John Saul - Shadows

Engersol’s eyes flicked toward Hildie Kramer, whose worried frown had deepened.

“It won’t work that way, Amy,” he said. “All you’ll do is kill Adam. But the files can be restored, and the program will go on.”

The screen above Amy’s tank suddenly went blank. A moment later a new image appeared.

An image of Amy, but it was no longer shimmering, no longer swimming on the screen. Now it was sharp and clear, and Amy’s eyes seemed to focus directly on George Engersol.

“You shouldn’t have done this to me, Dr. Engersol,” she said, her voice crackling over the speaker. “I told you I didn’t want to be part of your class anymore. But you wouldn’t let me go. You should have, though, because all you’ve done by putting me here is make me smarter than I ever was before.” She paused, the image on the screen changing to reflect the anger in her mind. Her eyes narrowed and her demeanor hardened. “I’m smarter than you are, Dr. Engersol. And I’ve learned how to use the computer. So don’t try to do anything to me, because you don’t know what will happen if I die.”

Engersol was perfectly still for a moment, then quickly typed a command into the computer, turning off the sound system. He turned to Hildie Kramer. “Well?”

Hildie’s eyes flicked to the monitor, where Amy’s image still covered the screen, looking down upon them as if she were watching every move they made. “Can she hear us?”

Engersol shook his head. “I’ve deactivated the microphone.”

“Can she actually do what she threatened to do?”

“I’m not sure,” Engersol admitted, his mind racing as he tried to figure out what Amy Carlson’s mind might be capable of. “I suppose it might be possible, but—”

Without warning, the speaker in the ceiling came alive again, and Amy’s voice filled the room.

“It is possible,” she said. “I can do anything I want to do.”

George Engersol and Hildie Kramer stared at each other as both of them realized what had happened.

Amy Carlson, acting only with the power of her mind and the computer to which it was wired, had reactivated the microphone.

She was listening to them.

At one-thirty in the morning Jeanette Aldrich sat numbly on the sofa in the den. On the television an old movie was playing on the university’s cable channel, but Jeanette was paying no attention to it.

The chaos of the day still threatened to overwhelm her. Her first instinct when she’d heard about Amy Carlson’s death was to withdraw Jeff from the Academy immediately.

That instinct, of course, had been based on her instant assumption that Amy had committed suicide. When she learned the truth — or at least what bits and pieces of the truth the police knew — she had decided to wait, at least until she learned exactly what had happened to Amy.

Besides, Jeff’s words that morning had kept echoing in her mind.

If you make me leave the Academy, I’ll do what Adam did!

When he’d uttered them, his face twisted with anger and his fists clenched as if he was about to hit her, the words had slammed into her mind like bullets into her body, searing her, shocking her so deeply she hadn’t been able to return to work at all. Instead she’d come home, sitting alone in this very room, staring out the window, wondering how it had happened that one of her children had died and the other one seemed to have slipped totally beyond her control.

Would he really do it?

At last she’d dug the thesis she’d copied the day before out of the depths of her bag and begun searching its pages for clues. As she read the case histories of the children who had killed themselves at the Academy, she tried to discover parallels between them and her remaining son.

She was only halfway through the thesis when the phone rang and she heard about the discovery of Amy Carlson’s body on the beach below the bluff north of town.

Only after Chet had finally gone to bed had she returned to the thesis, finishing it, then sitting unseeingly in front of the television, trying to assimilate what she had discovered.

There were common threads among all the cases she’d read about. Troubled children, each of whom, like Adam, had attempted suicide at least once before.

All of them, like Adam, had had few friends, spending most of their time in front of their computer screens, relating to the programs and games on the machine rather than to living people.

None of them, she told herself, were children like Jeff, who, in contrast to his brother, was friendly and outgoing, and full of mischief.

Jeff was certainly the kind of boy who would play the sort of trick that had been inflicted on her.

But from what she’d read, he wasn’t the sort of boy who would kill himself.

Adam, yes.

Jeff, never.

Feeling at least somewhat reassured by what she’d found in the thesis, and exhausted by the confusion of the whole day, Jeanette picked up the remote control and brought the sound up. The movie was something in black and white, with women, eyebrows plucked to thin lines, wearing broad-shouldered dresses while they smoked endless cigarettes and sipped martinis in art-deco nightclubs.

It seemed as if they’d made hundreds of movies just like this.

Jeanette was about to switch channels when the screen suddenly changed.

Adam appeared, dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt.

“No!” Jeanette screamed. “Stop it! Whoever’s doing this to me, just stop it!” She grabbed the remote control, fumbled with it for a moment, then found the power button.

The screen went dark.

“Jeanette? Honey? What’s wrong?”

She heard Chet’s voice calling from upstairs, but made no reply, her eyes still fixed on the television set. Her heart was racing, and she was fighting a chill that threatened to overwhelm her. Dropping the remote control to the floor, she put her hands over her face and started to sob. A few seconds later Chet came into the room, snapping on the overhead light

“Jeanette? Darling, what is it? What happened?” He sat down on the sofa next to her, slipping his arm around her as he stroked her hair with his free hand.

Jeanette struggled with her sobs for a moment, then managed to get them under control. “Oh, God, Chet! I think I must be going crazy!”

“Hush,” Chet crooned. “You’re not going crazy. Just settle down and tell me what happened.”

Jeanette took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then took another. She started to speak, felt a lump rise in her throat, and fell silent again. Only when she was certain she could control her voice did she try to tell Chet what had happened.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I came down and fixed a cup of coffee. Then I turned on the TV. There — There was a movie on. One of those things where Barbara Stanwyck kills everyone she marries. And then — then—” She broke off, the lump in her throat rising once more.

“It’s all right. Just tell me what happened.”

Jeanette turned to stare at Chet, her eyes wide. “Adam,” she whispered. “He was on the television set.”

Chet gazed at her blankly. “Adam?”

“On the television,” Jeanette repeated. “The movie just stopped, and there he was.”

Chet shook his head. “Honey, you know that’s not possible. You must have just dozed off and started dreaming—”

“No” Jeanette said, her voice sharp. “Damn it, it wasn’t a dream. Here! Look for yourself!” She reached down and snatched the remote control off the floor, then pressed the power button. There was a soft click from the TV set, and the screen began to brighten. Suddenly an image formed, rolled up the screen, then steadied.

An image of Barbara Stanwyck, in black and white, her expression hard as she glared with hatred at the man whose arms were wrapped around her. An instant later Barbara kissed the object of her wrath.