Seeing Black (26 page)

Oliver didn’t wait for Alexander to reply. He pulled
Alexander back and nodded at Paul, conveying to him to have a seat,
which he did. Alexander reluctantly sat as well. Once all the men
had somewhat composed themselves, Alexander repeated,
“Explain.”

“I never intended for Jill to get hurt. I had to
keep up an illusion of not knowing Jill with Brian. It was the only
way to keep her safe. It was the only way Brian would open up to me
and tell about his plans.”

“Who the fuck is Brian? You need to start
explaining.”

“I’ll start from the beginning, but for now, forget
Brian. He’s the least of the problems at the moment. Have you ever
heard of The Stargate Project and Project MKULTRA?”

Oliver nodded. “Wasn’t that some sort of conspiracy
theory from some movie?”

Agitated, Paul said, “No. It wasn’t a conspiracy
theory. It’s a fact.”

“So this is about some bullshit sci-fi experiment,”
Alexander said.

“Bullshit?” Paul looked bemused. “After all you’ve
been through with Jillian, you’re going to sit there and question
paranormal phenomenon?”

“I suppose you have a point. Go on.” Alexander
crossed his arms over his chest and sat back, impatiently.

“During the Cold War, in response to the Soviet
research in paranormal phenomena, the correct term being
parapsychology, the United States, so they wouldn’t be outdone,
began their own program. After Stalin, the ban on paranormal
research was lifted in the USSR, and the KGB began all sorts of
paranormal research ranging from telekinesis to life-after-death
studies. All the studies were for the sole purpose of creating
psychic super weapons. The U.S. wouldn’t be outdone, so they
created various organizations, most under the Defense Intelligence
Agency, better known as the DIA to research all sorts of paranormal
phenomena. Rocco spearheaded the funding of The Stargate Project
and Rocco’s half-brother brother, Dr. Josef Kraus, headed the
scientific and medical aspect of MKULTRA.”

“Which are?” Oliver asked.

“Which
were
the United States’ version of the
Soviet’s Institute for Brain Research in Petrograd, a top secret
experiment for the research of paranormal activity for the creation
of weapons and defense.”

‘This is all sounding a little too—”

“Strange,” Paul interrupted Oliver.

“Actually, I was going to say paranoid conspiracy
theory-ish,” Oliver said.

“Don’t beat around the bush, Oliver. You were going
to say this sounds like a major load of bullshit.”

“Well, yeah. It kind of does.” Oliver agreed.

Paul sat back on the chair. “I know. It sounds like
something straight out of a Dan Brown book, but it’s true and I can
prove it. Let me just finish the damn story.”

The twins nodded.

“In these projects, people were given mescaline,
heroin, LSD, and other psychotropic drugs and then hypnotized in an
effort to produce what was called psychic driving. I know this is a
lot of information, and I am trying to get to the point without
going into too much detail about the science. Suffice it to say,
things got real bad real fast. When the experiments didn’t work,
the doctors were ordered to lobotomize or electroshock the test
subjects into forgetting the experiments. By the way, most of these
experiments were performed on unwilling participants: mostly
soldiers, prisoners, and prostitutes.”

“This is all very informative, but what the hell
does this have to do with my Jill?” Alexander asked.

“So,” Paul ignored him and continued. “In the early
seventies, these projects were halted. First, it was found to be
inhumane, and further, the funding stopped since nothing concrete
came out of the research, but Rocco and his brother didn’t
stop.”

“Although, right now, they have no powers?”

“The only thing I think they still have, or at least
Rocco still has, is his ability to control Jill’s emotions, which
explains why she’d never seemed frightened of him. And it’s the
reason she can’t seem to get out of Wonderland.”

“Pardon?” Oliver asked.

“Wonderland?” Alexander repeated.

“I’ll explain in a minute. Let me get back to Josef
and Rocco. The government halted the research that they’d been
working on for years, but Rocco and Josef wouldn’t just give up, so
they continued the research on their own. The way that they were
able to continue their very expensive testing and over-the-top
lifestyle was by using their powers to gain wealth. You see Josef
and Rocco were able to see the winning lotto tickets and the
outcome of a few races, but there are only so many times a person
can win stuff before it becomes suspicious. That’s when Esther
became involved.”

