And then, operation after operation while the boy recovered, a teenager, nearly a man, and learning to test himself, test his abilities, but still too weak. Not recovered. And then, she went further, and felt as if she were going into the whorls of a dark sh.e.l.l. She was inside him, behind his eyes, seeing what he saw. And it was as if he were directing her back in time to look out through him. She saw the clippings on the wall-the murders. She saw things that he could Stream-and there was Hut, somehow he'd Streamed to Hut, Hut when he was in his late twenties, with Amanda, who looked more beautiful than Julie imagined she had been, more beautiful and radiant than any woman Julie had ever seen, and Amanda had Matty, a two-year-old then, and they were in Tompkins Square Park in the city. They were talking, but Julie couldn't hear their words. But she saw Hut's face. She saw a level of darkness there-as if there were an aura of ravens around him-and he was arguing with Michael, he was angry, and then laughing at him, and some of the words came through, "you idiot," "wasting your life," "you can't see what we're trying to do," and Amanda looking as if Hut had frightened her as he picked Matt up and took her hand, tugging her away from Michael Diamond.

Michael turned around on the street, and there was Hut again, only it was the Hut that Julie remembered. It was the Hut that she'd seen their last morning together. Again, she couldn't hear the words. Not clearly. The volume was too low on what she experienced, but she felt what Michael Diamond felt, and she saw the anger in Hut, and then the two men went to the curb, and Hut told him to get in. Hut had a small knife. He was threatening Diamond. But Diamond got into the Audi, and they drove. The consciousness crashed in a wave, and Julie felt herself being pulled into an undertow, deeper into Diamond's mind.

And then, she was at the clearing, and it was Hut with the knife. Diamond argued, and Hut jabbed the air in front of him. Julie understood. Hut had wanted to kill Diamond. In her mind, Michael Diamond said, "I had been the instrument that allowed him, and the others, to discover about resurrection."

She shot out of his mind, just as sure as if she'd been catapulted.

Again in the dark, but she opened her eyes, and it had begun to be light out. It was already morning. She was soaked with sweat, as was Diamond. "Oh my G.o.d," she said. "Oh my G.o.d."

"Try to stay calm," Michael Diamond told her. "Please. It's something that they discovered when they tried to kill me."

"What is it?"

"There is no death, Julie."

6.

"At least, not how we think of it. Death is like a train station. You leave one train and get on another," he said. "Only some people-with Ability X-can alter the process. I don't completely understand it, nor do I care to. I experienced death briefly. They were testing me, Julie. They've tested others. Most fail. Even with Ability X, the failure rate is high. They've killed some people. Some of their own children."

"Who are they they?"

"There are at least five of them, but I'm sure there are more by now. I've been trying for the past seven years to locate them, but they...well, they block me. They can do that." He must have read the shadowy expression on her face. "I know it's hard for you to believe. You've just come to this."

"But if Hut...if Hut were really..."

"You saw inside me. You experienced it."

"You carved into his body," she said. "And others. I saw them."

"I only killed your husband, Julie. They killed the others. And more that still have not been found. They kill their own children, Julie. Just as they tested me, they've been testing each other for years. They carved the symbols into your husband's back. They were there, watching. That's why he stopped the car at the path into the woods. I couldn't detect them, but I know they were there, and I did my d.a.m.nedest to make sure that your husband could not come back from the dead. They are a death cult. They have turned their ability into something...unspeakable."

She felt a shivering rack her body, and she pushed herself up from the floor. The ordinariness of the early morning light coming through windows, of the shadows being erased along the living room and down the hall to the kitchen, made her wonder what life was, and where the real and the unreal separated.

"You've been inside me, Julie. I've been inside you. You can't go back from that. You know-inside you- that what I'm saying is true. I showed you," he said.

She rose up, keeping her back to the door. "I don't know," she said, trembling. "You have this ability. I know you do. I don't know what to think. I just don't. What if you're lying? What if you can show me things that never happened?"

He pressed his hands to his forehead, as if he were stopping a headache. "Don't doubt me. Please, Julie. It's important. I'm here with you because I knew what you were going through. When you came to me, and I went inside you, I knew the pain you'd felt. I knew the desolation. It's because your marriage was a lie. He used you. He is still using you."

"He's dead. My husband is dead," she said, angrily. She stepped around him and went toward the kitchen. "I need time. I need time to think."

"There's no time," he said. "They've already tested others."

She half turned, stopping. "What do you mean?"

"Your children," he said. "They have some of their father in them. They have the genetic material for Ability X. You know that your stepson has things he can't express. You know that your daughter thinks she has a brain radio. That she communicates with her father. Some of them have already murdered their own children, trying to resurrect them. Do you think your children are safe?"

