The Forgotten Room (19 page)

The Taunton River Assisted Living Community was a cream-colored three-story building on Middle Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. Logan parked in the lot behind the building, then—leaning into the howling wind—went through the front entrance and made a series of inquiries.

“That’s him over there,” a second-floor nurse said five minutes later. “By the window.”

“Thanks,” Logan replied.

“How did you say you’re related again?”

“Distantly,” Logan said. “It’s complicated.”

“Well, however you’re related, it’s nice of you to stop by, especially with this storm approaching. Both his children are dead, and his grandchildren never visit. Shame, really—mentally, at least, he’s still sharp.”

“Thank you again.”

The nurse nodded toward the box of chocolates in Logan’s hand. “He can’t have those, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll leave them at the nurse’s station on the way out.”

He walked through the large community room, past superannuated men and women watching television, playing cards, doing jigsaw puzzles, mumbling to themselves, or in some cases just sitting with vacant expressions on their faces. He stopped before a large picture window in the far wall. It overlooked Kennedy Park and, past the train tracks, the approach to Battleship Cove. A wheelchair was placed by the window, and in it sat perhaps the oldest man Logan had ever seen. His face was sallow and covered with an incredible tracery of wrinkles; the bony white knuckles that grasped the arms of the chair almost threatened to burst through the tissue-paper skin. Extreme age had shrunk and twisted his body into the shape of a comma. A tube of oxygen lay in the base of the wheelchair, and a nasal cannula was fixed in place. But the faded blue eyes that glanced Logan’s way as he approached were as bright as a bird’s.

“Dr. Sorrel?” Logan asked.

The man looked at him a moment longer. At last, he nodded in the faintest of motions.

“My name is Logan.”

The old man’s gaze dropped to the chocolates. “Can’t have those,” he said. His voice was like dry leaves skittering over broken paving stones.

“I know.”

Sorrel’s gaze rose again. “What do you want?”

“May I?” Logan pulled up a chair beside the old man. “I’d like to talk to you.”

“Talk all you like.”

Logan sat down. “Actually, I’d rather hear what you have to say.”

“About what?”

Even though nobody was listening, Logan lowered his voice slightly. “Project Sin.”

The old man went very still. The knuckles grasping the arms of the wheelchair turned even whiter. Slowly, his eyes left Logan’s and drifted away. It took a long time for him to respond. Finally, the end of a tiny pink tongue emerged to wet his lips. He cleared his throat.

“Quite a storm brewing,” he said.

Logan glanced out the picture window. The leading edge of Hurricane Barbara was approaching the city, and the trees in the park were writhing crazily in the wind, small branches and green clouds of leaves streaming away in contrails beneath an ominous sky. The streets were eerily deserted.

“Yes, there is,” he agreed.

“What did you say again?” the old man asked.

“I said, I’d like some information about Project Sin.”

“Can’t help you with that.”

“I think you can, Dr. Sorrel.”

Sorrel’s eyes rolled in his head, as if he was looking around for assistance.

“Don’t worry,” Logan said, keeping his voice low. “My visit is officially sanctioned.”

“I’m ninety-eight. I’m an old man. My memory’s not so good.”

“I doubt if you’ve forgotten this particular project. But let me refresh your memory anyway. Project Synesthesia was undertaken at the think tank known as Lux, in Newport. It was halted rather abruptly by Lux’s director, Charles Ransom, in the nineteen thirties. You were one of the three scientists involved, along with Martin Watkins and Edwin Ramsey. They’re both dead. You’re the only one left.”

Sorrel’s only response was a faint shaking of the head, whether through denial or palsy, Logan couldn’t be sure.

“I—perhaps I should say we, since I’m working at the behest of Lux—know about the secret room. I’ve been inside. I’ve seen the equipment. And I know why your work was halted: there were fears it could be used in ways harmful to mankind.”

Sorrel’s head jerked in an involuntary spasm. He closed his
eyes. The lids were so thin, Logan could almost see the irises beneath.

