The Forgotten Room

by Lincoln Child

  He raised one hand and lightly traced his fingers along the window sash. Lux had its roots in a private club, founded in the early 1800s by six Harvard professors to debate issues of art and philosophy. Over the years it expanded in both ambition and scope, its mission broadening, until finally, in 1892, it was organized into Lux, with a formal charter and an impressive endowment. This made it the country’s oldest policy institute—“think tank” to the unwashed—antedating the Brookings Institution by more than two decades. It enjoyed unprecedented success in its early years, quickly outgrowing its Cambridge quarters and relocating first to Boston and then—in the early 1920s—making its final move here to Newport, where it purchased the mansion known as Dark Gables from the heirs of an eccentric millionaire. Over the years, Lux had continued to thrive in its areas of expertise: economics; politics; applied mathematics; physics; and more recently, computer science. The only subject expressly forbidden by its charter was any form of military application—which set it apart from other think tanks, many of which enthusiastically pursued such lucrative research.

  Logan stepped away from the window and glanced around the room. Like the rest of the mansion, it was ornate, opulent, and expansive. In addition to the office, there was a small sitting room, a bedroom, and a bath. Logan’s eye stopped when it reached his desk. He had already laid out some of his work materials: a laptop; a camcorder; a digital voice recorder; an EM detector; an infrared thermometer; and a dozen or so books, many of them bound in leather, most hundreds of years old.

  A low knock on his door interrupted this survey. Logan walked over and opened the door to see a young man in a muted business suit hovering outside. “Excuse me,” the man said, handing Logan a sealed folder marked PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL. “Dr. Olafson asked me to deliver this to you personally.”

  “Thanks,” Logan replied with a nod. The young man went off down the richly carpeted corridor and Logan closed the door with one shoulder, unsealing the folder as he did so. Inside was a single, unlabeled DVD.

  Walking over to the desk and taking a seat, he powered up the laptop, waited for it to boot up, and then inserted the DVD. Moments later, a media player window opened on the screen and a video began to play. Logan immediately recognized it as the security feed he’d watched in Olafson’s office: the grainy, black-and-white image of a man in an elegantly appointed library, pacing and pulling at his hair.

  Logan clicked the pause button. He did not want to watch that again. He stared thoughtfully at the now-frozen image of Strachey. Olafson’s words came back to him: I knew Will Strachey for thirty years. He was the most stable, the most gentle, the most rational of men. This was a man with everything to live for. That man in the video is not the man I knew.

  He closed the view window, then fired up a utility to extract the audio portion of the DVD. Next, he opened the resulting file in a forensic audio-editing program and played it in its entirety. It was just four minutes and twenty seconds long. After listening to it once, Logan deleted the last thirty seconds: the screech of the descending window sash, the sickening crack, and the two thuds that followed were almost as horrifying to listen to as they’d been to witness.

  Now Logan listened to the audio file again. The first forty-five seconds consisted only of heavy footsteps and stertorous breathing, and he deleted that as well. He was left with an audio file approximately three minutes long, of poor quality, full of hum and hiss and digital artifacts.

  In the editor’s main window, the audio was displayed as a waveform: a fat, ragged line that ran from left to right, studded throughout with needlelike spikes. Logan opened a smaller window and instructed the program to run a spectral analysis of the audio file. He peered at the resulting display, examining and adjusting the amplitude and frequency values. Next, he ran a glitch-detection macro over the audio, adjusting its threshold slider to an aggressive setting. He corrected the file for DC offset, increased the gain, then ran it through a parametric equalizer chained to a high-pass filter.

  Now the file was louder and clearer, and the majority of the hum was gone. Strachey’s voice was more audible, but it was still difficult to interpret—partly because of the poor audio, and partly because Strachey was alternately gasping and mumbling. Nevertheless, Logan made the best transcript he could, playing the difficult passages again and again and listening very closely. As much as possible, he tried to put himself in Strachey’s shoes, imagining what the man might be feeling, then interpolating the results.

