Year's End: 14 Tales of Holiday Horror by J. Alan Hartman Page B

session.”
    “One session? How can that be?”
    “We’ve found that the longer you spend trying to reach your desires, the less chance there is of accomplishing them.”
    I weighed what he said and finally decided to go through with it. What could I lose? And I could sure use some happiness in my life. Walters gave me earphones, and as I lay back in the leather chair, strange sounds blew into my brain. They reminded me of a high school orchestra where all the instruments were out of tune. And yet, I felt compelled to listen. Emotions appeared and disappeared, and then re-appeared—anger, sadness, fury. Finally, a calmness swept over me. I removed the earphones and sat up.
    “How do you feel, Mr. Lambert?”
    “Bit of a headache.”
    “Most of our clients get that. It’s to do with our conscious mind knowing for the first time what it truly wants and being anxious to get started. It will go away once you’ve attained your resolutions. There are three you will accomplish tonight.
    “But I don’t even know what they are.”
    He patted my shoulder. “Your mind does. That’s all that matters. Of course, as a precautionary measure, they’re recorded in the audio-graph.”
    He took my address so that he could bill me and I left. I looked at my watch and saw that it was a quarter to ten. I needed to go meet Angela, yet when I started driving, I seemed to be travelling in the opposite direction. My hands were automatically making wrong turns. I tried to force them to steer in the other direction, but they wouldn’t budge.
    It bothered me at first, but then I realized it must be from the audio-graph session. I wasn’t too worried, as Walters had told me that my mind knew what it was doing.
    A short time later, I parked the car in front of my accountant’s house—Sydney Roberts. I didn’t know why. Perhaps subconsciously, I had wanted to spend time with him. After all, he had no one in his life—a recent divorce, no friends. I had always felt sorry for him.
    However, last week, I’d discovered that he’d kept a hundred dollars I’d given him for his cousin’s MS charity. I thought he might have just forgotten about it, but he claimed he’d handed it to the donations chairman. I’d decided to have it out with him in the future, but not tonight—New Year’s Eve and all.
    Sydney, a short balding man with large eyeglasses, greeted me with a wide grin. He seemed to be happy for the company. We had a drink in his kitchen and talked.
    “I really appreciate you coming over tonight, Randy. It does get lonely now that the wife’s gone.”
    Suddenly, my mouth began moving of its own accord. “You never fucking handed my money to the charity, did you?”
    What was I saying? I didn’t mean to talk about that.
    He flushed red. “Yeah, of course, I did.”
    I tried to close my mouth, but my lips seemed to have a mind of their own. “Don’t lie, scumbag. I hired you when you had nothing and this is how you treat me?”
    He looked at me, pain in his eyes. “You’re right. I’m sorry. And this is no excuse, but my aunt had developed dementia and I needed every scrap of money I could find for home care. I wanted to tell you. I…I…just didn’t know how.”
    “It’s okay, don’t worry about it.”
    I sighed, relieved. I felt normal again. I stood to go, but my body began moving toward one of his drawers. My hands whipped out a steak knife and sliced through his chest.
    Sydney looked down at his chest in disbelief. “What did you…?”
    I sliced through his chest again.
    Sydney let out a tormented howl and fell to the ground, blood filling his shirt.
    I stared at the horror I had just caused, feeling faint. But then adrenaline kicked in and I raced to my car .
    What had I done? Sure, he had kept my money, but he didn’t deserve to die. Suddenly, my hand started the car and I began driving.
    Then it hit me. Had this been one of the resolutions locked away in my subconscious? To murder Sydney because he stole a