by John Saul
They started over again from the beginning, and suddenly the play that had seemed to Josh to be incredibly dull when he’d read through it the night before, marking Hamlet’s lines in yellow so he wouldn’t lose his place during the reading this morning, came alive. As his classmates got into the spirit of it, becoming caught up in the drama of the piece, Josh began to imagine himself in the vast, cold chambers of Elsinore Castle.
But in the midst of one of his speeches, the door opened, and Josh looked up to see Adam Aldrich coming in. He faltered, then stopped, for the one thing that Steve Conners was absolutely strict about was promptness.
“I only have an hour a day with you, and I don’t intend to waste it,” he’d explained on Monday, when Josh himself had been late because he hadn’t been able to find the room. “So if you’re not going to show up on time, don’t bother to come at all. Clear?”
Josh, his eyes wide at the rebuke, had nodded mutely and slid into his seat. Now he waited to see what would happen to Adam.
Steve Conners gazed steadily at Adam, who seemed totally unconcerned about his tardiness. “Didn’t you understand what I said Monday?” the teacher asked.
Adam shrugged. “I’ve got a note from Dr. Engersol,” he said.
He handed the note to the teacher, and Conners glanced at it briefly before nodding Adam into his chair, making a mental note to talk to the director that afternoon. “Okay, let’s pick it up where we left off. Adam, you take over the part of Polonius. We’re on page twenty-seven.”
The reading began again, but when Polonius’s next line came up, there was only silence from Adam Aldrich.
Conners frowned at the boy. “Adam?”
“I lost my place,” Adam replied. He read the line, but
with absolutely no expression to his voice, stumbling over the rhythm of the speech. When his next line came, he missed it again.
“What’s going on, Adam?” Conners asked. “Didn’t you read the play last night?”
Adam slouched low in his chair. “I didn’t have time,” he muttered, so softly that Conners could barely hear him.
Conners eyed the boy. Every day, it seemed, Adam was showing less and less interest in the class. Yesterday, in fact, he’d spent the entire hour staring out the window, taking no part at all in the discussion of Shakespeare and the theater of the Elizabethan era. Yet last year, he knew, Adam had been involved in both plays the Academy had staged, and even tried out for one of the productions the university drama department had put on.
“What were you doing that was more important than your homework?” Conners asked, keeping his voice mild.
“I was just doing something else, that’s all,” Adam replied, his normally placid expression turning sullen. “It’s none of your business.”
Conners frowned. “Come on, Adam. If it affects what’s happening to you in my class, I think it is my business.”
“Then maybe I won’t be in your class anymore,” Adam said. As the rest of the students watched in astonished silence, Adam Aldrich picked up his book bag, pulled his English text out of it, and stood up. “I hate this class,” he announced. “It can get stuffed, for all I care.”
He walked out.
As a tense silence hung over the class, Josh gazed at the door through which his friend had disappeared, wondering what was going to happen. Would Mr. Conners go after him and bring him back? And the way Adam had talked to the teacher …
“All right, gang,” he heard Mr. Conners saying. “Just go on with the reading. Brad, you pick up Polonius’s lines, okay?”
Brad nodded silently as Steve Conners hurried from the room. At the end of the hall he could see Adam Aldrich just starting out of the building. Breaking into a run, Conners caught up with the boy as he was reaching the last step down from the building’s porch and heading across the lawn toward the mansion.
“Adam?” Steve said as he came abreast of the boy. “Hey, come on, you can’t just walk out like that.”
Adam kept going, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his book bag hanging from his right wrist, barely clearing the ground. Conners put his right hand on the boy’s shoulder, stopping him and turning him around so they faced each other. “You want to tell me what’s going on, Adam? I’m on your side, you know.”
Adam’s eyes shifted away from the teacher’s. “Nothin’s going on. I just don’t like your class, and I’m not going to it anymore.”
“Oh, you’re not, huh?” Steve said, trying to keep his voice light, though the fleeting worries he’d felt about Adam all week were suddenly coalescing. “How do you figure you’re going to get out of it? English isn’t an elective, you know.”
