There was a soreness in his hand, and he opened it to find the pendant still inside. The indentations were gone, but the pain was still there.
Evan let the cross dangle around his neck and rose up into a sitting position, dropping his feet off the edge of the couch. He worked backward through his memory and was suddenly overcome by a wave of relief. He had done it. He had fought back and he was still here.
He began to grin when the door opened. He turned in time to catch a glimpse of Ellie before she promptly disappeared again, running back down the hall. Evan could hear her yelling excitedly that he was awake.
A minute later the door was pushed open wide and five others walked in behind Ellie. His mother Connie was first, followed by Shannon, Mary, Tania, and finally Dan Taylor.
“You’re awake!” Before he could get up, Connie rushed to her son on the couch.
“How do you feel?”
“Better.” He couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “I think we did it.” Everyone smiled at him except Taylor. Evan leaned forward as if he were about to stand up but suddenly stopped. The pain in his chest was still there.
He winced and rolled back onto the couch, clutching his chest. He looked up confused. “It still hurts.”
Taylor mused. “I bet it does.”
“But, I thought…”
“You thought what? One time would fix it and everything would be fine?” He shook his head. “Boy, you have one hell of a road ahead of you.”
The expression on Evan’s face changed to shock. “How…how long?”
“I don’t know.” Taylor didn’t know how long. It was either forever, or if he died, much sooner.
Evan dropped his head and stared absently at the carpeting under his feet. God, I don’t think I can do this.
“Evan?”
He raised his head back up to see Shannon step forward.
“This is not going to be easy. I understand that. We all do. But we’re here to help you.” When he didn’t answer, she continued. “We’re all ready to help you fight this, including Mr. Taylor, if you let us.”
“What does that mean?”
Shannon glanced around at the others before turning back to him. “I want you to come stay with me for a while. At my house, with Mr. Taylor. The next few weeks are going to be rough, and he’s agreed to stay and help you through it. If he can.”
Evan looked at each one of them in the room, beginning with his mother, who was clearly struggling to keep a stiff upper lip. When he got to Taylor again, he asked, “How bad is this going to get?”
“Pretty damn bad.”
“Will I make it?”
Taylor did not answer. Instead, he merely stared down with a look that Evan could not read. It looked like either doubt or indifference.
“Mom?”
Connie Nash frowned at her son, her eyes welling up. “I think we need to do this, honey.”
Evan lowered his head before finally nodding.
7
“I still feel it. All of it. The pain, the desperation. Even though we have her back, the anguish is still there. Hell, it hasn’t even been a week, but I thought those feelings would be mostly gone. Instead it’s almost like it’s still happening.”
Dennis Mayer looked at his daughter, curled up asleep at the table in his wife’s lap. “Ellie was the one who was taken, and yet she’s recovering faster than we are. We’ve got a long way to go, but now I realize it’s not just about the pain that you let go of; sometimes there’s a pain that won’t let go of you.
“And I can’t stop thinking that if I hadn’t decided to pick that phone back up and check the messages, I wouldn’t be here, with them.” Leaning forward slightly with his arms on the table, Dennis looked softly at Shannon. “I’m a changed man. No one can come that close to losing everything and not have it change them. If it doesn’t change you, then as far as I’m concerned, you’re dead already.”
He straightened in his chair. “So I quit the force. I went in and gave them my notice. I’ll get a small, partial pension and a healthcare plan. But now, I’ll be able to focus on the only thing that matters: my family.”
Taylor dropped his head slightly and stared at his coffee cup, gently fingering the edge of the saucer beneath it. It was late, almost midnight, and they were the only three still up. Evan had fallen asleep, thankfully without another episode. Taylor was not expecting another until the next evening. Evan’s mother was asleep on the couch in the other room.
Taylor pursed his lips and watched as Shannon softly kissed the top of Ellie’s head, careful not to disturb her. “So, she’s going to be alright?”
“Only time will tell. But we’ll take whatever we can get.”
Taylor nodded. He remained quiet for a long time, contemplating. “I’ve got to tell you, your sister is damn tenacious.”
Shannon grinned. “Yes she is.”
“No one had found me since Rief died. I thought I’d gotten all the loose ends. I couldn’t believe it when her and her friend showed up at the cabin. When it was clear I’d been found out, I wasn’t sure what to do.” He shook his head slowly. “I’d been hiding for a long time.”
Taylor was quiet again, still tapping the saucer in front of him. The memories were as vivid as ever. “Sometimes it’s still hard to believe what they were going to do. After all, the government is supposed help you, right? Not kill you. But there’s an awful lot of bad things happening in the government these days. The bigger it gets, the more secrets it keeps.”
Shannon spoke over the top of Ellie in a hushed tone. “Are you sure they’re still after you?”
“No.” Taylor shrugged. “But I can’t take the chance. I was lucky to escape the first time. And things were different then. It was a small group they’d put together, and they didn’t really know what they were doing yet. If it were a couple years later, who knows?”
“What exactly did they want with you?” Dennis asked.
