From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (148 page)

Deke was still gone. He had never returned from the basement.

Isaac hissed again.

Freeman lay on his back and stared up. The faint blue safety light by the door made the ceiling look like a starless night with a moon somewhere over the horizon. Or maybe it was the surface of the ocean and they were drowned. It really didn’t matter if they were all dead yet or not. Either way there was no escape.

Isaac was by his ear now, pesky as a mosquito. He whispered, “What happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“You got rid of Deke somehow, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“He wasn’t at dinner, he missed Group, and even Army Jacket’s looking a little lost. I’ll bet you and Vicky—”

“Never put her and me in the same sentence.”

“Or maybe it was Starlene. Or Kracowski? Did the mad doctor shock the monkey into a pile of ashes?”

“Are you on Ritalin or something?” Freeman asked.

“No, why?”

“You’re talking way too fast.”

“Bondurant made some of us go into his office. I’ve been there before. Never got a paddling, though. I hear that’s one of his deals.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Just asked if we’d been in the basement. Except, once he slipped and asked if I’d been playing ‘in the deadscape.’“

Deadscape. Freeman pulled the blankets tighter and tried not to think about the things under the bed and floor. “They got us trapped.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Wires. On all the fences. Can’t climb over without getting a shock that makes Kracowski’s treatments seem like a tickle.”

“Why?”

“Something to do with the Krackpot’s equipment, I think. And there’s a mysterious agency called the Trust that dabbles in this sort of weirdness. We’re the guinea pigs. But I don’t know what the experiment is.”

“No way. That would never happen in the land of the free. And I thought
I
was paranoid.”

“Isaac. You’re a Jew. What the hell do you know about freedom?”

Isaac knocked on his own skull. “I’m free up
here
. If you have that, then you win.”

Did Freeman have that sort of freedom? All he had was a screwed-up dad and screwed-up memories and rapid-cycle manic depression and a gift for triptrapping and, worst of all, he was falling into some sort of stupid attraction for a girl.

Attraction? Am I falling in love, or are my neurotransmitters screwed?

Now he was positive he was on the down cycle.

“Bondurant was drunk, as usual,” Isaac said. “He asked me if I’d seen the Miracle Woman.”

“Miracle Woman?”

“His eyes got all funny when he said her name. He looked at the walls like he expected to see cockroaches.”

“Isaac, do you believe in God?”

Isaac said nothing. Somebody coughed in the far end of the dorm. The stench of dirty laundry and bad breath hung thick in the room. The kid to Freeman’s right was snoring.

A voice came from the foot of Freeman’s cot. “He don’t believe in anything.”

It was Dipes. Dipes, who never uttered a word.

“Yes, I do,” Isaac said.

“Hush, because here comes the counselor,” Dipes said.

Isaac scrambled back onto his cot, Dipes ducked, and Freeman closed his eyes. Ten seconds later, the door to the Blue Room opened. A flashlight beam bounced around the room, froze on Freeman’s head for a moment, then the door slammed.

“How did you know he was coming?” Freeman said to Dipes.

The thin boy shrugged in the dim light. “Just knew. I’ve been knowing things lately. Knowing what’s going to happen before it happens. Like I saw Deke disappear in the basement, then one of those creepy guards took him to a secret room. And I ain’t seen Deke since. Can’t say I miss him none, though.”

“Freaky,” said Isaac.

“Wait a second,” Freeman said. “How many of Kracowski’s treatments have you had?”
“Five,” Dipes answered. “He said I was one of his favorites. Said I had so many problems I’d make a good case study.”

“Aren’t you better yet?”

Dipes said, “Look, someday when you got a few hours I could tell you the whole deal. But I don’t think we have a whole lot of hours left.”

“How come?” Isaac said.

“Because it’s going to open up.”

“What’s going to open up?” Freeman was impatient, and had to remind himself that he was talking to a nine-year-old who still wore diapers. And who now claimed to have powers of precognition, the ability to see the future.

“The door,” Dipes said. “The door to the deadscape.”

Isaac said, “What’s the deadscape, anyways? People keep talking about it, but what does it look like?”

