Tuesday afternoon came too quickly and not quickly enough. I'd spent the past two days preparing for Tyler's first session the way a general might prepare for battle; meticulously, obsessively, with the growing certainty that no amount of preparation would actually be sufficient.
My office had been subtly modified. Nothing obvious, nothing that would make Tyler suspicious, but I'd made changes nonetheless. The lock on the door had been upgraded to something more substantial. I'd repositioned the furniture so my desk was closer to the window; not close enough to be obvious, but close enough that I could reach it in seconds if I needed to. There was a letter opener in the top drawer now, within easy reach. Not that it would do much against a Hyde, but it made me feel marginally less helpless.
I'd also started a new habit: leaving a sealed envelope in my apartment every morning, addressed to Sheriff Galpin. Inside was a letter outlining my suspicions about Marilyn Thornhill, carefully worded to sound like professional concern rather than insane ramblings about Hydes and resurrected Pilgrims. If I died, my landlord had instructions to deliver it. It wasn't much of a contingency plan, but it was something.
At three fifty-five, I heard footsteps on the stairs. Measured, hesitant, the walk of someone who wasn't sure they wanted to be here. I stood up, smoothed down my shirt, and opened the door before Tyler could knock.
He stood in the hallway looking younger than he had at the Weathervane, more uncertain. His hands were shoved in his jacket pockets, his shoulders hunched defensively. When he looked up at me, I could see the exhaustion in his eyes; the kind of tiredness that went bone-deep, that had nothing to do with physical sleep and everything to do with carrying too much for too long.
"Hi Tyler," I said, keeping my voice warm but not overly enthusiastic. "Come on in."
He entered slowly, his eyes scanning the space the way Wednesday's had, though with less analytical precision and more wariness. He was looking for threats, I realized. Or maybe looking for reasons to bolt. I couldn't blame him for either.
"You can sit wherever you're comfortable," I said, gesturing to both the couch and the chair. "Some people prefer the couch, some prefer the chair. There's no wrong choice."
Tyler chose the chair, which was interesting. The chair was more formal, more distant. The couch implied relaxation, vulnerability. Tyler wasn't ready for either of those things.
I settled into my own chair, angling it so we weren't directly facing each other—too confrontational—but weren't completely side-by-side either. I'd learned this from Valerie's training: positioning mattered more than people realized.
"So," I said. "First session. Usually I'd start by explaining how therapy works, confidentiality, what to expect. But you heard most of that at the Weathervane, and I don't want to waste time repeating myself unless you have questions."
"I don't," Tyler said quietly. His hands were gripped tightly in his lap, knuckles white.
"Okay. Then let's talk about what you want to get out of this. Your dad thinks you need therapy. Ms. Thornhill thinks you need therapy. But what do you think?"
Tyler was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working like he was chewing on words he wasn't sure he wanted to say. Finally: "I think something's wrong with me."
My heart clenched. He knew. On some level, he knew something was happening to him, something he couldn't explain or control. The question was how much he was aware of and how much was still subconscious.
"What makes you think that?" I asked carefully.
"I don't sleep right anymore. When I do sleep, I have these dreams that don't feel like dreams. They feel... real. Like memories, but they can't be memories because I don't remember doing the things I see." His voice was getting quieter, more strained. "And the anger. You mentioned it at the Weathervane. It's getting worse. Sometimes I feel like there's something inside me trying to get out, and I don't know if I can keep holding it back."
This was worse than I'd expected. He was experiencing early breakthrough symptoms; fragmented memories of partial transformations, the psychological pressure of the Hyde trying to surface. Laurel must have been pushing harder than I'd realized, accelerating the conditioning process.
"How long have you been feeling this way?" I asked.
"Since my mom died. Or maybe before? I don't know anymore. Everything's blurred together." Tyler looked up at me, and there was something desperate in his eyes. "Ms. Thornhill says it's normal. She says it's just grief, that I need to stop fighting it and let myself feel what I'm feeling. But it doesn't feel normal, Dr. Kinbott. It feels like I'm going crazy."
And there was Laurel's voice again, encouraging him to stop fighting, to let the Hyde surface, to accept the transformation as natural. She was good. She'd positioned herself as the understanding mentor who validated his feelings while secretly steering him toward destruction.
