by Thomas Page
“Death after life,” said Kampmeier mordantly.
Branch roared with laughter. “By God, that’s good. Life after death is as natural as death after life . . .”
Overhead the roof shivered and clattered as if hundreds of ballbearings had been dropped over it, rolling down the slope to the eaves and rattling down the walls. A collective cry of shock came from the guests. The canapé trays, the drinks resting on the tables, the windows of the living room all began exploding in merry, slow-motion bursts of wet glass. The doors leading from the living room flew open and shut like flapping wings and from the telephone line came another blare of static. In the clamor of bursting glass and groaning wood, Dutton shouted into the mouthpiece, “Bickel? Bickel? Are you still there?”
The living room became a whirlwind of swirling papers and flying furniture, knocking the guests to the floor like tenpins. The avalanche of freezing air blew holes in the stone and wood sides of the house. The hurricane seemed to be centered near the hall entrance where the door cracked from its jamb and flew into the air like a piece of cardboard, landing on the coffee table. Kampmeier clung to Dutton’s back and pressed her face against his shoulders.
From out of the gloom caused by the bursting lights, Daniel Forrester strode, his face contorted with rage, his body at least a third larger than it had been in real life. He towered above Evan Branch, looking down at him like a cobra swaying above a mongoose. “Where is it?” he screamed. “Where is it, what have you done to me?”
Branch kept his control. “We were trying to help you, Forrester, we were trying to save your life.”
“Where is it?” screamed Daniel Forrester in a booming roar that caused them to cover their ears. “Where, where, where . . .” His words ran together, the syllables dissolving to a wall of white noise as Forrester’s head hovered above Branch, who tried to back off from him.
Friedman had been cowering against the wall, huddled away from the onslaught of noise and cold. As he watched Forrester’s hands reaching out for Branch’s neck, he propelled himself toward the figure. He passed right through it with a startled look, crashing into Dutton and Kampmeier, knocking them backwards. He looked at his hands and said, “Cold.”
Dutton screamed, “Forrester!”
Evan Branch stumbled backwards with a feeble swing at Forrester, the tip of his cane passing through his head. He reached for the table to steady himself and knocked it over, sending the lamp tumbling to the floor, but with the aid of his cane he managed to keep himself on his feet.
Suddenly Daniel Forrester was standing in front of Dutton, his basilisk eyes grappling Dutton’s attention as a hook snags a fish. Forrester’s anger came at Dutton like an avalanche.
Dutton tried to move back, but Forrester closed on him, pushing a wall of icy cold before him. His voice was a drumfire of noise, pounding, slamming, hitting Dutton’s mind over and over again until Dutton shouted, “NEW YORK CITY!”
Forrester receded a bit, listening. Dutton had gotten through to him for just an instant.
“You were transferred to New York this afternoon, to Bellevue, to some unit in the IC ward. You left about eight hours ago by plane.”
The cold disappeared, replaced by a blast of heat. The lights came on so quickly it seemed they had exploded. Branch’s house was solid, doors latched, walls seamless and smooth, the canapé trays intact, the drinks untouched. Everything was warm and peaceful. Daniel Forrester was gone. The people looked around, dazed and confused like survivors of a crash, dumbstruck to find they were still alive and the world still existed. A couple of the women were weeping, their hands pressed tightly over their ears.
The telephone was still in Dutton’s hand and a voice was coming out of it. “Dutton? What’s happening there? Is anybody there?”
It took three tries before Dutton could croak, “Bickel? Did you hear him? Did you hear that?”
“I heard it. God help me, I heard him. Dutton, it was him, I’d know that voice . . .”
“Are you getting anything from the machine?”
“No. He’s dead, no question about it.”
“He’s been dead before and it never slowed him down.”
