Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

They’d talked with her for only forty-five minutes. They hadn’t asked about her premonition, and hadn’t seemed very interested in where she was at the time of the shootings. The questioning had focused mostly on her family, especially her father, and his behavior during the last few months.

Since then, Amelia had phoned Karen every day, sometimes even twice a day. Karen always took the calls, and tried to reassure her that she’d survive this. Amelia never mentioned whether or not she still felt responsible for the deaths of her parents and her aunt. But Karen knew it was an issue. They would work on it during their next scheduled session on Monday.

In the meantime, Karen reviewed her notes from several of Amelia’s past sessions. She wondered about the origins of her nightmares and those memory fragments, some of which were eerily real. Amelia herself had joked she might have a split personality. But genuine cases of multiple personality disorder were very rare, and all the textbooks pointed out the dangers of misdiagnosing a patient as having MPD. Just the suggestion of it could make certain susceptible patients splinter off into several versions of themselves, worsening their problems, and delaying any kind of real treatment.

Still, multiple personality disorder could have caused Amelia’s blackouts, her lost time . Maybe it could also explain why Amelia had been at the rest home today, luring her down to that basement storage room. Lamar had said she was being set up, but for what? Her murder? Was Amelia the host to another personality that was killing everyone close to her?

It started to drizzle, and Karen switched on the windshield wipers. “Jessie, I need your opinion,” she said, eyes on the road. “I have a client who says she’s seeing and feeling things that are happening miles and miles away to people in her family-”

“Are you talking about Amelia?”

“A client,” Karen said, knowing she wasn’t fooling Jessie for a second. “Anyway, what do you think of that? Do you believe in ESP or telepathy?”

She was waiting for Jessie to respond with one of those alternative words for bullshit only people over sixty used nowadays: hogwash, balderdash, or bunk .

“I believe in it,” Jessie said, after a moment. “If we’re talking about picking up signals and pain from other people, then I say, yes, definitely, especially if you’re close to that other person. I’m a believer now. When my Andy was so sick, I felt every pain he had. Sometimes I’d even wake up in the middle of the night with the pain. And I knew it was Andy, suffering.”

Karen glanced over at Jessie. The headlights, raindrops, and windshield wipers cast shadows across her careworn face. Andy was her son, who had died at age twenty-nine back in 1993.

“He was in Chicago and I was in Seattle. Yet, I felt what he was feeling. If I was sick to my stomach one evening, sure enough, I’d hear the next day that he’d been throwing up half the night. If I had a headache or a dizzy spell, that’s what he was having. I’ve never felt so physically sick and horrible as I did his last week, when he was in the hospice. I was there with him, and for a while, I thought I was going to die there, too.”

Jessie let out a sad, little laugh. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but did I ever tell you that Andy still visits me every Christmas? It was his favorite time of year, you know. When he was younger, he used to go crazy decorating the house for Christmas. If it were up to him, he would have put a Christmas tree in every room. That Christmas after he died, my daughter, Megan, and my granddaughter, Josie, were staying with me. Josie was five at the time. I was about to go to bed when I heard her talking to someone. So I stepped into Andy’s bedroom, where she was sleeping and almost walked into…something that fluttered away, like a bird. It was the weirdest thing. I can’t describe it; it was like a ball of air that whirled around and disappeared. For a minute there, I thought I was going nuts. I asked Josie what was happening. And she said, ‘I was just dreaming about Uncle Andy, Grandma.’

“Something like that has happened every Christmas since,” Jessie continued. “It can be a weird little coincidence, or just this overwhelming feeling, and I know Andy’s there. It’s funny. Even though I know he’s going to show up somehow, he still manages to sneak up on me when I’m not expecting him. So, anyway, I’m no expert on telepathy and ESP and that sort of stuff. But I do know for a fact there are forces out there that keep us connected to the people we love, even after we’ve lost them.”

Karen nodded pensively. She could see Jessie’s block up ahead.

“So tell Amelia if she’s feeling a connection to someone who has died recently, and she’s seeing things, well, she’s not really all that crazy, at least, no crazier than yours truly.”

“I didn’t say it was Amelia, remember?” Karen felt obliged to say.

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” Jessie replied, deadpan.

She turned down Jessie’s block, and checked the rearview mirror again. No one seemed to be following them. Despite Jessie’s protests that she was double-parked and getting wet in the rain, Karen walked her to her front door. She made Jessie promise to call if she felt dizzy or short of breath. Jessie assured her that she’d be fine.

But Karen was worried about leaving Jessie alone, and it wasn’t just because of her little spell earlier, scary as that had been. No, it was because of the other scare Karen had experienced, in the rest home’s basement. Whoever had come after her might decide to go after Jessie.

“Listen,” she said. “I don’t want to worry you, but I read in the Post-Intelligencer there have been some robberies in this neighborhood. So lock your doors tonight, and set the alarm.” It was a fib about the robberies, but she wanted Jessie to take precautions.

“Well, there isn’t a thing in here worth stealing,” Jessie replied, unlocking her door. “I hardly ever set the alarm.”

“Well, set it tonight, for me, okay? Humor me.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll batten down the hatches. Worrywart.”

Karen hugged Jessie in the doorway, then scurried back into her car. She started up the engine, but sat in the idle car for a moment. The windshield wipers squeaked back and forth, and raindrops pattered on the roof.

She thought about how Jessie had felt her son’s pain, though two thousand miles away from him. Had Amelia made the same kind of connection with her family members when they were killed? Were her nightmarelike visions of their murders a form of telepathy?

Until this afternoon, Karen would have never considered it a possibility. But perhaps Amelia hadn’t really felt a telepathic connection with her loved ones at the time of their deaths.

Maybe she was connected to the person who had killed all of them.

In the shadows of a tall evergreen at the edge of the lot next to Jessie’s house, she stood in the rain. The hood to her windbreaker was up, covering the top of her head. The old Cadillac was parked around the corner. She already knew where Karen’s housekeeper lived; it hadn’t been necessary to follow Jessie down the block. But she’d wanted to hear what Karen and Jessie were saying to each other. So she’d climbed out of the Cadillac and skulked into the neighbor’s yard. She’d only caught snippets of the conversation through the sounds of the wind and rain. It was sweet how Karen had been so worried about Jessie, and even kind of funny, because they’d both be dead before the week was through.

Karen probably had only a slight inkling of how close she’d come to having her throat slit in the basement at the rest home an hour before. Now there was no mistaking it; Karen had seen her. It wasn’t the same as last week’s brush with her in the corridor outside the old man’s room. This time, Karen wouldn’t just ask if she’d been at the rest home. She’d accuse . And this time, the innocent routine or the blackout excuse wouldn’t work. Karen would keep pounding away at her for an explanation.