Ascending

by Wright, T. M.

  The cabdriver looked back. "Yes, sir?"

  Lenny said, "The Piddly Widdly. It's on Bloor Street West."

  Ryerson shook his head. "The Sheraton."

  Lenny said, "They allow dogs at the Piddly Widdly. It's an outdoor cafe."

  "And it's raining," Ryerson pointed out.

  Lenny laughed. "I thought you were psychic, Rye. It's a covered outdoor cafe."

  Very quickly, Ryerson reached to his left and opened the door. He gave Lenny a severe look. "Don't follow me," he growled, got out of the cab, and shut the door hard.

  "Hey!" the cabbie protested. "Sorry," Ryerson said, and walked off toward the Sheraton Toronto. Behind him, he heard, "I'd be your Watson, Rye. He was overweight, at least the one in the movies was. So am I. And he wasn't too bright, either. Think about it, okay? I'm in the book."

  Ryerson, soaked to the skin, was at the Sheraton Toronto a half-hour later.

  ~ * ~

  THE NEXT DAY, IN DOWNTOWN TORONTO

  Frenzy! Sometimes it was like seeing through someone else's eyes, as if what he was seeing wasn't real, as if it didn't matter, as if it were merely a movie being projected onto his corneas. That's when he knew he was in trouble. That's when he knew he'd wake up an hour later, twelve hours later, a day later, and wonder where he'd been, and what in the hell he'd done. And to whom.

  "I'm possessed," he whispered. He had said it many, many times in the last eight years. Once he had even gone to a priest and begged for exorcism. The priest had merely shaken his head sadly and recommended that he get "professional help."

  "But you have to do it," he had insisted. "It's your job!"

  The priest shook his head again. He was in his sixties, graying at the temples, and was usually very paternal and capable looking. Now he looked as if he were being put upon. "I don't believe in possession, my son."

  It was the last time he had gone to a priest.

  He fumbled a bottle of scotch from his liquor cabinet, poured himself a shot, shook his head as if to clear it, and downed the scotch. He sensed that someone had come into the big room. He turned. "Yes, Roberta?" he whispered to the red-haired young woman in the doorway.

  She said, "I thought I'd remind you of your three-thirty appointment." She paused, her brow furrowed. "Are you all right?"

  He shook his head. "No." He turned, poured another shot of scotch. "No," he repeated and downed the scotch. "I'm tired." He looked at her. "Is there any way I can get out of that appointment?"

  "It's with the people from the zoning commission. We've already asked for three postponements."

  "Dammit to hell!" he whispered.

  "Sorry," said the red-haired woman, surprised, because he rarely cursed. "Are you sure you're all right?"

  "I didn't say I was all right, Roberta. I said I wasn't feeling well."

  "Oh." His anger surprised her. She had worked with him for ten months now and had never seen him angry before. "Yes, of course." She started backing out of the room. "Three-thirty—that's in a half-hour."

  "I can read a clock, goddammit!"

  "Yes, sir." She left quickly.

  ~ * ~

  She knocked on the door twenty minutes later, called his name, got no answer, opened the door, and stuck her head in. She called to him again, thinking he was in the bathroom which adjoined his cavernous office. "Ten minutes," she said. Still she got no answer. She went into the room, called to him again, saw that the bathroom door was open and that the bathroom was empty.

  She pursed her lips. "Great!" she whispered.

  He was nowhere in sight.

  ~ * ~

  Ryerson Biergarten had very little to tell Homicide Detective Dan Creed, and Creed knew it as soon as Ryerson came into his glass-enclosed office. He said, "Nothing, right?"

  Ryerson closed the door, nodded glumly, and sat down in front of Creed's desk. "It happens that way sometimes, Dan. Not very often, but sometimes. I'm sorry." He put Creosote on the floor and said, "Stay!" The little dog looked confused, then curled up at Ryerson's feet.

  Detective Creed, a square-faced, heavily built, competent-looking man in his early forties, said, "It was a long shot, anyway. The kid will turn up sooner or later."

  Ryerson shook his head. "I don't think so, Dan." He gave Creed a flat, apologetic smile. "At least I can tell you that much. I don't think anyone will see Martin Cobb, alive or dead, ever again."

