by Taylor Grand
“I started watching her for a few days, and I saw that she went through that door about the same time every day. So, I snuck into the east wing early one morning and hid in a closet by the back entrance, and when she came into the house I followed her.
She was always talking and gossiping on her phone so she didn’t notice me. I saw here go all the way to the end of the main hallway and into the very last room.
“I waited a couple of minutes, until I thought it was safe. Then I peeked inside the room and saw that she’d moved one of those…what do you call it…those big carpets from China?”
“An oriental rug?” McDaniels offered.
“Yeah, one of those. There was a big wooden door underneath it and a ramp that went all the way down to a basement. I don’t think Lucinda worried about closing it, ’cause she didn’t think anyone was around. I started to sneak down the ramp real quiet.”
Jacob paused then, his thin face pinched with distaste. “I wish…I’d never gone down there.”
McDaniels glanced at the thing in the drawings again. He’d seen pictures of babies with massive heads that looked similar. He couldn’t remember the proper medical term for it, but he knew it was sometimes referred to as “water on the brain.” Jacob’s interpretation, however, was more like something out of a horror film.
He watched the boy squirming in his chair for a few moments, and then said, “And what did you see?”
Jacob’s eyes grew wider, as if the scene were unfolding before him. “I saw Lucinda changing an IV bag. I knew what it was, ’cause I’d seen them on TV. But I couldn’t see who was lying in the hospital bed from where I was standing. I tried to get a better look, but I slipped and fell on the ramp.
Lucinda heard me and turned around…and I saw my brother for the first time. I started screaming. Lucinda tried to calm me down, but I couldn’t stop screaming. I was still screaming after she’d carried me to the other side of the house and my parents came running.
“When my dad found out what I’d done, he wouldn’t even look at me. He was so mad he punched a hole in the wall and sent me to my room. But my mom came to see me late that night, after Dad went to sleep. She’d been drinking a lot—I could always tell. She just fell on my bed and started crying and crying and crying. I’d never seen her like that before.”
Jacob’s eyes welled with tears, but he seemed to be doing his best to hold them back. “She told me everything.”
McDaniels found his box of Kleenex and offered one. The boy shook his head and toughed it out. “I’m OK. It kinda feels good to talk about it—even though you probably don’t believe me.”
McDaniels cleared his throat. “I’m not here to judge the truth. I’m here to listen and help if I can.”
The boy studied him, as if trying to discern whether or not he believed his words. McDaniels offered a vague smile and prepared to take more notes.
“Mom told me that what I’d seen down in the basement wasn’t a monster. It was her first child. Quinn. They’d built him a special room. He even had his own private nurse—Lucinda. She said Quinn was born with a whole bunch of stuff wrong with him—things I can’t even pronounce.
He couldn’t see, talk, hear…anything. And his head is so big ’cause of his soft skull—and his brain. It’s a lot bigger than normal.
“Mom said he came out that way because of a drug she took to help her get pregnant, ’cause she and dad couldn’t have a baby on their own. It was an experimental drug that my dad’s company made, but it caused all kinds of problems with babies.”
Jacob’s expression grew heavy with sorrow. “I asked her why she and Dad never told me before, and she said that they’d been waiting till I was old enough to understand. I was like, understand what? And that’s when she told me that I was adopted…”
The boy’s voice trailed off. Neither he nor McDaniels spoke for a full minute. The only sound in the room was the hollow clunk of the air conditioner as it came to life.
Finally, McDaniels broke the silence, “How did that make you feel, Jacob? Finding out that you were adopted?”
Jacob gave a quick shrug. “I don’t know. Kinda mad. Kinda sad. Both at the same time, I guess. Know what I mean?”
“Of course,” McDaniels said sympathetically. “That’s understandable.”
“I mean, I could see why they adopted me…after what happened to Quinn and all. They didn’t want to take any chances, you know? What I couldn’t understand was what she told me after that.”
McDaniels took a deep breath as he flipped to the last blank page of his pad.
