“I THINK I’m losing my mind, Judie. I want to go see that doctor.”
It was around 8 p.m., and we were hanging out in the kitchen of the Houllihan’s hostel. We’d already had dinner, and the children were in their bunks, Beatrice reading Twilight and Jip playing Angry Birds on the iPad. Judie had invited us to spend the night far away from the house that still gave her goose bumps. And I was infinitely grateful. All afternoon, as we ran errands around town and attended a meeting to finalize the details for movie night, I’d tried to put on a good face for the sake of the kids. And I’d done it mostly without a problem, until I was alone with Judie, washing dinner plates, and I couldn’t hold back anymore.
“What a shitty day this has been. I made a fool of myself down at the police station, and what’s worse, I think I hurt one of my best friends.”
Judie knew immediately who I was talking about.
“I went over to talk to Leo. In hindsight, I simply went there so he could tell me what I wanted to hear: that I’m not crazy and that there’s a reason why all this is happening to me. And all I managed to do was open some very old wounds. I made him talk about something deeply painful, and I admitted to rifling through his things the night we went over with the kids.”
Judie gave me a dumbfounded look.
“You didn’t . . .”
“It was almost an accident, the way it came out. But yeah, I did. I stumbled upon a couple things that were hidden on a bookshelf. Something was drawing me toward it, to look in there. . . . Actually, I think there’s something you should know about my family. About this weird ‘ability’ that runs in the Harper bloodline.”
While we washed dishes, in just above a whisper I told her about my mother, the Aer Lingus accident, and about the voice I heard the night of the storm, before leaving the house. About Jip and his incident over by the rocks, and how he could “feel” when something bad was going to happen. And that’s when I realized I had been acting exactly like my dad. Hoping that it would simply go away if I didn’t talk about it.
“So now you know. And you have every right to think I’m out of my mind,” I said.
“Maybe you’re not as crazy as you think,” she answered.
I asked what she meant, but she raised an index finger to her lips and told me to follow her. We walked by the room with the bunk beds and saw Jip fast asleep, the iPad fallen to the floor by the bed. In the bunk above him, Beatrice was propped up on a pillow, reading with a small flashlight, absorbed in her book.
We descended the stairs in silence. Downstairs, besides the front door, there was another door that connected to the store. Judie opened it, and we walked through the shadowy space, amid miniature lighthouses, model boats, and shelves filled with second-hand books until we reached the back.
“I wanted to make sure they can’t hear us.”
“Hear what?”
After you told me about your dream the other night, I decided there’s something you need to know. But first, I need you to tell me the story again.”
She sat down and opened the small box where she kept her stash of weed.
“Judie, I’m not sure that I should. I’ve screwed up enough with my friends today. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
“I’m asking you to, Pete.”
Okay, I said, and I described the scene again: her, with her hands and feet bound, inside the resonant chamber of my piano, in a pool of blood, begging me for help. A man was coming to hurt her.
Judie had rolled a small joint and lit it as I retold her the story. When I was done, I noticed she looked at me with a strange mix of fear and fascination.
“It’s incredible, Pete. It really is.”
“What is?”
“But everything fits. Especially after you told me the thing about your family. I think it’s about time I told you something,” she said, pausing. “That man, Donald Kauffman? It’s true, he was my professor. But he also was my doctor. He treated me in the past. I was his patient.”
“His patient?”
“Yes. There was a time in my life when I needed help. Before I traveled to India, I had a . . .” She stopped again to take hit of the joint and spoke through a puff of smoke. “. . . an accident.”
I reached out, took her hand, and squeezed it gently.
“The scars along your side. The nightmares . . .”
She nodded.
“It was no motorcycle accident, although I guess you’ve probably figured that out by now. As for the nightmares . . . it’s been years since I’ve spent more than one night with someone. You’re the first. I knew you’d eventually have questions. I figured I’d tell you someday . . . I wanted to tell you. But I was scared. Scared to open up a door I know is going to let in pain.”
She took a long hit—maybe too long—and offered me the joint. I took it as she let out another cloud of aromatic smoke.
“You’re one of the few people I can talk to, Peter. It’s been a long time since I’ve told this story, but I think you have a right to know.” She took a deep breath. “There was a man who hurt me. Who really hurt me. He’s the one who injured my side. But that’s just a scratch compared to what he did to my mind.
“And I still see his face at night. . . .”
She held my hand tighter without knowing it.
“It was five years ago. I was working at Princess Grace Hospital as a psychology resident. That’s all anyone in Clenhburran knows about my time in London. But there’s more. The real reason why I left.
