The Home

by Scott Nicholson

  "No one's supposed to have access to the basement," Kracowski said. "That equipment is delicate."

  "I thought McDonald had some guards down there."

  "They're under orders to stay away from the equipment." Even as he spoke, he remembered McDonald's words as the equipment was being installed. Orders change, McDonald had said, ex-Army bastard that he was. Kracowski peered at the screen. One of the figures separated from the green dimness and backed away.

  "Bondurant."

  "What's he doing down there?" Paula asked.

  "He's the only one on staff with a key."

  "Look. There's somebody else down there."

  Kracowski cursed a god he didn't believe in. The magnetic pull of a regular MRI scanner was about 20,000 times the force of the earth's magnetic fields. It was strong enough to rip a pacemaker right out of a patient's chest, which was why MRI patients got a thorough going-over before being slid into the tube.

  The equipment in the basement generated a field a hundred times stronger than that, at least in certain localized points. The magnetic field was strong enough to hum and created static electricity and microshocks. If the anomalous fluctuations continued, they could create a serious danger by pulling hardware from the walls. A loose piece of metal might fly across the room and pierce one of the tanks of liquid helium. The helium wasn't explosive, but an accident could set Kracowski's work back by several months, not to mention drawing the interest of a lot of busybodies in the state Social Services Department and the county planning department.

  Bondurant's playing around down there, probably half-drunk or worse, was a disaster waiting to happen. He was already disrupting the careful alignment of the fields. The man might have iron or steel items in his pockets that could destroy valuable equipment. If the liquid helium or liquid nitrogen tanks were pierced, the basement would go into an instantaneous, though brief, deep freeze.

  Kracowski opened his desk drawer and got a key and his flashlight. There were three ways to access the basement from inside the building. One was from Bondurant's office, another via a locked door in the main hallway labeled Custodial Staff Only.

  Kracowski went to his bookshelf and removed his copy of H.G. Wells's A Short History of the World. He reached into the space on the shelf and fumbled for the hidden button. What had seemed clever when McDonald's people were installing it now seemed like a spy movie trick, unnecessary and overdone. He pressed the button and an adjacent bookshelf swung forward, revealing the metal door and the third way downstairs.

  "Hey, that's cool, Richard."

  Leave it to Paula to be impressed by extravagance. He unlocked the door and switched on the flashlight, playing its beam down the dark stairwell. Cobwebs draped the doorway, and he brushed them aside as he headed into the gloom. The stench of must and mildew rose from the dank basement. He glanced back once and saw Paula waiting at the door, her silhouette stooped with tension and excitement.

  Kracowski slipped down the stairs to the narrow hallway that branched off from the main basement corridor. He splashed his beam into one of the cramped cells. The cells were a hellish testament to the mental health field of the 1940s, when terror and pain were more common psychiatric tools than nurturing and synergizing. Frontal lobotomies, pharmaceuticals, insulin-induced comas, and electroshock were the glorious toys of those spearheading the charge into a brave new world of the mind. Too bad the psychiatrists hadn't recognized and dealt with their own delusions of grandeur.

  Too bad they weren't as flawless as Kracowski.

  He heard shuffling in the darkness of the main corridor. He switched off his light and listened. He recognized Starlene's voice immediately.

  "Hello? Who's there?" she called from the darkness.

  He should have figured Starlene would start snooping around. She'd already asked far too many questions about his experimental treatments. With her simple religious faith, she automatically assumed that all cures that weren't divine in origin were the result of unspeakable dark powers. That's why he wanted her to submit to the treatments herself, so she might understand what he was trying to accomplish.

  And perhaps she could be "cured" of the need to submit to an invisible authority and beg forgiveness for imagined sins. If not cured, perhaps she'd be frightened enough to keep her mouth shut. If worse came to worse, her memory could be erased.

  "Come out where I can see you," Starlene said. Her voice echoed down the corridor. Bondurant must have fled the basement, because Starlene's footsteps were the only sound besides the hum of the equipment.

