F Paul Wilson - Novel 05 (43 page)

 
          
It
took a lot of hammering and made a godawful racket, but she finally managed to
pry open the lid.

 
          
He'll
never forgive this, she thought.

 
          
She
opened the lid slowly.

 
          
A
small manila folder lay inside. Her hands shook as she lifted it out. Inside
was a report from the
Putnam
County
coroner on the deaths of
Lucy Gordon and Nathan Gordon. She sifted through it, glancing only briefly at
the autopsy results, the dental matchups. She gasped when the black-and-white
photo of a charred corpse slipped into the light. Nathan Gordon's empty eye
sockets stared at her. His blackened, half-open jaws seemed to be leering at
her.

 
          
She
told herself: That's not my father.

           
Julie shut the folder and shuddered.
God! Why
would
Eathan keep something like that? She put it aside and
sail
what looked like three small notebooks or journals
in the
bottom of
the box.

 
          
Could
it be? Were these Nathan's experimental journals?

 
          
Her
heart pounded madly against her ribs as she
opened
the top volume and
began reading the crabbed handwriting;

 
          
For
a memory to stay fresh and vivid, or for a false memory to be reinforced,
its synaptic connections must be periodically engaged
—
i.e.,
the memory must be reviewed
—
on
a regular basis. Sort of the neurological equivalent
of pulling the pieces of a memory from their various closets, reassembling it,
dusting it off and polishing it up, checking it for wear and tear, and then
putting it back on the shelf.

—
Random
notes: Julia Gordon

1

 
          
Barely
aware of where she was but absolutely certain of where she was going, Julie
stumbled along the dawnlit second-floor hall.

 
          
She
felt dead inside, physically and emotionally drained.

 
          
She
wanted nothing more than to crawl into her bed, pull the covers over her head,
and never show her face again
—
never
think
again.
Her mind and body screamed for rest, for escape, but she would not, could not,
permit it.

 
          
And
so with Nathan Gordon's experimental notebooks clutched tightly against her
chest, she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other until she
reached her goal.

 
          
She'd
spent the night poring over the journals. At first in a state of incredulous denial,
flipping back and forth in a vain search for inconsistencies, for some evidence
that this was a cruel hoax, and then with a slowly growing sick realization
that it was . . .
all true.

 
          
Days
ago she had been accused of thinking the unthinkable by a man who had known
the truth all along.

 
          
Julie
entered Eathan's bedroom without knocking, throwing the door open and letting
it bang against the wall.

 
          
Eathan
stirred in his bed. "What? Who is it?"

 
          
The
sound of his voice sparked something in Julie. Anger, resentment, rage
—
they fueled her, renewed her strength. She must have made a
frightening apparition as she approached his bed through the gloom, for he
struggled to a sitting position and raised a hand to her.

 
          
"Stop!
Who
are
you?"

 
          
And
again the sound of his voice stoked her fires. She raised the journals high
above her head and then flung them at him with all her strength. He cried out
in alarm as they fluttered and thudded against his chest and shoulders.

 
          
She
didn't give a damn about banishment from Oakwood. She didn't give a damn about
Eathan.

 
          
"Liar!"
she screamed.
"Liar!
You've known about this all these years and
you never told us! God, how could you
not
tell us?"

 
          
Eathan
rolled away from her and reached for the lamp at his bedside. She heard the
click and then the sudden gush of light blinded her for an instant.

 
          
As
her vision cleared she saw Eathan, dressed in striped pajamas, sitting in the
bed staring at the old journal he held in his hands. He looked vaguely
ridiculous, but Julie wasn't in a laughing mood.

 
          
"Oh,
no, Julia! Oh, no, you didn't! Please tell me you didn't!"

 
          
"Didn't
what?" she said. "Didn't learn the truth you've been hiding from me
all my life? Were you going to let me go to my grave not knowing Nathan, your
brother, my 'father,' used Sam and me as lab rats?"

 
          
Eathan
kept his head down, his face averted. He seemed to be trying to compose
himself. When he finally raised his head, his expression was miserable.

 
          
"How
could I tell you, Julia?"

 
          
"How
could you
not?"

 
          
"Tell
me then," he said, a note of bitterness creeping into his voice.
"Tell me the words I should have used to explain to you that your father
—
or at least the man we all thought was your father
—
experimented with your brains during your first years of
life, inhibiting certain neurohormones while supplying an excess of others.
Just how
—
"

 
          
"He
made me all left-brained and Sam all right-brained. He warped our brains and
personalities. He made us lopsided
—
on
purpose!"
She
wanted to scream.

 
          
"And
just how do you phrase that to a child, to a teenager, to a young adult woman
going out into the world? What turn of phrase will keep her from feeling like a
carnival freak, like a victim, like
—
as
you put it a moment ago
—
a lab rat? Tell me how
you
would say it, Julia."

 
          
"We
became adults. We had a right to know the truth," she said stubbornly.
"It would have explained so much."

