Obedience (31 page)

“What did you see, Summer? Tell me.”

“I saw them tying Williams up. They were taping his hands with, you know, masking tape. Or duct tape. Something. They were putting his hands behind his back and leading him around the room. But-”

“But what, damnit?” Brian asked. He was getting impatient with her. The hall was spinning, and it was all he could do to steady himself against the wall.

“They were all laughing. Like it was all a joke. Dean Orman was there. A few other people I didn’t recognize. And then-oh God-and then Williams turned and
saw me.
Through the window. He saw me. Or at least I thought he did. Later I couldn’t be sure. Thought I might have just imagined it. But I swear he looked-”

“Dangerous,” Brian finished for her.

“Exactly,” Summer said. “Dangerous. He looked like he had caught me in something. And so I ran. I drove off campus and stayed at a friend’s apartment in St. Owsley. I flunked both my classes. I haven’t told my parents anything. I just couldn’t…”

“Have you heard from them?” he asked.

“No. They called my cell, but I didn’t pick up. I eventually just turned it off. I haven’t spoken with Mary for a week or two. She probably thinks I’m dead.”

Mary’s got her own problems right now, Brian thought but didn’t say.

“But last night it just got to me,” Summer went on. “I thought about what I’d done. For fifty bucks, you know. Fifty bucks! For a fucking picture on a green couch. I couldn’t keep silent anymore. I thought Mary was in danger. The way Dr. Williams looked at me through that window, I thought maybe Mary was in trouble. I wondered if maybe I was responsible somehow…”

Brian waited, but she didn’t go on. She put her head down again and started to sob. It was a weeping at first, and soon it was a deep, ragged sob.

But he was no longer focused on the girl. He thought about what she’d said last: I thought Mary was in danger.

Williams was trying to hurt Mary.

Brian didn’t bother with the slow elevator at Brown Hall. He bolted down the stairs and burst out into the cold night. He knew exactly where he needed to go, knew that the only way to end this was to get to Williams before he could do any more damage.

I thought Mary was in danger.

Brian went to his favorite place on the Winchester campus: the viaduct. He threw his leg over the barrier and climbed across. He started down the bank toward Miller’s Creek, slipping here and there in the mud. There were no students around, thank God-no one to see him crawling on his hands and knees into the muck, just as he had in an early dawn three years ago, just days after he’d returned to Winchester. A security light on the viaduct gave him some light, enough to see his own hands becoming smeared with black as he dug.

Soon, he felt it. It was still wrapped in the towel he’d put it in.

He pulled it up out of the dirt, the ground below him making a sucking sound, and removed the towel. The Thing appeared in the sickly light off the viaduct. It was a gun-the 9 mm Smith & Wesson Marcus had used to shoot himself. Brian had kept it because there didn’t seem as if there was anything else to do. For weeks he’d carried it around in his truck, the Thing pulsing with some invisible energy from the glove compartment. When he came to Winchester, he’d wrapped it in a towel and packed it away. When he got here there was nowhere to keep it, nowhere to really hide it. And so he’d brought it down to the banks of Miller’s Creek and buried it, the closest thing he could think of to actually destroying it.

Afterward, his arms and knees covered with the black muck of the creek side, the Thing hidden in his coat pocket, he walked toward Up Campus. Toward Leonard Williams’s house.

The first thing Mary noticed when she entered Seminary East: the room was full of people. They were people she had seen before, all of them familiar to her. The second thing she noticed was that Elizabeth Orman was standing at the podium, where Professor Williams had stood during their classes. The woman was smiling a strange, almost beatific smile.

Brian walked slowly. He’d cut his knee on a rock, and the dirt in the torn skin began to burn when he reached Pride Street. There were no cars. The campus was completely silent; the only sound was the traffic moving up and down Montgomery three blocks ahead of him.

Williams’s house came into view up ahead, and Brian began to jog. He heard the dog barking, saw the man’s pickup truck in the drive. He put his hand in his pocket, felt the weight of the gun, held it still as his coat jostled. Brian had shot a gun only once, with his father years ago. He had no intention of shooting one tonight; he wanted only to have protection in case…

In case what?

