One-Eyed Jack (16 page)

“
What
I’m talking about? Ms. Derdiarian, I don’t
know
what I’m talking
about. I was hoping you could help me understand it.”

“
You really saw it in a
vision?” Now she sounded more curious than upset. “Me locking the
kids in their rooms and starving them?”

“
Well, more... more heard
it than saw it, really,” I explained. “That’s why I didn’t know how
old the kids were, I never saw them. And I don’t know whether the
Jenny Derdiarian I saw looked anything like the real one; she was
thin, with a pale complexion and long, straight black
hair...”

“
It’s been a long time
since I’d say I was thin, Mr. Kraft, and I cut my hair a few years
back, but at least you’ve got the color right.”

“
Then... then was it you
that I saw?”

“
You
tell me, Mr. Kraft. Just what
was
in this vision of
yours?”

“
I told you – you had
locked up your children and were denying them food. You were pale
and thin, with long black hair, wearing a plain white dress, and...
well, you seemed a little hysterical. Does that make any sense to
you?”

She didn’t reply
immediately, and I began to wonder whether she’d put the phone
down, but at last she said, “I’m going to tell you something I’ve
never told anybody else, Mr. Kraft, and it’s
because
I’ve never told anybody else
that I’m taking you seriously, and why I think you really are
psychic. When my children were little, when Ashley was about seven
and Jason was just a baby, I got feeling more than a little
overwhelmed. My first husband, their father, had left me, gone off
somewhere to drink himself to death, and I hadn’t met Chester yet,
so there was just me and the kids, and not enough money, and I felt
more than a little trapped, and I used to have these fantasies of
just locking the kids in their rooms until they starved to death,
and then I’d have my life back. I never
did
anything like that, thank
heavens, I never even seriously considered it, but I
thought
about it, and I
thought about it
all the
time
, it got to be a real obsession, you
know? It started out just a harmless little fantasy, but I couldn’t
stop thinking about it, and it got more and more real. Whenever I
had a spare moment I would sit and play it all out in my head, like
I was watching some horrible movie. Half the time I couldn’t think
about anything else. I started worrying that maybe someday I might
actually do something about it, and hurt my kids. I was thinking of
maybe talking to someone about it, but the preacher at the church I
went to back then, he wasn’t all he could have been, and I couldn’t
afford a psychiatrist, and I didn’t really have the time to talk to
anyone anyway. It was pretty troubling; I prayed a lot, but I
couldn’t make myself quit.”

I made a noise to indicate I was still
listening, that I understood.

“
And
then one day, it stopped. It was just gone. I didn’t think about it
anymore. Oh, things were still rough, money was tight, and I won’t
deny I had some hard thoughts about the kids and maybe yelled at
them a little more than I oughten, but that whole idea of locking
them up to starve, it was just gone. I thought God must have just
plucked it out of me, as a burden I didn’t need anymore, and I’d
hardly ever thought about it since then, until tonight. And here
you are, and it sounds like you dreamed that whole thing just the
way I used to. That thin woman in a white dress, I don’t know if I
ever
really
looked like that, but that was how I saw myself when I
dreamed about... about doing that.”

“
In... in your daydreams,
if that’s what they were,” I asked, “did the kids actually
die?”

“
Oh, yes,” she said, and
her voice had gone strangely calm, the distress that had been there
a moment before gone, as suddenly as she said her obsessive fantasy
had gone. “I’d listen to them crying and screaming and begging for
food, right up until they stopped. And I opened the door and went
into the room to be sure they were dead, and I cried over the
bodies, and then sometimes I’d die, too, or I’d just fly away by
magic, or – well, it didn’t matter, once they were
gone.”

“
Oh.”

“
But you
know, Mr. Kraft, if I’d ever
really
locked them up until they
died, they’d have died of thirst, not hunger, wouldn’t they? Or of
something else, anyway. Or they’d have smashed a window and climbed
out, at least Ashley would have. She’s always had a mind of her
own, that one.”

“
I guess
you’re right,” I said. “It
couldn’t
have been real.” I felt a
bit stupid for not realizing that myself.

“
But
you
saw
that?” she asked. “You really had a vision?”

“
Yes,” I lied.

“
That’s surely strange. I
guess God does work in mysterious ways.”

“
I guess so,” I
said.

This was all beginning to make a sort
of sense. I didn’t really understand it entirely, but it fit
together. The ghost-Jenny had somehow gotten hold of this woman’s
obsessive fantasy, taken it out of her head and believed it was
real.

That was strange, but it made more
sense than the ghost of a murderess wanting to eat kids.

“
Thank you, Ms.
Derdiarian,” I said. “You’ve put my mind at ease, knowing it was
just a daydream you used to have. I don’t know how it came to me,
but I’m glad to know it wasn’t any more than that.”

“
It was pretty intense for
a daydream, Mr. Kraft; I don’t know that’s the word I’d
use.

“
Well, it wasn’t real,
anyway.”

“
No, it
never was. I used to think I was a monster for even
thinking
about it; I
can’t imagine how it could be real.”

“
No,” I said. “Is there
anything more you can tell me about it? Because it seems to me
there must be some reason for me to see it now.”

“
Well, I don’t know what
it could be. Hold on a moment, Mr. Kraft.” I heard her do something
to muffle the phone, and then say something to Jason – I couldn’t
make it out exactly, but I’m fairly sure he had returned and she
was sending him on another pointless errand, out of
earshot.

