The Reality Conspiracy (48 page)

"Has Dr. Sparker put you on any medications you didn't tell me about?"

He shook his head. "Medications? No, miss. I'd've told you. But this ain't comin' from no medication, don't you worry about that. I know it's tough for you to understand right now. But you'll see soon enough. And that's a promise."

Completely delusional.

A drug could have been administered without his knowing it, but that wasn't the whole problem. The way he'd kept reflexing to stop Jeff from leaving suggested something else.
Maybe
, she thought,
maybe it's worth a try
.

She stepped directly in front of Alton and, with a finger under his chin, lifted his head so they were looking eye to eye.

"Mr. Barnes?"

"Yes, miss?"

"Are you relaxed?"

"Am I—? Why, yes, sure. . . ."

Without breaking eye contact, she said, "You're much sleepier than the last time, aren't you?"

Alton's eyes closed. His head sagged forward.

Jeff stared at the sleeping man in confusion. "W-what happened?"

"He's in a trance."

"How'd you—"

"Posthypnotic suggestion. When I hypnotized him for the therapy session in my office, I left him with a suggestion that would make it easier to invoke the trance at our next meeting. I figured, why not try it now? 'You're much sleepier than the last time, aren't you,' was my trigger phrase. Thank God, it worked."

"Thank God is right," Sullivan said. "And good thinking, Dr. Bradley."

Jeff still looked confused, "But what made you think—"

"The more I watched him, the more I began to suspect he might be responding to suggestions. Not mine, but somebody's. That's how he was acting, don't you think, Father Sullivan? Especially the way he'd tense up, ready to fight, every time you threatened to leave. It was as if he wasn't supposed to let us go. Then it occurred to me someone else might've used hypnosis on him, too. Luckily, I was the first to put him in a trance. If I hadn't been, I bet he wouldn't have responded this time."

Sullivan looked at the sleeping man. "You're right, Karen, he does act as if someone's been messing with his subconscious. Thanks to you, I think we're going to start getting to the bottom of things now. Would you like to question him, or should I?"

Karen shrugged. "I'm not sure what to ask. I don't have any idea what's going on."

"Join the club." Sullivan thought a moment. "Jeff, is it possible McCurdy and the Academy are involved in any brainwashing or mind manipulation experiments?"

Jeff shook his head. He didn't know. "He keeps talking about that light. It's what he saw in the woods last November. Apparently he saw it again this afternoon."

"Well," Sullivan said, "something powerful sure got to Mr. Barnes. Let's see if we can find out what it was."

I
n the darkness, parked across the street from the rectory, McCurdy observed the people inside the lighted rooms.

As he watched the house, he saw all things. The great globe of the world, slick with oceans, spinning in infinite space, its island continents dappled with cities, houses, people, animals, vegetation, individual grains of sand, all encased in a delicate membrane of atmosphere. And above, wrapping it again, the Light, its tiny golden beams shining down to each human soul. He saw all existence as an organized system, with everything interconnected.

He saw it all at once. Everything. There was no difference between one thing and another. The mitochondria in living cells converting oxygen to energy; tectonic masses of land moving minutely; interrelated societies changing vastly with each new birth or death. . . .

He visualized the perfect coalescence of myriad independent actions, each easily dismissed as insignificant, random, and unassociated. Some were taking place hundreds of years ago. Some thousands.

Others occurred only moments before.

An African moth flapped its wings; hurricane winds leveled an Indian village. The Maine tide feasted on sandy shore; the earth yawned on Pitcairn Island. An Arab child vanished in Israel. A pterodactyl streaked through the Texas skies.

For McCurdy it all was part of the great, bright, whirling, flowing truth. In his crystal vision, all diverse actions harmonized with elegant precision. He could see an ingenious master plan. No chance, no coincidence, had brought Jeffrey Chandler to the Academy three years ago. It was not some random act of violence that left Jeff's wife dead and his daughter helpless in a wheelchair. Each action was related, each reaction calculated, and McCurdy could see it all perfectly. He could see the ultrafine individual strands that made up the vast, elaborate tapestry of what's real.

He saw Dr. Karen Bradley mindlessly pursuing her profession with a compulsion she had never stopped to analyze or examine. She had no way of knowing she'd been selected to play an intricately choreographed role in the most important drama in the history of the world.

The priest, Father William J. Sullivan, a man of God—who knew nothing about man and less about God—applying his limited intellect and the pretense of his faith, hoping to comprehend that which he could never grasp nor expect to change.

And then there were the disposable people, the soulless ones: Alton Barnes, Lucy Washburn, Jerry Finny, Herbert Gold, Daisy Dubois, Beth Damon, and a billion billion others. They would burn like candles, lighting the pathway to the new day.

McCurdy laughed quietly in the dark vehicle. Staring at the door to the rectory, he knew it would open momentarily. Then the next act in the drama would begin.

A
lton Barnes's eyes were open. He glared at the ceiling, cringing from something no one else could see.

Karen and Father Sullivan crowded closely beside the seated man. Jeff had faded into the background early in the hypnosis session.

"It's okay, Mr. Barnes," said Karen, watching him cower from the unseen light. "You're safe and comfortable. You're watching it on a television screen. Nothing can hurt you. Now, you're in the kitchen at the Dubois farmhouse. . . ."

