The Reality Conspiracy (30 page)

When she opened her eyes, the dream-pictures vanished. Her daddy was gone and the darkness of the old woman's kitchen came back into view.

"You're all alone," the voices told her.

Lucy saw the old woman was awake, too. Her wide, frightened eyes flicked back and forth like the eyes of the mechanical cat on the clock back home in Mommy's kitchen.

But the old woman wasn't supposed to be awake. Today, tomorrow, something was going to happen and the old lady wasn't supposed to see it.

As Lucy began to move, the old woman's eyes locked on her. They seemed to say,
Help me, please, help me, little girl
.

Lucy's body tensed, just as it did when she was angry.

She wasn't angry now, not even a little bit, but she couldn't stop herself from stomping across the room and standing right in front of the old woman.

Today, tomorrow, something is going to happen . . . .

The lady looked up at Lucy, scared as could be. Lucy wanted to tell her,
Don't be scared, lady, it's okay
. But even as the words formed in her mind, her hand reached out and tore away the top of the woman's raggy old dress. Lucy felt her body laughing at the woman's flat wrinkled old tittles. And probably her toothless old mouth would be open in horror if Mr. Red hadn't stuffed her ugly cotton panties in there before wrapping her head with masking tape.

And—Lucy's body laughed some more—it was really funny the way he'd taken a Magic Marker and drawn a smiling mouth on the tape. Today, tomorrow . . .

The old lady made a noise through her nose and jerked her head back and forth like she was saying no.

But the old lady couldn't be allowed to see what was going to happen.

Lucy's hand came up and she hit the old woman hard on the side of the head. The old woman's head snapped sideways. She heaved and groaned. She made sounds like coughing.

Lucy hit her again. This time she went back to sleep.

Something is going to happen.

Lucy ran over to the screen door.

Sometime soon, today, tomorrow, someone new will arrive
.

Father Sullivan felt the chill dampness of the earth as it penetrated the knees of his pants. Shifting his weight, he picked up one of the Shasta daisies from the planter beside him. To his right, he saw a line of seven identical flowers, each supported within a symmetrical mound of gently patted earth. Sullivan saw an optimism in the cheery faces of the blossoms. If all went well, these perennials would pass the years with him. Together they'd welcome each new spring, each demonstration of God's miracle of rebirth.

Sullivan rose to his feet, his critical eyes surveying the yard. The buildings and grounds were a dreadful mess. The church and rectory had been closed for ten years. So he guessed he was facing a decade of yard work.

Already he'd begun to feel a certain affection for St. Joe's. In fact, he had begun to think of it as his home, bequeathed to him directly by Father Hamilton Mosely.

Sullivan had never lived in a home of his own. For him, growing up had been a six-decade game of hopscotch; he had leapt from orphanage to army, then to seminary. From graduate school, he'd jumped, finally, to a fixed location: a faculty position as psychologist in residence at St. Mark's College. There he'd had a private room at the campus rectory, a rectory shared with three other priests.

Sullivan marveled at the memory: when he'd joined the priesthood he'd fully expected to have a parish. All this time a shepherd, and never a flock.

He looked at his watch. Almost ten o'clock. Why, he'd been mowing and pruning and weeding and planting for three hours! He hoped his efforts would show the community that St. Joe's was coming back to life.

Sweat poured down his face. A while ago he had considered banding his forehead with a handkerchief, but he'd hesitated, fearing how that might appear to prospective parishioners. What if they mistook him for some gray-haired, sixty-five-year-old hippie, instead of their new spiritual leader?

Again, Sullivan chuckled, realizing that either description might be equally appropriate.

"Excuse me . . ."

The voice came from over his shoulder.

Sullivan turned to see a youthful police officer standing behind him. He had to blink two or three times before he realized his uniformed visitor was a young lady. She wore mirrored sunglasses, her sandy blond hair was tucked up under her Stetson. "I'm looking for the priest," she said, "Father William Sullivan?"

