The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“The Locus,” Tanya said.

“Yup,” Emma said. “Same as the last four times you asked me.”

“I was talking about a Locus.”

“’A particular position, point, or place,’” Emma said, quoting the dictionary.com definition that Googling had given them.

“So what point or place was I looking at?”

“No place, as far as I could tell,” Emma said. “You were just staring out the window.”

“And you understand that I don’t remember any of this, right?”

“Is that any crazier than me not remembering dry-humping you last night?”

“Okay, that was different,” Tanya said. “You were sleepwalking. That’s a totally normal thing.”

“Wait, what’s your point?” Emma said. This would happen with Tanya from time to time; the lawyer in her would argue every phrase in every single sentence, until the point of what she was trying to say was completely lost. It was super annoying most of the time, but Emma was just happy that Tanya was lively enough to do it again, instead of sitting there like a zombie.

“My point is,” Tanya said, “There has to be some reasonable explanation, because what you are saying makes no sense. Are you sure that you even woke up from being hypnotized? Maybe all this Locus stuff was in your head.”

“No, I totally woke up, and you were totally zoning out and talking about a Locus,” Emma said.

“Right,” Tanya muttered. She looked away, and her face began to take on that vacant look again. But then she gave her head a small shake, and looked at Emma. “There was something I was going to tell you, but I forgot what it was.”

Emma suppressed a smile. “I’m sure it’ll come to you.” She stood up and went into her bedroom, to check her phone.

“Maybe,” Tanya said after her, with a tone that suggested she was making an explanation up on the fly, “Maybe that Michael Night guy put all this stuff into your head? Like maybe I was actually saying something else, but he told you to hear Locus.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then why is he dead? Everything would be working out great for him, if that were true.”

“That’s for the cops to figure out,” Tanya said. “I’m just looking for an explanation that is, like, scientifically possible.”

“Doesn’t explain why you were kissing me and seeing someone from five years ago.”

“Shit,” Tanya murmured. There was a moment of silence, as Emma tapped and swiped on her phone. Then Tanya said, “What was I going to say to you again?”

“Forget it,” Emma said. “Travis e-mailed me! He says we can Skype him at 3 P.M. today. Wait, that’s in like fifteen minutes!”

Tanya made a face. “It’s almost three already? That’s can’t be right.”

Emma showed her the clock face of her phone. “See for yourself. Do you understand why science can’t explain this now? Normal humans don’t lose this much time, not even under hypnosis.”

“Well, nobody ever accused you of being a normal human,” Tanya said. “I’m going to take the call at the bubble tea cafe.”

“Why not take it here? We pay for the good wi-fi.”

“Emma, you know my policy on excretion.”

Tanya was referring to a favorite saying of her father’s: Don’t shit where you eat. It was an all-purpose philosophy, meaning Don’t date people you work with, don’t go into business with friends or family, and the like. In this case, it meant that Tanya never did any legal work in the apartment. She would rather work late at the office than work from home.

“What, do you think the cops are upstairs, tapping into our wi-fi?”

“If you plan like they are, then you never get taken by surprise when they try to pull something shady,” Tanya said.

“Whatever,” Emma said. “Let me get my coat.”

“Oh, no,” Tanya said. “You can’t be on the call. He’ll tell me things, knowing that I’m a third party, that he might not say if you were there.”

“Then I will sit away from the camera and I won’t say anything,” Emma said. “But I am listening to this call.”

“I’m going to record the call with Skype,” Tanya said. “You can watch it later.”

“Tanya,” Emma said flatly. “This is not a debate. I’m coming.”

Tanya could have argued with her. They’d had longer and rougher arguments than this in the past, and over smaller disputes. But she just wasn’t feeling it right now. She did not want to have this fight, because she had—

(The Locus)

—bigger things to think about.

“Fine,” Tanya said. “But you say nothing, you understand? Nothing. Because it’s not a situation where I can tell you to take some steps and the call is just fine afterwards. You fuck this call up, we get nothing.“

“Relax,” Emma said. “I know how to take direction.”

Jay Chen was driving south on Halstead. This was the path that O’Reilly’s car had taken, more or less. There had been a few odd detours, turning off onto side streets and carving odd paths through the University of Illinois-Chicago and surrounding neighborhoods, but he had always circled back to Halstead.

