The Searing

by John Coyne

  “Fifteen minutes,” Tom announced, still standing.

  “Tom, I’m not leaving. I’m going to find that child and solve this mystery. I am going to find out why we are being attacked.”

  “Sara, she’ll kill you.” His voice softened, and he stepped over to where she was sitting and crouched down beside her. She was wearing boots and jeans and was sitting sideways in the chair.

  “Please, don’t fight me. I need your help.”

  “I’m not fighting you; I just don’t want to lose you.” He took hold of her hand and kissed her fingers.

  He looked sad and worried and, Sara thought, adorable.

  “You won’t lose me,” she whispered and, leaning forward, kissed him softly on his lips. She could smell his body and the scent sent a sudden rush through her, as if he had just unbuttoned her blouse and touched her breast.

  “I’m not leaving you,” he answered. “If you’re going to stay in this Village and hunt the girl down, then I’m staying with you. You might need me.”

  “I do need you.” She touched his cheek again and he turned his face and playfully grabbed her forefinger in his mouth, holding it gently between his teeth and growling.

  “Don’t,” she laughed, trying to pull her finger away, but he wouldn’t let go. As he growled again his eyes lost their cold, dark-weather look. He was having fun holding her at bay, and he realized that they hadn’t shared one amusing moment since they’d met.

  “Please, Tom, it’s late.” She tugged her finger once more and he opened his mouth and let her loose as Marcia came back into the kitchen to tell them that the women at the barn had already left for Washington, D.C.

  “So, it’s just us, Sara.”

  “And Cindy Delp,” Tom added.

  “Yes, Cindy Delp,” Sara answered and then bounded out of the chair, saying, “We can, I think, help ourselves against the attack.” Going into the study, she picked up her medical bag and returned to the kitchen. She snapped it open and removed syringes and two small vials.

  “This is a composition of several drugs, including Demerol hydrochloride. What it should do is deaden our reactions; it could be dangerous, but, given the circumstances, this is a quick and perhaps effective way of surviving the next attack. I’ll fix another syringe, Tom, and if we go into shock just jab us with another 20CC of this.”

  “But, Sara, I don’t know how!”

  “Oh, come on,” she smiled at him, “be a big boy. After all, it’s Marcia and I who are taking all the chances. Ready, Marcia?” She held up the syringe.

  Marcia took a deep breath. “I guess. I mean, no, but …” She shrugged. “Do you want me to bend over or something?”

  “No, just roll up your right sleeve and let me swab it with alcohol. This will be a severe but temporary withdrawal from reality. A general numbing of your body. We both should be numb for between five to ten minutes.

  “What happens is that the drug shuts down certain neurotransmitters in the central nervous system and the brain. It also closes off any desire for sex. At least in mice.” She shrugged and smiled.

  “Six minutes,” Tom announced.

  “Go ahead, Sara.” Marcia held up her arm, exposing the soft, white underside of her forearm for the injection, then turned her head away so she wouldn’t see the needle being jabbed easily into the thin, blue vein.

  Sara waited a moment to see Marcia’s reaction. Quietly and slowly, she explained to Marcia how the drug was affecting her, telling her to sit down and make herself comfortable. “Don’t fight it, Marcia.”

  “Three minutes, Sara,” Tom reported. He had begun to pace nervously back and forth.

  “Okay,” Sara replied calmly. She had time, she knew, and she carefully fixed the second syringe, then swathed her own left arm. “Would you like to practice, Tom?”

  “Sara, I can’t,” Tom protested. He backed away.

  She smiled, then glanced at Marcia, who was now sitting in the kitchen chair, her head back and her eyes closed.

  “How do you feel, Marcia?”

  “Fine.” Her voice was soft and slow.

  Sara lifted her arm, tightened the rubber tourniquet, then turned her vein up and in a smooth motion slowly squeezed the drug into her blood stream. She was light-headed before she set the syringe down and loosened the rubber tourniquet.

  “Are you okay?” Tom asked.

  “Yes.” She had difficulty making her tongue form the word.

  “Easy, honey.” He was behind her, helping her to the chair.