“They wanted to use me as a weapon. It started off as a defense related project, but I could see their minds turning.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“The CIA. I guess one of their higher-ups witnessed a paranormal event, and it drove him to create a special task force to investigate whether it was real. They named it Project Stargate and had about ten agents assigned to it. It was run by a specialist named Douglas Bollinger who’d already been a spook for years. One thing I’ll give ‘em is that they sure picked the right bastard for the job.
“They spent a lot of time tracking down supposed psychics all across the country. Anyone claiming to have abilities. Any kind of ability at all. At first they ran their tests claiming to be a branch under the department of sciences or some bullshit.”
“They were looking for people with abilities so they could exploit them?”
“That’s right. The cold war was technically winding down, but they still didn’t trust the Soviets. The CIA hated them. They knew the Soviets had a lot more clandestine stuff going on than we knew about, which they probably did. But spies and espionage are expensive. They wanted to know if there was another way, maybe even a faster and more effective way. So they started recruiting.”
Dennis gave him a quizzical look. “But how did you get mixed up in all of it?”
“That was about the same time I had my car accident. I was twenty-three, driving home one night after work. A drunk driver hit me. Luckily it wasn’t very fast because we didn’t wear seat belts back then. I still hit the windshield hard enough to give me a concussion. Dr. Rief treated me in the emergency room, but there weren’t any symptoms to suggest it might be more serious. Two days later I had an episode, like Evan.”
“What happened?”
“It was brief, the first time. But that’s how they start. And they didn’t happen as frequently with me as they are now with him. Eventually though, I started seeing things. I thought they were hallucinations and so did Rief when I told him about them. He wasn’t all that worried. Apparently all kinds o
f strange things can happen following a concussion. He kept an eye on me though.”
Taylor stopped briefly as if remembering something new. “He was actually more concerned about the frequency than what I was actually seeing. It wasn’t until he suspected a more serious problem that he begun delving more into the images I had been describing.”
“But he believed you then?”
Taylor almost scoffed. “You could say that. When I described his living room at home right down to his favorite painting, he became a believer.”
Shannon nodded. “I can relate.”
Taylor shrugged. “By then, I was having physical problems that were clearly related to the visions. Rief was getting more and more worried. He called everyone he knew, but no one had any idea what it was. Finally, he got desperate and submitted it to a medical journal. What we didn’t know was that it was one of the sources that Bollinger and his other spooks used to look for so-called psychics. Rief had put in enough detail about my visions that the article caught the CIA’s attention.
Up until then they’d been recruiting by posing as scientists and doctors. In fact, the night I was abducted, someone called Rief earlier in the day claiming to be a doctor from Washington, D.C. Evidently, they were going to recruit me just as they had the others, by offering me money to participate. But when Rief laid out what was happening to me and what I was able to do in detail, I guess they didn’t want to take any chances.”
So, what, they just grabbed you?”
“They just grabbed me.”
“And no one knew?”
“Nope. At the time, I lived by myself. As far as I can tell, no one saw anything.”
“Where did they take you?”
“Back to Langley. I was young and didn’t know what the hell was going on. They used a lot of intimidation and accusations. Pretty soon I was ready to do whatever they asked just to clear myself. That’s how the government does it. They overwhelm and scare the hell out of you.”
“So you couldn’t resist,” offered Shannon.
“I couldn’t have resisted even if I wanted to. The visions were happening all the time by then. It was better if I at least had some say in it.” Taylor picked up the cup and finished the rest of his coffee. “I’ll never forget the first time I did it for them. I’m pretty sure at least one of them pissed their pants.”
Dennis and Shannon smiled simultaneously. “How did it happen?”
“They had one of their spooks sitting in the next room. A room I’d never been in. I was supposed to try to see the picture he’d drawn on a piece of paper.” Taylor actually smiled. “Instead, I read some the newspaper on the table next to him, word for word.”
Dennis began to laugh but caught himself. “No bullshit?”
“No bullshit,” Taylor answered, smiling. He looked out through the sliding glass door into the darkness beyond, and the smile faded. “You see, they never told you whether you were right or wrong. They figured too many wrong answers would damage the subject’s confidence and skill. But I sure knew. They couldn’t hide the look on their faces. Of course that was a big mistake. Everyone went nuts after that. But each time they had me do something harder, farther away. Pretty soon I realized I was in trouble. Both from them and from the symptoms. They knew they finally had a real ‘remote viewer’ but ironically, one who was slowly dying on them.”
“I couldn’t sleep anymore and with every vision I did for ‘em, I was coughing up enough blood to dye my shirt. Their doctors tried everything to stop it. They gave me all kinds of drugs and injections, but it just made things worse. But it was the last vision I did for them that changed everything.”
“The Russians had built a large complex in a remote section of Crimea, with hundreds of trucks going in and out. The CIA could see it from their satellite shots but couldn’t figure out what they were doing inside. Even though my health was failing, they pushed me to ‘view’ it. And I did. When I told them what was inside, and gave them a way to verify it, that was it. That was the end.”
Shannon raised her eyebrow. “The end of what?”
