Tunnel Vision Read online

  Roman had parked just down Arlington Street, so he followed the Town Car for Storrow Drive and westward until it crossed over the Larz Anderson Bridge to Harvard Square. The limo pulled up in front of her place on Harvard Street, and the two of them got out and went into her three-decker.

  Roman checked his BlackBerry for the time. Five hours of surveillance, and all he had learned was that the kid and the girl had attended some fancy event and then shacked up at her place. A friggin’ waste of time, he thought as he looked at the small screen.

  Or maybe not.

  47

  Sarah’s apartment was on the second floor. They walked into the living room, which was done in white and beige with accents of color, and nothing was out of place. Against the bank of windows overlooking Harvard Street sat a deep, cushiony sofa with a coffee table supporting a vase of fresh tulips. Two white-and-gold lamps sat on end tables, filling the room with a warm glow. Across from the sofa were two white French chairs. On the opposite wall were posters of French café scenes. It looked like a space Sarah would occupy.

  “How come your place looks like it was just attacked by Architectural Digest and my place looks bombed out?”

  “Maybe because I was expecting company.”

  “Tell me I’m it.”

  She smiled. “Besides, you’re a guy.”

  “And I’ve never been more grateful.”

  On the fireplace mantel were photos of her parents and a graduation shot of her in cap and gown with a smiling Morris Stern beside her. He followed her into the kitchen, her sensuous body making the emerald sheath look liquid as she walked.

  “Red or white?” She directed him to a small wine rack on top of the refrigerator.

  He removed a bottle of cabernet sauvignon and opened it while she got the glasses from a cabinet. Then he filled the glasses and they clinked. “Lovely, dark, and deep.”

  “The wine?”

  “Your eyes.”

  “You’re sweet.” She took his arm and walked him to the couch. “So, what did you think of Reverend Mr. Gladstone?”

  Zack settled beside her. “Besides his capacity for wind, he seems to carry a lot of weight.”

  “Without him, there’d be no lab.”

  “He also believes he’s about to find the Promised Land.”

  “I suppose that’s the televangelist in him.”

  “Except he expects me to point the way,” Zack said. “Just what kind of NDEs does he hope for me to have?”

  “I don’t think anything in particular.”

  “I mean, I’ve been suspended four times, and all I can remember is crawling out of a sand hole and playing ball with my father, then following him into some woods. Not exactly a life review and angels of light.”

  “Except each run yields new data about what goes on in NDEs.”

  “That’s my point: if I had bona fide NDEs. I mean, I didn’t feel separated from my body, looking down at myself like a seagull. And I didn’t pass through any tunnels toward godlight.”

  “You also said that they didn’t feel like regular dreams.”

  “Yeah, I still wouldn’t say they were supernatural. Just very realistic dreams.”

  “Elizabeth thinks you experienced transcendence.”

  “But everything I’ve read, including Gladstone’s book, talks about unconditional love and tranquillity. I didn’t get that. Plus I was younger and so was my father, and he wasn’t any being of light.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “That maybe Dr. Stern’s right. Maybe it’s all from inside my own head, and nothing else.” His only explanation for the root beer logo thing was sheer coincidence—that the image had been buried in his brain, tweaked while in suspension, so that he came out thirsty and craving a frosty A&W. As for the nightmares of being buried in sand, he blamed that on the anesthetic—that and how his brain had suffered trauma from the bike accident, followed by weeks in a chemically induced coma.

  “That’s entirely possible, which is why she wants more tests, if you’re still willing.”

  “I’ve got bills up to here, so I’m willing.” But he still felt torn. Despite the wide-eyed speculations about the afterlife and cosmic sentience, he couldn’t help thinking that he was part of a very expensive exercise in pseudoscience. It reminded him of those Discovery Channel shows about alien visitations, with scientists holding forth with sweet-smelling endorsements. Of course, he didn’t say that. Nor did he mention how he’d like to get back to those woods and find out what his dream “father” wanted to tell him.

  “Let’s see how you do on Thursday.”

  After a second glass of wine, Sarah lowered her head onto his shoulder. In a few moments, they were kissing and fondling each other. After a spell, she began to unbutton his shirt and kiss his chest. “You know what?” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “I’m starting to believe in transcendence.”

  48

  At six P.M. on Thursday, Sarah pulled up in front of Zack’s apartment to drive him to the lab. “Bruce, you never looked better,” he said, getting in.

  Sarah smiled. “He’s got the night off.”

  She headed down Huntington toward the MassPike. But instead of the usual turn off Route 109, Sarah proceeded to the next right and then another, cutting behind the lab building where construction was being done. Because of the high evergreens, Zack had not noticed the large white church on the other side of the woods behind the lab. A sign in front read, “The GodLight Tabernacle.” As they passed the church, construction crews were finishing a security fence around the lab. “It’s on the same property as the church.”

  “Yes. Gladstone owns all the acreage around here, including the lab.”

