Father Sullivan felt the chill dampness of the earth as it penetrated the knees of his pants. Shifting his weight, he picked up one of the Shasta daisies from the planter beside him. To his right, he saw a line of seven identical flowers, each supported within a symmetrical mound of gently patted earth. Sullivan saw an optimism in the cheery faces of the blossoms. If all went well, these perennials would pass the years with him. Together they'd welcome each new spring, each demonstration of God's miracle of rebirth.
Sullivan rose to his feet, his critical eyes surveying the yard. The buildings and grounds were a dreadful mess. The church and rectory had been closed for ten years. So he guessed he was facing a decade of yard work.
Already he'd begun to feel a certain affection for St. Joe's. In fact, he had begun to think of it as his home, bequeathed to him directly by Father Hamilton Mosely.
Sullivan had never lived in a home of his own. For him, growing up had been a six-decade game of hopscotch; he had leapt from orphanage to army, then to seminary. From graduate school, he'd jumped, finally, to a fixed location: a faculty position as psychologist in residence at St. Mark's College. There he'd had a private room at the campus rectory, a rectory shared with three other priests.
Sullivan marveled at the memory: when he'd joined the priesthood he'd fully expected to have a parish. All this time a shepherd, and never a flock.
He looked at his watch. Almost ten o'clock. Why, he'd been mowing and pruning and weeding and planting for three hours! He hoped his efforts would show the community that St. Joe's was coming back to life.
Sweat poured down his face. A while ago he had considered banding his forehead with a handkerchief, but he'd hesitated, fearing how that might appear to prospective parishioners. What if they mistook him for some gray-haired, sixty-five-year-old hippie, instead of their new spiritual leader?
Again, Sullivan chuckled, realizing that either description might be equally appropriate.
"Excuse me . . ."
The voice came from over his shoulder.
Sullivan turned to see a youthful police officer standing behind him. He had to blink two or three times before he realized his uniformed visitor was a young lady. She wore mirrored sunglasses, her sandy blond hair was tucked up under her Stetson. "I'm looking for the priest," she said, "Father William Sullivan?"
Sullivan wiped his fingers on his pant leg before extending his shaking hand. "I'm Sullivan," he said, smiling, "sorry I'm out of uniform."
She didn't smile. "I'm Sergeant Shane," she said. Her handshake was firm and brief. "I'm from the Vermont State Police. We're cooperating with the RCMP in the investigation of the apparent kidnapping of a Father Hamilton Mosely who disappeared from a hospital in Montreal."
Sullivan nodded.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions, if I may."
She was exceedingly businesslike, but her professional manner did nothing to help Sullivan accustom himself to an attractive young woman in a state trooper's uniform.
"How may I help you, Sergeant?"
"You had been visiting Father Mosely just before the kidnapping incident?"
"That's right."
"Did he have any other visitors that you recall?"
Sullivan thought for a moment, remembering the old blind priest who'd struck out at Mosely with his cane. "No. No one from outside. Just the other patients . . . ."
"Right. And did any of these other patients say or do anything that seemed strange or suspicious to you?"
Should he tell? No one else had witnessed Father Lemire's attack on Father Mosely. What had the blind man said? Something about Lazarus . . .? "The other patients, they're all elderly priests. Some are not quite themselves . . . ."
She nodded stiffly.
"One thing I remember: they were upset about something. All of them. The fact is, they were all acting strangely—nervous, agitated—but no one could tell us why."
"You got any ideas, Father?"
Sullivan shook his head. He waited, expecting another question, but it didn't come. The young policewoman—possibly a lapsed Catholic judging from her deferential demeanor—shrugged helplessly. "Well, Father, thanks. Mostly I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know I'm on the case." She presented Father Sullivan with a business card. "Please call me if you think of anything, okay?"
"Of course."
"And if you should stumble onto anything in the house, or maybe in the church . . ."
He nodded and held up her card.
"Okay then, thank you very much, sir." The young woman walked away. Sullivan watched her take about six steps down the walk, then she stopped, turned around. She removed her sunglasses and squinted at the priest. Now the youthful police officer looked like a puzzled little girl. "Father?"
