Twisted: The Collected Stories - 1 Read online

  "Good, Patsy." And -- thinking, the hell with transference -- the doctor gave his patient a huge hug.

  *

  That evening Patsy Randolph returned home and found Peter sitting in front of the television.

  "You're late," he said. "Where've you been?"

  "Out shopping. I got a bottle of wine."

  "We're supposed to go to Jack and Louise's tonight. Don't tell me you forgot."

  "I don't feel like it," she said. "I don't feel well. I --"

  "No. We're going. You're not getting out of it." He spoke in that same weird, abrupt tone he'd been using for the past week.

  "Well, can I at least take care of a few things first?"

  "Sure. But I don't want to be late."

  Patsy walked into the kitchen, opened a bottle of the expensive Merlot and poured a large glass just like Dr. Bernstein had told her. She sipped it. She felt good. Very good. "Where's the hammer?" she called.

  "Hammer? What do you need the hammer for?"

  "I have to fix something."

  "I think it's in the drawer beside the refrigerator."

  She found it. Carried it into the living room. She glanced at the last Boehm bird, an owl.

  Peter looked at the tool then back to the TV. "What do you have to fix?"

  "You," she answered and brought the blunt end down on the top of his head with all her strength.

  It took another dozen blows to kill him and when she'd finished she stood back and gazed at the remarkable patterns the blood made on the carpet and couch. Then she went into the bedroom and picked up her diary from the bedside table -- the one Dr. Bernstein had suggested she keep. Back in the living room Patsy sat down beside her husband's corpse and she wrote a rambling passage in the booklet about how, at last, she'd gotten the ghosts to stop speaking to her. She was finally at peace. She didn't add as much as she wanted to; it was very time-consuming to write using your finger for a pen and blood for ink.

  When Patsy'd finished she picked up the hammer and smashed the Boehm ceramic owl into dust. Then she began screaming as loudly as she could, "The ghosts are dead, the ghosts are dead, the ghosts are dead!"

  Long before she was hoarse the police and medics arrived. When they took her away she was wearing a straitjacket.

  A week later Harry Bernstein sat in the prison hospital waiting room. He knew he was a sight -- he hadn't shaved in several days and was wearing wrinkled clothes -- which in fact he'd slept in last night. He stared at the filthy floor.

  "You all right?" This question came from a tall, thin man with a perfect beard. He wore a gorgeous suit and Armani-framed glasses. He was Patsy's lead defense lawyer.

  "I never thought she'd do it," Harry said to him. "I knew there was risk. I knew something was wrong. But I thought I had everything under control."

  The lawyer looked at him sympathetically. "I heard you've been having some trouble too. Your patients..."

  Harry laughed bitterly. "Are quitting in droves. Well, wouldn't you? Park Avenue shrinks are a dime a dozen. Why should they risk seeing me? I might get them killed or committed."

  The jailor opened the door. "Dr. Bernstein, you can see the prisoner now."

  He stood slowly, supporting himself on the door frame.

  The lawyer looked him over and said, "You and I can meet in the next couple days to decide how to handle the case. The insanity defense is tough in New York but with you on board I can make it work. We'll keep her out of jail... Say, Doctor, you going to be okay?"

  Harry gave a shallow nod.

  The lawyer said kindly, "I can arrange for a little cash for you. A couple thousand -- for an expert witness fee."

  "Thanks," Harry said. But he instantly forgot about the money. His mind was already on his patient.

  *

  The room was as bleak as he'd expected.

  Face white, eyes shrunken, Patsy lay in bed, looking out the window. She glanced at Harry, didn't seem to recognize him.

  "How are you feeling?" he asked.

  "Who are you?" She frowned.

  He didn't answer her question either. "You're not looking too bad, Patsy."

  "I think I know you. Yes, you're... Wait, are you a ghost?"

  "No, I'm not a ghost." Harry set his attache case on the table. Her eyes slipped to the case as he opened it.

  "I can't stay long, Patsy. I'm closing my practice. There's a lot to take care of. But I wanted to bring you a few things."

  "Things?" she asked, sounding like a child. "For me? Like Christmas. Like my birthday."