  Kracowski eased down the hallway and waited. The air was thick with the stirring of ancient dust and he fought back a sneeze. That's when he saw her.

  At first he thought it was Starlene coming down the hall toward him. Then he realized the woman wore no clothes.

  She carried her own light with her. No, not with her, within her. She drifted toward him like dawn's smoke on a meadow, then, before he could discern what was wrong with her face, she was gone.

  But not before putting words in Kracowski's head: You can see the truth if you look through my eyes.

  Kracowski nearly dropped his flashlight. He looked around to see who had spoken, to see where the woman had gone. Translucent women didn't exist, and women who didn't exist couldn't appear out of nowhere. A mind could not live separately from the body. Kracowski flipped on the light again and swept the beam across the hall and into me nearby cells.

  "Where did she go?" Starlene said, approaching from the shadows.

  "Access to the basement is limited to authorized personnel only, Miss Rogers," Kracowski said.

  "Was she authorized?"

  "You should be concerned with your own violations, Miss Rogers. This early in your career, you'd better keep your record spotless."

  "I can't pretend I didn't see her."

  "Saw whom?"

  "Don't pull that with me. Mr. Bondurant saw it, too." Starlene waved into the darkness behind her. "I believe he ran away."

  "I'm not sure what sort of manifestation or illusion you thought you saw. My Synaptic Synergy Therapy and the resultant electromagnetic fields might have uncertain effects. I'm still studying how it changes neural patterns. It's possible that you may have been exposed to a high field fluctuation. That may lead to hallucinations."

  "She called herself the 'Miracle Woman.' Except she didn't talk at all, just put words right in my head."

  Miracle Woman. That was all Kracowski needed, more religious hysteria among the staff. At least that could be a good cover story if Starlene made some sort of report to the state board. He could say she was suffering from delusions. By the time Kracowski was through, he'd have them wondering whether Starlene should be receiving help instead of giving it.

  He shined the light in her face so that she blinked. "Why are you down here?"

  "Bondurant. He-" She seemed to change her mind about what she wanted to say. "I'm trying to figure out how your gizmos down here work. And how it's supposed to heal these kids."

  "You believe in the power of talk, the power of suggestion. Nurturing, compassionate attention. But you're trying to pour love into cracked vessels. I not only patch the cracks, I reshape the vessel."

  "Freeman said he 'heard' people down here. He claims to be able to read minds."

  "A rare but reported delusion among those with bipolar disorder, at least during a manic episode. And he's a rapid cycler, isn't he?"

  "I've observed him swinging from up to down in the course of minutes. But he's hearing voices, and I'm hearing voices, and I'm seeing people that I don't want to believe are real."

  "I can assure you they are not real. Like I told you before, I've heard plenty of ghost stories about Wendover, and I've not seen a ghost yet."

  "You didn't see the Miracle Woman?"

  "You saw nothing." Kracowski took the beam from Starlene's face and played it down the hall. "If it's not there, it can't be quantified. If it can't be quantified, it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, th
en I'm not interested."

  "If you're so brave, then why don't you give me the flashlight and you can stay down here in the dark?"

  Kracowski tilted the light under his chin, knowing it made sinister shadows on his face. "Maybe the crazies are standing right in front of you."

  "That doesn't sound like something a rational man of science would say."

  "If I scare you away, maybe you'll leave my equipment alone."

  "I wouldn't dream of interfering with your research. After all, you have the whole world to save, right? Lots of troubled, lowly humans to heal. The masses. Those who aren't perfect like you."

  She headed for the main corridor, into the thick stretch of black, her shadow bobbing along the wall like oil in a sick ocean.

  "You saw nothing," Kracowski said.

  "Like I didn't see that man at the lake," she said without slowing. "And those wet footprints in the hall. I'm seeing a lot of things I'm not seeing lately."

  "They don't exist until I say so."

  Starlene paused at the edge of the corridor. "God is the one who makes those decisions."

