Hear the Children Calling (2 page)

He fixed his eyes on the stuffed tiger. It was a cub, big green eyes luminous in the bright, clinical lights. The boy stared hard at him.

I don’t want to do this. I’m scared!

“Concentrate, Tommy,” a woman said. “Don’t be afraid. You can make him do whatever you want.”

I can’t make him! It never works right.

The tiger began to move.

“Keep going, Tommy,” the woman said. “You were so close the last time. Maybe today . . .”

No! No! NO! I don’t like this!

The green plastic eyes thinned. The head turned. The embroidered mouth opened to reveal long teeth that couldn’t possibly be there.

“Send it to the dummy, Tommy,” a man said. “Make it attack the dummy.”

The toy tiger, an adorable plaything moments before, had turned into a miniature version of the real thing, no less vicious for its size. Tommy’s eyes moved to a battered store mannequin that sat on the other side of the room. But the tiger didn’t follow his gaze. Once contact was broken, the beast seemed to gain a mind of its own. It leapt toward the chair where the child sat confined by straps and wires.

Tommy screamed.

“Nnnnnooooo!”

One of the adults jerked Tommy’s chair out of the way, wheels screeching on the tile floor. The tiger flew past the child and struck a technician, teeth sinking into her neck. She screamed, grabbing at it.

“Tommy, make it stop!”

Stop! You’re a toy. Just a toy.

Instantly, the tiger fell to the ground. The woman touched her neck and brought back fingers tipped with blood. At her feet, the tiger was once again a plaything.

Tommy’s father’s face came into view. “I thought you were going to try harder today, Tommy.”

He sounded disappointed. Tommy hung his head, silent again. He tried so hard to please the grown-ups. He’d been trying for as long as he could remember. But he was afraid of the things he could do, and that fear kept him from being in complete control. He closed his eyes and remained quiet as the electrodes were disconnected.

But in his mind, he cried pitifully. And for the first time since he was a small child, someone heard him. His thoughts carried out of the building, beyond the
iron fence that surrounded the center and all the houses within it, beyond the mountains that formed a natural barrier between the boy’s home and the neighboring city.

As she was driving up a mountain road, on her way to a picnic with her niece and nephew, a woman suddenly experienced a flash of head pain so intense she had to slam the brakes. The children begged her to say what was wrong, but she couldn’t. She could only stare up into the trees, listening to the cries of a child, a little boy whose brain was on the same wavelength as her own. The cries were so pathetic that tears began to form in her own eyes.

Ignoring the dismayed protests of her passengers, she sent a thought message back to the child.

Tell me where you are, little one. Tell me who you are, and how I can help you.

In his chair, free now of the wires, the boy finally relaxed. He had stopped screaming inside his mind, for somehow he sensed that he finally had been heard.

2

O
N THE
N
ORTH
S
HORE OF
L
ONG
I
SLAND
, N
EW
Y
ORK
, Jill Sheldon was busy readying the Science and You Museum for an annual fund-raiser. The building was closed to the public tonight, in order to welcome important and well-to-do guests. Exhibits in physics, biology, astronomy, and the like were set up in Plexiglas booths spread throughout four rooms. Nothing was encased, and P
LEASE
T
OUCH
signs decorated the brightly painted walls. In this, the largest room, several exhibits
had been moved aside to make room for a long buffet table.

“Maybe we need a few more carnations,” Jill said, pointing. “There, next to the seafood platter.”

Her assistant, Virginia Dreyfus, shook her head. “It looks fine,” she said. “Everything is perfect.”

“I hope so. How well this museum runs for the next year is going to depend on the donations we take in tonight.”

“We’ll do great,” Virginia said. “Just let our guests run through the exhibits and they won’t be able to resist pulling out their checkbooks.”

Jill wished she could share her assistant’s confidence. “Look at me,” she said, holding out her hands. There was a faint rattling of onyx and lapis bangles. “I’m shaking like a leaf. I’m so nervous!”

“Don’t be,” Virginia encouraged. “The museum will sell itself. Everything looks great—especially you.”

