The Vanishing (35 page)

‘‘It’s going to get worse before it gets better,’’ Tina warned. ‘‘You’re the talk of the town.’’

‘‘Hold out for Diane Sawyer,’’ Waylon suggested.
‘‘PrimeTime.’’

The nurse returned moments later. ‘‘I’m sorry to bother you again, Mr. Stewart. But that reporter asked me to give this to you.’’ She handed him a piece of paper.

‘‘What is it?’’

‘‘Some questions. He said they’re not for an article,’’ she added quickly. ‘‘They’re just questions you should be asking yourself. He said your situation is not unique, that this has happened to other people, and there are things you need to know.’’

Kirk nodded at her. ‘‘Thank you,’’ he said. He scanned the list of questions she’d written down:
Do you or your father have any unusual physical characteristics? Do plants or flowers grow wildly around your house or the place where you live? Are you able to read the bloody symbols scrawled on the wall where you were attacked and your mother was killed?

He glanced up from the paper, eyes suddenly misty at the thought of his mother. He had been repressing all memories of her, thinking about her only in bits and pieces and only from times of his childhood, not wanting to remember the last time he had seen her. That last question had jogged his memory, however, and though he hadn’t recalled it until now, it seemed to him that there
had
been some sort of writing on the walls of the trashed apartment, except that in his mind they had resembled Egyptian hieroglyphics.

He looked at his friends. ‘‘Is there—’’ He swallowed hard, willing the tears not to rise. ‘‘Is there a picture of my parents’ apartment . . . where this . . . happened?’’

Tina frowned. Her voice was cautious. ‘‘Are you talking about crime-scene photos? Of you?’’

And your mother?
he knew she was thinking, but she didn’t say it.

‘‘No. There should be some sort of writing on the wall.’’ He took a deep breath. ‘‘Maybe in blood. But they’ll be symbols, like hieroglyphics or something. I need to see a picture of that.’’

‘‘My laptop’s in the car,’’ Brad said. ‘‘I might be able to pull up something on there. Do you want me to go get it?’’

‘‘That’d be great,’’ Kirk said tiredly. He smiled, closing his eyes for a second, but it must have been more than a second, because when he opened them, Brad, Tina and Waylon were all clustered around Brad’s laptop.

‘‘You’re up,’’ Brad said simply.

‘‘Yeah.’’ He glanced at the clock but couldn’t remember what time it had been, so he didn’t know how long he’d been out.

‘‘I can’t access anything here in the hospital—it screws up the machines—so I checked it out in the parking lot and saved what I found. Look at this.’’ Brad brought the laptop up to the bed and adjusted the screen until it was visible from Kirk’s angle.

He didn’t know where it had come from, but it was a photo of his parents’ living room wall. The Chagall that had been hanging there was gone, and in its place what looked like a child’s scribbles mixed with words written in an alien alphabet had been inscribed in red. Bloody handprints that had to have been his father’s were pressed onto the wall below and to the right of the strange symbols, probably where he had supported himself while writing.

Oddly enough, it was the placement of the handprints and the image of his dad leaning awkwardly against the wall in order to write that made him suddenly miss his father. The two of them had not been close, and his conception of the old man now and forever was as an inhuman monster, but he realized nonetheless that he would miss him.

Tears were threatening again, and Kirk looked at the photo, concentrating on those scribbled hieroglyphic symbols. He found that he
was
actually able to read that writing, though he had never seen it before in his life. He spoke the words aloud, saying them slowly, and everyone in the room stared at him in shock.

‘‘What . . . was . . .
that
?’’ Tina asked.

‘‘I was reading those words.’’

‘‘You were screaming like a wild animal.’’

‘‘I was—’’

‘‘Screaming,’’ Brad said.

He looked at Waylon, who nodded. ‘‘I didn’t know human vocal cords could make those sounds.’’

He would have thought his friends were joking were it not for the circumstances—and for the fact that the expressions on their faces looked genuinely horrified.

‘‘Let me do it again,’’ he said.

‘‘Shoot,’’ Waylon told him.

