The Grays (38 page)

Conner clapped his hands to his ears and forced the scream that urged to get out to become a hiss through his teeth,
ssssss!

Mom’s neck flushed, she gripped the steering wheel, she glared straight ahead. Then she sort of shook it off. She started the car and they continued home.

“Mom, it’s not Dad’s fault.”

“What isn’t Dad’s fault?”

“Mom . . . you know. It’s not his fault.”

She almost ran the car off the road. Then she looked at him with her eyes bugging out and her face bright red.
What is this?
Her hand came out and she grabbed his shoulder and she turned him to her. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

She stared at the road, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Conner, I think I know why you’re feeling so bad. You’re feeling so bad because you know about Marcie.”

He did not exactly know, not the name. But now he did, because the instant she uttered the word Marcie, a huge complex of thoughts and feelings had poured out of her. They were frightening adult thoughts about sex and things he knew little about, and they made him feel like he was prying into his mother’s deepest privacy, and he didn’t want to but could not help it.

“Conner, has she been at the house? Has she been there when I was gone?”

He shook his head. She’d turned onto Starnes, which meant that they would be home soon and he could get away into his room and get out of this hell of
thoughts
.

“She has, hasn’t she, Conner? You answer me!”
He better not lie because if he lies, he’s not my son, not anymore!

“Oh, Mom, no! NO! I’m not lying and I am your son, I love you so much, Mom, you have no idea!”

She looked toward him. Her eyes were full of tears, now. “You’re reading my mind.”

He could not lie to her, he would not do that to his mother. But he wanted to, he wanted desperately to. He remained silent.

“You know what I’m thinking!”

He still did not answer.

In her face there were suddenly other faces, flowing one and another to the front with the lazy assurance of carp drifting up from the shadows of a pond. She was a shimmering mass of changing eyes and lips and shapes and hair. She whispered in a voice quite different from her ordinary voice, that he recognized as her soul’s voice, her
real
voice, “I know what you’re doing and we don’t do it, Conner, we hide this. This is a secret of the soul.”

Just then they turned onto Oak and then into the driveway, and Conner was very, very glad to open the car door and get out of there, and run downstairs and get some space and not have to listen to thoughts.

“Conner?”

“Gotta go to the bathroom, Mom!”

He raced into the kitchen from the garage, then headed across the family room toward the door to the basement. He took the stairs three at a time and dashed across to the bathroom and shut the door.

His mother followed him. “Conner, are you okay?”
If this is locked . . .

“Fine, Mom!”

He is not
. “I’m coming in.”

“Mom, I’m on the pot!”

“Oh, for goodness sake, I’m your mother.”

The handle turned, and in the gleaming of the brass he saw people moving in bright rooms. His vision focused and then he was
in
one of the rooms. The Keltons were there and they were in a state of rage, fighting and screaming and pushing each other around like battling animals. Pictures were falling off the walls and their dog was all contorted trying to bite itself—and then Mom came in and she came down to the floor where he had fallen, and he saw a boy walking away down a lane lined with flowering trees and dappled by golden sunlight. He knew, then, what had thrown him to the floor, what agony. That was the lane that led to the land of the dead.

“Mom,” he whispered, “I’m in danger.”

She held him close to her, and he knew that he had seen something that was going to come soon. When the sun was low in the sky and the bare trees shuddered in the wind, everybody on Oak Road, him and Mom and Dan, Paulie and the Keltons and everybody, even the animals—everybody who lived here—was going to face death.

“THEY’RE FINISHED,” CREW SAID.
“I observed it to completion, then took the boy home myself.”

“When did it happen?” Rob Langford asked.

“Last night, just at two. They instilled Adam’s content into the child. It looks like it went well.”

“So Adam is gone?”

Crew heard Lauren’s grief. “You and Adam have a long future together. You’ll find him in Conner. He’ll seem like a sort of shadow, I’d imagine, a little like seeing the ghost of the parent in the child.”

“But he’s . . . in there?”

“Adam is no more. What’s in Conner is his knowledge, and the structures of his mind.”

“Then my friend is dead.”

“I don’t think you really have a word that describes his state. He’s not alive. He hasn’t possessed Conner, he’s given himself to him. But there is so much of him in there, of his personality, his being, his—well, essence, I suppose is the closest word—that you’re going to feel, when you’re with Conner, that you’re also with your friend.”

“Is that reassuring?”

“It’s meant to be.”

“Then that’s how I’ll take it, but what does it mean to Conner? What’s he experiencing? He seems like such a very intense child.”

“He’s confused and afraid, I would think. He’ll have powers he doesn’t understand, and that’s going to really throw him. Knowledge that seems to have come out of nowhere. It’s probably going to be about as stressful as
human experience can get. The whole family will be stressed. Extreme stress. Psychotic breaks are possible.”

“Have the grays factored that in, do you think?” Rob asked.

“That’s a hard one. What do you think, Lauren? What sort of insight do they really have into the human mind?”

She thought over her time with Adam, remembered how profound the communications difficulties had been. “Anything might happen,” she said. “My guess is that he’ll go into meltdown.”

“Then you’ll have to help him keep his sanity. He’ll be able to communicate smoothly with you, while he’s going to find fear in every other mind he touches.” Crew glanced at his watch. “I had a little conversation with Dr. Jeffers this morning. Unless this alien sensation is quieted down, Conner’s going to have a really rough time.” He turned on the TV. “That boy has to have the chance to grow up in peace.”

The local station came on, and there sat Dr. Chris Jeffers, blinking into the lights like a disinterred mole. They ran what had become known in the media as the Oak Road Video. It had been on CNN, Fox, even ABC and the BBC. It was all over the Internet, of course.

