Acceptable Risk

16

Friday, September 30, 1994

At nearly three a.m. there was little traffic on the darkened streets of Salem, and Dave Halpern felt as if he owned the world. Since midnight he’d been aimlessly cruising in his ’89 red Chevy Camaro. He’d been to Marblehead twice and even up to Danvers and around through Beverly.

Dave was seventeen and a junior at Salem High. He’d gotten the car thanks to an after-school job at a local McDonald’s and a sizable loan from his parents, and it was the current love of his life. He reveled in the sense of freedom and unadulterated power the car gave him. He also liked the attention it evoked from his friends, particularly Christina McElroy. Christina was a sophomore and had a great body.

Dave checked the dimly illuminated clock set into the center console on the dash. It was just about time for the rendezvous. Turning onto Dearborn Street, where Christina lived, Dave hit the lights and turned off the engine. He slowed and glided to a silent stop beneath the canopy of a large maple.

He didn’t have to wait long. Christina appeared out of the hedges that ran alongside her clapboard house, rushed to the car, and jumped in. The whites of her eyes and teeth glistened in the half-light. She was tremulous with excitement.

She slid across the vinyl seat so that her tightly denimed thigh pressed against Dave’s.

Trying to project an air of insouciance, as if this middle-of-the-night rendezvous were an everyday occurrence, Dave didn’t speak. He merely reached forward and started his machine. But his hand shook and rattled the keys. Fearing he’d given himself away, he cast a furtive look in Christina’s direction. He caught a smile and worried that she thought he wasn’t cool.

When Dave reached the corner he switched on his headlights. Instantly the nightscape lit up, revealing blowing leaves and deep shadows.

“Have any problems?” Dave asked, keeping his mind on the road.

“It was a breeze,” Christina said. “I can’t understand why I was so scared to sneak out of the house. My parents are unconscious. I mean I could have just walked out the front door instead of climbing out the window.”

They drove down a street lined with dark houses.

“Where are we going?” Christina asked nonchalantly.

“You’ll see,” Dave said. “We’ll be there in a sec.”

They were now cruising past the dark, expansive Green-lawn Cemetery. Christina pressed up against Dave and looked over his shoulder into the graveyard with its stubble of headstones.

Dave slowed the car, and Christina sat bolt upright. “We’re not going in there,” she said defiantly.

Dave smiled in the darkness, exposing his own white teeth. “Why not?” he said. Almost as soon as the words left his mouth he pulled the wheel to the left, and the car bumped over the threshold into the cemetery. Dave quickly doused the headlights and slowed to a speed approximating a slow jog. It was hard to see the road beneath the foliage.

“Oh, my God!” Christina said as her head pivoted and her wide eyes scanned the immediate area on both sides of the car. The headstones loomed eerily in the night. Some of them gave off sudden splinters of ambient light from their highly polished surfaces.

Instinctively Christina moved even closer to Dave’s side, with one hand gripping the inside of his thigh. Dave grinned with satisfied contentment.

They rolled to a stop beside a silent, still pond bordered by droopy willows. Dave turned off the engine and locked the doors. “Can’t be too careful,” he said.

“Maybe we should crack the windows,” Christina suggested. “Otherwise it will be an oven in here.”

Dave took the suggestion but voiced the hope that there wouldn’t be any mosquitoes.

The two teenagers eyed each other for a moment of awkward hesitation. Then Dave tentatively leaned toward Christina, and they gently kissed. The contact instantly fueled the fires of their passion, and they fell into a wild, libidinous embrace. Clumsily they groped for each other’s physical secrets as the windows steamed up.

Despite the power of their youthful, teenage hormones, both Dave and Christina sensed a movement of the car that was not of their making. Simultaneously they glanced up from their endeavors and looked out through the misty windshield. What they saw instantly terrified them. Hurling at them through the night air was a pale white specter. Whatever the preternatural creature was, it collided with a jarring impact against the windshield and then rolled off the passenger side of the car.

