Chapter 5

"There is something terribly wrong with my daughter, doctor. You must find what it is."

Dr. Theodore Dedalus lifted the spectacles off his skinny nose and with a gesture that disarmed his audience screwed them into his bony brow.

His hand rubbed on his thin sharp chin and then pulled down on his face that made his cheeks look even more harrowed.

For Franklin Barker, a practical man and rancher, to seek out philosophical help was a step out of character.

In these parts Barker was a renowned man. A self-made one who fought his way to greatness by virtue of an indomitable will.

"You realize, Mr. Barker, that there is no way I can guarantee any degree of success. There are no odds I can give you."

"She doesn't respond to the normal things that children her age should. She is totally off on another world."

"And you say she's been this way since her mother's death?"

"She was always on the quiet side. But with an assuredness. She's lost that quality. She has lost her confidence and won't admit it."

This was not the kind of cursory knowledge Dr. Dedalus was used to hearing. None of the people who came to him had ever spoke so succinctly and to the point.

"It sounds to me like you've been concerned about her for a while and have actively sought yourself for a solution to her problem."

"You bet I have, doctor. We both experienced certain character changes since my wife's death. It's unexplainable but true."

Practical men didn't speak this way. They were never so perceptive as to understand the initial roots of things.

"Perhaps it has something to do with her strange death, I mean symbolically, of course. Exactly what was the effect upon you?"

"I was shocked when she died. It came totally out of the blue and was unexpected. It was a crushing blow that almost felled me."

"You mean that her loss caused you to mourn more than might be considered normal. That you were overly grief stricken, or something like that."

"Nora was a very independent woman. She was beautiful but eccentric, and in most men's eyes this seemed to taint her fabulous beauty."

"And you married her, accepting her faults as well as her good points. You filled a gap in her life but she never acknowledged the fact."

"Something like that. But I didn't care. As long as I could bask in her glow I was happy. She was a tremendously powerful woman."

"In what way?"

"She could command attention, just by her presence situations would become frightfully charged and take on an eerie glow."

"Don't you think you're exaggerating her importance, Mr. Barker, I mean, couldn't your grief have marred your former recollections."

"As long as I've known Nora, she always had that capacity. She was a woman filled with mystery. Like she was the carrier of a dark secret."

"Did you ever find out this secret?"

"No, never. But I can't get the feeling out of my head that her death had something to do with that secret."

"You said that she died of a cerebral hemorrhage. That is a physical cause of death, not psychological."

"I know that, doctor. But perhaps her secret preyed on her so much that it sought an outlet on her person."

Dr. Dedalus was stunned. Mr. Barker had just made a fabulous connection that only a few men of the rarest intellectual capacity were able to absorb.

Psychology was just beginning to experiment with the notion that all physical disturbances were facets of psychological maladjustment.

Psychology dealt with symbols. Some psychiatrists were convinced that a certain mental frame of mind led to a particular disease in one to one correspondence. The beautiful Nora Barker offered information in this new area of psychology gripped his curiosity.

"What else can you tell me: about her death."

There's nothing else I can tell you outside of the fact that her death came without warning and she was never sick a day in her life."

"Was there anyone she was with more than usual during her last weeks or months?"

"No, not any more than usual. There is the ranch foreman, Mullady Mistler, who was always very loyal to her, and then me and Melanie."

"How do you mean the foreman was loyal to her?"

"He was completely devoted to her. He did anything she asked immediately and without question."

"You speak of it without a trace of jealousy in your voice."

"Why should there be jealousy? His devotion was platonic and only concerning business."

"What kind of business?"

"Just things that had to be done on the ranch. If Nora wanted help with her flower and rock gardens he would help her to plan and make them."

"So she could depend on him for favors and the like when she had something on her mind that she couldn't come to you with."

"I suppose that's the case. But I never looked at it like that. Do you suppose Mullady knows something about her death that I don't?"

"I'm not a detective, Mr. Barker. But I am trying to trace the events leading up to her death so as to symbolically re-enact her state of mind."

"In this way you hope to find what's nagging at my daughter?"

"You yourself said that there is some kind of mysterious connection between her dark secretive self and the manner in which she died, her physical ailment."

"Yes, that's true. Do you think Melanie feels the same way?"

