The Forgotten Room: A Novel

by Lincoln Child

  Another slam. This time, she realized it was a wooden shutter banging against a nearby casement, shaking the butterfly cases that sat on her bedside table. Earlier in the afternoon, maintenance had come by to make sure all windows were secured against the blast. One of the shutters must have come loose in the wind.

  The phone on her pillow began to vibrate. She picked it up, glanced at the number of the incoming call. “Yes?”

  “Kim. It’s Jeremy.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At a gas station, just north of Roger Williams University.”

  “I thought you’d be back here hours ago.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. But the Sakonnet bridge is out, so I had to take the long way, via Warren and Bristol. And with this weather, traffic on 103 and 136 is crawling. I guess you’re not leaving?”

  “No. I’m here for the duration.”

  “In that case, you can do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “You know those two small devices we found, stored in the Machine?”

  “Know them? I’ve been slaving over one for what seems like days now.”

  “I want you to hide them away someplace. Someplace safe. And get the one from inside the radio in Strachey’s rooms, please. Hide it as well.”

  “But I’m in the middle of…” She hesitated. “Got it.”

  “And then I’d like you to search my bedroom for another device, just like those others. It would most likely be hidden somewhere along my common wall with Wilcox, maybe behind a dresser or a bookcase. If you find one, put it with the others. I’d do it myself, only I don’t know when I’ll get there—and I don’t want to leave this to chance.”

  “What is all of this about, exactly?”

  “I told you why I went up to Fall River, who I was hoping to see. Well, Sorrel revealed a lot about Project Sin. It seems they were working on a way to treat schizophrenia using high-frequency sound waves.”

  Mykolos caught her breath. No wonder…

  “They’d managed to reproduce schizophrenia-like symptoms in normal people, using a particular sound frequency, and hoped a different frequency would have the opposite effect in actual schizophrenics. But they never succeeded. In fact, modifying their experiment only made the effects worse. So the project was mothballed.”

  “And the small devices you want me to stash?”

  “I think you were right. They’re tone generators—built to emit the ultrasonic wave Project Sin was studying.”

  “That makes sense,” Kim said. “Because I’ve analyzed the Machine further, and as best I can make out it’s some kind of amplifier. A primitive, yet nevertheless very complex, amplifier.” She paused a moment, thinking. “But why do you want me to hide those things away?”

  “So they can’t be used to hurt anybody else.”

  Kim froze as the meaning of Logan’s words hit home. “Are you saying—”

  “I’m saying that whoever found the forgotten room and resurrected the research is using those devices—first on Strachey, and then, I suspect, on me.”

  “So he, or they, intentionally drove Strachey crazy?”

  “In order to halt work on the West Wing.”

  “Then why didn’t…sorry, but I have to ask: why didn’t it have the same effect on you?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question. I think it has to do with our, ah, ‘ghost catchers.’ ”

  “Those necklace things we’re wearing?”

  “Yes. The hemishell of a nautilus is the central component. I’m no acoustical engineer, but I’ll bet the logarithmic design of the shells’ chambers breaks up, distorts the sound waves, reducing their effect. Reducing, but not nullifying—because I’ve been feeling rather unstable myself these last few days.”

  “And you suspect I’ll find that device along the wall you share with Wilcox because he had no such…protection.”

  “Exactly. Instead of me being incapacitated, Wilcox ended up in the ICU.” There was a pause. “Kim, I just didn’t see it. I was convinced the Machine was a device for detecting, maybe communicating with spectral entities. Given my line of work, I guess that’s the kind of assumption I’d easily slip into.”

  “Well, I’d say the Machine is a device for communication—just not the kind you initially thought.”

  “All those materials I found in Lux’s files about ‘ectenic force.’ No doubt somebody was looking into paranormal phenomena—but it wasn’t those three.” Another pause. “Look, I’d better get back on the road. Traffic’s looking a little lighter and the storm’s growing worse—I don’t want to risk a closure of Route 114. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks, Kim. And please—be careful. Don’t take any chances.” There was a click as Logan hung up.

  As Kim placed the phone back on the pillow, she heard another noise. But this was no slam of a shutter—it sounded like a footstep, coming from the direction of Leslie Jackson’s room.

  “Leslie?” Kim called out. “What, you decided not to go after all?”

  No reply.

  Frowning, Kim rose from the bed and walked to the middle of the room, peering through the common bathroom and into the room beyond.

  “Leslie?” she called again.

  Was that movement, black upon black, amid the woven shadows of Leslie’s room? If Leslie was there, why wasn’t she answering? Why hadn’t she turned on the light?

  Had somebody been there all along, in the darkness, listening in on her phone call?

  Suddenly, and for the first time, Kim felt, understood, the full weight of the danger she and Jeremy Logan were now in. If somebody had resurrected the work of Project Sin, and was willing to let Willard Strachey die to protect their secret…what would happen if her own role was discovered?

  Be careful, Logan had said. Don’t take any chances.

  Was that more movement in the deep shadows? The cold gleam of metal?

  Instinctively, Kim wheeled toward the door. As she did so, her feet slipped on the carpet; falling, her skull impacted the wainscoting of the nearby wall with an ugly sound of bone against wood; and her body dropped to the floor.

