Authors: Amy Cross
Two years later
“I think the other members of the group would be very interested in your perspective, Anna,” Doctor Williams says. “Do you think maybe you're finally ready to contribute a little?”
Staring at my hands, I can hear the nervous shuffling of the other therapy group members. Some of them talk non-stop during these sessions, while others say barely a word. Some of them go on and on until they have to be encouraged to keep quiet, and others mumble a few sentences here and there. And then there's me, still being forced to come and listen to all these stories, even though I still just want to be left alone. I don't trust myself around other people.
“Anna?” Doctor Williams continues, clearly keen to make another of her periodic attempts to get me involved. “Is there nothing you want to say?”
Nearby, someone coughs. I'm sure they're all looking at me, but I refuse to meet their gazes. They all know what I am and what I did.
“Anna -”
“Get me a pen and paper,” I mutter finally, hoping to make her leave me alone, “and I'll write it down.”
“Anna, you know -”
“Can I
please
have a pen and paper?” I ask. “I'll write it all down tonight and someone can read it tomorrow.”
“You can't have a pen,” she says after a moment. “I think you remember why.”
Looking at my left wrist, I see the faint scar that's left from that night six months ago when the staff finally made a mistake. I came so close to escaping this misery, but they just
had
to patch me back up. There'll be another chance, though. One day, one of them will slip up and I'll be ready, and this time I won't even hesitate. I won't be weak.
“Okay,” Doctor Williams continues finally, “maybe we should move on to someone else and -”
“You should
make
her talk,” one of the other patients says suddenly. “It's not fair that you make the rest of us join in, but
she
gets to just sit there every day, listening but not giving anything back.”
“Everyone's at a different stage of this process,” Doctor Williams explains. “Anna just -”
“But she's been here longer than any of us,” another voice points out. “Isn't it kind of crazy that she's still allowed to just, like, sit around and not say anything? What's so special about her, anyway?”
“She's the girl from the video,” another patient says. “I saw the video.”
I turn and see that, just as I expected, everyone's staring at me. I look into their eyes and see nothing but contempt.
“Maybe we should move along,” Doctor Williams continues. “Arthur, would you like to talk about the progress you think you've been making in these sessions?”
***
I can hear the others talking, but down here at the bottom of the garden I can at least be left alone. I wander through the tall grass near the trees, keeping well away from the hospital's main building, and for a moment I manage to convince myself that there's no-one here to judge me. A fraction of a second later, however, I hear a rustling sound nearby, bringing me back to reality and reminding me that Nurse Walters is never going to leave me alone.
I turn to her.
“Hey, Anna,” she says with a smile. “Having fun? You seem very thoughtful this morning.”
“Can't I just be by myself for five minutes?” I ask.
“I'm sorry, but you know that's not allowed.” She pauses. “Are you sure you don't want to spend social time with the other patients? I'm sure they'd love to get to know you a little better.”
I shake my head.
“Anna -”
“I just want to be alone.”
“You're alone in your room every night.”
“I want to be alone out here. It's different.”
A sad smile crosses her lips. The truth is, I know that I'm not allowed to be alone. They're worried about me, and they think there's a danger I might do something to myself. As I turn and make my way past the trees, with Nurse Walters following a few paces behind, I try to focus on emptying my mind. Lately, I've been trying to think as little as possible, with the ultimate aim being to banish all my thoughts forever and just exist as a physical body that doesn't have any of my memories. That way, at least I won't -
Suddenly I see an image of Karen screaming as she struggles to get free. Her body is torn and bloodied, but I'm stepping closer with a pair of scissors in one hand.
“Please, Anna,” she sobs, “don't do this to me!”
“I won't,” I whisper. “I could never...”
I see myself driving the scissors into her leg, digging deep and causing her to scream louder than ever.
“I don't want to do this to you,” I stammer. “Please, I want to stop!”
“Anna?”
Spinning around, I find that Nurse Walters has put a hand on my shoulder. She has that same kind, concerned look on her face that I remember from the last time she interrupted me like this.
“Are you having another flashback?” she asks. “It's okay if you are, we can talk about it.”
I shake my head.
“You said something about wanting to stop?” she continues.
“It's nothing,” I mutter, turning and shuffling across the grass. Before I can take more than a few steps, however, I suddenly see Matt's bloodied body strapped to another chair.
“Anna,” he says firmly, his voice tense with pain, “you have to untie me!”
I kneel between his legs, with a pair of pliers in my right hand as I stare at his flaccid penis.
“Anna,” he continues, “listen to me.
Look
at me, Anna. Look me in the eyes!”
