Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills Ch. 08

*

After a weekend of recovering from the strain of Alistair's funeral, Monday morning saw the Hawkins family along with Gavin and of course minus Brendan in the Sydney CBD. Faye was now far more composed than she had been at her husband's funeral and spoke sharply to her son.

"Cornelius, you make it very clear you don't want to be here, but these group therapy sessions are designed to help us to recover and come to terms with what happened to us not least losing your Dad, so lose the attitude and give it a try," said Faye.

"I think it's fucked, why do we need to go and see a fucking psychiatrist together?" growled Cornelius, whose surly expression and body language showed his displeasure at the situation, his choice to wear a Ku Klux Klan tee-shirt plus filthy tracksuit pants and trainers another clear passive aggressive response to this. "Brendan is the crazy one, he needs the psychiatrist not us."

The day only got worse for Cornelius when they went into the office and he was horrified to find out that there was not a psychiatrist, but three psychiatrists. "Hi, I'm Doctor Melanie Ridley," said the first psychiatrist, a tall and attractive woman with long blonde hair who greeted them at reception and escorted them into a meeting room where chairs were set up for the group therapy session. She then introduced them to two male psychiatrists. "These are my colleagues, Doctor John Whittaker and Doctor Fritz Wagner."

The three doctors shook hands with the Hawkins family, with the exception of Cornelius who sneeringly refused the gesture. He took an instant dislike to Doctor Melanie Ridley although she was hot she looked like the sort of woman who went through life thinking her shit didn't stink. He disliked the second psychiatrist Doctor Whittaker even more, thinking that the tall, skinny grey-haired man close to age 60 looked like the sort of person who existed to stop Cornelius having fun in life.

But most of all Cornelius distrusted the third psychiatrist Fritz Wagner. With his Austrian name and accent, balding head and goatee beard with slim-framed glasses, the 40-something Doctor Wagner somewhat reminded Cornelius of Sigmund Freud and he did not want this guy psychoanalyzing him that was for sure.

"Please have a seat," said Doctor Ridley, indicating six chairs in a row which Faye, Erica, Cornelius, Danielle and Gavin sat down in, the three psychiatrists in three chairs opposite them. Cornelius to further display his displeasure at the situation leaned back in his chair, his feet up on the table and his arms behind his head.

"First of all, our condolences for your loss," said Doctor Ridley to the family. "But we hope that we can help you work through your experiences and move on with your future. We're confident that talking together as a group will be more beneficial than individual counselling."

"Quack," blurted out Cornelius. "Quack, quack, quack."

"Cornelius!" warned Faye.

Doctor Whittaker looked at Cornelius. "Young man, you seem to have some doubts about how effective these counselling sessions will be," he said. "Would you like to explain your last comments?"

Cornelius shrugged. "You're a qualified medical doctor. You and the other two are shrinks, you get paid a shit-load of money. How about you do your jobs and work it out for yourselves?"

"Cornelius, be polite they're here to help us," said Erica, an annoyed expression on her pretty face.

Cornelius shrugged his shoulders, sighed deeply, rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling, making it even clearer that he didn't want to be there.

Doctor Ridley looked at her case notes and the empty seat next to Faye Hawkins. "We had hoped your other son Brendan would be here today, I hope he is okay?"

Faye shook her head. "Brendan refuses to leave the house, so you'll have to excuse his absence."

"Is this since the events two weeks ago?" Melanie Ridley asked.

"Nah, he's been like that for years," said Cornelius. "He's scared of everything -- monsters, ghosts, demons, UFOs -- you name it, Brendan's scared of it. Anyway, he wasn't on the trip with us, so he's not relevant."

"It says in the case notes that when you fled your house you left him behind," said Doctor Whittaker.

"Yeah, well he won't even come out of the small granny flat into the main house, so what were we supposed to do?" Danielle asked defensively. "He would have been a liability to us."

"Was Brendan having the same delusions as the rest of you when you left that morning?" Melanie Ridley queried.

"No, he's always like that, since he got hooked on drugs," said Erica.

"I see," said Doctor Wagner, he like Doctor Whittaker and Doctor Ridley making a note with their pens.

"Brendan will never leave the house, so there's no chance of him ever coming to one of these sessions," said Faye. "But it's lucky that you put out that extra chair, I need somewhere to place this."

