Lucy Read online

  He vanished through the door. She listened as it shut with a metallic clang. Then silence fell once more. She wept uncontrollably for a time. She didn’t know how long. Her throat was raw from screaming. And through an act of will, she pulled herself out of the abyss and sat, clutching her knees. Be still, she told herself. Be still and don’t let them know your strength.

  Lucy paced the floor, wrapped in her blanket, her mind racing. She could feel the panic rising within her breast. It was all she could do to keep from screaming and throwing herself at the bars again. She had to get out. There had to be a way. But nothing came to mind. She seemed to be splitting in two, undergoing a kind of mitosis of the psyche. On one side she was a child, weak and weeping. But from the other side she heard a cold and rational voice. Think, the voice said to the child. You’re smart and you’re strong. Stop whimpering and think.

  She looked all around. Now she saw that there were instruments on a tray near the operating table. Perhaps she could pick the lock with one of them. But she had nothing to reach with. The blanket. Maybe she could use the blanket to knock something off the tray and drag it to her. She unwrapped the blanket from herself, reached her arm through the bars, and whipped one end of it at the tray. She tried again and again, but the tray was too far away. The door opened again, and a group of people in green hospital scrubs entered. Lucy froze. There were two very large men and three women. They wore surgical masks and gloves and clear safety goggles.

  One of the women unlocked a steel cabinet and brought out a rifle. She stepped forward. “If you fight us, we’ll have to dart you. Tell me you understand.”

  Lucy couldn’t think straight. Was it better to be darted than whatever they were going to do to her?

  “Tell me you understand, or we’ll have to dart you.”

  “I understand.”

  “Okay then. We’re going to take you out and you’re going to lie on that table, do you understand?”

  “Yes.” She was shaking so hard that she could barely speak. The woman aimed the rifle at Lucy while another unlocked the door of the cage. Lucy retreated to the far end as the two men entered.

  “Come on,” one of them said. “Nice and easy.”

  Lucy calculated the distance. She knew that she was fast enough and strong enough to take the two men. But the woman with the rifle was too far away. She’d shoot. Lucy saw that this was not her moment. She hung her head and shoulders. They would be unconsciously receiving the signal that she was harmless. She thought, I’ll do as I did when wrestling. I’ll lull them into complacency and show my strength only at the decisive moment.

  The woman motioned with the rifle. Lucy stepped between the two large men. The concrete was wet and cold on her bare feet. The rifle followed her movement.

  “Up on the table, please.”

  Lucy climbed onto the table. She felt the smooth white sheet. She smelled laundry detergent. She saw the skylight overhead.

  “Lie down.”

  She lay down, and then straps shot out and immobilized her. She struggled briefly, then forced herself to relax. Not now, she told herself. Wait for the right time. Someone covered her with a sheet.

  “Don’t do this. Don’t let him cut me. Please.”

  “He’s not going to hurt you. Dr. Eisner has been doing this for years.” The woman turned to the man and said, “Hold her arm.”

  “Please don’t.”

  She tore open a white paper envelope and removed a long needle from it. She put a rubber tourniquet on Lucy’s bicep. Lucy felt a pinch and looked down to see the needle going in. She felt tears streaming down the sides of her face and heard the blood singing in her ears.

  “We’re going to give you something to relax you. Just breathe normally.”

  “Don’t. Please.”

  The woman held a syringe up to the light and tapped it. Her fingernail made a ticking noise that echoed in the vaulted room. Her goggles flashed as she bent down and injected a clear fluid into the fitting in the tubing.

  “Don’t. Oh …”

  Lucy felt a dreamy lightness come over her. She gradually split in two, as if one part of her wanted to panic while another part didn’t care what happened next. She was back in the forest. Leda and her father had been killed, and she was putting one foot in front of the other without caring whether she lived or died.

