Claustrophobia
Lionel Penn often congratulated himself on keeping fit and eating healthy. Like many people, though, he occasionally got cravings for high-calorie comfort food. When he woke up one summer morning with a taste for fish and chips, he decided to head for Martha's Vineyard, to one of the lesser-known restaurants on the island that, in his opinion, had the best fish and chips this side of London. Since he was planning on taking his boat out anyway, it would not be an inconvenience.
As he headed over to his office—riding his ten-speed bike instead of driving the MG—he thought about his dinner: the light, crispy, melt-in-your-mouth coating on the fried cod, the homemade tartar sauce and the salty, slightly oily taste of the fried potatoes doused with malt vinegar. Anticipating his Nirvana on a plate, he walked into his reception area, removed his bike helmet and greeted Judy Stanfield, his administrative assistant.
"You rode your bike this morning? Good for you!" Judy exclaimed. "Glad to see you're doing your part to fight global warming."
"I'm afraid my pedaling to work has little to do with my concern over climate change. The truth is I wanted the exercise. You see, I intend to pig out on fish and chips tonight."
"Oh? Where are you and Sarah going?"
"The Vineyard, but I'm going by myself. Sarah's pulling a double shift. One of the other doctors at the hospital is on vacation."
Although Lionel had a busy practice, during the months of July and August, the office operated on summer hours. Every Friday the day began at seven rather than nine and ended promptly at noon. He considered going to a four-day workweek, but there were a handful of long-time patients who could only see him on Fridays.
"Want me to make you a cup of coffee?" Judy called to her employer as he read his email before the first appointment of the day.
"Thanks. I would have stopped at Starbucks on the way in, but it's hard to carry two cups of coffee and steer a bike at the same time."
"You need one of those wire baskets on your handlebars. You know, the kind the Wicked Witch of the West had in The Wizard of Oz."
"Very funny! But the witch traveled by broom. It was Almira Gulch who rode the bike."
Five patients, he thought, looking at the clock above his door. Then I'll have a small salad for lunch before I take out the boat.
After the fourth patient left his office, however, Judy popped her head through his door and announced, "Sarah called. She needs to talk to you."
Lionel was still thinking about his fish and chips as he listened to Dr. Sarah Ryerson's cell phone ring.
"I hope you don't have any plans for this afternoon," the emergency room physician said when she answered.
"Actually, I was hoping to take the boat out and go to the Vineyard."
"Can it wait until some other time? There's a patient here that I believe could really benefit from your expertise."
Lionel closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of his chair. Being the only psychiatrist in Puritan Falls had its drawbacks. But just as he kept his office open on Fridays to accommodate five patients, he would postpone his trip to Martha's Vineyard in order to help out Sarah.
"I have one more patient, and then I'm done for the day," he said.
"Great. I'll buy you lunch."
Lionel grimaced at the thought of hospital food.
"Thanks for the offer, but I'll stop at the Green Man afterward and get Shannon's seafood platter instead."
When he arrived at the hospital, Sarah was waiting for him at the emergency room entrance.
"Sorry I'm late," he apologized and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. "I rode my bike to work this morning and had to go home and pick up the car. So, who's this patient you want me to see?"
"Let's go down to the cafeteria, we can talk there."
She had not eaten since midnight, nearly fourteen hours ago.
"Are you sure you don't want something?" she asked, as she placed a hamburger on her plastic tray.
"I'll just take one of these fruit salads," he replied, looking dubiously at a small dish of what was obviously canned fruit cocktail.
"The patient's name is Emory Sturr," Sarah began after opening a small pack of ketchup with her teeth. "He's a professor at the university in Essex Green. Dr. Alanbrook had him come to the hospital for an MRI. He was in the machine for only a matter of moments when he totally lost it. Since the technician was unable to calm the professor down, he called me. I had to subdue the patient with a sedative."
"And you obviously called me because he had a claustrophobic reaction. That's often the case with MRIs."
"I know that, but this patient's reaction was so severe. The poor man seemed genuinely terrified."
"I'll have a talk with him," Lionel said, trying not to be angry that he was giving up his fish and chips for a relatively common fear held by roughly seven percent of the world's population.
"He's up on the second floor, Room 207."
After finishing his unappetizing salad—all the fruit tasted the same—he walked up two flights of stairs rather than take the elevator.