“Esther? As in Jillian’s mother, Esther?”

“Yes. As in Jillian’s mother,” Paul deadpanned.
“According to her journals, she willingly helped Rocco. She was in
love with him, but she also liked the money. It started off simple.
She’d be the one who purchased the ticket, went to the races, and
so on and so forth. But they started to get greedy. If you think
this sounds like some sort of James Bond movie so far, you’ve got
no idea.”

“Let me guess. They stole a shitload of money from
the big Columbian drug lords?” Oliver interjected.

“Yes. Exactly. How the hell did you know about
that?” Paul asked.

“It’s mentioned in Helen’s journals.”

“It never occurred to me that Helen may have known
the entire story.”

“How’d you know about it?” Alexander asked.

“It’s all here,” Paul grabbed one of the notebooks
that he’d thrown on the table and slid it to Alexander. “It was
Esther’s safety net if Rocco or Josef ever found her. Let’s face
it. Esther was a thief. I know it’s blunt, but she was money
hungry, had questionable morals, wanted to live the life of the
rich, but she wasn’t a murderer. When the men died, that’s when she
got scared.”

“Helen’s journal does say Esther left because she
was scared of Rocco. It says it a lot, but we didn’t know the
extent of it until we read the passages about the drug deal gone
bad and the murder,” Oliver said.

“Does Jill know that her mother helped commit all
those crimes? Did you tell her?” Alexander asked.

“No. I didn’t want to tell her that her mother was a
thief. It’s not a burden I wanted to put on her, especially not
now. When we get her out, I’ll tell her. But she knows everything
else.”

“Esther wasn’t exactly a great person, then?”

“I’m biased on that. Esther may have known about
Rocco’s big secret, but she never thought Rocco would physically
hurt anyone. You see he continued his research on his own long
after the project was terminated. In the mid-eighties, when they
kept hitting dead ends in their research, Rocco switched his test
subjects from adults to children. Esther didn’t know any of this,
by the way. Obviously, parents weren’t lining up to have their
children tested in some paranormal, mumbo-jumbo experiment, so he
used orphans.” Paul sat back and crossed his arms before he
continued. “I was one of those orphans.”

Paul certainly had the twins’ attention now.
Alexander leaned forward and Oliver sat up straighter. They were
all ears.

“I was eight years old. My parents died in a car
accident. Rocco came to the orphanage and fostered me. When I
arrived at his home, he already had other children who had been
there for years. At first, the experiments were what I thought to
be silly card games. He or Josef would look at a card, and I had to
concentrate and guess which one it was he was looking at. The year
that I lived with him, there must have been six other children
ranging in age from six to thirteen years old. As time went on, the
experiments became more intense. Sometimes they involved sleep
deprivation and other times sensory deprivation. They were
extremely horrid. He conducted them in a laboratory in the basement
of one of his homes. Some of the other kids, Jason, for example, he
was given a daily shot of something that must have hurt because
Jason cried every time he had to get that shot. I remember how
Jason became super hyper one day and couldn’t stop running around.
Looking back, they must have given him some sort of speed or
adrenaline. After three days of being sleep deprived and running
around rampant, the boy died. One of the other kids found him dead
on the playground outside the house. Jason was the oldest one of
us. A few other kids began losing their memories. I remember that
there was a point when they couldn’t even remember their own names.
Those kids were given pills in addition to the tests that we all
had to perform. There were tests as simple as the card games and as
scary as being dropped off in the middle of nowhere at night and
being expected to find our way back using only our thoughts. We all
failed every time and were picked up by Josef the next day and
punished by having more tests.”

Alexander was getting impatient. He wanted to get to
the bottom line. Jillian. She was the bottom line. “Get to the
point, Black.”

Paul was losing his patience with Alexander, as
well. “I’m trying to get there, Jacobs. Fuck. But you need to hear
the entire story.”

“Fine, but just answer me this before you continue.
Is she safe? Is she okay?”

