Either way, it’s clear that Frank feels threatened.
“Leave,” Maya says, “or I’ll call the police.”
“Call them,” Aubrey says.
No one moves.
Maya’s eyes dart to the phone on the kitchen wall, but someone has forgotten to return the cordless receiver to its base. She checks the living room, the knife still in her hand. She doesn’t see the phone, so she hurries upstairs for her cell. Finds it in her room, in the back pocket of the jeans she wore last night to the concert. She flips the phone open and is about to dial 9-1-1 when she pauses to ask herself if she’s really doing this.
What exactly does she plan to say? What is her emergency? A man she knows is talking to her friend at the back door? Frank isn’t armed and hasn’t done anything to threaten them. Maya takes the phone to the window and pulls back the curtain. When she presses her face to the glass and looks down, she can see Frank talking to Aubrey through the screen door. She can’t see Aubrey, who’s inside the house, but they appear to be talking calmly. Then he takes something from his pocket and holds it up for her to see.
The key.
Maya has no reason to think he’s going to hurt Aubrey, yet her body reacts as if he has taken out a gun and is holding it to her head. Maya grips the knife tighter. Backs away from the window. She needs to get Aubrey back inside. Even if she appears to be fine. Even if all Maya has to go on is a feeling—she has to try. She rushes back downstairs, but her steps slow as she enters the kitchen.
She sees them through the screen door, Aubrey and Frank. They look relaxed, side by side but not touching. The sky is blue and birds are singing. Maya’s hands hang at her side, the phone in one, the knife in the other. As she gets closer, she hears the low murmur of his voice. She can’t make out the words but detects a strange, songlike rhythm. She’s almost at the door when Aubrey tips over on her side. She makes no effort to break her fall. Her shoulder strikes the concrete, then her head.
Frank turns to her, a shocked look on his face.
The screen door slams open. Maya rushes out.
“What the fuck?!” Frank says. “What happened to her?”
Maya drops the knife and the phone and falls to her knees beside her friend. “Aubrey!? Aubrey! Wake up!”
“Does she have some kind of medical condition?”
Maya ignores him.
Aubrey’s eyes are open as Maya grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her. “Oh my god, oh my god.” Aubrey’s head lolls against the concrete, lifeless as a rag doll.
Maya looks up at Frank. “What did you do?”
Frank looks stunned. “What are you talking about? We were just talking and she—she just—” He gestures at her body on the stoop, hinged unnaturally at the waist, green eyes refusing Maya’s gaze, even as they stare at her.
“You can’t blame me for this,” Frank says, panic rising in his voice. “You can’t.”
“Aubrey! Wake up! Wake up!” Maya screams, her face wet with tears, as Frank slowly backs away.
THIRTY-THREE
It wasn’t just that Maya hadn’t seen or heard the word hypnosis in years. She hadn’t thought it either, or considered what the word meant. The induction of a trancelike, highly suggestible state. It was as if the very concept had been deleted from her mind. But now that she’d managed to hear part of it—hypno—the rest of the word came back to her along with its meaning. And then it seemed obvious.
Frank had hypnotized her, not just once but repeatedly, then hidden the memories from her inside her own head. Looking back, Maya felt like she’d been circling this a long time, but it was as if the very idea had been garbled, and finally she’d grasped it. Now, as she read about hypnotism online, she learned of new research emerging from the field of neuroscience, new developments in the understanding of how what happens in the mind can have real effects in the body.
When she came to an article on posthypnotic suggestion, she felt dizzy. She rearranged the comforter around her shoulders. She’d been too hot, so she had taken off her clothes, but was then too cold, so she’d wrapped herself in blankets. Her long hair clung to her sweat-damp back.
Suggestions made during hypnosis, she read, could affect the patient’s behavior in their normal life. The hypnotist could tell a person who wanted to quit smoking, for example, that their next cigarette would taste like the worst thing they’d ever eaten. For some people, this worked—a suggestion made under hypnosis, it seemed, had the power to alter their perception later on.
Could this be why Maya’s eyes had seemed to skip over the word hypnosis and why her ears couldn’t seem to hear it? Had Frank implanted a posthypnotic suggestion in her mind designed to keep her from figuring out what he’d done? She could almost feel it there, alien, invasive. A seed that had sprouted its pale tendrils through her brain.
Maya dropped her phone to the bed. She couldn’t stand to look at it anymore.
She wanted to scrub out the inside of her skull, could almost feel his words worming through her. She had a word now for what he had done to her.
But could hypnosis kill people? Was that possible? Even with all the recent scientific research she’d found online, the word made her think of stage tricks, a man in a suit making hammy volunteers quack like ducks. It made her think of the magic shows Aubrey had loved, which Maya had always found cheesy. But this clearly wasn’t the type of hypnosis Frank’s father had practiced. Steven had said he taught at Williams College, and if this was true, the college, along with both journals that had published his research, had erased all signs of having been affiliated with Oren Bellamy.
Yet—according to the Clear Horizons website—he had singlehandedly developed a “proprietary therapeutic method” for treating patients, one with a “100 percent success rate.” Frank had said his father was brilliant yet dangerous, that he had hurt people but not physically. Now Maya thought she understood. Oren didn’t have to touch anyone to hurt them. He did it with words, just like his son. Frank learned from his father.
Maya had to tell someone. She would tell her mom. Dan. The police. She turned on the light, got back into her sweatpants and shirt.
Her mom didn’t wake as Maya peeked her head through the door of her bedroom. She slept on her back, mouth open, blankets pulled up to her shoulders. The clock read 9:17. Maya paused here.
Claiming Frank had hypnotized her would make her sound as delusional as she had seven years ago. It’s like he has some kind of power. No one had believed her then, and no one would now, not even her mom, unless she had proof.
She crept back to her room, thoughts tumbling. She turned off the lights, then turned them on again. She rocked back and forth on the bed, hugged herself. It wasn’t enough to point out that Frank’s dad was a hypnotherapist. She had to prove that Frank was too, and that the hypnotism they had practiced was somehow deadly. She began to cry. It was like a caged animal had been released from her chest. The truth that wouldn’t let her sleep, that had lurked just beyond her grasp for the past seven years, was finally out in the open.
Either that or she’d lost her mind again.
The only person who knew for sure was Frank.
Steven had told her she could find him at the Whistling Pig most nights. The bar was less than a mile away. She downloaded a voice memo app on her phone. Tested it out, talking at different volumes with the phone tucked into her waistband, covered by her shirt, then beside her, hidden in her purse. The sound was best when she kept it in her purse. She found the cream-colored cashmere sweater she had worn to dinner with Dan’s parents stuffed in her backpack; this would look better than the faded T-shirt she had on. She would pretend like she just so happened to be in town and decided to have a drink at the Whistling Pig. She would act like she was happy to see him.