Evan Branch sat heavily on his sofa. His face was waxy and shining with sweat. He loosened his tie and mopped his forehead. Friedman frowned, touched Branch’s pulse, and spoke rapidly to another doctor behind him. Dutton knew a disaster was in the making. He said, “I’m hanging up. We’ve got trouble. Bickel.” He replaced the phone and spoke to the guests in what he hoped was a calm manner. “Listen to me. We’ve got to leave now. Right now. He’ll be back any second.”
“Lawrence?” called Branch, his voice frail and scratchy. He waved him over to the sofa.
“Yes, sir?” answered Dutton.
“Would you kindly call the clinic? I’m having a heart attack. Thank you.” Having spoken, Branch allowed himself to be laid out on the sofa and an oxygen mask to be strapped over his mouth from a portable tank Denenberg carried with him, while Dutton rang up Mrs. Handel and told her to prepare for a cardiac.
The last time Dutton ever saw Branch was when he helped load the old man into the back seat of one of the cars in the driveway. Branch pulled feebly at his sleeve and moved the oxygen mask away. “Lawrence,” he whispered.
“Yes, sir.”
“That was very rude of him.”
“It was the dregs of Forrester, yes, sir. So it is with ghosts.” Dutton tried to slip the oxygen mask back on, but Branch waved his hand away.
“Go away, Lawrence. Hide.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t let that creature get after you. Go now.” He squeezed Dutton’s arm, bringing his ear closer to his lips. “Find that girl, eh? You’ll need help.”
Denenberg pushed Dutton away and strapped the mask tightly back over Branch’s nose and mouth. The guests climbed into their cars and began driving out to the clinic road. None of them were friendly to Dutton except Dr. Kampmeier.
“That was very smart,” she said, tapping his shoulder. “Bellevue is big. And he’s crazy, they’ll never let him out of there, he was made for Bellevue.” She touched his cheek. “You’ll be all right. You have a girlfriend? Take her with you. She’ll be all right, too.” Then she climbed into her car and joined the parade heading down to the clinic.
Dutton was completely alone now. As a courtesy to Evan Branch, Dutton closed the house down. He shut the windows in the study, turned off the hall lights, and closed the vents on the fire mumbling in the wood stove.
Outside, it was still a cold clear mountain night, quite lovely in its chilly moonlit calm. Evening wetness slickened the asphalt of the drive and his feet slipped as he opened the car door.
He drove the car home and packed his underwear, toiletries, and a couple of changes of clothes in a bag. He tossed in his checkbook and credit cards, all the while formalizing a plan. Santa Eulalia was at least a day away by auto. He thought about calling the clinic and decided against it. Evan Branch had spoken his piece.
By nine-thirty, Dutton was driving down the mountains, the road a damp, wet ribbon in the moonlight. He felt as if he had died and was entering a second, different life. He wondered if that was the way it was for Daniel Forrester.
At ten o’clock that night, a raccoon which poked into the garbage behind Evan Branch’s house hissed in terror and unsheathed its claws at a cold wind flowing past its furry body. Inside, someone was walking aimlessly about the darkened rooms. The raccoon sensed confusion and loneliness and frustration from the lone inhabitant, emotions far too crystallized for its small brain to handle comfortably. The raccoon bounded away from the house into the woods.
At ten-oh-five, a girl in the Clayton Lodge bar noticed a rather nice-looking man alone in an alcove by the sundeck. He wore a blue coat and tie, and he seemed to be crying. The girl thought it might be interesting if she could catc
h his eye in some discreet way, since he looked reasonably respectable, even if detached from the music and conversation. He appeared to be waiting for somebody. The girl decided to move to a stool closer to the alcove. By the time she found one, she realized the stranger was gone. She looked around the room, but could not see him anywhere or understand where he had gone. So she ordered another drink and within five minutes found herself stifling yawns in a conversation with a tax expert from Wisconsin.
