The Mask

haughty indifference, padded past the doorway, and went softly down the hall, pretending that he hadn’t been spying on her, even though they both knew he had been doing exactly that.
    Spying? she thought. Am I crazy? Who would a cat be spying for? Catsylvania? Great Kitten? Purrsia?
    She could think of other puns, but none of them brought a smile to her lips.
    Instead, she sat with the book on her lap, wondering about her sanity.

9
    THURSDAY AFTERNOON.
    The office drapes were tightly closed as usual. The light from the two floor lamps was golden, diffuse. Mickey Mouse was still smiling broadly in all his many incarnations.
    Carol and Jane sat in the wing chairs.
    The girl slipped into a trance with only a little assistance from Carol. Most patients were more susceptible to hypnosis the second time than they had been the first, and Jane was no exception.
    Again using the imaginary wristwatch, Carol turned the hands of time backwards and regressed Jane into the past. This time the girl didn’t need two minutes to get beyond her amnesia. In only twenty or thirty seconds, she reached a point at which memories existed for her.
    She twitched and suddenly sat up ramrod-straight in her chair. Her eyes popped open like the eyes on a doll; she was looking through Carol. Her face was twisted with terror.
    “Laura?” Carol asked.
    Both of the girl’s hands flew up to her throat. She clutched herself, gasping, gagging, grimacing in pain. She appeared to be reliving the same traumatic experience that had panicked her during yesterday’s sessions, but today she did not scream.
    “You can’t feel the fire,” Carol told her. “There is no pain, honey. Relax. Be calm. You can’t smell the smoke, either. It doesn’t bother you at all. Breathe easily, normally. Be calm and relax.”
    The girl didn’t obey. She quivered and broke out in a sweat. She retched repeatedly, dryly, violently, yet almost silently.
    Afraid that she had lost control again, Carol redoubled her efforts to soothe her patient, without success.
    Jane began to gesture wildly, her hands cutting and stabbing and tugging .and hammering at the air.
    Abruptly, Carol realized the girl was trying to talk, but for some reason had lost her voice.
    Tears welled up and slid down Jane’s face. She was moving her mouth without the slightest result, desperately trying to force out words that refused to come. In addition to the terror in her eyes, there was now frustration.
    Carol quickly fetched a notebook and a felt-tipped pen from her desk. She put the notebook on Jane’s lap and pressed the pen into her hand.
    “Write it for me, honey.”
    The girl squeezed the pen so hard that her knuckles were white and nearly as sharp as the knuckles on a skeleton’s fleshless hand. She looked down at the notebook. She stopped retching, but she continued to quiver.
    Carol crouched beside the wing chair, where she could see the notebook. “What is it you want to say?”
    Her hand shaking like that of a palsied old woman, Jane hurriedly scrawled two words that were barely legible: Help me.
    “Why do you need help?”
    Again: Help me.
    “Why can’t you speak?”
    Head.
    “Be more specific.”
    My head.
    “What about your head?”
    The girl’s hand began to form a letter, then jumped down one line and made another false start, jumped to a third line—as if she couldn’t figure out how to express what she wanted to say. At last, in a frenzy, she started slashing at the paper with the felt-tipped pen, making a meaningless crosshatching of black lines.
    “Stop it!” Carol said. “You will relax, dammit. Be calm.”
    Jane stopped slashing at the paper. She was silent, staring down at the notebook on her lap.
    Carol tore off the smeared page and threw it on the floor. “Okay. Now you’re going to answer my questions calmly and as fully as you can. What is your name?”
    Millie.
    Carol stared at the handwritten name, wondering what had happened to Laura Havenswood. “Millie? Are you sure that’s your name?” Millicent Parker.
    “Where is Laura?”
    Who’s Laura?
    Carol stared at the girl’s drawn face. The perspiration was beginning to dry on her porcelain-smooth skin. Her blue eyes were blank, unfocused. Her mouth was slack.
    Carol abruptly flashed a hand past the girl’s face. Jane didn’t flinch. She wasn’t faking the trance.
    “Where do you live, Millicent?”
    Harrisburg.
    “Right here in town. What’s your address?”
    Front Street.
    “Along the river? Do you know the number?” The girl wrote it