Extracted - Chapter 12 – Hello, It’s Not Me – Part 1 of 2

 

Extracted

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 12 – Hello, It’s Not Me – Part 1 of 2

 

Agatha’s cellphone rang while she was in the middle of making dinner for the family.  She answered it as quickly as she could.  She noticed Detective Nolan’s name on the caller ID.  “Agatha Marsh,” she answered.

“Mrs. Marsh,” Nolan said into his phone while he was driving back towards Philadelphia.  “This is Detective Nolan.”

“What can I do for you detective?  Has there been any progress in Stephen’s case?”

“You can say that,” Nolan admitted.  “Unfortunately, the entire case has just gone from bad, to worse, and beyond.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tell me Mrs. Marsh, and believe me, this is an imperative question.  Is your son Stephen showing any signs of…let’s just say mental difficulties?”

“Mental difficulties?  Detective, let’s just say that that’s an understatement.  Why?”

“Damn!” the detective swore.  “I wish I had known.”

“Why?  What bearing can it have on who took him, which to my knowledge was most likely that eco activist group?”

“Mrs. Marsh, your son wasn’t the only one taken, we now know of another one that is directly related to your son’s abduction, and it looks like there could be more.”

“More!  Okay.  Who?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t say.  Look, I’m on my way back from New York right now.  We’re still on the case, but the FBI has now taken the lead on it, and trust me, that’s a good thing.  This thing has gone in a direction that could quite frankly be frightening.”

“You mean the abduction of my son and his…difficulties as you called them, isn’t frightening?”

“Yes, it is, but this could be far worse.  Is there any chance that you’ll be home this evening and that we can talk to Stephen?”

“When you put it that way, we’ll be here,” Agatha confirmed.  “We haven’t had dinner yet.  What time?”

“Would somewhere around eight be okay?”

“Fine,” Agatha confirmed.  “See you then.”

 

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Doctor Christopher Faucet picked up a piece of mail that had been delivered to his desk at the behavioral clinic.  He opened the envelope and pulled out the letter.  “Hm!” he grunted softly.  It wasn’t the kind of thing he ever expected to get here at the clinic.  It was an invitation to attend a group meeting to discuss the characteristics of incorporeal entities.  Why didn’t they just say ghosts?  But then he noted the member list of what appeared to be an ongoing group.  Three PhDs, a fourth one with pending PhD after his name, and a final fifth name that just said applied physics after it.  This was a group with some serious brainpower.

Why would people like this be interested in ghosts?  And why would they want a psychiatrist to discuss it with them?  But then ghost hunting was his hobby, and maybe one of them had tripped over the paper he had written on the subject.  Anyone even finding that thing though was a longshot!  Still, it was interesting to note that there were others, actual scientists, who were interested in the subject too.  It wasn’t just him.

He looked at the phone number, which told him nothing.  He was a ghost hunter who tried to actually study the ghosts he found and categorize their behaviors.  This sounded like something he might really be interested in.  He decided to phone the number after dinner tonight and hopefully get more information.

With a humorous grunt, he put the invitation aside and moved onto the next piece of mail, a notification for a psychological conference to be held in Denver.  He wasn’t sure if he would attend that one or not.  It would probably depend on how busy he was.

 

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It was a little before eight when the Marsh’s doorbell rang.  Agatha herself answered it.  She found two people on her doorstep.  “Detective Nolan,” she said.  “Nice to see you again.”  She looked to the woman with him, but the detective didn’t seem interested in introducing her.  She guessed the woman was with the FBI.  “Come in, please,” she offered.  “My husband is in his office and Stephen is in the den.  Who do you want first?”

“You and your husband, alone if possible,” Agent Rosenberg told her.

“It sounds like you need the door closed.  We’ll go to Henry’s office.”

She led the way through the house to an open door.  “Henry,” Agatha said as she went in.  “Our…guests are here.  We might need to talk here for a bit with the door closed.”

That caught Henry by surprise.  He sat at his desk and watched as his wife, Detective Nolan, and a woman he hadn’t met yet came into the room.  Agatha closed the office door.  Henry waved toward the two chairs in the room.  “Have a seat,” he told them.

Rosenberg sat down but Nolan continued to stand.  He looked at Agatha and offered the chair to her.  In moments the two women were seated.

“What can we do for you?” Henry asked.

“Mr. Marsh,” Rosenberg said.  “I’m Special Agent Rosenberg with the FBI.  As of this afternoon, the FBI has taken the lead on your son’s case, although the Philadelphia police force will be continuing to work it as well.  This may need all the resources we can get.”

“All the resources?  You’re the FBI.  You’ve got the entire government behind you.”

“True, but we now find ourselves in a unique situation.”

“Okay.  So what’s going on?”

“What if we were to tell you that your son wasn’t the only child abducted by whoever took him.”