Faye reached into the shoulder bag she was carrying and to the interest of the psychiatrists extricated the white urn that held Alistair's ashes which she set down on the vacant chair. "Alistair was part of this, I think it's important that he be here with us if not in person."

"Yes," said Doctor Whittaker, he and his colleagues again making notes.

"So where do we start?" Gavin asked.

"How about the start?" suggested Doctor Wagner with his strong Austrian accent. "From reading the case notes I understand the problems began for you Gavin began with certain delusions about your older sister Lisa being naked in front of you at 3 am." He stroked his goatee beard and adjusted his glasses and looked directly at Gavin full of Freudian fascination, his pen at the ready. "Perhaps it would be of assistance if you could describe your relationship with your sister, and why you think Lisa being in a state of complete nudity was the first delusion to afflict you?"

Gavin stammering his awkward reply was the first of the counselling session and interview which went on for about two hours.

"Well thank you for coming in, I hope you found our session helpful," said Doctor Melanie Ridley. "Please make a follow up session with our receptionist."

"Thank you Doctor," said Faye Hawkins, she and the others going on their way while Doctor Ridley closed the door to have a conference and compare notes with her colleagues, the young woman shaking her head as she sat down.

"What do you think?" Doctor Ridley asked.

Doctor Whittaker looked at his notes. "I think we can all agree that what we observed was a case of Folie a deux."

His colleagues nodded. "Yes, the madness of two," agreed Doctor Ridley. She looked at her notes. "Although I never thought I'd see a case of that so soon after specializing in psychiatry, especially one so weird."

"It's not all that common," said Doctor Wagner. "More usually it involves two, three people at most not six. Plus the involvement of the daughter-in-law and the daughter's boyfriend is odd, if it was just the husband, wife, son and daughter it would be more believable."

"They all underwent drug tests when they got back," said Doctor Whittaker. "Well, everyone with the obvious exception of Mr. Hawkins. There were small traces of that dangerous new party drug that's been causing havoc around Australia in their bloodstream."

Melanie Ridley shook her head. "I can't imagine the daughter, the daughter's boyfriend and the mother willingly taking drugs. Obviously we can't ask the father. As for the son and daughter-in-law..."

"Danielle Hawkins knows more than she's letting on," said Doctor Wagner.

Doctor Whittaker nodded in agreement. "Yes, she had that smug attitude, looked at all of us directly in the eye when she gave her smart arse answers or lied through her teeth. But as for Cornelius, I think the answers lie with him."

"Do you think he might have drugged the others as a practical joke and it all got out of hand?" suggested Doctor Ridley.

Doctor Whittaker shrugged. "I wouldn't mind betting that was the case. I wouldn't put it past him, in fact I wouldn't put anything past that man. Proving it is another matter."

"Cornelius Hawkins had just about the worst attitude of any patient I have ever met anywhere, anytime," said Doctor Wagner. "Did you notice the way he looked us directly in the eye, as though trying to intimidate us?"

His colleagues nodded in affirmation. "He was a strange case, either very defensive, being passive-aggressive or making inappropriate jokes," said Doctor Ridley.

"Like when we were discussing the neighbor across the road who died the day before all this started and they thought he had come back as a zombie," said Doctor Whittaker. He referred to his notes. "Henry Cole, apparently there had been a lot of tension between him and the Hawkins family beforehand. Cornelius got really annoyed when we were talking about how he died, saying it was not relevant and was trying to change the subject. It was like he was hiding something."

"On the other hand, he was making jokes about the death of that overweight man Nick Watson in the lake in Canberra following the altercation in the restaurant," said Doctor Wagner. "Like saying he was surprised to see a man of that size going into the restaurant as they didn't serve plankton. Or laughing about how it took a week to find his body because fat floats."

"On that subject, what do you make of the group's reaction when discussing that?" Doctor Ridley asked.

Doctor Whittaker gave a thin smile. "It was like they were actors in a play, all rehearsed from a script they had learned together. The overweight man confronted them after leaving the restaurant, got into a fist fight with the father, Mr. Hawkins won the fight and when they left the scene Watson was still alive and must have fallen into the lake on his own afterwards and drowned. Nick Watson is dead, Alistair Hawkins is dead, no witnesses, no security footage, nobody can prove anything."

