The Girls He Adored

14

“All right, sweetheart, we're going back further. It's your birthday again-do you have a cake?”

They were ten minutes into the age regression. The hypnosis had gone smoothly-like most multiples, Max/Christopher had proved eminently suggestible. After a short relaxation technique (not easy, with the prisoner seated, fettered and manacled, in a cold, relatively bare, brightly lit room with nothing but hard surfaces and right angles-but she pulled it off), Irene had him concentrate on a black dot she'd drawn on a sheet of blank notepaper, explained in a calm, low-pitched voice that he was getting sleepier and his eyelids heavier, and sent him to his safest place. She'd then implanted a code word to use as a cue for waking him up. That was pretty much all it took-Hypnosis 101, no bells, no whistles.

When he was deeply under, she began regressing him, walking him backward through his birthdays. When she reached five she observed his eyes rolling upward beneath the closed, fluttering lids-it was his first switch of the session.

“Choc'lit cake. Choc'lit icing. I like choc'lit.” His voice was chirpy, his body language fidgety.

“Does it have candles?”

“A course-it's a birthday cake, you silly.”

“Can you count the candles?”

“Five candles, one two three four five.”

“Can you read the writing?”

“My name-that's my name-Lyssy, el why ess ess why.”

“Happy birthday, Lyssy. Five years old, isn't that something. Did you open your presents yet?”

“After the cake-doncha know you can't open presents until after the cake?”

“How about your presents from your mommy and daddy?”

“I got a two-wheeler. In my room when I woke up in the morning. It's a red Schwinn, just like Walter cross the street, only red. Daddy said I was way too old for my Big Wheels. And no training wheels-Daddy says only, you know, sissies use training wheels.”

“Tell me about your mommy and daddy. Do they ever do things you don't like? Hurt you or touch you?” Leading question, right on the border of suggestion. But Irene's time with the patient was limited, this was diagnosis, not treatment, and every verified DID patient in the literature had a history of early, horrendous abuse- not just your passing pat on the fanny, but really egregious stuff.

“Daddy sometimes-but maybe I was dreaming. Mommy says I only dream it.”

“Dream what? Tell me about one of the times Daddy did something and Mommy said it was a dream.”

“Okay, the first time I was all tucked in, I was lyin' in bed lookin' at the wallpaper. I have party balloon wallpaper in my room-pink and blue party balloons, on account a they didn't know if I would be a boy or a girl. And alla sudden I can see right through the wall into their room, Mommy's and Daddy's room. They're sitting up in bed watching TV like usual, Mommy in her nightgown, Daddy in his T-shirt.

“Only their faces are different: they look like the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are. Daddy has a lion face, Mommy's face is all scary and furry and pointed like a fox. And their regular faces, their people faces, are lying next to them on the bed, all empty and rubbery and wrinkly, like these monster faces are their real faces, and the regular faces are just masks they put on in the daytime.”

“That does sound like a dream, doesn't it?”

“I know. I even dreamed I woke up. And I was staring at the wallpaper again, I couldn' see through any more. I'm still scared. I wanna call Mommy. But that's scary too. 'Cause what if what I saw was real? All they'd have to do is put on their people masks-how would I know?

“So I climb out a bed, ssh, real quiet, and open my door. The house is all dark for the night, except for the night-light in the hall, you know, for when I have to get up to go peepee. Tippy-toe down the hall. I can see light through the bottom a their door. I'm pos' to knock, always knock before you come in Mommy and Daddy's room, only then I think about how quick they could put their people masks on. So I try and turn the doorknob. But it's locked. But I know how to open it, cause one time Walter locked hisself in the baffroom and Mommy got the ice pick outta the drawer and stuck it in the little hole in the doorknob and it opened up.

“So I go into the kitchen and I get the ice pick outa the drawer and go back to Mommy and Daddy's room and stick it in and it goes pop and then the knob turns and I open the door and there's Mommy and Daddy with their regular faces on. Only they're not watching TV. Mommy is sitting in a chair all bare naked and she's all tied up and Daddy is standing over her, he's bare naked too and his peepee is all red and sticking out and he's holding this red candle, and he's dripping hot drips, I see the red drips on her boobies.

“Then she sees me, she says, ‘Oh fuck, honey, it's the kid.’ So he turns around-his peepee's pointing at me and I can't move and I can't scream, just like in a dream only I know it's real. Then he's standing over me. He pulls the ice pick outa the doorknob and looks down at it in his hand, and I know, I just know he's gonna, wham, stick it right down through the top a my head, only instead he picks me up and carries me over to the bed and tosses me on the bed and pulls down my pajama pants and I don' wanna talk about it anymore and you can't make me.”

Irene had no intention of forcing him. Even using hypnosis so early in DID therapy was unconventional-pressuring him at this point could be disastrous.

“Lyssy, honey,” she said soothingly. “I need you to know you never have to talk about anything until you're ready. But when you are ready, I need you to know you're safe telling me anything at all-nothing you tell me can ever come back to hurt you. Now, you said your mommy told you it was all only a dream?”

“A nightmare-next morning she said I had a nightmare. I axed her how do you know, she says I yelled in my sleep. Then she axed me to tell her about my nightmare. She says I hafta or it will never go away.

