Tunnel Vision (32 page)

“No.” He could hear the hollowness of his own response.

“Don’t rush your answers. Think, try to relax and recall the experience.”

He looked at Sarah, whose eyes were large and glaring at him. The same with the others. The room seemed to be holding its breath. He nodded at the computers. “What does it show?”

Stern and Cates looked to Luria to take the question. “It shows heightened sensory stimulation coming from the outside.”

“Like the last time,” Stern added. “The activity in the limbic area was wild.”

“I don’t remember.”

Luria’s eyebrow shot up like a polygraph needle. “You don’t remember. Well, frankly, I find that hard to believe. Your blood chemistry was teeming with cortisol and epinephrine. Your brain was in fight-or-flight response. How can you not remember anything?”

His heart was pounding so hard that his diaphragm throbbed visibly. This was like a psychic striptease. They knew he was lying.

“I’ll ask you again,” Luria said, her eyes black and intense. “Do you recall anything from suspension? Any sense of activity, of emotions—fear, anger? Of another’s presence?”

The pain in his side kept flaring at him. Again he checked it.

“Are you okay?” Sarah asked.

He nodded. The skin wasn’t broken, no bruises. But it felt as if the bullet were lodged inside.

Before Luria could launch into him again, Morris Stern cleared his throat. “Zack, a couple of weeks ago we explained how the machine can detect individual neuroelectrical signatures. Remember? Well, your brain contains one hundred billion neurons, so it’s like listening to conversations of every person on the planet fifteen times over. From all that chatter, complex algorithms help us eliminate those common to all other people from your own discrete signature. Okay?”

Zack made no response, but Stern went on as if he had.

He turned the computer monitor so Zack could see multicolored scintillations and patterns. “This may mean nothing to you, but that’s the axonal electrical activity in a region of your parietal lobe. Just before we woke you, we recorded a sudden change in patterns. We need to analyze more of the data, but preliminary results indicate an anomaly.”

The patterns flickered and changed color and meant nothing to Zack.

“These splotches flashing across your hippocampus indicate that the visual cortex and sensory centers were being flooded with data from the outside. In short, you were not manufacturing a near-death experience, you had one.”

“You said that the last time.”

“Not me, because I wasn’t convinced, but now I am. Your mind left your brain and took in an experience of its own. There’s more data to analyze, but we’ve got enough for confirmation.”

“Confirmation of what?”

Stern pushed up the glasses on his nose and looked directly at him. “That you merged with another mind.”

“What?”

“Like the last time. We finished those analyses, and found a signature that’s not yours—that belongs to another entity. Frankly, this is phenomenal.”

“In addition to that,” said Elizabeth, “your blood analysis shows spikes in adrenaline commensurate with the intense activity in the rage center of your brain. What you experienced was violence—like the last two times.”

A rat uncurled in Zack’s gut.
I’m not buying this,
he told himself. It was just a bad trip, a 3-D nightmare. The tetrodotoxin crap caused hallucinations. It was like what Stern said the other day—his brain put together scraps of memory, some wish fulfillment things from the day, and produced another killer flick inside his head. “If anything comes back to me, I’ll let you know.”

“You’re lying,” Luria said. “You are bloody lying. I can see it in your face. Tell me the truth, goddamn it. What did you experience?”

The others froze in place, but he could see Sarah wince in anticipation.

“I killed a man.”

“What?”

“I killed a man. I beat him to death with a tire iron while he was fixing his car.”

Sarah looked horrified. Luria’s face was a blank of itself. “You killed a man?”

“He was under his car fixing something. I waited until he crawled out, then smashed in his skull. And the last time I strangled a guy lifting weights. And before that I ran a woman down with a car.” He got up to leave.

“Wait, please,” Luria pleaded. “Do you know these people or why you attacked them?”

“No. And I don’t want to. You’ve fucked up my head something wicked.”

“Please don’t go just yet,” she begged.

“Lady, I may have permanent brain damage. You got that? I’m fucking out of here.”

“Fine, fine,” Morris Stern said. “You’ve been through enough.”

Sarah agreed. Dr. Luria glanced at the others. “Okay.” She took Zack’s arm. He could feel trembling but couldn’t determine if it was him or her. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

He pulled his arm free but didn’t answer her.

“I’m very sorry. We can give you something to help you sleep peacefully. I promise. But you have made an extraordinary breakthrough. You—”

He headed for the door. Sarah caught up to him. “Sorry, Zack.”

He pulled out his wallet and laid Luria’s $10,000 check on her desk, then passed through the door.

Luria ran to him, begging him to take it. “Please, Zack. Take a week off to rest. But please let us continue. Please. We’re almost there.”

He didn’t know what she meant and didn’t care. “Leave me alone.”

“But you made contact with another sentience.”

“I made contact with hell and I’m not going back.”

60

Roman played the Warren Gladstone video for the third time.

The guy had a big cartoon happy face, and he was making claims about the Day of Jubilation as if it were the second coming itself. He carried on about a whole new way of life for the world—a way of life that would unite people of all faiths and of no faith; a day when there would be no more fear of death. No more fear of hellfires.

A day of rejoicing. A day that will live forever and ever, world without end.

The guy sounded pretty convincing—so much so that Roman felt a little tickle of inspiration.

