After he drove off I wondered if I should have let him wait for me. The street was completely deserted and eerily quiet and the first few keys were not the right ones.
I tried all the bigger keys in the door until the lock turned. Relieved, I swung the door open and quickly closed it firmly behind me. The alarm started bleeping. Beryl had given me the code the last time she slipped me in so I keyed it in. The bleeping stopped. I did not switch on any lights. The only illumination came from the emergency lights on the stair landings, but it was enough. I felt like a thief as I ran lightly up the wooden stairs. On my third try I found the key to Marlow’s office. I went in and stood in the shadowy space. Some part of me was afraid of what I was about to do.
But for so long now the curious flashes, hints and impressions had come, catching me unawares and sometimes startling me. My deeper mind was conscious of some shadow, some vague unrest that needed to be let out from my past and into my future. I drifted in the shadows, slowly. Like a ghost, letting my fingers trail along the wall, the desk, the gray cabinet. My breath misted in front of me.
I needed to do this. I was changing. Every day I was becoming more and more of something, but until I had all the elusive memories, everything that belonged to me, I could never really be me. Everything always came back to my lost memories. It was important. And I wanted them back. Whatever they may be, they were mine.
I wandered into the soundproof room. It was completely dark. I turned on a light and went up to the recording equipment. I was nervous and jittery. I stood back and stared at it. I ran my finger along the smooth black panel. It felt forbidden and dangerous. A screen lit up. At the top left-hand corner it said:
Swanson, Olivia.
The buttons were easy enough to figure out. All my sessions were dated and could be accessed at the press of a button. I touched the square that said Session 1.
The screen filled with white noise. And then a night-vision image of Marlow and me popped onto the screen, and suddenly I felt excited. My stomach was clenched with nervous energy. Finally. Finally I was going to meet my past.
I went back to the chair where Marlow always sat and I watched myself. At first it was shocking to see myself without any will, a puppet. But then my body plunged with shock and I leaned forward in a daze. Session after session after session I stared at the screen until it seemed to swirl before my eyes.
My own voice mocking me.
What? How can that be true? Me a prostitute? Ridiculous. The Invisible Society? I could not believe it. I refused to believe it. It must be that false memories syndrome. Yes, that was what it was. Daffy had been right all along. It was all a mistake to hypnotize me. And Marlow believed in this utter rot! I felt angry. Something solid and hard was in my belly.
In the recording Marlow was asking a hypnotized me, ‘How many men are in the room?’
‘Twelve,’ the strange me replied.
‘Oh my God!’ My voice was a gasp. How could he believe that about me? Me a whore? Why? Why would I do that? I didn’t need money. It was all so silly it was laughable. I closed my eyes and saw myself sitting in the red and gilt chair wearing nothing but the shiny black boots. And the false eyelashes. I snapped my eyes open. The image vanished. I was back in the clinical room with the night-vision recording still running. My head began to ache. I felt so confused. I should never have come here. I stood up to leave. I walked to the door and then I heard myself say in that weird monotone, ‘They’re coming up the stairs.’
And suddenly I began to shake. Goose bumps spread along my skin like wildfire. Something swelled in my brain. I shook my head. No. No. I walked out of the soundproof room but I could still hear my own voice. I walked to the door. No. No. I opened the door. What had they done to me? Oh my God! I couldn’t see properly. My eyes were filled with tears. I tried to blink them away, but more arrived. I reached the top of the stairs and put my foot down and missed, and in that second while my arms were pin-wheeling and I was falling, those seconds before my flailing hands caught the banister, I had a flashback.
It was almost like an electric shock. The sounds were too loud, the colors too bright. The images needle sharp. I was not allowed to be an observer. I was sucked into it. It felt more real than the room I had been sitting in, the cold leather of the chair against the backs of my legs, the cold hard feel of the banister, the pain on my knee from where it had knocked the edge of the wall, the cold of the stair under my bare foot, where I had lost my shoe.
I was not watching the flashback.
I was living it.
I was walking down the corridor of my recurring dreams. It was cold. Only now I recognized it clearly as the east wing of Marlborough Hall. That was where Mummy and I lived. I had woken up frightened with a strange dream of crows calling to me and I was going to see Mummy. As I walked I became more and more frightened. I reached Mummy’s door and I turned the knob and I saw it.
I saw Ivana. And she saw me. Slowly she turned her head and looked at me. She seemed unhurried. She was holding a pillow over Mummy’s head and her eyes—her eyes were chilly. She hated me. I stared, astonished. I didn’t know what to do. Mummy’s hands were clawed on the sheets. I couldn’t even scream. She left Mummy and she started to walk toward me. And I turned around and ran. I ran to the end of the corridor toward the stairs. She reached the stairs at the same time as I did.
I felt her hands push me and then I was falling. I fell and fell and fell. Until the floor opened up beneath me and everything collapsed into a black hole, the stairs, the pain, the sound of Blanca screaming my name from the direction of the kitchen, my memories, all disappeared into it.
For a while I could not catch my breath and then I doubled over and vomited. The smell horrified me. I grasped the banister and ran down the stairs of Marlow’s office. I opened the door and ran into the street. I ran up it screaming. I wore no shoes, but I did not feel the cold.
Marlow
The scream was blood-curdling. The hairs at the back of my neck rose. That was her voice. I began to run in the direction of her scream. I found her up the road. Her feet were bare and dirty. She whirled around at my approach, her hands raised as if to strike. Under the street lamp her eyes were as wild and crazy as a blood-mad raptor. Her lips were almost blue in her startling white face. There was a bruise on one side of her cheek. She opened her mouth in a great roar and sprang at me. But not in attack.
She wanted to curl up in my arms.
I caught her, weak, defenseless and terrified, and squeezed her hard against my chest. She was trembling and her body was as cold as a corpse. I got her out of the road and onto the si
dewalk.
‘I’ve remembered. I know who the white owl is.’ Her voice was a thin, high screech. She began to sob as if her heart was broken and would never again mend.
I felt waves of pity and anger wash into my chest simultaneously. I did not know what she had remembered, but I didn’t care. I was not her hypnotist. I was her man. I didn’t care what she had done in the past—she was my woman and I loved her with every fiber of my being. I’d die before I’d let anyone hurt her.
She’d come back to herself and that was enough. She was out of the labyrinth of her mind. The maze had not led her to the minotaur. It had brought her to me.