Considering all the exercise I got today, I might order dessert at dinner, he thought.
A slice of Shannon Devlin's apple pie would be fair consolation for his missed trip to the Vineyard.
When Dr. Penn walked into the hospital room, Professor Sturr was just waking up. An orderly stood nearby should the patient become too agitated. Although the man's face was abnormally pale, there was something familiar about it.
"I think I know you," the psychiatrist said.
The professor, who showed no symptoms of claustrophobia or anxiety, took a good look at Lionel.
"We've never officially met before," he said, "but I've seen you down at the dock."
"That's it. You've got a boat there, too."
A mutual love of the sea created an instant bond between the two men.
"I think it's time we formally met. I'm Dr. Lionel Penn."
"My name is Emory Sturr," the patient announced over a firm handshake. "I teach medieval history at the local college. Have you come to discuss the result of my MRI?"
"From what my colleague tells me, they weren't able to do the test."
"Why not?"
"I wasn't present at the time, but apparently you had a bad reaction to being put inside the machine."
"Reaction? What kind of reaction?"
It was obvious the professor had no memory of the experience.
"Dr. Ryerson said ...."
"Wait a minute. Who's Dr. Ryerson?"
"Sarah Ryerson, the emergency roomy physician on duty today."
"I was taken to the emergency room?"
"No. As she explains it, you 'lost it' when you were put into the MRI machine. The technician called her for assistance, and she gave you a sedative."
"I can't remember a thing beyond lying down on the gurney and shutting my eyes."
"Let me ask you this, Professor," Lionel said, taking a seat next to the bed. "Do you suffer from claustrophobia?"
"Not to my knowledge."
Before asking the patient any further questions, Dr. Penn explained who he was and why Dr. Ryerson had called him in.
"You're that psychiatrist who specializes in phobias, aren't you?" Emory inquired, suddenly recognizing the name. "I know a number of people at the college who go to you regularly. They all have great things to say about you."
"I'm delighted to hear that. I was afraid you might not want to speak to me if you knew my field was psychiatry."
"You afraid of something?" the professor laughed. "I suppose that would be a case of 'physician, heal thyself.'"
Lionel was used to patients trying to make jokes while being questioned. They preferred to keep it light and not delve into the issues that were bothering them. Before he went any further, it would be best to ascertain whether Emory even wanted his help.
"Dr. Ryerson asked me to talk to you, but if you're not interested in ...."
"If I did freak out as this Dr. Ryerson claims I did, then perhaps I do need your help. I'd like to know not only why I reacted that way but also why I blocked the entire incident from my memory."
"There is the possibility you don't actually have claustrophobia," Lionel explained. "Perhaps you fell asleep and experienced night terror, an episode of intense fear while a person is asleep. Sarah—Dr. Ryerson—said you seemed terrified when she saw you."
Emory shook his head in hopelessness.
"If I had a nightmare, I don't remember it."
"This a little more serious than a mere nightmare. It's a condition that can be brought on by day-to-day stress, anxiety, bipolar disorder, sleep apnea or deprivation, migraine headaches."
"That might be it! Ever since my wife and I vacationed in England during the midterm break, I've been having excruciating headaches. That's why Dr. Alanbrook wanted me to have an MRI. He's trying to determine their cause."
"In that case, why don't we wait for his diagnosis before we go ahead with any therapy?" the psychiatrist suggested. "Meanwhile, if there are any further incidents, feel free to give me a call."
"I will—if I can remember them."
* * *
For the second Friday in a row, Sarah agreed to work a double shift at the hospital. Once again, Lionel planned on heading to Martha's Vineyard. After his final appointment, he drove to the dock where his boat was moored. Moments after he arrived a Subaru Forester pulled into the parking lot, and Emory Sturr got out.
"Dr. Penn," he called in greeting, heading toward his own boat. "It's nice to see you again."
"Call me Lionel, please. How have you been?"
"I'm hanging in there."
"Still having those headaches?"
"Unfortunately, yes. On the bright side, all Dr. Alanbrook's tests have come back negative. I take it you're going out on your boat," the professor said, changing the subject.
"I thought I'd go to the Vineyard. There's a little restaurant there that has the best fish and chips."
"Really? I haven't had fish and chips since I was in London."
"Want to come along?" the psychiatrist offered.
"I'd love to. My wife has gone to Boston with her sister, and I've got the day to myself."
