The Skull Ring (4 page)

"Tell me what's happening," came a voice.

Dr. Forrest
? What was she doing here?

A hand gripped hers.

And Julia tore herself from the past, remembered the earlier sessions and how they had gone this far into Julia's past, this far and more, and suddenly she didn't want to relive it again, just wanted that night to stay back there in the dim, dark forgotten.

"You know what happened, don't you, Julia?"

She nodded. How could she forget? Her mind had tried, had locked it away in some secret compartment.

"Are you ready to tell me about it?"

"No."

"Julia. I thought we were making progress."

"I can't remember."

"Yes, you can. The body remembers what the mind tries to forget. The memory is in your blood, in your cells. In your heart. Listen to it."

Remember.

No matter how much it hurts.

"They came and got you, didn't they?"

"Got me?"

"The bad people."

"The bad people," Julia echoed.

"And what did they do to you that night?"

Tears rolled down her cheeks, hot on her skin. Her stomach clenched as if expecting a blow from a fist. The muscles of her arms trembled uncontrollably.

"They . . . they
got me
."

"Yes. And you know what they did next."

Julia shook her head, still denying.
Needing
to deny.

"Let it out," Dr. Forrest said, squeezing Julia's hand so tightly it hurt. "Bring it to the light, so you can defeat it."

It came in a rush. The scraps of images, thoughts like broken glass, a jigsaw-puzzle dream with its pieces spilled in dark water, reflections in fractured mirrors, the splintered bones of memories, fantasies built on smothering air, all clashing together like invisible armies in the night.

Cold stone beneath her naked back. Her legs and arms fastened with rough rope. The candles around her, their orange light flickering off the gray walls and mingling with shadows that slithered like snakes. Above her, ropes dangling from rough wooden beams backed by an endless night. Singing, humming, many voices.

She wanted Daddy. She wanted Chester Bear. Then she saw the bad people. All around her, in their robes, eyes glowing under the dark hoods. Then they were hurting her, even though she screamed and fought against the ropes.

She struggled free, sat up, her lungs on fire. She blinked rapidly.

The office. The impressionist art on the wall, oak paneling, the slight scent of leather and flowers. Dr. Forrest sitting beside her, beaming, her glasses fogged.

"Yes!" said Dr. Forrest triumphantly. "You did it."

Julia looked around, saw the clock on the wall. Her hour was almost up. Good. She didn't think she could stand another minute with the punishing past.

"How do you feel?" Dr. Forrest asked.

"Awful. I've got a headache. My muscles are sore." She rubbed her wrists where the imagined restraints had squeezed her.

"The memory's in the flesh," Dr. Forrest said. "Psychogenic. The pain's locked away, too. But we can draw it out."

"I wish it didn't have to hurt so much."

Dr. Forrest put her face near, so close that Julia could smell the
fettuccine Alfredo
the woman had eaten for lunch. "You're the victim, Julia. Don't forget that. You didn't ask to be abused."

"Except I
do
keep asking for it, don't I? Isn't that why I fear The Creep so much? It's like I expect bad things to happen to me."

"Yes, but it's not your fault. You're helpless. Those people—
bad people
—have enslaved you. The past has a long reach."

"Then why do I have to keep returning to the past? Can't we just leave it alone?" Julia shook the smoke and sweat and pain from her head.

"Don't you want to be better?"

"Good enough. You know that. That's why I'm here."

"We have a lot of work left to do," the therapist said. "But that's enough for today. I really feel we've made a breakthrough this session."

Julia felt as if the breakthrough had been made from the inside out, that the memory in her meat had slashed and clawed its way to the skin. She stood and gathered her purse, slightly dizzy. Dr. Forrest was behind her desk, thumbing through her calendar.

Julia almost mentioned the wooden blocks, but knew that Dr. Forrest would make her search her purse for the receipt. Because the doctor would say that Julia bought the blocks herself and spread them out on the table to engage in psychological self-torture. A bit of self-indulgent trickery. Julia's diagnosis would change to something meaty like Schizophrenia, Stable Paranoid Type. And Julia would be no closer to being cured.

"Tell me something about your father," the doctor said without looking up. "When you used to play on the floor with him."

No
, Julia thought.
Dr. Forrest can't read minds. And believing people can read minds will definitely nudge you into the schizophrenic folder
.

"I'd spell my name with my wooden blocks. And he'd laugh and say, 'No, honey. It's
Jooolia
.' And he'd take away the second block and put in three
O’
s."

"And what would you do then?"

"I'd say, 'No, it's not,' and then he'd laugh and hug me and rub my hair and lay out the blocks the right way.” She glanced at the door, regretting the hour’s excursion from her chronic state of denial. “I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"Recovering good memories is just as important to healing as flushing out the bad ones."

"Right now I'm tired of remembering."

"Next week as usual, then."

Julia nodded. Dr. Forrest scribbled down the appointment. "Call me if you need me." Dr. Forrest handed her a reminder card. "And I want you to try something for me."

"Yes?"

"Keep a journal. Jot down some of the things that happen, your dreams, anything. It doesn't have to be formal. In fact, the more stream-of-conscious, the better."

"I'll try," Julia said, knowing she would do more than try. Dr. Forrest was a good therapist. She wouldn't assign Julia busy work. Everything was done with a purpose in mind. Julia knew a little therapeutic theory from her own college psychology class. And she wanted to please her doctor.

