The Mysteries

by Lisa Tuttle

  “What happened, he slip it back into your pocket?” I brightened. “If you had a check, we might be able to trace him through the bank.”

  “It wasn't a check. It was a lottery ticket. My share of the winnings turned out to be five hundred thousand pounds.”

  I whistled admiringly. “Some coincidence.”

  He shook his head. “I never bought that ticket. My mother found it in my jacket pocket about a week later; she's the one who thought to check the numbers. It came from a local newsagent's, where I used to buy my copy of Time Out. The guy who worked there even identified me, said he remembered me buying it. Well, he remembered me, no doubt, I was in there every week, but I never bought a lottery ticket. I just didn't. But there it was, I won the money.”

  Half a million pounds and the ability to see into the future. Good deal, I thought.

  “So what about these visions?” I asked. “Are they always as exciting as knowing when and where you're going to run into somebody like me?”

  He smiled reluctantly. “Go on, mock. Some of them are like that. Sometimes I don't even know what they're about—they're that inconsequential. I ‘see' something, out of context, then a week or two later I realize that it's happening. It's kind of like déjà vu. Other things—well, some are to do with other people.” He grimaced. “I knew one of my sisters was pregnant before she'd done the test, and I knew when she miscarried, before she'd told anyone. And some of them are still ahead in the future.” He shrugged. “Whether they're going to come true or not, there's bugger-all I can do about it.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean? You didn't have to come here this morning.”

  He looked surprised, as if staying away never occurred to him. “But you wanted to talk to me.”

  “So?”

  “I guess I wanted to talk to you, too.”

  I sighed. “Well, what if I hadn't turned up?”

  “But you did.”

  “But how long would you have waited? Would you have come back again tomorrow? I thought you didn't know exactly when something was going to happen. How long would you have kept coming here with your two cups of coffee, trying to make your vision come true?”

  “It's not like that. It's just a feeling . . . it was easy for me to come here today, I woke up early anyway, and it's near my work. If you didn't show up, I would have phoned you.”

  “Well, thank you for returning my call,” I said, drinking. “And thanks for this—I was about ready to kill for a cup of coffee.”

  “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

  I wondered if his visions included sound. “What do you think?”

  “You want me to rescue Peri.”

  “I want your help to bring her back.”

  He didn't respond to this distinction. “Do you know where she is?”

  There was no reason to pull my punches with someone who'd just confessed to Second Sight. “I think she's in the Otherworld—whatever that means—with Mider.”

  “But do you have any idea how to find her?”

  “I have some ideas. There are certain places, and certain times, when there are ways through, and these places usually have stories attached to them, local traditions. I'm guessing there's some kind of link, or doorway, not far from where she was last seen. If we go up and scout around about, oh, say, a twenty-mile radius of that phone box, I think we could find it.”

  “I think I'd know something like that if I was near it.” He put his empty cup down and toyed with his earrings for a moment, frowning. “In the story, it's not clear that Etain wanted to go back.”

  “If she gave her husband a sign, she did.”

  “But if she didn't? If she stood by and said nothing and let him take his own daughter to be his wife—how sick is that?”

  “Maybe she couldn't speak. She was under a spell.”

  He winced as he tugged at his earlobe. “Exactly. So she couldn't speak. She couldn't even choose to go away with Mider in the first place—he had to trick her husband into giving her up. She never had any say in what happened to her. It had nothing to do with what she wanted. It's all about the contest between the two men, or rather the god and the man, each a king in a different realm. Etain isn't a woman, she's a thing. It's not just that her desires don't count; they don't exist. She might as well be a magic box, or a prize cow that the men are fighting over.”

  “Give that man an A-plus in feminist criticism,” I said.

  “Peri is not an object. I won't treat her like one.”

  “I'm not asking you to. Etain is obviously a symbol. But Peri's real, even if she's caught up in some ancient story.”

