“If we know how you escaped,” he says, “maybe we can help them.”
Cyn yanks her arm away from Linda. “Tell me where they went.”
Linda gives her space, doesn’t try to force comfort on her. She pauses, considering whether Cyn really wants to know the answer. But she already does. She knows where they went.
The image of an old woman suddenly forms. “Patricia,” Cyn says.
Linda nods.
Cyn wishes Linda was holding onto her, keeping her from falling. Or maybe she just wants someone touching her, to let her know this isn’t a dream anymore. This time it’s real.
Because she’s just not sure.
51
The next morning is brisk.
Cyn sits on the front porch of the dinner house, watching the morning sun streak over the meadow. Dew glitters on the helicopter, the blades sagging.
She dreamed that night. She dreamed a normal dream, one with random images and illogical scenarios, the way dreams are supposed to be. No fog, no gray.
No cliff to perch upon.
It seems so obvious, now.
This is real. This physical world feels different, feels real. The colors more vibrant, the air more fragrant. The sensations deeper. The experience denser.
Is that what defines reality? Is the human experience in the physical world the gold standard for truth? Do our five senses separate illusion from enlightenment?
She shivers, not from the cold but the questions.
She can’t ask them, not now. Not yet. She has to be here, has to be present. Those thoughts make her doubt.
Maybe this is a dream, too.
Linda steps onto the porch, a thick beige coat to her knees and two steaming mugs. She hands one to Cyn.
“I’m sorry, tea is all I have. Would you rather have coffee?”
Cyn shakes her head.
Linda takes the chair on the other side of the door, cupping the mug with both hands. She inhales.
“Beautiful morning,” Linda says.
Birds are chirping. Cyn doesn’t remember hearing birds inside the dream. Maybe they were there in the beginning. Not at the end. Not when it was so cold.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Linda pulls an apple from her pocket. “If you’re hungry. You haven’t eaten much solid food, so it may take some time to adjust.”
Cyn examines the apple. So red and firm. Shiny. She rubs the skin with her thumb, takes a bite.
The taste is explosive.
“We had fruit when we woke up.”
Linda sips and listens. Cyn studies the apple after each bite, like each one is a new experience.
“I thought someone would come for us.”
“We did,” Linda says.
Another bite. Another look. “Not like I thought.”
“Did you do that assignment?”
Cyn pretends like she doesn’t hear, but Linda doesn’t look away. Finally, she reaches in her pocket, hands her a folded piece of paper. Linda flips it over.
What do I remember? Nothing.
“You have lovely handwriting.” Linda hands it back.
Cyn wads it up.
It’s that question again. Over and over, they ask it. She’s not pissed at Linda; it’s just that the answer doesn’t come to her—it only muddles her brain. Frustrates her. Like she doesn’t want to remember.
And she does.
Suddenly, she’s full. She puts the apple core on the porch railing and leans against it with the sudden urge to vomit.
She can’t remember specific things. She just knows what they feel like. Heavy and thick and wet. Whatever memories she has, she doesn’t remember them but they weigh her down.
“No one cares,” she says.
“I care.”
Cyn spits. “No offense, but that’s your job. You don’t know me.”
“I don’t have to know you to care.”
There’s thumping in the distance, like wind harvesters coming down from the sky. A black dot approaches from the east, the chopper blades echoing off the trees.
“This might be a dream. Ever thought of that?”
“This is not a dream, Cynthia. You woke up, you’re here and now. Trust me.”
“Why should I trust anything?”
“You can trust me.”
“Saying it don’t make it true.”
The mug hovers beneath Linda’s chin. “No. It doesn’t.”
Cyn feels the helicopter in her chest, the percussion banging inside her, stirring up anxiety. She wants to run, but where would she go?
It hovers in the meadow, slowly dropping the landing skids into the grass, thrashing the wildflowers in the downdraft. A few people jog out to meet it, one of them Thomas. They help a man and woman out of the back door, shake hands, shouting to be heard. They half-duck until they’re clear of the blades.
“More experts?” Cyn asks.
“There’s a lot of evidence. This camp was abandoned when we arrived. The people who brought you out here had escaped, leaving you and the others behind. We need to know what’s going on, how it works. Are there other places like this?”
A truck goes out to the helicopter; supplies are loaded into the back. Once that’s finished, the pilot salutes and, when it’s all clear, lifts off. Cyn feels the downdraft this time.
The new guests stand in front of the brick house. Two people come out to meet them. There’s a meeting on the front step. Thomas gestures toward the dinner house and they all turn.
Pretty soon, he’s walking toward them.
“How did you escape?” Linda asks. “They’re going to want to know.”
Thomas doesn’t wave them over. He’s going to make the trip all the way to the porch.
“You don’t have to go, Cynthia. If you’re not ready, you don’t have to see everything, not yet. You can rest, get yourself grounded. I’d prefer you remember more so that you know who you are.”
The helicopter is far above the trees.
The girls still have needles in their heads. Still in the dream. Cyn’s not going sit on the front porch sipping tea while they starve.
