by J. Thorn
Dad turned back to Vicky, and the force of his triptrap seared through both of them. “So he finally told you, didn’t he, lard-ass? And it’s all true, except for that part where he said I was the one who made him do it. Truth is, you always wanted to kill her, didn’t you, Freeman? It was your idea, and you built this little fantasy where I was the one who made you do it. You can’t out-shrink me, can you, Trooper?”
Freeman wished he could slip back into his flesh and suffer some ordinary pain. He didn’t want to die like this, with the guilt pressing on him, a blame that would follow him beyond death forever.
Vicky’s thoughts swept into him, crowding Dad’s. “Hang on, Freeman. Whatever happened, it’s over now.”
“Over?” Dad triptrapped a psychic tornado. “It’s only beginning. Because mind control doesn’t have to end just because your heart stops. Thanks to Kracowski, I can mess with you for the rest of eternity.”
In a flash, Freeman saw a vision of what Dad had in store, a timeless future where Dad raped Vicky and made Freeman watch, where he shoved doughnuts into her mouth, where Dad brought Mom back to life so Freeman could kill her over and over again, where the insane dead people threw their tortured thoughts into Freeman’s head, where all the pain of all the souls in the world could be his. A hell in his head.
The vision fell away and he was back on the bridge, Vicky receding on the far end, the bridge flickering and fading beneath them, Dad’s dark soul swelling, merging with the greater blackness beyond, joining the deadscape, becoming it, taking on a power that surrounded everything, that built a universe where there was no room for light or peace.
The edges of the deadscape quivered, monsters moaned from their hidden holes, ghosts whispered sorrows, despair rained in gray and washed the bridge away. The darkness ate at Freeman, nibbled him with its teeth, and he was tired, ready to surrender, because Dad was right.
It was his fault.
And he deserved every kind of punishment that Dad could dream up.
As he closed the eyes of his soul, a bolt of lightning juiced through him, an electroshock of energy.
“We can beat him,” Vicky said, flooding his head, filling him up. “Together.”
Filling him up and up and up.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Starlene pressed her damp palm around the gun. Was this the answer to her prayer? A sign from God?
God didn’t send you anything you couldn’t handle.
But what could she do? There didn’t appear to be a safety switch. She knew how to point and pull the trigger. But could she actually shoot another human being?
“I see another future,” Dipes said.
“Great,” Isaac said. “Please tell me in this one we all live happily ever after, even the Jews.”
“That never happens in any future.”
“Well, how about this? Starlene makes like one of Charlie’s Angels and blows away the bad guys.”
“Sort of. Except, we better get out of the basement.”
“Because it’s going to collapse, right?”
“No. Because it’s all going to be a deadscape.”
Starlene said, “You guys head for the stairs. I’ll be right behind you. I have to do something first.”
Isaac grabbed Dipes’s hand and Starlene pushed the two of them into the corridor. The basement was a crazed kaleidoscope of lights and noise. She waited until she saw the stairwell door swing closed, then slipped to the opening of the main area, where the lights strobed and the machinery whined. She peered down the corridor and saw Kracowski slumped to the floor, holding his head in his hands. McDonald lay inert by the cell where Vicky and Freeman were locked away. The large curved panels, like something off a space station, shook with whatever Dr. Mills was pumping into them. Mills himself stood behind the computer, eyes closed, a twisted smile on his lips.
“What now, God?” she asked, holding the gun in front of her.
A hand fell on her shoulder, and she turned, half-expecting to see the face of God, or maybe the Miracle Woman, but it was Randy, and his punch landed and her mind screamed blue and she heard the distant clatter of the gun falling to the floor just before her head cracked against the cold concrete.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Warm.
That was what this union was, that was what hope and faith felt like. Vicky was right. Together, you could beat back the darkness. Together, you never had to surrender or apologize.
