Tunnel Vision

by Gary Braver

  Devereux stared at him for a long moment. “I think it might be a good idea if I contacted my lawyer before we continue. We’re entering sensitive areas. I’d also like to notify the local police if my life is in danger.”

  “You don’t need the police. You’ve got the FBI. We’re working to protect you.”

  “You keep on saying we, but there’s only you.”

  “I don’t like this,” Mrs. Devereux said. “I’m scared.” She shot to her feet and started to move away.

  “Where you going?” Roman asked.

  “To call the police.” She headed for the telephone on a corner desk.

  “That’s not a good idea,” Roman said. But she didn’t stop. So Roman pulled a silenced pistol from his briefcase and shot her twice in the back. She crumpled in place. But before her husband could move, Roman lowered the gun to his face. “Move and you’re dead.”

  A yelp rose from his throat as he stared at his wife’s body.

  “Tell me what you were doing on that project.”

  For a long moment Devereux struggled to control himself, looking from Roman to his wife to the gun aimed at his head. “Who—who are you? Why did you shoot her?” His voice warbled with horror and disbelief.

  He started to get up, but Roman flicked the gun at him. “I’ll kill you.”

  Devereux settled back in place.

  “Tell me what you, Cola, and Pomeroy were working on, and no more sleep research bullshit, because I know where your daughter and her children live. And if you give me any double-talk, I will kill you and visit them, capice?”

  Devereux nodded, his face a bloodless bag of loose flesh. His voice choked as he glanced at his wife’s lifeless body, blood spreading across her blouse. “Near-death experiences.”

  “Near-death experiences?”

  “They were bringing people to flatline to detect electrical activity.”

  “Keep going.”

  “To see if there was anything to the claim—dead relatives, heaven, whatever.”

  Oh my, Roman thought.

  Devereux continued, gasping for air. “Or just neurobiology.”

  “What does this have to do with Satan?”

  “Satan? I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Why is the Church opposed to your research?”

  “The Church? I didn’t know it was.”

  “You were trying to prove if the afterlife was for real or just in the brain, right?”

  Devereux nodded.

  “And what did you conclude?”

  “I don’t know. It’s still ongoing.”

  “Where was your research done?”

  “I don’t know. It was all freelance. I know nothing else about it, I swear on my life.”

  “How much did they pay you for your work?”

  “Five thousand.”

  “Are they still doing the experiments?”

  “I think so.”

  Roman studied Devereux squirming in the chair. He looked as if he was telling the truth. “Why does the Catholic Church want you dead?”

  By reflex, Devereux sucked in his breath. “I don’t know. Please let me go.”

  “Think.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because we were trying to prove that religious experience was just brain chemistry.”

  Roman felt a small jab to his solar plexus. “You think they’re on to something?”

  “I don’t know. Please don’t kill me.”

  “What else do you know? Who else worked with you?”

  “All I know is they got a test subject with positive results.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “He’s neurosensitive. I don’t know. I just worked on the imaging software. His name was in the paper a while back. He woke from a coma and people thought Jesus was talking through him or something.”

  “You got a name?”

  “No. Some college kid. That’s all I know.”

  “What happened to him?” Roman slipped to his knees and pushed the silencer near his mouth. “Tell me the truth. Tell me names of any others. Or where I can find them, and I’ll let you live.”

  “I—I don’t know any others. I worked on the side and gave the results to Morris.”

  “Morris who?”

  “Morris Stern. That’s all I know. I swear I know nothing else. I swear.”

  “Anything else about this kid?”

  “No.”

  Roman studied him for a moment as he sat shuddering in the armchair, his face colorless, his mouth panting, his eyes twitching. Roman then jammed the silencer into Devereux’s mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullet exited the back of his skull, splattering blood and brain matter onto the back cushion and far wall.

  Roman had been careful not to touch anything. He put on a pair of surgical gloves, removed the silencer, and wiped the pistol clean of his prints. He then pressed the gun in Devereux’s hand and let it fall as if he had committed suicide after shooting his wife.

  Before he left the apartment and took the exit stairs to the street, he looked back on the scene of the dead Devereux.

  Nearer my God to Thee, he thought, and slipped away.

  38

  “It’s going well. I sleep and they pay down my Discover card, thanks to you.”

  “Glad it’s working out,” Damian said.

  “So the good news is this dinner is on me.”

  Damian looked down at his chicken burrito. “Hell, we could have been at Davio’s.”

  “Next time.”

  Zack had met Damian at Qdoba, a Mexican eatery that bordered the Northeastern campus and sat at the same Huntington Avenue intersection where five months ago he had hit a pothole on his bike and landed in a coma.

  “So what are they testing for?” Damian asked.

  “They wire my head and measure the activity while I’m dreaming.” He didn’t like being vague, especially since Damian had gotten him the gig. But he had signed the nondisclosure forms, and Dr. Luria was insistent that what they did in the lab had to remain in the lab.

  “Any interesting dreams?”

  Yeah, gasping for air and chewing sand.

  “Just fantasies of a hot neurobiologist on the project.”

  “That gives you something to look forward to.”

