Centralia

by Mike Dellosso

  Peter unlatched his seat belt. “How do you know I won’t run?”

  “Because you want to know the truth.”

  “I could find it on my own,” Peter bluffed. He needed Habit now but didn’t want the bald man to know that.

  Habit frowned and shook his head. “Not this truth.”

  Opening the door, Peter said, “I’ll be just a few minutes.”

  The bathroom in the convenience store was clean and empty. After changing into the clothes Habit had brought him, Peter was out in less than five minutes. He thought about running. Even after all Habit had told him, he still didn’t fully trust the man. Like Peter, he’d been trained to kill, educated to be heartless and singularly focused. Could Peter believe that he’d had a change of heart, that seeing Peter again had really caused him to alter his course that much? Then again, he had come to find him.

  Returning to the car, Peter closed the door and hooked his seat belt. He’d decided he had no other option than to play along with Habit and see where this trip took him.

  Twenty minutes into the second leg of their journey, Peter said, “You know Nichols is still alive? That guy you shot wasn’t him.”

  “I know. I knew then.”

  “Then why’d you take the shot?”

  “To send a message.”

  “Do you think he got it?”

  Habit slowed the car and turned left onto a road that appeared to be freshly paved. The yellow center lines hadn’t even been painted yet. “Nope. That’s another reason I came back. They’ll come after us. They’re not going to give up on you.”

  “And you’re using me as bait again.”

  Habit shook his head. “That’s not exactly what I have in mind.”

  The big man was being intentionally enigmatic, giving Peter just enough information to keep him interested. Peter had had enough for now. He turned his head and watched out the window as they passed through a small town. There was one intersection and one light. A police car was parked just beyond the light, the officer keeping watch on the traffic, waiting to catch someone violating the law—speeding, running a red light, making an illegal turn. The officer met Peter’s eyes as they passed, but there was no sense of recognition in them. Peter realized then he had been holding his breath and exhaled.

  “Where are we going?” Peter said.

  “I told you—there’s a man you need to meet.”

  “The mystery man. I know. I mean where, a location, like on a map.”

  Habit glanced at him. “Ever hear of Utica?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just north of Utica is the Black River Wild Forest. That’s where the truth is.”

  Two hours later Habit turned the car onto a dirt road that wound its way up a mountain dotted with pines as tall as five-story buildings. The road was narrow and rutted, and at times the sedan bottomed out and scraped on the stony ground. Habit did his best to avoid the potholes and ridges. He cursed under his breath each time the ground rose or dipped sharply.

  At the top of the mountain, concealed by trees that stood as tall and straight as telephone poles, sat a cabin. It wasn’t much to look at—just four walls and a slanted metal roof—but it was solidly built to withstand the harsh winters of upstate New York. Smoke puffed from the chimney and threw the aroma of burning wood into the air.

  Habit parked the car alongside the cabin and shut off the engine.

  “Someone wants to be left alone,” Peter said.

  Habit studied the cabin with intent eyes. “More like someone else wants him to be left alone.”

  “What did he do?”

  Habit turned toward Peter. “What makes you think he did something?”

  “This has the feel of exile rather than escape.”

  Habit didn’t answer. He opened his door and exited the car.

  Outside, the air was cool and crisp, and the combination of smoke and pine scents intensified. Above them, the tall canopy of trees blocked most of the sunlight. The ground was barren and rocky, blanketed with dry needles.

  “Though it would be a nice place to escape from the world,” Peter said.

  The cabin had a sprawling front porch that stretched the length of the front wall. On it were four wooden rocking chairs and a small table. Before Habit could knock, the front door opened and an elderly man appeared. Without saying a word, he hugged Habit and clapped him on the back. He appeared to be in his eighties. He was slightly shorter than Peter with a shock of thick white hair. His chest and arms were thick, remnants of a physique hardened by manual labor or strenuous exercise. Even in his advanced years, he moved with an athletic manner.

  When he pulled away from Habit, the old man looked at Peter and studied him with serious gray eyes. “So this is him?”