"Yes, Miss Shane?"
"I just can't understand it. I mean, why would anybody kidnap an old man like that?"
Sullivan moved down the walk and stood in front of Sgt. Shane.
She looked at the ground for a moment, then back at Sullivan's eyes. "Could it be . . . do you think it could be some kind of blackmail setup, Father?"
Blackmailing the Catholic Church? A novel idea, but way too strange a notion. "I have no idea, Miss Shane, none at all. I wish I did."
He shook his head sadly. It was irrational, but he felt guilty that he had nothing to offer this young lady.
She put on her mirror sunglasses, covering her puzzled eyes. "Thanks, Father Sullivan." Sgt. Shane's posture stiffened; suddenly she was a cop again. "Don't forget to call me if you come up with anything."
"I won't, Sergeant. I promise." Again they shook hands. The young policewoman did a practiced about-face and strode back to her cruiser.
Father Sullivan watched until the green and yellow police car pulled away. Should he have mentioned the investigation he planned to conduct on his own? No, it would only make him look foolish. The discouraged young policewoman gave him an idea of what he—a non-professional—was likely to be up against.
Returning to the house, he chuckled to himself, wondering what the townspeople would think if they noticed their new priest's first visitor was a state cop.
Burlington, Vermont
Karen fidgeted at her desk in the health center. Leaning forward, elbows on the blotter, she massaged her temples, oblivious to the clutter of files, letters, and referrals before her. She was so tired. She hadn't slept much last night. Her conversations with Jeff had lasted far into the morning hours. When she had finally crawled into bed, alone, she was unable to sleep.
Now she was confused and nearly in tears.
Her mind churned with fantasies that had suddenly become impossible realities. The world had changed for her, changed frightfully, changed to a degree that, she feared, might never permit sleep again.
Karen glanced at her watch. Her session with Alton Barnes would begin in just fifteen minutes. She didn't want to face him. Maybe she couldn't. Surely, she was too foggy to proceed competently. But she had a responsibility. Mr. Barnes's problem had taken on an unexpected new depth. Karen had no choice but to go on with the therapy, to help him if she could.
Her mind seemed to get fuzzier as she considered all. horrendous implications of the many things Jeff had told her. The Academy, the UFO research, the outrageous use of a multimillion-dollar computer: it all seemed like something out of a paranoid's nightmare.
Paranoid?
Could she be wrong about Jeff?
She'd miscalled things before, that was for sure. Was Jeffrey Chandler nothing more than a classic paranoid, slowly coaxing her, through charisma and fatigue, into his magical delusions?
Oh, Lord, she just didn't know for sure. She couldn't tell. Again she was forced to consider how imprecise a science psychology really was. Today her own fatigue contributed to its imprecision.
If Jeff were telling the truth, then the fabric of what Karen thought of as reality had started to fray. If he were lying, or delusional, then she may have already backed herself into enough of a
corner to result in professional suicide. Either way she was in trouble. By letting Jeff into her life she had dared to disturb her world. Now she was paying the price: she might be in great and possibly immediate danger.
She looked at her watch again. Five more minutes.
At the moment, her most important concern had to be for her patient. Her memory worked to isolate those parts of her marathon dialogue with Jeff that pertained directly to Mr. Barnes.
She tried to recall last night's conversation. Casey had just gone to bed and they were alone in the living room.
"So I'm dying to know, Karen, just why did you phone me at home? I'm sure it wasn't just to see how rude I can be."
She looked down at her glass, swirling the remaining gin and tonic, now mostly melted ice. "I couldn't help but remember what you told me about the miracle at Fatima, how you think it wasn't a religious apparition at all, but some kind of UFO experience . . ."
"Right. I was serious about that, you know."
"I know. So am I." She wet her lips with the ice water. "Jeff, I can't tell you his name, of course, but I have a patient, a real nice older man, who experienced what I supposed might be a hallucinatory episode. But then I thought of that big ball of light you described. I think he saw something very much like that, and it made me think that maybe . . ."
"Maybe your man saw a UFO?"
