Orphans of Wonderland Read online

  “Did Lonnie experience the same thing?”

  He nodded, then opened his jacket and pulled down his sweatshirt with his free hand. Branded into his skin was the same symbol Lonnie had on the back of his shoulder. “They marked us. I don’t remember it, but…they marked us.”

  Joel wanted to look away, but didn’t. “For what?”

  “Magic is real, did you know that?” Fernandez steeled himself, let go of his shirt and angrily wiped his tears. “Lonnie had the dreams too. Then he started to remember, they—the dreams helped him to remember. Because maybe they weren’t just dreams, he said. Maybe they were memories they tried to kill in us but we still had somewhere deep inside. He started looking into things. He said he thought they’d been giving us hallucinogens, heavy-duty doses of LSD and shit like that, fucking with our heads and breaking our minds.”

  “But why?” Joel pressed. “Did he know why?”

  “Ever heard of something called MKULTRA?”

  “Vaguely. They were secret mind control experiments the government conducted on human subjects back in the 1960s.”

  “Yeah. In the nineties, during the Clinton Administration, they finally admitted it, and information was released to the public for the first time.”

  “From what little I remember, it was very disturbing stuff,” Joel said, “but the MKULTRA programs were all discontinued and shut down decades ago.”

  “You sure?” A spasm of a smile twitched across his lips. “Lonnie wasn’t.”

  Stunned, Joel leaned back against the car. “Christ, this—I mean—”

  “Lonnie had this friend he knew from when he was younger. Real freak, but he knew all about this shit. Some underground type that lived out west someplace. He’s the one told him that while MKULTRA was shut down, a few of the studies morphed into other projects that are still going on. We were in one of them.”

  Joel was afraid of what the answer might be, but asked the question anyway. “This friend of Lonnie’s. Was his name Trent?”

  Fernandez nodded.

  “Lonnie was in contact with Trent? Trent Pierce?”

  “I don’t know his last name, never knew the guy. I only heard about him through Lonnie.”

  “I was told Trent fell off the radar and no one had heard from him in years.”

  He scratched nervously at the stubble along his chin. “You asked, I told you.”

  “Do you know how to reach him?”

  “No.”

  “Is that why they killed Lonnie? He knew too much?”

  “We all knew too much. They don’t care. It’s horror stories in the dark. Don’t you get it? What do I really know? What do you? What did Lonnie? You can talk all you want, no one’s gonna believe you anyway.” Another wave of tears spilled free. “I can’t even remember what I do most days, never mind what they did to us there. All I got are the dreams. They led Lonnie to the truth, but I can’t…I can’t remember… I just dream, Walker. Crazy, terrible dreams moving around in my head like snakes that can’t find a way out.”

  “Then why did they kill him?” Joel asked.

  In the growing darkness, Pete Fernandez’s swarthy face was becoming harder and harder to see. “They were finished with him.”

  The answer hit Joel like a punch to the gut.

  “They were finished with all of us. We weren’t even human to them, just lab rats, expendable, meaningless. Most of the others in our group are probably all dead by now too.”

  “Then why are you still alive?”

  “I won’t be much longer,” he answered evenly. “If Lonnie was right—if my dreams are real—they sent us to places no one should ever go. But no matter how deep they went into our heads, they knew they could bring us back. Maybe not the same, maybe all fucked up, but they could bring us back.” He looked to the cottage, his eyes gliding from window to window before settling back on Joel. “What they didn’t count on was something coming back with us.”

  “Lonnie had a notebook with these numbers written in it again and again,” Joel told him. “It had something to do with shortwave radios and—”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding rapidly. “The numbers, they—they run through my head all the time, they…they never stop, I—I just try to ignore them like I do my dreams but they’re always there, Walker, always. Right now I can see them moving through my mind, falling in rows like rain. And the sounds too, I—I can hear them when it’s quiet, when I try to sleep, but I…I…”

  “Easy,” Joel said. He wanted to comfort the man, but he was so shaky he couldn’t be sure what kind of reaction he’d get if he tried. “Take a deep breath. The numbers in your head, the numbers in Lonnie’s notebook, what do they mean?”

  “I don’t know, I—they’re trying to tell me something but—I don’t know what it is, I—I can’t remember what it is, Walker. But I don’t just see them in my head and in my dreams. I can hear them, the numbers and the sounds. They’re talking to me.”

  “Who, Pete? Who’s talking to you?”

  “The number stations,” he said, turning back toward the road. “I dreamed about them. I had those words in my head. Number stations. I didn’t think they were real. But they are.”

  “What are they? I don’t understand.”

  “Anonymous shortwave radio stations. Nobody knows exactly where they are or what their purpose is, but they broadcast from locations all over the world. Look into them and you’ll see. I found examples of their broadcasts online, and the minute I heard it I knew that’s what they were because I’d heard them before. They were exactly what I’d heard in my dreams.” He squinted into the darkness, watched the road. “They use them. They’re using them right now, broadcasting from them. There’s just nobody listening. Not you, not me, nobody.” Fernandez spun around and faced him with a level of fear and panic in his dark eyes that signaled he might flee at any second. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t hear it; you just don’t realize it.”

