Story Time
One by one they shuffled noiselessly down the hall and waited at the door to the hotel room as Steven tumbled in his pocket for the key to the room. As they made their way down the long hallway, Steven caught himself thinking that a single file line was the best way to hide their tracks, their numbers from enemy troops.
Enemy? What enemy, he mused to himself. There is no enemy. It’s ridiculous. This is the year 2005, not 1968. I was born in Louisiana and I live in New England. This life is my only life. I did not die in Vietnam.
“Liar, you know you died there,” another voice, this one shadowy, dark and resonant, whispered his mind.
Steven wanted to scream, “Shut up!” at the top of his lungs.
I don’t know who I was, he mused again, as if silently pleading with himself.
“Liar,” came the other voice again. “You know damned well who you are.” Cambodia….The word had an eerie sing-song sort of ring to it and Steven found himself practically whispering it to himself
For the first time in a very long time, Steven actually began to doubt his own sanity. What if, by some chance, he had imagined it all? What if he were to wake and find himself an infant or child, and his life, as he’d thought he had lived it with Ashley, Sarah, his parents, the years of therapy, had all been imagined?
How would all that, his life as he knew it, change if he were to wake up and find himself still a small infant, still standing inside a crib? Or, woke to find himself still in Cambodia, fighting a war that never, really did ever end?
Steven suddenly remembered a childhood activity. He remembered poking pinholes in a sheet of black construction paper and turning off the lights in his bedroom. He remembered shining a flashlight against the construction paper and how it looked as tiny fragments of light shined through the pinholes, casting the shadow of a constellation on his bedroom wall.
The more things he remembered - the sights and smells and sounds he recalled - the more he realized those things were just like the fragments of light, peering, shining trying to force their way through holes. It was then that he realized that he was the piece of paper and that it was only a matter of time before his life, his former life, completely punched through.
Would his soul, his mind be able to handle that strain? Or would they shatter, and fragment like the grenades he so often dreamt about?
Steven turned slid the key, a magnetic card actually, into a slot and the small LED on the base of the door turned green as he heard the door’s lock mechanism give way. He
turned the handle and held the door open as Sarah, Ashley and Matt walked in.
They’d all eaten at the hotel restaurant and Aunt Lori was still in her room, sleeping off the mid-day drinks she’d shared with Ashley and Sarah.
By this point, they’d all changed clothes, all of them dressed in jeans, long-sleeve
shirts and sweaters. A cold front was moving through, and the temperatures had already
begun to drop quickly.
Matt set a few grocery bags down on one of the hotel dressers.
“Cheese Wiz anyone?” he asked with a lopsided grin.
Sarah laughed and Ashley looked at him and said, “A man after my own interests. I knew I was beginning to like you for a reason.”
Matt handed her the can, but she set it down.
“I’ll take a rain check on that,” she said, as Matt continued to unpack the grocery bags. They’d stopped for supplies, chips, wine, beer and bottled water. They didn’t know
what to really expect, but Steven warned them that it could take a while to say all that he
had to say. They all settled in, kicking of their shoes and finding comfortable places, as Steven began pacing at the foot of the beds. Sarah glanced at him furtively and took his hand in hers.
It felt cold and clammy, but she didn’t recoil. Instead, she held him for a moment.
“Honey, you know you don’t have to do this,” Sarah said, almost knowing with absolute certainty that whatever Steven was about to tell them all was bound to be painful at worst uncomfortable at best.
“I know,” he murmured. “It’s something I need to do though.”
“No one is going to think less of you if you don’t,” she said. “We all care about you. And whatever is going on. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change how we feel about you.”
“Yeah,” Ashley chimed in. “The bottom line is that you’re my brother and I love you I know I said some things to you when you first got to town, awful things about your nightmares and the things you’ve gone through in your life. I don’t claim to really understand any of it. But I had no right to ridicule you. I’m sorry.
Steven cleared his throat and said, “I appreciate your concerns. I do. I really do, but the thing of it is, is that I’m into this thing for thirty-plus years now and I still don’t claim understand any of it. It isn’t something I want to burden any of you with.”
Steven paused as he paced the floor and for a brief instant he was somewhere else…
He saw an image of himself, blurred and unclear, pacing a jungle floor debriefing a group of men
“Who the fuck died and made you God, came a voice from the crowd, ugly and demanding, questioning his authority and his ability to lead them through the very bowels of hell…
And though I walk through the valley of death I fear no evil, because we’re the baddest mother fuckers in the valley….but that was a lie as well. Everyone knew Charlie was the baddest motherfucker in the valley. And those who figured that fact out first and came to terms with it, had the best chance of making it out of hell alive.
Suddenly, Steven’s attention snapped to the room and the faces around him. As quick as the image had come, it was gone. It had felt like an eternity, but in all actuality was only a second.