Once Lionel had his boat out on the ocean, the two men were able to relax and enjoy a pleasant conversation that touched on several subjects, from the upcoming Red Sox-Yankees game to the November elections.
As Lionel sat in the small, overcrowded restaurant enjoying his much-anticipated dinner, he asked Emory what led him to enter the field of academics.
"I was always fascinated with history, even as a kid," the professor recalled. "I suppose it began when I read about King Arthur. He was just a legend, of course, but those tales led me to read about William the Conqueror, the Plantagenets, the Wars of the Roses. Where most kids idolized athletes and rock stars, I was more interested in Thomas Becket, Richard III and Mary Queen of Scots."
"You sound like a real anglophile."
"I suppose I am. Britain has a long, fascinating and well-documented history."
"Is that why you went to England for your vacation?"
"Yes," Emory admitted. "I took my poor wife to the Tower of London, Windsor Castle, Hampton Court Palace."
"Does she share your love of history?"
"Her idea of a historical outing is spending the day at the Renaissance Faire or seeing the jousting tournaments at Medieval Times, not walking through centuries old castles and cathedrals. But she's content to go where I want to go—as long as there's a gift shop nearby."
During their talk, Emory failed to mention the devastating headache he got while visiting a medieval church on their journey from London to York. It had been so severe that he temporarily lost consciousness.
* * *
Working all those long shifts during July and August, Sarah longed for a much-deserved break. At the end of September, she and Lionel spent a four-day weekend on Cape Ann. After checking into a quaint B&B in Gloucester, they drove to Hammond Castle. While touring the ninety-year-old home of the late inventor, John Hays Hammond, Jr., they heard the familiar voice of Emory Sturr.
"They say every man's home is his castle. In Hammond's case, it was certainly true."
"Sarah, look who it is," Lionel said, pointing out the history professor.
Moments later Emory turned to examine a suit of armor and saw the couple looking in his direction.
"Lionel. Dr. Ryerson. Good to see you both again."
He then introduced his wife to the two doctors.
"It's nice to meet you," Cherylynne Sturr said. "I've been after my husband to call you, Dr. Penn."
"Oh? Has he had another claustrophobic episode?"
"Frankly, I don't know what you'd call it. He ...."
"Let's not bother Lionel with my problems on his day off," Emory declared, interrupting his wife.
"Why don't you give me a call on Monday?" the psychiatrist suggested, handing Cherylynne his business card.
After touring the castle together, the two couples went their separate ways. The Sturrs, who were only visiting for the day, returned to Puritan Falls while Lionel and Sarah headed toward the Gloucester waterfront.
"Why don't we get a pizza at the Crow's Nest?" Lionel suggested after they visited the Man at the Wheel, the cenotaph created as a memorial to fishermen "that go down to the sea in ships."
"Isn't that the bar from The Perfect Storm?"
"Yes, it is. I've never been there, but a few of my patients have told me if I'm ever in Gloucester to visit it."
The Crow's Nest, which was prominently mentioned in both the movie and the book by Sebastian Junger, appealed to the seafarer in Lionel, much like castles appealed to the historian in Professor Sturr. On the walls of the tavern were photographs not only of George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and other members of the movie cast but also of the actual crew of the Andrea Gail, the fishing vessel that was lost at sea during the 1991 storm that ravaged the Eastern Seaboard.
"What a pleasant surprise seeing Emory here," Sarah remarked as they waited for their pizza.
"Pleasant, yes, but I'm not really surprised. He has a thing for castles."
"Cherylynne seems nice."
"Maybe we should all go out to dinner sometime."
"Yes, that would be fun."
It was as though by silent agreement they kept their conversation light. Neither wanted to spoil their mini-vacation by discussing Emory Sturr's occasional odd behavior during their tour of Hammond's home or Cherylynne's obvious concern over her husband's mental state.
Three days later they concluded their little getaway with a bit of sightseeing and shopping in Rockport. They left the Cape late in the afternoon and stopped for dinner on their way home. Roughly five miles from Puritan Falls, Sarah ejected the CD that had been playing and tuned into WOAR, a radio station that broadcast rock 'n' roll classics.
"I love this song," she said and began to sing along to the 1961 Ben E. King hit "Stand By Me."
"And now for the local news," the announcer said. "Police are still searching for a missing man in Puritan Falls."