He spoke even slower this time, and in the middle of the sentence two nurses ran in with looks of concern on their faces. ‘‘What is it?’’ the first one demanded. ‘‘What’s wrong?’’

Tina was plugging her ears and grimacing.

Brad pulled away the laptop.

To Kirk, the words he’d spoken sounded perfectly natural. Not English, certainly, but another language, one not nearly as loud and cacophonous as the reaction of the others made it seem.

He didn’t finish the sentence. ‘‘Nothing,’’ he told the nurses. ‘‘Everything’s okay.’’

‘‘Then why were you screaming like that?’’

‘‘I . . . I don’t know.’’ He couldn’t come up with a believable explanation.

‘‘Maybe we need to adjust the dosages of your medications. I’ll call Dr.—’’

‘‘I’m fine,’’ he assured them. ‘‘Just . . . let me talk to my friends. If I need anything, I’ll ring you.’’

‘‘Are you sure you’re—’’ the first nurse began.

‘‘I’m fine.’’

The nurses retreated reluctantly. The second they were out of the room, Waylon closed the door behind them. ‘‘Check it out,’’ he said, pointing.

The plants that well-wishers had left in his room had grown. No,
were
growing. Even as they watched, a rose-bud opened into a flower and a fern frond uncoiled to its full extension.

‘‘It happened when you screamed like that.’’

‘‘When I read those words?’’

‘‘Yeah.’’

‘‘Keep the door closed,’’ he told Waylon. He remembered one of the words he’d said, and he tried to whisper it, but he could tell from the reaction on Tina’s face that either he did not succeed or else the sounds required to make that word were so harsh and unpleasant that it made no difference at what volume he spoke. He watched the flowers, and before his eyes they became brighter in color, doubled in size, grew offshoots.

‘‘Open the door,’’ he told Waylon. He pressed the call button to summon a nurse. One came running.

‘‘What is it, Mr. Stewart? Is everything all right?’’

He nodded, trying to keep the quaver out of his voice. ‘‘Let me talk to that guy from the
Los Angeles Times.
’’

Twenty-four

Merritt left for LA on an early-morning flight. He needed to print the photos he’d taken and also head back for a Rolling Stones concert that he wanted to shoot—and attend.

Seconds after he’d gone, Brian’s cell phone rang.

It was Carrie, and he was about to ask when he should stop by and pick her up—their plan was to spend the day visiting with Haskell’s illegitimate children, one of whom she knew and another who had been identified— but she didn’t let him say anything other than ‘‘Hello.’’

‘‘Turn on your TV! CNN,’’ she ordered. ‘‘Quick!’’

He did, dropping the phone as he fumbled with the remote, but the only thing on was a commercial for some sort of allergy drug.

He picked up the phone again. ‘‘It’s a commercial,’’ he said.

‘‘Shit. You missed it.’’

‘‘Missed what?’’

He heard the frightened intake of her breath over the phone. ‘‘They did a story on something weird that happened here in Northern California. I don’t know what made me think it was connected. I guess the fact that it involved plants and you said growing vegetation was one of the signs. But . . .’’

‘‘What was it?’’ Brian asked.

‘‘An area of clear-cut forest sold off in the last decade to timber companies. Fifty square miles of it.’’ There was that sucking in of breath again. ‘‘It’s grown back. All of it. Overnight.’’

Merritt shouldn’t have left, Brian thought. He’d probably love to get a shot of this. But it wasn’t exclusive, was all over the TV news channels, and he’d probably have more fun at the Stones concert anyway.

The chartered helicopter flew over acre after acre, mile after mile of dense green forest. It was the same thing he’d seen on CNN after that commercial break, and on every news channel and major network since then, but familiarity with the sight did not lessen its impact. If anything, seeing it in person brought home to him how simultaneously real and flat-out impossible this was. Of course, if he hadn’t seen those ‘‘before’’ shots, he never would have known how great the difference was between yesterday and today.

The terrain below did not look like California. No, this looked more like a South American rain forest. Instead of oak and ponderosa growing amid dried grasses and hardy drought-resistant bushes, there were leafy umbrellalike trees that formed an almost unbroken blanket of bright green over the land. Here and there, through the binoculars, equally lush and dense underbrush could be seen in the few open spaces visible between the trees. Far off, in each direction, small black specks that looked like birds but were actually the helicopters of various networks and news organizations flew through the sky.

