by J. Thorn
No.
That was what they called hope, and Freeman knew the word was nothing but a loaded gun in a shrink’s arsenal. Hope didn’t exist in the real world, where ghosts walked and little kids got shock treatment and barbed wire marked the edges of the universe.
“I’m not thinking anything,” he said, squeezing the penny and wishing he had the guts to say something strange, deep, and tough-soft, like maybe Pacino in “Scent of a Woman” or “Sea of Love.”
“Don’t hold out on me. You know you can trust me.”
“I’m thinking we ought to be getting back inside before someone notices we’re gone. All we need is for Bondurant to be breathing down our necks. He’d probably sign us up for an extra session in Kracowski’s secret little room.”
“Or else give us a spanking,” Vicky said.
“Spare me.”
“Think we should try to get in through the basement?”
Freeman heard a sound from beneath the landing. “I don’t think so,” he whispered.
Someone spoke from the darkness below them. Freeman barely recognized the voice as Starlene’s, it was so shaken.
Starlene spoke again, this time more clearly. “Hey, guys, what are you doing here? It’s past Lights Out. You could get in big trouble.”
Freeman almost wanted to laugh at that. Dead people coming out of the woodwork, and he was supposed to worry about having his dessert withheld.
“You shouldn’t have gone down there,” Vicky said.
Starlene came out of the dark hollow beneath the landing. “I just wanted to check out what you guys said.”
Freeman and Vicky exchanged glances. A grown-up who acknowledged having doubts? What was the world coming to?
“What did you see?” Vicky asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Freeman tried a triptrap on Starlene, but the air was too murky, his own thoughts too cloudy. He only gave himself a headache. If he knew what she’d seen, then maybe he could convince her that he wasn’t crazy. Or maybe she had seen something that had her doubting her own sanity.
Nah. No counselor in the history of the human race had ever been less than perfect. Shrinks were the baseline from which sanity was judged. And though Starlene had shown glimpses of being human, when you got right down to it, she was still a hard-headed know-it-all who gave Jesus Christ credit for all good things and blamed her few failures on other people.
“Nobody’s sure about anything lately,” Freeman said. “What about Kracowski’s machines?”
“All I can say is they look expensive. And they put off a lot of strange vibes.”
“Listen,” Vicky said. “You two can stand out here all night if you want. I’m going inside.”
“You might get in easier with this.” Starlene pulled a keychain from her pocket. “Unless you already know how to break in.”
Vicky gave an innocent look, widening her eyes and letting her mouth go slack. Nothing looked as guilty as feigned innocence.
“Vicky’s a saint,” Freeman said. “It would never cross her mind to do anything against the rules.”
“As if you’ve crossed her mind lately?” Starlene asked.
“I thought you didn’t believe in ESP.”
“I’m starting to believe in a whole lot of new stuff.” She looked at her watch. “Almost eleven. You guys think you can sneak into your dorms without getting caught?”
“You mean you’re not going to report us?”
“No. I’m on your side, remember?”
Starlene led them to the back door and unlocked it. Then she reached inside and keyed the pad, deactivating the alarm.
“Whatever you do, stay away from the lake,” Freeman said to Starlene.
“I know how to swim.”
“I’m not talking about swimming. I’m talking about jumping into the water and looking for an invisible man.”
“Hey, how did you . . . Oh.”
“We aren’t as dumb as we look,” Vicky said.
They slipped down the hall, looking out for the night watch. Whoever had seen them from the upper window might be lying in wait for them. Bondurant was rumored to roam the halls in the middle of the night, paddle in hand. And that wasn’t even considering the danger from crazy spooks who dangled from unseen strings and threw weird sentences into your skull.
Wendover itself seemed a skull, a hard shell housing random and unexplained dreams. Freeman wondered if a building could be insane. If what Vicky said was true and this place had been a nuthouse back in the glory days of psychosurgery, then these walls had absorbed more than their share of screams. Freeman shuddered and wondered where screams went to die.
They slipped past the main offices. No light showed beneath the door, which either meant Bondurant was gone or else was sitting in the dark. Probably dreaming about the next kid he got to paddle. Freeman never wanted to triptrap into Bondurant’s head again. He’d rather swap thoughts with a ghost than with something as vile as The Liz.
“Walk me to my door?” Vicky whispered. In the grim fluorescent light, her face was an unhealthy shade of greenish white.
“You scared?”
“No. I’m too dumb to be scared.”
“Yeah. You’re real dumb all right. So dumb that you play games with the security guards and you’ve got the counselors eating out of your hands.”
“Sorry about that, back there,” she said, sweeping her hair from her face, a gesture that made Freeman’s heart pause. “When I got all emotional.”
“Happens to the best of us.”
“I’ll try not to let it happen again.”
“That would probably make life easier. Even if you have to fake it.”
They were silent the rest of the way to the Green Room. The door was ajar, and Freeman thought about all the girls in their bunks wearing nothing but their underwear. The dormitory was dark, and Freeman didn’t know if one of the counselors was inside waiting for Vicky to enter. He figured he’d best not hang around, no matter what.
