F Paul Wilson - Novel 05

by Mirage (v2. 1)

  Julie closed her eyes and spoke through her teeth. "I prefer dealing with a truth to living with a lie. Can I make it any clearer than that?"

  "Maybe you could deal with it. But what about Samantha? How do you think she would have reacted? You know your sister. Imagine what the truth might have done.to her. . . ."

  "It might have given her some insight," Julie said, her eyes open again. "And me too. I've always analyzed everything to death—from math problems to relationships. Now I know why. Sam never analyzed anything. She emoted to every decision. But at least she could have understood what was behind that and maybe done something about it. Before it was too goddamn late."

  Eathan pushed the journal away. He took a deep breath, and sighed.

  "Yes. Or maybe it would have prompted her to be a little more efficient in her next suicide attempt."

  "We never had a chance at normal lives, did we?" Julie said softly. "It's not fair."

  "No, it's not fair. And, frankly, none of this has been very fair to me, either. I could have lived out my days quite happily not knowing any of this. Instead, I've been saddled with the knowledge of what my own brother did to my daughters, and then watching the effects of his experiment play out over the years in their lives. You dealt with it relatively well. But your sister always teetered on the edge of disaster."

  "But why did you keep it hidden?"

  "I certainly wasn't going to allow any of it to be published! Good Lord, the two of you would be tabloid freaks and Nathan would be portrayed as a monster."

  "He was a monster, dammit."

  "I thought so too, at first. But no man is a monster in his own mind. And as I read and reread those journals I became convinced that Nathan had no thought of harming you two. He seemed convinced, on paper at least, that the benefits far outweighed the risks. And I think the experiment succeeded far beyond his wildest expectations. His neurohormone treatment worked too well."

  Julie stared at him. "I don't believe you! This man—and I can't see that it matters whether or not he was your twin— uses your children as guinea pigs, and you don't hate him? He knew they were your children and not his, that's why he treated us as disposable. You should loathe him, Eathan! You should want to scour the earth of every trace of his existence and never speak his name again!"

  Now Eathan looked away, at the dull flow of daybreak at the windows of his bedroom.

  "Perhaps. And I did feel that way at first, but when I considered his intentions—"

  "I don't give a damn about his intentions. It's what he did that matters. And what he did to us was monstrous."

  Eathan nodded mutely as he stared down at the journal in his hands.

  "You must accept that I was only trying to protect you," he said. "Ever since you were teenagers you've accused me of being overprotective. Now you know why. Not just because I knew you were my own flesh and blood, but because I knew Nathan had played with your brains. So I was always on guard for some sign of instability, some warning of impending decompensation. With you there was never a worry. You had trouble with relationships but—"

  "I have no relationships," Julie said.

  "Perhaps, but you were functioning. Better than that—you were thriving, making great strides in your field. And Sam-antha ... Samantha had such wonderful potential, but she always seemed to be teetering on the edge of self-destruction. i made it my mission in life to see to it that she lived long enough to achieve her potential."

  "Well, you failed."

  Julie immediately regretted the blunt words. Eathan was an innocent bystander. She saw that now. He hadn't asked for any of this. He'd thought he'd inherited a pair of nieces and then learned they were his daughters. And then learned that his own brother had tampered with their wiring. He'd been dealt a rotten hand and had played it as best he could. He didn't deserve her anger. If the positions were reversed, she couldn't say she'd have played it differently.

  He looked up. "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying she's got very little chance of coming back. And it's Nathan's fault."

  "How can you say that?"

  "Because it's true. He sent her into the world with one leg and one arm, both on the same side. She had no balance. The -slightest breeze tipped her over. It could be there's no single incident that sent her into her own black hole."

  "But what about you?"

  Julie stared at Eathan. And she held that stare for a few terrible seconds before saying, quietly, "Maybe I'm next."

  She shuddered at the picture of herself immobile in a bed, her thoughts melting away like ice cream in the sun, until nothing was left.

