David Silva - The Disappeared

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” She put her arm over his shoulder and wished she could magically make everything better. It wasn’t fair, bringing him back after such a long absence and then giving him something like this. It wasn’t fair at all. “This isn’t the same as growing up.”

“What is it, then?”

“Well, Dr. Childs seems to think that it’s something like Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome. That’s a disease that children sometimes get, and it’s something that makes their bodies grow old much faster than they’re supposed to.”

“Will I get gray hair and have to wear false teeth?”

“I’m not sure about the false teeth,” Teri said, actually finding a breath of humor mixed into the horror. In reality, she really wasn’t sure if he’d have to wear false teeth or not. But the question caught her so completely off guard that she found herself smiling without being able to help herself.

“How about wrinkles? Am I gonna get wrinkles?”

“As I understand what the doctor said, the cells in your body will start to lose some of their regenerative abilities. What I mean by that is that they won’t replace themselves as often as healthy cells are supposed to. When that happens, your body’s going to wear out a little faster than everyone else’s.”

“Yeah, but am I gonna get wrinkles?”

“Yes,” she said, the humor suddenly gone. “I think so.”

“Weird.”

“I know. It’s very weird.”

“Am I gonna die?”

“We’re all going to die, Gabe.”

“Yeah, but am I gonna die when I’m still a kid?”

“I don’t know,” she said grimly.

“I don’t want to die. Not yet, at least.” He glanced in the direction of the television, looking suddenly as if he were balancing the weight of the entire world on his shoulders.

Maybe Tales From The Crypt wasn’t such a big deal after all, she thought solemnly.

“Mom?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What happens after we die?”

A small desk lamp cast a circular light over the console and the jumble of folders beneath Gabriel Knight’s patient records. Childs stared at the bank of monitors displaying the last cell sample taken from the boy, then sat back in his chair and wondered what was going on.

It was not Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome as he had told Teri. But it was something similar, something potentially even more devastating to the boy’s body. As he might expect to find with a case of progeria, minor signs of aging had already begun to appear. The boy had visibly lost some of his body fat, especially around his abdomen and his buttocks. It seemed apparent that his skin had begun to lose some elasticity as well. It wouldn’t be long before his internal organs began to suffer. Maybe only a matter of months.

The boy was aging.

He was aging at an alarming rate.

Just how fast, though, Childs couldn’t say. It was going to take more time before he’d be able to hazard a guess with any accuracy, and he wanted to be sure. He wanted to be sure about how fast it was happening and what was causing it to happen.

It just didn’t make any sense.

There had never been any previous symptoms. At least nothing telltale. In fact, nothing even remotely suspect for that matter. So why all of a sudden was this happening? What had triggered the change? And just as important—what was it going to take to reverse it? Was that even possible? And if it wasn’t, then what was it going to take to prevent the disease from getting worse?

He wasn’t sure if they could prevent it from getting worse.

No, it just didn’t make any sense.

He searched out a pencil and a pad from the top drawer of his desk, and wrote a quick note to himself: Is it possible that antisense oligos or oligo subunits might have accidentally integrated themselves into healthy DNA?

He dropped the pad on the desk, searching for any other possible explanations that might come to mind, and then the phone rang. The call was from Teri. He had given her the number to call in the case of an emergency.

“I didn’t really expect to catch you this late,” she said softly. She sounded as if she might have been crying.

“Well, I’m glad you did. What can I do for you?”

“I’m not sure. I guess I was just feeling a little frightened by things.”

“That’s certainly understandable under the circumstances, Teri.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“I wish I could tell you not to worry, but quite frankly, I’m not sure how this thing is going to play out. As I told you earlier, there are definite signs of premature aging beginning to show themselves. Can we halt it? I just don’t know.” He leaned heavily against his elbows which were resting on the console. “Once again, I want to encourage you to consider having Gabriel moved into a facility for observation. I think that would be the most prudent way of approaching this situation. At least until we have a better picture of what’s going on and how we might deal with it.”

There was silence on the other end, except for some background noise that sounded as if it might be a passing truck. Absently, he caught himself thinking: She’s in a phone booth somewhere.

“Teri?”

“I’ll think about it. I promise.”

“Please do.”

“How soon do you need to know?”

“The sooner the better, for Gabe’s sake.”

“All right.”

Childs hung up, then thought about it a moment longer. She wasn’t going to submit the boy to observation. Sometimes you got a feel for these kinds of things and that was the feeling he was getting now.

“Damn it, any how,” he muttered.

Then he took another look at the boy’s cells.

Teri hung up the phone, feeling as if she had been teetering on the edge of a huge hole that had finally opened wide enough to swallow her altogether. The doctor had sounded more than a little concerned. He had sounded frightened. And that had given Teri a fright of her own, a fright she could have done without.

She stepped out of the phone booth, glanced down the street, and turned in the opposite direction. It was cold out tonight. The sky was clear, the air crisp. The city lights cast a dim wash across the night that made the stars seem farther away than usual. But then, everything seemed farther away tonight.

The boy was waiting two blocks over, in the magazine section of a 7-Eleven. She went in, fighting back tears. The right thing, she supposed, would be to let them place him under observation. Anything else, and she wouldn’t be fit to be his mother, would she?

No, you wouldn’t, Teri thought as she spotted Gabe and went over to stand at his side.

But…

But she just got him back. And…

And she didn’t want to lose him again.

Not for a second.

Not to anyone.

Oh, God. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve this.

“Well?”

“We got it, but it’s a phone booth.”

“Where at?”

“The corner of Lake and Masonic.”

“Better have someone check it out, just in case.”

“I’ve already got someone on it.”

“Have them check out the motels in the area, too. You never know, she might have been foolish enough to call from a booth not far from where she’s staying.”

“You got it.”

“Walt? This is Teri.”

The answering machine was lying on the floor, at an angle, on a stack of file folders not far from the phone. The message light had been flashing furiously when Walt had first arrived back at the apartment. It was a solid red light now, and that meant the first of his messages had begun to play.