The Binding (13 page)

“What do you mean?”

“You know, touch you. In a way you didn’t want him to.”

Becca was staring at him with an icy look that bordered on hatred. “What . . . do . . . you . . . mean?”

He didn’t respond.

“No,” she said finally.

“What about the man who . . . who attacked you on December twenty-first. Did he do anything else to you?”

Her eyes went cloudy, and she frowned, looking down at the bed. “He took things away,” she said.

Nat’s eyes closed for a moment. “What things?”

She only stared.

“Organs?” he said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

She stood up, a look of horror spread across her face.
“How . . . how did you
know
that? Are you with the people who killed me? I thought you were—”

Nat took her hands in his. “Becca, I want to tell you something. I want to show you that your fears, as real as they appear to be, are
not
real. Will you let me do that?”

Becca watched him, distrust in her widely spaced eyes.
She’s so young
, Nat thought.
I have to remember she’s only nineteen.

“Will you give me a chance?” he said.

The slightest nod.

“I know these things because other people have believed them, too. There is a psychiatric condition that is very rare and I believe you have it. It’s called Cotard delusion. It was discovered in the late 1800s by a French doctor named Jules Cotard. A patient came to him and said that she had died. I wouldn’t normally tell you . . .”

“So it’s happened before,” Becca said.

“Listen, she wasn’t
dead
,” Nat said. “She only
believed
she was. She woke up one day and couldn’t recognize her family, and so she was under the mistaken impression that she was actually dead.”

Becca’s face was unreadable. But she was composed, her dark hair falling over her eyes. She had the stillness of a painting.

“Others have gone through this, Becca. They believe people have come and stolen their organs and that they’ve passed away. But it never really happened. It was all in their minds. And they’ve been cured.”

“What was the name of Dr. Cotard’s patient?”

“I don’t really know. He called her Mademoiselle X.”

“Nobody knows?”

“No, and it’s not important.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

Becca turned away, sudden bitterness in her face. “She died, though.”

“Yes.”

“While under the doctor’s care?”

“Yes. But he didn’t know what to do with her.
I
can help you.”

“What did she die of?”

Nat cursed himself for ever bring up Cotard. “She hated herself, so . . . she stopped eating. She starved to death.”

“Nobody cut her open?”

“No.”

“They didn’t take her liver? And her kidneys?”

Nat winced. “No, Becca. Like I said, it was a delusion.”

Her eyes looked hopeful for a moment, but then they moved to his right and Nat knew she was looking at the door.

“Who was trying to get in the door?”

“Perhaps your father.”

Becca’s eyes looked at his, and he felt her intelligence alive in them. “Or no one,” she said, her voice low. “Perhaps I heard the voices myself.”

“I don’t know that. In a way, it doesn’t matter.”

“Dr. Thayer, if I show you something, will you believe that I am not delusional?”

Nat studied her face. “You can try. But I’ve seen the door. Yes, someone attacked it with a knife.”

“You’re thinking I did that, too.”

“No.” He took a deep breath and released it. “Honestly . . . I don’t know.”

Becca smiled. He felt his body growing lighter, as if helium were filling his chest. He felt their closeness.

“You can’t help me, Dr. Thayer. If I’m not really dead, that means I’m crazy—and not in any way you can fix.”

She wore a smile that almost mocked him. But in her eyes there was something that contradicted the smile. Hope. A silent appeal.

“You’re very much alive,” he said. “And I can help you. We’re going to get you better. I promise.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
he classroom at St. Adolphus was quiet Monday morning as Ms. Elizabeth Sena made her way through the desks. Her first graders were so bad this year,
so
unruly and
so
loud, that she considered moments like these—when all the little heads were bent over their papers, coloring—a kind of triumph. She didn’t want to break the spell by even speaking.

It had been a long day, and it was shaping up to be a long year. There were going to be a lot of assignments like this one in the months ahead.

Today’s assignment was to draw one friend as you saw them. It could be a parent or a grandma or a crossing guard, so long as the person was your friend. She’d made sure to include those categories because if she didn’t, God only knew what the loners like Matthew Fudderman and Charlie Bailey would draw. Matthew had no friends because he was a fat, odorous bully. And Charlie . . . well, Charlie was just different.

She turned a corner by Rita Molino’s desk, saw she was making something outrageously colorful, as usual. Smart girl, though the mother was trash from the Shan. Across from her, Marcus was gazing off into the distance, having completed just a big round head with triangle ears—was the boy drawing Dracula, for God’s sake? Ms. Sena stopped above Marcus’s straw-colored mop of hair and glanced down. Crisis averted. The boy wasn’t drawing Dracula; he was just unable to form human ears. Marcus should have been left behind a year instead of being shoved into
her class. His overbearing parents, both lawyers, would be the ruin of him.

She moved on. At least Marcus was drawing
something
. And the dome of silence was still intact. That was the important thing. She needed to rest her sorely tried nerves.

Strolling again, the only sound the whisk of her feet on the polished floor and the occasional “ummmm” from a student. She eyed Matthew Fudderman, coming up on the right.
Let’s see who he thinks is his friend today
, she thought,
the deluded little fool.
Ms. Sena came up behind Matthew and turned to look down. The Incredible Hulk. The boy was actually drawing the Hulk. He was incorrigible. She’d stressed that the friend had to be a
real
person and
not
a superhero out of a comic book, but Matthew had a hard head. Ms. Sena paused over him, watching the green crayon rub furiously against the paper, the tip of the boy’s wet little tongue visible in the right corner of his sloppy mouth, coloring the big green torso.

