Foreverland Is Dead

nicely in one of the wood stoves.
    “How did she do it?” Cyn asks. “How did Patricia recreate a world exactly like this?”
    Linda shakes her head. “We don’t know. Her brain activity is nothing like we’ve ever seen. Maybe she’s triggered something in the human mind that can just absorb the details around her.”
    “Miranda gave this to me.” Cyn shakes the book.
    “Who?”
    “The girl with blonde hair—she’s upstairs, I’m guessing.”
    Linda nods slowly. “And she gave you that book?”
    “One exactly like it. I never read it, though.”
    “Why?”
    She had lost it, but where?
    Cyn thinks, overcome with foggy blankness. That’s where those memories are: lost in some inaccessible part of her mind where it’s rainy and cloudy.
    Gray.
    Photos slip out from between the pages. Oceans and boats, beaches and homes. Old people smiling at the camera, having the time of their life. The photos are glossy, developed from film long ago. One of the photos is older than the others. The woman is younger, her hair not so gray.
    Blonde.
    “She brought me here.”
    Linda doesn’t answer.
    “Do you know where she is?”
    “There are some leads.”
    Cyn traces the outline of Barbara Graham’s face, wondering if she ever spoke with her. Of course she did. Her face is so familiar; they probably become friends, probably rode horses and hiked trails. She likes to think that she and Barbara ate dinner together.
    She thinks she’d like to meet her again one of these days. And she hates herself for having that thought. But she can’t stop. She drops the book and photos in the box, all except the one that shows her blonde hair. That one ends up in her back pocket. If she ever sees her, she’s not sure if she’ll hug her or knock her out.
    Or both.
    If she ever sees Mr. Williams, she knows exactly what she’ll do. Tell him that he’s dead.

    Laughter in the back of the house.
    They walk past the kitchen, the cabinets open and empty. Boxes on the counter. Everything bagged and tagged for analysis, as if the old women were hiding in coffee cans.
    Linda passes Cyn, looks into the back room. “Gentlemen.”
    The laughter fades off.
    There’s muttering.
    Linda glances back down the hall. The foul odor is stronger, mixed with the fumes of a scented candle. Cinnamon. It doesn’t do much to mask death. She breathes through her mouth but then she can taste it.
    Cyn steps inside slowly. The body is gone. She wonders if it was back here, sitting in a chair, dead from a heart attack or a guilty conscience. There’s another door on the back wall, this one closed.
    Monitors wrap around the right side of the room, the largest in the corner. Two men sit in chairs, keyboards on the counter. Thomas is next to them.
    Thomas slaps their seats. “Give us five minutes.”
    The techs tap a few keys, shut down their work before leaving without looking at Cyn.
    “What is this?”
    “Headquarters,” Thomas says. “These computers monitor the entire camp. It’s a lot smaller than the island; that’s why the old women only managed half a dozen girls at a time. Still, it may have cost a billion dollars to set it up and maintain its secrecy. Cameras are everywhere, constantly recording and backing up.”
    Thomas taps on the keyboard. The monitors begin cycling through views. She sees the tents on one monitor, the inside of the bunkhouse on another. She remembers the floodlights but never thought there were cameras. That means Miranda could see them. Before that, the old women had watched them.
    They knew everything.
    He points at the batteries and generators on the other side of the room.
    “That’s why there are so many power generators. If you think about it, one wind harvester would be enough for normal living. Their demand was much more than that.”
    “Patricia,” Cyn mutters. Something tugs at her stomach.
    Thomas looks at the big monitor. An old woman lies in a very small room with electrodes taped to her head, face, and chest; wires are bundled and connected to machines in the corner, where there’s barely enough room to stand.
    He looks at Linda, then Cyn. “Yes,” he says slowly. “How do you know that?”
    “Mr. Williams said she was in that cabin in the woods. We couldn’t get inside, though.”
    And I took her IVs. And now they’re gone.
    “He said she was the dreamer,” she says. “Are the girls inside her? Is that what he meant?”
    “We don’t really know,” Thomas says. “Her brain activity is