“I wouldn’t say she’s safe, but, yes, she’s okay.
Physically, she’s fine. She thinks she’s going to see you
today.”

“Wait! What? I’m going to see her today?” Alexander
started to feel a weight lift of his shoulders, but just as it
began to lift, it was pushed back down when Paul continued.

“I have been seeing her almost daily now, but, no,
you aren’t going to see her today. She only thinks she’s going to
see you.” Alexander stood, fists clenched again. “Just sit down.
Let me finish my story. It’s the only way you’ll understand what’s
going on with Jillian.” Paul stood and gestured towards the chair.
Surprising even himself, Alexander complied and sat. “As I was
saying, when I noticed I was the only one who hadn’t been given
drugs or shots, I began getting frightened. I knew it was just a
matter of time. I had gotten lucky that they had experimented on me
without meds, even if those experiments were horrible. Imagine
locking a kid up in a dark four-by-four room for two days in order
to deprive him of most thoughts other than self-preservation and
then asking him what fucking tarot card you were holding in your
hand.” Paul was looking lost in thought and took a moment before
continuing. “Anyway, my salvation came one morning as I played
outside.”

“They let you out?” Alexander asked.

“Yes. When we weren’t ‘working,’ they would let us
play outside, and they had tutors that would come to the house. We
weren’t allowed to talk to them about what happened in the
basement, though.”

“Jesus.” Oliver whispered.

Paul nodded, as if agreeing. “Anyway, Esther came in
one morning to see Rocco.”

“Esther?” Alexander asked.

“Yes. We had never seen her before. She saved my
life. That’s why I can’t see her as anything but my guardian angel.
By this time, there were only two of us left, the other being
Raquel, my sister. Esther looked frightened. She was pregnant with
Jill. I remember when she saw me she looked surprised and came over
and spoke to me. She was so sweet. She asked me what I was doing
there and if I was hurt. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to tell her
the truth, so I lied and told her everything was okay. But when she
saw Raquel, who couldn’t even remember her own name, I suppose she
became suspicious. The next day, she came to see me again, but this
time she was in a hurry. She told me we were leaving town and we
couldn’t tell anyone. It all happened so fast. I met Helen and her
husband, Matthew, who ushered my sister and me quickly into a car.
Remember that I was young and it was all very fast and scary. I
wasn’t completely sure what was happening except that I felt, for
the first time, safe. I remember Helen talking to Matthew about
Esther, and they were nervous for her. She had stayed behind with
Rocco to keep up the appearance that everything was fine, but
within an hour, I was sitting in an airplane on my way to Thailand
where I lived with Liam Reynolds. Esther talks a lot about that
evening in the journal. Apparently when Josef found out we were
gone, he looked everywhere for us. He never suspected Esther’s
involvement, because she kept up the charade of the happy pregnant
girlfriend. Raquel and I lived with Reynolds, a doctor and
ex-boyfriend of Esther, until I was seventeen and Liam passed away.
Esther had shipped most of her belongings, as well as her journals
to Liam’s home before she left Texas. Then, ironically, the plane
that Esther and Jill were on crashed on the way to meet Liam in
Thailand, so I never got to see her again. Liam, who I consider to
be my father, helped Raquel and I change our last names to Black so
that I wouldn’t ever be found. He also helped Raquel with her
memory. She never recovered any of the memories from the time of
her birth to the time she was ten, which is when we arrived in
Thailand. I suppose, those are memories best forgotten.”

“So you knew Esther?”

“For a brief moment, yes. I owe her my survival and
that of Raquel. She wrote, in detail, all of Rocco’s misdoings
including the murder, the heist, the testing—everything. She even
implicated herself. As I said earlier, I think she was going to use
it to blackmail him if he ever found her or threatened Jill. Her
big fear was that he’d try to get his hands on Jill. Her leaving
with that secret, with her knowledge, scared the shit out of Rocco
and Josef.”

“My God, he’s killed a lot of people,” Oliver
said.

“And stole a shitload of money,” Alexander said.

“Yes, and Esther knew all of this. She was the only
one who could ever implicate them.”

Alexander chimed in, “Back to Jill. Why did you use
her? That text?”