The Home Page 24

  McDonald pressed his face close to Mills's. "Talk to me. Tell me what's going on or your ass will be in a strait jacket so fast and so tight you'll shit your pants before the Thorazine kicks in."

  "Don't you know what this is all about?" Mills shouted. "I'm with her. I'm inside her. She's dead and I'm reading her mind."

  His cackle ran through Kracowski's ears and into his bones, where it settled with a chill as deep as the grave's.

  "Okay. Fine." McDonald's face was blank, as if he were used to Mills's maniacal spells. "Let's start with the Barnwell girl."

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  "Dr. Kracowski asked me to get him," Starlene said to Randy.

  "I'm sorry, honey, I can't let you do that," Randy said "I can't release Freeman to anybody but the doctor himself."

  "You can't keep him locked up all day."

  "He's got some books. Besides, these brats keep themselves amused with their own little mind games."

  "Randy." She looked into his eyes, but none of the former passion burned there. "Tell me what's going on. Please."

  "You know more than I do. You're the one who keeps having visions."

  "Don't be like that."

  "Look, everything's gotten too complicated. I shouldn't have been interested in you in the first place."

  She pretended to be hurt, and bit her lower lip while gazing past him to the door of the Blue Room. One keyed lock and one operated by an electronic combination. Randy wore a ring of keys on his belt, but how could she trick him into revealing the pad's combination?

  "You know about Room Thirteen," she said.

  "You lived through it, didn't you?" He looked down the hall toward Kracowski's labs, which were around the corner.

  "Did Dr. Kracowski make you have a treatment?" She touched her head as if suffering a migraine.

  "That's none of your business."

  "Dr. Kracowski's hiding things from you. You can't trust him. Did you know about the ESP?"

  "Now you're getting paranoid. Maybe you need to take a few days off."

  "In case you haven't noticed Wendover has turned into a concentration camp. Barbed wire and armed guards."

  "They're not armed."

  "Not that you can see. But Kracowski does compare unfavorably closely with Josef Mengele, wouldn't you say?"

  "Kracowski never hurt anybody. He heals the kids. Improves them. I've seen it with my own eyes, many times. This work is important, and it doesn't help that you're sticking your nose into everything."

  "Sure, he healed me, all right, when I had the SST. Do you want to know what I saw?"

  Randy swallowed hard. "I…"

  "Or can you read my mind?"

  "Wait a second. I said I never had a treatment."

  "I almost believe you. How many treatments does it take before you can read minds outside of Thirteen? I could only do it for a few minutes, then the effect faded. But I saw a whole hell of a lot while the juice was running through me."

  "I don't believe that stuff. Ghosts aren't real. God would never allow such a thing."

  "Yet He allows people to read each other's minds?"

  Someone was coming down the hall, the footsteps of hard shoes echoing in the next wing. A door opened and the steps trailed off up the stairs.

  Starlene lowered her voice. "I never believed in ESP and I only believed in one sort of life after death. I didn't ask for any of this. All I wanted was to help the children."

  "You can help Freeman by leaving him alone. Dr. Kracowski knows what's best. This is bigger than any of us."

  "Are you sure you haven't been through some brainwashing? Whatever Dr. Kracowski's up to, I'd bet that turning you into a zombie would be child's play. Maybe ESP can be manipulated to work like a one-way street, put thoughts in there but not let them out."

  Randy grabbed her arm. "I'm serving the Lord, too, the same as you. You spread His glory through love and understanding and I do it by helping our mission of improving the human soul."

  "You were handpicked by Bondurant, no doubt. That's his brand of salvation."

  "God made Jesus suffer."

  "Oh, so you think you're God too? Or is Kracowski the real God and you're just one of the prophets?"

  The small walkie-talkie on Randy's hip hissed. He pulled it from his belt and turned away from Starlene. He spoke in low tones, then took several steps down the hall so she couldn't overhear. Starlene took me opportunity to make a closer examination of the lock.