  "Uh-hum." Harry rummaged in the case. "Here's the first thing." He took out a photocopy. "It's an article in the Journal of Psychoses. I found it the night after the session when you first told me about the ghosts. You should read it."

  "I can't read," she said. "I don't know how." She gave a crazy laugh. "I'm afraid of the food here. I think there are spies around. They're going to put things in the food. Disgusting things. And poison. Or broken glass." Another cackle.

  Harry set the article on the bed next to her. He walked to the window. No trees here. No birds. Just gray, downtown Manhattan.

  He said, glancing back at her, "It's all about ghosts. The article."

  Her eyes narrowed and then fear consumed her face. "Ghosts," she whispered. "Are there ghosts here?"

  Harry laughed hard. "See, Patsy, ghosts were the first clue. After you mentioned them in that session -- claiming that your husband was driving you crazy -- I thought something didn't sound quite right. So I went home and started to research your case."

  She gazed at him silently.

  "That article's about the importance of diagnosis in mental health cases. See, sometimes it works to somebody's advantage to appear to be mentally unstable -- so they can avoid responsibility. Say, soldiers who don't want to fight. People faking insurance claims. People who've committed crimes." He turned back. "Or who're about to commit a crime."

  "I'm afraid of ghosts," Patsy said, her voice rising. "I'm afraid of ghosts. I don't want any ghosts here! I'm afraid of --"

  Harry continued like a lecturing professor. "And ghosts are one of the classic hallucinations that sane people use to try to convince other people that they're insane."

  Patsy closed her mouth.

  "Fascinating article," Harry continued, nodding toward it. "See, ghosts and spirits seem like the products of delusional minds. But in fact they're complex metaphysical concepts that someone who's really insane wouldn't understand at all. No, true psychotics believe that the actual person is there speaking to them. They think that Napoleon or Hitler or Marilyn Monroe is really in the room with them. You wouldn't have claimed to've heard your father's ghost. You would actually have heard him."

  Harry enjoyed the utterly shocked expression on his patient's face. He said, "Then a few weeks ago you admitted that maybe the voices were in your head. A true psychotic would never admit that. They'd swear they were completely sane." He paced slowly. "There were some other things too. You must've read somewhere that sloppy physical appearance is a sign of mental illness. Your clothes were torn and dirty, you'd forget to do straps... but your makeup was always perfect -- even on the night the police called me over to your apartment. In genuine mental health cases makeup is the first thing to go. Patients just smear their faces with it. Has to do with issues of masking their identity -- if you're interested.

  "Oh, and remember? You asked if a ghost could come to one of our sessions? That was very funny. But the psychiatric literature defines humor as ironic juxtaposition of concepts based on common experience. Of course that's contrary to the mental processes of psychotics."

  "What the hell does that mean?" Patsy spat out.

  "That crazy people don't make jokes," he summarized. "That cinched it for me that you were sane as could be." Harry looked through the attache case once more. "Next..." He looked up, smiling. "After I read that article and decided you were faking your diagnosis -- and listening to what your subconscious was telling me about your marri
age -- I figured you were using me for some reason having to do with your husband. So I hired a private eye."

  "Jesus Christ, you did what?"

  "Here's his report." He dropped the folder on the bed. "It says basically that your husband was having an affair and was forging checks on your main investment account. You knew about his mistress and the money and you'd talked to a lawyer about divorcing him. But Peter knew that you were having an affair too -- with your friend Sally's husband. Peter used that to blackmail you into not divorcing him."

  Patsy stared at him, frozen.

  He nodded at the report. "Oh, you may as well look at it. Pretending you can't read? Doesn't fly. Reading has nothing to do with psychotic behavior: it's a developmental and IQ issue."

  She opened the report, read through it then tossed it aside disgustedly. "Son of a bitch."

  Harry said, "You wanted to kill Peter and you wanted me to establish that you were insane -- for your defense. You'd go into a private hospital. There'd be a mandatory rehearing in a year and, bang, you'd pass the tests and be released."

  She shook her head. "But you knew my goal was to kill Peter -- and you let me do it! Hell, you encouraged me to do it."

