314 Book 2 (41 page)

“Dying? But there must be some other way. We have to save them.”

“They are being saved, Alma. Death is their salvation.”

“They’re willing to kill themselves?” asked Alma.

“These are the ones that can remember, just like you. The Skeleton Man lost his focus, and let some of the souls in the town slip through. He was supposed to stick to the Watcher’s plan, but when he began to change things, some of the people here remembered what the truth was. They remembered being tortured a thousand times, and would rather die than go through it again.”

“But do they really have to die to escape?”

“No, but it’s their choice. Death is just a passage to a different reality, Alma. You’d do well to accept that. Over that cliff is your best chance of escape as well.”

“I don’t want to die,” said Alma.

“And you don’t have to. In fact, I don’t want you to. If you’re right, and The Skeleton Man has escaped, then you’re the one that has to go find him. Something like him doesn’t belong in the real world. There’s no telling what horrors a thing like him could release if he gets out. You’re part of his lie, so hopefully his powers won’t work on you.”

“What powers?” asked Alma as she followed the girl back through the crowd.

“I don’t know, and I don’t think he knows either. But you’ve seen what he could do here. Without the Watcher pulling his strings, he’s free to do anything. You have to get out of here, and you have to stop him.”

“How?” asked Alma.

The little girl stopped at the front of the van. “You brought them here, and now you can help get them out.” She motioned towards Jacker, Stephen, and Rachel. “You’re walking in multiple different streams of time. All you have to do is follow your steps back to when you first arrived. Then just don’t stop driving.”

“What?”

The girl pointed at the cliff.

“I can’t do that,” said Alma.

“You must. It’s the only way out. You have to get out and go find The Skeleton Man. He has to be brought back to Widowsfield, and you have to end this.”

“End it how?” asked Alma.

“Anyway you can,” said the little girl. Her hair began to rise from her shoulders, as if she was caught in a pool of rising water. Then, as Alma watched in horror, the little girl began to rot, and her skin peeled away from her face. Her eye floated away from her skull as her eyelids disintegrated, and it appeared as if something was tearing the flesh from her bones.

“That’s good,” said the corpse. “
You’re learning.”

*   *   *

Alma was driving the van as they passed a line of little girls that were walking in the same direction they were driving. The Jackson Reservoir was just ahead.

“One of the little girls just jumped off. Holy shit. Stop the van!” Rachel was panicked and about to open her door.

Alma stepped down harder on the gas.

“What are you doing?” asked Rachel as the road whipped by outside her partially opened door.

“I’m so sorry, but you have to trust me,” said Alma as she closed her eyes.

All the girls had parted to allow them
to pass. The van bounced over the concrete slab at the head of the parking spot and then plowed through the guard rail as its occupants screamed. Alma felt her stomach rise, a feeling she had come to dread, and the water below rushed up at them until finally…

Death?

Lee was a complete fabrication. Oliver was so reliant on his notes, and hesitated to even let me start drawing pictures for him instead of simply describing the scene. He was familiar with how untrustworthy memories were, so I created Lee as a way to convince Oliver that
he had no reason not to trust the notebook. All the while, it was me that was drawing the pictures for him: Little Rosemary Arborton, a psychometric twenty-something plucked from Chicago by Oliver to help him with his experiment. I also lied about my friend’s name, convincing Oliver that her name was Mindy instead of Terra. I couldn’t risk either of us being tracked down, so I changed our names and convinced Oliver to write out all of our checks to ‘Cash’.

During my time with Oliver, I continued to plant ideas in his head. He would take the notebook every night to make copies of, and every night he was infected with my lies. He even started to complain about how Lee was missing some days, but of course the next morning he would wake up thinking Lee had been with us all day long.

Oliver had to trust Lee implicitly, which was essential to our escape. Immediately after leaving the house on Sycamore, after drawing the scene for Oliver, I gave the notebook to the scientist and told him that I was certain there was something else we were missing about the house.

I requested one more day, and he agreed.

I have no doubt that if Terra and I hadn’t snuck out of Widowsfield that night, we would’ve ended up dead in the bottom of Jackson Reservoir, eaten by catfish. I never saw Oliver again, but if my lies worked as they were supposed to, he woke up the next morning convinced that not only were we dead, but that Alma and Michael Harper were dead as well.

I’m sure Oliver’s accountants were more than a little angry with him when all the construction workers that had been hired to help rebuild Widowsfield kept cashing their checks. After all, it would be a nightmare for an accountant to see that all of Oliver’s checks had been made out simply to, ‘Cash.’

Inside
Cada E.I.B.’s Compound

March 13th, 2012

The formerly dim compound came alive with flashing orange lights just before an alarm rang.

“They must’ve found Tom,” said Oliver.

A speaker crackled to life
and a winded woman began to call for help. “We’ve had a break in. A man came in and kidnapped one of the sleepers.”

“What the hell?”
asked Oliver as the woman continued to speak through the PA system.

“We’re at loading bay six. Tom, or Alex, if you’re there please come help.”

“Alex?” asked Paul.

“He’s one of the guards that worked with Tom,” said Oliver. “Come on, let’s find out what’s going on. You first.” Oliver pointed the pistol at Paul, and then at the door, motioning for his captive to go first.

Oliver gave Paul directions as they went through the facility. The orange lights spun as the alarm roared, reminding Paul of the fire drills in high school. The loading bay wasn’t far from Oliver’s office, and they saw two nurses standing by an open door that led outside.

“Oliver,” said the older of the pair. “What should we do? Should we call the police?”

Oliver was quick to say, “No! No, that’s the last thing we should do. What happened here?”

The younger nurse, a blonde haired girl with red glasses, explained. “A maniac took one of the sleepers.”

Helen nodded and then elaborated. “He said his name was Michael Harper.”

