I raised my camera-I had the strap around my neck, so even if I dropped it, it wouldn’t fall into the clutch of the hay-and looked through the viewfinder. Eight stones. I lowered it and there were seven again. Looked through the viewfinder and saw eight. The second time I lowered the camera, it stayed eight. But that wasn’t enough, and I knew it. I knew what I had to do.

Forcing myself to go down to that ring of stones was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The sound of the hay brushing against the cuffs of my pants was like a voice-low, harsh, protesting. Warning me to keep away. The air began to taste diseased. Full of cancer and things that are maybe even worse, germs that don’t exist in our world. My skin began to thrum, and I had an idea-truth is, I still have this idea-that if I stepped between two of those stones and into the circle, my flesh would liquefy and go dripping off my bones. I could hear the wind that sometimes blows out of there, turning in its own private cyclone. And I knew it was coming. The thing with the helmet-head.

[He gestures again to the scraps in the wastebasket.]

It was coming, and if I saw it this close up, it would drive me mad. I’d end my life inside that circle, taking pictures that would show nothing but clouds of gray. But something drove me onward. And when I got there, I…

[N. stands up and walks slowly around the couch in a deliberate circle. His steps-both grave and prancing, like the steps of a child playing ring-a-rosie-are somehow awful. As he circles, he reaches out to touch stones I cannot see. One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight. Because eight keeps things straight. Then he stops and looks at me. I have had patients in crisis-many-but I have never seen such a haunted stare. I see horror, but not insanity; I see clarity rather than confusion. It must all be a delusion, of course, but there can be no doubt that he understands it completely.

[I say, “When you got there, you touched them.”]

Yes, I touched them, one after the other. And I can’t say I felt the world grow safer-more solid, more there-with every stone I touched, because that wouldn’t be true. It was every two stones. Just the even numbers, do you see? That turning darkness began to recede with each pair, and by the time I got to eight, it was gone. The hay inside the stones was yellow and dead, but the darkness was gone. And somewhere-far off-I heard a bird sing.

I stepped back. The sun was fully up by then, and the ghost-river over the real one had entirely disappeared. The stones looked like stones again. Eight granite outcroppings in a field, not even a circle, unless you worked to imagine one. And I felt myself divide. One part of my mind knew the whole thing was just a product of my imagination, and that my imagination had some kind of disease. The other part knew it was all true. That part even understood why things had gotten better for awhile.

It’s the solstice, do you see? You see the same patterns repeated all over the world-not just at Stonehenge, but in South America and Africa, even the Arctic! You see it in the American midwest-my daughter even saw it, and she knows nothing about this! Crop circles, she said! It is a calendar-Stonehenge and all the others, marking not just days and months but times of greater and lesser danger.

That split in my mind was tearing me apart. Is tearing me apart. I’ve been out there a dozen more times since that day, and on the twenty-first-the day of the appointment with you I had to cancel, do you remember?

[I tell him I do, of course I do.]

I spent that whole day in Ackerman’s Field, watching and counting. Because the twenty-first was the summer solstice. The day of highest danger. Just as the winter solstice in December is the day when the danger is lowest. It was last year, it will be again this year, it has been every year since the beginning of time. And in the months ahead-until fall, at least-I’ve got my work cut out for me. The twenty-first…I can’t tell you how awful it was out there. The way that eighth stone kept shimmering out of existence. How hard it was to concentrate it back into the world. The way the darkness would gather and recede…gather and recede…like the tide. Once I dozed off and when I looked up there was an inhuman eye-a hideous three-lobed eye-looking back at me. I screamed, but I didn’t run. Because the world was depending on me. Depending on me and not even knowing it. Instead of running, I raised my camera and looked through the viewfinder. Eight stones. No eye. But after that I stayed awake.

Finally the circle steadied, and I knew I could go. At least for that day. By then the sun was setting again, as it had on the first evening; a ball of fire sitting on the horizon, turning the Androscoggin into a bleeding snake.

And Doc-whether it’s real or just a delusion, the work is just as hard. And the responsibility! I’m so tired. Talk about having the weight of the world on your shoulders…

[He’s back on the couch again. He is a big man, but now he looks small and shriveled. Then he smiles.]

At least I’ll get a break come winter. If I make it that far. And you know what? I think we’ve finished, you and I. As they used to say on the radio, “This concludes today’s program.” Although…who knows? You may see me again. Or at least hear from me.

[I tell him on the contrary, we have a lot more work to do. I tell him he is carrying a weight; an invisible eight-hundred-pound gorilla on his back, and that together we can persuade it to climb down. I say we can do it, but it will take time. I say all these things, and I write him two prescriptions, but in my heart I fear that he means it; he’s done. He takes the prescriptions, but he’s done. Perhaps only with me; perhaps with life itself.]

Thank you, Doc. For everything. For listening. And those?

[He points to the table beside the couch, with its careful arrangement.]

I wouldn’t move them, if I were you.

[I give him an appointment card, and he tucks it carefully away in his pocket. And when he pats the pocket with his hand to make sure it’s safe, I think perhaps I am wrong, and I will actually see him on July 5th. I have been wrong before. I have come to like N., and I don’t want him to step into that ring of stones for good. It only exists in his mind, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.]

[Final Session Ends]

4. Dr. Bonsaint’s Manuscript (Fragmentary)

July 5, 2007

I called his home phone number when I saw the obituary. Got C., the daughter who goes to school here in Maine. She was remarkably composed, saying that in her heart she was not surprised. She told me she was the first to arrive at N.’s Portland home (her summer job is in Camden, not that far distant), but I could hear others in the house. That’s good. The family exists for many reasons, but its most basic function may be to draw together when a member dies, and that is particularly important when the death is violent and unexpected-murder or suicide.

She knew who I was. Talked freely. Yes, it was suicide. His car. The garage. Towels laid along the bottoms of the doors, and I am sure an even number of them. Ten or twenty; both good numbers, according to N. Thirty not so good, but do people-especially men living on their own-have as many as thirty towels in their homes? I’m pretty sure they don’t. I know I don’t.

There will be an inquest, she said. They will find drugs-the very ones I prescribed, I have no doubt-in his system, but probably not in lethal amounts. Not that it matters, I suppose; N. is just as dead, no matter what the cause.

She asked me if I would come to the funeral. I was touched. To the point of tears, in fact. I said I would, if the family would have me. Sounding surprised, she said of course they would…why not?