The older woman, Helen Kurtis, had fallen asleep in an overstuffed chair and was snoring. She reminded Ada of her own aunt Clarice, who could doze in a straight-backed chair, maintaining a starched dignity, as though mummified and on display.
Before falling asleep, Helen Kurtis had given a matter-of-fact account of the night’s harrowing events, assuring Ada that her son and daughter-in-law were fine—that everyone was fine—and that, no doubt, they would show up momentarily.
Ada jumped when Gabriel leaned over the sofa and spoke directly into her ear.
“It’s time to call the police, I think. For all I know, your son, urged on by imaginary voices, could be murdering the others.”
“Raymond,” Ada responded, turning to regard the woman and somewhat shocked to find herself addressing an upside-down head and expanse of white throat, “is a gentle person and has never harmed anyone.”
Gabriel somersaulted into the sofa, righted herself with languid grace, and smiled wickedly as she brushed her dress down over white thighs. “I believe you have just described the average mass murderer. It is the gentle types that are always coming unhinged. Surely the local police have a right to know that a psychotic who has abducted a poor, helpless wheelchair-bound girl, an unfortunate woman who, I understand, is quite hopelessly brain-dead…surely the police should be informed that such an individual is at large in the community. I do not know how Allan fell under his spell, but my son must be released before his life is ruined by the association. I’ve seen how these things work. If you are along for the ride on one of these killing sprees, your reputation is ruined for life. Guilt by association, you know. Blame it on the media, but that’s the way it is.”
Ada glared at this rude woman whose arrogance and sense of privilege were as overbearing as the dark scent she wore, one of those aggressive, expensive perfumes with a name like Ravish.
“Raymond is not, I assure you, embarked on a killing spree. And your son is certainly free to—”
The sound stirred them all. Gabriel looked up at the ceiling. Helen Kurtis woke, snorting. And John Story entered the cabin, opening the door and letting the whup whup whup noise in. “Looks like we have company,” he said.
Ada, her husband, Gabriel, and Helen all stood on the porch and watched the big helicopter settle in the clearing by the lake. The sun’s reflection in the water shivered.
Three men, all of them wearing suits, disembarked from the silver chopper and moved gingerly—displaying great distaste for the muddy ground that sucked at shiny shoes and tailored pants legs—toward the cabin.
“Jesus,” Gabriel said, her voice off to Ada’s right, “it’s Peake.”
Ada disliked the man instantly. His lips were too red, and his habit of leaning forward and speaking in a low just-between-you-and-me voice reminded her of a smarmy talk show host trying to woo gullible viewers with a whisper. He also had the annoying habit of running his long fingers through his hair while tilting his head back, as though he were luxuriating under a hot shower, and if someone had told him that this mannerism would endear him to people… well, all Ada could say was: someone had done him a great disservice.
He sprawled in the sofa with his head back and said his mission was one of great urgency, life and death, as it were. He told them his name was Dr. Roald Peake and that he was the head of a corporation involved in pharmaceutical research and that Mrs. Allan-Tate could corroborate that.
Everyone looked at Gabriel Allan-Tate as though she would do just this, perhaps with some precise, formal gesture, but she seemed disoriented, staring out the window with an expression that might have indicated poor digestion or the end of a love affair.
“Gabriel,” Peake said, coming off the sofa with a serpentine glide and swooping an arm around the woman’s shoulder. He leaned toward her ear, bowing to do so. “If you are worried about that housekeeping unpleasantness, that nasty smell in the foyer, let me assure you that it is taken care of. I urge you to put it from your mind and never approach it again.”
He steered Gabriel to a chair—as though he were the host and this his house—and resumed his position on the sofa.