Before he left, Vicky grabbed him and put her mouth to his ear. “Thanks for the walk,” she whispered. Then she kissed him on the cheek.
What would Clint do?
Stand there like a wooden statue, that’s what. He almost wished he had a big chew of tobacco, so he could lean over and spit on the floor in lieu of a response. Or wince and twitch one corner of his mouth. Feel nothing, even if you have to fake it.
She was through the door and gone before he could think of something to say, and he was glad, because he would have resorted to Clint’s classic line from “The Outlaw Josey Wales”: Reckon so.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Dr. Kracowski stared at the two-way mirror. “Impossible.”
“Things are only impossible until they happen.”
Kracowski watched McDonald’s face in the reflection. They were in Thirteen, the room of miracles. That is, if Kracowski believed his own eyes instead of the empirical data. For the first time in his life, a shadow of doubt crossed the doctor’s mind. “Is that why the Trust funded me?”
“We’ve been in the paranormal business for decades. Uri Geller was just a Cold War smoke screen. Think of the practical advantages of ESP, clairvoyance, remote viewing. You could sit in on any meeting, no matter how top secret.”
“Congress would never fund such foolishness.”
“Yeah, and they would never fund a space-based missile system, either. What’s a few billion siphoned off here and there? When it comes to national security, most politicians know enough to keep their noses out. And when did I ever say I was working for one government?”
“Okay. You want me to believe in Illuminati conspiracies, and you want me to believe in the supernatural. That’s a lot to ask of a non-believer.”
“You’re not the first one to make a breakthrough.” McDonald waved to the floor. “But your machines downstairs are doing something even our think tank people hadn’t considered. Kenneth Mills never even had a clue, and in many ways, he was the pione
er in this field.”
“You’re fond of mentioning Mills, aren’t you? Maybe he was brilliant, but his end results aren’t. His wife’s dead and his son suffers from a half-dozen behavioral disorders.”
“Mills had a few personality flaws, sure. Like any genius. But his work with EMF opened the door to other people’s heads. And you’ve taken things to the next level, Doctor. A level that, I’m afraid, is a little higher than we expected.”
“And you’re thinking I can’t be trusted?”
“No. Like I told you, orders change.”
“That explains the electric fence.”
“We just think it would be best to keep everyone quarantined until we know more about what we’re dealing with.”
“Quarantined? You make it sound as if we’re cultivating anthrax or manufacturing nerve gas.”
“It’s strictly ‘need to know’ at this point. If a few of the staff members went around town telling ghost stories, somebody might start snooping. And snooping leads to more snooping. Before you know it, along comes an idiot reporter looking for a Pulitzer and a book deal.”
“Ah, that clichéd little cloak and dagger bit. Who do you really work for, CIA or FBI or National Security Council?”
McDonald gave a toadish creak of laughter. “We’re the guys who keep an eye on them.”
“I think, McDonald or whatever your name is, that’s the first lie you’ve told me.” Kracowski sat on the little cot where he had cured so many troubled children. He looked at the ceiling and wondered what it would be like to undergo an SST treatment himself. He didn’t think he would notice, because his neural patterns were perfectly aligned. There was nothing to cure.
But would he be able to read minds? Or see ghosts?
He shook his head at the memory of the incident in the basement, those cold words slithering into his head.
“So all you have to do is keep with the program,” McDonald said. “We’re bringing in some of our people to verify your results. Independent observers, that sort of thing.”
“What you’re trying to say is you’re going to keep the lid on this forever.”
“Maybe not forever. The United States government didn’t keep the atom bomb secret once they started wiping out cities.”
“I still don’t see how you expect these”—Kracowski spat the next word—”ghosts to be manipulated. If they even exist.”
“I think you can take ‘if’ out of the equation.” McDonald pointed to the two-way mirror.
Kracowski turned, and an image flickered in the glass as if trapped between the double panes. The image took a silver and white form, built itself a face. It was the woman, the one Kracowski had seen in the basement. This time, he had a corroborating witness to his illusion.
As they watched in silence, the woman ran her milk-vapor hands along the glass as if searching for a weakness, some small crack through which she could slip.
Kracowski realized he hadn’t taken a breath in half a minute. McDonald was just as still. The woman’s eye sockets, empty as abandoned mines, stared out as if not understanding this strange and solid world she had encountered. Her amorphous flesh pressed against the glass, and Kracowski found himself taking mental notes to record later in his journal.
He was halfway through the first sentence when the image dissipated like smoke.
The room had grown so quiet Kracowski could hear the dull vibration of the machines in the basement. Even in a state of rest, the massive magnets had a gravitational pull. And perhaps some other kind of pull as well.
“Electromagnetic energy,” Kracowski said.
“Looked like a ghost to me.”
“No. Perhaps that’s the force that draws them into our plane. This little intersection of dimensions we call ‘reality.’“
“Reality. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Kracowski waved his hand. McDonald was now insignificant, a spectator to Kracowski’s brainwork. “From what little I’ve read about paranormal investigators, they use anomalies in electromagnetic readings as ‘evidence’ of otherworldly activity. Presumably, the ghosts disrupt the force fields when they appear. But what if it’s the other way around? What if the electromagnetic fields attract them to our set of dimensions?”