  She felt as if the air had become oppressively heavy and was crushing down on her body, breaking apart her soft bones. She sat exhausted in the chair, pulling each breath up and out. She could still hear Tom. He seemed to be speaking, but his voice was far away, as if separated from her by an ocean.

  He was looking away, pointing towards the kitchen windows, and shouting at her. Slowly, with great effort, she moved her head, looked in the direction he was pointing, and there in the dark window, pressed against the glass, was Cindy Delp.

  TWENTY-ONE

  By the time Tom unlocked the kitchen door and got outside, Cindy had made it across the backyard, heading for the rocky hillside beyond Sara’s property. She ran fast, with the wild, long stride of an animal pursued.

  He realized at once where she was heading—to the curtain of dark trees on the hillside—and he sprinted across the terrace, cutting off her flight.

  At the edge of the yard he dove for her, bringing her down with an open-field tackle. They rolled over in the wet grass while she screeched and kicked, but he had his arms wrapped tightly around her slight body, bear-hugging the young girl. This time she wouldn’t get away from him.

  When he had wrestled her into submission, she wouldn’t stand, and he grabbed her arm and dragged the screeching child across the yard and back to the house.

  In the lighted kitchen doorway, he saw Sara and Marcia. He pushed the sulking adolescent ahead of him into the house, saying, “Are you okay?”

  They nodded, still unsteady on their feet, and Sara answered, “I’m not sure if it was the drug or if we just weren’t attacked this time.”

  “Oh, you were attacked, or at least she tried.” He had hold of the slumping child, holding her roughly at arm’s length, as if for example, and added angrily, “Why else would she be here?”

  “Please, Tom,” Sara said, “you’re hurting her. Let go of her arm.”

  “No, she’ll only run away.”

  “But what are you going to do with her?”

  “Ask her some questions. This time we’re going to find out the truth about this kid.” He pushed her ahead of him toward the study. “We’re going to find out how she is killing these children and attacking you.”

  “Try again,” Tom said. “Play it at a different speed.”

  Sara reset the large reel, saying, “This is 3.3 inches per second.”

  Then she started the tape of Cindy’s screeching. Her words were still muddled and incoherent.

  “Maybe we should tape her again,” Marcia suggested, glancing over at Cindy. The child sat on the floor, quietly playing with a black magic marker, endlessly drawing the monogram of the eye of Bel on poster board paper.

  “Try it at a faster tape speed,” Tom said instead. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  Again, Sara set the short tape they had made of Cindy’s screeching.

  “This is 15 inches per second, twice the normal speed.” She turned the switch and Cindy’s voice came through clear and comprehensible.

  “2444504.5”

  “Christ, more numbers.” Tom sighed. “Do they mean anything to either of you?”

  Marcia shook her head. “They could mean anything. She’s the only one who knows.”

  “Well, let’s ask her,” Tom said. “She gave us these numbers for a reason. If she does want to communicate, as Sara thinks, then she’ll tell us.” He positioned a new roll of tape on the machine.

  Sara moved closer to Cindy, careful not to dist
urb her with any sudden movement. When she was sitting next to her, she spoke softly, pulled the child’s attention away from the drawings, and showed her the list of numbers.

  “Cindy, who gave you these numbers?”

  The child screeched in Sara’s ear.

  “Do you have that, Tom?” Sara asked, not turning away from Cindy. She kept searching the blank black eyes, searching for some hint in the faraway look of the child, but Cindy’s eyes were empty and fathomless.

  Behind her, Tom played back the tape.

  “The smaller dog,” Cindy’s voice answered.

  “Cindy, what is the smaller dog?”

  Tom played back the tape and again Cindy rattled off a list of numbers.

  “We’re not getting anywhere,” Tom said, studying the numbers. “Maybe we should call Santucci and tell him we have Cindy.” He glanced at the women.

  “Wait. Not yet, Tom,” Sara said, then asked, “if someone said smaller dog to you, what would it suggest?”

  “Maybe it’s her dog. A family reference,” Tom replied. “We could telephone Delp and see if Cindy had a dog.”