  The other woman had put the rifle away. Now she approached and bent over Lucy. She smoothed the thick hair back from Lucy’s forehead. It was a comforting touch. Lucy thought, She’s grooming me. Maybe they understand at last. Maybe they realize that they, too, are bonobos and I’m human. We are all one now. Lucy felt the love of the woman’s touch.

  Then the woman brought her other hand up, and Lucy saw that in it was a set of electric clippers. The clippers began to buzz noisily. She lowered the shears to Lucy’s head and began cutting off her hair. Lucy could feel the great heavy tresses fall away. She could feel the cold air against her bare scalp. Lucy thought, She’s shaving my head. I’m going to be bald. But she couldn’t seem to decide how to feel about that. The person who was terrified had grown very small, as if Lucy had a baby just beginning to form inside her. A tiny baby who could not speak yet. A child who was getting smaller, not larger.

  37

  JENNY KNEW IMMEDIATELY that something was wrong. She pulled the car into her garage, and nothing was out of place. But she sensed that something had changed.

  “What is it?” Amanda asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid.”

  “Should we leave? We could call the police.”

  “Yes, let’s go.” But Jenny didn’t move. She searched the garage for a clue. She felt the maddening dilemma that Lucy had talked about, in which the demands of logic defeat what you know to be true. “What do I tell them? That I was picking up signals in The Stream? They’ll think I’m nuts.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?”

  “I’m going in. You wait here. If I’m not back in five minutes go to the police.”

  “Jenny, I’m scared.”

  “Scared is good. Just don’t be too scared to move if I don’t come back.”

  Jenny opened her door and stood in the garage looking for a weapon. She took up a claw hammer from the pegboard where tools were hung. As soon as she opened the door to the house, the smell hit her. It was man smell. Not Harry.

  At the top of the stairs she gently pushed open the door. The hair stood up on her neck and arms.

  “We’ve called the police,” she shouted.

  Nothing. No sound at all. She took two steps so that she could peer into the living room. The television, stereo, and DVD player were all gone, wires hanging out. She exhaled and dropped her shoulders, remarking to herself how odd it was that she could be grateful to be the victim of a simple burglary.

  She hurried down the stairs to the garage. Amanda was sitting halfway out of the driver’s-side door. Jenny said, “Somebody broke into the house. I don’t think anyone’s there.”

  Half an hour later, the alley and the street in front of the house were lined with police cars. Jenny and Amanda were touring the house, listing for the detective what was missing. His name was Danny Nelson, and he looked too young to order a beer. He conscientiously wrote down everything they told him.

  “There’s been a crew of kids working this part of town. They go for the things they can sell quickly. We already know who they are.”

  They were making their way to Jenny’s study as he spoke. As they entered the room, Jenny stopped. “They got my computer.”

  “Approximate value?” Detective Nelson asked.

  “New it was $1,600.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Jenny turned to see Amanda in the doorway. “What?” Then she saw the open cabinet. Jenny stepped across the room and knelt before it.

  “What?” Nelson asked. “Something else missing?”

  “Lucy’s father’s notebooks,” Jenny said. “You know the story of who Lucy is?”

  “Yes
, of course.”

  “Her father’s scientific notebooks were in there. They’re gone.”

  “What do you think that means?” Detective Nelson asked.”

  I think it means that someone faked a robbery to get them. This was not a group of kids.”

  “And where is Lucy now?”

  “I don’t know. I think we’d better file a missing person’s report.”

  “Was she here?” he asked. “Do you think whoever took the notebooks kidnapped her?”

  “No. Yes. I’m sorry. It’s complicated. I’ll explain.”

  38

  LUCY HEARD MUSIC and wondered, Is that possible? Where are we? Relentless violins were chugging along like a railroad train. The mad unstoppable logic of oboes, French horns, violas, all marching in lockstep. Then she remembered: It was Bach. She recognized the Brandenburg Concertos. Yehudi Menuhin. She opened her eyes. Eisner’s face floated above her, inverted.

