John Saul: Brain Child

Suddenly his eyes filled with tears once again. “He would have stopped it,” he whispered. “If so much of him hadn’t died — if just a little more of him had lived — I know he would have stopped it.”

Carol Cochran shakily rose to her feet. “What, Alex?” she whispered. “What would you have stopped?”

“Not me,” Alex breathed. “Him. Alex would have stopped what Dr. Torres did. But I didn’t know. He wouldn’t let me remember, so I didn’t know. But Alex found out. What was left of him found out, and he’s trying to stop it. He’s still trying, but he might not be able to, because he’s dead.” His eyes suddenly took on a wildness as they focused on Lisa once more. “Don’t you understand?” he begged. “Alex is dead, Lisa!” Then he turned, and shambled back through the dining room and out into the night. A moment later, Carol heard a car door slam and an engine start. And then she heard Kim, and felt the little girl tugging at her arms.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked. “What’s wrong with Alex?”

Carol swallowed hard, then held Kim close. “He’s sick, honey,” she whispered. “He’s very sick in his head, that’s all.” Then she released Kim, and started toward the phone. “I’d better call the police,” she said.

“No!” Carol turned back to see Lisa standing up, her expression suddenly clear. “Let him go, Mama,” she said softly. “He won’t hurt anyone else now. Don’t you understand? That’s what he was trying to tell us. All he wants to do now is die, and we have to let him.” She knelt down, and pulled Kim close. “That wasn’t Alex that was just here, Kim,” she said softly. “That was someone else. Alex is dead. That’s what he was telling us. That he’s dead, and we should remember him the way he used to be. The way he was the night he took me to the dance.” She hesitated, as her eyes flooded with tears. “Do you remember that night, Kim?”

Kim nodded, but said nothing.

“Then let’s remember him that way, sweetheart. Let’s remember how he looked all dressed up in his dinner jacket, and let’s remember how good he was. All right?”

Kim hesitated, then nodded, and Lisa’s gaze shifted to her mother. “Let him go, Mama. Please?” she begged. “He won’t hurt anyone. I know he won’t.”

Carol stood silently watching her daughter for several long seconds, then, at last, moved toward her and embraced her.

“All right,” she said softly. Then: “I’m sorry.”

“I am too,” Lisa replied. “And so is Alex.”

“You’re sure there’s nothing I can do?” Jim Cochran asked.

Marsh opened the front door, and gazed out into the night as if expecting Alex to appear, but there was nothing. “No,” he sighed. “Go on back to Carol and the girls. And tell them I understand why they didn’t come,” he added.

Jim Cochran regarded his friend shrewdly. “I don’t believe I told you why they didn’t come.”

“You told me,” Marsh replied with a tight smile. “Maybe not in words, but I understood.” He glanced back over his shoulder to the living room, where Ellen was still sitting on the couch. “I’d better get back in,” he went on. “I don’t think she can stand to be by herself very long.”

During the hour that Jim Cochran had been there, Ellen had finally begun to speak, but she was still confused, as if she wasn’t exactly sure what had happened.

“Where’s Carol?” she had asked half an hour ago. Then she’d peered vacantly around the room.

“She’s home,” Jim had told her. “Home with the girls. Kim’s not feeling too well.”

“Oh,” Ellen had breathed, then fallen silent again before repeating her question five minutes later.

“She’ll be all right,” Marsh had assured him. “It’s a kind of shock, and she’ll pull out of it.”

But even as he was about to leave, Jim wasn’t sure he should be going at all. To him, Marsh didn’t look much better than Ellen.

“Maybe I’d better stay—”

“No. If Alex comes home, I don’t know what might happen. But I know I’d rather nobody was here. Except them.” He gestured past the patio wall and up the road in the direction of the car Jim knew was still parked there, waiting.

“Okay. But if you need me, call me. All right?”

“All right.” And then, without saying anything more, Marsh closed the door.

Jim Cochran crossed the patio, and let himself out through the gate. As he got into his car, he waved toward the two policemen, and one of them waved back. Finally he started the engine, put the car in gear, and backed out into the street.

Thirty seconds later, as he neared the bottom of the hill, he passed another car going up, but it was too dark for him to see Alex Lonsdale behind its wheel.

Alex pulled the car off the road just before he rounded the last curve. By now, he was sure, they would be looking for him, and they would be watching the house. He checked the breech of the shotgun.

There was one shell left.

It would be all he needed.

He got out of the car and quietly shut the door, then left the road and worked his way up the hillside, circling around to approach the house from the rear. In the dim light of the moon, the old house looked as it had so many years ago, and deep in his memory, the voices — Alejandro’s voices — began whispering to him once more.

He crept down the slope into the shadows of the house itself, and a moment later had scaled the wall and dropped into the patio.

He stood at the front door.

He hesitated, then twisted the handle and pushed the door open. Twenty feet away, in the living room, he saw his father.

Not his father.

Alex Lonsdale’s father.

Alex Lonsdale was dead.

But Ellen Lonsdale was still alive.

“Venganza … venganza …”

Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz was dead, as was Raymond Torres.

And yet, they weren’t. They were alive, in Alex Lonsdale’s body, and the remnants of Alex Lonsdale’s brain.

Alex’s father was staring at him.

“Alex?”

He heard the name, as he’d heard it at the Cochrans’ such a short time ago. But it wasn’t his name.

“No. Not Alex,” he whispered. “Someone else.”

He raised the shotgun, and began walking slowly into the living room, where the last of the four women — Alex’s mother — sat on the sofa, staring at him in terror.

Roscoe Finnerty’s entire body twitched, and his eyes jerked open. For just a second he felt disoriented, then his mind focused, and he turned to his partner. “What’s going on?”

“Nothin’,” Jackson replied. “Cochran took off a few minutes ago, and since then, nothing.”

“Unh-unh,” Finnerty growled. “Something woke me up.”

Jackson lifted one eyebrow a fraction of an inch, but he straightened himself in the seat, lit another cigarette, and scanned the scene on Hacienda Drive. Nothing, as far as he could see, had changed.

Still, he’d long since learned that Finnerty sometimes had a sixth sense about things.

And then he remembered.

A few minutes ago, there’d been a glow, as if a car had been coming up the hill, but it had stopped before coming around the last curve.

He’d assumed it had been a neighbor coming home.

“God damn!” he said aloud. He told his partner what had happened, and Finnerty cursed softly, then opened the car door.

“Come on. Let’s take a look.”

Both the officers got out of the car and started down the street.

Ellen’s eyes focused slowly on Alex. It was like a dream, and she was only able to see little bits at a time.

The blood on his forehead, crusting over a deep gash that almost reached his eye.

The eyes themselves, staring at her unblinkingly, empty of all emotion except one.