Hear the Children Calling (30 page)

Jill sighed, realizing the woman was doing the best she could. Still, it was frustrating to know how close she was to Ryan. If she dared to use the same car she’d been driving for the past two days, she could find him. But part of her strategy was to get an entirely different car, one they wouldn’t be looking for. She hadn’t yet made a phone call to the LaMane Center because it was only twelve-fifteen in the morning.

She walked across the hall and plunked down onto a bench. By all rights she should have been tired enough to fall asleep, even here. But the thought of being without a car was like a powerful stimulant. Fidgety, she got back up and walked over to a newspaper rack. There was only one copy left, and since it was past midnight, this made it a day old. She took it without paying for it and brought it back to the bench.
Shuffling through the pages without really seeing them, she was suddenly stopped by a four-color spread depicting hundreds of brilliant balloons. The caption explained that this was taken at last year’s Balloon Festival and that the next one would commence tomorrow. It was a beautiful shot, but what caught Jill’s attention was the small map drawn in one corner. The field being used was almost halfway between the city and the LaMane Center.

Wheels began to turn in Jill’s mind, ideas forming even as her eyes started to droop closed. With the thought that the Balloon Festival would be the perfect place to hide when she escaped with Ryan, she fell into reluctant sleep.

43

A
FTER WHAT SEEMED LIKE AN ETERNITY IN THE AIR
shafts, Ralph and Beth found themselves in a darkened, empty laboratory. Beth had come to trust this stranger, though she couldn’t understand what he had to do with her brother, and she let him take her by the hand to lead her through the darkness. When she accidentally brushed against a rack of test tubes, she gasped, waiting for the door to open. Ralph pulled her forward with a reassuring squeeze from his warm hand.

Slowly, stopping each time the sash creaked, Ralph opened one of the windows. The yard behind the clinic was completely deserted. He helped Beth out, then followed himself. Just as carefully, he closed the window. The darkness behind the glass created a mirror effect, and he saw that his beaten face had swollen
even more. But after being cooped up in the air shafts, the burst of cool autumn air was invigorating. They’d gotten this far, and nothing, not even the severe pain behind his eye, would stop them.

He motioned toward a copse of trees about ten yards ahead of them. Beth looked all around, opening her arms. Softly, Ralph said, “They wouldn’t be looking this close, I think. If my son—if your brother ran away, he’s far gone from here.”

He took her hand again, and they began to run. Beth thought the security lamps made her shadow stretch so far that someone else was sure to spot it. She did not take a single breath until she was hidden in the darkness of the trees.

“How are we going to find Peter?” she asked worriedly. “And my mother? What will they do to my mother?”

“To both questions, I don’t know,” Ralph whispered. “But the first thing we have to do is get you back to your family. They can call the authorities and we’ll get some help. I’m hurt bad, Beth. I don’t think I could make it through these mountains, even if I did know exactly where Michael—Peter might be.”

God, it was hard to call his son Peter. But Peter wasn’t really his son . . . Ralph cut the depressing thought short and leaned down to Beth again.

“We have to scale the fence,” he said. “I cut the power off to it hours ago, and I made such a mess of the circuits I don’t think they could have fixed them by now.”

When she came to the tall fence, Beth thought it looked like the sides of a cage at the zoo. Ralph said he’d cut the power off. That meant there was electricity going through it. Was every part of the fence cut off? Or would she fry to a crisp once she touched it?

She heard the back door of the clinic slam and threw herself into Ralph’s arms. He pulled her back into the shadows, feeling her body trembling. They both listened.

“I swear I saw someone back here,” a voice shouted.

“You’re wasting your time,” another man answered. “We already looked here, and those kids would never come back. Adams is gonna have fits if he catches us chasing shadows.”

Shadows, Beth thought. My shadow was so big! “Let’s go,” the first voice said. “They think they’ve gone off toward St. Malta’s Ridge, so we oughta look there, too.”

When he felt it was safe to talk again, Ralph whispered, “St. Malta’s Ridge is about six miles from here,” he said. “I could never walk that.”

“I could,” Beth said, her mouth set hard. “And if Peter’s there, I’ll know it. I’ll feel him.”

