Caller unknown, p.5
Caller Unknown, page 5
“You think the kids have been programmed in some way, like Manson’s followers?” she asked.
“Too early to say. First up you have to ask yourself to what purpose? We don’t know what the kidnappers’ motives were: whether they were cultists or pedophiles, or something else. Secondly, what sort of threat is a nine-year-old kid going to pose to society? They’re not adults like Manson’s people. But there must have been some purpose for what happened to them. We have to take this step by step. The kid is very withdrawn. Monosyllabic at best. He has no recollection of anything before the discovery.”
“So where do we start?” Gloria asked.
“First, I’m going to repeat a post-traumatic amnesia test I did when he was first admitted. We’ll take it from there. Ready?”
She nodded and they both got up, then Gant ushered her into his office. It was unlike a typical doctor’s office: no diplomas, no banker’s desk or medical paraphernalia. Instead, the couch and floor were littered with children’s books and soft toys. Soft furnishings in bright colors, framed cartoons, a cheerful summer sun beaming onto the hand-woven Navajo-style rug—all gave a decidedly non-antiseptic warmth.
Ed was sitting on a plastic stool reading a book. He was an extremely gaunt, dark-haired child, pallid despite an olive complexion. His only clothing was blue-striped pajamas. His pitifully thin wrists and ankles protruded from them. His entire body language was hunched and introverted; the getup and appearance reminded Gloria uncomfortably of a concentration camp survivor.
Gloria saw he was reading Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. She wondered at Gant’s choice: the book was a super-realist coming-of-age story; but the shrink must know what he was doing. He probably wanted Edward exposed to the “real world.” If so, he would have been pleased with the degree of absorption the child was exhibiting. He seemed utterly lost in the book, to the extent that he hadn’t noticed Gant and Gloria come in.
“Ed, I have a visitor,” Gant said. The boy looked up very slowly and blinked when he saw Gloria.
“Hello, I’m Gloria,” she said, not sure if she should offer to shake the kid’s hand, but neither Gant nor Ed seemed to expect this. The boy continued staring; there was a worrying blankness in his eyes.
“OK, Ed, I’m going to ask you some questions today. Would that be OK?” Gant asked.
Ed slowly turned his attention from Gloria to Gant and nodded. Gant took a seat on a low stool, indicating that Gloria should sit on the couch. He took a clipboard and pen from the desktop and peered at the boy over the top of his half-moons, pen poised.
“OK, you ready?”
Ed nodded again.
“What’s your name?”
“Edward.”
“Do you have a last name?”
“What?”
“What are your parents’ names?”
He merely stared.
“OK. What is the name of this place?”
“A hospital.”
“Good. Do you know its name?”
“No.”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“No. I just woke up, then…” His voice died and his face crumpled.
Gant held up a hand. “It’s OK, Ed. Let’s move on. How old are you?”
Ed shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Alright, do you know what year this is?”
The boy’s face creased. “The year?” he whispered. He repeated the word. Then his voice deepened suddenly from a treble to a basso profundo and he said, “Twenty-nine. Two. Twenty-five. And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.” Then his eyes glazed and his face went slack. He suddenly seemed far away. Gloria shivered despite the warmth of the room. She looked nervously at Gant: had they lost him?
“Ed,” Gant said. “Ed, are you still there?”
Slowly the boy’s eyes came back into focus. His posture straightened slightly.
“You OK, kid?” Gant asked.
Ed nodded slowly.
“Let’s stop there. We’ll try something else,” Gant said.
He picked up some picture cards from the desk and showed them to Ed. The kid did better with these: he recognized a cup, keys; he called the seagull picture “a bird,” which was good enough.
When the nurse had taken him back to the ward Gant confirmed to Gloria that it was PTA alright. They were in it for the long haul.
“What was that with the years and the locusts?” Gloria asked.
Gant said, “Had to look it up the first time. The Book of Joel. The numbers are the number of the book, the chapter, and the verse. It’s the same with the other kids. They all quote numbers and random passages from the Bible, like that’s their entire memory.”