But there were dissenters—bloggers railing against him for going “soft on sin” and reducing the gospel to a lot of left-wing self-help bullshit.

Making God an extension of New Age desires trivializes His divine sovereignty and fails to explain the place of good and evil in His divine plan. He teaches people to believe that with God you can do anything you want. God helped them win the lottery, get a job, afford a new car. But that trivializes God to handouts.

What snagged Roman’s attention was what one commentator said about near-death experiences:

Some claim they’ve encountered a being of light that was Jesus. Appealing as that may sound, this is a false Jesus who teaches that death is good; that sin is not a problem. That there’s no hell to worry about since all people go to heaven, regardless of whether one has faith in Christ … that all religions are equally valid.…

The only conclusion is that this “Jesus” is the lying spirit warned against in the Book of John. And those who believe are the devil’s dupes.

Remember that Satan can appear as an “angel of light” and “servant of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14–15). His goal is to mimic Jesus and to lead people away from the true Christ of scripture.

Beware! Such claims of tunneling into the afterlife are the work of Satan’s henchmen.…

And at the bottom of several blogs was the name of the same organization, one he had never heard of: the Fraternity of Jesus.

He logged off as the words echoed and reechoed in his head:
Devil’s dupes. Satan’s henchmen.

61

Zack was shaking uncontrollably by the time Sarah dropped him off. Very little was said during the ride. She apologized several times, and he nodded acceptance. But it wasn’t her fault.

Nor was his mind on resentment or anger or disappointment. He wanted to say something conciliatory, sensing that she felt blameworthy. But it wouldn’t come out, constrained by the singular emotion that made his chest pound and his ears click and his mouth turn spitless with dread. He muttered a good night and jumped out of the car.

And he knew why.

And like a force of gravity, that knowledge yanked him out of the car and up the stairs to his apartment.

He tried stalling the pull by drinking a glass of warm milk and slipping into bed. He even fingered what was left of the Lunesta and Haldol in the dark, his body feeling as if it had turned into a giant cardiac organ, throbbing wildly.

Why are you stalling? Get up and get it over with.

He shook away the voice and popped the pills with the milk. Then he rolled over and tried to shut down his mind.

Impossible.

He tried to focus on absurd things like floating through the air, sailing across Boston. He ran pi to fifty places twice. Nothing. It was still there, pulling at his brain like a bungee cord. And he knew it wouldn’t let up until he knew for sure.

God, I don’t want this,
he thought.
I don’t want to know.

But it was now or tomorrow or the next day.
Might as well get it over with,
he told himself.
Might even be wrong.

He threw off the covers and padded out of the bedroom and into the other room, where he stumbled to his desk and flopped into his chair.

Years ago, when he got his driver’s license, his mother had said that she had to go to Mount Auburn Hospital for a procedure. He’d pressed and pressed until she’d revealed that she had a lump in her breast. For days he’d prayed that it not be malignant. As he sat in the dark, all that rushed back.

“Don’t let it be,” he said to the dark. Then he turned on his laptop.

Shaking, he clicked on Google and wrote in the name. He got two dozen hits. But at the top was an item from the
Hartford Courant
that he read as if in a premonition:

The body of Mitchell Gretch, 34, of Cedar Road, Manchester, was buried yesterday in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Manchester. He was found bludgeoned to death four days ago on Bolton Road, lying in a pool of blood. He had apparently been attacked with a tire iron while fixing a broken muffler pipe on his automobile.…

Gooseflesh shot up his torso and across his scalp.

Thirteen years ago, Gretch was exonerated from a murder charge of Jacob Kashian, from Carleton, MA, but that case was dismissed by the judge for insufficient evidence.

Coincidentally, his alleged accomplice in that homicide, William Volker, died last week from an accident in his home in Waltham, Massachusetts. Local police have ruled out foul play.

Manchester police believe that Gretch was murdered by an unknown assailant who used the tire iron from Gretch’s 1992 Mitsubishi sports car.

Police have named no suspect or suspects and say they are continuing to investigate the circumstances of Gretch’s death.…

As if on autopilot, he Googled William Volker. Instantly a dozen hits came up, at the top of which was an article from
The Boston Globe:
“Freak Weightlifting Accident Claims Life of Waltham Man.”

Zack’s brain could barely register what he was reading. Jake’s other killer. He didn’t have to double-check on the dead hit-and-run woman. He knew.

62

“Volker and Gretch killed my brother. And the woman was Gretch’s cousin—one of their witnesses who claimed they saw nothing.” Zack handed Sarah the obituaries he had printed up.

“What?”

It was sometime after two in the morning, and he had called her to come over, terrified at his discovery.

“And these were the same people you saw in your NDEs?” she said as she read them.

“Yes.” Photographs were included with the obit. “I recognize them.”

“Maybe it’s just bizarre coincidences.”

“What, that my brother’s killers got murdered and I was there each time? Sarah, I saw them. I felt their deaths. I was there. Jesus, I’m either losing my mind or I killed them.” He had been drinking a glass of warm milk and had to hold the glass with two hands, he was shaking so badly.

Sarah looked at the obits. “I don’t believe either.”

“But that tetrodotoxin is lousy with side effects,” he said. “What if I blacked out and went after them? Killed them and don’t remember anything?”