  “What are they broadcasting?”

  “Voices, but I…I don’t think they’re human. They sound artificial.”

  “And what do they say,” Joel asked, “these artificial voices?”

  “They recite number sequences, sometimes nursery rhymes. Other times they play parts of songs or broadcast signals that sound like electronic bleeps or Morse code.” He brought a trembling hand to his head, ran it across his hair and obsessively scratched at his scalp. “It’s creepy as fuck.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “Some think it’s spy shit. It’s not.” Fernandez gazed out into the field, as if he’d seen something again. “They’re out there,” he muttered. “In the dark.”

  “Pete, look at me,” Joel said. “I believe you. I do, okay? But I have to ask this. Other than these number stations, which could have a perfectly reasonable explanation, and the brand on your body, which you could’ve gotten in any number of ways, can you prove anything you’ve told me here tonight?”

  “All I’ve got are my nightmares,” he answered. “But if they’re not true, then I’m crazy and a liar. So was Lonnie. And so are you.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “Why are they doing this?”

  “Don’t you think I wish I could remember? I didn’t ask for this, I—I didn’t deserve this. They had no right to do these things to us, to fuck up our brains the way they did.” He visibly shuddered. “I’m afraid all the time. All the fucking time, dog. Sometimes I wish they’d just get it over with and do me like they did Lonnie just so my head will go quiet. Run away from all of this. And pray they don’t follow you.”

  “I did that once years ago,” Joel told him. “This time it’s not happening.”

  “You’ll lose. Lonnie told me about what happened to you back in the day. It’s still the same Devil. Always has been, always will be. He’s just wearing a different disguise, find
ing another way to come alive inside our heads.” Fernandez tapped the revolver against his temple. “He doesn’t need to find a way in. He’s already there.”

  Once the Devil takes you, he doesn’t give you back.

  “You went up against him before. How’d that work out for you?” Fernandez laughed a sad and helpless little laugh, then slowly backed away, raised his gun and pointed over Joel’s shoulder at the cottage. “They’re coming.”

  Joel turned and looked.

  He couldn’t be certain in the dark, but for the briefest moment it appeared as if something separated from the shadows and slid past one of the front windows.

  Something less than human…

  When he turned back, Fernandez was gone. Joel was by himself.

  But he wasn’t alone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The night crashed in on him like waves from an angry ocean. Joel still had no idea how Pete Fernandez had vanished as quickly and quietly as he had, or what it was he’d seen pass by the window of the cottage. The only thing he knew for sure was that two silhouettes had appeared in the field, standing there watching him, their forms barely visible but unmistakable in the darkness. The men following him, he assumed, but he didn’t stick around to find out. Instead, with his terror rising, he jumped in his car and rocketed back out onto Shawmut Avenue, putting as much distance as quickly as he could between himself and those men, the cottage and whatever was wandering around inside it.

  Rather than return to the hotel, he drove deeper into the city. There were no signs that anyone was following him, but he hadn’t realized they’d tailed him to the meeting with Fernandez either, so he could no longer be sure.

  Like so much else in life, just because something couldn’t be seen didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t there.

  Settling on the first bar he saw, a modest but busy place that advertised local bands, dancing and cheap beer, he pulled in and parked beneath a large neon sign that not only caught one’s eye from the road but illuminated most of the parking lot as well. At that moment, Joel wanted—needed—to be around as many people as possible, and with his nerves shot, a drink wasn’t such a bad idea either.

  He stepped out of the car and let the cold air snap him back, but he couldn’t help reliving what he’d just heard and experienced at Pete Fernandez’s place. Like all those years before, he’d looked into the darkness, and something deep within it had looked back.

  It’s still the same Devil. Always has been, always will be.

  Moments later, Joel was sitting at a busy bar, throwing back a Jack on the rocks while an awful eighties tribute band struggled through an old Def Leppard tune and did their best to keep the largely middle-aged crowd out on the dance floor.

  When he returned to his hotel roughly an hour later, he was pleased to find his suitcase undisturbed. Far as he could tell, no one had been in his room. The booze had leveled out his nerves somewhat, but he was still on edge, so he secured every lock on the door, then took the hottest shower he could stand.

  Later, wrapped in a towel, he lay on the bed without bothering to turn down the covers. Staring at the ceiling and watching shadows and light from the television play along the walls, he called home.

  Taylor answered in a soft and sleepy voice. “Hello?”

  “Hey,” Joel said, certain her voice was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. Like always, it made everything all right again, even if only for a little while.

  “Joel, hey.”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “I’m on the couch; I must’ve nodded off. Are you okay?”

  He felt himself smile. “Yeah, I’m all right,” he said, hoping he’d effectively masked the unrest that still had a hold of him.

  “How’s it going down there? Find anything out?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Is there anything to find out?”

