Hear the Children Calling Read online

  HEAR THE

  CHILDREN CALLING

  Clare McNally

  Copyright © 1990 by Clare McNally. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Don Congdon Associates, Inc.; the agency can be reached at [email protected].

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  August 21, 1969

  WHENEVER PARENTS DESCRIBE THE PERFECT BABY, the item that always tops the list is sleeping through the night. After a day of meeting the demands of even the most complacent infant, Mommy and Daddy want nothing more than a solid eight hours’ sleep. Babies who sleep through the night at a few weeks old are rare. Babies who sleep through the night from day one are almost impossible.

  But Lincoln and Georgina Adams had such a child. Lincoln Jr. never uttered a sound, not even at the moment of birth. Georgina, looking down over her suddenly flattened tummy at the glistening body of her firstborn son, did enough screaming for both of them.

  From the neck down, he was perfect. But there would be no bothering to count ten little toes and fingers on this child. For the face on the slightly misshapen head was almost nonexistent. There was no nose, two piglike black eyes, and only the tiniest slit of a mouth.

  Georgina screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

  September 2, 1969

  “I want you to kill him.”

  Georgina’s voice was like that of an automaton. She sat up in bed with pillows propped behind her, a tray of untouched breakfast straddling her legs. She’d been here for the last week, ever since her husband put her to bed at the first signs of labor.

  Lincoln poured her coffee, sighing deeply. “You know I won’t do that,” he said. “He’s our son.”

  Georgina’s eyes were clear as she looked up. She’d finished crying days ago.

  “Look at it, Lincoln,” she said. “What the hell kind of life is it going to have?”

  “With therapy—”

  “Therapy can’t rebuild its face, for Christ’s sake,” Georgina snapped.

  “You don’t know that, Georgina,” Lincoln said. “Plastic surgery can be miraculous.”

  Georgina regarded her cup of coffee for a few moments before picking it up and taking a long sip. “The trouble with you doctors,” she said, “is that you think you’re God. Nobody can reconstruct a face like that. It’s cruel to let it live.”

  Lincoln slammed his fist against the headboard behind her, making her dishes rattle. Her eyes went wide.

  “Stop calling him ‘it,’” he roared. “His name is Lincoln Junior! Why don’t you try being a mother to him? He’s a baby. He has needs.”

  “He never cries,” Georgina said, going back to the same faraway voice she’d used moments earlier. “He never makes a sound.”

  “Then you feed him on a schedule,” Lincoln said. “That special bottle I brought, the one for kittens, is the perfect size for him. He may be ugly, Georgina, but he needs love. I can tell that when I hold him, the way he relaxes in my arms, so content. He’s just a baby!”

  “He’s a freak!”

  Georgina’s scream was accentuated by the sound of her tray crashing to the floor. She threw aside her covers and pulled herself up from the bed.

  “Georgina, no,” Lincoln cried. “It’s too soon. You shouldn’t get up—”

  “Leave me the hell alone,” Georgina seethed, limping on water-bloated legs to the door of the bedroom. She didn’t even glance at the bassinet when she passed it. Instead, she stumbled down the hall to the dining room, where she pulled open the liquor cabinet. She’d get drunk. She’d get drunk and she’d forget and she’d pretend it was all a nightmare.

  Lincoln grabbed the whiskey bottle before she could pour a second drink.

  “This is no way to handle our problem, Georgina,” he said sternly.

  She glared at him. “Oh, you cold-hearted son of a bitch. Who are you to tell me how to handle our problem? I carried that child for nine months. I prayed to God through six years of marriage to get pregnant. I was so happy when the doctor told me the news. And then this . . .” She leaned her head forward, empty tumbler in her hands, and began to cry.

  Lincoln sat down and took her in his arms. He knew better than to say another word. He knew how much she hurt, because his pain was just as deep. But wasn’t a mother’s love supposed to transcend all boundaries? Why didn’t she love Lincoln Jr.?

  He realized suddenly that she had stopped crying. Her breathing was slow and even. Somehow, she had fallen asleep. Gently, Lincoln picked her up and carried her back to the bedroom. He thought about her pregnancy and how it had come about. The medicine she’d taken . . .

  No, that was impossible. Anything that had gone in her mouth had been thoroughly tested. He knew that for a fact, because he worked as a research biologist for Georgina’s father. Neither man would ever hurt that woman.

  As he tucked her covers around her, he thought for a moment of laying the baby down next to her. Maybe physical contact would bring out her maternal instincts. But he thought better of it and turned to check on little Lincoln.

  The baby lay on his side, just as Lincoln had propped him, a rolled-up towel set behind his back to keep him from rolling. His breathing was raspy but steady. Lincoln covered the small body with a little blue blanket. Georgina had crocheted it in anticipation of a perfect child. What she got was a monstrosity that they kept well hidden from the world. Nobody, not even Georgina’s father, knew the child had been born. Lincoln had to take his time making the announcement, preparing just the right words. He wasn’t even sure if it would be a birth, or a death, announcement.

