I rest my fingers on the worn black cover. What happened between 1985 and 1989 to reduce my grandfather to that strange repetition of letters and numbers?
It takes me a few hours to flip through the rest of the notebooks. Grandpa was coherent until about 1987, though he had already discovered the Montauk Project and was beginning to contact other conspiracy theorists. But there’s a gap in his writing between 1987 and 1989. Then, the last journal reads like gibberish.
After going back in time to 1944, I learned not to discount my grandfather’s ideas so quickly. He was right about the Montauk Project and what happened to Dean. But he was also never this unintelligible. Could SO4N2H11C9OC9H11N2O4S actually mean something? Is the pattern important?
I toss the journals aside and contemplate the mess on Lydia 2’s desk. She was researching his disappearance; more information has to be here somewhere.
I find what I’m looking for in a folder on her laptop—it’s called the Project and has pictures of Camp Hero mixed with Word files documenting what Lydia 2 knew. I open a few of the files, but they’re mostly the same old theories my grandfather used to tell me over and over: reptoids and Tesla and wormholes. I finally discover a file titled “Peter Bentley.doc.” It is a complete breakdown in outline form of my grandfather’s life, from when he was born, in 1937, to when he disappeared, on August 14, 1989.
My grandfather’s obsession with his father was driven by love and a desire to find out why his family was torn apart when he was a child. But Lydia 2 never loved my grandfather, and the file in front of me reads like an impersonal list of facts.
I skim through the document, a part of me wondering why Lydia 2 would care so much about solving the mystery of a man she never even knew. But then I think of how distant her parents are, and must have always been. At the core, Lydia 2 and I are still the same person, with a driving desire to discover the truth. With a loving family, I channeled that energy into journalism. Without that, Lydia 2 became consumed with the mystery that might explain why her family was so fractured.
I vaguely note the dates my grandfather graduated high school, married my grandmother, and opened his hardware store. But an entry near the bottom of the page makes me stop. “Oh my God,” I breathe.
On July 5, 1989, my grandfather was committed to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. He would remain there until his disappearance.
Did he really go insane in this time line, finally pushed to the edge by his obsession with the Montauk Project? Or, like before, was everyone simply writing him off as crazy, unwilling to see the truth in his theories?
I scroll back up the page and read more carefully. Apparently my grandmother was fed up with his obsession over the Project and kicked him out in 1988. He moved into an apartment in New York City shortly after, forcing my father to drop out of college to run Bentley’s Hardware. Dad was also the one who committed Grandpa to Bellevue in 1989.
“Well, that explains why my dad is so different in this time line,” I mutter under my breath as I click through the file.
According to Lydia 2’s document, that final afternoon, a nurse went to check on Grandpa and he wasn’t in his room. They did a sweep of the hospital, but he had vanished. No one ever saw him again.
The staff at Bellevue assumed that he somehow snuck out of the hospital and later died on the streets of New York. But Lydia 2 didn’t believe it, convinced that the Montauk Project had something to do with his disappearance.
Was she right? Was the Project trying to silence my grandfather for some reason?
I finish reading and sit back, staring at the screen until it starts to get blurry. My grandfather, the man who helped raise me, ended up in a mental institution. And it’s my fault—if I hadn’t changed something in the past, none of this would have happened. This was exactly why I didn’t want to look into Lydia 2’s information on the Montauk Project; I was scared of what I might find.
I used to think it was always better to know the truth. But I didn’t know how frustrating it would feel when there’s nothing you can do to make things right again.
I squeeze my hands into fists. All I want to do is go to sleep and forget about what I just learned. But the man’s words from earlier come back to me: “The Montauk Conspiracy message boards.” Lydia 2 wasn’t just investigating Grandpa; she was also involved with this Resister person. But does he really know how to find a recruit, or is he secretly working for the Project? Are they monitoring me, even now?
I hesitate for a minute, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. Outside it is getting darker, but I haven’t turned on any lamps and the computer is the only bright spot in the room. It puts out an artificial glow that reminds me of the fluorescent lights down in the Facility at Camp Hero. I shiver as I remember running through those white corridors, desperately searching for a way out.
If the Project suspected me, they wouldn’t be sending some conspiracy theorist into my father’s shop to question me. I would already be dead.
Which means the Resister was telling the truth. I don’t know if he’s really onto something, but if I can find the message board he was talking about then I might be able to figure out what he meant by “the rebellion.”
I close the file on Grandpa and open Safari. Lydia 2 has several saved bookmarks, and I find one called “MP Boards.” A white log-in screen pops up. I type in Lydia’s handle: Montauk17. But I pause when it asks for a password.
I
