Peter put a cautionary hand on Gillian’s shoulder and eased up two steps, stretching out like a cat. He looked past the yellow flashers that marked the construction site. The cars parked diagonally across the street in front of Hester’s building weren’t NYPD. All the men wore dark gray trench coats. The street was filling up with Homefolks. Maylun Chan We had sprung a leak, after an hour or so of inspired persuasion.
Peter returned to Gillian. His eyes stifled like a snake’s, they set a pulse to hammering in her throat and numbed the corners of her mouth.
“It’s MORG. There’s a lot of them, and they’ll kill me on sight. Tell me where I have to go, Gillian. Tell me where I can find him.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“How can you lie to me? Don’t you know what it means?”
“Yes, but I—”
His hands went around her throat; his thumbs pressed the darkness home a little at a time. Then as quick as it had come the fury left his face, and he let her go. She sagged in a corner gasping for breath.
“Oh, Jesus,” he mumbled. “Oh, no. I’m sorry. Forgive me, Gillian.” Peter touched her awkwardly; she shook her head again and crossed her arms and rocked, not making any more sounds.
Gillian was unaware that he’d left her. Then the voices of the men in the street sounded closer and she looked up, stunned. It took her a few moments to realize where Peter had gone. She crawled frantically through the window space into the wrecked house. She took three steps and stopped, paralyzed by pitch blackness.
“Peter!” she whispered.
He didn’t answer. Gillian went on, groping, ran painfully into a post and rebounded to the concrete floor. Looking back, she could see the clear rectangle of the window. She fought the urge to give in and retreat.
“Peter,” she sobbed. “Don’t leave me!”
She got up and went hesitantly forward, hands outstretched. A match was struck inches from her face. She flinched, filthy hands pressed against her mouth.
“Gillian, go back.”
“No, I can’t! I don’t have any place to go. Peter, I did see Robin. Last night, or the night before. I know I can find him again. It’ll take a little time. Just let me go with you. I promise I’ll find him for you.”
Peter blew out the flame. For a while Gillian stood there shuddering, hearing him move around in the dark. Then she felt him next to her; his hand gripped her elbow.
“I saw a flight of stairs. This way. Walk carefully with me, there are holes in the floor.”
Peter couldn’t risk another match, but he guided them with shuffling slowness to the stairs he had picked out by the glow of the first match.
On the floor above there was enough castoff light from the city to show them a back way out through a nibbled lot. One block north they climbed over a chain-link fence and continued, arm in arm, toward Forty-seventh Street, where Peter had parked his car.
For the moment they were free.
Chapter Eighteen
After looking briefly into Hester’s apartment, which still smelled oppressively of cooked flesh and spilled blood despite the fact that all the bodies had been removed, Childermass went upstairs to the Bundys’. He settled down on the sunny Mexican sofa and asked for a neat Scotch. This was brought to him. The time was twenty minutes past nine. For several more minutes Childermass listened to the tape recording which Miles Bundy had made earlier that evening.
It had been longer than a year since Childermass had heard Peter Sandza’s voice. He listened with an expression of pained fascination. So near in time, and so elusive. Twice he put down his glass to fondle the stump of his left arm. The other men in the room, embarrassed, stared out the windows or at the tips of their shoes.
“I’ll miss the Bundys,” Childermass said when the tape had ended. “I was really fond of those dancing fools. We were together in the bad old days, when all there was to MORG was a row of crummy offices in a warehouse across from the Navy yard. Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Did you know that, Richard? Meg and Miles Bundy were among my first recruits.”
“I didn’t know that, sir,” Richard Kanner said. He was the senior executive on hand, chief of Homefolks, MORG’s domestic division. “If only they’d called for backup—”
“I can’t fault them for taking the action they did. I know they didn’t realize they just weren’t good enough anymore. Time is a thief, and Peter Sandza is inhumanly difficult to trap. You can’t believe how good he is until you’ve actually been up against him. And how many have survived that interesting experience?”
“Sir, I think we should get out an APB on that blue Cougar.”
