Ammie, Come Home (9 page)

Sara was—Sara. But she was not alone. Ruth recognized Bruce's affected speech with mingled exasperation and relief. One could hardly speak candidly to the girl in his presence. On the other hand, it was good to know that Bruce had been with her. Especially with night drawing in.

Now why, she wondered, did I think of that?

Pat's greeting to Sara was, on the surface, casual and without innuendoes. Sherry was offered and accepted; the two young people sat down; Bruce suggested a fire, and was graciously permitted to build one. The darkness fell with winter rapidity, and they sat by the light of the leaping flames and talked about nothing.

Ruth was silent; light conversation seemed impossible. The devil that Pat had exorcised by the simple fact of refusing to see its possibility slid slyly back, hovering in the gathering shadows. Yet whenever she looked at Sara her brain staggered at the incongruity of it all. Miniskirts and long black leather boots do not suit the supernatural.

As the minutes wore on Ruth felt the tension mounting. Her own silence fed it; so did Bruce's uncharacteristically monosyllabic speech. He sat on the edge of his chair and never took his eyes off Sara. The girl was nervous too; she moved too much, twitching at her skirt, stroking the leather of her boots. She had developed a slight stammer, the first time Ruth had ever noticed any such trait.

“It's dark,” Ruth said suddenly. “Let's have some light.”

Pat's hand caught her arm as she started to rise. He alone seemed unaffected by the strain.

“The firelight is pleasant,” he said. “Leave it.”

The words, with their bland assumption of authority, would have irritated Ruth at any other time. Now the sudden need that had sent her groping for light closed in upon her. She sank back onto the couch, not because of Pat's grip, but because her knees would no longer hold her erect. Could no one else feel It? It was coming. It was all around. It was cold and darkness; It fed on darkness. If this went on….

“I understand you haven't been sleeping too well lately,” Pat said to Sara.

“No, Pat, don't,” Ruth said. “This isn't the time—”

“Of course it is; you're letting this worry you far too much. There's no reason to be shy about it. Everybody has problems at one time or another—nervous strain, overwork….”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Bruce demanded.

“I mean just what I say. Sara has been sleepwalking. That's a sign of nerves, a signal we can't ignore.”

“Stop it,” Ruth said urgently. “Pat, this is all wrong, can't you feel….” Her voice died, only to rise again in a gasp of terror. Sara was sitting on the edge of the couch nearest the fire. The red light gave auburn gleams to her dark hair, and lit the curve of cheek and chin with a diabolical flush. She had not moved nor uttered a word; but her pose had altered, indefinably but unmistakably.

In the silence that followed Ruth's intake of breath they could all hear the girl breathing in short shallow gasps. The firelight caught the glow of her eyes as they moved. Groping wildly Ruth found Pat's hand and clung to it. She was conscious of a bizarre feeling of relief. He saw it too. The rigidity of his muscles, unresponsive for once to her touch, told of his reaction more graphically than speech. But the reaction that cut Ruth to the quick was Bruce's. He made one small movement, quickly controlled; but she knew enough to recognize it, even from its abortive beginning—the instinctive flight of flexed fingers to his forehead.

“Sara,” Pat said softly.

No response. Only that shallow, panicky panting of breath.

“Sara, are you in pain? Tell me what hurts. I can help.”

No sound, no movement. Pat freed his hand from Ruth's grasp. He leaned forward as if to touch Sara's arm.

“Don't be afraid. Everything is going to be—”

She flinched away from him, shrinking into the corner of the couch. Pat withdrew his hand.

“You hear me, don't you?”

“I—hear.”

The voice was normal enough in tone and pitch; the only thing wrong with it was that it was not Sara's voice.

Even in those two words there was a noticeable difference in inflection. The “I” sound was softer, and there was something about the final “r” that struck oddly on the listening ears.

“You do hear me?” Pat repeated. His voice was soft, but insistent.

“Yes. But I don't know—”

“You don't know what?”

“Who you are.”

Pat's arm shot out in a savage silent gesture aimed at Bruce, just in time to keep him in his place. His voice did not lose its even, gentle inflection.

“I'm Pat, Sara. Professor MacDougal. You're taking my course, remember? And doing some typing for me.”

“What is—typing?”

“It's a kind of—never mind. You know your name, don't you?”

“Know…name. Sara.” There was a brief pause; the figure huddled on the couch rolled its eyes, and Ruth felt her hands turn cold. “You called…her…Sara.”

