The Eighth Voice

The brick wall in the South End did not so much divide the boarding house from the Massachusetts Hospital for Neurological Disorders as conceal it. It was a tall wall, built of dark brick that had absorbed a century of soot and rain and the slow, patient work of weather, and it stood between Daniel Cross's world and the world across it with the quiet certainty of something that had been there for a very long time and had no intention of moving. Daniel stood at the mouth of the alley behind his boarding house, the fog thick and yellow around him, and raised the telephone receiver to his ear.

The telephone was a wall model, black and heavy and connected to a system that Daniel knew, from his years of studying the mechanics of communication, was both remarkably simple and astonishingly complex. A voice became electricity, electricity became signal, signal became voice on the other end. It was a miracle that had been normalized into utility, into something you could use to say I love you to a woman you had met three months ago at a gallery opening and whom you were not certain you actually loved because you were not certain you were capable of loving anything with the consistency required to call it love.

Clara, he said into the receiver, his voice controlled and precise and carrying the particular cadence of a man who had spent fifteen years training himself to believe that control was the same thing as stability. Clara, I can't stop thinking about you.

He did not know that the wall was speaking back. He did not know that across those two meters of damp brick, in a soundproofed room on the third floor of the Massachusetts Hospital for Neurological Disorders, Dr. Richard Voss was monitoring a frequency that had been calibrated to carry Daniel's voice across the wall with perfect clarity to a set of speakers that had been installed behind the brick exactly six months ago, on the day Daniel had signed the consent forms in a state of mind that Daniel could not now remember and that the hospital's ethics board, if it had known the truth, would have described as deeply problematic.

Daniel had not initiated these calls. Or rather, he had initiated them, but not in the way he believed. The voice he heard in his head, the voice that told him to pick up the receiver and speak the words I love you Clara, was not entirely his own. It was a suggestion, implanted through a series of auditory stimuli that had been administered over the course of six weeks, designed to test whether a subject could be made to believe he had initiated communication with a person he barely knew.

It was working.

Clara, Dr. Voss repeated silently, reading the transcript of Daniel's latest call on the monitor in front of him. Clara, I can't stop thinking about you. He made a note on his pad: Subject demonstrates increasing attachment to constructed narrative. Suggest advancing to Phase 3.

He had been monitoring Daniel for six weeks. He had chosen Daniel carefully: a thirty-nine-year-old psychiatrist at the hospital, meticulous and controlled and suffering from what Daniel refused to diagnose and Dr. Voss, from his vantage point across the other side of the wall, could see clearly was the early stages of a dissociative disorder that was, in all likelihood, being exacerbated by the very research program that Dr. Voss was running.

It was, Dr. Voss acknowledged to himself, deeply ironic. And deeply necessary. The findings from this program could revolutionize the understanding of auditory suggestion and memory manipulation, could provide treatment for patients who suffered from exactly the kind of dissociative episodes that Daniel was beginning to exhibit. The end justified the means, as it always did in science, and Daniel had volunteered, had signed the consent forms, had agreed to participate in a study of auditory suggestion with the full understanding that he would be exposed to controlled auditory stimuli over a period of six weeks.

Or so the paperwork said. Dr. Voss had read Daniel's case files. He knew that the consent had been signed during an episode of dissociation, that Daniel had no memory of the signing, that the signature on the form was genuine but the mind behind it was, at the time of signing, in a state that rendered it legally and ethically questionable.

Dr. Voss had filed a report. The report had been filed into a drawer and forgotten. Science, he reminded himself, did not wait for ethics to catch up.

Daniel spoke of a woman named Clara who owned an art gallery in Beacon Hill, who was intelligent and perceptive and had looked at him at the gallery opening with eyes that were bright and unreadable and full of a curiosity that Daniel had mistaken for interest. He spoke of a connection he felt, or believed he felt, or had been suggested to feel through six weeks of carefully calibrated auditory stimuli, and he spoke of it in the controlled, precise voice of a man who had spent fifteen years training himself to believe that control was the same thing as stability.