“Someone else was taken?  Who?  Nothing about another abduction came across my desk.”

“That’s because the abduction happened in New York.  Which is why we never made the connection until a third party noticed it and passed the word.”

“A third party?”

“Yes.  I’ll get into that in a few minutes please.”

Henry sat waiting.

“Let me ask first what kind of mental difficulties your son Stephen is exhibiting?  And trust me, I’m guessing that if he is exhibiting any difficulties, I’m expecting them to be…beyond strange.”

“Beyond strange?” Agatha replied.  “You could certainly say that.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Rosenberg replied.  “Can you describe his problem?”

“That’s easy,” Agatha said.  “That…person out there watching TV, isn’t my son.  Oh, he may have my son’s body, but whoever is inside that body is not Stephen.”

“It’s what the doctor was afraid might have happened,” Nolan noted to Rosenberg.

“Yes.  Unfortunately,” Rosenberg agreed.  She looked to Henry, then Agatha.  “Let me guess,” Rosenberg said.  “Your son Stephen, thinks he’s actually a twelve year old girl named Nancy.”

Both Agatha and Henry were visibly shaken.  “How did you know?” Henry asked.

“Because our other victim is a twelve year old girl named Nancy, who thinks she’s a seventeen year old boy named Stephen Marsh.”

Henry wasn’t sure what to say to that, but then he looked to his wife.  “You want to tell them?”

“Tell us what?” Rosenberg asked.

“Earlier today,” Agatha said.  “I got a phone call.  Whoever it was only whispered, and it was a very short conversation, but that person said he was Stephen, and he was in New York somewhere.”

“Are you sure it was a boy who called?” Rosenberg asked.

“No.  It just sounded like a kid.  But he was whispering, and then he suddenly ended the call.  I don’t know why.  I got the impression that he was scared.”

Rosenberg immediately pulled out her cellphone and made a call.  “Wanda, it’s Ellen.  Did Nancy make a call this afternoon to Stephen’s real mother in Philadelphia?”  She listened a moment then said, “Yes.  Please check.  I’ll hold.”  She waited a while then she finally got her answer.  “No.  I was just wondering.  You didn’t by any chance get a phone call claiming they were Nancy, did you?”  She listened again.  “No.  I don’t know if you should expect one or not.  Thanks.  I’m with the other parents now.  Bye.”  She ended the call.  “Nancy up there, or rather Stephen in Nancy’s body, admitted that he tried to call you.  But he was afraid to make the call.  I don’t know why.  In the middle of it, he heard his sister coming and quickly ended it and hid the phone.”

“So that’s why it was so short, and that’s why he was whispering,” Agatha said.  She looked at her husband.  “Henry.  It was Stephen.  Our Stephen.  He called!”

“It sounds like it,” Henry agreed.  “But how can we know for sure that whoever it was, was actually our Stephen?”  He looked to the FBI agent to answer that one.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Rosenberg told him.  “All I can tell you is that there’s a young girl in New York who thinks she’s your son Stephen, and she can tell you everything in the world about him.  And now we’ve discovered that here in Philadelphia, your son Stephen thinks he’s a young girl named Nancy, and I’m guessing he can tell us everything in the world about her.”

“Believe it or not,” Henry said.  “That’s true.”

“So what do we do about it?” Agatha asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Rosenberg  admitted.

“You’re right,” Henry said.  “This is beyond strange.”

“Yes,” Rosenberg told him, then added.  “But that’s not the worst of it.”

“Not the worst?  How can it get any worse?”

“Mr. Marsh,” Rosenberg said.  “From what we’ve tried to piece together.  It very much sounds like someone did this to your son and the girl up in New York.  It was done deliberately!  Somehow, someone has figured out how to extract…”  She looked to Nolan and said, “How did she put it?  Stephen’s entire memories, personality, and identity…”

“I think that was it,” Nolan agreed.

“They figured out how to get all that out of your son, and somehow inject it into someone else, and at the same time, wipe out any existence of the original person in that body.  And it was all done in such a way that the mental takeover if you will, happened slowly, right in front of you, which means they’ve done this before and knew what to expect.  They were that confident of their process.  Now what do you think might happen if these people took the memories and personality from someone like, say a serial killer or something, and injected that into another person, and another person, possibly a hundred or more people, giving them all that same exact personality and memories?”

“My God!” Agatha breathed.  “Is that possible?”

“Is it possible that your son has all the mental characteristics of a twelve year old girl?  We don’t know, but it’s possible that whoever did this is taunting us with what they’ve done.  In a few months’ time, after we’ve had a chance to fully study what they did, we may get a ransom demand of an entirely different nature than the one you received, but that ransom will most likely not go to you, it will go to the government instead.”

“Geez!” Henry exclaimed.  “The fallout could be….”

“A catastrophe!” Rosenberg finished.