by John Saul
She had not watched them rehearse the knife-throwing act, nor had she seen it. But she had heard about it.
The Circus had taken place in the Connors’ backyard, and the last act had been Jason and Randy. In turn, each of the boys had stood against the wall of the Connors’ garage, while the other threw six steak knives at him. First Jason had stood against the wall, while Randy hurled the evil-looking blades.
One by one, the blades had struck the garage, inches from the target, their handles quivering as their blades dug into the wood siding. When all six knives were surrounding him, Jason had stepped forward, taken a bow, then pulled the knives from the wall.
Then Randy took his place against the wall, his feet spread wide apart, his arms stretched out.
Jason stood ten feet away and aimed the first of the six knives. It whirled through the air and struck the wall between Randy’s legs.
The second knife buried itself in the wall next to his left ear.
The third knife struck next to his right ear.
By now the children in the audience were screaming and cheering so loudly that Kay Connors had looked out the window to see what was happening.
She was in time to see the last three knives whirl, in quick succession, through the air.
Two of them struck Randy Corliss’s hands, pinning them to the wall.
The third buried itself in Randy’s stomach.
The happy cheering turned into terrified screams. Frozen in horror, Mrs. Connors stared woodenly through the window.
She watched Jason calmly go to Randy and yank loose the two knives that were pinning his hands. And then she watched as Randy himself, his face wreathed in happy smiles, pulled the third knife from his own belly.
An hour later, as she listened to Kay Connors relate the story, Sally had tried to remain calm.
“I still don’t know how they did it,” Kay had said when she was finished telling the tale. Her face was still pale from her fright, and her hands were trembling slightly. “And I don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you right now, Sally, I don’t want those boys at my house again. They scared me nearly to death, and I don’t even want to think about how the other children felt. The girls were all crying, and some of the boys too. I know Jason and Randy thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t funny.”
Sally, of course, had immediately realized that it had not been a trick at all. Jason had simply hurled the knives into his friend, and Randy, far from being seriously injured, had healed within minutes. By the time the screaming children had been sorted out and Kay Connors had gotten to Randy, there hadn’t been even so much as a scar left to betray the secret of the “trick.”
Four days later, two five-year-old boys had tried to duplicate the trick. One of them had nearly bled to death, but the other one was unhurt, apparently the beneficiary of the flip of the coin that had determined which of the two would be the first target Sally had suspected differently. Though she could no longer be certain, she thought she remembered the name of the uninjured boy, Tony Phelps, from the list of children in Group Twenty-one.
It was after that incident that Sally had begun to wonder about the boys. They had listened to her quietly while she talked to them, first about the “stunt” they had pulled, which she knew had not been a stunt at all, then about the little boy who had almost died.
“But everybody’s going to die,” was Randy’s only comment.
“Besides,” Jason had added, “people who can get hurt shouldn’t play our games. They should just do whatever we tell them to do.”
“Do what you tell them?” Sally echoed. “Why should people do what you tell them?”
Jason had met her eyes. “Because we’re special,” he said. “We’re special, and that makes us better than other people.”
Sally had tried to explain to them that their inability to be hurt, or even to feel pain, did not make them better than other people. If anything, it meant that they had to be particularly careful of other people, because they might accidentally do something that would hurt someone else. The boys had only looked at each other and shrugged.
“We don’t do anything by accident,” Jason had said.
And so the wondering had begun, and, once more, the watching had begun. And slowly, Sally had come to realize that there was more to The Boys than the GT-active factor. There was a coldness about them, and an ever-increasing sense of their own superiority that was at first disturbing and eventually frightening.
Now Jason was twelve and Randy was thirteen, but they looked five years older.
And they did what they wanted, when they wanted.
Last night, very late, Sally had talked to Steve about them.
“They’re not human,” she had finished. “They’re not human and they’re dangerous.”
Steve, who had listened quietly for over an hour, had shifted uneasily in his chair, “What do you suggest we do?” he asked.
Sally had swallowed, unsure whether she would be able to voice the idea that had been growing steadily in her mind for several months now. But it had to be voiced. It had to be brought out in the open and discussed. If it wasn’t, she would surely lose her mind.
“I think we have to kill them.”
Steve Montgomery had stared at his wife. As the import of what she had just said began to register on part of his mind, another part seemed to shift gears, to step back, as if unwilling even to accept the words Sally had uttered.
What’s happened to her, that part of his mind had wondered. What’s happened to the woman I married? Sally, over the last three years, had become almost a stranger to him. He had seen the changes in her face, but more than that, he had felt the changes in her spirit. In many ways she seemed more like a hunted animal than anything else.
Hunted, or haunted?
And yet, he had slowly come to realize, what he now saw in his wife was a reflection of what he felt himself. He, too, had come to regard the boys as something apart from himself, something he could only barely comprehend, but was afraid of.
What, he had often wondered, would they grow up to be, if they grew up at all?
At first he had dismissed the question, but then, as time had moved on, and the boys had not died, he had forced himself to face it.