I glance up at him, and I can see fear in his expression. He's terrified of me.
“You don't have to do this,” he stammers. “Anna, I can tell that you hate this. Untie me and untie Karen, and we can sort this out. Whatever happened to you in the cabin, you don't have to recreate it here!”
“I know,” I tell him. “I don't
want
to recreate it, I don't want to do any of this.”
“Then stop!”
“I can't!”
“Anna, please...”
Behind him, Karen is sobbing wildly.
“I can't stop,” I whisper, “because I don't understand why I started. This isn't me, this isn't something I'd do to someone. Even after the cabin, I can't believe that I'd...” My voice trails off for a moment as I feel tears in my eyes. “I don't want to be this kind of person,” I sob. “I don't want to be a killer!”
“You're
not
a killer,” Matt replies.
I look down at the pliers in my hand.
“You know you're not,” Matt continues. “Anna, deep down you know you didn't kill me, and you know you didn't do those things to Karen. You were set up. Please, you have to believe me, you have to make the police keep looking for the real killer. Trust yourself.”
“It was me,” I sob.
“No,” he says firmly, “it really wasn't!”
“I killed you,” I whimper. “I can't fool myself.”
“Anna!” he gurgles. “Please...”
Looking up at him again, I see to my horror that someone is standing next to the chair, cutting Matt's neck open with a knife. Hot blood is running from the wound, pouring down his naked body.
“Anna,” he gasps, “this wasn't you! I know you don't -”
He gasps again, his eyes wide with horror as I hear the knife grinding against the base of his skull. Blood erupts from his mouth, heaving in a series of violent bursts. When I look up at the figure next to him, however, I see only a dark shadow, and a moment later I suddenly realize that
I'm
the one holding the knife. I want to stop, but instead I drive the blade down into his neck, watching as the bloodied metal splits his flesh.
“Anna!” Karen screams. “Stop!”
“Anna.”
Turning, I see that Nurse Walters is standing behind me, and we're back on the lawn outside the hospital. I look down at my hands, but of course they're empty, although they're still trembling.
“We should go inside,” she says calmly, putting a hand on my arm and starting to lead me back toward the main building. “I think you're having more flashbacks, so maybe it's time to rest. You've had a stressful day.”
“I didn't do it,” I whisper, shocked as I hear Matt's words echoing through my mind.
“You'll be having a one-on-one with Doctor Williams tomorrow morning.”
“I didn't -”
For a split second, I remember untying Matt.
“Don't let her go!” he shouts, his voice echoing through my mind. “Don't cut her ropes!”
I remember Karen swinging something at my face, and then -
“I didn't do it,” I say again, pulling away from Nurse Walters. “I didn't kill Matt, it wasn't me. I don't know who did it, but it wasn't me, it can't have been!”
“Anna...”
“I would never do that!” I scream, with tears running down my face as I take a step back. I know the other patients are watching me now, but I don't care. “I'm not a killer! What happened at the cabin was not enough to turn me into someone who -”
Suddenly I'm seized from behind, and I feel a needle sliding into my neck.
“Calm down,” one of the orderlies hisses into my ear. “Time for a little nap, Anna.”
“I didn't do it!” I shout, struggling to get free even though I can already feel my body starting to weaken. “I know I didn't! I'm not that kind of person!”
I turn and try to pull away, but at that moment I notice another nurse nearby, talking to a patient while keeping her back to me. Somehow I feel as if I recognize the woman, but when I try to call out to her I find that my mouth is numb. The familiar nurse starts to turn toward me, but I can't keep my eyes open and finally everything goes black. I try to fight back, but the drugs are washing through my system and I know I can't resist.
“You didn't kill me,” Matt's voice whispers as I lose consciousness. “It wasn't you, Anna. You know who it was.”
“Karen turned down your request,” Doctor Williams replies calmly as we sit in her office the following morning. “In the circumstances, I'm sure you can understand that -”
“Tell her it's urgent,” I reply. “Tell her I just need to talk to her one time, so I can hear her version of what happened.”
“I believe you've read the statements she made to the police.”
“Of course, but I need to get it straight! The version she told the court doesn't make sense!”
“In her statements,” Doctor Williams continues, “Karen was very clear about her version of events. She talked extensively about the day you kidnapped her, and about the ordeal she went through while you were holding her in that building.” She pauses. “I've read the statements several times, Anna. It's quite clear that Karen was telling the truth, and that it was very difficult for her to relive it all. Do you really want to open her wounds up all over again?”
“Maybe she's confused,” I reply, “or maybe she's too scared to say what really happened.”
