From Black Rooms (27 page)

When we tried changing this gene alone in our test subjects' DNA structure, the results were...unpleasant." The grimness of his tone tightened the knot in Natalie's gut. She thought of Clement Maddox...and Calvin.

"What happened to those test subjects?"

"The treatment created node points in their brains, as we'd hoped. The dead could enter their minds, but the subjects lacked the ability to regulate that access. Souls could come and go as they pleased, and our quasi-Violets could do nothing to filter them out.

"That led us to suspect that another gene entirely contributed the filtering mechanism that natural

conduits possess. It took considerable trial-and-error to discover it." Again, Wax's expression conveyed how

"unpleasant" the results of those errors had been. Natalie cleared her throat, for the next question stuck there like a bone. "What...what's going to happen to Calvin?"

"There are several possibilities. Some subjects became what we cal 'whisper-ridden.' They could not keep souls from knocking, but the souls could never achieve ful inhabitation. Although they were never in danger of complete possession, the patients found the constant intrusion of the dead to be rather trying

psychological y."

Natalie found the doctor's clinical detachment to be
quite trying, psychologically. "And the other subjects?"

"Wel , at the opposite end of the spectrum were the

'empty vessels.' The treatment somehow severed the quantum connection that lodged their own souls inside their bodies. With the body left uninhabited, any knocking soul could occupy it for a short time, only to be displaced by another and another, in endless

succession."

"And how do I know which wil happen to Calvin?" Natalie's voice had become so soft, she could barely hear herself.

"Hmm. He won't be merely whisper-ridden, since ful inhabitation is obviously possible." Wax spread Calvin's hand over his chest to underscore the

observation. "Yet his consciousness retains its linkage to the body and returns to prominence between

inhabitations. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

Wax nodded. "Then I'm afraid your friend wil most likely degenerate into a 'captive audience' ful y conscious and aware, yet never the dominant inhabitant. Worst of both worlds, I'm afraid."

The fact that he delivered this nihilistic diagnosis with Calvin's face and Calvin's voice only made it more hideous. "There must be something you can do," Natalie insisted. "Reverse the process." He shook Calvin's head. "I tried. Once the node points become part of the brain's neural structure, they cannot be eliminated without destroying the neurons

themselves."

"No...there has to be a way." Horrid images from Natalie's childhood erupted from her subconscious, memories of the time before she attended the School and mastered her mantras, when she spent hours or even days as the unwil ing receptacle for whatever desolate spirit commandeered her. A "captive audience," indeed. She could see, hear, feel, but was powerless to stop her body from shouting obscenities at her parents as if they were total strangers or from running away in a vain attempt to return to someone else's abbreviated life. She hardly dared to imagine what it would be like if the waking nightmare never ended, if she could never

reclaim her own existence. Was that the curse awaiting Calvin Criswel , the only man since Dan that she felt she could love?

"I
can't believe that," she said aloud. Her mind groped
at solutions that popped like soap bubbles in her grasp.

"You said you found the gene that creates the...what did you cal it? The filtering mechanism?"

"Yes. Eventual y."

"What if you could treat Calvin with that? Finish making him a complete Violet?"

Wax chuckled. The novelty of the idea evidently

amused him. "You know, I hadn't considered that. I suppose it might--" His expression became suddenly severe. "No, that's impossible."

"But you said you hadn't even considered it!" He shook Calvin's head, more vehemently this time.

"I'm sorry, I can't help you." His gaze flicked back toward the gal eries. "Carl tempted me with those paintings, and I succumbed. I see now how wrong that was. I mustn't be that weak again."

Natalie was on the verge of grabbing Storm on the Sea
of Galilee off the wall and smashing it in front of Wax
to change his mind. "It's your fault Calvin's the way he is," she accused. "How can you leave him to a fate worse than death if there's a chance he can be saved?"

"You don't understand." Wax appeared to listen to a cry no one else could hear. "Carl loves death. He thinks we'd be better off if we could al commune with the departed. The Corps only wanted a steady supply of conduits, but Carl's plans were much bigger than that. He intended to create a carrier virus that would open the doors of Hades to everyone on the planet.