Chen, himself a UIC graduate, thought that he had a read on this situation which others who had looked at the car’s odd path did not. The university had a great many one-way streets in and around campus, and Chen thought that O’Reilly had come off the path and become confused by the multitude of one-way streets he had to negotiate. He remembered the dazed, uncertain state in which O’Reilly had left the Laugh Riot the night before, and he could easily imagine that guy, befuddled by the snowed-in one-way side streets, getting himself lost.

There was never any question in Chen’s mind that O’Reilly was driving the car. The oddities in this case loomed so large in his head, that he did not expect them to be resolved by something as mundane as a carjacking. As bizarre as it might seem to the C of D’s that O’Reilly could be driving the car, it seemed like the only reasonable explanation to Chen, given what he had already seen.

The uniformed unit that was tailing O’Reilly reached him on the radio. “Three-Charlie-Twenty-Two calling for Detective Chen.”

Chen thumbed the talk button, asking himself just how much he should tell these guys. The C of D’s warning, Keep it in the building, hung in his mind. “Go ahead, Twenty-Two.“

“Ah, Detective, we’re behind the car and showing our lights, but he’s not stopping.”

“And he’s still not answering on the radio, Twenty-Two?”

“Ah, no sir, Detective.”

“Where are you, Twenty-Two?”

“Heading south on Halstead—ah, there he goes. He’s pulling into a gas station at Halstead and Cermak, close to Chinatown, sir.”

“Copy that, Twenty-Two. Just get him out of the car and keep him at that gas station until I get there.”

“Copy that, Detective.”

Chen almost hung up the radio, but then thumbed the talk button again. “And, ah, Twenty-Two ...”

“Sir?”

“Be careful with this one. He’s been behaving a little erratically.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chen slowed for another red light and willed himself not to grind his teeth.

Emma and Tanya’s apartment was just north of Chinatown, in a former industrial area that had been converted into housing. They only had to walk three blocks to get to Tanya’s favored wi-fi spot.

Chicago’s Chinatown is much smaller than its counterparts in New York and Los Angeles. It covers a few blocks north and south of a stretch of Cermak Road that isn’t even a mile long. The largest building in the neighborhood is an open-air shopping center along Cermak: two stories of curio shops, Chinese restaurants ... and multiple bubble tea shops.

Tanya’s favorite of these bubble tea cafes claimed to have been the very first business in the U.S. to serve bubble tea. Tanya doubted the truth of that claim, but its more important claim was that it was the only cashless business in Chinatown. That latter claim required rather fast internet, which Tanya was happy to use whenever she needed to.

They both ordered tea, but this was when Emma discovered that she did not have her debit card with her. “Oh, shit,” she said to Tanya. “I left my card at the club.”

Tanya gave her a look, wary of the shop’s employees. “Well, I’m sure someone will return it,” she said, and they both took someone to mean the police.

On top of its wi-fi, the shop had several roomy booths for seating. Tanya never understood why anyone might need a booth just to drink some tea, but she wasn’t complaining, as it offered her ideal privacy for legal-related work. Tanya sat on one side of the booth, Emma on the other, so that it would be impossible to see Emma unless the laptop were turned around. Emma had an adapter which allowed them both to use two pairs of headphones out of the laptop’s one jack, and Emma made sure to use a pair of headphones that had no microphone.

To Tanya’s eyes, Travis Warwick looked significantly older than the photo Emma had shared. Lines creased his face deeply, and white stubble sprinkled over his jaw and his skull. He glanced at his computer’s screen—not the camera, the screen itself, in a way that charmingly reminded Tanya of her mother—and said, “Hello? Can y’hear me?”

“Yessir, Doctor Warwick,” Tanya said. She almost never called anyone sir outside of a courtroom, but he had said y’hear with a powerful hint of the South in his voice. Tanya thought he might respond better to polite language. “Can you see me?“

“Yes, I can,” Warwick said. He sat back, revealing that he was wearing a plain white T-shirt. Retired, Tanya thought. Doesn’t have to dress up any more and doesn’t want to. “How can I help you?“

“Well, Doctor, my name is LaTanya Marsh and I’m a paralegal in Chicago. I’m working on a case involving Emma Williams.”

Warwick smiled without showing his teeth; Tanya could almost see the memories come back to him in real time. “Ah, Emma. I still keep in touch with her parents, you know.”