“I’ll get out,” Adam announced, his eyes shifting away from Steve Conners and fixing on the large cupola that formed the fourth floor of the mansion. “Dr. Engersol will get me out.”
Conners frowned, his own gaze following Adam’s. Was that where Adam had been that morning? Up in Engersol’s private aerie atop the mansion? “What’s going on, Adam? How did you get that note from Dr. Engersol? He knows how I feel about people coming in late.”
“We were working on something,” Adam told him, in a voice that informed Conners that exactly what they had been doing was none of his business.
“Look, Adam,” Conners said, deciding to start all over again. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I think maybe you ought to tell me about it. I can’t help you—”
Adam twisted away from him. “I don’t need any help!” he said. “And nothing’s going on with me. Can’t you just leave me alone?” He backed a couple of paces away from the teacher, then turned and sprinted across the lawn toward the main house.
Conners was tempted to follow him, but then remembered the rest of his class, still inside, theoretically reading the play he’d assigned them. Still, he waited until he saw the massive wooden door close behind Adam before starting back to his classroom. Hildie Kramer, he was certain, would have seen Adam from her office and immediately dropped whatever she might have been doing to find out what had upset the boy. Hildie’s instincts with the kids, Steve had discovered in the short time he’d been with the school, were rarely far off the mark. She often seemed to know when one of them was heading for trouble even before the child himself knew.
Nevertheless, he added another mental note to his list of things to attend to later on.
Check with Hildie, and find out what’s going on with Adam.
“What’s going on with Adam?” Josh asked that night. It was an hour after dinner, and he was in Jeff Aldrich’s room, working out a problem in trigonometry that had stumped him. Amy Carlson, who had come with him, was flopped on Jeff’s bed, a history book open in her lap. As Josh asked the question, she looked up from her reading to hear Jeff’s reply.
Jeff, who had been concentrating on the computer monitor on his desk, turned to peer at Josh. “Maybe,” he began, his voice dropping into the same mysterious tone he’d used when he was telling ghost stories at the picnic the previous weekend, “he’s seen Mr. Barrington.”
Josh groaned. “Come on, man. That’s such a lie! There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“Really?” Jeff drawled. “You mean you haven’t heard him at all?”
Josh frowned suspiciously, remembering once again what Jeff had told him about Timmy Evans. “Heard what?”
“The elevator,” Jeff intoned, making the word itself sound ominous. “Sometimes, late at night, you can hear it running, but if you go to look, it’s not moving, and there’s no one in it”
Amy, her eyes wide, gazed raptly at Jeff. “Then if it’s not the elevator, what is it?” she asked.
Jeff’s eyes shifted from Josh to Amy, and bored into her. “It’s like I told you at the picnic,” he whispered. “It’s old Eustace Barrington, creeping around the house at night, looking for the people who killed his son. Or maybe,” he added, deliberately edging his voice with menace, “he’s really looking for his son!”
Josh swallowed the lump
that had risen in his throat. “Wh-What son?” he asked, his voice catching despite his efforts to control it. “You said the boy might not even have existed!”
“But he did,” Jeff declared, returning his gaze to Josh. “He disappeared when he was five years old, and nobody ever saw him again or found his body. No one knows what happened to him. But they say he died in this house, and the old man’s still here, looking for the people who killed him. And maybe that’s why Adam’s acting so weird. Maybe he’s seen Mr. Barrington! Maybe,” he added, “just maybe, Timmy Evans saw him, too!”
“Come on,” Josh protested, trying to shake off the chill that had gripped him. “Don’t ten Amy stories like that! You’ll scare her!”
“Her?” Jeff echoed. “What about you? You look pretty scared. And maybe the story’s true.”
“Who’s Timmy Evans?” Amy demanded, then listened, entranced, as Jeff repeated what he’d told Josh a few days earlier. “What if it’s true?” Amy whispered when Jeff was finished. “Adam was acting really strange today. Could he really be afraid of a ghost?”
Jeff shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Nobody ever knows what goes on with Adam. Sometimes he just gets real quiet.”