  One hell of a scary thought, but Julie wasn't going to turn from it. It was a real possibility.

  "I can't believe that. You're too sane."

  "Am I? Who knows what will come along and fry my unbalanced circuits? Because that's what I now think is wrong with Sam. Her damage didn't come from outside. It came from within. She ran into something she couldn't handle, and the imbalance your brother created left her without the tools to handle it."

  Eathan nibbed his palms against his face. "Damn."

  "Or..."

  Eathan looked at her. "Or what?"

  "Or there's something else inside her that she couldn't deal with."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "I'm not sure," Julie said. She rose to her feet and began walking about the room, aimlessly. "But I get the feeling Sam is both hiding something and drawing me deeper. Most of these memories feel like diversions, decoys to keep me from tapping into some other memory. Something she's scared of... something she's repressed."

  "Repressed? What would Samantha have to repress?"

  "I don't know," Julie said, turning toward him and fixing him with her stare. She'd been ready to mention the possibility of her starting the fire, but something else had just occurred to her. "Maybe neurohortnone injections are just the tip of the abuse iceberg. Maybe dear old Nathan had his way with us in other areas as well."

  She wanted to spark some rage in him, see him shout and scream and hurl things against the wall.

  But Eathan only sat there, staring at her.

  "Listen here, young lady. Nathan may have lost perspective in the area of his research, but I knew my brother—he was no ... no pedophile!"

  Julie felt the poison rising in her. She didn't repress it. Instead, she drew it up and let it fly.

  "With all due respect, Eathan, you didn't know shit about your brother." She spat the words. "How do you know he wasn't fucking with our little bodies while he was fucking with our little minds?"

  "Don't talk like that. Nathan may have been many things, but he wasn't a sexual pervert."

  "Damn it!" she cried. "Your brother was capable of anything! Why not that? And why aren't you angry about any of this, damn you!"

  Eathan looked away again. "Maybe—because I've lived with it for almost a quarter of a century." His voice sounded almost dead. "It took me years, but I'm past the anger. I've been more concerned with dealing with the consequences. And don't forget that he risked his life to save you two from the fire, even though he knew you weren't really his children. That was heroic. I haven't forgotten that. And don't forget this: His sacrifice gave me the chance to raise my two daughters."

  The fire ... in the shock and rage after reading the journals, Julie had almost forgotten about that. Maybe no man was all bad, but Nathan Gordon had come pretty damn close.

  "One more thing," she said, "then I'll leave you alone. How did you get a copy of the coroner's file?"

  "It wasn't easy. But I was a practicing physician in the area, remember? I had connections."

  "Why would you want such a grisly thing?"

  "I look through it every so often."

  "But why?"

  Eathan's eyes blazed as they bored into her, but his voice was wintry. "To make sure he's really dead. Every time Samantha would do something self-destructive I'd pull it out and look at those pictures just to assure myself that the ma
n who altered my daughters' brains—my daughters, not his— wasn't out there somewhere laughing at me."

  Julie nodded mutely. "I—I have to think about all this."

  "We'll talk some more," Eathan said, but Julie hurried from the room.

  And as she walked down the long hallway, she thought, Eathan isn't nearly as "past the anger" as he thinks.

  That lightened her own load. Something comforting about sharing the rage.

  But she was too wound up to devote much thought to that now. She'd had an epiphany of sorts back in Eathan's room.

  Sam's subconscious was protecting a blocked memory all right—a memory of abuse. It was as mundane and tawdry as that.

  Julie thought of that kraken; something more horrible lay buried deep in Sam's mind. A memory so awful that Sam's subconscious had walled it off, relieving her consciousness of ever having to deal with it again.

  But what if Sam had made an end run around her subconscious, the way her memories seemed to be doing now? What if, through her art, she'd accessed the memory and then ...

  God, that had to be it.

