The Door To December Part 17

Dan winced at Marge's description of the battered student. 'But Hoffritz has no arrest record.'

'The girl wouldn't press charges.'

'He did that to her, and she let him get away with it? Why?'

Marge got up, went to the window, and stared down at the campus. The orange light of sunset had given way to the grays and blues of twilight. A few clouds had sailed in from the sea. At last, the psychologist said, 'When we put w.i.l.l.y Hoffritz on suspension and started looking into his previous relations.h.i.+ps with students, we found this girl wasn't the first. There were at least four others over the years, four that we know of all undergraduates, s.e.xually involved with Hoffritz, all playing m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t to his s.a.d.i.s.t, although none of them had been seriously injured. Until this girl, it was always more of a nasty game than anything. Those first four were willing to talk about it when we insisted, and because of our interviews with them, we uncovered some interesting, appalling ... and frightening information.'

Dan didn't press her to continue. He suspected that it was painful and humiliating for her to admit that a colleague - even one she didn't like - was capable of these things and that the academic community was no more n.o.ble than the human race at large. But she was a realist who could face up to unpleasant truths, a rare creature both in and out of academia, and she would tell him everything. She just needed to do it at her own pace.

Still facing the twilight, she said, 'None of those first four girls was promiscuous, Dan. Good kids from good families, here to obtain an education, not to escape parental authority and get some kicks. In fact, two of the four were virgins before they fell under Hoffritz's spell. And none was ever involved in sado-m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic relations.h.i.+ps before Hoffritz, and certainly not after. They were repulsed by the memories of what they had let him do to them.'

She fell silent again.

He decided that she wanted him to ask a question now, and he said, 'Well, if they didn't like it, why did they do it?'

'The answer to that is a bit complex.'

'I can handle it. I'm a bit complex myself.'

She turned from the window and smiled, but only briefly. What she had to tell him obviated amus.e.m.e.nt. 'We discovered that each of those four girls had been voluntarily involved in undisclosed behavior-modification experiments with Hoffritz. Those experiments included posthypnotic suggestion and a variety of ego-suppressing drugs.'

'Why would they want to get involved with something like that?'

'To please a professor, to get a good grade. Or maybe because it actually interested them. Students are sometimes interested in the things they study, even these days, even the low-caliber students we've been getting lately. And Hoffritz did have a certain charm, which was more effective with some people than others.'

'Not with you.'

'When he turned on the charm, I found him even more slimy than usual. Anyway, he was teaching these girls, and he charmed them, and you mustn't forget that he was well published and well known in his field. He had earned a certain respect.'

'And it was after these experiments started that each girl found herself s.e.xually involved with him.'

'Yes.'

'So you think he used hypnosis, drugs, subconscious programming, to ... well, to convert them?'

'To program their psychological matrices to include promiscuity and masochism. Yes. That's exactly what I think.'

Melanie's shrill scream filled the house.

Shouting her daughter's name, Laura hurried behind Earl Benton, down the hall. Revolver in hand, the bodyguard entered the child's room ahead of Laura and snapped on the light.

Melanie was alone. The menace that had elicited her screams was one that only she could see.

Dressed in white socks and the pair of white cotton underpants that she had been wearing during her nap, the child was crouched in a corner, hands held in front of her to ward off an invisible enemy, shrieking so fiercely that she must have been hurting her throat. She looked so fragile, so pitifully vulnerable.

Laura was briefly overwhelmed with loathing for Dylan. She almost sagged, almost went limp, almost crumpled under the weight of her anger.

Earl holstered his gun. He reached out to Melanie, but she struck his hands and scrambled away from him, along the baseboard.

'Melanie, honey, stop! It's all right,' Laura said.

The girl didn't heed her mother. She reached the next corner, sat down, drew her legs up, fisted her small hands, and held them up defensively. She was no longer screaming, but she made a strange, rhythmic, panicky sound: 'Uh ... uh ... uh ... uh ... uh ...'

Crouching in front of her, Earl said, 'It's okay, kid.'

'Uh ... uh ... uh ... uh ...'

'It's okay now. It really is. It's okay, Melanie. I'll take care of you.'

'The d-d-door,' Melanie said. 'The door. Don't let it open!'

'It's shut,' Laura said, hurrying to her, kneeling by her. 'The door is shut and locked, honey.'

'Keep it shut shut!'

'Don't you remember, baby? There's a big, new, heavy lock on the door,' Laura said. 'Don't you remember?'

Earl glanced at Laura, obviously puzzled.

'The door is shut,' Laura continued. 'Locked. Sealed. Nailed shut. n.o.body can open it, honey. n.o.body.'

Fat tears welled in the child's eyes, spilled down her cheeks.

'I'll take care of you,' Earl said soothingly.

'Baby, you're safe here. No one can hurt you.'

Melanie sighed, and the fear ebbed out of her face.

'You're safe. Perfectly safe now.'

The girl put one pale hand to her head and began to twist a strand of hair in that absentminded way that any ordinary girl might twist her hair when preoccupied with thoughts of boys or horses or pajama parties or any of the other things that preoccupied kids her age. Indeed, after the bizarre behavior that she had displayed thus far, after alternating between extremes of hysteria and motionless catatonia, it was both moving and encouraging to see her playing with her hair, because that was such a normal act - a small thing, simple, hardly a breakthrough, not a crack in her hard autistic s.h.i.+eld, but normal normal.

Seizing the moment, Laura said, 'Would you like to go to a beauty shop with me, baby? Hmmmm? You've never been to a real beauty shop. We'll go and get our hair done together. How would you like that?'

Although her eyes remained somewhat gla.s.sy, Melanie's brow furrowed, and she seemed to be considering the proposition.

