From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (158 page)

“Her name is Vicky Barnwell,” Kracowski said.

Mills flipped through a folder. “That’s funny. You termed her ‘Patient 7-AAC’ in your records. Her ESP score was pathetic, though. We’ll see if we can fix that.”

“I’m sure you’ll do better. Compared to you, I’m just a guy who sweeps up after the lab closes.”

“Then watch and maybe you’ll learn something, and one day you can play ‘genius,’ too.”

Mills entered the rest of the commands, then keyed the machinery into action. The tanks hummed and Kracowski tried to visualize the process of the electricity running through the miles of coil wire in the superconducting magnet, the helium lowering the temperature and reducing the wire’s resistance. The draw on the electrical grid caused the scant lighting to grow even dimmer, until the room was cast in orange and deep blue. The whine of the machinery grew louder, and McDonald moved behind Mills’s computer as if that would provide some protection in case the tanks exploded.

Kracowski looked at his wristwatch. Electromagnetic fields could impair the functioning of watches, but Mills had done a good job of isolating and controlling the direction of the field. Whatever his other flaws, he was a brilliant physicist.

Thirty seconds went by.

Kracowski expected any number of things: for Vicky to scream, for Mills to jump up the juice, for McDonald to ask what was going on. But no theory could have predicted what happened next.

Vicky pounded on the inside of the cell door with the bottom of her fist. In a calm voice, she said, “Hey, you guys. Better come see this. There’s somebody in here.”

Footsteps approached from the far end of the hall.
Somebody was in a hurry,
Freeman thought.

He and Starlene pressed into the corner. The stairwell was close enough to make a run for, but it was keyed like most of the other doors, and they’d have to go through Randy’s assortment to find the one that fit.

“Hey, Freeman, is that you?” Isaac said in a loud whisper.

Freeman was about to answer, then wondered if Isaac had been turned into a mole for the Trust. Stranger things had happened. You couldn’t trust a guy just because he was a kid instead of an adult.

“I saw it happen,” Dipes said, sniffling from a cold. “I mean, I saw what’s going to happen. And it’s not nice.”

Freeman peeked around the corner. Isaac and Dipes stood there in sweatpants and T-shirts. Isaac’s curly hair was damp, and they were both panting from exertion. Isaac nudged Dipes and said, “He saw you guys hiding in the corner by the stairs.”

“So
you
can read minds, too?” Starlene asked Dipes.

“Sort of,” Isaac answered for him. “He saw it ten minutes ago. It took us that long to sneak away from the gym and get here.”

“Is that where the other kids are?”

“Yeah. Except Vicky. Some goon came and got her. A new guy, wearing a uniform. And Deke’s still nowhere to be found.”

“What else did you see?” Freeman asked Dipes, then added for Starlene’s benefit, “He’s clairvoyant, or whatever you call it when you know the future. Like Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce, except Dipes doesn’t talk in stupid riddles.”

Starlene nodded as if such a talent were only natural in a world where kids had ESP and ghosts walked around like they owned the place. At least she seemed to be losing some of that grown-up tendency to deny everything that didn’t fit into her narrow worldview. Freeman decided maybe there was hope for her after all.

“Can we trust her?” Dipes said. Isaac put a hand of encouragement on his shoulder.

“She’s promised not to shrink us,” Freeman said. “She just wants to help. In the
real
way, not the way that makes her feel better about herself.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Starlene said. “So, what’s going to happen that we need to be scared of?”

Dipes looked at Freeman. “Ghosts.”

Isaac said, “You guys keep going on about ghosts. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Believe it,” Starlene said. “What ghosts in particular are you talking about, Edmund?”

“Edmund?” Isaac said, looking at Dipes. “That’s a pretty cool name. Like in a British book or something. Why didn’t you tell us?”

He shrugged. “I like ‘Dipes’ better, ‘cause Edmund’s what my folks called me.”

“What ghost did you see?” Starlene repeated.

Dipes pointed a finger at Freeman’s chest. “Yours.”

“Great,” Freeman said. “Well, maybe you saw only one kind of future, and there’s bound to be a gazillion different futures.”

