by
Mary E. Overstreet
There was no one at the Old House when Willie arrived in the late afternoon. He was glad because he did not want to face Barnabas after what he had done. And all the way home, he'd kept seeing parts of a dream he'd had—him being stripped and dragged out of the ward down the corridor. It had kept coming to him till he was now feeling very unsettled and nervous. He set his bag on the bed and felt another image abruptly enter his mind—being put in a strait-jacket, the rubber hose, the male orderly pushing him on his face and grabbing his legs. . .
What? Willie shuddered, his knees growing weak. He hadn't remembered that before. In fact, he couldn't remember dreaming it. But where would it have come from? Stuff like that didn't really happen. Not at Wyndecliffe.
He sat heavily on his bed. He remembered seeing guys dragged out without their clothes, but that was nothing. It hadn't happened to him anyway. They hadn't dragged him. . . Julia wouldn't let those other things go on. Willie felt his head start reeling and leaned forward, steadying it with his hands. He had the horrible feeling in his mind that it had happened to him. But Julia cared about him, he thought, she knew he wasn't guilty, she would have protected him.
Willie pressed his fingers to his temples, unable to stop thinking of the images he remembered from his dreams or from reality. No! It couldn't be real. Not to me, he thought. They wouldn't've let that happen to me. I was hurt. They never tried to hurt me like that! They pushed me around, but they pushed everybody around. You had to obey the rules. Willie felt a shudder start from somewhere deep within him. Everything about the trip was forgotten, even his betrayal of Barnabas, in the rising tide of hysteria threatening to overwhelm him.
Somehow he quelled it before it surfaced and ripped him apart. "I must still be sick," he muttered in disbelief. He started to undress, hands shaking as he removed his tie and unbuttoned his vest. Willie took time to hang his vest and coat, then changed into a pair of black work pants.
He looked toward the closed drawer of his night stand for a minute before opening it with a trembling hand. The Valium was gone—it must've been the same bottle he'd taken to New York and ended up flushing down the toilet. He ran his hands through his hair and tried to think around the images in his mind. He went to his old room and opened the drawer of the bedside table. He fumbled around in the back of it, finding a nearly full prescription bottle. He read the date on the label, "1968". It was over three years old. He hadn't taken any since he had first come out of Wyndecliffe. He found the bottle's presence comforting in some way rather than disturbing, and he opened it. They used to make him take a lot of pills, he knew. He'd only taken one of these—to calm him. They were a lot stronger than Valium. He took out a capsule then placed the vial back where he had found it and went to his new room. He poured some water from the china pitcher into the cup and swallowed the pill with it.
Willie stretched out on his bed, not feeling well physically now. His trip had been really quite stressful, and he hadn't been out of the hospital that long, only a few weeks. God, how he hated being in the hospital. Working in one was okay, just being a patient was the worst.
Numbness slowly crept through his mind, and the nightmare visions retreated far back till he could no longer remember. He was not even sure what had bothered him so, just some dream he didn't know when he'd had.
He was startled by someone calling his name. Barnabas must be home, he thought, and forced himself to get up and go out. He met Barnabas on the landing.
"Willie, what. . . What's the matter with you?" Barnabas viewed Willie's untucked, tieless shirt and bleary half-lidded eyes with disapproval, thinking he may have presented himself improperly to their business associates. "Are you ill?"
"Nah, but I came home feelin' kinda lousy." He was too out of it to even care what he admitted feeling.
"Well—"
"I mean, mostly I'm tired an' I wanta lie down for a while."
"Certainly." Barnabas smiled slightly, placing a hand on Willie's shoulder. "You've been doing very well. Try to relax a little. I hope the trip wasn't too tiring for you."
"Nah. Thanks, Barnabas. Excuse me." Willie would've been flattered and touched and guilty if his mind had not been dulled by the drug. He went back to his room and crawled into bed.
He awoke sometime after ten, feeling disoriented and depressed. Julia was looking down at him, he realized suddenly.
"I wouldn't've awakened you, Willie, but Barnabas told me you weren't feeling well." She smiled, barely visible in the dim light coming in from the doorway. "I wanted to see if I could help."
"I-I wassstired." His words slurred together, and he couldn't think of what else he had wanted to say.
"You're still half asleep," she said softly, attributing his speech to grogginess from being awakened from a deep sleep. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Willie was grateful for the dark when she had left and shut the door behind her. He couldn't figure out why he felt so low, almost low enough to cry. He was despairing and didn't know he could fight it. It just filled him up till it spilled over in tears from his eyes, and he fell asleep that way, silently crying.
*
Willie tried to shake his depression, but it wouldn't go after the night he had taken one of the old pills. He stayed away from the other drugs including alcohol because he did not trust himself to stay in control of the ever-increasing dread in his mind. He kept to himself unless it was absolutely necessary he interact with someone. Barnabas claimed more of his time than anyone else, and there was little to that even. He trusted Willie enough to let him plan his own meetings, keep the records, and handle the money with relatively little interference. Willie spent a lot of time traveling. Guilt followed him everywhere he went, and each time he returned to the Old House, it was twice as strong when he faced Barnabas.