“Why the Bible?”
“I’m guessing it’s something to do with their conditioning. It could be that particular passages trigger something in them. I suppose we could go through the entire scripture with them and see what happens, but that has risks. We don’t want them regressing. Besides, it would take a while: there are eight hundred thousand words, give or take. I checked that too.”
“Hopefully you’ll make progress without having to do that.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it—this is the worst case of PTA I’ve come across. I wouldn’t rule out any approach.”
“What are the other options?”
Gant smiled grimly. “Regressive hypnosis, drugs. I’m not a fan of either. As I said, God knows what kind of traumatic memories could be dredged up. It might aid your investigation but I don’t know if it’ll help Ed.”
“I’ve heard of cases where hypnosis has been used on witnesses to aid their recall, but always adults, never kids.”
“No, never kids,” Gant agreed.
That was the end of the first day. There were many more like it. In the months to come, Gant had recourse to hypnosis, therapy, stress-inhibiting drugs: every measure known to alleviate memory loss; but still nothing came.
Only the eye remembered. All the people had gone around and around the eye and then into the deep hole, searching. Now the people had gone and the Lot was silent again. The eye lay there in the mud and rock by the crater of the House of Horrors, observing the sky, passing clouds and birds. If an eye could speak it could have told the Feds all they needed to know, but an eye only observes. And waits.
It was not impatient. Which was good, for nine years is a long time to wait and stare when you have no body and are just an eye. The winds of autumn came, then the snow and the melt, when it had thawed in late spring, they carried the eye a little further from its first resting place, and now it stared at another corner of sky. But all sky was the same to the eye. As was the sun and the moon and stars. Nine years the eye drifted slowly downhill from where the new sun had placed it, waiting for the hand that had last put it down to pick it up—and remember.
Ed and the others couldn’t stay in hospital forever. The state authorities posed the same question to all the psychiatrists: did the kids have a chance at “normal” life? The psychiatrists as one frowned at the word “normal;” in their canon there was no “normal” for anyone, let alone kidnapped and possibly abused nine-year-olds. Each one patiently explained all this to the police, press, and prospective adoptive parents. Prospective homes would have to be scrupulously vetted.
Some concerned couples had already put themselves forward as potential adopters. Stuart and Bettie Constance were a childless pair in their forties from Boston. They owned a house on Winthrop Road in Brookline, close to the Children’s Hospital. It was a handsome nineteenth-century edifice with a large backyard, three stories high. They claimed an extra interest in the Apostles through a cabin they owned up on Lake Tranquility, a vacation spot in Baxter Park. They happened to be there on Saturday, June 27, and professed to know every detail of the case even though Tranquility was a good 200 miles from the dump site.
The Monday after the kids’ discovery, the Constances contacted the police station at Presque Isle. Their names were passed on to the adoption agency and they were vetted, as thoroughly as these things were ever vetted in those days. The Constances explained that they had left it late in life to have a child—now, after countless procedures and tests, they had to accept they would never have their own biological offspring. They claimed the story of the kids pulled at their heartstrings and it was their dearest wish to adopt one of them.
Summer by now had turned to fall—a decision had to be made. The proximity of the hospital to their home in Brookline was in the Constances’ favor. In addition, they had led apparently blameless lives. He was a real estate developer, she an elementary school teacher. They were church people: First Episcopalian, regular every Sunday. Grace before meals, prayers at bedtime; vouched for by Woodson Bates, their pastor.
The adoptions of the five were anonymous; the files were sealed and could only be opened in the future by order of the presiding judge. The media adhered to a voluntary gagging order: after all, the news was by now monopolized by the Manson trial.
It was just before Christmas 1970 when Ed left the hospital. Gant and Gloria waited with him in the consulting room. Ed had one piece of luggage, a battered second-hand leather suitcase given to him by Gant. He had only a few clothes, charity donations to the hospital, but no toys. The Bible from the Pan Am bag had been taken for analysis. Gant had given him some classics to continue his reading, all fantasy, as was right for a boy who had never lived in the real world: The Hobbit; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The Little Prince.
