The tingling shot down her arms and into her fingertips. Sweat beaded on her face. Her concentration started to slip. The pressure became too much to bear.
The notebook fell to the table.
“Shit.”
She shoved it away. She had been so close to controlling it, moving it, manipulating it with her mind. Each session with the box gave her better control over her telekinesis. If she could stay here a few more hours, maybe a half a day, she’d be able to turn her ability on and off like a faucet. She finally had a shut-off valve.
Her cell phone rang again.
Will was probably frantic, thinking Professor Pritchard had come to harass her about the missing box. But she didn’t care. All she cared about was right in this basement. Paula and the box. That was her world. A twelve-by-twelve cement prison. And she wasn’t coming out any time soon. She wasn’t done yet. She needed more time.
She looked at her watch. Two-thirty in the morning. Time for another round. She turned on the box. The red light glowed. The clicking and whirring of the machine soothed her now, rather than threatened, because she knew she was one step closer to having the control she craved.
She heard a muffled pounding upstairs and ignored it.
“Paula, are you here?”
Peter.
“Hey, here’s her cell phone.” Will spoke now. Their voices filtered down through the floorboards.
“Paula!”
The box whirred and clicked, whirred and clicked. Faster than before. Louder. Her focus was drawn to it like an addict to her drug of choice. She stared at the red light on top of the box.
It understood. It knew her greatest fears, her sorrows. Only the box. No one else cared like it did.
This time she heard a ringing in her head. A slight fuzzy pain in the back of her skull. A new sensation. The whirring of the box synchronized with the throbbing in her head. The pain escalated rapidly.
I am pain, it said.
I am your pain.
Feel me. Let me live.
She clung to the edge of the table. The pain grew more intense than she could have imagined. She thought about her brother and Will on the other side of the door. They would find a way inside soon. The experiment would be over, and she would still be a freak. She didn’t yet have absolute control over her power. She needed more time, she needed the box. They couldn’t take it away from her. They couldn’t.
And if they did...?
She had to end it.
If she couldn’t fix the strange power inside her, then she needed it to be over. If she couldn’t have the box, she couldn’t stand living this way one more minute. She needed to shut off her feelings forever—the pain, the isolation.
“I think she might be down here.” The words were faint. She barely even registered them.
“Open the door, Paula. Can you hear me? Open the door!”
But Paula didn’t care. She picked up her pen and raised it above her wrist. To stab the sharp point into her flesh would be a merciful relief. Yes, there would be pain, but no more feeling. She was done with hurting.
With a white-knuckled grip she clutched the pen. The pale flesh of her arm stretched out in front of her. The whirring of the machine intensified as if it was egging her on. Wanting her to find release in one quick stab of the pen.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The crack of wood breaking startled her out of her trance. The door flew off its hinges with an ear-splitting bang.
“Paula, don’t!”
Will took the stairs two at a time.
Surprised, she let the pen fall from her grasp. It clattered on the cement. She scrambled on the floor, chasing after it.
Will grabbed her by the waist. “Stop it, Paula! Stop it!”
“What are you doing?” Her brother’s voice cracked. “What are you trying to do?”
She fought against Will, snarling, reaching for the pen. “It’s my life. Mine. You have no right to stop me. No right!”
“Smash the box, Peter. Now. Do it!”
Paula screeched, bucking against Will’s iron grip. “Don’t!”
Peter snatched the box and threw it against the brick foundation, breaking it into a mess of plastic and wires.
Paula screamed. She tried to bite Will. He let her go. She backed away from him into a corner and huddled there, weeping.
“Why did you stop me?” Her tears fell thick and heavy. “Why didn’t you let me do it?”
Will crouched beside her, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. His gentleness was more than she could bear. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Paula.”
“Yes, yes I do. I want to die. Why won’t you just let me?” In the harsh glare of the single bulb she could see her brother standing behind Will. He looked at her with her father’s eyes. Those eyes she missed so terribly. “Peter...I miss them. I miss them so. Why did they have to die?” Her voice was small and quiet.
Peter came forward, reaching out for her. “I don’t know. But they loved you. And you’ll see them again, I promise.”
She grabbed her brother’s hand as if it was a lifeline. He pulled her up and hugged her tight.
“I want them back, Peter.” She buried her face in his shoulder and wept.
“I know you do.” He patted her back gently. “I want them back, too.”
The tears came harder now, but something felt different this time. This time, her brother understood and shared her sorrow. This time, she wasn’t alone.
***
Paula sat at her kitchen table with Will and Peter, nursing a cup of coffee. Her head hurt, her eyes were sticky, and she felt drained.
“What were you doing down there with the box?” Will pressed her. “Why would you risk it? What possible reason do you have for exposing yourself to that thing?”
Paula looked to her brother. She found an equal amount of confusion and concern in his eyes. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
She wanted to tell them why she’d locked herself in the basement with a box she knew was dangerous. But she knew Peter wouldn’t believe her, and Will? She didn’t want to lose the bond that was forming between them, the friendship that had grown over the last few days. “I thought if we had more information about the box, we could figure out what Pritchard was up to.”
