LOCATION:

THE CENTRE

BLUE COVE, DELAWARE

DATE:

11/14/96

Miss Parker couldn't even tell that there was only a week until Thanksgiving, here in the austere halls of the Centre's lower levels. Most of her co-workers had gone on brief holiday vacations. Sydney had left for his mountain cabin yesterday, and Broots was at home, spending the precious time off with the daughter he'd bragged so much about.

Mr. Raines was still here, upstairs, in his secured sleeping quarters. Angelo, the empath Raines had just brought in on the Jarod Project, was here somewhere, too--as far as she knew, neither of them had any other home.

Her father was gone, and he hadn't informed her where he was spending his vacation. She walked faster, remembering their recent argument.

Her father had pulled her out of Corporate three weeks ago, exactly one week after Jarod had escaped from the Centre--and never mind her protests. As far as Daddy was concerned, both her former position as the head of Centre Security and her childhood friendship with Jarod would prove invaluable in the hunt for their escaped protege.

And as far as she was concerned, Miss Parker had come to share her father's determination to track down Sydney's errant Science Fair project. Unlike her father, though, she planned on killing the bastard once she finally caught up with him. Thus neatly ending the Jarod Project--or the Jarod Problem, as she privately referred to it. Forever.

Miss Parker smiled to herself.

The staccato sound of her high heels tapped out her path through the marble-floored halls as she walked--she wasn't exactly pacing, but she didn't have any particular destination in mind, either. The Centre, as lonely and desolate as it seemed, had been her home for so many years that it was somehow right to spend the holidays here. Later tonight, she would return home to her waiting supply of champagne.

Her wanderings had taken her to the wing where Sydney's office was located--whether she'd chosen this path due to some subconscious motivation or out of mere force of habit, she didn't know. Sydney would have been able to tell her, had he been here.

But he wasn't.

His office wasn't even locked. Miss Parker went inside, intending to use the phone. The computer on his desk was turned off for once, a sure sign that its user was absent. A dim light shone fitfully from the office's other exit; it was enough to light her way.

Miss Parker sat down on the edge of Sydney's desk, crossing her long legs at the ankles, the room's air cold against her bare skin.

She flipped on Sydney's desk-lamp and pulled his phone towards her. She dialed her father's number; while she waited, she examined the top of Sydney's desk. Usually, he cleared it off before taking his leave; this time, there was a cardboard box in the exact center of the smooth mahogany surface. Her curiosity piqued (and still no answer at the other end of the line) she leaned over and drew the box towards her.

"Jarod?" Miss Parker said aloud, her eyes widening as she read the address on the box. This had to be Jarod's handwriting--it was the same neat, somehow generic, capital letters he'd favored in the red notebooks he'd used to write out his simulations. She'd read so many of the damned things these past few weeks that she saw his handwriting in her sleep.

Jarod wasn't dead, as Miss Parker had been theorizing in the weeks since his escape.

Sydney's pet project was alive and well.

And he'd evidently decided to send his surrogate father an early Christmas present.

There was no return address.

Her father forgotten, she hung up the phone and turned her attention to the package. She felt no qualms about taking Sydney's silver letter-opener and slitting open the plain brown paper wrapping and peeling back the flaps of the box. Inside, she saw the glint of red foil: another box.

Jarod does so love his little games, she thought as she pulled out the second parcel. Just as she'd suspected, it seemed to be a Christmas present, neatly wrapped in red foil and green ribbon. She didn't bother suppressing a snicker as she read the tag: Merry Christmas, From Jarod. Miss Parker shook her head. All these weeks since the little lab monkey escaped neatly back into the jungle, and then he sends us a damn Christmas present.

She started to lift off the lid.

She heard a sudden sound from the hallway. Startled, she glanced up, only to see Angelo silhouetted in the doorway. It's like being in a circus, she mused darkly, surrounded by freaks all the time.

