Persona

A Fractured Mind. A Buried Past. A Killer Truth.

When psychiatrist Carter Lane inherits his best friend’s patients after a shocking suicide, he finds himself face-to-face with Arthur Frampton—a man with dissociative identity disorder whose presence dredges up memories of a decades-old massacre. But when Lane’s own wife is murdered in a chillingly similar fashion, suspicion turns inward. The police think Lane is the killer. He thinks the answer lies in Frampton’s fractured psyche.

To clear his name, Lane must navigate a web of false identities, buried trauma, and long-held grudges. But as his own past begins to unravel, Lane discovers a truth more terrifying than he ever imagined—one that could destroy him before justice is done.

Get your copy of Persona by William J. Cook and dive into a relentless psychological thriller that explores the darkest corners of identity—and how the past never truly dies.

Excerpt from the book

I’m having a lucid dream—the recurring one—aware that I’m sleeping soundly in my bedroom while my dreaming consciousness wanders about the house. Now I’m standing in front of a calendar that occupies my living room wall, each day printed in brilliant colors. As I watch, the pages slip off, one by one, and fall to the floor. September, August, July, June, disintegrate to ash. Then the pages begin to fall more and more rapidly. Whole years crumble to dust and flash before my eyes. 2020, 2011, 2000, 1995. The calendar stops at May 1993.

I step outside into the starless night. I’m walking down a dark, deserted street between rows of six- and seven-foot-tall Douglas firs—this year’s crop of Christmas trees—on one side of the road, and rows of grapevines on the other. There’s a house ahead of me. The lights are on, and the front door is open. A scream from inside pierces the silence. Then the whining roar of a machine. I run into a room where blood is splashed on the walls and pools on the floor. As always, the bodies are lying there. A man in blood-soaked clothing looms over them with a chainsaw stuttering in his hands. He’s howling like a wild animal. I can make out one word. “Frankie!” he shrieks. “Frankie! Come to Daddy!” I’m nauseous at the coppery smell of the blood and the acrid exhaust of the chainsaw.

Then all sound stops. He’s turned off the saw and collapses on the floor. A few moments later, he stands back up, and his blood-streaked face registers shock at the carnage around him. He reaches for the phone on the wall and calls the police. I slip by him and sneak upstairs to the guest bedroom. In a corner of the closet, behind the racks of hanging clothes, a little boy hunkers down, eyes wide in terror, shaking convulsively. And as always, I’m faced with the same choice: save the child or save myself?

“Stay there, Frankie,” I whisper. “Don’t leave the closet.” I turn and bolt downstairs and out of the house. Behind me, I hear police sirens approaching like a swarm of angry hornets.

It’s my alarm. I awake safe, in my own bed, the T-shirt I’m wearing soaked with perspiration. My knees wobble when I stand up, and my heart is pounding. After I use the bathroom, I stagger to the kitchen and start the coffee pot.

***

“Who am I?” asks my six-year-old son from his car seat in back. It’s a favorite memory of mine from two-and-a-half decades ago, and I recall it almost every morning on my drive to work. Mark never grew tired of this game, and we played it on the way to Addison Lord Academy, a private elementary school with a price tag that challenged the tuition of the local university.

“Are you a famous psychiatrist?” was the standard question I’d ask.

“Yes, Daddy,” he’d say with a smirk.

“Are you Carl Jung?” He was always Carl Jung. I think he liked the way the name felt in his mouth and rolled off his tongue ever since I first taught him to say it. Of course, he also liked the fact that nobody in his class at school had ever heard of the man.