“Yessir, Doctor,” Tanya said. “I’m sorry, should I call you ‘sir’ or ‘doctor’?”

“Travis is fine,” the psychologist said. “No need to get formal.”

“And if we’re being informal, my friends call me Tanya.”

“It’s so strange, Tanya, working with these child actors,” Warwick said. “The most innocent and most frightening and most incredible times of their lives, recorded and preserved forever.”

Emma frowned. It’s strange to hear a conversation about yourself, as though you’re not there, she thought.

“Did you work with a lot of child actors, D ... Travis?”

“Not early in my career. I came out to L.A. from Atlanta in my forties. I was planning to do normal psychiatric work, and it was pure chance that the first studio asked me to work with them. I liked that work, just kept right on doing it until I retired.”

“May I ask what was involved in that work, Travis?”

“First, show me some proof that y’are who you say y’are, Tanya.”

After Tanya had held her driver’s license and her U of C student ID up to the camera, Warwick went on. “Well, in those days there was still a lot of concern about Hollywood ruining child actors,” Warwick said. “That little girl from Diff’rent Strokes had just recently died of an overdose. One of the kids from The Mighty Ducks landed his ass in jail. The two Coreys were falling apart in full view of anyone with a camera. It got to the point where people were pointing at Drew Barrymore as a success story, even though she had been in and out of rehab before she was old enough to drive! Y’understand?“

“Yessir.” Tanya made as though she were taking notes. In reality, Skype was recording this call and she could go back and re-watch it if she needed to.

“So, when they were casting kids for high-profile parts, they brought me in, to give psychological evaluations,” Warwick said. “They were doing due diligence on the amount of time and money they were about to invest in the child.”

“What sort of tests were you giving them?” Tanya said, not looking up from her “notes.”

“Well, now you’re starting to get close to privileged information, young lady,” Warwick said. “But I can tell you, I didn’t try anything radical. Just the standard tests that a thousand child psychologists administer every day.”

“Is it possible, D ... Travis, that being the star of a TV show or a movie is an unusual situation that required some, ah, radical measures?”

“That’s an interesting question,” Warwick said. “I expect you’ll be quite the lawyer someday. But the answer is no. In order to do an experiment, you need to have a control group to measure against. I didn’t have that. Trying radical tests or treatments on these kids would be like trying to do surgery in the dark.”

Now Tanya was taking notes for real. She wrote surgery in the dark and underlined it twice. “Can we talk about The Adventures of Virginia West?“

“That was a special situation,” Warwick said. “The character traveled around a lot, there would be a lot of location shoots, not a lot of other kids her age. They were going to pay me a retainer to travel with the young lady who played Virginia West, monitor her mental health. Someone she could talk to, and someone who could diagnose if the pressure got to her. The position was called ‘Consultant’, because they were afraid that having a psychologist in the credits would look bad.”

“Did you have any role in choosing Emma for the part?”

“Oh, no,” Warwick said, shaking his head. “She’d already been acting for five years, y’know. Did you see that independent film she did, played Marisa Tomei’s daughter? Gypsy Feet?“

Emma covered her eyes with one hand.

Tanya said, “No, sir.” But now I know what the next choice is going to be for Movie Night.

“Well, she stole that whole damn movie at age eight,” Warwick said. “She was head and shoulders above all the other kids they saw. Most child actors learn by doing commercials, they get trained to look at the camera and smile just the right way. Emma could act.”

“I know the show ran for four seasons. Were you on set that entire time?”

“I was.”

“Were there any problems?”

Silence on the other end of the line. Tanya stopped taking notes and looked up. Travis Warwick was looking at her gravely. “You first,” he said.

“Pardon me?”

“If I keep going, I’m going to have to violate a lot of agreements I signed with that studio. And, honestly, I’m willing to do it. This story deserves to be told. But first, I want to know why. Tell me why Emma needs a paralegal to call me with all these questions.”

Tanya looked at him, trying to figure out what she could safely say. In her peripheral vision she saw Emma shift in her seat, understanding how serious the conversation was about to get. After about ten long seconds, Tanya simply said to herself, Fuck it. “The police may have her as a person of interest in a murder investigation,” she said. “But she doesn’t remember anything from the night in question. And she’s been acting ... oddly.“

Warwick asked, “Was Emma under hypnosis on the night of the murder?”