“Someone—we’re not sure who—recently broke into the room. We believe they are trying to restart the old experiments. Based on their actions, I can only assume they’re less interested in the beneficial aspects of your work than in the harmful ones. But they’ve taken away all the lab notes, all the files. I need you to tell me just what you were working on.”

Still no response.

Logan reached into a pocket of his jacket, withdrew an envelope, took out a folded sheet, and showed it to Sorrel. It was a letter from Olafson, on Lux stationery, giving Sorrel permission to answer any and all of Logan’s questions, without reservation. The old man scanned it with his eyes, hands still clutching the arms of the wheelchair. After a minute, he turned his head away.

“How did you find me?” he asked at last.

“It wasn’t easy,” Logan said.

There was a silence while the old man’s lips worked. “I made a vow,” he said at last.

“So did Olafson, the current director. But he broke it—and for good reason.”

“I’ve kept that vow,” Sorrel said, more to himself than to Logan. “All these years, I’ve kept it.”

Logan leaned in still closer. “Dr. Sorrel,” he said. “Since the secret room was broken into, two people have died. Others have been adversely affected to a greater or lesser degree. Some are experiencing synesthesia—tasting voices, smelling music. I need to know what you were working on, and the reason that work was stopped. Only you can help me. There’s no one else.”

As Logan was speaking, the old man had gone very still.

“Dr. Sorrel?” Logan asked.

No reply.

“Your help is vital. It’s critical.”

Still nothing.

“Dr. Sorrel?”

At last, the old man stirred. “Two eighteen,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Two eighteen. That’s my room.” For the first time, Sorrel lifted one of his hands and pointed toward a hallway. “It’s down that way. We can talk in there.”

Sorrel’s room at Taunton River was quite large, but as spartan as a monk’s cell. There was a hospital bed with a suite of vital monitors on the wall above it; a spare tank of oxygen; a single window looking out onto the roiling, ever-darkening sky. There was a tray table on wheels, a few magazines arrayed atop it. Logan was surprised to see recent issues of
JAMA, The Lancet
, and
Nature
, apparently well thumbed.

Logan moved the wheelchair to a position facing a small couch, then, closing the curtains against the ominous, distracting view, took a seat.

“Show me the letter again,” Sorrel said in his breathy whisper.

Logan complied.

“Tell me about the deaths,” Sorrel asked. “Please.”

“One was a computer scientist, a longtime resident at Lux. He’d
been tasked with restoring the West Wing, which has been closed for years. He suddenly became violent, hysterical—completely out of character—raved about voices in his head, some barely articulated threat to his well-being. It was unendurable, and he killed himself.”

Sorrel winced as if in pain himself. “And the other?”

“A descendant of Lux’s original architect.”

“And you say there is a connection between these deaths?”

“I don’t know for sure. I think so.”

“You mentioned that others have been affected.”

Logan nodded. “Hearing voices. Feeling dangerous compulsions.” He took a breath. “Seeing people who weren’t really there.”

The old man looked away for a moment. “Could you get me a glass of water, please?”

Logan nodded, then rose and, exiting the room, headed for the nurse’s station. He returned shortly with a plastic bottle of chilled water, which he opened and placed in a receptacle set into one of the wheelchair’s arms. Sorrel lifted the bottle and took a long drink, hand shaking slightly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny, withered neck. He replaced the bottle, dabbed primly at his lips with the edge of his robe.

“I came in late to the project,” he said. “Not long before it was shut down. I was very young. We all were, really. But I wasn’t long out of Harvard Medical School, full of new ideas—new at the time, in any case.” He shook his head. “I was brought in to see if there was any neurological or other medical way the…negative effects could be ameliorated.”

“I assume you were unsuccessful,” Logan said gently.

The old man went silent again for a few minutes. “That was many years ago. I’ve kept my oath—I’ve spoken of it to nobody—but of course over the years I kept up with developments in biology and psychology. After all this time it is hard for me to…” He paused. “To extract my later conjectures of what
could
or
should
have happened with what actually took place.”

The man might be old, but he was remarkably lucid. “Just
tell me about the goal of the project,” Logan said. “In your own words.”

