The First Cut

38 Kirsten

The green fronds began to sway and Kirsten felt the weight of the ocean on her eyelids. Laura’s voice murmured in the distance, urging her deeper, pressing her on, and then she heard the buzzing in her ears and she was walking out into the street one muggy June night eons ago…

She could feel the tarmac path, softened by the day’s heat, yield like a pile carpet under her feet and hear the swishing of her jeans as she walked. A car droned in the distance. A dog barked. Kirsten looked up. The stars were fat and blurred, almost butter-colored in the haze, but she couldn’t find the moon. It must be behind those high trees, she thought as she hurried on.

She stood at the center of the park, where she could see the glow of the haloed streetlights beyond the trees, and felt an urge to sit on the lion. She walked across the narrow patch of grass and mounted it. Images of cockatoos, monkeys, insects and snakes ran through her mind. She laughed and tossed her head back to look for the moon again behind the trees, then she felt the rough hand over her mouth and nose.

Her chest was tight and she knew she was kicking and struggling for air as someone maneuvered her off the lion onto her back. Long grass tickled the nape of her neck.

And suddenly there was a moon. It was shining through a gap between the trees on the spot where she had been dragged. And it lit up his face. It was dim and ghostly in the pale light, but a face nonetheless: deeply lined, with a short, black fringe low on the broad forehead and dark eyebrows that met in the middle. And his eyes. Even in the poor light she could see how they glittered and how they were far beyond reason.

For a moment, the image seemed to freeze and two time frames superimposed. She lay pinned to the ground, looking up into his face, but at the same time she seemed to be facing him directly through a haze. The vision disappeared almost as soon as it had formed. Again she lay on the ground fighting for breath as he shoved a coarse oily rag in her mouth. She was gagging, suffocating, she couldn’t go on…The next thing she heard was Laura’s voice slowly drawing her up from the depths.

Kirsten opened her eyes and took several deep breaths. Laura poured her a cup of coffee. As usual after the hypnotherapy sessions, Kirsten was grateful for the big window and its view of the city. She felt she had been lost in a deep airless vault and needed some air in her lungs, to see horizons again. Laura always waited a while before speaking, but this time Kirsten broke the silence.

“Did you get it all down?”

Laura nodded. She looked pale. “You went further than you’ve ever been before.”

“I know. This time it was different. I couldn’t stop myself going on even if I wanted. Until he put that awful smelly rag…I couldn’t breathe. I was choking.” She put her hand to her throat as if she still felt the pain.

“Your voice wasn’t always easy to catch,” Laura said. “You spoke very quickly, and sometimes you mumbled. Could we go over some of the details?”

Kirsten nodded, and Laura took notes as they analyzed the session. When it was over, Kirsten wandered out into the gray day and stood watching the Avon churn down by the city weir. She felt curiously detached from the bustling city life around her. She knew that she could have gone on reliving the experience if it hadn’t been for the choking sensation. That had felt too real to suffer through. But she did remember something else now, something she hadn’t been quite able to grasp at the time. Hands in pockets, she sauntered toward High Street to meet Sarah for lunch.

The pub was warm and noisy. Conversations swirled around Kirsten like the buzzing of insects. She felt as if she were floating. It was a pleasant sensation, though; it had been a long time since she had felt grateful for the atmosphere of a crowded pub. Sarah was sitting close to the side door, a half of lager in front of her and a paperback in her hand. Kirsten waved to her, stopped at the bar for drinks and went over. Sarah shifted some parcels from the chair next to her and put them on the floor. Kirsten sat down.

“Christmas presents,” Sarah said.

Kirsten sipped her double Scotch and reached for her cigarettes.

“Are you all right?” Sarah asked. “You look a bit pale.”

“I’m fine,” Kirsten said. “I just had a bit of a shock, that’s all. I feel dazed.”

“What was it? The hypnosis?”

Kirsten nodded. “I remembered, Sarah. I remembered what he looked like.” Her voice sounded shaky and far away to her.