  Randy put away the walkie-talkie and stuck his key in the Blue Room door. His hand flew over the electronic lock's keypad too quickly for Starlene to memorize me sequence. "You'd better go now," he said.

  "I want to help."

  "You can help by getting out of me way."

  The door swung open, Randy's key still in the door. Freeman stood waiting. Behind him, me row of cots were neatly made. No one else was in me room.

  "I'm ready," Freeman said to Randy. He glanced at Starlene. "You'd better stay out of the way, like he said."

  "I only want to help," she said.

  "I've been helped so much I'm sick and tired of it. I'm about helped to death. At least the people in the Trust are sincere about what they want."

  "The Trust?"

  "Be quiet," Randy said to Freeman.

  "Oh? She doesn't know? I thought you guys were soul mates." Freeman gave a smile that was even more elusive and sardonic than usual.

  "What's he talking about, Randy?"

  "I thought having a psychology degree automatically made you a know-it-all," Freeman said to her. "Certainly worked for my Dad. He has three of them so he knows more than everyone."

  Freeman pointed to Randy's walkie-talkie. "And that's a great way to keep a secret. Except from people who can read minds."

  Randy stepped forward, mouth twisted in anger. Freeman scooted back into the room.

  "Come here, you little smartass," Randy said. Freeman winked at Starlene and ran between the rows of cots. Randy yelled and gave chase. Starlene waited until they were at the far end of the room, checked me hall in both directions, men went inside and pulled the door nearly shut. Freeman was cornered now, and Randy climbed over a cot, watching the boy's eyes.

  "Head him off that way," Randy shouted to Starlene. She closed in to trap Freeman. Randy lunged at Freeman, who tried to dodge, but Randy was too fast and strong. He wrestled the boy face-down onto the cot. His walkie-talkie fell from his belt and bounced to the floor as they struggled.

  "My back pocket," Randy said to Starlene. "Restrain the little shit."

  Starlene pulled the handcuffs from Randy's pocket. Freeman kicked and squirmed, the pillow pressed against his face so that his screams were muffled. Randy put a knee on the boy's back, then stuck one hand behind him, reaching for the cuffs.

  "Here," he said. "Hurry."

  Before Starlene could think, she snapped one of the cuffs on Randy's wrist. He turned toward her in surprise and, as he hesitated, Starlene closed the other cuff around the cot's metal frame.

  "Damn you," Randy said, swinging his free hand at her. The blow caught her across the cheek and she fell onto the concrete floor. Randy fumbled at his belt where he'd kept his keys. When he realized he'd left the keys in the door, his face contorted into a mask of rage.

  Freeman rolled off the cot while Randy tried to free himself. Freeman wiped blood from his lips and helped Starlene to her feet. She rubbed her face. Her skin hadn't split, but her pulse roared beneath her skin.

  "I feel your pain," Freeman said.

  "So do I," she said.

  Randy jumped from the cot and clawed at them, tugging at the handcuff. The cot was bolted to the floor, though its frame rattled with his effort. "I'll kill you both."

  "Great," Freeman said. "I can't wait to be a ghost so I can come back and haunt your ass."

  Starlene took Freeman's hand. "Let's get out of here."

  "Where are we going?" he said.

  "I thought you could read my mind."

  "Well, I fi
gured you were trying to rescue me, but you don't have any kind of plan, do you?"

  They reached the door. The hallway was still empty. Starlene looked back at Randy, who'd stopped pulling at the handcuff. He was busy unhooking the springs of the cot. He'd have to work his way down, removing one spring at a time, but soon he'd reach the end and be able to slide the cuff through a gap in the folded corner of the cot.

  "Damn," she said. "Well, I guess our secret will be out soon."

  "One thing about this place," Freeman said. "Secrets don't stay secret very long."

  "So I've learned," Starlene said. She slammed the door closed, yanked the key back and forth until it broke off in the lock, then stuck the key ring in her pocket. "Hope that locks the jerk in. What now?"

  "We need Vicky," Freeman said. "She's smart and she knows her way around Wendover."

  "What about the other kids?"

