there a second later, when Rebecca put the lighter into his hand.
Well, Phil Margolis would undoubtedly have an answer for him. Getting out of the Volvo, Oliver went into the hospital.
“All this does is take a picture of your brain,” Dr. Margolis explained. The CAT scanner sat in a small room that had been renovated specifically to house it after the doctor succeeded in putting together enough funds to buy the used machine five years ago. Serving not only Blackstone, but half a dozen other towns, the scanner had brought in enough money to allow the tiny hospital to operate in the black for the first time in its history. “Lie down on the table, and I’ll strap you in.”
“Do you have to?” Oliver asked. The moment he’d stepped into the room, he felt a wave of panic begin to build inside him. Now, his eyes fixed on the heavy nylon restraining straps, and his palms went suddenly clammy.
“I have to hold you immobile,” Margolis explained. “Any movement of your head, and the images will be spoiled. It’s easiest if you’re strapped down.”
Oliver hesitated, wondering where the panic was coming from. He’d never been claustrophobic—at least he didn’t think he had—but for some reason the idea of being strapped to the bed terrified him. But why? It couldn’t have anything to do with Phil Margolis—he’d known the doctor for years.
Could it be he was just frightened of what the CAT scan might show? But that was ridiculous—if there was something wrong with him, he wanted to know about it! “All right,” he said, lying down on the table. Fists clenched, he shut his eyes and steeled himself against the fear that instantly gripped him as the doctor began fastening the straps that would hold him immobile. His heart raced; he could feel the sweat on his palms.
“You okay, Oliver?” the doctor asked.
“Fine.” But he wasn’t fine; he wasn’t fine at all. A terrible fear was overtaking him, an unreasoning terror.
“Okay, we’re all set,” Phil Margolis told him. He stepped out of the room, and a moment later the machine came to life, the scanner starting to move down over his head as it began taking thousands of pictures from every possible angle, which a computer would then knit together to form a perfect image of his brain.
And anything that might be growing inside it.
Then it happened.
With no warning at all, a blinding pain slashed through Oliver’s head, and the room seemed to fill with a brilliant white light that faded to utter blackness in an instant. And then, out of the blackness, an image appeared.
The boy is in a small room, staring at a table to which heavy leather straps are attached. The man, looming above him, is waiting impatiently for the boy to get onto the table. In his hand, the man holds something.
Something the boy has seen before.
Something that terrifies him.
Instead of getting on the table, the boy retreats to cower in a corner of the room.
As the man raises the object, with two shining metal studs protruding from a long tube at one end, the boy whimpers, already anticipating the pain to come.
As the man advances toward the boy, the child, screaming now, starts to run. The man’s large, muscled arm reaches out—
“That’s it,” Philip Margolis said as he came back into the room. He unfastened the straps that held Oliver to the table. “That wasn’t so terrible, was it?”
Oliver hesitated. The fact was, he couldn’t really remember much of the scan at all. There had been a moment of panic, but then …
What?
A headache? One of the strange hallucinations?
Something—some kind of vague memory—was flitting about the edges of his consciousness, but as he reached out for it, trying to grasp it, the memory slipped away.
Oliver managed a grin as he sat up, the straps having released their grip. “Not so bad,” he agreed. “Not so bad at all.”
Chapter 6
Andrea drove slowly, searching for the impossible: an empty parking spot in Boston. She’d already passed the red brick building three times, twice going this direction, once the other. Should she try the other side again, or give up hoping to find a spot within a few steps of the building, and try one of the side streets?
Or should she just turn around and drive back to Blackstone?
She rejected the last idea immediately. She’d thought it all through too many times to back out now. If she didn’t go through with it now, she never would. Her mother