  Then she was gone, into the black and across the blue where the hum of the machines carried suggestions of things beyond science.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Six hundred pounds of night sky pressed down, the mountains closed in, the trees were bad things that wanted to strangle him.

  Just like that, standing by the fence with the whole world against him, Freeman jumped the elevator into the down cycle, no stops. He was smart enough to tell the difference these days, thanks to Dr. Krackpot's treatments. Sure, depression was only a bad mix of brain chemicals and crossed wires, but he couldn't stop thinking of it as God's idea of a good joke.

  Only moments before, he'd known everything, he was smarter than God, he could triptrap into every skull in the world if he wanted. Now there was nothing but big dark.

  The path by the lake was tar, his feet as heavy as stumps. The black blanket of depression over his head dulled his senses and choked off the oxygen to his head. Seeing the electrified fence had flipped the big switch in his brain. He was stuck at Wendover, hopeless, helpless, just another stooge in the loser factory.

  Even worse. He was starting to shrink himself and trying to figure things out. The good old enemy within. The troll under the bridge.

  "Freeman?"

  Oh, no.

  Not her.

  Not now.

  All he wanted was to be alone, to slink back to his mattress and burrow under the pillow in the fart-filled wonderland known as the Blue Room. To be alone with bleak thoughts. Him and his misery, a match made in heaven.

  "Freeman, I'm sorry."

  Sorry. That was a good one. The word that everybody went for after they'd screwed you over and messed you up. Sorry was one of his dad's favorite words, right after shithead and motherfucker and sausage-brains and all his other pet names.

  Freeman moved past Vicky in the darkness, letting despair drag him back toward Wendover. The lake caught the silver moon and soft ripples whispered forgotten names, as if the water held the spirits of those long dead. Let the ghosts come and eat him up or pull him down with them for all he cared. Maybe he belonged with those crazy fucks.

  "Freeman, talk to me. Don't be like this."

  Like what? He wasn't being like anything. She didn't need to follow him. Why couldn't she find somebody else to worry about, somebody who gave half a damn?

  He walked on, and the path may as well have been waste-deep mud. Depression. Tidy little name the shrinks had for it. They were so goddamned smart. Depression, like sinking into a hole.

  "I can't triptrap you, Freeman. You're shielded. So you have to tell me. What's going on?"

  Triptrap was for idiots. Who cared what anybody else thought? When you walked across the bridge into somebody else's head, all you saw was their fuck-ups and problems and pain and sorrow. He had a Pandora's box worth of troubles tucked away in his own head. Why go out of his way to find more?

  Vicky grabbed his arm and tugged He blinked out of his stupor of self-pity and saw they were on the Wendover lawn, the few lighted windows of the building gazing like monster eyes. Off to the left, almost hidden beneath the trees, were the counselors' cottages. The buildings were dark and silent.

  She tugged again. "Freeman. I'm scared. Talk to me."

  Oh, God. Defender of the Weak, Protector of the Innocent. What a crock. Defending the weak had almost cost Clint his neck in The Outlaw Josey Wales.

  Still, Vicky had been nice to him, or at least acted like it. Damn, he hated when they were as good at pretending as he was.

  "Forget about it," he said. "We're all stuck here."

  "Stuck? Just a few minutes ago, you were all excited about making a run for it."

  "They outsmarted us. They always win. No matter what you do, they're one step ahead. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

  "No, Freeman. There's always hope."

  Freeman swallowed a laugh. It turned his stomach and he almost choked. Maybe he'd ask Vicky to give him some pointers on self-induced vomiting so he could get rid of all the lies they had fed him over the years.

  "Let me explain," he said. "There's a bunch of crazy dead people in the basement, electric razor wire on the fences, and the key to the front gate is in the pocket of a man who zaps little kids for fun. And the Trust is behind it all. I thought the Trust was out of my life forever, once Dad was booked into a rubber room. But they're back and I have this bad feeling they brought me to Wendover for more of their fun and games. Now what part of that is supposed to make me break into a chorus of 'Tomorrow'?"