DAN SAT BEFORE HIS TELEVISION
watching
Local Edition
. After Chris had called him, he’d come straight home to see it. Chris had said that his appearance would be a big surprise, but he scarcely believed what he was seeing, his good friend blithely lying like that on TV. The spot might be on a local afternoon newsmagazine buried at 3
P.M.
, but it would be picked up worldwide. The media had committed itself a long time ago to the notion that the grays were nonsense. They had not liked being shown to be wrong when the Keltons’ video was broadcast. The backlash would be ferocious.

Their own dear Chris had become a voice of authority, and he was lying. It also made Dan jealous as hell, but that he suppressed. Firmly—or, in any case, fairly firmly. “Hey, Katelyn, you think this’ll get him a better job?”

“Nancy says that CalTech is reconsidering him.”

“Now, that is impressive.”

“You don’t sound impressed.”

“He’s lying for dollars, here.”

“Well, I—”

“Don’t you think that people have some sort of right to know this? My God, he’s dirtying his soul, and look at him smile. It’s revolting, Katelyn.”

“If he tells the truth, what happens to him? The press went to him, remember. They demanded a statement from the head of the physics department. He has no net and a baby to feed.”

“He’s the believer, and now listen to him.”

She went into the kitchen, kicking the door closed behind her. He listened to it swing, and it surely felt like rejection.

IN WILTON, MIKE WILKES BRACED
close to the wall of the convenience store. Stinging snow blasted him as he fumbled to make his call. He didn’t want to do this again, but he had to. “Hello, Charles.”

“Mike! Is this line secure?”

“I’m on a pay phone. I tossed my cell. Any word about this investigation, Charles?”

“I don’t see a thing from this end. I’d say that there isn’t one.”

That was wrong. “I saw them, Charles.”

“Well, they weren’t from any investigative body I can tap, and I think I cover pretty much all of them, Mike.”

So the danger was still out there, and it was beyond the ability of Charles Gunn himself to detect.

In that instant, Mike decided that he had to cut off all contact with Charles. Without another word, he replaced the receiver. He would not communicate with him again until the operation was complete.

He glanced at his watch, then stepped away from the phone. Time was wasting. There was work to do.

He drove through the streets of the town. Too bad this car didn’t have tinted windows. A little thing like that could have been so helpful.

He approached the grain elevator carefully. The snow had not been plowed in its drive, only on the road in front. He got out of his car and surveyed the situation. There would be tracks, no matter how he approached the entrance. If a gust of wind blew snow over them, that would simply be a matter of luck. Time was flying, though, and soon these people weren’t going to be concerned about a few tracks in the snow.

IN THE OFFICE AT ALFRED,
Lauren considered again what Crew had been saying. It looked as if the grays had won . . . whatever that might mean. “So, if Conner—if he’s now this extraordinary person, does that mean that Mike’s finished? That Conner will always be able to stay ahead of him?”

“Conner is like a newborn baby, confused and frightened and in need of
support. Right now, he’s more helpless than he was before it happened.” He glanced at Rob, who said, “I’ve had my team in the Mountain burning satellite time looking for Mike. So far, no joy.”

Crew took a cell phone call, listened for a moment, then disconnected. The two of them waited, but he said nothing.

AT THE CALLAGHANS’, KATELYN RETREATED
into the kitchen, largely to get away from watching Chris. He’d warmed to his subject, lying so well that it became agonizing.

Dan came in. “You know, the wonder of the whole thing is that they really are here. I mean, what a thing to know.”

“I wish we knew what they wanted with us and I wish especially that those strange military people weren’t involved. They make me think it’s all terribly dangerous, and Conner is vulnerable in some way that I can’t quite understand and that scares me. It’s affecting him, too, Dan, and it worries me. I almost thought he was reading my mind this afternoon.”

“In what sense?”

“He kept answering my thoughts. It was terrifying.”

“Was it—do you think . . .”

“I don’t know!”

At that moment, Conner appeared. His hair was a mess, his eyes were swollen, he shuffled along in a bag of a T-shirt. Katelyn tried to hug him but he stared at her fixedly for a moment, then shook her off.

He looked from one of them to the other, frowning.

“What?” Katelyn asked.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.

“Are we?” Dan asked.

Conner was watching this sort of darkness that kept flickering between them. He could hear Dad moaning inside himself. Mom’s inner voice was crying and crying, like a little lost girl. The darkness flickered, grew more intense, seemed to come out of them, then toward him like a shadow full of claws.

He clapped his hands to his head and shut his eyes and screamed with all his might.

“Conner!”

“You have to stay married, you have to! Mom, Dad, don’t you end this family, don’t you dare!”

Katelyn stared at him, too amazed even to try to comfort him. His face
was bright red, his eyes were swimming with tears, but his voice—his
voice!

Dan stood slowly, staring at Conner as if he could not understand what he was seeing. “Hey, there, Conner. Take it easy, son.”

“You’re not leaving me, either one of you. I need you, do you understand? I NEED YOU!”

“Conner, hey! You’re outta line!”

Conner pointed at him. “No. You are out of line. Both.” He turned and ran from the room. A moment later, music came roaring up from his basement.

“Two-thousand-one time,” Dan said. Katelyn came to him. They stood, staring toward Conner’s door, silent. He wanted to kiss her, but he was afraid he would feel that coldness again.

From downstairs, Conner’s voice came again, a boy’s voice but full of something else, something that neither of them could really identify—a strident roar, fierce and brooking no opposition. “Do it,” he cried. “DO IT, DAD!”