Sarah put her hand on Kirsten’s arm. “You don’t have to talk about it-”

“No, it’s all right. I don’t mind. At least not with you anyway…a friend. Laura’s a doctor. She’s being paid to help me, however nice she is. I mean, I like her and I’m very grateful to her, but…”

“It doesn’t go any deeper?”

“No. When it’s not me in the office, it’s someone else, isn’t it? And she’s probably just the same with them. It’s nothing special; it’s impersonal, like the police.” And she told Sarah about finally seeing her attacker.

“How old do you think he was?” Sarah asked.

“I never really thought. About forty, forty-five, I suppose. Pretty old. It’s just that he had this lined face, you know, rough-hewn, like, lines from the edges of the nose and the mouth.” She drew them with her fingers on her own face, then she shuddered. “It was awful, Sarah. It was like going through the whole thing again, but I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to.”

“What happened next?”

“Laura brought me out of it.”

“Did you tell the police what he looked like?”

Kirsten sipped some Scotch and glanced toward the bar. Things were coming into clearer focus now; her feet were touching the ground.

“Not yet. Laura’s going to phone them and send a report.”

“Are you sure you’re telling me everything?” Sarah asked.

“Why?”

“You sound vague, and you’ve got that shifty look on your face. I’ve known you long enough to tell when you’re holding something back. What is it?”

Kirsten paused and swirled her drink in her glass before answering. “There was something else…just an impression. I can’t really be sure.”

“What was it?”

“When he put the gag in my mouth, I was too busy struggling, trying to catch my breath, to really notice at the time.”

“Notice what?”

“The smell. There was a smell of fish. You know, like at the seaside.”

“Fish?”

Kirsten nodded. “It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t remember it until I’d left her office, when I was coming here to meet you.”

“Why don’t you phone her?”

Kirsten shrugged. “Like I said, it’s probably not important.”

“But that’s not for you to decide.”

Kirsten toyed with her cigarette in the large blue ashtray, shaping the end in one of its grooves. She felt herself starting to drift again like the smoke that curled and twisted in front of her. “I don’t know,” she said. “It just seems that I keep feeding them bits of my memory, you know, things I’ve had sweated out of me, and nothing happens. They’re so impersonal, just a big bureaucratic machine. I mean, two more girls have been killed since my…two. I can’t explain myself, Sarah, not yet, but it’s me and him. I feel I’ve got it in me to find him. It’s as if he’s inside me and I’m the only one who can flush him out.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jesus Christ! Kirstie. If you ask me you’re turning a bit batty. It must be all that solitude and country air.” She put her hand on Kirsten’s arm again. “You really should tell the police everything you can remember. Like you said, he’s killed two women already, and there’s bound to be more. People like him don’t stop till they’re caught, you know.”

“Do you think I don’t know that,” said Kirsten, pulling her arm away angrily. “Do you think I don’t feel for those women? I have to live what they died.”

“Come again?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry if I seem so touchy about it. I can’t explain. I’m not even sure what I mean myself.”

Kirsten sipped some more Scotch and looked around the pub again. The people looked indistinct; their conversations were just meaningless sounds. Sarah changed the subject to shopping.

As she half-listened and let herself be lulled by the buzz of talk around her, Kirsten came to a decision. People didn’t understand her, it seemed. Not even Sarah. People didn’t understand how personal it was. Not just for her, but for Margaret Snell and Kathleen Shannon too. Doctors, police…what did they know? In the future, she would have to be careful just how much she told them.

When she tasted that foul rag he had stuffed in her mouth and smelled his rough stubby fingers, she recognized the salt-water taste as well as the fishy odor. The rag tasted as if it had been dipped in the sea. Wasn’t there, then, a good chance that he had come from a coastal town?

And there was something else. Not only had she remembered the smell, but when he had thrown her to the ground and put the rag in her mouth as she stared up at him in the moonlight, his mouth had been moving. He had been talking to her. She couldn’t hear any sounds or words, but she knew he had spoken, and if she could bring that back, there was no knowing what it might tell her about him. It might even lead her to him.