The Mask

name?”
    “Nicholas.”
    “And his phone number?”
    The girl frowned. “His what?”
    “What’s the telephone number at your house?”
    The girl shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Don’t you have a telephone?”
    “What is a telephone?” the girl asked.
    Carol stared at her, puzzled. It wasn’t possible for a person under hypnosis to be coy or to make jokes of this sort. As she considered her next move, she saw that Laura was becoming agitated again. The girl’s brow furrowed, and her eyes widened. She started breathing hard again.
    “Laura, listen to me. You will be calm. You will relax and—”
    The girl writhed uncontrollably in her chair.
    Squealing and gasping, she slid off the chair, rolled onto the floor, bumping the coffee table and pushing it aside. She twisted and shuddered and wriggled as if she were having a severe epileptic fit, though she was not; she brushed frantically at herself, for again she seemed to believe she was on fire. She called for someone named Rachael and choked on nonexistent smoke.
    Carol required almost a minute to talk her down, which was a serious loss of control; a hypnotist could usually calm a subject in only seconds. Apparently, Laura had lived through an extremely traumatic tire or had lost a loved one in a blaze. Carol wanted to pursue the matter and learn what was at the root of it, but this wasn’t the right time. After taking so long to quiet her patient, she knew the session should be ended quickly.
    When Laura was seated in the wing chair again, Carol crouched beside her and instructed her to remember everything that had happened and everything that had been said during the session. Then she led the girl forward through time to the present and brought her out of the trance.
    The girl wiped at the moist corner of one eye, shook her head, cleared her threat. She looked at Carol and said, “I guess it didn’t work, huh?” She sounded like Jane again; the Laura voice was gone.
    But why the hell had her voice changed in the first place? Carol wondered.
    “You don’t remember what happened?” Carol asked.
    “What’s to remember? All that talk about a blue kite? I could see what you were trying to do, how you were trying to lull me into a trance, so I guess that’s why it didn’t work.”
    “But it did work,” Carol assured her. “And you should be able to recall all of it.”
    The girl looked skeptical. “All of what? What happened? What did you find out?”
    Carol stared at her. “Laura.”
    The girl didn’t even blink. She merely looked perplexed.
    “Your name is Laura.”
    “Who said”
    “You did.”
    “Laura? No. I don’t think so.”
    “Laura Havenswood,” Carol said.
    The girl frowned. “It doesn’t ring any bells at all.”
    Surprised, Carol said, “You told me you live in Shippensburg.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “About an hour from here.”
    “I never heard of it.”
    “You live on a farm. There are stone gateposts to mark the entrance to your father’s property, and there’s a long driveway flanked by maple trees. That’s what you told me, and I’m sure it’ll turn out to be just like you said. It’s virtually impossible to answer questions incorrectly or deceptively while you’re hypnotized. Besides, you don’t have any reason to deceive me. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain if we break through this memory block.”
    “Maybe I am Laura Havenswood,” the girl, said. “Maybe what I told you in the trance was true. But I can’t remember it, and when you tell me who I am, it doesn’t mean a thing to me. Boy, I thought if I could just remember my name, then everything would fall into place. But it’s still a blank. Laura, Shippensburg, a farm—I can’t connect with any of it.”
    Carol was still crouched beside the girl’s chair. She rose and flexed her stiff legs. “I’ve never encountered anything quite like this. And so far as I know, a reaction like yours hasn’t ever been reported in any of the psychology journals. Whenever a patient is susceptible to hypnosis, and whenever a patient can be regressed to a moment of trauma, there’s always a profound effect. Yet you weren’t touched at all by it. Very odd. If you remembered while you were under hypnosis, you ought to be able to remember now. And just hearing your name ought to open doors for you.”
    “But it doesn’t.”
    “Strange…”
    The girl looked up from the wing chair. “What now?”
    Carol thought for a moment, then said, “I suppose we ought to have the authorities check out the Hayenswdod