Eternal (11 page)

“Yes. It’s so …” Julia’s words trailed off as her eye caught the message written on her windshield with a finger in the rain-streaked dust: “I’ll never leave you.”

T
HIRTEEN

A
ustin followed Julia back to her apartment. When they walked in, she double-locked the door behind them.

“Can I get you a glass of water?” she said.

“Sure, thanks.” He followed her to the kitchen; and, when she almost fumbled the glass, he rescued it from her shaking hand. “Maybe you’d better sit down and let me get that.” He pulled out a kitchen chair, and she almost fell into it. Austin filled the glass from the tap and handed it to her. Then he grabbed another one from the cupboard and filled it for himself.

“Thanks.” She took a sip and then set the glass down, sloshing water on the table.

Austin took the kitchen chair next to her and twisted it backwards. He straddled it, his folded arms resting on the back of the chair. He observed her quietly for a moment, his oblique expression making Julia wonder what he was thinking.

“Julz, you certainly have a penchant for trouble,” Austin said with a half-smile, his blue eyes sparkling. A thrill went through her at the sound of her name. Only her father had ever called her “Julz,” and she secretly loved the nickname.

“You knew what that note meant.”

“Well, at least I know what the words mean.” He let go of her hand, reached into his pocket, pulled out the note, which was now enclosed in an evidence bag, and read,
“Mort à l’hérétique’:
Death to the heretic. I spent three summers in France. How about you? You speak French?”

“Like a native. My mother was from Paris.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Julz.’“ His gaze was sad, thoughtful. “You’ve had a rough year.”

Her eyes filled with tears at the simple acknowledgment. “You could say that.” Austin took Julia’s hand in hers and began to massage her knuckles with his thumb. They were silent for a moment. Then Austin cleared his throat.

“Let’s talk about this death threat.” He tossed it onto the table between them. “We know what the words mean, but any idea what the note means?”

“You mean why someone would say such a thing to me? I don’t have a clue.”

“Did Bertel speak French?”

“No. At least, he always told me he was language-challenged.”

“Was he a religious man?”

She shook her head. “Agnostic.”

“And you?”

“A heretic.” She shrugged off his sardonic look. “I told you before that I was atheist.”

“Actually, what you said was that the soul never used to interest you, because you’d never seen observable evidence of it before.”

“Right.”

“But lately you’ve seen observable evidence, haven’t you?”

“Of a soul. But not of God.”

“Aren’t they related?”

“Not necessarily. To me the word ‘soul’ is just a convenient term. I’d call it the brain’s chemical-electrical source for personality and character.”

“How clinical of you.”

“You’d prefer something more poetic?”

“Sorry. I’m not trying to grade your answers. I’m just trying to figure out why someone would want to threaten you.”

“If we suspect the note was from a religious fanatic, then I guess he’d say I’m a pretty big heretic. Once upon a time, I would’ve been burned at the stake or something.”

“Isn’t that for witchcraft?”

“I suppose some people would see what Bertel and I were doing as not too far from that. How about you? Are you religious?”

“Absolutely. But then I’ve been brainwashed by years of Catholic school.”

“Figures.” Julia laughed. She didn’t mention that she had also attended Catholic school when she was younger. But to her, God seemed as scary a superstition as the Boogie Man: deciding who lives and dies, promising people goodies if they behave and torture if they don’t. Now, as she looked into Austin’s eyes, she almost wanted to believe.

Austin tore his eyes away from hers with some effort. He stood and started pacing, “Let’s look at this systematically. Did any religious types ever complain about your work?”

“Not as far as I know. I thought that no one knew about it, but then …”

“What?” Austin looked at her expectantly.

“Well, Dr. Bertel hinted a couple of times that someone might be after us. He said our research could be dangerous if it got into the wrong hands.”

Austin nodded silently. “What about that other note, ‘I’ll never leave you’?”

Julia looked down at her hands. “I don’t know. It has to be someone different, doesn’t it? Why would someone leave one note in paper and another on the glass right under it? It doesn’t make sense.” She wasn’t ready to tell him the note had appeared before in her bathroom mirror.

“Okay, so let’s go back to Bertel. You said he wasn’t himself.”

“He said he had amnesia, but it was worse than that. He acted like a raving maniac. He was still so messed up he looked like a corpse. And he seemed weak and exhausted, but he threw me across the room.”

“Why did he do that?”

“He kept asking about our research. He said it might jog his memory. But when I started telling him about it, it wasn’t like it was helping his memory. It was like it was the first time he’d ever heard it. He used to be excited when we’d talk about the research, but this time he was beyond obsessive. He insisted I give him my notes.”

“Did you?”

“No way. He sounded so crazy I felt like I couldn’t trust him. When I sent you that text, he accused me of trying to trick him, which I guess I was. That was when he lost it. When I suggested calling for help, he freaked out and threw me onto the desk with that same superhuman strength from before.”

“You mean like he did the night you revived him, when he grabbed you and said, ‘You belong to me’?”

She nodded.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Austin said, “and I’m starting to develop a theory.”

Julia nodded faster. “Me too.”

He sat down again. “You may think my theory is a little … farfetched.”

She bit her lip. “Mine sounds totally insane.”