“Wait,” Peter said, “you mean this was caused by that box? That thing I smashed against the wall? How is that possible?”
“We’re not sure.” Paula still felt numb. She had difficulty believing the woman in the basement was her: tormented, aggressive, suicidal. “But there are others who’ve killed themselves, and we think Professor Pritchard is the one behind it all.” She rubbed her forehead, remembering the pain, remembering the relentless desire to end her life and her worries. “I don’t know what happened to me down there.”
“It was the box. Not you.” Will added another spoonful of sugar to his mug. “The way you’ve been feeling...all those days after the first time you tried the box...it wasn’t you.” He looked up at her. “You should never have risked yourself like that.”
“Wait,” Peter said, “back up. Your academic advisor? Why would he be involved in killing people? What kind of man are you working for?” Exhaustion was etched into his face. Even after several cups of coffee, he had hollows under his eyes.
“It was an experiment to detect and record auras.” Paula stirred her coffee. “That’s all. But Pritchard must have found out something else. This box, the one I had downstairs, it wasn’t on the list.”
“What do you mean, ‘it wasn’t on the list’?” Peter’s brow wrinkled.
“We keep a list for the study...the boxes are all numbered and assigned to different individuals,” Paula said. “But the box I had, and a few others, they weren’t on the list. We don’t know where they came from.”
“You think this Professor Pritchard altered these boxes somehow?” Peter asked.
“Yes.” Will took his coffee mug to the sink. “To cause people to
harm themselves.”
Paula’s brother poured more coffee into his mug. “But why?”
“We think it has to do with money.” Paula grabbed the empty pot to make some more. Each cup brought her closer to normal. “We think his aim was to try certain settings, see if he could alter people’s behavior. It’s never been about auras. That was his cover story for the whole project.”
“But how could a box make someone commit suicide? It doesn’t make any sense.” Peter needed to take a step outside of the reality he knew to accept the truth, but he couldn’t seem to do it.
“You saw me down there.” As she reached for the coffee beans in the cupboard, a chill ran down her back as she remembered. “The box...it alters your mind. Your brainwaves? Chemical levels? I’m not sure. But it has a control over you.”
“Does that mean it still does?” The worry was plain in her brother’s voice.
Paula looked across the kitchen at Will who’d returned to the table.
“We don’t know.” Will ran his hand through his wild hair. “Paula’s brain might be permanently altered by her exposure to the box. We don’t know for sure. But we’re going to find out.”
“We are?” Paula, although she knew the black box ordeal wasn’t over, was surprised to hear the determination in Will’s voice.
“We can’t let him get away with it.” Will’s eyes shone with a strength she wished she possessed. “I can’t pretend you’re fine and go back to the way things were.”
Under the intensity of his gaze her stomach lurched, and she looked away. “But I feel all right now.”
“Could be you’ll be fine. You aren’t exposing yourself to the box any longer. But what if that isn’t true? What if something has been permanently damaged?”
“So are your saying she might not get better?” Peter gripped his coffee mug so tightly, Paula thought he might break it.
She secretly hoped the black box had altered her brain permanently, but her brother and Will didn’t need to know that. “What are we going to do? Waltz into Pritchard’s office and demand that he tell us what’s going on? Demand he stop the study?”
“Why not?” Will said. “He’s been given free reign with his experiment. It’s time somebody put a stop to it.”
She thought about Lark lying in her hospital bed with months of physical therapy ahead of her. Then, she thought of Craig, Sam, and Bianca. All three of them had done nothing to deserve what had happened to them.
She’d walked into this with open eyes, but everyone else had unknowingly exposed themselves to something dangerous. Will’s determination gave her courage. “You’re right. Let’s do this.”
“What about going to the police?” Peter asked. “If Pritchard has killed these people, who knows what he might do when you confront him.”
“What would the police do if we told them?” Paula knew it would be difficult to convince her brother. He believed in doing things the ‘right way’ at all times. To go around the system and act independently rubbed him the wrong way. “All of the deaths are considered to be suicides, there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing. There aren’t any records of the boxes, remember?” She carried the fresh pot of coffee to the table and hoped her brother would listen to reason. “If we walked into a police station talking about auras and brainwaves and little black boxes, they’d write us off as lunatics. Professor Pritchard would get away with it.”
“She’s right.” Will pushed the argument further. “There are only two things that would hurt Pritchard: losing his funding or losing his position in the department. Maybe Professor Glick or Professor Raiman might be willing to listen to what we have to say.”
“But not until we have some solid proof.” Paula thought back to one of her meetings with the professor. “I’ve been to Pritchard’s office. I know where he keeps the boxes. At least, I know where he stashed one of them. We should look there first for evidence. The boxes, notes, anything we can use.” She looked straight at Will. “Did you get that copy of the computer files from Larry?”
“Right here.” He patted the pocket of his plaid shirt. “Even if Pritchard suspected we were working together on this, it wouldn’t matter if they ran over the hard drive with a Mac truck. We have the data from all the dead subjects.”