  "And when I saw Peter I encouraged him to antagonize you... It was time to move things along. I was getting tired of our sessions." Then Harry's face darkened with genuine regret. "I never thought you'd actually kill him, just assault him. But, hey, what can I say? Psychiatry's an inexact science."

  "But why didn't you go to the police?" she said, whispering, close to panic.

  "Ah, that has to do with the third thing I brought for you."

  I can help you and you can help me...

  He lifted an envelope out of his briefcase. He handed it to her.

  "What is this?"

  "My bill."

  She opened it. Took out the sheet of paper.

  At the top was written For Services Rendered. And below that: $10 million.

  "Are you crazy?" Patsy gasped.

  Given the present location and context of their conversation, Harry had to laugh at her choice of words. "Peter was nice enough to tell me exactly what you were worth. I'm leaving you a million... which you'll probably need to pay that slick lawyer of yours. He looks expensive. Now, I'll need cash or a certified check before I testify at your trial. Otherwise I'll have to share with the court my honest diagnosis about your condition."

  "You're blackmailing me!"

  "I guess I am."

  "Why?"

  "Because with this money I can afford to do some good. And help people who really need helping." He nodded at the bill. "I'd write that check pretty soon -- they have the death penalty in New York now. Oh, and by the way, I'd lose that bit about the food being poisoned. Around here, you make a stink about meals, they'll just put you on a tube." He picked up his attache case.

  "Wait," she begged. "Don't leave! Let's talk about this!"

  "Sorry." Harry nodded at a wall clock. "I see our time is up."

  Beautiful

  He'd found her already.

  Oh, no, she thought. Lord, no...

  Eyes filling with tears of despair, wracked with nausea, the young woman sagged against the window frame as she stared through a crack in the blinds.

  The battered Ford pickup -- as gray as the turbulent Atlantic Ocean a few hundred yards up the road -- eased to a stop in front of her house in this pretty neighborhood of Crowell, Massachusetts, north of Boston. This was the very truck she'd come to dread, the truck that regularly careened through her dreams, sometimes with its tires on fire, sometimes shooting blood from its tailpipe, sometimes piloted by an invisible driver bent on tearing her heart from her chest.

  Oh, no...

  The engine shut off and tapped as it cooled. The dusk light was failing and the interior of the pickup was dark but she knew the occupant was staring at her. In her mind she could see his features as clearly as if he were standing ten feet away in broad August sunlight. Kari Swanson knew he'd have that faint smile of impatience on his face, that he'd be tugging an earlobe marred with two piercings long ago infected and closed up, leaving an ugly scar. She knew his breathing would be labored.

  Her own breath in panicked gasps, hands trembling, Kari drew back from the window. Crawling to the front hallway, she tore open the drawer of a small table and took out the pistol. She looked outside again.

  The driver didn't approach the house. He simply played his ail-too familiar game: sitting in the front seat of his old junker and staring at her.

  He'd found her already. Just one week after she'd moved here! He'd followed her over two thousand miles. All the efforts to cover her tracks had been futile.

  The brief peace she'd enjoyed was gone.

  David Dale had found her.

  *

  Kari -- born Catherine Kelley Swanson -- was a sensible, pleasant-mannered twenty-eight-year-old, who'd been raised in the Midwest by a loving family. She was a natural-born student with a cum laude degree to her name and plans for a Ph.D. Her career until the move here -- fashion modeling -- had provided her with both a large investment account and a chance to work regularly in such pampering locales as Paris, Cape Town, London, Rio, Bali and Bermuda. She drove a nice car, had always bought herself modest but comfortable houses and had provided her parents with a plump annuity.

  A seemingly enviable life... and yet Kari Swanson had been forever plagued by a debilitating problem.

  She was utterly beautiful.

  She'd hit her full height -- six feet -- at seventeen and her weight hadn't varied more than a pound or so off its present mark of 121. Her hair was a shimmery, natural golden (yes, yes, you could see it flying in slow motion on many a shampoo commercial) and her skin had a flawless translucent eggshell tone that often left makeup artists with little to do at photo shoots but dab on the currently in-vogue lipstick and eye shadow.

