A Vision of Fire

The girl stopped moving and stood shaking. Suddenly her hands whipped into the air, throwing Caitlin off balance, forcing her to break her fall against the four-poster bed. Maanik’s hands remained in front of her, her left hand clutching at the air and her right hand curled, the forefinger and thumb pinched tightly together. Her arms were jerking and spasming but the hands stayed front and center. Caitlin grasped Maanik’s shoulders and gently moved her from side to side to break her rigid stance. The spasms decreased slightly but she was still screaming in silence.

“That’s good, Maanik,” Caitlin said. “Mrs. Pawar, what is your daughter’s dominant hand?”

“Her left,” she said, tears streaming from her eyes.

“She writes with her left hand?” Caitlin said, not sure the woman had understood.

“Yes, yes!”

That’s not what I would have guessed, Caitlin thought. So why was Maanik pinching her right hand? Was she trying to pull at something?

No… that isn’t it.

Caitlin decided to try something. If a split personality were forming here, new or once-latent personalities sometimes switched the hand they wrote with.

“Mrs. Pawar, can you please get me paper and a pen?”

The woman was frozen as though she were in a trance of her own, staring at Caitlin but seemingly uncomprehending.

“Hansa!” Caitlin overenunciated for effect without volume. “Pen and paper please!”

Mrs. Pawar stood clumsily, wiping her face, and moved to Maanik’s desk to search through the mess there. Soon she held out a pad of turquoise paper and a black marker. Caitlin took the marker and instructed the woman to stand in front of her daughter with the paper. Caitlin then moved behind Maanik so that she could support the girl’s torso with her side. She reached around her and inserted the marker into Maanik’s right hand, uncurling the forefinger and thumb and pinching them together on the marker. She beckoned for Mrs. Pawar to hold the pad of paper under the nib. Jack London began to whine from behind the curtains.

Maanik touched the marker to the paper, had a moment of physical recognition, then scrawled across its surface, long swooping lines, then short jerks, more long lines. She then released the marker and her full weight dropped in Caitlin’s arms. Caitlin struggled to brace herself as she helped the girl’s body gently to the floor.

With one arm under Maanik’s shoulders, she reached up for the pad of paper and inspected it. The drawing looked like a steep cliff with wavy lines around its base like water. Caitlin turned the pad around and now the lines meant nothing, just chaos. She kept turning it but nothing stood out. When she returned it to its original position, Caitlin was no longer sure there was a cliff and water.

She handed the pad back to Mrs. Pawar and after helping Maanik to the rug, she stood. Maanik was finally, thankfully still but Caitlin realized she herself was trembling. She placed her hands on her knees and took a long, deep breath before straightening.

“Is it over?” Mrs. Pawar asked in a ragged voice.

“I don’t know,” Caitlin said quietly, her head still spinning. “May I have a glass of water?”

Jack London slunk out from behind the curtains. Dragging his belly on the ground, he slithered toward his young mistress. Suddenly the beagle lurched forward, seizing Maanik’s right sleeve and pulling with all of his strength. Maanik’s body jerked, her jaw opened, and with her eyes closed, she began to scream. This time there was sound.

Caitlin grabbed Jack London, tried to wedge a finger in his jaw to get him to release Maanik’s sleeve.

“What is happening now?” Mrs. Pawar cried. “Maanik!”

“Mrs. Pawar, I need your permission to put Maanik under deep hypnosis.”

The girl’s mother seemed entranced. Caitlin didn’t know if she’d even heard her.

“Mrs. Pawar!”

The woman blinked, looked at Caitlin. “Yes?”

“Your daughter is in crisis. She must be stabilized.”

“I understand. What… what about Dr. Deshpande’s medications?”

“I said stabilize her, not bludgeon her. I want to employ depth hypnosis, Mrs. Pawar.”

“I see. I–I will ask my husband.”

“No time!” Caitlin insisted.

The woman nodded. “I will just send him a text now.” With unsteady hands she pulled her cell phone from a pocket in her sari and typed.

Caitlin finally managed to separate the beagle’s jaws from Maanik’s sleeve. He didn’t bite her but he did bark. “Is there somewhere you can put him?”

“His crate,” Mrs. Pawar said as she stopped texting and took the dog. He struggled to get out of her hands as they left the room.

Caitlin crouched on the floor next to Maanik. The girl’s screams were relentless, each one weighted with deep sobs. Her hands were motioning in a peculiar way — not scratching, not writing, more as if she were pulling things off shelves frantically. Somehow in the breaths between cries, she was murmuring something, and Caitlin leaned close to catch it. It sounded like “null zee.”