Vortex by Ray Garton Read Free Book Online Page B

for Mrs. Fielding and delivered them to her house. Mama hugged the old woman and told her what a good man her son had been, what a great friend he had been to their troubled daughter. As Gertie stood there and listened to Mama, her fingernails pierced the flesh of her palms as she clenched her hands into angry fists. Then Mama had told her to hug Mrs. Fielding and tell her how grateful she was to have known Mr. Fielding.
    Gertie said something, although she wasn’t sure what—she wasn’t sure then and still wasn’t. A new tutor was hired. A woman named Miss Branczeck. But every morning, Gertie woke with the dread of having to face Mr. Fielding again. She thought that would pass after a while, but it never did. She still woke with that feeling now at the age of 53.
    Every time she looked out her bedroom window at night and saw an adult leading a child into that white building, Gertie felt a sickening wave of fear. There was no visible sign that children were being abused in any way, but still—it didn’t look right and it made Gertie tense and queasy.
    And now another child was being led into the shed.
    Gertie stopped pacing, stood at the desk and stared out the window. After about 30 seconds, she realized her hands were trembling.
    Don’t think about it, just do it , she thought. Just do it.
    She swept her nightgown up over her head and tossed it onto the bed as she hurried to her closet. She put on a flannel shirt, overalls and a pair of work boots. She took from the closet a long black wool coat so voluminous that it swallowed up even her large frame. On her way out of the bedroom, she bent down and reached for the Mag-Lite she kept standing on the floor beside the door. Then she stopped and thought, What am I doing? That’s the last thing I want. She left the flashlight where it stood.
    After quietly leaving her bedroom, Gertie went through the laundry room and crept out the back door, crossed the covered porch behind the house and went outside.

Chapter Six
    P enelope Jarvis thought about how much she hated her name while, in the back of her mind, she went over her escape plan. That was why she went by Penny, because she hated Penelope so much—although Penny wasn’t a whole lot better. She would much rather have a name like Desiree... or Miranda... or Natasha. Just about anything was better than Penelope. Well... almost anything. Certainly not Gertrude. The name Gertrude had been floating through her head lately. She was supposed to tell her handlers about everything that popped into her head but she hadn’t mentioned that. Handlers always wanted to know what was in her head, but she never gave them everything. Some things she kept to herself. She had so little that was hers and hers alone. It seemed only fair that some of her thoughts, at the very least, remain private.
    Worse than her name was her ... thing. That’s how she’d always thought of it—her thing —because it was too awful to give it a respectable name, and if she called it what she wanted to call it, people would get upset. It had brought nothing good into her life.
    Penny had memories of her early childhood, but they were foggy and dreamlike. She remembered living on a military base. Lots of people in uniform, including her father, who she remembered being enormous. When her thing started showing itself, her parents became very concerned because at first, they thought it was some kind of illness. Once doctors eliminated that possibility, their worry was replaced with fear. Then the questions began. And the tests, right there on the base, one after another, while grave-faced uniformed men looked on behind glass partitions and men and women in white coats intensely watched monitors and made notes.
    And then Mom and Dad were killed in a car accident and her entire world changed. After that, a man in uniform—a man her dad always called “Sir”—named Lieutenant Colonel Trask, told her that he was going to make sure she was well taken care