by J. Thorn
One of the chairs fell over, then silence.
After ten minutes, Bondurant opened his eyes, his cheeks wet with tears. In the dim light of daybreak, he looked around the circle of vacant chairs. He reached into his pocket and touched the flask, swearing for the hundredth time that he was through. Then he looked at the door.
Against its metal face he saw an image of the old man in the gown. The man’s lips moved, but no sound came out. As the shape dissolved under the sunrise, Bondurant thought he knew what words the ghostly lips had formed:
We’re making progress.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Are you comfortable, Miss Rogers?”
Starlene nodded at the mirror on the wall. An apparatus that looked like a high-tech chandelier lowered from the ceiling, stopping several feet above her head. The humming rose in intensity, vibrating the cot to which she was strapped. Her skin itched beneath the electrodes stuck to her temples. The pinprick of pain had faded where Dr. Swenson had injected the radiopharmaceutical that would allow Kracowski to track her brain’s chemistry and blood flow.
Randy had fastened the restraints, ignoring her questioning eyes. Now she was alone in the room. She gripped the sides of the mattress and waited for Kracowski to flip the switches that would send the currents racing through her brain, the weird waves that would oscillate through her molecules and send her into the unknown.
Kracowski’s voice came from the speakers again. “Remember that this is strictly voluntary.”
“I know,” she said. “Just like it is for the kids.”
“This is not a good time for a debate on the merits of traditional counseling versus Synaptic Synergy Therapy. My results speak for themselves.”
“Are you talking about your therapeutic results or . . . you know, all that other stuff?”
“Ah, the phantasmagoria effect. Don’t you Christians believe the souls of the dearly departed are immediately vacuumed off to hell or heaven?”
“Only people who actually have souls.”
“You are a doubter, Miss Rogers. I’ve had many doubters. In that respect, I am not unlike your beloved Jesus of Nazareth.”
“Except Jesus did what He did for the good of others, not to boost his own ego.”
Laughter crackled over the speakers. “If Jesus had computers and a better understanding of electromagnetic fields, He would have invented SST himself.”
The lights in the room dimmed, and Starlene tried to relax. Her sleep had been short and interrupted by nightmares. Each time she had awakened in her cottage, sweaty and tangled in sheets, she prayed the fear away. The Miracle Woman had drifted through her fleeting dreams, holding out those tragic eyes. The dread of the treatment had also kept her restless and anxious.
But it was too late to back out now. If she wanted to understand what Wendover’s children were going through, she had to endure the same treatment. That meant lying in Room Thirteen, helpless. That meant entering the place or state of being or hallucination that Freeman called the deadscape.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror and told herself to be brave.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Kracowski,” she whispered to herself, “I will fear no evil.”
The humming grew louder and the floor pulsed. A faint tingle trickled across her skin and the walls became softer. Above, the ceiling spun and lifted away, but instead of morning sky there was only a black void. Starlene’s heart accelerated, racing the rhythms of Kracowski’s machines.
She concentrated on her face in the mirror, but the glass warped and melted away. Now the walls were gone, and so was the bed she had been lying on. She panicked and reached up to her temples to yank away the electrodes. The restraints had vanished, as well as the electrodes.
She tried to stand but her legs were warm taffy. The floor opened beneath her and her stomach tightened in anticipation of falling. Starlene closed her eyes but still saw the floor yawning like a hungry mouth, and in the dark throat of the basement, faint wisps of light floated upward.
Starlene screamed at Kracowski, but the sound was swallowed by the roaring of reality’s death. The wisps solidified and the Miracle Woman stood on nothingness, holding out her palms, showing her dead eyes. Around the Miracle Woman came others, formed from the milk of afterlife, all wearing the lost and crazed look of the eternally restless.
The Miracle Woman’s lips moved, and her words came not as sound, but as thought. “Starlene Rogers.”
Starlene pushed toward where she thought the door was, but the door had disappeared along with the rest of the room.
The Miracle Woman smiled, and things fluttered around her tongue. Her thoughts came to Starlene like wind through graveyard grass. “The door is below you.”
Starlene turned and came face-to-face with the old man in the gown, the one who had walked into the lake. He spoke-thought into her skull. “I can make you better.”
“I don’t won’t to be better,” she thought or screamed or whispered, and she clawed frantically at the air, trying to move in whatever direction she could.
“My motto is, ‘Heal you or kill you,’” said the old man. “I win either way.”
A young guy, thin and ragged and pale as a maggot, drifted down from above. A sleeveless institutional gown draped him like a funeral shroud. He waved a hand at Starlene’s hair, seemed surprised when his flesh passed through her, and said, “Can we keep her?”
The Miracle Woman said, “She’s not ours yet.”
The young man whimpered. “The doctor said we could. I promise to play nice.”
“Since when have you ever believed your doctor?”
“Since yesterday.”
“You weren’t alive yesterday.”
The old man said, “And you never took your medicine. No wonder you ended up like you did.”