Stuart and Bettie were dressed in their church clothes when they arrived. Stu, as he was known to all, was short, only some five six, sporting a tweed suit and horn-rimmed spectacles. He had a beaky nose and a broad mouth that beamed the kind of big, toothy smile needed when persuading customers that some dilapidated brownfield site was a once-in-a-lifetime real estate opportunity. Bettie was also in tweed, a two-piece dress suit, horn-rims like her husband, crocodile purse, and white gloves like a Jackie O. knockoff.
Stuart took off his fedora and fired up his 100-watt smile. All the boy saw were his teeth, big for a small man, almost predatory, stained yellow by pipe smoke. Stuart vigorously shook Gant’s and Gloria’s hands, then turned almost shyly to the boy. He was only a foot taller than the kid.
“Well, Edward, here we are then.” (Ed found out later Stu was very fond of the “here we are” phrase.) “You ready to come home?”
Ed swallowed hard and turned to Gant and Gloria.
“OK, kid,” Gant said, “you’re back here every Wednesday, remember? And Gloria is going to visit you every week.”
Gloria crouched and hugged Ed. The Constances exchanged glances as if this was not what they expected from a federal agent.
“Next week, OK, kid?” she whispered in Ed’s ear. He bit back a tear and nodded.
The Constances had been briefed by Gant not to expect much in the way of conversation and that day they didn’t get it. Not in the walk down to the parking lot, where sat Stuart’s Volvo P220 eggshell-blue station wagon, acquired a year before and his pride and joy.
“What do you think, kid?” Stu asked, pointing at it. “Four cylinders, ninety horsepower. Comes all the way from Sweden.” His enthusiasm elicited nothing from Ed, who just looked blankly upon this Nordic engineering marvel.
Nor did he utter a word during the brief ride to Winthrop Road or when being shown the house. Not even when he realized he was to have his own room up in the attic. Stu had decorated the walls in a primrose yellow and put up a world map and some outdoorsy pictures involving men with shotguns and rods. Bettie had supplied a brightly colored throw from her women’s group. There was even a sink in the corner of the room.
By now Stu was somewhat fazed by Ed’s utter silence. “Well, here we are then. Why don’t you wash up, then we’ll have dinner?” he said, and with that he and Bettie left and, amazingly, shut the door and Ed found himself, it seemed for the first time in his life, utterly alone. He stood there, paralyzed, and was still staring at the wall when Bettie came back to tell him dinner was ready.
The Constances decided that Ed’s captive name was at least familiar to the kid, so they kept it. Stu claimed there was Scottish blood somewhere in the family. There was a stag at bay on the wall in the Winthrop living room and Bettie had upholstered the furniture in Stu’s supposed family tartan. Ed got a middle name, “Burns,” to honor the dubious Scottish connection.
The problems began at the first elementary school, Pierce. Ed arrived in January, a couple of weeks after the winter break. Given the uncertainty of his true age and that he was a recluse, with socialization skills way below those of the first graders, he was assigned to the fourth grade. He had reading aptitude and a remarkable memory, particularly of the Bible, but he knew nothing of math, history, or geography.
On the first day Principal Farmer brought Ed to Mr. Preston’s fourth-grade class. He was the only newcomer that spring term and all the kids turned and stared at him as he stood, shuffling from foot to foot, in front of them.
“Children, please welcome Edward Constance to your class today,” Farmer said primly, then nodded to Preston to take over. There was a whispered buzz of conversation as Farmer departed and Preston brought Ed over to a spare desk: Ed caught words and phrases: “found by the side of the road”… “two of them killed”… “aliens”… “freak.”
“That will be all, children,” Preston said and the buzzing died down. “Please sit, Edward.” He returned to his desk. There was a projector pointed at the wall. Preston pulled down a screen. “First lesson is history. Edward, you’ll have to catch up with the other children. We’ve been studying the twentieth century and the Second World War. We didn’t quite finish the subject last week. Open your textbooks at the chapter entitled ‘The Atomic Bomb’ and those of you sitting next to the windows, please pull the shades.”
