The Dreaming Tree

by Matthew Mather

  He checked his watch again. Eleven twenty-three. Almost time.

  The regulatory hoops he’d had to jump through to get to this point were the hardest part of it. Experimentation on great apes had been banned in much of the world, but he had managed to get a special permit that sidestepped the Endangered Species Act in America by proposing a research plan that would enhance the survival of the species. He had certainly achieved this goal.

  He could clone bonobos, grow them in these artificial wombs. The transplant experiment wasn’t a part of the protocol, and he would face sanction, but this was the price of pushing society forward. And after tonight, he would be free of regulatory rules forever.

  He inspected the face of the most mature bonobo in the incubator at the far end of the lab. So peaceful and dreamless. Just an organic husk waiting for the root graft of its dreaming tree. This bonobo was the one he would use in the experiment. He imagined what the chimp would think when it opened its eyes for the first time. How much stronger it would feel! How long would it live? This was the real question.

  A juddering thud pulled Nicolae out of his reverie. He straightened up. “Antoine?”

  No reply.

  He turned and repeated, “Antoine?”

  A figure emerged from the dark at the back of the lab, but it wasn’t his bodyguard.

  “Hello, brother,” Roy said.

  His face looked contorted, grotesquely deformed yet grinning.

  The intruder held a machete in the air. Its blade glinted dully in the blue light.

  57

  “You really thought you could get away with it?”

  Roy had watched the doctor inspecting one of his horror-show curiosities for a few seconds before entering the room. He drank down the cool tonic of the moment after so many hours of fantasizing. The pain in his face, in his head, was beyond agonizing.

  “Just kill him.”

  Jake Hawkins danced around the vats of fetuses. The dead man was excited, too.

  Dr. Danesti’s mouth dropped open and his eyes went wide in the dim light. He retreated a pace, his back almost against the window wall of glass and the thousand-foot drop beyond. His teeth flashed in something resembling a snarl, but then the blank inspecting-an-insect-in-a-jar look that Roy so despised dropped over his face.

  “It’s good to see you, Roy,” the doctor said after a beat of silence. “I was worried.”

  “Worried you wouldn’t get all my money?” Roy advanced three steps down his aisle, making sure he could cut right, to the next aisle, to block any avenue of escape.

  “I had nothing to do with that.” Danesti held his hands up, palms out.

  Jake hung back to Roy’s side and leered at the doctor. “He’s lying.”

  “I know he’s lying.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Danesti asked.

  “None of your business.” Roy took another two steps toward the doctor.

  The blue vats and pygmy chimps rolled in waves in his vision. The walls and the ground under his feet vibrated in a disjointed but building rhythm. The shrill whine of the electromagnetic dishes in the communication tower above the skyscraper drilled deep into the inner folds of his brain. He had seen the antennas and heard their shrieking before he entered the building, but he had no choice.

  It had been easy enough to get in.

  He still had in his wallet the plastic entry card that gave him near-unlimited access to Eden’s inner sanctums. He was one of the corporation’s most valued customers, after all. He had used one of the side entrances, keeping his face down, but a security guard stopped him at the second-level elevators. He told the guard he was Royce Lowell-Vandeweghe, and showed him his access card, confiding that he was the big surprise of the evening—that he was to be the big announcement.

  Of course they had heard of him, he said. Of course it was a surprise—didn’t they know there was a big shocker planned for tonight? He had on a black tie and jacket, after all.

  Dr. Danesti asked, “What are you doing with the knife?”

  “You like experimenting, don’t you?” Roy took another two steps toward the doctor. His hand shook a little.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “You cut my head off. It seems only fair that I return the favor.”

  Jake Hawkins hovered eagerly in the fringes of his vision.

  “Think I’ll go downstairs,” Roy continued. “Meet the world’s media that you’ve so kindly congregated. Hold your severed head up and explain to them how you’ll live forever—that image should stick around in their minds for a while.”

  “You’re having a psychotic break, Roy,” Danesti said, and Roy could hear the confidence returning to his voice. “Your face is swollen. Your body is rejecting the tissue. You need to take some antirejection drugs.”

  “I think he’s right,” Jake said to Roy. “Maybe we get some more? Fix us up? We could still escape, you know. Just cut his head off and leave it.” The dead man brightened. “Or take it with us.”

  “Roy,” the doctor said, “you need to stop.”

  “Stop what? I know where you come from. What you’re doing. You want my mother. My wife.”

  “We can talk about that.”

  “About you stealing a billion dollars?” Roy bounded forward. Just one last vat holding one blue chimp clone separated them.

  “I’m refusing the donation. I had nothing to do with Eden being named as your beneficiary.”

  The good doctor did his best to maintain the expression of concerned reason, but it didn’t last. The edges of his mouth curled up in a terrified grimace. The fear bled out into eyes that widened, darting back and forth between Roy’s eyes and the blade in his hand.

  “So you admit it.”

  Roy lunged forward and grabbed the doctor’s tuxedo lapels with his right hand, wrapped his big fingers around the fabric, and twisted, lifting Danesti off the floor. Energy flowed into his limbs. The man felt weightless in his grasp.

