Tentative Title: Knight Has Fallen
Dean and Dee Knight, twins born on July 3, 1995, have experienced a traumatic, depressing childhood and now find themselves in residential care. When they were five, their parents divorced and their mother left them with their father who suffered from bipolar disorder. He remarried two years later to a cold-hearted, gold digger. At his assistance, she agrees to adopt the twins. When the twins turn eleven, he commits suicide unexpectedly, and his wife receives a large life insurance payment. Not long after he dies, she remarries.
Her new husband abuses Dee. Dee tells no one because the husband says that he will kill Dean if she ever tells anyone. When she is 12, Dee tries to kill herself. What follows are a variety of medications and ECT treatments for Dee until the husband is finally discovered. After Dee tries suicide a second time, she and Dean are moved to Hollis Home Residential Facility. Both are heavily medicated for bipolar disorder and depression. Dee continues with her ECT treatments, and she loses a lot of the bad memories. However, before she takes the treatments, she does tell Dean her secret: that she submitted to her stepfather because he said he would kill Dean. This, of course, creates tremendous guilt in Dean.
Dean writes horror stories and has actually gotten a story published for which he was paid. He frequently dreams horrific nightmares which he converts to stories. These nightmares are symbols of the horrors of his childhood.
One night, Roger Wulf, one of the boys in Dean’s bunkhouse slips off at night. Because Dean has seen Dee flirting with Roger, he suspects that they are sneaking out to meet secretly. Since he now feels as if it is his duty to protect his sister, he goes after them. The next thing Dean knows, he is lying flat on a large flat rock that rises out of the swollen river. Roger Wulf is on the ledge above him and he rescues Dean. Dean does not have any idea where Dee is, nor can he even remember if he saw her or not. He just knows that his own clothes are soaking wet.
As the novel opens, Dean is in his state-mandated therapy sessions with Dr. Schlitz. It’s been two weeks since Dee disappeared. The doctor tries to get him to talk about his life and the disappearance of Dee. Dean refuses to talk about his life and refuses to acknowledge that Dee might be dead. He also balks at the doctor’s theory that he might have been trying to commit suicide. The doctor suggests that they increase his medication, but this thought enrages Dean because he feels as if he is being drugged so that he can be controlled. The doctor, on the other hand, tells Dean that he wants him to simply admit to and accept that his life has been horrific so that his healing can begin. Dean flees the psychiatrist’s office and goes to a cave that he and his sister know about. The cave, which has been flooded because of heavy seasonal rains, is open again. Dean gets a horrible feeling that something is in the cave, so he goes in. Sure enough he finds Dee’s body.
Dean goes back to his bunkhouse and meets Roger Wulf who asks him if he told Dr. Schlitz anything about the night Dee disappeared. He begs Dean not to implicate him because he is about to get his level, and once he gets his level, he can go on home visits. He also makes some kind of cryptic remark about how both of them could get into serious trouble. Dean does not remember what happened that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment