Stranger Things Page 6

  Desperate times…

  He reached into his lab-coat pocket and took out the packet of candy. “I got you a special treat, Kali. SweeTarts. I’m told they’re every little girl’s favorite.”

  Eight leaped up, discarding the crayon and grabbing the roll before he could take it away. She tore into it and put a handful of the candies in her mouth. He’d have someone make sure she thoroughly brushed her teeth later.

  “You promised me, Papa,” she said around a mouthful of sugar. She wiped her bloody nose with her knuckles. “Friends. You promised.”

  “I know,” he said. “I told you I’m working on it. You’ll have new friends, eventually. Why do you think I got you bunk beds? For your eventual roommate to share with you. I’ve explained.”

  And explaining to five-year-olds took patience. Again, not his particular virtue.

  But his work with Eight had helped secure this opportunity. She was the first jewel of success who proved humans might be able to develop exceptional abilities, with the right encouragement. Her wild talents were still as hard for her to control as she was for him to. That didn’t matter.

  He always managed it in the end.

  7.

  They’d been in the lab for eight hours when they got back in the van, and it had worn on them. Still, Terry felt strangely buoyant, especially considering the doctor had guided her back to the worst experience of her life. She couldn’t explain it.

  Terry wondered if any of them would talk on the way back home, and if Alice even could be quiet. She hoped not. She wanted to talk, find out how everyone had fared.

  But then Alice dropped into a doze that ended with her head on Ken’s shoulder. He met Terry’s eyes over the sleeping girl’s head. “I didn’t see this one coming,” he said, voice low so as not to wake her.

  Terry tried to smile, but couldn’t force it. No talking, then. Alice frowned in her sleep.

  Gloria stared out the window at the cornfields, hands gathered in a tidy knot.

  What had their days been like? Terry was desperate to ask, but she kept the question inside. There was always next time.

  1.

  When the next session came, Terry found herself in a big room at the lab, with larger machines and several additional workers. And, even more intimidating, a wetsuit to don and a metal tank filled with water.

  A tech pointed Terry to a changing room and she crammed into what might once have been a supply or custodial closet. The ghost scent of chemicals bolstered the theory.

  Terry pulled the tight gray suit onto her legs and over her torso, shrugging into the shoulder straps. From the places it alternately pinched or bagged, she suspected the bathing suit was made for a man. In the end, it was no less revealing than the gown. But she could ignore that. The clock, until they dosed her, ticked away in her ears.

  Squaring her shoulders and imagining she wore armor to overcome her nerves, she left the former closet. Brenner and his small team were waiting for her outside. They intended to submerge her in an elevated human-sized canister full of water with a long opening at the top. A steel ladder led up to it.

  “I feel like Harry Houdini,” she said.

  Dr. Brenner tapped a finger to his temple. “Only you escape through this.”

  “I’m curious.” She leaned against a table. “How’d you end up a doctor, doing this kind of research?”

  Brenner checked a monitor, shrugged. “The usual way. Medical school. An interest in public service.”

  “Where are you from?” Terry adjusted a strap on her suit.

  “Are we playing Twenty Questions?” he countered with a smile, walking over and handing her a bathing cap. She maneuvered her hair under it as best she could without a mirror. The edges pinched all the way around her scalp.

  “I’m nervous,” she said, not a lie. “This is another thing I haven’t done before.” She nodded toward the canister.

  “Sensory deprivation tanks can be quite pleasant,” Dr. Brenner said.

  “Really?” Terry couldn’t resist poking a little fun. “You’ve been in one?”

  “No, not personally,” he said, giving her the point. “But I’ve used them before in research. There’s nothing to worry about. Your vitals will be monitored the whole time. The lack of external stimuli helps with focus.”

  “You want me to focus on…?”

  “Expanding and exploring your consciousness. I’ll be here to guide you.”

  “When do you tell me what we’re after? It might help me do better.”

  “I just did.”

  “You haven’t really explained, though. You’re a man of few words.”

  He gave her an apologetic look. “The exact nature of our work is classified.”

  The other technicians and lab staff around them had begun to watch their exchange, riveted.

  “Who has the medical cocktail?” Brenner asked the group. “We all have our secrets, Miss Ives,” he said, laying an easy hand on her shoulder. “Our research here is about new ways of exposing them.”

  So this research was about uncovering secrets.

  For all that told her. But…she could see how that might be important.

  And now the same aide as before was bringing her a small paper cup filled with LSD Extra, as she’d come to think of the lab mixture. Andrew had laughed at her description of the trip—not to be mean; only because he had done three times as much acid at Woodstock and it seemed like lightweight stuff to him.

  “Down the hatch,” she said, and took a swig.

