John Saul - Shadows

Jeff Aldrich’s body, covered by a blanket, was being carried out of the elevator.

Alan Dover, softly issuing orders into his radio, signaled the Carlsons to come inside. Finishing his conversation, he turned his attention to them.

“Mr. and Mrs. Carlson?”

Frank nodded tersely while Margaret, her face pale, stood close by his side, her fingers clamped on his arm. Choosing his words carefully, Dover began filling them in on what had happened that morning. Finally, his eyes meeting Frank Carlson’s, he tried to explain what had happened to Amy. “We’re not sure of anything yet,” he said, unwilling to allow the Carlsons false hope before they understood exactly what was in the laboratory beneath the building. “But your daughter’s brain still seems to be alive.”

Margaret Carlson felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. Her face went ashen. “A-Alive?” she breathed. “B-But Amy’s dead! Her body …” Her words died on her lips as she rememberd the strange words in the coroner’s report, the words that Frank had refused to accept.

Amy’s brain had been missing from her skull.

A fish, someone had suggested. Or some kind of an animal.

But now …

“No,” she whimpered. “It isn’t possible. She’s dead! My daughter is dead!”

Frank Carlson’s arm slid around his wife’s waist, and he led her to the sofa. “Sit down, darling. Try not to—”

“No!” Margaret shook off her husband’s arm. Trembling, she turned to face Alan Dover. “I want to see what’s down there!” she declared. “If Amy’s brain is still alive, I want to see it!”

“Mrs. Carlson,” Dover began, but then, seeing the determination in Margaret Carlson’s eyes, the words he had been about to speak died in his throat. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take you down. But I want you to understand that what was going on down there was the worst kind of experimentation imaginable. As far as we know, at least one of the children who was reported to have committed suicide here, didn’t. And what happened to your daughter is … almost unimaginable.”

He led Frank and Margaret Carlson into the elevator. As the car slowly descended into the bowels of the mansion, he did his best to prepare them for what they were about to see.

The bodies of Jeff Aldrich and George Engersol, at least, were gone, and Adam Aldrich’s brain had been taken away as weü.

The lab was crowded now; Josh MacCallum was still there, along with two other officers and a man in a white jacket who looked like he might be a doctor, or at least a medic.

Margaret Carlson’s eyes fixed on the object in the tank, scarcely able to believe what she had been told.

“No,” she breathed again. “It’s not possible. Please, tell me that’s not …” Her voice trailed off as she found herself unable to utter the words.

The man in the white coat turned around as Margaret spoke, and Alan Dover quietly told him who she was.

“I’m Gordon Billings, Mrs. Carlson,” the white-clad man said. “I’m with the university medical center. We don’t know yet exactly what’s happening. All I can tell you is that the brain in the tank is human, and apparently is your daughter’s.”

“Is it alive?” Frank Carlson demanded.

Gordon Billing’s expression tightened. “Biologically, yes, it is. But as to its viability as a brain, I don’t know what to tell you.”

Frank Carlson’s expression hardened. “Tell us whatever you know,” he said. “Or what you think. We’re her parents, and we have a right to know exactly what happened to her.”

Josh MacCallum, who had said nothing until now, gazed up at Frank and Margaret. “Dr. Engersol took her brain,” he said. “He hooked it up to a computer. He did it to Adam Aldrich, too.”

Margaret Carlson felt her knees weaken, and she sank down into one of the chairs that flanked the desk. “Why?” she breathed. “What …?” But once more she couldn’t complete her question, as her mind reeled.

“She’s not dead, Mrs. Carlson,” Josh told her, his voice trembling. “She’s just asleep or something. Adam did something to her, and she went to sleep!”

Margaret stared numbly at Gordon Billings. “Is that true?”

Billings shrugged uneasily. “She’s in some kind of deep coma, yes. But it seems to be far beyond sleep. It looks to me as though her brain must be dying, although the instruments monitoring it indicate that it’s physically healthy.”

“Healthy?” Frank Carlson echoed. His eyes fixed on the tank, and he felt a terrible welling of anger coming from deep within him. “That’s not my daughter,” he declared, his voice strangling on his own words. “That’s not Amy!” His voice began to rise. “Don’t tell me that’s Amy! Do you understand? I will not accept that that — that thing — is any part of my little girl! No!” He was sobbing now, his rage suddenly dissolving into grief as the truth of what had happened to his daughter sank into him. “No,” he wailed again. “Not Amy! Not my little Amy!”

As his anguish filled the room, the lines on the monitor displaying Amy Carlson’s brain waves suddenly changed.

A blip appeared in the gentle wave pattern, a blip that lingered on the screen, slowly moving toward the left as the instruments gathered new data and displayed it on the monitor.

“She heard you,” Josh breathed, staring at the display. “Amy heard you!”

Out of the quiet and darkness into which Amy had retreated, a voice rang out, speaking her name, then died away almost as quickly as it had come. Amy’s first instinct was to cringe away from the stimulus, to retreat further into the shell she had built around her mind.

And yet the voice she’d heard was familiar.

Not Adam.

Not Dr. Engersol, either.

But familiar, nonetheless.

Terrified, she gathered her shell more tightly around her, willing herself not to respond to the stimulus, not to allow herself to be baited into whatever trap Adam had set for her this time. Memories of the demons still haunted her, and the fear that enveloped her was a palpable thing.

And yet a tiny tendril of her mind responded to that voice. Almost unconsciously, she opened a crack in that psychic shell. Reaching out with her mind, she took a tentative exploratory step into the world beyond the confines of her own brain.

She sensed instantly that something had changed.

The cacophony of stimuli that had assaulted her earlier was gone. She hesitated, certain that at any moment Adam would sense that she had opened herself again and let down her defenses, however slightly, and attack.

The attack didn’t ome.

She opened the crack in her shell wider and began to let her mind emerge once again. Still, she remained cautious, creeping forth into the computer’s circuitry, searching for the weapons she was certain were trained on her.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she began to sense that Adam was gone. She could no longer feel his presence, nor detect the stimuli emanating from his brain.

Was he hiding? Had he, too, closed himself down, waiting for her to drop her defenses entirely so that he could spring forth out of the black nothingness of the circuitry?

She reached further, exploring the world within the microchips and the data that were stored there.

Nowhere was there any trace of Adam.

There were voices coming through the microphone, though. A babble of voices that were being instantly digitalized and transmitted to her brain, tumbling over one another so that none of them was distinct.

She emerged completely from her shell, searching through the computer for some clue as to what had happened, some explanation for Adam’s disappearance. For she had already discovered that the support system for his tank was no longer functioning, nor could she find, anywhere, any trace of activity coming from his mind.