“Oh, that’s just hilarious,” Dad said, twenty feet tall now, grim smoke pouring out of his soul. “You murder your goddamned mother and then think you get away with a slap on the wrist because now you have somebody to share the blame. That’s not the way it works, Trooper.”
“You don’t know everything,” Freeman triptrapped, angry now, feeling the warmth expand, watching as the bridge grew brighter beneath Dad’s monstrous shape. “You think you’re God but you’re just as much of a loser as I am. Worse, even. Because I never asked for this and you searched for it. You begged for it and sold your soul for it. You pulled out every trick in your sick little book, but it’s nothing but a meaningless mind game. And now the game’s over.”
“He lied,” Vicky said. “He never gave you a gift. He gave himself the gift.”
“Shut up, bitch bones.” Dad quivered, his mouth alive now with dark shapes that fluttered like winged creatures. “I’m the one who controls things around here. This is a world I built.”
“Then you can have it,” Freeman said. “Because we’re getting out of here. In the deadscape, nobody has to follow your rules.”
And he focused, shielded himself from Dad’s thoughts, sent himself out and up, and Vicky joined him, the strength of their combined triptrap going through the deadscape and back to the real, living world and through the walls of the cell into the basement:
Dad, in the flesh, at the computer.
Kracowski in pain, stomach tight, mind sick with regret.
McDonald, rolling over, mad with the visions of things he’d never expected.
Randy . . .
Randy?
Randy, shielded, going to McDonald, a mission to complete.
And Starlene.
Freeman and Vicky went into Starlene’s head, saw only gray. And then black.
And they were back in the deadscape.
Dad stood between them again.
Freeman tried another triptrap, this time not beyond the deadscape but into it. He called to those who hid behind the darkness, those who orbited this freakish universe. The dead. The ghosts. The true rulers of this bleak land.
Vicky joined him, and the broken, sad thoughts spilled into them, the dreams and screams of those who had died in the basement, those whose souls were stitched into this fabric, those who belonged here.
A form came up from the blackness, the Miracle Woman, her light faint but unyielding, and Dad was confused for a moment, as if the playground had changed without his knowledge.
“That’s right, you bastard,” Freeman said, taking advantage of the lapse. “If you want to play God, then you may as well meet those whose souls you own.”
The Miracle Woman ascended to the bridge, as soft as a snowflake, and the bridge grew brighter. Her eyes were healed, her face clear, her soul pure. And as she joined the bridge, it grew brighter, the world tilted yet again and a storm roared from the dark corners of the deadscape. A keening of a strange wind arose and swirled around the bridge.
The Miracle Woman’s shape dissolved, shifted, the soul realigned. And Mom stood in her place.
Mom.
“Don’t turn away,” Vicky told Freeman, and he looked into Mom’s eyes, Mom who bore no scars, Mom who held no regrets.
“It’s okay, Freeman.” Mom smiled at him. “Vicky’s right. It wasn’t your fault.”
Dad swelled in rage, a hideous black disease, and hovered over Mom as if ready to collapse on top of her, drag her back into dim memory. “What the HELL are you doing here? WHO TOLD YOU TO COME BACK?”
�
�Oh, didn’t I tell you? Something I learned after you killed me. You carry your dead with you, Kenneth.”
Freeman triptrapped her, and saw the truth of it: Dad had experimented on Mom, made her a victim, too. And Dad was the one who came into the bathroom with the knife, Dad was the one whose perverted flesh wanted to taste that ultimate power. And Freeman triptrapped Dad, who was weakened now, and saw what Dad had hidden away, that Dad had planted the memory of Freeman committing the murder, muddled in his hippocampus and built a corrupt story.
Mom grew larger, became the Miracle Woman again, white and hot and angry, and all the ghosts of the deadscape spilled from their secret spaces, swarmed into the Miracle Woman, became a large shining globe, brighter than a billion stars, and now it was Mom, as big as the world, burning Dad, scorching him, and Dad’s soul screamed and scattered and a scrap of thought flew into Freeman’s mind, and Freeman and Vicky held together in the face of this strange explosion, the Big Bang of a separate universe, the simultaneous birth and death of a place that couldn’t exist.