And it affirmed to him that what he was doing was right.
He cleared his throat again and continued. “No,” he said. “This isn’t something I want to burden any of you with. But at this point I think I would be doing all of you a grave disservice by not telling you all that I can.
“My condition, for lack of better word, began when I was around two. I probably began to remember them when I was five. They were nightmares and they were usually filled with violence of the worst kind- of war. There was darkness. There were jungle nights filled with inhuman screams. There were helicopters machine-gun fire and explosions. People were shot, people were bayoneted, people were blown into only semi-recognizable parts and pieces. That, in itself, was terrifying in the mind of a small child… and even in the mind of a grown man as it’s turned out.
What made it worse was that, from the start, the dreams were recurring. And worse still was that there was, and still is really, a sense of familiarity to the nightmares, almost as if I’d been there some way. The nightmares were and still are as vivid and real as you all are now, sitting before me. They’re not just bad nightmares. In my nightmares, everything is real and I’m there.
Needless to say, the nightmares began to bleed into my waking life very early on. I didn’t have friends. I was alienated and confused I couldn’t stand crowded areas.
That got so bad that it came to a point where I would have to sneak outside at night after Mom and Dad were asleep to sleep under the stars. Just like some people get conditioned to sleeping with a fan on and can’t sleep without one, I couldn’t sleep dreamless peaceful sleep unless I was in an open area. Certain smells, sounds, even music, for no apparent reason, would stir deep emotions in me. To this day I can’t listen to Amazing Grace or Taps without almost completely breaking down.”
“You gotta admit though man that those have to be like the two most depressing songs on the planet,” Matt interrupted.
“It’s okay,” Steven said. “Matt, they are depressing-ass tunes, but I think I understated my responses to them. The pain I feel when I hear these songs. It shakes me to my very core. I completely break down and lose control. In fact, unbeknownst to any of you, one of the demands I made of the funeral home guys was that they not perform either song during Mom and Dad’s services.”
“Jesus, Steven,” Ashley said. “I just remembered my confirmation. They played Amazing Grace and I remember it now. I remember you bursting into tears and leaving the church. I thought you were just being weird or something. God, I’m sorry.”
“No need to be,” Steven said. “Of all of you here, you were probably the one subjected the most to…my weirdness. I’m afraid I’m the one who is sorry, for everything.”
“Don’t be,” Ashley said, almost whispering, as she moved closer to Sarah, who placed an arm around her.
Steven continued.
“After months, and eventually years of visits to shrinks, counselors, child psychologists, neurologists and every other “ologist” in the book, I was finally diagnosed with what has since become commonly known as post-traumatic stress disorder when I was around seven, around a year or two before you were born, Ashley.
“The only thing that was really odd about it was that I hadn’t been traumatized. I remember the day of my diagnosis with startling clarity. Mom’s shocked response was, “Post traumatic stress disorder? That’s what those boys who were sent to Vietnam came back with. How can my little boy have that? God damned you son of a bitch, why are you lying to us? My baby can’t have that awful disease.”
“She was pretty emotional about it. After my diagnosis, we were heavily scrutinized,” Steven noted. “My interviews and therapy visits began to get a little more intense. It all came to an ugly head right around my ninth birthday. You were an infant at this time, Ashley. This creepy little man sat me down one day in a sterile little room with these ugly anatomically correct dolls. Has anyone ever touched you here, he asked me with a squinty little smirk as he pointed his ink pen to the boy doll’s dick. Truly aghast, I told him no.”
“Are you sure? he asked me. I said yes, not quite believing the guy’s persistence, wondering what his questions had to do with my nightmares of bodies burning, or what it had to do with my insomnia or my innate ability to enter a room and find the safest, most strategic place to sit, to avoid enemy fire,” Steven said. “He pressed though, he asked me if I was sure that Mom or Dad, or a neighbor or someone at school had ever touched me there. He was persistent though.
“At that point, I told him he seemed like he was getting excited playing with the boy doll and that he was the one who needed help. After that, I stood up and walked out of his office.
“I told Mom ad Dad immediately and they both hit the roof. I knew this would happen, Dad said, like he was ready to punch a wall. ‘We shell out our hard-earned money and they turn it all around to make it like we’re the one’s at fault.’
“Mom was a little less calm. She barged into the guy’s office and demanded to see
someone in charge. After a while, some senior staff members escorted me, the shrink and
Mom and Dad into a large conference room. The man in charge, a tall, thin, balding man
named Dr. Thompson quietly reviewed my case file as we all sat their silently. He began
diplomatically.
“My apologies to you all,” he said. “I understand your reasons for being upset. I’m sure Dr. Bellows could have been a little more cautious in his interview with Steven. And I’m sure he did not mean to insinuate that you or your husband had improper sexual relations with your son.”
