by Thomas Page
“Kate,” whispered Dutton, “it’s all right. It didn’t happen.”
“It did happen,” she cried. “Goddamn him to hell.”
Dutton’s only physical damage was a bruised back and aching ribs. Armando helped him to his feet. Nora came down the stairs, hand pressed against her breast, and embraced them all. “Now that is absolutely enough of this nonsense. Kate, I want you and the doctor to go outside to your car and start driving back to my house, right now.”
Kate was clinging to Dutton’s body and he was trying desperately to think up something to say to her. To Nora he replied, “Are you coming?”
“Well, of course, I’m coming. But you go along ahead of me, while Armando and old Nora burn this house down.” With little coaxing movements, Nora hustled them down the steps to the ground floor.
“Why?” asked Dutton.
“So he won’t have any place to come back to, that’s why, now go along. Me and Armando have done this twice before. We’re getting to be regular arsonists, aren’t we? Don’t you two worry, we’ve figured out how to get out of here.”
“You can’t do that,” Dutton mumbled.
“Of course I can. It’s one less place for Mr. Forrester to come to and it will weaken him, and besides, do you honestly think the owner will be unhappy? Nobody wants to live here, insurance is all it’s good for. Maybe they’ll plant a garden or something. You two go on.” Then Nora Stone grasped his sleeve. “Doctor. You were dead for a moment, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” answered Dutton.
“Oh, I must find out what that’s like, I do so want to talk for hours with you. Go along now, and don’t tell a soul!” Nora Stone put a finger to her lips, then like a child about to rig a water balloon, disappeared with Armando down the cellar stairs.
Dutton and Kate drove to the end of the street and parked. Through the rearview mirror, they watched the house. Kate held tightly to his arm, and Dutton kissed the top of her head. “Really, I’m okay.”
“For now.”
“For good. I’m off the hook, he won’t come after me anymore.”
“You don’t know that, Larry.”
“Yes, I do,” he answered with absolute conviction.
“I don’t understand how it happened. I saw him throw you down the stairs, then thirty seconds later you’re lying under Armando perfectly fine. He blows up buildings and when he’s gone, everything’s fine. How does it happen?”
“It’s a dream, Kate. Drugs do it, alcohol does it. All you have to do is hit the pons in the brain. The subconscious experiences it.”
“Did he really kill you?”
Dutton mulled that over, then answered. “Yes. As a dream. Which is closer to reality than consciousness.”
“Then it didn’t happen.”
“No. It happened.” It was pointless to continue this way, to try to explain Jones’s universe in which physical matter was reduced to the shining lights he had seen. “He did what he wanted to do to me. It’s a good thing I wasn’t in a plane like Jameson or running round with a gun. I’d have never survived being killed.”
“I wonder if he’ll try the same with me.”
“No, remember what Nora said, keep at him. He’ll get the message sooner or later. It worked yesterday, remember, in the motel room . . .”
“Larry, that was not Forrester in the motel room. It was the other one, the one that’s after him.”
Well, nice try, Dutton, but she didn’t buy it. “Oh, bull, sure it was.”
“It wasn’t Forrester. I think I know who it was. I’m not sure, but I will be tonight.”
“Who?”
Rather than answer, she pressed her face harder against his shoulder and he could feel tears through his shirt. Dutton stroked her head. He knew it would not help her, but he stroked her anyway. He liked stroking her and thought those feelings might be a good omen.
In the upstairs window of the house, Dutton saw a blue flash light up the second floor. Forrester was back with his sidekick. The two of them would probably spend eternity canceling each other out.
The front door opened and Armando, leading Nora Stone with a firm grip on the elbow, walked rapidly down to his pickup truck parked across the street, started the engine, and headed down the street.
Dutton turned the key and, still watching the mirror, began slowly driving after them. Smoke leaked from the house roof and threaded out of the bottom windows. Armando knew his business. He was probably one of those experienced building trashers, hired by people to wreck places for insurance.