  Creed said, "I hope you're wrong, Rye." He nodded at a file folder lying open on his desk. "So, the case is closed as far as you're concerned? I can have accounting draw up a check for you."

  Ryerson hesitated, leaned forward, turned the file around, and scanned the relevant data on the missing boy, although he had memorized most of it.

  He leaned back. "Give me another day on this, okay, Dan? No charge."

  Creed grinned. "Professional pride?"

  Ryerson nodded. "That's part of it, yes." He paused, heard a strange, low crunching sound whose source he couldn't pinpoint, and went on, "It's one of the 'sins that flesh is heir to,' isn't it? Pride." The crunching sound grew louder, more enthusiastic. Ryerson continued, "I don't like coming up against a stone wall. No one does. And I really would like to find this boy."

  "I can't blame you for that," Creed said.

  Ryerson nodded at the file. "Do you mind if I take that with me, Dan? Maybe I overlooked something. Maybe there's a piece of physical evidence, a location—"

  Creed broke in, "What the hell is that noise?"

  Ryerson looked down at Creosote. The dog had one leg of Creed's desk legs firmly between his teeth; he had already gnawed half the leg into oblivion. Ryerson scooped him up and shook a finger at him. "No. Bad dog!" He looked apologetically at Creed. "I'm sorry, Dan."

  Creed smiled. "Does he still go after your socks, Rye?"

  Ryerson sighed. "Every chance he gets." He felt Creosote licking his chin. "Take the cost of repairing the desk offmy check, okay, Dan?"

  Creed said, "He's ugly, but he's got character, I'll say that for him. Don't worry about the desk." He handed the file to Ryerson. "And if you think you can get something more out of this, be my guest."

  ~ * ~

  Frenzy!

  Like being in a cement mixer.

  "Hey, you okay, buddy?"

  "My head hurts. I'll be all right."

  "You don't look all right. You want to go to the hospital? I could take you to the hospital. No charge."

  "Thank you. I'll be all right."

  "It's just a couple minutes from here—"

  "I said I'll be all right, goddammit!"

  "Suit yourself. Just trying to help."

  And so the rain. Hadn't it been raining forever? Wasn't he soaked to the skin, to the bone, the marrow?

  Wasn't he floating in it?

  Wasn't he floating? Didn't his hair billow out clean, and couldn't he propel himself? Like a fish?

  Couldn't he move as fast as light?

  Didn't he carry judgment with him, and power!

  Couldn't he dance, and didn't the sweet, surging updrafts push his hair about? Didn't he float? Wasn't he held up by the updrafts?

  Couldn't he dance on the updrafts? Wasn't he nimble? Didn't he carry judgment and power on either hand?

  Yes! Oh, yes!

  FOUR

  When Ryerson had started work on the Martin Cobb disappearance a week and a half earlier, he had gotten several of Martin's personal effects from the boy's mother, a widow who lived in the prestigious north end of Toronto. These items included a small spiral notebook that Martin had filled with adolescent poetry, a Revell model 1932 Buick Roadster with one headlight missing, a white T-shirt that had "GIZMO" emblazoned on it in red, a battered black-and-white Nike sneaker minus its shoelace, and a dog-eared paperback copy of The Time Machine—"Martinjust loves that kind of stuff, Mr. Biergarten," his mother had said.

  Ryerson had spread all these items out on the bed in his hotel room and had been touching each one lightly with his fingertips. It was something he had don
e several times in the past week and a half, and though he had no trouble getting psychic images from each item, the meaning of those images had eluded him, even when he asked Martin's mother about them.

  "I touch the paperback book, Mrs. Cobb, and I get the image of a ... hot dog." He paused, embarrassed, though he wasn't sure why. "A red-hot," he explained.

  She shrugged. "I've never read the book, of course, Mr. Biergarten."

  "And when I touch the sneaker, all I get is—pardon me, please—is someone's. . . derriere. It's moving. It's a girl's . . . derriere, and it's moving. Did Martin have a girlfriend?"

  That had offended Mrs. Cobb. "No, of course not. Martin was only fourteen years old, after all. What right-thinking fourteen-year-old is concerned with girls, Mr. Biergarten? I would say they have other things to be concerned with, wouldn't you? Baseball, for instance, and… and other boyish things."

  "Yes, of course. I'm sorry." A pause. "And when I touch the notebook, all I get is the sound of someone weeping distantly."

