The humming grew louder and the floor pulsed. A faint tingle trickled across her skin and the walls became softer. Above, the ceiling spun and lifted away, but instead of morning sky there was only a black void. Starlene's heart accelerated racing to the rhythms of Kracowski's machines.
She concentrated on her face in the mirror, but the glass warped and melted away. Now the walls were gone, and so was the bed she had been lying on. She panicked and reached up to her temples to yank away the electrodes. The restraints had vanished, as well as the electrodes.
She tried to stand but her legs were warm taffy. The floor opened beneath her and her stomach tightened in anticipation of falling. Starlene closed her eyes but still saw the floor yawning like a hungry mouth, and in the dark throat of the basement, faint wisps of light floated upward.
Starlene screamed at Kracowski, but the sound was swallowed by the roaring of reality's death. The wisps solidified and the Miracle Woman stood on nothingness, holding out her palms, showing her dead eyes. Around the Miracle Woman came others, formed from the milk of afterlife, all wearing the lost and crazed look of the eternally restless.
The Miracle Woman's lips moved, and her words came not as sound, but as thought. "Starlene Rogers."
Starlene pushed toward where she thought the door was, but the door had disappeared along with the rest of the room.
The Miracle Woman smiled, and things fluttered around her tongue. Her thoughts came to Starlene like wind through graveyard grass. "The door is below you."
Starlene turned and came face-to-face with the old man in the gown, the one who had walked into the lake. He spoke-thought into her skull. "I can make you better."
"I don't want to be better," she thought or screamed or whispered, and she clawed frantically at the air, trying to move in whatever direction she could.
"My motto is, 'Heal you or kill you,'" said the old man. "I win either way."
A young guy, thin and ragged and pale as a maggot, drifted down from above. A sleeveless institutional gown draped him like a funeral shroud. He waved a hand at Starlene's hair, seemed surprised when his flesh passed through her, and said, "Can we keep her?"
The Miracle Woman said, "She's not ours yet."
The young man whimpered. "The doctor said we could. I promise to play nice."
"Since when have you ever believed your doctor?"
"Since yesterday."
"You weren't alive yesterday"
The old man said, "And you never took your medicine. No wonder you ended up like you did."
The young man looked down at his wrists. Long scars, gray against the white threads of his skin, ran from the base of his thumbs to his elbows. "Can I take it back?"
Starlene pressed her hands over her ears, but still she heard the words from those impossible mouths.
The old man said to the suicide victim, "You'll have to do better than that. You've been very, very bad."
"Leave him alone," said the Miracle Woman. "Haven't you harmed him enough already?"
"I was only trying to help."
"I know. That's the worst part. You never saw the patients as human beings. You saw them as numbers, experiments, sets of diagnoses. As problems to be solved."
The old man drifted nearer to Starlene. He put a hand out, like a Catholic priest bestowing a sacrament, and his cold touch penetrated the bones of her skull. She couldn't twist away, no matter how she struggled. Behind him, in the shadowy ether, more shapes hovered, their faces blank.
"If only I had another chance," the old man said. "I know what to do now. I know where I made my mistakes."
"Keep away," the Miracle Woman said. "This one needs a different kind of healing."
The Miracle Woman closed her hands, hiding those hideous, wounded eyes. She grew brighter, her words falling more softly in Starlene's head, no longer shrieking.
"Have faith," came the gentle voice. "They can judge your mind, but they can't judge your soul."
The shapes began spinning, as if Starlene were at the center of a double Ferris wheel that turned in two directions. The Miracle Woman blurred, the shapes became dots of smeared light against black, and the humming swelled into a chorus of moans. Starlene reached for her own eyes and found they were still closed, and the lights became thin streaks circling and circling, until at last there was only darkness.
Her pulse pounded in her neck. A soft light bathed her, and she shuddered in fear of more encounters with the things that walked the deadscape. The light became stronger and another disembodied voice pierced her skin.
"Miss Rogers, are you okay?"
Kracowski.
She opened her eyes. The ceiling was back in its proper place, the mechanism quieted. The mattress beneath her was solid. She tested the substance of her fingers and found they were again made of flesh.
She drew air into her lungs and looked at the mirror, toward where Kracowski would be standing behind it. "What happened?"
Through the microphone: "How are you feeling?"
"I don't know."
"You're better, of course."
"Better than what?"
"You've been aligned. You're harmonized. I have healed you."
"But I wasn't broken." She gripped the mattress, unable to trust herself to stand even if the restraints hadn't held her.
"That's what's so wonderful about SST. It heals even those who aren't aware they are in need of healing."
She closed her eyes, and the images from the deadscape flickered at the back of her eyelids. She stared at the mirror instead. "How long was I out?"
A pause came from the speakers. Then Kracowski said, "You were dead for three seconds."
If three seconds of death were that unbearable, Starlene wasn't sure whether the afterlife was a promise or a threat. Already the memories were scrambled and weak, and she couldn't trust what she had experienced.
Randy entered the room, and their eyes locked. For the briefest of moments, she thought she heard him speak, but then realized his lips hadn't moved.
Shed read his thoughts.
Something about the Trust and how McDonald needed to get rid of this particular problem known as Starlene Rogers. Though she was a cute little thing and would be fun for a tumble, she asked too many goddamned questions. She was trouble, he just knew it.
She rubbed her forehead after Randy released the restraints. She tried to read him again, but it was as if a fog had rolled in between them. She had almost convinced herself she had imagined the entire thing, the shock and the deadscape and Randy's thoughts, when Kracowski and McDonald entered the room.
She picked up McDonald's thoughts. He was wondering if the force fields could be aligned to scramble neural patterns so people like Starlene could be lobotomized without leaving scars. A brain death that left no evidence would be a useful tool.
And McDonald thought, before another fog rolled in, maybe Kracowski could be scrambled once he'd outlived his usefulness.
Starlene closed her eyes and waited for Randy to remove the electrodes.
THIRTY
Freeman peeked out the window. The kids were in gym class, and Freeman had faked a sprained ankle. He'd been sent to the rec room again, where he was supposed to rest and watch whatever uplifting program PBS was broadcasting. Instead, Dr. Phil was brow-beating a couple into a changing day in their lives. He turned down the sound on the television so the noise wouldn't distract him.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the yellowed newspaper clipping. A tiny piece of it broke away as he unfolded it. The photograph had faded a little over the years, but it still had the power to reach off the page and squeeze Freeman's throat.
Dad's mug shot.
The headline above: "PSYCHIATRIST ARRESTED IN WIFE'S MURDER."