by John Saul
This was his favorite part of the day, when he saw no one and could enjoy the fresh air and rugged scenery with no distractions. The running always seemed to clear his mind, too. Often, a problem he’d decided to sleep on was solved not in the hours he spent in his bed, but in the forty minutes he spent jogging along the coast.
This morning he was thinking about Amy Carlson.
His sleep had been restless last night, for he’d kept waking up, an image of the little girl fresh in his mind, wondering where she might have gone. For, though he was well aware that there was plenty of room for ambiguity in the note she’d left on her computer, Steve was almost certain that Amy hadn’t killed herself.
She wasn’t the kind simply to give up, no matter how bad things got. Even that first week, before Josh MacCallum arrived, when she’d refused to leave her room, he’d been impressed by her determination: when she’d decided she didn’t want to stay at Barrington Academy, she had neither closed down nor run away. She’d just done her best to make things so difficult for Hildie and the rest of the staff that they’d finally give up and send her back to her family.
Though it hadn’t worked, Steve suspected that if Josh hadn’t arrived and made friends with Amy, she would have prevailed in the end, for even Hildie Kramer’s patience with the children had its limits.
He came to the viewpoint, turned left, and started slowly along the narrow track that led to the tiny parking lot at the end of the point.
Hildie was just about to get back into the Acura when she heard the sound of a car approaching on the coast highway. She waited, certain that in a moment it would pass by the viewpoint and continue on its way north, but when she heard it slow down, she froze.
Her mind went blank for a moment, and then she realized what she had to do. Snatching up Amy’s sweater from where it lay, she began running toward the approaching car, waving her arms and shouting for help. A second later the car came around the curve, the driver slamming on the brakes as the headlights caught Hildie in their glare.
“What the hell …?” Steve swore as the Honda lurched to a stop a few feet in front of Hildie. He recognized her and rolled down his window. “Hildie? What—”
“It’s Amy!” Hildie wailed, holding the sweater up. Before Steve could say another word, she was speaking again, words tumbling almost incoherently from her mouth. “Thank God you’re here! I’ve been up all night, looking for her. I was about to give up when I thought of this place. So I came out, and—”
Setting the brake on the Honda, Steve scrambled out of the car and took the sweater from Hildie, who looked so upset, he wondered if she was going to become hysterical. “Where was it? Where did you find it?”
“Right here!” Hildie cried. “It was just lying on the ground, all folded up. I—”
“Folded up?” Steve broke in. “You mean it wasn’t just dropped?”
Hildie shook her head. “I was going to go call the police—”
“What about Amy?” Steve demanded. “Did you see her?”
Hildie shook her head. “I looked down, right by where the sweater was, but—”
“Show me!” Steve demanded. “Show me exactly where it was.” Taking Hildie’s arm, he led her back toward the little parking area.
“Over there,” Hildie breathed, her voice cracking as she uttered the words. “Right by the wall.”
His hand still clutching Hildie’s arm, Steve strode to the low stone wall that was built along the edge of the precipice.
“Here,” Hildie told him, stopping suddenly. “It was right here.”
Steve let go of her arm, then leaned over the wall to peer down at the rocky beach far below. He only barely noticed Hildie’s hands touching his back, and for an instant thought she meant to steady him. Then, when it was already too late, he felt the push.
His arms churned in the air as he instinctively tried to find something to grasp.
Then he was falling.
He tumbled through the air, uttering only a grunt as his body struck the cliff, bounced away, then plunged down into the boiling ocean below.
Hildie watched only long enough to be certain that he had disappeared into the sea, then turned away. Hurrying to the Honda, whose engine was still idling, she put it in gear, released the hand brake, and moved it toward a spot where the low stone wall gave way to nothing more than a rusty chain anchored to crumbling concrete posts. Keeping her right foot on the brake, she worked herself halfway out of the car, then released the brake as she stepped free of the slowly moving vehicle.
Empty, the driver’s door open, the Honda moved across the pavement, struck the chain and kept going.
Two of the old concrete pilings broke under the pressure of the car, and then the car was gone, too, leaving only the broken posts and the dangling ends of the chain.
Leaving Amy’s sweater lying on the ground as if it had landed there at the end of a struggle, Hildie finally climbed back into the Acura. As she left the viewpoint and started back to the Academy in the brightening morning light, she was once again alone.
It was, she reflected as she wound back up into the hills, a pity that Steve Conners had had to die.
He’d seemed like a good teacher.
On the other hand, he’d also seemed much more interested in the children than he should have been.
Perhaps she might mention that to the police, she decided, if the matter ever came up. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time a teacher had proved to be dangerous to a student.
And given the new circumstances of Amy’s death, there would no longer be any need to adjust her records to show a tendency toward suicide.
Hildie sighed contentedly. At least Steve Conners had had the decency to kill himself after whatever he might have done to Amy Carlson.
