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Maligoth

Chapter Sixteen

The next two weeks passed without incident as well. Wallace had no problems gaining access to his trust fund and signing up for his classes. He bought a television and a DVD player, two luxuries denied him by Aunt Bernice since his parent's death. His first few days of school put him in a busy, but quiet and controlled environment. The world expected nothing from him but unthinking compliance. His apartment proved perfect for his studies, quiet and secure out behind the mansion and the traffic passing on the street. The garage below belonged to the caretaker and his equipment. Only occasionally was he bothered by the muffled roar of a lawnmower.

Someone had gone to a considerable expense to install a picture window in the back wall of the loft apartment, but for good reason. The view overlooked a block-sized city park. A nearby grade school filled it with children during the weekdays. The college provided young lovers in the evenings and weekends. Couples sprawled atop one another in passionate bouts of necking and evoked mixed feelings in Wallace. As he watched, he thought of Sasha.

But Sasha was gone and there wasn't another girl like her anywhere. He had no interest in women anyhow. Only his sanity mattered, his success in holding back memories of the nightmare that bubbled up in dreams and whenever he caught a glimpse of the searing eyes in dark corners of his room.

He decided not to risk friendships. The Willington Incident, as it had become known, was a morbidly obsessive item for discussion about the campus and within most classes. He dared not risk an inadvertent slip of the tongue and reveal himself as a Willington survivor. Two that he had heard about and had avoided for fear of recognition had been driven from their classes by curiosity seekers and had disappeared from the campus. Wallace had given up trying to understand what had happened in the woods behind his home, but within his first month in school, a passing reference to a field of physics called quantum mechanics caught his attention.

"It's hard to get a common sense grasp of this so-called new physics," a girl from the back of his general science class commented during a discussion. "In one experiment, light has all the properties of a particle. In another, using the same beam of light, it shows itself as a wave. How can light be both a wave and a particle at the same time?"

The class instructor was a retired theoretical physicist. Wallace absently wondered what he would think of a hole in space leading to a world of flat-faced kangaroo deer and birds with four wings.

"The problem is, the experiments speak for themselves," was his reply to the girl. "Therefore, your common sense perspective is in error rather than the results of such experiments. I'll admit, it's difficult to visualize a so-called wavicle. Keep in mind that a photon as a particle is only an analogy. So is the notion of the photon as a wave. Reality at that level has properties alien to senses engineered to perceive our far larger scale reality."

The professor paced the classroom as he lectured, walking up one isle and down another. "The overall implications of quantum reality lead to several truly bizarre models of reality, if we chose to believe that the human mind can comprehend the nature of reality at all. Remember that your brain is fed information Morse code fashion by your physical senses, there being no difference between a nerve impulse from the ear as opposed to another from the eye. The difference is in interpretation, and the neurological model that is formed in the brain is the only world you are conscious of in this very moment.

"Scientifically hypothesized models of objective reality are supposed to be descriptions of reality that lie outside our perception of it. One by one, as our technological expertise has increased, practical experiments have helped to eliminate many of these models, although it's not the common sense models that have survived. One of the survivors, for example, is the Everett-Wheeler-Graham Many Worlds Theory, the notion that when we choose between two equally viable probabilities of an event, the world breaks off into a new branch of reality to accommodate our choice, an alternate universe, so to speak. It's as if physical reality has a sideways breadth to it, a spectrum in the form of an infinity of probabilities aside from our three dimensions of space and time. Think of a rainbow existing only by virtue of your relationship to a drop of water and a source of light.

"Most physicists would as soon stick to the mathematics of the subject and leave the romantic meanderings to the realm of science fiction, but there are those who consider even that conservative stance a cop-out. The world we live in is more incredible than we know, more incredible than we can know. That much we can trust as fact."

The Professor mentioned a book on the subject that the class members could peruse on their own time. Wallace jotted down the title, but found it missing that evening at the library. His only remaining option was to buy a copy. He called around town to locate one, then set out on foot an hour before the nearby bookstore closed. Only in a parallel world was he going to find kangaroo deer and the inhabitants of Willington who had fled across the open plains where it lived.

An attractive, petite girl about his own age and a young man with a camcorder blocked his path into the store. "Excuse me, sir," the girl said.

Wallace faltered and looked down into the face of a petite blonde angel.

"We're doing interviews for the Harthmore Voice. Can we bother you for an opinion or two on issues of importance to the student body of Harthmore College?"

Wallace shook his head absently. He brushed past the girl and her companion and went into the store. He found the title he wanted mistakenly placed in the New Age section. The book was Parallel Universes, written by Fred Alan Wolf. He tucked a copy under his arm, then took note of the size of the store. Maybe he'd find entry level books on genetic engineering to understand better the significance of a virus in a mushroom containing human DNA sequences, or information on the kind of mental aberration it would take to see ghosts with eyes of blue-white fire standing about one's bed at night.

Wallace explored narrow isles in his search. He removed a book from a chest-height shelf and saw in the empty space between eyes as blue as the morning sky looking up at him in surprise. It was the same girl who had accosted him outside.

Embarrassed, Wallace turned away and pretended nonchalance. When he reached the main isle, the girl blocked his way, feigning distraction with her nose buried in a book. After a clumsy moment of silence, she looked up at him and flashing a smile.