And the only answer he had come up with, time and time again, was that whatever they grew up to be, it would not be human.
And so he, too, had come to feel haunted. Haunted by the feeling that he was raising a new species of man, indistinguishable from other men, but different. Cold, unfeeling, impervious to pain.
Impervious to pain, and therefore impervious to suffering. How many of them were there, and what would they do when the time came, as it inevitably would, when they realized their powers? Steve Montgomery, like his wife, didn’t know.
“All right,” he had said last night.
Sally had stared at him, momentarily shaken by the ease with which he had apparently accepted her idea. “Is that all you have to say? Just all right?”
Steve had nodded. “Three years ago, when we talked to Paul Randolph, I found out that you’d been right about the children all along. And I made up my mind about something that day. I decided that from that moment on, where the children were concerned, I’d go along with any decision you made. But I’ve watched those boys too, Sally. Whatever they are, they aren’t human. Randy Corliss is not our child, and never has been. And neither is Jason. I’m not sure what they are, but I know what they’re not.” Then he repeated the words once again: “They’re not human.”
And so, earlier today, Sally had gone alone to see Mark Malone, and quietly explained to him what she wanted to do. He had listened to her, and for a long time after she had finished, had sat silently, apparently thinking.
“I need some time, Sally,” he’d said at last. “I need some time to think about this.”
“How much time?” Sally had asked. “This isn’t something I’ve just made up my mind to, Mark. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Th
e boys are growing up, and I’m afraid of them.”
“Have you thought of sending them away to school?”
“Of course I have,” Sally replied bitterly. “I’ve thought of everything, and in the end I always come down to the same thought. They’re some kind of monsters, Mark, and they have to be destroyed. It’s not myself I’m afraid for—it’s everybody. Can’t you understand that?”
And Mark, to her relief, had nodded his head. “But I’ll still have to think about it,” he’d told her. “I’m a doctor. My training is to save lives, not end them.”
“I know,” Sally whispered unhappily. “Believe me, I wish I could have done this without even talking to you. But I need your help. I—well, I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea of how to”—she faltered, then made herself finish the sentence—“how to kill them.”
Mark had led her to the door. “Let me call you in a couple of hours, Sally, I’ll have to think about this thing, and I won’t promise you anything. In fact, I wish you hadn’t come here today.”
And so she had come home. Now she sat in front of her mirror, staring at her strange reflection, recognizing her image, but not understanding the person she had become.
But it didn’t matter. Nothing about her own life mattered anymore, not as long as The Boys were alive. Only after they were dead would she worry about herself again. And yet, what if diere was no way to kill them? What then?
And then the phone rang.
“It’s Mark, Sally. There’s something called succinylcholine chloride. If you’ll come down to my office, I’ll explain it to you.”
Late that night, Randy and Jason came downstairs to say good night to Sally and Steve. Sally accepted a kiss from each of them, and then, as they started up the stairs, called to them.
“I almost forgot Dr. Malone called me today and gave me some medicine for you. He wanted you to have it just before you went to bed.”
The boys looked at each other curiously. This was something new. Medicine? Neither of them had ever needed medicine before.
“What’s it for?” Randy asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sally replied, praying that there would be no trembling in her voice. “It’s just some kind of a shot.”
“I don’t want it,” Jason said. His face set into a stubborn expression that both Sally and Steve had come to know too well.
Steve rose from his chair. “You’re going to have it, son,” he said, keeping his voice carefully under control.
Jason glanced toward Randy, and as Steve moved toward the foot of the stairs, he could feel the boys sizing him up, weighing their combined bulk against his own strength. He started up the stairs. The two boys watched mm warily, and Steve braced himself against a possible attack. But then, as he approached the boys, Randy spoke.
“Fuck it, Jason. What the hell can it do to us?”
It can kill you, Steve thought with sudden detachment. Sally had told him about the chemical Mark Malone had given her. It was called succinylcholine chloride, and its effect would be to attack their nervous systems, paralyzing them to the point where they would be unable to breathe. In the few minutes it would take the GT-active factor to overcome the damage, they would be deprived of air and suffocated. Yes, he thought once again, it can kill you.
But the boys had already turned the whole thing into a joke, and while Sally prepared the hypodermic needles, Steve followed them into their room, where they undressed and slid into their beds. Randy grinned at Jason. “You ever had a shot?”
“Not since I was a little kid. But I’ve had blood tests.”
“So have I. That week I was at the Academy, they took tests all the time. You can’t even feel it.”
“Who’s afraid of feeling it?” Jason laughed. “It just pisses me off that Dr. Malone thinks something’s wrong with us.”
“What does he know?” Randy sneered. And then Sally came in, carrying two needles. Jason looked at them, frowning.
“What is it?”
“Succinylcholine chloride,” Sally replied. “Five hundred milligrams for each of you. Which of you wants to be first?”
The boys glanced at each other and shrugged. “I’ll go first,” Randy offered.
“All right” Sally took his arm and rolled up the left sleeve of his pajama top. The injection, Malone had told her, was to go directly into muscle. The upper arm muscle would be fastest, but any muscle would do. Holding the needle in her right hand, she grasped his arm with her left.
