The Home

THIRTY-THREE

Freeman couldn't concentrate on the history lesson. Ever since group homes had been turned into charter schools, with shrinks and teachers teaming up to make a bad situation worse, education had become yet another weapon the system used against you. Take the history teacher, for example. He might as well have "This space for rent" stamped across his pasty forehead, but he got to decide who was smart and who had a future and which kids were failures. All because he wore a necktie.

Leave it to a loser to be able to pick out the other losers. The teacher's voice was like chalk on a blackboard as he talked about patriots sneaking onto somebody else's ship and dumping tea into the Boston harbor. Creepy little vandals. And now they were hailed as heroes.

People sure didn't know much about heroism back then. The patriots even dressed up as Indians, that's how pathetic they were. The teacher was calling them Freedom Fighters. If you did that kind of thing today, you'd be called a terrorist and locked up for observation with no attorney. Or shot on sight.

Well, the winning side always wrote the history books and freedom was subjective. Being confined in a group home with barbed wire around the perimeter, right here in the Land of the Free that God had blessed above all other countries, didn't seem a bit contradictory to the teacher. Having Social Services telling Freeman where to live wasn't exactly what the Constitution meant by the "pursuit of happiness." The First Amendment didn't prevent shrinks from getting an endless ride inside his head. To Freeman, it seemed the only people who got to do what they wanted were me grownups and the ghosts.

At least Vicky was in this class. He tuned out the squeaky teacher and looked at the back of Vicky's head. The sun was in her hair, and the air around her almost shimmered. She sat in the front, by the window, a consequence of alphabetical order. Freeman was always stuck in the middle of the class. At least he had a good view of the mountains from here, and the fence that kept the world a safe distance away.

Vicky dropped her pencil, bent from her desk, and winked at him. He tried a triptrap, caught something about doughnuts, so he smiled. Then the door opened and a man in a blue suit and sunglasses entered the classroom and whispered in the teacher's ear.

Suits meant something at Wendover, so the teacher listened, then said, "Class, we've had an emergency and everyone needs to report to the dorms."

The class erupted with murmurs of glee and gossip. Isaac slapped his book closed and stared at Freeman as if this were all his fault. Isaac was way too serious about learning. Or maybe he was scared by the "emergency," because, even if he thought Freeman was bullshitting about the deadscape, Isaac had to admit that things were getting pretty weird around this place.

As the kids filed out, Freeman went to Vicky's desk. "What is it?" she whispered.

"What do I look like, a sawed-off Nostradamus or something? Ask Dipes, he's the one who can see the future."

"Oh, so you're in one of your patented mood swings. And you're going to make sure everybody suffers a little."

Why was she mad at him? He thought they were friends, maybe even more than that after this morning, when they had shared a "special moment."

Girls. Who could ever figure them out?

"It's okay to be afraid," she said.

"I'm not afraid," he said, even though the man in the suit and sunglasses was headed straight for him. The Suit had the Trust written all over him, from his buzz cut to his creased jaw to his shiny shoes. Even his cologne was by the book, making a weak attempt at feigned personality.

"I'll be thinking about you," Vicky said, and then the man had a hand on Freeman's shoulder and Freeman thought about ducking and running for the door, but what was the use? The room was a prison and Wendover was a prison and the world beyond the electric fence was just a bigger prison, because he'd been condemned to a life sentence inside his own skull.

"I owe you a penny," Vicky said, and lightning flashed across his soul and his skeleton rattled and ten thousand elves in cleats stomped across his skin. She had triptrapped him.

The Suit said, "Mr. Mills, you need to come with me."

Not a question. Not a request. Just a fact of life.

The Suit led him past the teacher, who was rattling some papers in a bottom drawer. Freeman couldn't resist a Pacino wisecrack. "Guess this means no homework?"

The teacher got busy erasing the chalkboard, even though nothing was written on it. Freeman looked back at Vicky, who flashed him a thumbs-up. The inside of his brain itched and he had no way to scratch it.

In the hall, The Suit stood even taller, his leather shoes squeaking as he marched Freeman in a familiar direction.

"You can take your hand off me now," Freeman said, trying to be Eastwood-cold. "I'm not running."

The Suit said nothing, having used up his requisition of syllables. What did they teach these guys in Secret Agent School, anyway? Besides how to keep from smiling. Back in the good old days, before Mom died, men like The Suit would sometimes stop by and visit his dad. Even at age six, Freeman knew these guys were bad news. They all smelled of hidden ammunition and secrets.

"I know the way," Freeman said. "Room Thirteen. I've spent some of the best moments of my life there."