  She continued past a low white parish house through more hemlocks to a new security gate at the entrance of the lab. Because of the trees, the fence was not visible from the church, and it was topped with razor wire. Also new was a guard shack with an armed uniformed man. Sarah showed her ID and guest pass for Zack. The guard looked at Zack and let them go through. “Is there something I should know?”

  “Just that a lot of crazies don’t like what we’re doing.”

  “Any actual threats?”

  “Just some nasty communications,” she said. “As you can see, the guards are new.”

  “Guards, plural?”

  “There are others around the compound.”

  They parked against the building, then moved through the front entrance, where a barricade had been erected and where a technician scanned them for metal and checked Zack’s backpack. All this in just a few days. “Just how serious are these communications?” he said as they walked down the hall to the lab office.

  “It’s more precautionary than defensive.”

  Dr. Luria was talking to Dr. Stern and a technician when they entered her office. They greeted Zack, then walked him down the hall to the MRI room, where he changed and got hooked up on the gurney.

  Sarah patted his arm. “Ready?”

  “If you don’t bring me back, the Discover people will be really upset.”

  She smiled. “So will I.”

  “Be still, my foolish heart.” He closed his eyes on her smile as she powered him into the MRI tube.

  His last thought before Sarah depressed the plunger was, Dad, be there.

  * * *

  Zack did not recognize the car. Or the street. Nothing about the locale meant anything to him. Nor did the fact he was driving somewhere in the country with very few houses and deep forests right up to the road. Nothing had any meaning except for the figure far down the road. A woman jogging in a pink outfit.

  She wore headphones and was pumping hard along the same side of the road. Sunlight splashed through the canopy of leaves. He slowed to the speed of the jogger, who was too lost in her music and running to notice him pace her a hundred feet back.

  Two cars came the other way and disappeared in his rearview mirror. Ahead, the road was a straight cut through th
e trees with no houses or cars approaching. He pulled alongside the woman. Without breaking her stride, she turned her face toward him. She wore sunglasses with large white frames. He lowered the passenger window as if to ask directions.

  It took a few moments, but her face registered fear and she stopped in her tracks.

  In a lightning move, he put the car in reverse and then jammed it into drive. Before she could move, he turned the wheel sharply and drove into her. She let out a cry as she tumbled onto the soft shoulder. When she saw him back up and then shift into drive, she let out a scream, cut off as he drove over her body and felt the heavy crunch of bones beneath the wheels.

  He woke up to the sound of his own scream.

  * * *

  But nobody in the lab heard it.

  Sometime later, he was in a chair in the lab office, drinking black coffee. Sarah, Luria, Stern, Cates, and a technician at the video camera listened to him.

  “Did you know the woman?” Luria asked.

  “I never saw her before.”

  “Or where you were?”

  “No.”

  “Or why you hit her?”

  “No. It didn’t even feel like me driving.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t explain. It just didn’t feel like my emotions.” Silence settled over the room like fog. “It was like someone else’s nightmare.”

  On the computer monitors, colored splotches danced across the schematic of his brain. After a moment, Dr. Luria said, “Zack, you didn’t have a dream or nightmare. Your brain was incapable of dreaming on the anesthetic.”

  He looked at her without response.

  “Every indication points to a transcendence. The data’s still raw, but at the intercellular level the sensory centers of your brain experienced external stimuli—vision, hearing, touch, spatial maneuvering.”

  “We still have hours of analysis ahead of us,” said Dr. Stern.

  “But you think it was a transcendence?” Zack asked.

  “I’m not ready to jump to conclusions yet.”

  Sarah said nothing, but Zack suspected that she agreed with Stern. Luria made a dismissive gesture with her hand and moved to another monitor beside Byron Cates. “Your blood profile shows a dramatic spike in epinephrine, another name for adrenaline. And that means your brain experienced a fight-or-flight response signaling your heart to pump harder and your blood pressure to increase. Do you remember feeling any fear?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “What about anger or rage?”

  He stood up. “I think I’ve had enough.” He looked to Sarah. “I’m ready to go.”

  “Zack, I understand how this may be upsetting,” Dr. Luria said. “Maybe next time—”

  But he cut her off. “I don’t think there will be a next time.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I’m not sure I want to do this again.”

  “Why not?” Luria proclaimed. “We’re making great progress with each run.”

  Zack shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “If it’s the money, we’ll pay you more.”

  “It’s not the money.” Zack got his stuff and headed toward the door.

  “Zack, please don’t go,” Luria whined.

  But he continued out the door and into the security area of the lobby. Sarah was right behind him. So was Byron Cates, who caught up to him and handed him a slip of paper. “Just in case,” he said. It was a prescription for Haldol.

  Sarah had her belongings and was ready to drive him home. Right behind her was Dr. Luria. “Zack, listen to me. You may have experienced total transcendence.” She took his arm. “Don’t you understand? You may have glimpsed the afterlife and returned. You owe it to us … to the world.” She stammered against disbelief and anger. Her eyes were huge, and her face filled with blood.

  “If there’s an afterlife, I’ll take my chances the traditional way.”

  And he walked out the door with Sarah behind him.

  49

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Sarah had said as she drove him home. “Yours is the first suspension that comes close to possible transcendence.”

