Unspeakable (22 page)

Collin tried to cooperate when he sat in the torn-to-ribbons easy chair and focused on the pendant that D.R. dangled in front of him. But he didn't get sleepy or tired. He couldn't get past the feeling he was wasting his time—and money. Collin was still awake and frustrated when D.R. announced he was making contact with the young Native American warrior from Collin's past life. Collin told him, “I'm sorry, this just isn't working.”

D.R. insisted that all his sessions were two hundred dollars each—even if they didn't last the full ninety minutes. That was a total rip-off as far as Collin was concerned—especially since he'd only been there forty minutes.

“Here's eighty,” he said, tossing the bills on the scratched-up coffee table. Then he ran out of the apartment and took the stairs down to the lobby. Once outside, he kept glancing over his shoulder to see if D.R. was following him. In the car, he checked his rearview mirror. Just moments after pulling out of his parking spot on Eastlake, he noticed a black Saturn peel out after him.

At first, Collin thought the Saturn was tailing him, but after a few blocks, another car got between them, and then another. Eventually, he lost track of the Saturn and focused on getting to his two o'clock appointment in Ballard with Claudette, who offered
“Psychic Counseling & Hope thru Hypnosis!”
She also did psychic readings. When he phoned to bump up their appointment to one-thirty, she was okay with it. He also noticed her heavy French accent.

Claudette lived in a semi-modern, tall apartment building near the Ballard Bridge. Her cramped little unit was full of antiques. With the lacy curtains drawn, the place seemed a bit gloomy. Confined to a wheelchair, Claudette had bluish-white hair, and was at least ten years older than Collin's grandfather. He figured she was around Mrs. Pollack-Martin's age, but definitely more frail. She had one milky blue eye that looked damaged or dead. It was hard for Collin to look at her, even when she was smiling at him sweetly. She wore a black pantsuit with a blue blouse. She seemed like a very nice lady, and Collin wanted it to work. He'd told Claudette in his email that he had trouble sleeping.

She had him sit down on her sofa, which had a knitted throw draped across the back. “Oh, so many bad dreams,” she said, rolling her wheelchair closer to him. “I can see that already. No wonder you cannot sleep.”

He nodded. “I was hoping you could heal me through hypnosis.”

Claudette used a little hand mirror and had him focus on the reflected patch of light it made on the flocked wallpaper. Collin had told her that his name was Rusty, so she kept telling him in her heavy French accent,
“Roosty, you get very, very tired. . . .”

Instead of getting tired, Collin just became panicky. What if Wade came out and hurt this poor, old crippled woman? Across the room, Collin spotted her purse on a lace-covered table. Collin imagined Wade taking her money, then setting the apartment on fire.

This whole experiment seemed ill-conceived. If Claudette met up with Wade Grinnell, the best Collin could hope for was her telling him what transpired while he was under. The session wouldn't do him much good unless it was recorded—and the hypnotherapist knew the right questions to ask.

“You resist,” she said, setting the mirror down in her lap. She pushed her wheelchair closer and studied him with her one good eye. “Roosty, it's not your real name.”

He shook his head. “It's Collin.”

Her frail hand patted his arm. “Not each time does the hypnosis work with people. I won't charge you.”

“Well, I—I'm sorry I took up your time,” Collin said. He was thinking he should at least give her twenty-five dollars for the aborted session. He was about to reach for his wallet in his back pocket, but she clung to his shirtsleeve.

“I'm psychic, you know,” she whispered.

He nodded. “Yes, you said that in your ad online.”

She pointed to her own arm. “The woman who has scars here, you need to warn her.”

Collin squinted at her. “What?”

Claudette let go of his sleeve, then sat back. “You wished you had warned your friends,” she said. “You need to warn the woman with the scars.”

“Warn her about what?”

The old woman stared at him for a moment. Finally, she shook her head. “I do not know. But perhaps what happened to your friends is going to happen to her. Is that any help? Do you know a woman with many scars?”

Collin nodded. “Yes, but I don't understand how you'd know something like that—”

Smiling, she touched her forehead with her bony finger. “On some level you were thinking it, and I just picked up on it. That's all. You go with your instincts, and warn the woman with the scars.”

Collin got to his feet. He reached back for his wallet and took out three twenties. “Listen, I'd like to pay you for at least part of the session. You've been a lot of help. In fact, I'd like to come back here and . . .” He trailed off when he noticed her shaking her head.

“I cannot hypnotize you, Collin. I saw you were afraid for me. You know it yourself. It won't work with me. You need someone who is strong and young to help you—at least, younger than this old lady in the wheelchair.” Gently, she pushed away his hand with the bills in it. “Keep your money for the other hypnotist.”

Collin thanked her. Before he left, he managed to slip the folded-up sixty dollars onto a table by her door. He figured she'd find the money later and think she had misplaced it or something. Then again, maybe Claudette would know it was from him.

After all, she was a very smart lady.

 

 

“Hi,” he said, after he heard the beep from her answering machine. “Um, this is Collin—you know, from the other day? I don't know how to tell you this without sounding crazy. But, well, you might want to go stay with a friend someplace. I think there's some people who—”

There was a click on the other end. “Hello?”

“Hello, Mrs. Pollack-Martin?” he said. “This is Collin. . . .”

“Well, hello, Collin,” she said. “Let me make sure this old answering machine is switched off.... There. How's your English composition coming along?”

“Um, okay,” he lied. Collin sat in his car with the windows rolled up to block out the noise. He was parked in line at the ferry terminal. Some passengers stood outside their vehicles, talking to each other—or on the phone. Security guards with their scent dogs on leashes walked up and down the rows of cars. The ferry was due in twenty minutes, and the terminal lot had started to fill up.

