The Door to December

'What are you afraid of, honey? What do you see?'
     "The ... there ... the...'
     Pepper cocked her head and arched her back. The cat had become tense, watching the girl intently.
     The air was unnaturally still and heavy.
     Although it wasn't possible, the shadows in the corners of the room seemed darker and larger now than they had been a moment ago.
     'It ... there ... no, no, no, no.'
     Laura put one hand on her daughter's creased brow, reassuring her, and waited expectantly as the girl strove to speak. A strange, disconcerting feeling came over her, and she felt a chill creeping like a living thing up the length of her spine.
     'Where are you, Melanie?'
     'No ...'
     'Are you in the gray room?'
     The girl was audibly grinding her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut, fisting her hands, as though resisting something very strong. Laura had been planning to regress her, take her back in time to the gray room in that Studio City house, but it seemed as though the girl had drifted back there without encouragement, as soon as she'd been hypnotized. But that didn't make sense: Laura had never heard of spontaneous hypnotic regression. The patient had to be guided, encouraged backward to the scene of the trauma.
     'Where are you, Melanie?'
     'N-n-no ... the ... no !'
     'Easy. Be still. What are you afraid of?'
     'Please ... no ...'
     'Be calm, honey. What do you see? Tell me, baby. Tell Mommy what you see. The tank, the deprivation chamber? No one's going to make you go back in there, honey.'
     But that wasn't what frightened the girl. Laura's reassurances didn't calm her. 'The ... the ...'
     'The aversion-therapy chair? The electric chair? You'll never be put in that again, either.'
     Something else terrified the child. She shuddered and began to strain against Laura, as if she wanted to get away, run.
     'Honey, you're safe with me,' Laura said, holding her tighter than before. 'It can't hurt you.'
     'Opening ... it's opening ... no ... it ... coming open ...' 'Easy,' Laura said. As the chill climbed all the way up her back and reached the nape of her neck, she sensed that something of terrible importance was about to happen.
    15
    Behind his back, Lieutenant Felix Porteau of the Scientific Investigation Division was called 'Poirot,' after Agatha Christie's pompous Belgian detective. It was clear to Dan that Porteau preferred to think of himself as Sherlock Holmes, in spite of his stocky legs, potbelly, slumped shoulders, Santa Claus face, and high-domed bald head. To bolster his desired image, Porteau was seldom without a curved-stem pipe in which he smoked an aromatic blend of shag tobacco.
     The pipe was not lit when Dan entered Porteau's office, but the SID man snatched it up from an ashtray and used it to point toward a chair. 'Sit down, Daniel, sit down. I've been expecting you, of course. I imagine you're here to inquire after my findings in the Studio City affair.'
     'Amazingly perceptive, Felix.'
     Porteau rocked back in his chair. 'A singular case, this one. Naturally, it will be several days before the full results are in from my laboratory.' It was always my laboratory with Felix, as if he wasn't in charge of a big-city police department's forensics unit but was, instead, conducting experiments in one room of his private quarters above Baker Street.
     'However, I could, if you wish, share some of the preliminary findings.'
     'That would be gracious of you.'
     Porteau bit on the mouthpiece of the pipe, gave Dan a sly look, and smiled. 'You mock me, Daniel.'
     'Never.'
     'Yes. You mock everyone.'
     'You make me sound like a wiseass.'
     'You are.'
     'Thanks so much.'
     'But a nice, witty, intelligent, charming wiseass — and that makes all the difference.'
     'Now you make me sound like Cary Grant.'
     'Isn't that how you see yourself?'
     Dan thought about it. 'Well, maybe half Cary Grant and, right now, half Wile E. Coyote.'
     'Who?'
     'The coyote in the road-runner cartoons.'
     'Ah. And how so?'
     'I get the feeling a giant boulder just rolled off the edge of a cliff above me, and it's falling toward me right now, going to smash me flat at any second.'
     'The rock is this case?'
     'Yeah. Any