The Post Sunday Experiment | COMPLETED 2020

Chapter 15

It wasn't long before Mae and Eric found themselves on the couch in Devlin's living room.

"Eric, don't you think we should try and find them? They couldn't have gotten too far, right? The only way out of this town is through the freeway and so they must still be here, right?"

"I don't know, Mae. Cazenovia is a small city but once you get to the forests and plots of abandoned land, it triples in size."

"But why on earth would Ody and Penny be in the forests? They would not be able to find food or water there! Oh God, why would they do this? What do they expect to find, anyway?" Mae's voice quivered.

"Well, this would be my advice: give the children three days where the police are searching for them. If the kids don't turn up, they'll surely have to go into town for food. If they don't come into town, then we'll simply have to assume they found it-"

"It?" Mae interrupted.

"It." Eric sighted before he continued. "I don't know much about it, but I know where to start."

"And where is that?"

"Where all good stories start, at the beginning of the mess."

Leaning forward to hear Eric more clearly, Mae put her head in her hands. She watched him intently, like a child listening to a fairy tale.

"As you know, Devlin hired me—shortly after Ody came along—to intern in hopes of getting a job as a botanist somewhere else. I came here to watch and learn, nothing more. This was supposed to be my gap year before I began working on getting my PhD.

"Well, you know now how I took my year then finished my schooling. However, shortly after completing my degree, I jumped into the world in hopes of finding a job. It didn't take long for Devlin to find me again and offer me the job as personal assistant.

"Now, I remembered how well I got along with your family. I had just married my wife then, so I moved back into Cazenovia. At the time, I had no idea what I was in for.

"Devlin was just as good a man as he was before you and Ody left, but there was a hardness and fear to him that even I could sense. He was terrified and I could see it in his eyes. Whenever he worked, there was a stress and anxiety to him that I never fully understood.

"Eventually, I mustered the courage to ask him. He simply said that he received the opportunity of a lifetime. It was a serious matter that needed to be finished as soon as possible so that no one else got hurt. He went on and on about how people were going to get hurt but he wasn't making sense. I didn't understand at the time and still don't.

"I asked him how I could help. He told me to try to understand photosynthesis better. It was an elementary concept I had mastered in ninth grade biology. I was confused and told him just that. He started shaking his head, stood up and ran about the room like a mad man.

"The man kept mumbling about how he was running out of time and he could not understand it. He had many panic attacks and was utterly lost.

"In my attempt to help him, I brought up all I knew about photosynthesis, but he kept telling me that I was missing something.

"At the time, I was awfully confused as to what was going on. He wouldn't tell me why the rush but simply pushed me to work harder and faster and to try and find things that were not there.

"I tried to tell him the textbooks were right, and that the information wasn't wrong. He continued to go on and on about cyanogenic glycoside and carbon dioxide intakes that I didn't understand. The man was convinced that something was missing even though it all seemed to work perfectly.

"It was not until shortly after he died that I got a phone call from someone I didn't recognize. They told me they had a job for me and that they knew I was working for Devlin beforehand.

"You have to understand that by now I was terrified. I was convinced someone was stalking me. This had to be a scam. Yet when the man continued talking, I became intrigued.

"He only told me the fundamental concepts. I was looking for a photosynthetic chemical that fed the frontal lobe of the brain and kept it steady. He said he knew it existed just that it had been overlooked and that is when I knew what Devlin had been looking for.

"I accepted the job and the man told me to stay at Devlin's house and on Monday morning I would meet with a woman named Ammon.

"I should've stopped that boy of yours when he asked if I knew the name. I didn't know he would run off with his sister like this! I am so sorry, Mae."

Looking down at the floor, Mae sat up and sighed. It was impossible to make out what she was thinking as her eyes remained, glued to the floor. Several minutes after Eric completed his story, Mae opened her mouth.

"So let me get this straight. Devlin was being paid by a person he met over the phone. That person wanted him to look for something that was not there. Then Devlin died in that experiment?"

"No, not like tha-"

"Eric, why on earth would you accept this? Devlin is dead because of this!" Mae started to lose her composure.

"No, Mae, that isn't how Eric died. Eric's death was a suicide-"

"Oh, you expect me to believe that a perfectly healthy man just beat himself up and then shot himself in the middle of the woods when he had a job to do and a daughter to raise? Eric, people do not just go insane like that!"

"You're right, Mae." Eric spoke with a strange confidence and strength in his tone. "People don't just go insane like that. It takes something to cause them to act so rashly. It's our job to understand what that something was before your children do. They're looking for it now and we must find it before they get themselves in deeper waters."