Scott Nicholson - The Home

"Disassociative personality disorder is not on your diagnostic axis."

The voice was metallic and clinical, and the transfer through electronics and speakers kept it from being trustworthy. Not that Freeman would have trusted it anyway.

"I've never been shrunk except face-to-face," he said.

"You've never been treated by me before, either. That's obvious, since you still have problems."

"You're quite sure of yourself, aren't you?"

"Success breeds confidence, Mr. Mills. That's one of the things you'll learn in our sessions together, while we're on the road to healing."

"Therapy is a two-way street." Freeman wasn't going to let this bug watcher off easy.

"Just beware the exit ramps."

"Not only are you too chickenshit to meet your clients face-up, your extended metaphors are pretty lame."

The room grew silent as the microphone switched off. Freeman made funny faces in the mirror while waiting. The Clint Eastwood squint worked well in the regular population, but you had to give the shrinks a little something extra. Maybe go over the top like Pacino in Scar-face or Keifer Sutherland in practically anything.

Soon the voice came again. "Are you ready to talk about it?"

It.

Freeman hated that word, at least when said by somebody who always capitalized It. And It only meant one thing in Freeman's sessions: the long scar on his wrist. Now, with depression sinking in and the shrink trying this new tack, Freeman almost told all about It.

About Dad and the blowtorch, or Dad and the ground glass, or Dad and the electricity, or Dad the evil fucking troll who fried Freeman's brain until it worked like a cell phone and anybody could beep their stupid messages into it anytime they wanted.

Yeah, goddammit, I got somebody to blame. Now that you mention it.

But before he could speak, as his lungs froze and his stomach clenched like a fist around the beige breakfast waffles, the voice was replaced by Bondurant's.

"We're waiting, Freeman."

"No, I don't want to talk about it." Bad enough for one brain drainer to pick at your skull, but when you were double-teamed "Freeman, this is Robert Brooks. I'm a friend."

Yet another voice. Another "friend." This was turning into a joke. Shrunken by committee. Did these clowns honestly think they were going to catch Freeman off-guard, grill him as if they were TV cops, keep hitting him with new lines of questioning until his spirit broke?

"How can you be a friend if I've never met you before?" Freeman asked.

"We're here to help," said Brooks.

A brief argument flared in the background as Brooks forgot to switch off the microphone. Bondurant was telling somebody that Freeman was a kleptomaniac who should have his fingers held over the flames of hell.

The first voice that questioned him said, "Freeman, I'm Dr. Kracowski. We've arranged a little demonstration for a couple of our supporters. All you have to do is relax."

Relax. Freeman took a breath that tasted of mint ice.

"What I'm going to do will only hurt for a moment, and then you're going to feel better," said the faceless Kracowski. "Your depression will fade and you'll feel elated and energetic."

"How did you know I was depressed?"

"Because I'm trained to observe, Freeman. Because I listen. Because I care."

"What's this business about it only hurting for a moment?"

If there was any answer, he didn't hear, because- zzzzijff-his ears clanged and orange light streaked behind his eyes. The bones of his head tumbled like gravel in a clothes dryer. Hot wires jabbed into his spine and his intestines tangled into knots. A scream came from somewhere. Blood was sweet in his mouth.

Freeman stared at his reflection, scarcely able to recognize the boy in the mirror: the pain had written ugly years on his face, peeled back his lips, caused his head to tremble and his jaws to clench. Worse, he found himself unable to read his own mind. He fought for breath and waited for the wave of agony to crest.

For the briefest of moments, his reflection had that same stretched grin that Dad had worn just before ordering Freeman to visit his mother in the bathroom.

Like father, like son.

Pacino in The Devil's Advocate.

Eastwood in High Plains Drifter.

De Niro in Cape Fear.

It was the kind of grin that killed.

Richard Kracowski tapped a couple of keys, even though all the functions were programmed into the computer and ran automatically. Moving his fingers and studying the screen gave a bit of flair to the presentation. To a scientist, the cause and effect were plenty enough to satisfy; with these board members and McDonald in attendance, though, Kracowski felt the need to resort to some showy sleight of hand.

In Thirteen, the subject was recovering from the thun-derburst that Kracowski's fields had just shot into his skull and soul. The boy's tremors faded, and a smile crawled among the slack features of his face. Kracowski had longed to see how this particular specimen would react to the treatment. Even for someone who had pushed the limits in both directions, Kracowski knew that this boy represented a paradigmatic leap in his research.

"What did you just do?" Robert Brooks said. Brooks was moist, his thick glasses misted by the humidity of his own skin. He covered the smell of sweat with a cologne so intense that Kracowski almost wished the man smoked cigarettes instead.

But Brooks was a key player, one of the money men, a fat industrialist who made a fortune in hosiery production. Brooks's factories had once been located in the Piedmont, but he'd moved the operation to Mexico to take even greater advantage of the labor pool. He'd left hundreds of Americans jobless, taken a large tax write-off for the abandoned property, and had increased his personal wealth fourfold. Yet Brooks fancied himself a humanitarian because he chipped in twenty thousand dollars a year to Wendover.

Kracowski despised such men, and McKaye was of the same stripe: well dressed, milky, and of the belief that money bestowed virtuosity. The doctor had an immediate distrust of anyone who used a first initial in his name. That's why he avoided the politics of fundraising and left the handshaking to Bondurant. Kracowski put on the show, Bondurant sold the tickets.

And McDonald? The man stood quietly apart, a faint smile the only crack on the stolid face. Physically, he was as blunt as a toad and his head sat on his shoulders as if pressed into clay. His dark eyes seemed to soak light from the room, and the colors of the computerized charts reflected off McDonald's forehead.

Kracowski let Brooks's question linger for a few moments more, tapping the keyboard as the printer spat its data and the zip drive backed up the programming. The computer drives were encased in a ceramic-and-lead-lined box, and a counter electrostatic field had been created to protect the drives from the erasing capabilities of stray magnetism.

"I still have to hone a few details, but soon you'll be reading about it in the Journal of Psychology,"? Kracowski said.

"It's been very successful in early clinical trials," Bondurant cut in. "We'll all be proud to have it associated with the good name of Wendover Home. And, of course, associated with you gentlemen as well."

The boy on the other side of the mirror gazed at them, unseeing.

Brooks tugged at his tie, his jowls straining against the tightness of his collar. "That didn't look entirely healthy to me. What do you call this business again?"

Kracowski swallowed a sigh. "Synaptic Synergy Therapy. The principles are very simple. The brain operates on a series of electrical impulses and relays. You're no doubt aware of electroconvulsive therapy, which was popular in the middle of the last century."

"Shock treatment, you mean? Like in that Jack Nicholson movie, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest?"