“But why me?” Ricky blurted. “I didn’t…”
“Of course you did. She went to you desperate for help, and you were too wrapped up with the direction in which your own career was heading to pay enough attention and give her the assistance she needed. Surely, Ricky, a patient who kills herself when under your care-even if only for a few sessions-well, do you not feel some remorse of your own? Some sense of guilt? Do you not deserve to pay some price? Why would you think that gaining revenge is somehow less a responsibility than any other human act?”
Ricky did not answer. After a moment, he asked, “When did you learn…”
“Of your connection to my adopted experiment? Near the end of your own analysis. I simply decided to see how it would play out over the years.”
Ricky could feel rage mingling with sweat within him. His mouth was dry.
“And when he came after me? You could have warned me.”
“Betray my adopted child in favor of my onetime patient? And not even my favorite patient, at that…”
These words stung Ricky. He could see the old man was every bit as evil as the child he’d adopted. Perhaps even worse.
“… I thought one might consider it justice.” The old analyst laughed out loud. “But you do not know the half of it, Ricky.”
“What is the half I don’t know?”
“I think that is something you will have to discover for yourself.”
“And the other two?”
“The man you know as Merlin is indeed an attorney, and a capable one at that. The woman you know as Virgil is an actress with quite a career ahead of her. Especially now that they have almost completed tying up all the loose ends of their lives. I think, Ricky, that perhaps you and I are the only loose ends remaining for the three of them. The other thing you should know, Ricky, is that they both believe it was their older brother, the man you know as Rumplestiltskin, who saved their lives. Not I, really, though I contributed to their salvation. No, it was he who kept them together, who kept them from straying, who insisted on their going to school and getting straight A’s and then accomplishing much with their lives. So, if nothing else, Ricky, understand this: They are devoted. They are utterly loyal to the man who will kill you. Who did kill you once, and will do so again. Is that not intriguing, Ricky, from the psychiatric point of view? A man without scruples who engenders blind and total devotion. A psychopath who will kill you just as surely as you might step on a spider crossing your path. But who is loved, and in turn loves. But loves only those two. None other. Except, perhaps, me, a little bit, because I rescued him and helped him. So, perhaps I have gained a loyalist’s love. Which is important for you to keep in mind, Ricky, because you have so little chance of surviving your connection to Rumplestiltskin.”
“Who is he?” Ricky demanded. Each word that the old analyst spoke seemed to blacken the world around him.
“You want his name? His address? His place of business?”
“Yes.” Ricky leveled the weapon at the old man.
Dr. Lewis shook his head. “Just like in the fairy tale, right? The princess’s messenger overhears the troll dancing about his fire, and blurting out his name. She doesn’t really do anything clever or wise, or even sophisticated. She’s just lucky, and so when he comes for his third question, she has the answer by dumb, blind luck, and thus survives, and retains her firstborn child, and lives happily ever after. You think this will be the same? The luck you have acquired which has you here, right now, waving a weapon in an old man’s face will win you the game?”
“Give me his name,” Ricky said quietly, voice as cold and evil as he could make it. “I want all their names.”
“What makes you think you don’t know them already?”
“I am so tired of games,” Ricky said.
The old analyst shook his head. “That is all life is. One game after another. And death is the greatest game of all.”
The two men stared across the room at each other.
“I wonder,” Dr. Lewis said cautiously, lifting his eyes for a moment and examining a wall clock, then pausing with each word, “how much time you have remaining?”
“Enough,” Ricky replied.
“Really?” the old analyst responded. “Time is elastic, isn’t it? Moments can last forever, or else evaporate instantly. Time is really a function of our own view of the world. Is that not something we learn in analysis?”
“Yes,” Ricky said. “That’s true.”
“And tonight, there are all sorts of questions about time, are there not? I mean, Ricky, here we are, alone in this house. But for how much longer? Knowing as I did that you were heading this way, do you not think I took the precaution of summoning help? How long before it arrives?”
“Long enough.”
“Ah, there is a wager I am not sure I would be so confident about.” The old analyst smiled again. “But perhaps we should make it slightly more complicated.”
“How so?”
“Suppose I were to tell you that somewhere here in this room is the information you seek. Could you find it in time? Before help arrives to rescue me?”
“I told you, I’m tired of playing games.”
“It is in plain sight. And you have already come closer to it than even I guessed you might. There. Enough clues.”
“I won’t play.”
“Well, I think you are wrong. I think you are going to have to play a bit longer Ricky, because this game has not concluded.” Dr. Lewis held both his hands up abruptly, and then said, “Ricky, I need to remove something from the top drawer of this desk. It is something which will certainly change the manner that this game is being played. Something that you will want to see. May I do that?”
Ricky aimed the pistol at Dr. Lewis’s forehead and nodded. “Go ahead.”
The doctor smiled again, a nasty, cold smile that had nothing to do with humor. An executioner’s grin. He removed an envelope from the drawer and placed it on the desktop in front of him.
“What’s that?”
“Perhaps, Ricky, it is the information you came here seeking. Names. Addresses. Identities.”
“Hand it to me.”
Dr. Lewis shrugged. “As you wish…,” he said. He thrust the envelope across the desktop and Ricky eagerly grabbed at it. It was sealed and Ricky took his eyes off the old physician for an instant while he inspected the letter. This was a mistake, which he realized as soon as he’d done it.
He lifted his eyes and saw that the old man now had a grin on his face and a small, snub-nosed.38 caliber revolver in his right hand.
“Not quite as big as yours, is it, Ricky?” The doctor laughed out loud. “But probably just as efficient. You see, you just made a mistake that none of the three people you are involved with would. And certainly not the man you know as Rumplestiltskin. He would never have taken his eyes off his target. Not for a second. No matter how well he knew the person he had targeted, he would never have trusted them enough to remove his eyes from them for even the briefest of times. Perhaps that should tell you how little chance you really have.” The two men were facing across the desktop, weapons aimed squarely at each other.
Ricky narrowed his gaze, feeling sweat gathering beneath his arms.
“This,” Dr. Lewis whispered, “is an analytic fantasy, is it not? In the system of transference, do we not want to kill, just as we want to kill our mother or our father or everyone who has come to symbolize all that is wrong with our lives? And the analyst, in return, does he not have a murderous passion that he would like to exploit at much the same time?”
Ricky didn’t reply at first. Finally, he muttered, “The child may have been a laboratory rat for evil, like you say. But he could have been turned around. You could have done it, but you did not, right? It was more intriguing to see what would happen if you left him adrift emotionally, wasn’t it? And it was far easier for you to blame all the evil in the world and ignore your own, wasn’t it?”