“Just a few minutes ago, you were strictly by the numbers. Now you have a theory for cooking up ghosts.”
“I’m a scientist, McDonald. A scientist’s main job is proving why certain theories will never work. Discoveries are almost always made by mistake. And not many scientists are lucky enough to make a true discovery in their careers.”
“And you’re not making this one. Remember who you’re working for.” McDonald looked at the small camera lens in the corner of the ceiling.
Kracowski went to the door and tried the handle. Locked. He turned, his cheeks hot.
McDonald dug in his pocket and held up a shiny object. “I carry the keys from now on.”
Kracowski nodded toward the glass where the image had appeared. “I don’t think they need keys. And I’m not sure barbed wire is going to hold them, either.”
“We’ll see. Until then, you keep cooking them up, and I’ll worry about what to do with them.”
As McDonald unlocked the door and tapped out the code on the newly-installed electronic lock, Kracowski stared at the mirror and wondered how he could best get inside McDonald’s head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Freeman thought he’d slipped to his cot unnoticed. But seconds after his head hit the pillow, a low whistle came from his left. Isaac’s silhouette was all Freeman could see of his friend. No, not a friend.
Freeman would have no friends here. Not Isaac, not Dipes, not Starlene, not anybody. Not even Vicky, no matter how much she made his heart float. He was permanently retired from the job of Defender of the Weak, Protector of the Innocent. Isaac was just another stooge, another loser kid, competition for food and oxygen here in God’s favorite little game, Survival of the Fittest.
“Psst.” Isaac was sitting up now. He wore striped pajamas that looked like those worn by concentration camp inmates.
Freeman pulled the blanket over his head, the institutional rayon scratching his cheek. He smelled his own feet. Tomorrow he’d have to shower, get naked in front of Deke and his Goon Squad. No, wait. Freeman yanked the blanket away and peered down the row of cots.
Deke was still gone. He had never returned from the basement.
Isaac hissed again.
Freeman lay on his back and stared up. The faint blue safety light by the door made the ceiling look like a starless night with a moon somewhere over the horizon. Or maybe it was the surface of the ocean and they were drowned. It really didn’t matter if they were all dead yet or not. Either way there was no escape.
Isaac was by his ear now, pesky as a mosquito. He whispered, “What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“You got rid of Deke somehow, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“He wasn’t at dinner, he missed Group, and even Army Jacket’s looking a little lost. I’ll bet you and Vicky—”
“Never put her and me in the same sentence.”
“Or maybe it was Starlene. Or Kracowski? Did the mad doctor shock the monkey into a pile of ashes?”
“Are you on Ritalin or something?” Freeman asked.
“No, why?”
“You’re talking way too fast.”
“Bondurant made some of us go into his office. I’ve been there before. Never got a paddling, though. I hear that’s one of his deals.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Just asked if we’d been in the basement. Except, once he slipped and asked if I’d been playing ‘in the deadscape.’“
Deadscape. Freeman pulled the blankets tighter and tried not to think about the things under the bed and floor. “They got us trapped.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Wires. On all the fences. Can’t climb ov
er without getting a shock that makes Kracowski’s treatments seem like a tickle.”
“Why?”
“Something to do with the Krackpot’s equipment, I think. And there’s a mysterious agency called the Trust that dabbles in this sort of weirdness. We’re the guinea pigs. But I don’t know what the experiment is.”
“No way. That would never happen in the land of the free. And I thought I was paranoid.”
“Isaac. You’re a Jew. What the hell do you know about freedom?”
Isaac knocked on his own skull. “I’m free up here. If you have that, then you win.”
Did Freeman have that sort of freedom? All he had was a screwed-up dad and screwed-up memories and rapid-cycle manic depression and a gift for triptrapping and, worst of all, he was falling into some sort of stupid attraction for a girl.
Attraction? Am I falling in love, or are my neurotransmitters screwed?
Now he was positive he was on the down cycle.
“Bondurant was drunk, as usual,” Isaac said. “He asked me if I’d seen the Miracle Woman.”
“Miracle Woman?”
“His eyes got all funny when he said her name. He looked at the walls like he expected to see cockroaches.”
“Isaac, do you believe in God?”
Isaac said nothing. Somebody coughed in the far end of the dorm. The stench of dirty laundry and bad breath hung thick in the room. The kid to Freeman’s right was snoring.
A voice came from the foot of Freeman’s cot. “He don’t believe in anything.”
It was Dipes. Dipes, who never uttered a word.
“Yes, I do,” Isaac said.
“Hush, because here comes the counselor,” Dipes said.
Isaac scrambled back onto his cot, Dipes ducked, and Freeman closed his eyes. Ten seconds later, the door to the Blue Room opened. A flashlight beam bounced around the room, froze on Freeman’s head for a moment, then the door slammed.
“How did you know he was coming?” Freeman said to Dipes.
The thin boy shrugged in the dim light. “Just knew. I’ve been knowing things lately. Knowing what’s going to happen before it happens. Like I saw Deke disappear in the basement, then one of those creepy guards took him to a secret room. And I ain’t seen Deke since. Can’t say I miss him none, though.”