True Crime Novels

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Luke met me at Starbucks.  Over chai lattes I told him everything.  Mathilde, my dreams, the journal, the scratches on my closet door, the recurring smell of Colonel Lewis’s compost heap, and my gut-churning vision in The Forest.

He gave me his undivided attention.  The line of his mouth remained stoic and understanding and, even as I heard myself devolve to near depravity, his eyes never left mine.

“Are these symptoms of repressed memories?”  I finally asked him.  “I didn’t have vivid hallucinations like this in Miami.”

He grinned as though I were a child asking about Santa Claus.

“Okay, first of all, your parents rented the house for, like, fifteen years.  I’m sure the scratches were made by some kid as a joke.  And, second of all, "repressed memories" is Freudian bullshit psychology just can't shake."

“Well, what about people with amnesia?” I asked.  Luke was getting condescending, and it was bothering me.

“What about them?  Amnesia is caused by damage to the part of your brain that stores memories.  That’s really not what we’re talking about.  Your memory isn’t like a video camera, you don’t record things and then play them back.  And for every housewife crying over repressed trauma on Dr. Phil, there’s a thousand therapy patients with false memories Jedi mind-tricked into them.”

“Okay, well, what about Mathilde?” I shot back.  “I didn’t even recognize her the first time I hallucinated her.”

“Have you looked at a picture of Mathilde?” Luke asked plainly.  “A real one?  Because if you did, I’m sure she wouldn’t actually look like the girl in your dreams.”

“What?”

Luke sighed.  “Have you ever liked a line from a book or a movie?  Of course you have.  You go around repeating the line, quoting it, thinking about it occasionally.  Then, maybe a couple years later, you watch that movie or open that book again, and the line is completely different than what you’ve been repeating, quoting, and thinking.  Has that ever happened to you?”

“Yeah.  The Mandela effect.”  I knew what he was talking about.  “Like *The Bernstain Bears* or Star Wars.”

He shrugged. “The Mandela effect is just a trendy name for an established psychological phenomenon.  Basically, your memory isn’t as reliable as you think it is.  They’ve done experiments.  People can develop false memories with a surprisingly low amount of suggestion.”

“Okay, so it’s not repressed memories.  Then what the fuck is wrong with me?”

Luke retained his 'serious therapist’ expression.  “Have you talked to a doctor about your medication?”

I clenched my eyes shut.  I was sick of hearing about meds.  “Luke, I heard Micah’s voice.”

Luke’s eyes narrowed.

“Seriously, Ansley?”  he snapped.  “Do we have to fucking keep talking about Micah?”

I reeled back, surprised at how much I’d upset him.  His face was taut, wrinkles lining his brow.  Then he softened.

“Listen, Ans,” he said sympathetically, “I used to see Micah all the time.  At the park, McDonalds, even at school - I’d see a boy in a red sweater, or a boy with curly brown hair, or some kid doing the whole hunch-with-hands-in-pocket thing Micah used to do, and I’d be sure it was him.  I did that for years, even after logic should have told me Micah wouldn’t be a little boy anymore.  I’d hear his laugh sometimes.  And I’d dream about him.  I’d wake up screaming.  Tommy, too.”

I nodded, suddenly feeling like an asshole.  I didn’t know how I’d convinced myself that Micah’s disappearance only had a nasty effect on me.

“Remember how I was kinda into true crime?” he continued.  “You know - those six-buck paperbacks?  After Micah, I got obsessed.  One time, I even hiked into the trees behind Allister Park with a shovel and a magnifying glass, convinced I’d somehow be able to find Micah’s shallow grave, even though that’s probably the first place the cops looked.”

I did recall Luke’s fascination with murder mysteries.  It was ironic, I guessed, how he’d become part of one.  One that had yet to be satisfactorily solved.

“I’m sorry man,” I said.  “You’re probably right.”

He gave me a half smile.  “For the record, I could’ve told you that Star Wars line was wrong years ago.”

