Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1)

by Michael Stiles

  Ed continued to pace. “Why?”

  Arthur shrugged. “My guess is, they needed someone to do some dirty work for them and wanted to cover their tracks afterward. They trained him, then made him forget all about it until the moment they needed him. Whatever they did, he was never the same again. It was as if there were now two Nathaniels—the old Nathaniel I knew, who wouldn’t have hurt a flea, wouldn’t even know how to, and another Nathaniel who was trapped inside the one I knew. The new Nathaniel was capable of awful things, murder not the worst of them. The government programmed him so they could unleash the killer and point him at whatever victim they wanted, and then they locked up the killer inside him with a code word of some kind. I was never able to break the code.”

  “So they taught him to kill. Tom taught him to kill.”

  Arthur reached out and took him gently by the arm to stop his pacing. “It’s a hard thing to hear, I know. But you understand why I needed you to see it for yourself. You would never have believed me if I told you this.”

  Ed pushed his hand away. “That doesn’t explain why he killed Eleanor. Tom didn’t even know who she was. Why her?”

  “Sometime after Kajdas got to him, Nathaniel discovered you. You’re a powerful prophet, I’m sure the Guru told you. You shine like the sun to those who know how to look. But your calling had been interrupted, or interfered with. Nathaniel must have sensed that. He must have seen what was locked up inside you, and he was desperate to find a way to complete your calling. He wanted to force you to reach your full potential, then find a way to take control of you—to become you. He was jealous of your raw power. It was Nathaniel’s idea to kill your wife, so your calling as a prophet of Blake would be complete. Even if I had known what he was planning to do, I couldn’t have stopped him. Nathaniel’s strength by that time was almost equal to my own. And after Kajdas created the monster inside him―”

  Ed blinked away sudden tears. “You knew the monster was there,” he said bitterly. “Why didn’t you do something?”

  Arthur looked at him with an expression that could have passed for compassion in anyone more human. “I tried to. I worked with him to fight it, make it go away. When I failed at that, he had to go live somewhere else. I wouldn’t let him stay in my house anymore. That was the hardest thing, but I thought it was the right thing. I think, after I kicked him out, he must have tried to fix himself. Something set him off, released the killer in him, but he went the wrong way and killed the wrong person.”

  Ed looked out the window. It was still dark outside, and all he could see was his own reflection. He looked horrible.

  “So they locked him up,” Arthur continued. “To protect themselves from him. To keep their lies hidden. They tried to reprogram him, erase his memory again, but apparently it only works once. They used him up and couldn’t do anything else with him. So they just kept him.” He was turning red in the face now, veins throbbing in his forehead. “Have you seen what evil looks like, Ed? I have. The government is a force, a force that is gradually assuming control over this country to subjugate us all. The government has manipulated you into helping it. Don’t you see that? Your wife is dead because of them. Are you going to keep letting them do things like that? Are you going to keep helping them?”

  “I never wanted anybody to die.”

  “You did what Kajdas wanted because he had power over you,” Arthur went on, ignoring him. “That’s how they work! Always! That’s how the forces of Urizen control you! They find a way to gain power over you and then force you to do their will. They force you with police, they force you with taxes, with the military and their guns, with bombs and tear gas and Agent Orange and courtrooms. When the True Judgment comes, when Urizen is overthrown, the people who helped these devils remain in power will be punished for eternity! You will be punished for what you did—fire and pain for the rest of time!” Arthur took a shuddering breath, visibly willing himself to calm down, and went on in a more subdued tone. “It’s not too late to save yourself, Ed. Join my people, help me overthrow Urizen as Blake foretold, and I’ll put you in a position of honor. Help us fight this evil.”

  Ed turned to face him. “Help you take over,” he said stubbornly. “Then what? Do you think you’d be any better than what you replaced?”

  “Don’t be a cynic. I’m not like Urizen. I was chosen to replace him, and when I’m in charge, everything will be different. There’s no reason you and I shouldn’t be on the same side. Your friend John came to me with an open mind. You could do the same.”

