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  And Randy was so secretive, with his "Don't ask questions" attitude. She needed an ally on the inside. This job was tough enough without having to wing it alone. How could she have a lasting relationship with someone who believed in keeping things from her?

  Now she had other worries to lose sleep over. This strange business with the disappearing man in the gown, for example. She hadn't hallucinated, no matter what Randy and Mr. Bondurant and Dr. Kracowski thought. She believed religious visions were confined to the Old Testament, not let loose in the modern waking world. Though, Lord knows, the truth often came cloaked in the weirdest of disguises.

  And the boy, Freeman, who had left Room Thirteen dazed and trembling. He was another puzzle in this stone house of mysteries.

  "The boy's doing fine now," came Dr. Kracowski's voice from behind her.

  Kracowski stood under an oak tree with Dr. Swenson. Paula, the doctor liked to be called especially by the men. She batted her eyelashes every time she introduced herself by her first name, and doubly enjoyed it after some man had peered at the nameplate on her breast a full five seconds too long. Starlene wasn't jealous, though she wondered what strategy the woman had employed to get through medical school.

  Kracowski waited looking at Starlene like a cat that had swallowed cream. Pleased with his playmate or smug in his therapeutic genius?

  "I don't know," Starlene said. "Freeman looked awful shaky when he left that treatment room."

  "You don't trust me at all, do you?" Dr. Kracowski turned to Dr. Swenson. "She doesn't trust me."

  "That's not really my place, sir," Starlene said. "My main responsibility is for the welfare of the kids."

  "As is mine, Miss Rogers. We're all part of the Wendover team. Victory is measured by happy hearts and contented souls. One child at a time."

  "What was that business with the electricity? I didn't think the home was authorized to administer electroconvulsive therapy. I'm pretty sure that neither Freeman nor his legal guardian authorized it."

  "Wendover is Freeman's guardian now," Kracowski said.

  "The treatment must have done his heart good," Dr. Swenson said, in her cheerleader voice. "He's well enough to be flirting with the Vomit Queen."

  Starlene wanted to choke the woman for her use of the nickname, but Kracowski's grin stopped her cold.

  "Now, Paula, just because the children can't hear us doesn't mean we can let down our guard," he said. "After all, if you name a puppy 'Butt-Ugly,' it will suffer from poor self-esteem and the resultant depression. Even though the puppy doesn't know the meaning of the words. It's all projection and perception, setting up expectations."

  Starlene looked at her watch again. Three more minutes. She could put up with this insufferable pair that much longer, surely. This was nothing compared to the trials of Job or the rigors of a church bake sale.

  "Tell me, Miss Rogers," Kracowski said, waving his hand to indicate the children playing and shouting on the grounds. "What do you see when you look at our young charges?"

  "I see hearts in need of hope. And I think we ought to do more than just shock them senseless."

  Swenson glowered. "Richard's treatments affect positive change at the subatomic level. He heals the whole person, from the inside out."

  Kracowski laughed. "I don't need another advocate, dear. The results will speak for themselves once I collate my data and get my articles published."

  "That's what it's all about with you, isn't it?" Starlene knew she was risking her job, but she'd had enough of Kracowski's subterfuge and pompousness. "As long as you get credit in the psychological community, you could care less about the kids."

  "I care more than you can imagine, Miss Rogers. Those kids out there, the ones who receive Synaptic Synergy Therapy, they are me. Or, rather, the way I was when I was young. Lost, confused, unsure of my place in the world. I had so much anger inside."

  "Did you plug yourself into a wall socket, or did you find somebody to talk to?"

  "We're really not so different, Miss Rogers. I believe in optimism. That's a version of harmony, no matter if the harmony is induced by SST or through the attention of someone who pretends to care."

  "I care," Starlene said. She watched Vicky and Freeman on the rocks by the lake. They seemed to be arguing about something. She hadn't seen Vicky so animated in weeks.

  "I'm sure you do care," said Swenson. "You're brainwashed by the twin systems of religion and social sciences."

  "Paula, don't rush to judgment," Kracowski said. "We all need faith."