I sarcastically bugged out my eyes.  “You mean time travelers aren’t using cheesy sci-fi to send us messages from the future?”

Luke laughed.  “Yeah, that’s bullshit.  Everyone I meet thinks they’re the first to put on a Vader voice and be all, ‘Luke, I am your father.’”

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We didn’t talk about Micah anymore.  We went to see Guardians of the Galaxy 2.  I was happy.  Being around Luke was therapeutic, meditative, cathartic.  I could convince myself my dreams, Mathilde, and even the glowing eyes in The Forest were completely harmless and if I only relaxed, it would all be okay.  I felt silly for worrying about repressed memories.  Luke had always held that effect over me - with him, I was fearless.

We talked about our respective college days, our families, my crash course in the Montessori teaching method.  He told me about the FBI internship he landed for the fall.  Apparently he’d been accepted into UCSF and Harvard, but picked Georgetown Medical School over both because he wanted to be in DC.

He dropped me off at my car, then turned around and headed for the freeway.  He’d scheduled a meeting with his mom’s doctor in Sylmar.  I’d thought his mother would have died by then, but Luke informed me she was still hooked up to a ventilator in the same post-acute, a prematurely-aged shell of the woman she’d been before the accident that took his father and left her, mercilessly, alive.

Luke was living with two ambiguous losses - Micah, and his mother.  Both dead, neither buried.  I understood why he was interested in true crime.  Why he was angling for a job with the FBI.  He wanted answers, even if they weren’t to his own questions.

On the way home, the euphoria of Luke’s presence began to wear off, leaving guilt in its place.  He’d told me Tommy was dead, and what had I done?  I’d made it all about me.  I hadn't even thought to seek out Tommy’s family, to offer my condolences.  His mother, Carol, always loved me - I think she’d wanted a daughter.  Though my backyard was our favorite hangout, Tommy’s house had been a close second.

I parked in front of the two-story Colonial where Tommy had lived and died, across the street from Luke’s grandmother’s little house.  Like mine, hers was the neighborhood eyesore - chipping paint, unruly weeds, a large FOR SALE sign stuck in the grass.  She was losing her memory, Luke had explained.  When he returned to Georgetown, she’d move in with her youngest daughter.

Still debating the wisdom of showing up unannounced at what, actually, may have been a stranger’s home, I knocked on Tommy’s door.

Footsteps.  The door was cracked open, and Carol Liu was staring out at me.

She recognized me immediately.  Nothing but smiles and cordiality, she invited me in, made a pot of tea, and opened a package of Costco cookies, all the while chattering about her sons. Eugene was going to be a sophomore at Berkley, she said, and Dexter just graduated from Cal Poly Pomona.

Through her cheeriness, I recognized veiled grief.  Mrs. Liu had been the sort of fit, stylish mom who could've shared clothes with her hypothetical teen-aged daughter.  She was still comely and slender.  But deep crow’s feet stretched at the corners of her eyes, her oversized house dress nearly swallowed her up, and she’d stopped dyeing her hair.

Finally, she interrupted her stream of chattering consciousness to take a sip of tea.

“Mrs. Liu, I’m so, so sorry about Tommy,” I blurted out.

She set down her teacup.  Her gregarious countenance shattered, and her eyes seemed to sink into her face.  For a split second, I thought she was going to cry.  Instead, she offered a gracefully strained smile.

“Thank you, Ansley,” she replied.  “I assumed that news had gotten to you.”

“Luke Andersen told me.”

She chuckled joylessly.  “I’m glad he did.”

“Tommy was, like, a really amazing friend.  I wish I’d kept in better touch with him.”

“It’s not your fault.”  Mrs. Liu shook her head.  “We shouldn’t have separated you.  My husband and me, your parents, Yi Chao across the street.”

