Whitley Strieber - The Omega Point

But no, that couldn’t be. It could not be. That had not been a dream, nobody dreamed that elaborately, it wasn’t possible.

He was still in his jeans, anyway, so he went back downstairs.

There was nobody at the piano and the kiln was dark. But, God, how disorienting. What had happened to the time?

Exactly.

Whatever they had been doing with the kiln had affected not just the brain, inducing hallucinations, it had, he thought, done something to space-time itself. Warped it, twisted it, sent him racing across the hours from three o’clock until dawn in just seconds.

He went to it, opened it, and thrust his hand into the firing chamber. A faint warmth was all he felt, exactly as if it hadn’t been fired since yesterday.

But he had seen Caroline Light in here, and Linda Fairbrother had been in the other room playing music to cover the sound of the superintense fire.

They’d made some sort of powder, he had seen it. And they had also been fools, because everybody in the place must have noticed the flashes, except for the staff in the four bedrooms on the far side of the building, and maybe them, too. Maybe Katie had lied.

What a hell of a situation. What was real? Who could be trusted?

Those people could. That had been the class, and Caroline had been there. They could be trusted. But who were they?

She must be waking them up. Of course she was, they’d been taught to use the glyphs and she was doing it.

Not all of them, though, and not the ones likely to be needed the most, they were still trapped in their various insanities.

It was while they were making that powder that space-time had gotten all twisted. So the opposition was going to try to take it. Therefore, bloodshed was coming.

He took the stairs leading to the second floor of the patient wing, running up, then through the door and down the hall to the central nurses’ station.

“Nurse!”

Nurse Fleigler came up from behind her small, electronically dense station.

“Doctor?”

Behind her was a bank of screens. Cameras covered each room from two directions. A computer continuously analyzed sounds, and immediately warned her if there were any screams, breaking glass, thuds, any sound suggesting violence. It also warned her when a room became too quiet.

“You’re up early, Doctor.”

“What kind of a night?”

“We had a security check. Some lightning flashes. Aside from that, it’s been quiet.”

David noticed movement in Mack Graham’s room.

“What’s four doing?”

It was perfectly obvious that the man was engaged in sexual self-stimulation.

“This is the third time tonight. He claims that he’s entertaining me.”

“He’s been in there all night?”

“Absolutely.”

“Have any confinement patients been recorded outside of their rooms tonight?”

She shook her head. “What’s the matter, Doctor?”

Could those have all been staff members? But no, he’d seen Caroline—or had he?

“How’s Caroline?”

“I’ve got a good sleep signal. Normal breathing pattern. REM sleep.”

“But she was agitated earlier, after Claire left her?”

Fleigler nodded, her plain, broad face registering sadness and, perhaps, a degree of accusation.

“The poor woman—she did not like that locked door.”

“I want to see her tape, if you don’t mind. Just roll it back to, say, three, and play it for me.”

The screen flickered, then flashed, and he saw what at first appeared to be a static image, but the status readouts confirmed stage four sleep, heart rate fifty-seven, breathing regular.

There was a flicker on the screen. “What was that?”

“What?”

“Roll it back.”

She did so. The flicker repeated.

“Run it slow.”

He watched Caroline sleep. Were the flickers caused by the flashes from the art room, or were they edits that concealed Caroline’s comings and goings?

“So everything’s been quiet? Definitely?”

“Quiet, Doctor.” She looked up at him, her brows raised in a suggestion of question.

On his way back to his suite, he came face-to-face with the fact that mystery was piling on mystery, and he was drowning.

Using the fingerprint reader on his door, he entered his suite. He returned to the window where he had seen Caroline disappearing under the trees. Ripped clouds sped past the low moon, and, to the north, lightning now flickered. The east was red with dawn.

He tried the Internet, but it was useless. Finally, he called security.

“How many of those flashes did you record?” he asked.

“Two sets of two each.”

It was still over an hour to breakfast, and he was profoundly exhausted. He threw off his jeans and T-shirt and returned to bed. It was so very strange to draw these gorgeous silk sheets up around himself in the context of the world as it was. There was jeopardy all around him, but the bed was here, the sheets were soft, and the mattress even somewhat tolerable. He closed his eyes and began to drift… and found himself having to will his mind away from the image of the woman running in the night, and thoughts of Caroline Light.

He redirected his longing toward Katie Starnes. Her dark Gaelic eyes and cream-white skin were well worth a few moments of presleep contemplation. He shouldn’t have been such a damn fool when she’d offered herself. He needed to fix that.

He wondered what Katie actually knew about this place. She hadn’t been in the class.

It was as this thought was forming in his mind that he slipped through the invisible door into sleep. His breathing became more steady, his shoulders relaxed, his lips parted slightly. After a moment, his body turned onto its right side, entering its preferred sleep position.

The dreams were immediate and once again he was facing the kiln, watching it flare with that amazing light. Then the broad clearing once again spread out before him. There was thick grass. A distance away was a tall oak, its leaves spring-fresh. Beside it was a thickly blossomed apple tree. In fact, the scene looked very much like the clinic’s grounds, but in far, far better days. Caroline Light was there, standing near the trees. She gestured to him, smiled and gestured again.

He thought that this sight of this woman in this place was the most beautiful and compelling thing he had ever seen.

Then there was a crash, followed by a long, retreating rumble, and he was again in bed. More crashing thunder and, coming with it, more flashes, but ordinary lightning this time.

He opened his eyes. Seven ten by the clock. More than an hour had passed in a sleep that seemed to last only a few seconds. Outside, thunder roared and bellowed, and lightning flashed.

The first thing on his agenda this morning was yet another staff meeting, more bad news about supplies and infrastructure, he supposed.

He thought that he needed to understand more about that powder. He needed to gain the confidence of the makers.

He should damn well remember it from the class but he didn’t… or did he?

Gold? Was it connected with gold?

Rain struck the tall window behind him, crashing torrents of it, and the great house groaned from the pressure of the wind, and the eaves mourned.

Exhausted, confused, and deeply, deeply afraid, David prepared to meet his day.

Nurse Beverly Cross and Dr. Marian Hunt came in at the same time, taking seats in the huge office. As David greeted them, he came around from behind his desk. The office enforced the formality of another age.

Nurse Cross gave him a weak smile. She looked exhausted, her eyes hollow.

“You lit us up,” she said.

“Sorry about that. I thought I saw a patient in the grounds.”