She is unwilling to reconcile the truth of her memories with her greatest fear from childhood. She still requires the delusion of forgetting. But why?
The phone beeps twice, then returns to a dial tone. I let it drone for another moment before turning it off.
The subject, even when presented with a nearly exact reenactment of the Fear Climax, generates other hypotheses. She does not accept the answer even when it’s staring her in the face. Perhaps the lack of skin disturbance in the exposed area was a factor in her avoidance. Perhaps the reenactment can be performed again, and this time, the glove will be dragged down farther, until it reveals a bit of rash.
A bit of rash? His psoriasis? But why would that—
My heart punches my sternum. I hear, instead of feel, myself moan. Then I drop the phone. Bring my hand to my mouth.
Perhaps only then will she remember what really happened.
There’s a violent churning deep inside my gut. Because—because the handle snagged on the glove. And as the man worked to detach the metal from the fabric…
The reenactment will be tried again, as soon as the subject returns.
The glove was tugged down even more. And I saw it then—I see it now, scratching my wrist as the memory blazes back—a section of skin so red and raw, so hardened by scales, it could only belong to one man.
I screamed when I saw it.
I scream as I remember it now. I scream as I scratch and scratch and scratch.
It was Ted. The man. The kidnapper. The monster in the mask.
It was always my father.
“Damn it, Fern.”
As soon as I hear his voice in the doorway, my throat closes. My scream snuffs out.
I whirl around to face him. He’s leaning against the doorframe. The gloves are still on his hands. His eyes flick from my face to the paper I’ve been reading and back to my face again.
“I was hoping,” he says, “you’d remember on your own.”
twenty-one
It was you?”
Even now, it comes out as a question.
Ted shakes his head. “The fact that you still have to ask that…”
He pulls at the glove on his right hand, finger by finger, until it slips off. When he drops it onto the floor, I stare at the patch of red on the back of his wrist. Red like a wound. Red like a door.
“We’ll have to explore that,” he says, “this delay in your understanding.” He tugs the fingertips of the other glove. Discards that one, too. “But of course it was me. Of course it was. And really—it’s mind-boggling that it took you reading it in my notes to see it.”
He steps forward, plucks the paper from my hand, sets it down on the desk. Without something to hold on to, I’m dizzy. Untethered. My knees buckle and I fall into the chair behind me. Not the interview one this time. His.
Ted furrows his brow at me. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Turns his head to look at the interview chair, then shrugs and sits down. He has no wheels with which to swivel toward me, but he leans forward as far as he can. I see every scale on his skin.
“Maybe we should start there,” he says. “Let’s figure out why you didn’t put it together. It made sense when you were younger. It’s not uncommon for dissociative amnesia to occur so a child can maintain an attachment to a person on whom they’re dependent. If a parent significantly frightens them, say, then the child’s mind might simply push out the memory in order to protect itself. But you’re not a child anymore. So it’s noteworthy that your mind would continue to block you from seeing the most logical answer.”
He opens his hand, begins ticking off his fingers. “You read the memoir. You and I have done countless Experiments together. I reenacted the Fear Climax, and yet you still didn’t recognize—or even suspect—that it was me.” He lets his hand fall into his lap. “Where did you go just now? Who did you think it was?”
Somehow my mouth moves. Somehow it whispers: “Cooper.”
“Cooper? He would have been a kid when this happened! I’d be offended if it weren’t so laughable. You thought of a teenager before you thought of me. I don’t…” He shakes his head again. “I think anyone else would have figured it out, Fern. A long time ago.”
“But.”
“But what?”
Now my voice pours out of me, but I can’t even feel it on my