He held her, ashamed that he hadn’t called her from Nullatumbi’s two weeks ago. Unwittingly he’d put her through agony.
But he had to get her to leave. She had no idea of the danger they were in, just sitting there on the steps. Yet still he held her, and still he felt her arms clinging to him.
“Two minutes ago,” she said, “I was a widow. I feel as though I’ve been reborn.” She watched his face anxiously, waiting for an answer. “Would it help if I said I’m sorry?”
“Sorry. You sorry? Sue, I’m the one who has to be sorry. I did an incredibly dumb thing.” He paused. “Look, we can’t stay here. It’s dangerous. You have to go.”
She ignored him.
“Sue.”
“You still haven’t told me where you were.”
Benson took an impatient breath. “Later. I’ll tell you everything later. Not now. I’m expecting someone. You’ll just have to go.”
“Who?”
“Kheim.”
“Here? You’re expecting him here?”
“Any minute.”
She stood. “Let’s leave. Right now.”
“You leave, Sue. I have to stay here.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not losing you again.”
“You could lose us both if you don’t go, Sue. It’s taken me a very long time to set this up and you can’t be part of it. You have to go. It’s urgent. Just trust me.”
“Eddie. Please, Eddie.”
He opened the front door. “Shhhhhh. It’s past talk. I’ll be all right. Go.”
Then he shut the door. Through the pane he could see that she was hugging herself as. she straggled up the path to the road.
His confidence was leaving him.
Alone again, Benson put his head down on his arms and once more feigned sleep at Renni’s table. He peered through a barely opened eyelid at the chess pieces just beyond his face.
Close up, they seemed to tower over the checkered board, and he concentrated on their details to suppress the sense of panic that kept him at all times on the verge of leaping up and bolting out of the building.
His eye through its slitted lid took in the curving neck of the knight’s steed, the crenelated tower of the rook, the mitred cap of the bishop and the tall presences of the king and his queen. Even these carved bits of wood seemed menacing to him.
Benson had to be able to concentrate on command, had to be able to leave his body. Or die in it. To do it—to leave—he had first to believe he could. Gathering his attention the way he had learned before the wall, he concentrated on that thought. Ael.
Abruptly, from the hall doorway, something hurried across the dark floor. Something rolling? No. A little red animal, about the size of a rat. A red rat? It hurried under the table and struck a leg and stopped. It was a toy car, a push toy from Top’s collection. A red roadster.
Benson’s eyes went back to the hall doorway. The landing was pitch dark. The little red car had come rolling out of that darkness. Something had pushed it. His eyes searched the wall of marionettes. None moved. He looked back at the hallway. It was out there, watching him, whatever it was. He sat immobile in the small circle of light and waited. He realized he was panting.
Then, before his eyes, the black king’s rook stirred on the chess board. As he watched, it slid from R1 between the other pieces to K1. It was barely two inches from Benson’s hand.
Benson clung to his composure. He tried to gather his concentration again while seeming to study the chessboard. Then he moved his queen past several pieces to B3. Checkmate.
He concentrated on AEL.
There was no reaction at first. None of the pieces moved. Then violently, all the pieces on the board were swept across the room. The chess table followed after them, crashing against the wall.
Benson, concentrating on calmness, called on himself to exit through his head. Instead, he felt his body pitching across the room along with the chair he’d been sitting in. But before he’d reached the wall, he was out.
Now came the bear. Massive, intimidating, it moved across the room toward his fallen body. As it approached, Benson saw Kheim’s cord trailing. The bear raised its fire-fighter’s ax up over its head.
Benson reached out and seized Kheim’s silver cord. Deliberately, he stretched it. He pulled harder. Like a string of taffy, it grew thinner. It was about to part.
At first the bear seemed astonished. Still bending over Benson’s form on the floor, it hesitated and turned. Then, without preamble, Kheim’s amorphous shape appeared at the end of the silver cord outside the bear. It turned toward him.
Benson was struck with a blow that hit like an explosive. He found himself tumbling, twisting, rocketing away, almost unconscious, and traveling at a speed beyond calculation.
He seemed to hurtle outward for days, an endless rocket ride. Gradually, as more of his consciousness returned, he saw the multitudes of stars that surrounded him. He seemed to be crossing an entire galaxy.
Now the pain came. It focused at one point—a paralyzing, unforgiving point of pain.
He gathered his strength and concentrated on slowing down. He slowed and, slower, stopped tumbling. Soon all movement ceased. He’d stopped in the midst of the stars, a throbbing point of pain in the universe, attached to a thin silver cord that meandered away in the dark like a thread floating in a pool of water.
He looked back along the length of cord and wondered if, somewhere along its length, there was a separation. If the cord had broken, he was dead, never to reenter his body. And his presence would wander in space forever. The loneliness, never to end, was surely the worst fate a soul could suffer.
Benson turned and began to follow his cord back, fearing to see the broken end of it floating in the night.
