Strangers (71 page)

“I’ll volunteer for the first team,” Jack said. “I just have to fetch my Cherokee from the hills, where I left it. Who’ll go with me?”

“I will,” Jorja said at once, then became aware of the weight of her daughter on her lap. “Uh, that is, if someone’ll let Marcie sleep in their room tonight.”

“No problem,” Faye said. “She can stay with Ernie and me.”

Jack said they ought to divide their numbers further, and Brendan Cronin volunteered to join him and Jorja on the first team. The priest’s response triggered a peculiar feeling in Jorja, a pang she would not identify as disappointment until much later.

Because everyone else had errands to run early tomorrow, the second team was composed of only Ned and Sandy. A rendezvous between the teams was set for four o’clock in the morning at the Arco Mini-Mart.

“If you get there first,” Jack said, “for God’s sake don’t buy a Hamwich. Okay, I guess that’s it. We should get moving.”

“Not quite yet,” Ginger said. The physician folded her hands and looked down at her interlaced fingers, collecting her thoughts. “Since this afternoon, when Brendan first arrived, when the rings appeared on his and Dom’s hands, when the motel office was filled with that strange noise and the light…I’ve been chewing over everything we’ve been able to learn, trying to make those bizarre phenomena fit in somehow. I’ve hit on an explanation for some of it; not all, but some of it.”

Everyone expressed an eagerness to hear the theory, half-formed though it might be.

Ginger said, “As different as our dreams are, one element links all of them: the moon. Okay. Our other dreams—decon suits, IV needles, beds with restraining straps—proved to be based on real experiences, real threats. In fact, they weren’t dreams but memories surfacing in the
form of dreams. So it seems reasonable to suppose the moon also featured prominently in whatever happened to us, that the moon, too, is a memory trying to surface in our dreams. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Dom said, and everyone else nodded.

“We’ve seen how Marcie’s lunar obsession changed to a fascination with a
scarlet
moon,” Ginger continued. “And Jack’s told us that, a couple nights ago, the ordinary moonlight in his own nightmare turned into a bloody glow. None of the rest of us has dreamed of a red moon yet, but I submit that the appearance of this scarlet image in Marcie’s and Jack’s dreams is proof that it’s also a memory. In other words, on the night of July 6, we saw something that made the moon turn red. And the apparitional light, which sometimes fills Brendan’s bedroom, which some of us witnessed today in the motel office, is a strange sort of reenactment of what happened to the real moon on the night in July. The apparitional light is a message meant to nudge our memories.”

“Message,” Jack said. “All right. But who the devil’s
sending
the message? Where’s the light come from? How is it generated?”

“I’ve got an idea about that,” Ginger said. “But let me take this one step at a time. First, let’s consider what might’ve happened to make the moon turn red that night.”

Jorja listened, as did the others, with interest at first and then with growing uneasiness, while Ginger got up from her chair and, pacing, outlined an unnerving explanation.

•

Ginger Weiss wholeheartedly embraced the scientific worldview. To her, the universe unfailingly operated by the rules of logic and reason, and no mystery could long endure once attacked in a logical fashion. But unlike some in the scientific community—and
many
in the medical community—she did not believe that a vivid imagination was necessarily a hindrance to logic and reason. Otherwise, she might not have devised the theory she now conveyed to the others in the Tranquility Grille.

It was a pretty strange theory, and she was nervous about how the others would receive it. So she paced to the jukebox, over to the service counter, back to the table, moving constantly as she talked:

“The men who dealt with us in the first day or two of imprisonment were wearing decontamination suits designed to handle biological risks. They must’ve been worried we were infected with something. So perhaps part of what we saw was a scarlet cloud of biological contaminant. When it passed overhead, it turned the moon red.”

“And we were all infected with some strange disease,” Jorja said.

Ginger said, “That may be why, yesterday at the special place along
the highway, I had the memory-flash of Dom shouting, ‘It’s inside me. It’s inside me.’ That would have been a logical thing for him to shout if, that night, he had found himself caught up in a red cloud of some contaminant and realized he was breathing it in. And Brendan’s told us that the same words—‘It’s inside me’—came spontaneously to his lips last night in Reno, when the red apparitional light filled his room.”

