False Memory

by wind and sun. He was one of those men who, just by walking through any stable, would win the trust of horses, which would nicker softly at him and strain their necks across stall doors to nuzzle his hands.
    His voice was quiet but intense as he sat down at the kitchen table with them. “What has Ahriman done to you and yours?”
    Martie told him about Susan. The worsening agoraphobia, the suspected rapes. The sudden suicide.
    “He made her do it somehow,” Chase Glyson said. “I believe It. I absolutely do. You came all this way because of your friend?”
    “Yes. My dearest friend.” Martie saw no reason to tell more.
    “Over nineteen years,” Chase said, “since he ruined my family, and more than ten since he hauled his sick ass out of Santa Fe. For a while, I hoped he was dead. Then he got famous with his books.”
    “Do you mind if we tape what you tell us?” Dusty asked.
    “No, don’t mind at all. But what I’ve got to say... hell, I’ve said it all maybe a hundred times to the cops, to different district attorneys over the years, until I was bluer in the face than a blue coyote. No one listened to me. Well, the once when someone listened and thought I might be telling the truth, then some big-shot friends of Ahriman’s paid him a visit, taught him some religion, so he’d know what he damn well was supposed to believe about my mom and dad.”
    While Martie and Dusty taped Chase Glyson, Zina perched on a stool before an easel near the adobe fireplace, drawing a pencil study of a humble tableau that she’d earlier set up on one corner of the distressed-pine table at which the rest of them sat. Five pieces of Indian pottery in unusual shapes, including a double-spouted wedding pitcher.
    The essence of Chase’s story was the same as in the clippings from Roy Closterman’s file. Teresa and Carl Glyson had for years operated a successful preschool, the Little Jackrabbit School, until they and three employees were accused of molesting children of both sexes. As in the Ornwahl case in Laguna Beach years later, Ahriman conducted supposedly careful, psychiatrically valid exploratory conversations with the kids, sometimes using hypnotic regression—and found a pattern of stories supporting the original accusations.
    “The whole thing was a lot of bushwa, Mr. Rhodes,” said Chase Glyson. “My folks were the best people you’d want to meet.”
    Zina said, “Terri, that was Chase’s mother, would have cut off her hand before she’d raise it to hurt a child.”
    “My daddy, too,” said Chase. “Besides, he was hardly ever at the Little Jackrabbit. Only to do some repairs now and then, ‘cause he was handy. The school was my mother’s business. Daddy was half owner of a car dealership, and it kept him busy. Lots of people in town, they never believed a word of it.”
    “But there were those who did,” Zina added darkly.
    “Oh,” said Chase, “there’s always those who’ll believe anything about anybody. You whisper in their ear that ‘cause there was wine at the Last Supper, Jesus must’ve been a drunkard, and they’ll gossip their souls into perdition, passing it along. Most people figured it couldn’t be true, and with no physical evidence, it might never have resulted in convictions... until Valerie-Marie Padilla killed herself.”
    Martie said, “One of the students, that five-year-old girl.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” Chase’s face seemed to darken as if a cloud had passed between him and the ceiling lights. “She left that good-bye of hers, that colored-pencil drawing, that sad little scribble drawing that changed everything. Her and a man.”
    “Anatomically correct,” Martie said.
    “Worse, the man had a mustache... like my daddy. In the drawing, he’s wearing a cowboy hat, white with a red band, and a black feather tucked in it. Which is the type of hat my daddy always wore.”
    With a violence that drew their attention, Zina Glyson tore off the top sheet from her drawing pad, balled it up, and threw it into the fireplace. “Chase’s father was my godfather, my own father’s best friend. I knew Carl from when I was a toddler. That man... he respected people, no matter who they were, no matter how little they had or what their faults. He respected children, too, and listened to them, and cared. Never once did he ever put his hand on me that way, and I know he didn’t touch Valerie-Marie. If she killed herself, it’s because of the hateful, evil stuff Ahriman put in her head, all the twisted sex and stories about sacrificing animals at