Secrets Amoung The Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

herself a minute to regain her composure. "If you're ready to proceed with the hypnosis, you may loosen your tie or take off your jacket, whatever you need to get comfortable. The control that reclines the chair is located on the right side."
    He leaned back stiffly but made no move to do anything further. She hadn't really expected him to. This wasn't going to be easy.
    And maybe not safe.

 
     
    Chapter 4
     
    "All right," she began, "I want you to concentrate on the muscles in your feet. Right now they're tense, but you can consciously relax them as I tell you to. Begin now to relax the muscles in your feet. Feel them start to loosen. Now the muscles in your legs."
    Working her way patiently and carefully, she led him through the process.
    "Your vision is becoming unfocused. It's hard to keep your eyes open. You may close them at any time you wish."
    His lids drooped slowly...a good sign. If he were doing it deliberately, the action would have been faster, more definite.
    "The chair on which you're sitting is unusually soft, like a cloud. Feel that cloud wrap around you, warm and comforting. You're floating on that cloud. Relax and enjoy the sensation of floating." He wasn't stiff any longer. Obviously he desperately wanted this to work. If he'd chosen to resist her, she suspected he could have easily done so.
    "Just relax and float as I count backward from twenty to one. By the time I reach one , you'll be in a state of total relaxation. You will still be able to hear my voice and to answer me, but other noises will fade into the background. They won't register or disturb you."
    She began to count, and he responded well. "One," she concluded. "You are now in a hypnotic state and can respond easily to questions I will ask. Eliot, please raise your right index finger."
    The slow, almost hesitant lifting of his finger told her he had at least achieved a light trance. It was all she'd hoped for this first time. His will to succeed seemed the only thing that sufficiently overcame his need to be in control.
    "Did you come by my house last night?" she asked immediately.
    "No," he answered, his voice slow and quiet.
    "I'd like to speak to the one who came by my house last night."
    Silence. She dropped the subject and changed direction.
    "Did you dream about me last night?"
    "Yes."
    "You're dreaming that dream again. Describe to me what's going on and how it makes you feel."
    He did. In an emotionless voice he described the actions of a man watching her, coming up to her room, putting his hands around her throat and squeezing the life from her. He reported the dream in the third person, always using the pronoun he, never I , as though repeating a gruesome tale he'd heard or read. " He climbed through a window." " He wrapped his hands around your throat." The Eliot persona had not been there.
    "How did the man who choked me feel in your dream?"
    "He felt excited and happy. When he takes someone else's life, he feels that life going inside him, making him more alive and more powerful." Eliot's detached recitation of those feelings made her cringe in spite of her training and experience. Even accustomed as she was to unexpected personality developments, she found it hard to reconcile such dissolute emotions with the man who'd come into her office.
    "Who did you see choke me?" she asked, surprised to find her voice sounded hoarse.
    Eliot hesitated, frowned. "I saw myself."
    "What is your name?"
    "Eliot Kane."
    "What does the man who choked me look like?" Frequently a multiple personality saw himself as different in appearance.
    "Tall," Eliot said. "Brown hair, gray suit. He looks like me."
    Leanne bit her lip and forced herself to remain professional and detached. The situation did not look good for Eliot.
    "I'd like to speak to the one who came to my house last night."
    Again silence. But that did not rule out the possibility of another identity. The personalities frequently chose their own times to reveal themselves.
    "Have you