Pressure Chamber, page 16
He complies and lays on the bed as instructed, and she approaches him from the side of his cuffed wrist and examines the wound.
“Yes, you need sutures. Stay just as you are. Don’t move.”
She has to keep focused. She goes over to the cupboard and pulls out the first-aid kit.
She goes back to the bed and straddles his back, locking him between her knees. He isn’t strong enough to throw her off him while he’s lying like that on the bed, wounded, his arms neutralized. Then she proceeds to clean and stitch the cut, proficiently but not particularly gently. She wouldn’t have administered an anesthetic even if she’d had one. He doesn’t move or make a sound. He appears to enjoy the pain. Crazy psychopath. She’s going to leave him here to starve until he lets her out.
When she’s done, she gets off of him and returns the kit to the cupboard.
“Give me the mattress,” she says.
“What?”
“Toss the mattress to me and stay there on the springs. I need a place to sleep tonight, and it certainly won’t be with you.”
He doesn’t move. “I suggest you do the rational thing and release me now,” he says. “The food will run out if I don’t replenish the stock.”
“Don’t you worry. I’ll find a way to get out.”
He doesn’t respond and she gives in. There’s no point in arguing about the mattress; it’s better to reserve that energy and look for the key.
The babies wake up in the meantime and she goes over to the cribs. He sits on the bed and watches her changing diapers, warming bottles, feeding them, talking to them, and washing the bottles and setting them out to dry. He addresses her again only when she’s done.
“Bring me water.”
“Where’s the key?”
“I’ve been good to you until now. I’ve provided everything you need to live here in comfort. You’re not repaying me in kind.”
“You’re forgetting the fact that you ran me down and abducted me and imprisoned me here. Apart from that, you’ve been the perfect host. But if you haven’t noticed, you’re no longer calling the shots. I’ll give you some time to take that in. You’ll get water and food when you give me the key to get out of here.”
He doesn’t respond.
“And I’m not leaving them here in the room with you.”
She spreads out the babies’ blanket on the floor in the Images Room and moves them there along with their toys. She also moves the four cribs, which, unlike the bed, he hadn’t fixed to the floor, then she closes the door and locks him inside.
While the babies explore their new surroundings, she renews her search for the key. She goes through the Images Room thoroughly once again and then moves to the X-ray Room. She carefully picks her way through all the equipment and machinery. After hours of searching – she can’t even tell how much time has passed – she gets down on all fours and examines the underside of all the surfaces and instruments.
From under the steel table of the X-ray machine, she pulls out a key.
40.
“Hello.”
“Have you ever tried WILD?”
“Daph?”
“Have you ever tried WILD?”
“What’s the time?”
“It’s almost twelve. I’ve been trying to get you all day.”
“Ah. Hmmm. I fell asleep on the sofa.” Rotem sits up and looks at the fish swimming across the screen of her laptop on the living room table. “It’s easier than you think.”
“What do I need to do to experience a wake-induced lucid dream, to go straight from a state of alertness into a dream?”
“Set an alarm to wake you during REM – four and a half or six hours from the time you fall asleep – get up for an hour and a half, drink some water, go back to bed, but don’t fall asleep.”
“Do you mean get up after another hour and a half?”
“No, no, after sleeping for four and a half hours, you get up for an hour and a half, go back to bed, but don’t go to sleep.”
“Ah, okay.”
“Lie in bed, think about all the muscles in your body, one by one, and relax them all. Toes, tummy, jaw – the lot. When you feel that your body is completely relaxed, and without moving in the slightest, you start counting in your head: I’m dreaming one dream, I’m dreaming two dreams, I’m dreaming three dreams. And so on. Nonstop.”
“And what does that do?”
“It leaves your brain’s center of logic active while you enter a state of REM. What you’re doing, in fact, is tricking your brain – convincing it that your body is already in a state of sleep. It’s very easy to lose focus and fall asleep at this stage and experience a regular dream. It takes a lot of practice to stop your thoughts from wandering. You need to focus on the counting until the landscape changes and then you’ll realize that you’re lucid inside a dream. You’ll go through a number of stages. You’ll see sparks, geometric shapes, circles of light or various other things like that, like you see when you close your eyes tight or press on them. You continue counting. Eyes closed. Body relaxed. Without moving. You’ll hear voices. Someone calling to you. Someone whispering ‘Shhhhh’ in your ear, or someone whispering: ‘What’s that?’ The doorbell ringing in the distance, the rustling of a carrier bag. Things like that.”
“It sounds a little frightening.” Daphne’s in the car, driving back home. She’s already passed the last trees of the Jerusalem Forest and on her right she can see the Paz gas station lights. She lifts one hand from the steering wheel and looks at her fingers.
“You get used to it,” Rotem says. “You have to keep counting. Your brain is approaching REM. If you’re struggling to focus at this point, start counting afresh and then you’ll feel the stage of your body entering a state of sleep, when sleep paralysis kicks in. A buzzing-like sensation that runs through you when the brain turns off your ability to control your muscles.”