  “We used to shave the head entirely,” he said as he worked. “But we discovered that shaving left microscopic cuts in the scalp that provided opportunities for infection. So now that we do only a buzz cut, we see fewer infections.” Eisner turned to one of the nurses and said, “Let’s get ready to clamp her, please.”

  It took two men to lift the complex metal contraption. It had pointed screws on the sides and top. They lowered it onto her head.

  “Good. Right there.”

  A bright light flashed on her left side, but she couldn’t turn her head to see what it was. Eisner said, “Can you see all right?”

  “Yes, fine, just keep working,” said another voice.

  Lucy heard a whirring noise, then a complex click like the shutter of a camera. There was a flash, a whining sound, then another flash.

  “Got it,” the new voice said, and the low melancholy chords of the adagio began.

  Eisner turned the screws, saying, “This may pinch a bit.” Lucy could feel the points of the screws touch her scalp and then start to dig in as he turned them tighter. At first it felt as if someone were squeezing her head in a powerful grip, as the cruel insistent hammering of the allegro started up. Then she felt a searing pain on both sides of her head. She began to scream. “Give her a bit more fentanyl, please.” Lucy screamed and screamed, and then all at once it stopped hurting and she fainted.

  Lucy opened her eyes to the sound of a machine, a grinding noise that was inexplicably inside her head. She smelled smoke, burning flesh. The menuetto was playing. She saw Eisner, inverted, bearing down on her. His glasses were bright white disks before his eyeless head. He had something in his hand. He leaned in on Lucy and grunted with the effort. She heard the lunatic precision of the bassoon playing against the oboes in waltz time. Then she noticed that she could see Eisner clearly reflected in the big overhead light. He was drilling a hole in her head. He’d been right, she felt no pain. But she could feel the pressure, and the noise inside her head was terrifying. The camera clicked and flashed again—she realized now that she was being photographed.

  Beneath her head, between Lucy and Eisner, was a blue plastic garbage bag. She could see the blood streaming from her head into it, bearing away fragments of cream-colored bone. The celebratory marching of the trumpets began.

  “Turn the music up a bit, please.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  No, no, Lucy thought. Please, don’t make it louder. It all seemed too insane to be real. It felt as if the machine and the orchestra were both inside her head, the harrying trumpets piercing her brain with each note. She struggled against the restraints.

  “Relax her a bit more, please,” he said, and continued drilling. “Just one more hole and then we can lift the piece out.” Then all at once the noise stopped. Lucy could hear the insect machine noises of the operating room and Eisner’s whistling breath, now heavy from his exertion. The strobe flashed once more.

  “There we go. All done.” Eisner lifted a section of Lucy’s skull and dropped it into a steel pan held out by a nurse. Lucy thought, A part of me is gone. A melancholy movement began with Menuhin’s violin crying against the wheezing lament of a recorder.

  “Let’s just make a small incision in the dura, then, and we’ll be ready with the electrodes. Cautery knife, please.” The device was placed in his hand. The bright tip of the knife sparked, and smoke rose from the hole in her head. The strobe popped, and the trumpets began again. Not the trumpets! It felt as if the trumpets were cutting her with their sharp electric sound.

  She let her eyes close, weary now and filled with amazement. She wondered, Did I really come all that way to experience this? What would the rest of her life be like? And where were Jenny and Amanda? Would they ever know what happened to her? She could see the red of her own blood through closed eyelids, as the strobe went off and another lumbering freight-train allegro began.

  She didn’t remember blacking out, but she had the sense that some time had passed, an interval lost. They were taking her off the table. Armies of violins were charging at her in a final berserk attack. She was slung in a sheet. A dozen hands lifted her onto a gurney. She could hear Eisner saying, “Intensive care. But I want someone with her at all times. Keep her in restraints. She’s too valuable to take chances with.” She opened her eyes and looked up at the tableau of nurses arrayed around her, at herself in the center of this scene, the violins racing like insects scattered from a nest on fire. Then she looked at Eisner as he leaned in with an expression of satisfied zeal. He took a small flashlight from his pocket and shined it into her left eye, then her right, his thumb lifting the lids. “Hmm. Good. Excellent.” He flicked off the flashlight and replaced it in his pocket, pursing his lips in thought beneath his mask. Lucy studied his face now, so sure, so eager, so energized with passion, and she recognized for the first time what had struck her before that she had not quite been able to put her finger on. She knew what she was seeing. She was looking at the bland, indifferent, earnest face of true evil.