Jill looked down at herself, feeling just a small wave of confidence despite the butterflies in her stomach. She had spent weeks looking for just the right dress. She finally chose a strapless, turquoise satin gown. Rhinestone danglers sparkled in the shoulder-length fall of her brown curls. She wore a small amount of makeup, just enough to bring out the green in her eyes and the faint shadowing of high cheekbones.

“There’s our first guest,” Virginia said, tapping Jill’s shoulder. “He looks familiar.”

A silver-haired man approached, dressed in a dark suit and red tie. He held a notebook in one big hand, and two pens stuck out from his breast pocket.

“Oh, it’s Patrick Cameron,” Jill said. “He writes a science-and-math column for the
Suffolk County Chronicle.
He’s given the museum more publicity than any other journalist.” She smiled, holding out a freshly manicured hand to greet him.

“Jill, don’t you look wonderful,” Patrick said. He helped himself to a glass of champagne from a passing tray. “To continued success,” he said, lifting the
stemmed goblet. “I know you’ll attain it, Jill. Ever since you started working over in Centerport five years ago, I knew you’d be doing something of your own someday.”

“Well, maybe we aren’t as big as the Vanderbilt Planetarium,” Jill said, “but I think we offer an important service to the children of Long Island.”

A few more people came through the door, then another group, and soon Jill was busy moving from one guest to another. Some clustered in chattering groups; a few wandered through the exhibits, trying them out. After a while, Virginia tapped Jill and whispered that everyone had arrived. Jill lifted a rubber baton and tapped it against a series of chimes, clear tones filling the room. Her guests turned to her.

“I want to thank you for coming tonight,” Jill said. “I didn’t prepare a speech, because I know these exhibits will speak for themselves. There will be two tours, one to be led by my assistant, Virginia Dreyfus, and one to be led by me.”

While Virginia led her group into the adjoining hall, Jill remained in the front room.

“You heard the chimes I played a few moments ago,” she said. “It’s part of our Sound and Hearing Exhibit. You’ll notice this particular room is dedicated to the five . . .”

She felt a sudden flash of heat across the back of her eyes, and for a moment the sentence was lost. Jill blinked and quickly regained her composure.

Stage fright, that’s all. Take it slow!

“. . . dedicated to the five senses,” she went on. She led them to a table laden with variously sized brandy glasses. “The kids get a big kick out of this one.”

She dipped her hands into a bucket of soapy water, then dried them. Gently, she ran her fingertips over the rims of different glasses, producing a bell-like rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

Her guests laughed and clapped.

“When my hands are clean and dry,” Jill explained,
“my fingers rub over the glass and shake it ever so slightly. This produces the musical tones you hear, according to how much water is in the glasses or how big the glass is. If my hand was oily, it would only slide over the rim and no sound would come out.”

Her guests moved about, trying out tuning forks and old gramophones.

“Let’s move on to the next exhibit,” Jill said. “Here we have Sight, and in this particular instance, color. Color comes from light, and the colors we see are those that bounce from the object to our eyes. A red apple looks red because all colors but red are absorbed. But how we see color also depends on its relation to the colors around it.”

She scanned her guests, her eyes resting on the name tag worn by a woman in a blue-green suit. Deliah Provost. Jill couldn’t remember her from the guest list, and when she met her dark eyes, that strange burning sensation shot through her skull again.

“With . . . different accessories,” Jill said, steadying herself, “Miss Provost’s suit might look either green or blue.”

She led them on.

“Here are some color panels,” Jill said. “The kids love looking through these, seeing things in different colors. And please try the kaleidoscopes.”

For the next thirty minutes, Jill showed off her exhibits, growing more confident with each presentation. Worry about stage fright passed quickly, and when the tour was over, she stood back and watched her guests with a satisfied smile.

Someone touched her arm, the fingers warm against her chilled skin.

“I’ve come with a message, my dear,” a voice whispered. “Ryan is alive. You must go and find him, for he is in terrible danger! I can’t stay . . .”

