Page 78 of Hostile Saint

“Yes… Why now? Why didn’t you try this when I first came here?”

“I felt it best to try other avenues first.”

Dagger and Lynx nodded, pleased with what they were hearing.

Lacey asked, “Will this avenue help with my memories? So that I can leave?”

“Vera, I can’t make any promises of what you will remember, and I refuse to force you to remember what your mind is rejecting.”

Dagger and Lynx nodded again.

“But I can tell you that I might learn some things to help your treatment, so that, yes, someday you can leave.”

After a moment, her gentle voice said, “Okay. I would like to try then.”

My heart started to pound again. A part of me had hoped she would refuse this treatment.

It is simply amazing how the mind works…and what mine saw coming.

Lacey was swiftly under Doctor Landon’s command. His hypnosis taking hold, he kept reassuring her, “You are calm. You are safe…”

I wanted to crash into that office and demand he stop, but that was clearly not an option.

“What is your name?” he asked.

Entranced, Pretty Girl sounded so tranquil. “It is Lacey.”

“What is your last name?”

Four sets of jaws dropped.

Dagger asked us gawking ones, “Are we fucking morons?”

As Lacey revealed her childhood name, Lynx smacked his forehead. “I was so worried about that fragile brain of hers that I didn’t stop to think he would ask the obvious. Jesus. H. Christ!”

Vice shook his head. “Damnit. He’s going to notify authorities.”

That safety net of Serenity was about to crumble.

By the time we listened again, Doctor Landon was regressing Lacey. “… Now you are twelve… Ten…”

The only reason I can think of why he wasn’t asking her questions about her at her present age is that he assumed it was too traumatic. Maybe he thought her younger years would be a safe time to begin as he requested her to go back further and further into her childhood. “You are now six years old. Look around and tell me what you see.”

Was he expecting fond memories of loving parents? A safe environment most wish all children have?

Lacey still sounded like the seventeen-year-old she was, but her words were pronounced with an eerie young way of speaking. “I am in my daddy’s garwage.”

My body broke into chills. She had told me about what happened in that garage.

“Brothers hurting me.” She was in a surreal state, speaking as if she wasn’t affected by the brother’s torture.

I was nothing of the sort. In my chair, I found myself slightly rocking while Doctor Landon said, “Very good, Lacey. They can’t hurt you. You are safe.”

“Mmhmm. My daddy is yelling at them…”

It was hard to breathe as I listened to the little girl version of my wife tell the terrifying tale of her father’s death. How the brothers murdered him coldly and callously in that garage. Only boys themselves, they were already working so efficiently together.

Weighted exhales told me Doctor Landon was a bit shaken but attempting to hide it for his patient’s sake. “Lacey, you are now seven. Can you explain what you are seeing?”