13: THE THREAT

EILEEN SLOUCHED IN her chair, staring at Hanna with wide, furious eyes. Her nostrils flared with each heavy breath and her teeth clenched together, grinding from side to side. Thick leather straps bound her arms and legs to the chair.

“I have a few questions for you,” Hanna said, sitting across from her. “Do you mind?”

Eileen sneered. “You’re a pig, just like the rest of them. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you.”

“I apologize for sedating you, but it was necessary. You have to understand we’re only trying to help you. If you cooperate, we may be able to reduce your sentence.” She glanced at Charles, not actually sure if that statement was true. He shook his head, out of Eileen’s sight.

Eileen tried to adjust her arm, but the strap prevented her from doing so. “Do you really think I’m going to believe a word you say? I can’t trust anyone in this room. You’re all corrupt pigs.”

“I don’t expect you to trust me, but I’m going to talk anyway, and I expect you to listen. We learned a few things while you were sedated. We know about your father and how he treated you. We know he physically abused you when you were a child.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“It couldn’t have been easy growing up like that. Getting bullied at school, and then coming home to your father.”

“School sucked. Home sucked. What else is new?”

“And that’s why you dropped out of school. You were a pretty good student, weren’t you? But you just couldn’t put up with it anymore. You threw in the towel and gave up.”

“Good student? Hell no.”

“Yes, you were. I saw it with my own eyes.”

Eileen squinted. “What the hell does that mean?”

Hanna pointed to the headband hanging from her chair. “We were inside your mind, remember? And while we were in there, we saw all sorts of things. Thoughts. Memories. Fears.” She paused to let that last word linger. “We discovered a fear of yours while we were in there. We learned you’re afraid of the dark. Is that correct?”

“Is that what you did? You found out I was scared of the dark and used it to torture me?”

Hanna flinched, caught off guard by the accusation. She intended to use Eileen’s fear as a threat but, apparently, the threat had already happened. “Tell me,” she said, leaning forward, “where did you end up after we sedated you? Describe it in as much detail as possible.”

“I thought I was going nuts, at first, but now it all makes sense. You guys messed with my brain. Made me think I was back in Neverhill. Back on my old street. You trapped me under that goddamn light.”

“We trapped you?”

“Yeah, you trapped me. I don’t know how you pulled it off. Some sort of voodoo mind games, I guess. When I stepped out of the streetlight, everything went dark and that fricking monster attacked me out of nowhere. It took a bite out of my hand. Bit my pinky right off. So I went back under the light and stayed there, praying the nightmare would end. It’s a sick form of torture, if you ask me.”

Hanna nodded. “We’ll end it, if you’re willing to cooperate.”

“I don’t know what you want from me. I already told you I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill any of them. How can I make that any clearer to you morons?”

“You can lead us to your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.”

Eileen scrunched her face. “My what?”

“You can let us access the deeper parts of your brain.”

“Hell no. After what you did to me last time, do you really think I’m going to let you go deeper? I don’t trust you for a second. For all I know, you’ll find a way to control what I say. You’ll pull the strings in my brain and make me confess. Nope. There’s no way I’m letting that happen.”

“Then we’ll continue to use your nyctophobia against you.”

“My nycto-what? Look, I don’t care what you do to me. The fact that you still want to poke around in my brain tells me that you haven’t found what you’re looking for. Otherwise, you would just send me to jail. So, as far as I’m concerned, all I have to do is sit back and let you poke because you’re not going to find what you think you will.”

“Okay,” Hanna said. “Have fun in the dark.”

She stood up and walked to where Charles, Howard, and Claire were standing. “She’s not going to cooperate. She’s made that clear.”

“So, what now?” Charles asked.

“I didn’t really expect her to cooperate, but it was worth of shot. We do have some new information, though. We know her starting location. She described her hometown. It’s probably not far from where Claire and I started. And it sounds like she encountered the same monster we did.”

“Can we use that against her?” Charles asked.

“We could, but I would prefer not to. I didn’t intend to follow through with her nyctophobia. It was only meant to be a threat.”

“Will it get results?”

“Potentially, yes. But it’s torture, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know if you can call it torture. We’re not physically harming her.”

“True, nothing will physically happen to her but, mentally, she will feel pain. The experience can be just as traumatic.”

“As long as she’s not in physical danger, I’m okay proceeding.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Charles gave a stern look. “Yes, I’m sure. Proceed with this plan. That’s an order.”

“Alright,” Hanna said. “But not right now. We need to wait until the sedative is out of her system before we give her any more. High concentrations of sedative in her blood can be dangerous when thought-hopping, for her and us. We’ll try in the morning. The footage from today’s session should be processed and ready for viewing by then as well.”

“Good,” Charles said. “Everyone, go home and get some rest. We’ll watch the footage first thing in the morning, and then we’ll proceed with our second session.”

Howard and Charles split off to help Russell unstrap Eileen from the chair. Hanna walked in the other direction to get her coat from her office.

Claire caught up with her in the hallway. “Do you really think this is the best plan? Torture? I can’t say that I agree.”

“I don’t agree either,” Hanna said. “But it’s what Charles wants. Our job is to follow orders. Otherwise, Russell and I don’t get paid.”

“Our job is to get results. There must be a better way to do that.”

“The only other way is to gain her trust.”

“Trust? You heard her back there. She hates all of us. You were the only one she didn’t despise, but you flushed that opportunity away when you told her you’re working for us. You flushed it again when you decided to sedate her. There’s no way she’ll come back around.”

Hanna shook her head. “There’s always a way. We just have to find it.”