“What the hell?” Dave yelled as he frantically struggled with his pants, which had worked their way halfway down his thighs.

Christina then shrieked as she battled to fend off a filthy hand that thrust itself through her cracked window and tore away a handful of her hair.

“Holy crap!” Dave yelled as he gave up on his pants to fight a hand that came in through his side. Fingernails sank into the skin of his neck and ripped off a piece of his T-shirt, leaving rivulets of blood to run down his back.

In a panic Dave started the Camaro. Jamming the car in reverse, he shot backward, bouncing over the rocky terrain. Christina screamed again as her head hit the roof of the car. The car slammed into a headstone that snapped off at its base and thudded to the ground.

Dave threw the car into drive and gunned the engine. He wrestled with the wheel as the powerful engine hurled the car forward. Christina ricocheted off the door and was thrown into Dave’s lap. He pushed her away just in time to miss another marble monument.

Dave snapped on the headlights as they careened around a sharp turn in the road that meandered through the cemetery. Christina recovered enough to start crying.

“Who the hell were they?” Dave shouted.

“There were two of them,” Christina managed through her tears.

They reached the street and Dave turned toward town, laying a patch of rubber on the street. Christina’s crying lessened to whimpering with an occasional sob. Turning the rearview mirror in her direction, she inspected the damage to her hair. “My cut’s been ruined,” she cried.

Dave readjusted the mirror and glanced behind them to be certain no one was following. He wiped his neck with his hand and looked at the blood with disbelief.

“What the devil were they wearing?” Dave asked angrily.

“What difference does it make?” Christina cried.

“They were wearing white clothes or something,” Dave said. “Like a couple of ghosts.”

“We never should have gone there,” Christina bawled. “I knew it from the start.”

“Give me a break,” Dave said. “You didn’t know anything.”

“I did,” she said. “You just didn’t ask me.”

“Bull,” Dave said.

“Whoever they were, they must be sick,” Christina said.

“You’re probably right,” Dave said. “Maybe they’re from Danvers State Hospital. But if they are, how do they get all the way down here to Greenlawn Cemetery?”

Christina put her hand to her mouth and mumbled, “I’m going to be sick.”

Dave jammed on his brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. Christina cracked her door and vomited in the street. Dave said a silent prayer that it all went out of the car.

Christina pushed herself back to a sitting position. She laid her head against the headrest and closed her eyes.

“I want to go home,” she said miserably.

“We’ll be there in a sec,” Dave said. He drove away from the curb. He could smell the sour aroma of vomit, and he worried that his lovely car had been ruined.

“We can’t tell anybody about this,” Christina said. “If my parents find out I’ll be grounded for six months.”

“All right,” Dave said.

“You promise?”

“Sure, no problem.”

Dave hit the lights when he turned onto Christina’s street. He stopped several doors down from her house. He hoped she didn’t expect him to kiss her and was glad when she got right out.

“You promised,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Dave said.

He watched her run across the lawns and disappear into the same hedge from which she’d emerged.

Under a nearby streetlight, Dave got out and inspected his car. In the back there was a dent on the bumper where he’d knocked over the headstone, but it wasn’t bad. Going around to the passenger side, he opened the door and cautiously sniffed. He was relieved when he didn’t smell any vomit. Closing the door, he walked around the front of the car. That was when he noticed the windshield wiper on the passenger side was gone.

Dave gritted his teeth and swore under his breath. What a night, and he didn’t even get anything. Climbing back into his car, he wondered if he’d be able to rouse George, his best friend, from sleep. Dave couldn’t wait to tell him about what had happened. It was so weird it was like some old horror movie. In a way, Dave was thankful about the broken wiper. If it hadn’t happened George probably wouldn’t believe the story.

Having taken the Xanax around one-thirty that morning, Kim slept much later than usual, and when she got up she felt mildly drugged. She didn’t like the feeling, but she was convinced it was a small price to pay forgetting some sleep.

