Chapter Twenty-One. Riley, Present Day
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
RILEY, PRESENT DAY
My restless night is punctuated by dreams so vivid they leave me sweaty and gasping.
In one, Danny perches on a stool at Betty’s kitchen counter while she serves him a plate of lasagna.
Pots and pans clutter the counters, and shredded cheese is spilled everywhere, coating the floor like orange snow.
The two of them are laughing like old friends.
“What are you doing here?” I ask in my dream.
Without looking at me, Danny replies, “What are you doing here?”
Then he turns and I glimpse his ruined face. His teeth are knocked out and his eyes blackened. “You shouldn’t be here,” Danny whispers.
I awaken with my pulse pounding between my ears.
Betty cooking in her kitchen, Danny looking roughed up—it was an amalgamation of details from my reality mixed with the surreal, like dreams always seem to be.
Even a warm shower and cup of coffee from the giant urn in the motel lobby don’t allow me to mentally reset.
At least I have a clear mission. Sandra Lennox gave me the name of the Trimble Institute.
My online research confirmed what Sandra told me, that it was an offshoot of the psych department devoted to exploring parapsychology until it was shuttered in the mid 1960s.
I’m not a believer in that stuff, so it seems strange a prestigious university devoted so many resources to it for decades.
Since it was once part of Marquis, the school’s library should have more information.
A young guy with double hoop earrings and a name tag that identifies him as Benjy is manning the library’s information desk when I arrive. I explain what I’m seeking, and he taps on a computer.
“We’ve got archives,” he finally says. “But you have to look at them here. You can’t take anything out.”
“That’s fine,” I tell him.
“ID?”
I hesitate. “Do I need a student ID?”
He shakes his head. “We’re open to the public.” I show him my driver’s license and he glances at it, then reaches for an iPad and spins it around so I can see it. “Type your name and address in the box here.”
There are a few other names above mine, presumably of people who have looked at the Trimble Institute archives in the past. I type in my information and Benjy checks it against my ID before walking around the desk. “Follow me.”
As he leads me down a flight of stairs, I catch the faint aroma of weed drifting from his clothes.
We reach the bowels of the library and he swipes a card through an electronic lock to open a door.
The floor is cement and the paint on the walls is chipped and faded.
Stacks of shelves rise up like tall rows of corn, filling the center of the space, but the edges are bare.
Benjy stops at a shelf in the middle of the stacks and points to a row of large brown boxes. “Everything is in there,” he says. “You want to look at it here, or…?”
It’s dank and silent in the basement, with no windows; I’d rather take the boxes upstairs. But they look heavy, and I don’t want to press my luck by asking him to help me carry them.
“Here is fine,” I say.
“When you’re done, come back upstairs and sign out.”
I wait until he disappears before I examine the boxes, which are all labeled by year. I choose the ones labeled 1963–64, staggering as I pull the heavy boxes off the shelf.
They’re full of folders, which are in turn filled with strange papers— like something from a science fiction novel.
The pages detail experiments designed to test psychic ability with handwritten notes and memos.
There are black-and-white photographs of testing equipment and subjects, and hundreds of typewritten pages.
The photos feel eerie, especially the one of a young woman wearing a blindfold made of halves of Ping-Pong balls.
Luckily, the folders are neatly labeled.
There are dozens of folders labeled 1964. But every single folder is empty.
I flip through the contents of the box, making sure the papers weren’t misfiled. Then I muscle down other boxes, searching through every scrap of paper and double-checking dates until my fingertips are stained gray and my back is aching from being hunched over.
An eerie sense of déjà vu sweeps over me. Once again, it’s as if Betty and her friends never existed.