Lionel exchanged a quick glance with Sarah and then turned up the volume on the car stereo.
"Emory Sturr, a professor at the university in Essex Green, was last seen by his wife late Friday evening. The following morning, he was gone, apparently having left the house during the night."
"Oh, my God!" Sarah exclaimed. "Friday was the day we saw them in Gloucester!"
"I didn't want to mention it at the time, but I felt there was something wrong," Lionel said.
"Me, too, but I was hoping it was nothing serious. And maybe it's not. Perhaps they just had an argument and he needed some time to himself to cool off."
"That's possible," the psychiatrist said, failing to add "but not very likely."
* * *
As Lionel prepared for work the following Friday, he thought about the weekend he had spent with Sarah. The two of them were committed to their careers, Sarah especially so, working long hours in the emergency room for days on end.
Maybe we should take a couple of weeks off and go to Europe.
The prospect of transatlantic travel made him think of Emory Sturr. A week had passed since that day in Gloucester, and he had yet to be found.
After his usual morning routine, which included stopping at Starbucks in the mall for two cups of coffee, he met with the first of the Friday Five: the name Judy gave to the five patients who could only schedule appointments on Fridays. Lionel suspected his assistant secretly blamed them for not having had a four-day workweek during the summer months.
During the ten-minute window between his twelve and one o'clock patients, the psychiatrist ate his lunch: a tuna salad sub and a bottle of Aquafina. He was barely halfway through his sandwich when Judy burst through the door.
"Sarah's on the phone!" she exclaimed excitedly. "They found that missing professor!"
"Is he all right?"
"He's alive; that's all I know."
As he spoke to the emergency room physician, Lionel could see his assistant listening to his side of the conversation from the outer office. When he hung up the phone, he relayed what Sarah had told him.
"Professor Sturr was found in that old Catholic church in Copperwell. Two teenagers went inside to spray paint graffiti on the walls and heard something moving behind the altar. For some reason, Emory crawled into the air-conditioning duct and got stuck there."
"For an entire week?"
"It seems so. He's in serious condition, suffering from severe dehydration and malnourishment."
"I would imagine so after a week of not eating or drinking."
"I'm going to go visit him after my last appointment. I'll let you know of any developments in his condition."
When Lionel arrived at Puritan Falls Hospital that evening, Cherylynne was standing outside her husband's room.
"Dr. Penn!" she cried when she saw him. "I'm so glad you're here."
"How is he?"
"The doctors assure me that he'll recover—physically. But ...."
Breaking down in tears, she was unable to continue.
"If your husband does suffer from claustrophobia, I would imagine being stuck in an air-conditioning duct was a traumatic experience. Quite frankly, I don't know what possessed him to crawl inside there in the first place. Was he trying to prove something to himself?"
"I'm so afraid that my husband is losing his mind! I began to have my suspicions when were in England. He acted so strangely! And then once we came home, the headaches and nightmares began. And now—this! Emory is conscious but not responsive. He doesn't seem to hear or see anyone. He just talks gibberish."
"Do you mind if I go in and see him?"
"By all means, please do! Maybe you, as a psychiatrist, can help him."
Lionel was shocked by the professor's appearance. To use a well-known colloquial expression, he "looked like death warmed over." Far worse than his cadaver-like visual aspect, was his behavior. The professor was wild-eyed, thrashing against the constraints that bound him to his bed. Although the volume, tempo and pitch of his voice constantly changed, he repeated the same expression over and over again.
"Obsecro ut tibi remittatur peccata mea. Obsecro ut tibi remittatur peccata mea. Obsecro ut tibi ...."
"He's been like this since they found him," Cherylynne said. "Nothing but nonsensical prattle."
"That's not gibberish; it's Latin."
"I've known Emory since high school. He doesn't speak Latin. He studied French."
"Whether he understands what he's saying or not, your husband is speaking Latin."
"What's he saying?"
"I'm not sure. Is there anyone at the university you can call to translate?"
Dr. Ruiz Ortega, who had left the priesthood in the Eighties when he fell in love and married, made use of his Latin by becoming a teacher of the language. He came to the hospital immediately upon receiving Cherylynne's call.
"You're correct, Dr. Penn. Emory is speaking Latin."
"What's he saying?"
"He's begging for forgiveness for his sins."
"That can't be right!" Cherylynne cried. "My husband is an atheist."
