The Truth

by Peter James

  Then, without warning, she was hit by a giddying wave of nausea. Unable to move, she gripped the window-sill, hung on to it, trying to keep upright, trying not to fall on the floor and pass out. She leant forward, pushing her head out of the window, so at least she would vomit into the garden, and closed her eyes.

  After a few moments the cool night air began to revive her, and the nausea faded. But she stayed longer, breathing in the salty ocean tang, until the dizziness had passed. Then, wide awake now, she eased herself down on the edge of the bed. Her watch said three forty. She did a calculation. Three forty a.m. here made it eleven forty a.m. in London. It was hardly surprising she felt so wide awake: it was the middle of the morning for her.

  What was John doing?

  In his office, phoning around everyone they knew, trying to find her? For an instant she weakened, wanted to feel his arms around her, to hear his voice, to hear him tell her that he wasn’t in league with Mr Sarotzini and Miles Van Rhoe. She wanted so badly to hear it from him now, she wanted him to say it to her face. To swear it.

  But he couldn’t do that because he was in league with them. She thought back to that first night she met Mr Sarotzini, in his club. It was so transparent a set-up. Had the dinner at the Guildhall, where John had met Mr Sarotzini, or purported to have met him, been a set-up too, just to fool her?

  How far back did John’s links with Mr Sarotzini go? She started thinking about the myriad nights when John had arrived home late, or even stayed away somewhere on business. Had those nights been when the coven, or whatever it was they called it, met?

  Then she tried to think through it more rationally. Could John really have been a satanist long before she’d married him? If so, why had he never talked about it, never tried to convert her? Perhaps it was connected to DigiTrak’s problems, a last resort for John. And he hadn’t had the courage to tell her.

  Zak Danziger, who had been a threat to DigiTrak, had died weeks after Mr Sarotzini had become involved. But why had Harvey Addison died? That made no sense, and she could see no connection. Fergus had been delving, that’s why he had died. She had told John what Fergus had said, and John had reported this to Mr Sarotzini, who had had him killed. And ever since Mr Sarotzini had put in the money, the business had been booming: John had said they’d got almost every contract they’d bid for.

  Susan knew from the book she had edited on the occult, and the one she had read on the flight, and from movies she had seen, that occultists, black magicians, satanists, whatever, could influence people. They could manipulate them, hurt them, paralyse them, blind them and even kill them just by concentrating their thoughts on them, just by thinking of them. It was like the voodoo doll into which people stuck pins, no different.

  Was John in league with them, or had he simply offered them a deal? A baby for sacrifice, no questions asked, in exchange for money and for them using their powers to help his business.

  And he hadn’t had the guts to tell her.

  She thought again of that dream (hallucination? reality?) in the clinic. The man from Telecom. The masked people. What if it had been real and not a dream or a hallucination? Had John been there as well, one of the masked people, and she hadn’t recognised him?

  Fergus had said that Emil Sarotzini was the devil incarnate.

  But Emil Sarotzini would be a hundred and ten years old, at least.

  If he was the Devil incarnate, there was no reason why he couldn’t be a hundred and ten years old. Or older.

  Then she had an even wilder thought. Was Archer Warren one of them too? Their Tuesday night squash games: did they really play squash?

  What about all their other friends? She’d never met any of John’s relatives – he had cut himself off from what fragments of family he had. What if all his friends were members of the coven and he’d brought her over, unsuspecting and naïve, from America? Delivered her to his coven. And all this crap of his about not wanting children – this had been simply to buy time, to preserve her intact for her true intended role as a brood mare.

  Oh, God, Susan, what the hell are you thinking?

  ‘Susaaaaaannnnnnnnnn.’

  She shivered. The cry sounded so close, as if Casey was here in the room with her. Bump thrashed again as if he’d heard it too. Casey needs you, he was trying to tell her, urgently.

  She pulled on her dressing-gown, quietly opened her bedroom door and, like a child again, tiptoed past her parents’ bedroom and downstairs. Using the phone in the kitchen she dialled the clinic’s number. After four rings, she got a recorded voice saying the switchboard was closed until seven a.m.