“Why bother? Peter has had an hour, he’s well rid of it by now. We could put their descriptions on the police networks, but that’s a long shot. Even if they’re picked up we’d be fortunate if we could move fast enough to keep the girl off the front pages: the Bellaver name makes her hot copy.”
“He might not have Gillian with him.”
“I think he does. Therefore we can be one hundred percent sure where our man is going. Hester said it best: Gillian is on Robin’s wavelength. We’ll fall back and wait for them at Psi Faculty.”
“There’s that other problem. How does Nick O’Hanna fit into this?”
“I’m listening,” Childermass said, and he winked at a subordinate nearby.
Kanner clasped his hands between his knees.
“Well—obviously Peter went to them looking for help. Because of the weapon, the articles of clothing and the electronic devices which we found in Hester’s apartment we can assume that O’Hanna agreed to supply Peter’s material needs. Let’s also assume he’s backed by the full faith and credit of the Langley gang. But they’re under edict. They want the boy killed, not liberated by his father.”
“How many ways can you skin an old cat, Richard?”
“They plan to double-cross Peter?”
“Why, sure. Leave it to Todfield. Should Peter succeed in taking back his son, they step in at their leisure and do the dirty. But, because we’re not going to let Peter anywhere near the boy, not even for old time’s sake, it’s a losing proposition. Don’t be concerned about the Langley gang. Things are working out our way.”
Childermass stood and was helped into his suit coat, then his long black astrakhan.
“Well, he’s out there,” Childermass said, smiling. “The existential fugitive, holed up with a girl who has been under such a severe strain she could go raving mad at any moment. She has the unpredictable power to destroy him. Even if he survives Gillian Bellaver, Peter’s on his last lap. Very nearly a burnt-out case, but does he know it yet? Oh, no, there’s still that last stubborn spark of hope. For a long, long time I thought he was enchanted. I really did. I doubted I would face him again long enough to see that ineffable spark die out before my eyes. Leaving nothing. A heap of human wreckage. But it will happen. It’s academic now. I’m paid in full and guaranteed. What a hell of a thrill. I’ll be having dinner tonight at Twenty-One with friends. After that I’m going to suck on a pair of thousand-dollar tits and cakewalk on the ceiling of the fanciest suite at the Waldorf. If you need me, Richard, I’ll be at Psi Faculty by sunrise. Try not to need me.”
“We have to close in five minutes,” said the woman in the Port Chester library. “Have you found what you were looking for?”
She smiled at Gillian, who was leafing through a thick reference work entitled Catholic Colleges and Universities in North America. Gillian replied with a tight-lipped shake of her head. She had looked at every page at least twice, and now she was concerned. There were hundreds of photos of campuses in the book, but none of the schools were familiar. Anxiety caused her vision to swim and blur.
“Gail, honey.”
Gillian, unused to her new name, glanced guiltily at Peter, who stared calmly back at her from across the table.
“You’re sure it was a Catholic college?”
“Yes. Because of the chapel.”
“Tell me about the chapel again.”
“It wasn’t like the other buildings.” Gillian used her hands descriptively. “The chapel was on a knoll, or a hill, all by itself. Mostly stained glass and—a lot of angles, you know, very futuristic, tent-shaped. The roof angles rose to make crosses and the crosses became three open spires. And everywhere the moon was shining there were long black crosses on the snow. It was really very beautiful.”
The librarian nodded. “How long ago did you visit the college?”
“Years and years,” Peter said, chuckling.
“I was just a little girl,” Gillian explained.
“You have a wonderful memory for places,” the librarian said. “Well, we’re really getting awfully close to the witching hour around here.”
Peter struck his forehead lightly with the heel of his hand. “Am I dumb,” he said. He reached across the table and lifted the book, read the date on the cover. “This year’s edition.”
“Yes, sir, the very latest—”
“But the college is closed. Out of business.”
“How do you know that, sir?”
“If it wasn’t, then it would be pictured in this book. Do you have an earlier edition? Three or four years back?”
