by John Saul
“What’s wrong?” she heard Jason asking from behind her. She turned to see her son sitting up in bed, sleepily rubbing his eyes. “Is something wrong with Fred?”
“He’s dead,” Sally breathed, fighting off the terrible emotions that were welling up inside her. It’s only a guinea pig, she told herself. It’s not Jason, it’s not Julie, it’s only a damned guinea pig.
But still, it was too familiar. Bursting into tears, she dropped the dead animal and fled from the room. Behind her, she heard Jason’s voice.
“What happened to him, Mommy? Did the same thing happen to Fred that happened to Julie?”
Chapter 10
SALLY MONTGOMERY SAT IN her living room, a small pool of light flooding the book she was trying to read.
The words on the pages made no sense to her. They kept drifting away, slipping off the pages, and over and over again she realized that she had read a paragraph but had no memory of it.
When Steve had come back from taking the sitter home, and Sally had told him about the guinea pig, all he had done was tell her to forget about it, then gone upstairs, brought the dead rodent down, and taken it outside to bury it in the backyard. By morning, he assured her, both she and Jason would have forgotten about it.
But would she?
She kept hearing Jason’s words echoing in her head.
“Did the same thing happen to Fred that happened to Julie?”
What had happened to Julie?
Involuntarily, images of her son began to flit through her mind.
Jason, standing at the door of the nursery, staring at her as she held Julie’s body.
Jason at the funeral, watching as his sister’s offin was lowered into the ground, his eyes dry, his expression one of—what?
It had been, she admitted to herself now, an expression of disinterest.
As the long night wore on, she had twice gone upstairs to check on Jason. Each time she had found him sleeping peacefully, his breathing deep and strong, one arm thrown across his chest, the other dangling over the side of the bed. If either the loss of his sister or the loss of his pet was bothering him, it wasn’t keeping him awake. Twice she had stood at the foot of his bed for long minutes, trying to drive horrible thoughts from the edges of her mind. And both times she had at last forced herself to leave his room without waking him just to prove to herself that he was all right.
Or to ask him questions she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to voice.
Now, as she tried once more to concentrate on the book of childhood diseases that lay in her lap, she found herself once more thinking of Jan Ransom’s words.
“Never wanted a baby in the first place …”
“Maybe the baby senses that the mother doesn’t want it …”
Finally, heedless of the time, she picked up the phone book and flipped through it.
There it was:
RANSOM, JANELLE 504 ALDER ESTBY 555–3624
The phone rang seven times before a sleepy voice answered.
“Miss Ransom? This—this is Sally Montgomery. I was at the meeting tonight?”
Instantly the sleepiness was gone from the voice at the other end of the line. “Sally! Of course. You know, I had the strangest feeling you might call tonight I—well, I had the feeling I hit a nerve.”
Sally wasn’t sure what to say, and as she was trying to decide how to proceed, she suddenly felt as if she was being watched. Turning, she saw Steve standing in the doorway. She swallowed hard, and when she spoke into the phone, her voice sounded unnaturally high.
“I—I thought perhaps we could have lunch next week.”
“Of course,” Jan Ransom replied immediately. “Any particular day?”
“Whatever’s good for you.”
“Then let’s not wait for next week,” Jan suggested. “Let’s say Friday at noon. Do you know the Speckled Hen?”
They made the date, and Sally slowly put the phone back on its cradle, still not sure why she wanted to talk further to Jan Ransom. All she knew was that she did.
Steve came into the room and sat down beside her. “Can I ask whom you were talking to?”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Sally said uncertainly.
Steve hesitated, then, seeing clearly the strain and exhaustion in Sally’s whole being, decided not to press the issue. He stood up and switched off the light. “Come on, honey. Let’s go to bed.”
Sally let herself be led upstairs and helped into bed, and she didn’t resist when Steve drew her close. But when he spoke again, her body went rigid.
“Maybe we should have another baby,” she heard him saying. “Maybe we should start one right away.”
Silently, Sally moved away from him, and as the hours of the night wore on, she felt the gulf between herself and her husband slowly widening.
Chapter 11
LUCY CORLISS GLANCED at the clock. It was nearly eleven, and another day, the third since Randy had disappeared, was nearly over. “Here’s to tomorrow,” she said bitterly, raising her empty cup. “Want some more coffee?”
Jim shook his head and watched as Lucy moved to the stove. They’d been sitting at the kitchen table all evening, Jim doing his best to keep Lucy calm. It had begun six hours ago, when he’d shown up at her door, his face pale. “What is it?” she’d asked. “Did you hear something?”
Jim had shaken his head. “Not really. Could I come in?”
Puzzled, Lucy had let him into the house and taken him to the kitchen. To Jim, it had seemed a sign of acceptance; when he was growing up, his mother had entertained her friends only in the kitchen—the living room was for the minister.
“I just came from the police station,” he told her after she’d poured him the first of the endless pots of coffee the two of them had consumed during the evening. “I talked to Sergeant Bronski.”
