Project Cain (31 page)

•  •  •

My whole head suddenly so heavy. Dizzy. Overstuffed all of a sudden with memories, echoes of something just passed. Then older remembrances blending with the new and the sounds of loud music, throbbing blood, screaming.

I remembered walking down a long dark hallway. And the room filled with tall containers. Tanks filled with yellow water. Something floating within. Someone. Dozens of someones.

The swelling hum of blood blotted out the next image/thought, and I stumbled in the street like I was drunk.

The man with the knives moved toward me.

•  •  •

Then there was a bright light, blasting down from above.

A helicopter—news or the cops—sweeping the scene. Its glowing beam cutting a path of light across the street and along the line of trees.

Broken free from whatever spell I’d fallen under, I told myself I’d just imagined the dark shape. No different from the black-dress lady
or nightmares or any of it. Except . . .

I chased the thoughts from my mind, dashed the rest of the way to the car.

Got inside in the backseat and warmed my arms with my hands. Seconds passing like minutes.

Castillo finally emerged from the crowd. He looked pissed. Walked slowly, head down.

I asked if it was them.

Yeah, he said, and then handed me his cell phone.

I was like: What’s this?

Castillo’d started the car and was pulling slowly away down the street.

He said: I need you to make a call.

I said OK and asked who I was calling.

Castillo stared me down in the rearview mirror.

Your goddamn father, he said.

•  •  •

I’d been busted.

Turns out one of the dead kids at the house was John Burton—John was the one who’d dressed like a clown because that’s what his DNA source had done—and he’d been gutted in the basement in his clown suit during this wild party. (There were, Castillo said, also, like, seven other dead kids lying around John. None of them was a clone, he thought, just regular kids who’d gotten in the way. Gotten in the way of some guy with knives.)

And when Castillo had checked John’s body, he’d found a cell phone.

And on that cell phone John had made several calls to a specific number.

And so then Castillo got curious, checked his own phone records online.

And that was that.

Same number was on HIS phone records too.

The three calls I’d made to my dad.

Guess my dad had given out his new secret number to ALL his sons.

•  •  •

Hey. Hey, Dad.

It’s me.

Jeff. Jeff!

No. Jeff Jacobson.

Yeah. I’m . . . I’m OK. I know you told me not—

Where are you? I need . . . I need to see you.

No. It’s just . . . Yes. I guess. Is that OK?

Winter Quarter? Quarters. No. Utah? Yeah, I can look it up. Thanks. I . . .

Midnight. Yes.

Are you OK? You . . .

Dad?

When will you—

Yeah. OK. . . . I—

Yes.

Yeah.

I love you too.

•  •  •

My dad had finally agreed to meet me.

The next night at midnight. Someplace called Winter Quarters in
Utah.

Castillo asked if I’d ever been there, and I told him no.

I told Castillo: Sorry.

He ignored that and just kept driving west.

I didn’t care if he was furious or disappointed with me or not. I was totally excited.

We were finally gonna see my dad!

Or at least that was what I thought.

I
t was another whole day until it was midnight again, the time when we were supposed to meet up with my dad. But Winter Quarters was only five hours away. So we slept some outside a McDonald’s right near Grand Junction, and then later in the morning Castillo found a Barnes & Noble and picked up a bunch of the books I’d asked for.

Books on Jack the Ripper.

These I read quietly while we drove for another three hours.

•  •  •

Castillo found somewhere to park at the Green River State Park. An hour north of Winter Quarters. Waiting for midnight. Castillo tried sleeping again. Couldn’t. He seemed anxious. Ready to get the day started for real. I kept reading, dozed off a little bit too. Neither one of us was much for talking. I assumed he was still pissed about me secretly calling my dad and not telling him about it. Probably assumed there was all sorts of things I was keeping from him.

I was too embarrassed to talk. I HAD betrayed Castillo a bit.

Figure he’d saved my neck a couple of times already. I probably should have said something earlier about the calls. But I didn’t even
know what to say about them now. So I just kept my mouth shut.

Lunch was Pop-Tarts and warm bologna. Dinner too.

Waiting.

Around seven I about jumped up through the roof of the parked car.

What? Castillo even reached for his gun.

I’d finally found something in the book.

One of the biggest puzzle pieces yet.

This puzzle piece, like so many of the others, was blood colored.

•  •  •

Tumblety!
I almost shouted.

Castillo wasn’t impressed.

The dead guy in your dad’s secret room? he asked.

True. But he was also one of the prime Ripper suspects, mentioned in all three of the books Castillo’d bought for me. And so I explained to Castillo what I’d just read.

After the Ripper murders, Tumblety escaped to America. The New York City police were always watching him and stuff. Apparently he was a bit of a character. Eventually settled in Rochester and got married twice. First time to Margaret Zilch and the second to . . .

I checked to see if Castillo was paying attention. He was.

I said, ALICE JACOBSON.

Castillo nodded and said: And there it is.

There was a son. William. William later used his mother’s name because Tumblety was a Jack the Ripper suspect AND had also been arrested for being involved in the Lincoln assassination. “Tumblety” was not a name you wanted to walk around with.

Castillo asked: So, William is your . . . what? Grandfather?