  “I’ll never follow you.”

  “Who else do you have? Your friends have all left you. You’re alone now.”

  Ed shrugged and turned away. “I can handle being alone.”

  “Ed,” Arthur said with sudden urgency in his voice, “the Society needs you. There’s so much power in you! I can see it! I can’t risk letting Nathaniel take control of you. If you choose not to join me, I can’t let you live.”

  “Go ahead,” Ed said, his hand on the doorknob. “I’ve been dead a long time already.”

  * * *

  Arthur’s girl walked Ed back through the dark house to the front door. There were no onlookers this time; Arthur’s soldiers were either asleep or watching from the deep shadows. The girl shut the door firmly behind him as soon as he stepped outside.

  Sarah was waiting near the car with her arms folded tightly in front of her, glaring at the ground. When Ed reached out to put his arm around her, she deftly veered away and walked over to stand by the passenger door. Ed got in, unlocked her door, and sat behind the wheel without starting the car. Sarah got in and stared at the dashboard.

  “Are we leaving, or what?” she demanded, still not looking at him. Her voice contained no emotion at all.

  “In a minute,” Ed said softly.

  “Take me to the Guru’s house.”

  “Doris,” he said, “Sarah. it’s the middle of the night. Can’t we just―”

  “Take me to the Guru’s house.”

  “Okay.” He started the engine and began backing out of the driveway.

  “Turn your lights on.”

  Ed hastily switched on his headlights. He drove through the deserted streets to Sunset Boulevard, his mind running through things he should say to break the silence. The last thing he wanted right now was quiet.

  “Are you sure you want to go back there?” he said at last.

  Sarah didn’t respond.

  “How do you know Rat won’t be there?”

  “How often do you think about her?” Sarah asked.

  The abruptness of her question caught him by surprise. “Eleanor? I don’t know. Not as often as I did before. But I still do.”

  “At first I thought it was sweet, the way you thought about her all the time. But she’s been dead almost a year now.”

  Ed fought down a surge of anger. “We were together a lot longer than that. A year’s not very long.”

  “You should’ve seen yourself when Arthur started talking about her. Or when the Guru talked about her. She’s gone. Can’t you just—I don’t know, deal with it?”

  “No,” said Ed, temper rising, “I can’t. You think I can just turn it off like a switch? Why don’t you tell me, Doris, how many times have you lost somebody you loved? Really loved? The Guru doesn’t count. If it ever happened to you, you wouldn’t be asking such stupid questions.”

  From the look on her face, Ed could tell that his words had wounded her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered. “You don’t know who I’ve lost.”

  “Well, you seem to have gotten over them pretty damn fast.”

  With that, he knew he had gone too far. She looked at him for a long time, her eyes filling with tears. “Stop the car,” she said.

  “I’m not stopping the car.” As soon as he said it, a traffic light up ahead changed from green to yellow. Ed considered speeding through it, but he had a gun in the car and didn’t want to get pulled over. He slowed down. Sarah
had her door open before the vehicle even stopped moving.

  “Sarah!” he shouted, but the slamming of the door drowned him out, and she was already running back the way they had come.

  He was supposed to run after her; he knew this. It was what she wanted him to do. But at that moment, Ed found that he just didn’t feel like it. When the light turned green, he hit the gas and sped off into the night, his car a perfect extension of his anger.

  33

  Someone at the Door

  Ed walked wearily up the steps from the courtyard to his apartment. The sun would be up soon, and he was desperate for sleep, but he knew his nagging conscience wouldn’t let him get any. He would have to go back out and look for her, but where? Would she go back to the Guru’s house? Not if Rat might still be there, he was sure. She had never wanted to talk about the home she’d left to follow the Guru; it seemed painful for her to think about. He didn’t think she’d go back there, either. No, she would probably come back to Ed’s apartment eventually. He concluded that the best thing to do was try to take a short nap and see if she turned up.

