Remillard's experiments, Lucille. But you must ask yourself: Might your fear of him be irrational?

LUCILLE
: I don't know. I'm all mixed up. My head feels so feverish and my throat is so dry. Can I get some water?

SAMPSON
: Today's session is almost over ... I have a suggestion. Let me find out some specifics of Remillard's research. Let me ask him—without mentioning you—about the general state of mental health among his subjects. Surely some of them must have experienced conflicts similar to yours. When I get more information, we can begin working out your coping strategy.