The Key to Midnight (21 page)

“And perhaps you cannot picture the activity in that kitchen,” Inamura pressed on, “because it never existed. Nor the apartment in London. So I want you to float freely in time ... drift ... just drift in time ... backward ... backward in time. You are looking for a special place, a unique and important place in your life ... a place that reeks strongly of antiseptics, disinfectants. You know the place I mean. You dream of it repeatedly. Now you’re searching for it ... drifting toward it ... drifting toward that special place and time ... settling into it ... and now ...
there
... you are there in that room.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Are you sitting or standing?”

A tremor passed through her.

“Easy, relax. You’re safe, Joanna. Answer all my questions, and you will be perfectly safe. Are you sitting or standing in that room?”

“Lying down.”

“On the floor or on a bed?”

“Yes. I’m ...”

“What?”

“I’m ...”

“You’re what, Joanna?”

“I’m n-naked.”

“You seem frightened. Are you frightened?”

“Yes. S-scared.”

“What are you frightened of?”

“I’m ... s-strapped down.”

“Restrained?”

“Oh, God.”

“Relax, Joanna.”

“Oh, God. My ankles, my wrists.”

“Fly away,” said the myna bird. “Fly away.”

Inamura said, “Who did this to you, Joanna?”

“The straps are so tight.”

“Who did this to you?”

“They hurt.”

“Who strapped you to this bed, Joanna? You must answer me.”

“I smell ammonia. Strong. Makes me sick.”

“Look around the room, Joanna.”

She grimaced at the stench of ammonia.

“Look around the room,” Inamura repeated.

She lifted her head from the chair in which she reclined, opened her eyes, and looked obediently from left to right. She didn’t see Alex or the office. She now existed in anoth- er day and place. In her haunted eyes, a veil of weeks and months and years seemed to shimmer like a sheet of tears.

“What do you see?” Inamura asked.

Joanna lowered her head. Closed her eyes.

“What do you see in that room?” Inamura persisted.

A strange, guttural sound issued from her.

Inamura repeated the question.

Joanna made the peculiar noise again, then louder: an ugly, asthmatic wheezing. Suddenly her eyes popped open and rolled up until only the whites were visible. She tried to lift her hands from the arms of the chair, but apparently she believed they were strapped down, and her wheezing grew worse.

Alex rose to his feet in alarm. “She can’t breathe.”

Joanna began to jerk and twitch violently, as if great jolts of electricity were slamming through her.

“She’s choking to death!”

“Don’t touch her,” Inamura said.

Although the psychiatrist hadn’t raised his voice, his tone halted Alex.

Inamura’s left eye gleamed from deep in the shadows that fell across that side of his face, and the reflection of gold light was over his right eye again, a bright cataract that gave him an eerie aspect. He seemed to have no concern about Joanna’s apparent agony.

As Alex watched, Joanna’s blank white eyes bulged. Her face flushed, darkened. Flecks of spittle glistened on her lips. Her wheezing grew louder, louder.

“For God’s sake, help her!” Alex demanded.

Inamura said, “Joanna, you will be calm and relaxed. Let your throat muscles relax. You will do as I say. You must do as I say. Relax ... tension draining out of you ... breath coming easier ... easier. Breathe slowly ... slowly and deeply ... deeply ... evenly ... very relaxed. You are in a deep and natural sleep ... perfectly safe ... in a deep and peaceful sleep....”

Joanna gradually grew quiet. Her eyes, which had been rolled back in her head, came down where they belonged. She closed them. She was breathing normally again.

“What the hell was that all about?” Alex asked, badly shaken.

Inamura waved him back into his chair, and Alex sat reluctantly.

The doctor said, “Do you hear me, Joanna?”

“Yes.”

“I never lie to you, Joanna. I tell you only the truth. I’m here only to help you. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“Now, I’m going to tell you why you had that little respiratory problem. And when you understand, you will not allow such a thing to happen ever again.”

