City of Sand

by Robert Kroese

  Benjamin shook his head. “It’s the people running the hospital,” he said. “They have friends at the FBI. I think they’re interested in Sofia because of her visions. How did you get away?”

  “I told Sofia she could have a candy bar if she was good at the doctor’s. But then on the way home, I told her we didn’t have time because we didn’t want to make Mr. Kassel late. Sofia didn’t take it well.”

  “Because you promised!” Sofia said accusingly.

  “I know, mi cielo,” said Sofia, hugging her. “I’m sorry, I had to say that to get the man to go away.” She smiled at Benjamin. “Sofia started crying. Mr. Kassel felt bad and said we could stop at the 7-Eleven. When he went in the store, I drove away and called the police. Detective Lentz said to meet him here. Why are they so interested in Sofia?”

  “The visions she has,” Benjamin said. “They think she’s seeing the future.”

  “The future?” said Lucia. “That’s crazy. She’s just a little girl.” She looked to Lentz as if wanting confirmation. Lentz just shrugged.

  “I don’t pretend to understand what’s happening here,” he said. “But it does seem like the feds are trying to cover up something pretty big. Something involving William Glazier.”

  “Mr. Glazier?” Lucia asked. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “He started a project back in the 1940s to take advantage of children with special abilities,” said Benjamin. “Children like Sofia. And Felipe. Felipe was one of the first. I don’t want to give them a chance to do to Sofia what they…” He trailed off, looking at Sofia, who seemed to be nodding off on the couch. “What did they do to her at the hospital?”

  “They gave her some tests,” said Lucia. “And we talked to a doctor, Doctor Zanders. He asked Sofia a lot of questions.”

  “About the buildings she sees? The airplanes?”

  “Of course,” said Lucia.

  “What kind of questions?” asked Benjamin. “Did it seem like he was trying to figure out why she was having these visions, or was he asking for a lot of details about the visions? Like what the buildings looked like, and whether she saw any street signs, that sort of thing?”

  “No,” said Lucia softly, shaking her head. “No, I don’t believe any of this. It’s crazy. People seeing the future? Mr. Glazier doing experiments on children? No. This all started when you showed up, Benjamin.”

  “Me?” asked Benjamin, surprised. “This has been going on long before I got here. I didn’t make Felipe the way he is.”

  “Don’t talk about Felipe,” Lucia snapped. “Felipe was fine before you got here. Ever since you arrived, he’s been acting strange, agitated. And Sofia’s nightmares started right after you came to town. There’s something about you, Benjamin. I don’t know if it’s completely your fault, but there’s something not right about you.”

  It hurt Benjamin to hear Lucia talking this way. She was the one person in this town that had seemed to always think the best of him, despite his own doubts. Now that she was attacking him, he came to realize how much he’d come to rely on that support. “Please, Lucia,” he said. “I only came here to find my daughter. I didn’t—”

  “Your daughter, who ran away and wouldn’t talk to you. What did you do to her, Benjamin?”

  Lentz was beginning to look very uncomfortable. He seemed to want to intervene, but feared making things worse.

  “Jesus, Lucia,” said Benjamin. “What kind of person do you think I am? I told you I wasn’t a great father, but I never intentionally hurt Jessica. I came here hoping to find her, hoping to make things right….”

  “Well, you haven’t,” said Lucia. “You just keep making things worse. You need to leave this town, Benjamin. Things are never going to be right here until you leave.”

  “Lucia,” said Benjamin. “You can’t—”

  “Oh my God,” Sofia suddenly said, her eyes wide open. “What is happening to me?”

  “Sofia,” said Lucia, still holding her daughter close. “It’s okay. I’m with you. We’re at a friend’s house. A policeman.”

  Lentz smiled and nodded at Sofia, trying his best to look reassuring.

  “Oh my God,” said Sofia again, recoiling from her mother’s touch. “Oh my God.” She pulled away from Lucia and got off the couch. She stood for a moment, looking dizzy and uncertain.