"Maybe while he was stuck in that vent, he had second thoughts," Lionel suggested.
"Obsecro ut tibi remittatur peccata mea. Obsecro ut tibi remittatur peccata ...."
"Can't somebody do something to help him?" she sobbed.
"Why don't we give him what he wants?" the psychiatrist suggested.
"What's that?" Ortega asked.
"Absolve him."
"I'm no longer a priest."
"Just give him your blessing, and hopefully Emory will believe he's absolved."
"Ego te absolve," the former priest intoned, making the sign of the cross over his colleague with his right hand.
The words acted like a magical incantation. The thrashing stopped. The patient became silent and soon slipped into a peaceful slumber.
* * *
"How is Emory doing?" Lionel asked Sarah as they walked along the Common where a flea market was being held to raise money for local organizations and charities.
"I spoke to Cherylynne last night before going off duty. She said that when he woke up, he didn't remember anything that's happened since they came home from Gloucester."
The psychiatrist frowned. Loss of memory was never a good sign. Although the professor was not actually his patient, he was concerned about the man's wellbeing.
"Maybe I'll swing by the hospital on my way home from the office tomorrow."
The discussion came to an end when Sarah spotted the selection of used books being sold by the Friends of the Library. Lionel watched with amusement as she rooted through stacks of previously read paperbacks. Books meant as much to her as his boat did to him.
True to his word, the psychiatrist stopped at Puritan Falls Hospital after his last patient of the day. After saying hello to Sarah, he headed up to Room 207. Emory looked much better this time. The color had returned to his face, and he lost the gaunt look he had on the previous visit.
"Lionel, how good of you to come and see me," the professor said cheerfully. "Is this a personal visit or has my wife convinced you that I need therapy?"
"Don't worry. I'm not here in a professional capacity. I just wanted to see how you were doing. You had everybody worried when you went missing."
"I'll bet people were beginning to think Cherylynne killed me. I've seen enough shows on ID to know it's always the spouse."
Lionel sensed that Emory's good humor was forced. The joking was a way of masking what was really bothering him.
"What did I miss?" the patient's wife asked when she entered the room and saw the psychiatrist sitting beside the bed.
"Not much," Emory answered. "The good doctor and I were just talking about wives killing their husbands."
Cherylynne, however, was in no mood to laugh. The harrowing events of the past week had taken their toll on her.
"Enough with the jokes," she said impatiently. "Since Dr. Penn is here, you have no excuse to put the matter off any longer. Ask him!"
"Ask me what?" the psychiatrist inquired.
"My wife thinks I need your help remembering what has happened to me."
"And discovering what it was that drove you to that church in the middle of the night—and if you make light of this and say it was a car, I just might kill you!"
After agreeing to take Emory on as a patient, Lionel gave the couple his usual speech about psychotherapy not being a quick cure.
"You may not find the answers you seek right away. It could take months or even years before we reach a breakthrough."
"Years? And, in the meantime, what if my husband wanders off again and gets stuck in some other confined space?"
"You make me sound like some kind of human groundhog," Emory laughed. "You have my word there'll be no more Jimmy Hoffa moments."
Ignoring her husband's comments, she asked the psychiatrist, "Isn't there some form of medication you can give him?"
"I have prescribed antianxiety and antidepression pills for several of my patients, but I don't think they're appropriate in his case."
"You were my last hope!" Cherylynne cried.
"Perhaps there is something I can do. I can't promise it will help, but I have had some success with hypnosis in the past."
The woman's face brightened with a renewed sense of hope.
"Please try it!" she pleaded.
"Is that okay with you?" Lionel asked her husband.
"Sure. If it'll make my wife happy, I give you my consent. Besides, what have I got to lose?"
* * *
"Thank God it's Friday!" Judy Stanfield exclaimed when she arrived at the office ten minutes late.
"Anything wrong?" her employer asked.
"The car wouldn't start. I had to ask my neighbor to give me a jump."
"You might want to heat that up in the microwave," he suggested as she reached for the cup of coffee on her desk.
"No need to. It's still warm."
"What time is Professor Sturr coming in today?"
"At two, immediately after the Friday Five."
When Emory arrived at the psychiatrist's office later that afternoon, Lionel was sitting at Judy's desk, eating a tossed salad.
"Nice place you've got here," he said, admiring the nautical décor.
