Sand.
28
Zack woke up spitting sand.
The room was dark but for the glow of the clock radio, which said 2:17. He was chilled but pushed off the blanket and sat up. He planted his feet on the rug and spit more sand. It peppered his skin and filled his scalp. He got up and flicked on the lamp, then pulled up the cover, expecting the sheet to be covered with beach sand. It wasn’t. And he had spit only air.
But his head was swimming, and his heart was jogging. He flopped back down, feeling cold and clammy. After several minutes, his head stopped whirling and he got up, slipped on a sweatshirt, and stepped out of his room. The landing at the top of the stairs was still dark but for the night-light that had burned since he and his brother were kids. He gently opened the door to his mother’s room. She was sleeping soundly. He closed the door and walked downstairs, steadying himself on the banister. Inside he was trembling.
He padded into the kitchen, flicked on a light, poured himself a glass of milk, and warmed it in the micro—something his father had taught him when he couldn’t sleep.
His father.
Since that day in the chamber when they deep-stimulated some lobe, he could not stop thinking about him, reliving sweet memories before everything turned horrible—days of playing ball, fishing in the canal, getting buried in the sand …
Outside, the streetlamp turned into a blinking red beacon across the water. In the distance he heard the moan of a foghorn.
He looked back at the kitchen, trying to get out of that dream. The foghorn faded, and he was leaning against the polished granite counter and trying to lose himself in the stainless-steel stove and fridge and other appliances. It worked. He glanced outside, and the red light was the old streetlamp again.
He leaned against the sink and took a few long breaths until he felt his insides settle back into place. Then he gulped down a mouthful of milk. Instantly, he spit it out, gagging over the drain. It was thick with salt. He sniffed it. Like fish water. He dumped the rest into the sink and opened the fridge. He removed the carton of orange juice. It smelled normal. He poured some in a glass and made a test sip. Orange juice. He guzzled a glass to flush the taste of ocean.
He headed back upstairs and dry-swallowed two tablets of Lunesta, hoping they’d knock him into a dreamless sleep. He closed the door and got into bed, lying in the dark, his body clenched against a sudden assault of visions.
But there were none, and relief soon passed through him.
He cleared his mind and tried to concentrate on the dark slurry seeping into his brain. He thought about Sarah Wyman and wondered if she was dating anyone.
He snuggled into the goose-down pillow, the filling making a soft cradle for his head. He pulled the blanket under his chin, then gave a little kick into the void. He would sleep undisturbed, he told himself as the heaviness spread throughout his body and the warm black cocooned around him.
The last thing he remembered before blacking out was a shovelful of sand landing on his face.
29
After closing the doors of his shop, Roman retired to the backroom office, where he went online and Googled LeAnn Cola and Thomas Pomeroy.
They had coauthored several articles on neurophysiology with long, complicated titles that meant little to him. The writing was highly technical, and he had to look up several phrases to get a general sense.
From what he learned, their research was aimed at perfecting ways of detecting microchanges in the electrical activity of the brain by use of a helmetlike device for the skull. Their objective was to help scientists better understand the function of different brain areas to diagnose and monitor diseases like epilepsy and dementia, but the same techniques could be used for personal identification. Signatures. The article went on to suggest security applications.
So what did that have to do with God or Satan?
He didn’t have a clue. And it really didn’t matter since he was thirty-five grand richer and didn’t have to worry.
And God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world.
30
Zack’s brain was still tender from the nightmare when he awoke the next morning. It was seven thirty, and his mother had left to do some errands but had made him a breakfast of potato pancakes, turkey sausages, fruit compote, and a pot of French roast, which helped clear his head. He cleaned up and left her a note of thanks, thinking how she had gone through the fire and hadn’t run off to a nunnery. He took public transportation into town and spent the rest of the day at the Northeastern library working on his thesis.
That night he received a call from Dr. Luria. She wanted to do another test on him next Tuesday evening, if he was free. He was. In advance of that, she asked him to e-mail sample photographs of his family members, friends, pets, his home, and favorite places. Her explanation was that they were going to use them to establish a baseline for brain scans. Zack didn’t know what that meant, but he complied.
He also went online and Googled each of the key people in the lab.
Elizabeth Luria was a professor emerita of microbiology at Harvard Medical School with a long list of publications on brain plasticity and imaging in prestigious-sounding journals such as The National Review of Neuroscience, Neuron, The Journal of Neuroscience. A few were on functional MRI imaging with meaningless titles like “Temporal-Lobe Bursts and ‘Transcendent’ Experiences” and “Total Deafferentation of Posterior-Superior Parietal Lobules PSPL and Self-Transcendence.” The words transcendent and parietal jumped out at him.
Morris Stern was listed as a professor of behavioral neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Tufts University School of Medicine. He was an expert on brain imaging and directed a lab investigating the neural basis of learning and memory. He had a long list of publications in the journal Neuroimage and Neurobiology.
Byron Cates was a professor of computational neuroscience and health sciences and technology at MIT. From what Zack gathered, he was an expert on “neuropsychological recordings” and “mathematical modeling to establish definitions of anesthetic states.” That was as meaningless to Zack as was an impressive list of published titles.
They each had research and/or teaching jobs, so this sleep study was something they did on the side during the evenings.
Sarah Wyman’s Web site listed her as unmarried and a former nurse who was doing postdoctoral studies at Tufts. On a list of her publications was a paper called “The Role of Serotonin 5-HT (1A) Receptors in Spirituality,” published in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
Spirituality? That did not seem like a topic for a doctoral thesis in neurophysiology. But he was too sleepy on Lunesta to speculate and went to bed thinking of her.
31
At six P.M. that Tuesday, the same unfriendly Bruce picked up Zack at the corner of Huntington and Massachusetts Avenues. Same trip to the lab. Same ensemble music. But this time Zack was alone. Damian had not passed the screening. He said he didn’t mind. He also wasn’t drowning in debt.
Zack arrived a little before seven, this time prepared to sleep over. Again Drs. Luria, Stern, and Cates and Sarah Wyman met with him in the same office. Dr. Luria explained the evening’s plan. “This is going to be a different kind of procedure. We’re going to establish a baseline recognition pattern of various images, but we’re going to do it in a functional MRI machine. Have you ever had an MRI scan done?”