  The liquid went down bitter, and she wondered how she could have ever mistaken it for water. She’d done some research on LSD. Not that there was much out there: Lysergic acid diethylamide, aka acid, was first made by a Swiss scientist in the late 1930s and had experienced a spike in popularity over the last few years, starting in San Francisco and Berkeley. Filed under “Psychedelic.” Arguments for and against its use tended to make the stuff sound like either the makings of a miracle or the gateway to insanity. Then there was Brenner’s use of the word “cocktail.” What exactly was in the Hawkins special acid blend? He wasn’t likely to tell her.

  “Ready?” Dr. Brenner approached her again, a reassuring look on his face. He fixed a sticky suction-cup monitor under the right strap of her wetsuit. “Remember, I’ll be right here.”

  Climbing up the platform reminded her of visiting the public pool back home over childhood summers. Of the way the other kids dived and dared her to, even though she’d never been a very strong swimmer. One day when she was twelve she gave in and plummeted into the deep end again and again, because it turned out to be fun. The lifeguard had to haul her out when she got exhausted and panicked. He yelled at her. Sixteen-year-old Becky had come over and argued back at him that he should’ve stopped her kid sister from diving at all.

  Terry had snuck away while they fought, and jumped off the high dive one last time.

  She hadn’t been allowed back at the pool the rest of that summer.

  When she reached the top of the steps to the tank, she peered down into sloshing darkness. Sensory deprivation. Of course she hadn’t expected to be able to see in the water, but the images that floated through her head were the absolute worst. Coffins. Drowning. Drowning in coffins.

  She thought of her parents again.

  “It’s all right,” she told herself.

  “It is; nothing can hurt you here.” Dr. Brenner handed her a helmet not so different from an astronaut’s. “So you have a steady supply of air.”

  She slipped it over her head, only then questioning why he’d bothered to give her a bathing cap. At least oxygen wouldn’t be a problem.

  She swung her now-heavy head around to look at him. He watched her with expectation. Go on, he seemed to be saying with his eyes.

 
She offered him her arm to help her as she stepped into the water. The wetsuit insulated her from the chill. She reclined and the water became a splashing weight against her. True to Brenner’s claim, the tank wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Not until she’d entered completely. He removed his hand, and the light got thinner, thinner, then vanished with the dull thud of the top being closed.

  Houdini she wasn’t.

  “Uh, hello? Anyone else in here?” She spoke, her voice muffled in the helmet, trying to joke.

  “Just you.” Brenner’s calm voice in her ears.

  The helmet was wired for sound.

  The darkness grew. She tried and failed to relax. Her breathing picked up its pace and spots appeared at the edges of her vision. She attempted to move around, but it was hard in the water.

  “Your heart is racing. Breathe deep,” Brenner said. “Relax. Close your eyes. Let the medicine begin its work. Go deeper.”

  Easier said than done in a water coffin. But she did her best to steady her breath. Could she go deeper again? Had that been the hypnosis?

  Was she getting Swiss cheese holes in her brain from the acid already?

  Asking the questions helped her get control of herself. She fought to steady her pulse. Sweat crawled down her face and she knew if she focused there while unable to wipe it away she’d lose control. Worse.

  So she closed her eyes.

  Not that it mattered. She reopened them. The darkness reigned.

  Deeper.

  “Now, Terry, focus inward.” Brenner’s voice in her ears might as well have been inside her head. “I want you to let your memory open; describe what you experience. I don’t want you to look for pain this time. Look for comfort.”

  Maybe because her mind had nothing to go on but his voice, maybe because the drugs kicked in, or both, her memory switched on as soon as he suggested it. Her mind conjured somewhere for her to be besides this tank. A feeling of being more than awake, more than alive danced at the edges of her awareness.

  “Where are you?”

  She imagined sinking her toes into the thick shag carpet in the living room at home. She and Becky sitting side by side on it as they watched Johnny Carson with her dad. The smell of popcorn, her mom in the kitchen shaking a pot on the stove, the two of them jumping up to go watch the top of the pot lift off as the kernels popped…

  “Watching TV with my dad and my sister. We’re only allowed to stay up past bedtime for this. My mom makes popcorn, a treat. We’re all together.”

  Usually revisiting happy family moments brought sadness, too, but this was like a warm hug.

  “Let’s move on—what’s another comforting place for you?”

  Andrew’s bedroom. This wasn’t just a where, this was a when. The first night she’d stayed over at his house. A candle on the bedside table, along with incense burning. It had felt so grown-up. This was adulthood, thick sandalwood and the exotic feel of another person’s sheets. Of a man’s sheets. Even if they were regular cotton. She couldn’t hear what they said, couldn’t remember the conversation, but she heard their laughter together and a feeling of safety melted through her, or she melted into it. Streaks of rainbow colors appeared around Andrew’s face and she wished he was here or she was there…

  “Terry, where are you? You’re laughing.”

  “I’m with Andrew.”

  “Andrew?”

  “My boyfriend.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She couldn’t describe that. “Being together.”

  “And that comforts you?”

  “Yes.”

  Her brain cycled on and on and she answered every question until, after no time, after all time, his voice said: “We’ll be bringing you out soon. Try to go even deeper.”

