Page 3 of The Mercy Chair

‘Nightmares?’

He nodded again.

‘What is it you see?’

He didn’t answer. He put his hands in his lap and looked at them.

‘What is it you see when you close your eyes?’ Doctor Lang urged.

The man looked up. His eyes were haunted and wet.

‘Crows,’ Detective Sergeant Washington Poe whispered. ‘When I go to sleep, I see crows.’

Chapter 2

‘Crows?’ Doctor Lang said. ‘You’re having nightmares about crows?’

Poe nodded.

‘Is this a childhood thing, or something more recent?’

‘Recent. Just a few months.’

‘You’ve been through a traumatic experience, Sergeant . . . Look, can I call you Washington? Sergeant Poe is far too formal.’

‘Of course.’

‘You’ve been through a traumatic experience, Washington,’ she said. ‘I’ve read the case summary and, in my entire career, this is by far the most horrific thing I’ve read about. People died in front of you.Younearly died. Nightmares can be the mind’s way of making sense of things and crows have long been associated with loss. In some cultures they are mediator animals between life and death.’

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘And some therapists might try to palm you off with a clichéd diagnosis about how the nightmares are your way of coping with what you’ve been through. They’ll tell you that crows are a manifestation of the parts of the case you were unable to control. That your nightmares are little more than an unconscious defence mechanism.’

‘If you say so, Doc.’

Doctor Lang smiled. She had a nice smile. It lit up her face. ‘But I think you’re far too pragmatic to entertain fanciful ideas like Freudian displacement. I don’t think you’ve been redirecting a negative emotion from its original source on to a less threatening recipient.’ She put her hand on the file. ‘If you’ve been having nightmares about crows, I think it’s likely crows played a significant role in what happened. Literally, not figuratively.’

Poe’s spine stiffened as if it had received a blast of electricity.

‘And I find this odd, Washington,’ she continued.

‘You do? Why?’

‘Because I’ve read this file cover to cover and, not only is there no mention of crows, I don’t believe you saw anything that might have attracted them. I know crows are attracted to carrion, but by the time you arrived at the Lightning Tree the dead man had been removed. And everything else happened indoors.’

Doctor Lang picked up the file.

‘And because the activity log has no gaps, it means if youdidencounter crows, it must have been before this case started. Am I right?’

Poe said nothing.

‘It would have seemed insignificant at the time,’ she continued. ‘It might not have even registered.’

‘Then why do I see them in my dreams?’ Poe asked.

‘The unconscious mind is a complex beast, Washington. It can make leaps ourconsciousmind doesn’t have the bandwidth for. It processes information differently. You can’t see it yet, but right now, in your mind, crows are the catalyst for everything that followed.’

‘So this is me now, is it?’ Poe said. ‘Every time I go to sleep, I’m going to wake up terrified and screaming.’

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