27. Clark
TWENTY-SEVEN
CLARK
On the eve of Olly’s eighth month of pregnancy, Edward Evans died at the age of eighty-nine.
Over the past month and a half or so, Madame Travers, Robert, and I had taken turns sitting by his bedside—which now was a hospital bed in the downstairs parlour—and reading to him from his final research paper.
We were to read it and mark down corrections or new areas for research in pencil until he could no longer give them verbally.
When we were wiped, his palliative care nurse sat by his bedside and read aloud to him from his last complete paper, our thoughts being that he would like to hear some of his published research.
They say hearing is the last thing to go when someone is dying, so we kept the conversation positive and focussed.
He practically had a whole hospital set up in this ridiculous mansion in Montréal, this sprawling house full of disappointed hopes and death.
Before he began drifting in and out of consciousness and became non-verbal these past two weeks, I did make time every day to visit with him, hoping that he could at least tell me his rationale for forming The Organization, its methods, and how it seemed to thrive in places around the world.
I viewed this all as information I would need for the future dismantling of the current framework of the cult, but I was holding my motives close to my vest. I also wasn’t swinging open the doors to my personal life, not when he’d already had it researched and sorted to specifications designed by Olly in her ignorance while working at Rose Financial.
On top of that, I had nothing else to do, as I would never be put back to working for him in the shadows.
My visits were not long. They were a study in the steady decline of a man, and I had already mourned two parents that I wasn’t sure if he had killed or made disappear.
As for his plans to bequeath The Organization For The Advanced Mind to me, I just took time to let the whole idea sink in.
I was a fair scientist, a great librarian, but I was not the stuff of a charismatic cult leader.
I only considered it because of the possibility of doing something good with the money and resources he had collected, something that could help those kids in Saskatchewan, or figure out what in the hell they were studying in Antarctica, and if it could be of use to the world.
It was that jerk, Robert—I tried to like him, I really did—who knocked at my door at around two in the morning to let me know that the old man had kicked the bucket.
He sounded bitter, and when I asked him straight-up why, he replied, “Enjoy the keys to the kingdom, asshole. I loved that man like a father, and you can’t even be arsed to care. Fucker.”
Robert was right, of course. On one level I felt that, considering he was my grandfather, his passing should have made me sad, just a little, but it honestly didn’t.
He’d had his underlings kidnap my Olly and Becky, and all the good he had thought he was trying to do for the world since he was a teenager didn’t mean much compared to taking my family from me.
Because that was how I had come to think of them, these past few months of our forced separation.
They were mine, and as soon as I could shake loose from some asshole in this Organization where the hell they were, I was getting them and we were never coming to Montréal again.
Halifax had a big question mark over it, because I didn’t know how Olly would feel, leaving her home.
Because nothing was going to get me back to sleep, I packed my shit up and looked out my window just as the hearse was pulling out.
All of the arrangements had been made well in advance, and there was no dilly-dallying, apparently.
At least I wasn’t expected to linger over the corpse of a man who I had made peace with loathing.
It was three in the morning by the time I showered and dressed, and not even ten past when Robert found me coming down the stairs, and waved me to follow him to the study.
Robert reached around his neck and pulled a key attached to a gold chain off.
He gestured impatiently for me to reach out, and he deposited it in my hands, and then pointed at the doorknob’s keyhole.
“I think you get where this is going, Evans. All the information will be on his desk in different coloured folders. Have fun running an empire. You know, before you surfaced, I was his successor. I was mentored by him personally for years. You won’t last a month keeping all these plates spinning in the air. ”
“Mr. Evans,” I corrected, and then, as he turned to leave, I tacked on, “And why aren’t you fighting for your place? You’ve obviously been number two around here for a long time. Or do you revel in trying to find some unfulfilling job on a government notice board?”
“As if you’d have me after what I did to Olive McLeod. And your dog,” he sneered back at me, looking feral as he said the bitter words.
“Tell me where they both are, immediately, and there will be no reprisals against you personally. I’ll lay it all at the old man’s feet, not yours.
” I tried to regulate my breathing and remain calm as I delivered this part of my speech, but inside my heart was racing and I was just praying he’d out with the details I needed, so I didn’t have to spend god knew how long combing that office for clues.
Barkhouse seemed to chew on my proposal for a minute, before his shoulders slightly sagged.
“Olly never left Nova Scotia. She’s in a small town Southwest of Halifax, confined to hospital.
She’s been in a locked Mental Health Inpatient Unit all this time.
” I finally saw some good in having the money and resources Robert Barkhouse said I would inherit once the Will was read, which was scheduled for tomorrow in Halifax, at Rose Financial.
That didn’t mean, however, that Barkhouse’s loyalty to my grandfather and his status as rightful heir was on hiatus.
I just had a lot to think about, though at this moment, if I were given the choice, I knew exactly what I’d do.
Twilight was falling as we arrived at the airport hangar where The Organization plane was kept. I smiled at Sara and Melanie, and they helped us stow our luggage.
From the Halifax airport, we took a helicopter down the coast to Bridgewater, where we would take Olly, by force if necessary, and get her and her baby away from anyone who might do her harm.
I wasn’t thrilled that Barkhouse was a part of this plan, but as of yet, I was totally incapable of carrying this off by myself.
Hell, I didn’t know how to procure a helicopter from the airport. I wouldn’t have even thought of it.
The reason time was against us is that when a Dr. Levy was going through the drawings Olly had completed in the last four months, she noticed a clear pattern when they were arranged a certain way, instead of just being shoved into a file.
I visualised this doctor taping up Olly’s illustrations on the walls of Dr. Bell’s office like stereotypically crazy people did, with bits of string connecting otherwise isolated events and sticky notes with interpretations on them, etc.
Well, it turns out, I wasn’t too far off.
Barkhouse showed me pictures of the whole enchilada on his tablet, and I was shown two images in particular, one a drawing of Olly running or waddling through the unit toward an Exit sign, and another drawing that showed her appearing dead on the pavement which was located about twenty feet away from that same door.
It was pretty hard not to vomit when I saw that image of her lying there outside, her eyes vacant and her feet bare, on what looked like a cold, damp night.
Barkhouse looked at me as our helicopter circled what looked like the dingiest old parking lot on Earth beside an abandoned mall before going down for a landing in the ‘back forty’ of the thing.
His phone rang, and it was straight-up villain-in-a-superhero movie when he said, “The McLeod Asset isn’t secured?
Fuck, well get it done! We’re on the ground and waiting on your arrival.
Do not sedate her.” He let out a deep breath as he put his phone away, and then addressed me.
“Our Assets who are familiar with Olly’s case say that she’s going to be attempting escape any moment, and that we shouldn’t interfere.
That despite what the drawing shows, she will make it here to us within...
ten to fifteen minutes, now. She’s smart, and she is highly determined to get out of there, Clark.
I know you want to rush in and play the hero, but in this instance we have to let Olly save herself.
There won’t be damage to her or the baby when she falls. It just looks awful.”
Awful proved to be an understatement. God, I wish I smoked.
After the longest ten minutes of my life, an ambulance came careening up the hill and onto the uneven dirt of the former parking lot, and made its journey toward us.
Five minutes later, they were pulling Olly out on a stretcher, her face pale and bruises visible on her exposed arms, but it was Olly, dammit, my Olly.
Barkhouse swung open the door to his side of the helicopter and hopped out, and said, “I’ll sit in front, you can have the space by him. Give me your hand and I’ll help you!”