  Vicky stopped him. "I thought you were special, but you're just like all the rest, aren't you? Aren't you?"

  He had to look at her. He owed her that much, at least. He wished he hadn't, because those big dark eyes caught the moon just like the lake water had. That's all he needed, for her to squeeze out a few tears here in the middle of the night. If he lived a million years, which was a million more than enough, he'd never be able to figure out girls. Even when he could get right inside their heads, they still made no sense.

  "Come on, let's go." Freeman took Vicky's arm. "All we're going to do is get in trouble. And that dead guy in the lake back there might decide he's lonely."

  She jerked free. "You're so stuck on your own problems that you don't see everybody else has them too. And sometimes you're the cause of their problems."

  Damn. She was crying.

  Freeman was helpless. If he were on an up, he might have sneaked into her head and tried to relate to her. Even though he'd be doomed to failure. Girls never said what they really meant, and they never even thought what they really meant. When you tried to fix one thing, it turned out to be something completely different mat was broken.

  He reached out to pat her shoulder, something even Clint Eastwood could manage, but she turned her back. What to do now?

  She took several slow steps away. He thrust his hands into his jeans pockets and looked at the stars. Insects fiddled among the trees and two bullfrogs swapped croaks across the banks of the lake. He wished he could dissolve into the night, do like the old man's ghost and melt away like a fog. But he couldn't, because he was made of God's stuff, flesh and bone and blood.

  Damn.

  He was the troll beneath the bridge, and she was the little goat Gruff.

  He was gobbling her up.

  Him and his evil mouth, his bad teeth, his stupid mean claws.

  Freeman went for that word, the one he'd heard too many times and hardly ever used himself. "Sorry."

  "You're only sorry for yourself."

  "No, really. I didn't mean to hurt you."

  She spun so fast that he almost fell over backwards. She came on like a two-fisted prizefighter, De Niro as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, Clint as Dirty Harry, Pacino as Michael Corleone in the Godfather movies, her words stinging like uppercuts and jabs. "Didn't-mean-to-hurt-me! You're the goddamned champion of hurt, Freeman. I never
met anybody like you. And I never wanted to, either."

  Then she stormed off across the grass heading toward Wendover, small and lost against the dark structure. Freeman followed, his heart like a trapped bird against the cage of his ribs.

  They were nearly to the building and Freeman was thinking of something to say, maybe ask what was the best way to sneak inside, when Vicky stopped.

  Freeman thought she was going to give him more pieces of her mind, but she pointed to a window on the second floor, one of the few that wasn't dark. A shadow moved against the muted light, a head ducking back. Someone had been watching them.

  "Who was it?" Freeman asked.

  "Couldn't tell."

  "Do ghosts have shadows?"

  "Maybe ghosts are the shadows."

  "Vicky, this place is major messed up."

  "It was bad enough back when it was just us kids with all our problems. Even without the disappearing man and the people in the basement, and now you're babbling about some Trust that's behind all this. I don't think I can take anymore, Freeman."

  They approached the back stairs, the night cool with crickets. The moon stretched the dark shadows of trees across the lake. Freeman took Vicky's arm and she didn't stop him; he let her lean against him as they headed up the steps. Freeman felt lighter now, as if some of the world's weight had fallen from his shoulders.

  He stopped in his tracks. Realization, big time.

  Depression didn't just slink away, even for a rapid cycler. Depression clawed its way to the surface from a spot deep in your guts. Yet Freeman felt something so rare that he had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't sleepwalking into a good dream.

  The feeling wasn't happiness, exactly. He'd known little enough of that in his life, but he could recognize it from a safe distance. And it wasn't joy. And it sure as heck wasn't the L-word. But being with Vicky was starting to feel like a habit. A good habit.

  "Don't get weird on me, Freeman."

  He smiled in the night. A smile. Yeah, that was weird, all right.

  Her hand pressed against his. She was giving him something. He took it and closed his palm around it. A penny.