CHAPTER ONE

ALISON, LOS ANGELES

"m crazy," the woman said, blinking. "Right?" She looked from her bandaged wrists to the doctor and then at the bookshelves. She was self-conscious. She would crawl out of her skin if she could.

She had done something terrible once. This much, he knew.

She wore glasses, and her hair was long and light brown. She was obviously very pretty although she had worked to frump herself up by wearing along skirt, and a gold sweater that gave a pallid cast to her olive complexion, as well as emphasized her short waistline. Somewhere in her life she had taught herself to not be too pretty. Perhaps she rebelled against the pressure of living in the Los Angeles area, where beautiful was the golden mean. Perhaps it was something deeper.

Something that made her not want to attract anyone. Made her want to try to disappear within baggy clothes, homely outfits .... He knew from reading through her file that she had been in and out of institutions for many years, and now lived with her husband in the Los Feliz section of the city, within a few miles of the clinic. "I used to be schizo, then just bipolar, and now, doc, I got to tell you, I'm not so sure." She had learned to be glib, in order to distance herself from the ordeal she had lived through. Continued to live through. He had seen patients similar to this before; similar, but not the same as this one.

She was different.

She was trying to get at the truth of her life.

He knew.

Dr. Diego Correa, sitting across from her at his desk, shook his head.

"I think you've been misdiagnosed. Unfortunately, back when you first underwent psychiatric treatment, that label was pretty much given out across the board. Nobody should ever make that kind of pronouncement on a girl of sixteen."

"I don't know, doc," she said, scanning the books on his shelf, "Schizo seemed as good a word as any." She giggled slightly, perhaps aware of her own madness. She shook her head, dismissing a question only she might know.

"I don't believe it," he said. "I've been working with schizophrenics for years, and you don't exactly conform to any of the known behaviors."

She did that thing with her eyes again blinked twice before she spoke,

as if she were still trying to control some inner rage--the clenched fists on the arms of the chair, the blinking eyes, the tight set to her lips. "I was in the

Falmouth hospital for six years, doctor. I know crazy. When I talked to them about demons, the other patients, they told me they'd had visits from demons, too. So, what, you're going to tell me that's not a classic pattern? Delusions, demons, all that stuff. I had it in a big way."

"But you didn't see demons at Falmouth, did you?"

The woman shrugged. "I've seen them before, though."

"I think you saw something, too. Before."

:

She took a breath. Deep. She must have been a smoker once, for she breathed the air like it should have a taste to it. "I don't remember any of it."

"I believe you do. I believe that somewhere inside you is a key, and with that key; the doorway to a mystery."

"Your colleagues told me you were a bit unorthodox." She actually smiled, and for a moment he thought he saw just a brief image of the girl she must once have been. Before the fear had set in.

The dread.

'7ctually, they laugh at me." He grinned, finally. "But I have a reputation, so they laugh and then they send me the ones that don't fit in their pigeonholes." "Like me." "Like you."

"Well, I've been through electro-shock, and I almost O.D.ed on Thorazine before I was twenty. Now I'm mid-thirties, and I'm tired of the meds. I don't want any more drugs. I don't want any more experimental treatments. So, what else you got?"

"It's simpler than that," he said. "Have you ever heard of regression therapy?"

"No, thank you. That sounds ... well ... nuts."

"Not as nuts as you think. I'm just going to hypnotize you. Nothing more. I'll ask you questions about your childhood. About that time. I understand from Dr. Hart that you've been having some more problems."

She sighed, and in that one brief exhalation of air, there was resignation, perhaps even acceptance of something she'd been fighting for years. "Call it what you want. I've been seeing it again."

"What?"

She looked beyond him, through him, as if he were just another in a long line of doctors and psychiatrists and specialists she had seen and would continue to see into eternity--and yet not really see at all. It was as if she had told this story a million times and would have to tell it a million times more. "The wall. It's a high yellow wall like a garden wall. And there's this shadow on it, only it's made of blood.

It's a woman. And it moves.

And then my head starts pounding really hard. And I bleed."

"Nosebleeds?"

"Nosebleeds, mouth bleeds other, more private places." You menstruate?"

She hesitated. Less glib about this aspect of her life. Then, almost a

whisper, she said, "Yes ... Not on schedule, either. Maybe it's like Dr.

Hart said, maybe it's just stress." Her voice changed, almost imperceptibly, from the wise-cracking tone to this core of vulnerability.

She was this beautiful child, untouched, somewhere inside the grown

[. woman's body, confused by the world now that she had to live by adult rules and beliefs. "I see this wall. And that's it. I break out in a cold sweat. Something is coming over that wall, or I'm going over it.

Something. Something terrible."

"Do you remember anything other than the wall?" Not really. But it terrifies me. And I know that's what it wants."

"It?"

"The demon. Do you believe in demons?" She jutted her chin out like a willful child.

He liked seeing this spirit in her, just when he'd been worried that her spirit had been broken on the psychoanalytical wheel.

"I'm not sure," he said.

"Well, that's something. They put me in Falmouth because of that.

Because I told them I knew a demon. Those doctors were positive there were no demons."

"Do you remember how you met this demon?"

"Would you like to try a session now?"

"Regress?" She asked. Then, she nodded. "Sure. Why not. "First,"

he said, "close your eyes."

She said, "All right, but promise me something."

"Of course."

"Promise me you won't do anything to make me afraid."

"I promise."

"It lives on that. Fear. That's why it never died. Because we're still afraid of it."

"Do you think it will come and get you? Is that what you're afraid of?."

"Oh," she said, her smile trembling, "I know it will. As long as we're all alive and safe and afraid, it's going to find us."

"Close your eyes," he said. "Now, tell me your name."

"Yklison. Alison Chandler."

"What was your name when you were fifteen?"

"Hunt."

"In the room in your mind, Alison, there's a mirror. I want you to go to it, to look at yourself. I want you to see Alison Hunt when she was seventeen. I want you to tell me what she looks like, and what she's wearing. Can you do that for me?"

"I can't remember."

"Till right. Look in the mirror. Alison Hunt is fifteen or sixteen.

Can you see her now?"

"Yes," she said, "clearly. I'm sixteen. I'm sixteen. I'm in love.

I'm prett I guess. I look the way sixteen year old's look, except for one thing."

"What's that?"

"The blood. Oh, my god, the blood. Oh, Jesus, look at it, look at all of it."

"On your hands, Alison?"

"No," she whispered, "on my lips."