"Thanks. Would you like a cup of coffee? Tea? A bottle of soda?"
"No, thanks."
Lionel showed the patient into his private office, closed the room-darkening shades, lit a candle and placed it on the desk. With a little encouragement, the professor was soon under a hypnotic trance.
"Obsecro ut tibi remittatur peccata mea. Obsecro ut tibi ...."
"No Latin, please," the psychiatrist said in a soft but commanding voice. "Only English."
"Yes."
"Good. Now, tell me what you remember about the incident at the church."
The patient became extremely agitated by Lionel's question.
"Obsecro ut tibi remittatur ...."
The doctor tried another tactic.
"You will describe the events that took place in the church, as unemotionally as possible, as though you were a teacher giving a history lesson to your students."
"I was ...."
"Remember. You're a third person observer, not a participant."
"Father Benedict was meant for great things. Despite his humble beginnings, he rose rapidly in the church, mainly due to his knowing which side to take in a political dispute. When Queen Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer, took up arms against her husband, he quickly abandoned King Edward and joined their camp. The queen showed her appreciation by ...."
"Wait!" Lionel interrupted. "What does any of this have to do with your climbing into the church air-conditioning duct?"
"Air-conditioning? You speak of strange things that make no sense to me. You want to know what happened in the church? Then be silent and I will tell you. For all his religious posturing, Father Benedict was a young man burning with ambition. By the time he reached his thirtieth year, he had risen to the lofty position of bishop, and everyone predicted he would eventually become Archbishop of Canterbury. He might very well have done so had it not been for the plague."
Lionel wondered how long he should let his patient ramble on about British history. Were it not for the fact that Emory experienced the first of his headaches while visiting a medieval church in England, he would already have put an end to the session.
"It was a bad year all around. A drought had killed off many of the crops, and people had little to eat. That was no hardship on Father Benedict, however. His church was a wealthy one, and he had plenty of food in storage, which he was loathe to share. Then word spread of a disease that was bringing death at an alarming rate. When the plague brought down its first victims in his village, the priest panicked. He bolted the church doors, refusing to let anyone enter. In the weeks that followed, the villagers died off. Those that did not succumb to the plague, died of hunger.
"When Father Benedict, the sole survivor, eventually emerged from the church, alive and well, he walked among the rotting corpses. Men, women and children, their bodies blackened by death, were barely recognizable as human. Such a sight would surely have a devastating effect on a man, even one as self-centered as the priest. These were people he knew: men and women he had joined together in marriage, babies he had baptized. Young and old, he had prayed over them and blessed them. Now he would have to say a mass for their souls."
Lionel believed he had finally made a connection between the story being told and Emory's bizarre actions the night he went missing.
"Is that how you got stuck in the air—inside the walls of the church?" he asked, trying to avoid references to modern technology. "Were you attempting to enter the locked church?"
"You don't understand. I was already inside the church. You see, I'm Father Benedict."
"But that's not possible," Lionel insisted.
"I ought to know who I am, but I'm not going to argue with you. Regardless, it is the other church I want to tell you about."
"The one in Copperwell?"
"I don't know where that is. I'm talking about the church in Baron's Woods. Father Benedict was a much older man by this time," Emory said, resuming his third-person narrative. "His career in the church, which had begun with so much promise, took a turn for the worse. To atone for his cowardly actions during the plague, he spent the remainder of his life caring for the elderly and the terminally ill. Yet the deaths of the innocent villagers still preyed on his mind. His desire for absolution eventually led him to the church in Baron's Woods and to its penitent's crawl."
"Its what?" the psychiatrist asked, unfamiliar with the term.
"Penitent's crawl. Basically, it's a hole in the wall of the church through which a penitent can crawl to gain forgiveness for his sins."
"And is that what you did? Did you—or, rather, Father Benedict—crawl through it?"
"He attempted to."
"But something went wrong. Didn't it?"
"He was very old at the time and not in the best of health. Before he could make it through to the other end of the crawl, his heart gave out on him. He died without receiving absolution."
The session came to an abrupt end when the patient came out of his trance without prompting from the psychiatrist.
"How did it go?" Emory asked. "Did I reveal any helpful information while I was under?"
"Tell me," Lionel said. "Where were you in England when you had that first severe headache?"
"I thought I told you that. I was visiting a medieval church."
"Yes, but where was it?"
"Some little village. Baron something or other."
