Michael Koryta - Last Words

Her chest swelled with a deep breath, and then she said, “I told her that she’d never be my sister, and I hoped she was classy enough not to take my family’s last name for her own.” She managed to say it without looking away from Mark, but it was evident that the statement was a bloodletting.

“You were right,” she said. “People remember. I wish that I didn’t, though. What was the last thing you said to your wife?”

“Told her that I loved her.”

“Do you know what I would give to be able to say that same thing?” Danielle asked, and Mark looked away.

They were quiet for a few moments. Danielle sat in the recliner and gazed around the room as if she didn’t recognize it.

“You asked why we let this place sit,” she said. “Understand now? Trapdoor seemed so pure once, seemed so magical. Right up until my father proposed to Diane Martin. And do you know what? Diane was lovely. She was a lovely woman, and her daughter was the same, and I knew that. Even when I went out of my way to hurt her, I knew that. I just wanted to be allowed to be angry about it. He was my father, and he’d left my mother, and I was entitled to my anger, and Sarah didn’t get it. But my anger wasn’t supposed to last. I understood that even then. The fight would pass, and we’d be fine. We were seventeen. You get another chance then, always.”

She tucked her feet beneath her so she was sitting curled up on the oversize chair, and she cried without making much of a sound. He didn’t say a word, because he understood. She needed to weep for Sarah, for her father, for Evan Borders, for an unspoiled summer that had been swallowed by darkness. To weep not for the way things had once been but for the way things had been supposed to go and did not. People believed that they were haunted by bad memories, but that wasn’t the truth. The most sinister hauntings were from unrealized futures.

Mark watched her and wondered why he hadn’t told her the truth. Because it was none of her damned business, that’s why.

Then why’d you ask her?

What he’d told her wasn’t a lie. He had said the words into the phone, whether they’d been heard or not. Maybe they had been. How could he know?

You know.

Of course he did. Don’t embarrass me with this shit. For so long, he’d known what he’d meant — his wife was willingly pursuing a fraud’s foolishness. He had known that without question, because it was the truth and the truth didn’t require questioning. Then Jeff London provided his addendum, and the old truth remained but another emerged beside it: Lauren had gone to Cassadaga to protect him. To cover for his weaknesses.

She told me you wouldn’t do the interview well because you wouldn’t think the woman had any credibility, Jeff had said. That you’d scorn her, and if there was anything legitimate, you’d overlook it.

Mark went to the wall and removed the tape from the last map Ridley Barnes had drawn, the one from the summer of Sarah Martin’s death.

“Are you going to see Ridley?” Danielle asked.

“Maybe. First I’ve got another stop to make. We’ll see how it goes.”

The dog that looked like a fox was back in the yard when he pulled in. It kept its distance but watched him with total focus and a regal stance, like some sort of mythical guardian. He was wary of it as he walked to the porch, but the dog let him pass without a sound. It felt like the animal had made a conscious decision, one that could easily have gone another way.

Julianne Grossman answered the door and said, “You look better. You’ve slept.”

“I’m going to need you to prove yourself to me,” Mark said.

“I gave you the recorder. You’ve got everything you need.”

“Not enough to prove that Ridley’s confession was anything close to legitimate.”

“I thought that was irrelevant to you. That you — to be absolutely clear — didn’t care.”

Mark said, “I can’t get at the truth of Ridley in an hour. I should be able to with you.”

It could have been a confusing statement, but she followed. “You want to be hypnotized?”

Mark nodded.

“This will tell you, what, whether I’m a fraud?”

“Whether I should believe that video confession of Ridley’s was anything close to legitimate.”

“It won’t tell you that,” she said. “You’ll learn about yourself, not about me. But I get your point nonetheless.”

“You’re from here,” Mark said. “Not Garrison, but close by. How did you come to do what you do? It’s a strange profession for an honest person to pursue.”

“You’re very wrong about that. There are many honest hypnotists. Some frauds, sure. But I suspect there are fewer frauds in hypnosis than there are in banking or real estate. And I’m quite confident there are more in politics.”

“How did you come to do what you do?” he repeated.

“My older sister struggled with alcoholism. Badly. She turned to a hypnotist, and everyone else thought she had lost her mind and was throwing away money. It worked. I was fascinated by that. I’d seen the wreckage of her life, and the idea that this thing had worked, and so effectively... it fascinated me. I read; I studied. I took classes.” She paused, and her eyes drifted, which was unusual for her. “There was another reason too.”

“What was that?”

She refocused on him. “There are always skeptics. Every day, I meet someone who doesn’t believe in me. In what I do. People like you. The personal challenge of that, the emotional challenge? I’ve learned to embrace it. Now, I could provide references, you could interview people about me to your heart’s content, you could go out and do your fact-checking work, but that’s not going to mean anything to you, is it? You need to feel things to believe in them. Every skeptic must. You put faith only in your own judgments, your own experiences.”

He thought of his mother with the dyed braids and brown contacts and self-tanning lotion, dream catchers scattered about.

“Yes, I put more stock in my judgment than in anyone else’s.”

She nodded. “That’s an issue you’re going to need to work on for the long haul, isn’t it? But no matter. We can conduct trance. I think if we—”

“We’ll conduct it just like Ridley’s confession.” Mark held out his phone. “We’re going to record it with this, not your equipment. And we’re going after memories, just like you did with him.”

“What memories, Mark?”

“How I got in that cave.”

She gave another of those measured, steady nods, but he could see intrigue in her eyes. “All right. We can do that. Come on in.”

He stepped over the threshold.

“Take the couch, please,” she said, and then she pulled a straight-backed chair close to him. He sat on the couch and tried to look relaxed, indifferent, crossing one leg over the other and folding his arms over his chest. She reached out and tapped his ankle.

“Let’s try a different posture. Something not so defensive. You’re guarding yourself.”

He put both feet flat on the floor and moved his hands to his sides and was amazed at how instantly vulnerable he felt.

“You’re going to have to be receptive,” she said. “Your pursuit right now seems to be due to sheer skepticism. You want me to prove that I can hypnotize you. I’d encourage you to think deeper. A stage hypnotist could hypnotize you, but it wouldn’t mean that person would be able to ascertain anything of value in working with Ridley Barnes. You want to get at your memories of that day, correct? The day you were hurt.”

“The day I was attacked.”