Blindspots Page 22

  Two words: apparent suicide. He read on. November 13, 1976. Just after midnight, Elizabeth Ellison had slit her wrists in a bathtub while her husband watched TV downstairs.

  A shudder ran through his bones, making his near-frostbite feel like blessed numbness by comparison. Suicide. He thought of Franklin Baynes jumping from the roof. Jake Griffith taking off into the snowstorm.

  He got up, heat flowing through his veins. Suicide…

  His mother tried to set him back down. "If you're on to something, keep at it. Indra figured we could find the answers down here… and a way to stop her. So let's not go jumping at shadows."

  Gabriel sat back down, turning to the screen, calling up another file at random. "Carrie Coburn… died – November 12th. Cause of death: suicide. Hanging."

  He slammed the keyboard, clicked on another file. "Tommy Sorrento. Nine-years old. Oh god…"

  "I remember Tommy!" Darcy's eyes lit up. "Such a spitfire! Ate nothing but pancakes and ice cream. Figured if his parents saw fit to dump him here for some extra pocket change he was sure as shit going to eat what he wanted."

  "Mom – he died two months after the study. The same date as the others. November 12th. Threw himself off a roof." His hands were shaking. "I’m going to find the same thing with all of them, aren’t I?"

  Darcy looked away.

  "Mother. What did he do?"

  She put a hand to her chest, as if blocking the words from reaching her heart. "I never knew for sure. But I heard about them, of course. From angry relatives accusing Atticus of doing something to their minds, warping them. Lawyers came to see us. Atticus paid a few of them off, I'm sure. Other times, he paid off the judges. Nothing stuck, and eventually the relatives moved on. And then of course, Atticus killed himself and left me to deal with the whole mess."

  Gabriel closed his eyes, a whirl of faces and names spinning in his head. "All of them? All six?"

  Darcy took a deep breath. "The damned experiment, and his usual lack of patience. He wanted results, couldn't wait for them."

  "Christ. He had them all kill themselves." Gabriel's mouth went dry; the room spun.

  "You have to appreciate his creativity."

  "But it shouldn't be possible. Hypnosis isn't that strong, it—"

  "It ain't supposed to be strong enough to leave yourself instructions in the next life neither, but damn Atticus learnt himself how to do it. Went in deep – real deep – as he'd say."

  "All of them," Gabriel repeated. "All on the same day…"

  "So they'd hop right back into the rebirth line. Be born again together. And then he could use their ages as another flag to point out the potential returnees."

  Gabriel held his head, waiting for the room to stop spinning, the dust to settle. "But Jake is younger, and I think I heard something about Kaitlin?"

  "That just proves it. Since the original six were all killed the on the same date, and they're not all the same age now…"

  Nodding, Gabriel said, "Kaitlin and Jake must have only lived about nine years or so last time, then died and came back – so this is their second reincarnation since the experiment, and they still have the face blindness and everything else he placed in there."

  Darcy nodded. "So now she has to take care of them for good, or else she'll have unfinished business." She smiled. "Potential competition. Always the chance someone could get regressed by a good hypnotist and remember, or the truth could come out in dreams or nightmares."

  "Dad always hated unfinished business."

  "His one dependable quality." She gave a raspy sigh. "Now that he knows he's got this immortality thing figured out, he can do it again and again. The implanted memory will stick forever, through every lifetime, and he can always add stuff to his vault. Think of it now with technology. DVDs, video recordings, microchips. Billions of bits of data, entire lives for his new incarnation to review. Like catching up with old friends."

  Gabriel's temples throbbed. "And that's why we have to find it… his vault or wherever he's programmed himself to go in the next life."

  Scratching her chin, Darcy looked around the room again. "But it can't be this place, not down here. Alexa needed the key first, before she could get through the vault door. The key had to be somewhere else. Somewhere…"

  Gabriel tracked his mother's gaze, scanning the room. "What are you looking for?"

  She held up a shaking hand. "Just remembering something… If I'm right, he would've wanted it close, maybe kept it here in the vault as a reminder to reinforce the latent commands…"

  "Wanted what close?"

