Brian Freeman - The Night Bird

Frankie sat down next to him. “It’s been a while.”

“Five months.”

“And how are you?” she asked.

“Honestly? Not so good.”

Frankie didn’t say anything immediately. She let her breathing return to normal. The pedestrians came and went on the trail, ignoring them, but she spoke softly. “I’m sorry to hear that. Why don’t you call and make an appointment next week, and we’ll talk.”

“No, I can’t do that,” Todd said. “I can’t go to your office.”

“Why not?”

“Because you take notes. You have to do that legally, right? But I don’t want anything written down.”

Frankie leaned forward with her hands on her knees. She stared at her sneakers. “So this isn’t an accident. Did you follow me?”

“No, I—”

“Because I have to be honest with you, Todd. I don’t like being stalked, and that’s what this feels like.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Stein. I didn’t follow you. I just remembered that you told me how much you liked running this trail on the weekends. And I thought I would take my chances.”

Her instinct was to get up and walk away. Todd wasn’t the first patient to cross the line between personal and professional. She’d had patients show up at her home, and invite her to Thanksgiving, and make clumsy passes at her. The thing to do was to shut them down calmly and politely. Even so, she didn’t. There was something in Todd’s voice that made her stay.

His full name was Todd Ferris. He was in his late twenties, tall and bony. He had a wistful face, with faraway eyes, a feminine mouth, and a soft-spoken way of talking that made her lean in to hear him better. A gathering of longer hairs along his chin line pretended to be a beard. He wore a navy wool cap, a gray Boomtown Casino sweatshirt, and jeans. A small loop earring hugged one ear, and a silver cross dangled on a chain around his neck.

He wasn’t one of her success stories. He’d come to her months earlier, troubled by memories of bullying he’d suffered as a child. The emotional trauma had worsened since he’d taken a new job at one of the large gaming companies, with a demanding and intimidating boss. He’d been unable to sleep or work. He’d started drinking heavily.

As a patient, Todd was hard to draw out. He was vague about whether the past abuse was sexual, which made her suspect that it was. He was reluctant to share details about his family and whether anyone else knew what his cousin had done to him. He’d grown up in a Nevada small town, and it was obvious that he still carried a stigma about therapy. Many people were like that. If you went to a psychiatrist, you were crazy or weak. She’d tried several approaches with Todd, but he was resistant to hypnosis, and he’d declined drugs to improve his suggestibility.

In the end, he’d thanked her and walked away. She didn’t think she’d helped him at all.

“So what’s going on, Todd?”

He stared off at the dark waters of the bay. His face twitched, as if his brain and mouth were struggling with what to say. “Something really weird is happening to me.”

“What is it?”

“I’m having strange memories,” he told her.

“Of your cousin?” she asked. “Of what he did to you?”

“No, this is completely different. I’m remembering things that never happened. And yet it’s like they did.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, me neither. I mean, it’s like waking up from a dream where you have flashbacks of what was in your head, but you can’t really put them together. I see things — I remember things — but only fragments. They’re disconnected. Like somebody snipped pieces out of a video. I’d swear they were dreams, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like I’m remembering something that really happened. I can’t explain it.”

Frankie was silent as she processed what Todd was saying. He went on in a voice that was so soft she struggled to hear him: “I was just wondering if this could be a side effect of what we did.”

“You mean the therapy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No, I’m sure this is something else, Todd.”

“You mean I can’t remember false things? Because online, they talk about recovered memories that aren’t true. People will remember things that never actually happened to them.”

“I really don’t think that’s what this is.”

He nodded, but he looked doubtful. “Okay, whatever you say, but I’m scared. I don’t like what’s going on in my head.”

“How long have you felt this way?”

Todd rubbed a hand across his face. He blinked and looked lost. “The first time was two months ago. And then it stopped, so I figured it was some weird one-time thing. But this week — this week it happened again—”

“What exactly do you remember?” Frankie asked him.

“Torture.”

Frankie recoiled. “What?”

“That’s what I remember, Dr. Stein. Horrible shit. The pictures in my head, they’re graphic and violent.”

Her mind was in a whirl. “Did this happen to you? Were you suffering some kind of physical or mental abuse?”

“No, I saw it. I was watching it. It’s like I was a witness, you know?”

“Who was being tortured?” Frankie asked.

“A woman. Women, actually. It’s happened more than once.”

“What happened to them? Who was doing this?”

“I’m not sure I can describe it. It’s all bits and pieces. There’s this white room, and the woman is on a bed or chaise or something. She’s like — I don’t know, she looks drugged. Tied up, too, so she can’t move. And I remember some guy in a creepy-ass mask. He’s the one torturing her.”

“A mask?”

“Yeah. Some weird grinning mask with bug eyes. Scary as shit. I mean, it’s so bizarre, it can’t be real, right? But I feel like it happened .”

“Have you told anyone else about this?” Frankie asked.

“Are you kidding? No way. Like I said — no notes, right? I don’t want anybody thinking I’m nuts. You can’t tell anyone about this, can you? Doctor — patient privilege or whatever?”

“That’s right,” she said.

Todd exhaled in relief. “Good.”

Frankie hesitated. This wasn’t the kind of question she usually asked a patient. You didn’t challenge their hallucinations. “Listen, Todd, can you tell me one other thing? You said this felt like a dream, and yet you seem convinced that it really happened. Why?”

He slid closer to her on the bench. She was uncomfortable with the lack of personal space between them. He eyed the Bay Trail to make sure that no one else was within earshot. He looked frightened now.

“When this first happened two months ago, I thought it was a dream, too,” he said, “but then I realized it couldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Because the women I saw are real. I saw them on TV. That chick who threw herself off the bridge this week? She was one of the women in the white room. I mean, I don’t know her, I’ve never met her, I don’t know who she is. But I remember her .”

Frost waited for the cable car to pass, and then he crossed into Union Square. He finished a foot-long hot dog as he walked. Ketchup, pickle relish, no onions. It drove his brother crazy that Frost ate so many hot dogs. Duane was a chef, and he didn’t appreciate Frost’s argument that street-vendor hot dogs were better than just about any other food in the world.

The sun beat down on his neck. Entering the plaza, he passed under the palm trees. The Macy’s building was across the square on his right. People swarmed the park, clustering around musicians, mimes, jugglers, and acrobats. Above the street music, he heard the chants and drums of protesters, and he could see hand-painted signs waving in the air. It was San Francisco. Someone was always protesting something.