The God Project

by John Saul

  That had been yesterday, and this morning Randy was still not convinced that Peter was right. He felt terribly alone, and when he went to look out the window, and saw nothing except forest beyond the fence that surrounded the Academy, a slight chill rippled over him. But then there was a tap at the door, and Adam Rogers stuck his head in.

  “You better get dressed. If we aren’t down for breakfast in five minutes, we won’t get any.” Adam came into the room and perched himself on the bed while Randy pulled his clothes on. “You from around here?”

  “Eastbury.” Randy sized Adam up as he tied his shoelaces. He looked younger than Randy, and was smaller, but his body was wiry and he looked like he was fast. “Where you from?”

  “Georgia. That’s down south.”

  “I know where it is. I’m not stupid.”

  “Nobody said you were,” Adam said by way of apology, “but lots of people don’t know where anyplace is. Come on.” He hopped off the bed and led Randy out of the bedroom and down the stairs into a large dining room. There were two tables in the room, around one of which the other four boys were seated. At another, smaller table sat Louise Bowen. “She thinks she’s a den mother or something,” Adam whispered as the two of them slid into the two vacant chairs at the big table with the other boys. “But she never talks to us in the morning. Just watches us.”

  “Why?”

  “Search me. But that’s one of the neat things about this place—they watch you all the time, but they practically never tell you what to do.”

  “Yeah,” Peter Williams agreed, grinning happily. “Not like at home. My mom was always telling me I was going to hurt myself, or get in trouble, or kill someone, or something. And then I ran away one day, and the cops picked me up, and ever since then she was always on my case.”

  The other boys began chiming in. As Randy listened, he began to think maybe he’d been wrong to be so suspicious yesterday. All the stories sounded familiar. Most of the boys had been lonely before they came to the Academy, and some of them bragged about how much trouble they’d caused in the schools they’d gone to before.

  “But what do you do here?” Randy asked.

  “Go to class and play,” Peter replied. “It’s neat, because we don’t have as many classes as regular school But we play lots of games. They teach us boxing and wrestling and some other stuff, but a lot of the time they just let us do what we want.”

  “Anything?” Randy asked.

  Peter looked at the other boys questioningly, and when they nodded, so did he. “I guess so. At least, they never told any of us not to do anything.” He paused, as if turning something over in his mind, then went on, his voice more thoughtful. “But they always watch us. It’s funny. There’s always someone around, like they want to know what we’re doing, but they never tell us much about what to do. Except in class. That’s just like regular school.”

  “How come there’s only six of us?” Randy suddenly asked. It seemed to him that the house was big enough for a much larger group than they made up, and he’d always thought private schools had hundreds of students.

  Adam Rogers glanced toward Louise Bowen, then leaned close to Randy and whispered. “There used to be more,” he said. “When I got here, there were ten of us.”

  “What happened to the others?” Randy asked.

  Peter frowned at Adam. “They left.”

  “You mean their dads came for them, or they went to another school?”

  Across from Randy, a red-headed boy with a sprinkle of freckles across his nose shook his head. “No. They—”

  “Shut up, Eric,” Peter broke in. “We’re not supposed to talk about that.”

  “Talk about what?” Randy demanded.

  “Nothing,” Peter told him.

  Randy turned his attention back to Eric. “Talk about what, Eric?” he asked again, his eyes locking onto the other boy’s. Eric started to open his mouth, then dosed it and looked away. “Tell me, Randy insisted.”

  Eric glanced uneasily toward Louise Bowen. She appeared not to be listening to them. Still, when he spoke, his voice dropped to a whisper, and Randy had to strain to hear him.

  “Sometimes kids just—well, they just disappear. We think they die.”

  “Die?” Randy breathed.

  “We don’t know,” Peter said “We don’t know what happens to them.”

  “Yes, we do,” Eric whispered miserably. “Nobody’s been here more than a few months, and everyone who’s gone died That’s what happens. You come here, and you die.”

