The Eternity Project

51

EAST VILLAGE, NEW YORK



‘Tom? Open up!’

Karina Thorne and Nicola Lopez stood at the entrance to the apartment block as Karina rang the buzzer to Tom’s apartment for the third time. They waited, but, once again, there was no reply.

‘Dammit,’ Karina uttered. ‘If he’s taken his own damned life again, I’ll kill him.’

‘When did you last call him?’ Lopez asked.

‘Last night, about maybe ten o’clock. He seemed fine, at least as much as can be expected after all that’s . . .’

Karina was interrupted by the door’s security system buzzing. She pushed against the door handle and it slid open. Lopez followed her inside and together they jogged up the stairwell, neither of them even looking at the vacant elevator car waiting nearby.

Karina got to Tom’s door first, knocking only to find it already open. She burst in, with Lopez just behind her, in time to see Tom slump back down onto the couch.

‘Jesus, Tom,’ Karina uttered. ‘You had me worried.’

The apartment was dark, the blinds drawn. Lopez could smell the stale air, the faint odour of unwashed plates drifting from the kitchen.

‘Christ,’ Karina snapped. ‘You need to clean up here, Tom.’

Karina reached up and yanked one of the blinds open. Bright light burst into the apartment and illuminated Tom Ross’s face. Lopez froze as she looked at the young police officer as he sat staring blankly before her.

He looked as though he hadn’t eaten for days and his eyes were darkened orbs ringed with bruised sclera. His hair was in disarray and his shoulders were slumped as though he no longer had the energy to support his own body.

Karina rushed to his side as Lopez threw open a window to let some fresh air into the apartment.

‘Tom, can you hear me okay?’ Karina asked, throwing one arm across her partner’s shoulder as she sat down.

Tom nodded without replying, staring at his feet. Lopez wasn’t sure but it looked like he hadn’t changed his clothes since the last time they’d visited him, his shirt heavily creased. She looked around the apartment and noticed instantly that the clock on the wall had stopped. The time on it read 10.37. The analogue hands could not reveal whether the clock had stopped in the morning or the evening. She glanced across at a digital clock on the oven in the kitchen. The clock flashed 00.00, as though it had lost power and had yet to be reset.

‘You had a power outage?’ she asked Tom.

Tom blinked up at her vaguely but didn’t respond. Lopez walked across to him and reached down to his left wrist. She pulled it up and looked at his watch, a silver analogue. The hands were frozen in place at 10.37.

Tom looked vacantly at his wrist.

‘What’s been happening, Tom?’ Lopez asked him. ‘Where were you at 10.37 two nights ago?’

‘Back off !’ Karina snapped, glaring up at Lopez. ‘He’s been through enough.’

‘This isn’t going to go away, Karina,’ Lopez shot back. ‘Either we figure this out or the killings won’t stop.’

‘What killings?’ Tom asked, looking up at Lopez and Karina in turn.

‘Since you got out of hospital,’ Karina explained, ‘several people have died, all of whom appear to have a connection to the robbery and pursuit on Williamsburg Bridge.’

Tom squinted at Karina for a moment. ‘What does that have to do with me? I haven’t left the apartment since I came down to the station.’

‘That’s why we’re here,’ Lopez said. ‘Tom, you said that when you overdosed, you were floating above your body and that you went up into a tunnel of light. Has that happened before and again since?’

Tom’s already pale features blanched. ‘No, it hasn’t. Not exactly.’

‘Not exactly?’ Lopez pressed. ‘Can you remember any dreams or anything from the times when you’ve been asleep, since the accident?’

Tom stared at her like a little boy wrongly accused of stealing sweets. ‘Sure I’ve had dreams,’ he replied. ‘Horrible dreams of being in the dark, with no sense of time and surrounded by . . .’ His voice faltered.

‘What?’ Karina asked.

‘Rage,’ Tom said finally. ‘I keep seeing elevators in my dreams, and strangers’ apartments.’ His voice seemed to fall away in horror as he spoke. ‘God, it’s always so cold in the dreams.’

Lopez looked at Karina for help, and, reluctantly, she took hold of Tom’s hands and held them tightly as she spoke.

‘We have evidence, of a kind, that all of the people who have died may have been involved in some kind of corruption. It’s as if this thing is hunting them down, one by one.’

Tom stared at Karina. ‘What thing?’


‘A wraith,’ Karina said, ‘a sort of poltergeist but much worse. Think of the Blair Witch on anabolic steroids and speed. It’s tearing people in half, literally.’

Tom Ross looked at them both for a long beat. ‘You think that I’m doing it?’