  “No…No. I can’t, I can’t.”

  This was followed by a passage of rapid breathing, almost hyperventilation.

  “Help me, please. It follows me everywhere. Everywhere. I can’t, I can’t escape!”

  Logan heard the doorknob being rattled, books flung from their shelves.

  “It comes from the [undecipherable]. I know it does.”

  Various crashing noises; the sound of a table being overturned. For a brief moment, the voice became clearer:

  “The voices—getting too close. They taste like poison. Have to get away.”

  Then the voice grew more distant as Strachey staggered away from the recording camera.

  “It is with me. They are with me. In the dark. No, God, no…”

  That was it. Suddenly, the tremulous agitation in the voice eased. The breathing slowed, became almost calm. Logan stopped the playback; he knew what was going to happen next.

  Saving the transcript to a text file, he closed the laptop and stood up, returning to the window and the view of the gray Atlantic. He had, for the purposes of deciphering the audio, tried to put himself in Strachey’s shoes. Now he wished he hadn’t. There was nothing there but inexplicable, sudden madness—madness and death.

  They are with me. In the dark.

  The sun beat down over the greensward that ran away from the mansion toward the sea. In the oak-paneled office, it was warm. Yet despite the warmth, Logan felt a shiver run through him.

  6

  It was half past seven when Logan left his rooms, descended the sweeping central staircase, and entered the main dining room. Dark Gables, Lux’s home, had been the product of the febrile imagination of Edward Delaveaux. During its construction, the reclusive, bizarre millionaire had purchased an ancient French monastery, disassembled it stone by stone, and brought sections wholesale back to Rhode Island to incorporate into his mansion. The dining room had once been the monastery’s refectory. It was a large gothic space, with huge wooden beams forming a vaulted ceiling and decorative arches lining the tapestried walls. The only things breaking the illusion were the two opposing Solomonic, or barley-sugar, columns that—with their inlaid bands spiraling from bottom to top—matched those at the mansion’s main entrance. Such columns were the primary load-bearing supports of the building, and could be found, in varying sizes, throughout Lux.

  Logan paused just within the doorway a moment, looking around at the tables, the people dining at them, and the tuxedoed waiters hovering attentively here and there. There were several vaguely familiar faces, still more that he didn’t recognize. The tables were all identical: round, seating six, covered with crisp white linen tablecloths.

  One of the closest tables was almost empty. There were just two people seated at it, a man and a woman, and another place setting indicating that a third person had temporarily left the table. Logan recognized the seated man. He was Jonathan King, a specialist in game theory. While Logan hadn’t been close to King during his time at Lux, the man had always been friendly. He began walking toward the table. As he did so, he was aware of people doing double takes as he passed. He’d had his image on the cover of enough magazines that he was used to this.

  King looked up as Logan approached. He looked blank for a moment; then his face broke into a smile. “Jeremy!” he said, standing up and shaking Logan’s hand. “What a surprise. And a pleasure.”

  “Hi, Jonathan,” Logan replied. “May I join you?”

  “Of course.” King turned toward the woman who w
as seated beside him. She was perhaps thirty years of age, with black hair and bright, inquisitive eyes. “This is Zoe Dempster,” King said. “Joined Lux six months ago as a junior Fellow. She’s a specialist in limits and multivariable calculus.”

  Hearing this, Logan remembered how, at the think tank, people were automatically introduced not only with their name but their specialty. “Hello,” he said with a smile.

  “Hello.” Dempster frowned. “Have we met before?”

  “This is Jeremy Logan,” King said.

  The frown remained for a moment. Then a lightbulb went on over her head. “Oh. You’re the—” and she stopped suddenly.

  “That’s right,” Logan said. “The ghost detective.”

  Dempster laughed with something like relief. “You said it, not me.”

  Logan caught a glimpse of Olafson. He was seated at a table in the rear of the dining room, along with vice director Perry Maynard and several others. Looking up, the director noticed Logan’s glance and nodded.

