19 THE HYPNOTHERAPIST

Now an expert interviews Ivan Bramble

Professor Junkin Marmartre was, if you haven’t heard of him, an eminent hypnotherapist who had somehow become involved in the tale of Ivan Bramble. The story of how he became involved is in itself involved, so I won’t go into it here, and just beg my audience to suspend their disbelief and accept his involvement.

The scene was the same police station. There was the slight aroma of cigarette smoke hovering around the NO SMOKING signs. Outside, evening was falling, a cold January evening where the remnants of last week’s snow had formed blocks of ice ready to trip up careless pedestrians.

Professor Junkin Marmartre was sitting in a chair in the interview room at that police station and Ivan was sitting opposite him. The whole process was being viewed via the gift of closed circuit television by the Inspector and his sergeant together with a short-skirted solicitor in the former’s office, on a computer screen. The professor could see that everything was decent and above board. The only thing that mattered was the truth, and Inspector Piggott was determined to get to it because he could smell, in the air, along with the cigarette smoke, the pleasing aroma of a conviction for double murder and an additional side issue of punishment for assault on an innocent schoolboy.

“Are you quite comfortable?” asked Professor Junkin Marmartre, smiling. He was elderly and typical of Ivan’s perception of what an eminent professor should look like, down to the slightly unruly thinning grey hair and rimless spectacles.

“As comfortable as any man would be with the horrors I’ve experienced recently still hovering around me,” replied Ivan, as helpfully as he could be. He had decided that being helpful and honest might be the best way out of a predicament that should never have existed, though he did regret boxing the Toothbalm boy’s ears only the once.

“Quite so. I am all ears,” murmured the professor, and he smiled. “I think we’ll try regression,” he said quietly, “and a man of your experience in life must know what I mean, so if you’re quite sure you’re comfortable we might as well begin. You do know that the police officers are monitoring our conversation? If you have no objections we can start...”

“Better get on with it,” grunted Ivan, knowing that any objection he might make would be totally meaningless and probably counter-productive.

“Right then.” The Professor blinked behind his spectacles and brushed away a wisp of unnecessary hair that strayed into his field of vision. “What I am going to do is ask you to clear your mind of all worries and thoughts, to be calm and receptive. We are going for a journey, you and I, and I will start counting in a moment, and by the time you hear my voice reaching seven I want you to be at complete repose. Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” muttered Ivan.

“Then here we go. Your mind is empty. You can see nothing but the blankness of walls all around you, so you close your eyes and dream. Now all you can hear is the wind rustling in the tall grasses that are growing somewhere nearby. I wonder where that is… one, two, three...” And his counting voice slowed down, to Ivan becoming one with the rustling wind that the professor had suggested, “… four five … s...ix … s...ev...en...” and before he could even begin the number eight Ivan was elsewhere, the professor and the police interview room and its sparse furniture were gone.

“Where are you?” asked the professor, and he heard the question as if it was the shaping of the rustling wind turned into sound.

“I’m in a field,” he said, quietly, “a lovely field of golden corn, and mummy is chasing me … mummy likes to chase me, she likes to catch me, she likes to pretend she’s tickling me, only she isn’t. She’s pinching me …. it hurts...”

“Ah,” sighed the professor, “and how old are you?”

“It was my birthday the other day, and I’m ten … but mummy’s not going to catch me, I’ll be home soon enough and she won’t want to make me cry when there are other people around… that’s it, I’m at our back gate, the one that opens onto the farmer’s fields, and the neighbours are there, waving at me, and I wave back.”

“That’s good,” sighed the professor, “now let’s go further back in time. Let’s go to another birthday … you said it had been your tenth birthday recently, so let’s go to a different birthday… where are you now?”

“I’m in my play pen,” Ivan told him. “I’ve weed my pants and it smells. I hate it in my play pen but mummy leaves me in it for ages when she’s busy.”

“Can you see her now?” asked the professor.

“No. She’s down stairs. I can hear pans clattering. She always clatters the pans in the kitchen...”

“And how old are you now?” The Professor was shaking his head, visualising an empty life for the little boy who had grown into the sad man in front of him.

“I’m four. It’s my birthday today.” Ivan Bramble sounded proud to be a year older today than he had been yesterday.

“You’re such a big boy now,” whispered the Professor, “tell me, why are you in a play pen? Surely play pens were made for very little children, toddlers who might find themselves in danger if they start, er, todddling?”

“She puts me in it a lot,” explained Ivan Bramble, “and I’m safe inside my play pen, safe from her...”

“What about your brother and sister?” asked the hypnotherapist, his question coming out of the blue.

Ivan Bramble looked at him, and smiled. “I have no siblings,” he said, “I never have had. I’ve always been all alone in the world.”

“Then I’ll continue,” almost whispered the professor, “let’s go back further into the shadows of your life. Further back, a long way further back. Tell me, where are you now?”

“I’m in water, lots and lots of nice warm water, it swirls all around me, and I’m not alone… Sometimes I can hear dull voices, like drum beats in the safety of my wet place.”

“You’re not alone? Tell me more,” demanded the Professor, aware that he might be sounding over-enthusiastic but also aware that he had a patient who had gone further back than anyone else he’d interviewed, and there had been thousands of lost souls who had sought his help over the years.

“It’s warm and cosy… and the two others with me, they are fighting me and I fight back… it’s fun, fighting in all this water. And then, suddenly, my head touches another head, a girl’s head, I know it’s a girl’s head though I don’t really know what girls are … and I can hear her thoughts like a voice inside my brain, loud and shouting like mother will be loud and shouting soon enough … and the girl’s voice says, clear as a bell and loud like a cannon, I will get you, yes I will, I will get you, both of you stupid boys, I will seek you out wherever you may be, and I will kill you….”

Then Ivan Bramble started shaking in the chair where he sat. His face was drawn as if he was in the most intense agony and beads of sweat formed on his forehead, glistening like cruel jewels.

Professor Marmartre knew that enough was enough. He’d regressed patients before and it was not unusual for them to have emotional reactions to forgotten experiences, but even so enough was most certainly enough.

“Thanks you,” he said quietly, so quietly the watchers on CCTV could barely hear him, “I am about to count to three, and when I reach the third number you will quietly wake up and forget what we have just seen. One, two, three...”

And as if a light had been switched on, Ivan Bramble opened his eyes and stared at the professor, still shaking uncontrollably.

“She killed us!” he almost shouted, “it was her! The woman in the chip shop! She killed us both!”

© Peter Rogerson 03.01.19