Seize the Night

reason?”
    “No.”
    “You think the thing he saw in his daughter's throat, in her eye—that was real?”
    “Totally.”
    “Me too. Things we saw in Hodgson's suit … could that be what the fluttering is about?”
    “Maybe that. Maybe something worse.”
    “Worse,” I said, trying not to imagine it.
    “I got the feeling—wherever the other side is, it's a real zoo over there.”
    We returned to the dining room. Bobby to the stool. Me to the chair by the composition table. After a moment of reluctance, I started the tape.
    By the time Delacroix had begun to record again, his demeanor had changed. He wasn't as emotional as he had been. His voice broke now and then, and he needed to pause to collect himself from time to time, but for the most part, he was striving to soldier through what needed to be said.
    “In the garage I keep gardening supplies, including a gallon of Spectracide. Bug killer. I got the can and emptied it on the three bodies. I don't know if that makes sense. Nothing was … moving in them. In the bodies, I mean. Besides, these aren't insects. Not like we think of insects. We don't even know what they are. Nobody knows. Lots of big theories. Maybe they're something … metaphysical. Do you think? I siphoned some gasoline out of the car. I have a couple gallons here in another can. I'll use the gasoline to start the fire before … before I finish myself. I'm not going to leave the four of us for overeducated janitors at Project Control. They'll just do something stupid. Like bag us and do autopsies. And spread this damn thing. I'll call the Control number after I go down to the corner and mail this tape to you, before I set the fire and … kill myself I'm all quiet inside right now. Very quiet inside. For now. How long? I want to believe that—”
    Delacroix halted in mid-sentence, held his breath as though he were listening for something, and then shut off the recorder.
    I stopped the tape. “He didn't mail the cassette to anyone.”
    “Changed his mind. What does he mean—something metaphysical?”
    “That was my next question,” I said.
    When Delacroix returned to the recorder, his voice was heavier, slower, leaden, as though he had fallen past fear, dropped below grief, and was speaking from a pit of despair.
    “Thought I heard something in one of the bedrooms. Imagination. The bodies are … where I left them. Very still. Very still. Just my imagination. And now I realize you don't even know what this is about. I started this all wrong There's so much to tell you, if you're going to be able to blow this wide open, but there's so little time. Okay. What you've got to know, the bones of it, is that there was a secret project at Fort Wyvern. The code name was Mystery Train. Because they thought they were making a magical mystery tour. Morons. Megalomaniacs. Me among them. Nightmare Train would have been a better name for it. Hellbound Train that would've been better yet. And me happy to climb on board with the rest of em. I don't deserve any praise, big brother. Not me. So … here are the key personnel. Not everyone. Just the ones I knew, or as many as I remember right now. Several are dead. Many are alive. Maybe one of the living will talt one of the upper-her bastards who would know a lot more than I do. They all must be scared, and some of them must have guilty consciences. You're good at finding the whistle-blowers.”
    Delacroix proceeded to list over thirty people, identifying each man or woman as either a civilian scientist or a military officer, Dr. Randolph Josephson, Dr. Sarabjit Sanathra, Dr. Miles Bennell, General Deke Kettleman … My mother was not among them.
    I recognized only two names. The first was William Hodgson, who was no doubt the poor devil we encountered in the bizarre episode in the egg room. The second was Dr. Roger Stanwyk, who lived with his wife, Marie, on my street, just seven houses east of mine. Dr. Stanwyk, a biochemist, had been one of my mother's many colleagues, associated with the genetic experiments at Wyvern. If the Mystery Train wasn't the project that grew from my mother's work, then Dr. Stanwyk had been collecting more than one paycheck and had done more than his fair share to destroy the world.
    Delacroix's voice grew softer and his speech slower during recitation of the last six or eight names, and the final name almost seemed as though it would stick to his tongue and remain unrevealed. I wasn't sure if he had reached the end of