The Home

by Scott Nicholson

  He was more than alive. He was cured.

  And, if Kracowski had arrayed the wavelength sequences correctly, the boy would score unusually high on the ESP card test. But no need for Brooks, McKaye, or Bondurant to know about that particular side effect.

  "Mr. Brooks, Mr. McKaye," Kracowski said to the pale men. "You have witnessed a miracle of science."

  "Amen," whispered Bondurant.

  "Did you see that?" McKaye said to Brooks.

  "What?"

  "The boy, standing at the mirror."

  "He was on the cot."

  "A trick of the light, Mr. McKaye," Kracowski said.

  Brooks pointed to the EEG reading. "That's normal, then?"

  "The boy experienced some spikes. Epilepsy is a kind of short in the electrical wiring of the brain. We don't know what causes it, but I can assure you, everything is functioning properly now. The treatment has his synapses working better than they ever have."

  "Is that trouble likely to happen again?" Brooks wiped his face with a handkerchief.

  "Never," said the doctor.

  "You're very sure of yourself, aren't you, Kracowski?" McKaye said.

  "I have to be. These young children are entrusting me with their brains."

  Kracowski watched the computer absorb and store the data. The energy field was winding down. The lights in the lab grew brighter. The treatment was over.

  Kracowski pushed the mic button. "How are you feeling, Freeman?"

  The boy lifted his head. He motioned with his finger as if wanting them to move closer, though he could only see his own reflection.

  "What?" Kracowski said.

  "You sure he's okay?" Brooks said. "He looks like he's g oing to throw up." "He's fine," Bondurant said.! "Doctor," Freeman said staring at the mirror. "You're cured son," Kracowski said. "Healed." "I'm very glad to hear that, sir." "Your brain and soul are in harmony." "You are a very good doctor." "Is there any pain?" "Pain?"

  "While you were under, you had an episode." "Is that what you call it when you die a little?" Kracowski released the mic button.

  "He's not supposed to know that, is he?" Bondurant said.

  "He doesn't know anything. He's only a patient."

  Freeman spoke, but his words didn't carry through the thick glass. Kracowski pushed the button.

  "Neat little trick there, doctor. While I was dead, I saw a big ugly troll waiting under the bridge."

  Kracowski flipped a switch, throwing Room Thirteen and Freeman into darkness. The green light of the computer screens and the colors of the magnetic resonance image of Freeman's brain intensified in the dimness.

  "This exhibit is over, gentlemen," Kracowski said.

  "I think we've seen more than we want to see," McKaye said. "We'd rather read about it in the journals."

  Bondurant led Brooks and McKaye from the lab. Kracowski traced bis finger over the multi-colored image of Freeman's brain.

  "The mind is a universe," he said to the walls. "My universe."

  "Don't get too full of yourself," McDonald said. "You think Freeman Mills ended up here by accident? You're not the only one who gets to play God."

  FIFTEEN

  Freeman sat under the trees by the lake. The air tasted gray. He felt like those Vietnamese POWs who played Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter. The ones who lost, whose numbers came up, whose brains splattered across the room. Not like De Niro, who could take it, or even Christopher Walken, who wasn't so tough but made it out alive anyway, at least for a while.

  On the lawn near the main building, kids were playing games, running, shrieking. From this distance, he couldn't triptrap anybody. Up close, they had nearly overwhelmed him, swarming across the mental bridge like invading armies, their thoughts like bullets and their emotions like bamboo slivers.

  If he stayed by himself, maybe he could sort things out. He remembered going into Thirteen, talking with some shrink through a two-way mirror, then some more shrinks, then everything going fuzzy. He had walked a strange land where shimmery people rose up from the dark floor and spilled out of the walls. People whose mouths opened in soundless screams. Scary people.

  Then the lights were on in the room and he was staring at the ceiling, his muscles sore, and the shrink was talking to him through the microphone. Dr. Kracowski, the shrink said his name was. Actually, Freeman realized, the man hadn't said anything. Freeman had walked into his mind and picked out that little nugget of information.