  Habit nodded. “It’s him.”

  The man approached Peter and stuck out his hand. Peter took it.

  “Son,” the man said, shaking Peter’s hand. “I’m Roger Abernathy. We got a lot to talk about.”

  Abernathy turned and entered the house; Habit and Peter followed. The interior was furnished with antiques and rustic pieces. The door opened to a great room with a cathedral ceiling. To the right was a small kitchen and two closed doors, no doubt a bedroom and a bathroom. Deer antlers and rifles of every size and caliber decorated the walls of the great room, and from the peak of the ceiling hung a chandelier made of moose antlers.

  Abernathy headed for the kitchen. “Sit down. Sit down. Would you like some coffee? I just put some on.”

  Habit declined but Peter, both intrigued and intensely curious, agreed. “Please. Sugar, no cream.”

  Minutes later Abernathy returned with two steaming cups of coffee, handed one to Peter, and sat on a chair opposite the sofa where Peter sat.

  Abernathy sipped at his coffee, not taking his eyes off Peter the whole time. “So I hear you’re looking for answers. Is that right?”

  Peter held the mug with both hands and nodded. “The truth would be nice for once.”

  “Yes. You’ve been fed a buffet’s worth of lies, haven’t you?”

  “It seems that way.” Peter took a sip of his coffee but didn’t take his eyes off the older man. “I just want to know the truth about my wife and daughter.”

  Abernathy shifted a glance at Habit, then looked back to Peter. “Ah, yes, and we’ll get to that. But first, Lawrence brought you here to me because I’m the only one who can give you the whole truth and nothing but. Do you know who I am?”

  Peter shrugged. “Someone important enough to exile. You need to be kept quiet but also kept alive.”

  Abernathy smiled and sipped from his mug. “Very good.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  Abernathy turned his head slightly and fixed Peter with narrow eyes. He’d taken offense at Peter’s question. “Does my side matter if I have the truth?”

  “Trust matters, don’t you think?”

  “Certainly. Then what are the sides? The lines can be rather ambiguous sometimes, you know.”

  Peter paused. What was happening in that hole under Centralia was wrong. “With Nichols, or against him.”

  Abernathy studied Peter as if he wasn’t satisfied with that answer. Finally he said, “I’m on your side, Jedidiah.”

  Peter straightened and placed his mug on the coffee table. “Why do you call me that?”

  “It’s your name. Your real name. The name your mother gave you at birth. Jedidiah Patrick. It has such a nice sound to it.”

  Peter was growing anxious. This Abernathy was as nebulous as Nichols, and no answers had yet to come out of his mouth.

  As if he’d read Peter’s body language, Abernathy crossed his legs and said, “In the 1950s the CIA began a project it called MK-ULTRA. Ever hear of it?”

  “‘Files no longer exist,’” Peter said, remembering the empty folder on the computer back in the bunker.

  “You’re a resourceful man, Jedidiah. MK-ULTRA was a program developed to determine how far the human mind could be altered an
d controlled. Experiments were done on human subjects, some aware of what was happening, others not so aware. All sorts of methods were used. Drugs, hallucination, deprivation, torture. The early results were astounding but unpredictable.” He paused and looked at his hands, twisted them as if he were massaging an invisible lump of dough. “I was a researcher. We studied ways to program multiple personalities. But then in the early seventies, we were exposed, and ULTRA was shut down. The files were destroyed. There was much outrage over the experiments.”

  “What does this have to do with me and my family?” Abernathy’s story was intriguing, but Peter failed to see the connection between some secret CIA project so many decades ago and him.

  “The outrage, Jedidiah, was a front. We made such great strides, there was no way the government was going to just give up on our work, cast it aside as if it had never taken place. ULTRA was discontinued, but Centralia was born. And I was asked to head it up. It took us a while to get our bearings again after all the congressional hearings in the eighties and after the dust settled.”

  “I’m still not seeing the connection.”