  “Shut up, Eric,” Peter said once again. “We don’t know what happened to David and Kevin. Maybe their fathers came for them.”

  “I hope so,” Adam Rogers said, and when Randy looked at him, he saw that Adam’s face was pale. “I’ve been here almost six months. Longer than any of you. I—I hope …”

  His voice trailed off. The six boys finished their breakfast in silence.

  Lucy Corliss sat at her kitchen table and tried to decide what to do. All night she had lain awake, hoping to hear the front door opening signaling Randy’s return, or the sound of the telephone notifying her that the police had found him. That was the one thing Sergeant Bronski had promised her last night—that he would put together a search party and comb the woods in which Randy had gotten lost a year ago. He hadn’t promised anything; indeed, he had reluctantly told Lucy that the odds of finding Randy in the darkness were almost nil.

  But all night long her house had been filled with an eerie silence. Finally, as the eastern sky had begun brightening into dawn, she had made one more call to the police, only to be told that no trace of Randy had yet been found; then she drifted into a fitful sleep, from which she had awakened an hour later. Since then she had been sitting in the kitchen, waiting, resisting the constant impulse to call the police yet again, knowing that if there was anything to report, they would call her.

  When the phone suddenly came to life just before nine, its jangling sound nearly made Lucy drop her coffee cup. She grabbed for the receiver, her heart pounding.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  “It’s Jim, Lucy.” There was a hopelessness in his voice that told her instantly that the search party had found nothing, but she had to confirm it. “You didn’t find him, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, God, Jim, what am I going to do? I just feel so helpless, and—and—” Her voice broke off as she fought to control the tears that threatened to engulf her.

  “Take it easy, Lucy,” she heard Jim say. “It’s not over yet.” There was a short silence, then he added, “Are you going to work?”

  “Work?” Lucy echoed. She felt a tentacle of panic at the edge of her consciousness, and her voice pitched higher. “How can I go to work? My God, it’s my son that’s missing. I’ve got to do something about it.” The panic was beginning to grow, and Lucy lit a cigarette, drawing deeply. As she exhaled the stream of smoke, a little of her tension eased.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” she heard Jim saying. “I just meant that there’s nothing you can do right now. It won’t do you or Randy any good for you to sit around the house going out of your mind.”

  “You’re a fine one to say that,” Lucy shot back. “How would you know what’s going to do me or Randy any good? You can’t just come waltzing back into my life after nine years and start telling me what’s good for me and what’s not. Was it good for me to have you walk out and leave me to bring our son up by myself?”

  If he was stung by her words, he showed no sign. “Tell you what,” he said. “You do what you think is best, and I’ll keep at it with the police. It’s all we can do. Okay?”

  Lucy took another puff on her cigarette and nodded, even though there was no one to see her. “Okay. But call me if you find anything. Anything at all!”

  “Sure.” There was a long silence, and then Jim’s voice came over the line once again. “Lucy? Are you going to be all right? Do you want me to còme over?”

  “No. I mean, ye
s, I’m all right, and no, I don’t want you to come over.”

  “Gotcha,” Jim said, and the word almost made Lucy smile. It was a word he had used throughout their marriage on those rare occasions when he understood exactly why she was angry with him and was trying to apologize for having gone too far with whatever excess he was currently involved in. Now, as the word echoed in her mind, she could almost feel the warmth she knew must be in his eyes. “If you need anything,” he went on, “you know where to find me.”

  The line went dead. Lucy held the receiver in her hand for a moment before hanging it up. As she poured herself another cup of coffee, she suddenly made up her mind.

  Jim was right—she couldn’t hang around the house all day. She quickly drained the coffee cup, then began dressing for work.

  For Sally Montgomery, there was a chill to the morning that even the spring sun couldn’t penetrate. She stared at herself in the mirror for a long time, studying the strange, haggard image that confronted her—slender arms wrapped protectively around a body she barely recognized as her own, hair limply framing a face etched with lines of exhaustion that even careful makeup hadn’t been able to erase—and wondered how she was going to get through this day.

