by Steven James
“Sure,” Nicole answered. “Sit off by yourself, think about what you did—but are you saying you had a turtle named ‘Snookums’?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Seriously?”
“What’s wrong with ‘Snookums’?”
“It’s just . . . Well, it’s more of a puppy name.”
“Do I look like a puppy person to you? When I was little I heard the name ‘Snookums’ and I liked it. At first when I got him, I thought he was a girl. Ended up he was a boy. It’s kinda hard to tell with turtles, but ‘Snookums’ is sort of a gender-neutral name, though, so I don’t think he really minded.”
“How do you tell with turtles?” Kyle asked.
“I’ll talk you through it sometime. Now, do you two want to hear the rest of my Snookums story or not?”
They both told her yes they did and to please go on.
“So, my mom put me on this timeout and I started thinking about Snookums in his aquarium and I realized it was like he was always on a timeout, one that would never end. And I thought of how lonely he must be without any other turtles around to play with. So I decided to let him go.”
The sky rumbled and Mia gazed up apprehensively. “Is that God telling me I shouldn’t have set Snookums free?”
“No,” Nicole assured her. “You’re fine. Go on.”
“There was this lake near where we lived. So, after I was done with my timeout, I told my mom I wanted to let Snookums go in the lake and she asked if I was sure and if he was going to be safe out there.”
“What’d you say?”
“To this day I still remember: ‘When you’re a turtle, it’s not about being safe, Mommy, it’s about being free.’”
“That’s a pretty insightful thing for a little girl to come up with.”
“I guess.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyway, we took Snookums to the shore and when we got there I picked him up and said goodbye and set him in the water—but he didn’t go anywhere. He had this whole turtle paradise dream-lake right in front of him and he just sat there staring at me and not swimming away. It was quite moving, actually. Very affecting. Finally, after a couple minutes he did swim off, but it took a while.”
“Did you ever see him again?” Nicole asked.
“Nope. Never did.”
“Hmm. Well, I like it. There’s deep truth in there, and no walls lined with skulls, so that’s a plus. And no ghostly faces in the window or shrieks from the pits of hell.”
“I’m working on a way to fit that stuff in the next time I tell it.”
“Wonderful. So what made you think of that? Of Snookums?”
“Waxford. His research. It’s like that’s what he’s trying to do with the convicts—put ’em on a timeout for hundreds of years. Solitary confinement to a degree that’s almost unimaginable.”
Kyle absentmindedly kicked a stone and it skittered off the road into the thick underbrush. “You know, your story reminds me of the Aesop’s fable about Dog and Coyote.”
“Does the dog lick anyone’s hand?” Nicole asked.
“Nope.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
Thunder growled at them.
They quickened their pace.
“In the fable, Dog and Coyote, they’re friends. Every day, Coyote would come in from the field and play with Dog, then at night he would return to the wild. One night, he invites Dog to join him, but Dog—” He paused. “Did you guys hear something?”
“Just some more thunder,” Mia said. “Why? What is it?”
“I thought I heard a car.”
They all waited. Listened.
Nothing.
“Okay, must have just been the thunder. So, Dog shows him this chain fastened around his neck. ‘My master doesn’t allow me to leave,’ Dog tells him. ‘But if you’ll stay here tonight, he can put a chain around your neck, too, and then we can always be together.’ But at that, Coyote trots away, saying, ‘I much prefer the perils of freedom to the security of chains.’”
“That’s a pretty insightful thing for a coyote to come up with,” noted Mia.
“Right, so it was just like with your Snookums story there at the end when he finally swam off to—no, that’s definitely a car.”
“Okay. Wait—I hear it too,” Nicole said anxiously. “It’s coming up the hill.”
“Get in the ditch. C’mon. Quick.”
They leapt off the road and found places to hide in the tangled thicket bordering it.
Nicole had just finished getting into position when a white minivan came around the curve.
It jaunted up toward them, passed by without incident, and then continued up the mountain.
They waited until it was gone and then lingered for another minute or so just to make sure no other vehicles were following it.
Finally, they climbed out of the ditch.
Mia brushed the dirt off her jeans. “Whoever that was, they must have a key to the gate. And they most certainly saw our car down there—which means they might be on the lookout for us now. You think we should turn back?”
“Not until we have some answers,” Nicole said firmly. “I mean, we’ve come this far. Besides, now we know for sure that something is going on up here. Let’s at least get to where we can see the Inn and have a look around.”
More thunder.
“Well, we better hurry then.” Mia was eyeing the threatening sky. “Because that storm is definitely coming this way.”
We’re almost to the creek.
Tane is far enough ahead that he won’t hear me, so, as I guide Alysha over a root in the path, I say, “I need to ask you a question and it’s going to sound weird at first.”
“What is it?”