There was a rustle of books being opened as two of the kids did as Preston bade and the room was cast into semidarkness. Ed felt the first stirring of uneasiness. There was a textbook on the desk in front of him. He was not sure where he was meant to find the chapter Preston had referred to, but the book fell open as if of its own accord on a page showing a black column rearing up from the earth into the sky, a halo of vapor, then a mushroom-shaped cloud above it.
He had seen that image before. He had seen it back then. Some delicate shell fractured in him: blackness began seeping in. The blackness was filling in his vision. He tore his eyes away from the picture and looked up, but there, now in color, on the projector screen was the same image amplified ten times. He heard Preston’s voice droning on as the slideshow cycled: President Truman, the Enola Gay, Colonel Tibbets and his crew, “Little Boy,” the egg-shaped bomb, Hiroshima, then Nagasaki… but the world and the classroom were slipping away—all was fading to that all-conquering black…
Out of the darkness another scene materialized. He was in another room, a classroom of sorts but not the one at Pierce with its twenty boys and girls. There were only seven children here. The other kids’ names came to him for the first time since Highway 11: David, Carl, Hope, Kevin, Catrine… and Shannon. Most importantly, Shannon… There were no windows in this room. A cine projector cast a shaft of white, flickering light onto a blank wall. And, yes, he and the others were singing as the mushroom cloud rose and rose and the sky turned blood red; a ruined city lay beneath; there were shadows on the sidewalk where people had been when the flash had turned the heavens white; the images of hideously burned victims began to shutter across…
He heard a scream, then arms grabbing him, shaking him, and urgent voices calling for the nurse to come quickly. “One of the boys is having a seizure.”
After consultation with Principal Farmer, it was agreed that Ed should be excused certain lessons, particularly Preston’s twentieth-century history ones. He was allowed to sit with Farmer’s secretary in his outer office during them. By now the story of the screaming kid and the rumors surrounding his past were all around Pierce. School is a jungle with predators and prey. Ed was now prey. Not long after the incident, the ringleader of the fifth graders, Todd Reilly, stood over Ed in recess.
“Hey, freak, look at me.” Reilly had a way of addressing everybody bar adults with hands on his hips and legs planted apart like some union enforcer.
By now Ed was making good progress with The Little Prince and was wishing he was far away in the Sahara with its hero rather than in this freezing playground. But one thing his books had taught him: you had to stand up to aggression or continually be a victim. The moment he had been anticipating since he arrived at Pierce had come. There was only one option. Mustering all the feeble courage he felt inside, he lowered the book and stood. He gave up a good six inches to Reilly.
“Do me a favor, leave me alone, will you?” he said, but even to his own ears it carried no conviction.
Reilly broke his posture and took a step nearer, bunching his fists.
“Say again,” he spat.
“I said, leave me alone,” Ed repeated. It was maybe a little stronger this time, but not by much.
“You know who I am, kid?” Reilly asked.
“I’m getting a fair idea,” Ed answered.
“What’s that?” Reilly’s face flushed and spittle speckled Ed’s face. He took another step forward and pushed Ed with both hands, hoping no doubt to land him on his ass, but Ed had braced himself and didn’t fall. He pushed back and Reilly tottered. The older boy snarled and this time he came in with his fists swinging. Ed tried to duck but a fist deflected off his cheekbone and crunched his nose. He tasted blood.
Reilly was a bit unbalanced, his sweaty face bowed just inches from Ed’s.
There was a roaring in Ed’s ears. Then, like a monstrous dark snake, it came swarming up from the depths: a long-buried rage. The roar became a scream. His mind went blank.
When he came back to himself—it could have been hours but was surely only seconds later—Reilly was lying on the asphalt holding his face. His nose was shattered, flattened against one cheek, and his mouth was a bloody hole. He gurgled something through the blood. Ed’s knuckles were skinned so they bled. He was being restrained from behind by a male teacher, who was pinning his arms.