"I realized the enormity of the horror I was helping to create the first time I saw The Scream up close. That skeletal creature with its eyes agape in awful

comprehension, unable to silence the piercing shriek of the Abyss. I'd stare at that picture every night, and every day I'd go to work and see the same expression on my patients... He looked at the empty air as if the painting hung, invisible, before him. "Are--are you tel ing the truth about doing a forgery for Carl? I could have sworn it was the real thing."

"In some sense, it was," Natalie admitted. "I had Munch's help."

He regarded her with new understanding, as if he could see past her brown contact lenses. "You're a Violet. Then you know what it's like--the perpetual cal of the dead. Do you think humanity is ready for that? Do you think that child out there would be so carefree if she had the specter of mortality perched on her shoulder every day of her life?" He peered out over the courtyard, where Cal ie made a game of jumping in and out of the shadows of the clouds that drifted over the glass roof. Natalie wondered what Wax would say if she told him that the happy little girl to whom he referred had been
born with Death at her cradle.

"If you won't help Calvin," she threatened, "I'l go to Pancrit himself."

"Al the more reason why I can't oblige you." Wax cast another wistful glance around at the sanctuary of the Gardner as if it would be al he'd ever see of Paradise.

"I can't tel you how grateful I am that you brought me back here. I only wish there was some way I could repay you."

"So do I." Natalie watched Dr. Wax's expression dissolve from Calvin's face...or perhaps that was only the shifting refraction of the liquid in her eyes. She resisted the impulse to cry, however, for she refused to let Calvin see her despair. He had enough of his own to bear, and the instant he resumed command of his eyes, he wept enough for both of them.

"You heard him, Natalie. I'm doomed. I might as wel end it now, while I stil can."

She put her arms around him, making sure that her bare skin did not come in contact with his. "I won't let that happen to you."

She left the phrase ambiguous. Calvin looked at her, sniffed to quiet himself. "Would you...?"

"I'l do whatever it takes. But you have to trust me, Calvin. You can't give up yet."

He rubbed the rest of the moisture from the hol ows around his eyes and bobbed his head. "Okay." He managed a shaky smile. "It's funny. I always had people cal me 'Cal' 'cause I hated my name. Until you said it."

Natalie smiled, blinking to imprison her own tears. "I can't believe that! 'Calvin' is so much better than

'Cal.' "

They laughed so brightly that Wade mistook their

commiseration for levity.

"You two seem happy!" he said as he led Cal ie to rejoin them. "What did you find out?"

Natalie was trying to come up with a way to convey the bad news to him when a flash of movement made her look at the arched window closest to them. There, she noticed the four of them reflected in the glass, grouped as if for a family portrait yet shadowed by the

overhanging colonnade. Submerged beneath their image lay the outline of a man inside the museum who peered out at them, creating the impression that there was a spectral fifth member of their party. Their reflection obscured his facial features except for the golden crescent of his short blond hair, yet his brooding posture gave Natalie the same eerie sense of familiarity that she'd felt when she'd seen the bearded derelict outside the grocery store. She saw him for only an instant before he withdrew into the unseen depths of the

gal ery, like a sea creature sinking back into the trenches of the ocean floor.

"We stil have problems," she told her father in a tired voice, staring at the black cavity in the glass where the blond man had stood.

22

The Monster Under the Bed

RUSHED OUT OF THE GARDNER to his rented

Nissan. Boo had seen him; he felt sure of it. He'd stared at her too long--he always stared too long--and she'd recognized him.

She'd always been his greatest weakness, the habit he couldn't quit, and he hated her for it. If he hadn't wanted to spare her ungrateful hide during the Violet Murders, he wouldn't have ended up in that white

plastic hel hole beneath Corps headquarters. Boo hadn't even had the decency to kil him, to set him free into the afterworld of the True Life that Simon McCord

promised them al . So he would show her no mercy, either. Although he'd fantasized often about gutting her innards and plucking out her gorgeous violet eyes as keepsakes, he refused to let her off that easy. Death was far too kind for her.

