Three days passed before Victor Deverell left his apartment. The rain had stopped sometime on the second day, replaced by a low, oppressive fog that wrapped itself around Grayhaven like wet wool. He spent those days in the armchair, the door to the impossible room firmly closed, the photograph of Martin Crowe and his younger self tucked face-down beneath a stack of old magazines. He did not eat. He barely drank. The hallucination came and went, sometimes lingering for hours in the corner, sometimes vanishing for long stretches that left Victor almost hopeful before the grinning figure returned, always a little closer than before.
On the morning of the fourth day, a letter arrived from the Federal Security Board. It was a single sheet of paper, typed on official letterhead, informing him that his psychological evaluation had been scheduled for the following Monday at the Stonebridge Psychiatric Institute. Failure to appear would result in immediate denial of his claim. A map was enclosed, along with a list of bus routes that served the facility.
Victor studied the map with hollow eyes. Stonebridge sat on the northern edge of Grayhaven, in a district of old Victorian houses that had been converted decades ago into clinics, halfway homes, and the kind of quiet, well-maintained institutions where families sent relatives they preferred not to discuss. He had never been there. Or perhaps he had, and simply could not remember.
He spent Sunday evening preparing. He shaved for the first time in a week, his hand surprisingly steady as he guided the razor across his throat. He put on his least wrinkled shirt and the tie he had worn to the hearing. In the bathroom mirror, his reflection looked back at him with dark-circled eyes and a jaw that seemed sharper than he remembered, as if the softness of his face was slowly being carved away.
The hallucination watched from the doorway. Victor ignored it.
Monday dawned cold and gray. Victor caught the Number 17 bus at the corner of Harrow Lane and sat in the back, his forehead pressed against the cold window. The city rolled past in a blur of wet sidewalks and bare trees. Other passengers got on and off — a woman with a stroller, an old man clutching a bag of groceries, a teenager with headphones clamped over his ears. Ordinary people living ordinary lives. Victor watched them with a hunger that surprised him. When had he last felt ordinary? When had he last felt anything but this slow, creeping dread?
The Stonebridge Psychiatric Institute occupied a three-story Victorian mansion that had once belonged to a lumber baron named Silas Stonebridge. The original owner had died in 1912, leaving his fortune to the establishment of a hospital for "diseases of the mind." A century later, the mansion had been modernized with steel-framed windows and wheelchair ramps, but it retained its essential character — a place of dark wood, narrow corridors, and the faint, lingering smell of pipe tobacco that no amount of disinfectant could erase.
Victor approached the main entrance and pressed the intercom button. A crackle of static, then a woman's voice: "Name and appointment, please."
"Victor Deverell. I have an evaluation with Dr. Moss."
The door buzzed open. Inside, a receptionist with copper-red hair and a name tag reading "HELENA" directed him to a waiting area on the second floor. The staircase curved upward in a graceful spiral, its banister worn smooth by a century of anxious hands. Victor climbed slowly, his footsteps echoing on the polished wood.
The waiting area was small and deliberately soothing — pale blue walls, comfortable chairs, a water cooler that hummed softly in the corner. A man sat in one of the chairs, middle-aged and heavyset, his hands clasped tightly in his lap. He glanced up as Victor entered, then quickly looked away. Neither of them spoke.
Twenty minutes passed. Then the door to Dr. Moss's office opened and she stepped out, her silver eyes finding Victor immediately.
"Mr. Deverell. Please, come in."
Her office was larger than he had expected. Bookshelves lined two walls, crammed with psychiatric texts and bound journals. A large mahogany desk dominated the center of the room, its surface covered with neat stacks of paper. In one corner, a leather couch faced a window that looked out over a neglected garden, its flower beds choked with dead weeds. In the opposite corner, a video camera on a tripod stood aimed at a simple wooden chair.
"We'll be recording today's session," Dr. Moss said, gesturing toward the camera. "The recording will be reviewed by Judge Vance and entered into your case file. Is that acceptable?"