  Lucia leaned toward her and reached out to take her daughter’s hands, but Sofia pulled away again. “Sofia,” said Lucia. “What’s wrong? Did you have another bad dream? About the airplanes hitting the buildings?”

  “The towers,” said Sofia. “The planes hit the towers. I was late for work. I saw them hit, and then the north tower fell down. I ran, but then I got caught in the dust cloud.”

  “No, Sofia,” said Lucia. “It was just a dream. It wasn’t you.”

  “It wasn’t a dream!” Sofia cried. “I was there! I tripped on something and fell down. There was so much dust and smoke, I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to die, but then….”

  Benjamin and Lentz exchanged baffled looks. Something about Sofia’s voice had changed. Not so much the tone of her voice, but the cadence and word choice was wrong.

  “I was in the hospital,” Sofia said. “How did I get here?”

  “I drove us here,” Lucia. “Remember? We left the hospital with Mr. Kassel.”

  “No, it’s not right,” Sofia said, closing her eyes and burying her head in her hands. “Who are you? I don’t understand. I shouldn’t be here!”

  “Sofia,” said Benjamin, kneeling down in front of her. “Sofia, is that you?”

  Sofia gazed into Benjamin’s eyes, then looked down at her hands. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the floor. Benjamin did his best to break her fall.

  “Get away from her!” Lucia screamed, shoving Benjamin out of the way. She tried to embrace Sofia, but Sofia squirmed away, still screaming hysterically.

  “What did you do?” Lucia demanded.

  “I didn’t—” Benjamin started.

  “This is all your fault!” Lucia shrieked, going to Sofia’s side. “Get away from her!”

  Benjamin stood up and backed away. Sofia looked up at him, a puzzled expression on her face. “Mamá?” she said. “Why are you yelling? Are you angry at Mr. Stone?”

  Lucia glared at Benjamin. Lentz caught his eye, motioning toward the kitchen. Benjamin followed him out of the room.

  “What was that all about?” Lentz asked.

  “I could tell you what I think,” said Benjamin, “but you’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “We’re well beyond that,” said Lentz. “The girl,” said Lentz. “It was like she turned into a completely different person.”

  “That’s a remarkably astute observation,” Benjamin said with a nod.

  “What the hell are you saying?” asked Lentz.

  Benjamin sighed. “Lucia has a gift, although it may be more correct to call it a curse. She seems to be able to project her consciousness into the future.”

  “Project her…?” said Lentz, eyeing Benjamin dubiously.

  Benjamin continued, undeterred. “Her mind actually moves forward in time to occupy the brain of another person living sometime in the future. She sees what that person sees. Her consciousness eventually snaps back into the present, but she retains memories of what this other person experiences in the future.”

  “Okay,” said Lentz, “you’re right. That does sound crazy.”

  “I know,” said Benjamin. “But that’s what this is all about. That’s why the FBI is here, why Glazier’s people are so interested in Sofia. They think she’s an intelligence asset. They think she can help them foresee and prevent events that occur in the future. And they may be right.”

  Lentz shook his head. “I don’t know that I buy the part about seeing the future, but something strange is definitely going on, and they certainly are interested in Sofia for some reason. But does she get like this after all these visions? She turns into someone else?”
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  “No, this is new,” said Benjamin. “I think something they did at the hospital may have triggered it.”

  “Triggered what exactly?”

  Benjamin shrugged. “Hell if I know. I’m just conjecturing, based on very limited information.”

  “We need to get her to a doctor.”

  “Not in this town,” said Benjamin. “I’m not sure how much good a doctor can do her anyway. “She seems okay now. Hopefully she’ll grow out of it.” He thought of Felipe and Estefan. Or maybe not.

  “Looks like our friends in the FBI found us,” said Lentz, looking out the window. A black Lincoln had pulled up in front of the house.

  “So now what?” asked Benjamin. “We can’t let them have Sofia.”

  “I don’t plan to hand her over,” said Lentz. “As far as I’m concerned, unless they have an arrest warrant for her, they’ve got no business with Sofia.”

  “Good,” Benjamin said. They watched Agents Hill and Kassel exit the car and begin walking toward the front door. Their guns were holstered.