Before Boo and the others emerged from the museum, Evan made it to his car and put on a hasty disguise. Mirrored sunglasses, a coarse fake mustache, a tightly permed brown toupee, an unbuttoned bowling shirt

thrown over his black tee. The getup made him look like a seventies porn star, but it enabled him to remain unnoticed as he tailed the Lindstrom family to the Patriot's Pride hotel near Logan Airport.

To avoid attracting their attention, he went around the block before entering the parking lot, then circled the building until he spotted Boo helping her braindamaged boyfriend through a side entrance in the hotel's westernmost wing. She darted a glance toward Evan's car, but he drove by without appearing to notice her. As soon as Boo herded Criswel inside, however, Evan parked the Nissan and ran to watch them through the pane of glass in the door that had shut behind them. He counted the number of doors they passed so he

could calculate which room they entered when they caught up with Old Man Lindstrom and Atwater's brat, who had walked on ahead of them.

Evan smiled. How like Boo! Maybe she wasn't afraid to ride in an elevator anymore, but after a lifetime of acrophobia, she habitual y reserved a room on the ground floor. That suited him just fine.

He sauntered around the hotel until he came to the front entrance and strode through the lobby to the

reservations desk. Whipping off his sunglasses to reveal his blue contact lenses, he smiled at the pretty

receptionist. "Hey, there!"

She looked barely old enough to be out of high school and squirmed in humiliation at the stiff Revolutionary War tailcoat and tricornered hat the hotel made her wear. "Yes, sir? Can I help you?"

"Yeah. See, my wife and I are celebrating our anniversary tonight, and, wel ... He gave a bashful chuckle, pawed the floor with his foot. "Okay, you might think this is sil y, but we spent our wedding night here, and I was wondering if we could get the same room for old time's sake."

She shrugged and tapped a couple of keys on her

computer terminal. "I can see if it's available. What was the number?"

"One-nineteen." The room next to Boo's. The receptionist's face lighted with mild surprise as she watched the monitor. "Yeah, looks like it's free. What's the name for the reservation?"

"Daniel Atwater." He almost snickered as he handed her the fake Visa card Pancrit had obtained for him through the Corps. Evan had personal y requested the alias.

"And your wife's name?"

"Natalie." A toothy grin. "I want to surprise her." He wished he could have claimed credit for planning the connecting door with Boo's room, but that was a serendipitous gift. The mechanical locks on the paral el doors would be so much easier to pick than the

electronic card-key lock on the door that faced the hotel hal way.

Although Evan proceeded with caution when he carried his suitcase of supplies into Room 119, he needn't have worried. Boo's own paranoia kept her holed up in her room, so she never had the opportunity to see him in the hal way. Evan listened through the thin dividing wal with amusement as she forbade her daughter to go to the hotel pool and forced the pizza delivery man who brought their dinner to produce I.D. before she'd unlatch the door to receive her order. Her fear flattered him.

Stil , there were considerable drawbacks in stalking a quarry who expected a trap. Evan knew that Boo never slept deeply, and when something worried her, she didn't sleep at al . He'd never be able to break into that room tonight unseen as long as she was inside it, yet he also could not flush her out of there as long as she thought he might be lurking outside...unless he

presented her with a more immediate danger.

Evan opened the first of the doors between the two rooms--the one whose lock he control ed--and placed a chair beside it, where he stayed for several hours, remaining virtual y motionless. When he overheard Boo tel her kid that it was time to brush her teeth, he silently rose and lifted the lid of the large suitcase he'd placed on the bed. Nestled inside, a five-gal on plastic can of gasoline pol uted the air with its stench. Next to it rested a padded nylon camera case with a shoulder strap. Evan unzipped its main compartment and took from it a compact set of locksmith's tools and a

tranquilizer dart gun--a standard-issue NAACC

weapon that Corps Security agents often used to take fugitive Violets into "protective custody." He loaded six darts, although he only needed four, and set the gun and the lock picks on the floor beside the connecting door. The camera case's remaining contents--a switchblade and a box of matches--he shoved into the pockets of his jeans.