314 Book 2 (31 page)

The younger nurse did as she was told, but was more frightened than Helen. She was skittish and co
wered from Michael’s aim, terrified the gun might accidentally go off.

“Point the gun somewhere else,” said Helen. “Stop sticking it in our faces.”

“You’re not the one in charge here, lady,” said Michael.

“We both used to be ER nurs
es,” said Helen. “We’ve seen our fair share of accidental shootings, so do our nerves a favor and put the gun away.”

Helen embraced her frightened coworker while continuing to glare at Michael.

“Fine, whatever,” said Michael as he put the gun back in his waistband. “Just don’t forget that I’ve got it. Do either of you have a car outside?”

“I do,” said Helen.

“Good, you’re giving it to me.”

“Like hell I am,” said the old nurse.

“Do I need to get the gun back out?” Michael reached for the grip.

“No, I’m sorry, you can take my car. What are you planning on doing?”

“You two are going to help me get my boy out of here.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” said Helen.
“You can’t take him away from here. You don’t know…”

“I’m not arguing with you about this, lady. Just do what you’re told.
We’ll take the elevator up.” He watched impatiently as the two nurses prepared the bed for transfer. They unhooked the latches that anchored the wheels and then started slowly pushing the gurney toward the door.

“Hurry up. Come on, move it,” said Michael as they guided the bed thr
ough the room and out into the hall. The bed’s wheels squeaked incessantly as they went to the elevator. Once in, Michael leaned over his son and whispered to his boy, “You’re doing good, pal. Daddy came back for you. Daddy loves you. Daddy’s going to take you home.”

The sixteenth anniversary of the Widowsfield disappearance is fast approaching. I hope this year goes by the same as the last five: Uneventful.

I escaped Widowsfield before Oliver had a chance to test his theory. He’d been using my sketches to recreate the town, and he spared no expense to put everything in its proper place. He spent all of February and March of 2007 bringing in construction workers and equipment to rebuild Widowsfield.

I played my part, and pretended to be diligent about recording the details about the town in that notebook, but I was trying to alter as many things as I could. I had no idea if it would do any good, but Oliver’s determination to get everything right convinced me to make sure he got a lot of it wrong.

Food was provided, and I was receiving weekly checks made out to ‘Cash’
from Oliver. By the end of my employment with Cada E.I.B., I had amassed a sizeable sum, but never had the chance to cash any of the checks. Part of the job description required that I stay in Widowsfield throughout the time leading up to March 14
th
. Oliver claimed it was because they couldn’t risk word getting out about what was going on, but he never made the construction workers stay there.

Almost every night Oliver would sit down with me and review my sketches. There had been some photos of Widowsfield after the incident, and we used those pictures to make sure the descriptions we had of the scenes were accurate. Occasionally the pictures would prove part of my sketch wrong, and we’d have to debate whether or not to alter the drawing. Then he would make copies of the pages that he’d hand out to the construction workers.

Piece by piece, the puzzle was being put back together again, and I was terrified that once it was finished, the creatures hiding in the walls would be freed. I’ve never been more frightened of anything in my life.

I stood on the shore of the Jackson Reservoir after sneaking back into Widowsfield in 2007,
which was my first year there, and was terrified that Oliver would succeed. I waited and waited, but nothing ever happened. I’ve been returning ever since, and I’m confident Oliver is still in there somewhere, reviewing my sketches, and trying to figure out where he went wrong.

Inside Cada E.I.B.’s Compound

March 13
th, 2012

“I don’t know anything about him,” said Paul as he stared down the barrel of Oliver’s pistol. He was surprised by how calm he was. No one had ever pointed a gun at him before, although he once had a knife pulled on him at a bar, and he always wondered what reaction he would have to it. Of course, the fact that he was strapped to a gurney that had been turned perpendicular to the ground played a big part in how he reacted. What else could he do but sit and stare at the gun?

“You brought him up,” said Oliver. His already pale skin had turned even whiter, and sweat had formed on his brow. He blinked rapidly, a symptom of how nervous he was. “What do you know about him? You need to hurry up. We don’t have much time.”

“Much time before what?” asked Paul.

“Before someone comes looking for Tom,” said Oliver as he motioned back at the dead guard.
“The others went to the reservoir, but they could come back at any time.”

“Let me down and I’ll tell you what I know,” said Paul.

“Not a chance.”

“Then why would I help you?”

Oliver was frustrated and huffed before answering. “Because they’re going to kill you and your friends. You heard what Tom said. They’re going to drown you in the reservoir to keep the locals from suspecting anything. Don’t think it’s the first time they’ve done it, either. A whole lot of nosy people end up tipping over in their boats out on the lakes around here. The catfish usually eat the bodies, and all that washes up are little bits of bone and clothes.”

“Is that what happened to the people in this town?” asked Paul. “Did you drown all of them.”

Oliver shook his head and grumbled in frustration. “No, for God’s sake. You really don’t have any damn clue what you’ve gotten yourself into, do you?”

“Why don’t you cut me down and clue me in?”

“I’m not going to let you go,” said Oliver.

“Then I’m not helping you
.”

“But they’re going to drown you and your friends!”
Oliver used the gun to point back at Tom’s corpse.

“You’re the only one here I’m a hundred percent sure is a murderer. Why should I trust you?”

Oliver was about to offer a retort, but stopped and sighed before nodding. “Fine, fine. I don’t have time to argue with you. But just remember who has the gun here. Okay? Don’t try anything stupid.”