  The sounds of morning drifted up the stairs, unfamiliar, for it should have been herself rattling around the kitchen, murmuring to Steve, urging Jason to hurry up. Instead it was her mother’s voice she heard, and even the sounds of the coffeepot beine put back on the stove and the frying pan clunking softly as it was placed in the sink bore the unmistakably purposeful tenor of her mother’s efficiency. She moved to the closet and tried to decide what to wear.

  She owned nothing black, never had. Navy blue? Her hands, shaking slightly, plucked a suit from a hanger. Something caught, and instead of stopping to disentangle the unseen snarl, Sally simply yanked at it. The rasping sound of a seam giving way raked across her nerves, and she knew she was going to cry.

  I won’t, she told herself. Not now. Not over a torn seam. Later. Later, I’ll cry. She glanced at the tear in the lining of her suit jacket and felt that she’d won a small victory.

  She went to her dresser next, and as she was about to open the second drawer where all her blouses lay neatly folded in tissue paper, her eyes fell on a picture of Julie. The tiny face, screwed into an expression somewhere between laughter and fury, seemed to mock her and reproach her at the same time. Now the tears did come. Sally backed away from the picture, sank to her bed, and buried her face in her hands.

  That was how Steve found her a few moments later. He paused at the door, watching his wife, his heart aching not only for her, but for his own inability to comfort her, then crossed the room to sit beside her. With gentle hands he lifted her face and kissed her. “Honey? Is there anything …” He left the sentence unfinished, knowing there was no real way to complete it.

  “… anything wrong?” Sally finished for him. “Anything you can do for me? I don’t know. Oh, Steve, I—I just looked at her picture, and it all came apart. It was like she was staring at me. Like she wanted to know what happened, wanted to know if it was a joke, or if I was mad at her, or—oh, God, I don’t know.”

  Steve held her for a moment, sharing the pain of the moment but knowing there was nothing he could do to ease it Then Sally pulled away from him and stood up.

  “I’ll be all right,” she said, more to herself than to her husband. “I’ll get dressed, and I’ll come downstairs, and I’ll eat breakfast I’ll take each moment as it comes, and I’ll get through.” She took a deep breath, then went once more to her dresser. This time she kept her eyes carefully averted from the picture of Julie as she opened the drawer and took out a soft silk blouse. Then, taking her pantyhose with her, she disappeared into the bathroom.

  Steve stayed on in the bedroom for a while, his eyes fixed on the picture of his daughter, then suddenly he turned the picture face down on the dresser top. A moment later he was gone, back to the kitchen where his son was waiting for him.

  Chapter 7

  THE CAR MOVED SLOWLY through the streets of Eastbury, and Sally found herself looking out at the town and its people with a strange detachment she had only felt a few times before. The last time had been when her father had died, and she had been driven through these same streets toward the same cemetery. On that day, as their car passed through the center of town, where the charm of old New England had still been carefully preserved, the people of Eastbury had nodded respectfully toward Sally and her mother. They had understood the death of Jeremiah Paine and been able to express their sympathy toward his family.

  But today, Eastbury looked different. People seemed to turn away from the car. What Sally had always perceived as Yankee reserve, today seemed like icy aloofness. Even the town had changed, Sally realized. It had begun to take on a look of coldness, as if along with the new technology had come a new indifference. Where once the town and its inhabitants had seemed to fit each other comfortably, now the people Sally saw moving indifferently through Eastbury’s picturesque streets were mostly newcomers who looked as if they had been cut from a mold, then assigned to live in Eastbury. Cookie-cutter people, Sally thought, who could have lived any where, and nothing in their lives would change. The new breed, she reflected sadly. It seemed to her that there was some vital force lacking in them, and as the car moved into the parking lot next to the First Presbyterian Church and its adjoining cemetery, she wondered if she, too, had become infected by the malaise that seemed to have chilled the town.