  “No, not Cindy. What does the term or name smaller dog mean?” It was not wild speculation on Sara’s part. Something was tugging at her memory.

  Marcia shook her head.

  “Isn’t smaller dog an astronomical term?” Tom asked. “Like the Great Bear and the Smaller Bear?”

  “Of course!” Marcia jumped up. “Canis Minor, the smaller dog—like Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Lots of planets and star clusters are named after animals.” She snapped her fingers excitedly. “We have to get Neil involved in this. He’s an astronomer. He can tell us what Cindy is talking about.”

  Neil Cohoe opened a copy of the American Ephemeris, spreading the star atlas on the desk in Sara’s study. “What were the numbers that Cindy gave you when she mentioned smaller dog?” he asked.

  “These,” Sara said, showing him the list.

  He studied them a moment, and then explained. “If she used the term smaller dog in connection with these numbers, then they’d make sense as the right ascension and declination, the way we locate the position of planets and stars in the sky. Declination and right ascension are equivalent to terrestrial latitude and longitude. Any other numbers?”

  “Yes, this list. She was screeching these numbers when Tom brought her into the house … 2444504.5.”

  “Well, we have to assume that it, too, is astronomical, and …” He opened another astronomy reference book and flipped rapidly through its long tables of data. “That number looks like a Julian date. That’s simply the astronomical way of counting days. Unlike our normal Gregorian calendar, the Julian date is a continuous counting of days from January 1, 4713, B.C., and that would mean …” he paused at one column and ran his finger down the listing, saying, “2444504.5 is September twenty-second.” He looked up at the others, adding, “That’s the autumnal equinox. It falls on the twenty-second this year.”

  “Tomorrow,” Marcia whispered.

  “Yes, sunrise tomorrow,” Neil replied.

  “It must have some meaning,” Sara said. “I mean, it seems to be coming together. The deaths, our attacks, the finding of the prehistoric chamber focus on the equinox, and all of Cindy’s strange numbers, the terrestrial latitude and longitude. Yet still we haven’t any idea why.” She looked around the room.

  “Let’s ask her,” Neil answered. “Each time you’ve asked her something, she’s responded, right?”

  They nodded.

  “Okay, let’s see what she knows.”

  On a sheet of poster board, Neil quickly drew a diagram, explaining as he did, “This denotes the fundamental formula of spherical trigonometry which is essential in determining planetary motion and other astronomical data. If Cindy can explain this formula, then we know she’s using planetary explanations as her points of reference.” He held up the diagram, saying, “What is this formula, Cindy?”

  For a moment it seemed as if Cindy wasn’t paying attention. Her blank eyes floated unresponsively over the drawing and Sara thought how ridiculous it was even to think of showing the diagram to Cindy, or any child. Then Cindy picked up her magic marker and went back to her poster card doodles. At first, it appeared she was writing at random, and then on the bottom of the white sheet Sara saw her carefully print, “cos a = cos b cos c + sin b sin c cos A.”

  Quickly Neil asked, “Cindy, what’s the Gaussian Gravitational Constant?”

  Again, at the bottom of the white sheet she carefully printed, “0.01720209895.”

  Neil glanced at the others, saying, “She’s right. Now, this information is simple, and common to anyone involved with astronomy. If she’s truly autistic, she could still have learned it all, memorized it, by reading a few books, studying a star atlas.”

  “Ask her something more,” Sara said quickly. “Ask what all these numbers and astronomical data mean. Most autistic children can’t reason. They only know information. Well, let’s see if she can think.”

  Neil nodded, and then to the child, asked, “Cindy, who told you these numbers?”

  Cindy screeched, and they played back her answer: “The smaller dog.”

  “And who is the smaller dog?”

  “The eye of Bel.”

  Neil looked at the others, confused by the reply. “Go on, Neil,” Marcia urged, “we’ll explain later.”

  “Who is Bel, Cindy?”