  "Faith," Starlene said. "I'll remember that tonight when I'm saying my prayers."

  The sun was lower now, touching the cut of the mountains, and shadows reached like fingers toward Wendover Home.

  "I'll tell you what," Kracowski said. "Why don't you let me administer an SST treatment on you? If you're sound and healthy, it can do no harm. If you have any troubles, your emotional fields will be aligned to their proper state. And you'll see that I'm not some Victor Frankenstein running a chamber of horrors."

  Starlene folded her arms. The evening was growing cold. Or maybe the chill originated from the challenge in Kracowski's voice.

  "Sure," she said. "I'll be your guinea pig. You'd probably love to have a case involving an adult subject, anyway, to make your research more credible."

  "Tomorrow morning, then?"

  "I'm scheduled to rotate off duty tonight."

  "I can have the schedule changed. Things will soon be very interesting around here. The state board is going to visit in a few days, and our directors are excited about what's happening here."

  Down by the lake, Vicky and Freeman had stopped talking and were looking out across the water. Starlene followed their gazes, and that's when she saw the old man.

  She was about to blurt out to Kracowski, to show him that the man with the wet footprints was real, that she wasn't prone to temporary insanity or hallucinations, but she saw the old man walking on water, four steps, five steps, and she was trying to deny the evidence of her own eyes when he disappeared.

  Maybe she did need an SST treatment. Or maybe she just needed to have her brain fried to a crisp.

  In recorded history, only one person had ever walked on water, and Jesus Christ was safely resurrected and borne aloft to Heaven. Unless Jesus had made his promised return right here in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, on the grounds of Wendover, then a different kind of spirit was on the loose.

  SEVENTEEN

  The conference room was quiet, the lights low. Francis Bondurant fidgeted with the glass in his hand. He longed for another drink, but he didn't dare let Dr. Kracowski learn of his vice. At least on duty and in public, he was a ginger ale man.

  Across the polished table from him, Kracowski and Swenson sat side by side. This room was where the Board of Directors held its quarterly meetings, and was several doors down from where Bondurant had imagined seeing the old woman the previous night.

  No, not imagined-she was REAL, she stared at me with that grinning forehead scar and Bondurant tossed down a couple of fingers of the ginger ale. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his suit, realized he was sweating, and loosened his tie. More oxygen to the brain never hurt, though surely his heart was thundering enough to send plenty of air to his skull. ' "You're melting," Kracowski said. "What's going on?"

  "It's like this, sir-"

  Paula Swenson smiled at Bondurant's term of subjugation and moved closer to Kracowski. She had selected the alpha male and her eyes said she had nailed him until death or a hefty divorce settlement, whichever came first. She cared not one bit for the children, for the Home, or for Wendover's good standing. She made her reputation on her back, not on her feet.

  Bondurant clenched one fist beneath the table, imitating the grip of The Cheek Turner, picturing Swenson bent over his desk and squeaking, softly at first and then in real pain, as he brought the paddle down again and again and again "Now you're evaporating as well," Kracowski said.

  Bondurant wiped
the sweat from his eyebrows. "Too many things going on at once. Those two directors showing up on short notice, your experiments increasing in frequency, the staff changing over, and state inspectors coming by in a few days. This McDonald guy lurking around all the time. And these new supporters, I know they're a godsend but it's hard to get a handle on them."

  "Pressure is internal, not external," Kracowski said.

  "That's a good one," Swenson said. "You'll have to write that down."

  "I already have."

  "It's just"-Bondurant paused to finish his glass-"the staff has become a little unsettled."

  "Unsettled?"

  "Well, it's about the… you know…"

  "If I knew, your calling this meeting would have been unnecessary."

  "Yes, sir."

  "My time is quite valuable. Should you ever need a private consultant, you'll find that you couldn't afford me."

  "Lucky for Wendover that you're willing to work for free," Swenson said, as if hardly happy about it.

  "I'm not working, I'm playing. I'm playing the biggest game of all, isn't that right, Bondurant?"

  "Game?" Bondurant's hands trembled.