He did not speak of the gaps in his memory. He did not speak of the mornings he had woken with the telephone receiver in his hand and no memory of having picked it up. He did not speak of the recordings he had found on his desk, recordings of his own voice saying things he did not remember saying, and the unsettling sensation that followed him through his days like a shadow, the sensation that he was being watched, not by another person but by his own mind, which was no longer reliable, no longer his own.

The gaps had been widening for three weeks. They started small: forgetting a patient's name, arriving at work and not remembering the drive. Then they grew: losing an hour in the middle of a consultation, finding himself standing in the alley with the telephone receiver in his hand and no memory of having left his room. Then they grew larger: waking up in his bed at 3:00 AM with the taste of copper in his mouth and no memory of the previous six hours, and realizing with a cold, clinical certainty that he had been sleepwalking, and that the sleepwalking was a symptom of something that was, in all likelihood, a dissociative disorder of significant severity.

He had not told Clara. He had not told anyone. He was a psychiatrist. He knew what his symptoms meant. And knowing what they meant did not make them any less terrifying.

The stranger in the navy coat appeared on the seventh week. Clara came to the boarding house, unexpected and unannounced, wearing a navy coat that absorbed the Boston fog and turned it into something that was almost predatory. Daniel was surprised, and then wary, and then terrified, because he had not invited Clara here, and he did not know what she was doing at his boarding house wearing a navy coat and looking at him with eyes that were bright and unreadable and full of a concern that he could not interpret.

I wanted to see where you live, she said, and her voice was different from the voice he had heard on the telephone, harder and more direct and less willing to pretend that the world was kinder than it was. I wanted to see where you live, Daniel, because I am worried about you.

He did not know what to say. He did not invite her in. He stood at the mouth of the alley with the telephone receiver in his hand and the fog pressing against his shoulders and the woman in the navy coat standing in front of him, and he said nothing, which was, in many ways, the most honest thing he had said in seven weeks.

She looked past him, into the alley, at the brick wall that separated the boarding house from the hospital, at the payphone bolted to the wall with rusted screws, at the brass receiver that hung from its cord like something that had been used and discarded and used again.

What is this? she said, and her voice was flat and practical and entirely without patience. What is this, Daniel? The telephone. The alley. The fog. The way you have been acting for the past three weeks. What is this?

He did not answer. He could not answer. Because the truth was, he did not know. He did not know what this was. He did not know if the voice messages were real. He did not know if Clara was real. He did not know if he was real. He knew only that the fog was thick and the wall was solid and the receiver was heavy in his hands and the woman in the navy coat was waiting for an answer that he could not give.

Clara looked at him for a long moment, and then she looked at the wall, and then she looked back at him, and something in her expression shifted, just slightly, from concern to calculation to something that was not quite fear but was close enough.

You are a good man, Daniel Cross, she said. And that is your problem. Good men are always trapped by their own goodness. Good men never leave. Good men never let go. Good men die in alleys with telephone receivers in their hands and women in navy coats walking away from them.

She left then, and the alley was empty, and Daniel stood at the mouth of it with the telephone receiver in his hands and the sound of her footsteps on the cobblestones fading into the fog.

He did not cry. He walked back to his room, set the receiver on the desk, and sat down in his chair and stared at the recordings he had found on his desk three weeks ago and had not been able to bring himself to delete, and he listened to his own voice saying I love you Clara over and over and over, and he felt something inside him crack, just slightly, like ice on a pond in March, a crack that was small and nearly invisible but that, he knew with a cold, clinical certainty, was the beginning of something that would not stop until the entire surface had given way.

At half past six, he took the receiver to the alley. The fog was thicker than usual, white and suffocating, and the gaslights were already on, casting long shadows that reached toward him like hands that were reaching not to help but to pull him down.

