Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

“You seem well studied.”

“I read the medical journals. They’re all working in a fog, trust me. Most psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia present with delusions-either paranoid or grandiose; hallucinations-visual, auditory, and so on; or other thought disorders that mess with the processing of ideas in the mind. Pressured speech, flight of ideas, word salad, that kind of thing. Does that all make sense?”

“Yes.” Brad had a new respect for Paradise already.

“Schizoaffective disorder is essentially a combination of a mood disorder like bipolar and schizophrenia. Just to clarify a few terms. I do have a mood disorder-bipolar-but I am not crazy.”

She slipped from the chair’s stuffed arm down onto the seat cushion. “So, what can I do for you?”

Sitting here looking into her brown eyes, listening to such succinct articulation, Brad saw an entirely different person than the one he’d seen a few days earlier.

“We found another victim this morning. A girl named Melissa, just a couple of years younger than you, in her early twenties.”

Paradise just stared.

“She was dead. The killer drained her blood and left her for us to find.”

“That’s pretty sick.”

“I agree.”

She leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs. “Who could do such a thing?” Her eyes misted and she averted them.

His own throat tightened.

“We thought the killer might have a history with the Center for Wellness and Intelligence, but nothing’s panning out.”

“Then why are you talking to me?”

“Honestly? I’m not entirely sure. I’m following my gut. Something Allison said the other day.” He crossed his legs, matching her. “Can you tell me about your gift?”

Her eyes stared into his. “My hallucinations, you mean.”

“Allison insists they aren’t just hallucinations.”

“But this isn’t Allison,” she said. “This is you and me. Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts.”

“No. I don’t. But I also know how powerful perceptions and instincts can be. In my line of work, a computer would do a better job investigating and deciphering evidence if the human equation wasn’t more important. Instinct, gut feelings. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe that some people have an extraordinary ability to perceive what others do not.”

She nodded. “Latent inhibition.”

“Which is?”

“Why are you so afraid of women?”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t have a ring on.”

“I’m not married, but that-”

“You take meticulous care of your hair and nails.”

He glanced at his fingers, thrown off by her line.

“You’re dressed in the same slacks you wore on Tuesday, and your apartment is spotless. If you could bring yourself to trust a woman you might let her in, but there’s too much in your world that you need to protect. Too much order and comfort. Your sofa is purple, the window behind you is open to another world, and if you hit it at ninety-four miles an hour, you’re there and flying through space with the angels, who ask you if you would like some tea before meeting with the Roush.”

“Roush?”

“Yes.”

They faced off in silence. He had no clue what kind of mythical creature a Roush might be, and it didn’t matter.

“Black,” he said. “My sofa is black velvet.”

“Sorry about that,” she said, blushing. “The window stuff was just a slip of the tongue. I didn’t mean to say it aloud.”

But she was right about the rest, he thought, and now she picked up on his hesitation to correct the rest of what she’d said.

“But I was pretty close on the rest,” she said. “You want to know how I know?”

“Something like that.”

“Ghosts,” she said.

“You…” He glanced to his left where her gaze had shifted earlier. “You’re seeing ghosts?”

“No, not now. Although one did walk past the window three minutes ago. But that was just my imagination.”

“So… I’m lost. Catch me up here.”

“My imagination sees ‘ghosts’ now and then”-she made quotes with her fingers-“because of my low latent inhibition. Most people’s minds inhibit the streams of stimuli that their senses are exposed to-sight, sound, feel, smell, ideas-and focus only on what the mind determines to be critical at any given moment. Like a filter. Latent inhibition is the mind’s perception filter.”

“And low inhibition, or this latent inhibition, is a breakdown in that filter,” he guessed.

“Extremely creative people-artists, writers, et cetera-often see more than others. Not all of it is real. I look at you and I see a flood of details that most would miss at first glance. I look out the window and see another universe. Some of what I see is imagined, some real. According to Allison, a high intelligence allows a person with low latent inhibition to process the extra stimulation effectively. But without high intelligence, the flood of ideas and senses can be debilitating.”

“Like the bit about the window opening to another universe…”

“Yeah, like that.”

“And the ghost you saw a few minutes ago?”

She shrugged. “But I have seen them a few times, for real, as far as I can tell.”

“But you wouldn’t know,” he pointed out. “To the observer, a true hallucination is impossible to differentiate from the real thing.”

“No, these are different,” she said in soft voice, as if afraid to disturb some unknown balance in the room. “I don’t hallucinate.”

Regardless of her true state of mind, Paradise was plainly brilliant. Into this small package, God had seen fit to deposit a mind that made Brad’s own spin with awe. He couldn’t help but feel just a little intimidated.

“Well, you’re not what I expected,” Brad said.

“Hm. What did you expect, a raving lunatic?”

“No.” He covered his embarrassment with a short laugh. “And what did you expect, a monster?”

Now she smiled in earnest, revealing perfect white teeth. Like her bipolar disorder, likely inherited.

“So tell me, Mr. Raines, what did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Not someone who is so well spoken, for starters. I understand you write novels?”

“A few. But they’re useless.”

“How do you know?”

“Even if they aren’t, they’re just my world. They’ll never leave this place. I can’t write when I’m on the meds.”

“Allison told me that you have agoraphobia?”

Her mouth fell flat and she fiddled with her fingers, absently picking at one of her fingernails, which was chewed to the nub. “That’s right.”

“You’ve never been off the compound?”

“No.”

She didn’t seem to want to talk about her fear. That certainly presented a problem, considering the idea he was toying with.

“Anything else? Other fears or special challenges?”

“Now you’re starting to sound like a shrink.”

“No, that’s not what-”

“Can I trust you?” she asked, interrupting.

“Of course you can trust me.”

“Because the last time someone told me to trust them, I unlocked the door and they shoved a shotgun barrel into my mouth.”

She said it without batting an eye.

“Then don’t trust me.”

Her eyes misted and she looked back at the window over his shoulder. “I can’t remember anything else about what happened except the gun. My father was a strict disciplinarian. Eccentric, wealthy. He was convinced we were all conspiring to steal his money and turn it over to the devil. He suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.” Her fingers trembled in her lap.

“I… I’m sorry.”

“He tried to shoot me after keeping me locked up for a month. He killed my mother and my brother and thought he’d killed me before he shot himself.” Her glassy eyes turned back to him. “But my older sister, Angie, had already moved out, so she was okay. She lives in Boulder and visits me when she can. But she knows that I have to stay here.”