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“Do you think they knew where they were dropping that girl?” asked Ian.
“No. It was too far away from all the buildings on the opposite side of the road. I think they were just dropping her. What’s stranger is trying to figure out why that girl is screaming that she’s in so much pain and yet hasn’t been touched.”
“We’ve all seen and heard of psychological experiments around suggestion, torture, and pain,” said Ian. “Do you think that’s what’s happening here?”
“But why use kids? You could pay a few bucks to the homeless, and they’d be happy to be a part of some fucking experiment. Why use kids?” asked Gaspar.
“I don’t know, but my guess is that if we get lucky enough to find another kid, it’s going to be the same damn thing.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Gracie, honey, can you hear me?” asked Ashley. Bree was standing at the door with Doc while Wilson, Ajei, and Kelsey gathered around the bed. They’d given her a sedative to calm her down, but she was starting to come out of it.
“Gracie, can you hear me?” asked Ashley again.
“D-don’t hurt me,” she pleaded in a meek voice.
“Honey, no one here is going to hurt you. I promise.”
“I’m hurting,” she mewled. “I’m hurting everywhere. My back where they burned me. My feet where the rats bit me.”
Her parents watched in horror as she recounted things that very clearly had not occurred. Was she on drugs?
“Did they give her drugs?” asked her father.
“Her toxicology is clear. Blood, tissue, and hair samples were taken,” said Cruz. “She’s had nothing. Not an aspirin, not an ibuprofen. Nothing.”
“This doesn’t make sense. She clearly wasn’t burned on her back or bitten on her feet. What’s wrong with our daughter?”
“I think someone has quite literally been playing mind games with her, Mr. Huckabay.”
“Mind games?”
“As strange as it sounds, throughout history, men have been known to subject others to psychological warfare.”
“This isn’t war,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s seventeen!”
“I apologize for using that word,” said Ashley. “But it’s the commonly acceptable term. In the 1950s, one study showed how people were willing to deliver torture to others, despite their obvious pain. It was all staged, but participants were seated at a device that had a dial on it. They were told that they were testing a patient’s ability to withstand pain. Slowly, the volunteer was asked to rotate the dial.”
“That’s horrible! I could never do that!” said Mrs. Huckabay.
“You’d be shocked,” said Ashley. “Almost all of them, when prompted to continue, did. The pain was obviously not real, but the participants didn’t know that. They thought they were actually torturing someone. It’s happened more than just that once.
“When I was in medical school, we did a study on a sanitorium in Switzerland at the turn of the century that convinced patients that certain sounds were causing them excruciating pain. It was little things, like paper rustling or chairs being pulled out. They were so diligent in the study that the individuals were never able to function in society again.”
“And you think this is what they’ve done to our daughter?” asked Mr. Huckabay.
“I don’t know for certain yet, but it appears that it could be something similar. I’d like to keep Gracie here for a few days and see if we can begin the process of reversal. If you have a family therapist or psychologist, please feel free to have them contact me. I welcome anyone who wants to help Gracie.”
“No, we don’t know anyone like that. Please. Please, just help our daughter.”
“Of course. Do you live nearby?” asked Ashley.
“Yes. We live about thirty minutes from here. But I’m not leaving,” said Mrs. Huckabay.
“That’s fine. We’ll bring in a cot for you so that you can sleep in here with her. We’ll be coming in quite frequently to check on her and to reinforce the fact that she doesn’t have rats biting her feet or anyone burning her back. I need your promise that you won’t interfere. Don’t try to shut her down. It won’t work, and she’ll only digress. Let her yell. Let her scream if she believes she’s in pain.”
“I understand,” said the woman.