  “Yeah,” Zack said, thinking about the eddy of emotions that had swirled in him since the helmet episode. No doubt aftereffects of the stimulation, deep sweet memories of his father would poke through the resentment that had stratified over the years. Like this morning while at the library. He was working on his thesis when his mind clicked back to a silly game they’d played when he was maybe four years old. He would slip under his little-boy blanket with the goofy cats, and when he called, “Ready,” his father would come into the room. “Where’s Zack? Where, oh, where can little Zack be?” And he’d hear his father look in the closet, under the bed, in bureau drawers, all the while saying, “Where’s my Zack? He’s got to be here somewhere.” And this would go on until Zack couldn’t hold in the giggles anymore and threw back the blanket and announced, “Here’s your Zack!” And his father would slap his chest in mock surprise and say, “There’s my Zack!” And he’d jump on the bed and smother him with kisses that turned into a tickle attack that left Zack giddy with laughter. The memory was as fresh as yesterday, and it had left him hollow with yearning.

  When they were finished eating, Damian offered to give Zack a ride home. “Thanks anyway. I’m being picked up just down the street.”

  “More sleep?”

  “Something like that. By the way, can I borrow your car this weekend?”

  “A date with the hot neurobiologist?”

  “If there’s a God.”

  “There is,” Damian said, and flashed his saintly smile. “Unfortunately, I’m going on a retreat in Vermont. But any other time. Going to be great weather, so go for a walk with her.” Then he added, “Live in light, go in faith.”

  It was one of his little salutations, born more of
habit than stubborn efforts to convert him. “Thanks, I’ll try.”

  * * *

  At six o’clock, Bruce showed up and drove him to the lab to Beethoven’s Third. By seven thirty, he was changed, on the gurney, and hooked up to the IV and monitors. Then they rolled him into the fMRI machine. When Sarah asked if he was ready, he nodded. And the last thing he remembered was her depressing the anesthesia into his IV.

  “Zack, can you hear me?” A female voice.

  He woke up with a mouthful of sand.

  “He’s coming to.”

  He couldn’t catch his breath. Throat was clogged. Lungs were sacs of concrete.

  “Come on, Zack, wake up.”

  He pushed against the weight, trying to free his hands. With every ounce of strength, he loosened them and clawed his way out. The cold night snapped against his skin. He rolled onto his knees, his diaphragm racking for air, his mouth drooling grit.

  “That’s it, open your eyes.”

  His eyes. They were swollen slits and lined with sand. His mouth, nostrils, and ears were clogged. His hair. Gritted. And mites were eating him all over.

  “Push, Zack. You can do it.”

  Through the gloom, he could make out the water’s edge—black curls lapping the shore. Like a crab, he scuttled toward the surf and lunged in. The salt water stung his eyes and skin, but he forced himself to stay under until the bugs and sand washed away.

  Then he was lying on his back, filling his lungs with sweet, cool air.

  “That’s it. Push a little harder. Open your eyes.”

  Light. The moon had broken through the cloud cover and set the sky in motion.

  “How you doing?” A woman was peering down at him.

  Then others.

  He had no idea who they were. His body jolted. He had no idea who he was.

  “Welcome back.”

  His lips and tongue were numb. His eyes were burning. Their faces hung in watery blurs.

  “Zack? Are you all right?”

  “What are you doing?” Fear jerked his body. He tried to get up, but his limbs were wooden blocks. And his arms and chest were tangled in something.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the younger woman said. “You’re doing fine.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Zack, it’s me, Sarah Wyman.” The woman pushed her face forward. “You remember me. And Dr. Luria and Dr. Cates.”

  He tried to sit up but was heavy with wet sand and vegetation. And his head was thick with sludge. He flopped back down on the sand and looked up at the people. This woman and two men, one older, the other a younger black man. He had no idea who they were. He had no idea why they were calling him Zack.

  With help from the younger woman, he sat up and blood drained from his head.

  “Don’t you remember?” the older woman asked.

  He shook his head. He remembered nothing.

  “Tell me your name,” she said, her face looking tight and pale but for dried blood on her cheek. She looked vaguely familiar.

  For a long moment, he stared into her eyes. Your name. Your name. “I don’t know.” He looked around but couldn’t see the beach or water. And the sky had been replaced with a ceiling, and the moon was panels of fluorescent lights.

  Your name. He knew he had one. A history. A presence. Yet it was just beyond his grasp.

  “You’d been asleep for an hour, don’t you remember? This is Elizabeth Luria and Morris Stern and Byron Cates. And me, Sarah. We were doing tests on you.”

  The night beach had faded into a large white room with electronic equipment attached by wires to his head and arms, where the seaweed had been. Behind him was a large machine with a round opening. And three people. Then, like a Polaroid image developing, it all came back to him. “Zack … Kashian.”

  “Good,” Sarah said, looking relieved. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “Yes.” And they asked him the usual questions to test the state of his memory.

  Then Dr. Luria began a battery of other questions. “Do you remember anything—images or experiences, locales, other people—from when you were in suspension?”