“Did you know that we only use about ten percent of our brains?” Jacob asked.
McDaniels nodded. “I’ve heard speculation to that effect…yes.”
“Well, Mom said that Quinn can do things with his brain that we can’t. But…he can’t control it. And that’s why they kept him drugged up and down in the basement. She said he did bad things when he was awake. I asked her how he could do bad things if he couldn’t talk, hear, or move. And she couldn’t answer me. All she could do was cry.”
A tear dropped silently onto Jacob’s cheek and a quiver crept into his voice. “She kept asking me to forgive her…telling me how much she loved me over and over.”
Jacob wiped at his face. “The last thing she said before she left my room was: ‘I’m sorry.’”
McDaniels handed the box of Kleenex to Jacob again, and this time the boy took a single tissue and wiped his eyes. “She died just a few hours later. Dad said that it was an accident, but I just know she took those pills on purpose.”
McDaniels softened his voice. “I was very sorry to hear of your loss, Jacob. I understand how difficult that can be.”
Jacob nodded, his face looking bloodless under the unflattering fluorescent lights. “I prayed that Quinn would get better. I’d always wanted a brother to play with. And every time I thought about him…stuck down in that cold basement alone, I would get so sad. Dad said that Quinn’s brain didn’t work like ours. He didn’t know where he was, or what was going on. But I thought what if he was wrong? What if Quinn had known what was happening all those years but couldn’t say or do anything about it? It was the worst thing I could think of.
“One night I found my dad drunk on the living room floor. It was always easy to get him to do things when he was drunk. He really wanted to sleep, but I kept bugging him about visiting Quinn and asking him for the combination to the lock on the basement door. He finally gave it to me just to get rid of me. But I didn’t have the guts to go down there for a few more weeks.
“When Christmas came we didn’t even put up a tree. That was something my mom was always in charge of. I searched all over the house Christmas morning, but I couldn’t find my dad anywhere. I wanted to give Quinn a Christmas present so I finally went down to the basement by myself.
“I saw my brother just laying down there in the dark, not moving at all, but staring at me with those awful eyes. I tried not to look at him too much, because he still scared me. But I’d brought him my favorite Batman comic as a present, and I started to read to him.
“And then, the weirdest thing happened…his breathing changed. It seemed calmer, and it made me feel good to think that might be because I was there. So I started visiting him a lot, and I always brought a stack of comics with me. My dad didn’t seem to mind, as long as I didn’t touch anything. And Quinn…I think he liked the visits.
“But whenever Lucinda came down, I hated it ’cause she was always acting like I was in the way. But I was quiet and watched what she did, because I wanted to know how to take care of Quinn too. I mean…he was my brother and all.”
McDaniels reached into the organizer on his desk, picked up a fresh pad of paper, flipped it open and started writing.
“You talk about Lucinda in the past tense. Is she no longer with you?”
Suddenly, Jacob smashed his fist down on the arm of his chair violently, giving McDaniels a hell of a start. “It’s my fault it happened—but
I could never have known it would happen!”
McDaniels regained his composure and spoke reassuringly. “It’s okay, Jacob. It’s okay. What happened to Lucinda?”
Jacob gave a distraught sigh. “Remember…when I said they kept Quinn drugged? Well, I found out what it was. I looked it up on my computer. Doctors call it a ‘morphine drip.’ They use it on people when they’re in lots of pain—and they use it to help people die faster.”
McDaniels’s mask of impassivity had begun to slip; lines of concern invaded the corners of his eyes.
Jacob raised his voice angrily, “It was like they were trying to kill him or something! So I went down into the basement and I poked a hole in the bag with a needle. I wanted to help Quinn wake up.”
The boy’s eyes darkened as he continued, “I went down the next day to check on him and the door was already open. There was this terrible smell coming out, like bleach and chemicals and stuff. As soon as I went down the stairs, I saw my dad. He’d moved Quinn and his bed to the far side of the basement and was cleaning up something off the floor with a mop. He was acting really weird, like he was sleepwalking or something.