“I don’t think you could've done anything to stop it.  My parents had been planning to move to Miami for almost a year before Micah died.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“No, we all sat down and talked about it.  After Micah Wall was kidnapped, we decided you and Tommy and Luke should be kept apart for awhile.  No phone calls, no visits, no talking online, as little contact as possible.”

I recalled our first few months in Miami.  I’d wanted to call Luke and Tommy.  I distinctly remembered asking my mom if we could visit them over Christmas break.  She’d said the tickets were too expensive and long-distance calls were inconvenient and, then, I’d taken her word for it.

“I had a hard time after Micah disappeared.”

Mrs. Liu nodded.  “I remember.  You kept insisting some horror movie ghoul had kidnapped Micah and we needed to save him.  And I think you rubbed off on Tommy, because he started waking up crying in the middle of the night, too.  Yi Chao threw a fit.  She thought the two of you were a bad influence on her perfect little genius grandson.”

I got the impression Mrs. Liu didn’t particularly like Luke’s grandmother.

“We really did think it was for the best.”  She sighed.  “I thought Tommy had moved on, whatever that means.  He studied hard and passed the licensing exams, found a job in Arizona, bought a house.  He was doing really well.  Then he started calling me in the middle of the night.”

Her voice held steady, but tears formed in the corners of her eyes.  I stayed silent.

“He couldn’t sleep.  When he did, he’d have hyperreal, violent nightmares.  He kept on asking me about Micah - was there any new clues?  Had they found his body?  It was disconcerting.  I mean, fuck, he hadn’t mentioned Micah’s name for years.”

Fat teardrops rolled down her cheeks.  I’d never heard Mrs. Liu curse before.

“He… he couldn’t take it anymore.  He quit his job and came back here.  A Master’s degree, and he was selling tickets at the movie theatre.  They diagnosed him with depression and prescribed him all these pills.  He’d be up nights.  We’d hear him pacing all around the house.  Then he got into heroin…”

She sobbed.  I sat passively, motionless but attentive, letting her work through her catharsis.

“The night before, I found him at the kitchen table in the middle of the night.  He was writing something.  Scribbling furiously, with this crazed expression on his face, in one of his old spiral notebooks.  I asked what he was doing.  He said he couldn’t tell me.  After… I tried to find that notebook.  I never could.  I think he burned it.”

Her voice rasped and dropped a pitch.  She buried her face in her hands.  Numb, I sipped my tea until she straightened up, dabbed her eyes with her napkin, and looked at me expectantly.

“Did you… find him?” I asked, with as much stability as I could manage.

“Dexter did,” she said thickly.  “I was in the kitchen, I heard him scream.”

“I’m so sorry.”  What else was there to say?

“God.”  Mrs. Liu shook her head.  “Now I know what Clare Wall must have gone through after what happened to poor Micah.  Everyone in town looking at her, whispering, giving her that forced sympathetic look.  I hate that fucking look.”

“Wait, the Walls are still here?”  I was surprised; I'd assumed they’d moved.

“They didn’t want to leave.  I think they still held onto some hope their son was alive.  That he would find his way back home.  Clare died some years ago.  Cancer.  She just… gave up.  After that, the husband sold the house.”

Fresh teardrops quivered.  She wiped her eyes with her napkin again.

“I felt so sorry for them.  Even more so, now.  I buried my child.  They didn't even get that small consolation.”

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I don’t remember driving home that day.  I must have, because my car was in the driveway, Alicia was in the kitchen, and I was wandering the backyard in aimless circles.

The numbness had melted into warm, throbbing panic.  I was choking on all the new information forced down my throat.  I’d believed The Daemon that lived in Allister Park kidnapped Micah.  I'm schizophrenic, my delusions were to be expected.  But Tommy?  Tommy had the same bad dreams I’d had.  Tommy also thought Micah was stolen by an imaginary monster.

Maybe he was misdiagnosed.  Maybe it was schizophrenia he was suffering from, not depression.  Or maybe it was induced psychosis, horribly intrusive fantasies transferred from me to him like a virus.