“The end of me. At least as far as they were concerned. They knew I was dying…and quickly. But for the first time, they also knew they had someone with a provable ability. An ability that could allow them to see anything. For an intelligence agency, it was…godlike. And yet, I was about to die and take it all with me.”
Taylor paused again and fell silent. His face took on a hard expression as the emotions behind the memories came flooding back.
“They didn’t give a damn about me. They just wanted what was in my head. Or more importantly, to find out what was so unique about my brain. Even if they had to go in and find out.”
Shannon gasped. “What? They were going to…”
“Operate.” Taylor stared down at the table and shook his head. “If they couldn’t save me, they decided to at least find out what it was that made my visions possible. And once I was dead it would be too late. They had to find out while I was still breathing.”
“My God!” Shannon exclaimed, under her breath. She had a thought and tilted her head. “How did you know what they had planned?”
Taylor peered at her, sarcastically. “Are you joking?”
Dennis leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “And then?”
“I had to get out of there,” Taylor said. “I did more during those tests than they knew. By then I’d seen their whole complex, where they met, where they worked, even the grounds outside. And I knew where the infirmary was. I also knew where the cameras were and where they weren’t. So I faked a health scare. Course, in my case, I guess I wasn’t much of a stretch. The last night there, I let my body hemorrhage and just tried to keep myself breathing and alert. They freaked out and rushed me to the infirmary, and then called the surgical team. But I managed to recover enough to grab something heavy and hit the two spooks who were in the room with me. I got their keys and made it outside. Even grabbed one of their cars.”
Dennis smiled. “You escaped.”
“I escaped. Made it a couple hundred miles before running out of gas, but then I ditched the car and took off on foot. I wasn’t able to move very fast in my condition, but I had enough of a lead that they never found me.
“Next morning I woke up in the woods, lost. It took me all day, but eventually I stumbled across a large house, which turned out to be a church. An old pastor took me in and cleaned me up.” Taylor grinned. “Fortunately, he wasn’t much of a fan of the government either. That man saved my life twice.” Taylor looked up and saw both Dennis and Shannon waiting expectantly. “He helped me get to the train station bound for Montana. But I wouldn’t have made it if he hadn’t helped me with something else. I told him about what was happening to me. About the visions. He didn’t understand it, but he did come up with what I needed to survive it.”
“The cross?”
“That was one part of it,” Taylor confirmed. “But it was the realization that wherever I was on the other side, I needed an anchor. Something to keep me here. Something to remind me how close I was to death and that I could not let myself be afraid.” Taylor couldn’t believe the memories were still so clear. “I’m not religious. The cross is symbolic, just like the phrase from the Bible. What it’s really about is staying grounded. Anchored. And providing yourself a way back.”
Shannon gazed at him solemnly. “Are you going to be able to help Evan?”
As the last word rolled off her tongue, Shannon realized how afraid she actually was of Taylor’s answer.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But…” Taylor added before she looked too relieved, “that kid has a hard road ahead of him. He was expecting to fix this quickly. It’s not going to be like that. I was serious when I said there is no fix. All he can do is endure it. Soon he’ll need to accept that things will never be the same. His battle will last the rest of his life. And death will come when he can no longer resist.
“I learned to endure because I had more time. Eva
n’s ability is stronger and how much he’s able to stand is up to him.” He looked at Shannon. “I think that’s your department, Counselor.”
Finally, Taylor checked his watch and slowly stood up. “I need to hit the sack.”
Dennis stood up with him and extended his hand. Taylor reached out to shake it. He then nodded at Shannon and a sleeping Ellie and headed for the other room.
“Dan,” Dennis said, stopping him. “Are you sure that guy Bollinger would still come after you?”
“He would if he knew I was alive.”
“How do you know?”
At that, Taylor smirked. “Because when I escaped from that building, Bollinger was one of the two spooks I knocked out in the infirmary.”
8
The early morning sun bathed the bedroom in a warm light, and the edge of its rays crept across the room. They eventually crawled across Evan’s face, causing his eyes to flutter and open. He lay still for several minutes before finally sitting up in bed. With a grimace, he clutched a hand against his chest.
It had been almost two weeks now and the pain was still there. God, would it ever go away?
According to Dan Taylor, it wouldn’t. Evan didn’t want to believe that, but he was gradually accepting the reality that it wasn’t getting much better. It was no longer getting worse, but it certainly wasn’t getting better. At all.
It was excruciating, and at its worst in the morning. Even when it subsided somewhat throughout the day, he would still occasionally experience a sudden jolt of pain that would stop him in his tracks. Dan Taylor insisted that in time the frequency of the jolts would decrease, but so far, Evan hadn’t noticed any change.
After a few relaxation techniques, he bent down and reached out gingerly to retrieve his pants. Then his shirt. He got dressed and quietly made his way downstairs.
As he neared the bottom of the stairs, he was only mildly surprised to see Ellie run into the room. She looked at him eagerly.
“Do you want to play catch?”
Evan grinned and palmed the large ball atop the end of the banister as he stepped onto the soft carpet. He had to acknowledge that this was his own doing. He’d been teaching Ellie to play catch with a softball.
The Unexpected Hero Page 3