  "The God game. Healing little souls, that's what we do here, isn't it? Redeeming the sins of society. Fixing God's mistakes."

  Bondurant wished he had a little something in his glass. He'd even risk some whiskey. The knot in his throat tightened. Nothing to do but say it plain. "It's about the ghosts."

  Kracowski had been leaning back in his chair, casual, perhaps with a hand on Swenson's thigh under the table. Now he sat forward and stared as if trying to decide to what species Bondurant belonged. After a long pause, in which the room's air grew more dense, Kracowski smiled. "Ghosts."

  Swenson giggled. "Spooky-boo. So that's what's been coming to me in the night? I thought it was you, Richard."

  She squeezed the doctor's arm but he pushed her away. "Not now, Paula. The man's serious."

  Bondurant wished that he, like the mad woman he'd seen, could disappear into the wall. Kracowski despised weakness, and belief in anything that couldn't be proven was a weakness. "We've had three staff members make reports. One even quit over it," Bondurant said.

  "What did these reports consist of? The same old campfire story about the old man in the gown? I've heard that one myself. Ever since I was four. Do you know what an urban legend is, Bondurant?"

  He nodded in response.

  "Well, Wendover seems to have its very own urban legend, the one about the dreary little hunchback they call 'Look-Out Larry.' I'm quite sure the so-called 'ghost' predates the existence of Wendover Home, and local townsfolk will be more than happy to share the legends their grandparents whispered about this place. Every town has a ghost, and every old building has one."

  "Wendover's only a dozen years old but the building's been here for more than seventy years."

  Swenson said, "Does that mean lots of people have died here?"

  Kracowski laughed. "Nobody ever dies at Wendover. Do they, Bondurant?"

  "Only for a little while," he said under his breath.

  "What's that?"

  "I said, 'Not like Enlo.'"

  "Ah, the home where the little girl died from a restraint hold."

  "Alleged restraint hold" Bondurant said. "That technique is approved by Social Services. The girl most likely had an undetected heart condition. But it should serve as a warning. Enlo was put on six months' probation."

  "Too bad. You'd think a just God would let the girl's ghost return from the grave and dispense justice."

  Swenson touched the doctor's shoulder. "You're funny, Richard. No wonder I like you."

  Kracowski frowned at her. "Not in front of the staff. How many times do I have to tell you?"

  Bondurant wondered if Kracowski really believed the staff didn't know about their little affair. But Kracowski wasn't common, he didn't deal in gossip, and to him, casual conversation about personal matters was poison. He lacked humanity even though he professed to work in human services. Even though Wendover and its clients were sport to Kracowski, he took the game seriously.

  "There's still the problem of the reports, whether you believe them or not," Bondurant said. "The staff members talk among themselves. Things get whispered."

  "I'll take care of that." Kracowski's eyes grew even darker.

  "Three people saw the man in the robe. I don't think all three are crazy."

  "But maybe two of them?" Swenson said.

  "By the descriptions, I think 1 know who the man might be."

  "Ah," Kracowski said. "Here it comes. One of your long-lost prophets, no doubt. I hope it's Ezekiel, who saw the chariot of fire. Or Elijah and the burning bush. All the Old Testament's best lunatics were pyromaniacs."

  Bondurant fingered the rim of the glass. He bowed his head and prayed for strength. Confession was good for the soul, but the opening line was always a tough one. "You know that when the home was finished in the 1930s it became a state psychiatric hospital?"

  Kracowski waved a hand. "Of course. Mary G. Mitchell Hospital. It was a training ground for some of North Carolina's finest doctors, and brought forth some solid clinical and theoretical research."

  "Yes. But we all can agree that the treatments of the era weren't necessarily… humane."

  "Science is built more on mistakes than on successes," Kracowski said. "And so, I might add, is religion."

  "Maybe. But frontal lobotomy, coma therapy, forced sterilization, electroshock-"

  "I don't perform electroshock."

  "Certainly not."

  "And then came the advent of the new class of drugs. The late 1940s and 1950s were a wondrous time For pills. It was more wonderful for the doctors than the patients. Instead of having to spend hours listening to troubled souls, you could scribble something on a notepad and send them off to the nearest pharmacy."