We start down the trail again. “Back at the theater did we have . . . well . . . a moment?”
“A moment?”
“When you touched my face, when you felt my heartbeat.”
“Daniel, why would you ask me that?”
“It’s just that I’m not sure anymore what’s real and what’s illusion.”
“I’m real. I’m here, right now, with you.”
“I know that, but . . .”
We come to the place where the bridge is supposed to be.
And there’s nothing there.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
8:00 P.M.
1 HOUR UNTIL THE DEADLINE
Tane is staring at the remnants of the bridge’s foundation. “It washed away.”
The creek is bloated with brown water from the recent rains and has risen high on its banks, climbing halfway up the trees that would have lined it if the water were at normal levels.
It’s thirty feet wide.
I watch the water rush past, maybe twenty feet downhill from us. “Well, we need to find Malcolm and Petra, and the only way to do that is by getting across this thing.”
“How deep do you think it is?” Alysha asks.
“Too deep to wade across, and besides, the current’s way too fast. We’d be swept downstream the minute we stepped into the water.”
As Alysha shifts her weight to the other foot, the loose soil beneath her gives way.
She cries out as she tumbles sideways down the hill and slides toward the furious river.
I leap off the trail and race to get to her before she slips in.
Branches swipe at my face, but I fling them aside and lunge toward her, throwing my right hand forward. I miss her wrist the first time, but manage to snag it on the second try as her left foot plunges into the water.
Tane calls out to us and I tell him we’re okay.
“I’m coming down!”
I help Alysha to her feet.
“There it is again,” she says.
“What?”
“Your habit. Being there when I need you.”
“So, we did talk back in the theater.”
“Yes.”
“And I told you I have a girlfriend.”
“You did, and we agreed to discuss things later, when—
”
Tane arrives before we can take this any further. “You two alright?”
“We’re good,” Alysha replies.
I assess things.
“So what’s the plan?” Tane asks me.
“I’m working on one.”
“I hope it’s better than that one you came up with in Atlanta when that guy was searching for us in the hallway.”
“You mean when I just lay on the floor and hoped he wouldn’t shoot me?”
“That’s the one.”
“I hope it’s better than that too.”
The river churns and courses its way downstream.
A seven-foot-long branch goes by, dipping and rising as the muddy water carries it toward a channel that passes between two narrow, rocky outcroppings.
I trace the branch’s movement, and watch it pass under a fallen tree that spans the river.
My plan emerges.
“See that tree, Tane?” I point. “I think it might be wide enough to walk across.”
“Let’s find out.”
When Adrian finished copying the files for General Gibbons, he returned her USB drive to her, and then led her to the one-way mirror that allowed her to peer into room 113 at subject #832145.
“And he can’t see us?”
“Correct. All he sees is a mirror.”
“It’s cracked on his side of the glass.”
“That’s from the chair.”
“So he’s tried to break out.”
“Multiple times. Quite often, actually.”
“And you let him keep the chair—why?”
“Part of his treatment.”
He left it at that.
“I see.”
To cut down on the chance of lice, Adrian’s staff had shaved the man’s head and beard while he was sedated. His tattooed eyeballs were completely black, making it impossible to tell what he was focusing on, but he was facing the mirror.
He looked wild. Savage. Barely human.
“And he’s been ‘under your care’ since the end of December?”
“Yes.”
“How much time has he perceived to have passed?”
“Based on our test results, I would say slightly more than forty years.”
“All in solitary confinement.”
“Yes.”
“In white room conditions.”
“Yes.”
“And how long will you continue treating him?”
“If we work from the typical fifty-year sentence for each of his eight homicides, and then add in what he would serve for his related kidnapping offenses and other crimes, we still have, well . . . a considerable amount of time left together.”
“What stops him from going insane?”
“That’s always a risk, of course, but we do all we can to keep the subjects psychologically intact. Our results continue to improve as I refine my techniques.”
“Alright, well, speaking of refining your techniques, I admit that I am more than a little intrigued by this new drug of yours. If it works properly, that might be enough to secure your funding for the foreseeable future.”
“Let’s swing by my office and I can show you the data I have. Then you can be on your way.”
She didn’t respond to that, but just walked beside him through the hall.
The minivan came to a stop.
A few moments later, Deedee unshackled Petra’s ankle, led her outside, and removed the blindfold.
They were at an old building somewhere in the mountains.
A sheath of unchecked, sprawling kudzu covered one side of the structure, finding its way nearly to the roof.
Petra had grown up in the South, so she knew that plant—and she also knew the other one that entwined with it: the dense poison ivy vines that were anchored to the forest floor and extended up the wall. Some were as thick as her leg and made her think of great snakes writhing from a giant Medusa’s head.
This building.
There was something about it.
Had she seen it before?
Part of her mind said yes, part was clouded by the way the world was fading into a dream.