They passed Bondurant's office and a couple of classrooms. The door to Kracowski's lab was closed. Freeman wondered how many people would be on the other side of the two-way mirror this time. No doubt the mad doctor had rounded up some spectators for his favorite rat's next run at the maze.

The Suit tapped on the door to Thirteen. The wing of the building was empty. You could almost hear dust collecting in the corners. The electronic lock beeped, then the latch clicked like an executioner's pistol.

"Hello, Freeman," said Randy.

Freeman disliked Randy, not just because he was a jock, but because he had the chin of a Secret Agent type. He wore his chin as if it were a boxing glove. Randy had the double disadvantage of being a counselor.

"Let me guess," Freeman said, climbing onto the cot while The Suit waited by the door. "Either I've just been selected as the next contestant on Fear Factor or the doctor's going to put the screws to me again."

Kracowski's voice descended from the hidden speaker in the ceiling. "We would never do anything to hurt you, Freeman."

He flipped a bird at the mirror. "Hitler was sincere, too. And those guys who dumped the tea in the harbor. And God. And all the other bastards back through history who messed with innocent people."

"I'm sorry you feel that way. I thought the last treatment would have helped you overcome your anger."

"Oh, I'm not angry. I've never been better."

Randy rubbed Vaseline on Freeman's temples and attached the electrodes. Then he tapped the flesh on the inside of Freeman's elbow, drew out a syringe, and injected an iridescent, syrupy substance.

"Seriously," Freeman said. "You don't have to sell me on the idea. I believe I'm better."

"No, you don't." Kracowski took on that familiar tone of all the shrinks who had ever subjected Freeman to their utter sincerity. The tone of smugness, lightness, absolute certainty. A tone that God Himself might use if He ever bothered to speak.

"Do we need the straps?" Randy asked the mirror.

"How about it, Freeman?" Kracowski asked.

"I promise to behave."

"We only want you to be better."

"I know. You and all the other brain police. Did it ever occur to you that I'm happy being a suicidal manic depressive? And if you just want to help me, why do you make me take ESP tests?"

Randy put a hand on Freeman's chest and forced him onto his back, then unreeled the canvas straps from beneath the bed. Freeman stared at the ceiling tiles, trying to picture the strange gizmos and wires of Kracowski's machines. The walls must be filled with them, too, the electronic bloodstream of the SST equipment. All connected to those big tanks and computers in the basement, which was the heart of the mad doctor's monster maker.

While the brain lay behind that mirror.

Freeman craned his neck to stare at the cold glass as Randy attached padded cuffs to his ankles and wrists. Clint Eastwood would never let them see him flinch. Clint would think of something clever to say, as if living or dying were pretty much the same to him.

"What do you have in mind this time, Doc?" Freeman said. "Want me to bring back a little souvenir from the deadscape? Maybe your Momma's underwear?"

"Freeman, you need to relax in order for the treatment to be effective. This is important."

Randy made a final check on the restraints. He pulled a hard rubber mouthpiece from a drawer and pressed it into Freeman's mouth. That meant a major shock was coming. Freeman waited until Randy was gone and the door had closed then pushed the mouthpiece out with his tongue.

"Who you got over there with you, Doc?"

"Just a few… friends."

Freeman tried to think of something wise-assed to say, like "With friends like yours, who needs enemies?" but that was too corny, and besides, the Vaseline made his skin itch and his chest ached and he realized he'd never been this scared in all his life. Not even when Dad had locked him in the closet for two days. Not even when Dad cornered him with the blowtorch. Not even when he came out of one of Dad's treatments and carried the knife into the bathroom where Mom No, that never happened.

Then his thoughts turned to broken bits of alphabet as the juice hit and the lights dimmed and his ears crackled and buzzed. The scream didn't come from inside his throat. Instead, it clawed its way from the center of his brain, writhing like a fanged worm, chewing up his hippocampus and thalamus and vomiting pain against the curved plates of his skull.

His bones turned to air and his eyes clamped shut but still he saw the blackness beyond color, a black that had never existed in nature, a dark solid mass that crawled into his lungs and smothered his heart and seeped into his bloodstream.

Then the darkness eased giving way to a mottled gray, and people walked toward him across the land of smoke and sorrow.

The Miracle Woman led them, a Moses of the damned, naked and blind and beautiful. All those shuffling behind her, the stooped the wild-eyed the scarred were just as lifeless; impossible things, spirits that clung to bodies that by rights should have long been abandoned.