It was too much for Bruce. With a muffled curse he dived, not for Sara, but for the light switch. The chandelier blazed into life, blinding the three who sat by the fire. Ruth's hands flew up to shield her eyes; Pat swore; and Sara, after one muffled cry, turned the color of typewriter paper and fell forward. Pat recovered himself just barely in time to catch her.

“Goddamn it all to hell,” he said, kneeling with Sara held across his shoulder like an awkward, long-legged doll; the black boots sprawled pathetically across the rug. “Goddamn you, you young bastard, what the hell did you do that for? Get over here and give me a hand.”

“Oh, Pat, don't yell at him; I was about ready to do it myself.” Ruth's cheeks were wet with tears of nervous strain. She dropped onto the floor and touched Sara's head. “Is she—”

“Just fainted. Bruce!”

“I'll take her.” Bruce held out his arms.

“You'll take her feet. Try not to joggle her. I don't want her to wake up.”

At the foot of the stairs Pat handed his part of the burden over to Bruce and let the boy carry her to her room. When Ruth tried to follow them, he held her back.

“Stay with her, Bruce,” he called softly. “If she starts to wake, let me know instantly. No, Ruth, you can't do a thing. Come back here.”

He took her with him, to the telephone on its little table behind the stairs. When he was about halfway through dialing Ruth woke up. She snatched at his hand.

“Whom are you calling?”

“Whom do you think?”

“Put that telephone down! Pat, you've got to tell me—”

They were both speaking in sharp whispers, their faces only inches apart.

“I'm calling a doctor,” Pat said. He was pale; the session had shaken him severely. “If I had realized that matters were this serious—”

“But I told you—”

“It's different when you actually see it.” Pat was silent for a moment, staring with creased brows at the telephone. “And I hoped my hunch was wrong. Damn it all—it need not have been this, not from your description. It is comparatively rare….”

“What? What is rare?” With an effort that left her shaking Ruth kept her voice from rising. “What doctor are you planning to call, Pat?”

“A friend of mine. He's a fine guy, one of the best.”

“It's after five. He won't be in his office.”

“I'm calling him at home.”

“But he won't see her till morning anyhow. Can't we—”

“He'll see her tonight—now. Face it, Ruth. I know you love the girl—”

“Yes,” Ruth said blankly. “Yes. I do.”

“Then you've got to keep your wits about you. This isn't incurable, they've had excellent results with other cases.”

“What cases? For God's sake, Pat—”

“He'll want her in the hospital at once, I'm sure,” Pat said. “You could go up and pack a bag….”

“Hospital,” Ruth pressed her hands to her cheeks. “What hospital? St. Elizabeth's. That's what you mean, isn't it? An insane asylum!”

He caught her by the shoulders and shook her.

“Stop that! St. Elizabeth's is not an insane asylum; it is a hospital for the mentally ill. I thought you were an educated modern woman! Next thing you'll be doing is muttering prayers and making signs against the evil eye! Anyhow, I don't mean St. Elizabeth's. I do mean, and let's get it straight, the psychiatric ward of whatever hospital Jim practices at. Sibley, probably. Ruth, darling….” His voice softened. “After this is over we'll come back and get good and drunk—absolutely stoned. Right now you must be calm or we'll all start screaming. And what good do you think that will do Sara?”

“All right. All right. What is wrong with her?”

He studied her face for a moment; then, as if satisfied, he nodded and let her go.

“Ruth, I'm only an amateur. But the symptoms are so obvious…. What you described last night might have been somnambulism—sleepwalking, as a result of some severe nervous strain. But tonight…. She really didn't know me, Ruth; she was not putting me on. But the most betraying sign was a single word. She referred to herself as ‘her.' ‘You call her Sara,' she said.”

“Amnesia?”

“Well, it's related, if I understand the problem correctly. But this is more than simple amnesia. We talked to someone tonight who thinks she is not Sara. Ruth, did you ever read a book or see a movie called
The Three Faces of Eve?
Or maybe Shirley Jackson's novel,
The Bird's Nest?
”

“Oh, no,” Ruth whispered.

“I'm afraid it's oh, yes. I may be wrong. But it looks to me like multiple personality. What they used to call schizophrenia.”

Standing in the hall, with electric lights blazing and telephone near her hand, Ruth knew that she was only half a step away from the cave, and that the gadgetry of the modern world was a thin skin covering emotions that had not altered in centuries. The terms were scientific; the thing they described struck her with the same chill that had struck her primitive ancestors when another word was mentioned.

“Good girl,” Pat said, mistaking her frozen horror for acceptance. “I'll call Jim now.”

“Oh, no,” said another voice. “No, you won't.”

They looked up to see Bruce's saturnine beard waving at them. He descended the last few steps.