“I have just recently learned that Mr. Harold Gainesborough and the people who are presently in his company are all participants in an unfortunate drug experiment, administered by Gabriel’s late husband, Marlin Tate, a man of genius but poor judgment. These experiments were conducted while the people involved were patients at Harwood Psychiatric. That such a thing could happen is lamentable…but that milk is, as they say, spilled, and I am here to prevent some greater tragedy from occurring. There is every reason to believe that this drug, this Ecknazine, has powerful hallucinogenic properties which may be linked to certain aging processes…which is to say that one or more of Dr. Tate’s subjects may experience something equivalent to an LSD flashback. Only…well, more dramatic. Dr. Tate destroyed all of his notes, unfortunately, but”—here Peake smiled in a manner that was intended, no doubt, to be ingratiating, but which made Ada shiver—”as a competitor I was aware of some properties of the drug.”
“Spies,” Gabriel said.
Peake shrugged, continued. “The drug established a sort of communal bond, a psychic link. Mind you, the subjects might never have met, might not be aware of the influence they exerted on each other. Dr. Tate spoke of a resonant effect. Ah.” Peake regarded his listeners with what Ada took to be his first genuine expression: one of frustration and anger. “I don’t know what he meant by this ‘resonant’ effect. Perhaps he didn’t know himself. But, here they are, all these Ecknazine folks, all come together. It could be very volatile, could cause psychological damage to one or all of them. Not a flashback, exactly. More…ah… explosive. Or…” He ran his fingers through his hair again, closing his eyes. “Perhaps nothing. In any event, better safe than sorry, and so I am here.”
And what, Ada wanted to know, did that exactly mean, his being here?
Observation. That was the word he used. He wanted the Ecknazine subjects under observation for a period of time. He wanted to run some psychological and physiological checks on them to determine that they were in no danger.
Ada shot a quick look at her husband, who was standing next to the overstuffed chair that housed the ample Helen Kurtis. His arms were folded, and he was glowering with bulldog truculence, and he saw his wife look at him and spoke back with his red-rimmed, seen-it-and-suffered eyes: we are not going that route again, his eyes said.
Ada nodded slowly. Her boy didn’t like to be studied and had not taken kindly to the six weeks he’d been at the Simpec Center for the Study of Human Potential. It had been a great setback for Raymond. It had been something of a setback for Simpec, too, actually. The director of Simpec, a heavyset, excitable man, had accused poor Raymond—who had only been thirteen years old, for heaven’s sake—of outlandish acts of sabotage and—really!—mind control.
Chapter 14
HARRY WAS WORKING on it, working on putting his world to rights, restoring order. One mental baby step at a time. He sat next to the window in the backseat of the car. Emily was propped woodenly on his left. Occasionally she would lean against him as the car sped around a curve.
The window was down and the wind ran green, honeysuckle fingers through his hair. His sight was fully restored, and he studied the Carolina countryside through the tinted glasses, speaking the sights silently, like a foreigner practicing his new tongue: farm, tractor, oak, dog, pond.
Cautiously, he reached up and took the sunglasses off. The world was less demure, brighter. Cows were revealed, loafing in the shadows cast by green willows.
He gathered strength from the scene. Nothing like cows to center and calm a man. Visual sedatives, cows. The Sneeze That Destroyed New Jersey had begun with a family outing whose sole purpose was to “see cows in their natural habitat.” Hay fever had subverted that purpose and taught everyone a lesson in acceptance and given birth to world peace (after the unfortunate but necessary destruction of New Jersey) and…
/> A small explosion—that registered on Harry’s ear as an oof!—was immediately followed by a bouncing deceleration and a number of exclamations from his traveling companions, and an explanatory shout from Raymond that said it all: flat!
They all climbed out of the car, and Raymond set about the business of replacing the tire. Fortunately, the trunk did contain a spare, fully inflated, and, after much searching, a jack was also discovered.
“Please, my Lord,” Raymond said, holding up a hand, “Lord Allan and I have the situation well in hand. If you will attend to the ladies, perhaps entertain them with humorous anecdotes, Allan and I will set things to rights in no time.”
“Raymond—” Harry began, but he wasn’t sure what he intended to say. Indeed, Raymond Story was at his best when engineering the changing of a tire. He brought to the task an enthusiasm that was perhaps unwarranted, as though it were a moon launch he was supervising, but he did get the job done, with surprising efficiency considering the high rhetoric with which he surrounded the task. The monkey contributed positive energy by jumping up and down on the roof of the car.