  A moment passed. And then a tall, thin man emerged from the darkness of Leslie Jackson’s room. His expressionless eyes surveyed the scene. Then he slipped a heavy blackjack back into a pocket of his tweed jacket and dragged Kim’s body into a nearby closet. And then, plucking the pillow from the bed, he dabbed away the blood and tossed the pillow into the closet, as well.

  “I’ll be back for you shortly,” he murmured, then slipped once again into the shadows.

  44

  Half an hour later, Logan pulled his Lotus Elan into the long, curving drive that led to Lux’s parking area. The normally fastidiously tended greensward ahead was a riot of twigs, leaves, and—strangest of all—seaweed and spindrift, blown all the way from the coastline a quarter of a mile away. He had to negotiate around heavy branches that had fallen across the drive; he could make out at least half a dozen trees uprooted from the greenery that stood before the encircling brick wall. The main massing of Lux itself reared up against a black and furious sky, its battlements winking ominously in the flashes of livid lightning.

  He managed to gain the relative safety of the near-empty parking lot in the shelter of the building’s East Wing, turned off the engine, and then paused a moment to catch his breath. The entire journey back from Fall River had been tense—with the traffic, howling wind, and lashing rain—but the final ten minutes had been the worst. When he’d turned onto Ocean Avenue for the last leg of the drive, the full, unconstrained brunt of the hurricane hit: merciless buckets of rain, and a straight-line banshee wind that threatened to pick up his car and fling it into the surf. More than once, he’d thanked the automotive gods he owned a hardtop Elan; a canvas top would have been ripped away hours before. And he’d made it back just in time; the guard in the security house by the front gate informed him that the governor had just
declared a state of emergency and instituted a curfew, effective immediately, and that the National Guard was being mobilized.

  Logan waited another moment, then—peeling his fingers from the steering wheel and taking a deep breath—grasped the handle and opened the door. A screaming gust of wind forced the door right back at him, and he had to manhandle it open again with all his might. He gathered his strength, then rolled away toward the rear of the car as the wind flung the door closed. And then, bent forward until his head was almost level with his waist, he bulled his way toward the mansion’s side entrance through air so thick with seawater he was almost drowning in it.

  Just as he reached the door, he heard the buzzing sound of a motor cut through the wind. There was a light behind him, and he turned to see Ian Albright, the Infrastructure Supervisor, pulling up in a large golf cart, two men seated behind him. The cart stopped beside Logan and the three got out, all wearing identical sou’westers.

  Albright stared at Logan as if he was from another planet. “Dr. Logan?” he asked. “You’ve just arrived? Don’t tell me you’ve been motoring through this dirty great storm?”

  “Something couldn’t wait.” Logan pointed at the cart. “What’s your excuse?”

  “A dozen slate tiles have blown off the kitchen roof, and the water’s pouring in. We’ve got to get a tarp over it before…” The rest of his sentence was cut off by a shattering peal of thunder, followed by the crash of another tree falling over.

  “Well, now that you’re here, you’d better get inside,” Albright said. “Dr. Olafson, Dr. Maynard, they cleared out hours ago, along with almost everyone else. There’s just a skeleton crew now, a handful of security and maintenance and a couple of stubborn eggheads that refused to leave. But the storm’s just been upgraded to a category three, and the worst is—”

  A sudden shriek of wind staggered the four men, and the golf cart promptly turned over onto its side. “Sweet mother of fuck!” Albright cried in dismay, making for the cart as he simultaneously motioned Logan toward shelter.

  Inside, the thick walls of the mansion dulled the roar of the hurricane to a constant, low-pitched moan. Logan made his way through the strangely deserted halls to his rooms. Save for the never-ending boom of the weather, the entire place seemed cloaked in a watchful silence. He placed his duffel on the desk, sat down, and transferred the notes he’d taken during his meeting with Sorrel to his laptop, along with some observations and questions that had occurred to him during the exhausting drive back. And then he glanced at his watch. Almost half past nine. He shut the laptop and stood up from his chair. It was high time he checked on Kim.

  As he turned to exit his rooms, the internal phone rang. He glanced back, saw the caller’s four-digit number on the LED display. It was a number he didn’t recognize.

  “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end of the line sounded breathless. “Dr. Logan? Dr. Logan, is that you?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “Thank God you haven’t left. It’s Laura Benedict. We met in my office a few days ago. You might not remember me.”

  The young, rather shy quantum computing expert. “Of course I remember you. I’m surprised you’re still here.”

  “Believe me, I wish I weren’t. The bank of hotel rooms Lux booked in Pawtucket filled up hours ago. There’s no place left to go.” A pause. “But as long as I have to be here, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  Logan took a seat behind his desk once again. “Go on.”

  “It’s about Roger.” Benedict’s breathless voice grew softer, almost a whisper. “Roger Carbon.”

  “What about him?”

  “I know why you’re here. You’re investigating the death of Willard Strachey. That was obvious when you interviewed me. And you think…you think that it was something other than suicide.”

