Hold Back the Dark by Eileen Carr

everything down. It focuses me and I can think. It’s like a relief.”
    They were getting somewhere important. “How long have you felt this way?”
    A wind gust shook the panes of glass in the window and a tree branch scraped the outside of the building. “I don’t know.” Taylor wrapped the army coat tighter around herself, losing her thin frame in its ratty bulk.
    “Have you always felt like this?” Aimee pressed.
    “No. Not always. There were times when everything was okay. I could think just fine.” Taylor leaned forward as if she was as interested in hearing her own answers as Aimee was. “Then sometimes I’d feel like this, like I couldn’t possibly make sense of stuff.”
    “When were the times when things were okay? When did they stop?” Maybe Taylor’s behavior change coincided with when the “okay” times stopped.
    “I don’t know. They just did. It’s not all the time, anyway. It’s just something that I need to do, you know, to get focused,” Taylor said with her eyes cast down.
    Aimee’s heart clenched. She could see how hard it was for Taylor to talk about her self-mutilation. The shame that came layered on top of the pain of the behavior itself was another hurdle they were going to have to jump together. “It’s okay, Taylor. No one’s judging you for this.”
    Taylor’s head shot up and her eyes blazed. “Are you fucking kidding me? Everybody judges me for this. Everybody.”
    “Who judges you, Taylor?” Aimee sat back in her chair, glad to see the fire in Taylor’s eyes. Turning the anger outward instead of inward was a huge step.
    “My mother. My father. Other kids at school.” She ticked the list off on her fingers with their chewed cuticles and black fingernail polish. “I’m a freaking cliché. The emo girl who cuts herself. I hate it. I hate me. I hate everything.”
    Then she had begun to sob, and she hadn’t spoken again for the rest of the session.
    Now Aimee thought about the blank look on Taylor’s face as she had rocked herself. What was going on inside? What horrors was she protecting herself against? What things that she didn’t want to feel were lurking inside there with her?
    She placed a new set of papers into the photocopier. In the back of the file were some drawings Taylor had done during the three months they’d been seeing each other. Aimee unfolded the top one, a self-portrait. Taylor had drawn herself as a small figure in the lower corner of the paper. The figure’s face was stark white limned in black. The body of the figure was black with a red circle in the center of it. But that wasn’t what Aimee found herself staring at. It was the repeating pattern of trisected rectangles and circles across the top of the page.
    She picked up her cell phone and dialed.
     

    “Wolf here,” Josh said.
    “Detective Wolf, this is Aimee Gannon.”
    Damn, he liked the way her voice sounded even over the static of a cell phone. “What’s up, doc?”
    “I’ve found something in my files on Taylor Dawkin that I think you should see.”
    “That’s great. What is it?” He gave Elise a thumbs-up sign.
    “You know the pattern that was on the walls at the Dawkins’? It’s in a drawing she did for me months ago, too.”
    That was interesting, but hardly conclusive of anything. “Is there anything else in the drawing?”
    “It’s a self-portrait. There’s just that pattern and Taylor very small underneath it. Detective Wolf, I need to see her. This is important; I’m sure of it. But the psychologist at the facility doesn’t want me to see her.”
    “Do you think it might get her talking?” Anything that might break through to her would help.
    She hesitated. “I don’t know, but I think it would be a first step in that direction.”
    For crying out loud, could a shrink ever give a definitive answer? Still, a step was a step. And it wouldn’t exactly bother him to spend more time with Dr. Gannon. “Tell me again the name of the place they stashed