The Unseen (44 page)

“That’s right,” Anton told her. “I think you might be more of service to us here.”

Anton threw back the coverlet of the bed and for one terrible second her mind went to the worst …

No no God please no don’t hurt me don’t—

Then something at the edge of the bed brushed against her calf. She gasped and twisted in Anton’s grasp.

The horror she felt on looking down was instant and complete. Welded to the metal frame of the bed were three thick iron rings.

For restraints
.

There were three identical protuberances on the right side of the bed, beside the wall—which was actually forcing the bed out several inches away from the wall, instead of it lining up flush.

Somehow it was those iron rings that made it real: Paul Folger’s long years of confinement. The room seemed to close in on her, with a rush of all that it had seen, all that it had absorbed, the sodden, stinking madness—the horror …

She bit back a scream. She wanted to scream, to scream her lungs out, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of her muffled, impotent howls.

Anton pushed her down on the bed and held her down. “Do it,” he snapped at Brendan.

“We don’t … have to hurt her,” Brendan mumbled.

“Don’t be a fool,” Anton said sharply, but his voice never rose. “Tie her.” And Brendan did, loosening the rope from her hands and, as Anton held her, looping it through the iron rings, fastening her arms by her sides, one on each side of the bed.

When Brendan stepped back, Anton straightened and looked down on Laurel with nothing like lust, or pleasure at her captivity—only the detachment a scientist would show a lab animal. “I trust your experience here will be illuminating. For you—and all of us.” He glanced around the room with an enigmatic smile. “I think we are in for an interesting night indeed. Perhaps even—life-altering.”

Brendan gave Laurel what seemed for a moment like a stricken look—ambiguous with misery—then the men moved away from the bed, and out.

She heard the lock turn in the door.

She was dizzy and gagging, fighting to breathe through her nose. Her eyes darted frantically around the room.

The room was stark and cold, the magnetic malevolence was heavy in the air.

Scream kick bounce shake make noise get them here make them help
. Her mind was shouting at her, fast, panicked thoughts.

No
.

Why?

Because Tyler and Katrina can’t help you
, she found herself answering herself coldly.
You’ll only put them in more danger. Shut up for now and figure out what you’re going to do
.

She breathed through her nose, breathed through the heart-pounding panic, until her pulse slowed. Her eyes went again to the side of the bed, to the rings.
So Brendan knew that, too, had known from the beginning that it was true, about Paul Folger, that they … they kept him here, that he was what they said he was… .

Get hold of yourself. Now is not the time to freak out
.

Brendan had lied to her, betrayed her.
It’s worse than with Matt. That was just an engagement he broke off. This is jeopardy. This is criminal
.

And then the anger came, and that was good.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The anger rose and fell in waves, and she rode it like the gentle rocking of a boat on the ocean. It was both calming and powerful. She breathed and burned as she lay tied to the bed of a madman, and tried to force her thoughts into some kind of order.

Think. Think. Think
.

You have to get out of here, get Tyler and Katrina out before they start that séance. That cannot happen. It must not happen
.

How can I get out?

She yanked and pulled at the ropes. She could move her hands, her fingers, but her arms were bound tightly.

She twisted on the bed, looking around the room. Her eyes fell on the circle cut into the window.

Uncle Morgan
.

The card was in her pocket—the one she pulled from the dream. The realization of it stopped her racing thoughts.

I saw him and he gave me the card
.

Somehow, wherever that was, it was a real place. Real enough. Can I get to it now?

She lay still on the bed and thought of the white room. She closed her eyes, breathed in … and saw it in her mind’s eye: the room she had been in when she walked among the file boxes and found the Folger test charts, the room she had been in when she tested with Tyler, the room she had been in in her dream, with Uncle Morgan as a young man. She saw its dreamlike whiteness, felt its indistinct contours, felt the coolness of the air, saw it becoming substantial around her …

Her heart beat steadily and slowly and she became aware of the pulse in her wrists. Then she realized she could move not just her hands, but her arms. The ropes were no longer binding her. She opened her eyes, lifted her hands, and sat up from the bed.

She was in the white room … it glowed faintly around her. All of the furniture and details of Brendan’s room had disappeared, but there was a door at the other side of the glowing white.

Laurel stood from the bed and walked across the whiteness to the door. She felt light, insubstantial; she moved with a dreamlike detachment.

She reached out and opened the door—

And found herself looking in on the great room.

She was standing in the archway. The room before her was recognizably the house but its contours were indistinct—nothing seemed clear.
Is this a dream?

The dining-room table was set up in the middle of the room with four people around it.

They’ve started the séance already
, Laurel thought in a panic. But something was wrong. There was the bank of equipment across the room, only it looked different, primitive, and the screens were intact, not smashed. And there were several arrangements of sofas and chairs and tables in the room, and carpets as well, three separate conversation areas in an elegant arrangement. The gilt-framed mirrors were there, too, intact on the walls.

Laurel understood with a jolt that she was looking at an entirely different group seated around the dining-room table.

Two young men and a young woman of college age were seated at the table. An older man stood with a clipboard, blond hair and high cheekbones.
I know him
, Laurel thought, electrified, but she could not think from where.

As Laurel hovered in the archway, fascinated, she saw the young woman speak, but Laurel could not hear, only see it, like watching a television with the sound turned down.