Doctor Wagner looked at his notes on the case. "The beating that Nick Watson was given would have to have been carried out by more than one person from the injuries recorded in the post mortem, but again proving who did what is impossible. It's like forensics on the clothes they were wearing, it indicated that both Cornelius and Danielle Hawkins fired guns at some stage, but both denied it, saying Alistair was the only one to have done so and they must have picked up the residue from handling the guns afterwards. The mother, sister and sister's boyfriend back them up, nobody can prove anything."

"Talking about the Nick Watson case, how do you think they worked out he really was a pedophile?" asked Doctor Ridley.

"One would think that Erica Hawkins' claims that Nick Watson had followed her to the toilet were part of her delusions and paranoia," said Doctor Whittaker. "But on that occasion she was correct, he did follow her into the female toilets then simply made out he had made a mistake and gone through the wrong door, independent witnesses at the restaurant confirmed it. When his mother reported him missing things started to come up, such as reports of him pulling similar tricks in the past, going into female toilets after young girls had gone in there, then pretending he had gone into the wrong toilet. When the police searched Watson's room looking for some clue where he might be they found no end of disturbing and illegal material that led to a network of child molesters and predators, so somehow the Hawkins family have managed to bring down a pedophile ring. Not that they deserve any credit. It was all just coincidence."

"Cornelius Hawkins seemed pretty amused by the boy scouts getting traumatized by the shooting incident in the Blue Mountains that Saturday night," said Doctor Wagner. "And by that lawyer being decapitated in a car accident after Alistair Hawkins chased him in Wollongong, Cornelius was joking about him 'really losing his head'"

"It might be unprofessional of me to suggest this without proper medical diagnosis so forgive me," said Doctor Whittaker. "But if proper evaluations were performed on Cornelius Hawkins, I think one word would appear on the report. Sociopath."

His colleagues nodded in agreement. "I noticed tension between the brother and sister," said Doctor Ridley. "At one time when Cornelius was spinning one of his tall tales Erica looked at us and said, 'You can't believe anything my brother says, he's completely crazy.'"

Doctor Whittaker gave a sardonic laugh. "She isn't wrong. Quite frankly, I think all of Cornelius Hawkins' comments here today are a crock of crap."

Again his colleagues nodded in agreement. "One thing that Cornelius was pretty defensive about was the circumstances of how his father died," said Doctor Ridley. "He gave a very vague explanation about how he 'might have called his father a name' and that was why his father was chasing him through Hyde Park until he exploded in rage."

"Ah yes, the spontaneous human combustion thing," said Doctor Wagner. "Whatever happened was no doubt more than Cornelius calling his Dad a name although from what I can gather without having met the man, he seemed to have a dark and troubled personality and a pretty bad temper even before all this. But can anyone get angry enough to literally explode in flames?"

"This morning I would have said no, but having just met Cornelius Hawkins I would say yes," said Doctor Whittaker. "But spontaneous human combustion is impossible, well it should be impossible."

"I thought most of these cases are people who fell asleep smoking or caught their clothes on a pilot light or heater and burned in an unusual way," said Doctor Ridley. "Mostly elderly and infirm people in poor health who lived alone."

"Most cases yes," said Doctor Wagner. "But there's some rare cases where it has happened in front of witnesses and with younger people. I did a bit of research and there was one case in the 1950s where a girl at a high school dance caught on fire in front of many witnesses and was consumed by the flames. Or a case in the UK in the 1960s where three young men burst into flames simultaneously in different parts of the country, all the same distance apart in a triangular pattern. In either case, no open flames, no accelerants, nothing to have sparked a fire. Very strange indeed."

"Alistair Hawkins' death was witnessed by the entire family and quite a number of independent witnesses in Hyde Park that day," said Doctor Whittaker. "All gave the exact same story about what they saw, the father chasing the son before flames started to appear around his body and then appeared to explode from within, consuming him in blue flames like a Bunsen burner with incredible heat, but leaving his clothes largely unburnt."