“There was blood everywhere, and this…twisted-up thing pushed into the corner. I couldn’t tell what it was, at first. It kind of looked like a body, but it was turned inside out…like a coat when you can see the pockets…all these guts and organs and stuff on the outside.
“Then I saw Lucinda’s bloody shoes lying in the corner and I knew. The horrible thing on the ground was all that was left of her. I got dizzy and my legs went wobbly—and that’s the last thing I remembered before I woke up in my room.
“My dad was just sitting there next to my bed, staring at me, bloodstains all over his shirt.”
McDaniels was so intent on the boy’s story that his pen slipped from his hands onto the desk. He quickly snatched it up and returned to his note taking.
Jacob spoke as if there were something unpalatable in his mouth, “He sat there and lied to my face; told me that Lucinda had a little accident with some of the medical equipment. Said he’d called an ambulance and she’d be just fine. I asked him about the bloody thing on the floor and he told me I’d hit my head—probably just imagined it.
“I wanted to laugh in his face. I mean, how stupid did he think I was? But I pretended to believe him ’cause I didn’t like the way he kept looking at me—I just wanted to get him out of my room.
“I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I kept thinking about Quinn, and how my mom said he did bad things when he was awake. And now I knew what she meant. Somehow Quinn had done that horrible thing to Lucinda.”
Light glinted off of the boy’s cheeks, which were wet with tears. “And it’s all my fault for waking him up.”
McDaniels remained silent. He didn’t want to risk Jacob shutting down again, as he had so many times in the past.
Jacob regarded his small hands as he spoke, “The next morning, I found out that Dad had fired the house staff: the housekeepers, gardeners, pool cleaners—everyone. He said it was just going to be him, Quinn, and me from now on, one big happy family. And when he said it, there was this smile on his face that didn’t look right.
“Things only got worse after that. My dad moved Quinn’s hospital bed into the family room, close to one of the windows—probably the first time he’d ever been near the sun. It was also the first time I’d seen Quinn fully awake.
“He looked even scarier in the daylight. The veins in his head had gotten thicker. His eyes were redder, and they bulged even more. His face—it twitched a lot, like he was always in pain.
“And my dad…he became a completely different person. He’d never been interested in anything except his job before, but now his whole life was about my brother. He took personal leave from work so he could take care of Quinn. He cleaned him, fed him, and took care of whatever he needed.
“That’s when it hit me. Quinn had to be controlling him—with his mind. That was why they’d kept Quinn drugged up all the time: to keep him from doing bad things with his mind! It was my brother that made dad clean up that mess with Lucinda.
“That’s why he was acting like he was sleepwalking when he did it. He also forced my dad to fire the house staff—and bring him out of the basement too. I know my dad never would’ve done any of that stuff on his own—especially take leave from his job.
“It was right around then that my nightmares started too. The ones I told you about—where Quinn’s thoughts are in mine.”
Jacob suddenly stood up. His eyes were scrunched shut, as if a sharp pain were lancing through his head.
“What is it?” McDaniels said with genuine concern.
The boy pounded his fist against his head. Once. Twice. Three times. “He’s in my head right now. I can’t get him out of my head!”
McDaniels tried calming words, but they felt hollow even as he said them. “It’s okay, Jacob. Everything’s going to be okay—”
The boy’s eyes snapped open and he gave McDaniels a look that stopped him cold. “No, it’s not. It’s not gonna be okay at all.”
McDaniels raised his hands. “I can see you’re upset. And I’m here to listen. But I need you to relax and take a seat. Can you do that for me?”
Jacob met his gaze defiantly for a long and uncomfortable moment. Finally, he plopped back down in his chair, rubbing his temples; his face a taut mask of resistance.
“Maybe we should continue this later, Jacob.”
“No!” Jacob snapped. “I still have to tell you the most important part—the whole reason I’m here.”