  He left the room.

  Georgina fell deeper and deeper into sleep, and finally began to dream.

  The baby was crying. No, no, that can’t be. It doesn’t make any noise at all. It doesn’t have a mouth.

  But it was crying. And Georgina suddenly had the irresistible urge to get up and go to him. It was almost as if the baby was pulling her toward him with an invisible magnet, pulling her out of the bed, across the flo
or.

  She didn’t want to look in the crib. Oh, God, she hadn’t looked at the baby since the moments after its birth. She couldn’t take it.

  Please, no!

  The baby commanded her to look at him. Not with words or cries, but with such incredibly strong emotions that Georgina felt a burning pain throughout her body. She could not resist. She looked in the crib . . .

  And saw a perfect, blue-eyed baby boy.

  No, Lincoln Jr. is a freak!

  He smiled at her, a smile like sunshine. She smiled back, reaching down to lift him gently into her arms. It was all a nightmare, a mistake! Lincoln Jr. was perfect, perfect, perfect . . .

  Lincoln, come and see our baby boy. Lincoln, you have to come see him! Lincoln . . .

  “Lincoln!”

  When Georgina cried out in her sleep, the sound awakened her. She was sweating on one side of her body. No, not sweating. Her milk had let down. Milk that should have dried up already. She felt an odd tugging at her breast. A cold chill washed over her as she slowly pulled back her covers.

  The baby was there, latched to her, sucking away contentedly.

  She knocked him aside with one swift are of her arm, sending him to the floor. Her screams brought Lincoln running.

  “Georgina, what . . . Oh, God! What have you done?” He hurried to the baby and picked him up. Georgina watched with wide-eyed horror as he kissed the child over and over again. “Thank God you’re okay,” he said to the baby. “Thank God we have a thick carpet in here.”

  He began to pace the floor as a father might do with a crying baby. Except that Lincoln Jr. wasn’t crying.

  “Why did you do that?” Georgina demanded.

  “Do what?”

  “Put it in bed with me,” Georgina cried. “I told you, I don’t want it near me. How can you be so insensitive?”

  “Georgina, I didn’t put the baby in bed with you,” Lincoln said.

  “Well, he sure as hell didn’t get here by himself.”

  “But I didn’t move him,” Lincoln said, a look of worry passing over his face. “I swear it!”

  Georgina was pensive for a while. The dream came back to her, only now that she thought of it, it was more vivid and real than any dream she had ever had.

  “He made me do it,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “He made me pick him up,” she said. “He used his mind and he tricked me into thinking he was beautiful.”

  “Georgina, you’re crazy.”

  “I want him out of this bedroom, Lincoln,” Georgina said. “Either he goes, or I do.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I want him out of here!”

  Lincoln breathed in a deep sigh. “Very well.” He lay the baby down in the bed. Lincoln Jr. stared at nothingness with pig eyes. Not for the first time Lincoln wondered if he was blind.

  He wheeled the bassinet out into the hall and down to the guest bedroom.

  “Sorry, little guy,” he said. “Life’s giving you the short end of the stick, isn’t it? But I’ll make it up to you. I’ll research day and night until I find a way to help you.”

  She hates me.

  The voice was so loud and clear that Lincoln swung around to see if someone was standing behind him. The doorway was empty.

  He was tired, that’s all. Hearing things.

  My mother hates me. Why does she hate me? Why? Why?

  No, this was impossible. He could hear a child’s voice in his mind. But how? He turned back to the baby’s crib.

  I want her to kill herself. Kill herself before she kills me.

  “This isn’t happening,” Lincoln said. “You can’t be using telepathy on me. You’re too young, and you don’t even know words. I’m imagining things! I’m going as crazy as Georgina.”

  “Lincoln, will you come here?”

  Not understanding why he was grateful to get away from the baby, Lincoln hurried down the hall to his wife.

  She was sitting up in bed, her hands tucked under her covers.

  “My mother hates me,” she said, her voice a strange parody of the childlike one Lincoln had heard in his mind. “I want her to kill herself. Kill herself before she kills me.”

  “Georgina, how did you know?”

  He saw the pistol, too late. A single shot aimed at her neck took Georgina’s life.

  Down the hall in his bassinet, Lincoln Jr. shed his first and only tear.

  1

  Summer, 1988

  A CHILD WAS CRYING, BUT NOT ONE OF THE ADULTS who stood around him could hear. The sound didn’t come from his mouth; his lips were pressed together in angry protest. It came from deep within his mind, a scream sounded for the thousandth time in hope that someone would listen. But no one did.

  “You’re doing fine, Tommy,” a young man said as he taped wires to the boy’s forehead.

  “Just a little blood sample, Tommy,” said a woman in white.