Isaac’s dark complexion grew a shade paler. “Sure. Like opening doors on a video game. Depending on which room you go in, different stuff happens.”

“We better go in one of them, and soon,” Starlene said. She went to the stairwell door and began trying keys. “They’ll be after us.”

“Are you scared?” Dipes asked Freeman.

“About maybe dying? Nah. There are
way
worse things than that.”

“Like what?”

Freeman didn’t want to dwell on it. For one thing, if he died, that meant he’d have to see Mom again. For another, he didn’t plan on dying. Even Clint Eastwood managed to make it to the final credits nine times out of ten.

Except in those movies where Clint was the Defender of the Weak, Protector of the Innocent. Then it was practically a hero’s requirement to take one for the team.

He looked at Starlene’s face. Tears made twin lines down her cheeks.

Damn
.
She must really sort of like me a little bit
.

“It’s worse to live like you’re waiting for second chances,” Freeman finally said. “That’s worse than being dead.”

Starlene found the right key and swung the door open. She wiped her nose and regained her composure.

“You guys better stay here,” Freeman said.

“No way,” Isaac said. “They’re going to pick us off one by one if we don’t do something.”

“Yeah,” Dipes said. “I saw a future where this place was empty. All the kids gone. Except for the ones in the basement.”

“The basement?”

“Yeah. Where the ghosts live.”

Freeman followed Starlene down the dark stairs.

Isaac took Dipes’ hand and came after them. “So we better stick together. Plus, this may be my only chance to see a real live ghost.”

“Just hope you’re not looking in a mirror at the time,” Freeman said.

They felt their way down. A dim emergency light filtered up from the base of the stairs, the glow painting the cobwebs a sickly yellow. The air was thick with dust and the rot of old masonry. The walls of the stairwell were stone, and a damp chill settled into Freeman’s bones as they descended. They gathered at the basement door and Starlene began trying keys.

“What’s the plan?” Freeman whispered.

“Get Vicky and get out,” she answered.

“Out, where?”

“We’ll make up that part when we get to it.”

“Good plan.”

“Can you read Vicky’s mind? Or, what do you call it, ‘triptrap’ her?”

“I’ve had other things on my mind. Like being a ghost.”

“Try again,” Isaac said.

Freeman shut out the sound of the water dripping behind the walls, forgot the fear of death that tickled his skin with knife tips, ignored his heart pounding as if trying to hammer its way through his rib cage, blocked whatever thoughts were racing through the minds of Starlene and Dipes and Isaac.

He sent his mind out, in that process that was still freaky even though he’d done it hundreds of times. Triptrapping, walking across that mental bridge. He concentrated, picturing Vicky’s face, the lips that said such kind words, the pretty eyes that looked all the way through him . . .

He had to back up because he was getting distracted. He couldn’t afford to think of that other stuff, that mushy, kissy lovey-dovey crap. Clint Eastwood didn’t have time for it, except in his worst movies, and neither did Freeman.

He triptrapped again, concentrating harder this time. He was rapid cycling like crazy, going from manic to depressed, up to down, white-hot to blue, throbbing like a police car’s lights. Something weird was going on, the erratic electromagnetic pulses scrambling his synapses. He was swinging from mania to depression so fast that the two almost merged into a bizarre new emotional state.

You’ve been here before.

Maybe it’s just your imagination, though, but that’s the kind of obsessive thought you have while depressed, or maybe you’re up and you think this is some kind of holy gift.

Maybe you’re supposed to use this power to be a Protector of the Innocent.

Don’t be a damned fool. Nobody’s innocent, and nobody’s worth protecting. Or is that just depression talking?

You’re innocent. You didn’t kill her.

If you try hard enough, you can make the world stop. You can make your brain go away. You’re bigger than God.

Forget about all that and CONCENTRATE. This is about saving Vicky, not you. For once in your sorry life, it’s NOT ABOUT YOU
.

And then he broke through, bridged with her as she was trying to reach him, and for the most beautiful, terrible moment they were linked, their sentences cramming together and overflowing like two glasses of water poured into a third, thoughts circling and dancing and taking on meanings beyond words.

Then Freeman saw what Vicky was seeing, and wished that the gift had stayed in the hands of God or Satan or Dad or whatever else cruel bastard had given it to him.