The downstairs windows glowed a dirty orange, flickering shine and smoke poured out in a solid, cottony billow from the bedroom window. The last Lawrence Dutton ever saw of the house was the smoke pouring out, fitfully lit by another blue flash. Nobody in the neighborhood ran into the street to watch, no lights came on. Those who saw it burn were probably dancing to the flames.
They returned to Los Angeles after midnight, Kate still resting on his shoulder. That night, she insisted he call Irwin Bickel at home.
That was how Dutton learned about Rothman. After checking out next of kin, the police had told Bickel that Rothman’s wife was Katherine Burnham. The puzzling events finally fell into place.
“Rothman,” Bickel speculated, “was the first murder victim to go into the Los Angeles machine. Like Forrester, he died before his time was up so he came back to haunt his murderer. This time the murderer was dead and Rothman didn’t know that until he was dead himself. I wonder, though, why Jones or Jameson didn’t go after Forrester after he killed them.”
“None of them went into an LS . . .” Dutton said. “Even if they did, it wouldn’t make any difference. Jameson was the kind of guy who’d be relieved that his running was over. Jones was prepared to die because he knew what he was up against. Evan Branch had been ready to go for years.”
“You said you saw Jones in the house, didn’t you?”
“Yes. He had a message. Save the machine. It burned up in the house.”
“Yes, but why did you see him at all? He wasn’t in an LS.”
Dutton sighed, “Bickel, if you’d been there, you’d have seen every dead human that ever lived. Every time the two of them collided, it seemed to open up our minds . . . we saw shapes and spirits . . .” Dutton would never be able to explain how that felt. He had doodled some notes about particles colliding at the subatomic level and tearing into the human subconscious, lifting a curtain in the mind so one could see the unseeable.
“I read through the accident reports of Daniel’s crash. He’d told me he thought Jameson was a phony. Is it possible Jameson could have fiddled with Dan’s plane somehow?”
“Possible, yes,” Dutton said grimly. “Unprovable, though. Why?”
Bickel laughed. “Don’t you see how symmetrical that makes everything? History repeating itself? Jameson kills Dan. Dan kills Jameson. Dan kills Rothman. Rothman kills Dan who’s already dead.”
Kate took the news well, seeing as it was not really news. She had suspected as much after hearing Nora Stone’s description. They spent the first night in a hotel on Ocean Avenue within walking distance of Kate’s apartment tower down the street. She was determined never to go into the apartment again and canceled her lease by phone.
Nora Stone tried to be sympathetic when Kate informed her of who the other ghost was, but she had seen too much to be surprised. “I knew it was something like that, dear. I was sure it was somebody intimately connected with you. Did I tell you the house was totaled?” The Realtor had publicly said, “I don’t know what happened and I don’t care, good damned riddance.” If arson was suspected, it was not pursued beyond a fire marshal’s opinion that one of the neighborhood kids had done it. They found some burnt matches downstairs. “Armando sometimes leaves matches behind for just that reason. Now, Doctor. You must write down everything you experienced in detail
today for the society’s files. Each passing day contaminates the case. Send Kate here for a rest, then come down yourself. Better yet, I’ll pick her up today.”
Since Kate was so thoroughly poleaxed by the past few days, she docilely agreed to whatever Dutton suggested. Her husband was dead, killed by her lover, and she was in bad need of rest and amnesia. “I don’t want to go without you,” she told him.
“I’ll be down day after tomorrow. I just have to write this up.”
Nora picked her up that afternoon. Dutton looked forward to a couple days alone so he could write the experience down, get some order in it, and be alone without being hunted.
Dutton filled stacks of hotel stationery with the facts in the case of Daniel Forrester. He described the hypothesis that ghosts appear by particle interaction with the human subconscious. He dwelled on the pons in the brain, on the startlingly vivid reality of the dream world, and on the theory that before consciousness arose in mankind, all people contemplated the universe in a dream state and saw ghosts and spirits everywhere.