  That was why it was such slow going in Sam's memoryscape. The key memory had been repressed all her life, so even now, even after her consciousness had been ruined, Sam's subconscious was still guarding it, blocking Julie, throwing other memories at her as distractions.

  But a memory of what? What could have happened, what could be so awful that merely reliving the memory of it could devastate her consciousness like that? Maybe it was a combination of the memory and some sort of instability in Sam's brain as a result of Nathan's experiments.

  That had to be it. If Nathan hadn't toyed with Sam's internal wiring, she probably could have handled reliving the repressed memory. She might have suffered other repercussions, but she wouldn't be in a coma now.

  Damn Nathan Gordon! Did he do something worse than dose them with neurohormones? Sam had a deeply buried memory. Most so-called repressed memories were fiction, but Julie felt she was dealing with the real thing this time. And what repressed memory would be most deeply buried?

  Sexual abuse.

  A wave of nausea swept over Julie. Was there no end to this?

  She wished she knew how to cry. It would bring some relief. But she couldn't cry. Nathan Gordon had seen to that.

  Only one thing to do. Go back into the 'scape and scour that third level for a clue to the whereabouts of the hidden memory. She'd have all the answers then, and maybe the key to Sam's recovery.

  But she was too tired now. She needed rest.

  She headed for her bedroom. Just a few hours and she'd be okay. . .

  2

  The sun was high when Julie opened her eyes. She snapped up to a sitting position and grabbed her bedside clock. Eleven A.M. She'd wanted only a couple of hours. The morning was practically gone. She leaped out of bed and headed for the hall. She didn't have to get dressed—she was still wearing yesterday's clothes. A shower would have been heaven but she didn't have time.

  She spotted Clarice in the hall.

  "Where's my uncle?"

  "Oh, he's out, mum," the maid said. "Been out since early morning."

  Julie hurried down to the dining room and found a note on the table:

  Julia,

  Had to go to London for the wake. Will be back tonight. Do NOT do anything with Sam until I get back. Very important that I talk to you first.

  Love, Eathan

  Put off going into Sam's memoryscape until tonight? Not a chance.

  Julie got a cup of coffee from the kitchen and hurried upstairs. This was perfect. She could make two trips into the memoryscape before Eathan returned. Maybe then she'd have proof enough to make even Eathan admit that his brother truly had been a monster.

  And maybe she'd even have the answer to Sam's condition.

  Thirty

  Children under age 8 are especially susceptible to fake memories because their frontal lobes are immature, and that's where the time and place of a memory—its source—are stored.

  —Random notes: Julia Gordon

  You enter the memoryscape and find yourself in the gallery, but this is a strange one—inside the hollowed-out stump of a shattered redwood. It's empty save for the large canvas— Sam's last work. More detail has been added. You now see that the bright yellow-orange light radiating from behind the central darkness is fire, flames roaring into the night, reaching for the full moon. And that central darkness now has a shape. Unquestionably a human silhouette. But whose?

  Liam? In Sam's memory he'd been silhouetted against the flames from the Branham Bank fire.

  Could be him . . . and it could be someone else.

  You go outside and scan the upslope of the volcano-Smoke, black and toxic, still drifts from the ragged maw, streaking the clouds with red from the sputtering fire in its belly. The dead trees that littered the slope yesterday are all gone now, the last sign of life removed like a stubble scraped away by a giant razor.

  You look up. The moon ... no—no longer a moon, just a cluster of glowing rocks floating in the sky—shattered. Even the moon isn't safe from the progressive deterioration of Sam's mind. The fragments provide scant illumination.

  It's the most hopeless place you've ever seen.

  Hopeless... because you realize you haven't much time left—Sam hasn't much time left.

  But there's got to be something here, planted on the slope between the flatland and the fire above. A clue to the ultimate memory ...

  Propelled by the growing terror that you'll lose Sam if you don't find something, you start up the slope, searching. What else can you do?