In case Mary was there, in the man’s house.

And they were laughing, Summer McCoy had told him.

Laughing? Why had they been laughing?

He was right in front of Williams’s house. It was dark; no lights were on inside at all.

Weird, thought Brian. Maybe they’re in the basement.

He approached the house, and as he did something caught his eye in the distance. It was the Seminary Building looming over the evergreen trees just across Loquax Avenue. The lights were on up there in Seminary East.

Why the hell would the lights be on? Brian wondered.

He went around to the side of Williams’s house to get a better look. Yes, they were definitely on. He saw them on the east side of the building as well. And was that-

He squinted to see.

There were people up there. A whole crowd of them. They were sitting in the student desks, and someone was at the podium addressing them. But he couldn’t see who it was. The side of the building obscured his vision.

At that point Brian knew.

He knew where he needed to go.

“I’m glad you made it,” Elizabeth Orman said to Mary. “We were worried there for a bit.” She gestured at the crowded room. There were perhaps twenty people there. Some stood against the wall, but most sat at the desks. They, too, were smiling at Mary. “And I assume you know these people,” Elizabeth said. “I guess no introductions are necessary.”

“No,” Mary managed, her voice hollow and ruined.

No introductions at all. In fact, back in the back corner, Mary recognized the boy they’d taken to the park, the boy called Paul. When he saw her looking at him, he waved.

“What is this?” Mary asked.

“This is the Polly Experiment.” Mary looked at Elizabeth Orman. The woman was in a black dress, different from the one she’d been wearing earlier. Her hair was perfect, her jewelry flashed in the fluorescent light. She had been preparing for this, Mary knew. This was her big night.

“What are you talking about?” Mary was bracing herself against the wall, the crowded room reeling around her.

“It’s my dissertation,” Elizabeth said. “I’m a PhD student in behavioral psychology, and you and Brian House have been my subjects.”

“You were performing a test on us?” Mary asked.

“Not
on
you, no,” Elizabeth said. “Not at all. I was using you to test certain results. Certain hypotheses. For instance: Did you know that a human being cares for a person that they’ve never even met? Did you know that a human being will go out of her or his way to save this hypothetical person given the right circumstances? If a human being feels that another is in danger, then that human being will ‘care for’ this other person in a profound, utterly human manner.”

“But not always.” It was a man’s voice. He was somewhere in the middle of the room, and when he stood up Mary gasped.

Troy Hardings.

He was dressed in a suit. It was silk, Mary saw: the light glinted off it when he moved. The facial hair was gone, the smirk had been replaced by a rigid smile. He looked completely professional, like a businessman-or perhaps someone acting like a businessman, Mary reminded herself.

“This is Dr. Troy Hardings,” Elizabeth Orman said. “He was my faculty adviser for this project.”

“To register the impact of this study, we have to remember Kitty Genovese,” Hardings said. “We have to remember the so-called bystander effect. What the Polly Experiment proves is that human beings are more apt to help a
potential
victim, an assumed victim, than they are if they, say, saw a woman being stabbed below their window at night.”

“Deanna,” Mary said weakly.

“Yes,” Elizabeth Orman replied. “Deanna Ward was completely fabricated. A lot of things in the Polly Experiment were fabricated. Or ‘exaggerated,’ as Troy liked to say. The night Brian saw me beside the road, for example. That was a ruse to pull in Brian. We thought he might be straying, so we found the perfect method of bringing him back. And the day you found Troy in the office. That was all done on the fly-we had no idea that you were coming up. We had literally nailed Leonard’s name to the door five minutes earlier.”

“And these people?” Mary asked. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at them, couldn’t turn to face the crowd. It was not embarrassment that she felt, not shame or guilt. It was fear: fear that there was another twist in the game coming, another misdirection. Mary didn’t know if she could handle it. Not now.

