Max wondered how he and Newton had managed to stay sane these last few days. This thought arrowed out of the clear blue. They were still okay, seeing what they’d seen, where Ephraim and Kent and Scoutmaster Tim and maybe Shelley had cracked. He couldn’t say why that was, exactly… it wasn’t that he didn’t feel the same fear. Human beings couldn’t function in a state of perfect ongoing terror, could they? Their bodies would seize like a car with sugar in its gas tank, minds fusing shut as paralysis leeched into their bones. Constant, unending terror warped minds; brains thinned and went brittle and then snapped—that’s exactly how Max pictured it: a singing snap! like an icicle coming off a February eaves trough. It could happen to anyone. It’d happened to Eef, hadn’t it? But everyone’s built to different tolerances, and you didn’t know your breaking point until the instant you hit it.
How had Max kept that crushing fear at bay? He didn’t really know—maybe that was the trick? Maybe it was that he’d found a way to bleed it away in the quiet moments. Breathing deep, feeling it slipping from him in almost imperceptible degrees.
Maybe Newton had his own strategies—or maybe it wasn’t anything you could strategize. It came down to that flexibility of a person’s mind. An ability to withstand horrors and snap back, like a fresh elastic band. A flinty mind shattered. In this way, he was glad not to be an adult. A grown-up’s mind—even one belonging to a decent man like Scoutmaster Tim—lacked that elasticity. The world had been robbed of all its mysteries, and with those mysteries went the horror. Adults didn’t believe in old wives’ tales. You didn’t see adults stepping over sidewalk cracks out of the fear that they might somehow, some way, break their mothers’ backs. They didn’t wish on stars: not with the squinty-eyed fierceness of kids, anyway. You’ll never find an adult who believes that saying “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a mirror in a dark room will summon a dark, blood-hungry entity.
Adults were scared of different things: their jobs, their mortgages, whether they hung out with the “right people,” whether they would die unloved. These were pallid compared to the fears of a child—leering clowns under the bed and slimy monsters capering beyond the basement’s light and faceless sucking horrors from beyond the stars. There’s no 12-step or self-help group for dealing with those fears.
Or maybe there is: you just grow up.
And when you do, you surrender the nimbleness of mind required to believe in such things—but also to cope with them. And so when adults find themselves in a situation where that nimbleness is needed… well, they can’t summon it. So they fall to pieces: go insane, panic, suffer heart attacks and aneurysms brought on by fright. Why? They simply don’t believe it could be happening.
That’s what’s different about kids: they believe everything can happen, and fully expect it to.
Max knew he was at that age where disbelief began to set in. The erosion was constant. Santa Claus had gone first, then the monster in the closet. Soon he’d believe the way his folks did. Rationally.
But for now he still believed enough, and maybe that had kept him sane.
He was idly working all of this over in his mind when the screams started.
From the sworn testimony of Nathan Erikson, given before the Federal Investigatory Board in connection with the events occurring on Falstaff Island, Prince Edward Island:
Q: Please clarify something for the court, Dr. Erikson: So far as you were aware, you and Dr. Edgerton were working on a diet pill?
A: What do you mean?
Q: I’m asking specifically about the grant Dr. Edgerton received.
A: From the pharmaceutical concern, yes.
Q: And it was the only funding the Edgerton lab was receiving?
A: Yes.
Q: No.
A: Excuse me?
Q: No, it wasn’t the only funding the lab was receiving, Dr. Erikson.
A: I’m sorry, what…?
Q: Dr. Erikson, for someone who claimed to have a higher IQ than most everyone assembled at this hearing today, is it possible that you were unaware of the end goal of the very experiments you were administering?
A: Of course I know. I told you. A diet pill.
Q: Dr. Erikson, I’d like to show you something.
[Dr. Erikson is handed a piece of paper]
Q: Can you tell me what that is?
A: It’s a bank statement.
Q: It’s Dr. Edgerton’s bank statement. For the account that administers the operating costs of his lab.
A: Yes, all right.
Q: Now if you scan down, you will see the deposits made by the pharmaceutical company.
A: They’re here, yes.
Q: Now can you see the other single deposit—the one made on January second?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you tell me how much that one is for?
A: Three million dollars.
Q: Exactly?
A: Three million, fifty thousand, five hundred dollars. And forty-two cents.
Q: Can you tell me who made the deposit?
A: Is this a spelling test now? T.N.O. Printz Mauritz.
Q: Do you know what that company does, Dr. Erikson?
A: I have no idea.
Q: They are a military research firm.
A: Okay.
Q: Three years ago, they were subjected to a grand jury investigation. The company was indicted on charges of industrial espionage and selling goods to foreign despots for the purposes of cementing various puppet regimes.
A: I don’t keep up on any of that.
Q: As a company, they do not have the cleanest of hands.
A: If you say so.
Q: Dr. Erikson, may I ask you this: If Dr. Edgerton is the genius you claim he is, why couldn’t he keep the worms where they belonged—in a subject’s intestinal tract?
A: As I said, even worms are complex organisms. Terribly complex.
Q: But—and please forgive my ignorance—isn’t it the baseline nature of most tapeworms to remain in the gut?
A: Generally so, yes.
Q: Dr. Erikson, I will cut to the chase: Were you aware that Dr. Edgerton was in fact receiving competing grants? One from a biopharmaceutical company and the other from a military research firm? One of those companies was anticipating a diet pill. The other, Dr. Erikson, was anticipating a biological weapon.
A: No.
Q: Would it shock you, Dr. Erikson, to discover that I have in my possession correspondence between Dr. Edgerton and the CEO of T.N.O. Printz Mauritz discussing this very thing?
A: That would shock me a great deal, sir.
Q: Do you see how such a creature could, in certain engagements, be an ideal method of warfare? Setting ethics and humanity aside, of course?
A: I… I suppose I do.
Q: It would be traceless. It would spread rapidly: An eyedropperful into a public reservoir would do it, yes?
A: Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.
Q: It could tear a country apart in short order, yes? Cause mass hysteria, destabilization, rampant infection, riots, fear, rage, secondary bloodshed in any order. It would defy both the letter and intent of the Geneva Convention—but it’s just a hypervirulent worm, yes? Nobody knows how it came to be. Mother Nature once again works her many strange wonders to behold, yes?