  Freeman looked at her with his piercing eyes. "You ought to know by now, you save the world a little at a time, not all at once. Even your old pal Jesus H. Christ figured that one out."

  Starlene let the sarcasm pass. "To the Green Room?"

  "She's not in the Green Room. She's in Thirteen."

  "What's she doing there?"

  "Dying," he said. "That's what we're all doing. Some of us faster than others."

  As they ran down the corridor, Starlene wondered if Freeman could read her mind enough to know how terrified she was.

  THIRTY-NINE

  He should have known better.

  If he had played the game and kept his thoughts to himself, this never would have happened. He should have stuck with the loner act, the Clint Eastwood bit, or the tough guy swimming against the current, like Pacino in Serpico. Sure, he was special and he could read minds and it was only a matter of time before the Trust broke him. But now he'd crossed the line, stepped up as yet another miserable Defender of the Weak and Protector of the Innocent. Just what the world needed. Another freaking unsung hero.

  Freeman ran beside Starlene, triptrapping outward to see if any of the Trust's goons had been tipped off by Randy. But too many of them were shields. When it was working, his ESP was as reliable as radar or sonar, but he could never be sure about the thoughts floating around that he wasn't intercepting. When he was on the up cycle, the gift was golden. And he was definitely up now, the hairs on his neck like antennae, his skin alive with the force radiating from the basement.

  He'd read Starlene easily enough, but she'd just undergone a treatment and was susceptible. Soft on the brain. Vicky was even softer because she'd been through several of the treatments. The freaky thing was that the treatment did different things to some people, and to others, nothing at all seemed to happen. Maybe it was a natural talent, a third eye or sixth sense or some other baloney. Maybe Freeman would have been able to do it anyway, even without the years of Dad's experiments.

  Either way, he wished that God would take the gift back, because it had been nothing but a pain in the ass from the very beginning. But God hid away up there in the sky where only people like Starlene could believe in Him. No matter how hard Freeman tried to read God's mind, he drew a blank. God, if He even existed, probably had the thickest shield in the universe.

  After all, if God could read everybody's mind at the same time, He'd probably gone bonkers way back around the time of Adam and Eve.

  The thing about being in a manic phase, a thing that he'd only recently been able to catch himself at, was that his thoughts rambled on about stupid stuff like God and love and other people and being afraid he'd never go to sleep again and stupid, stupid, stupid worries even when he ought to be concentrating on more important things. Like surviving.

  Freeman squeezed Starlene's hand as they slowed. She made an unnecessary hushing motion with her finger against her lips. Thirteen was around the next corner, and Kracowski's lab two doors down from that. If Vicky was undergoing an SST, then for sure the Trust would have a guard on hand. Freeman expected a walkie-talkie to crackle with Randyspeak at any moment.

  "Is she in there?" Starlene mouthed silently at him.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated. He'd heard Vicky clearly while he was locked in the Blue Room, triptrapped through the space between them as if they'd been talking via a cellular telephone at close range. But now, he picked up nothing. That could mean several things: she was shielded somehow, or she had slipped into unconsciousness and couldn't transmit her thoughts. Or she was dead.

  Freeman was overwhelmed by a sudden image of Vicky lying pale and breathless on the cot in Thirteen, the straps tight around her as her color faded. He shuddered the picture from his mind and concentrated harder.

  Nothing.

  He shook his head at Starlene. He couldn't even read Starlene's mind now. Something was happening. Maybe the puppet masters had changed the rhythms of their experimental waves. Maybe Dad had come up with some new gizmo that blew Kracowski's brain cooker right out of the water. Maybe Freeman's manic phase was over, in which case his number one survival skill would be down for the count when he needed it most.

  Starlene knelt and peeked around the corner, Freeman holding onto her shoulder in case he needed to pull her out of the way of a bullet or something.

  He silently scolded himself. Here he was again, playing Protector of the Innocent. This was getting to be a way bad habit.

  She turned and whispered, "Nobody."

  Freeman took a look for himself. The hall was empty and quiet. Except…

  Freeman whispered back. "I thought you said 'nobody.'"