"Is it possible, Jeff? I mean, your job is to debunk them, I know, but you told me—"
"I told you that I believe lots of people are seeing strange things in the sky. Seventy thousand witnesses at Fatima couldn't all be experiencing the same hallucination, right? And cameras don't hallucinate, yet photographers very definitely recorded a ball of light. Even now—almost every day—people are photographing all sorts of oddball aerial phenomena. At the Academy we've got literally thousands of UFO photographs, lots of fakes, I admit, but many—"
"Jeff, could someone have seen a UFO around here?"
"Why not? They're spotted just about everywhere. Not only do I believe it's possible, but I bet I can tell you where your man saw it."
"No—"
"In Hobston, Vermont. Right? That's close to here isn't it?"
Karen was speechless. She gawked at him, utterly silenced. When she spoke her tone was flat, "How did you know that, Jeff?"
Jeff smiled, apparently finding ill-timed amusement in his display of mind reading.
"Did I tell you it was Hobston, Jeff? Come on, how did you know?"
He got up from his chair and walked over to sit beside her on the sofa. She felt herself pulling away, experiencing something irrational, something like fear.
"Relax, Karen, it was just an educated guess. I've helped to collect an awful lot of statistical data about so-called paranormal phenomena: UFOs, disappearances, monster sightings, weird time warps, apparitions, both religious and diabolical, and so on. And yes, I'm talking about the kinds of stuff you read about in those lurid supermarket tabloids. But all the real data seem to suggest that there are certain places in this wonderful world of ours that, for reasons unknown, experience a disproportionately high percentage of paranormal phenomena. Fortean researchers call these areas 'Windows.' Occultists call them 'Gateways.'"
"Windows? Gateways? What do you mean?"
"Metaphorical descriptions of real phenomena. Both words suggest openings, places where the division separating the known from the unknown worlds has broken down, or, in some cases, has vanished altogether. The late Ivan Sanderson studied this 'Window' phenomenon—'vile vortices' he called them, somewhat melodramatically—and he identified at least six of them around the world. But as we gather more data we discover there are many, many more. Sanderson identified the biggies. Probably the best known is the so-called Bermuda Triangle. But there are others. For example, so many ships have disappeared in the Devil's Sea off the coast of Japan that even today fishermen are careful to avoid it."
"You believe in that stuff, Jeff?"
"I believe in the data I've seen. There's just so much of it.
"And you're telling me that one of these 'Windows' is in Hobston?" Karen couldn't tell if she was experiencing honest skepticism, or if her mind was literally rebelling, denying, fighting against an uncomfortable truth. Perhaps her suspicion was some atavistic survival instinct that protected the mind rather than the body.
Jeff continued, heedless of her discomfort'. "The fact is, you have at least two Windows here in Vermont, three if you want to count Lake Champlain and that monster people keep seeing there. One is in the southern part of the state, the area around Glastonbury Mountain, near Bennington. But the one in Hobston has always been more . . . active.
"Weird stories associated with both these places go back hundreds of years. In the Hobston area, there were Indian tales involving spirits and monsters. Then, when European settlers began to move in, they discovered what the Indians already knew—that there are some very strange places in this new land. Colonists reported weird lights, eerie screeching, inexplicable odors, giant lizards, and 'wondrous horny beasts.' More recently, in the late forties and early fifties, a total of seven people—some of them lifelong Hobston residents—vanished without a trace. And check this out: in 1987 the only color photo of a Vermont Bigfoot sighting was taken there."
"Bigfoot sightings?" Karen shook her head. "Oh, boy, I think I need another drink."
Jeff held up his hand. "No. Please wait a minute. I know how all this sounds. I know it's a lot to digest at once. But let's not discuss it seriously now, then tomorrow toss it all off as drunken blither."
She stood up. "I'm not drunk."
"No. I know. And neither am I. But you asked me, Karen, and I'm telling you, seriously, soberly: Hobston, Vermont, has had a bad reputation for a long time. Its well-known as a haunted place; it's been perceived that way for hundreds of years. Even its name is almost a sure giveaway. It's an odd quirk of fate, I admit, but the word Hobston comes from 'hob,' which is an old English word meaning 'devil."