“He wasn’t quiet today,” Josh told him. “He talked back to Mr. Conners.”
Now Jeff turned to look at Josh. “Aw, come on,” he said. “Adam? He wouldn’t talk back to anyone.”
“Well, he did this morning,” Josh shot back. He told Jeff what had happened in the English class that morning. “What’s he doing with Dr. Engersol?” he asked when he was finished.
When Jeff hesitated, Amy glared at him. “What is it? Some kind of big secret?” she demanded.
“It’s a special seminar,” Jeff replied. “It’s about artificial intelligence.”
“There isn’t any such thing as artificial intelligence,” Amy announced with the absolute certainty of her ten years. “There can’t ever be, until someone figures out how people think. And so far, nobody has.”
“Yeah?” Jeff teased. “What makes you so sure?”
“I read about it,” Amy replied. “In Scientific American. It was all about what they’re trying to do at Stanford and M.I.T. and all those places. So far, they can’t even make a computer think of putting on a raincoat if it’s raining outside.”
Josh giggled. “So what? Computers don’t go outside.”
Amy rolled her eyes. “I mean if they did. Besides, it wasn’t like it was anything real. It’s just one of the things they were trying to do to get the computer to think. And it couldn’t.”
“But it’s what we’re working on,” Jeff retorted. “Dr. Engersol’s trying to figure out how people think, and if he does, it’s going to change everything.”
Amy frowned curiously. “So what was Adam doing this morning?”
Jeff’s brows lifted and his air of mystery returned. “It’s a secret,” he said. “Nobody in the class tells anyone what we’re doing. I shouldn’t have told you as much as I did.”
Amy rolled over. “That is so stupid. I don’t believe you. I bet if I asked Adam, he’d tell me.”
Jeff’s lips twisted into a knowing sneer. “Bet he wouldn’t.”
The three kids immediately trooped over to the room next door, where Adam was sitting at his computer, the helmet of his virtual reality setup on his head, the glove on his right hand.
Jeff, signaling Josh and Amy not to say anything, moved to the computer and glanced at the screen. Then he picked up the microphone that sat on his brother’s desk, pressed the button on its side and whispered into it.
“I’m here, Adam. I’m here, and I’m watching you.”
Adam froze, then jerked off the helmet, glaring at his brother. “What the hell do you want?” he demanded.
“Hey,” Jeff told him. “Chill out, huh? We just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”
Adam noticed Josh and Amy standing uncertainly near the door. “I’m busy,” he said. “Couldn’t you see my door was closed?”
“We just wanted to ask you what your class with Dr. Engersol is about,” Josh told him, already edging toward the door. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? How come you’re acting so weird?”
A guarded look crossed Adam’s face, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. “I—I’m okay,” he stammered. “I’m just busy with something, all right?”
“But what?” Amy asked. “What’s that helmet thing?”
Adam licked his lips nervously, his eyes flicking toward his brother. “It’s something Dr. Engersol gave me,” he said.
“Why don’t you tell her?” Josh asked. “You showed it to me the other day.” He turned to Amy. “It’s called a virtual reality helmet. When you put it on, it shows you things on a screen, but it looks just like you’re really seeing them.”
“Really?” Amy asked. “Can I try it?”
“No!” Adam shouted.
Amy, smarting from the rebuff, glared at him. “Well, who wants to see your stupid helmet? I’m leaving!”
Turning on her heel, she stamped out of the room, while Josh eyed Adam curiously. He’d never acted like this before. Until today, he’d always been quiet, letting Jeff speak for him most of the time, and he’d always been nice. “You didn’t have to be mean to her,” he began, but Adam cut him off.
“And I didn’t invite her in here, either, did I? Or you. So why don’t you just go with your girlfriend and leave me alone?”
Josh felt himself turning red. “All right, I will,” he said, wheeling and stomping out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
When Josh was gone, Jeff gazed steadily at his brother. “Is it going to be tonight?” he asked.
Adam shrugged uncertainly. “I don’t know. It might be. I haven’t decided yet.”