Tanya’s breath caught in her throat. Emma’s eyes were as wide as saucers. Tanya wanted to say, How did you know that? But no sound would come out of her mouth.

“I would take your silence as a yes even if I couldn’t see your face,” Warwick said dryly.

“Please,” Tanya managed. “Tell me.”

“I’m gonna say two words that break a whole raft of NDAs,” Warwick said. “Richard Harrison.”

Tanya got her breath back as she consulted her notes. “The actor who played Virginia’s father.” She had watched a couple episodes of the show, back when she’d first met Emma, and had been struck by the man’s performance. He’d been as good and sweet a father figure as she’d ever watched on TV.

“Biggest piece of shit I ever met,” Warwick said.

Tanya, needing a minute to re-orient herself, took more notes. This whole affair kept on surprising her. “How so?” she said, after a few seconds.

“In every way,” Warwick said. “I would have thought Dick hated the entire world. He had a way of finding the cruelest thing to say to a person, and nothing was ever good enough for him. The craft services food was always shit, the stuntmen were always clumsy, the writing was always hack work, the lighting always made the other actors look ugly, the other actors were even uglier when they were lit right ... you name it.”

“Wow,” Tanya said quietly.

“Yeah,” Warwick said. “People always think these loving families on TV musta had real-life chemistry, but that’s just movie magic. In real life they’re workers, earning a paycheck, and sometimes your co-worker is a terrible person.”

Emma appeared astounded. Even if they were not friends, Tanya would have been certain Emma was hearing this for the first time. “How was Emma affected by this?”

“The worst thing about Dick was, he was smart,” Warwick said. “He always nailed every take, always remembered his lines. Plus, he knew not to do anything around Emma. If you’re on a show called The Adventures of Virginia West, rule number one is, Don’t pull any shit with Virginia West.“

“So how do you know he was such an awful person?”

“People knew I was a psychologist,” Warwick said. “So after a while, they were coming to me about their problems with him.”

“Like you were the crew’s therapist,” Tanya said.

“Yeah,” Warwick said, “But in a way, that was a double-edged sword. If I was acting as Emma’s doctor every minute I was on set, then a good lawyer could argue those conversations were privileged, even though I wasn’t talking to Emma. So the worst stuff Dick did, I was the only corroborating witness, and I couldn’t talk.”

“The studio wouldn’t fire him,” Tanya said.

“Well, as my grandson says, let’s be real,” Warwick said. “The show was a hit, and the audiences loved the chemistry between him and Emma. Doesn’t matter what he says to the assistant director, he ain’t going nowhere. The only way he could have gotten fired was if Emma hated him, or if I had proof he was damaging Emma’s state of mind.”

Tanya nodded. One reason that she had not wanted Emma to be on the call was the chance that Warwick could have done something awful to her in her youth, but now she was seeing how impossible that could have been.

“Part of me wanted to quit,” Warwick continued. “I thought that was the only way the studio would understand how serious the problems were. But then I thought, if I quit, how much worse does he get?”

“What was the worst thing Harrison said or did?” Tanya said.

Warwick looked down, hiding his eyes from the camera for the first time. “I’m going to tell you a story,” he said. “It’s not gonna make any goddamn sense.”

Warwick looked up, and this time he looked directly at his computer’s camera. His eyes were ... Tanya wrote down haunted and underlined it. “But the words I am about to say are true,” the psychologist said. “I will die believing that they are true, and I will tell Saint Peter that they’re true. Y’understand?“

“I understand, Doctor,” Tanya said gravely.

Another long silence. Warwick was in his story-telling rhythm, Tanya knew it, and the lawyer in her did not want to break the witness out of his story under any circumstances.

“The show had an episode where Virginia West goes to England. So they found a part of the coastline in Oregon that could double for the White Cliffs of Dover, or whatever it was supposed to be. Location shoot, everyone comes along: whole cast, whole crew, me, the school tutor, everybody. Emma’s parents even came in for a couple days, but they left early.”

“Now you have to understand, the person who got it worst from Harrison was June, who played Virginia’s mother,” Warwick went on. “She was always the one he was calling dumb, unprofessional, ugly, and so on. He would do it in front of the entire crew, as long as Emma wasn’t there. Some episodes, June shot her stuff separately from his, even if the scene called for them to be in the same room together.”

“Movie magic,” Tanya murmured.

