Tunnel Vision

by Gary Braver

  Zack’s brain could barely register what he was reading. Jake’s other killer. He didn’t have to double-check on the dead hit-and-run woman. He knew.

  62

  “Volker and Gretch killed my brother. And the woman was Gretch’s cousin—one of their witnesses who claimed they saw nothing.” Zack handed Sarah the obituaries he had printed up.

  “What?”

  It was sometime after two in the morning, and he had called her to come over, terrified at his discovery.

  “And these were the same people you saw in your NDEs?” she said as she read them.

  “Yes.” Photographs were included with the obit. “I recognize them.”

  “Maybe it’s just bizarre coincidences.”

  “What, that my brother’s killers got murdered and I was there each time? Sarah, I saw them. I felt their deaths. I was there. Jesus, I’m either losing my mind or I killed them.” He had been drinking a glass of warm milk and had to hold the glass with two hands, he was shaking so badly.

  Sarah looked at the obits. “I don’t believe either.”

  “But that tetrodotoxin is lousy with side effects,” he said. “What if I blacked out and went after them? Killed them and don’t remember anything?”

  While she read the printouts, he moved to the sink to steady himself, looking into his glass of milk and thinking that maybe he had lost his mind—that maybe the combination of head trauma, the coma, and the zombie anesthesia created some weird brain damage that had turned him into an insane stalker bent on vengeance. He had had nightmares throughout his life like anybody else. But these had been like no others—intense, brutally vivid, and through the eyes of someone else—of that he was almost sure.

  Sarah’s voice jarred him back into the moment. “But this says Volker died on June tenth. That’s when we were at Grafton’s. A neighbor says he always worked out after supper.”

  “Yeah, and we left around nine. I could have gone over there after we split and killed him … and blocked it from my memory.”

  “But he lived in Waltham. Even if you took the T, it would take over an hour,” she said. “Do you even know where he lived?”

  “Yes.” Volker moved from Allston to Waltham after the court decision. Zack’s mother hadn’t wanted to know where, but Zack had looked him up. And even before he’d gotten his driver’s license, he’d fantasized about driving to Volker’s apartment and firebombing it while he slept. Later he would sometimes drive over and follow Volker to work or the supermarket or to friends’ places. “I had my bike, and it’s only seven miles down the river.”

  “Do you remember doing that?”

  “No.”

  “Not exactly something you’d forget,” she said. “Remember pedaling home?”

  “No. Just walking you back to your place.”

  Sarah picked up another obit. “This says Gretch died in Vernon, Connecticut, on Saturday the twenty-fifth, eight days ago. Do you remember where you were?”

  “The library.”

  “Can you verify that?”

  “I checked out a book.” From his desk he pulled out a collection of essays on Mary Shelley. The slip inside gave the date and time—same date as Gretch’s death.

  “What time?”

  “Four eighteen.”

  “There you are. A motorist found him around one in the morning a hundred miles from here. There’s no way you could have biked down there.”

  “Except I had Damian’s car that weekend.”

  Her face stiffened. “Do you remember going down there?”

  “No.”

  “So how can you remember borrowing his car?”

  He removed his wallet and pulled out a slip of paper. “Receipt from the Gulf station on Huntington. I put in forty-three dollars’ worth of gas at five that afternoon.” No MassPike receipt, but the entrance was a mile east down the avenue.

  “And you don’t remember where you went?”

  “No.” Fear shuddered through him as if there were a core of ice in his chest.

  They were silent a long moment as Sarah stared at him, probably afraid for her own safety, he thought. Then she said, “But that means you’d have to have looked him up, where he lived, worked, what he was doing that night. That’s a lot of unknowns.”

  He nodded.

  “Remember doing any of that?”

  “No,” he said. “But sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and be at my computer and not remember getting there.”

  “Sleepwalking. Is that something you’ve done?”

  “Not until recently.” He downed the rest of the milk, which had done nothing to calm him down. “He worked at the local Sears. Maybe I called and got stuff from a coworker.” Even as he said that, nothing inside clicked.

  Sarah said nothing. She looked scared.

  He picked up the obit notice on Celia Gretch, the jogger. She was run down on a rural back road in Reading, fifteen miles north of Boston, on the afternoon of June 25—the same day her Volker was found dead in his garage.

  “Wouldn’t Damian have mentioned damage to his car?”

  “Not if she was just knocked down.”

  “But she died by getting hit.”

  “She died by being crushed under the wheels.”

  Her eyes were dilated with fear. “So what does this all mean?”

  “It means I don’t have an alibi for three murders I saw myself commit.”

  Sarah backed up to the kitchen sink, her arms folded protectively across her chest. “You’re scaring me, Zack.”

  “I’m scaring me.”

  63

  Roman arrived at the confessional early that morning. He had called two nights before on the secure cell phone and insisted they meet. Father X was not pleased but agreed when Roman said he had something important to propose.

  The church was empty when Roman slipped into the booth. At ten sharp, Father X entered the other side. “God be with you, my son. You did good work.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So, what are you proposing?”