  A few minutes later, as she stood in the cemetery where her father was buried, and where, she supposed, she herself would someday lie, Sally Montgomery still felt the chilly, though she knew the day was unseasonably warm. There were few people gathered around the grave. Apparently most of Sally’s friends were feeling the same way she was feeling: numb and unable to cope. Funerals were to pay final respects to old people and to comfort the living for the loss of someone who had been part of their lives for years. What did you say when an infant died?

  Suddenly all the soft murmurings sounded hollow.

  “Perhaps it was a blessing …” for someone who has been sick for years.

  “At least it happened quickly …” for someone who had never been sick a day in her life.

  “I know how you’ll miss her …” for a mother or a sister or an aunt.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do without her …” to share the burden of loss.

  But for a six-month-old baby? Nothing. Nothing to be said, nothing to be offered. And so they stayed away, and Sally understood.

  She watched the tiny coffin being lowered into the ground, listened as the minister uttered the final words consigning Julie Montgomery to the care of the Lord, moved woodenly toward the grave to deposit the first clod of the earth that would soon hide her daughter from the sight of the living, then started toward the car, intent only on getting home, getting away from the ceremony that, far from easing her pain, was only intensifying it.

  From a few yards away, Arthur Wiseman watched Sally’s forlorn figure and wondered once again why he had come to Julie Montgomery’s funeral. He rarely attended funerals at all, and particularly avoided the funerals of his patients. To him, a funeral was little more than a painful reminder of his own failure.

  But this one was different Julie Montgomery had not been his patient, not since the day he’d delivered her. No, this time his patient was still alive. But he had delivered Sally herself, as well as her two children, and she had been on his roster for as long as she had needed the services of an obstetrician-gynecologist. Over the years he had come to regard her with an almost paternal affection. One of his special girls, as he thought of them.

  So he had come today, even though he hated funerals, and now, as the service drew to a close, he was beginning to wish he’d stayed away after all. He was going to have to speak to Sally, and he knew the words of condolence would not come easy to him. In the familiar surroundings of his office, the right words always came easily
. But here, faced with a patient whose problem was beyond his medical expertise, he was at a loss. And yet, something had to be said. He started toward Sally.

  She had nearly reached the car when she felt a hand on her arm. She turned and found herself looking into the troubled eyes of Arthur Wiseman.

  “Sally—” he began.

  “It was good of you to come, Dr. Wiseman,” Sally said, her voice barely audible.

  “I know how difficult this must be for you …” Wiseman said. Then his voice faltered, and he fell silent.

  Sally stared at him for a moment, waiting for him to continue. “Do you?” she asked at last. Suddenly, with no forewarning at all, she found her entire being flooded with anger. Why couldn’t he find the right words to comfort her? He was a doctor, wasn’t he? Her doctor? Wasn’t it his job to know what to say at a time like this? She glared at him, her face a mask of pain and anger. “Do you know how difficult it is for me?” she demanded. “Do you know what it feels like to lose your baby and not even know why?”

  Stung, Arthur Wiseman glanced around the cemetery as if he were looking for a means of escape. “No, of course I can’t feel what you’re feeling,” he muttered at last as Sally’s gaze remained fixed upon him. “But I hope I can understand it” He could see that she was no longer listening to him as she searched the cemetery for—what? Her husband, probably. Wiseman kept talking, hoping Steve would appear. “I do know how hard it is, Sally. Even for doctors who see death all the time, it’s still hard. Especially in cases like Julie’s—”

  “Julie?” Sally repeated. At mention of her daughter’s name, her attention shifted back to the doctor. “What about Julie?”

  Wiseman paused, looking deeply into Sally’s eyes. There was something in them—a sort of flickering glow—that told him Sally was on the edge of losing control. He searched his mind for something to say, anything that might ease her pain. “But we’re learning, Sally. Every year we’re learning a little more. I know it’s no help to you, but someday well know what causes SIDS-”