Hear the Children Calling (42 page)

“I’ve just been thinking,” Peter said.

“You do a lot of thinking,” Beth retorted. “I just wish you’d talk to me.”

“I will,” Peter promised, “when I’m finished. Beth, if our mother is looking for us, I’ve gone for a walk down the road.”

Beth watched him go to the hall closet and pull on his jacket. It was strange how he referred to their parent as “our mother,” as if to stress Natalie was someone they shared.

Outside, Peter began to walk down the road to the boat house. With Halloween just a day away, almost all the Cape Cod homes along the road were decorated with scarecrows, pumpkins, and ghouls. Halloween was something new to Peter, since they rarely celebrated
holidays at the center. Ghouls, on the other hand, were quite familiar.

After the last house on the road, there was a twenty-yard stretch of foxtails, and then the remains of a long-abandoned boat house. Its roof was almost completely gone, the windows had been shot out with slingshots and BB guns, and the big doors hung crookedly on their hinges. When they had passed it for the first time on their way to Laura’s house, Danny had warned the children that it was a dangerous place and they were never to go inside.

Peter looked left and right down the road, and once he determined he was alone, he pulled one of the doors open. He walked inside and studied his surroundings by the sunlight that seeped in through cracks in the rotted wood walls. The floor was cement, sloping down into the water that still sloshed into the house from the bay. Peter went to its edge and watched clumps of debris move gently back and forth. There was a strong smell of rot in here; it was icy cold and dark.

It was a perfect place to kill Dr. Adams.

There were hooks along several of the walls and shelves that had once held boat equipment. But what interested Peter the most was an old staircase that led to a three-foot ledge. A rusted clamming rake explained what had been stored up there, out of the way. Carefully, Peter climbed up the stairs. He was light enough so that they wouldn’t break under his weight, but still he held fast to hooks he found on the wall as he walked out to the end of the ledge. He wouldn’t let himself look down, even though the water was barely ten feet below him. Memories of being hung upside down from the watch tower tried to crowd his mind. He forced them away and sat down, rolling himself into a ball.

What happened in the next half-hour was not done by the little boy Ralph Colpan had loved so much and Stuart Morse had died for, that Natalie and Beth Morse adored. It was done by a child who had suffered years
of subtle torture at the hands of a madman whose twisted mind helped him justify all his crimes. It was done by a child who saw no end to his nightmare other than this.

The door creaked open and sunlight poured into the boat house. Peter stiffened—and looked down at the shining white hair of the doctor. His stark eyes seemed to glow in the dark.

“I’m up here, Dr. Adams,” Peter said.

The doctor looked up at him, the pale eyes going wide. He opened his arms and beckoned the child down. But Peter shook his head vehemently.

“I’m scared,” he said, a tremor in his voice. “I think they might come looking for me, and I don’t want them to find me.”

“Then we must hurry,” Dr. Adams said. “Let me take you back with the others and we’ll start all over again.”

Peter stared down at him. “Come up and get me, Dr. Adams.”

“You can walk down by yourself,” the doctor insisted. “Those stairs won’t support me.”

“Yes, they will,” Peter insisted. “They’re sturdy. I want you to come up here, Dr. Adams. I want you to help me down. I’m afraid of high places, you know.”

The doctor’s eyes thinned now and his jaw set firmly. “Yes, I suppose you are,” he said. “We’ll have to work on eradicating that, won’t we?”

Peter nodded.

“Come up and get me, Dr. Adams.”

The voice was different this time, strangely deep for a young boy. Almost guttural.

Dr. Adams started toward the stairs, then froze. “What do you think you’re doing, Michael?” he demanded.

“Walk up the stairs.”

Deep. Guttural. Unable to be ignored.

Dr. Adams felt his feet lifting up. He tried to resist, but before he knew it, he was at the top of the stairs. He gazed down the ledge at the small boy on the other
end. None of the children had ever used their powers to control him. He was stronger. He had perfected Neolamane and had complete power over its subjects. He had to resist.

“Walk over to me, Dr. Adams. Come and get me. Come here . . . c’mon . . .”