“Every day, I’d go to Regent’s Park to eat my lunch. That’s where I met a man named . . .” She stopped for a second, as if just the name brought back a rush of memories. But she continued. “A man named Pedro. He was Portuguese and he worked at one of the take-out places near the underground station. They served falafel, my favorite, so four days a week, I’d stop in, we’d talk for a while, and then I’d head to the park to sit outside and eat my lunch with a book.
“I’d been going there for about a month. I noticed Pedro looking at me, and he was smart—cleverer than your average person—and he remembered every detail I’d told him about myself. And I liked him, too. I was single. I’d just broken up with my boyfriend of three years, and I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I wanted to meet people who were fun, and Pedro looked like fun. He had a beautiful smile, and he always talked about his quaint little town in Portugal, about the beaches there, the food, the wine. I liked him even though he wasn’t really my type. And one night, I agreed to have a glass of wine with him. We went to a bar near the park after work, and he insisted on treating me. He didn’t want me to lift a finger and went to the bar for drinks. ‘In my country, the men take care of everything,’ he said, smiling. I felt this rush of romance. It had been so long since I had let someone wine and dine me.
“We started to drink and talk. Everything was going perfectly, but then I started to feel dizzy and sleepy. I even joked about it when I started yawning. I told him not to think I was bored of his company, but I was probably tired from a long week. He smiled and joked that he wouldn’t take it personally. It was Friday, after all. I had a right to be tired. He told me about another place that was a little more lively, a club just down the street, and thought that might help me get my second wind. We went there and had another drink. But by that point, my eyes were starting to close as Pedro talked about his life, about his plans to buy some property in Madrid . . . and in the end he was the one who suggested it might be time to go home. ‘But you can’t take the tube in this state,’ he joked, ‘or you’ll wake up at the end of the line.’
“My mind got hazy. I was sleepy, the noise of the club was dizzying, and it seemed like I’d gotten drunk too quickly. And for a split second, I thought I was making a mistake getting into a car with this total stranger. But I told myself I was being ridiculous, and I was almost falling asleep when Pedro helped me out of the bar. Just before passing out, I remembered I hadn’t even given him my address. How stupid of me, right?”
Judie sighed. A single tear ran down her cheek, and she gave a weak smile. I squeezed her hand.
“Judie, you really don’t have to . . .”
But she continued speaking as if she hadn’t heard me.
“He raped me,” she said, pursing her lips. “While I slept. And again, after I woke up, in this horrible place. A windowless room. Later, I learned it was a basement in Brixton. He’d tied me to the bed. Tied my hands and feet, Peter, just like in your dream.”
“Holy shit . . .”
I reached for the pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket. I took the last one and lit it.
“I was locked in there for two days. And in some way, I’m locked in there still. A piece of me has stayed locked in there forever. I knew there had been others, too. I saw desperate scratch marks on the walls, discarded women’s clothing, stains on the floor that could only have been blood. I knew what was going to happen to me. I knew it instantly. I’d seen his face. He was never going to let me out of there alive.
“Before he left in the mornings, he’d inject me with something in the arm. Turned out it was heroin. I spent most of the day asleep. When I’d come to, I’d scream as loud as I could—well, as loud as was possible through the gag. I struggled against the leather bindings. I’d pull so hard—I’d amputate my own hand if that’s what it took—and finally one of the straps started to come loose. I used to complain about how thin my wrists were and now they were going to save my life. Ironic, isn’t it?
“The binding slipped right to edge of my thumb but I realized that’s as far as it would go because of the bone. So I didn’t think twice. I started banging my hand as hard as I could until I dislocated my thumb. I got my hand free, and pulled off the gag. I started yelling myself hoarse, calling for help.
“If Pedro had restrained me with handcuffs, I’d be dead now. But that son of a bitch didn’t count on me waking up before the drugs wore off. I found out later the evil bastard had killed his mother down there first, and then used the basement to kill three other women. Three poor women who weren’t lucky enough to escape like me. These women—they were thirty-eight, forty-one, and nineteen. I didn’t want to know more than that. How long they’d been in there. What finally happened to them. The only thing I ever asked the cops for was a picture of each. I try to imagine them smiling, in a better place. It helps me to think that somehow they helped me escape that day, as if they spoke to me: ‘You can do it, Judie. Pull your hand out as hard as you can. I couldn’t, but you can!’
“When Pedro came through the door that afternoon, I knew someone had heard my screaming. He looked scared, frantic. I started to scream again, and he jumped on the bed, knelt on my chest and punched me three times until I was knocked nearly unconscious. He told me it was time to get rid of me the way he’d gotten rid of the others, and then he told me exactly how he was going to do it, the way you rehearse a speech in front of a mirror: He was going to chop me up in his bathtub and burn the pieces, one at a time, in the house’s furnace. But since I’d been such a bad girl, he was going to gag me again, and do it all while I was still alive.