  Logan went quite still. “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s hard to keep a secret in a place like Lux. Nobody knows exactly what’s going on, but there’s been speculation….” Benedict went silent for a moment. “The thing is, Carbon’s been acting a little…frightening the last couple of days.”

  “Frightening.”

  “Maybe a better word is ‘suspicious.’ I can make out some of his phone conversations—through the wall, I mean. The things he’s been talking about…hinting at…are very alarming.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”

  “I wanted to. But the fact is that I’m…” Another pause. “Well, I’m afraid of him. It was all I could do to gather the nerve to call you. But I haven’t seen him around today. I think he may have left the island, and…and if what I think is true, then I shouldn’t keep it to myself. I have to tell you—because I think you may be in danger.”

  “I may be in danger?” Logan repeated.

  “I think so.”

  “Would you like to come by my office so we can talk about it?”

  “No!” This came out in a frightened rush. “No, this storm…Please, let’s meet in the basement. I have a lab here. We’ll be safer.”

  Logan rubbed his chin. He really ought to check up on Kim.

  I think you may be in danger…

  “Please, please,” Benedict said in a voice like a supplicant’s. “Before I lose my nerve.”

  “Very well. How will I find you?”

  “Do you know the basement layout?”

  “Not well. I’ve only been to the archives.”

  “That’s sufficient. Take the elevator or the main stairway down, then head in the direction opposite from the archives. I’ll be waiting for you by the barrier.”

  “I’ll come immediately.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Logan.” And she hung up.

  45

  Logan, his satchel slung over one shoulder, reached the base of the central staircase without seeing a single person. Turning left, he once again made the journey down the dimly lit corridor of undressed stone toward the gleaming metal door that led to the basement laboratories. This time, however, he could see the thin, birdlike face of Laura Benedict on the far side of the perforated Plexiglas window set into the heavy steel door. As he approached, she punched a series of numbers onto a keypad set into the wall—apparently, the door was locked from both sides. With a low beep and an audible click, the door sprang ajar with a sigh of positively pressurized atmosphere.

  Looking briefly over Logan’s shoulder to satisfy herself they were alone, she let him in, then pulled the door shut behind her. The air here was cool and smelt faintly of ammonia.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  Logan nodded. Once again, he was struck by the woman’s evident youth. She led the way down the gleaming corridor with the sharp, almost abrupt movements he recalled from their first meeting. Before, he’d been struck by the aura of sadness she’d seemed to wear almost like a garment. Now, however, he sensed a different emotion: anxiety, even fear.

  “We can talk in my lab,” she said as they walked. “It’s not far. There’s nobody else in the secure area—I’ve already checked.”

  “I would have thought you had all the computers you needed in your office.”

  Benedict smiled wanly. “It’s true. I could probably get by without this lab. But it gives me a quiet place where I can be alone when I’m working on a particularly thorny problem—or when I need a break from Roger.”

  As they walked, Logan glanced around curiously. Most of the doors were closed and bore simple airbrushed nameplates, but a few were open, revealing modern and sophisticated labs sporting equipment that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Unlike the rest of Lux, the lighting here was bright, fluorescent, even a little harsh. It was as different from the polished wood and leather of the mansion above as a level-4 biohazard facility was from a London gentleman’s club.

  He followed Benedict around one corner, then another, and then—just as the basement was beginning to resemble a chrome-and-glass labyrinth—she stopped at an open door l
abeled BENEDICT. She ushered him into a sizable room that contained a steel desk surrounded by several Herman Miller chairs in matching gunmetal gray; a whiteboard, currently devoid of writing; two computers linked to a digital projector; and a rack of blade-server CPUs similar to the one in her upstairs office.

  Benedict closed the door, then sat in one of the chairs and motioned Logan to do the same. Her face was pale with anxiety.

  “Okay,” Logan said, taking the proffered seat and putting his satchel on the floor beside him. “Please tell me exactly what your suspicions are concerning Roger Carbon, and why you think that I, in particular, might be in danger.”

  Benedict swallowed. “It’s hard to know where to begin. Honestly, I’m not sure I can pinpoint just when it started. Roger has such a corrosive personality, you know; he’s always getting into fights with somebody or other.” She paused. “I guess it started three months ago. I noticed that, all of a sudden, he’d become a little secretive. That wasn’t like him—normally, he doesn’t care who hears what he says, what he does. But he started closing his office door. Just occasionally at first, and then more frequently. And every time he did so, he’d get on the phone—I could hear murmurs through the wall, you see. And then, just a couple days before Will Strachey’s death, the two men had a dreadful argument in Roger’s office.”

  “Strachey and Carbon? What was it about?”

  “I’m not sure. Something about the West Wing. Roger had advocated for him to be in charge of that, you know.”

  “That’s always struck me as odd,” Logan interjected. “If Carbon had wanted the work done quickly, you’d think he would have argued for somebody with more experience.”

  “As it happened, I only caught the odd line or two of what was said. Will mentioned something about ‘I’m moving ahead whether you like it or not.’ And Roger replied, ‘I’ll see you in hell first.’ I have to tell you, I’ve never seen Will Strachey like that before—livid, really livid.”