Personal Demons

Chapter 2

"Kevin?"

The man sitting on the tan leather couch looked up. "Dr. Chase?"

She nodded and extended her hand. "Call me Megan."

Kevin was a pleasant-looking man, with light brown hair cut short and a round, innocent face. Average height, average build, just one of the many people one sees on the streets every day and doesn't remember two minutes later.

So Megan didn't understand why she started feeling sick as soon as her skin touched his.

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice, Dr. Chase—I mean, Megan." Kevin let go of her hand. Megan gasped as the nausea eased off. It didn't disappear, it stayed lurking in her stomach and making her mouth water, but it did ease. "I just.... I had to talk to someone."

Megan swallowed and forced a smile. "That's why I'm here. What would you like to talk about?" She made her way to her chair and sat down harder than she planned.

Kevin had quite a few troubles to talk about. He was lonely, he was depressed, he had low self-esteem and worked in a dead-end job at a bank. Kevin was afraid of heights and small spaces, snakes and spiders and bugs. In all, Kevin was basically just like everyone else whose life hadn't turned out exactly as they'd hoped or expected it would.

Megan tried not to let her mind wander, but she couldn't seem to focus. Her memory of Regina's pale face and the deformed feet and the twisting tension in her stomach when Kevin touched her hand all pointed to a problem she'd never faced before, not like this.

Anyone with psychic abilities dealt with their share of what Megan called "the shivers." Some people just didn't "feel" right. Maybe they liked kicking puppies, or swindling old ladies, or occasionally something even more violent and horrible. She'd met such people, of course. But Kevin made her feel like she was the problem, as if whatever threat existed came from deep inside herself.

"How long did you attend—" she checked the file and forced herself not to roll her eyes—"Fearbusters?"

"Six months," Kevin said. "And it's a good program and everything, but lately ... I'd rather see how I do on my own, you know?"

"Of course." She glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes left in this session. "Is there something in particular you'd like to focus on today in the time we have left?"

"I had a nightmare last night," he said. "A bad one." For the first time she noticed something other than sadness and loneliness in his eyes. Fear lurked in the depths like a wasp in a flower bouquet.

"Tell me about it."

Kevin lay back on the soft leather couch, resting his head on the armrest, and closed his eyes. He smiled faintly, clearly enjoying this part of the session. It was a relief to talk to someone who listened.

Megan tensed. At this point in a session she started tuning in, seeing what the patient saw, noticing what they mentioned or omitted and asking careful questions to find out why.

She had to steel her nerves to do it for Kevin.

She saw the room he walked across as he described it to her, and sighed with relief. No nausea, no fear.

The cavernous room seemed to stretch into nothingness, with a ceiling so high only the fuzzy variations of color let her know something decorated it. The walls weren't walls at all, but cupboards, with hundreds of doors in them, each two or three feet tall. It was like being in an enormous library card catalog, but lights came from under the small closed doors.

"Was it an empty room, Kevin? Or was there furniture? Doors to other rooms?"

"There were doors. A lot of doors."

"What's behind them?"

In the dream memory Kevin paused and looked at the thin line of light on the floor. "I don't know. Weapons?"

Megan noted that answer on her pad. "Did you think you needed a weapon, Kevin?"

"I didn't think," he said. "I just tried to get to the end of the room. There was something waiting for me there, something that wanted me to see it."

"What was it?"

"I didn't know. I just knew I needed to get there."

Another note. "What happened when you did?"

At the end of the room another door loomed, larger than the others, with ornate carvings in the dark wood. She felt sweat rolling down her face—Kevin's face. Was there a fire behind the door? Fire was a pretty common fear.

Kevin's voice changed now, growing higher and faint. Whatever hid beyond that door must not be pleasant. She braced herself as he reached for it. His hand closed over the ornate brass knob. Flesh sizzled.

Kevin screamed. Something slammed into Megan with enough force to knock her out of her chair. She cried out, her head hitting the floor with a painful thud. The door still loomed in front of her, even as she saw Kevin jerking and convulsing on the couch, his mouth open, his eyes wide. Desperately Megan tried to put her shields back up, to break her connection with Kevin's dream, but she could not. Something had grabbed hold of her mind and refused to let go.

She tried to cry out for Lucy the receptionist, for anyone, but no sound escaped her constricted throat. She reached up, her fingers scrabbling for what felt like a cord squeezing her neck, but she scratched at empty air.

Kevin fell off the couch, smashing into the glass-top table in the middle of the floor. His body still twisted and writhed, horrible gagging noises coming from his open mouth.

Megan's vision started going black around the edges, black as the dream door that screeched on huge brass hinges...

Just before she saw what lurked behind it, the door to her office burst open. Lucy's terrified face was the last thing Megan saw before darkness overtook her.

"I'm fine." Megan sat up on the bed and swung her legs over the side. "I just want to go home."

"The doctor hasn't released you," the nurse replied, in the weary tones of a woman used to being ignored and treated badly by the people she tried to help.

"Can you call her for me, please? I'm fine." It was a lie. She was not fine, but the hospital couldn't do anything for her.

Twice in two days now she'd had an unusual reaction when tuning in to someone. Three times, if you included her inability to read anything from the lawyer on her doorstep. Was it possible for psychic abilities to suddenly become uncontrollable? Or was it a coincidence, some odd alignment of the planets? Maybe Kevin was epileptic or had an organic brain dysfunction?

She had no way to find out, no one she could ask. In her youth Megan had looked for a mentor, someone else who could do what she did. Once she'd realized her parents couldn't help, she'd tried making appointments with Tarot readers and psychics. None of them were able to do anything for her, with the exception of the Tarot reader who'd advised her to let go of her anger. Megan liked her anger and ignored the advice.