Sorrel nodded once more, and then his gaze went far away, as if he was peering into the distant past—which, Logan realized, was precisely the case. He remained silent, giving the man space to remember. In his own mind’s eye, Logan saw a procession of sepia-toned images: a group of men in seersucker suits and straw hats, standing and laughing on the front lawn of Lux; the same men, huddled together in a lab, engaged in some experiment; the same men yet again, sitting around a table, faces serious.

Finally, the old man shifted in the wheelchair. “It started as an accident, really. Martin had been experimenting with the effects of very high-frequency sound. What today would be called ultrasound.” He looked at Logan. “You probably aren’t aware of the impact certain infrasonic frequencies have on the human body.”

“You mean, like the Coventry Haunting?”

Sorrel nodded in surprise. “Why, yes. Precisely.”

This haunting had been a discovery by researchers at Coventry University: that extremely low-frequency sound, in the vicinity of 19 hertz, caused feelings of disquiet and dread. A side effect of this infrasound was a peculiar ocular vibration that triggered visions of a shadowy, ghostly apparition.

“Our work took place much earlier than that phenomenon, of course. Martin discovered that certain very
high
-frequency sounds had quite specific effects on human subjects.”

“By ‘Martin,’ I assume you mean Martin Watkins, the physicist.”

Sorrel nodded again.

“What was the frequency of the ultrasound?”

“I don’t recall precisely. Not one that would ever occur in nature. Somewhere in the vicinity of one point five or one point six megahertz, I believe. That was Martin’s bailiwick, not mine. It was a very precise frequency, and the level of sound pressure had to be exact in order for the phenomenon to occur.”

“What phenomenon was that?”

“Unusual sensory manifestations. Odd, unpredictable behavior. Even, in extreme cases, what a psychologist would term ‘dissociation.’ ”

“That sounds like a form of schizophrenia,” Logan said.

“Exactly. Of course, schizophrenia was a relatively new term in the thirties. Many still referred to it as dementia praecox.” Sorrel chuckled mirthlessly. “You know, people aren’t that much closer to understanding schizophrenia today than we were when Roosevelt was president. No known etiology.”

“At least it’s treatable. With drugs like Thorazine. Clozaril.”

“Yes. Thorazine was the first.” Sorrel seemed to slip into old memories again for a moment. “The basic idea of the research was that if certain specific ultrasonic frequencies could
induce
such reactions—if the sound waves influenced the brain in a certain way—then logically there should be other sound waves—perhaps harmonic, perhaps derivative—that would have the
opposite
effect.”

It was as if a huge piece of an invisible jigsaw puzzle abruptly slid into place. “Of course,” Logan said. “If sound could be used to trigger schizoid behavior in a normal brain…why couldn’t it be used to suppress such behavior in a schizoid brain?”

“That’s it in a nutshell, young man—that was the start of what was initially called Project S. For obvious reasons, the research was kept secret—the last thing Lux wanted was for word to leak out that they’d found a way to reproduce schizophrenic behavior. But nevertheless, spirits ran high. Martin and his partner, Edwin Ramsey, thought they could find a way to cure, or at least treat with great efficacy, a disease that had baffled mankind for ages. All they had to do was reverse Martin’s initial work.”

As he’d spoken, the light in the old man’s eyes had grown brighter, and he’d become more animated. Now, however, he sank back in his wheelchair. “They tried everything. Different frequencies and amplitudes. Sound masking. Interference. They all but invented a revolutionary method of antiphasing—noise cancellation. Ultimately, they made some progress at mitigating schizoid
behavior in afflicted people—but they were never able to eliminate the negative effects on everyone else.” The man’s eyes slid closed, and his head nodded. Then he started. “Did I say ‘they’? I meant we. I was brought in, as a last resort.”

“What did they hope you could bring to the table?” Logan asked.

“Some kind of medical key. Some biological answer to the problem.”

“How did the sound waves work, exactly?”