The young man looked down at his wrists. Long scars, gray against the white threads of his skin, ran from the base of his thumbs to his elbows. “Can I take it back?” Starlene pressed her hands over her ears, but still she heard the words from those impossible mouths.
The old man said to the suicide victim, “You’ll have to do better than that. You’ve been very, very bad.”
“Leave him alone,” said the Miracle Woman. “Haven’t you harmed him enough already?”
“I was only trying to help.”
“I know. That’s the worst part. You never saw the patients as human beings. You saw them as numbers, experiments, sets of diagnoses. As problems to be solved.”
The old man drifted nearer to Starlene. He put a hand out, like a Catholic priest bestowing a sacrament, and his cold touch penetrated the bones of her skull. She couldn’t twist away, no matter how she struggled. Behind him, in the shadowy ether, more shapes hovered, their faces blank.
“If only I had another chance,” the old man said. “I know what to do now. I know where I made my mistakes.”
“Keep away,” the Miracle Woman said. “This one needs a different kind of healing.”
The Miracle Woman closed her hands, hiding those hideous, wounded eyes. She grew brighter, her words falling more softly in Starlene’s head, no longer shrieking.
“Have faith,” came the gentle voice. “They can judge your mind, but they can’t judge your soul.”
The shapes began spinning, as if Starlene were at the center of a double Ferris wheel that turned in two directions. The Miracle Woman blurred, the shapes became dots of smeared light against black, and the humming swelled into a chorus of moans. Starlene reached for her own eyes and found they were still closed, and the lights became thin streaks circling and circling, until at last there was only darkness.
Her pulse pounded in her neck. A soft light bathed her, and she shuddered in fear of more encounters with the things that walked the deadscape.
The light became stronger and another disembodied voice pierced her skin.
“Miss Rogers, are you okay?”
Kracowski.
Sh
e opened her eyes. The ceiling was back in its proper place, the mechanism quieted. The mattress beneath her was solid. She tested the substance of her fingers and found they were again made of flesh.
She drew air into her lungs and looked at the mirror, toward where Kracowski would be standing behind it. “What happened?”
Through the microphone: “How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re better, of course.”
“Better than what?”
“You’ve been aligned. You’re harmonized. I have healed you.”
“But I wasn’t broken.” She gripped the mattress, unable to trust herself to stand even if the restraints hadn’t held her.
“That’s what’s so wonderful about SST. It heals even those who aren’t aware they are in need of healing.”
She closed her eyes, and the images from the deadscape flickered at the back of her eyelids. She stared at the mirror instead. “How long was I out?”
A pause came from the speakers. Then Kracowski said, “You were dead for three seconds.”
If three seconds of death were that unbearable, Starlene wasn’t sure whether everlasting life was a promise or a threat. Already the memories were scrambled and weak, and she couldn’t trust what she had experienced.
Randy entered the room, and their eyes locked. For the briefest of moments, she thought she heard him speak, but then realized his lips hadn’t moved.
She’d read his thoughts.
Something about the Trust and how McDonald needed to get rid of this particular problem known as Starlene Rogers. Because, though she was a cute little thing and would be fun for a tumble, she asked too many goddamned questions. She was trouble, he just knew it.
She rubbed her forehead after Randy released the restraints. She tried to read him again, but it was as if a fog had rolled in between them. She had almost convinced herself she had imagined the entire thing, the shock and the deadscape and Randy’s thoughts, when Kracowski and McDonald entered the room.
She picked up McDonald’s thoughts. He was wondering if the force fields could be aligned to scramble neural patterns so people like Starlene could be lobotomized without leaving scars. Because a brain death that left no evidence would be a useful tool.
And, McDonald thought, before another fog rolled in, maybe Kracowski could be scrambled once he’d outlived his usefulness.
Starlene closed her eyes and waited for Randy to remove the electrodes.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Freeman peeked out the window. The kids were in gym class, and Freeman had faked a sprained ankle. He’d been sent to the rec room again, where he was supposed to rest and watch whatever uplifting program PBS was broadcasting. Instead, Dr. Phil was brow-beating a couple into a changing day in their lives. He turned the sound on the television down so the noise wouldn’t distract him.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the yellowed newspaper clipping. A tiny piece of it broke away as he unfolded it. The photograph had faded a little over the years, but it still had the power to reach off the page and squeeze Freeman’s throat.
Dad’s mug shot.
The headline above: “Psychiatrist Arrested In Wife’s Murder.”
And then came the deck: “Mills Was Respected In Mental Health Circles.”
Like all small-town papers, the Neuse River Tribune delivered sensationalism with a community touch. The article hinted at the gruesome nature of the crime with phrases such as “mutilated corpse” and “unsuspecting victim,” but also included eyewitness testimony:
“Dr. Mills was the nicest man you ever met,” said Doris Jenkins, who had lived next to the Millses for four years. “He was quiet and always waved hello. You never would have expected something like this.”
Doris Jenkins, as Freeman recalled, had been an old witch who shook her broom at the kids whenever a stray football bounced into her roses. In her account to the press, she neglected to mentioned she’d never waved back. Now she was frozen in ink as the voice of authority. Whatever.