The scientist tucked his pistol ba
ck into his waistband and then undid the restraints on Paul’s ankles. He stood back up and then bit his lip as he looked at the large, strong, tattooed prisoner. “If you do anything to me, you’ll be killing both of us and all of your friends in the process. Do you understand?”

“I don’t understand a damn thing that’s going on in this place, but I do know it doesn’t do me any good to beat your ass.” Paul winked at the scrawny, bearded scientist and added, “At least not yet.”

Oliver undid the buckles around Paul’s wrists and the big man wobbled as he stepped forward. Oliver was going to catch him, but then backed away, frightened of falling for a ruse. Paul staggered and dropped to his knees hard. He thudded down on the tile.

“Fuck, man. Thanks for the help,” said Paul as he forced himself to stand. He felt weaker than
he expected.

“Sorry, I was worried you’d go for the gun.” Oliver took the gun back out from his waistband and inspected it.

Paul rubbed his wrists where the buckles had been choking off his circulation. “How many guards are out at the reservoir?”

Oliver made Paul go into the hallway first and stayed several feet behind, the gun pointed at the burly man’s back. “Just three,
but there’re a couple nurses in the basement here.”

“Three guards?” asked Paul. “That’s it?”

“Turn left.” Oliver instructed Paul on where to go in the dark complex. “They pulled support for the project. Tom was going to shut it down. They said too much money had been spent, and cut all my funding.”

“What project?” asked Paul. “What the hell is it that you guys were doing here?”

“I’m the one asking the questions,” said Oliver. “Tell me what you know about The Skeleton Man. What happened to you when you were unconscious?”

“It’s all a bit muddled,” said Paul. “I don’t know what was a dream and what was real.”

“It was all real,” said Oliver. “Tell me everything.”

“It wasn’t all real,” said Paul. “Not if you’re telling the truth about my friends being alive. Because I saw them die. I saw them bleeding on the floor. I watched
them get shot.”

“That was after he got to you,” said Oliver.

“After who got me? Tom?”

“No, no,” said Oliver, perturbed that Pau
l wasn’t following him. “After The Skeleton Man got you. None of your friends were killed. This is going to be too tough for you to comprehend, so just do me a favor and tell me everything that you remember.”

“What’s going to be too tough for me to comprehend?” Paul stopped as he asked the question. “Don’t treat me like an idiot. Tell me
what’s going on here. Help me make sense of this shit.”

“Okay, okay.” Oliver glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Just keep moving.” Paul did as he was told and Oliver struggled to figure out an easy way to explain what was going on. “Have you ever heard of the fourth dimension?”

“Sort of,” said Paul. “But probably not in a scientific way. I remember them saying that movie theaters wanted to give people a 4D experience.”

“No, no, for Christ’s sake, nothing like that at all. I’m talking about real science here, not market
ing bullshit. Think of a basic graph, with a ‘y’ and an ‘x’ axis.”

“I’m pretty shitty at math,” said Paul.

“This isn’t math,” said Oliver. “Do you know what a graph looks like, with the line going up on one side and another line perpendicular to it on the bottom?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“That’s representing two dimensions, height and width. Then you add in depth. Okay? Imagine drawing a line moving diagonal, away from where the other two lines meet. Are you following me?”

“Sure,” said Paul.

“That third line represents the third dimension. That’s what they’re talking about when they say that a movie is in 3D. The images you see have depth to them.”

“What
does this have to do with…”

“I’m getting to it,” said Oliver, like a teacher at his wit’s end with a student. “The fourth dimension is time. It’s hard to explain how to visualize it, and you can’t do it with a simple graph example, but time influences everything. It’s supposed to be a constant, but it’
s not. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“Nope
,” said Paul.

“This entity that you
met, the one they refer to as The Skeleton Man, he seems to exist independent of the fourth dimension. Imagine someone existing independent of the third dimension, and they can just zip all over the place on that graph without being forced to adhere to the laws the rest of us do. It’s almost as if he can twist time around to confuse the people stuck in there with him.”

“Stuck in where?” asked Paul.

“In Widowsfield, or more precisely, in Widowsfield as it existed immediately after the cord was cut.”

They reached an elevator, but saw that it was already in use. It was headed up.

“Shit,” said Oliver. “Someone’s coming up here. Come on, let’s go to the stairs.”

“
You said something about a cord. What does that mean?” asked Paul.

“Go down those stairs,” said Oliver as they came
to a staircase. There were already muddy footprints that led down the stairs, and Paul realized that someone had recently walked through here. The halls were lit only by faint caged emergency backup bulbs, but he was fairly certain the tracks were fresh. He debated warning Oliver, but then the thin man urgently continued with his explanation. “Don’t worry about the cord, forget I said it. I’m just referring to the moment when the creature became sentient. It happened in 1996…”

“On March 14
th
, at 3:14,” said Paul.

“You’re close,” said Oliver.
They were both speaking in whispers, cautious after seeing that at least one person was still in the facility. “But off by fourteen minutes.”

“Then how does that number factor into all of this? Why is the
name of the company you work for code for pi?”

“It’s a math thing,” said Oliver. “The company was founded by scientists, funded by scientists, and run by scientists from all over the world. They wanted to choose a name that celebrated the universal beauty of mathematics, so they settled on a symbol that has been used by other like-minded individuals throughout history.
Some of the founders were from Europe, so the name fit well. It allowed them to mask the whole operation as if it were just a European Investment Bank. The name fit so well. You see, mathematicians love to hide little puzzles in their work, as a sort of nod to the people that come along after and figure out the codes. It’s something that spans the breadth of human history. I bet you’ve never heard about how the Great Pyramid is a coded message sent from almost four thousand years ago to the people of today.”