  Abernathy leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “You were born in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Your parents were young, unmarried, and scared. Your mother was Brethren, your father Catholic. A most unlikely union that never had a chance. Your mother ran away from her family, gave birth to her son, and promptly gave you up for adoption. Her family eventually took her back but not before intense shaming. Your father disappeared.”

  Peter found his heart racing in his chest, and blood surged through his neck and ears.

  “As a child,” Abernathy continued, “you spent time in a handful of foster homes. The system became your family, but it made a poor one. At eighteen you joined the Army, full of fight and attitude. You served your four years, got out, got married, and had a child.”

  “Lilly.”

  “Yes. Lillian. Sweet girl. But you missed the service. You missed the security, the structure, the predictability, so you rejoined. You were the best, Jedidiah. Absolutely the best in every way.” Abernathy hesitated and looked as if he might begin to cry. “Until tragedy struck. It was outside Kandahar. Your unit was ambushed and driven into a warehouse. There were no survivors except one.”

  “Me.”

  “You. And barely at that. Amazingly, you had few physical injuries. But you suffered severe head trauma. We essentially brought you back from the dead, gave you new life, a new purpose.”

  “Centralia.”

  “I saw the potential in you; of course I did. You were our hope for resurrecting the work begun in MK-ULTRA. Nichols was heading it up then, and he, too, saw the opportunity you presented us with.”

  Still Peter remembered nothing. His flashbacks were there, but they were so spotty, so irregular and unreliable. Abernathy’s story was totally unbelievable, and yet Peter found himself wanting to believe every word of it. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

  “I know you’ve been lied to so much, haven’t you? But the lies stop here. I have proof that will convince you.” He motioned to Habit, and the big man got up, crossed the room, and retrieved a laptop. Abernathy ran a hand across his forehead and rubbed his eyes. “Nichols was a liar even back then. He told you your wife and daughter were dead, told them you had died in the mission. He said it was the only way to get you to volunteer. And for the programming to be effective, he needed a willing subject. I disagreed with his tactics. I’ve done a lot of things in my life I’m not proud of—not now, at least—but what he suggested crossed the line for me. I got out. Told them I was leaving. And that’s when they banished me to this mountain. They knew the secrets I keep would bring down kingdoms, crumble the White House, the CIA, Congress, everything Americans trust.”

  Habit set the laptop on a coffee table and swiveled it so the screen faced Peter. He hit a key, and a video began to play. The picture was grainy and the filming amateurish, but the person front and center was definitely Peter. He wore Army fatigues with sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve. He sat at a desk, back straight, hands resting on his thighs. Across from him at the desk sat Nichols. What was visible of the room was bare save for an American flag next to the desk.

  “Name and rank,” Nichols said.

  Peter lifted his chin. “Jedidiah Kurt Patrick. Sergeant. US Army Rangers. Sir.”

  Jedidiah. Peter’s face flushed and heat burned in his cheeks. That was him in that video. It wasn’t some digital trickery or any such thing. He knew it was him. The real deal. And his name was Jed, just like Habit and Abernathy had said.

  On the video, Nichols said, “Do you understand the mission of the Centralia Project?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And do you, Jedidiah Patrick, willingly volunteer for the Centralia Project?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why? What is your motive?”

  “To serve my country, sir. To do my duty. Sir.”

  Nichols slid a piece of paper and pen across the desk. “Sign at the bottom, Sergeant Patrick.”

  Without hesitation, Jed picked up the pen and scribbled his name on the paper.

  The video stopped with a freeze-frame of Jed looking at Nichols. The look on his face was one of determination, of resolve and purpose. He knew full well what he was getting into. Or at least he thought he did at the time.

  Peter pinched the bridge of his nose, then looked toward Abernathy.

  “I know it must come as a shock, son, but you’re not the man they made you think you are.”

  Habit crossed his arms and nodded.

  “So why have they kept you around?” Peter asked Abernathy.

  “I’m valuable to them. I’m not proud of this, but over the years, I’ve been able to help them. Give them information they need.”

  “Why? Why would you help them?”