  "Look for a picture… you remember the one, I'm sure… of the cemetery? That tomb?"

  Gabriel blinked, thinking. "Yes, I think I do. A really odd picture that used to hang in his office? A framed black and white photograph of a mausoleum."

  "That's the one! So out of place with the rest of his psych awards, framed articles and occult crap that it practically begged for an explanation."

  "I remember… once, I asked Dad about it and he just ignored me. As always."

  "Believe me, you got off easy." She moved to the nearest bookshelf, rummaged around the shelves, then she knelt, moving along the bottom shelf, pushing things aside, until… "A-ha!"

  She snatched up something from where it had been stuck between two large leather-bound volumes. Spinning around, she held it up in front of Gabriel's face. "Look familiar?"

  He stared at the black-and-white image of a cemetery at dusk. Gnarled trees with swollen branches cradling a tomb's ivy-covered walls. "The mausoleum…"

  "I know this place," Darcy whispered, staring at it and tapping the glass with her finger. She spoke quietly, as if afraid she'd be overheard by the Egyptian deities. "A cemetery just outside of Boston. I know, I know – morbid as shit, but that was Atticus. This here's a huge mausoleum up on the highest hill."

  "What was its significance?"

  "I asked your father once, after he hung this picture in his office, oh – back in the '50s. He said that it belong to a Silas-somebody. Berger, I think. Some renowned spiritualist and big-time landowner who died in the 1820's."

  "Let me guess. Atticus believed he was this Silas man in another life?"

  "Didn't say as much, not in so many words, but I think you're right. He was obsessed with the place. Went there a couple times a year, like a pilgrimage."

  "Did he ever go inside?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know, never went with him, but one time while snooping in his office, I found a bunch of Polaroids of the tomb's outer walls, especially the back. Don't know where those pictures are now, but I got a feeling he might have scoped out that tomb for a reason."

  Gabriel closed his eyes and thought for a moment. "Trying to be like the pharaohs. Leaving the real treasure – the secret of who he was – in the tomb of his predecessor. But, if all this is true, he must have put something else in there too."

  "The key to this goddamned vault." Darcy took a wheezing breath and clutched her chest. She held up a hand. "I'm okay..." She steadied herself. "Besides the key, I bet Atticus also had some secret off-shore accounts and investments. Never did find all of his money. Only left us enough to keep Daedalus running. Until—"

  "—Until he got back," Gabriel finished. He wrung his hands together. "So, assuming we can even manage to incapacitate Alexa, then we still need to go up to that cemetery in Boston and find what she's hidden up there this time."

  "Damn right."

  Gabriel thought quietly, and his vision unfocused. "Mom?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I never really thanked you."

  "For what?"

  "For protecting me from him. For standing up to him. I can't even imagine what it was like for you."

  "Had to be done. I loved you too much, too much to let you turn out like him."

  "And… thanks for keeping the Institute running after he was gone..."

  "I had help." She set down the picture. Squeezed Gabriel's shoulder, then pulled him close in a hug and s
poke into his ear. "You did most of the work, Gabriel. Daedalus is yours, not mine. Never was. It's not your father's, and it's not Alexa's, no matter what the deed says."

  Reluctantly breaking the embrace, he blinked at her, trembling again as his injuries throbbed and his head spun, and his mother smiled.

  "Take it back, Gabriel. Take it back."

  12.

  His hand concealed underneath the blanket, Indra silently released the heavy gun's safety. He kept an eye on Nestor, the man whose face he could see so clearly, so powerfully. He felt at once drawn to him and repulsed by him. Traitor, was all Indra could think, but at the same time, he understood.

  "What did she promise you, Nestor?"

  The big man spun around, leveling the gun at him. "What?"

  Alexa glided up behind Nestor, facing Indra. They were alone again in the lobby. Her eyes swam in a sea of white-gray mist, devoid of any emotion, feeling or life. "Indra. I'd love to catch up, but we have to take a little trip first, deep into your soul."