Because Vicky was in the deadscape, big time.

“You have to get right to the source,” Kenneth Mills said. His voice rose as the power to the superconductors increased. Kracowski looked at the rows of specially-built fuse boxes that were stacked on the wall behind the tanks. He didn’t know what would happen if the whole operation shorted out, but that might be preferable to observing the results of Mills’s mind games.

The girl pounded on the door again. “You better come see.”

McDonald approached the door, hesitated, then asked Mills, “Should I open it?”

Mills cracked a grin that resembled that of a sadistic clown’s. “Sure, step right on in. Let’s see what the treatment does to
you
.”

Mills’s eyes were closed, and he leaned back from the computer keyboard like Captain Nemo playing a demented organ melody.

“Ah, I can see it,” Mills said. “I knew I could do it. See, McDonald, you and your Trust thought I was wrong, that I was used up and broken. And you were ready to throw me away. But you need me. I’m the only one who can make it happen.”

“Don’t keep me in the dark on this thing,” McDonald said. “Kracowski made tons of notes. Why do we have to keep guessing with you?”

“Because Kracowski wants other people to know what a genius he is. All I want is to find out for myself.”

Mills opened his eyes as if finishing a prayer, then altered the programming. “See, Kracowski, you don’t need to shock them if you want to kill them. Kill them and let their hearts keep beating. That’s the way to get inside the dead.”

Kracowski had administered death in doses that lasted for fractions of seconds. Mills appeared capable of killing millions without hesitation. After what he’d done to his own wife and son, Kracowski wouldn’t be surprised if the man wiped out the entire human race just to prove himself right. Mills would even kill God if he had the means and opportunity. He already had the motive.

“Take a look for yourself,” Mills said. “It’s beautiful. Dead is beautiful.”

Kracowski looked at the readings on the computer screen. The amplitude was erratic, scrambled into a wave pattern he’d never seen before. Not even the radical physicists, those who linked electromagnetism with UFOs and world war and brain cancer and killer viruses, had directly connected the silent radiation with the human spirit. And Mills was pushing it with no idea what the result would be, playing a guessing game that might be far more tragic than the splitting of an atom.

Because even nuclear reactions obeyed the laws of nature, and Mills was playing in the field beyond nature.

And Kracowski damned himself for not being able to look away. He was just as curious as Mills.

“Open the door,” he heard himself saying.

McDonald put a hand on the thick handle of the slide lock. He eased the lock free and winced, as if expecting the walls to fly loose from the floor. When nothing happened, he took hold of the door handle. He paused, then knelt to the slot in the door, pulling the rusty mechanism where food had long ago been shoved to the cell’s inhabitants.

Vicky’s voice came from the slot, louder than before. “They’re eating the light,” she said, the words made even more haunting by her calmness.

Mills laughed. “Dark tastes better. Less filling. Don’t have to make yourself vomit after.”

McDonald said, “What the hell’s going on in there?”

Mills traced a strange pattern in the air with the tip of his finger. Painting an invisible Picasso, or maybe conducting a frenzied Phillip Glass piece for full orchestra. Communing with fleshless things. Or stroking the molecules of heaven.

“Damn you,” McDonald said to Mills. “Talk to me, or I’ll have your ass stuck back in the loony bin.”

The agent worked the lever on the food slot and peered inside the cell. Kracowski wondered if McDonald would be able to see anything because of the darkness. McDonald shook his head as if trying to clear his vision, then pressed his head closer to the slot. He squealed in sudden pain, as if acid had been dashed in his eyes, and rolled to the floor.

McDonald huddled with his knees against his chest and moaned unintelligible syllables. He shuddered, eyes fixed open, staring past Mills and Kracowski. Mills hurried around the computer table and grabbed the man by the jacket, shaking him. “Help me get him away from the fields,” he said to Kracowski.

Kracowski glanced at the computer screen, where the resonance image of Vicky’s brain flashed in bright purple, green, and gold, the colors one saw when pressing fingers against closed eyelids. An infrared video camera depicted an aurora surrounding her body. Other cloud-like shapes flickered against the darkness, clusters of energy that weren’t connected to the girl’s physical form.