  Mrs. Cobb had pursed her lips. "That notebook was his undoing, if you ask me, Mr. Biergarten. He spent far too much time with it. Poetry, indeed! If his father were alive, he wouldn't have allowed it. Weeping, you say? That would have to be me, wouldn't it? Me weeping for his weakness and his . . . his sensitivity!"

  That session with her had gone very badly. If the images Ryerson had gotten from Martin's personal effects had been conflicting and nebulous, the images he'd gotten from Mrs. Cobb had been only too concrete: resentment, frustration, grief. And fear. Ryerson sensed that without her son or her husband, Mrs. Cobb's future seemed filled with loneliness and uncertainty.

  ~ * ~

  Now, alone in his hotel room—Martin's personal effects spread out on the bed—Ryerson got precisely the same images he had gotten then: a hot dog, some anonymous, bouncing rear end, and the distant sound of weeping, which was obviously a deep inner sadness that Martin disguised none too well in his poetry.

  Ryerson picked up the spiral notebook, flipped to the middle, read the poem there aloud:

  "Oh, ant, oh, ant, there in the ground, When you walk, there is no sound, When you breathe, there is no breath, When you die, there is no death! Oh, ant, oh, ant, in the ground I see, How I wish I were like thee!"

  Ryerson set the notebook down and whispered, "You're a troubled young man, aren't you, Martin?"

  Yes, he heard.

  Ryerson fell silent.

  Yes! he heard again, louder, more urgently. Yes! Yes!

  "Martin?"

  Yes! he heard again.

  "Martin Cobb?"

  Help me! Help me, please!

  "Martin, where are you?"

  Yes, yes, yes!

  "Please tell me where you are!"

  Come to the house. Oh, come to the house!

  ~ * ~

  An hour later, Ryerson pressed Mrs. Cobb: "A country house, then, if not a beach house."

  "No, of course not. This is the only house we have." She paused. "Except for the summer house, of course. But that's been shut up for years. I doubt that Martin even remembers it."

  "A summer house? Where?"

  She shook her head. "He couldn't have known about it, Mr. Biergarten. He just couldn't have. He hasn't been in it for ten years. His father died there."

  "Please, Mrs. Cobb, where is it?"

  She sighed. "Fifty miles north, near a village called Lakeville."

  ~ * ~

  "Dan, this is Rye. I'm at Mrs. Cobb's house and I think I'm on to something. Have you heard of a village called Lakeville?"

  "Yes, I have," Creed answered. "Why?"

  "I think Martin's there."

  A brief silence, then, "I'll pick you up. Give me a half hour." A dial tone followed.

  Ryerson hung up and turned to Mrs. Cobb, who was standing behind him with a look of hopeful anticipation on her face. "Did I hear you correctly, Mr. Biergarten? Do you really think you've found Martin?"

  "Yes," Ryerson answered. "I think he's alive." The words made him uncomfortable, and he wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was his professional skepticism, which should have made him cautiously optimistic, at best. But he was certain of what he had heard. Certain of its source, certain of its reality. To waffle, now, in front of this poor, tormented woman, would be cruel. Of course Martin was alive. He was at the summer house in Lakeville and he was alive!

  ~ * ~

  LAKEVILLE

  It was a three-story, blue-green, wood-shingled house near the center of a small stand of pine trees. There were many small, narrow windows set starkly against the massive bulk of the house.

  Because it had been empty for almost a decade, Ryerson had supposed that the house would have a pronounced look of decay and abandonment about it. But it didn't, and this confused him.

  He said to Mrs. Cobb, who was walking between him and Inspector Creed up the pine-needle-covered brick walkway to the house, "Does someone live here?"

  "No," she answered.

  "I don't understand," Ryerson said. "Didn't you tell me that it's been empty—"

  "Yes. It has. I keep it up because John likes it that way, Mr. Biergarten. It's been repainted twice. The roof has been replaced. And a housekeeper comes in once a week to do whatever cleaning is necessary." They were on the wide wraparound porch now. Mrs. Cobb fished in her purse for a few seconds, found a key ring, and put one of the keys in the lock. She looked pleadingly at Ryerson. "It's painful for me to be here, Mr. Biergarten."

  "Yes, I understand that."

