CHAPTER SIX.

"Mrs. Brasher, it's me, Spence."

"Oh, h.e.l.lo, Spence."

"I'd like to speak to Cindy if I could."

A pause. "Well, I'll see if she's up."

"I'd appreciate that."

That's when I heard the whispering behind her. This being Sat.u.r.day morning, they were probably having a late breakfast. Cindy probably heard my name and started whispering to her mother that she didn't want to talk. Her mother, who had cupped the phone with her hand, started whispering back.

Cindy came on.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Hi."

"Hi, Spence." Not exactly warm and enthusiastic.

"I wondered if we could have lunch today."

"Don't you have to work?"

"I traded with somebody."

"Oh."

"I really think we should talk."

Pause. "You know I'm dating your friend Garrett, don't you?"

I laughed. "I'm not sure I'd call him my friend exactly."

"He wouldn't be happy. You know, if we had lunch."

"We could always go over to Dover." Dover was seventeen miles away, a small town that swelled in the summer because of the wealthy people who had homes on the river.

"Wella"" she said.

"I want to talk to you about some tapes."

"Tapes?"

I wanted to hook her so she couldn't say no.

"Yeah. Right before he died, Myles recorded a couple of ca.s.sette tapes." Now I paused. I wanted to make this as dramatic as possible. "About the well."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. He was pretty screwed up about it."

"You have the tapes?"

"Uh-huh."

"How'd you get them?"

She was hooked, all right.

"His folks gave them to me."

"His folks? They know about the well?"

"Yeah."

She didn't say anything for a time, then: "What time do you want to pick me up?"

"Around noon."

"Will you bring the tapes?"

"All right."

"I'd like to borrow them."

"For what?"

"You know, just to listen to them. David had quite an imagination."

"I'll bring them along."

"Around noon, then."

"Right."

On Sat.u.r.day, the National Guard Armory is a busy place.

Weekend warriors from four different counties come here to play soldier. Having served as an enlisted man, I had a slightly superior att.i.tude to the Guardsmen, just as enlisted men who'd seen combat in Nam had a slightly superior att.i.tude toward me for having spent my three years in the wilds of darkest New Jersey.

The Armory was filled with trucks covered in camouflage, with rifles being torn down and put back together, and with a lot of guys standing around drinking coffee and eating donuts. The Armory smelled of car oil and gun oil and smoke from a lot of cigarettes.

In the back of the vast, echoing warehouse area was a group of small offices.

I went to third door and knocked.

"Yes?"

I opened the door and peeked in.

Dr. Wylie, tall, bald, and slightly stoop-shouldered, sat in a chair at his desk. He wore his camouflage uniform. He'd been working on a set of papers. His pen was still poised above them. The office was small but tidy. On the wall behind his desk were several framed degrees.

"May I help you?" he said.

"My name's Spencer. I was in the Army until about three months ago. Friend of mine, Bill Nelson, said you saw him a few times and I was just wonderinga""

"h.e.l.l, yes. C'mon in and close the door."

Dr. Wylie was a weekend warrior himself. But he'd had a long career as an enlisted man before this. His real job was that of psychologist. He had an office two towns away.

A lot of people just getting out of the service have certain adjustment problems. Bill Nelson, a Navy vet I knew, told me that he and some others always went to see Dr. Wylie. He didn't charge you anything, and he was really good at calming you down and helping you think through your problems.

He got up and poured us both a cup of coffee.

When we were all settled in, he said, "So how can I help you?"

"It's kind of embarra.s.sing, actually."

And it was.

a"There's this alien in this well, see, Dr. Wylie and it's going to come out someday and...

"I guess what I want to know is if people can all have the same delusion at the same time?"

"Could you explain that a little more?"

"Well, say I have a dog and I think he talks to me."

"All right."

"And then I tell my best friend and he doesn't believe me but then he starts watching my dog real close, just on the off chance that I'm telling the truth, and then one day he hears the dog talk."

"I see."

"And then he tells somebody else that my dog can talk, and this guy doesn't believe it, either. But then he starts watching my dog, and listening real hard, and then one day he hears my dog talk, too."

"All right."

"But the dog can't really talk. I just imagined ita"and so did my friends. Does that ever happen?"

He was sipping coffee and nodding his bald head. "More often than you think."

"Really?"

"Sure. There's even a psychiatric term for it. Shared Psychotic Disorder."

"I guess I don't know what that means."

"It means that one person has a delusion and tells it to somebody else. This second person is suggestible enough to buy into the delusion, too, so he starts believing in it, and he finds other suggestible people, and he gets them to start believing it, too."

"But they really believe it? I mean, they're not faking?"

"Most of them could pa.s.s a polygraph test. They absolutely believe it's the truth. We see that with alien abductions all the time."

"Wow."

"That's not to say that there aren't some real alien abductions. I'm not one of those people who rule out all possibilities. But a lot of the cases I've heard of are part of a Shared Psychotic Disorder. Usually happens to people with very creative minds. They're more open to suggestion."

He put down his coffee cup. "Some of your friends trying to convince you of something you find hard to believe?"

"Something like that."

"And they all swear it's true?"

"Yes."

He watched me with shrewd brown eyes. "And you're starting to think that maybe it's true yourself?"

I felt my cheeks get hot. I thought of the night I heard a voice out at the well. An alien voice, yet. Creepy crawlies from planet Zanthar or galaxy Glakmo.

"Yeah." I smiled. "It's sort of like an alien abduction."

"I kind of figured."

"And they kept telling me about this creature and then I started hearing it for myself. Out at the well. What did you call that syndrome?"

"Shared Psychotic Disorder. But you mentioned the well. The one out by where the meteor landed last century?"

"Yeah. You know about it."

He smiled. "They've been telling stories about that well for over a hundred years. Wild stories."

"Shared Psychotic Disorder?"

He nodded.

"That's what it sounds like, huh?"

"Very possibly. If you're hearing alien voices."

There was a knock on the door. "Excuse me. Yes?"