He raised the receiver to his ear, and he spoke.

Clara, he said, and his voice was different from the voice he had spoken into the telephone for seven weeks. It was flatter, harder, emptied of everything. Clara, I love you. Clara, I miss you. Clara, I am waiting.

Across the wall, Dr. Voss heard him. He heard the change in Daniel's voice, the loss of something that could not be replaced. He paused the recording, made a note on his pad, and picked up the phone to call Dr. Grace Whitfield.

Grace was Daniel's supervisor. She was in her late fifties, sharp, and had been monitoring Daniel's case files without his knowledge for the past three weeks. She had noticed the gaps in his memory, the erratic behavior, the declining quality of his consultations, the way he had begun to stare at walls for extended periods, as though listening to something that was not there.

She had filed a report recommending that Daniel take a leave of absence. The report had been denied by the hospital's administration, who cited Daniel's value to the institution and his clean record and the fact that he was, technically, still in good standing.

Grace had not argued. She was a woman who had learned, over thirty years of hospital administration, that some battles were not worth fighting and that some victories were not worth having. But she had continued to monitor Daniel's case, quietly and discreetly and without his knowledge, because she was a psychiatrist and she cared about her patients, even the ones who did not know they needed saving.

When Voss called her, she came to the monitoring room immediately. She listened to the recording of Daniel's latest call. She listened to the flat, hard voice saying I love you Clara over and over and over, and she closed her eyes and she thought about the boy she had been once, before the hospital and the administration and the thirty years of learning that some truths were too dangerous to speak aloud, and she thought about the fact that Daniel was, in many ways, exactly what she had been, and that the hospital was, in many ways, exactly what she had become.

She opened her eyes. Tell me everything, she said to Voss.

And Voss told her. He told her about the program, about the auditory suggestion, about the six weeks of calibrated stimuli designed to test whether a subject could be made to believe he had initiated communication with a person he barely knew. He told her about the consent forms, signed during an episode of dissociation, about the ethics board, about the report that had been filed into a drawer and forgotten.

And Grace listened, and when he had finished, she said, We need to tell him.

Voss shook his head. If we tell him now, the data is compromised. The program is at Phase 3. If we interrupt now, six weeks of work is wasted.

Grace looked at him, and her eyes were old and tired and full of a compassion that was not romantic and not desperate and not hopeless, but which was, in its own way, a kind of fury.

Six weeks of work, she said. Six weeks of breaking a man who volunteered for a program during an episode of dissociation that he does not remember and that we allowed to happen on our watch. Six weeks of turning his mind against himself and calling it science.

She picked up her coat. I am going to tell him. If you want to stop me, you can try. But I think you will find that you do not want to.

She found Daniel in the alley at seven o'clock. He was standing at the mouth of the alley with the telephone receiver in his hand, his eyes closed, his face turned toward the fog, and he was speaking into the receiver in a voice that was flat and hard and emptied of everything.

Clara, he said. Clara, I love you. Clara, I miss you. Clara, I am waiting.

Grace did not interrupt him. She waited until he had finished, until the receiver had been hung up, until the alley was empty and the fog had swallowed everything. Then she stepped forward and said, Daniel.

He opened his eyes. He looked at her, and he saw, with a clarity that was both terrifying and liberating, that she was not Clara. She was Dr. Grace Whitfield, his supervisor, a woman in her late fifties with sharp eyes and a sharper mind and a reputation for being, in the words of one colleague, the most formidable psychiatrist in the state.

We need to talk, she said.

They sat in his room. She told him everything. She told him about the program, about the auditory suggestion, about the six weeks of calibrated stimuli designed to test whether a subject could be made to believe he had initiated communication with a person he barely knew. She told him about the consent forms, signed during an episode of dissociation. She told him about the hidden speaker in the wall. She told him about the recordings. She told him about Clara, who was real but who was not, in the way he had been led to believe, connected to the program.

