Now look what you did! Mother shouted. I told you not to do that anymore. She picked up the bottle again and advanced on the child, holding it out in front of her.

Jessie closed her eyes tight as the child screamed again, squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could on the horror in front of her that went on and on, louder and louder until she couldn’t bear any more.

Suddenly it all stopped. It was utterly silent for a long moment, and then she heard voices whispering softly. She kept her eyes screwed shut for a long time, and then finally opened them, but it was completely dark, so black she couldn’t tell when her eyes were open or shut. It was as if she were blind, and she felt panic rising within her until it threatened to take over completely. The voices became louder and she could make out snatches of what they were saying. She realized the voices were really all one voice speaking many different things.…sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of others…aloof and suspicious, resentful…

Jessie didn’t understand what the words meant, but she knew that they came from the man’s memory of a place he had been. The walls were cream colored, there were hanging plants and nice furniture, and a woman sat in the room with her long legs crossed and her hands in her lap. It was her voice Jessie heard, and she was a doctor.

Something has happened to you, Jonathan, the woman said, that has made you so afraid. What is it?

(A sudden picture of Mother lying in a pool of her own blood and the razor the bottle and the cold steel blade.)

Jonathan listened to the woman with a wary sense of what surrounded him, the way a dog sniffs out unfamiliar territory. He liked the woman, but what she wanted to know (the razor the RAZOR, Jessie tried to shout) was locked away deep inside, where even his own conscious mind could not go.

The image spun away into blackness, and just before the last of it disappeared she thought she saw something else: long, thick arms covered with hair, and fangs red with blood. Then it was gone, and Jessie found herself again in the three-walled room. Her heart beat a crazy thumping pattern in her breast. The little Jessie part of her was awake now, and it was scared to death.

She watched as the wall around the door slowly materialized, wood forming out of thin air, building itself from the inside out to the farthest corners. As the last bit fell into place, she felt her mind do a quick flip and then everything was real again—the dampness, the flickering shadows, the smell of rotting wood. It was no longer her nightmare world. This one could hurt her.