  “Jeremy was in residence here for a time,” King said tactfully. “That was—How long ago was it, Jeremy?”

  “Almost ten years.”

  “Ten years. Hard to believe.” King shook his head. “Are you back here for more research?”

  Logan noticed the way the two were looking at him. He knew they were curious about his presence here, and he was considering the best way to answer, when somebody sat down at the third table setting: a man in his late fifties, with close-cropped black-and-silver hair and a beautifully trimmed beard that would have done Sigmund Freud proud. He set down a cup full of black coffee beside his plate, then looked over at Logan with an expression of theatrical surprise.

  “Well, well,” he said. “I was wondering if you might be showing up about now.”

  “Hello, Roger,” said Logan.

  “Hullo, yourself.” Roger Carbon had a honeyed English accent that somehow made everything he said sound slightly disdainful. He turned to the others. “Jonathan, you remember Jeremy Logan, no doubt. Zoe, you wouldn’t. Although you might have seen him on television. I happened to catch you on CNN just the other night. ‘There ain’t no Nessie.’ How droll.”

  Logan merely nodded. Roger Carbon, specialist in evolutionary psychology, had been Logan’s nemesis during his time at Lux, considering his work on enigmas and the qualification of supernatural phenomena to be sensationalist, beneath the institution. Carbon had been one of a small group that had been instrumental in seeing that Logan was asked to leave.

  A waiter appeared at Logan’s side with a small printed menu; Logan glanced at it, checked off his choices, and passed it back to the waiter, who quickly vanished.

  “I must say, the modus operandi you described sounded remarkably scientific,” Carbon went on airily. “And you have a name for your, ah, discipline now—don’t you?”

  “Enigmalogy,” Logan said.

  “That’s it. Enigmalogy. As I recall, you had not yet gotten as far as a name during your time here at Lux.”

  “Remarkable what can happen in a decade,” Logan replied, tolerating the man’s snide tone.

  “It is indeed. Can I assume, then, that you’ve codified this new field of yours? Systematized it, established its principles? Can we expect a textbook any time soon? Ghostbreaking 101, perhaps? Or, no—Spooks for Dummies?”

  “Roger,” Jonathan King warned.

  “I’ve gotten very good at ancient curses, too,” Logan said, careful to keep his tone light. “In fact, I’m offering a special today: I’ll hex two people of your choice for the price of one.”

  Zoe Dempster chortled, covered her mouth with one hand. King smiled. Carbon took a sip of coffee, ignoring the remark.

  “But you are here about Strachey, right?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “More or less,” Logan said.

  “Well, let’s have some details, then!”

  “Another time. Suffice to say the board has asked me to make some inquiries into the nature of his death.”

  “The nature of his death. Nobody’s talking much about that, but the word is it was pretty ghastly.” Carbon gave him a penetrating gaze. “Is it true Strachey’s head was found in a rosebush?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Logan replied, with a double meaning.

  “Well, at least tell us how you’re going to get started.”

  “I’ve started already.”

  Carbon digested this for a moment. Clearly, he did not like the insinuation.

  Logan’s first course appeared: frisée salad with lardons and a poached egg. “Actually, I thought I’d drop in on Perry Maynard.”

  “Ah. Well, when you do, be sure to ask him about the others.”

  Logan stopped in the act of raising his fork. “Others?”

  “Others.” And Carbon finished his coffee, dabbed primly at his mouth with a linen napkin, smiled at King, winked at Zoe Dempster, then rose and left the table without another word.

