I take Bloody-Head’s warning about revealing too much at therapy to heart. Before the session with Feshtig, I spend twenty minutes in the parking lot in my car, considering what I will say this time. I search for something that will please me even more than last week’s story about my chastening of the boys, something to keep him off balance, something new.
The only thing that will do is the murder.
But it would be a mistake to speak of the murder. It is too close, too open to investigation.
Though, if I tell it as a dream . . .
No, it is too much of a risk.
Still, it is what I want to talk about.
“Feeling lucky?” asks Bloody-Head.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Tell if you want,” he says. “Take a few chances. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“We’ve been making a great deal of progress,” suggests Feshtig.
“Yes,” I say. “We really have.”
“How have your dreams been?”
“They haven’t stopped, if that’s what you mean.”
“Are they still as frequent?”
I shrug. “A little less.”
He sits staring at me until I begin to talk, constructing a new dream on the fly. I describe Bloody-Head’s face to him, his nicks and cuts, say that he was the one who killed the girl.
“In the dream, did you have a name for him?”
“He doesn’t have a name.”
“Did you call him anything?”
I consider whether I dare tell him the truth, then figure it can’t hurt. “Sure,” I say. “Bloody-Head.”
“Why?”
“Because he was a bloody head.”
“Didn’t he have a body?”
I think a moment, guess at what he wants to hear. “I was his body,” I suggest.
“He was your head?”
“My head was my head. He was extra.”
“He was a part of you?”
“He wasn’t a part of me, he was attached to me.”
“Why did he have a bloody head?”
“How should I know? I just dreamed it.”
“You dreamed he engineered the murder of the girl?”
Yes, I am going to say, but when I look up I see Bloody-Head behind Feshtig, shaking his head no.
I avoid the question. I begin describing the murder as it might have been if I had stumbled across it, the scene from the outside, after the murder. I try to lead him away, but he keeps drawing things back to the bloody-headed man. Bloody-Head himself just stays standing behind him, shaking his head, arms crossed.
“How did his head become bloody?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you feel the cuts were purposeful or accidental?”
I can’t figure out why he wants to know this, how he’ll interpret what I’ll say. “I don’t know,” I say in some confusion. “Out of necessity maybe.”
He makes a note. Behind him, Bloody-Head is frowning. I look down, keep my head down, so I won’t have to look at him.
“In the dream, he didn’t seem all bad,” I suggest.
“No?”
I glance up in time to see Bloody-Head draw his finger across his throat.
Feshtig turns around in his chair and stares through Bloody-Head, then turns back to me. I start to get nervous.
“What did you mean when you said he wasn’t all bad?”
I do not need to look up to know that Bloody-Head is waving his hands, shaking his head. I stumble through a few responses and then clamp down, bide my time until the session runs out.
When I open the door, Bloody-Head is in the car.
“Brother,” he says, “don’t go back.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve given too much away.”
“I’ve changed things,” I say.
“He’s smarter than you think. He’s given you enough relief that you’ll sleep easy. Be satisfied with that.”
I start the car.
“Do you hear me?” he asks.
“I heard you,” I say. “I have a question of my own: who are you?”
“Who am I?”
“Are you Jesus?”
“Jesus? What do you think?”
I think about it a while. “Yes,” I say. “I think you are.”
He smiles. I take this as confirmation.
“I’ll stop then,” I say. “I won’t go back. Anything for Jesus.”