ME: (nods)
DR. LEWIS: Has anything happened? Anything that might have triggered a return of the trauma?
ME: (Thinks about the restaurant. Blood. Dad getting home and finding me in the apartment. Tiles. Me forgetting Mom’s day.) No.
DR. LEWIS: What does the seventh of August mean to you?
ME: (looks up sharply, breathes hard) What?
DR. LEWIS: The seventh of August. It’s a date. What does it mean to you?
ME: Are you … What the … I …
DR. LEWIS: It’s the day your mother died, I think?
ME: How do you …
DR. LEWIS: The Internet.
ME: Oh.
DR. LEWIS: It’s also two days ago.
ME: Yes.
DR. LEWIS: Do you think that might have something to do with your regression?
ME: (cries)
DR. LEWIS: Here. (He hands over a box of tissues.)
THE VOICE: Are you crying again, you ******* pathetic piece of ****? All of this is your fault. You did it. I died, and you did nothing to—
DR. LEWIS: You said the voice was a woman’s. An adult woman’s?
ME: (nods)
DR. LEWIS: You have any theories about that?
ME: (shrugs) It might be the voice of one of the … one of the prostitutes that was killed. Wanting me to, you know, solve the murder.
ME: (Watches, carefully. Having said this fake-casually. Wanting to see what he makes of it.)
DR. LEWIS: Right.
ME: It adds up, huh? A woman. Speaking after I find the foot … wanting revenge. Wanting justice. Maybe that’s where I come in. To … to get him. To make him pay.
DR. LEWIS: Maybe.
ME: You think I’m crazy, don’t you?
DR. LEWIS: I certainly don’t think that.
ME: But you think I’m deluded.
DR. LEWIS: No, I think you’re … hiding from certain things.
ME: Hiding from what?
DR. LEWIS: You say your role is to find the killer. What have you done to further that goal?
ME: Um.
DR. LEWIS: Anything? Any progress at all?
ME: I read some books. About him. About other serial killers.
DR. LEWIS: (significant pause)
ME: Okay, so I have been busy with other things.
DR. LEWIS: Busy? Did you get a job?
ME: (pause) No.
DR. LEWIS: I have a theory. Do you want to know what it is?
ME: No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.
DR. LEWIS: My theory is that this notion of yours, about the voice being one of the murdered women … it’s a distraction. Pure and simple. That’s why you’ve done nothing about it. So let’s think about other adult women. Other women the voice could represent.
ME: Like who?
DR. LEWIS: Your mother was an adult woman.
THE VOICE: TEAR OUT YOUR ******** EYES, YOU ******.
ME: (head reeling, roiling, a receptacle for liquid, set spinning, detached from my body and sliding around on a smooth tiled
floor—my mind revolving, finding no purchase on the slippery tiles,
and that’s really what it feels like; like my body is gone and I’m just a head, with eyes that for some reason are seeing a static image of the Doc sitting on his chair, the blank walls, the coffee dispenser and the cookies on the table, while my head itself is rolling uncontrollably, unstoppably, on that tiled
floor)
THE VOICE: (SCREAMING INCOHERENTLY, A KLAXON OF ANGER AND CURSING AND JUST, JUST, JUST AWFULNESS) I put my hands over my eyes and my head between my knees. I took deep, long breaths. There is an expression—my mind was spinning. Usually it’s just an expression. But that was what was actually happening. My mind was a whirligig; I felt sick.
DR. LEWIS: Cass?
I looked up. I wanted this feeling to stop, I wanted to never feel like this again. “What are you … I mean … ,” I said.
Dr. Lewis was looking scared, and at the same time—not pleased, but like something he had been suspecting had been confirmed. “The voice is very angry with you, is that right?” he said.
“Tear out your throat,” said the voice. “Tear it out, right now.”
“Oh God,” I said. “Help me.”
“I’m trying to, Cassie,” said the Doc. “It may not feel like it, but I’m trying.”
“It’s not my mother!” I said. “The voice is not my mother!”
“Okay, okay. Take a deep breath.” He paused while I panted, trying to get my heartbeat under control. “We often find that people, especially younger people, respond to trauma with anger. Perhaps they feel angry with a person who abused them. Perhaps they feel angry with someone for dying. But they are taught to hold that anger in, that it is inappropriate to express it. So they turn it on themselves. The voice begins to punish them.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying maybe you are angry with your mother for dying. Maybe the voice is an expression of that.”
“I’m not angry with my mother.”
“Not consciously, no, but it’s possible that—”
THE VOICE: It’s you. It’s your fault. It’s all you.