"Tyler, I want you to listen to me very carefully," I said, leaning forward slightly. "Grief is normal. Anger is normal. Having trouble sleeping after a traumatic loss is normal. But if you're experiencing things that feel like they're not part of your normal consciousness—memories that don't make sense, feelings that seem foreign to who you are—that's not grief. That's something else, and it's worth taking seriously."
"What else could it be?"
How did I answer that? I couldn't tell him the truth, that he was a Hyde being activated by a psychotic normie who wanted to use him as a weapon. But I also couldn't lie to him, not completely, not when he was sitting here asking for help in the most vulnerable way possible.
"Sometimes when people experience severe trauma, especially at a young age, it can affect them in ways that aren't immediately obvious," I said carefully. "The brain is incredibly adaptive, but sometimes it adapts in ways that feel foreign to our sense of self. Dissociation, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts; these can all be trauma responses."
"So I'm not crazy?"
"You're not crazy. You're struggling with something difficult, and your brain is trying to cope with it in the best way it knows how. That doesn't make you crazy. It makes you human."
Some of the tension left Tyler's shoulders. He wanted to believe me, I could see that. Wanted to believe there was an explanation for what he was experiencing that didn't mean he was fundamentally broken.
"Ms. Thornhill talks about my mom a lot," Tyler said after a moment. "About how she died, about what happened. She says I need to process it, need to really feel the anger about it instead of pushing it down."
"And how does that feel? When you talk to her about your mother?"
Tyler's expression shifted, became harder. "It feels... right. Like she's the only person who really gets it. My dad doesn't want to talk about Mom. He acts like if we just don't mention her, the pain will go away. But Ms. Thornhill understands. She knows what it's like to lose someone and have nobody care."
The isolation technique. Classic manipulation. Laurel was positioning herself as Tyler's only true confidant, creating a psychological dependence that would make him more susceptible to her commands. And she was doing it by weaponizing his legitimate grief and his father's emotional unavailability.
"It sounds like Ms. Thornhill is an important support for you," I said neutrally.
"She is. She's the only one who doesn't treat me like I'm fragile. The only one who doesn't look at me like I'm about to break."
"Do other people look at you that way?"
"My dad does. Kids at school do. They all know what happened to my mom. They all know an outcast killed her, and they look at me like I'm some kind of victim who needs to be handled carefully." His voice was rising, anger bleeding through. "But I'm not a victim. I'm—" He stopped abruptly, like he'd been about to say something he wasn't ready to share.
"You're what?" I prompted gently.
Tyler shook his head. "Nothing. It doesn't matter."
But it did matter. I could see it in the way his hands had clenched into fists, in the tension that had returned to his shoulders. He'd been about to reveal something important, something about how he saw himself in relation to what happened to his mother.
I made a calculated decision to push, just slightly. "Tyler, you said people look at you like you're a victim. But you don't feel like a victim. So what do you feel like?"
His jaw tightened. "Like I should have been able to stop it. Like if I'd been stronger, faster, and better; she'd still be alive."
"You were what, fourteen when your mother died?"
"Fifteen."
"Fifteen years old. And you think you should have been able to stop a supernatural creature from killing your mother?" I kept my voice gentle but let the absurdity of the statement hang in the air.
"I should have done something. I should have—" Tyler's voice cracked. "I was there. I saw it happen. And I froze. I just froze, and she died, and I didn't do anything."
Survivor's guilt. Profound, devastating survivor's guilt wrapped up with the trauma of witnessing his mother's murder. This was the wound Laurel was exploiting, the vulnerability she was using to shape him into a weapon. If Tyler believed he was weak, powerless, a failure, then the power of the Hyde would feel like redemption. Would feel like finally being strong enough to protect, to matter, to not freeze.
"Tyler," I said quietly. "You were a child witnessing something traumatic and violent. Freezing is a normal physiological response to overwhelming threat. It's not weakness. It's your nervous system trying to keep you alive."
"But it didn't keep my mom alive."
"No. And that's a terrible, unfair reality that you have to live with. But you surviving doesn't make you responsible for her death. The person—the creature—who killed her is responsible. Not you."
Tyler looked away, his throat working. "Ms. Thornhill says I shouldn't let myself off the hook so easily. She says accepting responsibility is part of healing."
I felt cold anger rise in my chest. Laurel was telling a traumatized fifteen-year-old to take responsibility for his mother's murder? That wasn't therapy. That was psychological torture designed to create the exact shame and rage that would make him vulnerable to her manipulation.
"Tyler, can I be very direct with you about something?"