  “I’m proposing we cut the Father-son bullshit and get real.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Roman punched his fist through the grate. He reached in with one hand, grabbed the man, and pulled his face to the window. “You’re no more a priest than I am. You’re Norman Babcock, and I want to know what the hell this is all about.”

  The man made an involuntary grunt as his fat bald head flushed like a ripening tomato.

  “I’m not on some mission for the Church. You hired me to settle some pissant little scores for you.”

  “What? That’s not true.”

  “Then tell me what the fuck is going on or I’m going to come in there and pound you till you stop moving.”

  “Please lower your voice.”

  With the other hand, Roman whipped out his gun and poked the barrel with the silencer through the window. “This better?”

  “God, don’t. Please.”

  Roman tightened his grip on Babcock’s shirt. “Then tell me why you want these people dead.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Roman yanked the white collar off his shirt and tossed it at him.

  “H-how do you know…?”

  “How do I know you’re Babcock? ‘Satan’s henchmen,’ ‘dupes of the devil.’ Your pet phrases are all over your Web site.”

  He looked at the silencer aimed at his chest. “What do you want?”

  “I wanna know why I’m killing these people. And don’t give me any mission-for-the-Church bullshit.” Roman would have loved to choke the fat bastard to death out of sheer rage—rage at being Babcock’s patsy, rage at himself for having nearly fallen for the setup. For wanting to believe that he was on a genuine quest to eliminate the enemies of Christendom and, in so doing, opening a path to heaven.

  “You are on a mission for the Church. For the Lord Jesus Christ himself.”

  “They’re a bunch of fucking doctors and computer geeks.”


  Babcock hesitated, probably wondering how much Roman knew. He had been hired to kill and not ask why.

  “Yes, and what they are doing is evil.”

  “They’re doing near-death experience research.”

  “So you know. But you know what they’re trying to do?”

  “I’ve read your Web site.”

  “They’re committing blasphemy. They’re violating God’s demand not to practice divination. And that’s what their research is—defilement of God’s Word.”

  Babcock’s Web site was a nonstop rant against near-death experiences—“the Great Cosmic Lie,” another favorite phrase. “So some people say they see dead loved ones. What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal? The test subjects are innocent. It’s those running the tests who are violating God’s prohibition, leading them to believe that they’re encountering beings of light, glimpsing heaven. But that’s all deception—fabrications of Satan.…”

  Roman snorted. “Yeah, yeah. I read all that.”

  “Then you also know that stopping them is a sacred mission for the Lord and the Church.”

  In his heart of hearts, Roman wanted to believe him. “But this mission’s not sanctioned by the Church. It’s for you and your Friends for Jesus.”

  “No. The Fraternity of Jesus are dedicated to the belief that every member of the Church is called to holiness—to a sanctifying life of doing God’s work. And fighting God’s enemies is the highest mission and an aspiration to sainthood.”

  Roman snickered. “So, I keep it up, they’ll make me a saint?”

  “I didn’t say that. Your work in defense of the Church is a blessed mission. History will decide if your success is worthy of sainthood. But this is not some little personal payback thing.”

  Nothing in Babcock’s manner suggested that he did not believe in his own words. And he had put forty-five grand where his mouth was. Roman pulled the pistol out of the smashed-open window between them. “What’s your beef with Warren Gladstone? And don’t go stupid on me. Your rants are all over the Internet.”

  “I think he’s behind the NDE project.”

  “You mean he’s bankrolling it?”

  “Yes. And throwing his moral weight behind it. He’s a disgraced Evangelist minister who’s trying to get back in the limelight.”

  “Why not take him out of the picture?”

  “He’s not important unless he has his so-called proof. Eliminating that will be the better strategy—exposing him: the emperor with no clothes. Also, eliminating him risks making him a martyr—and that’d be counterproductive.”

  “Okay,” Roman said. “So why’s this miracle kid so important?”

  “What kid?”

  “Zachary Kashian.”

  Babcock’s face did not struggle for an expression or pretend ignorance. “What they’re doing is converting him into Satan’s dupe in order to parade him before the world as evidence they’ve found the afterlife. It’s their grand illusion: Science finds God.”

  “Does the kid know what he’s doing?”

  “No, but they’re conditioning him to channel the devil.”

  “But he quoted Jesus from a coma.”

  “That wasn’t Jesus. That was Satan. That’s how he works. That’s his modus operandi—to lie,” Babcock whispered, his face all flushed. “That young man has become Satan’s mouthpiece, his channel, and he doesn’t even know it. At least not yet.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not yet’?”

  “Once he operates on his own, he’ll achieve their mission.”

  “What mission?”

  “Bringing to earth the Antichrist.”

  “You got to be kidding.”

  Babcock pushed his face into the jagged hole from Roman’s fist. His face was full, fleshy, and burning. “Do I look as if I’m kidding, Mr. Pace? He’s their secret weapon.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “We have our contacts.”