Jeff’s eyes hardened. “Well, when are you going to decide?”
Adam dropped down in the chair in front of his desk, avoiding his brother’s gaze. “I don’t know,” he said. “I—I don’t even know if I want to go yet.”
Standing behind his brother, Jeff frowned. Adam wasn’t going to chicken out, was he? He couldn’t! Not now, not after everything they’d planned. “Come on,” he said. “I thought we’d already decided. You hate it here. You hate it everywhere. So what’s the big deal? If you want to get out, you get out. Isn’t that what we decided?”
Adam shrugged, but then went to the window. “What—What if I changed my mind? I mean, afterward?”
Jeff chuckled hollowly. “It’d be sort of too late, wouldn’t it? I mean, you’d already be gone.”
“I know,” Adam agreed, his voice barely audible. “That’s what I keep thinking about.”
He turned around to see his brother regarding him angrily.
“You are chickening out, aren’t you?” Jeff accused.
“I didn’t say that,” Adam argued, his voice taking on a plaintive note.
“Yeah, but it’s what you meant. Jeez, Adam, you really are a wimp, aren’t you? All you ever do is whine about everything, but when you have a chance to do something, you chicken out. Well, if you don’t go tonight, you might as well forget it. I’ll tell Mom and Dad about what you’re planning, and they’ll stop you. This time, they’ll probably send you to Atascadero, or something.”
Adam’s eyes widened with fear at the thought of being locked up in the state mental hospital. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“I might. Anyway, even if they don’t lock you up, I bet they’ll take you out of school and keep you at home. Then you’ll never have another chance to do it, will you?”
Adam swallowed. “I—”
Jeff could feel his brother wavering. “Come on, Adam. Tonight. You’ve got to do it tonight.”
Adam’s temper, usually held perfectly in check, suddenly flared. “If you’re so hot for it to happen, why don’t you do it yourself?” he demanded.
Jeff said nothing, his mind racing. They’d already talked it out, spent hours arguing about it. And Adam had agreed that he was the one w
ho should go. Now he was trying to back out, losing his nerve at the last minute.
Well, it wasn’t going to happen. It had all been planned, all been decided, and this time Adam wasn’t going to chicken out at the last minute. “You’re going to do it,” Jeff finally said, his voice dropping to a furious whisper that sent a chill through Adam. “If you don’t do it, I’ll kill you myself, Adam. I’ll figure out a way so no one will know it was me. And I’ll make sure it hurts. Is that what you want me to do? Do you want me to hurt you?”
Adam shrank back in his chair. “No,” he breathed. “And I’m not saying I’m not going to do it. I just—”
Jeff didn’t let him finish. Instead, he kept talking to his brother, browbeating him, convincing him, putting his own thoughts into Adam’s mind, just as he had since they were old enough to talk.
At last, as always, Adam nodded.
“Okay,” he said, his face pale. “I’ll do it tonight. So just leave me alone, and let me get ready, all right?”
“You swear you’re going to do it?” Jeff demanded.
Adam held up both his hands, intertwining his fingers with his brother’s, in the way they had ever since they were little more than toddlers. It was a gesture that meant one of them had made an unbreakable promise to the other. “Swear,” he said.
Jeff finally smiled, but there was no kindness in it. “Okay.” He started out of the room, then paused at the door.
He looked back at his brother, his eyes devoid of emotion. “Afterward, I’m going to take your leather jacket. Okay?”
Adam shrugged. “If I don’t wear it when I go,” he said. “Anyway, tomorrow you can take anything you want. It’ll probably be here.”
Jeff paused for another moment, then spoke once more. “Just make sure you leave it. See ya.” Then he was gone, and Adam was alone in his room.
“Yeah,” Adam replied. “See ya.”
But he wondered: Would he really ever see his brother again?
Probably not.
But what did it matter?
What, really, did anything matter?
After all, he couldn’t ever remember having been really happy, not on a single day of his life. For every day of his life, Jeff had always been there, thinking for him, making up his mind for him, telling him what to do.