Great-
grandfather, I replied. Maybe. And not mine. I wasn’t a Jacobson.

Then your adoptive father’s grandfather? Castillo said.

Maybe, I agreed again, and suggested we could double check.

Now I had Castillo’s attention. He asked if this Tumblety guy was
really
Jack the Ripper.

I reached for the other book Castillo had picked up and explained to him that most evidence now points to an artist named Walter Sickert. They’ve done DNA analysis and everything. Pretty much case closed.

Wouldn’t your father know that? Castillo asked.

I said: Maybe he didn’t really want to know it.

I mean, if my dad was running around for years thinking he was some kind of descendent of THE Jack the Ripper and that somehow gave him a genetic excuse/reason to have all those violent fantasies and to turn into some kind of killer himself, why ruin that with something such as, say, the Truth?

So, Castillo said, if he still thinks he’s a direct descendent, some kind of rebirth of Jack the Ripper . . .

It’s totally in his sick head. I finished Castillo’s thought.

Yeah, Castillo said.

Yeah, I echoed. And if he’s wrong about that the whole Tumblety thing . . .

Castillo now finished mine: Then he’s wrong about a lot of things.

We both let that sink in for a while.

•  •  •

Why This Possibility (That My Father Was Wrong) Was Important to Me

By now I’d figured out I’d been raised only as a science experiment. My father had constructed and raised me only to further prove his hypothesis that Nature overwhelms Nurture and that the chromosomal makeup
that’d led Jeffrey Dahmer to kill all those people would, despite anything I tried to do to the contrary, eventually lead me to do the same. That the Evil coursing inside me would eventually reveal itself.

Why This Same Possibility Was Important to Castillo

My father had run a pretty good game up to this point. He’d sort of gotten out ahead of DSTI—and Castillo. The original Massey clones were free; new secretly adopted clones were free. There were vials of some terrible biotoxin out in the world. And it looked like my father was now murdering people and teasing the authorities about it. I think Castillo was maybe looking for proof that my father wasn’t perfect. That he could mess up. That he was, despite all his planning and brilliance, rather insane.

•  •  •

Castillo suddenly said his own dad had taken off when he was nine.

Yeah? I prompted.

Yeah, Castillo said. I hated the son of a bitch for close to twenty years. And the more I tried hating him, the more I became just like him. The way he moved, talked. Things he said. Christ . . . I don’t know. In a couple of years I’ll probably
be
him.

A strange silence fell between us again.

I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking the same thing.

But I wasn’t worried about becoming my father someday.

I was worried about becoming Jeffrey Dahmer.

Becoming, well, ME.

Guess Castillo was worried about me becoming that also.

It’s time, Castillo said. Let’s go.

W
inter Quarters is a “ghost town” in Utah. Past Colton and down Route 96 to Scofield. Deserted canyon with dusty dirt roads, rotted railroad ties, and the gutted shells of a couple of ancient brick buildings. The biggest structure has only two sides left. Whole place looks like a little kid just randomly plopped some gray LEGOs into the ground.

A hundred years ago it was a prosperous coal mining town. Then the mine exploded. Every available casket in Utah was shipped to Winter Quarters. It was not enough. Two hundred men died in one day. Burned, buried alive, poisoned by coal dust. The entire town was completely empty ten years later. I looked it up on the Internet. Said the place was seriously haunted: strange lights in the mines, the desperate wails of the dying men and their mourning wives. All that stuff.

I sat in the car alone as usual while Castillo went down into the canyon to retrieve my father. He’d left just maybe fifteen minutes before. Castillo’s intention was to get down there before my dad even showed up. He’d parked on a dark service road. I was freezing again. My whole body shaking with fever chills even though I had no fever. I dealt with
it, just stared out the window. Giant slender trees running along both sides of the road and into the surrounding hills. The sky above was pitch-black, a zillion stars blinking overhead.

I tried not to think of them as dead people this time.

Didn’t care much about dead people or ghosts tonight. Any kind.

Tonight was not about them. Only about finding my dad. Getting ANSWERS.

Soon Castillo would bring him to the car. (Even though Castillo hated me now for lying about the phone calls. But that didn’t matter either. Castillo would do what he said he would. Make things right. He’d find my dad. Even
help
him.) Then we would all talk. Figure it all out. Make things better. Maybe even somehow get back to the rest of our lives.

The cursed dead could wail all they wanted. Tonight was only about the damned souls who were still living. Me and my dad.

In the dark I saw someone up ahead of the car walking on the dirt road toward me.

Castillo was already coming back.

•  •  •

I did not yet know that Castillo was still a mile away.

•  •  •

I got out of the car to see what the story was.

But by the time I got out of the car, “Castillo” was gone. No one there.

Like I said, I was in no mood for ghost stories this night. No black dresses or dark men with knives either. So I marched right down that gravel road toward where I’d seen something. If it wasn’t Castillo, it was
someone
.

Figured I would go check things out. Maybe it was my dad. Maybe
I’d
be the one who found him, talked him into giving himself up and whatnot. I’d be all:
Hey, Castillo. It’s cool, dude. I got my dad right here and everything’s gonna be just fine.
Sure.