  “You should have just told me the truth. That we’re twins. It didn’t have to come to this.”

  He hefted the machete in his left hand. He could sever the spinal column with a single blow. In his mind’s eye, he watched the doctor’s head tumble from his body.

  “Do it,” Jake urged.

  Roy’s arm twitched as a searing new pain eclipsed the banging in his head. He almost doubled over in agony. Danesti trembled in his grip, his feet still dangling above the floor.

  58

  “Roy!” Del shouted.

  She was soaking wet, her hair stuck to her head. She had ditched the heels for her Nikes and run the three miles from her loft in Greenwich Village to the Eden skyscraper in Midtown. She didn’t even try to get a taxi. Her father always said to keep in good shape because you never knew when it would come in handy.

  Her body shivered uncontrollably as it tried to warm up. She still had on the little black dress, and it hadn’t been much protection from the sleeting rain. She held up one shaking hand with her Suffolk County detective badge, the other down low where she would normally carry her gun.

  She had left her personal sidearm in her father’s lockbox. They had gone to the range yesterday and were going again tomorrow, and the chief had taken her service revolver when he put her on suspension. She had no weapon, but he didn’t have to know that.

  In the semidarkness at the far end of the lab, Roy held Dr. Danesti aloft like a child’s toy. He had a long blade in his hand. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to see what came next.

  “Roy. Listen to me for a second. Just stop.” Clicking the light on, Del put down her badge and pulled her phone from her purse. “Tell him what I told you to tell him,” she whispered to the man beside her.

  “What was that again?” he murmured.

  “I’ll repeat it for you,” she whispered. Then she yelled, “Roy, I’
ve got Sam with me. Your best friend. Listen to him.”

  On the run over, she had called Phipps, leaving audio and text messages. She figured he would be in Manhattan for New Year’s. She had done her research. A few days ago, she’d gotten a copy of the invitation list to Eden’s New Year’s gala. It was one of the parties for the who’s who in town. Roy’s mother was here, too, but Del didn’t see her as especially useful.

  Also on the run over, she had phoned the NYPD to confirm the arrest warrant for Roy, but she couldn’t find anyone above a desk clerk she could speak to in her desperate scramble—so she’d called her father.

  Roy looked back over his shoulder at her. Danesti swayed in the air, scraped his fingers ineffectually against his attacker’s muscular forearm.

  “S—Sam?”

  “Yeah, buddy, it’s me,” Samuel replied, his bushy gray beard and wild hair haloed by the blue glow of the vat beside him. He stood straight, hands up in an attitude of surrender.

  “Tell him Danesti didn’t know about the money,” Del whispered. She held her phone’s light out so that it illuminated Sam’s face.

  “Danesti didn’t know about the money,” Sam repeated.

  Del watched him, then glanced down to the end of the room to see the effect on Roy. He looked confused.

  “How do you know?” Roy said to Sam.

  “Just tell him Atticus was the one who changed the trust,” Del whispered urgently.

  Sam nodded and said in a loud voice, “Atticus was the one who changed the trust.”

  Two security guards behind Del edged forward, but she put out one hand to hold them back. She had brought security, of course. Had them try to contact the doctor’s bodyguard, and when they couldn’t, they came up here.

  She’d said it might be a hostage situation, that she was a negotiator with the police, and flashed them her badge. Dr. Danesti was promising a big announcement at the stroke of midnight, just fifteen minutes from now. This was likely not what he had in mind.

  “What now?” Sam whispered to Del. “What do I say now?”

  Roy’s face contorted, and he said through gritted teeth, “Sam, you have no idea what I know.” He turned to Danesti and drew back the machete. “This stops tonight.”

  Del looked at Sam’s face one last time and shoved him back. She ran forward four paces and stood up straight.

  “Listen to me, Roy!” she yelled. “We don’t want to have to shoot you.”

  Roy swung Danesti’s body around to put him between them. “You want to shoot me? I can’t be killed, because I’m already dead.”

  He charged at Del, the machete held high.

  59

  Hope Hawkins pulled the last plate from the kitchen cupboard, wrapped it in newspaper, and placed it gently on the others. The small kitchen was stacked with boxes of all sizes. Discarded ones she’d taken from the grocery store, the liquor store—anything that she could use to pack in.

  The start of a new year. Anything had to be better than the last.

  She sat on the edge of a wooden chair with wobbly legs and held the knuckles of one trembling hand her to mouth. She had grown to love this house. She knew all its imperfections, every creaky floorboard. The house was tiny, but that didn’t matter, because it had been filled with a dream, its sagging beams held up with love. It had been theirs—hers and Jake’s—and now they had to leave it.

  Two nights ago, someone had spray-painted the front of the house with something so vile and horrible that she forced it out of her mind. Yesterday, she went straight to the store to find as many boxes as she could.

  Today, just getting out of bed was all she could manage.