“Why would she be scared?”
“I don't know,” I continue, trying not to sound too agitated, “but that's why I need to speak to her myself! Maybe she's being threatened, but she'll tell the truth if it's just me and her!”
Doctor Williams pauses, before leaning back in her chair.
“Where is this coming from all of a sudden?” she asks. “Until last week, you seemed to have accepted the truth about what you'd done. You talked a lot about remorse, and about trying to come to terms with your actions, and even about trying to recover your memories of that time, but underpinning all of those breakthroughs was an acceptance of your...” She pauses. “Well, of your guilt. That's not a word we like to use around here very often, but I think perhaps it's appropriate in this situation. And now suddenly you seem to be resisting that acceptance and talking about the possibility that someone else did all those things to Karen and Matt. What changed?”
I try to work out how I can explain myself without sounding even crazier.
“Do you not want to admit that you're capable of such things?” she asks.
“I didn't do it,” I reply. “I just know deep down, in my heart, that I didn't do it. I'm not a killer.”
“Your mother came to visit again this morning,” she continues. “And yet again, you refused to see her. Why?”
“I can't,” I stammer. “Not yet.”
“Is it possible that you're denying your guilt because you don't want to disappoint her?” she asks. “I'm thinking, Anna, that perhaps you're trying to postpone your mother's visits indefinitely so that by the time she
does
come, you'll have managed to clear your name. Is that the kind of fantasy you're seeking, Anna?”
“It's not that,” I tell her.
“Then why the sudden change?”
I open my mouth to reply, but suddenly I realize that I can see Matt standing right behind her. A shudder passes through my chest as I find myself staring into his dark, pained eyes, but after a few seconds he disappears.
“Anna?” Doctor Williams says.
I turn to her. “Can I see the video?”
“Which video?”
“The one showing Matt and Karen.”
She sighs.
“Why not?” I ask. “If I'm in it, don't I have the right to see it? Maybe there's a clue in there, maybe I can work out who really did all those things to them! I think someone has been setting me up!”
“And who might that be?” she replies. “Do you have a suspect in mind, Anna?”
Filled with frustration, I realize that she's just humoring me. The more I protest, the more she and the other doctors think that I'm simply refusing to face the truth. I don't blame them, I probably sound insane, but I can't accept that I'm a cold-blooded killer, not yet. Glancing over at the window, I watch as a nurse walks past with a couple of patients, and I find myself wondering whether I should just accept what everyone's telling me. Maybe Doctor Williams is right, maybe I'm just refusing to recognize the truth. As I watch her leading the patients past, the nurse turns and smiles at me for a moment before disappearing out of view.
I freeze.
It can't have been, but...
“Karen,” I whisper.
“I'm sorry?” Doctor Williams asks.
I turn to her. “Did you hire Karen?”
She frowns.
“Is Karen working here?” I ask, getting to my feet as I feel a cold shiver passing through my chest. “Is Karen a nurse now?”
She reaches under her desk, no doubt to press a button and call some orderlies.
“No!” I say firmly, sitting back down. “I'm fine, you don't need to do that. I'm calm, I just...” I look over at the window again. I swear, the nurse who walked past was Karen, and she even smiled at me as if she knew that I recognized her. “I want to go back to my room,” I whisper after a moment, turning back to the doctor as I feel a wave of exhaustion. “I think I'm seeing things again. Can I go to my room and sleep?”
***
“But that's the thing,” Beth continues, as she stirs her porridge in the dining room, “I
couldn't
have been the one who set fire to all those houses, because I wasn't even in that part of town when it happened! I was in the other place.”
“The other place?” I ask wearily, turning to her.
“Where you get taken.”
I stare at her for a moment.
“Haven't you ever been to the other place?” she continues, her eyes wide with shock. “Not everyone gets to go, you have to be special. You have to stand out and attract their attention.”
“Whose attention?” I ask.
“The people from the other place.” She looks down at her porridge for a moment. “It's not something that can be described. You can't imagine it, you have to see it. The other place is this vast series of worlds. I don't know why I was chosen to go there, but I flew through the sky on a magic carpet and I saw it all!”
“You did, huh?” I reply, forcing a smile. Poor Beth is clearly out of her mind.
“I saw plains filled with deserts,” she continues, “and huge oceans, and a vast library, and whole worlds spinning through the sky.” She stare at the table for a few seconds, clearly lost in her fantasy. “And then when I got home, there were lots of police there, and they said I'd been seen setting fire to the shopping mall and some houses nearby. I tried to tell them it wasn't me, but they said they had proof. I explained that I'd been to the other place, and that when you come back from the other place you always smell of gasoline and have gasoline stains on your clothes, but they didn't believe me!”