“So I say I saw through the wall, and you and Daddy took your faces off and you were both monsters and I woke up and I went into your room to see if it was true and he was hurting you, and then he pulled down my pants and he hurted me.

“And she says that proves it's only a bad dream because Daddy would never hurt us. She crosses her heart and hopes to die. But my butt still hurted, so you know what I think?”

“What, Lyssy?”

“I think either both dreams hafta to be real, the one where I see the animal faces through the wall and the one where I go into their bedroom, or both a them hafta be dreams. And sometimes I think what if everybody wears a people mask? What if everybody has a animal face under their skin. And sometimes in the bathroom I stand on my old potty stairs from when I was little, and I look into the mirror real hard, and I try to see what kind a animal I have under my skin.”

He was starting to grow agitated again. Irene glanced at her watch. It was just past twelve-forty. She only had until one o'clock with the prisoner, and it was important to leave at least fifteen minutes at the end of a hypnotherapy session to bring the patient back and give him time to reorient.

“All right, Lyssy. I understand. Thank you for sharing with me.”

“Sharing's good. You're 'pos to share.”

“Yes you are, honey. You did a wonderful job. Now I want you to think about your safest place, the place in the world, it doesn't have to be real, you can make it up, where you feel the best and the safest, and I want you to go there for me… Safest place… You there yet…? Attaboy. Okay, here we go. Five, four, three, two, one… applesauce!”

Once again, Irene observed a radical alteration in the prisoner's body language. The fidgeting and squirming ceased. There was a tense stillness about him. His neck stiffened. His scarred hands, which as Lyssy he'd used expressively, within the range of the manacles, now curled into protective fists. When he opened his eyes, they darted nervously around the room, then fixed suspiciously on Irene.

“What happened?” He was acting out his grounding behavior again, rubbing his fists against the coarse orange fabric of his jumpsuit.

“It's all right, you just came out of hypnosis.”

He moaned. “Who did you talk to?”

Irene's turn to go still and watchful. It was a crucial moment in their relationship-the closest Max, as Max, had come to acknowledging the nature of his dysfunction. “I'm not sure I understand your question.”

“Cut the crap, Irene.” His hands strained, twisting against the manacles. “We both know I'm a multiple-now who the fuck did you talk to?” It was the first time she could remember hearing him swear; his face had darkened with anger.

Recognizing that she'd erred in pretending to misunderstand his question, she tried to make up for it. “A little boy named Lyssy.”

“That titty-sucking wimp? What'd he tell you?”

It took all the self-control Irene could muster not to draw back in her chair-she couldn't remember ever seeing an expression so purely murderous. “He told me about the first time he was molested by his father.”

“I bet he didn't tell you how he provoked it-did he tell you that? Did he tell you it was his own fucking fault?”

“No, he didn't feel that way. Do you remember the incident?”

“No, I don't remember it,” he said, spitting out the words with unconcealed contempt. “I wasn't there. But I know about it. Little fucker breaks into his parents' bedroom while they're going at itwhat the fuck did he expect?”

“All right, all right, I understand you're angry. I wish we could deal with it now, but our time's almost up for today. So let me just give you a little food for thought-something to toss around until our next session. Your anger at Lyssy-do you think it's possible it might be displaced? That you've turned the anger you feel for your father in on yourself because it's not safe to be angry with your father, Max?”

The prisoner turned his head to the side and spat violently onto the linoleum floor of the interview room. When he turned back to Irene, he was calm again, or at least under control, and when he spoke his voice was level, reasonable.

“Food for thought, is it? I'll give you some food for thought, Dr. Cogan. One: I'm not Lyssy, and Lyssy is not me. Two: I don't have a father, and I never did. And three: you're not my therapist. This is a court-ordered evaluation-as far as you know, there's not even going to be another session. So if you're not going to be treating me, Dr. Cogan, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't fuck with my head. You have no business fucking with my head.”

Irene had no problem apologizing to a patient-dealing with multiples was always a process of trial and error. “You're right. I'm sorry. I had no intention of messing with your head.”

His eyes were downcast; he nodded warily without raising his head.

“But about that last point you made.” Irene struggled to keep the eagerness out of her voice. “If I could arrange it, would you like for me to treat you, to be your therapist?”

“I–I-I'd like that very much,” said the prisoner softly. When he raised his head, Irene saw that he'd executed another switch-this was the exhausted, defeated-looking alter with the slumped shoulders, the vowel stammer, and the tic in the right eye. “But he'll never let ih-ih-it happen.”

“Who? Who'll never let it happen?”

“Max.”

“What if we could convince Max that therapy would be in his best interest as well?”

“You couldn't-he wouldn't.”

“Why not?”

“Because… he's…” Irene watched in astonishment as the personality sitting across the desk from her began to disintegrate. The tic worsened, until both eyes were twitching violently; the face clenched like a fist; the head began to tremble violently as he fought to get the words out. “… he's a demon. His name is Car-”

The prisoner went limp; he sagged down in the wooden chair, then toppled forward, striking the top of his head against the edge of the desk as he fell. Irene jumped up, started toward him, then thought better of it and reached for the phone on the wall instead.