  Cindy looked up, her head flopping over as if she couldn’t control herself, and the black depthless eyes rolled loose in their sockets. Sara blinked, momentarily unsure of what she was seeing. Cindy’s eyes were spinning wildly, then blazing with color. Marcia grabbed Sara’s arm, whispering, “Do you see?”

  “Yes.” Sara went down on her knees and crawled toward where the child was sitting on the floor. Perhaps they had pushed her too far, she thought, and Cindy was reacting, experiencing a seizure.

  “Who is Bel?” Neil repeated loudly, and Sara spun towards him, signaling for him to stop, that the young girl had gone into shock; when Cindy looked back at the group, her pale, fair skin was scarlet with fear, her eyes enlarged and bright with the violent light that zigzagged across her retinas. She screeched. Again and again, her voice louder and louder, shrill and terrifying. The shrieking crushed them with sound.

  Sara was shouting, telling Neil to stop the questioning. Then she rushed to Cindy, took the trembling child into her arms, and hugged Cindy against her breast, blocking out for the moment the terrible noise of the outside world.

  “Listen,” Tom instructed, when Cindy had calmed down and slipped again into her silent, secret self. He flipped on the tape recorder, playing back her screeching on the slower speed.

  On a pad of paper, Neil quickly wrote down the string of new numbers, the setting of terrestrial latitude and longitude.

  Then he frowned.

  “What is it?” Marcia asked, seeing his puzzled reaction.

  He shook his head and opened the atlas, fingering through the pages, then stopped and asked Tom to play the tape once more, before replying, “Well, these numbers she has quoted are accurate, in the sense that they are a correct ascension and declination. Mathematically, there is such a spot just outside our solar system.” He turned the book around, pointing to a spot near Capricornus. “Here it is, outside the orbits of Pluto and Neptune, and part of the Capricorn constellation, approximately 3,666 million miles from the sun. The problem is”—Neil paused, as if to get their full attention—“if you look to where I’m pointing on this atlas, to the planetary latitude and longitude that Cindy gave us, what do you see?”

  “Nothing,” Sara answered.

  “That’s right. No planet, star, or nebulae.” Neil closed the large atlas and moved it aside.

  The others glanced at each other, then Marcia asked, “Well, what does it all mean? Why those numbers, then?”

  Neil shrugged and adjusted his glasses, speaking thoughtfully as he watched the silent child. “We look up into the s
ky at night and see perhaps a thousand or two thousand stars, but we really don’t begin to comprehend the magnitude of space. We know of about 250 billion stars in space, so maybe we’ve overlooked one or two …”

  The others glanced around the room.

  “What are you suggesting … that Cindy is somehow connected with an unknown star or planet at the edge of the universe?”

  Neil nodded towards the child on the floor. “I’m not suggesting anything. She is. These are her terrestrial alignments.” He lifted his notepad with the numbers jotted down, as if producing evidence.

  “Incredible,” Marcia whispered.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Sara protested. She pulled herself up from the floor and began to pace nervously in the study.

  “What are we talking about?” Tom asked. “Extraterrestrial life?” Neil shrugged, unsure of what to say, then he answered, speaking slowly. “Someone gave this girl these astronomical numbers. Now let’s assume for a moment that it was some form of extraterrestrial life. It’s not as farfetched as we might think,” he said, glancing at the group. “If only one percent of the stars in our galaxy have conditions suitable for life, that would mean 2.5 billion planets or stars could have technological civilizations like ours.

  “Now we usually assume these civilizations would visit us in some sort of space ship, a flying saucer for example. But they won’t.

  “Carl Sagan, and other astrophysicists, are convinced that the first communication will be some sort of space probe, terrestrial radar maybe, or microwave, perhaps a laser beam of ultraviolet light.

  “There is even a likelihood that another advanced civilization has already reached earth and is watching us now, collecting data, and sending it all back out into space.”

  “A relay system?” Tom asked.

  “Yes, something like that. For example, it might work this way.” On the white poster board, Neil drew a rough outline, explaining, “The information is relayed from here on earth, this Village, to the ‘eye of Bel’—in this case, the star Canis Minor—toward the rim of our solar system and the Capricorn constellation, some four million miles from the sun.”