Tunnel Vision

65

Sarah left, saying that she would drive to the lab first thing in the morning to check the records.

Meanwhile, Zack took two sleeping tabs and turned off the light, hoping to shut his mind off from speculating on the hideous options. Like Sarah, he did not believe in ghosts. And his mind refused to accept insanity or the possibility that he had murdered three people and repressed the acts from conscious memory. That left some psychic awareness he had tapped into—some alien sentience that had left his mind feeling contaminated.

After several minutes, he slipped into a drowsy twilight, feeling himself fading into a dreamless void. He didn’t know if at first he was imagining it, but he thought he heard something outside his bedroom door.

His first thought was Sarah. Maybe she forgot something. Or maybe her car didn’t start. He called her name. Nothing. Then he reached over to turn on the light when a bright flash went on in his eyes and a hand with a white towel clamped down on his face.

As he thrashed against the pressure, harsh chemical fumes filled his head. Chloroform. He recognized the odor. He also recognized the bald-headed male as his body pressed across his own, the towel smothering his face.

But before he could connect it, his mind faded to black.

“He’s coming to.” A male voice.

Zack squinted at the bright light. The sky, he thought. Bright white sky.

But then taking shape was the textured, translucent panel that covered the fluorescent lights recessed into the ceiling of the lab. He tried to move, but his hands and feet were restrained, and he was wired up with contacts to his chest and an IV line in his arm.

Standing beside Elizabeth Luria in street clothes were two men. One had a hairless domed head and fleshy pink face. A face he had seen before. The other was thin, with glasses and dark hair.

“I’m sorry, Zack,” she said. She was standing on the other side of the gurney.

He tried to say something, but she depressed the plunger, and he was gone.