John Saul: Brain Child

Carol patted Lisa’s hand reassuringly. “It’s all right, honey. We’re not going anywhere. I’m … well, I’m just as frightened as you are.” Suddenly Jim appeared in the doorway, and Carol’s attention was diverted from her daughter to her husband.

“I just talked to Marsh,” Jim told them, “and he wasn’t making much sense. And Ellen’s not talking at all. He says she’s just sitting on the sofa, and he’s not sure she’s even hearing what anyone says.”

“Anyone?” Carol asked. “Is someone else there?”

“The police were there. They just left.”

There was a silence. Carol sighed as she came to a decision. “All right,” she said quietly. “If you think you have to go, we’ll all go. I guess you’re right — we can’t just sit here and do nothing.” She stood up, but Lisa remained seated where she was.

“No,” she said, her eyes flooding. “I can’t go.”

And finally, seeing the extent of his daughter’s fear, Jim relented. “It’s okay, princess,” he said softly. “I guess I can understand how you’re feeling.” His eyes moved to his wife, and he offered her a tight smile. “I guess that lets you off the hook, too.”

Carol hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll stay here.” Guiltily, she hoped the relief she was feeling didn’t show, but she was sure it did.

“I won’t stay long,” Jim promised. “I’ll just see if there’s anything I can do, and let them know they’re not alone. Then I’ll be back. Okay?”

Again Carol nodded, and walked with her husband to the front door, where she kissed him good-bye. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I’ve lost my nerve, but I just have. Forgive me?”

“Always,” Jim told her. Then, before he closed the door, he spoke again. “Until I get back, don’t open the door for anyone.”

Then he was gone, and Carol went back to the kitchen, to wait.

Darkness was falling as Alex made the turn off Middlefield Road, and as he started up into the hills on La Paloma Drive, he reached down and turned on the headlights of Raymond Torres’s car. He wondered if he would dream about Dr. Torres tonight — if he chose to live that long — and wondered if, in whatever dreams he might have, he would feel the same emotional pain again, as he had when he dreamed about Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Benson. With Dr. Torres, he decided, he wouldn’t. Torres’s death was very clear in his memory, and he felt no pain when he thought about it.

But he would dream about Mrs. Evans, and Carolyn, too, and then the pain would come.

There was, he had finally come to believe, still some little fragment of Alex Lonsdale still alive, deep within the recesses of his central brain core. It was that fragment of Alex who was having the dreams, and feeling the pain of what he had done. But when he was awake, there was none of Alex left. Only … who?

Did he even have a name?

Alejandro .

That was the name Dr. Torres had chosen for him, and then carefully built the memories of Alejandro into him. But the emotions that went with Alejandro’s memories were Raymond Torres’s, and those he had carefully left out.

It had, Alex realized, avoided confusion. When he saw the women — the women Torres hated — in the environment of Alejandro’s memory, they had become other people from other times, and Alejandro had killed them.

And why not? To Alejandro, they were the wives of thieves and murderers, and as guilty of those crimes as their husbands.

But in the darkness of night, in the visions generated by the remnants of Alex Lonsdale’s subconscious, they were old friends, people he had known all his life, and he mourned them.

And that had been Torres’s mistake.

For his creation to have been perfect, there should have been none of Alex Lonsdale left.

Ahead of him, the headlights picked up the sign for the park that lay on the outskirts of the village. Alex pulled into the parking lot and shut off the engine.

His father had told him that when he was a boy, he’d played here often, yet he still had no memory of it. His only memory was Raymond Torres’s memory of standing on the street, pleading with his mother to take him to the swings and push him as the other mothers were pushing their children.

“No,” María Torres would mutter. “The park is not for us. It is for los gringos . Mira!” And she would point to the sign dedicating the park to the first American settlers who had come to La Paloma after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been signed. Then she would take Ramón by the hand and drag him away.

Alex got out of the car and began making his way across the empty lawn toward the swings. Tentatively he settled himself into one of them, and gave an experimental kick with his foot.

The movement had the vaguest feeling of familiarity to it, and Alex began pumping himself higher and higher. As the air rushed over his face and he felt the slight lurch in his stomach at the apex of each arc, Alex realized that this must have been what he’d done as a boy, this must be what he’d loved so much.

He stopped pumping, and let the swing slowly die until he was sitting still once again.

Then, knowing he had much to do before he went to the house on Hacienda Drive where the people who thought they were his parents lived, he left the swing and returned to his car.

He drove on into La Paloma, and turned left before he got to the Square. Two blocks further on, he came to the plaza. In the flickering lights of the gas lamps, the memories of Alejandro began creeping back to him, but Alex forced them out of his consciousness, keeping himself in the present. Only when he drove around the village hall to the mission graveyard did he let the memories come back.

Was this where they would bury him, or would they take him up into the hills above the hacienda and bury him with his mother and his sisters?

No.

They would bury him here, for they would be burying Alex, not Alejandro. Again he got out of the car, and slipped into the little graveyard. Tucked away in a dusty corner, he found the grave he was looking for.

Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz

1832–1926

His own grave, in a way, and already sixty years old. There were flowers on the grave, though, and Alex knew who had put them there. Old María Torres, still honoring her grandfather’s memory. Alex reached down and picked one of the flowers, breathing in its fragrance. Then, taking the flower with him, he went back to the car.

In the Square, he stepped over the chain around the tree, and stood for a long time under the spreading branches. Alejandro’s memories were strong again, and Alex let them spread through his mind.

Once more he saw his father’s body swinging limply from the hempen noose knotted around his neck, and felt the unfamiliar sensation of tears dampening his cheeks. He took the flower from Alejandro’s grave and laid it gently on the ground above his father’s grave. Then he turned away, knowing he’d seen the great oak tree for the last time.

Lisa and Carol Cochran were still sitting in the friendly brightness of the kitchen when they heard the car pull up outside, and a door slam. Carol hesitated, then pulled the drawn shades just far enough back to allow her to peer out into the street. A car she didn’t recognize sat by the curb, and it was too dark to see who had gotten out of it. She dropped the shade back into position, and went to the stove, where she nervously poured herself yet another cup of coffee. As soon as Jim had left the house, she had given up any idea of sleeping that night.

“Who was it, Mom?” Lisa whispered, and Carol forced a grin that held much more confidence than she was feeling.