  There was somewhere she wanted to go. But her senses were slippery. She’d forgotten where she was and now the water lapped around her as she tried to remember.

  Deeper, she thought. Deeper.

  She pictured those white church doors. She wanted to go back there, and for some reason thinking of it didn’t hurt.

  “Okay, we’re going to open the lid slowly,” Dr. Brenner said.

  She wanted to protest that she needed more time, but then overhead fluorescents blinded her.

  “You might want to close your eyes,” he told her.

  Terry did and then reopened them, moving slowly, a stranger to light and motion.

  2.

  “You’re not worried?” Andrew asked Terry, sliding her hand into his as they walked across campus.

  “Not really,” Terry said. “Maybe a little. That’s why I’m bringing you.”

  Becky had called Terry to tell her that she’d gotten a letter at home telling Terry to stop by the administration office at school. She’d sounded worried about it and asked if she should come, had Terry gotten into trouble…?

  Terry figured it was some mix-up or forgotten paperwork. Classes had just started. These things happened. Didn’t they? Okay, so never to her before, but it wouldn’t be the most unlikely thing.

  “It wasn’t good news when they called me in,” Andrew said.

  Terry squeezed his hand in a way she hoped comforted him. He’d gotten in trouble for ditching campus for Woodstock. Academic probation. A very big deal because getting kicked out would mean the loss of his student deferment. None of the guys wanted graduation to come.

  “You’ll just be more careful,” she said. “Besides, you said it was worth it.”

  He shook his head, lost in a blissful memory. “You would’ve loved it.”

  “I know.”

  “You start reading the book yet?”

  Terry groaned. Andrew had fallen in love with The Lord of the Rings on the van ride to New York and back, and then presented her with his battered copy of the first book when he returned. The cover featured a wizard in flowing yellow robes with a long white beard on a mountaintop. He swore she’d love it, too.

  “It’s three books.”

  “Babe…” Andrew shook his head. “It’s great.”

  “I’ll read it, I promise.”

  “Good, because that’s what I want for my birthday next week.”

  “Noted.”

  They reached the administration building, three stories of brick and glass. Andrew opened the door for her. The letter had specified room number 151 and they found it at the end of the first floor. The registration department. She’d been here before.

  Andrew dropped into a plastic chair in the waiting area as she approached a desk. “Hi there,” she said. “I’m Terry Ives. My sister got a letter telling me to come by?”

  The clerk looked at her blankly through cat’s-eye glasses. “What kind of letter?”

  “I don’t know. We weren’t sure what it was about.”

  “Terry Ives, you said?”

  “Theresa.” Terry nodded.

  “That rings a bell. Wait here.” The woman swung around and bustled back into a warren of desks and filing cabinets.

  Terry turned and made a face at Andrew. He made one back, then nodded behind her.

  The woman had returned, of course. Great first impressions were Terry’s special gift.

  The woman didn’t react to Terry and Andrew’s game. “We were to inform you that you’ll be excused from your Thursday classes,” she said.

  “What? Why?” Terry knew how school worked, and they expected you to attend class. She couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder at Andrew, who shrugged with the same confusion.

  “You’ll be getting credit for the psychology research you’re participating in,” the woman said. “You won’t have to make up assignments on those days. The school has let your instructors know. You’re to be at the psychology building at nine a.m. each Thurs
day, unless told otherwise.”

  “Okay,” Terry said and shook her head. “But what’s the catch?”

  “Your overall academic performance will be tied to your continued participation,” the woman said. “Other than that…” She shrugged.

  Terry planned to keep going anyway, so that wasn’t a big deal. “Hmm.”

  “It’s unusual, but…it’s what we were told.” The woman lowered her voice a touch. “What kind of research is it?”

  She definitely couldn’t answer that. “Private,” she said. “I don’t need to do anything else?”

  Nose in the air, not happy at being rebuffed: “Not at this time.”

  A dismissal.

  Andrew stood and they moved back into the hall.

  “What the hell?” Andrew asked.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Terry said.

  “Who are these people, Terry?” Andrew frowned, something he rarely did, except when listening to the news. He was worried about her. Sweet.

  “I told you, it’s a big deal. That’s why I’m doing this.”

  “I’m not sure I like it.” His gaze went back to the room they’d left.

  “But you can see it’s important?” Terry leaned in close, and they kept their voices down as other students walked past. “They just called up the school and told them to give me Thursdays off and I’m getting credit for it? They’re tying our grades to doing this. And no one asked any questions. They just agreed. I have to keep going.”

  Andrew rested his forehead against hers. “Babe, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I do and I don’t,” she said and gave him a light kiss. Some administrative type in a suit cleared his throat and they separated, but she extended her hand and Andrew wove his fingers through hers.

  “You’re my witness to whatever comes of this,” she said.

  “I hereby solemnly swear.”

  He really was worried about her. His eyes were so brown, his grin so nice…Terry forgot to worry about anything for a little while.