Part 27 (1/2)

1.

”Julie,” he said, his hands going up. She kept the flashlight on his face. She thought about the gun. Upstairs in the bedroom. She thought about how fast she could run there. Could she get there fast enough? Could she lock the bedroom door behind her? Could she get the key out-in the dark-and open the metal box-and get the revolver and get back out to make sure her children were safe from the man who she was now sure had murdered her husband?

”Julie,” he said. ”I'm not trying to scare you.”

”Shut up,” she said. ”What...you broke into my house?”

”No,” he said. ”The door was open. The lights were off. Please. Let me explain.”

”What in h.e.l.l are you doing here?” she asked, and then wondered how long it would take for her to find the cell phone and call the police.

2.

”Please. I can understand every single thought you're thinking of. I was the boy who was burned.”

”You said he died.”

Michael didn't respond to this. ”But my memories are like flashes of lightning, Julie. I can't see everything. You know what I did with you. You know where I took you, where you showed me what was inside you. You were there. You aren't crazy. This makes sense if you believe, Julie. If you believe. You resisted me. I could feel it when I went into you. You had fear, and fear is the thing that has power over you now. But you've got to let it go. Somehow. You know how I Streamed into you. How you went to doors in your mind. You saw things. You relived things. But there's something important now. Something more important than that. There's a door in you that needs opening, but they've blocked it.”

”They?”

”If I told you who, you would not believe me,” he said.

”Try me.”

”Your husband,” he said.

”My husband is dead.”

”There is no death, Julie,” Michael Diamond said. ”Let me show you.”

He moved toward her, and she stepped backward, and felt fear clutch at her. She was sure he was going to kill her, she stepped back, and felt for the door k.n.o.b to the front door. She turned it. But it was still locked. The chain was on, as well. She pressed her back against the door. Her mind flashed on things-on what she could grab to protect herself. Where she could run. Her heart beat a mile a minute as she began hyperventilating.

He came nearer, and she kept the flashlight beam on him. He unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt.

The light shone on his skin. It was scarred and layered. ”They set fire to me. They wanted me to burn, Julie. They stood by and watched me die. But I can show you. Just as you showed me what was inside you. I want you inside me. I want you to see this,” he said, and reached out and took her trembling hand while she kept the flashlight on his chest. He drew her hand to the middle of his chest and she felt a surge of energy, and she knew it was the Stream because she felt herself-not her body, but her true self, something in her mind-flow into him, sucked along as if she were liquid and were being poured into a dark lake.

3.

The first thing she felt was that gradual warmth and a sense of safety, and then pleasure sensations ran through her. She heard his voice, with her, guiding her. ”Julie, this is the Stream, I've brought you into it,” and she tried to resist moving along with his voice, but she didn't feel the same fear as she had seconds before. She saw memory screens inside the darkness: his father holding his hand as he led the little boy toward the doctor who took him through several doors, into a room with a series of beds. Two boys and three girls, of varying ages, lay on the beds, their eyes closed, small wires attached to what looked like polka dots on their foreheads and just beneath their left nipples-for they were in their underwear, sheets drawn up just to their stomachs. He cried when he was told to take his clothes off and get onto one of the beds, and watched in terror as the polka dots and wires were attached to the top of his head, making a slurping sound as they suctioned his forehead.

”This one for your heart,” the doctor said as he placed his cold hand near his chest. ”It's so we can make sure you're okay.”

The lights were kept on, and his arms were tethered to the bed so that he had a range of movement but he couldn't get up. ”I have to pee,” he said, repeatedly, but no one came to take him to the bathroom. He was in a white room with long mirrors on all the walls. He wasn't even sure where the door was.

Eventually, he peed in his underwear, and fell asleep, exhausted and a little scared.

Another memory screen: a cla.s.sroom of twenty children, with three stern-looking women at the front of the cla.s.s, near the big teacher's desk. He sat in the third row back and they were all being told to close their eyes and try to think of nothing but darkness. But he couldn't. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw something awful, although as soon as he opened them, he couldn't remember what it was.

”You don't go home?” Julie asked in the Stream, shocked that she was able to speak at all.

The little boy answered her. ”For some of us, our mommy and daddy never pick us up. We stay in that room with the lights and all the mirrors. They put the polka dots on us every night.”

It was night, she a.s.sumed, but the lights above never gave an indication of morning or midnight. One of the boys plucked the polka dots off his forehead, and laid them on the bed. ”Mikey,” he said. ”They're stealing your dreams.”

”Are they?” he asked. ”My dad wouldn't do it.”

”Don't lie to him,” the sad little long-haired boy said. He must've been about fourteen, but he looked younger than Michael, who was almost thirteen. ”They're checking for brain activity. That's all. They want to see patterns while we dream. Don't worry, Mike, n.o.body can steal your dreams.”

”They are too,” the older boy said. He was at least fifteen, but seemed older. ”They're trying to steal from us.”

The girl of eleven or so who Julie thought might be the long-haired boy's sister, piped up, ”I just want to go home.”

”There is no home,” the older boy said. ”None of us have parents.”

”I do,” Michael said, and the little girl nodded, ”Me, too.”

The older boy smirked. ”If you call those people parents. They'd sell you if they thought it could buy them something. Don't you think that, Mikey? Don't you? Since as far back as you can remember, don't you remember how they hated you? How they think you're a freak because of what goes on in your head? That they think you're going to go nutso because you keep predicting things-bad things-like you're a bad luck charm? Like you're a jinx? I wouldn't want a kid like that around the house,” he said. ”Who would?”

The long-haired boy said, ”What about you?”

”My parents died,” the older boy said. ”In a car crash. I knew it was coming, only I didn't tell them.”

”That's mean,” one of the girls said.

”Is it? I was only four. What did I know? I didn't know people died like that,” the older boy said.

”Don't you feel bad?” Michael asked.

”Why should I? I didn't make them die. It was an accident.”

”But you saw it coming.”

”There's a lot of things I see coming,” the older boy said, looking at the boy with the long hair.