Chapter 7
"Are you sure you don't want to reconsider going to Reverend Trask's meeting?"
Barnabas shook his head "I would feel uncomfortable around him. Specially the way he looks at me."
"What's wrong witht the way he looks at your?"
"Like...like I could do no wrong. It disturbs me. Specailly since I can make a list of the things I did wrong and..."
Julia looked down to hide the anger in her eyes. Barnabas sure looked modest, didn't he? And saintly too. It was such a beautiful act of his.
But she would show him for what he really was. She and Maggie.
She checked her watch. She couldn't keep Barnabas with her making small talk for much longer. And Barnabas had to be there when Maggie came.
The headlights of the car approaching reached them.
"I wonder who would be coming at this hour." Barnabas wondered aloud.
"Oh, that's Maggie." Julia said as calmly as she could.
"Maggie?"
"Yes. She said she was coming over here."
Maggie...the last time he had seen it had been last winter... When memories he wished he didn't have had come back to him.
And now he would have to face her again, with what he knew...
Sabrina led Maggie in.
Maggie looked so sick, so pale... As sick and pale as she had looked when he had been through with her in 1967.
"It was a long ride, but we made it." Sabrina said. She looked curiously towards Barnabas. Did Julia confide in him that much? She certainly wouldn't.
"Hello, Maggie" Julia said, with what calm remained in her. "have you seen Barnabas?"
Maggie lifted her head and stared in the direction that Julia pointed.
Her eyes were dead, Barnabas realized with shock. Then they eyes changed.
"Maggie?" he said tentatively.
Maggie took a step forward, her face contorted with hatred.
"Murderer!" she screamed.
She fell on him, kicking, spitting, and clawing him. She dug her heels into his shins, caught his nose between her teeth and twisted it.
He reeled from the attack and tried to grab her.
The nails that raked his cheeks moved closer to his eyes.
Then she went limp.
"My God, she's freaked out." Sabrina said while checking that her karate blow had not done serious harm. "you okay?"
"Yes. he 's okay" Julia said venomously "she is a mess, but he is okay. And why do you think that she is a mess? Because he once played a funny game with her. He pretended that she was Josette, and when she wouldn't go along with him, he just drove her mad."
Barnabas stared at Julia, stunned.
"Oh, Kira helped, I grant you. But he planted the seeds. And he would just as well killed her. She had the mind of a five year old child when I saw her first. But that's not all. I lost count of how many times the put his hands on my throat, trying to strangle me, until I talked him out of it."
"Julia..." Barnabas managed to say.
"Of course, he does not want to talk about it. Did he ever tell you how he asked me to kill Willie in the hospital? And what about Dave? You killed him, and made me give you the poison for it. He knew it was me who had prepared it. He rejected me before he died."
She walked towards Barnabas slowly, her eyes blazing.
"It hurts to remember, doesn't it, scum?" she hissed at him. "it would be so much easier if nobody ever spoke of it."
She spat on his face.
Barnabas stood numbed, without even the will to wipe the spittle away.
Julia licked her lips, ready to speak the next barb.
Which she never uttered, since Sabrina felled her with another karate blow.
"Oh, Lord, what a mess" Sabrina said to no one in particular. "As they say, psychiatrists catch it from their patients."
"She is right" Barnabas managed to say.
"What is it to me?" Sabrina shrugged "I came here because Maggie's in trouble, not because I want to witness your spats."
Barnabas stood immobile while Sabrina laid Maggie on the sofa.
"Since you are not going to be much help around here, would you mind going out? I want a few words with Julia, in private."
Barnabas paced in the garden...Maggie had remembered. The thought filled him, made him want to run away, never to be seen again anymore...
And Julia had rejected him.
Her spit burned like acid on his skin. That she would hate him so.. that one day she would look at him that way...
"You ordered me to kill Willie when he was in the hospital..."
Had he been willing to do that? To kill Willie?
He remembered his own words then. Every one of them...
What kind of beast could do those things?
He didn't deserve anything of what he had. he didn't deserve anyone's friendship, anyone's love...
Was madness a good enough excuse? Could it ever be?
...Maggie...Maggie...her eyes blank, singing 'London Bridge' over and over...
...Willie, his face frozen in fear, whimpering before the cane hit him...
'...Julia in pain, shaken by the enormity of the crime he had forced her to commit. And he still tormented her...
He bit his knuckles, as if by inflicting pain on himself somehow made things better.
But it wasn't enough. As Maggie's fingernails digging into his flesh weren't enough...
Dry sobs broke in his throat, but he could not bend down to cry. It was as if a straight rod of iron had been driven through his spine, forcing him to remain erect...
"Well, Julia, this is a pretty mess, isn't it? I bring Maggie here for treatment and what do I get? Included in some sort of group therapy? That's the most charitable explanation I can find.
"You do not understand."
"I am not interested in finding out what kinds of problems you have or don't have with your staff. I am not interested in your personal problems, either. If you forgive me, I find your behavior today highly unprofessional."
Julia bent down her head.
"Kira's tapes" she managed to say.
Sabrina cocked her head. "You mean they got to you?"
"They would get to anyone."
"Yes." Sabrina agreed "you told me something of it, when you started."
"It exploits all your buried anger and resentments until you are ready to kill."
Sabrina paced. "Well, what do we do now? Do you think that you could treat her, in the shape your are in?"
"No: Julia swallowed "I cannot. But Barnabas might."
"If you haven't shocked him into uselessness, that is."
Maggie was lying comfortably while Julia sat at her desk, looking down on her papers, to avoid looking at him when he went in, called by Sabrina.
"You remember Kira?" Sabrina asked him.
"Yes.. but.."
"She is one's of Kira's killers." she pointed at the unconscious Maggie "she's already killed one man in the Longworth Building, and would have gone on killing if I hadn't stopped Kira."
"But..."
"You might have planted the seeds, but if it had not been you, Kira would have found something else to exploit. She was a professional mind bender. There were plenty of other angers and resentments for her to exploit. She might have ended killing her father over and over, instead of you."
He turned to Julia "Is that true?"
Julia nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
"And ..."
"And now she needs help. Yours."
"It cannot be Julia. She listened to Kira's tapes for too long and they got to her. No, you are Maggie's only chance now."
"But I...I cannot."
"She needs you are the only one who can help her."
"She hates me."
"You have to face up to her and break through."
"She has every right to hate me.."
"It is you or nobody. After that unprofessional behavior of Julia, she can't do it."
"Julia was right..."
"I am the doctor, and I say that I am too affected by the material I studied to be able to make a rational decision." Julia said slowly "I hope that you don't start contesting my decisions."
"If you don't do something, she will kill somebody. Do you know what she was getting ready for when we came? Sniping. Right! Get up on a roof with a gun and start shooting anything that moves.
Barnabas looked at Maggie.
...One of Kira's killers.
He moved closer to her.
""Oh, Maggie, what happened to you?"
A sniper. A Pavlov dog, like the children. Buffy Duncan... Joseph Lilley..
"Who did she kill?"
"A lobbyist called Drew Harrison."
There was a snarl growing in Maggie's throat."
"No, Maggie. I will not let Kira destroy you."
