The Key to Midnight (23 page)

“Trust me, Mr. Hunter.”

Anguished, Alex drew back from Joanna.

“What sort of treatments?” Inamura asked again.

“I’m dying.” She shuddered. She pressed her arms even tighter across her chest, shrank back defensively into the chair. “Each time I d-d-die just a little more. Why not kill me all at once? Why not get it over with?” She was crying openly now. “Please, just get it over with.”

“You aren’t dying,” Inamura assured her. “You’re safe. I am protecting you, Joanna. Just tell me about these treatments. What are they like?”

She could not speak.

“All right,” the psychiatrist said gently. “Relax. Be calm. You are calm and relaxed ... relaxed ... safe and at peace and relaxed ... sleeping deeply ... such sweet tranquillity.”

Her shaking subsided. Her tears stopped flowing. But she kept her arms crossed defensively.

“You are still in that room,” Inamura said when Joanna was ready to go on. “Alone in that room, on the bed, strapped down.”

“Naked,” she said. “Under a sheet.”

“You haven’t yet had your daily treatment. Herr Doktor will be here in a moment, and you will describe what happens after he arrives. You will describe it calmly, serenely. Begin.”

Joanna swallowed hard. “The woman doctor ... comes into the room and pulls the sheet down to my waist. She makes me feel so helpless, utterly defenseless. She hooks me up to the machines.”

“To the electrocardiograph and electroencephalograph?”

“Yes. She tapes electrodes to me. Cold against my skin. The machine keeps beeping ... beeping ... beeping. It drives me crazy. She slips a board under my arm. Tapes it in place. Hooks me up to the bottle.”

“Do you mean that you’re being fed intravenously?”

“That’s always how the treatment starts.” Gradually Joanna’s speech became slower and thicker than normal. “And she covers my breasts with the sheet ... watches me ... watches me ... takes my blood pressure ... and after a while ... I begin to float ... light, so light, like a feather ... but aware of everything ... too aware, painfully aware ... a sharp, terrible awareness ... but all the time floating ... floating.”

“Joanna, why is your speech slurring?”

“Floating ... numb ... drifting ...

“Does the IV bottle contain a drug in addition to glucose?”

“Don’t know. Maybe. Up, up, up like a balloon.”

“It must be a drug,” Alex said.

Inamura nodded. “Joanna, I don’t want you to speak in that thick, sluggish manner. Speak normally. The drug is still being administered to you, but it won’t affect your speech. You’ll continue to experience this treatment, and you will tell me about it in your usual, unaffected voice.”

“All right.”

“Good. Continue.”

“The woman leaves. I’m alone again. Still floating. But I don’t feel high or happy. Never do. Just scared. Then ...”

“What happens then?” Inamura encouraged.

“Then ... then ... the door opens and he enters. The Hand.”

“Herr Doktor?”

“Him, him.”

“What’s he doing?”

“I want out of here.”

“What is the doctor doing, Joanna?”

“Please. Please let me out.”

“Be calm. You are in no danger. What is he doing?”

She continued reluctantly: “Pushing the cart.”

“What cart is he pushing?”

“It’s covered with medical instruments.”

“Go on.”

“He comes to the bed. His hand ...”

“What about his hand, Joanna?”

“He ... he ... he ... he holds his hand in front of my face.”

“Yes?”

“Opens and closes his steel fingers.”

“Does he say anything?”

“No. Just the s-sound of his fingers. Clicking.”

“How long does this go on?”

“Until I’m crying.”

“Is that what he wants—to see you cry?”

She was shivering.

The room seemed cold to Alex too.

“He wants to scare me,” she said. “He enjoys it.”

“How do you know he enjoys it?” asked Inamura.

“I know him. The Hand. I know him so well by now. I hate him. Standing over me. Looking down. The clicking fingers. He grins.”

“So he makes you cry. He likes watching you cry. But then what does he do?”

“No,” she said miserably. She turned onto her side in the big reclining chair, facing Alex, eyes still closed, arms still tucked against her breast. She drew her knees up slightly, into the fetal position. “No ... please.”