“Remembering doesn’t make me who I am,” Cyn says distantly. “My soul ain’t memories.”
Linda sips. They watch Thomas approach.
“Some people want to talk to you.” He puts his hands on his hips.
Cyn steps off the porch. He leads the way.
Linda puts her mug down and follows.
52
Cyn stops at the tall grass.
There’s a faint line, a subtle difference in how the grass grows, that crosses in front of the house, circles around it. Not one these people would notice.
Cyn stands at the line, the end of her boots almost touching.
“You okay?” Linda is almost to the steps.
She rubs her neck, wondering. When she woke up, she was the first one to hit the fence, like a cattle prod to the back of the head.
“Cynthia?” Linda’s next to her. “We don’t have to go inside.”
She shakes her head. Takes a breath. “There’s this thing in our neck.”
“We know. They used it to track your location. It shouldn’t be hard to remove, once you’re back.”
“It did other things.”
Linda gives her space to sort through the thoughts.
“There were places we couldn’t go or it would go off.”
“How?”
“Like a jolt to the nervous system. If we crossed that line,” —she points at the soft line, follows it around the corner— “We were knocked unconscious. We called it a fence.”
Linda’s nodding. “I’m sorry, Cynthia. The boys from the island had something similar, but it wasn’t activated by a fence. Are there other fences in the dream?”
She shakes her head, remembering something else that ignited the lump. Something the old man had, like a remote control. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember.”
She doesn’t remember other fences. It seems like there was another place ar
ound there that initiated the lump and knocked her out. She’s sure there is. And she doesn’t want to go back there.
“Do you want to go back to the tent?”
“No. I don’t think this is on.” She rubs her neck again. There’s no tingling, no sensitivity. “There was always a warning when we got near one, I’m not feeling it.”
Still, she has trouble breaking the hold on her knees. She puts a hand on Linda’s shoulder. She doesn’t mean to close her eyes—it’s more like a long blink during that first step.
And then she’s on the other side.
“Nothing?” Linda asks.
Cyn shakes her head. Nothing.
Dead things are inside.
Cyn stands at the front door, impulsively sniffing the foul air. The hairs on her arms bristle. “Where is it?”
“In the very back,” Linda says.
“Old woman?”
“Yes. The body was removed weeks ago. The smell probably won’t ever go away.”
They look around the front room. The couches are spotless, the tables clean. The front window is intact. The stone that Roc threw was in another dimension.
In the dream, she reminds herself.
“We’re still trying to determine how they built this?” Linda says. “It’s a gorgeous house.”
Cyn cringes. Gorgeous.
She can see the paltry shelter through the window. She feels left out, ignored. Banished.
“It’s built like a fortress,” Linda adds. “Retractable shutters, security cameras. Quite an architectural feat.”
“What were they doing in here?”
“Well, it’s mostly living quarters. The upstairs is all bedrooms and a bathroom. There are a few bedrooms on the first floor, a kitchen down the hall.”
There are voices in the back of the house.
They stop at the first bedroom on the left. Cyn is filled with the odd sense of comfort, peeking into someone else’s bedroom without their permission. She’s not supposed to be in here, but no one can stop her.
The bed is large enough for three people. Probably only slept one. Plastic containers are stacked on the bedspread. The desk drawers are open and empty. So are the dresser drawers. The closet still has a few items.
Cyn walks past the desk. The perfume smells expensive.
“Her name was Barbara Graham.” Linda’s voice sounds more distant than it should. “She mostly lived in the San Francisco area but had houses all over the world. She was married to a man named Michael Graham.”
Cyn is careful not to touch anything, afraid she’ll never want to leave if she does. There’s a set of crystal figurines gathered on the dresser. She leans in closely. The Buddha looks like it’s made of ice.
“Michael went by another name,” Linda says. “Mr. Williams.”
Cyn looks back. Linda is still in the hall.
“The men from the Foreverland used aliases. It was on a tropical island, and when it failed, we discovered this one.”
“He said he was lost, that Foreverland collapsed.”
“He was still plugged when it did. He’s dead.”
Cyn’s chest contracts, sharply. “No, he’s not.”
“Cynthia, we’re still not sure what’s going on. We were surprised when you mentioned him yesterday. What we do know is that his body is dead. And so is the body of a boy who was in the bed next to him.”
“Sid.”
“Yes.” Linda’s not shocked to hear the name. “Maybe their identities were in Foreverland when it failed and they couldn’t get back to their bodies. We assumed that since the body was dead, so were they. But obviously there’s more to this than we know. Somehow there was a connection between Foreverland and the world you were trapped inside.”
They were lost in the gray for a long time. How long? There’s no sense of time in the gray. Just eternity.
And suffering.
Files are stacked in one of the open containers on the bed. A leather spine sticks out among the manila folders. Cyn doesn’t ask, just digs it out. Miranda gave that leather-bound journal to her in the dream.
But she remembers what she told her. She warned her that one of the girls is dangerous and to be careful. Miranda was sure it was Roc.
The Fountain of Youth… This is Hell.