Julie glanced upstairs to the bedrooms. "Stop it. Please. If that's true. My G.o.d, if that's true, then why didn't Hut just come here and take them? Why all these months..." She tried to block out the videos she'd seen. That's insane. It was your mind. It was stress. Posttraumatic stress. Eleanor called it that. Shock. Shock of having your husband murdered. Shock and despair and anger and grief and mourning and cracks in your mind where you fall off a cliff of life and dangle from a thin branch over a chasm. Nervous exhaustion. Night fears. Erotic dreams. Rape dreams. Short-circuiting in the face of an enormous shock. That's what it was. This is insane. That's insane. It was your mind. It was stress. Posttraumatic stress. Eleanor called it that. Shock. Shock of having your husband murdered. Shock and despair and anger and grief and mourning and cracks in your mind where you fall off a cliff of life and dangle from a thin branch over a chasm. Nervous exhaustion. Night fears. Erotic dreams. Rape dreams. Short-circuiting in the face of an enormous shock. That's what it was. This is insane.

"You don't come back all at once," he said. "First, your autonomous nervous system kicks in when Ability X turns on another part of the brain. Then, it takes weeks before your memories come back. And they only come back if others with the Ability are there to bring them into you. To get inside the Stream with you. To re-open the doors that have been closed. But you've seen him. In your dreams. In the movies in your head. The movies on screen. He is blasphemy, Julie. He violated the sacredness of death. He violates the soul. He does not believe in the soul. He puts himself above the laws of nature, which are here for a reason, Julie. It's what I learned in my death. If I could take away my life now, I would. I've tried. But I can't. Only when my brain itself breaks down, will I finally find release and enter the Stream that connects us all. And then my soul will go where it is meant to and not be shackled by this body. I wish I could make it untrue, Julie," he said, getting up from the floor. He came toward her. "I wish I could say I made it all up. That I'm just a murderer. That I murdered your husband and I'm here to hurt you. But it's not true."

"Don't come near me. Please," she said, feeling an immense ache within her.

"You're feeling separation from me. It's all right," he said. "It pa.s.ses. It's what we feel when we're too much within another. You don't have Ability X strongly enough. Everyone has it to some small degree. Your husband has it greater than anyone I've ever known. You seem to have perhaps three percent. A drop of it. But it's enough to make you ache when you separate from going inside someone in the Stream. It's what we all feel," he said, and as he went toward her she slowly moved back, through the doorway into the kitchen. "I learned something in my death, Julie. I learned about the soul. And death is the sacred doorway. I should not have been pulled back into life. I should not have come back into my burnt body. But they were there, and they got inside the Stream, and they drew me back because I was their experiment. I was their guinea pig. But I came back better. They don't always. Sometimes, they come back violent. Sometimes, they show up with nothing but evil in them. Sometimes, they come back as a child who can't learn right, who can't remember, who can't express himself, who gets angry and violent and pulls knives."

She stared at him, angry now. "Matt? Matty?"

"He killed him. When he was only three. That was too young. But he doesn't care, Julie. It was a test. I know, because his wife came to me. Amanda. She came to me and she was losing her mind with fury for what she'd allowed them to do."

"Matty? He's not dead. He's in his room, sleeping. He'll wake up soon."

"She told me that she fought him-your husband- to make him stop. But the problem with what they do, Julie, is they want fear. Fear makes the adrenaline pump. Fear makes them come back. It wakes up a part of the brain after one part of it turns off. Fear is a switch. It gets the Ability going at hyperspeed. They need that. It opens a door that should be permanently sealed in the brain. It turns on something. When one part of the brain diminishes, another part begins to rewire and come alive. Do you know how they did it to that little threeyear-old boy? Do you?"

"He doesn't have the carving," Julie said, her eyes watering up with tears and she went to the knife block and pulled out a long sharp knife. She held it up, more afraid than she'd ever been in her life.

"Amanda stopped them from carving into his skin after he was dead. But before he died, they had to frighten that little three-year-old. They had to do something so terrible to him, Julie, that his system would go into shock. And then they drowned him. They made his own mother do it. Your husband made his wife wrap her hands around the boy's neck and press him into a bathtub and the fear was like electricity so that even she felt it. But he had some of the Ability. He came back. But he didn't come back without something not right. That's what they do, Julie. They think that they're changing the world. They think by doing this, they'll eradicate death. They'll close the door of death. But it doesn't always work. Sometimes the body rots. Three days are crucial. If the mind does not awaken in three days, corruption sets in, and it's too late. If the brain doesn't turn on, then natural death occurs. But they stay inside them for three days. They stayed inside me for three days after the fire. They made sure I turned on and came back from the dead. And they did it with your husband. And his son."

