John Saul - Shadows

The bill for the parts came to thirty-five dollars, which he paid for out of the fifty-dollar bill he’d taken from the small cache of emergency money his mother kept hidden in the bottom of the cedar chest at the foot of his parents’ bed.

The chance of her missing it this evening wasn’t big enough to worry about.

By tomorrow morning it wouldn’t matter at all.

Josh MacCallum sat by himself in the dining room that evening, nodding to everyone who spoke to him, but not asking anyone to sit with him, nor accepting Brad Hinshaw’s suggestion that he bring his tray to a table where two other kids were already eating.

Tonight he didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to answer any more questions about what it had been like to find Amy’s body, didn’t want to listen to all the other kids talk about how Steve Conners might have killed her.

Tonight he wanted to be by himself, for all day long he’d been trying to figure out what he should do. Though he’d tried to concentrate on his classes, it hadn’t worked. No matter how hard he tried to pay attention to what his teachers were saying, all he could think about was what had happened yesterday to Amy.

And what had happened to himself last night, when he’d put on the virtual reality mask and Adam Aldrich had suddenly appeared.

He’d been puzzling at it all day, trying to decide if what he had seen had been real or only some kind of computer trick; some kind of interactive program that was so complex it could respond to whatever he said.

But if the program was so good that he actually believed he was seeing Adam, and talking to him, then it was intelligent, wasn’t it? That was one of the tests of artificial intelligence. Yet Dr. Engersol had told them it didn’t exist, and never would. Besides, if what he’d seen was a program, how could he explain what had happened right at the end, when he’d heard Amy’s voice, calling out for help?

Then this morning Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich had come to the school and taken Jeff home. Josh had known right away that Jeff’s sudden departure had something to do with Adam. It had happened right at the beginning of first period, while they were waiting for Dr. Engersol, and when Hildie had told them the seminar wouldn’t be meeting that morning, and then taken Jeff upstairs to Dr. Engersol’s office, he’d been sure he knew what had happened.

Mrs. Aldrich must have gotten another message from Adam, and they’d blamed it on Jeff.

So now he didn’t even have Jeff to talk to about the confusion in his mind.

None of it made any sense, and it seemed as though the more he thought about it, the more confusing it got.

Except that if he assumed that what he’d seen last night was real, then it all fit together. And it meant that somewhere close by, Adam and Amy were still alive, their brains still working, even though their bodies were dead.

But where? Where was the computer Adam said he was inside?

And what would happen to him, Josh wondered, if he found out? Whatever was going on, it must be really secret if they wanted everyone to think that Adam and Amy were dead! And if he got caught trying to figure out the secret …

Maybe he should call his mother and tell her he wanted to come home.

But she’d want to know why.

What would she say if he told her that Adam and Amy weren’t dead at all, but were hidden away somewhere, inside a computer?

She’d say he was crazy and send him to see a psychiatrist.

Besides, he didn’t really want to go back to Eden, and have to sit in boring classes with kids who didn’t like him. And he certainly wanted to find out what had happened to Amy. If they’d done something to her, he wanted to find out who had done it, and make them sorry.

Finishing his dinner, Josh picked up his tray full of dirty dishes and took it to the butler’s pantry between the dining room and the kitchen.

His eyes fastened on the door to the basement, and he shivered as he remembered what had happened down there the night before last.

Remembered, and wondered.

In his mind’s eye he saw once more the mass of concrete that had looked like an elevator shaft, and heard once more the sound that seemed to pass right by him in the shaft and continue downward.

Under the house?

Could that be where Adam was, and Amy, too?

But how could he find out? And if there was something under the house, some kind of hidden laboratory, how could he get into it?

His heart raced as he began to speculate on the possibilities.

And he felt a chill of fear as he thought about once more going down into the dark maze of rooms that lay beneath his feet.

A voice broke through his reverie. A voice that made Josh freeze.

Hildie Kramer’s voice.

Forcing himself to control the panic the mere sound of the housemother’s voice instilled in him, he turned around.

“Josh?” Hildie asked, her eyes seeming to pin him to the wall. “What’s wrong? Don’t you feel weif?”

Josh felt cornered. Had she been watching him staring at the basement door? Did she know what he was thinking?

“I–I was just thinking about Amy, that’s all. I always ate with her, and—” His voice broke with a sob that was only half forced. “I just miss her, that’s all,” he finished.

The penetrating look in Hildie’s eyes softened. “I know,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “We all miss her. But sometimes terrible things happen, and we have to learn to bear up under them. We have to go on living, no matter how hard it might seem.” She paused, and Josh had to steel himself not to duck away from the touch of her hand. “Would you like to talk about it?” Hildie asked. “We could go into my office.”

Josh shook his head. “I’ll be okay. And I’ve got a lot of homework to do.”

To his relief, Hildie’s hand dropped away from his shoulder. “Well, if you need me, you know where to find me,” she told him.

Josh slipped by her and hurried through the dining room and into the foyer. As he started up the stairs to the second floor, he paused, hearing the familiar rattle of the elevator as the machinery came to life.

He watched as the car rose slowly up its guides toward the floors above.

When it was gone, though, Josh’s eyes remained on the spot where it had been.

The floor of the shaft was solid, and the elevator could go no farther down.

Or at least, he realized as he stared at the solid mass of the floor, this elevator couldn’t go down any farther.

But what if there was another elevator?

As he mounted the stairs, he continued to think about that.

It was nearly midnight when Jeff Aldrich removed the three sheets of paper from under the mattress, crept out of his room, listened at his parents’ bedroom door until he was certain that they were both sound asleep, then moved silently down the stairs to the darkened lower floor of the house. Turning on the Macintosh in the den, he activated the modem, tapped in a telephone number followed by a security code, and a moment later was in contact with the Croyden computer in George Engersol’s laboratory.

Ill BE HEADY IN FIFTEEN MINUTES, ADAM.

The answer appeared instantly.

I’M HERE.

His bare feet moving soundlessly across the hardwood floor, Jeff went through the kitchen and into the garage, not turning on the lights until the kitchen door was closed behind him. He lifted the hood of his father’s car, studied the first of the drawings Adam had sent him that afternoon, and located the box that contained the automobile’s electronic components. Snapping the plastic latches loose, he studied the second drawing, then used a screwdriver to loosen one of the circuit cards that were arranged in a single tier inside the box, withdrew it from its slot, and reclosed the plastic box. Dropping the hood back down, he froze at the sound of its latch snapping shut, then relaxed when he heard no sound from within the house.