  “She's not my property. I didn't give her away and I can't take her back. Only if she wants to come back with me. I don't want to bargain with Mider over who gets the girl; I won't play that game. If Peri needs my help, she only has to ask. I'd do anything she asked.” Raw emotion was naked in those last words, and I knew then that he'd never stopped loving her.

  “What if she can't ask?”

  He frowned and shook his head, fiddling again with the ear-rings, pulling them in a way that had to hurt. “He'll have to let her talk; if I see him again, he'll have to. It's her decision.”

  “What if she thinks she doesn't need rescuing, but she really does?”

  “According to who?”

  “People can be deluded, deranged . . . you wouldn't let her destroy herself?”

  “Take her away and lock her up for her own good, is that what you mean?”

  I bristled at the contempt in his eyes. “Who said anything about locking up?”

  “Drag her back here, then. Force her to live the way somebody else says is right. No. If she wants to stay, that's it. We don't have to understand her choice, just respect it.”

  I'd finished my coffee. I stared across the square at some strutting pigeons. The sun was warm on my face, the top of my head, my hands. Hugh was with me, whatever his supposed moral reservations, and we had a mission; I should have felt great. Instead, I felt weary, and a little frightened. I was aware of an aching, hollow emptiness in my chest, which seemed to have been with me for most of my life, and I thought of the dark, tomblike space in my dream where I'd found myself imprisoned, having lost both Jenny and Fred.

  Out of the silence, I thought I heard a bell ringing—distant, muffled, as if sounding from another world.

  I shivered and tried to ignore it, forcing myself to speak.

  “What happened to change your mind?”

  He looked puzzled. “How do you mean?”

  “You wouldn't help me, before. According to you, she'd made her choice and left you. Now you think she might want to come back to you.”

  He took a deep breath, nodding. “I've seen her. I mean, ‘seen' her, living with me. I don't know how far ahead it might be, but—there's a baby.”

  I could still hear the bell, ringing far away. For a split second I imagined I was back on that Scottish hillside in the dark cold of an October night and that everything since then had been just a dream.

  Hugh was looking at me with an odd expression. “Are you going to answer that?”

  Belatedly, finally, I recognized my own telephone's ring tone and scrabbled to dig it out of my pocket. “Hello?”

  “Ian—oh, Ian—” a woman's voice, American, Texan, tearful; almost unbearably familiar. For one heart-stopping moment I thought it was Jenny.

  “I have to talk to you—you have to help me—I'm afraid I'm going crazy!”

  “Calm down, Laura. Take a deep breath. You're not crazy. Tell me what's wrong.”

  “Polly's dead!” She gulped and fell silent.

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “I read her obituary last night, on the Internet. Your friend died in a car crash in Texas in 1995.”

  “But I saw her! How can she be dead? I know there was an accident; she told me she'd been in a terrible accident, it was how she'd lost her leg.”

  My eyebrows went up at that.
I was certain Laura had never mentioned her friend was a one-legged woman.

  “I tried to e-mail her last night and it bounced back. I went to find her phone number—she wasn't listed, but there was one for her sister. When I called her, she told me Polly died years ago—long before Peri disappeared! I didn't believe her—how could I?—after a while she got pissed off and didn't want to talk to me, but she faxed me a copy of the obituary, and a piece from the local paper, and also the phone number of the mortuary, and the crematorium and the public records office if I needed further confirmation.” She broke off. I could hear her breathing raggedly.

  “Laura, I'm so sorry. You must be in a state of shock.”

  “It gets worse. There's more. Just now—this morning—look, I hate talking into this dinky thing—I'm outside the underground station—can I come see you? I need to talk to you. I'm sorry I fired you. I need your help. I've changed my mind about everything. Everything.”

  “I'm in the West End right now. Soho. Just having a talk with Hugh Bell-Rivers. Why don't you meet us for breakfast?” I glanced at Hugh as I said this, but he wasn't paying attention. His eyes were fixed on the other side of the square. I followed the direction of his gaze, toward Number 23, but there was nothing going on.

