“Talk to Sergeant Dover. Alan Dover. He’ll tell you what’s going on.”
Now, as they sat in the car watching the crowd in front of the Academy, a terrible sense of apprehension came over them. What did the ambulances and squad cars have to do with them?
Or with Amy?
“Are you going to be all right?” Frank asked his wife.
Margaret took a deep breath, then nodded. “I think so.” Steeling herself for whatever might be about to happen, she got out of the car and started toward the murmuring throng.
“Dr. Engersol’s dead!” she heard someone say.
“So’s Hildie Kramer,” someone else replied. “They found her in some kind of lab that no one even knew was there!”
Dead? Dr. Engersol and Hildie Kramer? Margaret heard the words, but they meant nothing to her. The Carlsons threaded their way through the crowd as quickly as they could, finally coming to the steps that led up to the loggia. A police officer blocked them from going farther. “Sorry, sir. Nobody’s allowed in the building right now.”
“I’m looking for Sergeant Dover,” Frank told him. “We’re Amy Carlson’s parents.”
The officer murmured into his radio for a moment, then turned back to them. “He’ll meet you in Engersol’s apartment. On the fourth floor.”
Nodding, Frank and Margaret Carlson moved into the building and started up the stairs. When they stepped through the door of George Engersol’s apartment, Margaret gasped and Frank instinctively put his arm around her.
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 weu.
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
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.