“Mmm-hmm. Now June would never quit. She already had an Emmy for a different show, which meant she was getting paid more than Dick, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. I’m gonna show up at his funeral to make sure he stays down, she’d say.“

Emma shifted uncomfortably in her chair. With an act of willpower, Tanya ignored her. “June hated him the most of anyone, but it was a long line, I bet.”

“Mmm-hmm. So June and some of the department heads formed this family unit around Emma whenever her parents were not on a shoot. It wasn’t to protect Emma from him, you understand; it was to protect June, because Dick always acted nice around Emma.”

Emma’s lips were quivering. I should have known this would be like therapy for her, Tanya thought. But in order to know that, I would have to be a therapist.

“The system must have failed at least once,” Tanya said. “Or you wouldn’t have a story to tell.”

Warwick looked down again. “I was at craft services, early in the morning on what was scheduled to be a long day. June comes up, and without saying hello or anything, she said, ‘Why is Emma alone with him?’”

Tanya wrote in her notes, This guy is born to testify.

“They were standing maybe fifty yards away,” Warwick said. “In front of this ropeline the crew had set up to make sure no one messed with the cliffs they were going to shoot on later. Their backs were to me, but I could see Dick’s jaw moving, saying something to her. I couldn’t see what Emma was saying, couldn’t see her face at all. And then she just collapsed.”

Tanya was leaning forward, just inches away from her screen, as though she could jump through the camera and into the room with Travis Warwick.

“June and I screamed for a doctor at the exact same time. The fifty-yard dash I ran at that moment would’ve won the Olympics. I remember being afraid that she would just roll down the grass and fall off the cliff, and Dick would not do a damn thing to help. Of course the grade wasn’t even close to being steep enough, but it’s what I was worried about.”

Emma looked at Tanya, her eyes wide. She shook her head slowly, mouthing, I don’t remember this.

“I went straight for Emma. As soon as I established that she was breathing and her pulse was strong, I looked up at Dick. He hadn’t moved, not one iota. The look on his face ... it was one of those looks. The star of his show was laid out on the ground, unconscious, and he was looking at me like he was ready to call the police on me. And then, just for a minute, his eyes glowed.”

Tanya looked at Emma. “His eyes ... glowed?”

“I know how it sounds. But they glowed, as bright as the sun. So bright that it didn’t look human.”

“So bright,” Tanya murmured. Emma kicked her leg under the table, and Tanya shook her head, clearing it. Emma needs me. “What happened next?“

“They only glowed for a second, maybe not even that. Right after they stopped, June got there, and she went straight at him. She was just screaming at Dick, over and over, about how she would kill him. She cut the shit out of him with her fingernails, he had to get stitches. Stitches on his face, y’understand?“

Tanya, who had often heard Emma joke sarcastically about how much money her face was worth, did understand. She said, “What had happened to Emma?”

Warwick shook his head. “Fainted due to stress, far as I could tell. He did not touch her.”

“Maybe he drugged her,” Tanya said.

Warwick said, “We tested her blood. Nothing abnormal.”

“So you think he hypnotized her,” Tanya said.

“I don’t know,” Warwick said. “When she came to, she didn’t remember what they had been talking about. I wasn’t going to settle for that—I finally saw my chance to get his ass fired—so I put her under hypnosis. But what she remembered didn’t make any sense. She said he just walked up to her and started saying a bunch of gibberish. She was a gifted subject, so I was able to get her to repeat the words, but they didn’t mean anything. Just nonsense.”

“Another language?”

“If you thought the glowing eyes were wild, then you’ll love this,” Warwick said. “The technology didn’t exist at the time, but a year or two back, my kids got me a pair of headphones that could translate other languages. ‘Someone talks to you in Spanish while you wear them, you’ll hear English,’ they said. So I put in the headphones and played my old recording of that hypnosis session. After a few seconds of hearing that gibberish, the phone’s voice said, I’m sorry, I don’t understand that, like it would do sometimes when I didn’t speak clearly. Then it said, Error, which the manufacturer’s website claims it should never ever say. Then the headphones started to get real warm.“

Warwick pulled at the collar of his T-shirt. There were several scars criss-crossing his shoulder. “I got them out of my ears just before they exploded,” he explained, “but the shrapnel got me pretty bad. If I’d been a second slower...”

Tanya opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Could he be playing me? Gave himself those scars? But even if so, why the hell would he do it?