Freeman had seen the deadscape as plain as day. To him, that world was as real as this one. Not everybody could triptrap, though. At least, not yet. But, if Kracowski’s experiments were giving people psychic powers, then who knew where it would end? What would happen if everybody in the world could read each other’s minds? And how would Freemen feel when his power was no longer so special?

He asked Isaac, “Haven’t you had a treatment yet?”

“No. Maybe I’m not screwed up enough to need curing.”

“Give them enough time and they’ll find something,” Freeman said.

“Well, they’re careful with me because my grandparents want me out of here, but no way am I going to get conditioned by some creepy old Jews. They believe Christians are out to wipe them off the face of the planet.”

“They probably are,” Freeman said.

“Plus they’d make me get good grades.”

“Better the devil you know, huh?”

Dipes tapped on the rail of Freeman’s bed.

A couple of guys were talking across the aisle. One of them snickered.

“Tell us what happens,” Freeman said to Dipes. “What you see.”

“I don’t know what the deadscape is, all I know is there’s a white door in the floor. And the door swings open, and it’s real bright, and all these people pour out and their eyes are crazy and they want to get us—”

“Calm down,” Freeman said.

“They’re people, but they don’t have no bodies. They scream, but their lips don’t move. And we start dying. And I’m scared.”

Freeman fought off an urge to hug Dipes and comfort the little guy. The only way to survive this thing was to worry only about himself,
numero uno
, the budget Clint Eastwood AKA the Kid, starring as The Man With No Name in his most insensitive role ever. Because the future was looking pretty bleak, even from the spiderhole view of a manic depressive.

Whatever he’d seen in the deadscape was more than just a triptrap illusion, and couldn’t be explained away by screwed-up brain chemistry and misaligned neurons. Whatever walked down there was real. He believed without a doubt Dipes could see the future. At Wendover, everything was now believable, even the impossible.

Especially the impossible.

Isaac pulled his sheet over his head and made “whoooh” noises in imitation of a ghost. He lifted the sheet and stared at Freeman and Dipes, his face made eerie by the blue lighting. “Okay, let me get this straight. You’re trying to tell me a bunch of restless spirits are living in the basement—I mean, are
dying
in the basement. And they’re going to crawl out of the floor and do bad stuff to us. Okay, I’ll buy that, since we all know that ghosts do bad stuff because they’re jealous of us breathers and—”

“Isaac, you talk way too much.” Freeman wished they would go to sleep so he could be alone with his thoughts of Vicky. He’d had enough doom and gloom for one day.

To Dipes, he said, “When does this door of yours open?”

“I can see the future. But I ain’t learned to tell time yet.”

“Guys,” said Isaac. “Ghosts aren’t real. And nobody knows the future but God.”

“What are you nitwits talking about?” It was Army Jacket, who had crept out from the shadows.

Freeman felt brave in his despair, so he said, “Where’s your buddy?”

“What buddy?”

“Deke.”

Army Jacket’s eyes were black as beetles. “He ran away. He could blow this joint any time he wanted to.”

“Sure. And he didn’t invite you to run away with him. A goon like him needs a brainless sidekick. It’s hard to picture Deke out there in the real world, getting by on his wits.”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

“Somebody around here better be smart. Because we’re in trouble.”

“What the hell is this ‘ghost’ stuff?”

“Ghosts are what got Deke. Down in the basement.”

“Bull. That’s baby crap.”

Dipes stuttered in the presence of his tormentor, but managed to say, “Wuh—we had those treatments. Now we can see through the walls.”

Army Jacket snickered. “I had the treatment, too, and I’m not crazy yet. Unless they’re giving you some pills or something. If they are, I want some.”

“Ghosts aren’t real,” Isaac said.

“Oh, yeah?” Freeman said, pointing to the wall on the far side of the dorm. “Try telling
her
that.”

Against the painted cinder blocks, flickering like the image cast by an old film projector, the woman without eyes smiled her dead smile.

Bondurant stepped back from the window. Dawn was still an hour away, and he knew he’d be unable to sleep until the sun rose. No matter how much he drank.