He looked back at me, surprised by my tone. "Okay."
"Ms. Thornhill is not a therapist. She's a teacher who means well and is trying to support you, and I'm glad you have her in your life. But some of the advice she's giving you isn't just unhelpful; it's actively harmful. Telling a teenager to take responsibility for not preventing their parent's murder isn't healing. It's compounding trauma with guilt that shouldn't exist."
Tyler's expression became defensive. "She's just trying to help me be honest with myself."
"There's a difference between honesty and self-flagellation. Honest would be: 'I witnessed something terrible, I reacted the way most people would react, and I'm struggling to process it.' What you're doing—what she's encouraging you to do—is taking on responsibility for something that was never yours to control."
"You don't understand. You weren't there."
"You're right, I wasn't there. But I have been trained in trauma therapy, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that survivor's guilt is a normal response to loss, and the treatment for it is not to reinforce the guilty feelings. It's to help you separate what you're responsible for—your own actions—from what you're not responsible for, which is someone else choosing to commit murder."
Tyler was quiet, but I could see the conflict playing across his face. Part of him wanted to believe me. Part of him had been conditioned by Laurel to reject exactly this kind of reassurance.
"She says you'd try to make excuses for me," he said finally. "That therapists always want to absolve people of responsibility because it's easier than helping them grow."
There it was. Laurel had pre-programmed him to resist traditional therapeutic intervention. She'd framed therapy itself as a weakness, as something that would coddle him rather than help him become strong. It was brilliant and horrifying.
"Tyler, can I ask you something? When you're with Ms. Thornhill, when she's telling you to accept responsibility and feel your anger and stop making excuses, how do you feel afterward?"
He considered this. "Powerful. Like I matter. Like I'm not just some kid who watched his mom die."
"And when you're alone, after those conversations?"
His expression shifted. "Worse. More angry. More... out of control."
"That's important information. A supportive relationship should help you feel more regulated, more centered. If you're feeling more powerful in the moment but more dysregulated later, that's a red flag that something about the dynamic isn't healthy."
"Are you saying I shouldn't trust her?"
I had to be very careful here. If I pushed too hard against Laurel, Tyler would report it back to her, and I'd be dead within days. But if I didn't plant any seeds of doubt, I'd never be able to counter her influence.
"I'm saying that no one person should be your only source of support, and any relationship that makes you feel dependent on the other person's validation isn't a healthy relationship. That's true whether we're talking about Ms. Thornhill, your dad, or even me. You should have multiple people in your life who can offer different perspectives."
Tyler absorbed this slowly. "My dad doesn't offer perspectives. He just wants to pretend everything's fine."
"Then let's talk about your dad. You said he doesn't want to discuss your mother. How does that affect you?"
For the next twenty minutes, we talked about Sheriff Galpin; about Tyler's complicated feelings toward his father, about the silence that had grown between them, about Tyler's certainty that his father blamed him for not saving Francoise. It was safer territory than discussing Laurel, and it gave me insight into the family dynamics that were making Tyler so vulnerable.
What became clear was that Tyler felt completely isolated. His father was emotionally unavailable, his peers treated him like a tragedy waiting to happen, and the only person who seemed to really see him was Marilyn Thornhill. She'd created a perfect isolation chamber, and now she was the only voice Tyler heard.
"Tyler," I said as our session time wound down, "I want to give you something to think about between now and our next session."
"Okay."
"I want you to pay attention to how different people in your life make you feel. Not in the moment, but after. When you're alone and processing the interaction. Notice if you feel more settled or more agitated. More clear-headed or more confused. More like yourself or more like someone you don't recognize."
"Why?"
"Because the people who are good for us should help us feel more like ourselves, not less. And if someone is making you feel more fragmented, more out of control, more dependent on them, that's worth examining."
Tyler nodded slowly. "You want me to examine my relationship with Ms. Thornhill."
"I want you to examine all your relationships. Including the one with me. I'm not exempt from scrutiny." I stood up, signaling the session was ending. "But yes, Ms. Thornhill is an adult who's taken a special interest in you during a vulnerable time in your life. That doesn't make her motives automatically suspect, but it does make the relationship worth thinking critically about."
Tyler stood too, and for a moment he just looked at me with those exhausted, haunted eyes. "Dr. Kinbott, if something is wrong with me—if I'm dangerous—you'd tell me, right?"