Lopez took control of the conversation. She knelt down in front of him, bringing her eyes to his level and softened her voice.

‘Tom, when you overdosed, the main reason that Karina came here so quickly was that you appeared to her in her kitchen. It was like a vision and it happened the moment you died. That’s called a crisis-apparition, a last fleeting glimpse of the dead person’s soul before they go wherever the hell it is we go when we die. Is there anything like that running in your family, Tom? Is there anything that might cause you to somehow be able to attack people even when you don’t know you’re doing it, like when you’re asleep?’

Tom stared at the floor for several moments before he spoke.

‘My great-grandmother,’ he whispered. ‘My mother once told me a story about how my great-grandmother, Pennie Barraclough, claimed to have seen one of her sons at the moment he died, out in some great battle in France during the First World War. She was thousands of miles away when it happened.’

‘That’s a crisis-apparition,’ Lopez confirmed. ‘There were many of them during the Great War. Has anything like that happened to you since?’

Tom sat still for a moment, and then he appeared to go white as a sheet as though the blood were draining from his body.

‘I haven’t been sleeping properly,’ he said. He looked down at his watch. ‘The clocks keep stopping and I keep having to re-set them.’

Lopez looked up at the clocks again, the one on the wall and the digital display on the oven. Another display on a DVD player near the television was also flashing zeros at her.

‘How many times has this happened?’ she asked him.

Tom frowned as he struggled to remember. ‘Four,’ he said finally.

Karina looked at Lopez. ‘That blows your theory. There have only been three murders.’

Karina’s cellphone buzzed in her pocket. Lopez watched as she picked up the call and switched it onto speakerphone. She put one finger to her lips as she set the phone down on the table.

‘Yeah, what’s up?’

Lopez heard Donovan’s voice on the other end of the line.

‘We’ve figured it out, Karina. We think that Tom’s doing this but he doesn’t know it. There was another murder last night.’

Karina’s eyes flared in alarm as she looked at Lopez. ‘Do we know who was killed?’

‘It was Jackson,’ Donovan replied. ‘Got hurled out of his apartment window and hit the sidewalk at about two hundred miles per hour. Forensics said it’s not physically possible to fall at that speed unless he was being forced downward by something.’

Lopez glanced at Tom, who looked as though he had been slapped across the face.

‘How can you tell that Tom’s involved?’ Karina pressed.

‘These things only happen at night,’ Donovan replied. ‘Either somehow he’s doing it or he’s getting somebody else to do it for him. Either way, we’ve got to bring him in. I figured you’d rather talk to him first, give him a chance to alibi out or at the least explain himself

Karina’s eyes narrowed. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Call him,’ Donovan suggested. ‘Tell him that we need to talk to him and bring him up to Hell Gate. We can’t interview him at the station without arousing attention, so let’s keep this to ourselves. If Tom alibis out, all’s good. If he doesn’t, we can pursue it without risking him being arrested or charged.’

Lopez caught Karina’s eye and slowly shook her head.

‘Why the big interest in helping Tom now?’ Karina pressed. ‘Yesterday, you wanted to string him up.’

‘Yesterday, Jackson wasn’t dead!’ Donovan snapped. ‘We can’t deal with this in the normal way, Karina. Christ, it’s hardly a normal situation! Can you get Tom to Hell Gate or not?’

Lopez shook her head again. Karina spoke toward the cellphone.

‘We’ll be there. We’ll find Tom and meet you, before sunset at the latest.’

‘Good,’ Donovan replied, ‘keep him out of sight until then.’

Lopez turned off the cell and shot Karina a concerned look.

‘The law can’t sort this, Karina.’

‘Then the law can’t hurt Tom, either,’ Karina replied tartly. ‘What would they charge him with? Homicide by psychokinesis?’

Lopez looked Karina in the eye.

‘And if Joanna Defoe successfully goes public with evidence for MK-ULTRA? Then there’ll be grounds for a prosecution, no matter how bizarre it might seem. Maybe there’ll be evidence there that this kind of thing really is possible.’

Karina was about to reply, but Tom Ross cut her off.

‘I can speak for myself , ’ he uttered, and looked at Karina. ‘We can’t run from this. We have to face it down.’

Karina shook her head. ‘How?’

‘We need to get out of here,’ Tom said, ‘fast.’

The phone in the apartment suddenly trilled. Karina looked at Lopez, who shook her head. ‘We don’t know who it might be.’

Karina thought for a moment, and then dashed across the lounge and picked it up.

‘Tom Ross’s house.’

‘Karina?’ came Ethan Warner’s voice down the line. ‘Listen to me and do everything I say.’