Kim spent the first part of the day getting her uniform ready for Monday, when she was scheduled to start back to work. It amazed her how much she was looking forward to it. And it wasn’t just because of the mounting anxieties about the lab and what was happening in it. During the last two weeks she’d become progressively weary of the isolated and lonely life she’d been leading in Salem, especially once she’d finished decorating the cottage.

The main problem on both counts was Edward, despite the better mood he was in while taking Ultra. Living with him had hardly been what she’d expected, although when she thought about it, she wasn’t sure what she did expect since she’d invited him to come and live with her on impulse. But she certainly had expected to see more of him and share more with him than she had. And she certainly hadn’t expected to be worrying about him taking an experimental drug. All in all, it was a ridiculous situation.

Once Kim had her uniform in order, she hiked over to the castle. The first thing she did was see Albert. She’d hoped the plumbing work would be finishing that day, but Albert said it was impossible with the additional work in the guest wing. He told her they’d need another two days tops. He asked her if they could leave their tools in the castle over the weekend. Kim told him he could leave whatever he wanted.

Kim went down the stairs in the servants’ wing and checked the entrance. To her great disappointment it was again filthy. Glancing outside, she noticed the mat was in pristine shape, almost as if they purposefully ignored it.

Getting the mop once again, Kim scolded herself for not mentioning the problem to the researchers the day before, when she’d been at the lab.

Crossing the courtyard, Kim checked the entrance to the guest wing. There was less dirt than in the servants’ wing, but there was some, and in some respects it was worse. The stairs in the guest wing were carpeted. To clean them Kim had to cart over an old vacuum cleaner from the servants’ wing. When she was finished she vowed to herself that she would talk to the researchers about it this time.

After putting away the cleaning paraphernalia, Kim contemplated walking over to the lab. But she decided against it. The irony was that in the beginning of the month she’d not wanted to visit the lab because they’d made her feel unwelcome. Now she was reluctant to go because they were too friendly.

Finally Kim climbed the stairs and fell to work in the attic. Finding the Thomas Goodman letter the day before had kindled her enthusiasm. The hours passed quickly, and before she knew it, it was time for lunch.

Walking back to the cottage, Kim eyed the lab and again debated stopping by and again decided against it. She thought she’d wait rather than make a special trip. She knew she was procrastinating, but she couldn’t help it. She even considered telling Edward about the dirt problem and having him talk to the researchers.

After lunch Kim returned to the attic, where she worked all afternoon. The only thing she came across from the time period she was interested in was Jonathan Stewart’s college evaluation. Reading it, Kim learned that Jonathan was only an average student. According to one of the more verbally colorful evaluating tutors, Jonathan was “more apt at swimming in Fresh Pond or skating on the Charles River according to season than in logic, rhetoric, or ethics.”

That evening while Kim was enjoying fresh fish grilled outdoors accompanied by a mixed green salad, she saw a pizza delivery service drive onto the compound and head to the lab. She marveled that Edward and his team existed on junk food. Twice a day there was a delivery of fast food such as pizza, fried chicken, or Chinese take-out. Back in the beginning of the month Kim had offered to make dinner for Edward each evening, but he had declined, saying he thought he should eat with the others.

In one sense Kim was impressed with their dedication, while in another sense she thought they were zealots and a little crazy.

Around eleven Kim took Sheba outside. She stood on the porch while her pet wandered around in the grass. Keeping one eye on the cat, Kim looked over at the lab and saw the light spilling from the windows. She wondered how long they would keep up their insane schedule.

When she felt Sheba had had adequate outdoor time, Kim carried her back inside. The cat wasn’t happy, but with what the police had told her, she surely wasn’t about to let the animal roam freely.

Upstairs Kim prepared for bed. She read for an hour, but like the evening before, her mind would not turn off. In fact, lying in bed seemed to augment her anxiety. Getting out of bed, Kim went into the bathroom and took another Xanax tablet. She didn’t like taking it, but she reasoned that until she started back to work, she needed the respite it provided.