The Home

THIRTY-NINE

He should have known better.

If he had played the game and kept his thoughts to himself, this never would have happened. He should have stuck with the loner act, the Clint Eastwood bit, or the tough guy swimming against the current, like Pacino in Serpico. Sure, he was special and he could read minds and it was only a matter of time before the Trust broke him. But now he'd crossed the line, stepped up as yet another miserable Defender of the Weak and Protector of the Innocent. Just what the world needed. Another freaking unsung hero.

Freeman ran beside Starlene, triptrapping outward to see if any of the Trust's goons had been tipped off by Randy. But too many of them were shields. When it was working, his ESP was as reliable as radar or sonar, but he could never be sure about the thoughts floating around that he wasn't intercepting. When he was on the up cycle, the gift was golden. And he was definitely up now, the hairs on his neck like antennae, his skin alive with the force radiating from the basement.

He'd read Starlene easily enough, but she'd just undergone a treatment and was susceptible. Soft on the brain. Vicky was even softer because she'd been through several of the treatments. The freaky thing was that the treatment did different things to some people, and to others, nothing at all seemed to happen. Maybe it was a natural talent, a third eye or sixth sense or some other baloney. Maybe Freeman would have been able to do it anyway, even without the years of Dad's experiments.

Either way, he wished that God would take the gift back, because it had been nothing but a pain in the ass from the very beginning. But God hid away up there in the sky where only people like Starlene could believe in Him. No matter how hard Freeman tried to read God's mind, he drew a blank. God, if He even existed, probably had the thickest shield in the universe.

After all, if God could read everybody's mind at the same time, He'd probably gone bonkers way back around the time of Adam and Eve.

The thing about being in a manic phase, a thing that he'd only recently been able to catch himself at, was that his thoughts rambled on about stupid stuff like God and love and other people and being afraid he'd never go to sleep again and stupid, stupid, stupid worries even when he ought to be concentrating on more important things. Like surviving.

Freeman squeezed Starlene's hand as they slowed. She made an unnecessary hushing motion with her finger against her lips. Thirteen was around the next corner, and Kracowski's lab two doors down from that. If Vicky was undergoing an SST, then for sure the Trust would have a guard on hand. Freeman expected a walkie-talkie to crackle with Randyspeak at any moment.

"Is she in there?" Starlene mouthed silently at him.

He closed his eyes and concentrated. He'd heard Vicky clearly while he was locked in the Blue Room, triptrapped through the space between them as if they'd been talking via a cellular telephone at close range. But now, he picked up nothing. That could mean several things: she was shielded somehow, or she had slipped into unconsciousness and couldn't transmit her thoughts. Or she was dead.

Freeman was overwhelmed by a sudden image of Vicky lying pale and breathless on the cot in Thirteen, the straps tight around her as her color faded. He shuddered the picture from his mind and concentrated harder.

Nothing.

He shook his head at Starlene. He couldn't even read Starlene's mind now. Something was happening. Maybe the puppet masters had changed the rhythms of their experimental waves. Maybe Dad had come up with some new gizmo that blew Kracowski's brain cooker right out of the water. Maybe Freeman's manic phase was over, in which case his number one survival skill would be down for the count when he needed it most.

Starlene knelt and peeked around the corner, Freeman holding onto her shoulder in case he needed to pull her out of the way of a bullet or something.

He silently scolded himself. Here he was again, playing Protector of the Innocent. This was getting to be a way bad habit.

She turned and whispered, "Nobody."

Freeman took a look for himself. The hall was empty and quiet. Except…

Freeman whispered back. "I thought you said 'nobody.'"

"I did."

"Then what about the geezer in the gown?"

Starlene looked again. "What geezer?"

"Uh oh."

The old man stood in the hall plain as day. It was the man from the lake, hunched and gray and wrinkled. He moved toward them without a sound, his eyes staring past them as if a hole to heaven had opened up on the opposite wall. Freeman fought an urge to reach out as the man drifted past, his gown and skin shimmering with a faint silver dust. The man disappeared into the wall, leaving no trace on the crumbling stucco.

"So, you didn't see him?" Freeman said.

"See who?"

"Never mind."

"Do we try the door?"

"Well, considering we have a minute at the most to get out of here before Randy tips off the entire free world-"

"You want to rescue Vicky, because you're always thinking of others," Starlene said.

"You don't have to be mean just because you're a shrink."

"Sorry. But you're going to have to trust me if we're going to get out of this mess."

"Trust. That's a good one."

"Well?"

"Sure. Just don't try to 'understand' me or 'heal' me or shower me with 'tough love.'"

"Deal."

"Let's go for it, then."

They rounded the corner and crept to Thirteen. "Damn," Freeman said. "I forgot they use these stupid keypad locks everywhere."

"Why didn't you read somebody's mind when they were punching in the numbers?"

"Look, you try lying there getting shocked and skull-fried and being sent on a journey to the land of the dead and see how practical you are."

Starlene paled as if recalling the visions from her own treatment. "Yeah, I see what you mean."

"What do we do now?"

"Knock?"

Freeman shrugged and tapped at the thick door. A series of beeps flashed from the electronic lock, and the handle turned. The door opened. And Freeman was face to face with the last person he ever expected to see again.

Except, you couldn't really call what he was looking at a face. It was red and raw and exactly as he remembered it, only worse.

He tried to scream, but you need air to scream, and his lungs were solid steel and his throat was stacked with bricks and his skull was pounded by eighty-eight invisible hammers and he wanted to fall but his limbs wouldn't even cut him that much slack. All he could do was stand and stare and wish himself away.