"That's what you and I are here to find out. If you are satisfied with my approach so far, we could start right now. I agree to see her on one condition. And that is I must hypnotize her."

"For what purpose."

"I want to find out what she's dreaming about. The unconscious mind is the source of conscious desires. The farther down I can go the more I can understand what motivates her."

"Couldn't she remember her dreams consciously."

"Yes, she could. But her account would be biased. The conscious mind filters out parts that are too outrageous for it to face."

"Will she remember her awful nightmares once you take her out of the trance?"

"No not at all. That is the saving grace. She will never have to face her dark side in the real world. It will remain a buried dream. Only I will know what it is and then be able to provide the proper therapy."

"All right. I agree then. You can hypnotize her. I'll bring her in now. Do you want me to leave or stay here with you?"

"I would prefer that you leave the both of us alone once we've been introduced. Now you may bring her in.

Dedalus watched Barker get up and leave the room. He came back in with Melanie and he introduced her to the doctor.

"Melanie I want you to watch this little beacon over here by my left hand and start counting backwards from one hundred."

Melanie held her father's hand tightly.

"It's not going to painful, honey, I promise. He's just going to put you to sleep for a while and you will answer questions without even knowing it."

The doctor turned on the switch and the small globe on the left of his desk began to whir very softly.

A flashing light shaped like a diamond eye pulsed on and off in a steady rhythm that seemed to be encircling inside the globe.

Melanie's pretty blue eyes twinkled from their casual stare into the glass ball. Soon they were concentrating with fierce intensity on the spinning ball of light.

In her head she counted backwards. As her lids began to close her gazed fixed inside herself and she was dazzled by the life of her internal radiations.

Dedalus watched her eyes close and turned off the spinning light. Without speaking a word he had put her into a trance.

"It's time for you to go, Mr. Barker."

"Good luck, doctor," said Barker as he took up his jacket to leave.

"We make our own luck, Mr. Barker." Dedalus heard the door open and close. He stared at the subject before him and tapped lightly on his desk.

"Melanie, can you hear me?"

"Yes, "I can hear you."

"Do you dream often?"

"Yes, all the time."

"Do you like your dreams."

"Some of them are good. Some of them are bad and scare me. And then there are some that are part good and part bad."

"Tell me about those. Tell me about the ones that are good and bad at the same time."

"There's this one about me and Lightning."

"Who's Lightning, Melanie."

Dedalus' right hand reached down under the desktop and switched on a tape recorder that was hidden inside a drawer.

"Lightning is my horse. He's more than that really. He used to be my mother's favorite horse and now he's mine."

"Do you spend a lot of time with him?"

"Yes, I do. He never hurts me and he's always good to me. I can always count on him, not like mother, or that stupid Carter Marington."

"Is Carter your boyfriend?"

"Not any more. Not since Lightning led me to the spot where he and Flossy were making out."

"You said Lightning led you to the spot?"

"Yes, he knew what was going on. He wanted to show me what a bastard that Carter is, and Flossy too."

"What were they doing?"

"Flossy was sucking his dick. And he came all over."

"Okay, Melanie, now tell me about the dream."

"The dream is about me and Lightning. We are lying down together on a spinning bed, he's right next to me."

"And what are you doing."

"I'm kissing him on the face. I'm totally naked and my nipples are swollen and red hot. I'm burning up."

"And the bed is spinning?"

"Yes, it goes all around. Lightning's mouth is open and I'm running my little tongue on his big one. I'm getting hot kissing him."

"And then what do you do."

"I rub my hot tits in his big face. He laps his tongue out and it brushes my hot tits with big, sweeping licks."

"You like it?"

"Oh yes, I like it ever so much. My cunt is sopping wet. Lightning licks both my hot throbbing tits while I mash them into him."

"What happens next?"

"My cunt is very hot. I put a couple fingers inside my gash and poke them around. My nipples are so hard."

"What else do you do."

"I'm so hot I feel like I'm gonna blow up. I look down at Lightning's cock and it's huge and hard as a rock."

"Is that what you wanted all along. Lightning's big cock."

"Oh yes. I love him so. There's nothing on this earth like him. His cock is so big. It is the master of cocks."

"Is that what attracts you to him. His cock?"

"Yes it is. I always dream about it. Now that I think of it all my dreams are about Lightning's big cock."

"When you are in bed with him what do you do?"