He hid it. He was short and quick with his reports, retreating to his room when he finished and remaining out of sight as much as possible. He bluffed Barnabas. And Julia and Carolyn and Stokes—the only people who came to see him. In New York, he stole, pressured by threats and finally even Mace and Jack's company with him to the bank. He took a lot that time. And they wanted more—to blow on the horses, he knew. There were no more attempts at rewarding him, though they occasionally talked to him as if they were all still friends. Willie reached a point where he did not care. He just took the money for them, fixed the books to cover it, and existed in dread.
That he would eventually be caught was inevitable. He couldn't bear the thought of that day and did everything he could to postpone it, working like a slave to keep everything in hand so that Barnabas would not start back into the more active aspects of it. Willie did all the traveling, made all the contacts, leaving Barnabas with only paperwork that he thought he had no reason to check up on. Willie tried to cover all ends of their business and keep up the Old House, too.
He was running himself down; his nerves were constantly on edge, he slept poorly at best, and he was unable to relax most of the time. But he kept up an appearance of youthful energy when he was around friends and associates. Being busy all the time gave him an excuse to have no social life, and it helped him to not think about the images that had come with increasing regularity into his mind and caused him an anguish he could not hide.
Staying alone had its drawbacks, however, as he found the shattering visions were most frequent then. If he let his thoughts drift away from work or just onto something pleasant, scenes would come like memories and their accompanying emotions to stop and tie him down until he could cut his mind away. It hurt so much he wanted to die.
He didn't notice the late coming of spring. His heart was still bound up in the dead cold of January. Willie had heard people commenting that this was a long winter; as far as he was concerned, it would never end. He just moved through the weeks, narrowly avoiding disaster and staying alive.
But Willie's state of mind had not gone entirely unnoticed. Barnabas was growing concerned because Willie was working so hard, and he seemed so distant and introverted. Carolyn thought the same thing from her brief encounters with him, but they did not discuss him with each other. Instead, Barnabas took his worry to Julia who was again working at Wyndecliffe.
She admitted him into her office, surprised at his unexpected visit. "What brings you up here, Barnabas?" Julia had long ago given up the idea that he would come to see her at Wyndecliffe if there was not a problem for which he needed her help. She just hoped it was nothing serious.
"Well, I've been hoping you would pay us all a visit in Collinsport soon, but I decided to just drive up myself. I didn't know if I should wait any longer." He settled down in a chair opposite her at her desk.
"What's wrong?"
"Perhaps nothing. I may be wrong, but I think Willie is depressed. I know he's staying so busy you've had little time to talk to him. He avoids us all, I think. I've tried to talk to him into taking a holiday, but he just says he'd be bored. He doesn't look well, he looks tired, and his hands tremble constantly. But he's doing such a good job. I'm disinclined to interfere. It might hurt his feelings."
Julia did not say anything for a few minutes, still a little amazed by how much Barnabas had come to care about Willie. She thought Willie was slowly succumbing to the pressure he inflicted upon himself because he continually buried the things that hurt him. She could not help him as long as he denied there was something wrong—as she knew he would.
She took a hard look at Barnabas. "You are the focal point in his world. I think you stand a better chance than anyone else at getting through to him. I think you should interfere, Barnabas. Gently of course."
He would much rather have her handle the problem. She was a psychiatrist, presumably she knew a lot more about what could be wrong than he did. Mostly, he did not want to be involved in any emotional scenes. The ones in the past had been bad enough. Now he was more fond of Willie than he had ever been, he did not want to be the one to upset him.
"But, Julia, I don't know what's wrong with him. I wouldn't know what to do." He leaned forward earnestly. "I don't want to hurt him any more than I have already. Besides, I can't make him listen to me."
"He's hurting anyway, Barnabas. He needs to face what he really feels for you." She sighed, raising her hands in a helpless gesture and bringing them down flat on her desk. "But I don't know if it's a good idea to upset him that much. And opening up about you would upset him." She leaned back. "If he'd only let me help him. You should at least try to talk him into coming to see me. And try not to let him spend so much time away from people."
"I'd have to force him to do that."
"Then insist upon being with him on his next business trip. You certainly have the right to that. It may even mean something to him that you want to go with him."
"He'd think it meant I didn't trust him."
"Barnabas, he's been doing this for you for what? Two months since he was released from the hospital? Surely your wanting to go is not unreasonable. You could tell him you miss going."
"I think he would back out of it entirely. Why do you think my going with him would make such a difference?"
"Because you would have that time alone together, and you might be able to get him to trust you a little. And being away from the Old House and Collinsport in less familiar surroundings could help that."
"But Willie is from New York, I think. He's probably at home there."
"Well, then, don't go," she said, exasperated. "You ask my help, and I'm just trying to give you a place to start. I don't think I could do anything for him short of drugging him into cooperation. That shouldn't be necessary and certainly could be dangerous. I don't want to force him if he isn't ready. His mind might not recover if he doesn't sort things out for himself."
That worried Barnabas more. If he upset Willie, what might happen? "Julia, if I go with him, and something like that happens, I won't know what to do."
"Do you think you could manage to give him a sedative? In tablet form."
"I don't know. I could try of course, but—"
"Barnabas, you probably wouldn't have to. If all you did was to gain a measure of his trust, that would help."
He looked into her eyes, resignation slumping his shoulders. "I suppose I must try."
"I think it'll help. I honestly do." She pulled a prescription pad out of a desk drawer and began writing. "But just in case. . ."
*