He traveled on and on, hurrying through the void, riding the fragile thread like a single track. The sense of a great passage of time made him wonder if he might arrive back decades later, centuries later. Maybe they would have buried his body.
It happened unexpectedly: he was in the tunnel, shooting past multicolored lights and, just as abruptly, inside his body again.
He ached. Every joint, every muscle complained. A deep bruise permeated his body, making everything inside him throb with soreness. He opened his eyes.
He felt as though every part of his body had been pummeled with a club. Even slight eye movements hurt. It was nearly dawn.
Disappointment all but overwhelmed him. The opportunity he’d missed was enormous. Had he been able to hold Kheim’s cable an instant longer, he’d be sitting there a free man, his life restored, his future beckoning, while Kheim would be floating in space, a wandering speck damned forever to darkness. Instead, he had Kheim to face yet again, and he had lost the critical element of surprise.
The front door opened. By the first light of dawn, Sue stood looking at him.
CHAPTER 9
Benson napped briefly in his own bed that morning.
But he slept badly. His mind kept reliving—or was it dreaming?—that long, tumbling flight into endless night. Again and again he dreamed that, tracing his silver cord homeward, he found it severed.
Each time he awoke, he told himself he had to go hide somewhere. There could be no second battle with Kheim. The man’s superhuman strength was overwhelming. He had to hide; he had to do it soon, for Kheim was sure to return that night. The severed cord loomed. After a few minutes, he arose.
A shrouded, fever-colored sun rose, and Benson sat on his patio with a pot of coffee to watch it. His eyes traced its usual path above the trees, across the sky and down behind the hill. And that was as much time as he had—the hours between sunrise and sunset.
Later he dressed. It was still very early, and Sue was still sleeping when he drove away.
“I taught you,” said Sanjay Nullatumbi, “because I believe you are in danger for your life. It seemed to me that it was the only way to save your life and rescue your daughter. Now your attack has failed and he is aware of your astral p
owers. Tell me, Mr. Benson, how long were you unconscious last night?”
“Four hours.”
“Four?”
“Yes.”
Nullatumbi and Rama looked at each other.
“Four hours,” said Nullatumbi. “He’s stronger than I thought. I must say, Mr. Benson, I do not know how you survived that. How do you feel now?”
“Very upset. You’re saying I can’t face him again?”
Sanjay Nullatumbi considered that for a moment. “Kheim is a man of enormous strength and confidence. In the astral plane, confidence is everything. That is why he robs his enemies of theirs. That great melancholy you feel is his mental telepathy at work. It makes you afraid and ready to flee even before he arrives. It’s an easy conquest for him, then.”
“Are you saying there’s no way?”
“I see only one way, Mr. Benson. His confidence must be weakened. And he must be tired out—exhausted—before you can attack him. Make him spend his great strength.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Mr. Benson, I do not know. He will surely return tonight, especially since he knows you can enter the astral plane. Your self-confidence is badly damaged. You may not even be able to enter the astral plane again in your present mental condition. You are in very great danger. My conclusion is you should go far away and not return. Not for years.”
“Years.”
“Mr. Benson, I would say if you remain, your death is almost certain.”
A short time later Benson was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, driving due west at more than ninety miles an hour. In his mind dangled the frayed end of a silver cord. He wished the car could go faster.
His plan was simple: to go west, to Colorado or Wyoming, and start over there, probably alone and maybe someday—
There was no need to remain in Philadelphia anyway: his film-making career was shot and Renni was beyond rescue. Out west he could even start his own film production company.
But when he looked into the rear-view mirror, he’d see the corner of his right eye and it told him it was all a lie. He was running west in panic—running from his life, for his life.
Sue Benson walked about in front of her house, noting the signs of neglect, the shaggy lawn, the haze on the sunlit windows. She walked to the back and looked at the dog’s grave. Her home brimmed with sadness.
She went into Renni’s room to straighten up the mess: the chess pieces were still scattered across the floor, and the table lay on its back in the corner by the window. As she looked she remembered, and as she remembered she became frightened again. She sat down on the bed, holding a chessman, and tried to think.
She wondered if she had the courage to risk her life like that. What Eddie went through at Nullatumbi’s had to have been greater agony than most humans ever feel, and that was merely a preamble. When he was napping, she had held his sleep-filled hand and known he should run away. She would not blame him if he did. In fact, as she looked at the clock, she felt sure now that he had.
She hoped he was in the car, racing away on a main road somewhere.
“Oh, Eddie,” she said aloud. “Don’t come back. Run. Run.”
It was a click: something had struck something else, a sharp sound, coming from Renni’s room.
Sue Benson stood at the bottom of the stairs and listened. She heard a rustle, like silk or taffeta. Something was stirring. A shadow crossed a wall on the stair landing. A triangular shape, it loomed higher, then it rested slanting on the door to Top’s bedroom. Someone was walking around up there. The shadow rose higher on Top’s door, grew bigger, and a figure wearing a conical hat appeared in Renni’s doorway. Signora Strega.
