Chapter 10 - The Doctor’s Second Story
Dr. Mercer did not run.
He met Vance at the hospital with his attorney and admitted the reflection was him. The video had been recorded four years earlier at a protected residence in Maine.
“I was treating Samuel,” he said.
“For what?” Nora asked.
“Neurological damage caused by prolonged drug exposure.”
“You told me you lost contact after the Bellweather fire.”
“I lied.”
“Why?”
“Because Samuel asked me to.”
Mercer’s second story was more complicated than the first.
After the fire, Caroline and Samuel built a hidden network to help Bellweather survivors disappear. Mercer provided medical care. They believed law enforcement had been compromised. Several witnesses who came forward died in accidents.
Samuel refused to contact Nora because Judith and Walter monitored her. Each attempt risked exposing the network.
“Then why didn’t you help me?” Nora asked. “You saw what Graham and Judith were doing.”
“I did not know where you were. Your records listed you as Anna Reed. By the time I found your real name, Samuel stopped me.”
“Why?”
“He believed Graham was protecting you from worse people.”
Nora laughed bitterly. “He was helping break me.”
“I know that now.”
Mercer handed Vance a sealed drive. It contained medical files, survivor statements, and partial Sunday voting records. Samuel had ordered it released if Nora ever appeared at a hospital with injuries suggesting renewed conditioning.
“He predicted this?”
“He feared it.”
“Where is he?”
Mercer looked at Nora for a long time. “I do not know. He vanished from the Maine residence eighteen months ago.”
“Taken?”
“Possibly. He left no signs of struggle. Only a note.”
The note read:
Nora is beginning to remember. Keep her away from Caroline.
That warning made no sense. Caroline had helped Nora. Caroline had exposed Bellweather.
Unless Caroline’s role had changed.
Vance traced the Vermont address from Samuel’s letter to an isolated farmhouse owned by a charitable foundation. The property had no listed residents, but satellite images showed recent vehicles.
Nora insisted on going.
This time, Vance did not argue.
The farmhouse stood among bare trees and long fields. Inside, they found fresh coffee, warm ashes, and walls covered with photographs of Bellweather survivors.
At the center was Nora.
Red string connected her to Graham, Judith, Walter, Mercer, Samuel, and a woman whose face had been cut from every image.
On a desk lay a yellow blouse sealed in plastic.
Caroline’s blouse from the basement photograph.
A floorboard creaked overhead.
Police searched the house and found no one, but a concealed attic room contained audio equipment. Someone had been monitoring police frequencies, hospital calls, and the Collins house.
A recording began playing automatically.
Caroline’s voice filled the room.
“Nora, you were never chosen because of your father. Your father became a target because of you.”
Nora stopped moving.
“You were the first successful subject,” the recording continued. “The others came later. Sunday was built around what they learned from your memory.”
The tape clicked.
A second voice began.
Samuel’s.
“She cannot know what happened before Bellweather. If she remembers the lake, everything starts again.”
The recording ended.
Nora felt pressure behind her eyes.
A lake at night.
A child’s hand inside hers.
A car sinking beneath black water.
Then a woman screaming Nora’s name.
On the attic wall, someone had written in red:
At the farmhouse, investigators found a shelf of children’s storybooks with passages cut from the pages. When Nora arranged the missing words, they formed a message:
The lake remembers before the child.
Mercer recognized the books as tools once used at Bellweather. Patients were given stories containing hidden prompts. Later, familiar phrases triggered emotional responses without clear memories.
Nora opened a copy of The Snow Queen and felt sudden terror at an illustration of a red sled. She shut it quickly.
“Was my whole childhood planted?” she asked.
“No,” Mercer said. “Conditioning does not create a life from nothing. It attaches fear to what already exists.”
That distinction offered little comfort.
In the kitchen, Vance found two coffee cups. One held Caroline’s fingerprints. The other held Samuel’s.
Both had been there within forty-eight hours.
The search was no longer for ghosts. Nora’s father and Caroline were moving through the same landscape, leaving messages in rooms they knew police would find.
May you like
The question was whether they wanted rescue or pursuit.
ASK JUDITH WHO GRAHAM’S REAL MOTHER IS.