“And?” Lucy prompted when Jim seemed reluctant to goon.
“And he started talking about statistics.”
“What sort of statistics?”
“About cases like ours,” Jim replied, his eyes meeting hers. “Cases like Randy.”
“I see,” Lucy said softly. Her mind wandered back over the day she had just spent talking to people, knocking on every door along Randy’s route to school, pleading with people, begging them to try to remember anything they’d seen that day, anything that might give her a hint as to what had happened to her son. Always the answer had been the same.
People were sorry, but they had seen nothing, heard nothing, noticed nothing. And all of them, both before and after the search of the forest, had been interviewed by the police.
“Lucy,” she heard Jim saying, “they told me we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that when Randy is found—if he’s found …” His voice trailed off, and he felt tears brimming in his eyes. He looked away from Lucy.
“… hell be dead?” Lucy asked, her voice devoid of emotion. “I know that, Jim. Anyway, I’ve been told that. I don’t believe it I just have a feeling—”
“Lucy,” Jim groaned. “Lucy, I know what you think, I know how you feel. But you have to be ready. Bronski told me that if there were anything—a note, or a phone call, or even some sign of a struggle somewhere, it would be one thing. But with nothing, no clues, all they can think is that Randy either ran away, or—or whoever took him wasn’t interested in ransom.”
“You mean some pervert picking him up for sex?” Lucy asked, her voice uncannily level. “Raping him, and then killing him?”
“Something like that—” Jim faltered.
“That didn’t happen,” Lucy stated. “If that had happened, I’d know it. Deep in my heart, I’d know it. He’s not dead, Jim, and he didn’t run away.”
“Then where is he? Why haven’t we heard something?”
But Lucy had only shaken her head. “Jim, I’ve talked to everyone I can think of, asked questions, looked for God-knows-what, and all I can think of is that in a book, or in a movie, it’s always different. The mother goes out looking for her ch
ild and she finds him. But it’s not that easy. I haven’t found anything. Not one damned thing. All I’ve got after three days is this.”
She had picked up the file that the school nurse had given her and tossed it across the table to her ex-husband, who flipped through it, then put it aside. It still lay on the table, where it had lain all through the evening as they ate dinner, talked, sipped at their coffee, tried to figure out what to do next, talked of other things, and always, inexorably, returned to the subject of their son.
Now, as Lucy refilled her cup and came back to the table again, Jim picked up the report once more. He looked through it.
The only tiling about it that made it unique was the picture it painted of a remarkably healthy little boy.
Too healthy?
Jim began studying the file again, searching it for all the things that should have been there.
The absences from school.
The upset stomachs after lunch.
The skinned knees from inevitable falls.
The sore throats and colds that no child escapes.
None of it was there.
Jim went over the report yet again, searching for anything he might have missed. Finally, he closed the folder and faced his wife. “Lucy, did you notice anything odd about Randy’s file?”
She looked at him pensively. “Odd? How do you mean?”
“According to this, Randy’s never been sick a day in his life, never had a cavity in his mouth, never even so much as skinned his knee.”
“So?”
Jim frowned. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of such a thing before.” He reopened the report and began quoting it to Lucy. All of it was clear—all except for a small notation at the bottom of the first page:
CHILD #0263
“What’s this mean? Do they assign each of the kids a number now?”
Lucy shook her head. “It’s a survey code. I wondered about it, too, so I called the school nurse this morning. CHILD stands for Children’s Health Institute for Latent Diseases, and oh-two-six-three was the number assigned to Randy.”
“Assigned to him for what?” Jim asked.
“Some sort of survey. Miss Oliphant said they’ve been tracking Randy for a long time.”
“Tracking him? You mean watching him?”
“Not exactly. Every few months the school forwards Randy’s health records to the Institute, that’s all.”
“How many of the kids are they tracking?”
Lucy frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Are they tracking all the kids at the school? All the ones in Randy’s class?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. She picked up the file and looked at the notation once again, trying to remember just what Annie Oliphant had told her about the survey. Had she even asked how many of Randy’s schoolmates were involved? She couldn’t remember. She went to the phone and began dialing.
“Lucy, it’s after midnight,” Jim reminded her.
“But it might be important.” Lucy waved him silent and turned her attention to the phone. “Miss Oliphant? It’s Lucy Corliss. I hate to bother you so late, but I keep wondering about this survey Randy was involved in. Was his whole class being studied?”
She listened for a moment, asked a few more questions, then thanked the nurse again, and hung up.
“Well?” Jim asked.
“It’s strange,” Lucy said. “She told me she doesn’t know anything about the survey. There are several children from Eastbury involved, and Randy’s the oldest Every month she sends copies of the children’s records to Boston, to the CHILD headquarters. They supply the envelopes and the postage, but they’ve never told her what the survey is about or what the results are.”
“But who authorized the survey?” Jim asked. “I mean, don’t you have to give your permission for Randy’s records to be sent out?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy replied. “I suppose I might have signed some kind of consent form somewhere along the line. You know how it is—kids bring home so many forms, and they never give them to you until breakfast the day they’re due.”