  “They’re not coming in with guns blazing,” said Lentz. “Let’s hope they listen to reason. I’m going to move Lucia and Sofia to the back room just in case, though.”

  Benjamin nodded, and Lentz escorted the two out of the living room. Benjamin hoped things didn’t get violent, but they would be safer if they were out of the line of fire. Lentz returned as a knock sounded on the door.

  “Not interested,” yelled Benjamin through the closed door.

  “Mr. Stone?” Hill said. “Is that you? We’re just here to talk.”

  “We’re not giving you Sofia,” Benjamin yelled.

  “We’re not here for Sofia,” called Hill. “Please, Mr. Stone. Could you open the door?”

  Benjamin glanced at Lentz, who had drawn his gun. He nodded to Benjamin. Benjamin opened the door.

  “Mr. Stone,” said Hill. He glanced at Lentz. “Detective Lentz. I assure you, the gun is not necessary. We’re just here to talk.”

  “Alright,” said Lentz. “Let’s talk.” He held onto his gun, but pointed it down at the carpet.

  Hill and Kassel stepped inside, Kassel closing the door behind them.

  “I don’t know what we have to talk about,” said Benjamin. “Unless you’ve got an arrest warrant, you can’t take Sofia. You don’t want to press that point.”

  “We’re not here for Sofia,” said Hill again. “We’re here for you, Mr. Stone.”

  “Me?” said Benjamin. “What do you want with me?”

  “Mr. Glazier has taken an interest in you,” said Kassel. “He said to tell you it was something he read in the newspaper.”

  Benjamin studied Kassel for a moment, wondering if Glazier had explained to them what he was referring to. Benjamin decided he hadn’t. These guys were just Glazier’s errand boys. How powerful was Glazier, that the FBI did his bidding without question? More importantly, what did this development mean? Had Glazier been straight with him when he’d claimed ignorance of the story about Spiegel in the Herald?

  “If I go with you, you’ll leave Sofia alone?”

  “Those were our instructions,” said Hill. “Mr. Glazier seems to think you have information relevant to matters of national security.”

  Lentz shot a puzzled look at Benjamin. Benjamin shrugged. “I think Mr. Glazier is going to be disappointed in how much I actually know. But if you give me your word you’ll leave Sofia alone, I’ll cooperate.”

  “You have my word,” said Hill.

  Whatever that’s worth, thought Benjamin. But he nodded to Lentz, and Lentz reluctantly holstered his gun. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Lentz said quietly.

  “Not a clue,” said Benjamin, turning his back on the two men. “But if there’s still a chance for Sofia to have a normal life, I’ll do whatever I can. There’s a guy in town named Tony Sabbia. Used to be a reporter for the Herald. He knows about Glazier. Some of it, anyway. Take Lucia and Sofia to him. Tell him what I told you. They can’t silence all of us. And tell Lucia I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” Lentz asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Benjamin. “Everything.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Benjamin got into the back of the black Lincoln. Hill drove, while Kassel rode in the passenger seat. Benjamin didn’t have to ask where they were going. They’d be taking him to Sand Hill Children’s Hospital to meet with the doctor who had examined Sofia. As valuable as Sofia’s visions were to GLARE, something Benjamin had said to Glazier convinced him that Benjamin possessed still more vital information. But what?

  Assuming that Glazier hadn’t been lying about the story in the Herald, that meant… what? The story had been real? Sabbia had published a story about a famous scientist dying in a car accident at a nonexistent intersection, and nobody had noticed the error? It was impossible, an irreducible flaw in the history of Sunnyview. It reminded him of the sort of flaws that often marred eye witness testimony in criminal investigations: a witness would give an extremely detailed, convincing account of a series of events, but in the course of fact-checking the story Benjamin would run up against an obvious error—one on which the rest of the account depended. Memory was a funny thing, often sketchy and replete with errors; the mind would fill in gaps with convincing fictions that became part of the witness’s reality.

