The Door to December

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.
     Laura continued to hold the girl's face, but now she didn't keep a tight grip on it. She held Melanie but stroked her too, smoothed the lines out of her tortured countenance, cooed to her.
     At last Melanie stopped struggling, went limp, and Dan released her into her mother's arms.
     The girl allowed herself to be embraced by her mother and, in a forlorn voice that chilled Dan's heart, she said, 'I hate them ... all of them ... Daddy ... the others ...'
     'I know,' Laura said soothingly.
     They hurt me ... hurt me so much ... I hate them!'
     'I know.'
     'But ... but most of all ...'
     Laura sat on the floor and pulled her daughter into her lap. 'Most of all? What do you hate