“I gave Emma a suggestion to forget the trance,” Warwick said. “I was worried that remembering all of the gibberish coming out of her own mouth would be damaging. But when Emma woke up the next morning, she didn’t remember anything. Not talking to Harrison, nothing that happened after she came to, nothing that happened after the trance ... she literally thought the date was the previous day’s date.“

That’s how he knew that the issues now were related to hypnosis, Tanya thought. And why she insists she’d never been hypnotized before. “What happened to Richard Harrison?“

“There was a story in the L.A. Times that they’d had an argument on set, but the Times didn’t have very many details, and they didn’t know anything had happened to Emma,” Warwick said. “The story wasn’t that big, and it didn’t get any traction in the wider media, but the studio panicked. They fired him in the middle of filming.“

“Good,” Tanya said.

“I thought so too,” Warwick said. “We had a party on the first day without him. But then there was a run of bad luck that you can’t even imagine. Emma got mono, delayed shooting for weeks. A stuntman was paralyzed on a busted stunt a month or two after that. Network started moving the show around the schedule because other shows were failing and getting cancelled. And then the ratings...”

Warwick shook his head. “I still think that the episode where they killed his character off, Emma did the best acting I’ve ever seen. Not just the best child acting, the best acting. She should’ve won an Emmy. But a baseball playoff game went to extra innings, the show got pre-empted, and no one saw it.”

Warwick shrugged. “It was a top-ten show in Season Three,” he said. “Fired Dick halfway through shooting Season Four. There was no Season Five.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Tanya said.

Warwick laughed, a hearty old-man laugh which suggested he had quite a few years left in him. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t,” he said. “About a month after he got fired, Dick had a heart attack while driving his car. Huge crash. The body burned beyond recognition, they had to use dental records. There was a closed-casket funeral, and I looked up during the Lord’s Prayer and made eye contact with June across the crowd. We’d both come, to make sure the motherfucker stayed down.”

Based on his politeness earlier, Tanya might have expected him to ask her pardon for his language. But she knew why he did not ask. She said, “Can you send me your recording? Of her hypnosis session.”

Warwick looked at her, hard. ”Hell no. I wouldn’t give you anything from any of my sessions with her, but especially not that. Hypnosis is a deeply personal process. It requires trust that you can’t imagine.“

“With respect, sir, I can imagine. Emma and I have been roommates for years. She’s my friend. If you were like her father on that set, I’m like her sister now.” Tanya went into her purse, producing a picture of the two of them at Six Flags, from Senior Day in college.

“Mmm-hmm,” Warwick said. “I thought it was something like that. You’re a little too dedicated for just any paralegal. But my answer is the same. That is one line I don’t cross. I wouldn’t even give that recording to her mother.”

“I can ask Emma to ask you for the recording, sir.”

“Then do it,” Warwick said. “If I think she’s asking just so she can give it to you, I’ll say no. The law is not my specialty, but I think it’s on my side.”

Tanya gritted her teeth. Gotta get better at the whole lawyer-intimidation thing. “Thank you, Travis. Honestly. You’ve been very helpful.“

“I did what I could, Tanya. If you tell Emma about this conversation, say hello for me. I hope she’s doing well.”

“I’ll do that,” Tanya said. She thanked him again, and broke the connection.

If you tell Emma about this conversation. The doctor knew what was up. From where Tanya was sitting, the scary part wasn’t that Emma would dismiss the doctor’s words. The scary part was that she would believe them.

“The Locus,” Emma said. “Harrison was the Locus. Or was connected to it, or whatever. Then he gave it to me.”

“Oh, I didn’t know it worked like that,” Tanya said dryly. “Guess I was sick the day they taught Locus in science class.”

“Tanya, you heard the same story I just heard. There isn’t a scientific explanation for what I just heard.”

“I’m sure there is,” Tanya said. “It’s just that neither of us have studied the science we need for it.”

“Come on, I know you,” Emma said. “First you were thinking he might be senile. But he’s obviously still sharp. Then you were thinking he might be the actual bad guy. But everything he was talking about, there were witnesses to what he was telling us. He would have to be making up the supernatural parts, and only those parts, and there’s no reason he would do that.“

Tanya had no response to this at first. Inside, she was thinking, Shit. I have to get a little less predictable. Finally, she said, “I’m sure he believes what he was telling us, and he does seem to be of sound mind. But no cop, no judge, no jury is going to buy that story.“

Emma leaned forward. “Maybe I did kill him,” she whispered. “Maybe the Locus turned Harrison into an asshole, and maybe it turned me into a murderer.”

