CHAPTER TWELVE
“Did you get the notebooks?” he asked.
“No,” said the other man breathlessly, wiping the sweat from his brow and neck with a dirty, once white handkerchief. “No, and I think we need to leave. Move to another state.”
“What? No. Why would we do that and where the hell are the notebooks?”
The breathless man held up his phone, showing a photo of the message left for them. He enlarged it, just to be certain they could see what was written.
“Run while you can. I dare you. So what? Some kid left a spooky message,” he laughed, the others laughing with him.
“That’s not all.” He swiped, showing them the photos of the walls torn apart, every book that hid their secrets, now gone.
“Who was it? Did you see them?” asked an anxious woman.
“Of course I didn’t see them. They were long gone and so were the bodies in the basement. Someone knows. Someone knows and is going to find us,” he said filled with concern.
“How?” laughed the other man. “Those kids don’t talk, they don’t hear, because they’re all dead.”
“Not all,” he said quietly, taking a step back to ensure he had at least an arm’s length distance between he and the other man.
“What do you mean?”
“I-I should have told you a few months back but I just thought I was counting wrong or something.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded, standing from his leather chair.
“The kid. The composer kid. He was the last one we operated on before we left, remember? His head was all fucked up and he was walking funny.”
“I remember. What about him?”
“H-he wasn’t in the basement any longer. I always just opened the door and looked. I mean, I wanted to be sure they were all there. A few months back, not long after we left, I opened the door and his body wasn’t on the top any more. It wasn’t anywhere to be found.
“On top of that, there were scraps of food inside the room, like recently left for some weird reason. I got spooked and I thought I heard a sound, so I left. When I went back the next time, the door was closed again.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us this?” screamed the woman.
“Stop yelling at me. We knew we couldn’t do this forever. Let’s just publish what we have and move on,” he said nervously.
“Are you stupid? We can’t publish this shit and we never had intentions of publishing anything,” said the third man in the corner. “If we publish this, people are going to want to see the kids. All of which are dead, except for the brats that ran away. We’re working a different angle now.”
“Then we’re doing this for nothing. I’m doing this for nothing. I agreed for the science of it all. What were you all doing? This is a game to all of you,” he said pacing back and forth.
“It’s not nothing,” said the woman. “We’re doing it to figure out what makes them savants. How can they play music, write music, when they can’t hear, speak, or sometimes see? We’re going to figure that out and possibly replicate it in children.”
“Replicate it?” he whispered. “Are you mad? We can’t replicate that. That’s not what you said we were doing. You said we were finding out how their brains work to be able to shed light on the phenomenon. That’s what you said.”
“You’re panicking, John. You always panic,” said the man leaning against his desk now. “You’re weak and I can’t afford weakness on my team.”
“Just pay me what you owe me and I’ll leave,” he said taking a step backward.
He stared at their boss, then at the woman who was colder than the basement of dead children. That’s when he realized the other man was nowhere to be seen. He realized it too late. He gasped at the sharp stabbing pain in his back, then again at his side.
“Sorry, old chum,” smirked the man, as he whispered in his ear. “You’re a risk we can’t have now. Nighty night.”
He stared up at the faces of the men and woman that he thought were his friends, his colleagues. The blood was leaving his body too quickly and he couldn’t slow his heart enough to extend his life. It didn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t fight all three. He never could.
“Take him to the basement,” said the woman.
“You take him,” sneered the man holding the bloody knife. “You want to play like you’re in charge, then use those big, beautiful muscles and haul his ass to the basement.”
“My tits aren’t muscles, Benjamin, or did you forget what they feel like?”
“Oh, no babe. I remember,” he said rubbing his cock with the back of his hand. “Do you remember what this feels like?”
“Stop it!” yelled the other man. “You two are such fucking children. Either get back together or don’t but this little dance you play every day is making me sick.”
“We’re not getting back together,” said Judy. She didn’t want to alienate the one man that could help her to bring this vision to life. “Sorry, Paul.”
“Never mind,” he said frustrated with all of them. “Take care of him and then we need to find out who took the journals. We have to get them back and we have to find those fucking kids.”
“They’re probably dead, Paul. There’s no way they would have survived on their own and no one has reported finding them, alive or dead.”
“They’re out there,” he said rubbing his jaw. “The girl, the sister of the kid Pip. She was smart, clever and sneaky. She got them out and she’s keeping them alive. Somewhere.”