“You stupid fool,” Pat exclaimed. “Get back up there. If she wakes….”

“She won't be any worse off, with what you're planning. Cool it, Pat; she's asleep; she won't wake up for a while. And when she does, it will be here, in her own bed—not in some goddamn ward with a lot of nuts and a bunch of head-shrinkers probing into her subconscious.”

Pat's face turned dark red. He rolled his eyes heavenward and started counting aloud. After “four” his color began to subside.

“Eight, nine, ten. All right, Bruce, I am not going to knock your front teeth out, as was my first impulse. I will listen to you first, before I knock them out. But make it fast. I'm not feeling awfully calm right now.”

“Neither am I.” Bruce faced him. Feet apart, hands clenched, he looked like a boxer braced for a blow—except for his face, which was pinched and haggard. He stood in silent thought for several seconds; it was clear that he was choosing his words with care.

“Are you sure of your diagnosis?” he asked.

“Of course not. How arrogant do you think I am?”

“I don't mean the diagnosis of multiple personality. On the face of it, it's a reasonable hypothesis. I'm questioning your general assumption, Dr. MacDougal, not your specific diagnosis. How do you know that this is mental illness?”

Pat was too puzzled to be angry. His brows drew together in an introspective frown.

“How could it be physical? It's not delirium, there's no fever, no—”

“I don't mean that.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

Bruce hesitated. Ruth noticed that the scant area of skin that showed on his cheeks was darker than usual. The boy was blushing.

“What I'm suggesting may seem unorthodox,” he said at last. “But if you'll try to look at this with an open mind you'll see that there is another possibility, which fits the observed facts even better than your theory of multiple personality.”

“Better? What?”

Bruce looked as if he were about to choke. And then, all at once, Ruth knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“Possession.”

“
POSSESSION
?”
PAT REPEATED
.
HIS VOICE WAS CALMLY
, mildly curious. “Possession…. You do mean what I think you mean—evil spirits? That sort of thing?”

“Yes.” Bruce's face was bright red from the hair on his chin to the hair on his forehead. But his eyes did not waver.

“All right. Go on.”

“You mean you believe—”

“I think,” Pat said, with precision, “that you are insane or joking. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it is the former. You are, of course, a crypto-Christian—”

“I haven't been to mass for five years,” Bruce said in outraged tones, as if he had been accused of fraud or burglary.

“Excuse
me.
I meant that your youthful training, though consciously denied, still affects you. Damn it, boy, you're poaching on my preserves! I know all about the superstition of possession; it's an ancient, widespread delusion among primitive peoples.”

“There is still a ritual for exorcism in the church,” Bruce said.

“A ritual dating from one of the most superstitious eras of human history. How many pathetic women were burned, tortured, maimed, because their credulous acquaintances believed they were possessed by the Devil? We know now that these symptoms—if they ever existed, except in the imaginations of vicious neighbors of the accused—were those of mental disorders, schizophrenia among them. Superstition is my field, Bruce; do you suppose I've neglected the richest source of all—the history of the Christian church?”

“I won't argue religion with you,” Bruce said. His color was still high, but argument was his meat and drink. “I'll even admit, for the sake of the discussion, that the Christian faith is based on centuries of superstition. My contention is that your modern science of psychiatry is just as irrational—just as much a matter of superstitious faith.”

The tension in the dimly lit hall was almost audible, like a high keening. When a log dropped in the fireplace in the next room, all of them started. Pat turned back to his opponent with narrowed eyes.

“This is no time to quibble.”

“There won't be another time.” Bruce's embarrassed flush had gone; his skin was as pale as ivory against the sharp black lines of his beard. “If you do what you plan to do, she'll lose—”

“Her immortal soul?”

“You could call it that….”

“Show me a soul, Bruce.”

The color—excitement, not embarrassment now—blazed up in Bruce's cheeks.

“Show me a subconscious mind!”

“That's not the same thing!”

“God, yes, it's the same thing! Just once try to break through your thick crust of adult dullness and see what I'm trying to get at! I'm not insisting on the possession idea. All I'm saying is that it is as reasonable a theory now, for us, as your theory of multiple personality. We're hypnotized, in our age, by the mumbo jumbo of psychiatry just as the men of the Middle Ages were hypnotized by witchcraft. We've less material proof of our faith than they had of theirs! That's what it comes down to in the end, a matter of faith. You ask me to take the word of Freud and Jung. I don't see why their opinions should carry more weight than those of Thomas Aquinas and St. Paul—and Martin Luther, if it comes to that!”