“Do you have some more questions about my books?” Mrs. Pollack-Martin asked. “I'm sorry about the other day. I kind of went—what do they call it? I went
off-topic
.”

“No apologies necessary.” Collin shifted a bit in the driver's seat. “Actually, I'm calling about another thing. I know this sounds crazy, but I'm worried something might happen to you.”

“Really?” she asked.

“See, two of my good friends were killed yesterday. One died along with her parents and kid brother. They were all killed when their house caught on fire. It happened just hours after I talked with you—”

“I don't think that's the least bit funny—”

“Neither do I,” Collin said. He knew it had to be awful for her to hear about another deadly fire. “I'm serious, Mrs. Pollack. My friend's name was Gail Pelham. It happened in Poulsboro yesterday morning. You can check. My other friend's name was Fernando Ryan. He was hitchhiking to school Monday. Somebody picked him up and killed him, slit his throat. They found his body last night.” Collin's eyes filled with tears and his voice started to shake. “They were my only friends. I think they might have been killed because someone knew they were close to me. This person—or maybe it's a couple of people—they must have thought I'd told them something. I—I'm not explaining it right. . . .”

“Well, if what you say is true, I'm really very sorry,” she said soberly. “I haven't looked at the newspaper today, except for the crosswords. I didn't hear anything about it. You—you must be devastated. . . .”

“It's pretty awful, yeah,” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. A woman waiting for the ferry walked by his car. Collin turned his head away from the window so she wouldn't see him crying. “But right now I'm worried that something might happen to you,” he explained. “I think some people have been following me around. I'm afraid they'll go after you next. Maybe just to be safe, you could go stay with some relatives for a while. . . .”

“Oh, honey,” she said with pity in her voice. “Don't worry about me. I'll be fine where I am. Listen, are you getting any help—grief counseling through school or something like that?”

Collin took a few deep breaths. Obviously, she thought he was crazy. And why wouldn't she? He cleared his throat. “Yes, in fact, I went to a therapist today. I just came back from seeing her. It's why I'm calling you. She's a psychic, too, and she described you to me. She said that after what happened to my friends, I should warn you. Anyway, ma'am, the thing is, you're a really nice lady. I don't want anything bad happening to you. . . .”

There were a few seconds of silence on the other end. Through his windshield, he could see the ferry in the distance, a speck on the water for now.

“Okay, Collin,” she said finally. “I'll be careful. I won't take any chances. I doubt anyone will come after a dotty old lady like me. Just the same, I'll keep a lookout and lock my door—if that makes you feel any better.”

“It does—a little,” Collin told her. “But I really wish you'd take me seriously.”

“Okay,” she said. “But you need to promise you'll talk to your parents about how you're feeling right now. If your parents can't help you, maybe there's a teacher or counselor at school you're close to—someone older than you. Talk to them, confide in them, okay?”

Collin was about to reply, but hesitated. He was thinking that just hours after he'd confided in Gail, she and her family had perished in a fire. He sighed. “I will, ma'am. Thank you. Good-bye.”

 

 

As the ferry made its crossing, Collin stayed in the car. He didn't want to risk having another one of his grandfather's friends spot him on the deck or in the cabin seating area.

It was ironic that Mrs. Pollack-Martin had recommended he talk with a counselor. He had six printouts from hypnotherapist-counselor websites in the pocket of his jacket. He'd already seen two of them. He wondered if the four others would be as awful as D.R. Dorian.

Collin decided to go to his morning classes tomorrow. But at lunch, he'd take the ferry back over to Seattle and see these other hypnotists.

Sitting at the wheel, he called in appointments with three of them. He said his name was Russell Leander, after a character he'd played in his second film,
Honor Student
, which had tanked at the box office. He told the therapists he had sleeping issues. Once he found a hypnotist he trusted, he'd ask them to record the session on his cell phone. If Wade came out, then he and the hypnotist could hatch a plan for the next session. He got the first three therapists to agree to forty-five-minute sessions at a reduced fee.

He'd spent a hundred and forty dollars in just three hours today—and most of that had been a total waste. His grandfather had been footing the bill for his mom's life insurance for years, and now it was paying back in annuities. Old Andy had insisted he take the money and save it for his living expenses during college. Collin had collected three thousand dollars so far. He didn't intend to go through a big chunk of it visiting a bunch of bogus hypnotists.

The fourth one of the group didn't impress him at all. For starters, her ad was awfully similar to “Dr.” Dorian's:

Olivia could only squeeze him in at 4:45 tomorrow, which meant he wouldn't be home from school until seven. He'd have to make up some excuse in advance for his grandparents. Plus she charged one hundred dollars a session, and wouldn't budge when he asked about reducing the rate if he didn't stay for the full hour. Finally, for some reason, when she asked about why he needed help, instead of insomnia Collin said he had a drinking problem.

“Well, I'm not qualified to handle people with alcohol issues, Russ,” she said on the other end of the line. “I can't promise results the way I can with clients who want to lose weight or quit smoking or sleep better. I recommend you check out your local AA chapter—”

“I drink to fall asleep most of time,” Collin said. “It started out as kind of an insomnia cure, and I've been drinking pretty heavily for almost two years now. I'm a student and it's really starting to affect my grades. I want to quit, but I can't seem to. Anyway, I'm hoping you can help me. Maybe we can discuss it when I see you tomorrow. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. No harm done, y'know?”

“All right, then we're on for four-forty-five tomorrow, Russ. And you have the address in Madison Valley?”

“Yes, thanks, Olivia. See you then.”

Clicking off the phone, Collin figured seeing this Olivia woman would be pointless. But if there was just a tiny chance she could reach Wade Grinnell, then it was worth a shot.