The Door To December

Yet… being taken back into the gray room, being forced to speak of the chair where she had received electric-shock aversion therapy, being forced to climb into the sensory-deprivation tank… well, it seemed to be draining the life out of the girl. If memories could be vampiric, these were exactly that, sucking the blood and vitality from her.

'Melanie?'

'Mmmmmm?'

'Where are you now?'

'Floating.'

'In the tank?'

'Floating.'

'What do you feel?'

'Water. But…'

'But what?'

'But that's fading too…'

'What else do you feel?'

'Nothing.'

'What do you see?'

'Darkness.'

'What do you hear?'

'My… heart… beating, beating… But… that's fading too…'

'What do they want you to do?'

The girl was silent.

'Melanie?'

Nothing.

With sudden urgency, Laura said, 'Melanie, don't drift away from me. Stay with me.'

The girl stirred and breathed, though shallowly, and it was as though she had come back from the faraway and lightless shore of the river that flowed darkly between this world and the next.

'Mmmmmm.'

'Are you with me?'

'Yes,' the girl said, but so quietly that the spoken word was barely more than a shadow of the thought.

'You're in the tank,' Laura said. 'It's like it always is in the tank… except that I'm there with you this time: a safety line, a hand to grasp. You understand? Now… floating. Feeling nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing… but why are you there?'

'To learn to…'

'What?'

'… to let go.'

'Let go of what?'

'Everything.'

'I don't understand, honey.'

'Let go. Of everything. Of me.'

'They want you to learn to let go of yourself? What does that mean, exactly?'

'Slip out.'

'Out where?'

'Away… away… away…'

Laura sighed with frustration and tried a different tack. 'What are you thinking?'

An even colder and more haunting note entered the child's voice. 'The door…'

'The door to December?'

'Yes.'

'What is the door to December?'

'Don't let it open! Keep it shut!' the girl cried.

'It's shut, honey.'

'No, no, no! It's going to come open. I hate it! Oh, please, please, help me, Jesus, Mommy, help me, Daddy, help me, don't do it, please, help me, I hate it when it comes open, I hate it!'

Melanie was screaming now, and the muscles in her neck were taut. The blood vessels in her temples swelled and throbbed. In spite of this new agitation, she regained no color; if anything, she grew even more pale.

The child was terrified of whatever thing lay beyond the door, and that terror was transmitted to Laura. She felt the skin prickle at the back of her neck and all the way down her spine.

* * *

With considerable admiration, Dan watched Laura calm and quiet the frightened girl.

The session had wound his own nerves so tight that he felt as if he might pop apart like a self-destructing clockwork mechanism.

To Melanie, Laura said, 'Okay. Now… tell me about the door to December.'

The girl was reluctant to reply.

'What is it, Melanie? Explain it to me. Come on, honey.'

In a hushed voice, the child said, 'It's like… the window to yesterday.'

'I don't understand. Explain.'

'It's like… the stairs… that go only sideways… neither up nor down…'

Laura looked at Dan.

He shrugged.

'Tell me more,' Laura said to the girl.

Her voice rising and falling in an eerie rhythm, never too loud, often too soft, the girl said, 'It's like… the cat… the hungry cat that ate itself all up. It's starving. There's no food for it. So… it starts chewing on the tip of its own tail. It begins eating its tail… chewing higher… higher and faster… until the tail is all gone. Then… then it eats its own hindquarters, and then its middle. It keeps on eating and eating, gobbling itself up… until it's eaten every last bit of itself… until it's even eaten its own teeth… and then it just… vanishes. Did you see it vanish? How could it vanish? How could the teeth eat themselves? Wouldn't at least one tooth be left? But it isn't. Not one tooth.'

Sounding as puzzled as Dan felt, Laura said, 'That's what they want you to think about when you're in the tank?'

'Some days, yes. Other days they tell me to think about the window to yesterday, nothing else but the window to yesterday, for hours and hours and hours… just concentrating on that window… seeing it… believing in it… But the one that always works best is the door.'

'To December.'

'Yes.'

'Tell me about that, honey.'

'It's summer… July…'

'Go on.'

'Hot and sticky. I'm so warm… Aren't you warm?'

'Very warm,' Laura agreed.

'I'd give anything for… a little cool air. So I open the front door of the house… and beyond the door it's a cold winter day. Snow is falling. Icicles hanging off the porch roof. I step back to look at the windows on both sides of the door… and through the windows I can see it's really July… and I know it's July… warm… everywhere, it's July… except through this door… on the other side of this one door… this door to December. And then…'

'Then what?' Laura urged.

'I go through…'

'You step through the door?' Laura asked.

Melanie's eyes flew open, and she bolted off her chair, and to Dan's astonishment she began to strike herself as hard as she could. Her small fists delivered a flurry of blows to her frail chest. She thumped her sides, whacked herself on the hips, shouting, 'No, no, no, no!'

'Stop her!' Laura said.

Dan was already off the bed, hurrying to the girl. He grabbed her hands, but she wrenched loose with an ease that startled him. She couldn't be that strong.

'Hate!' Melanie screamed, and she struck herself hard in the face.

Dan made another grab for her.

She dodged him.

'Hate!'

She took fistfuls of her own hair and tried to tear it out of her scalp.

'Melanie, honey, stop!'

Dan grabbed the girl by the wrists and held her tightly. She felt as if she had been reduced to mere bones, and he was afraid of hurting her. But if he released her, she would hurt herself.

'Hate!' she screeched, spraying spittle.

Laura approached cautiously.

Melanie released her own hair, at which she had been tearing, and tried to claw at Dan and pull free of him.

He held on and finally managed to pin her arms at her sides, but she wrenched left and right, kicked his shins, and said, 'Hate, hate, hate!'

Laura put one hand on each side of the girl's face, held her head tightly, trying to force her to pay attention. 'Honey, what is it? What do you hate so much?'

'Hate!'

'What do you hate so much?'

'Going through the door.'

'You hate going through the door?'

'And them.'

'Who are they?'

'I hate them, I hate them!'

'They make me… think about the door, and they make me believe in the door, and then they make me… go through it, and I hate them!'

'Do you hate your daddy?'

'Yes!'

'Because he makes you go through the door to December?'

'I hate it!' the girl wailed in fury and misery.

Dan said, 'Melanie, what happens when you go through the door to December?'

In her trance, the girl could hear no voices but her own and her mother's, so Laura repeated the question. 'What happens when you go through the door to December?'

The girl gagged. She'd had no breakfast yet, so there was nothing in her that she could bring up, but she succumbed to dry heaves so violent that they frightened Dan. Holding her, he felt each spasm rack her entire body, and it seemed that she would tear herself apart before she was done.