The Home

THIRTY-FIVE

Not alone. Not alone. Not alone.

Freeman peered into the dwindling gloom. Vicky was in here somewhere, trapped in this same gray deadscape. Her voice came to him again.

"Triptrap, Freeman. Reach out to me."

How could he reach with arms that were heavy as mud? The ghosts had dissolved and the darkness pressed in on all sides. He wanted to speak but his throat was clogged with black oxygen. Then he remembered he didn't have to speak. Not out loud, anyway.

"Where are you?" he thought.

"The Green Room," came Vicky's voice. "They made us go to our beds."

"I saw them. The dead people. The Miracle Woman-"

"I know. I was with you the whole time."

"How did you do that?"

"My brain works better now. Even when I'm not in Thirteen. They must have really juiced up the machines and maybe it's spilling over or something."

"How am I supposed to get out of here?"

Freeman turned his head, looking for any sort of dismal sunrise in this land of midnight. He hoped he wasn't dead.

He didn't want to spend another second in this place, much less an eternity. A hum drifted from the unseen distance, growing louder, as if a monstrous swarm of insects was approaching.

"Vicky?"

The sky broke apart and became part of the swarm. The darkness spun, the horizons narrowed, a frozen wind arose from somewhere below. Freeman shouted, but his words were lost in the surreal tornado. As he felt his body being lifted, he grabbed for the darkness that had seemed so solid only moments before.

He found himself on the cot in Thirteen. His stomach fluttered and his head throbbed. He opened his eyes to a blurred world of soft light and moving shadows. People stood around the bed, and for a moment, Freeman thought they were ghosts, and he closed his eyes again, but then someone loosened the restraints.

He heard a voice that sent an icy stake through his heart, a voice that was worse than death, a voice that sent him shivering and made the memories spill from that dark space under the bridge.

"Hey, Trooper."

Dad.

Freeman's eyes snapped open as if awakening to escape a nightmare, only to find the nightmare was there in the flesh, standing at the foot of the bed.

Dad.

The fucking troll. Out of the loony bin. How had he found Freeman?

No, the question wasn't how he had found Freeman. The question was, what had taken him so long? Because Dad had promised to finish the job. After Freeman had testified in the judge's private chambers, Dad had stood up in court and screamed at his son, frothing at the mouth as if to verify a self-diagnosis of sociopathic schizophrenia. Freeman had known, even as a six year old, that Dad never lied, at least not about enjoying his only son's pain.

"I'm going to triptrap you to death," Dad had shouted that day six years ago, and now Dad repeated it so softly that only Freeman heard. He added, "Because we both know what really happened to your mother, don't we?"

"What was that?" Kracowski said.

"A secret joke between Freeman and me," Dad said. 'Right, Trooper?"

"Trooper" had been Dad's pet name for Freeman, usually used in public when Dad was pretending to be affectionate. But Freeman knew the real meaning behind the name, because Dad loved to torment him with it. Like the time he'd hooked Freeman to the machines in the closet and said, "I'm melting your brain like I melted your toy soldiers. You're a trooper. You're going to be a soldier in a different kind of war."

Freeman rubbed his wrists where they'd chafed against the restraints. Kracowski checked Freeman's pulse, then shined a penlight into each of his pupils. Freeman stared back at the light, hoping it would burn him blind so he wouldn't have to look at his father.

"No outward sign of neurological damage," Kracowski said.

Dad pushed the doctor away. "Well, we've got plenty of time yet, don't we?" He stared down at Freeman, his chin sharp, his teeth too white and narrow, his eyes bulging.

Then Dad triptrapped him, just like the old days, only Freeman was smarter now and Dad was a little out of practice. Dad's strange broken thoughts bounced off the shield that Freeman had thrown up and Freeman felt a surge of triumph.

I can knock down the troll, Freeman thought. He's not going to eat me for his dinner.

But the euphoria died as Dad cracked the blockade and roared into his mind like a hurricane of knives. To the bystanders, Kracowski and Randy and McDonald, it probably looked like Dad was leaning down to kiss Freeman on the forehead. But Dad was really getting close so that his frontal lobe could spew its poison through the bone of Freeman's skull. Dad let loose, as if he'd been storing up his anger for years while locked behind bars in a Dorothea Dix psychiatric unit, pretending to slowly get better, acting as if the medication was working and believing that, yes, Kenneth Mills had committed a terrible wrong, but now Kenneth was all better, and with the benevolent blessings of the government shrinks who'd pronounced him sound and sane, Kenneth Mills was now ready to pick up where he'd left off.