"Devil's Town, Vermont . . ."
Jeff shrugged as if to say, See what I mean? Then he went to get each of them another drink.
"Karen, Mr. Barnes is here." Laura Welsh peered around the partly open door.
Jarred from her reverie, Karen looked up, bleary-eyed. Automatically, she began to straighten papers on her desk. "Is Jeff Chandler out there, too."
"Yes, he just arrived." Laura stared at her for a moment'. "Karen . . ."
"I'm okay, Laura. I'm just tired, that's all."
"Sure. But if you need anything..
"I know. Thanks."
Laura turned away, almost closing the door. Then she stopped, turned back. "Oh, Karen, Gloria Cook, the woman from Dr. Gudhausen's office, phoned this morning from Boston. I guess she's been in there cleaning the place up, and that sort of thing."
"Yes?"
"She said you had asked her about the therapist Dr. Gudhausen had been trying to get in touch with . . ."
Karen shook her head, confused.
"You know, that friend of Gudhausen's? The Catholic priest . . ."
"Oh yeah, right. Dr. Gudhausen was going to ask him something about Lucy Washburn."
"That's it. Well, Ms. Cook located the name and phone number for you. She's pretty sure the man Dr. Gudhausen had in mind is on the faculty of St. Mark's College in Utica, New York. Want me to set up a phone consultation for you?"
"Oh yes, please." She thought for a minute. "What's his name, do you know?"
"Do I know? 'Course I know. His name's Sullivan, Father William J. Sullivan."
"Nope, no sir, I don't know if I can go along with nothin' like that." Alton Barnes shook his head. His gaze jumped from Jeff Chandler, to Karen, then back to Jeff. "I mean, talking to this lady, to Dr. Bradley here, is one thing, but I don't know about this hypnosis business. Doc Sparker never told me nothin' about no hypnosis." He crossed his arms and sat back, spine pressed tightly against the straight-backed chair.
Alton looked defiantly at Jeff. Jeff looked a
t Karen. She noted how the patient's eyes automatically gravitated to the man in the room. But, by gosh, she was the doctor, not Jeff, and it was up to her to win Alton's confidence and cooperation.
"Look, Mr. Barnes," she said, "no matter what you may have heard about hypnosis, as I use it here it's little more than a relaxation technique. It's no more painful than deep breathing, and nowhere near as dangerous as a cigarette after dinner. The theory is, the more you can relax, the more you'll be able to recall. You said it yourself: you can't remember anything after you saw that circle of light in the sky."
Alton uncrossed his arms and let his hands fall to his lap. He studied the back of his right hand like a penitent schoolboy in the principal's office. Karen too looked at his fingers. They were sun darkened, leathery, rugged-looking. She noted the gray crescents of dirt under his well-chewed nails.
On the phone, he had displayed only slight resistance to the idea of meeting Jeff and allowing him to sit in on the session. But when they introduced the topic of UFOs. Mr. Barnes had seemed to back off. Now the hypnotism. She was throwing too much at him too fast.
I'll let him alone for a minute, she decided. I'll give him time to think. Maybe he'll come around.
Alton systematically cracked the knuckles of his right hand, one finger at a time. When he finished he said, "I know how you're tryin' to do right by me, Dr. Bradley. I appreciate it and I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but . . . you know, this business about gettin' hypnotized, I mean."
"I promise you. Mr. Barnes, hypnotism is nothing like it's portrayed in the movies and on TV. I guarantee you'll remember everything we talk about, and I won't ask you to do anything I wouldn't ask you to do right now. All I really want is to help you remember. When we find out what's bothering you, we'll be a lot further along toward helping you to feel better."
Alton raked the fingers of his right hand through his thick white hair. Then he looked at his hands again. Karen was afraid he'd start cracking the other set of knuckles. In a moment he looked up at Jeff. "And if we find out what I seen really is one a them flyin' saucers of yours, then what?"
Jeff looked to Karen for help. She decided to let him answer this one on his own, and she waited with Mr. Barnes to hear what he'd say.
The Reality Conspiracy Page 21