Alton's lips trembled. "It's . . . it's above my head, coming down, coming closer. Oh! It . . . It's passin' right over me like some kinda mouth swallowin' me up! And inside . . . oh, it's dark in here. And there's voices, speakin', whisperin' right into my mind . . .

"Relax, Mr. Barnes. That's right. Now what are the voices saying?" Karen looked at Father Sullivan as she spoke. He shook his head, puzzled. Both moved closer to the seated man.

"Horrible things. Talkin' about horrible things they want to do to me, to hurt me . . . scare me. I try to hold on. I know they can't really hurt me because I'm tied up in a chair, and they're . . . they're just in my head, in my mind, like some kinda bad dream. But somehow—I know I ain't imaginin' it—they're talking' to me from outside. From somewhere far away. But I'm hearin' 'em in my mind. It's like they're tryin' to pull me away. Like somehow they can pull me right out of my body. And I'm scared they really can. If they do, what if I can't hold on? What if I can't get back?"

He gulped a few rapid breaths, his barrel chest heaving and falling. "And one of 'em tells me, this's what happens when you die. You fly out of your body and into this other place. A place that's all around us, but it's . . . different. And all of a sudden, I can see it! I can see that other place! The place beyond the light. And, oh, it's beautiful! There's so much color and shine, and the sky's just as clear as the glass on a pocket watch. And flowers, beautiful flowers like nothin' I ever seen before."

Alton's eyes narrowed; tears swelled at their corners. He smiled and his voice softened'. "There's Stuart! He's smilin' and wavin' and he's all sorta glowin' like some kind of angel. 'Stuart!' I says. And he says to me, 'See there, Alton, didn't I tell ya it was gonna be fine? Didn't I promise?' And it is fine. That's the thing, it's jest as fine as can be.

"See, I'd passed right on by them bad ones that wanted to hurt me. And now I'm in— Well, I guess it's what you call Heaven. An' Stuart's tellin' me, 'See there, Alton, ain't It just as pretty as I always tried to tell ya?'

"And he says, 'Now you go on back, but keep listenin' to what I tell ya. 'Cause now you know I ain't lyin' about none of it. An' I'll be right there with ya, jest you wait and see. I'll tell ya what you gotta do every step of the way. It may seem wrong, and it may seem bad. But that's just how it'll seem. 'Cause now you seen where folks come to when they die. You know better'n anyone that none of it's bad or wrong, it's jest the road we gotta take to get from there to here. This here's the new beginnin', and you got yourself a job to do.' That's just what he says to me, 'You got yourself a job to do.'"

Alton Barnes fell silent. For a few moments no one spoke.

"Hal-lu-cin-a-tions?" Sullivan silently mouthed the word.

Karen shrugged. She didn't know. Maybe it was real. Maybe this was what happened when people had a vision. Maybe this was an honest-to-God religious experience?

"Mr. Barnes," she said, "when you came to join us here tonight, you wouldn't let Jeff leave. Why wouldn't you let him leave this house?"

"'Cause his daughter, she's got a job to do, too. So's Jeffrey. Right now they just ain't supposed to be doin' it together."

"I see. Can you tell me about these jobs they have to do?"

"I don't know no more about it than you do, miss. All I know's that each of us has a part to play. Beyond that, we all gotta wait an' see."

"Okay, Mr. Barnes," Karen said as she stood up. "You just rest now. Relax and rest."

Her eyes met those of Father Sullivan. He shook his head as if to say, I don't understand any of it, but it's sad. It's very, very sad.

The room seemed to shake as the grandfather clock began to strike midnight.

Karen looked around for Jeff. She wondered what he made of it all.

But he was gone.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And a crack in the teacup opens

A lane to the land of the dead."

—W.K. Auden

Excerpt from

The Reality Conspiracy:

An Anecdotal Reconstruction of the Events at Hobston, Vermont

R
onald E. Boudreau's Scout died.

Just like that, it stopped. The engine didn't knock or fart or wheeze—it just quit without warning or protest. One second it was on, the next it was off. Simple as that.

"Jay-zus Christ, what now?" Ronald said and he didn't care who heard him.

He'd stopped on a slightly downhill grade, so it was easy to let the vehicle roll to the side of the road out of the way of oncoming traffic. Of course, there wasn't much traffic to worry about after midnight on this rutted and frost-heaved road back to his trailer.

It was the first hour of the first day of July. Ronald had worked second shift. He was tired as hell and eager to get home.

"Christ, I could set here all frikkin' night," he said to the tiny glow-in-the-dark plastic statue of St. Christopher that dangled from his rearview mirror.

Again he turned the key and the starter motor sang its whining, grating song. The engine didn't kick in; it didn't even attempt to fire.

"Looks like we got us a problem, m'friend," he said to the saint.

Ronald's oldest boy, Joe, often made fun of the St. Christopher statuette. "That's MISTER Christopher, Dad. Don't forget, he ain't a saint no more; he's been DE-moted!"

That Joe was a godless boy, worse than his mother, but Ronald knew he was right about St. Christopher. Still, he just couldn't figure out how a guy can be a saint one minute, then busted to civilian the next. If a fella's a saint to start with, how could he do the kind of sinning required to get his sainthood revoked? The bottom line, of course, was that the whole thing didn't make much sense. Far as Ronald was concerned, once a saint always a saint, so he left the statue swinging from his rearview mirror and he thought no more about it.

It was real dark. Thickening clouds blotted out the stars, but there was a little moonlight.