Freeman tried to yell at the doctor to shut off the goddamned machines and get him the hell out of there. But he knew, through some instinct older than consciousness, that this world was connected to the other real world only by the human bridges that were subjected to SST. Those who could read minds beckoned the ones brought from the dead by Kracowski's weird machines. Freeman was cut off from the real world until Kracowski pushed his little God buttons and made everything normal again. He was all alone now, as alone as Clint in the Italian desert scrapping for a fistful of dollars.

He shifted himself, the straps gone, the mirror gone, Thir-een gone. He found he could move as if swimming in thick water, though he could see through his own skin and he weighed a thousand pounds. His feet were lost in the strange mist that covered the deadscape like an ever-shifting skin. He tried to run but the Miracle Woman raised a hand and though her eye sockets were torn and empty, the mouth wasn't scary at all now. The mouth was sad

Freeman looked past her at the pale and aimless legion. He saw the old man in the gown, the one who had shuffled past him on Freeman's first day at Wendover and had recently walked on water. A stooped woman nodded constantly, as if her head were on a spring, gaunt fingers yanking her long hair. A dun, ebony-skinned man in cov-sralls bit his fingertips. One of me ghosts, a man with a broad and blank face, did a dervish dance, clumsy despite his lack of substance. He, too, wore an institutional gown.

Freeman backed away, trying to figure out the laws of this new universe, commanding his transparent flesh to run. He wasn't breathing, but still the air tasted of ash. Behind him the smoke stretched as far as he could see, and layers of gray clouds marked the seams of the sky. He reached up and the threads of his hand mingled with the deadscape.

He was part of the deadscape.

He was one of them.

Dead.

A member of that sick and shuffling crowd, those who wore masks of pain and hopelessness and confusion. Chained to their humanity, though being human must have been the most horrible punishment ever inflicted upon them. Not even death had released them from their agony. They might have walked the deadscape for centuries, but time had no meaning here, which would make it the cru-elest death sentence of all. Could God be that cruel?

The ebony man bit off his pinky and spat it into the mist. The dervish spun and his lips parted in a silent chant. The Miracle Woman came nearer, her palm lifted in supplication, the torn eyeball in it staring at Freeman as if he owed her an explanation.

Freeman wanted to disappear, wanted to jump back into the real world with its ordinary despair, but his feet were part of the mist, his skin sewn into the fabric of this ethereal tapestry.

The Miracle Woman stood inches away from him, the silent ghosts looking on. She moved her hands to her face. Freeman tried not to stare at her white breasts and curves, and the mysterious dark patch between her legs. Then she moved her hands away and her eyes were in her head, she blinked and smiled.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said. Except her lips didn't move. This was a triptrap from the dead, and as creepy as hearing the thoughts of another human being was, it was nothing compared to the cold, sharp words that came from the Miracle Woman. A triptrap from the dead.

Then more thoughts gushed through him, into him, a multitude of voices drove spikes through his soul. He felt their pain, he absorbed their bleak pity, he ate their psychic sickness. "A white, white room in which to write." "The answers are hidden in the television." "I am a tree I am a tree I am a tree and I leave." "The voices in my head are telling me to listen." "Yes, doctor, I AM feeling much better, thank you." More voices, other phrases, scraps of broken sorrow. And the Miracle Woman: "You don't belong here yet." Freeman wanted to shout that he'd never asked to be here, he'd never volunteered to have ESP in the first place, he'd never wanted any special gifts, he just wanted to be a normal boy with a Mom and a Dad and a dog and a house that didn't hurt and no weird games with Daddy and no experiments and no Department of Social Services and no Wendover and no Kracowski and no Trust and no more people trying to heal him when he'd never been broken in the first place, but then the voices all ran together and he knew what it was like to be insane, because the deadscape was nothing if not a land of the insane, and it certainly wasn't nothing because he was here now and it was real and this was everything and forever and God made a place like this for people who couldn't help themselves or maybe insane people made God and the voices in his head and the triptrap dead and yes doctor daddy daddy daddy had a white, white room in which to write I'm feeling much better now television in my tree God is an antenna is a computer is a doctor I'm feeling much better now blade in my brain and cut out the bad part and shock me doctor I'm feeling much better now leave me alone daddy daddy daddy and why are you dead Mommy "You don't belong here yet."

The Miracle Woman's words were softer now, caressing, and the other voices faded like a radio dropped down a hole and the smoke shifted, became more solid, and the ghosts dissolved and the Miracle Woman smiled and the gray gave way to the darkness.

And Freeman was alone in the darkness.

How long was forever?

Just as he reached for his chest, to see if his heart was still beating, another voice reached him like a golden shaft of light.

It was Vicky, and she said, "Told you you're not alone."