He spotted her then. The someone else. A hooker, young, strung out on heroin, on the street trying to hustle some money. She looked tired and worn out and cold. All she was wearing was a short, black leather jacket and matching mini-skirt and boots. As cars rolled by, she halfheartedly tried to slow them down by flashing them some skin. There weren’t any takers. Winters sighed to himself as he put the phone back down. Hookers were cheap and easy and not all that satisfying. How can you really enjoy yourself when they’re faking the emotion and not giving a shit about what’s happening? Oh well, Winters thought sadly to himself as he headed across the street. Oh well, a body’s a body.
Chapter 24
Did he know about them?
Shannon could honestly answer that he didn’t. Whether he had suspicions about them was another matter. Any lawyer cross-examining him on the stand would have a hard time proving otherwise.
But he sort of knew about them, didn’t he? About the things Susie would tell when he’d be fading in and out around his yearly breakdowns. The way she’d claim he’d act. But, then again, Susie had stopped telling him about those things years ago, and it was easier to simply ignore, to pretend they never happened…
His suspicions went further back than Susie, though. They went back to when he was a teenager living in California. Back to maybe three years after his mom’s death. By then, he and his dad had stopped acknowledging each other’s existence. They lived in the same house, cooked food in the same kitchen, sometimes sat in the same rooms, but they never talked or even looked at each other. More specifically, they’d look through each other. Days, sometimes weeks, of that would go by; all the while a low burning rage would be filling up Shannon’s lungs, both stifling and suffocating him. When the pressure would get too great, when he could no longer breathe because of it, he’d have to get someplace alone. Then it would all come out of him; the rage and the anger and the tears. It would pour out of him like the insides from a gutted animal.
But did they really exist? Were they voices whispering to him or was it just noise echoing through his mind? Because there was nothing concrete, nothing substantial. Only a vague sensation of whispers dying deep in his head.
But he’d have a sense of what the whispers were telling him (if they were, indeed, whispers and not simply his own mind racing towards a breakdown), or more specifically, what the whispers were saying, because they never seemed directed towards him. About what a patsy he was being or if they were in his shoes they’d kick the shit out of the old man instead of the wall of his room or how unfair it all was. Especially, how unfair it all was.
Back then he ignored them. But he did have suspicions about them.
He had gotten back late that night. Susie eyed him somewhat suspiciously as he walked into their apartment but accepted his explanation that he’d had a late session with his therapist. For the most part it was true. He and Elaine had spent hours talking, first at a coffee shop and then at a restaurant.
Elaine had insisted on knowing the truth and Shannon broke down and told her all of it, the words just sort of bubbling out of him. He told her what he found when he got home the day his mother was murdered. He told her the things Herbert Winters had done to him and what his father later accused him of. When he was done he couldn’t look at her. Instead of feeling any sense of relief, all he felt was disgust.
“Bill, there’s nothing for you to be ashamed of.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Bill, please, look at me.”
He forced his eyes up to where he was looking at her. “You know,” he said, “when I picture my mom in my mind I can only see her dead. I’d give anything if I could close my eyes and see her alive.”
“Do you have any pictures of her?”
“Not a single one.” He shook his head. “The only image I’ve got of her is what’s in my head.”
“I’m so sorry-”
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”
“I can still feel for you, Bill. Knowing what you went through, I’m amazed at how well adjusted you’ve turned out.”
Shannon couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, I could be a poster boy for mental health, couldn’t I? Me and all the little people living inside me. We could make it a group shot.”
“First of all, I doubt you’re suffering from multiple personality disorder. As I’ve been telling you all night, your dreams are not any indication of it and I haven’t seen any symptoms. Second, most of the year you are healthy.”
“Yeah, but not all of the year.”
“No, not all of the year. But considering what you suffered through, first with your mother’s murder and then all those years of emotional abuse from your father, most of the year’s pretty good. We just have to figure out how keep you from breaking down during that one small opening every year.”
Elaine Horwitz took a sip of wine, a warm smile spreading over her lips. The smile made its way up to her eyes, leaving them sparkling.
“You know,” she said, “for the first time since I’ve been treating you I really feel positive. Like we’ve turned a corner.”
Shannon didn’t feel quite so optimistic, but he kept quiet about it. If nothing else, it was nice to see Elaine smiling. They finished their dinner. Elaine, over coffee, told him she’d find a psychiatrist who specialized in multiple personality disorder to evaluate him but she didn’t believe anything would come of it.
That was all hours ago. It was now almost four in the morning. Too quiet to sleep. Too damn quiet to do much of anything. He could feel Susie’s small, warm body against him. He could feel her chest barely rising with each breath. So quiet. Eventually, he closed his eyes and stopped thinking. Eventually.
Winters was waiting for him. As Shannon drifted into unconsciousness he saw Winters off in the distance, his malformed face cold and expressionless. Like polluted ice. From far away he could smell the foulness from him. As Shannon watched, Winters’s bloated body flew towards him.
“I’ve got a lot to tell you, Billy Boy,” Winters breathed in his singsong voice as he moved closer, now only a foot from Shannon’s face. “You’ve been a busy little shit tonight. We’ve both been busy tonight.”
Shannon froze. For a moment he thought about lashing out at Winters. As he imagined himself grabbing Winters by the throat, as he imagine himself throttling that smirking thing, he felt his strength drain out of him. His arms fell dead at his side.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he forced himself to say.
“Sure you do. You let me out tonight and I had fun, Billy. We both had a hell of a time.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No, you don’t, do you?” Winters asked, bemused. “You don’t even know anymore when you let me out, huh? But you do know I’m in you. You know I’ve been fermenting inside you for years, Billy Boy, getting nice and ripe. You can smell the ripeness, can’t you? Breathe deeply, Billy Boy.”
Winters took a long, deep breath and winked. “I got news for you, Billy, there are others, but I’m the dominant one inside you now. I’m the one who comes out whenever I want, ’cause in reality I’m the true essence of you.”
Winters watched as the numbness spread across Shannon’s face. “What’s the matter, boy?” he asked, “the truth a little too painful?”
“That’s nothing but crap-”
Winters shook his head sadly, his small knife-wound of a mouth smiling sympathetically. “You know it’s the truth, boy. You know you let me out after you left that redheaded sweet thing of yours. What’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget, is that it? Well, let me refresh your memory, boy. Let me tell you what we did tonight.