  “Soho? Where?”

  I suggested an American-style diner, which she knew, and it was agreed.

  Putting the phone away I raised my voice to get Hugh's attention. “What's so interesting?”

  “I just saw someone go into the basement of Number 23.”

  “Really?” I jumped up. Hugh didn't move.

  “No point. I've seen her before.”

  “So who is she?”

  He sighed. “You still think we're going to find a real person behind all this? A mad, all-powerful, millionaire obsessive playing mind games with us?”

  “What did you see?”

  “A woman. She opened that gate as if there was never a lock on it and went down the steps. I saw her as clearly as I see you now, but not in the same way. I can't explain it, but I know. It used to freak me out, seeing people, and things, that weren't really in our world . . . but I've kind of got used to it.”

  “The first time I met Laura she told me you saw things other people didn't see. She figured you for a fantasist.”

  He nodded. “Laura sees less than she could. Less than she should. She insists on such a rigid, narrow view of the world that she makes herself crazy.”

  “That may be about to change.”

  He looked at me, and a gleam of mischief shone in his eyes. “Oh, and you're the man for the job? Good luck, mate!”

  “You said you'd seen that woman before?” I inclined my head toward the house across the square.

  “That's right, change the subject.” He crushed the styrofoam cup absently in one hand. “Yeah, I saw her coming out of that same basement just a few days after Peri disappeared. I was keeping watch on it, just in case. I followed her down the road, to see where she went. I had my brand-new, state-of-the-art video camera with me—Christmas present from my dad—and so I used it. I even got a full-frontal shot of her when we were on the underground—she never seemed to notice me; I was sure she never had a clue I was following her, and I followed her all the way.”

  “All the way where?”

  He looked me in the eye. “All the way to West Hampstead. To Laura's. I watched her go in.”

  The hairs rose on the back of my neck. “Polly Fruell?”

  He nodded. “So she said.”

  “Did you tell Laura?”

  “I tried. I was all set to show her the proof on video but, guess what? She wasn't in the video. That was when I realized that there were things I could see that wouldn't show up on tape. When Laura asked her, Polly denied ever having been in Golden Square. She said she didn't even know where it was. She didn't seem flustered, just bewildered. She said she hadn't even gone by underground, she didn't do a lot of walking because of her bad leg. I must have mistaken her for someone else. Laura thought she was being too kind to me. That's when she became convinced I couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and reality.” He stood up. “I should go.”

  “Come and have breakfast. There's things I need to tell you.”

  He hesitated.

  “That was Laura on the phone. I said we'd meet her.”

  “Oh, well, you don't want me along . . .”

  “Yes I do. Yesterday Laura fired me. Today, she's hired me again. She just found out that her old friend Polly Fruell died in 1995.”

  His eyes widened.

  “The limits of her reality have just expanded. Come on, Hugh. We need to talk. You're not the only one who's had contact with the Otherworld.”

  For the first time since I had known her, Laura looked less than perfectly turned out when she entered the diner. Her clothes were smart, as usual, but had an air of having been thrown on without much thought; her hair hung limply, without its usual shine and bounce, and her face was bare of makeup. For the first time, she really looked her age, the mother of a grown-up daughter, someone who had struggled, and suffered, and lost.

  She kissed Hugh on both cheeks, but for me there was only an awkward nod as she slipped into the seat beside him, across from me.

  “I have to apologize—”

  “No, forget it. I'm all in favor of the skeptical mind—still try to keep mine that way. Why don't we order breakfast; then we can talk.”

  Hugh and I both went for the Good Morning America special: scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and hash browns. Laura asked for a fresh fruit salad.

  Then she began her story.

