Evan Hunter - The Moment She Was Gone

“What I’m asking is can you exert power over a person’s mind by beaming something at her from a television set?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not in the sense that...”

“Well, you yourself used the word ‘power.’ ”

“The power of suggestion, yes. Concentrate on that other word. ‘Suggestion.’ ”

“Are you hypnotizing me now?” Annie asked, somewhat flirtatiously, I thought.

“You would know if I were,” Charlie said.

“Because you told me to concentrate, you know...”

“Yes, look deep into my eyes,” Charlie said playfully, and passed his hand over her face like Mandrake the magician.

“Bad man,” Annie said. “Next you’ll tell me to go kill somebody.”

“Hypnotists can’t do that, can they?” Maggie said. “Force people to do something against their will?”

Annie was nodding. “Control people’s minds,” she said. “Transmit thoughts to them.”

“We cannot force anyone to do anything he would not do...”

“Is that ‘he’ generic?” I asked.

“He or she,” Charlie corrected. “We cannot force them to...”

“Compounding the felony,” I said, and winked at Maggie, who didn’t get it because grammar was not her strong point.

“We cannot force anyone, ” Charlie persisted, “to do something he or she would not normally do.”

“Normally,” Annie repeated.

“Normally, yes. But we can manipulate reality.”

“Meaning?”

“I can hand you a forty-five-caliber pistol, for example, and regress you to the age of five, and tell you the weapon is in reality a water gun, and suggest that you playfully squirt it at your brother here...”

“I wouldn’t do it,” Annie said. “I’d know it was a real gun.”

“Perhaps. There are many hypnotists who believe a person never goes under completely. A part of the mind retains control...”

“Control again, see?” Annie said. “I find that very scary.”

“Well, it is scary,” I said.

“I mean, suppose somebody out there has already hypnotized all of us...”

“Annie, that’s science-fiction!” Maggie said, and glanced at me pleadingly, her eyes urging a change of topic.

“No, it isn’t!” Annie insisted. “He just told us he can make us believe a forty-five is a water pistol!”

“Can he make us believe an Entenmann’s pie is a baked Alaska?” I asked.

“All I’m saying is, if it’s true someone can transmit messages...”

“No, I didn’t say...”

“... that tell me to do something I don’t want to do...”

“No one can do that, dear lady.”

“Then how can I protect myself?” Annie asked.

“Just say no,” Maggie said.

We all laughed again.

Except Annie.

Maggie waited until she was sure my sister had finished her mantras and was asleep. Then she rolled over next to me and put her mouth close to my ear, and whispered, “Andy? Are you awake?”

“Yes,” I whispered back. “What is it?”

“Andy... I think there’s something wrong with your sister.”

“No, no. She just wanted to know about hypnotism, that’s all.”

“I don’t mean just tonight. Though that was strange, too, don’t you think? Her being afraid of someone controlling her mind?”

“Well, it is sort of frightening, I think so, too. That you can convince someone a pistol...”

“I meant... Andy... please... I know she’s your sister... but... don’t you think all that FBI stuff was strange? She seemed to be saying that someone had... I don’t know... surgically implanted a transmitter or something. She picked up on it tonight, too...”

“I never heard her say anyone had implanted...”

“All that stuff about them taking her to a secret room and examining all her orifices, didn’t you hear her use that word? She was trying to tell us they’d... I don’t know. Don’t you remember her saying the FBI has little transmitters? That this is how they eavesdropped on her? Andy, I’m sure she thinks they did something to her in Luxembourg...”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Yes, she does. She thinks that’s how they traced her here.”

“You’re misreading what she said.”

“Andy, she seemed terrified!”

“Well, if somebody was stalking me, I’d be...”

“She said it was the FBI. She specifically said the FBI!”

“Shhhh, you’ll wake her up.”

“And tonight she wanted to know if someone could beam commands to her from a tele...”

“No, she didn’t say that, Maggie.”

“She was worried about thoughts being transmitted to her from a television set, yes! Where were you, Andy? Didn’t you hear any of this?”

“Shhhh!”

The bedroom went silent.

Maggie was still for a very long time.

Then she said, “I think she should see someone.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she needs help.”

“No, come on.”

“You’re her brother,” Maggie said. “Take her to get help, Andy.”

“Well.”

“Andy?”

“Yes, Magg?”

“Do you hear me?”

“Let me think about it,” I said.

She was silent for several seconds.

Then she said, “Good night, Andy.”

“Good night, honey.”

Next door, I could hear Annie’s gentle breathing.

Two days before Christmas Annie called from Maine to say she was going to be all alone on Christmas Day, and if she didn’t have such a bad cold she would help serve meals to the homeless but she didn’t want to be spreading her germs, so what should she do?

My mother was off skiing, and Aaron and his family were spending the holidays with Augusta’s mother in New Jersey (great surprise!) so what could we do but invite Annie to come down and stay with us? Actually. I was the one who did the inviting.

“I’m not sure I want her here again,” Maggie said.

“It’s just for a few days,” I said. “It’s Christmastime, Magg. Where’s your Christmas spirit?”

“Honey, please. I don’t want her here. I don’t want FBI agents chasing her up Second Avenue again.”

“Come on, FBI agents.”

“Well, it’s what she told us, isn’t it?”

“Well, she did live with a translator for the UN, you know, so it’s entirely possible...”

“Oh, now you think the FBI is after her?”

“Of course not. Nobody’s after her, per se. I’m just suggesting that security checks are routine when...”

“How about the radio transmitter in her cooze? Is that routine, too?”

“She never said she had a radio trans... and really, Magg, I find that vulgar.”

“Well, gee, I’m sorry, but it’s not my cooze that has a radio transmitter buried in it.”

“Look, what’s the big deal here? She wants to come down for Christmas. I really can’t understand what the big...”

“Do what you want to do, okay? She’s your sister, invite her, don’t invite her. But I promise you, if she starts talking about FBI agents again, I’m calling Bellevue.”

“She won’t start talking about FBI agents.”

“Good. Cause I’ll have you both put away,” Maggie said.

“Sure, sure.”

“Sure, sure,” she said.

Annie came down by train on Christmas Eve.

She was bundled in a blue ski parka and long muffler with alternating blue and red stripes wrapped several times around her neck, and a blue woolen watch cap pulled down around her ears. Her cheeks were red and her eyes were watery, but I thought that was due less to her professed cold than to the frigid weather we were experiencing. I took her duffel and tossed it into the trunk of the taxi, and we drove back to the apartment where Maggie had made a roaring fire (albeit of cannel coal) in the dining room fireplace. We drank homemade soup and ate thick buttered bread, and went to bed shortly before midnight. Annie didn’t do her mantras that night. The next morning, she was running a temperature of a hundred and four degrees, and shaking from head to toe.