“Bellows, for his part, stared down at the table in front of him, not daring to look up at Mom and Dad, whose eyes were still boring holes into him like lasers,” Steven said.
“In fact,” Thompson continued. “Had Dr. Bellows consulted his diagnostic manual he would have found that post traumatic stress disorder is seldom, if ever, a direct result of sexual abuse, but usually of extreme physical abuse or a situation where the patient believes his or her life has actually been threatened.”
“So is this the part where you accuse us of abusing our own child?’ Dad asked him
“No,” Thompson replied. “Quite the contrary Mr. Majors. Although it is not a rule, and abuse can be hidden, I can practically look at your son and tell he isn’t an abused child. He displays no outward signs or typical behaviors of an abused child. He seems well nourished, and from the spirited dressing down he administered to Dr. Bellows, who subsequently deserved every bit of it, Steven’s self esteem is very much intact.”
“Then what does all this mean?” Mom asked. “No one has really been able to tell us what post traumatic stress disorder is.”
“The fact of the matter is that we honestly don’t know much about it,” Thompson said. “We re finding out more and more about it every day, but diagnosis and treatment is very tricky, particularly in someone as young as Steven.”
“You said diagnosis was tricky,” Dad said. “Is it possible that Steven was misdiagnosed?
“Possible, but not likely,” Thompson said. “Diagnosis, in Steven’s case, isn’t nearly as precarious as treatment. Normally, these cases are treated with a combination of intense therapy and strong sedatives. Speaking as both a doctor and parent of three, I would have serious reservations about prescribing any sedative, no matter how small the dosage, to a patient as young as Steven. That would leave us with only intense therapy. But that’s not the main difficulty we face here. The mystery here is that Steven suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, yet, for all intents and purposes, he does not appear to have ever suffered a trauma that would prompt this response in his system.”
“Thompson paused again,” Steven said. “His words hung in the air like stale smoke. Up to this point in the conversation, it had almost been as if I hadn’t been in the room. Talk about irritating. They were all discussing me, without really noticing that I was sitting with them in the room. But this changed suddenly when Dr. Thompson looked me dead in the eye.”
“Steven, I need you to think hard,” he said. “Have you ever been involved in any accident?
“No, I told him, and that was that.”
Matt paused, as if in reflection. “Hmm,” he said.
“What?” Steven asked.
“Something just kind of dawned on me,” he said. “About you. You were extraordinarily good at all that shit.”
“We were all into it though,” Steven said.
“True,” Matt admitted. “I can remember you though. You’d get this far away look in your eyes sometimes, like you were somewhere else. Kind of like you did when you were beating the crap out of Henry.”
“Maybe I was,” Steven said. “It was around this time though that things started to
change for me.
Steven then digressed to tell the story of the mini battle he and his friends had waged on the contractors at the park. Eventually, this story led to the story of the thing that chased him and Matt that day so long ago.
“I can back this part of the story up,” Matt said. “I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. There is just no way no way humanly possible this guy could have gotten ahead of us like he did. We’d run and then turn, and he’d be in front of us. We’d turn again and run and then he’d be over there. My only conclusion is that…he wasn’t human”
For the first time since Steven’s confession began, a glimmer of doubt shown across Sarah and Ashley’s faces.
“I know,” Steven said. “You don’t believe us.”
“No Steven,” Sarah said. “It’s not that exactly. It’s just…You guys were kids, and you were obviously up to no good.”
“What’s not good about protecting the environment?” Matt asked.
“Hmm, let’s see,” Ashley said. “Should we start with sugar in the gas tank or trying to set the pavilion on fire?”
Matt and Steven laughed and high-fived each other.
“The point is,” Sarah said, “is that you were doing things you knew were not really right, at least in the eyes of the law. “You knew the construction workers were watching out for you,” Sarah continued. “So there was a heightened sense of paranoia, if you will. I’m just saying that maybe, in the rush of being chased, you imagined some things that were a little more than plausible.”
Ashley agreed. “That’s true,” she said. “I mean there is a very logical explanation for it right in front of you, that it was just a construction worker.”
Steven mulled this over for as while.
“I understand your skepticism,” Steven said. “But…there was something. At one point, several points actually, I was close enough to smell him..and I know the smell…from my nightmares of course, but I know it well enough. It was the smell of death, the smell of rotting burning flesh. Believe me, once you smell that smell, you never forget it. It’s unmistakable.”
“The only problem Steven is that you’ve never actually smelled it,” Ashley said.
“But I have,” he said. “Just not in this life.”
And it was at this point, that Sarah, Ashley and Matt began to become afraid.
“Christ Steven, don’t do that,” Ashley said. “You just gave me cold fucking chills.”