The question hit me like a physical blow. He knew. On some instinctive level, he knew he was becoming something dangerous, and he was asking me to warn him, to save him from himself.
"If I thought you were an imminent danger to yourself or others, yes, I'd have to break confidentiality and get you immediate help," I said carefully. "But Tyler, having intrusive thoughts or anger issues doesn't make you dangerous. Acting on them does. And so far, from everything you've told me, you're working very hard not to act on those impulses."
"What if I can't keep working that hard? What if one day I just... snap?"
"That's why you're here. That's why we're doing this. We're building skills and awareness so that you don't snap. So that you can recognize when you're getting close to your limits and take steps to de-escalate before anything happens."
He didn't look entirely convinced, but he nodded. "Same time next week?"
"Same time next week. And Tyler? If you're having a crisis before then—if you feel like you're losing control—you can call me. Day or night. That's what the emergency number on my card is for."
After he left, I stood at the window watching him walk down the street toward the Weathervane. His shoulders were still hunched, his hands still buried in his pockets. He looked small and lost and completely unaware that he was being systematically destroyed by someone who pretended to care about him.
I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Sheriff Galpin: "First session with Tyler completed. He's struggling significantly with grief and survivor's guilt. Would like to schedule a session with you alone to discuss family dynamics and how to better support him at home."
The response came quickly: "Would that help him?"
"Yes," I typed back. "I think it would."
"Then let's do it. When?"
"Thursday afternoon? 3 PM?"
"I'll be there."
I set my phone down and pulled out my notebook, starting to document the session while it was still fresh. But my hands were shaking, making my handwriting nearly illegible.
Tyler was worse off than I'd expected. The conditioning was further along, the Hyde closer to the surface. And Laurel had been brilliant in her manipulation; she'd positioned herself as the only person who truly understood him while simultaneously making him question everyone else's motives.
But I'd also found openings. Tyler's question about feeling more like himself versus less like himself; that was a seed of critical thinking I could nurture. His awareness that something was wrong with him could be redirected from self-blame into genuine self-protection. And his willingness to examine his relationships, even reluctantly, meant he wasn't completely under Laurel's control yet.
Yet.
I was still writing when my phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number made my stomach drop: "Dr. Kinbott, just checking in! How did the session with Tyler go? I hope he was open with you. He can be such a closed-off kid, but he needs someone professional to talk to. Coffee tomorrow? I'd love to hear your thoughts (within confidentiality limits of course!). - Marilyn"
There it was. Laurel checking in, making sure I was playing my role properly, fishing for information. The cheerful tone, the casual coffee invitation, the emoji; all of it was a mask over the question she was really asking: Are you a threat I need to eliminate yet?
I stared at the message for a long moment, my heart pounding. This was the game. Every interaction with Laurel was a test, every response scrutinized for signs that I knew too much. I had to be perfectly normal, perfectly professional, perfectly oblivious.
I typed back: "Session went well, Tyler is engaging with the process. I'd love to grab coffee and discuss general support strategies (nothing confidential of course). Weathervane tomorrow at 10?"
"Perfect! See you then! ☕😊"
I set my phone down and looked around my office, at the upgraded lock, at the repositioned furniture, at the letter opener in my drawer. All my pathetic preparations for surviving a monster.
But the real monster wasn't the Hyde. It was the woman who'd just sent me a cheerful text with coffee emojis, the woman who was slowly, methodically destroying a grieving teenager while pretending to help him.
And tomorrow I'd sit across from her and smile and pretend I didn't know exactly what she was.
I pulled out a fresh page in my notebook and started a new entry:
Meeting with Laurel Gates (Marilyn Thornhill) - Wednesday 10 AM
Goals:
- Appear helpful but not too helpful
- Share nothing substantial about Tyler's sessions
- Deflect any probing questions
- DO NOT reveal knowledge of her true identity
- DO NOT let her sense fear
- DO NOT accept any food or drink she brings me
Additional notes:
- Tyler is aware something is wrong with him but doesn't understand what
- He's more psychologically fragmented than expected
- Laurel's conditioning is accelerating. Timeline may be shorter than anticipated
- Need to work faster to build counter-narrative
- Wednesday starts at Nevermore in 4 days
- First murder likely within 10 days of semester start
- Running out of time
I closed the notebook and locked it in my desk drawer. Outside my window, the sun was setting over Jericho, painting everything in shades of red and gold. It would have been beautiful if I didn't know what was coming.