Since fleeing the basement, he’d wandered the halls of Wendover, flashlight in hand, trying to forget what he’d seen. Or what he thought he’d seen. The memories were blurred now, softened by Kentucky bourbon and that trick of the night that allowed you to delude yourself.

Now he was checking out the dark rooms where classes and group sessions were held on the second floor. All the rooms were empty.

No, not empty. The stink of something strange clung to the shadows, and a couple of times he’d seen movement from the corners of his eyes. But when he turned his head, the fluttering shapes evaporated. He was in a room near Kracowski’s lab.

Damn Kracowski. He was the cause of all this. So what if he’d brought in money? The Lord had no place in this new Wendover, where machines and ghosts ruled.

Bondurant sat in one of a circle of chairs and flipped off the flashlight to save batteries. He closed his eyes and felt for the chair beside him. Kids sat here and tried to solve their problems, trapped in this evil church of psychology, with an overly-educated counselor serving as minister. If Bondurant had his way, the little sinners would bend in prayer instead, talking to God instead of each other.

Group therapy was one of the few trends that had survived endless waves of supposed bright ideas. Newer, better, smarter, the counselors kept coming up with fresh roads into the human mind, all the while neglecting the soul. The soul was the only thing that needed healing. Let the Lord take care of the rest.

Bondurant felt for the flask in his coat pocket, pulled it out and twisted the lid free. He held the flask in the air.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” he said. The words bounced off the cinder block walls.

He put the flask to his lips, tasting the sting of liquor around the rim. He drank, but only a few drops remained. He pushed his tongue against his teeth and took a deep breath. Wendover’s air was full of dust and dead things.

The bourbon was gone. He was alone.

“I don’t have a problem,” he said to the dark room.

That’s what they always say. He’d read enough case files to know that even young children could become alcoholics. But Bondurant wasn’t an alcoholic. Because alcoholics had problems with drinking, and he had no problems. He occasionally sinned, but his sins were forgiven because someone had died for them. Someone else’s blood had washed those sins away.

The solution was so simple that he could never understand why the psychological establishment didn’t embrace it with joy.

But his head swam too much to wrap completely around the angry thought, and he slumped in his chair. This was his church, he realized. Not a church in the way the Baptists built them, strong and expensive, like military bunkers. This was a mental church, standing under a steeple of his own solitude and power.

Out there, in the real world, he was nothing but a suit and a handshake. Even at his expensive home in Deer Run Estates, he was just a shadow passing between the furniture, no more substantial than the photograph of his ex-wife that rested on the mantel. Here at Wendover, he was important. He had value. He was admired and appreciated, even loved.

Loved by the weak, and by those he tried to lead to salvation.

He sat in the circle of chairs.

His group.

Lost in the blackness.

“What would Jesus do?” he asked the silence. No one answered. Some group this was. You come in expecting to be understood but all you got were stupid stares.

He spoke louder now, a preacher at the lectern. “Jesus would say, ‘Take another drink,’ that’s what Jesus would say.”

“Sounds good to me,” came a voice from the darkness.

Bondurant shuddered himself alert, thinking he’d drifted into unconsciousness. “Who said that?”

“Me,” said the voice.

Bondurant’s hand trembled around the flashlight. He put his thumb on the switch, but was afraid to see the thing that had spoken. It was a female voice, calm and doomed and coming from a chair across the circle. He wondered if it was the woman with the smiling scar, the one who had disappeared into the wall. She had never spoken, though, except with her eyes. This one had a voice.

It couldn’t be one of the staff. He would have heard the door open, and the halls were all lit by faint security fixtures. No one had entered. Except through the walls, or maybe down from the sky. Or up from the floor. From the deadscape.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Bondurant said.

“I belong here.”

“Who are you?”

“Me.”

Bondurant’s pulse pounded against his skull. He was drunk and dreaming, that was all. He wasn’t sitting here talking to nobody. “I’m Francis,” he said.

Three voices came in unison from the darkness. “Hello, Francis.”

He groped for the flask again and remembered it was empty.

“Do you have a problem, Francis?” came one of the voices, this one from his left, a female voice scratchy from cigarettes.