“Voilà!” Raymond was saying in no time, waving them forward, and Harry was wheeling Emily back into the sunlight when two things occurred.
Something fluttered to the dust and weeds at his feet, and he bent down to pick it up. It appeared to be a piece of white cardboard, bent in the middle, but as he rose with it, it turned over in his hand, opening to reveal the satiny finish of the photograph. It was the postcard he had purchased from a dead—leave it!—a postcard of a large, pink hotel, perched gloriously close to the ocean, white sand and sea grass in the foreground, a confettilike celebration of seagulls falling toward the earth, pulling the eye with them, drawn by the small, fearless girl in a green bathing suit, holding her hand high with bread crumbs for the winged multitudes.
Amy.
He looked closer. No mistake. Amy. The way she stood, all her weight on one foot, her body bowed forward as though she were a human sail: Amy. And why not? Hadn’t he snatched this card from that rack, there, amid the AMY SOUVENIRS? It made perfect sense.
He turned the card over and read: St. Petersburg Arms, St. Petersburg, Florida. This hotel, built in 1918 by millionaire playboy Andrew Mallon, is a landmark for… Raymond had just been speaking of the St. Petersburg Arms. Yes. The mysterious Duke lived there.
Amy had never been to St. Petersburg, Florida. What did this mean?
A shadow darkened the blank surface of the postcard, as though mirroring Harry’s own clouded thoughts.
“Look!” someone shouted, and Harry turned in the direction of the shout—it had been Rene—and followed her gaze upward.
The cloudless sky was infinity blue, and a great, black dropcloth flapped across it, a shape-changing hole in the sky that made Harry’s soul cower before he even identified the monstrous form, before it lay, illogically but perfectly, over the image of the creature that did not exist, the dream he had dreamt at the bottom of despair: the Ralewing.
“It’s a fucking monster,” Rene said. “I didn’t know they got that big.”
They don’t, Harry thought. But what did he know? He had never seen one the size of an eighteen-wheeler before—but then, outside of Zod Wallop, he’d never seen one at all.
He heard Raymond then, his voice commanding but not, oddly, panicked. “Better get back in the car,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if its destination is the same as ours.”
Ada stood, clutching her handbag as though preparing to wring it, a ritualized stance that all Story women assumed before doing battle with clerks, salesman, tax assessors, any sort of authoritarian impediment to their will. She was a woman who did not anger easily, but she had listened to this Peake long enough. Ada spoke. “When my Raymond returns, I am taking him home,” she said. “I can tell you right now that he will not want to go into any institution. He doesn’t like such places, and judging from what you’ve just told me I can see he has been right all along. I might also remind you that he is on his honeymoon. He and his bride are not going anywhere for observation. I don’t know if you have ever been married, Dr. Peake, but I can tell you that the newly married are shy and shun close scrutiny. I’m sure Raymond will be glad, at some later date, to fill out any questionnaires you might find appropriate, but he will not be shuffling around in any more hospital gowns, not while my husband and I draw a breath.” She extended a hand toward her husband, who moved quickly to her side and hugged her in a show of solidarity.
One of Peake’s colleagues, standing by the door, snorted. “We wouldn’t want to upset them newlyweds, would we?”
Ada glared at him as he rocked back on his heels. He was a grinning man with a crew cut and small teeth—lizard teeth, Ada thought.
Peake raised a hand. “Quiet, Karl. Mrs. Story does not understand the gravity of the situation. There are people, unscrupulous people, rivals of mine, who are interested in the Ecknazine research and its subjects. I’m afraid that the spies Gabriel alluded to do exist in this business, and despite the most rigorous security measures I have reason to believe that there may be other interested parties in the vicinity. If they find Raymond and his friends before we do…well, their desire for knowledge would no doubt outweigh any other considerations. Your son and his companions could get hurt.”
“It is high time we called the police,” Helen Kurtis said, pushing herself out of the armchair and marching to the phone.
A muffled explosion shook the cabin; the windowpane rattled in its frame.