"Come in, Angelo," she said, deliberately adding a little warmth to her normally chill tone. "It's me--Miss Parker." Miss Parker often wondered about whatever bizarre occurrence had produced Angelo, the nearly autistic man who ceaselessly prowled the Centre, simultaneously afraid to leave and afraid to stay. Miss Parker could sympathize.

Angelo hesitated in the doorway, and then entered the room. "Daughter have present?" he ventured, not meeting her eyes. He seemed as preoccupied with absolutely nothing as he usually did.

Speaking carefully, like one addressing a child, she said, "Yes, Angelo. It's a present. From Jarod." Was it her imagination, or did he perk up a little at that? "I'm just about to open it."

She lifted the lid of the box and upended its contents on Sydney's desk as he came closer.

A motley assortment of items fell out: a toy tractor, a large quartz crystal, two pieces of paper, one big and one small. The final item missed the desk and clattered to the floor at Miss Parker's feet. She reached down after it and drew her hand back with a muffled curse. "Damn thing's sharp."

Indeed, when it fell, the silver dagger had cut through the police evidence bag that had contained it, and had subsequently lanced her index finger.

She picked it up, carefully this time, as a small rivulet of blood welled from her finger. The dagger's razor-sharp edges gleamed harshly in the bright glare of the 100-watt bulb in the desk-lamp. She turned it in the light, noting the red stone set in both sides of the hilt and the cryptic runes that were written along the blade. She doubted that their translation would read Made In China. "I thought Jarod was too young to play with these things," she muttered, stealing a tissue from Sydney's Kleenex stash to wrap around her wounded finger.

Angelo, meanwhile, had zeroed in on the tractor like a child who had just discovered a new favorite toy. He was turning it over and over in his hands, getting God alone knew what empathic information from it--or maybe he was just playing with the damn thing.

Miss Parker set the dagger down on Sydney's desk, almost irrationally relieved to have the damned thing out of her hands. She picked up the larger piece of paper. It was a flyer for something called "The National Tractor-Pulling Championship," with the name of the city, exact location, and date blacked out.

The second, smaller, piece of paper turned out to be a Tarot card. The drawing on it showed a grinning skull pierced through the cranial cavity by four swords; faint lettering identified the card at the bottom. "'Four of Swords,'" she read aloud. "'Deception.' Very clever, Jarod."

"Deception . . . " Angelo echoed, still fixated on that goddamned tractor. She half-expected him to put it down on the desk and push it around, all the while making tractor-noises.

The quartz was a pure white thrust of crystal; she lined it up with the dagger, the card, and the flier along the edge of Sydney's desk. She eyed Angelo's tractor. "What do you think, Ange? Is our boy taking up farming?"

Angelo shook his head.

"Well, what do you think?" Miss Parker questioned, impatiently. "If anything." She tried to be nice to him, but sometimes it was so goddamned difficult.

"Sad . . . " Angelo's voice was almost inaudible as he turned the toy tractor over and over, over and over. "He's so sad."

"Poor thing," Miss Parker interjected, dryly. "Can you tell me where he was, physically, when he sent it?"

"Cold. Very cold." Angelo shivered as he looked up; for that moment, at least, Miss Parker could have sworn that she saw Jarod looking out at her.

She'd always known that Angelo's empathic abilities were strange, but sometimes (like now) they seemed to border on the psychic. Or the ridiculous, whichever way she chose to see it. She often had a hard time deciding which opinion to take.

Angelo spoke again, this time in the first person, as if he were Jarod. "She's like my mother, isn't she? Being chased." He glanced down at the quartz crystal. "But even that can't keep the bad man away, can it?"

"The bad man?" Miss Parker said, her voice seeming loud and harsh next to Angelo's near-whispering tone.

The empath muttered something that sounded to Miss Parker like "the night-man," as if that was really supposed to clarify anything.

"Angelo, have you been sneaking comic books from Broots again?" she asked him, irritated. "I thought I told you--"

"I'm there, but I'm here, too." Angelo continued along a line of thought that only he could understand as he looked around the room. "It's all coming back again. It's real again."

"What's real?" She ran the fingers of her good hand through her hair impatiently.

"What happened to me here." Angelo shivered again, and his Angelo-as-Jarod eyes filled with a dark sort of fear as they met hers. "The dreams are back. And sometimes . . . sometimes I think I'm back here. Back at the Centre."

"Jarod's finally cracking, isn't he?" Miss Parker's lips twisted into something that fell decidedly short of a smile. "Nightmares and flashbacks. That's what you're telling me, isn't it?"

"Not nightmares . . . dreams," Angelo clarified. His shivering turned into a violent shudder as he whispered something.

"What?" Miss Parker leaned in closer, her hand brushing against the dagger. She gave a shudder of her own, pulling away in distaste. "Say it again."

Angelo looked up, his Jarod-eyes guilty. "I didn't mean to see it. I swear I didn't." He lowered his voice like a conspiratorial child. "Don't tell Dr. Billy. Please don't tell him."

Miss Parker didn't miss the reference to Dr. Billy, Raines's nickname among the children he'd deemed "special" enough to participate in his equally "special" experiments . . . Angelo was lost somewhere in Jarod's childhood now, wasn't he?

Angelo looked up at the security camera tucked away in one dark corner; all that could be seen of it in the blackness was its blinking red light. "But he already knows, doesn't he?" Angelo's shoulders slumped in defeat. "He knows, and he's going to take me to the secret place. He won't even help the nice lady!"

"Why do you have to speak entirely in pronouns?" Miss Parker lamented. "What 'nice lady,' Angelo?"

"Miss parker's mother."

"My mother?" Miss Parker said sharply, focusing on the blinking red light, endlessly signaling its warning that they were being recorded . . .recorded! Everything, it seemed, ended up on one DSA or another. "Angelo--what you're talking about . . . is it on a DSA?"

Angelo nodded.

"Can you find it for me?"

He shook his head. "Dr. Billy won't let anybody else see." And then, "I told them that it would happen. I told them she'd die."

"Jarod knew?" Miss Parker grabbed Angelo by the shoulders. "Jarod knew my mother was going to die?"

"I tried to tell Sydney, but he wouldn't listen." Angelo's mouth frowned in a child's angry pout. "I did! I really, really did!"

Miss Parker let go of him, stepped back a few paces. "Jarod knew! He knew they were going to kill my mother. But how in the hell could he know?"

"The dream," Angelo said. And then, bizarrely, "'All that we see or seem--'"

"'--is but a dream within a dream?'" Miss Parker filled in the rest of the quote. "Poe, Angelo?"

Angelo said nothing.

"At least I know you've been reading more than Broots' comics." She paused, and then asked another question, her voice low, mindful of the recording devices. If anyone ever heard her say this, she'd never live it down. "Are you Jarod . . . somehow? Right now?"

This time, Angelo shook his head vehemently. "He won't talk to you. You want to hurt him. Daughter mean." When he met her eyes this time, she saw that whoever he'd been up until now was gone.

"Angelo, can you find me the DSA?"

He looked at her, tilting his head in that posture she'd seen him take when he was carefully considering something. "Present . . . for Angelo?"

"You want to trade? This--" She snatched the toy tractor out of his hands. "For the DSA."

"Can I keep it?"

"Yes. It'll be your tractor." She smiled at him, her teeth gleaming mellowly in the light. "Until then, it's my tractor. Deal?"

Angelo turned and left the room, his sock-covered feet whispering his passage.

Miss Parker watched him go, and then gathered together the contents of Jarod's strange present. She wrapped the dagger in the plain brown paper that had originally surrounded the box, careful with its sharp blade. That's why he sent this shit to Sydney, she thought. You'd need to be a shrink to figure it out.

Miss Parker turned off the desk-lamp, picked up the package and left Sydney's office.

I wonder what the hell Jarod's up to now?