But no. She wasn’t about to speak to Matthew, because his arms would fly up in frustration and his screeching would begin and the little dome of quiet inside the room would be destroyed. Ms. Sena felt she deserved a few minutes of calm. She began to think about the bottle of cabernet she’d left out on her kitchen counter before she’d turned on the radio for Jacks, her Pekingese, who’d be alone all day. It was 1:16 p.m. now, so that meant in about three hours, the first delicious pour of the wine would be rolling down her throat.

Ms. Sena walked down the last row. Charlie Bailey was at the head. Poor silent Charlie with Heller’s syndrome. At the beginning of the year, she’d had to take a class on special disabilities just because of him. His father had fought to get Charlie into a normal classroom environment—the deadly stigma of the short bus was still strong, she’d learned—and so here he was. Charlie was sweet, but it wasn’t easy accommodating him—the speech
lessness, the notes scrawled in their capital letters. He tried, though. The boy did try.

He now looked up at her uncertainly as she approached. Ms. Sena raised her eyebrows, as if to say,
What do you have for me today, Charlie?
He was leaning over the paper, his right shoulder blocking her view.

She bent down.

“How’s it looking, Charlie?”

The boy’s eyes. As deep as an ocean.

Something quailed inside of her. She felt fear coming off of the boy in tiny wavelets. Like low-level radiation.

“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “Let me have a look.”

Charlie shook his head.

“Uh, Ms. Sena?” It was Matthew.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said evenly.

“Yeah, but is the Hulk—”

“I said one minute.”

Matthew muttered something and his head went down again.

Ms. Sena laid her hand on Charlie’s shoulder. It was trembling. The poor thing, he should really be in special ed, where they had the personnel to deal with things like this.

She applied the lightest pressure, pulling him toward her as if to whisper in his ear. As he came back, she peeked over his shoulder. Probably another Marvel hero.

“Good Lord, Charlie,” she hissed, her hand tightening on his shoulder. A shiver of horror ran through her.

The face on the paper was black as coal. It had high cheekbones, a gaping mouth, and its eyes circled in, each like a whirlpool toward a center of bright orange. It looked . . . diabolical.

“Who in God’s name is that?”

Charlie looked at her and said nothing, just stared at her with those big brown eyes.

“Charlie. You were supposed to draw your friend. Did you
not understand the assignment?” She had the sudden urge to send the drawing immediately out of her classroom. There was something . . . unearthly about it. A seven-year-old drawing a satanic figure and calling it his friend.

She reached down for the paper. She would throw it away. Or burn it.

Charlie swiveled his shoulders and pulled his drawing away from her outstretched fingers. She touched the corner of it, but he jerked it away, then angrily looked up at her.

Ms. Sena stood up straight, one hand on her hip, feeling a rush of heat coming up her neck.

“Charlie!”

He was looking down, afraid to meet her eyes.

“Who is this . . . person?”

Heads popped up. She glared at them, and all but Matthew sank back down. Charlie pulled the paper out farther onto the desk. He took a red crayon and began to scribble something under the thing’s black neck. Interested despite herself, Ms. Sena watched.

The boy crouched over the drawing, blocking her view. She tapped her foot on the linoleum floor.

Finally, Charlie pulled back to show her what he’d done.

THE MAGICIAN
, it read.

“Well, I don’t like the looks of the magician,” Ms. Sena said a little too abrasively. “Draw somebody else.”

Charlie looked at her. The sadness in his face . . . Okay, fine, she would try. She bent down to him, putting a hand again on his little shoulder. “Don’t you have another friend?”

He shook his head.

“What about your daddy?”

Charlie’s head went still and the brown eyes regarded her.

“Just draw somebody else,” she said, attempting not to hiss at the boy. “I don’t care if it’s Superman, for Christ’s sake . . .”

She heard her own voice screeching. The little heads shot bolt upward all around the room, and two hands shot up. Ms. Sena cursed under her breath. She was letting her anger take control. The dome of silence was shattered.

Charlie’s confusion mingling with fear in his eyes.

“Not like that,” she snapped. “Turn the paper over.”

Charlie did as he was told. And now just stared at the blank side.

She was going to speak to Mrs. Abruzzi as soon as possible. She’d had enough of little Charlie Bailey. It was time for him to go.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

J
ohn Bailey was driving down State Street when his phone buzzed in his pocket. The little screen read
Wartham Coll
. He stared at in puzzlement—
Is someone calling me from administration?
—before realizing that all calls from Wartham were labeled with the college and not individual rooms or dorms. He quickly pressed
Talk
.

A drifting wave of static sounded in his ear, rising and falling.

“Detective Bailey,” he said.

The static dipped, and from the back of it emerged a voice. “Hello?”

“Yes, this is Detective Bailey. Who am I talking to?”

Ssssshhhhhhh
in his ear.
ShhhhhWWWWWOOHHHHHHHHHHH.

He thought he heard a voice. It was like one of those hearing tests when you’re tensed to pick up anything and you think you detect a ping after it’s sounded.

“This is . . .” The static rose to a moan. It was like talking to someone in space.

“Who is this?”

“
Rrrrr
 . . .”

John pulled over in front of McGinnis’s Hardware and jammed the car into park. Without the sound of the engine, he could hear deeper into the static.

“Yeah?”

“
Rrrrrrramo
. . .”

John frowned. It had to be the black girl. “Ramona?”

“. . .
essssss
.”

“Ramona, where are you? The reception is terrible.”

It was the reception, but it was something in her voice, too, in the middle of that storm of electricity. She sounded a little off. Almost panicked.