  7

  The office of vice director Perry Maynard was twice as large as the director’s was. And although it naturally had the same Edwardian feel, it nevertheless managed to look quite different from Olafson’s office, as well. It was located on the fourth floor of the mansion, in one of the gables beneath the massive, beetling roof; and it faced north, looking over the expansive grounds rather than toward the rocky, angry coastline. The power desk almost devoid of paper, the set of Ping clubs placed with deliberate casualness in one corner, and the sporting prints on the walls all gave the space the appearance of a CEO’s lair. This was not really a surprise: Maynard’s specialty had been macroeconomics before he was promoted to vice director. There were, Logan had noticed, two basic types at Lux. On one hand there was the academic type, who tended to wear white coats or slightly rumpled blazers and always seemed to be absorbed in whatever research they were conducting at present. The other was the corporate type, usually specializing in industrial psychology or business administration. They wore dark, well-tailored suits and habitually assumed confident, übercompetent airs.

  It was just ten o’clock the next morning when Logan was ushered through the outer office and admitted to Maynard’s sanctum sanctorum. “Ah, Jeremy,” said Maynard, coming around his desk and shaking Logan’s hand with a bone-crushing grip. “I’ve been expecting you. Have a seat.”

  Indicating a brace of leather chairs with a wave, Maynard retreated behind his desk. He did not, Logan noticed, take a seat beside him, as Olafson had done.

  “Congratulations on your promotion to the vice directorship,” Logan said.

  Maynard gave another wave, dismissive this time. He had dark blond hair and a lithe, athletic body that made him seem younger than his fifty years. “I prefer to think of myself as head of operations,” he said. “You know, most of the Fellows here are their own bosses. They know their areas of research, their own little fiefdoms, better than anyone else. I’m just the administrator.”

  This bit of self-deprecation didn’t fool Logan. Maynard might be an administrator, but one possessed of great power should he need, or decide, to wield it. While it was true Lux was a think tank, it was also a privately held corporation that cared about profits. Naturally, it gave generous grants, awarded a number of annual scholarships, and funded chairs in various areas of academic pursuit—but such things were made possible by a steady stream of revenue. Though it wasn’t often articulated, every Fellow at Lux knew that the most effective kind of research was the kind that could, ultimately, be put to practical use. Logan wondered whether Maynard was one of the three on the board of directors who had voted for his presence here, or one of the three who’d done the opposite.

  Maynard settled himself in his chair. “No doubt you’d like to discuss Willard Strachey.”

  Logan nodded.

  “What an awful business. Awful.” Maynard shook his head.

  “Gregory told me that you’d be in a better position to fill me in on just what Strachey had been working on recently.”

  �
��Mmm. Yes.” Maynard leaned back and crossed his arms. “Well, you may recall that Willard’s specialty was DBMS.”

  “DMBS?”

  “Database management systems. He made some revolutionary progress in the relational database model first pioneered by Codd and others. Strachey’s database, Parallax, was one of the breakthrough applications of the early eighties.”

  “Go on, please,” Logan said.

  “It was a database manager with a built-in programming language of Strachey’s own design. It was legendary for its speed, scalability, and small footprint: not a behemoth like, say, DB2. It was popular with the VAX minicomputers used on many college campuses of the time. The time, of course, was thirty years ago.” Maynard shrugged. “Programming languages have changed a lot since then.”

  “Are you saying Strachey had come to believe his best years were behind him?”

  “I don’t think he viewed it that way at all. He was exceptionally proud of the work he’d done. And he was a true academic: for him, the research itself was its own end.” Maynard hesitated. “It was Lux, if you really want to know, that had issues with it.”

  Logan frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s like I said: programming has changed a lot. These days it’s all about objects, class inheritance, scripting languages. The very things that made Parallax so revolutionary when it was first released also made it difficult to reengineer. And, let’s face it, Willard was happy with Parallax as it was. He continued to refine it. But many larger clients were moving on.”

  “And taking their money elsewhere.”

  A pained look crossed Maynard’s face, but he nodded, conceding the point. “In any case, Strachey was fully vested at Lux. He was a senior Fellow. He’d had his successes, done us all proud. Even though he could have retired with a full pension, we were delighted to see him continue his relational database work. But a decision was made that such work should be more of a…sideline.”