  “What about all the other subjects?”

  “I’ve only been on the project a few months.”

  “But you must have seen the records.”

  “A few and nothing very promising. Only one or two were possible OBEs. But no follow-ups like yours.”

  That was far from comforting. “So you’re saying my mind separated from my body and experienced me running down that woman.”

  “I’m saying the raw data shows a highly intense experience. As for the hit-and-run scenario, that could be something created in your own head—a flash dream.”

  “And what about the possibility these suspensions are fucking up my brain? Did anyone think of that?” he snapped. “That all the toxins and flatlining are making me loony.”

  “You’ve had bad nightmares before, we all have. But you didn’t lose your mind because of them, right?”

  “So you’re saying it could be some weird nightmare vision.”

  “I’m echoing Morris here, but yeah. Stuff in your unconsciousness got activated just as you emerged from flatline.”

  He couldn’t tell if she really believed that or was trying to placate him. “But you said the stimuli was recorded in real time while I was suspended.”

  “Yes.” She was silent for a moment. “Zack, I really don’t have a good answer.”

  “But if you were me, would you submit to another suspension?”

  “I can’t answer that. It depends on how disturbing the experience was and how much of a risk you want to take of having another.”

  In a flash, he saw his father in his monk’s robe standing in the woods before a large rock. Time for big-boy talk. “I’ll think about it.”

  By the time she dropped him off, he was feeling more settled. Before he got out, she gave him a hug.

  “Want to come up?”

  “Not tonight. I’ve got a ton of work.”

  He kissed her good night and went up to his apartment. He took two sleeping pills, and before fading into a dreamless night, he again saw his father standing in the long brown robe before a large rock outcropping. Big-boy talk.

  The next day, Friday, he called Sarah to say he would submit to another suspension next Tuesday. She was free that night, and Damian didn’t need his car all weekend, so Zack took Sarah to the waterfront, where they took a ferryboat cruise at Boston Harbor.

  Over the weekend, he worked on his thesis. At Byron Cates’s suggestion, he filled the prescription for the antipsychotic Haldol, which apparently did the trick—no more dreams of crawling in sand. No psychotic visions of running anyone down in a car. No weird out-of-the-blue flashes.

  That Tuesday night, Sarah picked him up and drove to the lab. Everybody was delighted, especially Dr. Luria, who could barely contain her relief.

  He was prepped and ready to be rolled into the MRI machine. His last thought was, Dad, please be there.

  50

  This would be a night to remember for Billy—one he’d mark the calendar from. Breaking his own personal best.

  He had converted his garage to a home gym, adding a rack of free weights, two benches, one tilted, one that lay flat. He also had a used Cybex machine for his back and shoulders.

  He still belonged to the local health club, but he liked having his own workout space where he could do his routines without a lot of other people around. In fact, he preferred to work out alone. His wife was visiting her parents in Albany, so he had the place to himself and could pump in peace and quiet. His hope tonight was pushing his bench press to the next plateau.

  Billy was proud of how his upper body was bulking up. He was doing forty-pound curls and seventy-pound shrugs. But he had to work on his chest. He wanted bigger, chiseled pecs like some athletes and movie stars. And the way to do it was to bench regularly and increase his maximum, which meant finding the weakest part of h
is lift and focusing on that.

  His weakest was at hoisting the weight off his chest, so he’d concentrate on lifting the bar no more than six inches. Workout videos recommended going slowly, bringing the bar negative all the way and not cheating by bouncing off the pecs. His goal was to get ripped for the beach now that summer was here. His favorite uncle was a lawyer who owned a place on Martha’s Vineyard where he and his wife stayed for a week every July.

  He warmed up at two hundred and forty, doing three sets fairly easily. After a rest and some water, he did a set at two sixty. That went well, and he felt strong. So strong that he slipped another two ten pounds on each end of the barbell, bringing the total to two eighty—twenty pounds higher than his max. Yes, he was pushing it, but all he wanted was one full lift to break his record.

  He planted his feet firmly on either side of the bench, then raised his arms and gripped the bar as it sat in the spotter stand. This was more weight than he had pushed, and he was aware of the effort to hold it in place at arm’s length. So much of bodybuilding was in the head. The trick was to be totally in the moment, to focus on particular muscles to take to the next level.

  Toward that end, he turned off his cell phone, dimmed the lights, and inserted earplugs to block ambient noise—cars going up the street, dogs barking, planes overhead. So as he lay on the bench, gripping the bar, he concentrated like a laser on his pectorals, tuning out everything else until he became those muscles.

  He closed his eyes in total concentration, feeling his arms extend, his pecs harden. As the training videos said, he imagined a stronger, more powerful Billy. He imagined himself leaving his own body and entering his ideal body.

  As he pressed shut his eyes, Billy thought, Strong. Powerful. He thought, I can do this. I am my all-muscle self.

  He adjusted his grip on the cross-hatchings until he was fully comfortable. He lifted the bar from the spotter above his face, feeling the full exertion, then lowered it to his chest, where he let it rest a moment.