by H. G. Nadel
She lowered the cup and stared into it. Then she looked up at the mirror and saw faint lines revealed by the steam, letters drawn with a finger. “I’ll never leave you,” it said. Julia hitched in a shuddering breath and tried to say “Mom?” but no sound came out. She ran a flat palm across the steamed mirror, erasing the words. But the strong smell of coffee remained.
Julia got ready quickly, eager to leave the apartment that had seemed a safe haven until a moment ago. Fifteen minutes later she exhaled in relief as she locked her car door behind her. She drove away, her mind still full of what had happened in the bathroom, but not so full that it could ignore the return of the sensation that someone was following her. She glanced into the rearview mirror a couple of times, sure she saw a repeating glint of sun reflecting off chrome. But when she looked over her shoulder, she only saw the impatient surge and crawl of all the other 8:45 A.M. drivers late for work.
ELEVEN
Julia thought about the words on the bathroom mirror as she drove. She began to wonder if maybe the man who had followed her last night had gotten into her apartment somehow and written those words: “I’ll never leave you.” Did she have a stalker?
She pulled into the parking lot in front of Research Building Three, stepped out of the car, and felt two hands cover her eyes. She didn’t scream but, instead, ducked and spun around, her arms bent in a circle, the way she remembered from the self-defense class her father had made her take in preparation for the uncertainties of campus life. Her left arm swept up and under the arm of her assailant then down across his back as she stepped to the side and whipped around, throwing him off balance and sending him staggering to his knees.
She was ready to deliver a kick to his stomach and run screaming for help, when he grunted, “What the hell, Julia! It’s just me! It’s me!” She took in the basketball uniform before Tyler turned his face up to hers in stunned surprise.
She stepped back and hunched over her legs, hands on her thighs, gasping for air. “Holy crap! You scared me!”
“I scared you? Jeez, GI Jane, where’d you learn to do that?” He rose from the ground and started to laugh.
“Are you crazy? Why would you sneak up on me like that after all that’s happened the past few days?”
“I’m sorry, babe. It’s just a habit. I just wasn’t thinking.” He stopped laughing. “Why so tense? Did something else happen?”
“A man followed me last night.” Julia leaned back against her car, still struggling to catch her breath. “At least I think so.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know. It was dark. I parked my car, and then he started following me to the building. So I ran to my apartment, and he followed me upstairs. But he didn’t try to attack me or anything. So I guess I could have imagined it all.”
Tyler looked genuinely worried. “Was it the man from the graveyard?”
Julia thought, then shook her head. “Maybe. The man at the graveyard was thin, just like this guy. But it’s always been too dark to see a face.”
“What do you think he wanted?”
“I’m guessing it had something to do with our research.”
“I’m so sorry,” Tyler said, genuinely concerned. She wished he would ask about her research—why it was so important to her and, she believed, to the world. But instead, he put his arms around her, and she found that an acceptable alternative. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“I knew you were still playing video games over at Rob’s, and I didn’t want to bother you when I didn’t know for sure.” She left out the fact that she had tried to call Austin.
Julia had spent most of the night trying to convince herself a random neighbor was simply walking to his apartment and the light had been broken by kids playing ball. But after this morning, she was no longer willing to dismiss all the strange things that were happening to her as paranoia. This much coincidence was statistically impossible.
Julia changed the subject. “What are you up to this morning? How did you know I was here?”
“Just a guess. I was on my way to practice when I spotted your car. I thought you might want to come with me and then go grab a burger at Shakes after.”
She hesitated. Last week she would have jumped at the chance. But right now she was more eager to get at Dr. Bertel’s lab notes. “I’d love to, but I can’t today. I have a lot of stuff to do.”
“What stuff? Until your boss turns up, you really don’t even work here, anymore.”
“I have a feeling that the answers to my recent problems may be found in Dr. Bertel’s lab notes.”
“But isn’t that the job of the police?”
“Well, Austin has asked me to help him look for something that might clue us in to what happened to Dr. Bertel.”
“So now he’s Austin?”Julia had seen Tyler’s jealousy before, and she usually found it flattering. But now it was stifling. “Did Austin ask you to dress like that too?
“It’s hot out,” Julia mumbled, feeling a wave of guilt wash over her.
“It’s been hot all summer, Julia. But this is the first time I see you wear a skirt, except when Nadia drags you out dancing.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“An IQ of 150, and that’s the best you can come up with?”
“145.”
“Whatever. What’s up with you, Julia? I know that some bad juju has gone down in the past couple of days, but you’re acting kinda weird. I can’t put my finger on it, but something is definitely up.”
“I’m sorry, Tyler. I—I’ve just got a lot to figure out. After what happened in the graveyard, I just haven’t been able to get my head right. I think I’m fine, and then my whole body is suddenly pulsating. My chest feels like it’s closing in on me, and …” Julia trailed off.
“You sure it’s just that?” Tyler seemed skeptical.
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Okay. Well, I need to get to practice. Take care of yourself, okay?” Tyler leaned forward for a kiss, and Julia gave him a peck on the lips.