The thing that stood before him reached out wet rags that must have been arms.

A hug.

Just like Mom used to make, back before Freeman had ripped her to shreds with a steel blade. Back before Dad had screwed with his brain and turned him into a mother-murderer.

Suddenly he was six years old again, and in the memory at least he could cry, unlike now, because he'd opened the bathroom door and Mom's eyes were closed and her naked body was hidden beneath the bubbles. Soaking, she always called it, because she said it was the only time she didn't have to answer the phone or obey Dad's orders.

And in the memory the knife was cold in his hand and Dad's voice was in his head, so loud that there was no room for any of Freeman's own thoughts, which made him glad in a way because that meant he couldn't help himself and it wasn't his fault.

But of course it's your fault.

Freeman tried to blink but his eyes were wide and dry and the memory was gone. The words had come from the thing standing before him, the thing he had once loved more than anything in the world back when love and trust and hope were more than just useless shrink words.

A dark maw opened in the middle of the mutilated face. She was trying to speak. Oh God, she was trying to speak, except she didn't need a tongue to say what she needed to say. Who needed a voice when you could triptrap right to the source, get in there with the lies and the tricks and the deception and, right at the core, find the tiny secret hope that Freeman harbored, a nut that no shrink had ever been able to crack, that no triptrapper had ever glimpsed, that even Freeman himself rarely probed?

A hope of false innocence. A sincere and unshakable belief in a lie. A faith in an utter and utmost betrayal. His own private troll beneath the bridge.

He'd always told himself, even though the nightmare rose in its crimson wounds every time he shut his eyes, that it had never happened, that it was just the way the newspapers reported it, that Dad was the real killer.

Dad, and not Freeman. Freeman had loved his mother, no matter how many brain games Dad played no matter how much shock treatment Freeman had endured, no matter how many mental mazes the old bastard had run him through. When you love somebody, you don't hurt them.

When you love somebody, you take care of them. You don't But the thing before him didn't look to be in a forgiving mood. The maw parted and closed with a moist sigh of contentment, the arms edged closer, and Freeman was frozen by a chill a thousand graves deep.

The words were in his brain, in that same voice that used to sing him nursery rhymes and tell him bedtime stories.

You don't get second chances.

The paralysis broke and tears streamed from his eyes and he wanted to say he was sorry but what good was that useless word when you don't get second chances?

That was one of Mom's mottoes: do right the first time, avoid suffering regrets at any cost, love with all your heart, because YOU DON'T GET SECOND CHANCES.

He could breathe again and he was about to scream for real, he was shaking so hard his bones could wake the dead, and the memory of the warm blood against the silver blade slashed through the little secret hidey hole in his head, and he knew he was guilty. And that she'd never forgive him, even if she lived a billion eternities.

Before he could scream, Starlene's hand clamped over his mouth. He hissed against her palm and tried to squirm away. That was when Bondurant spoke.

"I told you he was troubled," Bondurant said. "May God have mercy on his soul."

Freeman's eyes snapped open. The mother-thing was gone.

Or had never been.

But this was the deadscape and Freeman couldn't tell anymore who was alive and who was dead. Or if it made any difference, because Mom hadn't died in the deadscape.

Maybe you carried your dead with you, forever.

Bondurant stood in place of the nightmare, licking his lips and squinting through the fog of his glasses. His jacket was wrinkled and the knot of his tie was loose. No matter how scary and ugly the director was, Freeman was glad to see him. Anybody but Mom.

"Mr. Bondurant," Starlene said, pushing Freeman inside and closing the door behind her. "What are you doing here?"

"I have the keys, remember?"

"We, um…"

"Say no more," Bondurant said. "Can't you see your liberal views are carved in your face in big letters? Save the children. Sacrifice. Do good instead of evil."

Freeman shuddered. That was exactly the sort of philosophy Mom would have had, if she'd been a social worker instead of a lawyer. If she hadn't fallen under Dad's control. If she were alive instead of dead.

"Well, I've got a job to do," Starlene said. "And if you're with Kracowski and McDonald, then I'm afraid I'm going to have to do some evil to you"

Bondurant shook his head. "Sweet, sweet Starlene. I could have put that fire of yours to such use." He glanced down the hall toward his office. "But, see, I'm a changed man, and God's servants don't get much choice in the duties for which they are chosen."

"Oh, dang," Starlene said. "Don't tell me you've had another vision? Well, I hope this one involves a chariot in the sky, because that's the only route out of this place. Or haven't you noticed the armed guards and the barbed wire?"

"God is testing us."

"One thing I know is that God doesn't send you anything you can't handle."

"Where's Vicky?" Freeman cut in. "I know she was here because I saw it inside her head."

Bondurant looked down at Freeman. "She was here. One of the guards took her away."

"They didn't say where?"

Bondurant tilted his head back as if Michelangelo's ghost had painted a mural on the ceiling. He let out a laugh that was too loud for the room.

"Where is she?" Starlene said.

"Where we all go, sooner or later," Bondurant said between cackles.

Starlene pulled Freeman back as if the crazed director were playing on a strange television quiz show, one where the wrong answer meant instant death. "Heaven?"

Bondurant rolled his reptilian eyes toward the floor and stopped laughing. This time his voice was a deranged imitation of Vincent Price's. "The other place," he said.

"The basement," Freeman said to Starlene. She yanked open the door and they ran down the hall.

Bondurant's melodramatic voice boomed after them like B-movie thunder. "Take the stairs. That's the fastest way to hell."