  Her anxiety deepening, she dialled directories and asked if there was a night emergency number for the Cypress Palisades Clinic in Orange County. The operator told her there wasn’t.

  The nausea was returning. Susan looked at the kitchen clock, which said three forty-five, and checked it against her watch, which said three forty-two. Three and a quarter hours before anyone would be at the clinic to answer the phone.

  As she hung up, another wave of nausea swept through her. It was followed by another and now she was going to be sick. She just made it across to the sink and threw up violently. The pain inside her felt like a red-hot poker that was being twisted. Then she threw up again, tears streaming from her eyes. She wished her parents would wake, that her mother would come down here and hold her forehead the way she used to whenever she’d been sick as a child. But since Casey’s tragedy both her parents had been on medication at night, and slept in drugged comas.

  She threw up again, her legs buckling with exhaustion, barely able to support her. There was no more food to come up, she was vomiting foul-tasting, acrid bile now. She coughed, her lungs aching, her eyes blurred, waiting for it to pass now, and for the pain in her guts to subside.

  Finally she rinsed out her mouth, and then the sink and began to feel a little better, except now she had a raging thirst. She poured herself a glass of iced water from the fridge and drank it straight down. Then she made her way upstairs again. It was like climbing a mountain. At the top she stopped, doubled up in pain, and had to wait until the attack passed before she was able to move. She made it back to her bedroom, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Her forehead was burning, and she knew she had a temperature. Something was seriously wrong inside her, she was certain – and scared. It wasn’t smart being all this distance away from Van Rhoe. Even if he was a satanist and was going to sacrifice her baby, he was a good doctor, the best. He would know what the pain was and do something about it.

  Maybe I’m going into labour.

  She had none of the early-warning symptoms Van Rhoe had told her to look out for, no contractions – unless these new pains were contractions. No blood. No mucus plug.

  She lay back and closed her eyes, but her brain was whirring too much to sleep. Casey, Casey, Casey.

  Casey was calling out to her.

  She wondered if she could make it if she drove. She could call a taxi. But the nausea was coming back and she felt too ill to move anywhere right now. She looked at her watch: five after four. Three hours, I can call you. I’ll get Mom or Dad to bring me over first thing, you can relax, I’m here in LA, I’m near you, I’ll see you in a few hours. I love you.

  There was a book at the bottom of her suitcase somewhere. She knelt down, rooted around through her badly packed belongings, and finally found it. Exhausted by even this exertion, she clambered back into bed with it.

  It was the second of two reference books she had bought in an occult shop in Covent Garden. She’d read the other on the flight, but this one appeared to go into more detail in the areas that interested her.

  She stopped scanning when she reached the section headed ‘Amulets and Talismans’, and started reading carefully.

  According to Sir E. H. Wallis Budd, the egyptologist, the essential difference between an amulet and talisman is that an amulet exercises its protective powers continuously and in general around its owner wherea
s a talisman is called on to perform some isolated task of protection. Possession of items –

  She stopped reading. The finger in velvet in the attic: had that been an amulet or a talisman? Then, as she read on, the egyptologist confirmed that bones, teeth, hair, spittle, blood and body parts all made powerful amulets and talismans.

  Bump’s hands pushed sharply outwards. Then he rolled, and pushed again, and suddenly into her head came an image of the man from Telecom.

  ‘What do you want?’ she shouted at him. And then she bit her lip: she’d shouted aloud.

  I’m delirious.

  ‘Susaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.’

  Bump rolled again.

  ‘Susaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.’

  Casey was desperate and she wasn’t imagining it. ‘It’s OK,’ she whispered. ‘I’m coming.’

  She swung herself out of bed, pulled on the leggings and sweatshirt in which she’d travelled, stuck her feet into her flat shoes, pulled on her camel coat and grabbed her handbag.

  ‘I’m coming, Casey,’ she whispered again. ‘Calm down, I’ll be with you as quickly as I can.’