Across from the dark-haired young woman was a black-haired young man who also seemed familiar—the slant of his eyebrows and the prominent cowlick. At the far end of the table was another young man who was strangely familiar as well—with crystal-bright eyes in a round boyish face. They were all dressed in clothing that was instantly identifiable as from a previous era because of its formality. The young woman’s short dress and Jackie Kennedy bouffant decided it. The sixties.

There was something odd and distancing about the entire room and the people in it … and Laurel realized there was no color. Everything was black and white.

I’m on film, then
, Laurel thought, and promptly forgot there was anything strange about that.

She tried to look around the rest of the room, to get more details about the group, the time, the situation. She felt that she was looking through a fog: though some details were sharp and clear, the perimeters of the room were hazy. But as she stared harder, trying to focus, she suddenly recognized some familiar pieces of equipment: the dice machine with its oblong Lucite tube, and the black felt-covered particle board with its Zener card displays.

It’s the Duke group
, she thought in a rush of understanding.
Leish’s group. Dr. Leish … Victoria Enright … Rafe Winchester … and the crystal-eyed boy is Uncle Morgan. What are they doing here? What am I doing here?

The young woman was speaking again, but Laurel couldn’t hear her. She watched as all three men watched the young woman covertly; there was a sexual charge that Laurel could feel from where she was standing. Then suddenly a
RAP
sounded, reverberating through the room. All four at the table reacted with excitement, looking up, talking quickly. Laurel heard the
RAP
but not the voices. The tension was electric in the room.

And suddenly she felt a chill, like a cold draft.

Laurel
.

She stiffened. Someone had spoken her name very clearly.

She looked around the room. No one in the room was looking at her. The round-faced boy was looking down at the table, at a pack of cards he held in his hand.

Laurel
.

She heard it again. And then she realized: the voice was in her own head.

She glanced around the room surreptitiously. Who was it? Who was speaking to her?

She stared toward the table. Victoria was speaking, soundlessly. The round-faced boy with the electric eyes was concentrating on the cards. The Zener cards. There was one card in front of him—the bold black
O
.

Laurel
, the voice said again in her head, and now she knew. Young Uncle Morgan.

He said her name again, quite clearly, but she saw that he had not moved his mouth. Somehow, he was speaking inside her head.

Play the cards with me. Come sit and listen
.

She glanced at the others warily.

They can’t see you
.

Laurel’s eyes lingered on Leish, with fear.

He can’t hear us. It’s his great anger—he has no ability at all
.

Laurel stepped out of the archway, walked across the misty room to the table, and sat down across from him. None of the others acknowledged her. The cards were spread out between them.

She looked back into the boy’s eyes—so familiar … and even through the strange black and white she knew they were blue, Carolina blue.

She had no idea how to express the things that she wanted to say—she had no idea how to begin.

Just ask
, he said, and his thought was as warm and comforting as a caress.
Concentrate on the card and say what you want to say to me
.

She concentrated all her being into the words, and thought at him:
Is this the past?

She felt immediately exhausted from the effort, but was rewarded with the tug of a sad ghost of a smile at his lips. And then a haunted look that wrenched her heart.

Somewhere between. Half-life
, he said enigmatically. Then his face darkened and he glanced at the others around him.

But where is this? How can you see me?
she thought at him, frightened.

A jumble of thoughts came from him then:
Vortex whirl pool threshold gateway timeless limbo
. She could feel his frustration at the inadequacy of the words.

Dimension
. He finally ended.
Dimensions. There are so many more than one
.

She could hear everything he said clearly in her head. But no one around them heard. Leish never turned toward either her or Morgan.

The round-faced boy was looking at her intensely.

What happened?
she thought at him. He glanced surreptitiously at the tall, blond man.

Dr. Leish wanted big results, violent results. He wanted to see the poltergeist effect at full force. He thought—hoped—that our psi ability would bring the force out into the open
.

Laurel felt a chill, realizing how very closely they had followed Leish’s example. She looked at the table, at the séance—so eerily similar to what her own group had just been doing

And he—made contact?
she asked silently, her own voice hollow inside her head.

Not him
, the young man—Morgan—said.
It was a dynamic, between the house, and us—

Another
RAP
reverberated through the whole of the house … through the foundation, through Laurel’s body. Everyone at the table looked up, electrified. Laurel clenched herself, thought at the young man at the table.

What is it?

He glanced for a second toward her. What she got from him was not words but a black wave of fear … it made her cold all over. Her teeth began to chatter and her breath came shallow and fast, she could actually see it in the air, but she pressed on.

Morgan … Uncle Morgan … I need to know. Is it madness? An imprint of madness on the house?

For the first time she saw the young man across from her flinch. Again he did not speak, but the voice in her head was raw and urgent.

It is dangerous to think you understand. It is many things. It is pure irrationality. There is no answer. It is a mistake to think that you know. It will not be known
.

The young man at the table closed his eyes briefly. Then he opened them and Laurel heard in her head:

We opened a door
.

She looked toward the striking blond man with the clipboard.
Is that how Dr. Leish died? Because of something you saw? What?

Morgan shook his head, a quick, surreptitious shake.
You must get out before it is summoned again. Stop it before they open the door. You must get out
.

How?
she said, frightened beyond anything she had ever felt before.
How?

At the table beside her Dr. Leish and Rafe Winchester started arguing, without sound—the blond older man with the clipboard and the black-haired younger man across from Victoria. They both stood, soundlessly screaming at each other across the table,