In his mind, the doctor fought the child’s demands. But his body obeyed and he walked slowly across the ledge. How had Michael become so powerful? Was it because he had left the center? Suddenly, Adams smiled a delighted smile. What exciting possibilities for study—letting the children infiltrate the real world. Perhaps their powers were boundless, and if he could turn them over to the armed forces when they were of legal fighting age, what formidable weapons they would be. Oh, it was almost too exciting to . . .

Adams jerked his head up, looking into Michael’s eyes. The boy had said something, but he hadn’t heard. He stopped short to find a rusted lobster trap in his way. Its wooden handle was broken in half, and many of the tines were missing or rusted. Adams started to kick it away, but Peter called out in his strange voice: “Pick up the rake, Dr. Adams.”

The doctor obeyed without question.

“Now, stand there and listen to me. Don’t talk and don’t move.”

In an instant, Peter’s expression changed from one of grim coldness to the twisted features of a heartbroken child. Tears welled up in his green eyes, and his lower lip quivered. His voice was his own.

“I hate you, Dr. Adams,” he said. “I hate you for taking me away from my real parents, for killing my mom from the center, and for killing my real dad. I hate you ’cause now my dad Ralph is in big trouble and he’ll never get out of jail no matter what anyone says and I’ll never see him again. You hurt me with those stupid wires and tests and that stupid big green chair and making me hurt other people and animals and telling me I was bad if I didn’t and telling me you
were gonna take me to the watch tower and making my friends do bad things, too.”

After the rambling sentence, he gulped in a shaky breath, then went on.

Dr. Adams remained silent and frozen.

“You took children from their real parents because some medicine you gave the mothers made weird babies. Kids like me. My dad gave me a file he stole, Dr. Adams. There weren’t any names, but I could guess who was who. Most of us are telepaths, aren’t we? Well, I’m gonna send thought messages to the other kids, and Laura and Ryan are gonna do it, too. You know who Laura and Ryan are, Dr. Adams? That’s Jenny and Tommy’s real names. And the other kids are gonna know their real names, too, and you aren’t gonna stop me because you’re gonna die. I’m gonna kill you.”

And suddenly, the child’s voice turned diabolical. “Pick up the rake, Dr. Adams. Pick it up.”

In jerking movements that showed he was fighting every step of the way, Adams picked up the rusted rake.

“Turn the points up to your chest. Stab the rake into your chest, Dr. Adams. Kill yourself the way you killed my real father and my mom. Kill yourself. Kill yourself!”

The doctor pulled the rake back, gazing at the quivering tines, his mouth dropped open in a silent scream. This was impossible. He was too brilliant a scientist to have been tricked by a ten-year-old boy. A boy who was one of his subjects. He wouldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t!

“Peter!”

At the sound of Beth’s voice, the spell was broken. In an instant, Dr. Adams jerked around and lost his footing. With a long scream he plunged into the mucky, icy water below the ledge. There was a splash, then silence. Peter moved toward the wall, covering his face. He didn’t want to look.

But Beth looked; she screamed and screamed.

Dr. Adams had fallen onto the rusted tines of the clamming rake. He floated facedown in the dark water, his body resting over the length of the rake as if it were a float. The tines pointed up toward the neck, where blood began to gush out with the flow of the water.

Beth’s screams brought the adults running. Natalie, without thinking of danger to herself, rushed up to her sobbing child and took him in her arms. Kate kept the other children out of the boat house while Danny went to look at the man floating in the water. He walked down the cement ramp until he was waist-deep, then pulled the body back with him. When he turned him over on the cement, a sick feeling congealed in his stomach. The rake had shoved up under his chin, deep into his head. With his mouth still open, one of the tines was visible. Danny jerked off his coat and covered the body.

But before he did, Natalie took a look at it and let out a cry. “That’s Adams. That’s Dr. Adams.”

Danny looked up at the woman, holding her son tightly. “We—we’d better call the police,” he said softly. “Peter, come down now. Come down and tell us what the hell just happened here.”