"Hut saw her. That's not true," Julie said. "He saw her. He told me. He said she was trying to kill him. When he was eleven."

"Maybe she was trying to send him where his soul had been meant to go," Diamond said. "Julie, there's no time now. I want to ask that you and your children come with me. I'll protect them. They can't really hurt me. They can't do anything to you once you've died and come back."

"No," she said, wiping at her eyes with the back of her left hand. She held the knife up, sobbing. "Matty's a good boy. He's good. There's nothing wrong with him."

"It doesn't make you bad," Diamond said. "But there are no guarantees how we come back. None. n.o.body understands how the brain-and mind-work, Julie. n.o.body understands the enormous part of our minds that is untapped. They play with fire. They murder and call it understanding."

"That's insane. You're talking insane. This is not real. This is not happening. Please, just leave. Just go. I...I'm confused. I don't...I don't want this. Please." She tried to reach for the phone on the counter by the sink, but wasn't quite there. He stepped toward her, and she jabbed the knife in the air.

"We've been inside each other. You know this is true. You know it."

"Stop saying that! It's obscene. It's disgusting. He's dead. You killed him. Please. Why don't you leave? Why don't you leave?"

"I know you won't stab me," he said, stepping closer. "I've been inside you. I know you, inside and out. I know."

"Don't, please," she sobbed, slashing at the air, less than a foot from him, crumbling to the floor, wishing the world would disappear, wishing she could feel safe again.

"There's something I need, Julie. You know where they are. But they blocked you. But I can unblock it inside you. I just need to go find that door. I need just a little time to find that door. I can stop them for good, Julie. Inside you, you have a memory. You've been to where they're giving their tests."

"66S? Is that what this is about?"

"No," he said. "That was a young woman's apartment. A woman I knew. Her father had been friends with my father, and he gave her the apartment after it was converted into units. A woman named Gina Lambert. Another one of us. But she was the daughter of a girl named Nell who had been in Project Daylight. Her mother was one of them. And they got her. They killed her to test her. They killed a boy named Terry West. He was still in college. He had Ability X. Do you want to know how? They had to create great fear in him before he died. But he still died. He didn't come back. Do you want to know how monstrous they are?"

"I don't know anything, I don't."

"Let me inside you one last time. Just one last time," he said, "Please let me get inside you."

She jabbed the knife at him, almost touching his skin. "No, please, no."

"There's a place inside you. I know it's there. We were almost there. Almost. I almost found it. If you can let me in, I can stop them. I know I can. There's always hope. It's a blessing and a curse. But sometimes, it's all we have. Yet, when faced with this, there is no hope. There can be no hope. Do not let hope cloud your resolve. Help me find them. Help me open that one door in your mind."

"Please," she wept, slashing blindly, "Go away. I don't want this. It's not happening!"

He reached out and touched the edge of the knife, and then the tips of her fingers. "Let me inside you, Julie."

She felt a spark between them, and a lubricating familiarity as he slid into her and she shut her eyes for just a moment and felt him moving, and now she tried to resist but he was pushing her hard, slamming up against her on the inside, his consciousness roaming and tearing at walls and doors and things that she felt were the tunnels into her memory.

And then she saw it at the moment he did.

It was simply a house.

It was a house with gla.s.s walls on one side.

She had seen it before but she wasn't sure where. She could not name whose it was. She vaguely remembered a video of Matt's that was just a house on a lake. On the lake, she thought. Their lake. Somewhere right here. Somewhere in Rellingford. On the lake. She remembered the rich people's houses across the lake, and felt as he searched her memory for who owned this house and why she was there, and she saw a woman coming to the door as she stood out in the side yard looking at the brown lake, and she turned to see the woman more clearly, but the image was out of focus and she almost had a name...

And then something exploded. She felt a sudden rush of wind inside the Stream. Diamond was no longer there with her. She opened her eyes.

At first she thought the noise was from outside the windows, a cherry bomb blast.

She looked at Michael Diamond's face. He wore an expression of shock.

He tried to reach around to his back.

He fell hard on the floor.