  She let herself out of her bedroom, tiptoed past her parents’ door and down the stairs. They creaked but no one stirred in the house, and she was relieved. She didn’t want to have to explain to her parents what she was doing – she could tell from their expressions last night that they hadn’t been sure whether to believe her or whether she was cracking up.

  She’d made them promise not to tell John she was here if he called, and just after they’d all gone to bed, shortly before midnight, the phone had rung and she had hurried from her room, stood outside her parents’ door, and had heard her father say, No, I – Gayle and I–we didn’t hear from her for a couple of weeks – er, Sunday last she called. Sounded fine, a little tired but fine.

  She closed the front door, using her key to soften the click of the latch, then climbed into her rental car.

  It was a forty-minute drive in daytime but, in the pre-dawn quiet, Susan was in Orange County and heading towards the canyon in less than a quarter of an hour. It had stopped raining, but the road still had a glossy sheen from the water.

  She suddenly saw flashing lights in her rear-view minor, a whole broad band of them; it looked like a spacecraft was coming up the freeway behind her, and nervously, she moved across to the exit lane and slowed right down.

  A convoy of fire trucks hurtled past, followed by two police patrol cars. Then not just one ambulance, but a whole fleet.

  And, oh Christ, no, she could see where they were heading. She could see the red glow that was too thick, too concentrated to be street lighting.

  Her distress deepening, she stamped on the gas pedal, pushed the needle up past ninety m.p.h. then a hundred m.p.h., chasing them, and two miles on, steadily gaining on their tail-lights, she followed them down the exit ramp and along the four-lane road that went through the small village. More emergency vehicles howled past her and crashed the stop light ahead. Susan crashed it too, beyond caring, a tight knot of fear in her gullet. This road had changed since she was last here, a year back, she thought. More flashing lights appeared in her mirror. She drove past a new development and she wondered – she hoped – whether some miracle had happened and they were all on the wrong road.

  And then, to her disbelief, the convoy started to turn left. Braking hard, she shouted at them, through the windshield, ‘Wrong way, you’re taking the wrong –’

  And then she stopped shouting.

  They hadn’t.

  They weren’t going to Casey’s nursing home.

  They were going to a different part of the canyon. And, she remembered now, there was a big lumber warehouse a mile or so up there. That’s where they were going!

  She lowered her window and felt a welcome blast of air on her face as she accelerated again. It was OK, there was no fire at the clinic. Casey was safe. The sirens screamed on up there above her like mad animals, and perspiration sloughed off her. ‘I’ll be right with you, Casey,’ she said. ‘Just coming up to the entrance now.’

  The imposing white Doric pillars, each engraved with the words CYPRESS PALISADES CLINIC, were right ahead. She put on her right-turn signal, then halted to let a car out, one of the night staff or a doctor, she presumed, the headlights momentarily dazzling her. Then she accelerated hard up the long, tree-lined driveway, braking sharply every fifty yards to crash over the sleeping policemen.

  The clinic was a handsome modern building, three storeys high, spread out along the ridge of the canyon with fine views in daylight out towards the ocean and inland across the desert. It was a medium-sized, luxury private hospital, with a high reputation both for cosmetic surgery and for its facilities for long-term care patients like Casey.

  Most of the building was in darkness, but lights were on in the downstairs hall and in a few upstairs windows. Whenever she’d been here in the past, the parking lot had been full; now there was only a handful of vehicles parked outside.

  Susan pulled into a bay, then got out of the car and looked anxiously up at Casey’s room. It was on the second storey, with a row of window-boxes full of flowers that her mother kept up all year round, but she couldn’t see these now. There was a faint tinge of burning wood in the air, and the distant wail of sirens pricked the silence of the night.

  She walked as fast as she could towards the main entrance, but the automatic glass doors remained shut as she approached them. A sign on them read, AFTER 10 P.M. PLEASE USE BELL.