McDaniels exhaled loudly. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“Quinn…he tells me things. Not in words. It’s more like…I can feel what he feels. And all he seems to feel is hate—especially for what my parents did to him. He wants to do terrible things to my dad—even worse than what he did to Lucinda. But I won’t let him. I had to explain that killing him would be bad for both of us. We need a grownup for money, food, electricity and stuff.
“But in some ways, it’s as if my dad is already gone. Quinn’s turned him into this thing—like a zombie that only looks like my dad. It’s awful to see.”
McDaniels’s hand was cramping up from all the writing, but he didn’t dare stop. He wanted to make sure he got everything down.
Jacob’s fingers unconsciously probed the area around his eyes. “When Quinn is in my head, he can see and learn about the world through me; like when I’m watching TV or using my computer.
“But his brain doesn’t work the same—he learns way faster. He can scan a whole webpage in a few seconds. He wants me to keep clicking page after page…I can barely keep up with him.
“And then a few weeks ago he started having me bookmark all of these terrible news stories. The news people call them ‘freak accidents.’ Like a few weeks ago when all of those kindergarten kids on that school bus stopped breathing for no reason.
“And then there was a gas explosion that destroyed a bunch of warehouses that my dad’s company owns. Killed over a hundred employees. And everyone on the news is talking about these crazy fires that keep happening all over the city. I have over fifty bookmarks of things like that.
“I don’t know how, but I think Quinn makes these things happen.
“But what scared me more than anything, were the two bookmarks from yesterday. The first one was a website about meltdowns at nuclear power plants and how they happen. And the second one was about the nuclear plant in our town.”
Jacob paused for a moment and studied McDaniels’s face. “I can tell that you don’t believe me.”
McDaniels reached under his glasses and rubbed his eyes before answering. “What’s important here is that you believe it, Jacob. And I’m glad that you trusted me enough to tell me what’s been troubling you.”
Jacob reached for his backpack, which was sitting near his feet on the floor. It was faded black with a yellow Batman logo emblazoned upon on it, and it appeared to be filled to the burs
ting point.
“You remember ‘Show and Tell,’ don’t you, Mr. McDaniels?”
McDaniels nodded as he reached for the small bottle of water on his desk. He unscrewed the cap and began to drink.
His throat was so constricted and dry that it actually hurt.
Jacob said, “You’re probably wondering why I would tell you all of this—stuff that could get my family in trouble.” He unzipped his backpack and stepped closer to McDaniels’s desk.
“It’s because I knew you wouldn’t believe me. And even if you did, it wouldn’t matter…’cause you’re not leaving this room alive.”
McDaniels choked on his water.
Jacob’s face transformed then. His features took on a hateful, savage quality. “You told me everything I said in this room was confidential, Mr. McDaniels. But you lied. When you and Mrs. Finelli called my dad about those drawings, you broke your promise. I trusted you.”
McDaniels wiped water from his chin with a trembling hand. “Listen…Jacob. It’s true that our conversations are confidential. But teachers and counselors have the right to contact parents under certain circumstances.”
Jacob moved awkwardly—as if he weren’t in complete control of his body. “You thought you were talking to my dad, but you were wrong.”
McDaniels started to respond, but he could only muster a weak gurgling sound.
Jacob reached into his backpack. “Mrs. Finelli didn’t show up for school today because I visited her at her home last night—and I told her the same story I told you.”
McDaniels stood up, struggling for his next breath, and then doubled over from a severe jolt of pain to his abdomen.
Jacob yanked Mrs. Finelli’s severed head from his backpack. There were two gaping holes where her eyes had been, and her blood-streaked face was stretched into a hideous, eternal scream. McDaniels dropped to the floor in agony as his internal organs began to shift and twist, like a pit of snakes had been unleashed inside his body.
The boy McDaniels knew as Jacob Campbell stood over him, his face twitching, as if he was in pain. At that moment, the school counselor realized that everything the boy had said was true.