As he walked along the snowy sidewalk, Jarod's mind kept returning to his past, despite his efforts to concentrate on this cold and windy present. He tucked his ungloved hands even deeper into the pockets of his black leather coat, and glanced up at the cloudy gray sky, which was just beginning to take on the deeper blues of twilight.

He paused at the corner of Main Street and Wooster, waiting for the walk light to change. There wasn't much traffic out tonight, pedestrian or otherwise.

The light finally changed to WALK; Jarod continued on, stepping over yet another dirty-white snowdrift heaped carelessly along the curb.

The deserted twilight town did nothing to help Jarod forget his dark thoughts. He was one of the few people who dared brave the elements tonight; everyone else had already reached whatever destinations they were bound for, or so it seemed. They were no doubt celebrating the holiday season with family and friends, while he wandered the streets, restless and alone.

The year would soon be ending, yes . . . but what else would draw to a close with the season? The brief freedom he'd managed to steal from his captors? Jarod's short time in the outside world had been frightening at times, but it had also provided him with many unexpected joys.

He wasn't sure if it was just the time of year weighing on his mind or not--but, for whatever the reason, he felt haunted by the unquiet ghosts, both dead and living, that roamed the dark halls of his memories. Catherine Parker, mysteriously murdered deep within the secret places of the Centre. Mr. Raines, whose shadowed face and raspy, breathless voice still animated Jarod's nightmares. Sydney, father-figure but certainly no father. Angelo (and which side of the life/death line was he on, with his strange mind? Jarod wasn't sure). Miss Parker, long-ago friend and present-day sworn enemy. And, of course, the other "subjects" in the projects they'd all been forced to endure; the friends, few and far between though they'd been, who'd made Centre life bearable. The girl, Jillian--but he stopped that thought before it could even begin.

Jarod could leave the Centre, but the Centre would never leave him. He could pretend to be anyone, they'd told him. They were wrong. He could never pretend to be what he wanted to be the most--someone who could love and be loved, someone with a future that didn't involve being hunted by the Centre. Someone who didn't dread sleep because of the inevitable nightmares, the nightmares and the dreams . . .

He shook his head, attempting to dispel these tiresome thoughts, and concentrated on the scene at hand.

The businesses he passed were closed for the night, doors locked and lights turned off--they were not closed against him, but seemed to be, nonetheless.

Only his destination was still lit.

He could see, even from this distance, that the harsh effect of overhead fluorescent lights within the little shop was dulled by the cheerful glow of table-lamps, making the place seem that much more inviting.

A moderate shower of freezing rain was beginning to fall, and the freshening wind was cold even through his thick coat; he was eager to be inside. In seconds, his spiked dark hair was soaked. Even though the sensation was vaguely discomforting, he managed to enjoy it--anything different from the monotonous sameness inside the Centre was a welcome gift that he'd never expected to receive. The cold made him feel so much more real, alive for once.

Jarod walked faster, his soft-soled shoes making no sound on the sidewalk as he crossed alternating patches of snow and concrete. Closer now (he could see the colorful details of the many items hung in the store's wide front window), he retrieved his current red notebook from the inside pocket of his coat.

He angled to the right, walking towards the snowdrift that marked the edge of the curb, and stopped--he was directly across the street from the shop now, and that was close enough for a time. In a very short while, he knew, the bitter cold would start to numb his bare hands; for now, though, he wanted to savor this moment, the beginning of his newest identity, his newest life.

Jarod opened the notebook, turning to the first page. The headline, "BGSU Student Missing," had long ago engraved itself in his mind. Kimberly Ann Ebhart had never finished her second semester at Bowling Green State University. Her roommate had reported her missing after she'd failed to return from a visit to nearby metro Toledo on April 9 of this year. The picture showed a smiling African-American girl in her late teens.

