“I’d say somebody who can create an earthquake just by wanting to make it happen already has got a little secret weapon in him. My question is, what else is in there you don’t know about?”
Ethan stared at JayDee. Did a little heat ripple in the air between them? Ethan said, “Kidneys, stomach. Large intestine, small intestine, pancreas. Liver, spleen, lungs. Brain, heart. Those are things I know I have. I am human, sir. And I’m remembering something, too. It’s getting clearer and the details are filling in. I’m in a room, sitting at a desk under a green desk lamp, and I’m putting together a model of the Visible Man. You know what that is?”
“I had one. Every kid who ever grew up to be a doctor probably put that thing together.”
“Okay. I’m looking at my desk, and that’s what I see lying there. The parts. Kidneys, stomach, large intestine, small intestine, pancreas, liver, spleen, lungs, brain, and heart. I’ve got them arranged in that order, to be painted. My jars of paint are sitting there. The brand is Testors. A woman with dark hair comes into the room…and she starts to speak, but I can’t hear what she says.” Sadness pierced him like a blade; not only sadness, but a deep sense of desperation. Tears burned his eyes. “I want to hear, but I can’t. And…what I want most of all…most of all…is for her to speak my name, because I think she’s my mother, but…if she does say it, I can’t hear it. Or maybe I just can’t recognize it anymore.” He wiped his eyes and stared at the floor. A shiver passed through him, quick and then gone. “I’m human. I know I am.” And then he looked up into the careful eyes of John Douglas, and Ethan said what he was really thinking: “I’ve got to be.”
It was another moment before JayDee spoke. “You have no idea what the white mansion is? You just believe it’s a place you have to get to?”
Ethan nodded.
“Well,” said JayDee, as thickly as if he had a mouthful of sand, “Dave believes it too. Maybe Olivia does. She’s not saying much lately. But I know Dave’s been going through that road atlas. There’s no town in these United…in this country,” he corrected himself, “bearing that name. Dave took my magnifying glass—the last one I have, incidentally—and he’s been going through that atlas page by page. He must be nearly blind by now. I hear he’s not sleeping very much either. I just wanted you to know.”
“Okay,” said Ethan, who thought he should respond in some way.
“You can go now, if you want to. Me, I’m just going to sit here for awhile and think…or maybe try not to think.”
H
Kidneys, stomach. Large intestine, small intestine, pancreas. Liver, spleen, lungs. Brain, heart.
Sitting in the broken recliner in the apartment of a dead man, with the thin sickly light of morning coming through the duct-taped windows, Ethan can see those plastic organs lying before him on the desktop. The dark-haired woman comes in. She is smiling, and Ethan thinks she is pretty, but her face is really just a blur. And what he wants to say is Speak my name, but he does not and she does not, and he returns his gaze to the shell of the Visible Man that he so desires to make complete.
He heard a tapping at the door, which like so many others had been sawed so that it closed firmly in the misshapen frame.
“Who is it?” he called.
The voice was a tired mumble. “Dave. Got something.”
At once, Ethan was up and opening the door. Dave came in looking like he’d been on a three-day binge. He was wearing dirty jeans and a faded brown t-shirt that had so many holes in it a pitbull could have been using it as a chewrag. His hair was a touseled mess, and his eyes were weary, swollen maybe from deciphering too much small print. In his right hand was a page torn from the road atlas and in his left was the magnifying glass. “Might have something,” he amended, holding up the page. “Want you to take a look.” He came in as Ethan stepped aside. Dave went to the candle lantern. “Map of southeastern Utah,” he said. “You probably won’t need the magnifier, but I sure as hell did.”
Ethan took the page as Dave offered it.
Dave touched the map with a forefinger. “There. About midway between the two towns of Monticello and Blanding. It’s at the eastern edge of the Manti-La-Sal National Forest. See that?”
Ethan did. White Mansion Mtn., it read. 10,961 ft.
“It’s over three hundred miles from here as the eagle flies. But we’re not eagles.” Dave rubbed his eyes. “That’s what I found. Ring any bells?”
“No, nothing. But maybe that’s it?”
Dave gave a short bark of a laugh. “Maybe? Maybe? You know what’s it’s like searching those maps with a magnifying glass, hour after hour?” Dave hadn’t realized until he and Olivia had gotten back to Panther Ridge that the last few maps and the index had been ripped out. It had been close work, and hoping the White Mansion wasn’t up in Canada because those were the missing maps. He had scoured everything remaining…all towns, military bases, lakes, bays, mountains, canyons, and at last had come to the name of the mountain in Utah.
“I don’t know anything about that area,” he said, “but I know to get there would be…like…a miracle. Going south to Denver, crossing the Rockies on I-70, with the Gray Men and the aliens everywhere. So, when you say maybe that’s it…that doesn’t make me feel too very confident.”
“How am I supposed to know for sure?” was Ethan’s next question, delivered flatly and as a matter-of-fact.
Dave looked down at the floor as if he were trying to control an outburst. It took him a moment to get himself stabilized; he was tired, hungry, and thirsty, and he figured he’d aged his eyes by about five years in the past two days. But when he lifted his gaze to Ethan again and spoke, his face was calm, and his voice as quiet as he could force it to be under the circumstances. “That’s the only White Mansion I could find. Either that’s it or not. Either, like you say, something you don’t understand is trying to guide you there, or it was just a bad dream and it meant absolutely fucking nothing. But I’ve decided to believe in you, Ethan. I’ve decided to listen to you. Got that?”
Ethan stared into Dave’s eyes, his own face betraying no emotion. “Have you decided to follow me?” he asked. “If I go there, are you going with me? Is Olivia? Dr. Douglas? Anyone else?”
“You’ll never make that by yourself. God only knows how anybody could make that trip.”
“That’s no answer. Sir,” he added.
Dave took the map back from Ethan. He felt near collapse, near just lying down in a corner somewhere and peering into the Magnum’s barrel until he gathered enough courage to pull the trigger. But still…damn it…the White Mansion. And this boy…this damned strange boy who JayDee had said ought to be lying six feet under by now. This boy…maybe an experiment by either Cyphers or Gorgons? So why was he here, and what was to be done with him?
“You ask too many questions,” Dave said. “Right now I’m going back to my place and get some sleep. We’ll talk about this later…when I can think straight.” So saying, he turned away from Ethan and left the apartment, half-walking and half-staggering, with the map from the road atlas in one hand and the magnifying glass in the other.
The White Mansion, Ethan thought after Dave had gone.
Go there. It’s important. Somehow…really important.
And he asked himself, that if he knew it was somehow really important, then how come he didn’t know why? If his mind or whatever it was guiding him was only giving him bits and pieces, clues that right now made no sense…why wasn’t it giving him the whole picture, so he could understand?