“Exactly? I can’t tell you that, any more than I can tell you what causes schizophrenia. That’s the central problem. Believe me, I’ve spent more than my share of time thinking about it. Researching the possibilities—for my own amusement, of course.” He nodded toward the magazines on the tray table. “As best I can tell, the high-frequency sound waves stimulated—in today’s terms—serotonin receptors in the frontal cortex of the brain. Perhaps they acted on the raphe nuclei, as well.” He sighed. “Ironically, the more Martin refined his machinery—the electromagnetic emitters, amplifiers and compressors, and transmission equipment—the more extreme the effects became. The hallucinations grew more bizarre, the behavior more erratic. Synesthesia became a common side effect. Toward the end, in fact, the work became known as Project Synesthesia. They were hoping, you see, that if nothing else, we’d be able to learn more about the inner workings of conditions like synesthesia and schizophrenia. But…” And Sorrel lapsed into another silence.

“You were closed down in 1935,” Logan said.

Sorrel nodded. “Ransom, the director, became increasingly concerned that a device such as ours, which created hallucinations and unpredictable responses, could effectively short-circuit minds. My term, not his. He worried about the device being used to force people to see things that weren’t real, hear voices that weren’t actually speaking. Do things they didn’t want to do. The last straw was when other scientists, working in the vicinity of our lab, began seeing and hearing things, acting oddly. Ransom said
it went against the charter. Nevertheless he felt it had sufficient promise to be mothballed rather than scrapped. Sealed up the lab and everything with it. Equipment, books, box upon box of files—the works.”

“How did the others take it?”

“You mean, Martin and Edwin? About as you’d expect. It hit Martin especially hard. Even though Edwin pioneered much of the technology that made the work possible, Martin was the one who first stumbled onto the process. We parted ways immediately. None of us wanted to talk about it—even if we’d been allowed to. I moved back to Massachusetts, found work in a local hospital. Martin eventually killed himself.”

A brief silence settled over the room. Logan glanced up at the curtained windows. “Let me ask you just a few more specific questions about the equipment. We found several bulky suits hanging in one corner of the room. I’m assuming those were used by the operators of the machinery to shield them from negative effects.”

“If we’d been successful, those suits would no longer have been necessary.”

“The central device has two settings: beam and field.”

“The therapy was meant to be administered in two distinct ways. The first way would be to have several patients assembled together, so that they could be treated as a group.”

“I see. That would explain the roman numerals on the floor. So that would be the field setting?”

Sorrel nodded.

“And beam?”

“That allowed people to be treated individually, in remote locations. A radio wave would be sent out at a particular frequency to one of several small devices we constructed. When one of the devices received a signal, it would in turn emit an ultrasonic wave.”

“These small devices you mention. Were they stored in a recessed drawer on the central machine?”

“Yes.”

“How were they powered?”

“The usual way—by electricity. They had wall plugs, solenoids, vacuum tubes.”

Logan thought a moment. “The displays on the faceplate of the Machine. They were graduated from one to ten.”

“That’s right.”

“What was the standard medicated dose you administered?”

“Normally, two. Sometimes, as high as five—but those were only in the cases of the most floridly psychotic.”

“This was in the field setting, I assume.”

“Correct.”

“What would happen if you redlined it?”

Sorrel frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Turned it all the way to ten.”

“Ah. I understand.” Sorrel passed a trembling hand over his lips. “We never ‘redlined’ it.”

Logan hesitated before asking the final question. “In a few decades, the quarantine will be lifted. A small panel will be convened to discuss whether Project Sin should be revived—whether technology has advanced sufficiently so that your work could never be used against humanity. Do you think that will prove to be the case?”

The old man looked at him a moment. Then he shook his head. “I’ve wanted to think so. All this time, I’ve wanted that. But no—I don’t think it will ever happen. Project S is a Pandora’s box. I hate to say it, but they were right to close it down. And if you’re right, young man: if someone has secretly opened it again…they’ll be opening a window into hell.”

A window into hell
. Logan stood up. “Thank you, Dr. Sorrel—for your time, and your candor.”

“Good luck.” And Sorrel raised a withered hand in farewell. “Sounds like you’re going to need it.”