"Sorry."

The blue eyes were set in a wide, Slavic face, but she was more Nordic in her coloring. She stood about five flawlessly proportioned feet in height. Sasha had been his only experience with a woman, and she had stood his own five feet, eight inches.

And then she moved on, leaving Wallace breathless with excitement. There should have been an erection to go with his arousal, but that hadn't happened since the night he had lost Sasha. Wallace knew he should have sought psychiatric counseling. Impotence in a virgin eighteen-year-old had to be a bad sign.

He shook off his concerns. He had no use for women in his life just now. His interests were in the books he was purchasing, the one on parallel universes, another on genetic engineering, and a third on pathological human psychology. He began thumbing through the pages as he made his way to the checkout counter. By the time he left the store, he had forgotten about the blue eyes entirely.

The afternoon outside was warm and the traffic cheerfully noisy and distracting. He tucked the books under his right arm and started toward home. He took no notice of the black limousine with tinted windows parked at the curb until two dark-skinned Arabs dressed in business suits and white turbans emerged. They hurried around both ends of the car. One blocked his way. The other took up position behind him.

A third, bare-headed man emerged and stood glaring at him over the roof of the car. Wallace had never seen the man before, but the family resemblance was unmistakable. The two men in the employ of Sasha Abdul's father closed on him and reached for his arms.

A flurry of blonde hair flew in Wallace's face. A tiny hand shoved a microphone into his face.

"Excuse me, sir! May I have a word with you?"

The girl hurriedly gestured to the young man with the camcorder. "Off to the left, Jack! Get a good picture of this!"

She turned back to Wallace with a smile. "I'm Melanie Cass, roving reporter for the Harthmore Voice. I was wondering if you would be so kind as to share your opinion with us about Dean Rathmont's admonishment against oral sex following back fielder Trent's recent injuries at the hand..."

She giggled.

"...mouth, rather, of Susan Bowman, during an argument concerning Trent's alleged infidelities and the resulting pregnancy of Penelope Grant?"

The two Arabs grimaced with irritation as an amused crowd gathered. The remaining back door of the limousine closest to Wallace opened. Sylvia Carleton-Abdul emerged into the light of day wearing a black dress and a hat with black lace partially covering her face. There were tears in her eyes and she opened her arms to him.

Wallace dropped his books unthinkingly. He went to her and stepped into her embrace like a lost child.

Sylvia hugged him fiercely, then pushed him to arm's length. "We only want to speak with you about Sasha, my husband Sadat and I."

Wallace glanced back at the confused little blonde. "Thanks," he said, "but it's okay. I know these people."

He got into the back seat of the limousine, sitting between Sylvia and her husband. The two Arabs climbed in front. An opaque divider came up between the front and back seats, and the car pulled smoothly into traffic.

"I have heard that my daughter may be dead," Sadat Abdul said in a heavily accented voice. "My wife informed me that you were one of Sasha's friend. You proved to be an fortunate survivor of a catastrophe that I do not understand."

Wallace looked at Sylvia and tried to hold back his own tears. "I was hoping Sasha would be with you. I don't know what happened to her."

Sylvia wept with her fists clenched in her lap, then composed herself. "I went to work that day after we spoke with the police officer. When all the commotion broke out, the police wouldn't let us back in town. It was horrible."

"Is my daughter dead?" Sadat Abdul said, his dark eyes ablaze with pain and anger.

Wallace shook his head. "No, sir, she's not dead. She wasn't one of the… victims."

Sylvia stared at him without understanding.

"The dead number in the hundreds," Sadat said. "The missing equal that number. You are saying that my daughter is among the missing."

Wallace gave a reluctant nod.

"Where did they go? What happened to them?"

He knew he should not be talking to these people. Neither of them would believe the truth. "I don't know, but Sasha's alive. I know she's alive."

"They tell me the town went mad!" Sadat roared. "The dead were murdered, cannibalized, even by their own families! I'll not believe my beloved Sasha guilty of such crimes! I would prefer her dead!"

Wallace turned his face aside and said nothing.

"Infidel!" the man cried. "Useless child!"

"Sadat, please! He's not responsible! How can you expect Wallace to know more than what we ourselves have discovered?"

"Stop the car!"

"Sadat, I want to speak with the boy!"

"If he has nothing of any importance to tell us, then we must but this terrible incident behind us and never speak of it again! Sasha is dead, and I will not be told otherwise by ignorant children!"

The car stopped. Wrought with pain, Sylvia said, "I'm sorry."

"She's not dead," Wallace said calmly, solemnly.

His door was opened. A hand grasped his arm and dragged him from the car, throwing him down in the middle of a deserted side street. Wallace rolled to his hands and knees in time to watch the limousine drive away in a quiet hiss of exhaust.

He glanced up and down the street to ensure he was in no imminent danger of being run down by passing traffic, then carefully picked himself up and brushed off his shirt and pants. Melanie Cass rounded the corner down the block, alone and on foot. She made a bee-line for him with a bright smile and handed him the three books he had dropped outside the book store.

Wallace nodded his thanks. He expected the girl to grill him for some explanation of what had happened. Instead, she gave him a reassuring touch on the hand, and then turned and walked briskly away.

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