Hour Of Darkness

CH 7 - "Transference"

...Before...

JONATHON

The small boy they led into the room was eight but he only looked about six. His blond, wavy hair was thick and hung over his forehead, into his eyes. The boy didn't seem to notice and didn't try to wipe it out. He stared straight forward, a blank look in his eyes. He looked blind, but he wasn't. Johnny had seen the boy before and he wasn't blind.

“What are they going to do to him, father?” Johnny asked the man standing beside him. He called Victor father, but he wasn't his father. Johnny didn't have a father, or a mother. None of the kids at the institute did. He just had Victor...and Uncle Lee – but he was Johnny's secret friend.

“Just watch.” Victor clasp his hands behind his back and watched through a large window. The room on the other side of the window was about medium size and was equipped with only an exam table. The walls were bright white and a large fluorescent light on the ceiling made it even brighter.

Johnny watched the three men in long white lab coats lead the blond boy to the table. One of the men lifted the boy onto the table and laid him on his back. Johnny could feel the boy's fear like a heat wave, though the boy lay silent and unmoving.

“They're scaring him.” Johnny said.

“No.” Victor murmured. “He isn't scared. He doesn't feel like we do. None of them do.”

Johnny stepped closer to the window and flattened his hands on the glass. One of the men pressed his palm to the boy's head and held him down while another placed a scalpel to the boy's throat. The boy's fear spun into a whirlwind of terror, hitting Johnny hard, like a physical force, causing him to take a step back. His eyes widened as the man with scalpel cut an incision across the boy's throat. Blood drained out and pooled on the table. The boy coughed and blood spittle sprayed from his mouth then trickled from the corner. The boy's eyes went dead.

“Why are they killing him?” Johnny cried. Tears filled his eyes.

“They aren't.” Victor said quietly, watching intently. “Just watch, Johnny.”

Johnny's throat was tight as he turned his attention back to the boy on the table. The incision on the boy's throat slowly healed. The boy gasped and drew in a sharp breath. A fierce wave of terror hit Johnny. But it wasn't his own. The boy's mind spun chaotically and suddenly his thoughts came together in one single word that screamed through his head.

Clarice!

7...Transference...

Paul McCormick sat at the oblong table and stared at the two way mirror. His reflection stared back at him, revealing a man on the edge. He knew this procedure. He was usually on the other side of that glass. He could feel the unseen eyes watching him and for the first time since entering law enforcement, felt a shred of pity for the criminal who had to sit there and wait.

But the men he'd put at this table were usually guilty. He himself was...what? Innocent? Hadn't he been holding his weapon on officer Brent while he let the suspect escape? It still made no sense to him. What the hell had happened back there at the house? How could he literally forget what had taken place between the time Officer Brent had handcuffed the suspect and the moment McCormick realized Sergeant Kempt was holding his weapon on him?