The noise in the copter was deafening, the
chop-chop-chop
of the rotors giving rhythm to the roar of the wind.

‘‘Is there anyplace you can set us down?’’ Brian shouted.

The pilot shook his head.

‘‘I thought that was the point of a helicopter! I thought you could set it down anywhere!’’

‘‘I need a clear space!’’ the pilot called back.

Brian peered once more through the binoculars, searching for an open meadow or field, but every square inch of ground appeared to be covered with some sort of vegetation. Whether this was connected to the story he was pursuing or not, the event was truly astounding, and he was glad that he had come. Gut feeling told him that it
was
connected—he got the same creepy feeling from the overnight reforestation that he’d gotten from seeing Stephen Stewart leap around his mom’s yard in the moonlight—but he could not for the life of him figure out how. The only idea he could come up with was that a millionaire or billionaire had bought up this land and was building a house or compound down there, with the regeneration of all the trees occurring as a freakish side effect. It was why he wanted to set down and look about the new forest, to see if he could find a sign that such a project was being built, but it didn’t look as though that was about to happen.

Maybe he could rent a Jeep or something and drive in there.

And explore some fifty square miles? That was looking for a needle in a haystack. Who knew how long it would take?

Brian continued to scan the land below. He thought he saw movement for a quick second—a dark shadow skulking through the forest, visible briefly in the space between two trees—but then the helicopter had passed on and he lost it.

In his phone call, Kirk Stewart had told him that he had spoken the words scrawled on the wall of his parents’ apartment and that had triggered plant growth in his room. He could read the words and say them in their original language, but for some reason his brain could not translate them to English, so it was impossible to know what they meant. It seemed clear, however, that they were magic words, part of some sort of spell, and Brian wondered if something like that wasn’t involved here.

How quickly a person’s vocabulary and worldview changed when confronted with evidence of the unexplainable.

The helicopter flew back and forth over the regrown forest, from end to end. The boundaries were clear, straight, almost as though they were lines that had been drawn on a map, and the artificiality of that brought home to him even more the unnaturalness of it all.

The eeriness.

Carrie sat next to him, looking through her own pair of binoculars, not saying a word, although whether that was because she was frightened or because it was so hard to hear through all of the noise he could not say.

The pilot finally decided to land in a field on the edge of the trees, and the helicopter set down near a small duck pond. They waited until the blades had stopped turning, then stepped out onto solid ground. From this vantage point, the trees looked huge, almost the size of redwoods, and their trunks merged with the thick leafy bushes that grew between them to form a continuous wall of vegetation that seemed purposefully designed to keep out intruders. It was an intimidating sight and one that gave Brian pause.

‘‘None of this was here yesterday,’’ the pilot marveled.

‘‘No,’’ Carrie said.

‘‘It’s like being in a goddamn science fiction movie.’’

Brian took a step forward, looking for a path into the forest, not wanting to
touch
any of the trees or underbrush.He could blaze his own trail, push aside bushes and make his way into the woods, but something told him that those leaves and branches would be slimy and abhorrent to him. Listening carefully, he tried to determine whether any noises were coming from within the forest, but he could hear nothing, only a lack of sound so complete that it seemed deliberately imposed.

‘‘Okay, boys and girls. Let’s get out of here.’’ The pilot’s expression had darkened.

‘‘Why?’’ Brian asked.

‘‘What is it?’’ Carrie said.

He was striding back toward the copter. ‘‘Radiation. I should’ve thought of it sooner. I should never have landed.’’

‘‘We don’t know—’’ Brian began.

‘‘We don’t know anything. All we know is that this sprung up overnight. We don’t know what caused it, we don’t know what kind of energy it involves or whether it’s giving off harmful radiation. Better safe than sorry. We’re out of here.’’

He couldn’t argue with that, and Brian followed Carrie and the pilot back to the helicopter where, moments after strapping themselves in, they took off.