False Memory

questions when she was far down in the mind chapel, the doctor lowered his fist and slowly unclenched it. “Tell me, yes or no, if you have spoken to anyone about that videotape on the TV”

    Relieved, he took her by the arm and led her to the bed. “Sit down, girl.”
    She sat on the edge of the bed, knees pressed together, hands folded in her lap.
    For a few minutes the doctor quizzed her, phrasing his questions as statements and commands, until he understood why she had set the trap with the camcorder. She had been after evidence against Eric, not against her psychiatrist.
    Although her memory was erased after each of their assignations, Susan was certain to suspect that she had been sexually used, and if the doctor did not choose to sponge up and take with him every drop of sweat and passion that he produced, Susan was also certain to find evidence to support her suspicion. Ahriman chose not to be obsessive about postcoital cleanup, because that would diminish the thrill of power and compromise the pleasing illusion that his awesome control was absolute. There would be little fun in either a food fight or bloody murder if, afterward, one were required to wash the walls and mop the floor.
    He was an adventurer, after all, not a housekeeper.
    He had numerous techniques with which to mitigate or misdirect Susan’s suspicion. For one thing, he could have suggested to her that upon waking she would simply ignore all signs of physical abuse, be unaware of even the most obvious evidence of intercourse.
    In a more playful mood, the doctor could have implanted in her the conviction that she was being visited by a yellow-eyed spawn of the brimstone pit determined to breed with her and bring forth the Antichrist. By seeding dreamlike memories of an evil night-lover with a coarse leathery body, sulfurous breath, and a forked black tongue, he literally could have made her life a living Hell.
    Ahriman had played that tune with others, strumming the harp of superstition, inducing severe cases of demonophobia—the fear of demons and devils—that had shattered his patients’ lives. He had found such sport highly entertaining, but only for a while. This phobia could be more poisonous than others, often advancing swiftly to a complete mental decline and outright insanity. In the long run, therefore, Ahriman found it to be less than fully satisfying, because the tears of the mad, who were detached from their suffering, were not as invigorating as the tears of the sane, who still believed that they had a hope of recovery.
    From his many other options, the doctor had chosen to direct Susan’s suspicion toward her estranged husband. This current game, for which he’d mentally composed a particularly bloody and intricate scenario, was meant to end in a storm of violence that would make nationwide news. The precise details of the final inning were constantly being revised in the doctor’s mind, although Eric might be either a significant perpetrator or a victim.
    By encouraging Susan to focus her suspicion on Eric and then forbidding her to confront him, Ahriman had crafted a clockspring of psychological tension. Week by week, the spring wound tighter, until Susan could barely contain the tremendous emotional energy coiled in it. Consequently, desperate to relieve that tension, she had sought proof of her estranged husband’s guilt, sufficient evidence to make it possible for her to go directly to the police and avoid the forbidden confrontation with Eric himself.
    Ordinarily, this situation would not have arisen, because the doctor never toyed with anyone as long as he had played with Susan Jagger. He had begun to drug and condition her a year and a half ago, for God’s sake, and she had been his patient for sixteen months. Usually he grew bored in six months, sometimes in as few as two or three. Then either he cured the patient, stripping away the phobia or the obsession that he’d implanted in the first place, thereby adding to his singular reputation as a therapist—or he devised a death colorful enough to be satisfying to a gamesman of his experience. Bewitched by Susan’s exceptional beauty, he had dallied far too long, allowing her stress to build, until she was driven to this act of entrapment.
    Girls. They were always trouble, sooner or later.
    Rising from the edge of the bed, Ahriman ordered Susan to stand, as well, and she obeyed.
    “You’ve really messed up my game,” he said, impatient with her now. “I’ll have to figure out