We’re making progress . . .
.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dr. Forrest walked her to the door. Julia went blinking into the parking lot. As always after a session, the world seemed unreal, the pieces of it incoherent and unstable. The asphalt was a separate thing from the ground, as if it floated over ether. The mountains and sky didn't seem to quite meet up on the horizon. Though the clouds still veiled the sun, the flecks of mica in the sidewalk sparkled like tiny stars, forming galaxies beneath her feet. Even the trees that lined the streets seemed to exist in a two-dimensional universe of their own, as flat as colored leaves pressed in a keepsake book.

It was only after she'd started her car and edged out onto the highway that she remembered her bedroom clock. She hadn't told Dr. Forrest about 4:06, either. The oddity wasn't concocted by her imagination. She had the handyman Walter as a corroborating witness. But Julia had unplugged the clock before Walter saw it. She was sure.

Julia had a feeling that Dr. Forrest would be displeased to hear about the clock. The therapist didn't like Julia's focusing on little coincidences. Maybe Julia would casually mention it next time, or scribble it in her journal. Or maybe just forget all about it. Sometimes the past was best left alone.

She skirted the main drag of Elkwood, four blocks of downtown where the highest building was five stories. The town billed itself as "The Gateway to the Mountains," and had originally been a trading outpost for the hunters who tamed the wilderness, displaced the Cherokee, and eradicated the buffalo and even the elk from which the town had derived its name. Now it was a growing tourist destination, nestled in a river basin between the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains.

Julia drove across the Amadahee River and the unused railroad tracks that circled Elkwood's small industrial section. Two of the factories were abandoned, their chain-link fences ripped and sagging, the parking lots pocked with grass, stubborn oil stains, and broken bottles. Some of the factories were being torn down and replaced by condominiums and technology parks, the South's New Reconstruction.

Maybe Julia would write a series about it. Her editor had pigeonholed her, though. She was a "soft" writer at the
Elkwood Courier-Times
, even though she'd been a straight news reporter for
The Commercial Appeal
. That was okay, too. She no longer had to sleep with a police scanner, hoping for someone’s personal tragedy to supply her day’s work.

She made it to the office just in time for her 3:00 writers' meeting. Her assignments for the week included a flower show at the mall, a disease outbreak at the animal shelter, some famous literary writer she'd never heard of speaking at the library, the dedication of a new soccer field, and a crafts festival coming up in three weeks. The crafts festival included a lot of the paper's advertisers, so the editor wanted to give it a big push. Julia could handle it, although glorifying glued beads and poorly-woven baskets was a challenge to her writing skills.

Covering the local school boards and arts committees was also a challenge. She'd learned that the most valuable journalistic skill was making people’s quotes sound smarter than they actually were. She was bothered when readers referred to the weekly paper as "The Snooze," but she was thankful for the low-stress job. Pulitzers could wait. She was in Elkwood to get her head together.

As she left the conference room, her co-worker Rick O'Dell caught up with her. "Hey, Julia, what's up?"

"Same old," she said.

Rick smiled, eyes bright behind his 1950's science-teacher glasses. He had a Clark Kent-style curl in the middle of his forehead, the studly tress glistening with
mousse
. His zoot-inspired suit was tailored, a luxury at his salary. His retro style was tarnished by the gold chain around his neck, as if he were Palm Beach by way of Cleveland. "Did you read the opening of my series?"

"I don't get the paper," she deadpanned.

Rick laughed too enthusiastically. He was a hot reporter, on the way up, two North Carolina Press Associations Awards under his belt already. But he wanted other things under his belt, such as every young woman who crossed his blotter. "It's a killer story," he said. "Literally."

"Do tell," she said, continuing to her desk, knowing Rick wouldn't need a nudge. Persistence was important for a good reporter, and Rick’s cockiness meant he didn’t give up easily.

"Remember in the 1980s, when there was all this buzz about Satanism, the huge underground network, how all these children were disappearing that ended up as human sacrifices?"

Julia's head lifted at the word "Satanism." She stopped walking and turned to Rick. "Yeah. Didn't everyone pretty much agree that the whole business was overblown?"

"Sure. I mean, how do you account for some of those claims that as many as 50,000 people were murdered as human sacrifices? You just can't hide that many bodies without somebody finding a bone here or there."

"Bone?" Last night's dream stirred in its slumbering grave.

"Yeah," Rick said. His angular sideburns lifted as he smiled. "Well, maybe it's coming back. Did you hear about the body they found in the Amadahee?"

"No." Julia avoided the television news, the radio, even the paper when she could. She hadn’t been kidding about not subscribing to the newspaper. If ignorance was bliss, she wanted to be as blissful as a meditating Buddha.

"Caucasian male, in his twenties. Nude, hands bound, his abdominal cavity ripped open. Pretty ritualistic."

"Wow," Julia said, her interest piqued. Elkwood didn't have as many murders as Memphis, but was as suspect to that particular sin as any other American community. Still, this one sounded different from the run-of-the-mill Saturday night armed disagreement. Julia hadn't shaken the habits of the crime beat as easily as she had thought. "But what's the link to Satanism? If you've done your research, and I bet you have—"

Rick grinned, showing perfect white teeth that could afford smugness, and nodded at her to continue.

"Then you know that ritualism is usually more to fill a psychological need than a spiritual need. At least when it comes to murder."

"Sure. Serial killers do what they do to fulfill a sexual need. Everybody knows that. They don't make necklaces of women's body parts just because they want to please some higher or lower power. They do it because they like it. They get off on it. And they keep doing it until they're caught or dead."

"So, you took 'Creep 101' in college, too?" Julia asked.

"The home course."

"Then why do the authorities think this was a Satanic killing?"

"They don't. Not yet. But the victim was male. Gutted. And here's the kicker. The guy's pinkie was chopped off."