Cast a Pale Shadow(51)

"I want to love her, Doctor. For the first time in my life, I want someone to love," Cole had said when he came to him with his plea for help. "When I'm with her, it is like I'm someone else. Not Cole. Not Nicholas either. But someone who's only whole when she's there to complete me. Is that love, do you think? I know so little about it."

"Yes. I think that is love."

"But you know how hopeless it is. I'm more than a little insane, and I remember only half a life, and I probably killed her father. A promising start for a young couple in love."

"You are no murderer, Cole. I am sure of that," he'd promised him.

And Fitapaldi had believed that so deeply that when the first jolt of the session struck him, he panicked and pulled back from his questions instead of pursuing them to resolution. As a doctor, he had broken the primary tenet of therapy and become too involved with his patient to be able to accept the revelation neutrally as he should have. Thus, he had failed Cole as dismally as all the others of his profession had ever failed him. How could he have been so wrong?

The tape spun to its end and Fitapaldi rewound and played it again, hoping he had somehow missed a key phrase that would make the nightmare stop. Cole's voice in flat, slowing cadence recited the numbers once more.

"Ninety-four, ninety-three, ninety, nine..."

"Are you feeling all right, Cole? Do you hear me?"

"I'm cold. See the goose bumps? I hear you."

"Will you answer my questions?"

"Fire away, Doc."

"What is your name?"

"Nicholas. Andrew. Brewer."

"Good. And when were you born?"

"July 28, 1937. A Depression baby. Another mouth to feed. Save a place in the soup line."

"Do you know where you were born?"

"Dayton, Ohio. Ohh-hii-ooo. It's very cold. My teeth are chattering. Is there a window open?"

"We'll get you a jacket." A pause, then, "There. Is that better?"

"A l-little."

"I want you to think back to just a short while ago, Nicholas, just two weeks ago. Can you remember back that far?"

"Far, far ago."

"Just two weeks. It was evening. Do you remember Bob Kirk?"

"The grave. Yes, the grave. Far, far ago. Once upon a time. The c-cold and l-lonely grave. So dark, forever dark."

"No, Nicholas, I want you to remember before that, before the cemetery. The night you--"

"The night there was no morning. And Cynthia is in the dark. As c-c-cold as I am. I'm sh-shivering. Is it right to b-be so c-cold?"

"Do you want to stop the session, Nicholas? Nurse, get me some blankets."

"No g-good. N-no good. I wrapped her in the quilt. B-but it was no good. Cynthia, my sleeping princess. Awake. Aw-wake t-to me. D-down, down in the d-deep, cold grave. Take me. G-god, Cy-cynthia, take me with you!"

"You can leave this memory now. Come back to just two weeks ago. There is no Cynthia in this memory of two weeks ago."

"No, there is no Cynthia an-anymore. 'Til death do us p-part, Cynthia. But it was not s-supposed to part us. Why couldn't you t-take me with you?"

"It's all right, Nicholas. We are stopping now. You don't have to remember anymore. Look, here are the blankets. We will let you sleep, now."

Fitapaldi snapped off the tape recorder and buried his face in his hands. Cynthia. He remembered Cynthia from the stack of pictures Cole had brought with him to the session, hoping they would stir a memory. Cynthia with the large, dark eyes, alert and luminous as a sparrow's in her thin, triangular face. Cynthia, smiling, with wisps of hair sticking out of the kerchief she had tied behind her head like a Russian peasant. "If we only had forever, Nicholas. Love, Cynthia," she had scrawled on the back of one of the photos.

When, with tortured effort, Fitapaldi succeeded in clearing his mind of Cynthia, the memory of Cole took her place, shivering violently in the jacket, under the blanket, mumbling about the grave, the dark and lonely grave until the second injection he had given him had finally taken effect and he had sunk into deep sleep. He slept still, on the bed in the treatment room next door, while Fitapaldi sat and pondered his mistakes and wondered what to do. He had been so sure Cole was not a murderer, that Nicholas could not do what Cole would not have done. How could he have been so wrong?

Several hours later, when he had yet to think of any solutions and Cole faced him expectantly across the desk, Fitapaldi fell back on his training to carry him through the second part of the therapy. Perhaps there was an explanation buried as deeply as the memory. Perhaps if he slashed deep enough he would find it.

"Do you remember these photographs, Cole?'

"Yes, Trissa showed them to me several times."

"But do you remember this girl?" he held out the doe-eyed girl with the scarf. "Do you know where she is now?"

"No. She is one of Nicholas's girls. He collected them."

"And you never met her yourself?"

"No."

"Did you ever meet any of Nicholas's girls?"

"Other than Trissa? Yes, one."

"Can you show me that one?"

Cole spread the photos in a fan on the desk. "This one."

"Jane Simmons?"

"That's what the back says."

"What happened to her? Do you know?"

Cole's face clouded. "Yes."

"Can you tell me?"

"What does this have to do with me now? What does it have to do with our session?"

"You don't want to tell me?"

"I'm not proud of it."

"Not proud?"

Cole shoved his hands in his pocket and stretched his legs out in front of him, pretending a casualness that was denied by the rigid lock on his knees and the grim line of his jaw. "I got rid of her."

"How do you mean?"

He shrugged, as if it meant nothing. "I was cruel to her."

"You hurt her?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I screamed at her. I called her names. I called her a fat, stupid cow. I threw her clothes out into the street."

"I see."

Yanking his legs back, Cole sat upright, his hands out in the open again, gripping the arms of the chair. "Wait a minute. How did you think? Did you think I hit her? God, it was bad enough what I did. She cried. She pounded on the door, crying. She sat on the front steps, crying. I couldn't stand it. I went out to her and apologized. But I wouldn't let her back in. I gave her some money and took her to a motel. I told her she could have the apartment in the morning, that she was better off without me. I would be gone by then. And I was."

"Did you treat them all like that?"

"I told you. I don't remember them all."

"What about this one? Doreen?" The pictures of Doreen were more primitive, no more than blown-up snapshots, the kind a child might take with a point and click camera. They did not belong with the rest, strictly amateur.

"No."

"She was in the mental hospital with you."

"I was never in a mental hospital, except as a visitor. You know that."

"Cole, you spent five years of your life in mental hospitals. Even you know that."

Cole turned his face to the window. "That was Nicholas."

"Stop it, Cole."

The sunlight through the blinds cast a shadow of stripes across Cole's face, a shaft of it struck his eyes making them glint steely bright. "Stop what?"

"Assigning your bad memories to Nicholas. Do you remember Doreen?"

His voice lowered a register. "No."

"She killed herself."

"I don't remember."

"You were there when it happened. You screamed through the night when it happened."

"I don't remember." He turned his attention back to Fitapaldi, the crease between his eyebrows deep and hard, but his voice was dull and emotionless, resigned, defeated. "Why are you doing this? What did I say on that tape? I killed him, didn't I? You are just trying to get proof of my insanity, aren't you? You want to drive me over the edge, don't you? It's all right. It's what I want."

Only the slight tremble of his hand as he raised it to rub his temple betrayed him. "If -- If I can't have her... If I can't have Trissa, I'd just as soon be mad, stark, raving mad. Psychiatry created this monster you see before you. It is your duty to destroy it. Or -- or send me to Duncan. He'll do the job for you. He's so damned good at it."

"Doreen. Do you remember Doreen?"

"Yes! Yes, it is our memory, Nicholas's and mine."

"They're all your memories, the memories of both in the one."