  Indra maneuvered the gun. Pointed it at her stomach. Maybe a gut shot? Had to wound her, not kill her. Funny, he thought. Ironic, maybe. They were both in the same predicament – desperate to do away with their enemies, but restrained from using full force. They both had unfinished business to attend to first.

  And then there was Nestor. Indra needed to take him out too, now, or he wouldn't get another chance. But there were ways other than gunfire.

  "You didn't answer my question, Nestor."

  Alexa touched Nestor's shoulder gently with her free hand. "Ignore the chatter of the dead." She stepped forward. "Don't make this difficult, Indra. The other four are taken care of. Let me cure you, give you back your sight, and then you can go on your way. No hard feelings. I'll forgive you for killing my colleague back in Jaipur. And—"

  "—And will I forgive you for killing all of us back in 1976?"

  In Indra's mind, Alexa's swirling features resolved, just for a moment, into a mask of pure fury, a shape topped with fiery red hair and steely blue eyes. Then her features fell back into confounded obscurity.

  Nestor tensed his hold on the gun. "What's he talking about?"

  "Nothing," Alexa hissed.

  "Tell him," Indra said. "Tell your lapdog here what you did. Why you killed us off. Come on, Alexa. Tell him how you are far too selfish to share immortality with anyone."

  "That's a lie!" Nestor hissed. "We will be together forever, and—"

  Indra's laugh cut him off. "Seriously? Love? Is that it? You and her? My god, Nestor. She is blind, but not stupid. Playing you, just as she played the other—"

  "Enough!" Alexa raised her cane, brought it to within inches of his face, and Indra saw something on the bottom – a slot, just the width of a blade tip.

  Something else to consider, he thought, gripping his fingers around the gun's handle, raising it just a touch beneath the blanket. Almost time.

  "Alexa?" Nestor turned toward her, lowering his gun. "He's lying, right? Let me kill him."

  "No. I told you, it must wait."

  "If he's lying, what does it matter? We have an eternity to kill him."

  Indra made a mock laugh. "Where she is going, Nestor, you are not following."

  "Shut up!" He aimed back at him. "I am her warrior. I—"

  "You are deceived!" Indra sat up straight, eyes blazing. "Go ahead, ask her, ask about the others she has promised the same thing. Her 'Brotherhood'. Do you really believe she's going to reward all of them too?"

  "Yes!" he shouted, veins popping on his head. "Yes…" he said again, weakly. He looked at her face, searching for confirmation.

  "Yes!" Alexa answered, her voice trembling. "Don't let this cripple sow doubts in you. You know what I am."

  "Nestor," Indra said, shaking his head with a little chuckle. "Alexa was a man in the past life. How does that grab you?"

  "SHUT UP!"

  He swung the gun around and fired – just as Alexa snapped her cane and knocked his arm out of the way. A piece of the wall behind Indra exploded, and Nestor reflexively struck back with his free hand – knocking Alexa to the floor.

  Footsteps came pounding down the stairs.

  Now! Indra told himself, just as two men in black turtlenecks came into the lobby, with guns drawn. They took one look at Nestor standing over Alexa – their leader, their redeemer – and fired.

  #

  Nestor fired back, almost simultaneously. Something stung his hip, and another something slammed into his ribs. He fired again. Fuckers aren't taking me down. Not after I've come this far.

  He saw a satisfying gush of red burst out of the first man's skull. The second staggered with a shot in his shoulder, then kept coming. Firing wildly. Once, twice. Aimed again—

  Nestor shot him in the throat.

  Both men down, he stumbled back around, saw Alexa struggling to rise, then had a moment's calm. The fury was abating, replaced with guilt.

  What have I done?

  He hobbled, holding his side, feeling his blood pouring out, spilling on the floor, slick under his boots. But when he looked at Indra and saw a matching spot of bright red in the center of the cripple's chest and realized one of the Brotherhoods' errant shots had indeed found its mark, he smiled.

  Until he heard Alexa's cry of frustration.