“We hired them to play roles,” Elizabeth explained. “They all did a beautiful job. And of course you know who we hired to play the part of your professor.”

Leonard Williams stood up from his chair and nodded. “In real life he’s in a theater troupe here in DeLane. His stage name is Mike Williams. And he was often disguised, so there was no way you could have uncovered him.” Mary thought about the first time she’d seen him, of the acne pits on his face. Makeup, she knew now.

There was a pause, a moment where nobody spoke. Then Williams approached Mary. He was smiling, trying to disarm her with his charm. In an instant he was beside her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Mary,” he said softly.

And then something happened.

Brian crept slowly onto the floor where Seminary East was. The door was open, and yellow light spilled out and bathed half the hallway. He heard a woman’s voice coming from inside, but because he was sliding along the wall he couldn’t see anyone in the room.

“In real life he’s in a theater troupe here in DeLane,” the woman said.

And then another voice. This second voice was very low and weak, barely discernible. “Mary,” it said. And he did discern it: it was Leonard Williams.

Brian moved faster down the hall, his hand on the gun in his pocket. He had turned it now so that his finger was on the trigger.

When he stepped inside his knees almost buckled. He almost pitched forward into the crowd, but somehow he maintained his balance and stood, staring at them.

They were all there. All the actors. Marco, the Collinses, the boy from the park named Paul. Bethany Cavendish from the high school. The waitresses they’d met in Bell City. Even Dean Orman, sitting toward the front and wearing his fedora. All of them were here, waiting for him.

And there, leaning against the back wall, was the girl from the kilns. She’d pulled her hair back. She looked very young, thirty or so, and she was staring at him in a way that was so sickening, so fucking sickening.

“Polly,” he said.

Ashamed, the girl looked down at the floor.

“Brian,” someone said to his left.

When he turned he saw not Elizabeth Orman, who had spoken to him, but Leonard Williams.

Williams’s hand was on Mary’s arm. He was-was he pulling on her? Pulling her toward him?

“Brian,” Elizabeth said again from the front of the class.

But he paid no attention. Williams was staring at Brian so oddly, so coldly that Brian knew he was trying to impart some information. The professor’s gaze said something, it spoke of something awful.

What? Brian mouthed.

But Williams still stared at him, his eyes hooded, his hand still tight on Mary’s shoulder. She looked shocked and terrified, as if she were in tremendous pain. Did Williams’s mouth move? Did he say some word, reveal something?

What the fuck do you want? Brian mouthed. Let her go!

“Brian, we want you to know that this began during your freshman years,” Elizabeth Orman said. But Brian already had the Thing out of his pocket and he was aiming it at Leonard Williams.

When Williams released his grip on Mary’s arm and fell backward onto the desk, coming to rest right in front of Edna Collins, everyone laughed. They thought it was part of the game, another trick. Another wrinkle thrown in the narrative.

But Mary knew better. She saw Brian’s hand, saw through the wispy smoke that he was holding a gun. A gun that had just been fired.

The atmosphere changed around her. It became charged; the whole room dimmed as if a fuse had blown somewhere. The dog tore away from the man he had been kneeling beside, the man in the baseball cap, and ran out of the room.

At that point everyone moved.

Dean Orman was the first to Williams. “Get an ambulance!” he shouted.

A couple of the other men collapsed on Williams. It was all moving fast, so fast. They were tearing off his shirt. They were slapping him, trying to keep him awake.

And to her right Brian was moving. He was not trying to escape, but rather he was coming into the room, toward the frantic throng of actors and actresses.

He was walking toward Elizabeth Orman with the gun.

“Brian,” Mary said softly.

Mary said his name, and he stopped.

That movement-the stopping, the turning around to face her-was what allowed the man in the Red Sox cap to reach him.

“Stop,” the man said. He was dressed strangely, Brian saw. His jacket had been zipped high and the cap had been pulled down low so that his face was obscured. The dog he’d had beside him, the black Lab, had run out of the room. The man held the snapped leash limply in his right hand.