  “She’s not coming back,” said the gnome, which sat on his kitchen counter watching him. It seemed uncharacteristically somber.

  “Shut up,” Ed muttered. He carefully put his gun in the hiding place beneath the cupboard.

  “I remember now,” said the gnome. “They took my memory.”

  Ed tried his best to ignore it.

  “You have to plant a memory of today,” it said. “They’ll take it if you don’t.”

  “They can have it.” He went to his bedroom. The gnome was in there too, perched on the windowsill as if it had been there all along. “You have to,” it said again. “After they get you, you have to remember what Kajdas did.”

  Ed thought of the killer getting sliced across the face by the shovel, blinded by Kajdas. That memory did bring him a little satisfaction, but only a little. “I don’t want to hear any more from you,” he said, going to the closet. There was an old golf club in there, a seven iron of his uncle’s that he’d somehow ended up with. He hefted it in his right hand.

  “You have to remember what Kajdas is,” it insisted. “You think I’m a monster. What does that make him?”

  “Stop talking to me,” Ed said quietly. He was done shouting at the creature.

  “They’ll get you the way they got me. Once they get their hooks into you, you belong to them.”

  “I don’t belong to anybody.” Ed strode to the window, swinging the golf club. It struck the gnome on its bright red hat, bouncing off with a loud clink. The blow should have been hard enough to crack its ceramic head, but it didn’t leave a mark. Ed raised the club and swung once more. This time he missed the gnome and took a sizeable piece of wood out of the windowsill. He swung the club again and again, grunting with the effort. Most of his blows hit the gnome and bounced off harmlessly, while others chipped the white paint around the window or left deep gouges in the wall. The window shattered, and still he raised the club and aimed it at the gnome’s shiny head. It watched him in silence, undamaged except for the old crack across its left eye.

  Ed finally relented and threw the golf club to the floor, breathless and aching from the effort. The gnome vanished then, leaving Ed alone to stare at the damaged windowsill and broken window. The sill was chipped and splintered even where the creature had been standing, as though Ed’s blows had landed on the wood instead of bouncing harmlessly off the gnome. With a cry of frustration, he threw himself onto the bed and pressed his palms against his eyelids.

  Exhausted as he was, he knew sleep wouldn’t come. His mind kept running through everything that had happened during the night. Especially the argument with Sarah; he cringed at his own callousness toward her. He’d been so consumed by his own crushing loss that he had been indifferent to what Sarah had gone through. She had loved the Guru. Where was she? For the hundredth time, he berated himself for not getting out of the car and running after her. The only thing that had stopped him was his own stubbornness.

  They’ll get you the way they got me. The killer’s words stuck in Ed’s head. It was right about one thing: once Kajdas had found a way to make Ed do what he wanted, the man had never let him go, and probably never would. Whatever they had done to erase Nathaniel’s memories, wasn’t it possible they’d do the same to Ed? That had to be why the gnome had taught Ed how to plant his memories in other people’s heads. However much Ed hated the creature, he knew it was right.

  Struggling to clear his head, he closed his eyes and wafted through the ceiling into the gray sky and beyond, until he was once again surrounded by the brilliant, colorful stars. He explored them carefully, looking for the ones that felt the most approachable, and eventually found one that seemed right. It was a world full of grasslands and young forests—possibly the mind of a child somewhere, with no old memories that had taken deep root.

  He found a spot of bare earth where the grass hadn’t yet started to grow, and thought about the events of the day, laying each one down in the soil until it took hold. The memories of Sarah he planted with extra care. The last one, the memory of her running away from him, sent a stab of sadness into his heart as he put it in the ground. He brushed against a leaf of that memory and stared for a long time at the image of Sarah’s face, frozen in time as she was about to slam the car door. There was so much pain on that face, pain that Ed had caused. Reluctantly, he let go of it; the image faded from his mind, and the memory—a tiny flowering plant with blue-tinged leaves—stirred slightly in the gentle breeze.