  In spite of himself, an electric glow in Roman’s chest had its source in something close to conviction. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but Roman began to settle into a strange solace. “You going to want me to go after him?”

  “Not just yet. They may self-destruct before we get to that.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Only those nearest the project know who’s been eliminated. Either they’ll take the hint and stop, or they’ll continue. Either way they’ll fail. And there won’t be any going back.”

  Roman didn’t understand what he meant, so he remained silent.

  “But you’ll hear from us in due time.”

  “Meanwhile…?”

  “Meanwhile do nothing but pray for your soul.”

  Roman slipped the weapon back into the shoulder harness and pulled his jacket forward. He nodded at Babcock and left the booth. The church was still empty.

  Instead of going outside, he stopped at the end of the nave and stared into the church. The day was partly overcast, so stray sunlight played through the colors of the stained glass, filling the floor with splashes of reds, greens, blues, and gold.

  He looked upward from the stone floor and followed the direction that the architecture pulled the eye to—the circle of colored light over the altar and upward to the vaulted ceiling. The people who designed these churches knew what they were doing, Roman thought. The eyes were drawn from stone-cold mortal earth to heaven.

  Roman admired the colors and the art, but he didn’t feel the presence of God. Nor was he sure what that would be like. But standing there, he could sense something higher than himself. And that made him feel good. So did the reassurance that he was still on a mission. He knew he didn’t have it in him to become a regular churchgoer. He didn’t like crowds. He didn’t like people. He was divorced with no children and few friends. So he couldn’t imagine sitting in packed pews with someone in the pulpit booming away in Latin. That was not him. His relationship with God was strictly private.

  He dipped his fingers into the holy water and crossed himself.

  Thank you.

  Then he walked outside into the shafts of sunlight with two thoughts humming in the fore of his brain.

  One, that the Reverend Warren Gladstone was a bankroller.

  Two, that some just plain college kid might be pitting heaven against hell.

  64

  It was nearly three in the morning, and Zack and Sarah were still sitting in his apartment, the obits in a pile on the kitchen table between them. “There’s another possibility,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That I crossed over and linked up with something evil on the other side.”

  “Evil? Like supernatural?”

  He nodded. “Sarah, my mind feels violated, like I’m psychically bonded to a psychopathic killer.”

  “But that’s impossible.”

  “Is it? You all said I experienced transcendence, right?”

  “Yeah, clinically. But—”

  “And my blood showed spikes of rage?”

  “Well, the adrenaline—”

  “And that I merged with another mind?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What if that other mind is my dead father?”

  “What?”

  “I know how crazy that sounds,” he said. “But what if I crossed over and released his spirit, and it’s hot with vengeance, and he went after those bastards. And somehow I mind-linked with him. I’ve been feeling his presence since that first day in the lab.”

  “You mean his ghost came back and killed them?”

  “Got a better explanation?”

  “No. And I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Neither did I, and now I’m afraid of them.”

  “Zack, even if ghosts exist, I doubt they can overpower a weightlifter or drive a car.”

  “If I didn’t do it myself, then what the hell am I picking up?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t believe you killed them.”

  “That’s a relief.” She didn
’t want anything, but he went over to the refrigerator for another glass of milk. Milk, he thought as he stared into the glass. So innocent and ordinary. It wasn’t long ago when his own life was innocent and ordinary. “So, if it wasn’t me, how the hell did I see those murders?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t even explain transcendence, and every metric says your mind left your brain. But I can’t tell you how.”

  Zack sipped his milk. “I feel like that kid in The Sixth Sense. He sees dead people. I watch them die. It’d be funny if it weren’t so friggin’ real.”

  She thought for a moment, then looked up at him. “Maybe you really did have a paranormal experience. Really.”

  “That works in books and movies, but how do you explain telepathy or astral projection or whatever the hell in rational terms?”

  “Something I’ve been wondering since I started. But if you picked up someone else’s sentience, it has to be through one of the four known force fields—nuclear, atomic, gravity, or electromagnetic. The first two don’t count—the ranges are too small. And as far as we know, gravity doesn’t carry information. That leaves EM waves.”

  “Like light and radio waves.”

  “Yeah, but to pick up thoughts of someone five miles away, you’d need a power source that would cook your brain. And Gretch was in Connecticut.”

  “So how do you explain it?”

  “I can’t, but Elizabeth would say you experienced the supernatural.”

  “But what do you think?”

  She shook her head. “I’m still a skeptic. Either an unknown medium—something we’ve never seen before. Or we’re missing something in the diagnostics. Don’t get excited, but the only way to know for sure is more suspensions.”

  “Well, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Can’t say I blame you.”

  “But what if she’s right? What if there’s a whole other level of awareness—what mystics have been talking about forever? Some kind of mind pool I tapped into.” He finished his milk and walked to the sink. “My head feels haunted. And it’s been this way since I started these friggin’ tests.”

  “Did you ever, you know, ever have psychic experiences before?”