She was the power that had taken possession of the radio in the kitchen. She could not throw off the heavy weight of guilt and self-disgust that kept her pressed down in her quasi-autistic subworld, could not bear to speak of what she had done or might do, but she could send warnings and pleas for help through the radio. That’s what those messages had meant: ‘Help me, stop me. Help me. Stop me.’
And the whirlwind filled with flowers had been … what? Not at all threatening, of course. It had seemed threatening to Laura and Earl, but only because they hadn’t understood. No, the flower-laden whirlwind had been a pathetic, desperate expression of Melanie’s love for her mother.
Her love for her mother.
In that love, the girl might find salvation.
Boothe was impatient with Dan’s silence. ‘When she broke through, when she finally cast off all restraints of the flesh, and found her great powers and saw how to use them, she should have been grateful to us. The rotten little bitch should have been grateful to her father and to all of us who helped her to become more than just a child, more than just human.’
‘Instead,’ Uhlander whined with childish self-pity, ‘the vicious little brat turned on us.’
Dan said, ‘So you told Ned Rink to kill her.’
Boothe was as quick as ever with the self-justifications. ‘We had no choice. She was infinitely valuable, and we wanted to study and understand her. But we knew she was after us, and recapturing her and studying her was a risk we simply couldn’t take.’
‘We didn’t want to kill her,’ Uhlander said. ‘We created her, after all. We made her what she became. But we had to remove her. It was self-preservation. Self-defense. She’d become a monster.’
Dan stared at Uhlander and Boothe, as though peering through the bars of a cage, into a cell in a zoo. It must have been an alien zoo as well, on some distant planet, for it didn’t seem that this world could have produced creatures as bizarre, bloodless, and cruel as these. He said, ‘Melanie wasn’t the monster. You were. You are.’ He got up, too tense and angry to remain seated, and stood with his hands fisted at his sides. ‘What the hell did you expect to happen if she ever actually achieved this breakthrough you wanted? Did you think she’d say, “Oh, thank you so much, now what can I do for you, what wishes can I grant, what deeds perform?” Did you think she would be like a genie let loose of a lamp, subservient and eager to please those who’d rubbed the brass and let her out?’ He realized he was shouting. He tried to lower his voice, but he couldn’t. ‘For God’s sake, you people imprisoned her for six years! Tortured her! Do you think prisoners are usually grateful to their jailers and torturers?’
‘It wasn’t torture!’ Boothe protested. ‘It was … education. Guidance. Scientifically encouraged evolution!’
‘We were showing her The Way,’ Uhlander said.
* * *
Melanie murmured.
Laura barely heard the girl above the music and screeching of car tires in the movie. She leaned closer to her daughter. ‘What is it, honey?’
‘The door…’ Melanie whispered.
In the pulsating light from the film, Laura saw that the girl’s eyes were going shut again.
‘The door…’
* * *
Beyond the French windows, night had come to Bel Air.
Boothe had gone to the bar for more bourbon.
Uhlander had gotten up too. He was standing behind the desk, staring down into the panoply of colors that composed the Tiffany lampshade.
Dan said, ‘What is this “door to December,” this door that opens onto a different season of the year than any other door or window in the house? I read a little about it in your book. You said it was a paradoxical image used as a key to the psyche, but I didn’t have a chance to finish the chapter, and I wasn’t entirely sure I grasped the concept, anyway.’
Uhlander spoke without looking up from the lamp. ‘As part of the attempt to get Melanie to view anything as possible, to open her to fantastic concepts like astral projection, she was given specially designed concepts on which to concentrate during long sessions in the sensory-deprivation chamber. Each concept was an impossible situation … a carefully designed paradox. Like that door to December about which you read. It was my theory … it still is my theory that these mind-stretching exercises are useful for people who want to develop their psychic potential. It’s a way of training yourself to explore the unthinkable, a way to readjust your worldview to include what you formerly thought impossible.’