“Good.” Hope grew inside her. They could do this, they could pull it off. “That’s just the beginning. We need another altered box. Then, we take it to Larry and have him compare it to a normal box.”
Will picked up on her thinking, “Then maybe we can find out what’s different about them. Why the altered boxes can harm people.”
“So, what, you guys are going to be the Mulder and Scully of Blackridge?” Peter had a worried look on his face. “You almost killed yourself down there, Paula. I don’t know if you can trust yourself to take this on right now. What about your head injury? You’re not as strong as you think you are. I want you evaluated by someone.”
“Evaluated for what?” Anger bloomed to life. The old Peter was back. Rigid, demanding Peter.
“Depression? Suicidal tendencies? I don’t know.” Her brother pushed away his full mug of coffee. “What if it happens again? What if you decide to go through with it next time? I can’t just let my baby sister go running off on some spy mission—”
“It’s not a spy mission—” Why did he always have to run her life, her decisions? Why couldn’t he trust her once in a while?
“—And then find out you got hurt. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, Paula. I just couldn’t. You need to be taking care of yourself. Let someone else handle this.”
The anger that had been boiling under the surface dissipated. She could recognize he was responding as a worried and concerned brother, not as a demanding parent. He didn’t want to tell her what to do, but it was the only way he knew how to show his feelings.
“Peter,” she gripped his hand reassuringly, “there is no one else to handle this.”
Her brother took a deep breath, looked from her to Will, and then let it out slowly.
“I have to do this.” Her eyes searched her brother’s for understanding.
Peter pressed his lips together. “Then promise me, Will, that you won’t let her out of your sight.”
“You’ve got my word,” Will said.
“Can I ask one more thing?” Peter stretched his hands out across the table.
“What?” Paula held her breath, waiting for one last diatribe.
“Will you let me say a prayer for you?” Peter gripped Paula’s hand.
The warmth and comfort from his touch was very welcome—as if she were coming home after a long journey. “Of course you can.” Years of arguments and heartache were forgotten with his simple gesture.
All three formed a circle of hands around the table.
“Lord, keep my sister and Will safe. Watch over them, guide them, and lead them to the answers they are looking for. We thank You for all the blessings You’ve brought our way today. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”
Paula’s heart swelled at the words. For the first time in many years, she felt hope.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
During Paula’s first meeting with Professor Pritchard in his office, he had put Craig’s box in a cabinet. A locked cabinet behind his desk. At the time, she’d thought nothing of it, but now she knew that cabinet might hold some of the answers they were looking for.
However, they weren’t expecting Minerva Caldwell to be in the office on a Saturday morning. In fact, they weren’t expecting anyone to be in the building at all.
Will had decided it would be safer for Paula wait around the corner while he talked with the secretary. Just in case the professor had warned Ms. Caldwell about her. Paula was reluctant but remembered the promise Will had made to her brother. She didn’t want her stubbornness to be the reason he broke it.
Ms. Caldwell wore a Halloween-themed sweater—a witch riding her broomstick across the moon. How appropriate.
When Will approached her desk, she lo
oked up. “Was Dr. Pritchard expecting you? I didn’t have anything on my schedule.” She paged through her day planner.
Will hooked his thumbs in his pants pockets. “It was a last-minute thing. I ran into him yesterday—”
“You were in D.C. on Friday?”
Paula held her breath.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t realize students were helping with fundraising now.” Ms. Caldwell closed her day planner and set her pencil atop it.
“Fundraising? Um, yes, he wanted some of his students there to show the faces behind the research.” Will rocked back on his heels. “You know, a little human connection goes a long way.”
Minerva Caldwell gave a grim smile. “Wish they could be a bit more civil over the phone. I mean, they’re funded by our tax dollars, you know.”
“Yes, you’d think they’d learn a little common decency.”
“Well, I guess Dr. Pritchard wouldn’t mind too much if I let you wait in his office,” Ms. Caldwell glanced at the door, and then back at Will. “We were supposed to go over some important correspondence later today. He was worried about the extra hours, but he should know by now that I don’t mind.”
“I’ll bet he really appreciates everything you do for him, Ms. Caldwell.”
The aging secretary reddened and waved her hand at him. “Oh, I don’t know about that. He’s such a workaholic. The rest of the staff around here don’t understand how hard he works at keeping this department up and running. The dean would have cut funding a long time ago if Dr. Pritchard hadn’t pled his case about the importance of the work he’s doing.”
“Is that so?”
“The dean said our department was an anachronism! Can you believe that?”
“How ignorant.”
Ms. Caldwell nodded, egged on by his support. “This new funding came just in time. Last summer, things were looking pretty bad for most of the department.”
Ms. Caldwell got up from her desk and unlocked the door to the professor’s office. “If you wouldn’t mind, could you turn up the heat in there for me? Also, he really likes having a fresh pot of coffee when he arrives.” She looked at her watch. “Darn it. I need to go make some copies downstairs before Dr. Pritchard gets here. Would you excuse me?”
The Little Black Box Page 16