“I can’t control it,” she said.

“Yes, you can. I’m telling you the truth now, and you are well aware of that truth. You had difficulty breathing only because
they
told you that you’d be unable to breathe, that you’d suffocate, that you’d spiral down into uncontrollable panic if you were questioned thoroughly under the influence of drugs or hypnosis. They implanted a posthypnotic suggestion that caused this attack when I probed too deeply, evidently with the hope your seizure would terminate this interrogation.”

Joanna scowled. “That’s the same thing that caused my claustrophobia.”

“Precisely,” Inamura said. “And now that you’re aware of it, you won’t allow it to happen again.”

“I hate them,” she said bitterly.

“Will you allow it to happen again, Joanna?”

“No.”

“Good,” Inamura said.

Even in the dimly lighted room, Joanna looked so pale that Alex said, “Maybe we shouldn’t continue with this.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” the doctor said.

“I’m not so sure.”

Inamura said, “Joanna, are you still in the room, that special room, the place that reeks of ammonia?”

“Ammonia ... alcohol ... other things,” she said. “Sickening. It’s so strong I can smell it and
taste
it.”

“You are unclothed—”

“—naked—”

“—and strapped to the bed.”

“The straps are too tight. I can’t move. Can’t get up. I’ve got to get up and out of here.”

“Relax,” Inamura said. “Easy. Easy.”

Alex watched her anxiously.

“Be calm,” Inamura said. “You will remember all of it, but you will do so quietly. You will be calm and relaxed, and you will not be afraid.”

“At least the room’s warm,” she said.

“That’s the spirit. Now, I want you to look around and tell me what you see.”

“Not much.”

“Is it a large place?”

“No. Small.”

“Any furniture other than the bed?”

She didn’t reply. He repeated the question, and she said, “I don’t know if you’d call it furniture.”

“All right. But what is it? Can you describe what’s in the room with you?”

“Beside my bed ... it’s ... I guess it’s one of those cardiac monitors ... you know ... like in an intensive-care ward or hospital operating theater.”

“An electrocardiograph.”

“Yes. And beside it ... maybe ... a brainwave machine.”

“An electroencephalograph. Are you in a hospital?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Are you hooked up to the machines now?”

“Sometimes. Not now. No beeping. No wiggly lines of light. Machines are ... shut off.”

“Is there anything else in the room?”

“A chair. And a cabinet ... with a glass door.”

“What’s in the cabinet, Joanna?”

“Lots of small bottles ... vials ... ampules ...”

“Drugs?”

“Yes. And hypodermic syringes wrapped in plastic.”

“Are those drugs used on you?”

“Yes. I hate ...” Her hands closed into fists, opened, closed. “I hate ...”

“Go on.”

“I hate the needle.” She twitched at the word “needle.”

“What else do you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Does the room have a window?”

“Yes. One.”

“Good. Does it have a blind or drapes?”

“A blind.”

“Is the blind open or shut?”

“Open.”

“What do you see through the window, Joanna?”

She was silent again.

“What do you see through the window?”

Her voice suddenly changed. It was so hard, flat, and cold that it might have been the voice of an altogether different person. “Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.”

Omi Inamura gazed at her, captured by a silence of his own. At last he repeated the question. “What do you see beyond the window?”

She chanted—not woodenly but with a strange, cold anger. “Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.”

“You are relaxed and calm. You are not tense or apprehensive. You are completely safe, utterly relaxed, calm, in a deep and natural sleep.”

“Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.”

Alex put one hand to the nape of his neck where a chill crept across his skin.

Inamura said, “What do you mean by that, Joanna?”

She was rigid in her reclining chair. Her hands were fisted against her abdomen. “Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.”

A dry scratching noise rose from the shadows across the room. Freud was scraping his talons against his wooden perch.

“Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun,” Joanna repeated.