“Even if I bought into all this Locus stuff,” Tanya said, “You would have had it in your head since you were fourteen. Since then, you got into and through the University of Chicago, you made friends with me, you impressed the people at the Court Theater enough to get that show last year. That’s a lot of people who all think you don’t have it in you to murder.“

Emma looked away. Tanya could tell that she was unconvinced, and Tanya herself could only say so much to help. After all, Tanya had no proof of anything. She was insisting about Emma’s innocence, more or less, on faith.

“We need to get back to the apartment,” Tanya said instead. “The police are going to show up even sooner than I expected. Like, if they have your card, you would first on their list to question even if you hadn’t been in Michael Night’s show.”

“Because forgetting the card is something you would do if you had just killed someone,” Emma said morosely.

“Stop with that talk,” Tanya said. “Let’s go.”

The signage on the gas station was generic-looking, proclaiming GAS-AND-GO in a font that might as well have been called American Gas Station Classic. Chen thought maybe it was family-owned, or part of the weakest franchise imaginable. It had as many diesel pumps as regular, taking advantage of several highway exits within a few blocks, and had a big enough footprint to accommodate diesel-fuel trucks. There was no shop or grocery store attached; all payment was automated.

As Chen arrived at the station, he was immediately on alert, because he saw that there was no obvious CPD cruiser parked anywhere nearby. He saw O’Reilly’s unmarked car, parked off to the side. There appeared to be a shape behind the wheel.

Chen thumbed the call button on his radio. “Detective Chen for Three-Charlie-Twenty-Two.” No answer came.

Chen would have pulled up to the curb, but the snow there had been piled too thick by the plows. Instead he pulled into the station itself, parking the car as though he was going to fill up with diesel. O’Reilly’s car was maybe twenty yards away from his passenger-side door.

Chen glanced through his passenger-side window, at O’Reilly’s car. There was a splatter of mud across the door, of the sort that you got if you left your car parked while plows drove past it.

He could not have stayed in that car last night. Either his battery would be dead from leaving the heat on, or he’d be frostbitten all to hell.

Chen got out of the car. he made sure his winter coat and jacket were open, so that he could reach his holster. He approached the car as casually as he could manage, while thinking with each step about how fast he might need to draw his gun.

When he thought he was close enough to be heard through the window, he said, “Ray?” The winds were not howling as they had been yesterday, and O’Reilly should have been able to hear him. No answer.

Another two steps, and Chen was close enough to see that the man behind the wheel was not O’Reilly. There were epaulets on his shoulders. A Chicago Police Department uniform.

Chen took the last few steps at a run. As he got close, he saw that the mud splattered on the driver’s door was mixed with blood. Chen grabbed the handle and flung open the door.

A uniformed cop—one-half of Three-Charlie-Twenty-Two, he assumed—was sitting there, quite dead. He had been shot at least twice that Chen could see. His clothes were blown apart in star-shaped patterns at the points of impact; he had been shot at extremely close range, the barrel pressed right up against his body. O’Reilly had let him get close, killed him, and put the body in the driver’s seat so that he could take the patrol cruiser.

Chen ran around the back of the car, already dreading what he would see. The other uniform was lying facedown next to the rear passenger-side wheel. Chen could not see how many times he had been shot, but the blood was pooling in the snow underneath him. Fresh blood. O’Reilly only had a few minutes’ head start. Chen knew he should call it in.

Except...

He didn’t actually know it was O’Reilly. Could have been a car thief. To Chen, that seemed preposterous; these officers would have allowed the killer to get close after Chen’s radio warning if, and only if, they were talking to another cop. But he couldn’t prove it. And if he made any call, anywhere, suggesting that two cops had been killed by another cop, everyone in the city would know about it in three hours.

Keep it in the building, the C of D’s had said.

Was he really going to do that? Leave two dead cops to be found by someone else?

Detective Chen realized that was exactly what he was going to do.

Chen ran to his car. After getting the dispatcher on the radio, he said, “I need to know where Three-Charlie-Twenty-Two is, right this minute.”