  39

  “THE STORY OF LUCY LOWE, widely known as the Jungle Girl, has taken a new and bizarre turn this evening,” the newscaster said. “Her adoptive mother, Dr. Jennifer Lowe, has reported her to the local police as a missing person.” The newscaster stood on the lawn in front of the house as he and Jenny had agreed. A light breeze was rattling the leaves on the trees, which had begun to turn as autumn moved south.

  “Dr. Lowe has agreed to talk with us, so stay tuned for an exclusive interview, right after these words.”

  The newscaster came inside during the commercial break and sat across from Jenny. When the commercials ended, Jenny walked the reporter through the story, explaining that Lucy had left to visit a friend and that no one had seen her since. After checking with other police departments, hospitals, and morgues, Detective Nelson had found that two witnesses in a suburb called Northbrook had reported seeing a girl in pink jeans being picked up from the sidewalk, where she’d apparently collapsed. Two men carried her into a blue van and drove away. After investigating, the police discovered that the girl was picked up in front of a house that had been burglarized while the family was away. But the only things taken were clothes, sunglasses, an iPod, and hair dye. The girl in the pink jeans had multicolored hair.

  “And what do you think all this adds up to?” the reporter asked.

  “I believe it was her. She was trying to disguise herself, because she feared for her own safety. And someone, whoever it was, caught her. That same van had been parked in front of our house the night she left. Our house was burglarized while we were away, too, and the scientific notes that Lucy’s father kept were stolen. I can’t believe that a common thief would do that. I believe that someone in our own government did it and that they have Lucy now. We want to know where she is, and we want her returned safely to her home.”

  “And how would you suggest going about that?”

  “I’d suggest that Congress order all of its federal agencies to disclose if any one of them has her. And I would suggest that the FBI inve
stigate the various radical groups from which we’ve received threatening letters, e-mails, and phone calls. She’s a fifteen-year-old girl with a very delicate constitution, and she needs her mother.”

  “And what if Lucy just ran away? Kids do that all the time.”

  “Then I want to know who stole the notebooks and why. And I want to know who the girl in the pink jeans is.”

  “And that’s the breaking news in the Lucy Lowe story. Michael Khoury, ABC News.”

  But Jenny’s effort seemed to backfire in a way. Once the public knew that Lucy was missing, the sightings and conjecture began. Experts were interviewed, and speculated that such a creature might take to the forest and never be found again. Others pointed out that with her delicate constitution she might have perished somewhere and suggested that a search for her body be undertaken. The hotline that the police had set up was receiving several hundred calls a day. An organization that helped to find missing children published a photograph of Lucy on its Web site. She was spotted on the commuter train, on top of the Sears Tower, down by the lake, and at a popular nightspot.

  40

  OFF AND ON in the night Lucy woke to the strange sounds of hospital machines. At one point she fell asleep and dreamed that she was back in the jungle with her father and Leda and Toby and Viaje and little Faith. They were happy, all gathering the caterpillars that had begun to rain down from the branches above.

  When she woke to morning at last, her head was swimming with the drugs they had given her. She had an excruciating headache and the Brandenburg Concertos were still pounding in her brain. She felt the stitches pulling where they’d sewn up her scalp. Her head was wrapped in a bandage, and bundles of fine wire hung beside her shoulder. A thin woman in her forties sat by her bed. Lucy tried to sit up, but she had been shackled.

  “Can I have some water, please?” The woman lifted a plastic cup, and Lucy drank. “Where are we?”