“
Are you still there?” she
asked, when Jason was presumably gone.

“
I’m still here, Ms.
Derdiarian,” I said.

“
You know, I do believe
things happen for a reason, so if you had this vision, maybe it’s
important, though I can’t imagine how.” She sounded
thoughtful.

“
I don’t know myself, but
I have a feeling that someone may be in danger, and there’s
something in your story that might help save him.”

She caught her breath. “Oh, my –
really?”

“
I
don’t
know
, but I think there might be.”

For a second she didn’t
respond, and when she did she seemed almost wistful. “It must be
very strange, being psychic. You just
see
these things, out of the
blue?”

“
Sometimes, yes.” I didn’t
want to get distracted by any details of how my talents worked.
“Now, about your... your daydreams. Was there just the
one?”

There was a pause before she said,
“No, there was one other.”

“
What was it?”

“
You didn’t see it in your
vision? Or hear it?”

“
I’m not sure,” I said
cautiously. “If I did, it wasn’t clear.”

“
The other one came first.
Do you have any children, Mr. Kraft?”

I resisted the temptation to say, “Not
that I know of,” and just said, “No.”

“
But you’ve seen people
play with babies?”

“
Some,” I said, wondering
if maybe I should have spent more time with my stepmother and my
half-sisters.

“
Well, you know how
someone will say, Oh, you’re so cute, I could eat you right up!
You’ve heard that, haven’t you?”

“
Sure,” I said, suddenly
afraid I knew where this was going.

“
Well, when Ashley was a
baby, I used to say that – I would hold her in my arms and look
down at her and smell her and I would say I could eat her right up,
and at first it was just one of those things you say because it’s
what you’ve always heard, and she was so adorable, but then I began
to wonder what it would be like to actually eat her. Isn’t that
awful?”

“
It’s... I don’t know, Ms.
Derdiarian.”

Suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted to
hear any more of this. I wondered how psychologists could stand
listening to some of their patients’ secrets.

“
I would hold her tiny
little hand and kiss her fingers, and everyone would smile at me,”
the voice on the phone said, “but while I was doing that I was
wondering what it would taste like to bite those fingers right off.
I loved her so much I wanted to get her back inside me – isn’t that
crazy?”

“
I don’t know, Ms.
Derdiarian,” I said, a little desperately, while the image of
Jack’s left hand filled my thoughts.

“
They
say that new mothers are a little crazy sometimes, from all the
hormones and sleep deprivation, so at first I thought it was that,
but the idea kept coming back. Every time I held Ashley, and then
again after Sarah was born, and again with Jason, I’d think about
eating them alive. Those cute little fingers and big bright eyes –
I never
did
anything, of course, but I
thought
about it, every time I
picked one of them up. I’ve never said a word about it to anyone
before right now, but you asked.”

“
Yes, I did,” I agreed,
though now I almost wished I hadn’t. “Thank you.” It sounded as if
Jenny’s appetite had nothing to do with becoming human; it was just
another nasty involuntary fantasy this woman had once
had.

“
That
went away, too. I’m not sure whether it was at the same time that
the one about locking them away to starve went away, or whether it
might have been maybe just a little earlier. I mean, Ashley and
Sarah weren’t babies anymore, and even Jason was running around on
his own, I wasn’t carrying him all the time, so I hadn’t been
thinking about eating him so much, I was dreaming about locking him
in his room so he would be
still
, so I wouldn’t need to worry
about him anymore.”

“
I understand,” I said,
though I didn’t really.

“
I’m
sure you think I’m really horrible,” she said.
“
I
certainly used to think so! I remember how awful I used to
feel about these things just as much as I remember the... the urges
themselves.”

“
You
used
to think so?”

“
That’s
right. When the... when the obsession went away, so did the guilt.
It was
all
gone – it was like it wasn’t even me who’d had all those
terrible thoughts, like that was just something I’d seen on TV, or
read in the newspaper, not anything that had been in my own
head.”

“
Really?”

“
Really. It just stopped.
The good Lord took it away.”

I didn’t think it had been God who
took it away. “And that was when?”

“
Oh, goodness, I don’t
know. At least fifteen years ago.”

Did that mean that
ghost-Jenny had been lurking there for
fifteen years
, waiting for some kid
like Jack to come along? Was it because Jack had that psychic
talent so strongly?

Or had she victimized other kids, and
for some reason no one heard about it? Maybe I should check into
any missing children in that neighborhood.

But that wasn’t Ms. Derdiarian’s
business. There was no reason to upset her, when she was being so
open and cooperative. The mere fact that she hadn’t hung up on me
immediately was more than I’d had a right to expect.

“
You haven’t had any nasty
feelings like that since?” I asked.

“
Not a
one, Mr. Kraft. At least, not one that ever repeated. Nothing that
kept
going
. I admit I’ve had the occasional wish that something bad
would happen to someone, that someone with her nose in the air
would trip over her own feet, or that sort of thing, but we’re none
of us perfect, are we? And I never once, since that day, dreamed of
hurting anyone myself; at worst I wished that the bad things would
just
happen
,
never that I would
do
them.”

“
I see the difference,” I
said.

“
I told you, it was as if
God had just pulled that darkness out of my soul, cast out the
devils that troubled me.”

“
And that was fifteen
years ago?”