  #

  The windows rattled, the lights flickered and the winds roared along the turrets. Indra had an instant of shining clarity, a flash-burst of insight, and a glimpse into a spider web made of golden thread, spinning and spinning, woven back into countless pasts, interconnecting and linking back in a seamless, perfectly integrated whole.

  Shot, he mused with a giddy jolt of something like psychic adrenaline. His body was dying, that was certain. He started to laugh, and the webs turned to silver, then copper, rusting as they began to dissolve, releasing his vision of this life, this world. There was the shadowy lobby, the creaking walls… The big man with the gun.

  It's over, he thought, or he said, he wasn't sure.

  Someone answered, shouting, "NO!" A violent grunt, and the big shape crumpled as something long, metallic and shiny plunged in, then ripped out of Nestor's chest.

  Indra blinked, an action that seemed to carry with it a note of finality.

  When his vision focused again, all he could see were two eggshell-white eyes.

  #

  "Stay alive!" Alexa spat, shaking Indra. She found his shoulders, shook him, then felt lower, touching the spreading warmth that drenched his shirt. A gun had fallen from his limp fingers, unfired. Goddamned Nestor! She heard him twitching now, dying behind her. The sword blade inside her cane had cleanly punctured its target, and Nestor was probably spending his last seconds wondering what had happened.

  "Stay with me!" She slapped Indra's face. Again. She pounded his chest. "I can't let you go! Not yet. Listen to my voice, Indra. Listen to my goddamned voice!"

  She heard a nearly silent, bubbling laughter. Indra's chest heaved with great effort to make the sounds.

  "I see the webs," he whispered. "So shiny…"

  "Shut up and listen to my voice." She couldn't let him slip away. Had to get inside now, right now. Dive deep and strike. "You are drifting back, far back, beyond—"

  Again, the laugher. Liquid, taunting.

  "It's over," he said.

  "NO!" She slammed his chest again. "You are falling back, so deep. Deeper and deeper. Listen to me, you are—"

  "Free," came the whisper. "But… do not worry. I am not coming back."

  "What?"

  "Free," he said again. A cough. Giddy childish laughter. Then, weakly: "Free."

  "No…" Could it be? Was he talking about what she thought? Was it possible? She had studied the theories to death, but never paid much heed to the parts about how to stop the wheel, to get off the cycle. Why would anyone want that? Besides, such speculation always involved mumbo-jumbo about selflessness and meditation and do-goodedness. None of that concerned her.

  None of it.
But still – was he saying he was done?

  "Indra, if that's true, I'll take you at your word. As long as you're no longer my responsibility. No more unfinished business."

  "…st… one," he whispered.

  "What did you say?"

  "Just… one."

  She felt his heart, one beat, then an impossibly long wait for the next. Beat. Then he spoke: "Go… to your vault. See what I've brought you."

  Beat…

  And then nothing.

  Alexa pushed away, and in her perpetual darkness, she gave the wheelchair a kick. She turned, bent down and found her cane. Pressed the button near the handle, and heard the blade whisk back inside.

  She stepped over the bodies, then paused for a moment, listening to the wind raging outside, thumping and howling like a bloodthirsty crowd, cheering the imminent victor.

  She headed for the basement.

  13.

  The patients fled back up the stairs, faster than they had left only minutes earlier. Monica backed off the railing, watching as they nearly trampled each other rushing to get back to their rooms. But she just marveled at the ability to see each one of them. Every face, every horrified expression. Such emotion, such a range of expressions and familiar looks. Such shared pain, horror, fear.

  Something down there scared the shit out of them. Those gunshots she'd heard, the ones that had momentarily broken her resolve to jump. What was happening down there?

  It doesn't matter. When the doors all slammed shut, and once again she was alone, she glanced down over the railing. Nothing down there but gloom, and a subtle, silvery sheen on the distant floor.

  Nothing that's my concern. She felt the railing again. She just had to pull herself up and simply roll over the side. It would be easy.

  Her heart was thundering, knees weak.

  She heard a sound. It was that nurse. Outside the door to Gabriel's office; standing there, smiling patiently.

  "Go on," she said. "Don't mind me. You have an important job to do."