  A pinch. The boy winced, but didn’t say a thing. He knew there was no use in it. No one would hear.

  “Now, you know what to do, son,” his father said from somewhere behind the big green chair where the boy sat, wired to machines he didn’t understand. “It’s just like all the other times. Bring the toy tiger to life, Tommy.”

  Tommy wanted to shake his head, to cry out “No!” But when he moved, the electrodes pulled hard at his skin. And he knew any protests would go unheeded now and he would be punished later.

  He fixed his eyes on the stuffed tiger. It was a cub, big green eyes luminous in the bright, clinical lights. The boy stared hard at him.

  I don’t want to do this. I’m scared!

  “Concentrate, Tommy,” a woman said. “Don’t be afraid. You can make him do whatever you want.”

  I can’t make him! It never works right.

  The tiger began to move.

  “Keep going, Tommy,” the woman said. “You were so close the last time. Maybe today . . .”

  No! No! NO! I don’t like this!

  The green plastic eyes thinned. The head turned. The embroidered mouth opened to reveal long teeth that couldn’t possibly be there.

  “Send it to the dummy, Tommy,” a man said. “Make it attack the dummy.”

  The toy tiger, an adorable plaything moments before, had turned into a miniature version of the real thing, no less vicious for its size. Tommy’s eyes moved to a battered store mannequin that sat on the other side of the room. But the tiger didn’t follow his gaze. Once contact was broken, the beast seemed to gain a mind of its own. It leapt toward the chair where the child sat confined by straps and wires.

  Tommy screamed.

  “Nnnnnooooo!”

  One of the adults jerked Tommy’s chair out of the way, wheels screeching on the tile floor. The tiger flew past the child and struck a technician, teeth sinking into her neck. She screamed, grabbing at it.

  “Tommy, make it stop!”

  Stop! You’re a toy. Just a toy.

  Instantly, the tiger fell to the ground. The woman touched her neck and brought back fingers tipped with blood. At her feet, the tiger was once again a plaything.

  Tommy’s father’s face came into view. “I thought you were going to try harder today, Tommy.”

  He sounded disappointed. Tommy hung his head, silent again. He tried so hard to please the grown-ups. He’d been trying for as long as he could remember. But he was afraid of the things he could do, and that fear kept him from being in complete control. He closed his eyes and remained quiet as the electrodes were disconnected.

  But in his mind, he cried pitifully. And for the first time since he was a small child, someone heard him. His thoughts carried out of the building, beyond the iron fence that surrounded the center and all the houses within it, beyond the mountains that formed a natural barrier between the boy’s home and the neighboring city.

  As she was driving up a mountain road, on her way to a picnic with her niece and nephew, a woman suddenly experienced a flash of head pain so intense she had to
slam the brakes. The children begged her to say what was wrong, but she couldn’t. She could only stare up into the trees, listening to the cries of a child, a little boy whose brain was on the same wavelength as her own. The cries were so pathetic that tears began to form in her own eyes.

  Ignoring the dismayed protests of her passengers, she sent a thought message back to the child.

  Tell me where you are, little one. Tell me who you are, and how I can help you.

  In his chair, free now of the wires, the boy finally relaxed. He had stopped screaming inside his mind, for somehow he sensed that he finally had been heard.

  2

  ON THE NORTH SHORE OF LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK, Jill Sheldon was busy readying the Science and You Museum for an annual fund-raiser. The building was closed to the public tonight, in order to welcome important and well-to-do guests. Exhibits in physics, biology, astronomy, and the like were set up in Plexiglas booths spread throughout four rooms. Nothing was encased, and PLEASE TOUCH signs decorated the brightly painted walls. In this, the largest room, several exhibits had been moved aside to make room for a long buffet table.

  “Maybe we need a few more carnations,” Jill said, pointing. “There, next to the seafood platter.”

  Her assistant, Virginia Dreyfus, shook her head. “It looks fine,” she said. “Everything is perfect.”

  “I hope so. How well this museum runs for the next year is going to depend on the donations we take in tonight.”

  “We’ll do great,” Virginia said. “Just let our guests run through the exhibits and they won’t be able to resist pulling out their checkbooks.”

  Jill wished she could share her assistant’s confidence. “Look at me,” she said, holding out her hands. There was a faint rattling of onyx and lapis bangles. “I’m shaking like a leaf. I’m so nervous!”

  “Don’t be,” Virginia encouraged. “The museum will sell itself. Everything looks great—especially you.”

  Jill looked down at herself, feeling just a small wave of confidence despite the butterflies in her stomach. She had spent weeks looking for just the right dress. She finally chose a strapless, turquoise satin gown. Rhinestone danglers sparkled in the shoulder-length fall of her brown curls. She wore a small amount of makeup, just enough to bring out the green in her eyes and the faint shadowing of high cheekbones.