“You reason like a Jesuit,” Pat said coldly. “But doesn't it seem in bad taste to you to debate about Sara's sanity?”

“For Christ's sake!” Bruce brought his clenched fists down on the balustrade with a force that drove the blood from them. “I care more about Sara's sanity than I do about some abstract problem in debate! Why doesn't she deserve the same amount of intellectual effort I give to a problem in logic?”

“This isn't a problem in logic! This is—”

“Wait a minute,” Ruth said. She had not spoken in so long that her voice sounded cracked and rusty. Both men turned to stare at her. “You're wrong, Pat. So am I. Isn't this what they accuse us of, the young people—of refusing to keep an open mind? You haven't even asked him why he thinks…. I can't say it. I don't even understand what it means.”

Hands still clenched on the stair rail, Bruce studied her in openmouthed amazement. Then understanding dawned.

“So that's it,” he said slowly. “You felt it too.”

“Yes,” Ruth said. “If you mean—”

“The Otherness. The occupation of Sara's body by a force—personality, soul, spirit—that is not Sara. That's possession, Mrs. Bennett. That's what I mean.”

“Dear God,” Pat muttered. “Ruth—”

“No.” She moved back, rejecting his outstretched hand and everything it implied. “Are all three of us mad, Pat? Bruce, and I, and Sara?”

“Not mad, just unbearably distressed and distracted. Damn you, Bruce—”

“At least listen to me!” Bruce glanced up the stairs. There was no sound from Sara's room. “Just give me a chance! I'm not insisting that this is it, Pat. I'm only asking you to consider it as you would any other hypothesis.”

“Give me your evidence, then.” Pat was livid with anger, but he had his face and voice under control.

“First point—the reaction, not only of myself, but of Mrs. Bennett. Hunches are almost always rationally based; they are value judgments made by the subconscious mind—see, I'm giving you your damned subconscious mind—on the basis of evidence the conscious mind doesn't see. Mrs. Bennett—”

“Ruth.”

“Ruth and I are more emotionally involved with Sara than you are. We are more sensitive to her, more able to notice discrepancies. And both of us felt the same thing, and at the same time. Right, Ruth?”

“At the séance. You saw it too.”

“Not ‘saw,' ‘felt.'” Bruce's eyes went dark with memory. “I felt it clear on the other side of the table. And I'll frankly admit it made me feel sick.”

“The medium knew too,” Ruth exclaimed. “She was terrified.”

“Your interpretation of the medium's emotions is not evidence,” Pat said flatly.

“How about my emotions?”

“Ah, Ruth—now—”

“And the fact that Bruce and I felt the same?”

“You find now that you felt the same. You're infecting one another. Don't you see—I'm not denying the—the Otherness, if you choose to call it that. Good God, it's the basis of my own theory.”

Bruce rubbed his hands together nervously.

“And Sara's reference to herself, in this last seizure, in the third person?”

“The alternate personalities in this type of psychosis regard one another as different entities,” Pat said relentlessly. “Reference to the others as ‘she,' or by various nicknames, is common.”

Ruth felt herself weakening. He seemed to have an answer for everything. And the proposition he supported had, in a sense, greater hope for Sara's eventual cure than any other; she could not have said why she fought it so strongly, or why she had instinctively supported Bruce's incredible idea. Now her eyes turned to him with a silent plea, and the boy straightened.

“It just so happens that I've read about several of these cases of multiple personality,” he said disarmingly.

“I might have known.” Under other circumstances the expression on Pat's mouth might have turned into a smile.

“In the first place,” Bruce said, “these types aren't homicidal, or dangerous.”

“Have you happened to notice Ruth's face?”

Bruce's glance flickered over to Ruth; his knowledge was so intuitively complete that it surprised her to recall that he knew nothing of the previous night's events.

“Sara did that?”

“It was an accident.”

“Tell me.”

Ruth told the grim little story again. Bruce did not seem disturbed by its ending; what really interested him were the words that Sara had uttered, and he made Ruth repeat them several times. Then he nodded.

“I agree. The attack on you was impersonal. She didn't even know who you were, any more than she knew Pat tonight.”

“That will be poor comfort,” Pat said, “if she pushes Ruth down the stairs next time, and breaks her neck.”