“Feel him?”

“I can talk to him with my mind,” Beth said. “That’s how I knew he was here.”

Ralph looked down at the pretty little red-haired girl who hugged him tightly. Of course, it made sense. If Michael had been born with powers, then his twin sister would certainly have them, too.

“Lead us to him, then,” Ralph said, starting toward the fence. A quick check proved it hadn’t been turned on again, and a minute later they were both on the other side. Ralph had to pause a moment until the pounding stopped in his head, and then he motioned Beth toward a trail that led between two huge boulders.

The night was silent except for the hiss of the wind and occasional howl, telling Ralph the search was not going on in this area. If he could just get to St. Malta’s Ridge, if he could just hold out that long . . .

In his mind, he spoke words of encouragement to himself, trying to drive away the pain he felt. He was so deep in this self-bargaining that he did not realize half an hour had passed without Beth saying a word. In fact, he had almost forgotten her presence until she let out a small scream.

From the hissing sound, Ralph was certain the little
girl had come across a snake. “Don’t move,” he said. “That snake’s probably as scared of you as—”

“It’s a dog,” Beth cried.

Ralph came closer and looked down with horror and awe at the monstrosity at their feet. He recognized one of the guard dogs from the LaMane Center by the blue collar around its neck. But even though this animal physically resembled a dog, its mannerisms were those of a snake. Its feet were tucked very close to its body, its neck was stretched out as far as possible, and its tail waved in a way that would have normally been impossible. The animal’s tongue flicked in and out, and instead of whimpers of pain, it was hissing. A trail of multiple Ss had been made in the dirt.

“One of the kids did this,” Ralph guessed.

“Would—would Peter hurt an animal?” Beth wanted to know, unable to tear her eyes from the freakish sight.

“I don’t think so,” Ralph said. “But it wasn’t meant to be done cruelly. I’m sure the dog was about to attack, and they had to defend themselves. Come on, Beth. There’s nothing we can do for this poor mutt until we find the other children.”

Leaving the snake-dog behind, gazing at him over her shoulder, Beth followed Ralph as he limped deeper into the mountains.

44

O
VER THE NEXT HOURS, UNTIL THE SUN ROSE AT
dawn, each group involved in the LaMane Center crisis pushed itself toward an unforeseeable future. Jill finally obtained a car, but she was so exhausted she
couldn’t trust herself to drive it. And there would be no finding Ryan at this early hour anyway. She fell back into fitful sleep in the airport lobby.

Danny caught snatches of unbidden sleep on the airplane, though he tried to stay awake and make plans. Beth and Ralph pushed forward in their quest, following Beth’s instincts and subtle clues left behind by the runaways. But the pain behind Ralph’s eye became so bad that he collapsed against a tree at one point and begged his small companion for a moment’s rest. Tired and cranky herself, she agreed, and she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder. Whether she shivered from the wind or from fear was hard to tell. As for the runaways themselves, they slept fitfully in their cave hideout. Each one took a turn keeping watch, while the other two slept and dreamed of a monster who bore a remarkable resemblance to Dr. Adams.

Only Lou Vermont’s and Lincoln Adams’ teams kept at work. Armed with information from Lillian Blair, Lou had gathered a posse of sorts and headed toward the LaMane Center. But when he approached the gate, no amount of bell ringing or yelling brought any signs of human life. Lou couldn’t know mat Adams was still leading a search party through the mountains and that he had left word behind that no one was to leave his or her home until word was given. The LaMane Center might as well have been a ghost town.

“Screw it,” Lou snapped. He turned to the young man behind him. “John, get those bolt shears and get this chain open. We’re going inside.”

While John went for the shears, another cop said, “Doesn’t look like there’s anyone in there. Maybe they’ve flown the coop because they suspected we’d be coming.”

“Maybe so,” Lou said. “But they had to have left clues.” He shifted impatiently from one booted foot to another while John worked at snapping off the chain that locked the gates. When it came free, he pushed both of them out of the way and entered the confines of the center.

“I always was suspicious about this place,” he said. “The way they’d never let anyone in, the way they never came out. Something sick’s going on in here, you mark my words.” He came to a turn in the roadway and looked left, then right. Seeing a long, low building in the distance, he pointed. “Let’s look there first.”