“Thank God a neighbor had heard the noise and called police. The cops knew the neighborhood. They’d been there a few months earlier when a taxi driver swore he’d seen a man carrying a drunken woman who matched one of the missing women’s descriptions, the last victim. Between my screams and the neighbor’s phone call (a young Indian man named Asif Sahid who I still call every Christmas), the police raced down. They banged on the door, and Pedro swore I’d pay for what I did. He plunged a butcher knife deep into my side—once, twice—before police broke down the door and shot him dead, with a bullet right to the forehead.”
“Yeah. That was his final act. But of course, it wasn’t the end of the story. I didn’t sleep for six months afterward. I was terrified. The nightmares ruled my life. I’d wake up screaming, or rather, howling with fear. Completely by accident, I discovered a way round the problem: I slept at a youth hostel. Surrounded by thirty or so people snoring in their sleep—call it safety in numbers—was the only way I could manage to rest.
“But it wasn’t a cure. One night, while I was working at the hospital, I was making rounds alone when I saw a man who looked like Pedro coming down the lonely hallway. I panicked. Forget that I’d seen his death certificate and even his body. My irrational mind thought he had survived somehow. I hid in a janitor’s closet and spent the night in there, crying.
“I started self-medicating, first with prescription drugs, which were easy to get at work, and later with harder stuff. I couldn’t stand to be alone, ever. I started going to bars and making friends—the bigger and tougher the better. I became sullen and needy . . . I guess one day I woke up in some strange house, with a man I didn’t know and realized things had gotten way out of control. The hospital did the best thing they ever could have done: They fired me. My boss, a guy I used to think was an asshole but now I deeply respect, said they’d tried to look the other way, ignore my missing work or how disheveled I looked when I did show up. But he said I just was in no condition to be back at work. He’s the one who told me about Dr. Kauffman and suggested I make an appointment with him in Belfast. More than suggested, actually. He stood by as I dialed the number. And so I went to see him.
“Kauffman listened to my story and told me I need to see him in Belfast. ‘My method is intensive, but it works. I think in as little as a month, we can fix most of the damage.’
“It was my first time in Ireland, and I loved it immediately. On the weekends, when I wasn’t meeting with Kauffman, I’d rent a car and travel around the north. That’s when I decided I’d like to live here. One time, I ended up lost here, in Clenhburran, and that’s how I met Mrs. Houllihan. It was raining cats and dogs, and hers was the only place open. She gave me tea and offered me a place to spend the night. (In those days, there were no hotels in Clenhburran.) She was a lovely woman. She loved to travel and had been all over the world. We spent the whole night talking, and although I never told her the whole truth about me, I think she intuited it, somehow—or most of it, anyway. She confided that she hoped to retire in a few years and didn’t know who she might turn the business over to. I think she knew I’d want it, so she wasn’t surprised when I accepted right away . . . ‘But first I have some things I need to take care of. A brief trip,’ I told her.
“ ‘Of course, child,’ she said, ‘but don’t take too long.’ That night, for the first night in more than a year, I slept without any medication or tricks of any kind. The next morning, when I came downstairs and went down to the harbor and saw the old men feeding the seals, I decided I loved this place.
“In about a month and a half, Kauffman and I had made real progress. I still had nightmares, though, and Kauffman was honest with me about it. ‘You’ll most likely continue to have them. Maybe forever. They’re scars from a very deep wound. But at least we’ve stopped the bleeding.’ And that was true. The hypnosis helped me put some distance between me and the monster. The voice in my head was a muffled sound I could finally manage. That’s when I knew I was ready to grab my backpack and go. And that’s what I did. I went to Vietnam, Thailand, India, Nepal. Spiritual retreats. Meditation. I learned to control my emotions, to accept them as something inevitable, but to keep them in their proper place. When I was ready to return, Mrs. Houllihan was still waiting for me, ready to hang it up and retire to Tenerife.”
“I’m glad you came back,” I said, squeezing her hand and kissing it. “I’m glad I found your way back to Clenhburran.”
“Me too, Peter. So now you know the truth. And maybe you’re not so crazy.”
“Agreed. But in either case, I want to see Kauffman. I don’t trust myself, anymore. I have to try to take control over whatever this is. And right now he sounds like my best option. Can you help me get in to see him as soon as possible?”
“Consider it done,” she said. “I’ll take care of everything.”