Tunnel Vision

43

Zack was again back on that beach, but the tide was up, the air was cold, and fog was closing in. Also, the perspective was wrong. Instead of crossing the sandbar, he was looking down from a set of wooden stairs at the far end of the beach and climbing to the cliff top. He knew the area, but the stairs seemed much higher than he remembered. And the beach appeared to stretch forever. Somewhere in the distance was their rental cottage, but he couldn’t make it out. And farther down was the vague impression of the canal. Through the mist, he could hear the muffled groan of the foghorn and see the blinking red eye of the channel marker. Just below, the bay spread into the mist like a sheet of rippled iron.

“Almost there.”

He looked up. His father. He was maybe ten steps ahead of him, climbing to the top. “Dad, wait.”

But his father kept climbing without looking back. “This way.”

Zack’s legs were tired, but he had to keep up because his father had to tell him something. “Dad, slow down.”

But his father didn’t seem to hear him. Or maybe it was the sea breeze in his ears. Winded, Zack fought the heaviness in his legs and pushed on. When he looked up again, the top was only a dozen stairs away. But something was different. His father’s clothes had changed from the swimming trunks and bare back to a brown robe. Where did that come from?

Stranger still, the top was not a clearing with ocean-view homes like he remembered of the Manomet cliffs, but a thick forest. His father’s head was covered with a pointed hood, giving him a disturbing appearance. He turned, but his face was lost in shadows. “This way.” And he cut into the trees.

Zack didn’t actually hear his father’s voice, only in his head. But he was out of breath from the long climb and stopped for a moment. “Wait up.”

But his father continued into the dark thicket.

“Dad, wait, I’m going to lose you.” Panting, he stumbled after him, trying not to lose the figure, trying not to get his feet snagged in the underbrush. “Dad, don’t leave me.”

But his father continued fading into the woods.

“Dad? It’s me, Zack.”

The brown figure disappeared behind trees, then emerged again, moving deeper. With a shock, Zack wondered if his father wasn’t hearing him on purpose. That he didn’t want to tell him something but was trying to lose him. “I’m your son, too!” Suddenly he was filled with hot anger. They killed Jake and left his father a loveless shell of a man. “Why won’t you wait for me?”

He moved as best he could over fallen branches and tree stumps, trying to keep up, not knowing where they were or how these endless woods got up on the Manomet cliffs, and where all the fancy houses went. He kept losing sight of the figure that cut soundlessly through the trees.

Several times Zack called, but his father neither stopped nor called back. And horror filled Zack that he’d never catch up or find his way out of the woods as the sky darkened.

Then Zack lost his father for good. He stopped, hearing nothing but his own panting. No birds or insect sounds. Nothing but the stirring of the wind through the treetops.

For a long moment he stood there, hugging himself against the chilled air.

Suddenly a large winged bird swooped overhead from its perch and sliced through the trees. Some kind of hawk. Zack followed it to a small clearing, where he saw the hooded figure. He was standing motionless, his face lost in opaque shadow, his arms folded into the sleeves. Behind him was a large granite outcropping.

“Dad?”

“How you doing?”

“What?”

“How you feeling?”

Zack squinted at the bright lights of the MRI lab. Sarah, talking from a muffled distance. He tried to sit up, but his head thudded painfully.

“Don’t move until the sedative wears off a little,” she said, peeling the contacts off his chest. At nearby computer terminals sat Drs. Stern and Cates.

“Welcome back.” Dr. Luria’s face appeared above him. Behind her was a videocamera on a tripod, recording everything.

After a few moments, his head cleared and she began asking him the usual questions to test his awareness—his name, where he was. He answered them to their satisfaction.

Then she said, “We recorded some neuroactivity while you were under. Do you remember any of it?”

“I was on a wooden staircase.” He wanted to get it on record while it was still fresh in his mind.

“Did you recognize the locale?”

“Sagamore Beach. The set of stairs at the end leading up to the Manomet cliffs.”

“Were you alone?” Luria asked.

“No. My father was there. He was ahead of me, climbing.” Sarah finished removing the contacts and brushed his hair out of his eyes. He liked the feel of her warm hand. “Then it all changed.”

“Changed? How so?”

“The top of the cliff was all woods—thick trees and scrub.” And as best he could, he described the area.

“Did you recognize it?”

“No, just thick woods. But there aren’t any woods like that on the cliffs.”

“So it wasn’t a place you recognized.”

“I don’t know, but it’s not the cliff.”

“Did it feel like an out-of-the-body experience?”

“No, from my own perspective. But it didn’t feel like a dream, you know—things happening in fragments, no timeline. It felt real, like I was in those woods.”

“Following your father.”

“Yes.”

“Did he say anything?”

“No, but I think he wanted me to follow him.”

“How do you know?” Luria asked.

“I don’t know how I know. Just a feeling.” Then Zack turned to Dr. Stern, who was at his computer terminal listening to him intently. “Was it a real NDE?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Stern said. “There was activity in the temporal and parietal lobes, suggesting stimulation from outside.”

“So it’s an NDE? Not a flash dream thing?”

“At this point, it looks as if you weren’t dreaming,” Dr. Luria said. “The dream centers of your brain were dormant, yet there were electrical stimuli that appear to have come from outside your brain.”

“I beg to differ,” said Dr. Stern. “But it could still be a flash dream just as you woke up. Most of the activity takes place at the very end of your suspension.”

Zack could see Luria bristle at Stern. “We’ll have to do another run.”

“Another suspension?” Zack asked.

“Yes. But some other time. It takes twenty-four hours for the sedative to work itself out of your system. Would you be willing in a couple of days?”

If there was anything to the narrative flow of these visions, they were getting darker. He could feel his hesitation, in spite of another $1,000. “I guess.”

“Good. Let us do the analysis, then we’ll call.”

After he got dressed, Sarah walked him to the limo out front. As they walked up the stairs, Zack stopped. “I was there, Sarah. That was no dream, flash or otherwise.”

“I’m sure it felt that way.”

“Except real dreams always have some margin of awareness. Not this. I could smell the pines, I could feel the sand on my feet. I’m still chilled from the cold air. It was a total sensory thing, not a dream.”

“The preliminary data do show a lot of sensory activity.”

“But?”

“But so did other suspensions that turned out to be flash dreams after we ran the math.”

“So when will you know?”

“In a day or so.”

Bruce was in the car and waiting for him in the parking lot alongside the building.

“She keeps asking me if I was alone in these dream visions or whatever they are. Is that something you can determine?”

“That’s what we’re hoping. Which means separating out the neuroelectrical signature of your own mind from other data we’ve picked up. If the other neurodata can be identified as an external sentience, it would be a major leap. Are you okay for another run?”

He really didn’t know. Standing in those woods and facing that mute hooded figure was not something he was yearning to return to. Yet he felt compelled by a bizarre sense that these suspensions had produced a queer narrative—but one that seemed to be growing darker, more secret.

Secrets from the grave. Luria’s words swooped across his mind like that bird. “I suppose.”

“See you soon.” She gave him a hug, and he left with the driver.