  “To stay alive. Without my cooperation they’d have no reason to keep me around. I was biding my time, waiting, hoping for an opportunity like this.”

  Peter was quiet for a long moment. “So why bring me here and tell me this?”

  Abernathy smiled again. He had a nice smile, warm and welcoming, a smile one could come to trust easily. “You’re our last hope for shutting it all down. The project has gone awry, experimenting on children and holding them and their mothers prisoner. It’s grown dark under Nichols and needs to be exposed for what it is. Nichols needs to be stopped.”

  “Why can’t you expose them? You were part of it. You have all the inside information.”

  Abernathy sipped his coffee and let out a long sigh. “My past is very dark and checkered. I’ve done some wicked things.” He paused and a shadow moved across his eyes. “Things I’m ashamed of. Things that have tarnished my reputation. Outside of the project my word means little. Most in Washington think I’m dead, and I can tell you no one mourned. If I suddenly showed up and wanted to pull the cover off a project few even know exists, I would not be taken seriously.”

  “Can’t Habit do it then?”

  Abernathy leaned over and patted Habit’s knee. “Lawrence is part of the plan. Voluntarily, I might add. He found me a week ago and asked me for my help. When I met him, I knew the opportunity had come. But you, Jedidiah, you’re the missing piece of the puzzle.” He stopped to sip his coffee again. “You see, this is my last chance to make things right. To do some good for a change. A lot can happen on a mountaintop, you know. One can even find God and forgiveness. Consider this my final act of restitution.”

  Abernathy dug in his pocket and pulled out a small thumb drive and handed it over. “This is everything you need. All the names of everyone who knows about Centralia. Locations. Documents. Videos. It’s all there.”

  “And what do I do with this? Just walk into the president’s office and hand it to him?”

  Abernathy laughed. “Goodness no. You might get slightly farther than I’d get but that would do no good. No one wants this information exposed. Be careful with it.”
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br />   “Then what do I do with this?”

  “You’ll know when the time comes.”

  “I don’t like that answer.”

  A smile pushed the corners of Abernathy’s mouth toward his eyes. “Neither do I, but I knew what to do with it when the time came.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Abernathy nodded.

  “So I can pass it on to someone else?”

  “When the time comes, if you feel that’s the answer.”

  Peter—Jed—didn’t like this. He didn’t want to be this involved. He only wanted to find Karen and Lilly, disappear somewhere for a long time, and regroup his life. But from somewhere inside him, a voice whispered and told him this was the right thing to do. He didn’t know how he’d accomplish it. He hadn’t any idea even where to begin. But he knew he had to at least try. He glanced from Abernathy to Habit. “Where are Karen and Lilly? Does this lead back to them?”

  “It does,” Abernathy said. “They tampered with your mind. Programmed multiple personalities.”

  “I know that. What does it have to do with where my wife and daughter are now?”

  “They fed you what they wanted you to remember, to see, to know, to experience. But what they fed you is merely images and ideas; remember that.”

  Throughout the entire conversation Habit had sat quietly and listened. Now he spoke. “Your real memories, the real you, is still in there. They call it scrubbing, but they can’t delete what’s already been recorded in your brain. The truth is in your mind; it’s just buried under layer after layer after layer of false images.”

  Peter’s heart began to thump again, and suddenly his fingers started to tingle. “Why are you telling me this?” He feared the worst, that they’d tell him Karen and Lilly were really dead, that they were saving the most devastating news for last.

  But instead, Abernathy motioned to Habit and said, “There’s a couple you need to meet.”

  Habit rose from his chair and crossed the room. He stopped in front of a wooden door, placed his hand on the knob, and looked back. Then he opened the door.

  The woman and girl from the bunker emerged. Nichols had called them Nora and Maddy. But then, Nichols had said a lot of things. Peter’s heart beat harder, faster; he could feel his pulse in his throat, temples, ears. Sweat wet his palms. He rose slowly from the sofa and faced the woman and child, who stood just outside the room, holding hands. The looks on their faces said they recognized him, knew him. There was sorrow there yet a glint of hopefulness.