“I don’t know. We’re constantly updating our reference shelves. The older volume might well be in a carton downstairs awaiting disposal. If you could come back in the morning—”
“There’s just no way,” Peter said dejectedly. “Gail and I are passing though, and I’m pinched for time. I’m an architect by profession, and I’ve been commissioned to redesign a college campus in West Virginia. We’re touring campuses in the east looking for ideas. Gail remembered this Catholic school, and it sounds like an impressive place. I’d sure like to see it before we head home. Are there many cartons?”
“Quite a few …”
“I’ll be glad to help you look. It shouldn’t take long.”
Woodlawn College for Women. Lake Celeste, New York.
When they had a room for the night, Peter located the town on an oil company road map. Lake Celeste was on a state road in the eastern Adirondacks, an area dotted with lakes and medium-sized mountains that supported three ski centers. Population 350. The nearest railroad was thirty-five miles southeast. No airport closer than Glens Falls. There was one way in and one way out, a plowed road which easily could be blockaded.
The surrounding countryside and the campus of what had been Woodlawn College lay under four feet of snow, and more was on the way. Peter had phoned the weather bureau at JFK to get an accurate forecast. Up to eight inches of fresh snow were predicted for Friday night; near blizzard conditions would prevail. Either that made things impossible for him, or it was just what he wanted. He couldn’t tell yet. He needed better maps of the Lake Celeste region; government geological survey maps which would show him the location of every building on the campus.
Up to a point Gillian had been helpful, describing the large house in which Robin lived. But when he asked her to Visit again, to go back for a closer look at the inside of the house, she flatly refused. Soon after she wept bitterly; eventually she cried herself to sleep on the double bed in their shared room.
Peter was surprised that Gillian had held up this long. She had to be a mass of raw nerve endings, tormented by each new horror thrust upon her. Gillian’s good life had been blasted nearly off the tracks; it ran crazily now, wobbling and screeching into a future that looked like Hell. Yet she had the iron will of those survivors who had walked out of Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II, wounded, diminished, but never beaten.
Her reluctance to re-visit the Woodlawn College house was Robin’s fault. Peter guessed that much, but their strange, otherworldly relationship baffled him. Robin had done something to hurt her deeply. Almost overcome by fatigue and tears, Gillian tried to explain: after eighteen months in that place, Robin was very different from the image of the boy Peter still cherished. But her thoughts became disconnected. She rambled about childhood things that mysteriously involved Robin, then she simply cried over what was lost or irretrievable. He understood very little of what she meant to say.
From the bedroom windows of the inn in which they were staying Peter read the illuminated face of the clock in the pre-Revolutionary Congregational church. It was six minutes to eleven. At this early hour the historic village of Mt. Carmel, Connecticut, was utterly still. He hadn’t seen a moving car for ten minutes. Mt. Carmel was in the southwest corner of the state, off the main roads and a little too far from New York City to serve as a bedroom community: backwater status had enabled the village to retain most of its Colonial character. Moonlight glistened on polished snow and the tall bare trees that lined the common.
On the bed Gillian breathed huskily and worried in her sleep. She was fully clothed but the room was drafty: Peter threw a blanket over her. There was a smudge of dirt, blending into one eyebrow, which he hadn’t noticed before. She had a nail-biting habit. Her hair was a welter on the pillow and she was pathetically pale. But Gillian had an undeniable, visceral impact on him; it wasn’t lust, he thought, but foreknowledge of the marvelous woman she could be, given any kind of chance.
Considering the company she’d chosen to keep, he wondered what her chances were of living beyond tomorrow…
In a remarkably vivid and ugly transposition Peter saw Hester’s blown-apart head on the pillow. He jerked away from the bed and sought the bottle of gin he’d bought immediately after leaving the Port Chester library. He poured a stiff shot, knowing that tonight he could absorb the full fifth and remain very nearly sober. No, he was not going to dwell on Hester. He’d always known it could happen, despite all their precautions. And so they’d killed her. Probably she didn’t have an inkling that her life was over, certainly she hadn’t suffered, there was no use sniveling about it. Hester didn’t need an hour of teeth-chattering soggy remorse in place of a eulogy, that would serve only to make him less effective, reduce critical focus at the worst of times.