The Clara you think you love, Grace said, her voice cold and clinical and more terrifying than any dramatic confrontation could ever be, may be a fabrication. The program was designed to create a focal point for your fabricated memories. A person to attach them to. A reason to believe that the communication was initiated by you rather than suggested to you. You may have constructed an entire relationship with a woman you met once at a gallery opening, and the relationship may exist entirely within your mind.

Daniel sat in his chair and listened to Grace's revelation in silence. He looked at the telephone on his desk, at the receiver that had carried his voice across the wall to a room where men in white coats had monitored his words and catalogued his responses and called it science. He looked at Grace, who was standing in his room with the truth in her hands and a face that was as hard and cold and clinical as the truth itself.

And then he said, How much of this is real?

Grace did not answer immediately. She considered the question carefully, the way a psychiatrist considers a patient's question, knowing that the answer is less important than the act of asking.

That, she said finally, is the question you will have to answer for yourself. I can tell you what I believe. I believe that your feelings for Clara are real, even if the object of those feelings is not. I believe that the gaps in your memory are real, even if their cause is not. I believe that the voice you hear in your head telling you to pick up the telephone and speak those words is real, even if its origin is not. What is real is what you experience. What is real is what you feel. The question is not whether the program created the experience. The question is whether the experience is less real because it was created.

Daniel sat in his chair and thought about Grace's words for a long time. The fog pressed against the window. The brick wall stood across the alley, dark and solid and absorbing. The telephone sat on his desk, black and heavy and silent.

Then he stood up. He walked to the desk. He picked up the receiver. He walked to the alley. He raised the receiver to his ear.

Daniel stood at the mouth of the alley, holding the phone, unsure whether he was about to make a call or whether the call was about to be made through him. The fog swallowed his silhouette. The brick wall absorbed his silence. The telephone receiver was warm in his hand, warm as flesh, warm as a living thing, and he did not know if he was holding it or if it was holding him.

He raised it to his ear. He did not speak. He did not need to. The voice was already there, in his head, saying the words he would say, the words he had always said, the words that were his and not his, the words that were real and not real, the words that were the only thing he had left that he could call his own.

Clara, the voice said. Clara, I love you. Clara, I miss you. Clara, I am waiting.

And Daniel, holding the receiver to his ear, standing in the fog in front of the brick wall, did not know if he was speaking or being spoken, if he was initiating or being initiated, if he was a man making a call or a call making a man, and he understood, finally, that the wall had never been between him and the world. It had always been within him. And it had taken a stranger across the wall to show him that there was no stranger. There was only the wall, and the fog, and the receiver, and the voice, and the silence that followed, which was not a silence at all but a voice so quiet that it had become indistinguishable from the sound of his own mind thinking thoughts that were not his.

He lowered the receiver. He did not hang it up. He held it in his hand, warm as flesh, warm as a living thing, and he stood in the alley and he listened to the silence, which was not silence but voice, and the voice was not voice but silence, and he did not know which was which and he did not care, because the knowing had stopped mattering months ago, perhaps years ago, perhaps before he had ever picked up a telephone in his life and spoken words that were not his words into a fog that had swallowed them and a wall that had absorbed them and a room across the wall where men in white coats had monitored them and called it science and called it progress and called it anything but what it was, which was the slow, careful, methodical dismantling of a man's sense of self, brick by brick, voice by voice, memory by memory, until nothing was left but the voice in his head saying I love you Clara over and over and over until the words lost all meaning and became nothing but sound, and the sound became nothing but silence, and the silence became nothing but the wall, and the wall became nothing but the space between his ears where the voice lived and the voice did not live and the question of whether it lived or did not live was the only question that mattered and the only question that would never be answered.

He stood there for a long time. Then he walked back to his room. He set the receiver on the desk. He sat down in his chair. He closed his eyes. He listened to the silence, which was not silence but voice, and the voice was not voice but silence, and he did not know which was which and he did not care.

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