At nine o’clock that morning, Jeanette Aldrich sat staring at her computer, almost afraid to turn it on. And yet what was she afraid of? she wondered. What had happened yesterday had been no more than a stupid prank, no matter how tasteless it might have been. And at least Jeff hadn’t been involved in it.
Indeed, last night as she and Chet sat over dinner at Lazio’s, the incident had slowly reduced itself in her mind to more normal proportions.
What, after all, had really happened?
One of the kids—and neither of them thought they’d ever know which one—had pulled a stunt.
And she had overreacted, undoubtedly just as the perpetrator of the joke had hoped, allowing herself to become overwrought simply at the sight of her son’s name popping up on a computer screen.
She and Chet had lingered at the restaurant, enjoying a bottle of wine as they watched the sun drop into the ocean and the sky turn crimson as the darkness gathered. By the time they crept home, she had been almost able to shake off what had happened, and the thesis she had taken from her office that afternoon was easily left for tomorrow.
For the first time since Adam had died, they’d made love.
It had been slow, tender lovemaking, and as she’d lain in bed afterward, safe in Chefs arms, she’d begun to think for the first time that perhaps she was going to be able to put her life back together again after all.
But this morning, in the harsh light of day, and without the numbing support of that extra glass of wine, her grief had come crashing in on her once more. She’d put it firmly aside, determined that she would not come apart yet again, and insisted to Chet that she was going to be all right, despite the fact that her voice carried a brittleness even she could hear. Now she was in her office, and as she gazed at the blank screen that hovered on its articulated arm a few inches above her desk, she started to shiver.
Don’t be stupid, she told herself. It’s only a computer. Even if someone hacks into it again, it can’t hurt you. It can only make you upset if you let it, and you won’t let it.
She turned the screen on. After a few seconds it brightened.
Words came into focus.
Words that shouldn’t have been there.
&nbs
p; This time, the message wasn’t typed.
Instead, it was written out in longhand, in the neat, precise script of which Adam had been so proud.
Jeanette recognized it instantly.
For almost a full minute she did nothing at all. She simply sat still, staring at the familiar handwriting, remembering the other times she’d seen it.
On notes, held to the refrigerator door by the ladybug magnet that had been Adam’s favorite ever since he’d first been able to reach up and pull it off the enameled metal, looking surprised that it wasn’t alive.
On valentines that he’d cut out of red paper, and the short stories he’d written in the last couple of years.
Stories that she’d always found vaguely disturbing, for they’d always shown a maturity that Adam’s years belied.
Always written in longhand in the same distinctive script that now filled her computer screen.
Her eyes focused on the words then, and she read them slowly:
Jeanette read the note through twice, her eyes blurring with tears even as cold fury welled up inside her.
Whoever was doing this to her had not just copied Adam’s handwriting. They’d even figured out how to make the note sound as if Adam himself had written it.
It made it sound like killing himself had been a reasonable decision, one he’d thought about carefully, that, in the end, had been nothing more than a way of ridding himself of inconveniences.
Like parents who sometimes told him to go to bed when he wanted to read all night long.
Or teachers who gave him assignments he didn’t always feel like doing.
So he’d decided to kill himself, not really worried about what it might do to her.
“I don’t want you to be sad anymore.”
“I hope you’re not mad at me.”
And, worst of all, “Tell Dad I love him.…”
Her fury at the callousness of it grew steadily. For a moment she had an almost uncontrollable urge to pick up the monitor, and its horrible message, and smash it to the floor.
Then she took control of her churning emotions.
She was reacting exactly as whoever was doing this wanted her to.
But not this time.
This time she would deal with it rationally.
Her fingers shaking, she reached out and pressed the Print Screen button on her keyboard, and a moment later the printer next to her desk came to life, spitting out a copy of the handwriting on the screen.
Then, refusing to give whoever was at the other end of the linkup to the computer in her office the satisfaction of even knowing she’d seen the message, she reached out and switched the monitor off again. As the screen faded back into darkness, she picked the single sheet of paper out of the tray on the printer and stared at it once more.
This time, though, she didn’t read the words.
This time she studied the handwriting.
Who could have done it?
But of course she already knew.
There was one person whose handwriting was almost a perfect match for Adam’s.
One person who knew how Adam had thought, and how he had expressed himself.
When she faced Jeff this time, she would have the proof of what he’d done, and dare him to deny it while she held it in front of his eyes.
Her anger growing, she left her office and started toward the Academy, on the other side of the campus.
Jeanette strode along the path, almost breaking into a run in her rush to find Jeff, tears of rage streaming down her cheeks. She was oblivious to the strange looks she was subjected to by everyone she passed, and it never occurred to her that the message clutched in her hand might actually have come from Adam himself.