Freeman read the article all the way through, though he knew it by heart. His name was in the last paragraph. The poor kid who hadn’t spoken since witnessing the terrible tragedy. The kid who was in an emergency foster placement until Social Services could figure out what to do with him.
The kid who grew up to be him.
Freeman carefully folded the article and returned it to his pocket. There had been other articles, page two follow-ups, and coverage of the trial before the DA pled Dad down because it was an election year and all the expert shrink witnesses were ready to declare Dad a basket case. But Dad had never again made the banner headline. That murder was the best the old bastard ever got.
Freeman closed his eyes and leaned against the mildewed sofa cushion. He could go to sleep here, with the sun dappled across his face from the window, nobody to bother him. Mercifully alone.
Something landed on his stomach.
He cocked an eye and saw Vicky standing over him. She wore brown today, a sweater that suggested two small shapes on her chest beneath it. Her skin was pale and vibrant, her eyes black. She nodded at the floor beside him.
A penny lay on the stained carpet.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“How do you think?”
He tried a triptrap but he was on a definite downer. “Do you have to follow me every second of the day?”
“Can’t help it.” Vicky touched her head. “You got inside here, and now I can’t get you out.”
At least he was in her brain and not her heart. ESP he could understand, because it made sense if you thought about electricity and radio waves and how the brain was just a bunch of wet wires. But that other stuff would have been way too freaky. It seemed bigger than the brain.
Freeman sat up with a fake groan. “What do you think they’re doing to Starlene?”
“Can’t you triptrap her?”
“I’m beat. Even a genius like me can’t turn it on all the time.”
“Depressed?”
Freeman put a hand over his pocket, where the clipping was safely hidden. “Yeah, a little.”
“Memories are hell, aren’t they?”
He looked at her. “You’re not going to make me talk about it, are you?”
“I just want to help.”
Freeman grabbed two fistfuls of ratty couch cushion and squeezed. He wasn’t going to get mad. It wasn’t her fault. She was like all the others, the shrinks, the cops, the social workers, the whole goddamned system, all of them wanting to help when they could have helped most by leaving him the hell alone.
He rolled to his feet and faced away from her. Through the rec room window, he could see the front fence. Dewy strands of barbed wire glistened in the sun. Beyond that stretched the mountains, out and up and solid as rock. If only he were on those gray peaks, above it all, where they couldn’t get to him. Where he couldn’t even get to himself. Like Clint in “The Eiger Sanction.”
“I don’t want any help,” he finally said.
“I figured that out the second I laid eyes on you.”
“Then why are you bugging me?”
“Because we need each other if we’re going to get out of this mess.”
“We don’t even know what the mess is.”
“Dead people. It’s about dead people.”
“I hate dead people,” Freeman said.
“You hate everybody.”
“Come here and look.”
“Don’t change the subject. We were starting to get linked there.”
“Yeah. And I don’t want you triptrapping into my head without permission.”
He pointed outside. The autumn sun had risen fully and capped the ridges in molten gold. Thin strands of clouds hung like silver monk’s hair in the lavender sky. The tree-covered slopes were the colors of pumpkins and plums.
“It’s beautiful,” Vicky said.
“And, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s on the other side of the
fence.”
“Ten miles away.”
“A million miles.”
“What are you hiding from me, Freeman?”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“Don’t lie. There’s dark water beneath the bridge.”
“I told you I didn’t want your help, and I don’t want to talk about it. Now stay out of my head.”
“Why did you try to kill yourself?”
“I thought you already knew everything.”
“It’s something to do with your parents, isn’t it?”
Freeman spat a laugh. “Sure, blame it on the parents. Are you studying to be a shrink or something?”
“I say that because my parents wanted me to disappear. My dad was too busy for children, and Mom was too busy trying to please Dad. He was out of work a lot, I think because he drank too much. One day I was eating breakfast, a bowl of corn flakes, and Dad was reading the newspaper. Mom gave him a cup of coffee and went back into the kitchen.
“Dad said something about a job market, and what did I know, I was only five years old. I said, ‘Daddy, if you need a job, why don’t you just go down to the job market and buy one?’ He slammed his coffee cup on the table and looked at me.
“‘You’re just another goddamned mouth to feed,’ he said to me. He didn’t yell it or anything, just said it like he was asking me to please pass the butter. Mom hurried in from the kitchen, wringing a dish rag.
“‘What’s all this ruckus about?’ she said. Dad looked past me and said, ‘Make her disappear.’ Mom didn’t understand, then Dad threw the cup against the wall and said, ‘Make the little bitch go back where she came from.’ He got up from the table and left the apartment. Mom looked at me like it was my fault Daddy was mad. My stomach started hurting and I ran to the bathroom and threw up. The corn flakes scraped my throat on the way out. But I felt better, leaning against the toilet, and I thought I could make everything okay if I could only disappear.”
Freeman continued staring out the window, feeling like a priest stuck in a confessional booth, wondering how priests handled all the heavy crap that got dumped on them.