  The work took him some time to finish, although he had trouble keeping track of time in this place. He returned to his body even more tired than before, and yet sleep still eluded him. Rubbing his eyes, he went back to the living room and sat heavily on the couch.

  The atlas still sat on his coffee table where Sarah had left it. He picked up the big book, let it fall open to a random page and stared at a map without really seeing it. He and Sarah had studied every page in the atlas several times over with no success; he didn’t expect to find anything new tonight. But holding the book made him think of her, so he sat there holding it on his lap and wishing silently that she would show up at his door.

  He felt the gnome beginning to stir in the back of his head. Not again, Ed snarled at it. I’ve had enough of you. He pushed it away ruthlessly, and was mildly surprised when he was successful. He could still sense the creature, but it sounded far away and its words were nothing more than a low, wordless grumbling.

  A sound came from outside. Someone had opened the gate downstairs. Going out or coming in? Ed got up to look through the peephole, hoping to see Sarah coming up the stairs, but the early morning sun was shining on his door and he couldn’t see a thing through the glare. After a minute, he sighed and went back to his maps.

  The gnome tried to speak to him again, more insistently this time, and he had to fight harder to keep it from bubbling to the surface. He forced himself to concentrate on the book, frowning at it in confusion for a moment before he realized he was holding it upside-down.

  And there it was: the city from his dream. Ed drew in a sharp breath. He could recall every detail of the landscape that had been spread out beneath him as he’d descended out of space in that first vivid dream of the city. That was the landscape he was seeing in front of him now. It had artificial borders drawn on it in bright colors, and text obscured the shape of the land, but if he ignored those distractions he found the geography was unmistakably the same as what he’d seen from above.

  It was exactly as he’d remembered it. The coastline—Ed saw now why he and Sarah had been unable to find it. The coast was not the edge of an ocean, but a lake.

  Leave, the gnome growled in the back of his mind. In his excitement, Ed had allowed it to sneak back into his head. They’re here. Leave now! Something about its voice, the urgency of it, made Ed leap to his feet in alarm. The gnome had never sounded so frightened before.

  Someone was walki
ng up the stairs outside. The loose step creaked at least three times, and then he could hear them approaching along the walkway. They were in front of Mrs. Findlay’s place. Ed tried and failed to recall the name of the man who had moved in there. The footsteps stopped; Mrs. Findlay’s door creaked open. Men spoke to each other in low voices, their words inaudible. Someone was talking to his new neighbor.

  The footsteps started up again, finally coming to a stop outside Ed’s apartment. He waited several heartbeats for the sound of a knock, but the sound didn’t come. Whoever they were, they were standing right outside.

  Move yourself, the gnome cried, and this time Ed felt the peculiar sensation of being prodded into motion from within his own head.

  Who is it? he asked.

  He’s coming for you.

  Who? Ed thought. Kajdas?

  Kajdas, the gnome whispered.

  For one frantic moment, Ed considered running to get his gun. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he dismissed it as foolishness. What good would his little Ruger do him if a whole group of armed men had arrived to take him away? Better to run, he thought; he started moving toward the kitchen. From the balcony off the kitchen, there was a chance he could drop to the ground and escape on foot.

  There was a soft click, barely audible over the pounding pulse in his ears, and the door swung all the way open. Ed stared at the empty doorway for what felt like an eternity. Then a man stepped into view, a silhouette in the sunlight. Ed recognized the young agent from Tom’s office. Driscoll, Wensel had called him. There were two others behind him. Ed backed up until he felt the hard edge of his stereo shelf pressing into the small of his back.

  The gnome began to wail wordlessly in the back of his head.

  “Mr. Terwilliger,” Driscoll said, keeping his voice low, “let’s not make this difficult. Please lie down on the floor and put your hands behind your back.” He was remarkably polite for the circumstances, Ed thought, aside from the gun he was pointing at Ed’s chest.