And with that, she experienced it again—the hallucination she’d had the last time she visited that hypnotist.
The snakes.
All coming for her.
In her trance, she’d seen a wide stretch of broken glass before her, the shards slicing up the sunlight into little pieces and tossing jagged daggers of it back into the day.
Beyond the glass, a cliff dropped off into nothingness.
She wore only a swimsuit. Had bare feet.
When she turned around, she found herself facing barren sand dunes that drifted and blew back for miles.
Then, born from the earth, snakes began to emerge from the sand and slither toward her.
She glanced at the glass again, then back at the snakes.
A sea of serpents on the hunt for her, with no way for her to get past them on either side.
And so, the choice: run across the shards of glass and leap off the cliff into the unknown, or face the snakes.
She’d been transfixed, paralyzed, terrified as they came closer.
She tried to kick them away as they thrashed at her feet.
And then they began to scale up her legs.
She screamed and screamed and screamed and swiped at them until she lost her balance and tumbled backward.
Toward the glass.
And as she was falling, she awoke from the hypnotist’s trance.
Now, as she stood here beside the building, she had a hard time separating what had happened in that hallucination from what was happening before her with those immense serpents squirming up the building. Interlaced. Interwoven. Frozen in mid-slither.
No. They’re vines.
The snakes aren’t real.
Sergei spoke to someone on a radio, interrupting her thoughts, bringing her back to reality. After the transmission, he said to Deedee, “Henrik is moving Zacharias to the basement. He wants us to use the west entrance and take Petra up to the fourth floor. There’s a room already prepared. Waxford is keeping the general occupied, so we should be fine.”
Zacharias?
They have Malcolm?
Petra processed that as they led her to a door and Sergei put his hand on some sort of reader.
The wall of serpents hissed at her in the gloomy, cloud-swallowed light.
Then the door opened and her two kidnappers pushed her inside.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
We stand beside the downed tree.
“I should be able to make it,” Tane says to me.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. You?”
“I’ll be alright.”
“How are we going to get Alysha across?”
“How wide is it?” she asks.
“It starts out at about a foot and a half,” I tell her, “but by the time it gets to the other side, I don’t know, maybe eight to ten inches.”
She kneels and runs her hands across the log. “Is it covered with bark the whole way?”
“It looks like it.”
“No moss?”
“I don’t think so.” I study the tree. “It’s hard to say. Why?”
“If the bark is gone, the wood will be too slick. Also, if the bark is mossy, it’ll be too slippery. If not, though, I can manage. I have pretty good balance.”
She takes off her shoes and socks.
Tane watches her curiously. “What are you doing?”
“You ever see a tightrope walker wearing running shoes? This way, I can feel the log with my feet.”
“Good point.”
She stuffs the socks in the shoes, ties the laces together, and drapes them around her neck.
I offer to go first. “Alysha, you can hold onto my shoulders.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Just one will be better. Then I can have one arm to help keep my balance.”
“Alr
ight. Remember, it’s just like walking in a straight line on solid ground.”
“Except,” Tane adds, “this time if you lose your balance, you just happen to fall ten feet into a raging river.”
“Oh, thanks. That’s very helpful.” Alysha turns to me. “You’re an athlete, right? So you’ve got this?”
“I’ve got this.”
I take off the sling so I can use both arms for correcting my weight distribution if I need to.
Then I face the river.
Alysha places her hand on my right shoulder. “Okay, let’s go.”
After taking a calming breath, I edge out onto the downed tree.
With every step, I remind myself of what I just told her: this is the same as walking in a straight line on solid ground.
But honestly, it doesn’t do a lot of good—not when I see that ten-foot gap between the log and the roiling surface of the river.
It might’ve actually been easier if there was just empty space beneath me—if the tree were spanning a canyon.
As it is, the swirling water disorients me, and I end up having to stare straight ahead to keep my focus on where we’re going rather than on what’s below us.
I feel Alysha’s grip tighten.
“You’re doing great,” I assure her. “We’re halfway there.”
After a few more feet, however, I see that I was wrong about the bark.
A section of it in front of me is sloughing off the log.
I freeze. If I step on it and it tears off, there won’t be any way to keep from ending up in the river.
“What is it?” Alysha asks.
“There’s some loose bark. We’re going to need to step over it.”
“How far?”
“Eighteen, maybe twenty inches.”
A slight pause. “Okay. Talk me through it.”
“First, get up right behind me because I need to get across and you’ll have to reach my shoulder.”
She nudges up close to me.
“Stay where you are until I get there. I’ll tell you when to move.”
“Careful.”
“Always.”
I gingerly step over the patch of rotten bark.
One foot.
Then the other.
It’s not too bad.
“Okay, your turn.” I look back over my shoulder to watch her. “You can do this.”