  Freeman mined other ores from the doctor's brain, obscure formulas and theorems, properties of electricity and wavelengths and other stuff that would have been dull in a classroom but became gold when discovered inside another person's head. And there were other bits, a woman named Paula Swenson, skin business that would have made him blush if he'd understood more of it. And something about Dr. Kenneth Mills. Dear old Dad.

  But before Freeman could dig in and get a really serious read, Starlene Rogers had knocked on the door to Thirteen, Kracowski had run from the laboratory to get her away, and then Freeman was in her head: sunshine and roses and a mobile home in Laurel Valley, Bible verses and boys in pick-up trucks, a cat named T.S. Eliot, Randy the house parent who might have too much chest hair for her taste but was otherwise an okay guy, college psychology textbooks, peach lip gloss, Lucille the hairdresser who had a way with a curling iron, the coming Gospel Jubilee at Beaulahville Baptist, a strange old man in a gray robe.

  The same old man Freeman had seen in the hall and again in the dish room. Except, inside Starlene's head, the man was wet and left footprints that stopped in the middle of the floor.

  And then Kracowski was at the door, saying "Excuse me, Miss Rogers, this room is off limits to unauthorized staff," and someone released the straps and Freeman sat up on the bed and then he was inside Bondurant's head, and Bondurant wasn't anywhere near the room. Bondurant's head was foggy, his thoughts not completing themselves before stumbling on to the next garbled batch. By that time, Starlene and the doctor were arguing and Freeman was wondering just how far and into how many minds at a time he could triptrap, and Paula and Randy showed up Something landed in his lap and pulled him back to the present, by the lakeside. He looked down and saw a shiny penny.

  "For your thoughts," Vicky said.

  "You couldn't afford them."

  "Try me." She was pale in the sunlight, almost ethereal in her thinness. Her eyes were black storms in the calm of her face.

  "Okay." Freeman looked across the water. Could he read the minds of fish?

  "Of course you can't, silly. There's nothing there to read."

  Freeman drew back as if she had drenched him with a bucket of the frigid lakewater.

  "I mean, do you think they dream of worms or something? It's just 'swim, swim, swim.'" Vicky crossed her arms.

  "You're not in here. Because I'm thinking that I want to see what you're thinking, but I can't."

  "Because you think you're so freaking special. That you're the only one with problems, or with gifts."

  "I wasn't thinking that."

  "I wouldn't even have to read your mind to know that. It's written right across your face. 'Don't mess with big bad Freeman Mills, or there'll be hell to pay.' And this macho Clint Eastwood fixation is really pathetic."

  "Why don't you dry up and blow away?" Freeman focused on the water until his tears made the surface appear to shimmer.

  "Why don't you quit lying to yourself for a change?" Vicky turned and walked away, had reached the large rocks and was about to slip down the path between them when at last Freeman broke through her mental shield. At least a little.

  "Keep moving, lard-ass," he shouted after her.

  She froze, turned, and lowered her head.

  "Your father called you 'lard-ass,' didn't he? When you were a little girl."

  She knelt. Her shoulders trembled. Freeman wiped his own tears away, feeling guilty at the jab, yet pleased he'd been able to penetrate her shield. He thought if this were a movie, he would go to her now, hug her, s
how her he was strong and kind and understanding, like George Clooney in practically anything. Instead, he picked up the penny and held it to the sun.

  "I'd almost forgotten that," Vicky said. "I think my first shrink got me to remember it, but the best things get buried deep. I guess you win."

  One of the staff members passed by, Allen, the mousy guy, and waved at them from under the shade of the willow tree, letting them know they were safely under watch. No funny stuff. If Allen only knew.

  "When did you quit eating?" Freeman asked. "Was it a gradual thing, or did you just wake up one morning and discover that oatmeal tasted like the sole of a tennis shoe?"

  "I haven't quit eating. I still eat way too much."

  "Yeah. You're, what, seventy pounds soaking wet?"

  "Sixty-eight pounds and probably eleven-sixteenths of an ounce, if the two tablespoons of lunch have digested properly."

  "A girl as tall as you ought to weigh at least ninety, maybe a hundred."

  "If you believe the charts. But who cares about the charts? All I know is what I see in the mirror. A big fat buttery tub of lard."

