F Paul Wilson - Novel 05 (31 page)

 
          
You've
no time for this, yet you can't resist finding out what nests inside. You touch
the doll and it splits across its middle. The top pops off and there's Elmer
Fudd in hunter's gear, trying to look fierce as he clutches his shotgun to his
chest. Another touch, another split, and Bugs is back again, carrot in hand,
that insouciant, wiseacre grin on his face.

 
          
But
as with all the preceding matrioshkas, this is as far as it will go. Bugs
inside Elmer inside Bugs. What does it mean? Does it mean anything?

 
          
You
hurry back to the darkened theater front and turn left. When you reach the
welcoming light from inside the diner, you pull on the door again. Still
locked. You start to knock on the glass but stop cold.

 
          
It's
different inside. The couple at the far end of the counter by the urns
—
the woman in the red dress now wears your mother's face,
and the man has become Eathan. Not a young Eathan, but Eathan as you know him
now. And the man sitting alone
—
he's now your father. And
the counterman, Liam. He looks up from whatever he's frying on the grill and
grins at you.

 
          
Disturbed,
frightened, you back away. This is too crazy, even by Sam's standards. You turn
and flee, soaring off into the night. Forget the gondola. Just go.

 
          
The
dripping moon is half-risen from the sea on the far side of this drowned world.
You aim for it, sensing that is the way back to the gallery. As you glide you
notice something rippling the surface of the moonlit water below. Could it be
whatever brushed the hull of your gondola last night?

 
          
You
swoop down, but by the time you reach the surface the ripples have spread and
dissipated. You hover there, wondering what could live in these dead waters.

 
          
Suddenly
a splash. You turn and see a tentacle as thick around as a man's thigh
uncoiling from the surface. The black water rolls off its skin. Its suckered
undersurface reaches for you, the puckered mouthlike pores ready to grab and
hold you.

 
          
You
cry out
—
your voice in the real world
startles you. Then you dart away, leaving the thing to slide back into the sea.

 
          
What
would it have done to you? Dragged you down to join Sam in her coma?

 
          
With
your heart pounding you click on EXIT.

 
          
You'll
return to the gallery another time.

 
          
Maybe.

 
          
Not
all memories are conscious. We have loads of nonconscious memories
—
they're
called "habits."

—
Random
notes: Julia Gordon

1

 
          
Julie
pulled off the headset and stared at Sam as she waited for her heart to slow.
She knew the tentacle couldn't have really grabbed her
—
she had no physical presence in the memoryscape
—
yet it appeared to be trying. Maybe that was good. It
seemed a sure sign that something inside Sam was aware of her presence. But why
such a frightening and ugly manifestation? And why try to snare her like that?

 
          
Retaliation
for the memory she'd just relived?

 
          
Julie
squeezed her eyes shut against a stab of remorse.

 
          
Can't
say
I
haven't
got it
coming.

 
          
She
glanced over at Alma, who was scribbling furiously on her yellow pad.

 
          
"What
was
that
all about?"

 
          
"Which
'that'?"
Alma
said, still scribbling. "The cartoon, the diner or
the kraken?"

           
"Kraken?"

 
          
"The
tentacle. The kraken was a mythical creature that used to rise from the depths,
grasp hapless ships, and drag them under."

 
          
"Why
would she have a kraken in there?"

 
          
"I
can't say just yet. Perhaps it's a manifestation of Samantha herself, or her
subconscious. Something obviously
deep."

 
          
"Could
that be why it reached for me
—
a sign she's trying to reach
me?"

 
          
Alma
's head snapped up.
"Now
there's
a possibility. A very intriguing thought." She
went back to scribbling. "If only I could have seen that first session
yesterday."

 
          
"But
I described it to you."

 
          
"Not
the same as seeing and hearing with my own eyes and ears. Those landscapes are
simply
acrawl
with meaning and symbols." She sighed. "If only
I'd taken an earlier flight."

 
          
Guiltily,
Julie glanced at the videotape box. The cassette with the little
X
on
its label, the tape of the session in question, sat within arm's reach among
the blanks.

 
          
Why
not? she thought. Eathan is hours away in
London
.
Alma
will have time enough to
watch it any number of times before his return. And if I ask her to keep mum,
for Eathan's sake...

 
          
Could
she trust this woman who made nocturnal visits to Eathan's bedroom? Julie
imagined
Alma
's hierarchy of loyalties as
Eathan first, Sam second, and Julie last.

 
          
But
she had to risk it, for Sam's sake.

 
          
She
reached over and plucked the X tape from the box.

 
          
"
Alma
? I hope you'll understand
why I did this----- "

 
          
"Did
what, dear?"

 
          
"Held
back the tape of yesterday's first session. I
—
"

 
          
Alma
leaped to her feet and
snatched it from Julie's fingers.

 
          
"You
have it?" she said, staring at the blank label. "This is
it?"

 
          
"Yes,
I
—
"

 
          
But
Alma
was already headed for the
hall. "I must see this immediately!"

 
          
"But
—
"

 
          
Julie
hurried out after her and followed her downstairs to the family room,
explaining her concerns about Eathan's reaction to the tape.