  "Avoiding the real problem," Bondurant said.

  "Neither of us approves of drugs," Kracowski said. "You, on religious grounds, and I oppose them because they distort the brain's harmonics."

  "But then you get to fix them," Swenson said. "You can realign their energy fields."

  "You're pretty smart for a doctor," Kracowski said to her, with an edge of sarcasm she didn't grasp. "But I'd rather the patient be healed in the first place and not have to submit to treatments. Harmony is the brain's natural state. We can blame civilization, socialization, and, yes, religion, for the pressures and stresses that have thrown the modern brain out of balance."

  "I've read your theories, Doctor." Bondurant literally ached for that whiskey now. If only God would grant him eight ounces of ninety-proof bourbon. "But there are mysteries that science will never be able to solve. Like the ghost."

  "You and your damned ghost. I still say it's nothing but wishful thinking mixed with the power of suggestion."

  Bondurant's stomach tensed. This was going to be difficult. "I saw one myself."

  The room grew so quiet that Bondurant could hear his heartbeat in his ears. Dr. Swenson stopped picking lint from her blouse.

  Kracowski narrowed his eyes. "Your hunchback, I presume? Thanks to the power of suggestion?"

  Bondurant shook his head ashamed scared. "No. This was a woman. Last night. I heard a noise in the hall and followed it. When I cornered her and asked her what she was doing, she turned and disappeared into the wall."

  Bondurant wiped his eyes, hoping to erase the memory of her face. But that long scar grinned at him still.

  "She had a scar across her forehead" Bondurant said, the words large in the hushed room. "A lobotomy scar. Done from the top, not up through her nose."

  "And her clothes? I suppose she was dressed in hospital garments." Kracowski smiled and spoke as if he were narrating a B-grade horror movie. "Naturally, since she must have been the ghost of a patient who died here long ago. Evil lives in the walls, doesn't it, Bondurant? Evil, evil, EVIL."

  Swenson slapped at him. "Quit it, you're creeping me out."

&
nbsp; Kracowski laughed. "I'm afraid our dear Francis has been working too many late nights."

  To Bondurant, he said "Reading the Bible in the wee hours? Or is it the whiskey that fulfills your spiritual needs these days?"

  Kracowski had commented on his drinking, Bondurant's well-kept secret, of which neither the Lord nor Wendover's directors would approve. But he couldn't answer in his defense because, through the small square of glass set in the conference room door, the crazy old woman was looking in, wearing her double grin. Kracowski, his back to the door, couldn't see. If indeed there was anything to see.

  "I don't want to hear any more foolishness about ghosts," Kracowski said. "The breakthrough won't take much longer, so keep your head until then. All that matters is that I continue my treatments. For the good of the children."

  "For the good of the children," Swenson said.

  "For the good of the children," Bondurant echoed, smiling weakly back at the woman at the window. But she had already gone, into the wall or back through the mists of time. Or maybe into the arms of the dead.

  EIGHTEEN

  Vicky slipped out of the shadows and crossed the hall. Sneaking out of the Green Room at night was too easy. She loved challenges, and Wendover hadn't provided many so far, at least when it came to security. Though the back doors were bolted and locked, some of the entrances had to be left accessible in the event of fire. No, they weren't entrances, because doors opened both ways. They were exits.

  About once a week she sneaked outside, usually to lie in the grass and look at stars or count blue splotches on the moon. She had never been tempted to go over the wall and make a serious break for freedom; she could think of no destination that would allow her to escape her own grotesque body. She was so damned fat she should be easy to spot, like a Goodyear blimp in a circus tent.

  The home had an overnight security guard, whose main duties were to quell fights among the boys or to make sure nobody was getting high on smuggled contraband. Watching out for runaways wasn't in the job description. He was probably watching TV in the rec room, eating greasy burritos and slamming Diet Coke, with a Snickers bar in his pocket for later, all sweet and gooey and peanutty, the kind that would make lumpy brown vomit and scratch your throat as it came back up. He had never caught her even though her footsteps were like an elephant stampede in the halls.