Peter drank the gin in his glass in measured sips and forced his thoughts to the problem at hand.
He had taken with him to Hester’s the expendable electronics gear, his Python revolver, which he wished he had, and a topcoat and sports jacket which he could- easily replace. Most of his clothing, all of the two thousand in cash and the false identification he’d prudently left locked in the trunk of the Cougar. He was now driving a rented Volare Wagon, but he had no intention of driving it as far as Lake Celeste. MORG would have every inch of the town under its control, they’d be picked up in a minute.
Leave Gillian behind? He considered this option again, but he realized he wasn’t going to be less conspicuous traveling alone. And she had a talent he might still make use of, the ability to telepathically communicate with Robin.
There was another, emotional factor in his final decision to take Gillian along. He had a poignant feeling of responsibility for her life that overwhelmed common sense; it had started that night at the hospital and was now more powerful than ever. Peter had no doubt that Gillian was strongly attracted to and dependent on him. No, he wasn’t going to abandon her. He’d thrown Hester away, but possibly there was something he could still do for this one.
The next time he went to the windows to look at the clock it was ten minutes to two in the morning, and the bottle in his hand was nearly empty.
Peter yawned. He had come up with some workable ideas, a way of using the coming snowstorm to advantage. At the same time he was realistic about the probability of success. He yawned again, nerveless but not yet sleepy. Gillian lay peacefully on the bed. As he turned out the single lamp in the room he wondered if she was all there, or if she had gone wandering. In the bathroom he relieved himself of a good part of the gin he’d drunk, brushed his teeth and went to bed beside Gillian.
As soon as he stretched out she turned over and put a loose arm across him, burrowed close and warm with a long exhalation of pleasure, or a release of deep ten
sion. Peter held her head against his chest, kissed an exposed ear and closed his own eyes.
Shortly before dawn he woke up feeling panicked, certain that, in the course of a dream he couldn’t recall, he had died.
In sleep Peter had retained a tentative grip on Gillian, but her back was to him now; she was half in and half out of the blanket, warm enough and still fast asleep. The moon had set but there was outside light in the room, a faint morning sheen. You never died in dreams, he thought. You could suffer but not die. Was it simply the cold weight of Hester on his conscience?
The panic was a momentary thing, lying on his back he breathed it all away. But now that he was clearly awake he was obsessed by something not a part of any dream. A catastrophic event had taken place, a gross insult to his mind—palpable fingers had probed his precious gray matter like a small boy grubbing in earth for night crawlers. He was shocked by the image; he quivered childishly and groaned aloud.
Gillian sat up still immersed in sleep and gave him a puzzled look; then she gasped and scrambled away from him. She fell off the bed and rebounded holding her head in her hands, making thin sounds of distress.
“Gillian, it’s Peter. Don’t yell. Easy, girl. You’re all right.”
She needed another full minute to get her bearings.
“Bathroom,” she mumbled.
He got up and guided her in and closed the door. It was then he realized something was wrong with his left hand. The last two fingers had no feeling. They were inert, dead twigs on the surviving limb. The edge of his palm was numb to the wrist. The very tip of his middle finger also was numb. He had control of only about half of his left hand.
So he’d slept on it wrong. Feeling would return. But even as he tried to assure himself that the condition was temporary he realized the truth. It wasn’t a circulatory problem or a pinched nerve.
Stroke, Peter thought, more amazed than afraid. The quietest kind of death. A threadlike vessel had ruptured somewhere deep in the right hemisphere or basal ganglia of the brain. The seepage of blood had painlessly destroyed a little patch of neurons. Result, two fingers dead. There was some chance he would regain the use of those fingers. He knew how fortunate he was: he could function with a hand and a half. He might have been lying there on the bed unable to move or speak. He might have been stricken in a thousand bizarre and crippling ways.
A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult Page 279