“Very well,” Inamura said. “Forget about the window for the time being. Let’s talk about the people who came to see you when you were kept in that room. Were there many of them?”

Shaking with what seemed to be anger but which Alex now realized might be the physical evidence of a fierce internal struggle to break free of the implanted psychological bonds that imprisoned her memory, she repeated, “Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.”

“Now what?” Alex asked.

Omi Inamura was silent for so long that Alex thought he hadn’t heard the question. Then: “The posthypnotic suggestion that triggered her breathing difficulties was their first line of defense. This is their second. I suspect this one is going to be harder to crack.”

“Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.”

“Do you hear me, Joanna?” the psychiatrist asked.

“Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.”

Alex closed his eyes, silently repeating her chant along with her. He was teased by a vague sense of familiarity, as though he had heard it somewhere before.

Inamura said, “At the moment, Joanna, I’m not trying to pry any of your secrets out of you. I just want to know if you are listening, if you can hear my voice.”

“Yes,” she said.

“That sentence you keep repeating is a memory block. It must have been implanted posthypnotically. You will not use that sentence—’Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun’—when you talk with me. You neither need nor want to avoid my questions. You came here to learn the truth. So just relax. Be calm. You are in a deep and natural sleep, safe in a deep sleep, and you will answer all my questions. I want you to see that memory block. It’s lying in your mind, rather like a fallen tree lying across a highway, preventing you from going deeper into your memories. Visualize it, Joanna. A fallen tree. Or a boulder. Lying across the highway of memory. You can see it now ... and you can even put your hands on it. You’re getting a grip on it ... such a powerful grip ... and you feel a sudden rush of superhuman strength ... so very strong, you are, so powerful ... straining ... lifting ... lifting the boulder ... casting it aside ... out of the way. It’s gone. The highway is open. No obstacle any more. Now you will remember. You will cooperate. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good. Very good. Now, Joanna, you are still in that room. You smell the alcohol ... ammonia. Such a stench that you can even taste it. You’re strapped to the bed ... and the straps are biting into you. The blind is open at the window. Look at the window, Joanna. What do you see beyond the window?”

“Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.”

“As I expected,” Inamura said. “A difficult barrier.”

Alex opened his eyes. “I’ve heard that chant before.”

Inamura blinked and leaned forward in his chair. “You have? Where? When?”

“I can’t recall. But it’s strangely familiar.”

“If you can remember, it would be enormously helpful,” Inamura said. “I’ve got several tools with which I might be able to reach her, but I wouldn’t be surprised if none of them worked. She’s been programmed by clever and capable people, and more likely than not, they’ve anticipated most methods of treatment. I suspect there are only two ways I might be able to break through the memory block. And under the circumstances, with time so short, the first method—years of intensive therapy—isn’t really acceptable.”

“Not really,” Alex agreed. “What’s the second way?”

“An answering sentence.”

“Answering sentence?”

Inamura nodded. “She might be requesting a password, you see. It’s unlikely. But possible. Once she gives me the first line—’Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun’—she might be waiting for me to respond with the appropriate second line. A sort of code. If that’s the case, she won’t answer my questions until I’ve given her the correct answering sentence.”

Alex was impressed by the doctor’s insight and imagination. “A two-piece puzzle. She’s got the first piece, and we’ve got to find the second before we can proceed.”

“Perhaps.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“If we knew the source of the line she uses, we might be able to come up with the answering sentence. For instance, perhaps she’s giving us the first line of a couplet of poetry.”

“I believe it’s from a book,” Alex said. He rose to his feet, stepped out of the circle of chairs, and began to pace around the shadow-shrouded room, because pacing sometimes helped him think. “Something I read once a long time ago.”

“While you think,” said Omi Inamura, “I’ll see what I can do with her.”

For thirty minutes the doctor strove to break down the memory block. He cajoled and argued and reasoned with Joanna; he used humor and discipline and logic; he demanded, asked, pleaded; he pried and probed and thrust and picked at her resistance.