"Yes."
"Good. Please, take a seat."
Victor sat in the wooden chair. Dr. Moss adjusted the camera, checked the microphone, and then settled into the leather armchair across from him. She held a notepad in her lap, a pen poised above it.
"Let's begin with something straightforward," she said. "Tell me about your childhood."
The question caught Victor off guard. He had expected more questions about the corkboard, the notebooks, the photograph. He had prepared answers for those questions — denials, explanations, pleas of ignorance. But childhood? That was a door he had not opened in years.
"I grew up in Grayhaven," he said slowly. "My father worked at the shipyards. My mother stayed home. We lived in a small house on Cedar Street."
"Any siblings?"
"No. I was an only child."
"And your parents? Are they still living?"
"My mother died when I was nineteen. Cancer. My father remarried and moved to the coast. We don't speak much."
Dr. Moss made a note. "What was your relationship like with your father?"
Victor felt a muscle twitch in his jaw. "It was… difficult. He was a hard man. Expected a lot. I never quite measured up."
"Did he ever strike you?"
The question was delivered so casually, so matter-of-factly, that Victor almost answered it before his conscious mind caught up. He hesitated. "Sometimes. When I disappointed him. Which was often."
"What did he strike you with?"
"His hands, mostly. Once with a belt. Another time with a wooden ruler. I had brought home a report card with a C in mathematics. He broke the ruler across my back."
Dr. Moss wrote something on her notepad, her expression unchanged. "And your mother? How did she respond to this?"
"She didn't. She would leave the room. Or go into the kitchen and run the tap so she couldn't hear." Victor paused. The memories were coming now, unbidden, rising from some deep well he had long ago sealed shut. "She was afraid of him too."
"Do you think your father's treatment of you contributed to your current psychological condition?"
"I don't know. I've never thought about it that way."
"Perhaps it's time to start." Dr. Moss set her notepad aside and leaned forward slightly. "Mr. Deverell, I've reviewed your medical history extensively. I've spoken with Dr. Cross, who conducted your initial evaluation. I've examined the materials from your apartment. And I've come to a preliminary conclusion that I'd like to share with you."
Victor's throat tightened. "What conclusion?"
"I believe you are suffering from a dissociative disorder of significant severity. The memory gaps you describe, the sense of lost time, the feeling that you were not truly present in your own life — these are classic symptoms. But I also believe there is more going on than simple amnesia." She paused, her silver eyes holding his. "I believe you have constructed an alternate identity. A psychological double who carries the memories and impulses that your conscious mind cannot accept."
The words hung in the air between them. Victor shook his head slowly. "An alternate identity? Like multiple personalities?"
"The clinical term is Dissociative Identity Disorder. It typically develops as a response to severe trauma, particularly in childhood. The mind creates separate selves to compartmentalize experiences that are too painful or threatening for the conscious self to bear." Dr. Moss gestured toward the camera. "I've been observing you carefully, Mr. Deverell. Your speech patterns, your body language, your handwriting. There are inconsistencies that suggest more than one personality construct is operating within you."
"That's insane."
"Is it? Let me show you something." Dr. Moss rose and walked to her desk. She returned with a folder and opened it to reveal several sheets of paper, each covered in handwriting. "These are samples I collected during my visit to your apartment. This one is from your shopping list. This one is from a notebook in the hidden room. And this one," she held up a third sheet, "is a handwriting sample you provided to Dr. Cross during your initial evaluation."
Victor stared at the pages. The shopping list was written in his familiar, right-slanting script. The notebook page slanted sharply left, the letters cramped and angular. But the third sample was something else entirely — a looping, florid hand, almost calligraphic, with elaborate flourishes on the capital letters.
"That's not my handwriting," he said.
"All three samples were written by your hand, Mr. Deverell. The forensic analysis is conclusive. But they were written by different aspects of your psyche." Dr. Moss sat down again. "I believe the left-slanting script belongs to an identity that emerged during your missing decade. An identity that became fascinated with Martin Crowe. An identity that may have done things your conscious self cannot acknowledge."