  But in this case, it was as if the error in recollection had affected the entire town. Some sort of collective delusion had taken hold, in which no one questioned an accident that couldn’t possibly have happened the way it was officially recorded. Benjamin had brought the error to the attention of Glazier, and Glazier clearly believed that it meant something. But what? And what did it mean that Felipe’s model shared the error? Was that just another symptom of the delusion, or was it something more? Benjamin found himself entertaining the absurd conclusion that the entire town of Sunnyview existed only in the mind of Felipe Sanz. It was a ridiculous idea. How could I be a figment in someone else’s imagination? Whatever else is true, I know that I exist, and my experiences are real.

  But if the error wasn’t the result of one person’s imperfect recollections, then it was apparently the result of a collective delusion that seemed to affect the entire city of Sunnyview. Where did that delusion come from? What motivated it? Was there some memory that was so abhorrent to the residents of the city that they had somehow unconsciously collaborated to blot it out?

  This wasn’t a new idea: Benjamin remembered reading about Carl Jung’s theory of the “collective unconscious” when he was in college. Jung’s idea was that there existed a set of unconscious attitudes that were inherited by members of a culture; that in a sense, these attitudes created the reality of the culture’s members. Past occurrences were interpreted through a filter of pre-rational patterns of thought, so that two different cultures might have completely different interpretation of the same historical event.

  But what was happening here seemed to be a quantum leap beyond the mere framing of events according to pre-existing attitudes. Somehow the people of Sunnyview had unconsciously decided to ignore a completely obvious contradiction. Whether the oversight was the result of a malevolent conspiracy by GLARE, the faulty memory of a single individual, or a collective delusion, the question remained: why such an obvious flaw? The error had evidently just been sitting around in a newspaper for over fifty years, waiting for Benjamin to find it. And how had nobody else noticed it until now? Why was Benjamin the only one who had seen through the delusion? What was so special about him?

  Whatever it was, he suspected it was why Glazier was so interested in him. Somehow he had seen something that nobody else had noticed, in over fifty years. It seemed like an obvious mistake, but maybe it was only obvious to him. And yet, when Benjamin pointed out the error to Glazier, Glazier had apparently seen it as well. So it wasn’t that only Benjamin could see the contradiction. Others could see it as well, but only after Benjamin pointed it out. None of it made any sense.

  As th
e car made its way toward the hospital, Benjamin wondered if this is how the prophets of the Old Testament felt. Most people thought of prophets as people who foresaw the future, but mostly what the prophets did was remind people of things they were already supposed to know. That is, they pointed out errors in the people’s thinking; contradictions that they were trying to remain ignorant of. The story rarely ended well for the prophet. Was that his fate? To be punished by Glazier for pointing out the error? He would find out soon enough, he supposed.

  Efforts to gather more information from Hill and Kassel proved pointless; either they didn’t know anything or they had been instructed not to say any more than was necessary to get Benjamin in the car. Benjamin suspected it was the former; these guys threw around “national security” like it was some kind of shibboleth, marking them as members of an elite group of protectors, but in reality it was more like a badge of ignorance. All they knew was that what Glazier wanted, Glazier got. And in this case, he wanted Benjamin Stone.

  Agent Hill at least seemed a bit irritated at having been demoted to Glazier’s stooge; his jaw was set tightly and his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. He turned left onto Main Street, gunning the engine, obviously impatient. The Lincoln’s engine roared as it shot down the street.

  In the distance, a woman stood motionless in the middle of the street. Hill was staring straight ahead, and Benjamin couldn’t imagine the agent didn’t see her. But he continued to accelerate, apparently oblivious. The car was going close to forty miles an hour.

  “Hey,” Benjamin snapped, leaning forward between Hill and Kassel. He pointed at the woman, who was now less than a hundred yards away.

  “Sit down!” Kassel barked. “Don’t make me—”

  “Jesus Christ,” Benjamin growled. “Watch out!”

  But Hill remained oblivious, continuing to accelerate.

  In the split second that Benjamin reacted, he realized both who the woman was, and why Hill didn’t see her. She isn’t real, Benjamin told himself. She’s a hallucination.