Peaceable Kingdom (mobi) (12 page)

“And there were other kids involved, right?”

She nodded. “Danny Scott, Ritchie Siddons, and the Dennison twins.”

“Did Patricia ever try to resist at all? Ever try to run away?”

“A couple times she tried. But she was too little to go anywhere. The Gannets beat her bad for it. So she didn’t try anymore.”

She stopped. Tears were rolling down her cheeks in a sudden stream.

“Leslie?”

Her chin trembled and the large brown eyes were doe’s eyes, liquid, innocent.

“Lynette? Is that you?”

“They
hurt
me! Mommy and Daddy . . .”

“I know. It’s all right, Lynette. Mommy and Daddy won’t hurt you any more. I promise. I swear.”

That was true enough. Mommy and Daddy were dead in a car accident nearly ten years before. He was drunk. The telephone pole unforgiving. As far as Hooker was concerned, good riddance.

“They
hurt
me!”

“I know they did, Lynette. But that’s all over now. Mommy and Daddy can never hurt you again. You understand?”

She sniffled. The tears abated.

“Are you okay now?”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“Good. If it’s all right then, can you let me talk to Leslie again?”

“Oh for chrissakes,
fuck
Leslie!”

The voice was deep and husky.

Sadie
.

Only the third time she’d appeared.

The first two times were trouble. He could see this was not going to be an exception. She was up and out of her chair and striding over.

“You want to talk sex, honey? You feel like a turn-on? Is that it? Then you better talk to
me
.”

He was halfway up out of his own chair when she reached down and pushed him back again.

Then lifted her skirt and straddled him.

“Sadie . . .”

“I know. We been through this before. ‘It’s inappropriate for a patient and therapist’ blah blah blah. Loosen up, will ya?” She shrugged off her jacket.

“Get off me, Sadie.”

“Loosen up. You know you want little Sadie.”

“What I
want
is to talk to . . .”

“Yeah, Leslie. I know. But will Leslie do this for you, Doc?”

She pulled the sweater off over her head. Underneath it her breasts were naked. They were lovely breasts, full and firm for her age and the fact that she’d born two children—and judging by the size and shape of the nipples, breastfed at least one of them.

Lovely but for the scars.

Small puckered burn-scars. Over a dozen on the breasts alone. Many more on her stomach, neck and shoulders.

He could still make out the swastika carved just above her navel.

He had never seen the evidence first-hand before.

“You want to talk about those, Sadie?”

She laughed. “Talk about what?
My tits
?”

“Those burns. The swastika.”

She pushed off him angrily and scooped up the sweater and walked to the window. Slipped the sweater on. Walked back to her chair and dug in her purse for a pack of Winston Lights.

Sadie smoked. The others didn’t.

“I don’t allow cigarettes. You know that, Sadie.”

She gave him a look, disgusted, and tossed the pack back into her purse. Sadie would rebel but only so far. Then like all the others she was forced to obey.

“
Oh, fuck you
, Doc.
Talk
to your precious Leslie. Have a wonderful time. You
asshole
.”

She dropped into the chair and looked at him. The eyes softened. Her face went slowly neutral.

Leslie again.

Now if he could just keep her here for the duration.

The session was running long. He could see that already. The clock on the wall above and behind her read two-fifty. But this was all much too productive to quit in ten minutes. He had a first-time patient who was probably already outside there in the waiting room—his three o’clock appointment. It wasn’t the best way to start a doctor-patient
relationship but the man would have to hold on awhile.

It wasn’t just Patricia who had something on the line here.

This case was going to make his reputation, no doubt about it. The first article, published six months ago, had gone a long way toward doing that already. AP had picked up on it. My God,
The New York Times
. For Warhol’s classic fifteen minutes he and his unnamed patient were famous.

Soon they’d be more so. His first paper was only the beginning.

“Leslie.”

“Hi. Hello again.”

“We were talking about all the sexual things they did to Patricia. But there were other things too, weren’t there.”

She nodded.

“Would you mind going over them for me again?”

“There were all the witchy things,” she said.

“Like what?”

“They taught her all these chants and stuff, and they would all dress in black and sometimes they’d visit graveyards at night and sometimes dig up bodies and do stuff with the bones and the dead guy’s clothes, make up devil potions for the Feast of the Beast or Candlemas and calling up spirits and . . .”

“What do you mean, ‘devil potions’?”

“Pee. And wine. And blood.”

“Whose blood?”

“Theirs. Anybody’s.”

“Go on.”

“Well, most of the time though, they were in the basement of the Gannets’ house. They had a really big basement there. And everybody would be naked. And everybody would have to kiss Mr. Gannet’s penis before things started, like all in a line, and then there’d be chanting and people would eat and drink a lot and then they’d bring in the sacrifice.”

“What was the sacrifice?”

“Chickens. Cats. Mostly it was dogs.”

Dogs like Katie
.

It was amazing and highly unusual. Patricia had created this personality in total identification with the dead or soon-to-be dead.

The dead
taken inside
her, made one with her.

A remarkable exercise in compassion.

“And then there was that one time,” she said. “You know. Her initiation.”

The voice was small and not nearly so matter-of-fact as before. Unsure. Almost frightened.

He knew that tone.