“We don’t have a search warrant,” John said. “Aren’t we gonna get in trouble?”

“Who’s gonna know?” Lou asked. “The place is deserted, isn’t it? And even if we do find anyone, I’m sure we can convince them to be cooperative.”

There was such an air of assurance, of sheer menace, in Lou’s voice that the younger officers exchanged glances of wonder. But they followed him to the building. A small sign over the door was crammed with the legend: A
DAMS
C
LINIC FOR THE STUDY OF
P
ARAPSYCHOLOGICAL AND
P
ARANEUROLOGICAL
B
EHAVIOR
.

“What the hell does that mean?” someone asked.

“We’ll find out,” Lou said. He wiggled the door. To his surprise, it opened easily.

The group moved into the building, where Lou signaled them to split up to either end of a long hallway. John remained with Lou, heading toward a door marked L
AB
A. Other than the soft steps of their own shoes, there wasn’t a sound to be heard. Lou pushed open the door and looked in at a room that reminded him of his high-school chemistry class. Nothing unusual here. Lab B was a duplicate of the first, although this one had two large refrigerators. In the third room, they found a green chair like the kind used in dentists’ offices. Monitors and electrical equipment that Lou could not identify surrounded the chair. A mirror lined the back wall, ending with a double-bolted door. Right now, the locks were open.

John pulled the door open to investigate. “Look at this,” he said. He turned to Lou, showing bloodstained fingertips. “It’s fresh.”

Lou hurried around the green chair, taking hold of
the door himself. Carefully, not wanting to think what he might find in there, he yanked it open.

He found a viewing room. Eight chairs had been set up on stairlike platforms, facing the large window at the front. There were three large cabinets along the back wall, secured with padlocks.

“One-way mirror,” he said. “They must be doing some kind of psycho experiments here.”

“Where did the blood come from?” John wanted to know.

Lou shook his head. The two men combed the room, but there was nothing to be found. No body.

John tapped his shoulder and pointed up toward the ceiling. There were a number of cameras suspended from heavy chains, each one aimed at the window. Their darkened lights told Lou they hadn’t been running during his search.

“There have to be tapes somewhere,” he said. “If we find them, we may find answers. Nothing else is turning up.”

“Maybe they keep them in those cabinets,” John suggested.

“Let’s find out,” Lou said, pulling his gun.

“Lou?”

Without answering and without even trying to pick one of the locks, Lou shot through its shaft. Adams had never expected anyone outside the center to ever be in this room, and so he used simple locks just to keep curious kids from getting their hands on his videotapes.

They were lined up like books, each one bearing a numerical code that didn’t give the slightest hint of content.

“What, now?” John asked. “We can’t look through every one of these. There must be two hundred in this cabinet alone.”

“We’ll take a random sample,” Lou said, pulling four tapes out. He handed them to John, then took out four more. The younger officer watched in bewilderment as Lou unzipped his black leather jacket and
stuffed the videos inside. The jacket’s cinched waist created a natural pouch, and its thick lining prevented any bulges from showing. Understanding, John did the same.

“There’s nothing more we can do here,” Lou said. “Let’s get the other guys and get out. Once we’ve viewed these tapes, we’ll decide what to do next.”

When they walked back out into the hallway, they heard the sounds of a heated argument. The other two officers were standing outside a pair of double doors, hands raised. A third man had his back to them, but they knew by his stance that he was holding a gun. Silently, swiftly, Lou and John pulled their own weapons and sneaked behind the man.

“Put it down,” Lou said. “We don’t want any trouble here.”

The man turned around and, seeing the two revolvers pointed at him, let his own gun drop to the floor. One of the other cops immediately picked it up.

“What are you doing here?” the man asked. “You have no right to come in here. You don’t have a warrant, do you?”

“Why? Do you have something to hide?” Lou asked sarcastically. “We received a distress call about a half-hour ago, a report that there was some trouble here.”

The man looked around himself. “The only trouble I see here is four crazy, trigger-happy cops. You guys are in a lot of trouble, you know. Searching this place without a warrant—”