  The doctor gave her sleeping pills, but that didn’t stop the nightmares. She hadn’t slept in two weeks, ever since the police showed up on her doorstep. Since the FBI came in their unmarked cars. Asking questions and more questions. Names and dates. They had dug up the entire yard and uprooted half the surrounding woods. They hadn’t told her what they found there, but they did tell her what they found next door.

  The storage locker. Filled with body parts.

  And the headlines in the newspapers: “Jake Hawkins, Fire Island Killer.”

  The thought screamed through Hope’s mind. She had cried for days and nights. Her mother had taken Elsa to begin with, but she went and got her back. She tried to protect her, tried to shield her, but the kids at school were cruel. So were the adults. She had lost her job at the diner. The boss said it wasn’t his fault, but he needed to run a business. A family business. He couldn’t handle the crowds of curiosity seekers and the rumors. She understood.

  She had no money and no idea what she would do, but she had to be strong.

  Little feet padded down the stairs. “Mama, are you crying?”

  Hope hadn’t even noticed that she was sobbing quietly. Tears dripped onto the scratched parquet floor. She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand and swept back her long red hair with the other. “I’m just packing up, honey. We’ll get going soon.”

  Elsa came around the corner and into the kitchen. The same red hair as Hope, the same freckles. Just five years old, but her pretty eyes now had the look of someone older, their pale blue washed with a sorrow as deep as time. She had on her pink My Little Pony pajamas. “I’ll help, Mama,” she said. “You wanna empty the bottom ones, too?”

  The little girl had been through so much in the past two years. First the shock of losing her father, and now this? It made Hope feel as if she were screaming with lungs full of water at the bottom of a dark ocean, yet, somehow, they had to carry on.

  She said to her daughter, “Yeah, let’s empty the bottom ones.”

  She opened the baseboard cupboards and arranged a new box, and Elsa began a determined campaign to get everything out. Hope watched. Each item her child placed in the box reminded her of Jake. Of where they had bought that slow cooker. Of her telling Jake they didn’t need that food processor.

  “We’re going to go somewhere far away,” she said to Elsa. “Somewhere nobody knows us, okay? Somewhere warm. It’s going to be nice. You’ll see.”

  “Okay, Mama.” Her daughter continued working on the bottom shelf.

  How could Jake have done what they said he did?

  The psychologists had come over with the FBI that first week. They told her it wasn’t her fault, that she bore none of the blame. They said that psychopaths were often charming, that it was impossible to tell, that they lived normal lives right out in the open. Told her that she and Elsa were just cover, just a smoke screen for Jake to hide his true nature.

  So her whole life was a lie? Worse, she had loved a murderer? Given birth to his child? Revulsion and fear warred with her love and dedication. She gritted her teeth and willed back the tears. All those tender moments with Jake—all lies, fabrications. Jake had promised that he would always take care of them, never leave them, that he would never let go.

  A loud rap came at the front door. Hope flinched. Not again. Leave us alone, please. Another knock, and another.

  “Just a second,” Hope called out, her voice wavering.

  She scooped Elsa into her arms, held her snug, and walked to the front door. She took a deep breath and opened it. A huge man stood in the rain on their front steps.

  Royce.

  His face was misshapen, and red sores encircled his neck. His clouded eyes seemed to look straight through her.

  “What are you … What do want?” Hope stammered.

  She took a step back and clutched Elsa in her arms. She looked left and right for anything she could use as a weapon.

  The huge scarred man lumbered through the open door, his massive frame blocking out the light. He reached for Hope and growled, “We need to bury the past, once and for all.”

  60

  Officer Coleman pulled his wool cap lower to cover his ears, turned his collar up, a
nd rested for a second. He leaned on his shovel and looked out over the snow-crusted sand dunes and a gray Atlantic dotted with whitecaps.

  When he signed up to be a police officer, he never imagined that he would end up here, doing this. He took a deep breath, then stood up straight and thrust the shovel into the sand.

  It thudded against something.

  “I got another one,” someone behind him yelled.

  That made eight so far today. He pressed his shovel down. Maybe nine.

  The officers twenty feet to his left and right put down their shovels and walked back to the voice, but Coleman stayed there, dread tingling through him and raising the hairs on his arms and neck. More gently this time, he pushed his shovel into the soft sand and scraped it back. Something gray. And blue. He dropped to his knees, letting the shovel fall to one side. With his hands he scooped away the sand, brushing it away with his fingers. A swatch of red hair emerged.

  His head sagged. He was going to be sick.

  After two deep breaths, he got unsteadily to his feet. The sleeting rain was finally letting up. “I got one,” he said. Then louder: “I think I found her.”

  He looked back down at the red hair. Yeah, definitely her. The bodies weren’t even really dug into graves—just dumped between the dunes and covered in sand, as if the person who left them didn’t care anymore. Coleman tried to calm his stomach and lifted his nose into the sea breeze to take a deep breath.

  * * *

  Delta Devlin struggled up the side of a steep dune, the sand spilling down with each step. BB-size pellets of ice fell from the sky. She topped the ridge to find Officer Coleman gazing at his feet.

  “You okay?” She trudged over to him and looked down. “Yeah, that’s Primrose Chegwidden.”