And Freeman triptrapped, Vicky with him, everywhere at once, the gift grown large, and he saw Starlene blink awake, look through fogged eyes at Dad standing over the computer, and her hand clawing for the pistol, then she had it and she raised to her elbow and fired at the computer, hoping to destroy it, but the shot went wide and glanced off Dad’s shoulder and struck a large tank that stood against the wall.
As the tank hissed from the puncture, Freeman and Vicky triptrapped Starlene and told her to run up the stairs and quick, don’t worry about us, we will be just fine, we are together and the bridge doesn’t have to break and there’s always hope with a thousand roads to healing and good-bye and then Dad’s final thought cut in and Freeman wondered if Dad would ask to be forgiven.
Dad said, “You carry your dead with you, Trooper,” and then he was gone, his brain frozen, and the deadscape shimmered, became something strange and wonderful, and he suffered the slightest fear, but then Vicky’s hand, her real hand, was in his as the cold settled around, the cold that seeped under the cell door, a cold that stole their breath and took away their pain.
Together they said a final farewell to flesh and walked into a landscape of their own.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Starlene stood at the gate of Wendover, looking back at the cold stones and unblinking windows of the building. The children had been evacuated and now milled around as if it were a holiday, playing under the trees, throwing pine cones at each other, yelling as the trucks drove past and around the building. The clouds had broken up and the world was bright with autumn, full of the promise of change.
“What did you do?” Isaac asked her.
“I’m not sure. All I know is I pulled the trigger and Freeman and Vicky told me to run, I was in the stairwell and I thought they must have escaped and gone ahead, because it sounded like their voices were far away. Some kind of gas was leaking from the tank, so I closed the door to the stairs, then came out and saw you guys, and the guards were bringing the other kids out of the gym.”
“The door,” Isaac said. “It locks automatically.”
Starlene felt the blood leave her face. “They were trapped-”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Isaac said. “Blame it on the idiots who put the brain cookers down there.”
Dipes shook his head. “I didn’t see this one. Not with Freeman and Vicky and all the rest of them down there.”
“Where are they?”
The boy smiled. “I can’t see anymore. Once the machines shut down, the future was gone. But I think they’re going to be okay.”
Had she killed them? How could she ever forgive herself? Starlene wiped at her eyes, ignoring the clenched fist of pain around her heart, making herself be strong for the children. “I hope you’re right.”
“Well,” Dipes said. “Some futures, nobody knows about.”
“God knows,” Starlene said. “God knows everything.”
Paula Swenson was talking to Bondurant in the driveway, and a shaken Bondurant nodded and rubbed at his head. He pulled a silver flask from his pocket and Swenson smiled in approval as he took a gulp. He shivered, his eyes bloodshot and his skin pale.
Starlene approached them. She overheard Swenson say, “You were drunk the whole time, got it? They’re going to ask you questions but you don’t know anything.”
“I don’t know anything,” Bondurant said. “Believe me, I don’t know anything. You can say that again. I don’t know anything.” He tilted the flask again, and it flashed in the afternoon sun.
Swenson turned to Starlene. “You have no idea what you’ve done.” Her voice was cold, harsh, and she was not at all the giggly, girlish thing she’d been before. Starlene saw a pistol tucked into her waistband.
“I think I have some idea. But I guess I’ll never know the rest.”
“You already know too much. We can get rid of the machines, and we’ve got the data on file, so at least Kracowski’s work won’t be wasted.”
“You’re in it with them, aren’t you? What Freeman called the ‘Trust’?”
“The Trust doesn’t exist.”
“What I’m wondering is how you’re going to explain this to the authorities.”