At five minutes after ten, Evan Branch opened his eyes in his room at the clinic which he had founded and beheld a well-built man standing by his bed. An electrocardiograph was strapped over Branch’s chest and for the moment he was alone. Branch recognized the stranger but he had made his peace years ago when he learned the condition of his heart and the man held no terrors for him. Evan Branch moved his lips and whispered a question. Mrs. Handel did not hear Branch, but she distinctly heard a deep voice reply, “I think so, but I’m not sure.” Just after that sound, the vital signs on the main desk monitors jumped, indicating Branch had arrested again. When she and several doctors dashed into the room, they found Branch dead with a smile on his face. Nothing in life had so amused Evan Branch as tales of immortal fallibility.
At six minutes after ten, the last of the fearful neighbors broke up their conversation on the street before the house on Ridgeset Lane in Santa Eulalia. The police had scoured the interior and roped off the front porch where Gareth Jones had died. Unanimously they hoped the damned place would burn down. The children were fretting themselves into nightmares and the whole neighborhood was jumpy about the strangers who came in to take pictures of it. As they headed for their homes, one lady thought she saw a face looking out of the upstairs window, but, not believing in ghosts, she dismissed it.
At six and a half minutes after ten, Kate Burnham, who was slaving over her article with Mr. Fudd on the table in front of her, felt a cool draft pass through her apartment. From the door came a single loud knock. She looked through the keyhole but no one was there. Whatever it was scared the hell out of the cat, for he bounced off the table to the rug, his fur so distended he was circular in shape. “You’re a coward,” she scoffed at the fuzzball.
And at exactly seven minutes after ten, Irwin Bickel gaped at the LS capsule in Denver Mercy. The scanners and systems shut off one by one as Daniel Forrester’s heart peeped, stumbled, then began to beat strongly. Blood pressure and breathing rates marched across the screens in lively jagged mountain peaks. The capsule temperature rose. Under the canopy the pitiful bony chest regularly swelled and fell. What was left of Daniel Forrester was back among the living.
CHAPTER 12
In the cramped darkroom, Kate switched on the yellow light as the last strip of negative came out of the bath. She had processed the Santa Eulalia photos, strung the negatives on wire, and weighted the ends with clips to prevent curling. Now she was going through each shot.
No good. A haunted house had to look haunted and this one was either too sunny or she had overexposed. She could feel the article going down the drain already. The corner room, where the intruder had so frightened the Velasquezes, looked as clean, bare, and cherubic as bright yellow walls could make it. The basement with its cobwebs and pipes looked silver-bright under the flash.
Kate minutely examined the basement frames with a jeweler’s loupe. She found the shot of the work table laden with crusted cans of paint. She said in a singsong voice to herself, “Daniel, where are you!” Wherever he was, he was not in the pictures.
Kate ran that discovery through her central brain bank. Forrester was not out of frame or out of focus and underexposed, he was not there. She remembered him lit by the flash against the work table. Come on, Daniel, where did you get to?
Time to try the enlarger. Kate slipped frames into the aperture and examined the projection on the base. She blew up sections till she could see the grain. Forrester was not in any of them. According to her camera, the only one in the house that afternoon was her. She was going to need a bit of help on this one.
Steve examined the negatives, the blowup, and even the developing baths, then shrugged. “What can I say, love? You missed him.”
“I didn’t miss him, he was no more than six feet away from me.”
“Then you’ve got a parallax problem.”
“Steve, I have a Nikon SLR . . .”
“All right, all right, don’t get in such an uproar. Why are you so upset about all this?”
“Steve! Why isn’t he in the picture? Use your head. Think about it a minute, I know it’s a small thing, but it’s a small impossible thing.”
“Did he move?”
“What does it matter? The flash would have caught him. It’s a strobe. A thousandth of a second.”
“Maybe he moves faster than a thousandth of a second,” he joked. “Did he have a big ‘S’ on his chest?”
“You saw him, what did you think?”
Steve actually winced at the memory. “Well, he sure isn’t like me.”
“Diane isn’t like me either, Steve, so let’s not start comparing notes. Objectively speaking, what did you think of him?”