'Lord knows, you need something done with your hair,' Laura said, anxiously trying to preserve the moment, expand upon it, deepen and broaden this unexpected contact with the girl inside the autistic sh.e.l.l. 'We'll get it cut and styled. Maybe curled. How would you like your hair curled, honey? Oh, you'd look just great with lots of curls.'

The girl's face softened, and a smile threatened to take possession of her mouth.

'And after the beauty shop, we could go shopping for clothes. How about that, honey? Lots of new dresses. Dresses and sweaters. Even one of the glitzy new jackets the kids are wearing. You'd like that, I bet.'

Melanie's unfinished smile stopped forming. Although Laura kept talking, the mood was gone as suddenly as it had come. The girl's placid expression gave way to a look of disgust, as if she had seen something in her private world that horrified and repulsed her.

Then she did a startling and disturbing thing: She struck herself with her small fists, struck hard at her knees and thighs, with a loud smacking sound, then pounded her chest- 'Melanie!'

-and swung both fists at the same time, pounding her withered biceps and her shoulders, pummeling herself fiercely, with unexpected strength and fury, trying to hurt herself.

'Stop it! Melanie!' Laura was shocked and frightened by her daughter's sudden self-destructive frenzy.

Melanie punched herself in the face.

'I got her!' Earl shouted.

The girl bit him as he tried to restrain her. She freed one hand and clawed her own chest with sufficient ferocity to draw blood.

'Jesus!' Earl said as the girl kicked him with her bare feet and twisted loose again.

Frowning at Marge, Dan said, 'Programmed them to be promiscuous and m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic? Is that sort of thing possible?'

She nodded. 'If the psychologist has a deep and broad knowledge of modern brainwas.h.i.+ng techniques, and if he's unscrupulous, and if he has either a willing subject or one he can physically detain and control for lengthy periods - then it's possible. But it usually takes a long time, a lot of patience and perseverance. The astonis.h.i.+ng and frightening thing in this case is that Hoffritz seems to have been able to program these girls in a matter of weeks, after working with them only an hour or two a day, just three or four times a week. Apparently, he developed some new and d.a.m.ned effective methods of psychological conditioning. But with the first four, it wasn't long-lasting, never longer than a few weeks or months. Eventually, each girl's original personality resurfaced. First she felt guilty about her s.e.xual acrobatics with Hoffritz but continued to take perverse pleasure in the humiliation and pain of her m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic role. Then she gradually grew to fear and despise the whole sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic aspect of the relations.h.i.+p. Each of these kids said it was like waking from a dream when they finally began to want to be free to Hoffritz. All four girls eventually found the will to break it off.'

'Good G.o.d,' Dan said.

'I believe there is a good one, but sometimes I wonder why He lets men like Hoffritz walk the earth.'

'Why didn't these girls report him to the police ... or at least to university officials?'

'They were deeply ashamed. And until we found and questioned them, they never suspected that their m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic aberrations were Hoffritz's work. They all thought those twisted desires had been in them all along.'

'But that's amazing. They knew they were involved in behavior-modification experiments. So when they started behaving in ways they'd never behaved before-'

She held up one hand, stopping him. 'w.i.l.l.y Hoffritz probably implanted posthypnotic directives that inhibited each girl from considering the possibility that he was responsible for her new behavior.'

It scared Dan to think the brain was just so much Silly Putty that could be so easily manipulated.

Melanie scuttled past Earl and sprang to her feet and took two awkward steps into the middle of the bedroom, where she stopped and swayed and almost fell. She began once more to scourge herself, hammering herself as if she felt that she deserved to be punished or as if she were trying to drive some dark spirit from her traitorous flesh.

Stepping close, grunting as the small fists glanced off her, Laura threw her arms around her daughter, hugged her, trying to pin the child's arms at her sides.

When her hands were restrained, Melanie still didn't settle down. She kicked and screamed.

Earl Benton stepped in behind her, sandwiching her between him and Laura, so she couldn't move at all. She could only shout and weep and strain to break free. The three of them remained like that for a minute or two, while Laura spoke continuously and rea.s.suringly to the girl, and finally Melanie stopped struggling. She sagged between them.

'She done?' Earl asked.

'I think so,' Laura said.

'Poor kid.'

Melanie looked exhausted.

Earl stepped back.

Docile now, Melanie allowed Laura to lead her to the bed. She sat on the edge of it.

She was still weeping.

Laura said, 'Baby? Are you all right?'

Eyes glazed, the girl said, 'It came open. It came open again, all the way open.' She shuddered in revulsion.

'The fifth girl,' Dan said. 'The one he beat up and put in hospital. What was her name?'

The stocky psychologist moved away from the twilight-darkened window, returned to her desk, and slumped in her chair as if these unpleasant memories had drained her in a way that a hard day's work never could. 'Not sure I should tell you.'

'I believe you have to.'

'Invasion of privacy and all that.'

'Police investigation and all that.'

'Doctor-patient privilege and all that,' she said.

'Oh? This fifth girl was your patient?'

'I visited her several times in the hospital.'

'Not good enough, Marge. Carefully worded, but not quite good enough. I visited my dad every day when he was in the hospital for a triple heart-bypa.s.s operation, but I don't figure a daily visit gives me the right to call myself his doctor.'

Marge sighed. 'It's just that the poor girl suffered so much, and now to dredge it all up again four years after the fact-'

'I'm not going to find her and dredge up the past in front of a new husband or her parents or anything like that,' Dan a.s.sured her. 'I may look big and dumb and crude, but actually I can be sensitive and discreet.'

'You don't look dumb or crude.'

'Thank you.'

'You do do look dangerous.' look dangerous.'

'I cultivate that image. It helps in my line of work.'

She hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged. 'Her name was Regine Savannah.'

'You're kidding.'

'Would Irmatrude Gelkenshettle kid about anyone's name?'