Epilogue

One Year Later

W
ITH HER ARM AROUND HER SON
, J
ILL WAITED AT THE
entrance to Disney World and watched for their friends to arrive. In the year since Adams died, there had been no contact with others from the LaMane Center. To the frustration of everyone involved, the case was put on the back burner for lack of evidence. When Adams
died, it seemed the whole sickening affair died with him. It would only live on in his victims, in the innocent children who had suffered at his hands, until another child came forward in search of his real past. But the past of three particular children—Laura, Peter, and Ryan—was something that the adults in their lives were trying to deal with. In spite of the memories, the children insisted upon keeping contact with one another. They had grown too close during their ordeal to forget their friendship.

There had been an investigation after Dr. Adams’ death. Peter had insisted he killed the doctor, but the police concluded from Beth’s eyewitness testimony that the man had intended to use the clam rake to kill the boy. Beth told them she saw him fall off the ledge. No matter what Peter said, no one would let him believe he had actually murdered the doctor. Peter, Beth, Natalie, and the Blairs had gone home to put their lives back together. Frequent letters and occasional phone calls convinced both the Emersons and Jill Sheldon that Peter was coming along as well as their own children.

“Wait until Peter sees the surprise we have for him,” Jill whispered.

Ryan broke his hand free and pointed. “There they are! There they are!”

He waved both arms over his head, and Laura Emerson came running. Beth and Peter followed, but the little Emerson boys were held back by their father. There was a lot of giggling and hugging until Beth said, “I can’t believe you guys are here.”

Kate and Danny and Natalie reached the group and hands were shook all around.

Once they were inside the park, Chris tugged at Danny’s leg and asked, “Where’s Mickey and Donald? I want to see Mickey! Is Goofy here? Are we gonna go on rides?”

Joey squealed with delight. “Mickey Mouse!”

The adults laughed and a knowing look was exchanged between Jill and Natalie.

“Let me ask someone,” Jill said, “There’s a man over there.” She walked through the crowd, making Peter ask why she had to talk to that man in particular. When he turned around, the answer became obvious.

“Dad! Dad!” Peter yelled so loudly other people turned to stare curiously. But he was unaware of their presence as he raced toward Ralph Colpan’s open arms. Ralph, who had not seen his child since he was taken from the hospital in New Mexico, gathered the boy up and covered him with kisses. Tears brimmed in the women’s eyes, and Danny gazed at the scene in amazement.

“How . . . how . . . ?” He couldn’t choke out the question.

“It took a lot of work,” Natalie explained. “But since the FBI was not pursuing the case, and since the Morses refused to press charges against Ralph Colpan, there was little reason to keep him locked up. With Lou Vermont’s help and influence, we were able to have him released on probation. The judge was able to see that Ralph was as much a victim as the others, and he let him go on the stipulation that he come forward to testify if ever the other members of the LaMane Center are found.”

“You kept this a secret from Tommy?” Kate asked.

“From Peter,” Natalie corrected. “I was afraid to say anything in case Ralph wanted to cut himself off completely. You can see what a fool I was to believe that.”

“This is an incredible day,” Kate said, shaking her head.

Beth and Laura and Ryan hugged one another and jumped up and down. “It’s the best, best day ever,” they cried out in unison.

The adults nodded. Maybe, just maybe, things were going to be all right.

As the happy group walked into the park, a man turned and walked away from the door of a gift shop. He wore a fringed suede jacket and tattered jeans. His face was plain, except for one startling feature—blue
eyes that were so pale they seemed colorless. He followed the group for a while, but when they stopped at the gate to one of the rides, he ducked back into a crowd.

His mind was full of sick thoughts.

I’ll get them, Father. I’ll get them back again, and I’ll continue your work, no matter how long it takes.

Gregory Adams, son of the late Lincoln Adams and his most successful experiment, stared at the children, especially the red-haired boy who had murdered his father. Michael Colpan would pay for that.

Gregory listened to the children’s laughter, hating the sound of it.

Also available as eBooks from Clare McNally:
Come Down Into Darkness
Cries of the Children
Ghost House
Ghost House Revenge
Good Night Sweet Angel