“Actually,” Jim commented, his voice not unkind, “I don’t know about such things. I guess there’s a lot I don’t know much about.”
His eyes had taken on a look of such loneliness that Lucy went to him and slipped her arms around him, “Well, don’t start worrying about all that now,” she told him. “I can guarantee you that if you had been around, you wouldn’t have read all the forms either.”
Jim grinned at her. “You mean you’d have forgiven me for being irresponsible?” Lucy drew away from him, and Jim wished he’d left the mild taunt unsaid. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, but Lucy was already studying Randy’s medical file again.
“Miss Oliphant said something else. She said that all the subjects of the survey have one thing in common: All their files read like Randy’s. It seems they’re all in perfect health and always have been.”
Now Jim stared at her.
“All of them?” he said.
Lucy nodded.
“But—but how can that be?”
“What do you mean?”
“How long has the survey been going on?”
“At least since they started school.”
“And all the kids they’re surveying have perfect health?”
“That’s what Annie Oliphant said.” What was he getting at?
“Lucy, doesn’t it strike you as odd that this survey has been going on for some time—we don’t really know how long—and all its subjects have perfect health? I mean, it seems to me that it would be reasonable if when Randy was, say, ten years old, someone came along and suggested that because he’d been in perfect health all his life, they’d like to start tracking him to see what’s going to happen. But apparently this outfit in Boston had some reason to think mere was going to be something special about Randy and the others and started tracking them early.”
“What are you saying, Jim?” Lucy asked, sure she already knew what was coming.
“I’m saying that it seems to me we might have some kind of clue about Randy after all. I think tomorrow one of us better get in touch with CHILD, and find out just what this survey is about, and how Randy fits in. Apparently there is something special about Randy. We’d better find out what it is.”
As she went to bed later that night, Lucy wondered what could possibly come of talking to the Children’s Health Institute for Latent Diseases. Was Jim just sending her off on another wild-goose chase?
Still, it would be something to do, and anything, right now, was better than nothing.
With nothing to do, she would go crazy, and she couldn’t allow herself to do that.
Not until she knew what had happened to her son.
Chapter 12
AFTER ONLY THREE DAYS at the Academy, Randy Corliss had grown accustomed to the routine. For the first time, he felt as though he belonged somewhere. The sense of being alone in the world, of being somehow set apart from the other kids his age, was gone. At the Academy he was like all the other boys.
School at the Academy wasn’t like school in Eastbury. Here, all the classes were compressed into the morning, except for physical education, and the things they studied seemed to Randy much more interesting than the things they had been taught at home. Also, at the Academy everyone seemed to care whether or not you learned. It wasn’t like the public schools at all. As long as Randy could remember, if he got bored with something and stopped paying attention, no one seemed to care. All his teachers had just gone along at their own pace, never noticing that their students had lost interest.
But here, everything seemed to go faster. Here, they expected you to learn, so you learned. And they spent most of their time on subjects Randy liked. A lot of history, which Randy liked because most of history seemed to be, one way or another, about war, and Randy found war fascinating. There was, to his young mind, something wonderful about men marching into battle. And the way Miss Bowe
n taught it, war was almost like a game. You obeyed the rules, and did exactly as you were told, and you won. Time after time, in lesson after lesson, Randy learned that battles were lost only because the troops had not done as they’d been told. To him, it all made perfect sense, because as he thought about it, he realized that in all his nine years, the only times he’d really gotten into trouble were the times he’d disobeyed someone.
At the Academy it was the same way. As long as you followed the routine, everything went fine. When you were supposed to do something, you did it. If you failed, you did it again until you got it right. But the main thing was to do as you were told. Otherwise things happened.
The quick hand of retribution had fallen on Randy only once, on the night after he’d arrived at the Academy. It had been dinnertime, and Peter had come to his room to take him down to the dining room. Randy had been reading, and the end of the chapter was only two pages away. He had told Peter he’d be down in a minute and finished the chapter.
By the time he got to the dining room, his place at the table was gone—even his chair—and none of the other boys even looked at him. Miss Bowen got up from the staff table. Dinner was at six o’clock, she said, not five after six; he’d missed it. He was about to protest that the other boys hadn’t even started to eat yet, but as he faced her, something in the woman’s eyes told him that anything he might say would be useless. He was sent to his room and spent the rest of the evening by himself. No one came to his room, no one even spoke to him, though he left his door open all night From then on Randy was careful to do exactly as he was told.
Not that it was difficult. Mornings seemed to be the time when discipline was strictest, and in the afternoons, after gym class, they were turned loose, free to do as they pleased. In the afternoons no one ever told them what to do or how to do it. Indeed, though Randy always felt as though someone was watching him, he’d never been able to see the watchers. It was, he’d finally decided, like some kind of test, but he didn’t know what the rules were or what was expected of him. Nor did he know what would happen to him if he failed.