  "I did."

  "Then what about the geezer in the gown?"

  Starlene looked again. "What geezer?"

  "Uh oh."

  The old man stood in the hall plain as day. It was the man from the lake, hunched and gray and wrinkled. He moved toward them without a sound, his eyes staring past them as if a hole to heaven had opened up on the opposite wall. Freeman fought an urge to reach out as the man drifted past, his gown and skin shimmering with a faint silver dust. The man disappeared into the wall, leaving no trace on the crumbling stucco.

  "So, you didn't see him?" Freeman said.

  "See who?"

  "Never mind."

  "Do we try the door?"

  "Well, considering we have a minute at the most to get out of here before Randy tips off the entire free world-"

  "You want to rescue Vicky, because you're always thinking of others," Starlene said.

  "You don't have to be mean just because you're a shrink."

  "Sorry. But you're going to have to trust me if we're going to get out of this mess."

  "Trust. That's a good one."

  "Well?"

  "Sure. Just don't try to 'understand' me or 'heal' me or shower me with 'tough love.'"

  "Deal."

  "Let's go for it, then."

  They rounded the corner and crept to Thirteen. "Damn," Freeman said. "I forgot they use these stupid keypad locks everywhere."

  "Why didn't you read somebody's mind when they were punching in the numbers?"

  "Look, you try lying there getting shocked and skull-fried and being sent on a journey to the land of the dead and see how practical you are."

  Starlene paled as if recalling the visions from her own treatment. "Yeah, I see what you mean."

  "What do we do now?"

  "Knock?"

  Freeman shrugged and tapped at the thick door. A series of beeps flashed from the electronic lock, and the handle turned. The door opened. And Freeman was face to face with the last person he ever expected to see again.

  Except, you couldn't really call what he was looking at a face. It was red and raw and exactly as he remembered it, only worse.

  He tried to scream, but you need air to scream, and his lungs were solid steel and his throat was stacked with bricks and his skull was pounded by eighty-eight invisible hammers and he wanted to fall but his limbs wouldn't even cut him that much slack. All he could do was stand and stare and wish himself away.

/>   The thing that stood before him reached out wet rags that must have been arms.

  A hug.

  Just like Mom used to make, back before Freeman had ripped her to shreds with a steel blade. Back before Dad had screwed with his brain and turned him into a mother-murderer.

  Suddenly he was six years old again, and in the memory at least he could cry, unlike now, because he'd opened the bathroom door and Mom's eyes were closed and her naked body was hidden beneath the bubbles. Soaking, she always called it, because she said it was the only time she didn't have to answer the phone or obey Dad's orders.

  And in the memory the knife was cold in his hand and Dad's voice was in his head, so loud that there was no room for any of Freeman's own thoughts, which made him glad in a way because that meant he couldn't help himself and it wasn't his fault.

  But of course it's your fault.

  Freeman tried to blink but his eyes were wide and dry and the memory was gone. The words had come from the thing standing before him, the thing he had once loved more than anything in the world back when love and trust and hope were more than just useless shrink words.

  A dark maw opened in the middle of the mutilated face. She was trying to speak. Oh God, she was trying to speak, except she didn't need a tongue to say what she needed to say. Who needed a voice when you could triptrap right to the source, get in there with the lies and the tricks and the deception and, right at the core, find the tiny secret hope that Freeman harbored, a nut that no shrink had ever been able to crack, that no triptrapper had ever glimpsed, that even Freeman himself rarely probed?

  A hope of false innocence. A sincere and unshakable belief in a lie. A faith in an utter and utmost betrayal. His own private troll beneath the bridge.

  He'd always told himself, even though the nightmare rose in its crimson wounds every time he shut his eyes, that it had never happened, that it was just the way the newspapers reported it, that Dad was the real killer.

  Dad, and not Freeman. Freeman had loved his mother, no matter how many brain games Dad played no matter how much shock treatment Freeman had endured, no matter how many mental mazes the old bastard had run him through. When you love somebody, you don't hurt them.