“And it will be poor comfort to me,” Bruce said softly, “if your psychiatrist friend sends Sara off the deep end into real psychosis. No, wait a minute, Pat. Remember the Beauchamp case, where four separate and distinct personalities were involved, in one woman? One of these, the “Sally” personality, was almost certainly
produced
by the hypnotic suggestion of the doctor who was handling the case. In another case there were
seven
different personalities which emerged—how, I wonder, and with what help from the inexpert probing of the doctor? Oh, sure, some of these cases were cured—if you can call a random fusion of disparate personalities a cure. My God, Pat, don't your doctor friends scare you just a little bit? They're so damned smug, so sure of themselves—just dig around in the patient's childhood till the probe hits the right little trauma—then, spoing! the pieces all snap back together again!”

“Bruce, I'm not claiming this is simple. Or easy.” Pat rubbed his hand across his jaw as if trying to relax tight muscles. His eyes were hooded and sad. “I don't like the situation any better than you do.”

“Then listen to me!” Bruce flung his hands wide in a gesture that would have looked theatrical if it had not been so passionately sincere. “Just listen and try to think! Pat, I tell you I know these cases, and this is not like the others! The things Sara has said, and the way she has behaved, do not fit the classic patterns of multiple personality. Nor can I blandly ignore, as you do whenever you strike evidence that doesn't suit your theory, the reactions of other people. Look, I'll make you a proposition. Give me forty-eight hours. Two days. Nothing serious can happen in two days, even if you're right.”

“Two days for what?”

“For me to convince you that I'm right.” Bruce's eyes blazed. “I have a feeling that we've only seen the beginning of this, Pat. If the situation hasn't changed within two days, I'll give in.”

“This is the craziest proposition—!”

“But you have no choice,” Ruth said calmly. “Because, when you come right down to it, I'm the one who has to decide. Aren't I?”

Pat's eyes met hers.

“I could telephone her mother,” he said.

“You do, and you'll never enter this house again.”

“Damn it, Ruth—”

“I mean it.”

Bruce remained silent, with the tact of an expert strategist. He did not so much as bat an eye when Pat, breathing heavily through his nose, said, “All right, I'll give in. Not because I like it. Because I have no choice. But I agree only on one condition. I'm moving in. And I'm staying till this is settled. I'll cancel my classes.”

“Good idea,” Bruce said coolly. “That makes two of us.”

And Ruth said, as calmly as if she were welcoming invited guests, “I'm sorry we have only one extra room. But it has twin beds. I'll call work tomorrow and tell them I've got the flu.”

 

II

They sat around the kitchen table eating pizza. Three of them were eating; Ruth regarded the red-and-yellow circle in front of her with faint repulsion.

“I can't believe you've never eaten pizza,” Bruce said. “Where've you been all these years?”

Ruth poked the rubbery red circle with a fork.

“Are you sure it's edible?” she asked dubiously.

The burst of laughter was a little too loud. In the bright, modern warmth of the kitchen they were all able to pretend, but not very successfully, or for very long.

“You didn't want to go out,” Pat said. “And nobody feels much like cooking.”

The silence fell like fog, wet and clammy.

“Pat, you promised—” Bruce began.

“That I'd give you two days. I'll do more; I'll actively cooperate with anything you suggest doing. I just want to know how Sara feels about this.”

Two of them, at least, had been trying not to look at Sara, who sat next to Bruce, her eyes still a bit foggy with sleep, her hand openly holding his. But with the other hand she was feeding herself pizza with the healthy appetite of a young woman.

“As I said before,” Bruce remarked, with strained patience, “she has the best right of anyone to know what we're doing.”

The argument at the foot of the stairs had not ended with Pat's capitulation. He had protested vigorously when Bruce proposed waking Sara, and it had taken further threats from Ruth to overrule him.

“I'll heat some coffee,” Ruth said, abandoning her pizza.

She had not felt like cooking dinner; but there was a sort of comfort now in handling the smooth aluminum of the coffeepot, fiddling with the handles on the stove. The familiar charm of the kitchen seemed like a painting on gauze, that wavered oddly in the breeze of unreason, and might at any moment blow away completely, displaying something the senses could not endure.

Ruth poured the coffee, and no one commented on how badly her hands were shaking.

“Let's take it into the living room,” she said.

“No.” Bruce caught at Sara's sleeve as she started to rise. “I don't—well, let's say I don't like that room.”

“Ah.” Pat wriggled around so that he was sitting sideways in his chair. He lifted one foot, raising the ankle on the other knee, and slumped, comfortably. “It is your contention, then, that the living room is a focus of the—er—trouble?”

Bruce gave him a sharp glance; but the older man's manner was irreproachable.

“I'm cooperating,” he explained, answering Bruce's look.

“Hmmm. Thanks. I don't know what my contention is. That's half the trouble. But the room is abnormally cold. And that was where this—thing—”

“Are you afraid of your own terms? Possession. By what, if I may ask?”