Jill felt herself falling, lights whirling over her head like the vortex of a tornado. Voices, music, and footsteps all blended into one confusing mess. The walls began to move, to close in on her. She grew feverish,
sweat forming on the top of her quivering lips. Jill’s chest constricted, her heart pounding as if struggling to make more room for itself.

It was all over in a matter of seconds. Jill’s eyes snapped open and she looked around herself. Whoever had spoken to her had already disappeared into the crowd. On legs that seemed boneless, Jill turned and hurried from the room. Busy looking over the displays, none of the guests noticed her. A short flight of steps took her into her office, where she sank into a leather swivel chair and forced herself to breathe deeply. After a few moments, the dizziness passed, and she was able to lift her head to stare at the door.

“How the hell did you know?” Jill whispered.

With her eyes closed, Jill could still imagine the last time she saw her child alive—a three-year-old in ticking stripe overalls with a red shirt and high-top sneakers. With his blonde hair tousled by the warm summer winds, he turned at the end of their walkway to say good-bye.

“See you, Mommy!”

“Keep an eye on him, Jeff. Don’t let him eat too much, okay?”

“He’s still my kid, Jill. I wouldn’t let anything happen to him.”

“Good-bye, Ryan. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mommy.”

“Good-bye, Ryan. I love you,” Jill whispered now. They were the last words she had ever spoken to him.

That evening, a policeman had appeared on her doorstep. He was a young man, with bright-red hair shaved close to his head and a small scar that ran along his hairline. Funny, Jill thought, how she could remember that particular detail: “I’m sorry to inform you that there’s been a terrible accident . . .”

And he’d gone on to describe how witnesses saw Jeffrey’s car fly over an embankment, bursting into flames at the bottom. There was no way to get to it, and by the time the fire was put out, the bodies inside
were burned beyond recognition. Two bodies—a man and a child.

“No! No! You’ve made a mistake! They can’t be Ryan and Jeff. It’s a trick. Jeff’s kidnapped our son.
It’s a trick!”

But everyone else involved finally convinced her that the bodies had, indeed, belonged to her little boy and ex-husband. For weeks after the funerals, Jill had walked around in a fog, sleeping little and eating less. She became like a zombie, not caring about anything. Her mother came to check on her one day and gasped to find an emaciated shell where her daughter had once been. She had bodily lifted her and carried her to the hospital, where Jill was treated for anorexia. Therapy had followed, convincing her she had to get on with her life. And that meant getting away from people who stared or offered stupid, sympathetic comments. She finally made use of her science degree from Michigan University and moved to Long Island, where she had worked in various labs and museums until finally earning enough to open up her own. And in all that time-six long years—she had never told anyone about Ryan.

So how, she wondered, could anyone have known?

“I’m damned well going to find out,” she said, pushing back her chair and rising. She dried her eyes, checked her mirror to be sure they weren’t red, and returned to the party. Everyone was buzzing, and no one seemed to notice she had gone. Looking them over, Jill was more confused than ever. She knew all these people and had never taken one of them into confidence. Who, then, had been the one to open up a still-painful wound?

3

K
ATE
E
MERSON
HELD FAST TO HER
L
ABRADOR
’
S
leash, the leather strip snapping taut each time the dog saw a squirrel or a rabbit. She pulled back on it, commanding him to heel, but Boston Blackie had other ideas.

“I know, fella,” Kate said. “You’ve got fall fever. I’d like to run through these woods myself.”

She breathed deeply, taking in the scent of damp leaves newly colored red and orange. Though it was early morning, she could already smell the cinnamon aroma of pumpkin pie wafting through the cracks in a nearby kitchen door. The air was crisp, the wind tickling the back of her neck where skin showed between the rim of her cable-knit sweater and her bobbed brown hair.

“Sweater weather,” her sister Diane called it. It was Kate’s favorite time of the year, so relaxing after a busy and hot summer. And this summer, the coastal New England town of Gull’s Flight, Massachusetts, had been particularly busy. They’d just celebrated their tricentennial, and the little curio shop where Kate worked had done booming business.

Boston Blackie was yelping at something. They were nearly to the end of the woods, coming upon a roadway that would lead them to the house Kate shared with her husband, Danny, and their two children.