  Learning of Polly Fruell's death had been disturbing, but it didn't push her into what historians and theorists would call a paradigm shift. Everything could still be explained in human terms. After all, why couldn't a competent actress have convinced Laura she was the friend she hadn't seen in over eighteen years, especially when there was no reason for her to be suspicious? The reason for this pretense was harder to understand, but must be connected with the man who called himself Mider, and, no doubt, given time, she could have concocted a plausible explanation.

  But there'd been no time for that.

  “I got up this morning and found her in the living room, sitting on the couch. I was amazed. At first, I wasn't even scared, because, well, it was Polly. I was just so happy to see her, to find out that the story about her death had been a terrible mistake, it was all so easy and natural to find her in my flat, that I was afraid I was still dreaming.

  “But I knew I was awake. It's only in dreams that you think you might be dreaming, isn't it? And then I wondered how she could have gotten in. Even while I was still relieved to see my friend alive, I glanced at the door, and the chain was on, just like the night Peri disappeared.” Her voice wobbled slightly, and she paused to take a steadying breath.

  I reached out to touch her hand, which was lying on the table. It felt very cold as I covered it.

  Laura looked startled, and her eyes flashed to mine. I thought I'd overstepped, and started to take my hand away, but hers turned and caught mine and held it tight. The rush of pleasure this simple act gave me took me by surprise. I saw the faintly mocking smile that curved Hugh's mouth and tried to pretend I was alone with Laura.

  “All of a sudden, instead of being relieved, I was scared. ‘What the hell's going on?' I said. ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in? Who are you?' I was between her and the door. I was trying to look aggressive—well, I might be little, but I'm fit, and I've got both my legs. I was staring at her, demanding to know the truth, and all of a sudden, she just vanished. I mean, one minute I was looking right at her—I really was wide-awake, this was no dream, she was there—and then the next second, she just wasn't.

  “I totally freaked. Well, not totally. I nearly went running out barefoot, in my bathrobe, but I managed to keep it together long enough to race back upstairs and throw some clothes on, and make sure I had my phone and keys and everything. I was so
afraid she'd be there again when I went downstairs that I really thought about calling the police from my bedroom—but then I'd've had to go downstairs to let them in, and I'd've felt like a complete idiot if there was no one there, and after all, this was Polly, not some maniac stranger who'd broken in . . .” She sucked in a long breath, and squeezed my hand.

  Her squeeze felt like a warm shot of whisky. “Was she there when you went back down?”

  Laura shook her head. “No. But I'm sure I saw her the first time—I'm sure I didn't just imagine it.”

  “I'm sure you didn't.”

  “She was a ghost,” Laura said. She shook her head. “I don't understand, how could that be? Was she a ghost the first time, when she stayed with me? Hugh, you met Polly.”

  He nodded without comment.

  Laura frowned. “That video. You said you'd followed her from Golden Square until she went into my house. But she didn't appear anywhere on it.” She pulled her hand away from mine to cover her mouth. “Oh! I touched her. She hugged me. She was real, we went out and around London together—ghosts don't do that; how could she be a ghost?”

  “Not a ghost,” I agreed, missing her touch.

  “Then what?”

  “Someone from the Otherworld, a shape-shifter, someone friendly, I think; someone who wanted to help you and took Polly's form because it would make it easier for you to accept her.”

  She stared blankly.

  “A one-legged woman. Long blond hair?”

  Hugh and Laura both nodded.

  “Did she wear a purple dress by any chance?”

  Laura frowned. “Actually, she was wearing purple this morning. She did like that color, and she nearly always wore long skirts, because of her leg, I guess.”

  “To hide her missing leg,” I said. “Who does that remind you of?”

  I could see that Laura still had no idea where I was going with this, but Hugh did.

  “Queeny,” he said.

  “Bingo.”

  Laura looked from Hugh's cool smile to mine and back again. “Who's Queeny?”

  “One of Peri's Guardians.”

  Laura seemed to hold her breath as she looked at me. “You're not talking about Peri's old toys.”