  "You're nothing but a sheet of skin stretched around a stack of bones."

  "Bet you say that to all the girls."

  "No, really. You're way too skinny."

  "I'm a total lard-ass."

  "Don't believe everything Daddy says. Daddies have been known to be wrong. Or psycho, in some cases."

  Freeman stood, found a flat stone, and skimmed it across the water. It bounced six times before sinking. He walked over to Vicky and knelt beside her. He tried to concentrate, but he could smell her hair again.

  "I'm sorry I was mean to you," he said. "I just get a little jumpy when it kicks in like this and I can read too many people at the same time-"

  "Wendover causes it. Kracowski's little treatments. I used to read books with titles like Mysteries of the Mind, Secrets of the Unknown, parapsychology and ghosts, that kind of thing. I even practiced ESP every night, scrunching my face until I thought my eyeballs would pop. But I never got any good at it. Then I come here and, boom, I'm practically Miss Cleo overnight."

  "Did Paula and Randy take you to the little room with the table and chairs?"

  "And the deck of cards? Yeah."

  "And Paula held up one at a time, showing the back of the card, and you had to guess what symbol was on it?"

  "Yeah. A circle, a square, a plus sign, a five-pointed star, and a set of three wavy lines. Pretty corny. I mean, the Rhine Research Center was using that eighty years ago. Most parapsychologists use machines these days."

  "Machines make it harder to cheat." Freeman flipped the penny and caught it, peeked, and held it flat inside his fist.

  "Tails," Vicky said.

  Freeman opened his palm. Tails.

  "How many cards did you get right?" she asked.

  "Twenty-two out of twenty-five."

  "I got three."

  "Three? You can do better than that by guessing."

  "You think I want those nuts to know I can read minds? Are you crazy or something?"

  " 'Crazy' doesn't exist in the twenty-first century," Freeman said. "Only science and blame. This place is just a cover for whatever Kracowski is up to. Have you seen the Wendover fundraising brochures yet? 'Give from the Heart to Society's Child.' We're the products of everybody's collective guilt."

  "Then what are you acting so guilty about?"

  Jesus Henry Christ, Freeman thought. Don't let her get into that secret little spot in my head. The one where I've hidden you-know-what. The big troll.

  "I'm not guilty," Freeman said quickly, before his thoughts ran away to those shadowy cracks. "And I've done much better on the card reading. I used to get twenty-five out of twenty-five, back when I was six."

  "Six? You could read minds when you were that young? Before Kracowski?"

  "My Dad was into it."

  "Whoa. When you said 'Dad' I felt some bad vibes. What's up with that?"

  "Nothing. You think too much for a girl."

  "You haven't known many girls, have you?"

  "Well, sort of."

  "Don't bother lying to somebody who can see inside your skull, Freeman."

  "Okay, okay. I've never kissed one, if that's what you want to know."

  Vicky sighed with dramatic flair and shook her head. "I meant being empathetic with a girl. Caring about one. Having a friend."

  "Don't need any damned friends." Beyond the lake, beneath the stone face of Wendover, the other children played. Freeman tried to learn the score of the soccer match in progress, but whatever juice had allowed him to jump his mind across the grass was now drained. Maybe he'd used it all up trying to sneak past Vicky's defenses.

  "Sorry I called you a lard-ass," he said.

  "That's okay. I'm sorry I jumped into your head with-out permission. Or, what do you call it, 'triptrap'?"

  "My Dad's name for it. Did you have a treatment recently?"

  "Yesterday. Those mirrors creep me out. And the humming, like a hive of metal bees in the walls."

  "That's what causes it. The mind reading, I mean."

  "Yeah," Vicky said. "I could read real good yesterday. Like in the lunchroom. I believe that if I had concentrated, I could have read every mind in the room. Or maybe not by concentrating, but its opposite. Shutting down, meditating, going blank."

  "Letting the thoughts in." Freeman flipped the penny again, glanced at it. Heads. "Sometimes when you chase them, they get all mixed up with your own thoughts, and that's a good way to go crazy."

  "Remember what I said about 'crazy.'"