And ready to see just how much damage Freeman could withstand.

Dad's words tumbled forth in fractured phrases. "How dare you… thought you'd escaped me, didn't you, you little shit? Kracowski's trying to steal my thunder… but we both know I'm the only one who can control minds around here. The crazy fucks… babbling about spirits and the deadscape… hey, you really do think you saw ghosts… you're a chip off the old block, aren't you, Trooper? Madder than a fucking hatter."

This was just like the old days, when Dad hadn't been afraid to juice himself in the interest of science; though Freeman was the star pupil. Kracowski called it SST, but Dad hadn't needed a fancy acronym. Dad had simply called it "triptrap."

"How is he?" McDonald said.

"He's perfect," Kracowski replied.

"No, I mean, did we learn anything?"

Dad turned his attention from Freeman to Kracowski. Kracowski shook his head at McDonald. "I can't tell yet. My treatment is designed to work in an emotional vacuum. I'll have to see how the subject responds to this disturbance."

"Disturbance?" Dad screamed at Kracowski. "You're the one that's disturbing. I was right on the threshold of a breakthrough. All you've done is come in and stir the stew, but it's my recipe."

Freeman sighed with relief because Dad was out of bis head for the moment and he could breathe and think again.

Dad pointed a finger at McDonald. "Your guys could have freed me a lot sooner. But, no, I guess I was disposable because you found Kracowski and figured one scientist was as good as another. Only you found out that you needed me because Kracowski here has these little moral qualms and will only push the buttons so far-"

McDonald crossed the room and backhanded Dad across the cheek. The blow was so intense that even Freeman felt it, the raw pain flickering across his mind like a lightning strike.

Dad fell to his knees, rubbing his cheek where he'd been struck. Dad smiled. "Not bad. With a goon like you in charge of this operation, maybe the Trust will take over the world yet."

McDonald stared at the mirror, expressionless. "We tried to protect you, Mills, but murdering your wife was something even the Trust couldn't bury, not the way you did it." His eyes darted to Freeman. "Right there in front of witnesses."

"It was in the interest of science," Dad said. "I had to keep pushing him. You have to admit, even though Kracowski's had a little success, Freeman still outshines them all. He's a regular triptrapper from hell, the world's first workable spirit spy."

"Results will speak for themselves."

Freeman tried his tongue. "Sorry. I don't know what your game is, but I'm not playing anymore. You can shock me until my brain fries, like those eggs in the antidrug commercials, but you're never going to break me."

Freeman sat up and glanced at Dad, then looked back at McDonald. "He couldn't burn me out, and Kracowski doesn't have the slightest idea what it's all about."

"Synergy," Kracowski said. "Tapping the brain's potential."

"Wrong," Freeman said. "It's about control."

McDonald's lips tightened in a movement that would have passed for a smile on someone else's face. "Control. The boy's not so dumb after all."

"Except you got it wrong, too." Freeman said. "You can build bigger bombs and faster planes and deadlier chemicals, but there's one thing you'll never control."

Dad had risen and leaned over Freeman again. Freeman turned away but Dad was already up from his troll hole and standing on the bridge, eating Freeman's thoughts.

Dad straightened and laughed. "The little trooper thinks you're not after ESP at all, McDonald. He dunks you're wanting the ghosts. Is mat why they call you secret government types 'spooks'?"

McDonald said nothing. Randy waited by the door, arms crossed. Kracowski looked down at the floor as if trying to picture the strange spirits that swirled in the mists of the deadscape.

Freeman waited until the shock of Dad's invasion faded, then reached out for Vicky. Anything was possible. The mind was an incredible machine, so incredible it could even be a weapon. But right now, all he wanted was one slim bridge between himself and somebody he could trust.

He triptrapped, but his thoughts couldn't reach beyond the room. Vicky had abandoned him. Despite her promises. But, then, hadn't he learned a long time ago that you couldn't count on anybody?

He was alone again, except for the mad, dead voices mat still whispered from the corners of his soul.