“Fancy that,” I mutter.
“But I know I'm right,” she adds firmly. “Anyone can say what they want about me, or to my face, but I know with absolute certainty that I went to the other place.” She pauses, before leaning closer and lowering her voice. “By the way, do you have a box of matches I can borrow?”
“Sorry, no.”
She mumbles something, before scooping another spoonful of porridge into her mouth.
And that's when I realize the truth. Beth absolutely believes every word of the nonsense she just told me. The human mind is an incredible thing, capable of recognizing vast truths but also, at times, capable of maintaining immense fictions. I truly can't trust my own perceptions anymore, and if all the police officers involved in my case and all the lawyers, and all the doctors and psychiatrists, agree that I murdered Matt and tortured Karen, I guess I can't really argue with them. With tears in my eyes, I lower my head and take deep breaths, but I feel as if this is a turning point.
“Excuse me,” I mutter, getting to my feet and hurrying out of the room. Beth calls after me, but I ignore her as I make my way along the corridor. As I get to the double doors, they swing open and a nurse walks past, bumping against my shoulder.
I pause for a moment, before turning and seeing that it's the same nurse I saw earlier, the nurse who I thought was Karen.
“Hey!” I call out, hurrying after her. “Hey, wait!”
She stops and turns, and I immediately see that I was wrong.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “Sorry, I'm new here, but is there something you need?”
“No,” I reply, staring at her as I feel the last of my hope slipping away. “No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you.”
She smiles as she heads toward one of the nearby doors, and I turn to make my way back along the corridor. I'm losing my mind, seeing things that aren't really there, and there's no point denying the obvious truth any longer. Everyone else is right, I'm just a killer, and I never really recovered from what happened to me at the cabin. Maybe some things are just too horrible for anyone to ever recover. Maybe from the day I first set foot in that place, I was doomed to a lifetime of madness.
Sometimes, I think maybe it would have been easier for everyone if I'd just died in the cabin. At least Karen, Matt and Freddie Gray wouldn't have suffered.
***
My room is cold, as usual, but I don't bother ringing the buzzer and asking someone to turn the radiator up. It's getting late now, and I'm glad of the chance to come to bed and get some sleep. The whole day has gone past in something of a blur, and I feel as if I'm losing control of my thoughts again. I thought saw Karen, then there was the weirdness with the nurse, and now I'm exhausted. As I climb into bed and pulls the sheets up, I can't help feeling that being asleep is better than being awake. Lately, my everyday life makes about as much sense as my dreams.
Less sense, even.
I'm never going to get well.
This is me now, forever. There's no life after the cabin. Only madness.
As the night wears on, I find that I can't sleep. I toss and turn, thinking back to the moment when I discovered Karen and Matt in the basement of that building. I know that everyone says I was responsible, and I guess they're right, but I still have a burning sensation in my chest every time I try to imagine myself doing something so awful. Whenever I try to picture myself torturing Karen or cutting Matt's throat, I feel as if I'm actually watching someone else as they do those things. Could my experience in the cabin really have turned me into such an awful person? Was I really so badly broken? I guess maybe my real memories are lost forever.
Eventually I manage to drift off to sleep. My dreams are dark and deep as usual, filled with flashes of the cabin. Lately I never dream about anything that happened before I ended up in that awful place, and it's almost as if my entire personality was severed at that point. The old Anna, the Anna from before my trip to Norway, was discarded and left to die somewhere, and the new Anna is a messed-up ball of madness. I guess that explains how I ended up torturing Karen and killing Matt. The good parts of me were dead by that point, just memories, while the bad parts of me lived on, emboldened by my experience in the cabin.
After a while, I start to stir. I hear a faint bumping sound nearby, but I just assume that it's coming from one of the other rooms. I allow myself to slip back into dreams, but another bump brings me back.
Someone's in my room.
“What?” I ask, turning over to look, just as something slams into my face and presses me down against the bed. I try to struggle, then to call out, but some kind of gag is forced into my mouth and I feel ropes being passed around my wrist and ankles.
“It's okay,” the voice whispers, leaning over my bed. “Don't struggle. It'll all be over in a moment.”
I try to shout for help, but all I manage is a muffled groan. I pull on the ropes, but they're far too tight. A moment later, the light next to my bed flickers to life, and then a woman in a nurse's uniform leans over me.
“Hey Anna,” Karen says with a faint smile, keeping her voice low as if she's worried about being overheard. “It's finally time to finish what we started at the cabin.”