  She pressed the button. Then, when nothing happened, she pressed it again. After an eternity, a uniformed security guard, who must have weighed a good three hundred pounds, ambled into view, gave Susan a cursory inspection, nodded at her then ambled away again. A full minute later, the doors slid open.

  As she went inside, the guard was sitting behind the front desk with a National Rifle Association magazine open in front of him. ‘Help you?’

  ‘All right to go see my sister?’

  He raised his eyebrows as if to say, At this hour? ‘You know where she is?’

  ‘Room 214 in the Laguna wing.’

  He tapped his computer keyboard. ‘Name?’

  ‘Hers or mine?’

  He gave her a weary look. ‘Hers.’

  ‘Casey Corrigan.’

  ‘And yours?’

  ‘Susan Carter.’

  He studied the screen, then tapped some more keys. There was a sharp whir and a pass card printed out on a machine beside him. He pushed it into a plastic holder and handed it to her. ‘Know your way?’

  ‘Yes.’ She pinned the card to her coat lapel. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No problem. Have a good one.’ He returned to his magazine.

  The place reminded her of the Vörn Bank’s clinic in London. The designers had done their best to make it look more like the foyer of a hotel than a hospital lobby. The walls were panelled in light cedarwood, hung with huge tapestries, and groups of comfortable chairs, separated by plants and vases of fresh flowers, were spread around the perimeter of the marble floor. But, again like the bank’s clinic in London, the sterile smell was the giveaway.

  The swift surge of the elevator car brought on another bout of nausea and dizziness. As she stepped out into the blue-carpeted corridor she had to lean against the wall and close her eyes. Don’t black out, she thought. Not now, please, not now.

  The elevator doors shut behind her with a hiss and the only sound in the corridor was the thudding of her own heart, the flat hum of the air-conditioning fans and a beeping sound, a steady, beep … beep … beep … beep.

  She opened her eyes and stared down the long corridor, each of the doors labelled with a typed name in a small metal holder. This was the long-stay floor. All the patients, like Casey, were in a persistent vegetative state, and most of the names on the doors were familiar to her as she stumbled past them. D. Perlmutter. Sally Shulman. Bob Tanner. Casey Corrigan.

  A red light was flashing above Casey’s
door.

  Her heart in her mouth, Susan ran, stumbling, down to it, and pushed open the door. The room was in darkness; just a faint haze of green and orange light from the dials of the machines that kept Casey alive and monitored her every breath, heartbeat and brain signal. Three small red lights were flashing, and another audible warning was sounding, a shrill pip-pip-pip-pip.

  Susan fumbled for the light switch and snapped it on. The brilliant overhead light dazzled her momentarily, and then she saw Casey lying in bed, just like she always was. Except Casey was motionless. The ventilator was still clunk-puffing away, but Casey’s chest wasn’t rising and falling, like it should, like it always did.

  It wasn’t moving at all.

  And the colour of Casey’s face behind that naso-gastric tube, did not look right. Her cheeks were usually rosy, as if this great long rest she was having, was doing her good. But they weren’t rosy now, they were the colour of spent chewing gum.

  Susan’s eyes swung up to the monitors then jumped along the dials to the ECG. Normally there would be steady spikes. But now instead of any spikes there was an unflickering green line, and on another monitor next to it, three words were flashing on and off: AIR SUPPLY DOWN!

  Her eyes sprang to the ventilator, and she saw immediately what was wrong: the connector dock, linking Casey’s breathing appliance to the rubber output tube from the ventilator, had come apart. The oxygen was being pumped uselessly out into the room.

  Shouting for help, Susan tried to jam the two parts of the line together. She felt the hard blast of air, got them together but they sprang apart the moment she released them. They needed a clip, or tape, something.

  ‘HELP!’ she screamed. ‘Help, someone, help, please help me!’

  She ran out into the corridor. ‘Help! Please help!’

  There was no sign of anyone. Her brain raced, as she tried to think what to do. Someone must come along, there had to be someone on duty, it was more important to try to keep the air flowing. Christ, how long had Casey been like this?