“Thanks for understanding, Tyler. I’ll call you later.” She grabbed her laptop bag out of her car and headed into the building. But not before catching the flash of astonishment on Tyler’s face. Julia had lied—and they both knew it.
Before Julia entered the building, she stopped in her tracks, again convinced that someone was following her. She whipped around, but all she saw was Tyler’s red convertible speeding out of the parking lot, tires screeching as he took a left turn in front of another car. Her stomach was in knots. Julia gave herself one last look and then made a beeline for the entrance to Research Building Three.
She hurried through the entrance and to the elevator, but the wait made her feel antsy, so she darted toward the stairs. Her footsteps echoed on the concrete steps, making it sound as if there were two pairs of feet descending to the basement. Are you there? She paused. Nothing. Must be an echo. Still, she ran the last flight and straight-armed the metal bar on the exit door. She felt better in the basement hallway. Spooky as the weird blue lighting could seem, she knew that the security guard regularly passed through here on his rounds, and the thought comforted her.
Julia dropped off her laptop in the lab, crossed the hall to Bertel’s office, and ducked under the crime scene tape. She paused just inside the doorway and scanned the room. Everything looked the same, yet it seemed as if something were out of place. She turned to look at Bertel’s file cabinet. One of the drawers was the slightest bit open, maybe a quarter of an inch. She couldn’t remember whether it had been that way when Austin was here, but it seemed wrong. She looked at the laptop on his desk. It wasn’t squared with the corners of the desk, the way it usually was. Maybe Austin had moved it.
Julia had just started looking through Bertel’s notes when the phone on Bertel’s desk rang. She bolted upright, once again dislodging the yellow tape from the doorjamb. She walked to the phone, trying to calm the heart palpitating mercilessly in her chest, and checke
d the caller ID. She couldn’t believe it.
Julia slowly picked up the phone and lifted it to her ear, as if it were a bomb that might go off if jostled. She held the mouthpiece close to her lips and spoke in a barely audible voice. “Dr. Bertel?” She didn’t know why she felt compelled to whisper. Apprehension filled her heart with misgivings.
“Julia? Is that you?”
“Yes, Dr. Bertel, it’s me. Where are you?”
“I’m at the back of the building. Would you please come let me in?”
“Don’t you have your key card?”
“No. I … lost it.” Julia thought that was somewhat odd, but forgetting things was not unlike him.
“Doctor, where have you been?” She tried for a calm, even tone, but her voice cracked.
“I’m not entirely sure. I couldn’t remember anything until a few hours ago.”
“Do you remember getting electrocuted?”
“No, though I noticed that I have some disfiguring burns. I do seem to remember a burst of light and the sound of shattering glass. But very little before or after that.”
“Can electrocution cause memory loss?”
“Any sudden shock can affect brain function.” He sounded confused.
“Do you remember me?”
“Yes, a little. I know you’ve been my research associate this summer, but I don’t remember much of anything about our research. My memory from the past two months is almost completely gone.”
Julia breathed a sigh of relief. At least he knew who she was. She could fill him in on the research later. “What do you remember?”
“The first thing I remember is standing in a ditch alongside the 405. Just a few hours ago. I hitchhiked home, then changed, showered, and turned on the TV. There was a segment about my disappearance. It said that you saved my life. It said I used to have a son.” When he said the word “son,” his voice cracked. “Now I can’t stop thinking about him. I found him at the bottom of the stairs. His neck was broken. It was my fault. Did I ever tell you that?”
Julia felt as if a hand were squeezing her heart. “I know, Dr. Bertel, and I’m so sorry for your loss.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then Bertel spoke. “Julia, could you please let me in? I’m afraid someone will see me.”
“But everyone’s concerned about you. They all worry you’ve been kidnapped. Why don’t you want them to see you?”
“I don’t know. I—I think I’m being followed. Please, Julia! I’m … worried.”
Him too. Julia was now certain that they were being targeted. “Okay, I’ll be right up.” She paused and then asked, “Dr. Bertel, do you remember when I revived you?”
“No, I’m sorry. What happened?”
“Do the words ‘Tu m’appartiens’ mean anything to you?”
“Should they?” He sounded perplexed.
With those words, Julia’s earlier feelings of apprehension were, for the moment, assuaged. Whatever possessed Dr. Bertel the night of his electrocution was gone now. “I’ll be right up.”
When she reached the back door, she opened it a cautious crack. “Dr. Bertel!” she called in a whisper.
“Julia?” She turned her head to the right and spotted a disheveled man squatting behind a bush. He was obviously distraught.
“Come on!” she said.
“Is anyone else there?”
She poked her head out and surveyed the narrow alley behind the building, her eyes pausing at the trash bins. She swayed on tiptoes, trying to see around them. “It looks clear.”
Keeping his head down, Bertel scurried toward the door and slipped through it. She shut the door behind them. Up close, he looked like something from a zombie movie. His face was still a patchwork of peeling red and black burns. His hands shook. His hair stood on end, as if he were still being electrocuted.