“I had the feeling he’d slug me any minute. I also had the feeling he’s crazy about you. What does he do anyway?”
“He’s a hot-shot salesman of medical equipment.”
Steve blinked at that, looked at the wall, then back at her. “You’re joking.”
“That’s what he told me. He even had brochures.”
“Kate, that guy is no salesman. If I was to figure out the qualities least desirable in a salesman, I’d just about mail him in. It’s ridiculous. You saw Diane, you saw me, nobody can stand to be around him. He’s stringing you.”
Kate remembered the folders spread out on the bed, the assurance with which Forrester had talked about his work. “No, he was telling the truth.”
“Did you call the company he works for?”
“He works for a defense contractor. They wouldn’t tell me anything.”
Steve spoke intently straight into her face, his hands gripping her shoulders. “Kate, that guy cannot possibly be a salesman, he could not sell mice to cats. You know he can’t.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said, grasping one of his hands in her own. “I’m coming around to the idea that sometime between Clayton and yesterday, he had a nervous breakdown or something. A kind of collapse.”
“Does he take drugs?”
“No, he wouldn’t work for this place if he did. Steve, you wouldn’t recognize him if you had seen him in Colorado. He doesn’t even change clothes anymore. He was very conscious of the way he dressed, like a good salesman should be, right? Every morning I’d see him in a different outfit; he must travel with four or five suits in a steamer trunk. Yet each time I’ve seen him down here, he’s wearing that same blazer and gray pants.” She released his hand. “It’s a little thing. That outfit was what he was wearing the last time I saw him. It’s got to be a breakdown of some kind.”
“Then dump him.” Steve raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Let’s both do some dumping.”
Steve’s hand had somehow slipped up her arm to her shoulder. She said, “You always could find your way around in the dark, couldn’t you?”
“I know you like I know the liver spots on my hand.”
Laughing, she pulled away. He held on, a little too tightly, before letting her go. “You won’t get into trouble so long as you keep talking, Steve. Keep talking.” She flicked the regular light on, killing the mood.
Steve flicked it off again and cornered her. “Oh, come on, let’s grope in the dark.”
He was nibbling his way down the side of her neck.
“Steve.”
“Yes, dear?”
“Take your hands off my private parts.”
“It’s agony, Kate, downright pain
.”
“That’s what you wanted Diane for.”
“Diane didn’t work out. This scalpel peddler isn’t working out for you either. We work out, Kate.”
“We stopped.”
“Let’s call it scratch and start again.”
Kate managed to get the light on and slip under his arm to freedom. “Let’s play it out to the end, then start again.”
“I think the end is coming soon for you and this character. Hell, it never really got started with Diane. The whole thing was a mistake. I don’t know how it happened. It ought to be fixed right, though. I’ll make it right this time.”
“I believe you’re jealous, Steve.”
“But you aren’t, are you?”
“No. I get depressed, not jealous.”
They could sense a fight lurking down the road. Kate gathered her negatives together and Steve changed the subject. “Anyhow, all I can say is you missed him, Kate, there’s not a shadow, not a sign of anybody in these frames.”
“I didn’t miss him,” she repeated. “Something else is going on here.”
“Are you seeing him again?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I have no idea. He just shows up like he did with us.”
“He’s a loser, Kate.” He walked her out of the darkroom. “You know I’m not.”
After fifteen years, the old man looked as he did when Dutton was a callow pre-med student. He wore the same chalky wool suit, his thick grizzled skin was more appropriate to a prospector or seaman than a teacher, the same old granny glasses slid down his nose, and behind the sour turn of his mouth were the same old bad teeth. Jordan surveyed Dutton as he did crossword puzzles, methodically, from left to right, up and down, concluding his inspection with grudging satisfaction.
Dutton sat in the front row of seats and waited for Jordan to speak. Jordan moved the flap of the cardboard carton Dutton had just placed on the desk before him. Finally the old man spoke. “Are you married, Lawrence?”