 
          
"I
don't think you give your uncle enough credit,"
Alma
said. "He's
considerably more resilient than that. Consider what he's already absorbed from
Samantha all these years."

 
          
Julie
didn't want to mention her other reason: losing access to the wall cabinet.

 
          
"Just
don't tell him. I don't even want him to know the tape exists. I hope I've made
that very clear."

 
          
Alma
stopped and looked at her.
"If that is what you want, my dear, then that is the way it shall be. Fair
enough?"

 
          
"Fair
enough."

 
          
"Smashing.
Now I must see this at once!"

 
          
As
Alma
disappeared into the family
room, Julie dug into her pocket for the key to the wall cabinet. Maybe she'd
better do some more snooping while she still could.

 
          
And
then she remembered: Hadn't she seen a locksmith shop in Robin Hood's Bay as
she drove through yesterday? She had Eathan's key. Why not have a duplicate
made?

 
          
She
headed to the front closet for her coat.

2

 
          
When
Julie returned with the duplicate key, she immediately checked on
Alma
in the family room. She
found the psychiatrist sitting in the dark, utterly absorbed in the videotape
playing before her.

 
          
The
light from the open door reflected off her glasses as she glanced over at
Julie. "I'm so glad you let me see this," she said. "It adds
so
much!"

 
          
Julie
left her there and went directly upstairs to the study. She wanted the original
key back where it belonged before she did another thing.

 
          
After
replacing it in the drawer, she took the duplicate to the wall cabinet and
tried it in the lock. It worked. Good.

 
          
She
debated whether to delve further into that locked file cabinet. She'd only
scratched the surface there, only seen part of the top drawer. She was about to
pull the doors open when she heard a timid tap on the study door.

 
          
Quickly
she relocked the wall cabinet, pocketed the key, and said, "Yes?"

 
          
Clarice,
the maid, opened the door. A little mouse of a woman, she gazed at Julie
through thick glasses. "Pardon me, mum, but 1 wonder if I'd be disturbing
you if I cleaned now."

 
          
"No-no,"
Julie said. "Come right in. I was just looking for something to
read."

 
          
Damn.
The maid must have seen her come in here. Hopefully she wouldn't think enough
of it to mention it to Eathan. Clarice hadn't been here during their childhood,
when the study was Eathan's sanctum sanctorum, and no one else was allowed.

 
          
As
Clarice started dusting, Julie wandered over to the bookshelf where she'd seen
the neurochemistry journals with the Nathan Gordon articles. Just what sort of
research had her "visionary" and "unorthodox" father been
into?

3

 
          
Julie
put off the day's second trip into Sam's memoryscape until Eathan returned from
London
.

 
          
After
seeing the dunning notices in the locked file cabinet, she'd wanted to quiz him
on Dad's financial problems. But now, having read her father's journal
articles, she had far more pressing concerns.

 
          
Eathan
arrived in the late afternoon. The skies were a battleship gray, the air cool
and damp. Not too many more blue-sky days in store.

 
          
She
let him freshen up, then tracked him to his study, where she found him seated
at the desk unpacking his briefcase.

 
          
She
was more than a little nervous as she stepped through the door.

 
          
"Welcome
back," she said. She held up the journals
—
she'd
decided to be up-front about the articles. "I'm returning these."

 
          
He
looked up. "What are they?"

 
          
"Neurochem
journals with some of Dad's articles. I was in here when Clarice was dusting
and spotted them on the shelf. Hope you don't mind."

 
          
He
glanced around at the shelves. "Here? I'm surprised you found them. Of
course I don't mind. They're part of your legacy from Nathan. Frankly, I find
them impenetrable. I tried to read them after the fire but couldn't make much
of them. Too much chemical mumbo jumbo. Do they make any sense to your'

 
          
Julie
nodded. "Yes. Maybe too much."

 
          
"I'm
sorry?"

 
          
Julie
stacked the journals on his desk. "All his work^-at least what's in these
—
seems to center around right-brained and left-brained
aspects of intellect and personality. He didn't use those terms. He simply
called them creative and analytical abilities."

 
          
"I
know the theoretical basics
—
Nathan and I discussed them
many times. He saw creative and analytical abilities occurring on a bell
curve, with analytical on the left and creative on the right, and the optimum
at the top of the curve, where both abilities were perfectly balanced. I forget
what examples he used, something like Einstein on the left, Van Gogh on the
right, and Frank Lloyd Wright atop the curve."

 
          
"That
sounds about right. But it's kind of scary in these articles the way he talks
about influencing someone's place on the curve by dosing them with various
neurohormones during their developmental years... making them more left-brained
or more right-brained, whichever you wish."

 
          
"Just
theory."

 
          
"But
it's not just theory. He outlines ways to do it. It sounds like..."

 
          
Eathan
smiled through his beard. "Social engineering?"

 
          
"'Well,
yes, that too. But..." Her mouth was suddenly dry. Dammit! How could she
say this? "But Sam and I are identical twins and yet we're so different. I
mean, who's more right-brained than Sam? And as for me
—
"

 
          
Eathan
shot to his feet. "Julia, stop it! Stop it this instant! How can you even
think such a thing? Your father loved you two! You were the lights of his life.
He would never even consider experimenting on you! It's unthinkable!"