Victor's hands were trembling again. He pressed them flat against his thighs, trying to still them. "What kind of things?"
Before Dr. Moss could answer, there was a knock at the door. A young man in orderly's whites entered, carrying a file folder. "Dr. Moss, the lab results you requested just arrived. Priority marked."
"Thank you, Jacob." Dr. Moss took the folder and opened it. Her silver eyes scanned the contents, and for the first time since Victor had met her, her expression shifted. Something flickered behind her professional mask — surprise, perhaps, or alarm.
"What is it?" Victor asked.
Dr. Moss was silent for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was quieter than before. "The DNA sample I collected from your apartment. The Board's laboratory ran it against several databases. They found a match."
"A match to what?"
"Not what, Mr. Deverell. Who." She looked up from the folder. "Your DNA matches genetic material recovered from beneath the fingernails of Lillian Thorne. The fifth victim of the Laughing Man."
The room seemed to tilt. Victor gripped the arms of his chair, his knuckles going white. "That's impossible. I never met her. I told you, I don't remember her."
"The evidence suggests otherwise."
"Then the evidence is wrong. The test is wrong. Something is wrong." Victor's voice rose, cracking. "I'm not a killer. I couldn't hurt anyone. I can barely leave my own apartment."
Dr. Moss closed the folder. "Mr. Deverell, I want to try something. It's a therapeutic technique called guided hypnotic regression. It may help us access the memories that your conscious mind has suppressed. Will you consent to the procedure?"
Victor felt the walls of the room pressing in around him. The hallucination — Martin Crowe — had appeared in the corner of the office, his grin wider than ever, his dark eyes glittering with something that looked horribly like anticipation.
Say yes, the hallucination whispered. Let her open the door.
"I don't know," Victor said. "I don't know if I want to remember."
"If you don't remember, the Board will rely solely on the physical evidence. And the physical evidence, Mr. Deverell, points toward your involvement in a murder."
The word hung in the air, brutal and final. Victor stared at Dr. Moss, then at the camera recording every word, then at the grinning figure in the corner that no one else could see. He was trapped. He had been trapped for a long time, he realized. Perhaps his entire life.
"All right," he whispered. "Do it."
Dr. Moss dimmed the lights and drew the curtains. She had Victor recline on the leather couch while she sat beside him, her voice dropping into a low, rhythmic cadence. The video camera continued to record, its red light blinking steadily in the darkness.
"I want you to focus on your breathing, Mr. Deverell. In and out. Slow and steady. Let your body relax. Let your mind drift. You are safe here. Nothing can harm you."
Victor closed his eyes. The tension in his muscles began to ease, replaced by a heavy, floating sensation. Dr. Moss's voice seemed to come from very far away.
"I want you to go back. Back to the year 1998. Summer. You are in Grayhaven. Can you see it?"
"Yes," Victor heard himself say. His voice sounded strange, distant.
"Where are you?"
"A bar. The Rusty Anchor, on the south side. It's dark. Smells of cigarettes and spilled beer."
"Who is with you?"
A long pause. Then Victor spoke again, but his voice had changed. The pitch was lower, the cadence rougher. The right-slanting vowels had flattened into something harder, more confident.
"I'm waiting for someone," he said. "A woman. Pretty thing. Dark hair. She doesn't know me yet, but she will."
Dr. Moss leaned forward. "What is your name?"
"Victor. Victor Deverell."
"And the woman you're waiting for. Do you know her name?"
A slow smile spread across Victor's face. It was not his smile. It was too wide, too knowing, too comfortable in its cruelty.
"Lillian," he said. "Her name is Lillian Thorne. And she's going to help me send a message."
"What kind of message?"
The smile widened. "The kind that makes people laugh."
Dr. Moss sat very still. The camera's red light blinked on. And from the corner of the room, the hallucination of Martin Crowe watched the man on the couch with an expression that looked almost like pride.
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