  People, Details, W, Rolling Stone, Paris Match, the London Times and Entertainment Weekly had all described Kari Swanson as the "most beautiful woman in the world" or some version of that title. And virtually every publication in the industrialized world had run a picture of her at one time or another, many of those photos appearing on the magazines' covers.

  That her spellbinding beauty could be a liability was a lesson she learned early. Young Cathy -- she didn't become "Kari" the supermodel until age twenty -- longed for a normal teenhood but her appearance kept derailing that. She was drawn to the scholastic and artistic crowds in high school but they rejected her point-blank, assuming either that she was a flighty airhead or was mocking the gawky students in those circles.

  On the other hand, she was fiercely courted by the cliqueish in-crowd of cheerleaders and athletes, few of whom she could stand. To her embarrassment she was regularly elected queen of various school pageants and dances, even when she refused to compete for the titles.

  The dating situation was even more impossible. Most of the nice, interesting boys froze like rabbits in front of her and didn't have the courage to ask her out, assuming they'd be rejected. The jocks and studs relentlessly pursued her -- though their motive, of course, was simply to be seen in public with the most beautiful girl in school or to bed her as a trophy lay (naturally none succeeded, but stinging rumors abounded; it seemed that the more adamant the rejection, the more the spurned boy bragged about his conquest).

  Her four years at Stanford were virtually the same -- modeling, schoolwork and hours of loneliness, interrupted by rare evenings and weekends with the few friends who didn't care what she looked like (tellingly, her first lover -- a man she was still friendly with -- was blind).

  After graduation she'd hoped that life would be different, that the spell of her beauty wouldn't be as potent with those who were older and busy making their way in the world. How wrong that was... Men remained true to their dubious mission and, ignoring Kari the person, pursued her as greedily and thoughtlessly as ever. Women grew even more resentful of her than in school, as their figures changed
, thanks to children and age and sedentary lives.

  Kari threw herself into her modeling, easily getting assignments with Ford, Elite and the other top agencies. But her successful career created a curious irony. She was desperately lonely and yet she had no privacy. Simply because she was beautiful, complete strangers considered themselves intimate friends and constantly approached her in public or sent her long letters describing their intimate secrets, begging for advice and offering her their own opinions on what she should do with her life.

  She grew to hate the simple activities that she'd enjoyed as a child -- Christmas shopping, playing softball, fishing, jogging. A trip to the grocery store was often a horror; men would speed into line behind her at the checkout stand and flirt mercilessly. More than once she fled, leaving behind a full cart.

  But she never felt any real terror until David Dale, the man in the gray pickup truck.

  Kari had first noticed him in a crowd of onlookers when she was on a job for Vogue two years ago.

  People always watched photo shoots, of course. They were fascinated with physiques they would never have, with designer clothes that cost their monthly salary, with the gorgeous faces they'd seen gazing at them from newsstands around the country. But something had seemed different about this man. Something troubling.

  Not just his massive size -- well over six feet tall with huge legs and heavy thighs, long, dangling arms. What had bothered her was the way he'd looked at her through his chunky, out-of-fashion glasses -- his expression had been one of familiarity.

  As if he knew a great deal about her.

  And with a chill Kari had realized that he was familiar to her too -- she'd seen him at other shoots.

  Hell, she'd thought, I've got a stalker.

  At first David Dale would simply appear at shoots like the one in Pacific Grove, California, parking his pickup truck nearby and standing silently just outside the ring of activity. Then she began to see him around the modeling agencies that repped her.

  He began to write her long letters about himself: his lonely, troubled childhood, his parents' deaths, his former girlfriends (the stories sounded made-up), his current job as an environmental engineer (Kari read "janitor"), his struggle with his weight, his love of Dungeons & Dragons games, television shows he watched. He also knew a frightening amount of information about her -- where she'd grown up, what she'd studied at Stanford, her likes and dislikes. He'd clearly read all of the interviews she'd ever given. He took to sending her presents, usually innocuous things like slippers, Day-Timers, picture frames, pen-and-pencil sets. Disturbingly, he'd sometimes send her lingerie: tasteful Victoria's Secret items, in her exact size, with a gift receipt courteously enclosed. She threw everything out.