"Baron's Woods?"
"Yes, that's it."
* * *
"You're saying my husband is the reincarnation of some long-dead priest?" Cherylynne asked with disbelief when she accompanied the professor to Dr. Penn's office on his next scheduled appointment.
"Not necessarily," Lionel answered, not fully understanding the relationship himself. "But I have been able to ascertain—thanks to Professor Ortega's friends in the diocese—that Father Benedict was an actual person who died during the fourteenth century. His body is buried in the churchyard at Baron's Woods."
"I don't remember hearing about him when we were there," Emory said.
"You don't remember crawling into an air-conditioning duct either," his wife pointed out.
"Something happened in that medieval church," Lionel proposed, "and somehow you made a mental connection with Father Benedict. Have you ever had any other psychic experiences?"
"Oh, come on, Dr. Penn!" Cherylynne exclaimed, frustrated by the psychiatrist's suggestion. "A phobia I can buy but not this paranormal crap."
"Try to keep an open mind," her husband urged. "Besides, I'd rather be a conduit for the dead than be insane."
"All right. I'll consider the psychic angle—for now. Where do we go from here? Do we hold a séance in hopes of getting in touch with this priest?"
"Not a séance but perhaps another session of hypnosis."
Before leaving Dr. Penn's office, Emory made an appointment with Judy to return the following week. By that time, however, the history professor went missing again.
As Officer Shawn McMurtry of the Puritan Falls Police Department was leading a group of volunteers in hopes of locating the history professor, the object of their search was driving through the English countryside, headed toward Baron's Woods. When he arrived in the village, he waited patiently until the vicar entered the rectory for his midday meal. Then he entered the empty church.
His head began to ache as he walked down the nave toward the chancel. It increased in intensity with each step he took. As he stood before the altar, his vision blurred.
Don't let me pass out.
Like a double exposed photograph, he seemed to see two different images at once: that of the modern Anglican house of worship superimposed over one of the medieval Catholic church. The only major difference between the two scenes was the presence of a wooden panel on the wall.
The penitent's crawl must be behind there.
Heedless of any legal consequences he might face for destroying church property, he managed to pry the wooden panel from the wall with the metal crucifix on the altar. Behind it, as he had surmised, was an opening, just large enough for an average-sized man to crawl through.
As quickly as it had struck him, the pain in his head vanished. The two periods in time were successfully merged as were the minds of Emory Sturr and Father Benedict. The history professor leaned forward and entered the hole. With only minor discomfort, he squeezed into the tight space and began to crawl forward. All the while a familiar voice in his brain spoke to him in an Old English dialect, urging him forward.
"Obsecro ut tibi remittatur peccata mea," he intoned. "Obsecro ut tibi remittatur peccata mea."
For a man Emory's age—not yet forty—and in good health, making it through the penitent's crawl was fairly easy. When he emerged from the opening at the other end, having completed the task that Father Benedict had failed seven hundred years earlier, it was as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
"I've done it. I'm free at last," he announced, unsure if these were his own words or the priest's.
* * *
Lionel and Sarah drove Cherylynne Sturr to the airport to meet her husband's plane when it arrived at Logan from Heathrow. Because he was under psychiatric care at the time of the incident, no charges were brought against him. Also, he had agreed to pay for all damages and to make a generous contribution to the church fund.
"I don't know what to do with you!" Cherylynne cried, tightly holding on to him as though he might slip through her grasp at any moment. "I think I should get one of those invisible dog fences and a collar to keep you from wandering off again. Or maybe an electronic ankle bracelet the police use when they put someone under house arrest."
"No need to go through all the trouble, sweetheart," Emory assured her. "I won't be doing any more disappearing acts."
"How can you be sure?" Lionel asked.
"This time I remember everything, and I promise you Father Benedict is gone."
"But what if he isn't?" his wife asked, still fearful for his safety. "Or what if you are psychic, and you pick up someone else's signals?"
"I can't explain it, but I know my link to the past is finally over. It's high time for me to look ahead, not back."
Although the professor ceased being a patient, Emory and Lionel remained good friends. They, along with Cherylynne and Sarah, would share many happy times together, not to mention the occasional day on the sea followed by a fish and chips dinner on Martha's Vineyard.
Salem isn't afraid of enclosed spaces. On the contrary, the smaller the box he can crawl into, the better!