“Bacteria? Disease? Then why didn’t we get sick?” Brendan said.

“Because they treated us immediately,” Dom said. “We’ve already worked that one out, Brendan—yesterday, before you got here. But, Ginger, the light that filled the office this afternoon was too bright to represent moonlight filtered through a red cloud.”

“I know,” Ginger said, pacing. “Underdeveloped as it is, my idea doesn’t explain everything—like the rings on your hands. So maybe it’s not the right idea. On the other hand, it does explain some things, and maybe if we think about it long enough, we’ll see how it explains these other puzzles, as well. And as a theory, it has one big plus.”

“What’s that?” Ned asked.

“It could explain why Brendan was involved in two miracle cures in Chicago. It could explain the whirling paper moons in Zebediah Lomack’s house. And the destruction here at the diner on Saturday night, when Dom was trying to recall what had happened the summer before last. It could explain the source of the apparitional light.”

On the jukebox, the last of a series of songs had faded to its end as Ginger began to speak. But no one got up to choose more music, for they were riveted by her promise to explain the inexplicable.

“To this point,” Ginger said, “the theory’s pretty mundane. A red cloud of contaminant. Nothing hard to accept in that. But now…you’ve got to take a big leap of imagination with me. We’ve been assuming that the miraculous healing and certainly the poltergeist phenomena have some mysterious external source. Father Wycazik, Brendan’s rector, thinks that external source is God. The rest of us don’t feel it’s exactly divine. We don’t know what the hell it is, but we all assume that it’s an external power, something out there somewhere that’s taunting us or trying to reach us with a message or threatening us. But what if these wonders have an
internal
source. Suppose Brendan and Dom really possess some power, and suppose that they possess it
because of what happened during the night of the red moon.
Suppose they have telekinesis—which is the power to move objects without touching them, which would explain the whirling paper moons and the destruction in the diner.”

Everyone looked at Dom and Brendan in amazement, but no one was more startled than those two men, who gaped at Ginger, shocked.

Dom said, “But that’s ridiculous! I’m no psychic, no sorcerer.”

“Me neither,” Brendan said.

Ginger shook her head. “Not consciously, no. I’m saying maybe the power is in you, and you’re just not aware of it. Bear with me. Think about it. The first time the rings appeared on Brendan’s hands, the first time he exercised his healing power, was when he was combing the hair of the little girl in the hospital. He’s said he was overwhelmed with pity for her and filled with frustration and anger that he couldn’t help her. Maybe it was his intense frustration and anger that freed the power in him, even though he wasn’t aware of it. He
couldn’t
be aware of it because the acquisition of this power is part of what he’s been made to forget. Okay, the second time, with the wounded policeman, Brendan found himself in an extreme crisis, which might trigger these powers.” She began pacing and talking more rapidly to prevent debate until she’d finished. “Now think about Dom’s experiences. The first one, in Reno, at Lomack’s house. The way you told it to us, Dom…as you wandered through the house, you became so frustrated by the ever-deepening nature of the mystery that you wanted to rush through those rooms
and tear those paper moons off the walls.
Those were your very words. And, of course, that’s what happened: You pulled those moons off the walls, not with your hands but with this power. And remember, the pictures only fell to the floor when you shouted, ‘Stop it, stop it!’ When it did stop, you thought something had heard you and obeyed or relented, but in fact you stopped it yourself.”

Brendan, Dom, and a couple of the others still looked skeptical.

But Ginger had captured Sandy Sarver’s imagination. “It makes sense! It makes even more sense if you think about what happened here on Saturday night, right in this very room. Dom was trying to remember back to that Friday in July, trying to remember what happened right up to the second where his memory block took effect. And while he was struggling to remember…all of a sudden this strange noise, this thunder, started to rumble through the diner, and everything started to shake. He could’ve been unconsciously using this power of his to re-create the
effects
of whatever happened back then.”

“Good!” Ginger said encouragingly. “See? The more you think about it, the more it hangs together.”

“But the strange light,” Dom said. “You’re saying Brendan and I somehow manufactured that?”

