The Grays

was born… and then this sad, sad thing that had happened with Marcie Cotton—

—and he saw why: the grays had needed the family to stay here in Wilton, and they had made certain that Marcie would give Dad tenure. He saw the two of them whirling round and round in a dark place together, saw sparks of golden soul mingling, and understood what had happened.

It made him angry at the grays, because they had hurt Marcie and Mom and Dad just to get what they wanted. You better understand that I’m calling my own shots now, he said in his mind.

Instantly, there flashed before his eyes a vast wall of gray faces, eyes gleaming, arrayed in rows as far up and as far down as you could see.

He cried out in surprise.

“What’s the matter?” Paulie asked. “Scared?”

“Nah.”

As Mr. Warner, stuck behind a truck, slammed his hands against the steering wheel the color around him changed. The air flickered with red and then took on darkness, especially around his head. He hammered on the horn and flashed his lights.

“John!”

Purple light filled the car, gushing off both Paulie and Amy. Conner saw it coming out of himself, too, pulsing out of his chest with his heartbeat. He looked down at it and told it to go away, and as it did, so did the fear he had felt at Mr. Warner’s outburst.

“Sorry, sorry, folks. That guy was intentionally hassling me, he—Jeez, it’s Len Cavendish, too. He must have gone nuts. I hope he can still unstop sewers.”

Conner watched the familiar Cavendish Plumbing truck weave off down the road. Tim Cavendish had been in the passenger seat, and he had locked eyes with Conner, and Conner had heard a thought, kill, directed at him.

He shook his head, trying to shake away the feeling of it, and the memory it had evoked of the awful time in the playground at recess.

Since it was impossible to hear thoughts and see emotions, both of which he was doing, he decided that when he got home he would go online and learn everything he could about schizophrenia. If you’re schizophrenic, he thought to himself, you have to diagnose yourself and figure out a treatment protocol. If you need medical attention, you have to tell Mom and Dad.

He would start at the New England Journal of Medicine and read all the recent monographs on childhood schizophrenia. Then he would go into the neutraceuticals literature. If there was a cure or a useful treatment, he would find it.

As the sun dropped lower, the western sky turned dull orange behind the skeletons of trees.

A car coming toward them suddenly sped up and smashed into the rear of the car in front of it. As they went on down the road, Conner could see the two drivers get out and start fighting like maniacs. There was a lot of black haze around the cars, the evil smoke of their rage.

He had the strange, sickening feeling that it was somehow connected to him, as if the cars had been… after him. On their way to Oak Road.

That must be part of the schizophrenia, a paranoid aspect. There were drugs that controlled schizophrenia itself, but not paranoia. Paranoid-schizophrenia was still difficult to manage.

He had known for years that he might be susceptible to problems like this. He squirmed in his seat next to Paulie. He did not want to see his beautiful mind destroyed. He watched purple fear gushing out of his chest like a waterfall, and disappearing down through the floor of the car.

He decided that he was definitely going around the bend.

They got to the fire and Paulie practically threw him across the street getting out of the car. He was tremendously excited, racing toward a cluster of their friends, waving his new camera, and yelling.

Conner noticed more of the black haze, and saw that Will Heckle was as black as night. Was he coated with smoke or something?

Conner was afraid of Will. That was not right, that he would look like that. He stayed close to Paulie. “Awesome,” Paulie breathed, looking up at the massive structure with flames shooting out of it.

It was a marvelous fire, but Conner really did not like the way Will and now Steve Stacy and another of the older kids were looking at him. A lot of people sounded crazy, their thoughts roaring like a maddened troop of chimpanzees screaming at each other in the zoo. He began to look around for his parents, to cast for his dad’s thoughts in the screaming turmoil around him. Dad he said in his mind. But, of course, Dad couldn’t hear him, that was just the schizophrenia talking.

KATELYN HEARD A CRACKING SOUND a good deal louder than the fire. Then she saw, at the far end of the elevator, that somebody was down, and a cop, young Tory Wright, was standing over him. “That looks like Dr. Bendiner,” she said.

“It is Dr. Bendiner. I wonder what in the world—”

Tory Wright skullwhipped the old man with his nightstick, and Dr. Bendiner’s head flew from one side to the other with the blows.

“My God, he’s going to kill that old man!” Katelyn yelled. She started to run toward them. The rest of the crowd totally ignored what was happening. Then two townies started fighting, and a fireman suddenly threw down his hose and stalked away, leaving it spraying like some mad snake, the brass head a lethal projectile.

“What is going on here, Dan?”

“We’ve gotta get Conner.” He looked around, but it was hard to see through the icy haze being generated by the spraying hoses. “Conner!”

Katelyn saw Marcie about fifty feet away. She froze, not knowing if she should go to her or what she should do. Marcie looked at her. A slight smile trembled in her face, vulnerable, ashamed. She took a step forward.

Katelyn did the same.

“Katelyn, forgive me. I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain it and I’m deeply ashamed, Katelyn.”

As the fire roared and the water thundered, the two women embraced.

“Something happened, Marcie,” Katelyn said

Sleet swept over them. “I know it, I had—oh, Katelyn, what’s going on? Something is not right!”

Without warning, the hose the fireman had abandoned seemed to rear up before them like a cobra. Katelyn leaped away, but it smashed into Marcie’s face and slammed her to the ground.

“My God, it hit her! Help her,” she screamed at the firemen. “Help her!”

Dan saw she was badly hurt and ran to her, and found her jaw shattered and blood bubbling out of her mouth, and her eyes filmed and uncomprehending. “Marcie,” he cried, going down to her. “Help me, this woman is dying! She’s dying!”

Katelyn saw a fireman staring… but not at Marcie. He looked off into the crowd, into the blowing ice haze. She looked around again for Conner, still did not see him. She ran to Dan. “Dan, we’ve got to help her!” But Dan heard something, he heard it in his left ear, as clearly as if a radio had been turned on there. It was Conner’s voice: Dad, I need you!

The implant—he realized that it was there for Conner, to help Conner. He went to his feet. “She’s beyond help. Katelyn, Conner is calling us, I can hear him, it’s the implant, Katelyn. We’ve got to find him!”

CONNER STOOD ABSOLUTELY STILL, STUNNED by what he was seeing. Kids, adults, a lot of people, were looking not at the fire but at him. They were stealthy but they were very definitely surrounding him. He could hear a sort of grumbling whisper, as if they had lost all humanity, and turned into snarling animals that had only one enemy on this earth…

This was not making sense. It had seemed sort of understandable at school, but not here. Nobody should care. They were here to see the fire of the century, not to go after some kid. Turning slowly round and round, he watched them. Any moment, one or another of them was going to jump him. Kill, he heard, once or twice, but most of the thought was more primitive than words, it was an incoherent snarling, and