Behind him, Hut.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

She felt the world spinning around her. She saw Michael Diamond wriggling and then trying to crawl. She stared at him. Looked up at Hut. She looked at Hut as if she'd never seen him before. Trying to comprehend. Trying to make it all make sense to her. Reason was gone. She knew Michael Diamond. She knew him. She didn't know Hut. She had never known Hut. He had hidden from her. He had...used her? For what? For making a child? Another child? Another test to pa.s.s? Livy? With her brain radio? Was that it? Were they all making children? Stealing children? With Ability X? That's insane. It couldn't be. Why? What purpose? Why kill them? Why do it? Hut can't be here. It has to be like the movies. It has to be just me. How is it possible? But she remembered the feeling within the Stream. She could not deny that. She had felt...wonderful and terrified, as if it were something that...her soul had known existed. Diamond believed in the soul. The human soul, inviolate. Not to be violated. Not to be played with. The soul's journey along the Stream after death. After life. Beyond life. For what? For making a child? Another child? Another test to pa.s.s? Livy? With her brain radio? Was that it? Were they all making children? Stealing children? With Ability X? That's insane. It couldn't be. Why? What purpose? Why kill them? Why do it? Hut can't be here. It has to be like the movies. It has to be just me. How is it possible? But she remembered the feeling within the Stream. She could not deny that. She had felt...wonderful and terrified, as if it were something that...her soul had known existed. Diamond believed in the soul. The human soul, inviolate. Not to be violated. Not to be played with. The soul's journey along the Stream after death. After life. Beyond life.

Something in her brain began to fade, as if she no longer could tell the difference between dream and reality, and words and images came up to her, trying to draw her back from what she saw in front of her, trying to make her close her eyes, and return to the Stream that Michael Diamond had taken her into with him.

Hut stood there in a white shirt and khakis, the revolver from the metal box in his hand.

"Don't scream," he said, softly. "The kids are probably waking up now. They heard the shot. Even the neighbors, although it'll take a little while to identify where this came from. Shhh." Then he bent down and took the knife from Julie's fingers, and put his foot against Michael Diamond's throat. "Look at him. He's dying. But he can't die. But he can suffer. He can go towards death. But in three days, he'll come back. Once you pa.s.s the test, Julie, you can't die ever again." Then he leaned closer to Julie. She could feel his breath, which was sweet. "If you let me inside you now, I can take all the pain away," he said.

She stared at him, feeling as if she were surrounded by ice.

"This is shock," he whispered, stroking the side of her face gently. "Do you want me inside you?" Hut asked. "If you let me inside you, Julie, I can take away hurt."

She felt his consciousness come into her and suddenly, she felt sleepy and tired as if she'd been given a sedative. He was stroking her on the inside, altering the pain, softening her confusion, making her black out.

As she sank down into a dark oblivion, she thought of Livy and Matt, and she wanted to claw her way up from the darkness for their sakes. Please Livy. Please Matt. Don't let him touch you. Don't let your Daddy near you. I don't know what to believe. I don't know if I'm really here or if my mind is gone. Please G.o.d help my children. Please Michael. Please someone. Hut please don't hurt them. Don't let this be happening. Please Livy. Please Matt. Don't let him touch you. Don't let your Daddy near you. I don't know what to believe. I don't know if I'm really here or if my mind is gone. Please G.o.d help my children. Please Michael. Please someone. Hut please don't hurt them. Don't let this be happening.

Part Four

Chapter Twenty-Three.

1.

The headache blasted into the back of her scalp. Jesus. I have to tell Dr. Glennon that Darmien is like an axe. Christ, I'll never take it again. Jesus. I have to tell Dr. Glennon that Darmien is like an axe. Christ, I'll never take it again.

Her eyes opened. She looked at the clock. It was after three.

She began to get fragments of memory back. It was dream-like and vague, but then she felt terror clutch at her. She got out of bed, and went down the hall to Livy's room.

Her bed was empty.

Then, to Matt's.

First, she called the police, talked to the sheriff but midway through speaking, she could tell that he was patronizing. "Julie, I'm sorry. Have you checked with the schools? With anyone? Could they possibly be somewhere together?" Then, he said, "All right. I'll send someone by."

She demanded Detective McGuane's number, and when she got it, she called and had to leave a message on his voicemail. She spoke slowly and as coherently as possible. She tried not to bring up everything that Michael Diamond had told her or shown her. She was beginning to doubt herself by the end of the message.

She finally went to the kitchen. The knife was on the floor. She picked it up and put it in the sink. She thought she saw something under the cabinetry on the tile. She reached down and felt around to see what it was. It was the revolver.

A police cruiser came by, and she met the two cops outside. She worked hard to retain her composure. She didn't tell them everything. She watched for their reactions to her story. She didn't say "my dead husband," and she didn't say "psychic." She just told them that some crazies broke in. That she pa.s.sed out. That there was a gunshot, and she had the gun. That her children were missing. They wrote some things down and told her to wait at home, keep the doors locked, keep the phone line clear.

But as soon as they'd left, and she returned to her house, she got the revolver and got into her Camry and drove down to the perimeter road of the lake.

2.