“Relax, Joanna,” Inamura said. “You are there but detached from the experience now, insulated from the feelings this time. You are there only as an observer.”

“No ... no.” But her protests were merely weak denials of the horror of those memories, not a refusal to proceed with the session.

Alex was suffering with her, because the helplessness that she had felt while strapped to that bed was akin to the sense of helplessness that had informed his entire childhood.

“What is Herr Doktor doing now?” Inamura asked.

“The needle.”

“The IV?”

“No. Another. Oh, God.”

“A hypodermic?”

“It’ll kill me this time,” she said with pathetic conviction.

“Rest easy. Be calm. You’re safe now. What’s so special about this needle?”

“It’s so big. Huge. It’s filled with fire.”

“You’re afraid the needle will sting?”

“Burn. Burn like acid. Squirting acid into me.”

“Not this time,” Inamura assured her. “No pain this time.”

Beyond the closed pine shutters, a sudden gust of wind shrieked at the windows, and the glass thrummed.

Alex almost felt as if the man with the mechanical hand was in Omi Inamura’s office. He could feel an evil presence, a sudden and chilling change in the air.

“Let’s continue,” the psychiatrist said. “The doctor uses this needle, gives you an injection, and then—”

“No. Not my neck. Not my neck. Jesus, no!”

She thrashed on the reclining chair, wrenching herself out of the fetal position almost as if racked by an extreme epileptic spasm, flopping onto her back, rigid, shaking, tossing her head from side to side.

Inamura said, “What’s wrong with your neck, Joanna?”

“He puts the needle in your neck?”

Alex felt ill. He touched his own neck.

Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, Joanna was not in Inamura’s office. She was deep in the past, living through hell once more. And though the doctor had told her that she would remain emotionally detached from the memory and would report upon it in an objective fashion, she was unable to maintain the distance he demanded of her. She was convulsed by the memory of pain as if she were suffering the real agony at that very moment.

“It hurts, everything hurts, my veins are on fire, blood’s boiling, bubbling, oh, God, Jesus, God, it’s eating me up, eating me up, like acid, lye, turning me black inside.
Some
body,
please, please help me!”

Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, as if she could not bear what she would see if she opened them. The arteries throbbed at her temples, and the muscles in her neck were taut. She writhed and cried out wordlessly, and her back raised up from the reclining chair in such an extreme arch that only her feet, her shoulders, and the back of her head were touching the upholstery.

Dr. Inamura spoke comfortingly to her, trying to talk her down from the ledge of hysteria on which she was precariously balanced.

Joanna responded to him but not as quickly as she had done earlier. She slowly relaxed—although not as completely as before. Still in a trance, she rested for a few minutes, though she never quite stopped trembling. Now and then her hands fluttered up from the arms of her chair and described meaningless patterns in the air before settling down again.

Dr. Inamura and Alex waited silently for her to be calm enough to go on with the session.

The wind huffed at the shuttered windows again, harder than before, and then keened shrilly, as if in disappointment, when it was unable to get inside.

At last Inamura said, “Joanna, you are in the room that smells of antiseptics, disinfectants. The odor is so heavy that you can taste it. You are strapped to the bed, and the treatment has begun. Now dispassionately, quietly, I want you to tell me what they do to you, what the treatment is like.”

“Floating. Floating and burning at the same time.”

“What does Herr Doktor do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you see?”

“Brilliant colors. Whirling, pulsing colors.”

“What else do you see?”

“Nothing else. Just the colors.”

“What do you hear?”

“The Hand. He’s talking. Very distant.”

“What’s he saying?”

“Too distant. I can’t make out the words.”

“Is he talking to you?”

“Yes. And sometimes I answer him.”

“What do you say to him?”

“My voice is as distant as his. I can barely hear myself. I’m so far away, high above, high up and floating in the fire, in the pain, lost in the pain.”

“If you try now, you’ll be able to hear yourself. Just listen to your voice, and you will hear it clearly.”