“Let me see, will you?” Josh demanded, pushing his way in between Jeff Aldrich and Brad Hinshaw so that he could more closely watch what Dr. Engersol was doing. All through breakfast he’d kept looking for Amy, hoping that somehow, after he’d fallen asleep in his chair, she might have miraculously returned to the Academy. When there was still no sign of her by the time breakfast was over, he’d almost gone to Hildie Kramer’s office to find out if anyone had heard anything. But then he’d changed his mind, because once he started talking about Amy, he was pretty sure he’d start talking about what had happened in the basement last night, when he’d gone looking for her. And the only person he wanted to talk to about the strange sounds he’d heard, and the funny shaft that seemed to go right through the basement floor, was Steve Conners.
For a while he’d thought about cutting Dr. Engersol’s seminar and going to find Steve, but in the end he’d decided to wait until after the English class.
Now, though, he sort of wished he’d decided to cut the special seminar. This morning they were going to do some more experiments on the same cat they’d been working with yesterday morning.
The cat was unconscious, and part of its skull had been cut away to expose the animal’s brain. As he stared at the convoluted mass of matter contained within the cat’s skull, Josh tried to keep his mind on what Dr. Engersol was saying, but he kept thinking about Amy and her objections to what had happened the day before.
If she’d been here this morning, she probably would have left already. Even as Dr. Engersol began telling him what they were going to do, Josh wasn’t sure he would be able to stay, either.
“We’re going to begin exploring the various parts of the brain today,” their teacher explained. “The cat, as you can see, is unconscious right now, but in a little while we’re going to wake him up. First, though, we’re going to immobilize him, not only so that he can’t hurt any of you, but so he can’t hurt himself, either.”
Carefully, aided by Jeff Aldrich, Engersol bound the cat’s four legs and torso to a wooden slab that sat on the tabletop, using nylon straps that had been designed for that specific purpose. When he was finished, even the cat’s head was held immobile.
“As most of you already know,” Engersol went on, “a great deal of the cat’s brain is used for coordinating the functions of its body and reacting to stimuli from the outside. This morning we’re going to begin identifying those areas of the brain, and start disabling some of them. And I want to assure you,” he said, his eyes fixing on Josh as if he knew what was going on in the boy’s mind, “that the cat will feel nothing. The brain itself has no pain sensors at all, and as I disable certain areas of the brain, I won’t be causing the animal any serious discomfort. It will undoubtedly be aware of certain false stimuli, but that will be all.”
Josh frowned. Whether the stimuli were real or not, the cat would still hurt, wouldn’t it? Before he could ask the question, Dr. Engersol had begun.
He slipped a needle into a vein on the animal’s left foreleg, pressed the plunger, and a few seconds later the cat began to stir. Then it came fully awake, and tensed as it realized it couldn’t move.
For a moment it struggled, but then, as if sensing there was no way it could escape its bonds, it relaxed under the restraints, its eyes narrowing to slits as it studied the faces of the boys gathered around the table.
“As you can see, the cat is now fully awake, and responds to various stimuli.” Engersol waved his hand in front of the cat’s eyes, and the animal tried to turn its head away.
Then he snapped his fingers by one of its ears. The cat’s body tensed as it tried to turn toward the sound.
When Engersol touched the tip of one of its ears with the probe in his hand, the ear twitched reflexively, as if flicking away an offending fly.
After Engersol had demonstrated the cat’s responses to various other stimuli, the real work began. Using a laser probe that was guided by a computer, he began focusing the instrument on a spot within the cortex of the cat’s brain. “First, I’m going to destroy the area of the brain that responds to visual stimuli,” he explained. “And I want you to watch the cat carefully. If any of you see any signs of pain, let me know immediately.”
As josh watched the cat, the computer adjusted the probe to
an accuracy of less than a millimeter, and finally Dr. Engersol triggered the laser.
Nothing seemed to happen at all.
“Did you do it?” someone asked. “Didn’t it work?”
Engersol smiled. “Why don’t you wave your hand in front of the cat’s eyes?”
The boy did. There was no response at all.
Engersol refocused the laser and triggered it again. Now the cat was deaf as well as blind.
Yet as far as Josh could tell, it had exhibited no evidence that it was in any pain at all. Indeed, a few seconds after its eyesight had been disabled, it seemed to have decided that it was time to sleep, and its eyes had closed. But when he reached out and touched it, the eyes flicked open again and moved as if the cat was attempting to see despite its blindness.
Engersol kept working, and half an hour later removed the bonds from the cat’s limbs, body, and head. “As you can see,” he explained to them, “the cat is now totally helpless. It is deaf and blind, and has no sense of either smell or taste. Nor can it feel anything, for its pain centers, too, have been disabled. Yet you can see that it is far from dead. It still breathes, and its heart still beats, for all the normal functions that are carried out by the autonomic nervous system are still working perfectly. But I want you to look at what we’ve done.”
The boys shifted away from the lab table and gathered around a computer monitor that was currently displaying a highly detailed graphic image of the cat’s brain. “This is what it looks like under normal conditions. Now let’s feed the computer data about the areas of the brain we’ve destroyed, and see what happens.” He typed some instructions into the keyboard. Almost instantly the image began to change.
Certain areas of the brain—areas that had been burned away by the perfectly focused laser—turned red on the screen.
