The House in the Pines(64)

He raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I only want to talk.”

“I told you I don’t want to see you.”

“I just want to clear the air about the other night.”

Aubrey, standing closer to the door, faces him through the screen. She’s an inch or two taller than he is and, unlike Maya, doesn’t seem scared. “You need to leave, Frank. Now.”

“This has nothing to do with you, Aubrey. Stay out of it.”

“Or else what?” Aubrey stares him down. “I know,” she says.

A look of fear on his face, followed quickly by fury. His voice remains calm. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know what you did to us.”

Maya can’t tell if she’s bluffing.

Frank lurches at her. Stops an inch from her face. “Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words are edged with warning.

Alarm bells sound in Maya’s chest. She wonders if Aubrey is telling the truth.

Either way, it’s clear that Frank feels threatened.

“Leave,” Maya says, “or I’ll call the police.”

“Call them,” Aubrey says.

No one moves.

Maya’s eyes dart to the phone on the kitchen wall, but someone has forgotten to return the cordless receiver to its base. She checks the living room, the knife still in her hand. She doesn’t see the phone, so she hurries upstairs for her cell. Finds it in her room, in the back pocket of the jeans she wore last night to the concert. She flips the phone open and is about to dial 9-1-1 when she pauses to ask herself if she’s really doing this.

What exactly does she plan to say? What is her emergency? A man she knows is talking to her friend at the back door? Frank isn’t armed and hasn’t done anything to threaten them. Maya takes the phone to the window and pulls back the curtain. When she presses her face to the glass and looks down, she can see Frank talking to Aubrey through the screen door. She can’t see Aubrey, who’s inside the house, but they appear to be talking calmly. Then he takes something from his pocket and holds it up for her to see.

The key.

Maya has no reason to think he’s going to hurt Aubrey, yet her body reacts as if he has taken out a gun and is holding it to her head. Maya grips the knife tighter. Backs away from the window. She needs to get Aubrey back inside. Even if she appears to be fine. Even if all Maya has to go on is a feeling—she has to try. She rushes back downstairs, but her steps slow as she enters the kitchen.

She sees them through the screen door, Aubrey and Frank. They look relaxed, side by side but not touching. The sky is blue and birds are singing. Maya’s hands hang at her side, the phone in one, the knife in the other. As she gets closer, she hears the low murmur of his voice. She can’t make out the words but detects a strange, songlike rhythm. She’s almost at the door when Aubrey tips over on her side. She makes no effort to break her fall. Her shoulder strikes the concrete, then her head.

Frank turns to her, a shocked look on his face.

The screen door slams open. Maya rushes out.

“What the fuck?!” Frank says. “What happened to her?”

Maya drops the knife and the phone and falls to her knees beside her friend. “Aubrey!? Aubrey! Wake up!”

“Does she have some kind of medical condition?”

Maya ignores him.

Aubrey’s eyes are open as Maya grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her. “Oh my god, oh my god.” Aubrey’s head lolls against the concrete, lifeless as a rag doll.

Maya looks up at Frank. “What did you do?”

Frank looks stunned. “What are you talking about? We were just talking and she—she just—” He gestures at her body on the stoop, hinged unnaturally at the waist, green eyes refusing Maya’s gaze, even as they stare at her.

“You can’t blame me for this,” Frank says, panic rising in his voice. “You can’t.”

“Aubrey! Wake up! Wake up!” Maya screams, her face wet with tears, as Frank slowly backs away.





THIRTY-THREE




It wasn’t just that Maya hadn’t seen or heard the word hypnosis in years. She hadn’t thought it either, or considered what the word meant. The induction of a trancelike, highly suggestible state. It was as if the very concept had been deleted from her mind. But now that she’d managed to hear part of it—hypno—the rest of the word came back to her along with its meaning. And then it seemed obvious.

Frank had hypnotized her, not just once but repeatedly, then hidden the memories from her inside her own head. Looking back, Maya felt like she’d been circling this a long time, but it was as if the very idea had been garbled, and finally she’d grasped it. Now, as she read about hypnotism online, she learned of new research emerging from the field of neuroscience, new developments in the understanding of how what happens in the mind can have real effects in the body.

When she came to an article on posthypnotic suggestion, she felt dizzy. She rearranged the comforter around her shoulders. She’d been too hot, so she had taken off her clothes, but was then too cold, so she’d wrapped herself in blankets. Her long hair clung to her sweat-damp back.

Suggestions made during hypnosis, she read, could affect the patient’s behavior in their normal life. The hypnotist could tell a person who wanted to quit smoking, for example, that their next cigarette would taste like the worst thing they’d ever eaten. For some people, this worked—a suggestion made under hypnosis, it seemed, had the power to alter their perception later on.