The witch stepped onto the landing, her gown swishing. Walleyed, her face flattened, she looked down at Sue Benson. The smile was idiotic, the hat was bent, and the eyes were cocked, but she slowly walked to the edge of the landing, trailing her guide strings, and bowed.
“I am the tooth fairy,” she announced.
Sue Benson sat slowly down on the step, staring at Signora Strega. Then she laughed. The voice was unmistakably her husband’s. She laughed still more.
Then she began to cry.
At three that afternoon Benson returned from his errands with a large box filled with equipment. He found Sue putting more dirt on the dog’s grave.
“How about some coffee?” he said.
They sat on the patio.
“Beautiful day,” she said. “Lovely.”
“Here’s to a million more.” He saluted her with his coffee mug. “I’m going to have to take you back to your mother’s in a little while, you know.”
She nodded. “I thought you were coming to that. Suppose, instead, that I stay.”
“I figured you were coming to that. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I don’t think what you’re going to do is a good idea, either.”
“What do you think I’m going to do?”
“Eddie, I think you should stop this.”
“Stop.”
“Go away for a while. The two of us. Mother can care for Top.”
“Go where?”
“Wherever you say.”
“What about Renni?”
“Well—what about Renni? I sat down and thought that all out. I’m not helping her much by standing around trembling all day, am I? And you can’t help her by getting killed. Can you? So—we’re helpless. While you were gone those weeks I went downtown several times to see Renni on the street. And every time I got near her, that Pammy would get right in front of her and then all of them would start hooting at me and chanting like a bunch of cheerleaders while Pammy led Renni away. They must have parent drill every night. I swear Top was right: Get Pammy out of the way and you’ll get Renni home.”
“So—go on.”
“So—not one of those children has ever broken away from Kheim.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we have no way to get Renni back. Five people are dead already. We’ve got to stop trying.”
“Give up hope?”
“At least, stop trying for a while.”
“No.”
“Tell me about the silver cord.”
“How do you know about that?”
“From you. Last night. You asked me if I’d seen a silver cord.”
“Oh.”
“And then you talked about it in your sleep. You said it was broken. What happens if it’s broken?”
Benson looked away from Susan, at the softness of the day and the line of trees at the back. High in the air, a hawk was riding a thermal current. He thought how lovely it was.
“You die,” he said finally.
“There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
“Your soul becomes lost.”
“Lost. What does that mean?”
“You drift in limbo.”
“This is like pulling teeth, Eddie. Is that what the fight is—to break each other’s silver cord?”
“You ready to go?”
“I’m not going. Yes, I am. I’m going. But you’re going with me. Try that on for size.”
“I did. I tried it on, and I can’t wear it. I can’t let him have Renni as his permanent beggar. And I can’t live hiding that way.”
“You can’t live this way, either. Do you actually think you can beat him?”
“I could wish for better odds. But I have a plan that may turn the trick.”
“Eddie-”
“It’s past talk, Sue. I ran away once. This morning. I won’t do it again. Kheim is stronger than I am, but I’m smarter. I’ll beat him and I’ll get my kid back from him. Tonight.”
“Or wind up floating around the universe. Lost, up there somewhere.”
“You ready?”
“Oh, Eddie, come with me. Let’s go somewhere and figure this whole thing out. There has to be another way. What do you say? We can do it.”
Nullatumbi had told him to run. His own instincts told him to run.
His wife was telling him to run. He looked up at the soaring hawk.
“It has to be my way, Sue. I’ll drive you back to your mother’s.”
Over the gate, the moon rose full.
It lit the edges of the black clouds that moved slowly seaward. And it lay long shrub-shadows across the lawn.
Hidden in the trees near the Benson house a hermit thrush trilled in the darkness, a glass tinkle in a minor key.
The gray cat bounded up the lane. She paused at the gate near the wood to consider the song of the thrush, then scurried on to the open fields. There mice played under a hunter’s moon.
Hidden eyes observed her passage. Through a parting in a curtain in Renni’s room, Benson, waiting, watched the cat. Every muscle and joint still ached, and he was remembering Kheim’s awesome strength.
Tire Kheim out, Nullatumbi had told him. Make him spend his great strength. Weaken his confidence. Benson had spent the day pondering that. As his eyes roved over every part of the room, his mind reviewed his plan. And the more he thought about it, the more doubtful he became. What had seemed sound in daylight now in the darkness seemed inadequate. It simply wouldn’t work.
Things must not end up as they had last night. Benson looked out of the window up at the night sky—at the unimaginably cold spaces above the clouds. A miss is forever.
An hour later the moonlight was in full flood. Through Renni’s curtains, the pale light reached the rows of dangling dolls on the wall, reached the desk and the shelves and bureau and canopied bed, the puppet stage and mirror and touched the lusterless German war helmet on the desk.
Under the helmet, in the dark and silence, two small red eyes glowed. Two furry ears monitored the silence of the house, listening for the first sound of the intruder.
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