“Dr. Bertel, we need to call the police and tell them you’re okay. Or really, that you’re not okay. In fact, you should still be in the hospital.”
“No!” Bertel was emphatic. “No, we can’t! I think someone is out to get me, and I don’t know who I can trust.”
She paused, thinking. “You can trust Austin.”
“Who’s Austin?”
“A detective.”
Bertel shook his head. “Can we go someplace private to talk first? Maybe look at some of the things in my office? Anything that might jog my memory. If I can just remember why I might be in danger, then I’ll feel safe to call the police.”
“You told me that our research was dangerous.”
“Is it? I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything! Please, Julia, help me!” She would have found Bertel’s desperate plea upsetting even if she weren’t already frightened.
“Long-term amnesia isn’t common, Dr. Bertel. You’ll remember,” Julia reassured. “Just think. You’ll have first-hand experience about what it’s like to come back from the dead.”
“What are you talking about?” He looked more than confused. He looked panicked.
She laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Come on. We’ll talk.”
She started to walk him toward the elevator, until she heard footsteps clacking against the tile floor. The security guard was coming, so she made one last-ditch effort.
“Let’s go get the security guard, Dr. Bertel. He can help us get to the hospital.”
“No!” Bertel said with uncharacteristic ferocity. So Julia acquiesced. They slipped into the stairwell and started down, both of them taking care not to make too much noise. Funny how the security guard that had seemed so comforting to her a few minutes ago now seemed like a threat. Funny how she now felt like a criminal.
TWELVE
Julia and Dr. Bertel tiptoed from his lab into his office, and Julia quietly pulled the door shut behind them. As he slumped into his chair, it struck her that he looked older. It wasn’t just the charred black and peeling red wounds scattered across his forehead, cheek, and neck. Something about him felt sort of—dead. Maybe it was that vacant look in his eyes. When he wasn’t talking, his eyes looked like those of someone suffering from catatonia.
Julia sat in the chair across from him but perched on the edge, ready to jump up at the first sign of trouble. She had no real idea what kind of trouble to expect, but the circumstances warranted caution.
“Julia, how long have we been working together?” Bertel asked.
“Just a couple of months.”
“Was the work we were doing … controversial?”
“You could say that. I think—” she shifted in her chair. “I think it was the same research that got you fired from the FBI.”
“The paper mentioned my book on demonic possession. Is that what we were working on?”
“Not exactly. We were trying to find physical evidence of the human soul. We thought that maybe the evidence was in the brain. We were using various drugs to see if we could induce the soul to return to the brain after death. We recently had a breakthrough—a very brief, very small chemical reaction in the brain.”
Bertel twitched violently and suddenly, but he quickly regained his composure. He grinned, and the effect of his bright white teeth against his partially ruined face was ghastly. He scratched the bridge of his nose with his index finger, and Julia noticed that his hand was trembling, the way hers sometimes did after too much caffeine. He caught the direction of her gaze and lowered his hand to the desk, where his fingers continued to vibrate against the dark veneer. He darted a look to the right, where a file cabinet drawer sat partially open. His eyebrows rose before he swallowed and turned back to her. There was a new, hungry look in his eye, and it made Julia’s skin crawl. She wondered if she could find a way to text Austin without Bertel noticing.
His voice grew terse. “What kind of drugs caused this change in the brain?”
She was afraid of how he might react if she didn’t answer, but she dared not give too many specifics. “Mainly PCP.” There. He couldn’t do much without the complete recipe for her
drug cocktail. “Anyway, we realized we needed to add physical stimulation to the mix, but we weren’t sure what kind. We’d started narrowing down those options the day before your … accident.”
“The electrocution?”
“Right. Dr. Bertel, you say you can’t remember anything before a few hours ago?”
“Not much.” He shook his head. “A few bits and pieces, but everything’s blurry.”
“Does the date July seventh mean anything to you?”
He put a hand to his head, and for a moment his eyes had their old shy sadness. No weird vacancy, no fierce hunter. “Yeah, it does. Isn’t that … I think … That’s the day my son died, isn’t it?”
Julia studied him, hoping he was returning to himself.
“Do you remember when you had your accident?”
His eyes widened with understanding. “That was the same date my son died.” He put his head in his hands, and Julia’s heart went out to him.
“Dr. Bertel, were you on any kind of medication, or under any kind of care at all, for depression?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Why? Do you think I tried to kill myself?”
“I don’t know.”
He thought about it for a moment, and then his body went rigid, his eyes took on that wild look again, and he jerked back in his chair—hard enough to tip the front rollers off the floor. “No! That doesn’t make sense. Why would I try to commit suicide when I was so close to a breakthrough?” Then his eyes went blank.
“Dr. Bertel, you’ve been through a lot, and well, I mean, have you looked in the mirror lately? You’re a mess. You should be in the hospital. We’re so close to the ER. Please, let me take you.”
“I can’t. I think someone’s after me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps someone else who wants to know about our discovery.”
“Then let’s call Austin, I mean Detective Moore, and tell him. Maybe he can have someone guard your room or something.”