“Okay, let’s start with farfetched,” he said. “Bertel has been depressed for a long time over the death of his son, and now his wife has left him. He’s been suffering from intense guilt. He wrote a book about demonic possession, using fringe science to support his theories. Now he’s trying to prove that the soul resides in the pineal gland, as our friend Descartes supposed.” He took a deep breath and searched Julia’s eyes.

Her heart was pounding. Austin seemed to be on the same track she was. She nodded encouragement.

He continued, “I think his incredible guilt has driven him over the edge, and now Bertel is suffering under the delusion that he’s possessed. It explains everything, even the superhuman strength. People under extreme emotional stress have been known to perform astonishing physical feats.” He paused. “What’s wrong? Too out there?”

“No,” she said. “Not out there enough.”

“Really? What were
you
thinking?”

“You know that Dr. Bertel and I were able to use a drug cocktail, with PCP as the primary component, to create a small chemical change in the pineal gland of cadaver brains?”

“Your brand of witchcraft.”

It was her turn to give him a sardonic look. “Whatever. Anyway, I didn’t tell you everything. We weren’t just trying to find the location of the soul. We were trying to see if we could bring one back. We thought if we could come up with a way to make the chemical change permanent, we could administer this treatment when someone died and, putting it simply, sort of bounce the soul back into the body.”

“So you wanted to raise the dead.”

“Not exactly. We wanted to revive people at the moment of death. When the heart stops, you use a defibrillator. But when the soul stops, or if you prefer, when the brain stops, that’s when our treatment would come in. Bertel called it ‘seizing the soul back.’ If we could maintain the chemical reaction, then death wouldn’t take place, unless of course the body was unable to function. But medicine offers so many interventions. We already have organ transplants, engineers are working on mechanical replacements, and cloned organs are liable to have future applications. So, if we could just keep the soul viable long enough, maybe we could extend life, possibly for decades.”

“Wow,” Austin said. “No wonder Bertel thought someone might be after him. This could revolutionize medicine—and life as we know it! It could be worth millions. Billions.”

Julia put both hands to her head at this new revelation. “Right. I never thought about that.” She shook her head. “Actually, I was going in another direction with this: I’m thinking maybe I didn’t just bring Dr. Bertel’s
heart
back with the defibrillator. I’m thinking maybe I brought something more back. You see, after we got the chemical reaction with PCP, we realized we needed some sort of external physical catalyst to maintain an electrical impulse, as well. We hadn’t started any testing yet, but among the possibilities I suggested was an electrical charge. Austin, Dr. Bertel was dead for several minutes, and it’s unusual for someone to come back after that long. But if he were on drugs, like you suspected, and if those drugs were from our lab, then there’s a remote possibility the added electrical charge might have …”

“Bounced back his soul? I don’t know.”

“Wait, I’m not finished. Let me show you something.” Julia walked into the next room, grabbed a heavy book off her coffee table, and brought it back into the kitchen, where she set it on the table with a thunk.

Austin spun the book so the title was facing him and read,
“The Devil Takes a Body: When Science Can’t Explain Superhuman Behavior,
by Doctor Caleb Bertel.” He looked up at her. “Exactly. This is where I got my theory. How did such a logical girl end up working with such a nut?”

“All geniuses can be a little nutty,” she said. “Anyway, a scientist has to keep a mind open to all possibilities. And so does a detective, don’t you think?”

“Fair enough.”

“So, keeping an open mind …” She flipped the book open to a bookmarked page covered with underlines and highlighter, with scribbles in the margins. “Read this.”

Austin silently read the whole page, a wrinkle of concentration on his forehead. Julia waited, unconsciously bobbing in her chair in rhythm with the ticking of the kitchen clock. When he finished reading, he looked up at her, his face unreadable. He looked back at the book, ran his finger through the text until he found what he was looking for, and read aloud.

“Although modern psychiatry has debunked most cases of demonic possession as mental illness, there have always remained those few cases that cannot be categorized. We may presume that modern diagnostics simply has yet to identify some mental and emotional syndromes or their causes. However, medical practitioners, therapists, and scientists cannot ignore the fact that 2.3% of patients who experience a sudden onset of nonspecific psychosis have exhibited no previous symptoms of mental illness, do not come from families with any history of mental illness or notable dysfunction, and have been unable to identify any precipitating trauma.

“Meanwhile, some of the symptoms endured by these uncategorized patients seem to operate independently of the patients’ brain functions. These symptoms include nonsubjective physical changes in such things as eye color or vocal patterns, extreme feats of strength, sudden ability to speak foreign languages never before exposed to, and recollection of verifiable events and facts about which they have no previous knowledge. Most frightening are the few reports of inanimate objects exhibiting changes, either in the vicinity of these patients or in the vicinity of those with whom they come in contact. These include objects flying through the air, objects appearing and disappearing, writings appearing and disappearing, and, occasionally, disembodied voices speaking or shouting. Unlike cases of schizophrenia, these changes have been observed by outside parties, such as psychiatrists and mainstream scientific researchers, not just the patients or those with close ties to them.

“Add to all this the coincidental rise in cases of nonspecific mental illness among those who come in contact with these patients, and a pattern begins to emerge—a pattern that suggests external forces may be at work. Mental illness, while it can be inherited, is not typically contagious. An as-yet unverified virus is one possibility; but until such a virus is identified, we cannot discount the possibility of some sort of possession, perhaps by a free-floating energy source—what some people call ‘the soul.’“