“Can you genuinely feel it?”
“Totally. You may also feel tremors through your body, like an electrical current. And from that point, your body will be paralyzed and you’ll go into REM.”
“From a state of alertness straight into a dream without all the other steps?”
“Exactly. But no need to worry, your body experiences the same process a few times every night, only now you’ll be aware of it. A few more tremors and you’ll be inside a dream. The landscape changes, and you stop counting.”
“And then a reality check?” Daphne looks at her fingers again, then opens the car windows a little to let the cold air in.
“Yes, you’re dreaming and you’re aware of it. The entire process lasts from ten minutes to half an hour at most. It rarely happens the first time you try it, so don’t despair. It’s an excellent shortcut from being awake to being in a lucid dream.”
“Yes, thanks, that’s what I need.” She’d read about it but feels a lot more confident after hearing Rotem’s explanation.
“I got a green light from my section chief.”
“A green light?” The sharp change of subject throws Daphne.
“To work with you. We’re an official team now.”
“You, Nathan and I?”
“Just me and you. Carry on working with Nathan like usual, but keep me posted on everything you guys find, do, or are planning to do. At the same time, I’ll be sending out feelers to other police divisions that are working on the case and additional elements outside the police too.”
“Do you need me to speak to anyone to arrange access for you to computers and phones?”
“I’m already in. The computers, the phones and the emails of everyone at the police who’s involved in the investigation. They’re completely unaware of course, and you don’t know a thing either…”
“Of course, of course.”
“If I were to get involved in the investigation formally, I’d only hamper things. Egos would run wild. It’s best I remain an unseen observer.”
“Great!” Daphne smiles at the news, although she’s a little sorry she’ll have to keep lying to Nathan.
“Goodnight, Daph.”
“Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Bye.”
Rotem picks herself up off the couch and gets undressed, adding her clothes to the impressive pile of laundry on the living room carpet. She looks at it admiringly. It’ll hit the ceiling in a few weeks. She goes to her bedroom and burrows under the thick comforter. She toys for a short while with the thought of practicing a little lucid dreaming but drops the idea. Her life is wild enough in the waking world, and at night she simply wants to rest. Within a few minutes, she’s fast asleep.
Daphne drives through the Lod interchange on her way home from the Forensics lab. It has been a very long day. A white family sedan, with a soldier in uniform at the wheel, passes her, and a large, yellow-eyed German Shepherd stares at her through the rear window. She almost crashes the car when she takes her hands off the wheel to do a reality check.
41.
Lee stands with the key in her hand. Force of habit causes her to brush her knees clean after getting up, though there is no need to do so. The X-ray Room is spotless. She approaches the door on the far side of the room and slips the key into the lock, taking a deep breath and praying it will work. The key turns to the right. With two clicks, the door opens onto a long hallway, lit up in a yellowish glow, with steel doors on either side. She bangs her fist against the walls. Just like in her room, the walls are concrete here too. She tries opening the doors one by one.
One of them, marked Laundry Room, opens. But all the other doors along the hallway are locked, including the one with a sign like in a movie theater shining above it that reads: EXIT. What is this place?
She bangs her fists against the door, kicking it repeatedly with the heels of her bare feet.
“Help! I’m locked in here!”
She stops to listen. She can’t hear a thing from the outside. She runs back to the locked room, opens it, and ignoring him on the bed, grabs a can of food from the cupboard and slams and locks the door behind her again. She then runs back to the EXIT door and begins banging loudly with the tin can, pausing now and again to press her ear to the door and then picking up the screaming and banging again. Then listening again. And more banging. And again.
Nothing.
She gives up and goes into the Laundry Room. A large dryer is full of her flannel clothing. The industrial washing machine is empty. She opens the doors of the cupboard and finds rows of large one-gallon bottles of fabric softener and rows of large bags of laundry detergent. All neatly arranged. The spaces between the bottles and bags are even, as if they’ve been precisely measured with a ruler. Alongside the machines stands a metal bench with a laundry basket filled with folded white towels.
She turns everything inside out. There is nowhere in the room to hide a key.
Back in the hallway she tries the other doors again, pounding on them with the tin can to check if one is thinner. But they are all heavy metal doors, she can see that there is no way she’s going to break through any of them. She has to find the key to the EXIT door.
She realizes that she’s becoming hysterical; her breathing is rapid and shallow, her heart racing. She stops, returns to the metal bench in the Laundry Room and sits down, placing the can next to her, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. She’s in control. Time is on her side now. Not his.
A few minutes later, she feels composed again. She stands up and goes into the Images Room and sits down on the blanket next to the babies. It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen tonight. She needs to be patient. He’ll be a little more cooperative after a few days without food and water.