Swenson gave a tired smile. She looked old, wrinkled around the eyes. “You mean, how did six people freeze to death on a warm September day? I guess we’ll have to call in a few favors. And count on you to keep your mouth shut. Or maybe we’ll just blast your memory to pieces. You wouldn’t want to end up in a mental ward, would you?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, I forgot. You’re the self-sacrificing type. Religious. Into the whole martyr bit. Well, let’s try another way. You don’t want anything bad to happen to these kids, do you?”
Starlene looked around at the children playing, at Dipes and Isaac watching her from the gate, a vacant Deke sitting off by himself, plucking at invisible blades of grass. She glanced at the barbed wire and then across the grounds, at the lake where the dead man had walked, at the crumbling building where crews were frantically hauling equipment up from the basement. Then she looked to the mountains beyond.
What would she say to the police or DSS? That a secret agency had conducted mind control experiments and brought the dead back to life? That insane ghosts had risen from the floor? That she had communicated telepathically with the dead? And that she had helped kill six people, some of them innocent and some of them guilty?
She would end up in the loony bin if she told the truth. It all seemed like a strange nightmare, and even though she could still hear the echoes of Freeman’s and Vicky’s final thoughts, they were fading, and she couldn’t be sure they had ever existed.
She couldn’t be sure she had visited the land of the dead.
And she didn’t know for certain which truth was the real one.
Maybe the Trust had already scrambled her memory and she didn’t know it.
She shuddered. She hoped, with all her heart, that God knew and understood. And she reminded herself that God didn’t send you anything that you couldn’t handle.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said to Swenson. “You leave the kids alone. You get rid of Bondurant. They’ll shut this place down, but the kids will go to another group home. All of them, together. And I go with them. If your Trust has as much pull as I think, you should be able to swing that easy.”
Swenson waved at a panel truck that was coming up the driveway. She motioned it though the gate and watched as it headed down the gravel road, kicking up small clouds of dust that danced like ghosts before being swept away by the breeze.
“Deal. We’ll make the pistol disappear, too,” Swenson said. “We’re good at making things disappear. Remember that.”
Starlene’s eyes grew watery. Swenson sighed and handed her a wadded-up napkin from her pocket. “Get a grip. Nothing happened, remember? Do your God thing and hold on for them. I don’t want to have to come after you. I’d enjoy it, but it would be
a real pain in the ass.”
“I was just thinking of something Freeman told me. He said, ‘You carry your dead with you.’”
“Good one. Ought to come in handy during your next skull session. Now, excuse me. I have a lot of work to do. We can’t keep this incident secret forever, and we want to make sure the truth ends up just the way we want it.”
Swenson started to walk away, but Starlene grabbed her arm. Swenson’s face was blank, as impassive as the stones of Wendover.
“Tell them to give it up,” Starlene said. “People shouldn’t try to play God.”
“Who’s playing? You set us back a few years, but you know what else Freeman said? On one of the tapes, when he was six, and Kenneth Mills was first teaching him ESP?”
Starlene looked back at the kids. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“He said, ‘Daddy, is this what it’s like when God talks to you?’”
Starlene looked at the sky, a large blue thing stretching beyond imagination, endless and unforgiving, built of impossible pieces.
“Now get the hell out of here,” Swenson said. “From now on, this is none of your business.”
Starlene went to Dipes and Isaac and put her arms around them. “We need to talk,” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
“Charlie.”
“Yeah?” Charlie was in a bad mood. Nothing new there. Wife was diddling around with a manufactured home salesman and the eleven Miller Lites had been great last night, but weren’t so hot this morning. He’d busted his thumb with a hammer and, worst of all, this week’s paycheck was already spoken for. So the last thing he wanted was a jaw session with Jack Eggers.
Jack wiped gypsum dust from his nose. “Look at this.”
Charlie’s hip was pressed against a piece of sheet rock, holding the weight until he could get some nails in. “Come on, let’s get this room hung and get out of here.”
“This is screwed up.”