And suddenly she lost her nerve.
Over Randy’s head, her eyes met Steve’s. “I—I can’t do it,” she whispered. “I just can’t do it.”
Steve shook his head. “Don’t look at me,” he said quietly. “I can’t do it either.”
And suddenly the boys were laughing at them. “Let me have the needle, Aunt Sally,” Randy said. “I’ll do it myself. It’s no big deal.”
“We’ll do it together,” Jason offered. “On three, well each give ourselves a shot in the leg. Okay?”
Silently, feeling as though she were in some kind of a dream, Sally gave each of the boys one of the needles. Then, as she and Steve looked on, they rolled up the legs of their pajamas, and, after Jason had counted to three, jabbed the needles into their legs, and pressed the plungers down. The liquid in the cylinders disappeared into the muscle of their thighs. When it was over, they pulled the needles out of their flesh, and looked at Sally, their eyes filled with contempt.
“Satisfied?” Jason asked.
Sally nodded and took the empty needles from her son. “Now go to bed,” she said, her voice choking with all the emotions she had held so carefully in check ever since she had reached her decision. “Go to bed, and go to sleep.”
She tucked them in and then did something she hadn’t done for a long time. She leaned over and kissed each of them on the forehead. A moment later, leaving the lights on, she and Steve slipped out of the room.
When they were alone, Jason suddenly felt a strange sensation in his body.
“Randy?” he said.
“Hunh?”
There was an odd strangling sound to Randy’s voice. Jason tried to sit up to look at his friend.
He couldn’t.
All he could do, and even that was a struggle, was roll over and stare across at the other bed. Randy was lying on his back, his eyes wide open, struggling to breathe.
“Wha—what’s wrong?” Jason managed to ask. “What—what did they give us?”
“Don’t know,” Randy gasped. “Can’t—can’t breathe.”
And then, as the full force of the lethal dose of poison struck him, Jason fell back on his pillow, and slipped into unconsciousness.
Downstairs, Sally sat desolately on the sofa, trying to accept what she had just done.
“It was the right thing to do,” she said over and over again. “It was the right thing to do and I had to do it.” Her tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks. “But, oh, God, Steve, I’ll never be able to live with it. Never.”
Steve nodded unhappily. “I keep telling myself they weren’t human,” he whispered. “But I guess I still don’t believe it. Randy, maybe. But Jason? God, Sally, he was our son.”
“He wasn’t,” Sally said, her voice rising. “He wasn’t our son. He was something else, and he had to die. He had to, Steve. But what’s going to happen to us now?”
Steve looked up and Sally felt a sudden calmness emanating from him. “Well be charged,” she heard him say, his voice sounding as if it were coming from a great distance away. “Well be charged with the murder of our own son and our foster son. And no one will believe it wasn’t murder, Sally.”
“And they’ll be right,” Sally cried. Her hands clenched together and she twisted them in her lap as if she were fighting some physical pain that was threatening to overwhelm her. “Oh, God, Steve, they’ll be right.”
And then, in a moment of silence, they heard a sound from upstairs.
They heard a door open. There were footsteps.
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A moment later Jason and Randy came slowly down the stairs and stepped into the living room, where they stood quietly facing Jason’s parents.
And, since they were his parents, it was Jason who spoke.
“You can’t kill us,” he said softly, his eyes sparkling evilly. “Dr. Malone knows that. That’s why he gave you that stuff. It was just another experiment. But don’t ever try to kill us again, Mother. Because if you do, we will destroy you. Without even thinking about it, we will kill you.”
Then, in perfect unison, they turned, and went back up the stairs.
a cognizant original v5 release november 24 2010
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN SAUL is the author of twenty-eight novels, each a million-copy-plus national bestseller: Some of them are: Suffer the Children, Punish the Sinners, Cry for the Strangers, Comes the Blind Fury, When the Wind Blows, The God Project, Nathaniel, Brainchild, Hellfire, The Unwanted, The Unloved, Creature, Sleepwalk, Second Child, Darkness, Shadows, Guardian, The Homing, Black Lightning, The Presence, and The Blackstone Chronicles. John Saul lives in Seattle, Washington.
ENTER THE TERRIFYING WORLD OF JOHN SAUL
A scream shatters the peaceful night of a sleepy town, a mysterious stranger awakens to seek vengeance.… Once again, with expert, chillingly demonic skill, John Saul draws the reader into his world of utter fear. The author of fifteen novels of psychological and supernatural suspense—all million copy New York Times bestsellers—John Saul is unequaled in his power to weave the haunted past and the troubled present into a web of pure, cold terror.
THE GOD PROJECT
Something is happening to the children of Eastbury, Massachusetts … something that strikes at the heart of every parent’s darkest fears. For Sally Montgomery, the grief over the sudden death of her infant daughter is only the beginning. For Lucy Corliss, her son Randy is her life. Then one day, Randy doesn’t come home. And the terror begins …