Sullivan wiped his fingers on his pant leg before extending his shaking hand. "I'm Sullivan," he said, smiling, "sorry I'm out of uniform."

She didn't smile. "I'm Sergeant Shane," she said. Her handshake was firm and brief. "I'm from the Vermont State Police. We're cooperating with the RCMP in the investigation of the apparent kidnapping of a Father Hamilton Mosely who disappeared from a hospital in Montreal."

Sullivan nodded.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions, if I may."

She was exceedingly businesslike, but her professional manner did nothing to help Sullivan accustom himself to an attractive young woman in a state trooper's uniform.

"How may I help you, Sergeant?"

"You had been visiting Father Mosely just before the kidnapping incident?"

"That's right."

"Did he have any other visitors that you recall?"

Sullivan thought for a moment, remembering the old blind priest who'd struck out at Mosely with his cane. "No. No one from outside. Just the other patients . . . ."

"Right. And did any of these other patients say or do anything that seemed strange or suspicious to you?"

Should he tell? No one else had witnessed Father Lemire's attack on Father Mosely. What had the blind man said? Something about Lazarus . . .? "The other patients, they're all elderly priests. Some are not quite themselves . . . ."

She nodded stiffly.

"One thing I remember: they were upset about something. All of them. The fact is, they were all acting strangely—nervous, agitated—but no one could tell us why."

"You got any ideas, Father?"

Sullivan shook his head. He waited, expecting another question, but it didn't come. The young policewoman—possibly a lapsed Catholic judging from her deferential demeanor—shrugged helplessly. "Well, Father, thanks. Mostly I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know I'm on the case." She presented Father Sullivan with a business card. "Please call me if you think of anything, okay?"

"Of course."

"And if you should stumble onto anything in the house, or maybe in the church . . ."

He nodded and held up her card.

"Okay then, thank you very much, sir." The young woman walked away. Sullivan watched her take about six steps down the walk, then she stopped, turned around. She removed her sunglasses and squinted at the priest. Now the youthful police officer looked like a puzzled little girl. "Father?"

"Yes, Miss Shane?"

"I just can't understand it. I mean, why would anybody kidnap an old man like that?"

Sullivan moved down the walk and stood in front of Sgt. Shane.

She looked at the ground for a moment, then back at Sullivan's eyes. "Could it be . . . do you think it could be some kind of blackmail setup, Father?"

Blackmailing the Catholic Church? A novel idea, but way too strange a notion. "I have no idea, Miss Shane, none at all. I wish I did."

He shook his head sadly. It was irrational, but he felt guilty that he had nothing to offer this young lady.

She put on her mirror sunglasses, covering her puzzled eyes. "Thanks, Father Sullivan." Sgt. Shane's posture stiffened; suddenly she was a cop again. "Don't forget to call me if you come up with anything."

"I won't, Sergeant. I promise." Again they shook hands. The young policewoman did a practiced about-face and strode back to her cruiser.

Father Sullivan watched until the green and yellow police car pulled away. Should he have mentioned the investigation he planned to conduct on his own? No, it would only make him look foolish. The discouraged young policewoman gave him an idea of what he—a non-professional—was likely to be up against.

Returning to the house, he chuckled to himself, wondering what the townspeople would think if they noticed their new priest's first visitor was a state cop.

Burlington, Vermont

K
aren fidgeted at her desk in the health center. Leaning forward, elbows on the blotter, she massaged her temples, oblivious to the clutter of files, letters, and referrals before her. She was so tired. She hadn't slept much last night. Her conversations with Jeff had lasted far into the morning hours. When she had finally crawled into bed, alone, she was unable to sleep.

Now she was confused and nearly in tears.

Her mind churned with fantasies that had suddenly become impossible realities. The world had changed for her, changed frightfully, changed to a degree that, she feared, might never permit sleep again.