He ran into problems trying to get down the flavor of Jones’s theories of synchronicity and coincidence. Was his lucky gambling streak caused by some celestial wheel of fire triggered by Daniel Forrester? Was it really all that coincidental that Steven Rothman was both a murder victim and the husband of Katherine Burnham, the focus of Forrester’s earthly existence? Looking back on his days in Vegas, Dutton remembered a few poker games he had lost; maybe he’d just managed his losses so well, he thought he was winning constantly.
Yawning and stretching, Dutton decided he’d had enough for one night. Better to tackle the death experience in the morning when he’d be refreshed and rested.
But even after a good night’s sleep and a satisfying breakfast of pancakes and coffee, he immediately ran aground. Words simply could not describe the experience. He wrote, “Incredibly beautiful.” Hadn’t those been the last words of Thomas Edison, the great atheist? If not precisely those, then something to that effect. Dutton wrote, “Flying. Diamonds. Colors. Evan Branch, the peace that passeth all understanding.” He remembered how he had wanted to comfort Kate, but knew she could not see him. Dutton decided to put that aside and get to what seemed to be the key point.
Some returnees from death report that Jesus was their guide, others that close friends or relatives, now in a state of pure light, accompanied them. Daniel Forrester was very definitely the one who had accompanied Lawrence Dutton. It was Forrester who had killed him, thus fulfilling his own ghostly reason for haunting him, and ironically it was Daniel Forrester who pulled him back. Why? Dutton sensed a paradox here. For what it was worth, Lawrence Dutton knew one good thing came of all this. He would never be afraid of anything again as long as he lived.
Two days later, Dutton carried his sheaf of papers to Nora Stone’s where Kate greeted him with a long, tight hug. Nora Stone broke out champagne and they toasted each other. Then while Kate went swimming in the backyard pool, Dutton tried and failed to amplify on his death experience while Nora read through his papers.
“Never mind,” she sighed. “It’s always like that, words can describe only what we live with, not what we die with, but you did real well.”
Dutton sipped more champagne. “The problem is Kate. Forrester’s finished with me, the machine, and the house. He still hasn’t gotten to her. Has there been any sign of him?”
“No, nor of her husband,” replied Nora. “You must stay with her. Be close to her. That wicked man, it sounds as if he’ll never leave her in peace. But Mr. Rothman will be after him too, so . . . well.” Nora Stone gave up.
“What will he do to her? The same thing he did to me?”
“I can’t think of anything else. But you survived it. So will she.” Nora Stone left them alone and discreetly closed the door to the yard.
That afternoon, Dutton called Bickel, who informed him the LS system was being recalled for design adjustments. Why didn’t the two of them get together for drinks someday? Sure, Dutton replied cheerily, hoping to see him again.
They stayed a week at Nora Stone’s, swimming in her pool, eating her food, drinking her liquor, and generally imposing on her hospitality to the point where Dutton wondered if she wanted to adopt them. He detected from Nora Stone a curious envy of him, as though he were an initiate bearing great secrets in whose presence she was privileged to be. Nora Stone tiptoed round them, setting out cheese, crackers, and nuts, insisting on making their beds in the morning, setting out clean towels, and doing their washing. Nothing spoils a person more quickly than staying with somebody who enjoys being imposed upon. They felt as though Nora Stone was a mother to every frazzled soul in the state of California who’d just lost a mate or seen an apparition in the closet.
It gave Lawrence Dutton and Katherine Burnham a chance to grow close to each other. They did not fall in love, they searched, tested, and talked themselves into it, working quite diligently at loving each other. By the end of the week, having finally gotten a little heat going between themselves, they decided it was time to leave Nora Stone. She was desolate but understanding. “You’re such exalted company, dear me, but life goes on, doesn’t it?”
Dutton cleaned out Kate’s apartment, nerves jumping at the prospect of Forrester surprising him; but no one was there. He talked to several hospitals round the country, all of which were enthusiastic about having him. He mulled over an immediate offer from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, an area perpetually short of physicians. As he had at Clayton, Dutton realized he would rather practice medicine where he was needed.