  Nothing catches your eye, nothing at all. It's all dead here.

  And then, to your right, about halfway up the flank of the volcano's cinder cone, you see a tiny streak of light.

  You hurry toward it and find a crack in the cinder and ash-strewn crust. Not a volcanic side vent, for there's no heat coming up. More like a cave or tunnel that's been reopened by the eruption. The faint light is leaking from within. Deep within.

  You enter and, like a moth, you float toward the light.

  Or perhaps "lights" is more accurate. You see them far ahead. They seem to be in motion, swirling like lightning bugs in a midsummer field.

  Your heartbeat kicks up its meter. Is this the way to the lost memory you're searching for? Obviously whatever's down here has been buried, hidden away.

  Abruptly the tunnel ends and you find yourself in a huge, seemingly limitless cavern. It's as if you've passed through the volcano and emerged on the other side. But you sense this is a pocket world, completely encased in stone even though the living rock gives way to a field of golden grain, with dark green presses undulating sinuously as they reach toward the stars.

  And—God—what stars. They twirl deliriously above like flaming pinwheels. The night air is alive and awhirl with light. You laugh. You know this place. It's Van Gogh's Starry Night. You and Sam had a running argument about it for years, Sam insisting the phantasmagorical scene sprang from Vincent's imagination, and you infuriating her by saying it was the result of some neurochemical aberration, that this wasn't artistic vision, this was psychosis—this is what the poor mad artist actually saw.

  God, how you could drive each other crazy.

  But now, to live in the painting, to see the stars swirl and the cypresses dance, it's ... it's wonderful.

  But where are the village and the steepled church of the painting? This landscape appears uninhabited.

  No, not completely uninhabited. There's one house there, nestled among the trees in the background. It looks like—

  Oh, no. Not that house again. Not the Millburn house. You don't want to go in there again. It's too painful. You start to turn away, then stop.

  Why else are you here? Certainly not to be comforted. You're supposed to be exploring all the memories you can find. Isn't that what this is about? And you've learned that the associated pain seems to be directly proportional to their importance.

/>   Clearly, knowledge has a price in this memoryscape.

  Your insides coil with dread as you turn and start toward the house.

  You try to keep from wondering what you will find within; you study the writhing cypresses that seem to be made of green-brown flame rather than vegetation, and you marvel at the twisting shadows cast by the whirling stars, yet you cannot shut out the raised, angry voices filtering though the night air from somewhere nearby. Men's voices. You follow the sound around the side of the Millburn house.

  And there—

  Nathan and a young Eathan face each other like two prizefighters waiting for the bell, separated by half a dozen feet and a redwood picnic table. You feel the thickening tension between them. Nathan has a pair of work gloves folded in his right hand. Twenty feet away is the vegetable garden with rows of corn and tomatoes and eggplant. A rake and a hoe lie where Nathan must have dropped them upon Eathan's arrival.

  Even in the wan starlight you can see that Nathan's cheeks are flushed with anger; small droplets of spittle fleck his mustache. Eathan seems calmer, but only marginally so. His expression is difficult to read through his beard, but his rage appears to be calm, cold.

  You look around. No children about. How could... ? You glance up and see a little face peering through the screen of one of the upstairs windows, watching with wide, wondering eyes. Sam with her games of surprise and boo.

  Abruptly your perspective shifts. You're looking down on the scene from above, through the aluminum screen on your bedroom window. You're Sammi and you're wondering why your father and uncle are so mad. You know now that Nathan's not your father, but to little Sammi he's Daddy—and you can't separate her feelings from your own while you're here. Everything is turmoil.

  "You had no right!" Daddy shouts. "No damn right at all!"

  "I had no right?" Uncle Eathan points to the experimental journals that lie scattered across the picnic table. "You play God and then have the nerve to stand there and complain about someone snooping through your file cabinet?" He throws up his hands. "There's no talking to you, Nathan. You're insane!"