Through trial and error, not to mention desperation, she'd found a way to shield herself, but she'd never advanced beyond that.

The nurse looked her up and down. "Are you the kind of person who ignores doctor's orders?"

Megan smiled. "No. I'm not an idiot."

"You don't look like an idiot," the nurse said, returning the smile. "I'll get her." She turned and headed for the busy nurse's station in the middle of the Emergency Care area, her jogging shoes making little squeaks on the polished tile floor. Megan bit her fingernails and waited.

"You know, we have a snack machine," the doctor said, entering Megan's little curtained cubicle. "In case those nails don't fill you up."

Megan blushed. "Nervous habit. Oral fixation."

"Mmm-hmm. You're a counselor, right? PhD?" The doctor—Janet Hunter, according to her ID badge—cocked an eyebrow and grinned.

"Physician, heal thyself?"

"Something like that. I suppose it could be worse. You could smoke."

"No smoking. Just clean, non-lethal nasty habits."

"Great. Lisa tells me you're feeling fine, and I don't see any reason to keep you here, but try to take it easy for the next few days, okay? And call your regular doctor if you have any dizziness or pain that can't be treated with a couple of Tylenol."

Megan nodded.

"Dr. Chase?"

A man in a plaid shirt and a pair of brown corduroy jeans that had seen better days stood in the entryway to Megan's room. Large glasses dominated his smiling face. "I'm sorry to interrupt," he said. "I wanted to catch you before they discharge you."

"I'm done with her, Art. Signing her discharge now, you're just in time."

"Excellent." The man stepped further into the room while Megan thanked Dr. Hunter. "I'm Arthur Bellingham." He held out his hand. Megan shook it. It was warm and limp. "I'm head of the Fearbusters program here at the hospital."

"Right," Megan looked at him with new interest. "Kevin's therapist."

"Yes, Kevin's therapist." Something about the way he said it made Megan itch to tune into him, but she refrained. She wasn't about to take a chance of something else going wrong when she was so close to freedom from the hospital. "That's why I wanted to talk to you. What happened to Kevin?"

"It looked like a seizure, but you'd have to ask Dr. Hunter if it was."

"I will," Bellingham replied. "I'm glad neither of you were seriously injured."

"Me too." What did he want? He was clearly building up to something, and Megan wished he would just come out with it so she could leave.

"I suppose things could have gone very badly if your receptionist hadn't come and found you."

How did he know that? Had he been peeking at her triage forms? Not worth arguing about. It wasn't like there was any information there he couldn't get elsewhere anyway. "I suppose," she said. "I'd rather not think about it."

"Oh, come now, Dr. Chase. We're psychologists. It's our job to face fear."

"It's our job to help our patients face their fears."

"You say potato. Actually, it's just that kind of thing I was hoping to discuss with you. Fears, I mean, not potatoes!" He chuckled at his own joke.

Megan smiled with her mouth closed. "What about them?"

"Well." He thrust his hands into his pockets and leaned against the EKG monitor, only to stumble and nearly fall when the monitor on its wheeled cart rolled away. Megan tightened her lips to keep from laughing as he pulled it back into place. He looked back at her, with the guilty expression of a child who expected to be beaten for his clumsiness.

"Stupid wheels," Megan said. "Whose idea were they, anyway?"

He gave a nervous little giggle. "Yes. Right. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about Fearbusters."

"The program Kevin was in?"

"The program Kevin is in. He hasn't officially left."

"Most therapy clients don't officially leave, do they, Mr. Bellingham? I mean, there's no graduation ceremony for feeling better. They just stop making appointments."

Bellingham shrugged, but the lines of his face tensed. "Fearbusters is ... different. Special. We do have a ceremony of sorts, and our clients sign up for a set period of time. If they feel better before that time is up, they help mentor those who aren't as strong yet. It's a wonderful program."

It may be wonderful, but it also sounded unethical. "And they pay for the sessions where they're acting as mentors?"

He nodded. "We reduce the fee, but our theory—and our clients agree—is that they're still learning new coping mechanisms while helping others to cope. Often they decide to stay, even after they've had their Leaving Ceremony."

"I see."

He narrowed his eyes. "If they really want to leave, they can. They just have to tell us. But in the two years we've been running the program, only one person has."

"Impressive."

"Thank you. Let me cut to the chase, Dr. Chase." He smiled. Megan smiled back, just as if she hadn't heard that joke a million times. "I'd love to have you on board. I heard you on the radio last night, dealing with the woman who heard voices. You were great. Most of our clients have issues like hers, hence our name. I think you'd be a great asset to our team."

Was there a person in the city who hadn't been listening? In her worst nightmares she'd never imagined Richard's stupid publicity campaign being this effective.

"I'm flattered," she began. "But with my own practice and the show, I'm working six days a week. I just don't see how I can fit it in."

"Maybe you could come down one evening and sit in on a session? We meet here at seven every weeknight, Conference Room B in the Outpatient Center. We'd love to have you."

"I'll try."

Bellingham brightened. "Great. Here's my card." The card was much flimsier than the one her mysterious visitor had presented her last night. "Please call me anytime if you have the chance to come in."

"I will." Megan hopped off the bed and landed with a thud on her feet. The bed was a little higher than she'd thought. She grabbed her purse. "It was nice meeting you, Mr. Bellingham."

"Call me Art." He gave her another limp handshake. It was like holding hands with an uncooked chicken cutlet. Megan suppressed a shudder. "Megan," she said.

"Megan, then. I hope you'll call."

She waited until he was gone to wipe her hand on her skirt.