“Yes, possibly,” Ginger said, returning to the table, leaning on her empty chair. “Pyrokinesis. The ability to spontaneously generate heat or fire with the power of the mind alone.”

“This wasn’t fire,” Dom said. “It was light.”

“So…call it ‘photokinesis,’” Ginger said. “But I think when you and Brendan met, you subconsciously recognized the power in each other. On a deep level, you were both reminded of what happened to you that July night, the thing you’ve been forced to forget. And both of you wanted to blast those memories into view. So unwittingly you generated that weird light, which was a re-creation of the way the moon changed from white to red on the night of July 6. It was your subconscious trying to jolt the memory through the block.”

Ginger could see that their minds were spinning with all these odd ideas, and she wanted to keep them unsettled a while longer, because when they were unsettled they were more likely to absorb what she was saying. Given time for quiet reflection, the heavy armor of skepticism would fall back into place, and her ideas would bounce off.

Ernie Block shook his head. “Wait a minute. You’re losing me now. You started all this by suggesting that what turned the moon red was a scarlet cloud of some biological contaminant. Then you jumped way the hell to one side and started talking about how the thing that happened to us was responsible for Dom and Brendan developing these supposed powers. Where’s the connection? What does biological contamination have to do with all this psychic stuff, anyway?”

Ginger took a deep breath because they had come to the core of her theory, the wildest part of it. “What if…
what if
we were contaminated by some virus or bacterium that, as a side-effect, causes profound chemical or genetic or hormonal changes in its host, changes in the host’s brain? And what if those changes leave the host with something very like psychic powers, even once the infection is gone?”

They stared at her with a variety of expressions, though not as if they thought her mad, and not as if she was too imaginative for her own good. Rather, they seemed impressed by the complex chain of logic which she had forged and by the inevitability of the final link.

“Good God,” Dom said, “I doubt that it’s the right answer, but it’s sure the prettiest, most neatly constructed theory I ever expect to hear. What a concept for a novel! A genetically engineered virus that, as a surprise side-effect, causes a sort of forced evolution of the human brain, resulting in psychic powers. For the first time in weeks, I have a terrific urge to rush to a typewriter. Ginger, if we get out of this alive, I’ll have to give you a piece of the royalties on the book that’s sure to grow out of that idea.”

Gently rocking her slumbering daughter, Jorja Monatella said, “But why
couldn’t
it be the right answer? Why does it just have to be a terrific concept for a novel?”

“For one thing,” Jack Twist said, “if it were true, if we’d been contaminated with a virus like that, we’d all have developed psychic powers. Right?”

“Well,” Ginger said, “maybe we weren’t all contaminated. Or maybe we were contaminated, but the virus didn’t get a foothold in all of us.”

Faye said, “Or maybe this special side-effect isn’t manifested in everyone who’s infected by the bug.”

“Good thought,” Ginger said. She began to pace again: this time, not because she was nervous but because she was excited.

Ned Sarver pushed one hand through his receding hair and said, “Are you saying the Army knew about this side-effect of the virus, knew that it might cause these changes in some of us?”

“I don’t know,” Ginger said. “Maybe they knew. Maybe not.”

“I think not,” Ernie said. “Definitely not. From what you found in the
Sentinel,
we know they closed the interstate shortly before the ‘accident’ happened, which means it was no accident. So…first of all, I find it hard to believe our own military would intentionally subject us to contamination with a biological-warfare microorganism in a hare-brained scheme to test its effectiveness in the field. But even if such an atrocity were possible, they wouldn’t expose us to a virus that could transform us in the way Ginger has suggested. Because, my friends, people with strong psychic powers would be a new species, a
superior
breed of humanity. Formidable psychic power would translate directly into military, economic, and political power. So if the government
knew
it had a virus that conferred these powers, it would not expose a group of ordinary people like us. Not in a million years. That blessing would be reserved for those already in positions of high authority, for the elite. I agree with Dom: I find the red-cloud-of-virus theory quite fascinating…though unlikely. However, if we
were
contaminated by such a thing, the side-effect was unknown to the government.”