For a few weeks they traveled around the country together in a van, purchased by trading in both their cars and renovated into a moving apartment. Everywhere they awaited the appearance of the ghost. They watched crowds of people in the towns through which they drove, they caught their breaths whenever they saw a long figure in the midst of a sunwashed midwestern cornfield, they studied the faces of forty-year-old men in movie theaters and state fairgrounds. Before leaving Los Angeles, Kate had nearly had a cardiac as she was driving through Venice, for she did see Forrester walking down Rose Avenue after the light changed, rerunning in detail his restless search for her the day she looked for him. Later she heard of an occasional intruder in her old apartment who bothered the new tenants, but after a guard was put at the door, nobody was bothered for long.
It was over a month later that Dutton realized they had been seeing Forrester almost daily and had not realized it. Sometimes when people look out a window from darkness to light, or stand up, sending blood rushing to the head, the retina of the eye flashes bright lights in the corner. The flash is never in direct vision. And sometimes sunlight glints off the chrome bumper of a car or hits window glass and when one turns his head to see what caused the flash, he sees nothing.
Sometimes when they were making love, camping in woods, or just thinking, a tiny blue flash would appear at the corner of their vision. They finally realized it was Daniel Forrester. Obviously he was following them, having no house to go back to, and just as obviously Steve Rothman was still after him. One night in Mississippi, as they watched galaxies of fireflies wink and fade in the flow of fragrant night, they saw the flash in the midst of them and they thought it quite beautiful. It was kind of like having a friend tag along without getting in the way. In Kentucky they spent a night in a motel and that evening, as Dutton came out of the shower, prepared to plunder Kate who was curled up in white sheets, he saw a figure standing four floors below on the parking space. Dutton motioned to Kate, who joined him in looking down at the lonely, mournful figure of Daniel Forrester watching their bedroom window with impossible grief. They shaded their eyes as a tiny blue flash blinked in the night. That was the last time they ever saw him.
Dutton decided to take the position in the Outer Banks. He sank a mortgage on a house on Roanoke Island and he and Kate spent three weeks shipping their furniture out from Los Angeles. H
e had moved from mountains to near-jungles, swampy lands bursting with lush green vegetation where most of the patients suffered from jellyfish stings, pregnancy, and broken bones. He figured they’d spend a year there, maybe buy a little boat, do some deep-sea fishing, and move on, but he had thought similarly when he went to Clayton and had stayed there close to two years.
Four months after Daniel Forrester’s house burned down in Santa Eulalia, Lawrence Dutton married Katherine Burnham on Roanoke Island in a civil ceremony presided over by a justice of the peace. And six months after that, Katherine Burnham gave birth to a baby boy whom they named Lawrence Burnham Dutton.
According to the Shinto tradition of Japan, the souls of the dead circle the earth for a set number of days, after which they depart it. Exactly where they go, Shinto does not venture to say beyond a body of lively theories concerning reincarnation.
Kate and Larry observed their child with a sense of suspicion. Blond hair did not run in either of their families, yet this kid had the kind of spun-gold hair that would stay with him all his life, as well as a smile that would look good under a pair of sunglasses. He was rambunctious and had a way of looking at them with a secret grin as if he intended to spend his infancy savoring some kind of practical joke.
They remembered he had been conceived after a beach picnic of clams and wine, with the surf coming in—“just like Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity,” Kate had said. It had been an exorbitantly delightful and lively session, full of sea, stars, thundering surf, and flashing lights.
Sometimes late at night when the kid awoke for his bottle and Dutton looked at his son’s direct, giggling expression, he wanted to slap an encephalograph on the boy’s head and see if his brain waves looked like those of someone he knew—but then again he never had gotten to see Forrester’s brain waves. The blue flashes of light had ceased around the time of the midnight roll in the sand. Dutton noticed how the child totally adored his mother, and switched on like a light whenever he heard her voice or saw her come in the room. His feelings for his father were more ambiguous, encompassing jealousy for his mother’s attention and wonder at Dutton’s big black beard which he continuously pulled and tugged. Maybe all children were like that—what the hell did Dutton know, aside from the fact that Daniel Forrester had to get away from Rothman somehow and physics teaches us that the universe is an infinite curve.