“No. Can’t make it out. I’m flying a thousand miles above myself, too high to hear.”

“Joanna, he’s talking to your subconscious. Your conscious awareness is being suppressed by drugs, and your subconscious is wide open to him.”

“High, high above myself,” she insisted.

“It’s only your conscious mind that’s floating up there. On a conscious level, perhaps you can’t hear him, but your subconscious hears him clearly, every word, every nuance. I want you to let your subconscious speak. What is Herr Doktor saying?”

Joanna fell into silence and became deathly still.

“What does he say to you?”

“I don’t know, but I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of, Joanna?”

“Losing things.”

“What things?”

“Everything.”

“Please be more specific.”

“Pieces of myself.”

“You’re afraid of losing pieces of yourself?”

“Pieces are falling away. I’m like a leper.”

“Pieces of memory?” Alex guessed.

“I’m crumbling,” Joanna said. “High above, I’m floating and burning, but down here I’m crumbling.”

“Is it memory you’re losing?” Inamura pressed.

“I don’t know. But I feel it going.”

“What does he say to you to make you forget?”

“Can’t quite hear.”

“Strain for it. You can remember.”

“No. He took that away from me too.”

Inamura followed that line of questioning until he was convinced that he would learn nothing more from it. “You’ve done well, Joanna. Very well, indeed. And now the treatment is finished. The needle has been removed from your neck. The other needle has been removed from your arm. You are gradually settling down, down.”

“No. I’m still floating. Not burning any more, not being eaten up inside any more, but floating. I keep floating for a long time afterward. For at least an hour. Longer.”

“All right. You’re floating, but the needles are out of you. What happens now?”

She covered her face with her hands.

“Joanna,” Inamura said, “what’s happening to you?”

“I’m ashamed,” she said miserably.

“There’s no need to be ashamed.”

“You don’t know,” she said from behind her hands. “You can’t ever know.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of at all. Put your hands down, Joanna. Put them down. It’s okay. That’s right. You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re a good person. You have a good heart. You’re the victim here, not the criminal.”

She could not speak. She tried and failed.

The wind at the windows.

The bird in the cage. Talons on the brass.

She struggled to tell Inamura what he wanted to know, and it was clear by her tortured expression that she needed to spill those secrets and be rid of them. But her mouth worked without producing a sound.

Alex could hardly bear to watch her as she lay torn between shame and the need to confess, between fear and freedom. Yet he couldn’t look away from her.

Finally she said, “If only ... I could die.”

“You don’t really want to die,” Inamura assured her.

“More than anything.”

“No.”

“It’s the only way to stop him ... what he does to me.”

“It’s already stopped. Years ago. You’re only plagued by the memory now, because you haven’t been able to face it. Confront it and be freed, Joanna. Tell me the rest of it and be free.”

Her voice was so faint that Alex had to lean forward in his chair to catch what she said: “Hear it? Hear it?”

“What do you hear?” Inamura asked.

“The clicking.”

“Clicking?”

“Click, click, click,” she said softly.

“What is this clicking?”

“The gears.”

“Ah. In his hand?”

“Soft at first. Then louder. Then as loud as gunshots. The gears in his fingers.”

She shuddered and made a pitiful sound that weighed like a stone on Alex’s heart.

Inamura said, “Where is Herr Doktor now?”

In her still small voice, she said, “Beside the bed. He strokes my face. With those steel fingers. Click, click, click.”

“Go on.”

Her hands moved from her face to her throat.

“He massages my throat,” she said. “I try to pry his hand away. I really do try. But I can’t. It’s steel. So powerful. Hear the little motors purring in it?”

She opened her eyes, staring at the ceiling. Tears shimmered.

“Go on,” said Inamura.

“He grins,” she said. “I’m floating very high, but I can see his grin. I’m way up high, but I can feel what he’s doing. I ask God to stop him, just to stop him, that’s all, because I’m too weak, I need God’s help, but it ... never ... it never comes.”