  "My power's going away already. I can feel it fading, sort of like a car radio going to static."

  "It usually lasts a day or two for me. I've had four of Kracowksi's treatments. I don't know what he's up to, but I can feel the tingling."

  Freeman rubbed his scalp at the memory of the seizure. "It's not too bad, though. Not like my Dad's experiments. But I'm not going to talk about him."

  "Yeah, right. They say it only hurts for a little while. I've heard that all my life, and it hasn't stopped hurting yet."

  "You ever heard of the Trust?"

  "The Trust? No."

  "Good."

  "What's the Trust?"

  "Never mind."

  "I can't never mind. I have to always mind."

  "Forget it."

  "Listen, I know exactly what you're thinking,'' Vicky said. "I'm Jane Fonda and you're Robert De Niro in Stanley amp; Iris, and you expect me to take you on and teach you and open up a whole new world. Rescue you from yourself."

  "No. I wasn't thinking that at all. That sounds like a dumb movie."

  "I've seen worse, but not lately."

  Freeman flipped the penny again, caught it, and held up his closed fist.

  "Heads," Vicky said.

  Freeman glanced at the coin, shielding it from her. Heads again. "No, tails," he said putting the penny in his pocket.

  The sun was sinking now, just touching the ridges in the west. Freeman looked across the lake, expecting one of the house parents to wave them inside. From here, they wouldn't be able to hear the bell that signaled dinner.

  He saw somebody under the trees and thought at first it was Randy, the muscle jock. He tried for a quick triptrap but the person was too far away, and the power really was on the blink. Then the figure came out into the muted light of sundown. It was the old man in the robe.

  "You see him, too," Vicky said.

  "The geezer in gray. I've seen him twice."

  "What's he doing down there?

  "Maybe he decided it was time for a bath."

  Vicky stifled a laugh. "That's mean, Freeman. He might be the nicest person here, for all you know."

  "I thought he worked at the home, like a janitor or something. Figured he must have been here so long they didn't give him a hard time about the way he dressed. Saved on uniform expenses."

  The man moved closer to the water's edge, then paused and seemed to
sniff the air. He looked toward Wendover on the rise of lawn above the lake, then at Vicky and Freeman. Freeman couldn't tell whether the man was smiling or grimacing as he approached the water, back stooped with the effort of descending the bank.

  "The stupid old coot's going for a swim," Freeman said. He and Vicky stood so they could see better. "He'll freeze to death."

  The old man put a foot into the water. Then he took another step. He must have been standing on a rock, because he put another foot forward without sinking.

  Four more of his shuffling steps, and still he kept on. He wasn't swimming, he wasn't bathing, he wasn't sinking.

  The old man was walking on water.

  SIXTEEN

  The kids were all accounted for, even Deke and his buddies. Starlene knew they liked to sneak off and smoke cigarettes in the laurels, but she didn't think cracking down on them would do any good, at least until she established rapport. She needed to earn their trust to be a good therapist. And at least it wasn't marijuana they were smoking. Probably.

  Down by the lake, Vicky and Freeman were talking. That was a good sign for both of them, because Freeman had acted like a sassy loner and Vicky had been aloof ever since Starlene had taken the job at Wendover. The poor girl was a classic anorexic-bulimic, and maybe having a friend would help her self-esteem, which in turn might boost her appetite. She sighed. Sounded like a "Dr. Phil Get Real" platitude.

  Starlene looked at her watch. Dinner was fifteen minutes away. House parents rotated shifts on a weekly basis, and her week off was coming up. After eating, she would make the long drive down to Laurel Valley, where her cat awaited in her cold mobile home. A good book and a prayer would get her to midnight, when sleep would probably come.

  A restless sleep, as they all were these days. First it was Randy who had intruded on her dreams, with his big arms and strong smile and his irritating overprotective-ness. Guys these days thought just because you kissed them meant you were obligated to roll back the sheets and let them wallow like hogs in the slop of your skin. Randy didn't understand the meaning of patience, especially that business about waiting for marriage. Chastity didn't seem to be a treasured virtue outside her Baptist church,vand virginity was more a burden than a prized possession these days.