Cyn almost laughs. Even surrounded by this posh palace, she has the nerve to comment on suffering. This book will burn nicely in one of the wood stoves.
“How did she do it?” Cyn asks. “How did Patricia recreate a world exactly like this?”
Linda shakes her head. “We don’t know. Her brain activity is nothing like we’ve ever seen. Maybe she’s triggered something in the human mind that can just absorb the details around her.”
“Miranda gave this to me.” Cyn shakes the book.
“Who?”
“The girl with blonde hair—she’s upstairs, I’m guessing.”
Linda nods slowly. “And she gave you that book?”
“One exactly like it. I never read it, though.”
“Why?”
She had lost it, but where?
Cyn thinks, overcome with foggy blankness. That’s where those memories are: lost in some inaccessible part of her mind where it’s rainy and cloudy.
Gray.
Photos slip out from between the pages. Oceans and boats, beaches and homes. Old people smiling at the camera, having the time of their life. The photos are glossy, developed from film long ago. One of the photos is older than the others. The woman is younger, her hair not so gray.
Blonde.
“She brought me here.”
Linda doesn’t answer.
“Do you know where she is?”
“There are some leads.”
Cyn traces the outline of Barbara Graham’s face, wondering if she ever spoke with her. Of course she did. Her face is so familiar; they probably become friends, probably rode horses and hiked trails. She likes to think that she and Barbara ate dinner together.
She thinks she’d like to meet her again one of these days. And she hates herself for having that thought. But she can’t stop. She drops the book and photos in the box, all except the one that shows her blonde hair. That one ends up in her back pocket. If she ever sees her, she’s not sure if she’ll hug her or knock her out.
Or both.
If she ever sees Mr. Williams, she knows exactly what she’ll do. Tell him that he’s dead.
Laughter in the back of the house.
They walk past the kitchen, the cabinets open and empty. Boxes on the counter. Everything bagged and tagged for analysis, as if the old women were hiding in coffee cans.
Linda passes Cyn, looks into the back room. “Gentlemen.”
The laughter fades off.
There’s muttering.
Linda glances back down the hall. The foul odor is stronger, mixed with the fumes of a scented candle. Cinnamon. It doesn’t do much to mask death. She breathes through her mouth but then she can taste it.
Cyn steps inside slowly. The body is gone. She wonders if it was back here, sitting in a chair, dead from a heart attack or a guilty conscience. There’s another door on the back wall, this one closed.
Monitors wrap around the right side of the room, the largest in the corner. Two men sit in chairs, keyboards on the counter. Thomas is next to them.
Thomas slaps their seats. “Give us five minutes.”
The techs tap a few keys, shut down their work before leaving without looking at Cyn.
“What is this?”
“Headquarters,” Thomas says. “These computers monitor the entire camp. It’s a lot smaller than the island; that’s why the old women only managed half a dozen girls at a time. Still, it may have cost a billion dollars to set it up and maintain its secrecy. Cameras are everywhere, constantly recording and backing up.”
Thomas taps on the keyboard. The monitors begin cycling through views. She sees the tents on one monitor, the inside of the bunkhouse on another. She remembers the floodlights but never thou
ght there were cameras. That means Miranda could see them. Before that, the old women had watched them.
They knew everything.
He points at the batteries and generators on the other side of the room.
“That’s why there are so many power generators. If you think about it, one wind harvester would be enough for normal living. Their demand was much more than that.”
“Patricia,” Cyn mutters. Something tugs at her stomach.
Thomas looks at the big monitor. An old woman lies in a very small room with electrodes taped to her head, face, and chest; wires are bundled and connected to machines in the corner, where there’s barely enough room to stand.
He looks at Linda, then Cyn. “Yes,” he says slowly. “How do you know that?”
“Mr. Williams said she was in that cabin in the woods. We couldn’t get inside, though.”
And I took her IVs. And now they’re gone.
“He said she was the dreamer,” she says. “Are the girls inside her? Is that what he meant?”
“We don’t really know,” Thomas says. “Her brain activity is remarkable. Based on what we’ve learned about Foreverland and what you said, we’re assuming that she’s operating like a host computer—an organic server, so to speak. I don’t know if you know what that means—”
“I know what that means.”
Her emotions boil up. She’s tired of this victim crap. She wasn’t a stupid kid.
“Instead of watching a movie, I was in it. She created a world in her mind and the old ladies sent me there.”
“That’s right.”
“So that’s where the girls are, right now.”
He’s nodding. “We believe so, yes.”
“Why?”
Thomas balks. Linda’s hand is on her shoulder again. “Cynthia,” she says in her softest, most supportive therapist voice, “we think they sent you there so you wouldn’t come back.”
“Come back where?”
Cyn knows, but she asks anyway. She doesn’t hear Linda answer. Doesn’t need to. The old women bring the destitute, the hopeless, the dregs of society out here to the middle of nowhere. Old women spend millions to sponsor a perfect young woman with a twisted mind in a healthy body.
Foreverland Is Dead Page 18