The man called Karl turned and ran out the door. Everyone followed him.
They stood on the lawn and stared down at the lake, at what remained of the burning helicopter (black metal wrestling with yellow flames), at the black column of smoke that probed the blue sky like a leprous tentacle, at the man running up the hill, his leather jacket identifying him as the pilot.
Ada noticed—with no surprise—that Karl had produced a handgun. The other man who had accompanied Peake came around the corner of the cabin, a rifle cradled in his arms.
There was fire on the lake itself, lines of fire that stretched on across the muddy bank. It was as though a giant hand had raked the ground, each finger-carved furrow sprouting flames.
The paths of flames ran past the helicopter and up the far hill into the trees. The top of a pine tree emitted a dirty thread of smoke. Ada leaned into her husband’s strong embrace. A smoldering-tar stink surrounded them, and she felt stained by a foulness in the air, impaled by a curious, wild panic that was unwarranted. Whatever had happened, she was witnessing its aftermath; nothing immediately threatening was to be seen.
“What?” she asked—more exclamation than interrogative as her husband suddenly squeezed her sharply, and she saw the black shape unfold above the pines and sail, like a funereal kite, down from the mountains, toward them.
“Dear God!” she heard Helen Kurtis exclaim. The old woman’s gravel voice broke. “It can’t be.”
Ah, Ada thought, no less frightened but suddenly certain of the phenomenon. It can be.
It came toward them, moving with an uncanny, sinister shimmer. It uttered a piercing cry that made her heart race. The long stalk of its neck unfurled, stretched, as though it were attempting to sniff them out, bird-dog fashion, and then it twisted violently in the air and plummeted earthward.
They screamed as one (Peake and his minions, Gabriel, Helen, Ada, John) and fled toward the cabin.
Its shadow fell over Ada, a shroud. The reek of terror filled her lungs, and she thought she might explode, but then the sunlight came again, and she fell, breaking her fall with her hands, and blinked at the running shadow on the ground before her and watched it climb the cabin porch and disappear.
She stood up in time to see it dwindle on the horizon, an undulating black shape gliding over the mountains, easily mistaken at this distance for a plastic trash bag dragged heavenward by hungry winds.
The day was still and cloudless, however, and Ada knew wha
t she’d seen. The Ralewing’s spewed vomit still burned on the land—the flames were now gone from the lake—and the helicopter shimmered in near invisible fire, a skeletal mirage.
“I wonder if I could talk to you a minute,” Ada said. Helen Kurtis turned and smiled tentatively.
Ada’s husband whispered in her ear. “Ada,” he said, loading her name with caution and doubt.
Ada looked at her husband. “I have to tell someone, John. I don’t trust that Peake fellow. This woman is a close friend of Harry Gainesborough’s, and she’s no fool. She knows what she saw today. I hardly think she’ll be shocked by what we have to show her.”
Helen smiled tentatively. “Well, I hardly know what I saw.”
“You see,” John said, looking hard at his wife.
Ada took a deep breath. “You saw one of those creatures from Mr. Gainesborough’s book Zod Wallop. Nasty things. Raymond had an unholy fear of them.”
“I don’t know, really, what I saw.”
“Ada,” John Story said, “I don’t believe Mrs. Kurtis cares to hear about all this. We’ve all had a shock. We just need to find Raymond and—”
Ada inclined her head toward the cabin where Peake had gone to make telephone calls, accompanied by Gabriel and the others. “He knows. It’s clear enough. He’s so excited he’s about to burst. He wants to get my Raymond and find out how it’s done and cause all manner of trouble.” Ada thought her anger would override her fear, her sense of helplessness, but suddenly the momentum failed her. She faltered, and then, like a hiccup, tears surprised and embarrassed her. She staggered, instantly wretched, and assaulted by tears, she fled down to the lake, her husband’s shouts behind her.
Ada could not stop sobbing. She stared into the sun-smeared water, saw her own stout reflection, the fuzzy halo of her hair; saw then the shape loom up behind her, thought it was her husband and was prepared to be irritated with the hand upon her shoulder.
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