Jarod paged past the article titled, "Search for Missing Girl Continues," straight to an article dated two weeks later: "Search for Ebhart Ends In Tragedy." The abandoned building in downtown Toledo where the girl's body had been found was a ruin of scorched brick and metal starkly illuminated against a gray sky.

After a few months, Kim's story had been replaced by more "current" stories and relegated to the third page. "Was Kim Ebhart Ritually Murdered?" another title questioned. He paused at this clipping and read, " . . . might signal the return of the known cults that once practiced human sacrifices in Connersville in the early eighties." Rural Connersville was located a little over fifteen miles south from Bowling Green. "By 1988, police had recovered several bodies of victims, mostly young girls, who had been reported missing. There was evidence of ritualized abuse in each case . . . " Jarod had read the police reports about each of the victims, and had read the coroners' reports of the exact condition of their remains. Personally, he agreed with both the authorities' and the reporter's statements.

A less recent headline, dated November 4, 1986, read, "Suspected Cult Leader Escapes Raid." This was only partially true--the man (and a few of his most dedicated followers) had fled their small compound before the police had even arrived. The included picture showed that the "leader," one Michael Gray, was a powerfully-built man in his late thirties. His blond hair was worn in a military cut that was even shorter than Jarod's own; he was smiling a disconcertingly warm, normal smile for a man who was suspected of leading the ritual slaughtering of eight victims. Eight known victims, Jarod's mind corrected. There had probably been others.

The freezing rain marked Gray's picture like tears as Jarod turned the page.

The final articles concerned the one woman who, he thought, had encountered the "cultist" killer or killers and lived.

The first had warranted little more than a few sentences in a section of The Toledo Blade called The Police Blotter, which chronicled car wrecks and crimes both big and small. His copy of the article was a hazy microfiche printout--the actual event had taken place in late 1986. "Ms. Jasmine Allen of Bowling Green reported being assaulted by an unknown assailant on East Merry Street. The assailant has not been found." It was the first mention of the woman in print.

In the spring of 1987, she'd given birth to a baby girl. The child's birth announcement also occupied a page in his notebook. No father was listed.

A car slowly cruised by, its driver wary of the ice and therefore tapping on the brakes every few seconds. The pages Jarod turned were lit in alternating flashes of streetlight-white and brakelight-red.

The rest of the articles were culled from various tabloids between 1984 and 1986. Jasmine Allen was a practicing psychic who had gained national fame for her work with the Ohio and Michigan police during these years. She'd helped them, among other things, recover a missing girl in 1986, working from the sketchiest of clues. No reputable newspaper would have printed her sketch of the uncaptured man who'd taken the child, but the tabloids did. The man in question bore a striking resemblance to Michael Gray.

Less than two weeks later, Gray's compound (a dismal bunch of buildings surrounded by cornfields) had been raided. An amazing stockpile of weapons had been found, along with enough evidence to confirm that the man had, indeed, been heading a small but exceedingly bizarre cult. Given enough time, the authorities claimed, Gray's cult could also have become exceedingly dangerous.

And more than one tabloid had claimed that Jasmine Allen had been personally responsible for the information leading to the raid, though no reputable paper had dared to voice such insupportable opinions.

The final article's headline ran, "Local Psychic Opens Store." The date was August 15, 1990. Jarod briefly studied the included black-and-white picture of the little shop Jasmine had named The Spirit Centre. The irony of the name's spelling had not been lost on Jarod.

Jarod raised his eyes and looked across the street at the store in question.

On one side of the small building was the local Ben Franklin Arts and Crafts store; on the other was a combination coffee shop/used bookstore known as Grounds For Thought. The Spirit Centre had changed little in the intervening years since the picture had been published--the most obvious difference was the multi-colored Christmas lights around the door and display window. Their cheerful glow dispelled the gloom that shrouded the shiny-wet street, and raised Jarod's spirits a little.

He could see Jasmine Allen behind the counter. Even from this distance, she could see how drawn and tired she looked.

The Centre comes home to The Centre, Jarod thought, cryptically, as he started across the street.