The agent who’d done all the talking reached into his jacket and handed Deb some folded papers. Mal detected the tiniest smirk in the corner of the man’s mouth.
“The experiment begins this weekend. Good evening to you both.”
The Feds left, and his wife closed the door, locking the various latches and deadbolts.
“Debbie, you’re not serious.” He searched her pretty face. “Are you?”
“I think we should at least discuss it, before you make a decision for the both of us.”
“I don’t understand.” Which was as true a statement he’d ever made. “I thought—”
“That’s the problem, Mal,” she snapped. “You thought, but didn’t ask me.”
“Is it the money?”
“I wasn’t even thinking about the money.”
“So what’s there to discuss? We can’t sleep as it is. You want to go someplace where they’re purposely trying to terrify you?”
“It’s a fear study, Mal. Something you and I suffer from, every single day.”
“Exactly, so—”
“So maybe a doctor who studies fear could somehow teach us how to deal with ours.”
Mal was about to object, but caught himself. They’d both had psychiatric treatment since the Rushmore Inn. Hypnotherapy. Exposure Therapy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Interpersonal. Group. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And a pharmacy’s worth of drugs, from sleep agents to SSRIs to beta-blockers to anti-psychotics.
Nothing seemed to work. In fact, some of the treatments worsened their condition.
“You remember exposure therapy,” Mal said.
“Of course.”
They’d been subjected to shocking images of mutilations and congenital malformations in order to desensitize them. Deb had freaked out during a session, crying so uncontrollably they’d had to quit, and later that night Mal had gone to the ER, unable to stop hyperventilating, convinced he was having a heart attack.
“This seems even worse, Deb. They’re not just going to show us pictures. They’re going to try to scare us.”
“We’ll get through it,” Deb said, reaching for him again. “Just like we got through the Rushmore. But maybe we’ll learn something this time.”
Mal chewed his lower lip. The worst part about fear wasn’t the dread, it was the helplessness. The FBI agents said they’d be able to bring any items they wanted to with them for the weekend, including weapons. But the gun in Mal’s robe didn’t make him feel any safer. Quite the opposite. The very fact he owned a gun was a constant reminder of what he was so afraid of.
“I don’t know, Deb…”
“Can we discuss it, at least?” She moved a step closer to him, the hydraulic cylinders in her prosthetics whirring softly.
Mal didn’t want to discuss it. He wanted to run away, someplace where it never got dark. Where nightmares didn’t exist, both the ones in his head and the real ones.
But the longing in his wife’s eyes made his heart hurt.
“Of course, Deb. If this is something you want.”
“It is.”
Deb moved in for the hug, and he reluctantly embraced her, a thought bouncing through his mind and forcing out all others.
Be careful what you wish for, because it may come true.
Solidarity, South Carolina
Forenzi
Dr. Emil Forenzi could barely hear the phone ring above all the screaming.
“It’s okay,” Forenzi told his patient, giving him an affectionate pat on the cheek. “It’s all going to be okay.”
The screaming didn’t abate. Forenzi gave him a dose of traumesterone and the noise went down to a hoarse wheeze.
Forenzi answered the phone, located on the wall next to the EKG machine.
“I’m with a patient,” he said into the receiver. Which was unnecessary, because he was always with a patient. Even at ungodly hours like this. Who could sleep when there was so much to do?
“We have a head count for this weekend.”
“Go on.”
“Three confirmed.”
“And the others?”
“Still deciding.”
Forenzi frowned. He’d been hoping for better results.
“Which three?”
“Sara Randhurst. Moni Draper. Frank Belgium.”
Forenzi rubbed the stubble on his chin, and his eyes drifted across his laboratory. Besides his patient, and the various pieces of equipment, there was a large, glass apparatus on a stainless steel table, which looked like something out of a mad scientist movie. It was currently distilling a batch of Serum 3.
That serum, Forenzi knew, was going to win him a Nobel Prize.
Some believed that most of humanity’s conflicts, be it person-to-person or country-to-country, were based upon one possessing something the other one wanted. Land. Oil. Water. Food. Religious and political differences were used as excuses to dehumanize the enemy and grab their resources.
But Forenzi knew that this greed was bolstered by another, even more base and powerful emotion.
Fear.
Mankind reeked of fear.
This fear led to distrust, and ultimately to hate.
Being able to conquer fear meant a fresh start for the world.
“Let me know if the situation changes,” he said, then hung up.
Of the three who signed on, Dr. Belgium interested him most. A molecular biologist, he would recognize what Forenzi was doing here. It would be refreshing to talk to someone who could grasp the magnitude of this invention. Who would understand it.
He turned back to his patient, whose eyelids had drooped in sleep. Forenzi yawned sympathetically.
“You’re exhausted, my friend. So am I. We can continue the therapy tomorrow. Sleep well.”
Forenzi left the lab, walking into a hallway that looked more like a tunnel in a coal mine than the basement of a mansion. The floors were crumbling concrete, the walls lined with stacked railroad ties. There were wood ceiling braces every five meters, and Forenzi wouldn’t have doubted the bare 60w bulbs hanging from them were older than he was. As he passed beneath one, it buzzed and flickered.
One of the many ghosts of Butler House, demanding attention.
Forenzi paid it no mind. Instead, he took the hall to a fork, went right, and headed for the veterinary clinic. As he approached, he heard some lone trilling, and recognized it as Gunter’s.
Forenzi’s spirits dipped, and his pace quickened. He entered the clinic through the metal push door and beelined for Gunter’s habitat, which was situated to the right. It was several cubic meters in size, with a window of clear, unbreakable Plexiglas, the interior foliage meant to mimic a Columbian forest, with twisted, dead tree branches and fake plants.
The Panamanian Night Monkey watched his approach while upside down, hanging from a limb. Gunter was large for an A. zolalis, nearly three pounds in weight. His bushy brown fur was mottled with blood, and his enormous red eyes stared at Forenzi dispassionately.
“Gunter… Gunter… what have you done?”
Of course, Forenzi already had the answer to that. Gunter’s two cagemates, capuchins named Laurel and Hardy, were dead on the fake grass in the habitat. They’d been dismembered and eviscerated, their insides strewn across the bathing pond and staining the water pink.
“You just can’t play well with others, can you?” Forenzi shook his head and tsked.
Gunter stared, unmoving.
Aphobic.
Forenzi picked up the clipboard next to the habitat, recorded the event, and then flipped through the previous five months to get an accurate count.
“This makes twenty-eight,” he said. “You’re a regular little monkey serial killer.”
Gunter grunted, as if agreeing.
Forenzi left a note for the morning help to clean the cage, and order more monkeys. Serum 3, for all of its potential, still had some kinks to work out. There was undoubtedly a broad line between fearless and homicidal, but Forenzi hadn’t found it yet.
“I think we’ll lower your dosage,” Gunter said. “Maybe then you’ll be able to make friends.”