Suspicious Minds (Stranger Things Novels #1)(18)

“I just did.”

“You haven’t really explained, though. You’re a man of few words.”

He gave her an apologetic look. “The exact nature of our work is classified.”

The other technicians and lab staff around them had begun to watch their exchange, riveted.

“Who has the medical cocktail?” Brenner asked the group. “We all have our secrets, Miss Ives,” he said, laying an easy hand on her shoulder. “Our research here is about new ways of exposing them.”

So this research was about uncovering secrets.

For all that told her. But…she could see how that might be important.

And now the same aide as before was bringing her a small paper cup filled with LSD Extra, as she’d come to think of the lab mixture. Andrew had laughed at her description of the trip—not to be mean; only because he had done three times as much acid at Woodstock and it seemed like lightweight stuff to him.

“Down the hatch,” she said, and took a swig.

The liquid went down bitter, and she wondered how she could have ever mistaken it for water. She’d done some research on LSD. Not that there was much out there: Lysergic acid diethylamide, aka acid, was first made by a Swiss scientist in the late 1930s and had experienced a spike in popularity over the last few years, starting in San Francisco and Berkeley. Filed under “Psychedelic.” Arguments for and against its use tended to make the stuff sound like either the makings of a miracle or the gateway to insanity. Then there was Brenner’s use of the word “cocktail.” What exactly was in the Hawkins special acid blend? He wasn’t likely to tell her.

“Ready?” Dr. Brenner approached her again, a reassuring look on his face. He fixed a sticky suction-cup monitor under the right strap of her wetsuit. “Remember, I’ll be right here.”

Climbing up the platform reminded her of visiting the public pool back home over childhood summers. Of the way the other kids dived and dared her to, even though she’d never been a very strong swimmer. One day when she was twelve she gave in and plummeted into the deep end again and again, because it turned out to be fun. The lifeguard had to haul her out when she got exhausted and panicked. He yelled at her. Sixteen-year-old Becky had come over and argued back at him that he should’ve stopped her kid sister from diving at all.

Terry had snuck away while they fought, and jumped off the high dive one last time.

She hadn’t been allowed back at the pool the rest of that summer.

When she reached the top of the steps to the tank, she peered down into sloshing darkness. Sensory deprivation. Of course she hadn’t expected to be able to see in the water, but the images that floated through her head were the absolute worst. Coffins. Drowning. Drowning in coffins.

She thought of her parents again.

“It’s all right,” she told herself.

“It is; nothing can hurt you here.” Dr. Brenner handed her a helmet not so different from an astronaut’s. “So you have a steady supply of air.”

She slipped it over her head, only then questioning why he’d bothered to give her a bathing cap. At least oxygen wouldn’t be a problem.

She swung her now-heavy head around to look at him. He watched her with expectation. Go on, he seemed to be saying with his eyes.

She offered him her arm to help her as she stepped into the water. The wetsuit insulated her from the chill. She reclined and the water became a splashing weight against her. True to Brenner’s claim, the tank wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Not until she’d entered completely. He removed his hand, and the light got thinner, thinner, then vanished with the dull thud of the top being closed.

Houdini she wasn’t.

“Uh, hello? Anyone else in here?” She spoke, her voice muffled in the helmet, trying to joke.

“Just you.” Brenner’s calm voice in her ears.

The helmet was wired for sound.

The darkness grew. She tried and failed to relax. Her breathing picked up its pace and spots appeared at the edges of her vision. She attempted to move around, but it was hard in the water.

“Your heart is racing. Breathe deep,” Brenner said. “Relax. Close your eyes. Let the medicine begin its work. Go deeper.”

Easier said than done in a water coffin. But she did her best to steady her breath. Could she go deeper again? Had that been the hypnosis?

Was she getting Swiss cheese holes in her brain from the acid already?

Asking the questions helped her get control of herself. She fought to steady her pulse. Sweat crawled down her face and she knew if she focused there while unable to wipe it away she’d lose control. Worse.

So she closed her eyes.

Not that it mattered. She reopened them. The darkness reigned.

Deeper.

“Now, Terry, focus inward.” Brenner’s voice in her ears might as well have been inside her head. “I want you to let your memory open; describe what you experience. I don’t want you to look for pain this time. Look for comfort.”

Maybe because her mind had nothing to go on but his voice, maybe because the drugs kicked in, or both, her memory switched on as soon as he suggested it. Her mind conjured somewhere for her to be besides this tank. A feeling of being more than awake, more than alive danced at the edges of her awareness.

“Where are you?”

She imagined sinking her toes into the thick shag carpet in the living room at home. She and Becky sitting side by side on it as they watched Johnny Carson with her dad. The smell of popcorn, her mom in the kitchen shaking a pot on the stove, the two of them jumping up to go watch the top of the pot lift off as the kernels popped…