  He bought himself a few seconds by drawing a deep breath. “Hard to say.”

  “Well, that sounds evasive.”

  “Not trying to be.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t really know that much yet,” he said hesitantly. “We’ll see happens.”

  She remained quiet a moment. “Are you sure you’re all right? You sound—”

  “Baby, I’m fine.”

  “If you’re feeling like you need one of your pills, go ahead and—”

  “I will.” He clenched shut his eyes until the visions of Fernandez’s tortured face faded. “How’d your day go?”

  “Usual stuff, I won’t bore you with it.”

  “Please do.”

  “Really?”

  “Every last detail. Just as long as I can hear your voice.”

  “Miss me?”

  “Something awful.”

  “Then come home.”

  “Soon.”

  Neither spoke for a while. Just listening to each other breathing was comforting somehow.

  “Taylor,” Joel finally said, “you may not hear from me for a few days.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll be working late hours and I may not be able to call every night, so if you don’t hear from me, don’t panic; it’s fine. I’ll be in touch soon as I can, okay?”

  More silence, and then, “I don’t like any of this, Joel, not one bit of it.”

  “I’m not that wild about it myself.”

  “I know you’re trying to do what you think is right,” Taylor said, “but you don’t have to save the day. It’s not your responsibility.”

  “If we don’t save ourselves and each other, who will?”

  “Is that a stab at late-night romantic poetry?”

  He pictured her smiling. “Sure, why not? Feeble as it may be.”

  “Beats your usual Roses Are Red routines, I guess.”

  “There Once Was a Man from Nantucket?”

  “I dated that guy. He tended to exaggerate, trust me.”

  Joel laughed lightly and nuzzled the phone, wishing it were Taylor instead. All the evil in the world felt far less powerful just then, revealed for the coward it was in the glow of their love. “Go to bed and get some sleep,” he told her. “I’ll call when I can.”

  “Be careful, Joel. Please, sweetheart. Promise me.”

  “I promise,” he told her. “And I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  After they’d hung up, Joel wanted nothing more than to drift off to sleep, but he was wide-awake and his mind had begun to race again.

  Magic is real. Did you know that?

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  He lay there thinking, his mind laden with the events of that evening and everything Pete Fernandez had told him. Were these things really happening? Had Lonnie been killed because of them? And he’d been in contact with Trent? How had that happened, and what the hell would Trent know about these things? When he’d last known Trent, he was an angry punk rocker, a rebel and an antiestablishment guy for sure, but hardly an expert on mind control and secret government programs. Then again, things changed, people changed, and he hadn’t spoken to or even laid eyes on Trent in a very long time, so it was certainly possible.

  Years before, Joel had come across several occult groups that claimed to use brainwashing techniques in their rituals and practices to control their members and influence them in certain ways. It was never clear if any of it worked or was even real, but those people he’d talked to about it swore it was quite effective and implemented on a regular basis. Shady occult groups were hardly the only ones allegedly involved in such things, however. Although he hadn’t researched it directly, had rather come across it in his investigation of hardcore satanic activity years before, the government, the military-industrial complex, and espionage and intelligence groups had a long history of loose ties to t
he occult and to various occultists and occult organizations. Even the most perfunctory amount of research could yield examples of this, if one bothered to look for it. There was also no question that in years past the government had conducted hideous experiments on unwitting human subjects, and sometimes even society at large. They’d admitted it, and extensive amounts of verifiable information were available online and elsewhere—again, if one bothered to look. The real questions were, did these ties still exist, and were these programs still happening today, as Fernandez suggested?

  A few minutes later Joel was on his laptop Googling MKULTRA and mind control experiments. The information that came back was astounding and encompassed a wide range of victims, including the mentally ill and even children.

  Later, on absolute overload, Joel shut everything down and did his best to convince himself he might at some point in his life be able to sleep again. He felt like Nero, fiddling away while the world around him burned to the ground. It was all so overwhelming, and oddly familiar, just as things had been years ago. And just as they’d been when he was a kid and that strange black car—whether a dream or reality—changed his and his friends’ lives forever.

  But this time it was even broader, deeper and more frightening, because there literally seemed no end to it. The more he looked, the more these things were thoroughly entrenched not only in his past and in his dreams, but in the flesh and blood, real-world power elite establishment. If the numerous conspiracy theories around government mind-control programs were even partially true, there was likely nothing anyone could ever do to reverse or stop what had been done and what might still be happening. They’d attempted to create everything from super soldiers to sex slaves to spies to Manchurian Candidate assassins. Yet, if one was to believe the reports, these programs had gone by the wayside years ago, not because of moral awakening but because most failed to produce the results they’d hoped for.

  Apparently wiping a human being’s mind clean by bombarding it with nearly lethal doses of LSD didn’t create a blank slate of a brain that could be rebuilt into anything the programmers wanted. Instead, it destroyed the test subjects’ minds, left them horribly damaged and broken beyond repair, vegetables.