Karen glanced at her watch. Her session with Alton Barnes would begin in just fifteen minutes. She didn't want to face him. Maybe she couldn't. Surely, she was too foggy to proceed competently. But she had a responsibility. Mr. Barnes's problem had taken on an unexpected new depth. Karen had no choice but to go on with the therapy, to help him if she could.

Her mind seemed to get fuzzier as she considered all. horrendous implications of the many things Jeff had told her. The Academy, the UFO research, the outrageous use of a multimillion-dollar computer: it all seemed like something out of a paranoid's nightmare.

Paranoid?

Could she be wrong about Jeff?

She'd miscalled things before, that was for sure. Was Jeffrey Chandler nothing more than a classic paranoid, slowly coaxing her, through charisma and fatigue, into his magical delusions?

Oh, Lord, she just didn't know for sure. She couldn't tell. Again she was forced to consider how imprecise a science psychology really was. Today her own fatigue contributed to its imprecision.

If Jeff were telling the truth, then the fabric of what Karen thought of as reality had started to fray. If he were lying, or delusional, then she may have already backed herself into enough of a corner to result in professional suicide. Either way she was in trouble. By letting Jeff into her life she had dared to disturb her world. Now she was paying the price: she might be in great and possibly immediate danger.

She looked at her watch again. Five more minutes.

At the moment, her most important concern had to be for her patient. Her memory worked to isolate those parts of her marathon dialogue with Jeff that pertained directly to Mr. Barnes.

She tried to recall last night's conversation. Casey had just gone to bed and they were alone in the living room.

"So I'm dying to know, Karen, just why did you phone me at home? I'm sure it wasn't just to see how rude I can be."

She looked down at her glass, swirling the remaining gin and tonic, now mostly melted ice. "I couldn't help but remember what you told me about the miracle at Fatima, how you think it wasn't a religious apparition at all, but some kind of UFO experience . . ."

"Right. I was serious about that, you know."

"I know. So am I." She wet her lips with the ice water. "Jeff, I can't tell you his name, of course, but I have a patient, a real nice older man, who experienced what I supposed might be a hallucinatory episode. But then I thought of that big ball of light you described. I think he saw something very much like that, and it made me think that maybe . . ."

"Maybe your man saw a UFO?"

"Is it possible, Jeff? I mean, your job is to debunk them, I know, but you told me—"

"I told you that I believe lots of people are seeing strange things in the sky. Seventy thousand witnesses at Fatima couldn't all be experiencing the same hallucination, right? And cameras don't hallucinate, yet photographers very definitely recorded a ball of light. Even now—almost every day—people are photographing all sorts of oddball aerial phenomena. At the Academy we've got literally thousands of UFO photographs, lots of fakes, I admit, but many—"

"Jeff, could someone have seen a UFO around here?"

"Why not? They're spotted just about everywhere. Not only do I believe it's possible, but I bet I can tell you where your man saw it."

"No—"

"In Hobston, Vermont. Right? That's close to here isn't it?"

Karen was speechless. She gawked at him, utterly silenced. When she spoke her tone was flat, "How did you know that, Jeff?"

Jeff smiled, apparently finding ill-timed amusement in his display of mind reading.

"Did I tell you it was Hobston, Jeff? Come on, how did you know?"

He got up from his chair and walked over to sit beside her on the sofa. She felt herself pulling away, experiencing something irrational, something like fear.

"Relax, Karen, it was just an educated guess. I've helped to collect an awful lot of statistical data about so-called paranormal phenomena: UFOs, disappearances, monster sightings, weird time warps, apparitions, both religious and diabolical, and so on. And yes, I'm talking about the kinds of stuff you read about in those lurid supermarket tabloids. But all the real data seem to suggest that there are certain places in this wonderful world of ours that, for reasons unknown, experience a disproportionately high percentage of paranormal phenomena. Fortean researchers call these areas 'Windows.' Occultists call them 'Gateways.'"