Years later, out of nowhere, he’d started having vivid nightmares about Micah, like me.  Medications did nothing to quell his torment, as my Haloperidol hadn't assuaged mine.  So he’d taken to self medication, fallen into a psychotic tailspin, twisted and tumbled until his pain became impossible to bear and his little brother found him dead in the bathtub, bled dry.

Like me?

Maybe Tommy remembered something I’d blotted out.  Maybe he’d stayed quiet, forced it all into a mental safe and tossed the key.  So he developed insomnia and began swallowing powerful antipsychotics, which sliced and diced his memories until he was puking them out in chunks, scribbling in one of his old notebooks while sizing up his mother’s kitchen knives.

I don’t know which scared me more.  The past Tommy and I shared, or the uncertain future I'd face without him.

I thought about Micah’s parents - tall, bony, redhead father; small, round, brunette mother.  Kind people.  They'd had an older daughter, Naomi.  Naomi was a big girl, at least six feet tall, and brashly, unapologetically ugly.  She’d been in high school when I met Micah, and little more than wallpaper to me.  Occasionally, she’d tromp through our Gameboy marathons, dressed in her EMT uniform, before disappearing into her room and closing the door.

I couldn’t believe they’d stayed.  All those years, waiting, hoping their beloved baby would be returned to them.

I smelled something.  Rotting vegetables, cut grass, tinged with moldy sweetness.

CRACK!

I jumped.  I whipped my head towards Colonel Lewis’s yard, fully expecting to lock eyes with Mathilde.  I could swear I heard her singsong, robotic giggle.

But Mathilde wasn't there.  I was alone.  A breeze rustled my hair.  The wind had dislodged a loose brick from a pile, directed the stench of the putrefying compost heap towards my nose.

It hit me, then, that I was scared of my own backyard.

I went inside. Alicia sat at the kitchen table, on her computer.

“Hey, did you get a chance to look through that mail yet?” she asked.

I shook my head.  “I’ll do it now.”

Alicia’s eyes lit up.  “Oh!  You’ll never guess who called me!”

“Who?”

“Andy Koperski!  You know, the kid who lived across the street.  He said he’s going to be in LA next month.”

I allowed Alicia a few minutes of babbling about her conversation with her high school boy toy. Then I retreated to my room and opened my laptop.  Andy must have seen my message.

He had, and he’d responded to it.

*Hi Ansley!*

*Yes, I definitely remember you and Alicia.  How have you been?  I live in Seattle now.  We moved here in 2005.  I saw on your profile that you’re a preschool teacher.  That’s awesome!  I remember you always had a really big imagination.*

*As for my sister, she passed away almost thirteen years ago.  I’m sure you know she had severe autism.  She had seizures, too, and a violent seizure killed her when she was only eleven.  I think about her every day.  I hope that when I die, I’ll see her in Heaven, and she’ll finally tell me everything she couldn’t say while she was alive.*

*On that depressing note, it was great to hear from you.  I’ll be in LA for two weeks in July, I’d love to see you and your sister again!*

*- Andy*

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How does it feel to believe, truly believe, you’re seeing a ghost?

It was a weird moment for me.  Definitely a difficult one to explain.  I guess I felt like Neo must have, waking up in the Matrix.  Andy’s message was my red pill.

Mathilde the hallucination was unsettling, but explainable.  Mathilde as an avatar for repressed trauma had been disturbing, but at least she fit comfortably into the realm of logic.

But Mathilde the ghost?  Maybe it was my schizophrenia.  Maybe it was my paranoia.  Or maybe it was my conversation with Tommy’s mom, and the corroboration by Tommy of my prepubescent fears.  But, the minute I learned my child tormentor had, in fact, died a child, I became convinced I was receiving messages from her disembodied spirit.

It was a relief.

Because if I was being accosted by the specter of Mathilde Koperski, it meant I wasn’t crazy.

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