The Forgotten Room: A Novel

“A suspenseful and entertaining read—but not at bedtime.”

Another title in Lincoln Child’s quasi-supernatural series featuring Dr. Jeremy Logan, enigmalogist, who is hired by Lux, a think tank in Newport, Rhode Island, to find a rational explanation for the horrific suicide of one of its researchers. As an enigmalogist, Jeremy searches for explanations for strange, puzzling, and possibly supernatural events, and Dr. Strachey’s suicide seems to fit all three categories.

The director of the Lux, Dr. Olafson, shows Jeremy a security video of the suicide. “But I knew Will Strachey for thirty years  . . . And I know something else: that man in the video is not the man I knew.” Dr. Olafson is so adamant about how out of character Strachey’s suicide is, that he gives Jeremy access to Lux’s offices, labs, and records.

This is a controversial decision considering that Jeremy had once worked at Lux, and had been asked to leave because of a “. . . perceived lack of academic vigor.” His work on enigmas, not to mention the supernatural was ridiculed by some of the Fellows at Lux, especially Dr. Roger Carbon, who greets Jeremy’s return in his usual sarcastic fashion. “Can we expect a textbook any time soon? Ghostbusting 101, perhaps? Or, no—Spooks for Dummies?”

Dr. Carbon provides Jeremy with his first clue when he mentions that there were “others” who also exhibited uncharacteristic behaviors. Jeremy wonders if Carbon is being helpful or just deflecting unwelcome attention away from himself and onto his fellow researchers.

After enhancing the audio portion of the suicide tape, Jeremy listens to Will Strachey’s last words. “It is with me. They are with me. In the dark.”

Who is with Will Strachey, rather, who does he think is with him, because the video shows that the aging Fellow was alone when he committed suicide. Whatever or whoever it was also spoke to five more researchers, one of whom attempted a horrible, but unsuccessful suicide. Someone or something is driving the scientists at Lux mad. But not all of them; only a few.

Jeremy learns that Will Strachey was given the task of overseeing the renovation of the West Wing of the mansion housing the Lux. According to the vice director, Dr. Maynard, “. . . it’s been off-limits for the last several years. It’s not unsafe, of course, but it’s old and needs a complete retrofit to bring it into the twenty-first century.” It was during this renovation that Strachey’s odd behavior began.

Jeremy enlists the help of Kim Mykolos, Strachey’s research assistant, to help him in his investigation. While exploring the disused West Wing, where all demolition has stopped, Jeremy discovers a hidden room. “As Logan played his flashlight around it, he saw it had been a laboratory of some kind.” What kind, he doesn’t know as the room is empty except for a work table, a few wooden chairs, an old phonograph, several metal suits with helmets, and something else. “A much larger device—waist-high and even more mysterious in appearance—sat in the middle of the floor.”

The room has other oddities besides the strange device. It is completely dust free and has no doors or windows. Other than the hole that Jeremy made in one wall, there was no way in or out of the room. “What kind of a room was this? And what on earth had it been used for?” The partially burned memo Jeremy’s finds in the room’s fireplace provides an answer of sorts “Project Sin.”

Jeremy searches the Lux’s archives for some mention of Project Sin and what its purpose was, but archival material for the l920s and early 1930s is very scant. Apparently whatever Project Sin was, it was abandoned in 1935. But there is still something remaining in the hidden room, something that causes Jeremy to hear discordant music and smell burning flesh.

When Kim examines the large device left in the room, she tells Jeremy it is a primitive electromagnetic field generator. In Jeremy’s field of study, such a generator is used to detect “Distortions caused by paranormal events.” In a disbelieving voice asks if “. . . this was a machine built to . . . detect ghosts?”

To Jeremy, the bigger question is whether the project was abandoned because the device didn’t work, or “. . . perhaps because it worked too well.”

The gothic elements of Child’s thriller are foreshadowed by his description of the brooding mansion that housed the Lux. “. . . the dark veins of ivy covering the façade; the oddly hooded, watchful appearance of the gables and turrets; and the low crenelations that ran along its roof as if in readiness for battle gave the building an appearance that was slightly sinister.”

While the supernatural is always hinted at in Child’s novel, its presence lacks the terrifying intensity that one finds in the work of Stephen King; however, Child’s hint is enough to make you doubt what you hear—or smell in the night. A suspenseful and entertaining read—but not at bedtime.