Whitley Strieber - The Omega Point

“Jesus, they’re in a hurry!”

“There can be shooters,” Mrs. Denman muttered.

“How dangerous is this place?”

She looked at him as if he was some sort of a lunatic for even needing to ask. Andy, now driving, did his job in silence.

“I have two hours. The plane will fly a pattern, then meet me back here. Not a good idea to keep it on the ground.”

“No, I suppose not.”

The car swayed, then picked up speed as it approached the town of Raleigh itself. David had never been here before, but had been told that it was a prosperous and settled community of upscale commuters and local gentry.

By the time they reached the outskirts of the town, the car was doing at least sixty. They accelerated as they went along the main street, tires screaming as they rounded courthouse square.

Buildings raced past on each side as Andy leaned on the horn and they shot through one red light after another.

“What’s going on?”

“We call it ‘running the town.’”

“But—Jesus…”

“There’s a lot of inappropriate resentment.”

At that moment, the car turned and slowed as it began moving, once again, through the countryside. “Cigarette?” Mrs. Denman asked, holding out a pack.

“I don’t smoke.”

She put it away. “Neither do I.” She sighed.

Soon, David saw ahead of them a pair of enormously imposing gates. They were iron and easily twenty feet tall at their peaks. Across the top were four iron finials. On the finials, David recognized gryphons with their eagle’s wings and lion’s bodies, familiar, leering forms from the walls of Gothic cathedrals. Gryphons were guardians of the gates of heaven. Worked into the iron of the gates themselves were images of Mesoamerican deities—which was odd, given the age of this place. In the early twentieth century, they’d hardly been known.

“Are these gates new?”

“They’re original to the estate.”

As they opened and he saw the great house standing off across the rolling, exquisitely kept lawns, he was struck as if through the heart with the most poignant déjà vu.

“You’re as white as a sheet, Doctor.” She put the back of a long, spiderlike hand to his forehead. “No fever, at least, young man. Memory can bring fever.”

“Stop the car.”

“Ignore him, Andy.”

“Stop the car! I’m not taking this job. No matter what, I’m going back to New York.”

The car didn’t even slow down, and as they approached the great redbrick house with its wide colonnade and broad terraces, the sense of déjà vu, rather than fading, became more acute.

“You feel it, don’t you?”

“I feel very strange and I do not want to go ahead with this. I don’t know what’s going on here.”

She laid a hand on his wrist. “Just relax and let yourself feel it. Memory will return.” She leaned back and gave him a smile as broad as a child’s. “You’ll thank me, young man, when you do remember.”

“Just tell me, for God’s sake!”

“You have to make the connections yourself or they’ll have no meaning. No emotional resonance. You need to find your commitment to your mission in your own heart. I cannot do it for you.”

“But you know.”

“I know that the class existed but not what you were taught in it. And I also know that you just this moment remembered being here. It’s written on your face.”

They pulled up before the portico. David opened the door of the car, which was so heavy that it felt like pushing open a safe.

Walking toward the great house, he found himself profoundly drawn to the sense of order and permanence that pertained everywhere. The docile clicking of the lawn sprinklers, the early green of the trees, the grand apple tree just by the south wall in full bloom—it all spoke of a world that elsewhere had already slipped into the past, replaced by the sense of the posthumous that was coming to define modern life.

But it was also part of his past. His own personal past belonged in some way to this place.

Aubrey Denman opened the front door using a fingerprint detector. He’d half expected the great door to be swept open by some sort of butler. Instead, an armed security man in a blazer and tie greeted them. Obviously, his orders were to wait until the fingerprint reader had released the lock.

“Where are the—” David’s voice died. He had been about to ask where the patients and staff were, but the splendor of the room he had just entered silenced him. He found himself looking across a wide hall with a magnificent inlaid floor depicting a hunt in full cry. It was marquetry, and yet not too fragile for a floor.

And, incredibly, he remembered: You slid across this floor in your socks.

The leaping horses and racing dogs in the floor led the eye to a grand staircase that swept upward as if to heaven itself, drawing the eye further, this time to a phenomenal trompe l’oeil ceiling that imparted an unforgettable illusion of a vast summer sky.

You lay on the landing and imagined yourself among the birds.

“Where are my patients?”

“The patients are in the patient wing. Study the records first, Doctor, please. Then meet them.”

“Will they know me? Are they also in amnesia?”

“They’re in a state of induced psychosis.”

He stopped. “What did you just say?”

“For security reasons, this place appears to be a clinic for the mentally ill. Most members of the class are here as patients, their real selves hidden beneath a combination of amnesia and artificial psychosis. Members of the class who are on staff have only the amnesia, and one or two of them, who will guide the others, retain clear memory.”

He turned to her, and on her. “This is totally unacceptable. Who did such a thing to these people? I can’t be a party to it.”

“You can be a party to waking them up, then, and ending the need.”

“This is all insane, the whole thing. Who would ever induce mental illness to conceal somebody’s—what, their knowledge, their identity? Why was it done?”

“The enemies of our mission are incredibly ruthless and they’re going to get more so. If they found the class, they’d kill every single one of them. And you, David, make no mistake. But beforehand they would tear your mind to pieces with drugs and torture beyond anything you can imagine. And in the end, they would obtain your knowledge, amnesia or not.”

Never in his life had he struck another human being, but he was tempted to now, as he found himself coping with a disturbing impulse to shake the truth out of this old lady.

“Who are these enemies?”

“Presidents, kings, the rich and the famous, not to mention the members of the Seven Families who control the wealth of this planet.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The more you remember, the more you’ll understand. Come with me. My time is short, and I need to show you your office.” She touched his hand. “David, you’ll regain control of your situation and I know how badly you need control; I wrote your personality profile.”

“ Wrote it? Where is it? How could you write it?”

“I’m a psychiatrist, David, just like you. I managed the mental health of the class.”

“You did this to these people!”

Her eyes sought his, and in them, brown and hazed, he saw that hunted expression again.

“How did you do it? What method did you use?”

As if in shame, she turned away from him, and he knew that whatever she had done had been traumatic for all involved, including her.

Causing amnesia was a matter of hypnosis and drugs, but to make a person psychotic must be a ferocious process.

“How can they be released from this?”