  "I was last here shortly after John died. I was going to sell the place, but of course John told me not to. He said, ‘Where would I go?' " She turned the key in the lock. "I had no answer for him. I told him that he couldn't come back to Toronto." She pushed on the door.

  Creed began, "Are you telling us, Mrs. Cobb, that you believe that you actually spoke with—"

  Ryerson put his hand on Creed's arm and cut in, "Of course she spoke with her husband, Dan."

  "Of course," said Mrs. Cobb, looking surprised. "And so he stays here. All by himself. Except for the housekeeper, and I'd say she doesn't know a thing about him." She pushed the door open.

  Ryerson was about to ask whether he could be alone in the house for a few minutes, but when he looked through the small foyer and into the large living room beyond, he murmured, "My God," instead, and stepped quickly into the house. Mrs. Cobb followed. She smiled pleasantly, as a hostess would.

  Inspector Creed said, "What is it, Rye?"

  Ryerson stopped at the end of the foyer, where it opened onto the living room. "Someone's been living here," he said.

  Mrs. Cobb said, "Yes. John has been living here."

  The heavily furnished living room bore the unmistakable look of having been lived in. The cushions on the big green corduroy couch had slight indentations in them; books in the three large bookcases against one wall were askew; a copy of Popular Mechanics lay open on a side table. A floor lamp was switched on.

  Creed said to Mrs. Cobb, "You've kept the electricity hooked up all these years?"

  "Of course," she answered, and settled into a big green corduroy chair. "For John's sake. And so the furnace will work in the winter, so the pipes won't burst, and the paint won't peel, and the walls won't crack."

  Ryerson realized that he was hearing a different woman from the one he'd been dealing with in the past ten days. He was hearing a bizarre kind of pragmatist, someone who believed without question in the ghost of her long-dead husband and wanted to make his afterlife, in the house where he died, as comfortable as possible. But a woman who wanted, also, to protect the ceiling joists from dry rot, the cellar from slow leaks, and the hardwood floors from mildew.

  She said, "John's always been an untidy man."

  "Your son is here," Ryerson said to her.

  "No," she corrected, "John's here."

  Ryerson glanced at Inspector Creed, who looked very ill at ease, then back at Mrs. Cobb. He extended his hand. "I'm going to search the house, Mrs. Co
bb. I'd like you to come with me."

  She looked questioningly at his hand, at Inspector Creed, then at Ryerson's hand again. She smiled a flat, odd smile, said, "Yes, of course," took his hand, and rose. "It's a very big house." She looked at Inspector Creed and said, "It's a very big house, Inspector, and if Martin is hiding in it. . ." She stopped. Her smile vanished. Suddenly she looked confused, as if unsure of where she was. She shook her head and looked accusingly at Ryerson. "Why have you brought me here?"

  Ryerson squeezed her hand. "I believe that Martin is here, Mrs. Cobb. I know that he's here. I . . ." He paused very briefly. He didn't want to say what he was about to say, but the words were already piling up at the back of his tongue. They spilled out. "I spoke with him."

  Creed said, "You spoke with him? You never told me that. You told me you got impressions!"

  Mrs. Cobb's mouth opened, then closed. "Yes?" she whispered anxiously. "And what did he say?"

  Creed broke in, "What do you mean you spoke with him? Christ, Rye, that's a hell of a long way from… getting impressions, isn't it?"

  "It happens, Dan."

  Creed shook his head. "No, it doesn't. You've taken me for a ride, my friend—"

  "Dan, please, I know what I'm doing."

  Creed shook his head again. "They warned me about hiring you. They made jokes about it. They asked me where I kept my crystal ball—no, that's not what they asked me, they asked me if I had crystal balls!"

  "Dan, you're not being fair."

  Mrs. Cobb broke in, "Yes, I can feel it, too. Martin really is here!" She started walking toward the stairway which led to the second floor. "He really is here!" she whispered.

  And from above came a series of quick, low thudding noises.

  FIVE

  As he moved swiftly up the stairway with Mrs. Cobb and Inspector Creed behind him, Ryerson heard distantly, "Shit, oh, shit!" It was the voice of a young man.

  "Let me through!" Creed ordered.

  Ryerson glanced at him. Creed had his gun drawn. "You don't need that, Dan!"