Because it was at this point that Leslie’s information had almost always stopped in the past, here or only slightly further. Something about the initiation had been highly traumatic. Hooker knew from sessions past that Patricia had been sixteen years old at the time, the age at which most of the personalities erupted out of her all at once, guardians at the gate of her sanity. He knew that the initiation had occured in her parents’ basement. And that was about all he knew.

He looked at the clock. Three o’clock exactly.

To hell with the time. He needed to try.

“Leslie, in the past you haven’t wanted to tell me about this, I know. And I understand that it’s difficult for you. But this time’s going to be different. I’ll tell you how and why it’s different. You see the tape recorder on the desk there beside you?”

She looked and nodded.

“What’s different is that this time I’m
taping
this. And next session I’ll play the tape back for Patricia. When I do, Patricia will know and understand what they did to her. She’ll understand why she’s this way, why
all
of you are this way. And can you guess what happens then?”

She shook her head.

“The pain
stops
. A little more time, a little more therapy, and it stops.”

He looked at her, gave it a moment. He thought,
trust me
.

“Tell me about it, Leslie,” he said.

For a moment he thought it wouldn’t happen. Then she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes and when she opened them again she was remembering.

“There was a boy,” she said. “I don’t know where he came from. Not one of the usual boys, I mean. Not one of theirs. Spanish, I think, Cuban or Mexican, about Patricia’s age. Patricia had had a lot of some kind of drugs and so had the boy and they both were naked and they put her down on the table, the altar, with the boy standing over her, everybody chanting while he put his penis in and started doing it. He was doing it a long while and it was hurting. And then Mr. Gannet reached over with this knife he had, this sacrifical knife which was very, very sharp, and he cut the boy . . . you know the place, right between the . . . the balls and the asshole? that skin there?”

Hooker nodded.

“And there was blood running out of him, all this blood, running down his legs and dripping off the altar but I guess because of the drugs or because it was doing it, I don’t know, he didn’t know it at first, he just kept doing it to her but Patricia knew, she could feel it pooling up under her real warm and wet and finally the boy got it too, he started screaming and went to pull out of her but by then Mr. Gannet was around the side of him and cut him across his throat with the knife and Patricia was screaming and the boy was coughing blood, it was all over the place, all over her,
she tasted it
, and all the others were around them catching the blood with bowls, drinking the blood from his neck and from between his legs and she could smell his shit and they were catching that in bowls too and smearing it across their faces, across their mouths, and instead of coming inside her he just released it, you know? He pissed inside her.

“Well, then the boy fell on top of her, he was dead, and
Mr. Gannet handed Patricia the knife and told her to stab him in the name of Lord Satan and she was so scared and so
mad
at the boy—it was weird—so really completely furious at him, that she did. Stabbed him over and over over.”

She stopped, puzzled.

“I wonder why she was so
angry
at him? And not at them.”

He let her consider it a moment. There wasn’t time to get into it now though he knew perfectly well where the anger of one victim toward another usually came from. Another session.

“What happened then?”

She shrugged. “They ate the boy’s heart. They smeared her with his blood. Then they did it to her one at a time. Then they let her go upstairs to shower and then they let her sleep.”

Ten minutes after three. They’d got through it. It was over.

He felt shaken. Elated too. He couldn’t believe what he had here.

“I’m going to count to five, Leslie,” he said. “When I get to five I’ll be speaking to Patricia again and she’ll be awake, rested, relaxed and comfortable and she’ll remember none of this. You did very well. Thank you.”

“Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“Patricia’s scared again.”

“She needn’t be.”

“She knows I told. That I told you
everything
.”

“Patricia’s going to be fine, believe me. I’m going to count to five now, all right? Close your eyes.”

He counted.

Patricia opened her eyes and smiled.

“Well, how’d we do?” she said.

“You did beautifully.” He returned her smile. “I want to go over this with you as soon as possible. But I’ve got another patient outside right now.”

He consulted his book.

“How is three o’clock Wednesday—day after tomorrow?”

“Fine.”

“We’ve made a breakthrough here, Patricia. You should know that.”

“Really? Then can’t you . . . ?”

“No. I’m afraid not. Not right now. This is going to take some time. I’m scheduling you for two hours again Wednesday, all right?”

“All right.”

He handed her up the jacket on the floor in front of him. She didn’t even ask how it got there. She was practically an old pro at this by now. She gathered up her coat and purse and stood to leave. Hesitated and then turned back to him.

“Should I be worried?” she said.

“Worried about what?”

“I don’t know. Just . . . worried.”

“No. Not at all. We’re already through the worst of it. There are some very difficult issues to face, I won’t deny that for a moment, but now at least we know what we’re dealing with. We know
for sure
. It’s going to take some time. But you’re going to have a
life
, Patricia. A full, integrated life. Without hiding.
Without fear
.”

She smiled. “I’ll see you Wednesday, then, Doctor. And I guess . . . well, I guess we’ll just see.”

She stepped through the door to the waiting room and closed it gently behind her. He walked to the table beside her empty chair and turned off the recorder. Pushed the rewind button and heard the sibilant hiss of tape which was her voice and his so that he knew it hadn’t failed him and then heard it click back into the start position. He unpugged the recorder, walked to his desk, opened the top drawer and slipped it away.

In the waiting room outside he heard a chair thump against the wall. His three o’clock was probably impatient
as hell right now, would probably need some soothing of feathers. That was all right. At the moment he felt up to anything. He walked across the room and opened the door.