Steven nodded knowingly, and also knew he was only just getting warmed up.
“Forget the guy for a moment,” Steven said. “He is important, but not relevant to this part of the story…Needless to say, after that, I don’t think we returned to the woods for a long time. We all, more or less, agreed we should lay low and hang in the neighborhood.
“Besides, we were getting older. By this time, I guess, we were freshman in high
school and it was kind of nerdy to be hanging out in the woods playing G.I Joe,” Steven
said. “My nightmares had returned in full after that. I was adjusting to high school. Part of that adjustment was drugs. Pot at first, and alcohol. It basically stayed that way until I was in my twenties. I realized though, that the pot helped. I soon realized the pot kind of helped to stave off the nightmares.
“But it opened up a whole other realm of problems for me. My grades slipped. I became more and more withdrawn. And while the nightmares seemed to stop, other things began to happen. I call them flashes, for lack of better word. I guess it’s comparable to either a war flashback, or maybe an acid flashback, I don’t know, I’ve never tried acid. I’ve always been terrified of it, afraid of what sort of doors it would unlock.
“The flashes, as I call them, were kind of like dreams except I was awake when they happened. They didn’t last long. It’s like my mind would drift and then….it’s not so much a hallucination as it is like intuition. Things that I’d just know, mostly about weapons and war-things that I shouldn’t have known; actually couldn’t have known because I’d never been around them, like how to field strip an M-16 in less than 20 seconds. I did that at a gun show I went to once during college, I just grabbed it. .and….my brains and fingers knew what to do. It was like I wasn’t even in my own body, like some sort of deeply ingrained instinct, that definitely wasn’t my own, just sort of kicked in.
“Sometimes I’d see flashes of places, the jungle, a prison camp…also a kitchen and an old church building that weren’t part of the war, but, no less a part of it all..the whole puzzle-The smell of freshly baked cornbread. A big trigger there….All of this increased to the point where I couldn’t stop it. It was like a switch was thrown in my brain and these things..images really, rushed out at me constantly…Again, though, I thought I could control it. I cut back on the pot and began to drink heavier.
“College and the years right after were a blur. I drank to kill the images and the pain and it worked for a while. I was becoming an alcoholic in the process though. There was insomnia, blackouts, which were the worst because I didn’t know what I would do, or what I was capable of…In my senior year of college I began therapy again, a substance abuse counselor actually, helped me to get sober and stay that way but didn’t ever scratch the surface of what was going on underneath.
“He was concerned with the obvious problem, which had really gotten out of hand,
and so that’s what we dealt with. Shortly after, I began work at the paper here,
and then in Hammond when I signed up for grad school. Who knew though, at that point,
that a routine series was going to turn out a Pulitzer.
“I wasn’t ready for that success, or the spotlight,” Steven admitted. “I guess, as a writer and reporter that was the high mark of my career and I remember always thinking, ‘man this is it, this is the big time, a Pulitzer.”
“But I also began to get seriously depressed around this time,” Steven said. “I was
practically catatonic. I was paralyzed, more insomnia, more fear, I locked myself in my
apartment for nearly six months and didn’t go out except to get food. I quit my job at the
paper, which no one found odd because hey. I’d written a Pulitzer winning series, I deserved a little break and there were plenty of other job offers on the table after that.”
“And then, all of a sudden, I woke up one day and I felt fine, like it had all vanished. I responded to an ad for the job in New England, packed my stuff and left. Got there, took the job, started working out, met the woman of my dreams and for once found a therapist that I thought, that I still think can help me get to the bottom of it all. Things appeared to be going well, extremely well until you called to tell me Mom and
Dad died,” Steven said.
He then carefully, in minute detail related all that had happened to him, since his last therapy visit with Eric. Steven told about his visit with Faciane and about the empty bottle of Jack Daniels found in the rental car. He told about Lester. And when he was finished they all sat transfixed in silent terror.
It was Ashley who spoke first.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Steven said. “We need a plan. I think our lives could be in danger.”
“Gee do you think,” Ashley said. “Shit, I’m sorry, but do you realize what this means? You’re telling me Mom and Dad were killed by who, by what, some ghost that chased you and Matt through the woods 20 years ago? Why would anyone want to kill Mom and Dad? Or that Vet guy, Lester, or burn down the post office?”
Ashley paused again and looked at Steven.
“Everything I thought I’ve ever known, including my own brother, isn’t exactly..” Ashley’s voice got caught in her throat.
“We have to find out who you were Steven,” Sarah said. “I don’t believe I’m actually saying it, but that’s the bottom line. As crazy as it sounds, that’s what we have to do. I do believe you. And I do still love you. But we have to find out who you were.”
Matt exhaled heavily and rubbed his eyes.
Steven nodded and said, “Yes. That’s about the size of it.”
