Mr. Nobody(90)
I rest back into my chair, aware of the bulk of my mobile phone and pager in the depths of my coat pocket. The phone is right there, on silent—I could slip a hand down and get it. But then what? Pull it out and dial? Or just blindly tap at it in my pocket? I vaguely know there’s a combination of buttons you’re supposed to press to make a secret emergency call, but I have absolutely no idea which ones. Why did I never find that out? I could try my luck anyway but I’d only risk tipping the balance of this situation if he catches my hand moving. I’d only be shortening any precious time I have left. I know I can’t outrun him, so I need to outthink him. I need time. I need to work out who he is and what he wants with me.
I watch him settle; he winces slightly as he leans his shoulder back into the chair, this man who isn’t Matthew and isn’t Stephen. I ask myself what I actually know about him. I know he knows things about me he couldn’t know. He knew my name was Marni as soon as he saw me. And I know he’s killed, he’s told me as much himself.
In spite of everything that’s happened I still can’t help but wonder if this does lead back to that night fourteen years ago.
Judging by his demeanor, I don’t think he wants to kill me. He’s had the opportunity to hurt me already and he hasn’t—in fact, he’s saved me. A faint glint of hope sparks inside me.
I let my gaze connect unthreateningly with his. I’ve worked with dangerous people throughout my medical career; the trick is to realize that they are the most vulnerable. They need the most care.
“What is it that you remember?” I ask gently, after some time passes.
He looks away, out the French doors, toward the sea. “Just pieces, really. Only fragments.”
I weigh his words, unwilling to be fooled again—there is a chance he’s lying. But given the fMRI results only days ago, he should still be only dealing in fragments, as he says.
“Tell me about these fragments,” I prompt. “Is the memory of the forest one of them?”
He glares back at me, caught off guard. “Yes,” he returns, “the forest is one of them.”
Slowly his gaze softens and drops from me. “There was a girl,” he continues. “In the forest. I was younger, I don’t know when this was, what year or where. The memories are only images, sounds, feelings.” He pauses, clearly working through the memory as he speaks. “They come in flashes, moments. A young girl with dark hair. The sound of her chasing me, breathing. I feel in the memory that I loved her. I cared for her. I can’t remember her name or…She’s running after me. She was so…she wanted to help me. She was so good. An image of her face close to mine…she cried when I—I don’t remember why I did it—these horrible thoughts—” He breaks off, his eyes glistening in the light from the French doors.
I study this stranger’s face, a face I thought I knew, a face I’d come to love in my own way. This man has Matthew’s features but someone else’s voice, and the things he’s saying Matthew would never say.
He swipes away the wetness beneath his eyes with the sleeve of his good arm and looks back at me, searching for a reaction, a judgment, on his partial confession. But I’m used to hearing confessions. I’m used to being a receptacle for awful things, it’s part of my job. I keep my face an impartial blank, no reproach, only my willingness to hear more.
“I remember it happening, Emma. I remember my hands around her neck. Her eyes, the life fading, her pupils releasing, impossibly wide, black, endless.” He breaks off momentarily, lost in the memory, before snapping back to me. “I remember it happening but I don’t remember me doing it. Does that make sense? I mean, I wouldn’t do that, a thing like that. You have to believe me. I couldn’t do a thing like that…it makes no sense. These memories I have—they aren’t me—I can’t have done those things.”
His voice sounds reedy and lost. He has no connection to these events, no personal identification with these actions. And for one insane microsecond the idea that, perhaps, these awful memories truly aren’t Matthew’s at all flashes through my mind. The idea that somehow he could be part of the military, that these memories could somehow be someone else’s, that he could be part of some kind of program. A neuroscience experiment, a study in memory manipulation, and somehow, Groves could be part of all this.
Stop it, Em.
My thoughts stutter to a halt, because, of course, that is not possible. Medically, none of that is possible. I so want there to be another explanation to this story, I so want this man to be good, that I’m seriously considering the existence of artificial memory implantation in test subjects. I’d actually rather consider science fiction than believe my patient is a bad person. That’s how strong an effect Matthew has on people, consciously or not. That’s how much I want him to just be Matthew. An innocent man wronged.
But I know the human brain—what it can and can’t do—and memories can’t be implanted. Facts can be suggested to subjects, as in the shopping mall experiment, and memories can be embellished or reframed, but they can’t be completely fabricated. Not in the way that would be necessary to explain the things Matthew is telling me. Whole life histories can’t be manufactured, not by the military, not by anyone. Neuroscience just doesn’t work like that; only wishful thinking does. Matthew killed those people, plain and simple.