  Suspension? He wasn’t in suspension. He wasn’t asleep. “I think I was on a beach.”

  “A beach?” Luria said.

  His mind was foggy, and his recall faded rapidly. “Got sand in my face.”

  “You were kind of spitting when you came through,” Sarah said.

  “Recall what you were doing at the beach?” Luria asked, her face stiff with concern.

  “No.”

  “Any movements of any kind—walking, jumping, swimming, interacting with people?”

  “I don’t recall anything.”

  “What about the presence of other people?”

  Zack shook his head. “I was alone.”

  Byron Cates came over from the computer. “Zack, can you characterize your emotional state while at that beach?”

  “My emotional state?” He thought for a moment, trying to summon the experience. Then he shook his head. “Not really. Just a blank.”

  Cates glanced at Luria for a moment. “No sense of anxiety or fear?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Why you asking?”

  “Because your blood chemistry registered a high level of cortisol, which is a stress hormone secreted by the adrenal gland.”

  Dr. Stern cut in. He had been studying feedback from the computer monitor he was at. “Zack, we’ve been doing these kinds of tests for a while, matching blood and neuroelectrical activities with subjective reports. There’s every indication your unconscious experience was borderline violent.”

  “But I don’t remember any of it.”

  “Just as well,” Stern said. “Because it appears you were fighting for your life.”

  39

  “Zachary Kashian,” Roman Pace whispered to himself. “Gotcha!”

  The morning after his visit to the Devereux, Roman went to the Providence Public Library on Empire Street, where he Googled “coma,” “woke,” and “Jesus.” He came up with over 277,000 hits. He refined the search by adding “Massachusetts,” reducing it to 5,000 hits. At the top were recent reports about a Northeastern grad student who had gotten into a bicycling accident back in January and ended up in a coma for nearly three months, waking up this past Easter Sunday.

  What held Roman’s attention was that during the coma, the kid had mysteriously muttered snippets of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, including the Lord’s Prayer, in the original language. That and how a lot of miracle-seeking religious fanatics had crashed his hospital room and had to be removed by security.

  One of the doctors remarked that “given the severity of his trauma and the coma level,” his odds of recovery were “very slim”—borderline miraculous. Others were convinced that Kashian was channeling Jesus Christ. According to all reports, the kid had never been exposed to Aramaic. He was also a member of some college atheist club.

  What made Roman’s heart leap was that a nurse’s aide, so taken by the “miracle,” had captured the mutterings on a cell phone video. She was subsequently fired for breach of confidentiality. But the clip had made it to YouTube, and Roman watched it over and over again.

  Of course, the kid was emaciated and his head had been shaved and had wires coming out of it. And with his eyes closed, he looked like something this side of a corpse. Roman could not tell what he really looked like, but he froze the video and printed up a frame.

  The likeness was made worse by the graininess. But it would do.

  40

  Sarah lived just off of Harvard Square in a second-floor apartment on Harvard Street, across from the Pennypacker dormitory. She met Zack at the door that Friday night, and they walked down the street to Massachusetts Avenue and to the Grafton Street Pub & Grill, where they got a table in view of the bar.

  She was dressed in jeans, a cream-colored shirt, and a matching jacket. With her short auburn hair, she looked more
like a French fashion model than a neuroscientist. A waiter hustled over and took their drink orders. Zack asked for a Guinness and Sarah a sauvignon blanc.

  “So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in near-death experiences?” he asked her.

  She chuckled. “Now, there’s an original line. Well, my grad work was with Morris Stern in his neurobiology lab at Tufts. He was working on enhancing molecular MRI imaging and ended up as my thesis adviser. He signed up with Dr. Luria, and later he asked me aboard.”

  “What was your thesis on?”

  “Neurotheology.”

  “Ah, yes: ‘The Role of Serotonin … Receptors in Spirituality.’”

  She nodded. “The neurological mechanisms active in spiritual and religious experiences.”

  “Kind of what you’re doing with Dr. Luria—seeing if we’re hardwired for God.”

  “Yes. We know that mystical experiences originate from the same mechanisms that produce hallucinations—you know, people who claim to see the Virgin Mary, dead grandmothers, even space aliens. When the parietal lobe is stimulated, that region reports a sense of another’s presence.”

  “What happened to me in the booth.”

  “Yes. We stimulated your parietal lobe, and you sensed your father’s presence.”

  “But it felt so real.”

  “As we knew it would. The challenge was to find a diagnostic means to distinguish these from actual experiences.”

  The waiter returned with their drinks.

  “Before she got the fMRI prototype, Elizabeth was restricted to interviewing hospital patients who claimed NDEs. Now we can do it in the lab under controlled conditions.”

  “So how long have you been flatlining people?”

  “Only three months, but the project’s been going on for a few years.”

  “How many others have you suspended?”

  “The data’s confidential, but a few.”

  “Can you say what you’ve determined so far?”

  “Nothing conclusive, but Elizabeth’s very excited about your testing.”

  “Because I’ve got a hot God lobe.”

  She sipped her wine. “Yes.”

  “So how come I get a craving for root beer instead of a tunnel to the pearly gates?”