“I’m just saying,” Emma said as they trudged through the snow. “Brie Larson is, what, six years older than me? Seven? She did a network show as a kid. And she wasn’t the lead of that show! So why didn’t I have that career?”

“If you’re about to say the Locus, bite your tongue,” Tanya said. “You went to high school and college, she tried to be a singer. And she blew it! I bet you don’t even know the name of that album!”

“I don’t,” Emma said. “What was it called?”

“I don’t fucking know!” Tanya exclaimed. “That’s the whole point! She took a crazy risk, it didn’t work out, and she didn’t have high school and college to fall back on. She had to bust her ass for years after that, just to be the sort of person who might win an Oscar. You did the responsible thing.“

They reached the apartment building, and climbed the outside stairs to their first-floor two-bedroom.

“But what if I didn’t need to do the responsible thing?” Emma asked, as she unlocked their apartment door. “Those risks might not have been crazy for me, after the show. Maybe I should have taken them. Maybe the Locus changed my mind.”

“God, stop letting that story get in your head,” Tanya said. “If you’re going to get obsessed about something, make it something which is scientifically possible.”

As they got into the apartment, taking off their coats, Emma glanced through the front windows, which looked out on the front of the building. She saw a man approaching from across the street. She might not have noticed him, except that he was limping, shuffling, like a reanimated corpse in a movie. She saw him head straight for their building, laboring his way up the stairs. It was only when he was standing at the front door that she saw he was holding a gun in his right hand.

The buzzer buzzed. Emma spun, saying, “TanyaTanyaTan—”

“Hello?” Tanya said. She’d been standing right by the door, had answered too quickly. She now looked at Emma with concern.

“Police,” a sluggish voice said into the intercom.

“Don’t let him in,” Emma hissed.

“I gotta let him in,” Tanya said. “Keeping him out is what guilty people do.”

“His gun is out!”

“What?”

“He was holding his gun in his hand!”

They stared at each other, both struck dumb by what this might mean. The silence was broken by thumping footfalls in the front hallway. The old man, from upstairs. They heard the front door open.

“Shit,” Tanya said.

“Call the police,” Emma whispered.

“He is the police!”

A closed fist pounded on the apartment door three times. The sluggish voice repeated, “Police. Open up.”

Emma thought that he sounded drunk. She whispered, “If he’s doing something illegal, they need to know about it!”

“Emma, if he’s doing something illegal, he will shoot us both, claim we were reaching for our waistbands, and the head of the police union will say ‘they were no angels’ while the DA refuses to indict.”

A voice spoke from the other side of the door. It said the same words, “Police. Open up.” But it was not the same voice. It was a strange, inhuman harmony, like listening to a humpback whale speak English.

Tanya’s face went blank. She reached forward and grabbed the doorknob. Emma was so surprised that the door was already opening before she could find the words to say, “Tanya, what the hell are you—”

The door was open, and the cop shambled in. He was a bulky, balding white guy, but he might as well have been Brad Pitt for all Emma was paying attention to his face. Her eyes were locked on the gun, and the hand holding it. She might have thought the hand was covered in blood, except that some of the angry red color was clearly frostbite: parts of the fingers were turning a bluish color, and the tip of the pinky was entirely black. The sleeve of that hand had quite a bit of dried and frozen blood on it. She saw the badge clipped to his belt; he was CPD, no doubt about it, but something was badly wrong.

“Close the door,” the bizarrely harmonic voice said, and Tanya closed it. After, she stood in front of the door, her hand still on the knob. The coffee-brown eyes stared at nothing, her lips slightly parted.

“Tanya? Tanya!”

“Look,” the voice said, and Emma looked at the cop that did not sound like a human being. His eyes were also staring at nothing, but even more so than Tanya’s; the pupils were dilated to a horrifying degree, and they pointed at an absurd angle. The whites of the right eye had filled with blood. One side of his mouth sagged obscenely.

“Time is short,” the not-cop said. Watching that voice come out of the sagging lips made Emma queasy. “This body fails.”

“Who are you?” Emma said. Her eyes had returned to the gun. She was wondering what she would do if he raised it.

The not-cop cocked its head, somehow adding to the grotesque. After a few seconds’ pause, the voice said, “Police?” As though unsure.

“Do you ...” What am I even trying to ask here? “Do you know about the Locus?“

“No,” the not-cop said. “You do.”