 
          
"And
the truth was going to do what
—
set you free? Do you feel
free now, Julia? Do you feel better about yourself? Has it boosted your
self-esteem? Are you more ready to go out and tackle the problems of your
career? Are you
happier
now that to   know the gold-plated
truth,"

 
          
Julie
closed her eyes and spoke through her teeth. "I prefer dealing with a
truth to living with a lie. Can I make it any clearer than that?"

 
          
"Maybe
you
could deal with it. But what about Samantha? How do you think she
would have reacted? You know your sister. Imagine what the truth might have
done.to her. . . ."

 
          
"It
might have given her some insight," Julie said, her eyes open again.
"And me too. I've always analyzed everything to death
—
from math problems to relationships. Now I know why. Sam
never analyzed anything. She
emoted
to every decision. But at least she
could have understood what was behind that and maybe done something about it.
Before it was too goddamn late."

 
          
Eathan
pushed the journal away. He took a deep breath, and sighed.

           
"Yes. Or maybe it would have
prompted her to be a little more efficient in her next suicide attempt."

 
          
"We
never had a chance at normal lives, did we?" Julie said softly. "It's
not fair."

 
          
"No,
it's not fair. And, frankly, none of this has been very fair to me, either. I
could have lived out my days quite happily not knowing any of this. Instead,
I've been saddled with the knowledge of what my own brother did to
my
daughters,
and then watching the effects of his experiment play out over the years in
their lives. You dealt with it relatively well. But your sister always teetered
on the edge of disaster."

 
          
"But
why did you keep it hidden?"

 
          
"I
certainly wasn't going to allow any of it to be published! Good Lord, the two
of you would be tabloid freaks and Nathan would be portrayed as a
monster."

 
          
"He
was
a monster, dammit."

 
          
"I
thought so too, at first. But no man is a monster in his own mind. And as I
read and reread those journals I became convinced that Nathan had no thought of
harming you two. He seemed convinced, on paper at least, that the benefits far
outweighed the risks. And I think the experiment succeeded far beyond his
wildest expectations. His neurohormone treatment worked too well."

 
          
Julie
stared at him. "I don't believe you! This man
—
and I can't see that it matters whether or not he was your
twin
—
uses
your
children
as guinea pigs, and you
don't
hate him? He knew they were your children
and not his, that's why he treated us as disposable. You should
loathe
him,
Eathan! You should want to scour the earth of every trace of his existence and
never speak his name again!"

 
          
Now
Eathan looked away, at the dull flow of daybreak at the windows of his bedroom.

 
          
"Perhaps.
And I did feel that way at first, but when I considered his intentions
—
"

 
          
"I
don't give a damn about his intentions. It's what he
did
that matters.
And what he did to us was monstrous."

 
          
Eathan
nodded mutely as he stared down at the journal in his hands.

 
          
"You
must accept that I was only trying to protect you," he said. "Ever
since you were teenagers you've accused me of being overprotective. Now you
know why. Not just because I knew you were my own flesh and blood, but because
I knew Nathan had played with your brains. So I was always on guard for some
sign of instability, some warning of impending decompensation. With you there
was never a worry. You had trouble with relationships but
—
"

 
          
"I
have
no relationships," Julie said.

 
          
"Perhaps,
but you were functioning. Better than that
—
you
were thriving, making great strides in your field. And Sam-antha ... Samantha
had such wonderful potential, but she always seemed to be teetering on the edge
of self-destruction. i made it my mission in life to see to it that she lived
long enough to achieve her potential."

 
          
"Well,
you failed."

 
          
Julie
immediately regretted the blunt words. Eathan was an innocent bystander. She
saw that now. He hadn't asked for any of this. He'd thought he'd inherited a
pair of nieces and then learned they were his daughters. And
then
learned
that his own brother had tampered with their wiring. He'd been dealt a rotten
hand and had played it as best he could. He didn't deserve her anger. If the
positions were reversed, she couldn't say she'd have played it differently.

 
          
He
looked up. "What are you saying?"

 
          
"I'm
saying she's got very little chance of coming back. And it's Nathan's
fault."

 
          
"How
can you say that?"

 
          
"Because
it's true. He sent her into the world with one leg and one arm, both on the
same side. She had no balance. The -slightest breeze tipped her over. It could
be there's no single incident that sent her into her own black hole."

 
          
"But
what about you?"

 
          
Julie
stared at Eathan. And she held that stare for a few terrible seconds before
saying, quietly, "Maybe I'm next."

 
          
She
shuddered at the picture of herself immobile in a bed, her thoughts melting
away like ice cream in the sun, until nothing was left.

 
          
One
hell of a scary thought, but Julie wasn't going to turn  from it. It was a
real possibility.

 
          
"I
can't believe that. You're too sane."

 
          
"Am
I? Who knows what will come along and fry my unbalanced circuits? Because
that's what I now think is wrong with Sam. Her damage didn't come from outside.
It came from within. She ran into something she couldn't handle, and the
imbalance your brother created left her without the tools to handle it."