Yoavi is awake and lying on his back, his tiny hands clutching at the cloth figures swaying from the baby gym she placed above him. Omer is sleeping on the side of the blanket. Shai, who she named after her boyfriend because he looks just like him, is focused on a piece of cloth displaying a black-and-white image of a smiling face and is smiling back at it, and Rami is lying on his stomach looking at her.
She hopes their parents will like the names she’s given them. She thought she was going to remain imprisoned with them for a long time, months, even years perhaps, but she’s feeling hopeful now. It won’t be years. She recalls the survival Rule of Threes: You can survive three minutes without air, three days without water and three weeks without food. Another day or two or three without food and water and he’ll break and let them go.
42.
Great. Everything is just great. Better than any scenario he’s imagined. The road to redemption is paved with suffering. Everyone’s. His, the Messenger’s, and the Bearer of the Mark, in particular. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. All the misguided sheep, all the criminals and sinners, all the vile and the shameless, all the wicked.
He observed the feed from the camera he’d installed in her room on the computer screen in the Images Room – watching her standing behind the door with a can of corn in her hand, shifting her weight from one leg to the other, waiting for him. The pleasure he derived from the anticipation caused him to delay the moment as much as he could. She was so determined. So purposeful. From time to time, he tapped on the keyboard so she would hear him and keep waiting. He assumed the blow would be painful and that he’d probably lose consciousness. If not, he’d pretend to black out to see what her next move will be.
Lee continued to move agitatedly. He decided that if she broke down and went to the bathroom, he’d immediately get up and enter the room. To make her think she’d just missed her chance. Another small grain of suffering for the great mountain.
He continued to type and observe her at the same time. If she had any sense, she’d cuff him to one of the metal pipes in the showers or the iron frame of the bed and then she’d have to take care of him. Another reason why it was important for him to have chosen a doctor. She might hurt him, but she wouldn’t be able to abandon him and refrain from helping him. Everything would become plain to her. He decided to allow her to move forward at her own pace. To experience the frustration one step at a time. Without rushing.
He got up and walked through the X-ray Room and into the hallway, where he checked that all the doors were locked apart from the one to the Laundry Room, where the dryer had just come to the end of its cycle and had switched off. He returned to the hallway and from there to the X-ray Room and then the computer.
And she was still there, waiting for him.
He locked the computer, got up from the chair, pushed it into place alongside the desk and approached her door. He paused momentarily in front of it, interlocked his fingers to crack his knuckles, then opened the door. He made sure to look straight ahead and not to the side where she was standing.
43.
The smell of wet earth.
Moisture hanging in the still air.
I’m lying in bed under a blanket and realize I’m there again.
I have to face up to him this time. I can’t let him strangle me.
The banging on the door begins.
I throw off the blanket and run to the other room. I open the closet and remove the hanging rod. I run back to bed, and before I leave the room, I look back at the closet. The inscription says Hopeless in black letters.
I get back into bed, hiding under the blanket with the rod. Waiting for him.
Pale moonlight penetrates the fog and shines through the three windows of the hut. I hear the howling of a wolf.
I have to remember something.
I’m sure I have to remember something.
I can’t remember.
The door to the cabin bursts open with a crash and footsteps approach me. The blanket is torn away and I swing the rod from the closet at his face as hard as I can. He catches the rod in mid-flight and flings it aside. It lands on the wooden floor with a hollow thud.
He sits on me.
“Did you think you could do something to me with that toothpick?”
He leans over me. His face is right in front of my nose. His eyes are bloodshot. His pupils are big and black. He smells of forest and death and swampland. He wraps his two large and dirty hands around my neck, smearing me with black mud. He tightens his grip and my air runs out. Everything goes quiet, and a continuous high-pitched sound rings in my ears.
Daphne sits up in bed, her hands stretched out in front of her to fight off her assailant. He isn’t there. He was only in her dream. She’s covered in sweat. Her heart is racing, pounding hard.
She gets up to go to the bathroom and from there she heads to the kitchen for some water. She glances into Anna’s room. She’s sleeping, cuddled under her comforter. That’s good, it means she hadn’t screamed in her dream. That counts for something. On the night table next to Anna’s bed is Stephen King’s 11/22/63. Daphne borrowed it from the library and passed it on to Anna when she was done reading it, in a single weekend. Its hero tries time and time again to change the course of history and prevent the assassination of Kennedy. Maybe that’s what is happening to her in her dreams with Anat Aharon. Sometimes, she appears beside her, alive; and other times, she merely observes her from a distance. Sometimes, she’s lying on the road, as they’d found her at the scene of the hit-and-run. The image had etched itself into her mind.
As Daphne stands there lost in thought, Anna turns on her side in her sleep, takes one leg out from under the covers and rests it on the comforter.
44.
He’s hungry but mostly thirsty. He isolates his sense of thirst and breaks it down into its components. A dry tongue. An empty, shriveled stomach. A headache. But perhaps the headache’s related to the blow he received and not thirst or hunger.
