From Black Rooms Read Free

detested the piece, he found it had the soporific effect of elevator music upon the test subjects.
    Holding the gun behind his back, Dr. Wax approached the first room and peered through the porthole. When he'd satisfied himself that the occupant was not waiting to attack him, Wax entered the security code on the door's keypad to unlock it. The music was not quite loud enough to drown out the scream that burst forth as the door opened.
    "G et away from me! Leave me alone!" Dr. Wax knew that the patient was not shrieking at him. The plump man lay curled in the far corner of the room between the mattress and the toilet and did not even seem to register the doctor's presence. But Wax could not help fretting that the subject knew what he had come to do.
    "Hel o, Harold. How are you today?" Although he knew perfectly wel how Harold was, Wax employed
    his usual bedside patter to avoid upsetting the patient as he advanced, the gun concealed behind him.
    Harold pounded on his head with his fists, which were bound in padded cotton mittens. Scabs and scars stil streaked his face and shaved scalp where he'd clawed the skin with his fingernails. "GO AWAY! ALL OF
    YOU!"
    Fecal matter smeared the back of his loose hospital smock as he squirmed against the vinyl upholstery of the wal s and floor. Unlike a true Violet, Harold could neither al ow a dead soul to inhabit his body nor shut out the souls who tried. He lived, therefore, in a gray zone between this life and the next, constantly
    bombarded by spirits that knocked and knocked and knocked.
    "Easy, Harold." Wax knelt and brought his arm from behind his back. "I can make them go away." He jammed the point of the gun into Harold's upper arm and pul ed the trigger. With a spitting sound, the needle shot the fluid under the skin, and Harold's eyes snapped open to stare at Wax.
    "Y ou." His pupils, flecked with both violet and robin's- egg blue, became an electric shade of lavender. "You did this to me. I'l --"
    Wax stumbled back as Harold lunged for him. But the convulsions dropped Harold onto his bel y, where he quivered like a salted slug. Not one to take chances, Bartholomew Wax had put almost ten times the lethal dosage of procaine in the vaccine gun's solution. The doctor returned to his bag and replaced the empty poison vial with a fresh one before proceeding to the next room. Through the door's circular window, he could see a young Hispanic girl pacing the tiny cel and hugging herself. Her scalp, like Harold's, had been shaved and tattooed with the twenty node points that showed where to attach the SoulScan electrodes.
    Her resemblance to the figure in The Scream eased his conscience over what he was about to do. It was for the best--for her, and the whole world.
    When Wax entered the room, the patient darted her eyes toward him. One was violet, the other brown, like mismatched marbles. "Hel o? Who are you? Where am I?"
    "Don't worry. Everything's going to be al right." With the vaccine gun hidden behind him, Wax edged toward her, waiting for some indication of how dangerous the soul that inhabited her might be.
    The girl swiveled her head to take in her surroundings.
    "Is this a hospital? I remember being in an accident." She looked down at the smooth brown skin of her arms.
    "What's happened to me?"
    "You'l be fine," Wax assured her. "I'm a doctor." The problem in handling Marisa was that the person she had been no longer existed. The quantum connection in Marisa's brain that had once moored the
    electromagnetic energy of her soul inside her body had eroded away, leaving her an empty receptacle for any dead soul to inhabit. Another spirit might displace the current one at any moment, but if Wax could keep the present soul at bay long enough for the injection...
    "You've got to cal my husband," she beseeched him.
    "You've got to tel him where I am."
    "Of course. But, first, let me give you something to help you relax."
    Before he could administer the poison, Marisa's body jerked