“That s what they said. The other peows, they could control them easy. Sometimes I got out of hand, though. They thought I was gonna blow the whistle on them. So they’d punish me.”
“How?”
“Sometimes they’d tie me up, burn me.”
“They
“They’d lay a metal rod in the fire.” Erik stood up and raised his black T shirt. Several long scars could be seen along his abdomen.
Erik sat back down. “I could handle that, though. Sometimes they made me look in the mirror. And they always made me watch the hustig.”
“The what?”
“The rituals. Watching those was
“Why didn’t you just leave?”
“Couldn’t. The closer you are to them, the more power they have over you.”
“I see,” Dr. Greene said. “But let’s backtrack a minute, okay? We were talking about your voice. What exactly did they do?”
“Oh, yeah. They stuck an awl in my throat.”
“As punishment for insubordination?”
“Yeah.”
“Erik, the night you were arrested, you told the police that
“I lied.”
“Why?”
“I was scared. I didn’t know what was happening. But I know now, so I can tell the truth and it won’t matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
Erik laughed. “Because I’m in a mental hospital now. They don’t care what I say because they know no one will believe me. They’re the ones who got me put here.”
“Erik, the police caught you burying bodies in a field off Route 154. Do you deny that?”
“No,” Erik Tharp said. “That was my job. After a husl, I had to bury the bodies. They decided I was too hard to control, so after the last hustig, they told the cops where I’d be. The whole thing was a setup.”
“Okay, Erik. Tell me more about the bodies. Some of them were children, babies. Why did you kill them? For the husls?”
“No, no, I didn’t kill any of them, I just buried them, and, yeah, I snatched some people, sure, but I never killed anyone.”
“You
“I abducted people for them, that was my job too. Hitchhikers, runaways, people like that, people who weren’t local.”
“What about the babies, Erik? Did you abduct the babies too?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“No one. They weren’t abductions.”
“Then—”
“I don’t want to talk about the babies anymore.”
Dr. Greene nodded. “All right, Erik. Tell me about the—”
“I don’t want to talk about anything anymore.”
Erik Tharp put his head down on the table and began to cry.
Dr. Harold ejected the tape. Now he knew exactly what Dr. Greene meant. Erik Tharp displayed no signs of story-mixing, referencing, or even lying. Most clinical psychiatrists could spot lying in a matter of minutes by gauging facial inflections via question structure. Only a pathological mind set could repress such inflections, and Erik Tharp clearly was not pathological.
Next were transcripts of a court authorized narcoanalysis, a process in which all conscious mental barriers were dropped with hypnotic drugs. “T” was for Tharp. “G” was for Greene. A light dose of a drug called scopolamine maintained unconsciousness without dropping most brain wave activity. It was even harder to lie under narcoanalysis.
G: How many people did you kill, Erik?
T: None.
G: Why were you burying bodies?
T: Bludcynn.
G: Erik, were you part of a satanic cult?
T: Dohtor.
G: What?
T: Dother fo Dother.
G: Erik, tell me about the cult.
T: Husl. Blood. Bludcynn. Dother fo Dother. I am peow. I am wreccan. We are all wreccan for the face in the mirror.
G: What do you see in the mirror, Erik?
T: Hell.
G: You see hell?
T: Her.
G: Who?
T: They make us wreccan for her. I am wreccan. I have no soul.
G: What happened to your soul, Erik?
T: They gave it to her. They fuck.
T: They fuck us and make us wreccan. For her.
G: Erik, who is her?
T: Dohtor.
G: Erik, what is dohtor?
T: Dother fo Dother. Liiiiii… Liiiiii… Liiiii
T: I am brygorwreccan, I am digger. Scierors cut, cokkers cook. We are huslpegns. We work for them. They eat, they fuck, they kill—for her.
G: Who is her, Erik?
T: Liiiiii… Liiiiii… Arrrrrrdaaaaa—
Two weeks later they’d attempted hypnosynthesis: hypnotic vocal commands in conjunction with fluctuating doses of sodium amobarbital, which kept the patient’s subconscious accessible without inducing high autonomic