“Seriously?” asked Paul.

“And he took one of the sleepers,” said the older nurse. “He made us help him take the man to my car, and we loaded him in the backseat. Then he took off.”

“Who did he take?” asked Oliver. His voice was shrill and he looked panicked.

“He took his son, Ben,” said the nurse.

“Oh no!” Oliver looked out of the open door, into the parking lot and screamed in frustration. “This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening!”

“Is Alma okay?” asked Paul of the nurses.

“Who?” asked the younger of the two.

Oliver interrupted, “We have to go track him down. We have to go now.” The thin scientist was shouting and flailing his arms, trying to command the group to go out the door. “Everyone move, now. We have to try and find Ben. Go, go, go.” He was rotating his right arm like a windmill, ushering everyone out the door. The two nurses were confused, but did as they were told. Paul followed behind, pretending to fall in line, but he was watching Oliver’s arm as it spun. Then, just as Paul passed the thin man, he reached out and caught Oliver’s wrist.

“You son of a…” Oliver
tried to fight back, but it was a hopeless attempt. Paul weighed nearly twice as much as the man, and had been waiting for a chance to get close enough to attack.

Paul twisted Oliver’s arm, sending the frail scientist to the floor. Then he pried the gun out of his hand before putting his boot in the center of his back. The two nurses stood aghast in the doorway, unsure how to react.

“Everyone stay calm,” said Paul as Oliver sputtered and cursed beneath him. The two women nodded. Their eyes were wide with fear and they stayed silent as Paul assessed the situation. “I’m not the one you should be scared of. This piece of shit just shot one of the guards.”

“He’s lying!” Oliver shouted from the floor. “He’s the one that killed Tom.”

Paul pressed his boot hard into Oliver’s spine. The scientist yelped in agony until Paul stopped. “It doesn’t matter what you believe. All that matters is that you let me get my friends and get out of here. So this is what we’re going to do. We’re all going to go back down to the basement, and the two of you are going to help me load all of my friends into a van. Okay?”

The nurses nodded as Oliver groaned.

“And if anyone tries anything, I won’t hesitate to use this.” He shook the gun as he pointed it down at Oliver. “Are we clear?”

Again, the nurses nodded.

Paul took his foot off Oliver’s back and the scientist bounded up. His face was red with anger, and he pointed at the door leading outside as he shouted, “You don’t know what you’re doing! If Ben is taken out of here, we’re going to lose our best chance of recreating the event! We’re going to lose everything.”

“I don’t care what you lose, asshole. I just care about Alma and my friends, and I’m the one with the gun now.”

“I’m not helping you,” said Oliver. “You’ll have to shoot me or let me go.”

Paul looked at the two nurses and asked, “Do you two have experience with gunshots.”

They both nodded.

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” said Paul. “If I shoot him in the foot, there’s no c
hance he’d die, right?”

“There’s always a chance,” said the older nurse.

“Yeah, but not a really good chance,” said Paul as he aimed at Oliver’s shoe.

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Oliver.

“Are you going to do what I ask?”

“No,” said Oliver as he stood up straight and defiant.

Paul pulled the trigger.

The gunshot’s blast echoed through the halls nearly as loud as Oliver
’s pained scream. The thin man crumpled to the floor and grasped his bleeding foot.

“You shot me! You bastard.”

“I told you I would,” said Paul. “Girls, can you please help him up so we can get moving before I have to shoot his other foot?”

The nurses got Oliver up, and let the man drape his arms over their shoulders. Then they moved on as Oliver cursed and whined.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” said Oliver. “We need Ben here, otherwise we can’t replicate what happened. The reason it never worked before is because Alma wasn’t here. I’m sure of it. Nia lied to us about Alma to keep us from being able to open the pathway again. With her here…” he yelled in pain and frustration. “We were so close! Please don’t do this. If you help us find Ben, and we get him to the cabin with his sister tomorrow, we could change the world. Don’t you see? This could be the most important discovery in the history of mankind. Walking on the moon is nothing compared to opening a door to another dimension! To the discovery of intelligent life that’s been hiding all around us forever! How can you just throw that away? How can you be so stupid?”

They got into the elevator and Oliver continued to plead with Paul. They were leane
d against opposite sides and Paul looked nonchalant as he crossed his arms and smiled.

“Are you truly this stupid? Truly?” asked Oliver, goading the big man. “You’re just going to stand there and smile as the greatest discovery in man’s history slips through our fingers?”

“I’m going to go save the girl I love,” said Paul. “Simple as that.”

“There’s nothing simple about it, you idiot,” said Oliver. “You’re making the biggest mistake of your life. The biggest mistake anyone’s ever made.”

“I’m starting to think my biggest mistake was not choking you out. Do you ever shut up?”

The elevator chimed as it stopped at B2. Oliver was about to respond, but as soon as the doors opened they heard a cacophonous noise coming from the sleepers’ room. Paul ran down the hall as the nurses followed with Oliver between them.

“What is that?” asked one of the nurses as Paul got to the door.

He flung the doors open and was confronted with an awful sight. Several of the sleepers had woken up, and were writhing in their beds.
They weren’t strapped down like Paul had been, but their atrophied muscles prevented them from doing anything other than shaking.

It was only female sleepers that had woken up, but they were gasping and sputtering as they flopped on their beds. Some of them were able to arch their backs while others shook their heads back and forth. Their eyes stayed wide, glistening with Vaseline, and when they heard Paul enter they all turned his way. He was horrified by their gaunt visage as the women’s mouths hung open. They tried to cry out for help as they
shook, causing the metal gurneys to clatter. Then the women began to roll off their beds, thudding to the floor and causing irreparable harm to their bodies. He could hear their bones breaking as they hit the tile, and the women screeched as best they could. A guttural chorus of anguish filled the room.