Doctor Ridley looked at the chair where Alistair's ashes in the urn had sat during the counselling session. "I think Faye Hawkins has a serious case of denial about her husband's death. Did you notice the way that she alternated between speaking about Mr. Hawkins either in past tense or present tense as though he was still alive, without knowing she was doing it? Plus bringing his ashes to the session today? It's understandable given the unusual and gruesome way he died, especially given she witnessed the whole thing at the media attention since, but long-term I worry she might slip into long term denial."

Doctor Wagner agreed. "Mrs. Hawkins was also very flippant about some things. Like she was very casual about saying how her late husband hated black people, homosexuals and the disabled like she was talking about foods her husband liked or didn't like. And she clearly believed that Alistair opening fire on the boy scouts with a shotgun was the right thing today, as at the time they were convinced they were being stalked by cannibal pygmies. I don't believe there's anything sinister in her behavior but it is something worth keeping an eye on, clearly she's having trouble moving on."

"I think the daughter is also having a bit of a hard time working out what was real and what wasn't real," said Doctor Whittaker. "Erica reminded me a bit of Alice in Wonderland. She's definitely the most high-strung of the group, and in some ways believes that the black panther in the back yard really was a panther and not the neighbors' cat, that she really did see the Titanic in Sydney Harbor, that a giant chicken was mocking them at the restaurant in Nelson Bay and that demons and clowns were stalking her when she used the lavatory. You can also see she's still terrified of her late father even though he's passed on, and she had that habit of putting her fingers in her mouth when she's nervous such as when we were discussing her father. But with time, I think Erica can move on from the experience."

"Young Gavin seemed the most adjusted of the group, which is probably understandable given he doesn't live with the others," said Doctor Wagner. "He was able to interpret events better than the rest. For example, he was able to hypothesize that the reason he saw a burglar on the first day was his fear of intruders in the house in his subconscious, and the giant frog he chased out of the house was him seeing his sister's plush toy frog and imagining it coming to life. He was able to understand better than the others that some of the things that the family saw when on the run were ordinary things that they believed to be paranormal. Like the UFOs the family believed chasing them were planes and helicopters, or the hippopotamus walking the werewolves at Bondi Beach was an overweight woman walking two German Shepherds. Or the zombie people from the 1800s and early 1900s they saw at Katoomba were simply busloads of tourists on day trips."

Doctor Wagner then adjusted his glasses, looked at his notes and said, "I think Gavin could benefit from some one-on-one therapy sessions with me, given the delusions involved his sister and that he took Lisa's panties to his girlfriend's house. I think there are some unresolved issues in the dynamic between the Baxter siblings that Gavin needs to work through, but he probably would not feel comfortable discussing them in front of a group, and especially in front of his girlfriend."

Doctor Whittaker laughed. "You're a true Freudian Fritz. And what do you think Sigmund Freud would think of our friend Cornelius Hawkins?"

"I doubt that Freud himself would get anywhere with Cornelius, and nor would Carl Jung either," said Doctor Wagner. "For one, he doesn't want to change and he seems pretty stubborn, so therapy is a waste of time for him."

"It's the same with that wife of his Danielle," said Doctor Whittaker. "You could see that she was having fun playing games with us, trying to out-psych us and beat us at our own game. She's a cold fish, I doubt we could get through to her, she'd just fight back with mind games and enjoy herself doing it."

"We had a name for girls like Danielle Hawkins when I went to high school," said Doctor Ridley. "It was quite simply a bitch."

Her male colleagues laughed. "I couldn't have said it better myself," said Doctor Wagner. He turned to Doctor Whittaker and Doctor Ridley. "So John, Melanie, do you think that there's any point in them continuing with group therapy?"

Doctor Whittaker shook his head. "No, Cornelius and Danielle would negate any benefits for the others, and it's such a dysfunctional family and poor group dynamic that I couldn't see it working. Faye, Erica and Gavin might benefit from individual counselling and will improve with time, but Danielle and especially Cornelius, I don't think so."

The others conferred their agreements and went into the nice Sydney sunshine to get some lunch, all three psychiatrists somewhat relieved when the receptionist informed them that Faye Hawkins had failed to book another session, and they had gone on their way.

It was in bustling George Street that the three psychiatrists heard a commotion and lots of yelling, and turned to see Cornelius Hawkins getting into a fight with a media crew. Before heading home the Hawkins family had gone to a café for lunch, with Gavin's sister Lisa meeting them on her lunch break.