Ghost Music

by Graham Masterton

  “I don’t get this,” I protested. “I really don’t get this.”

  Pearl came up to me and gently touched my cheek, as if I were a child, and she were my mother. “You don’t have any choice, my dear. She’s painted you into a corner.”

  “But what am I supposed to do now?”

  She went across to the bureau, which was crowded with ashtrays and pots of moisturizer and paintbrushes and books, and brought back a photograph in a tarnished silver frame. “Here,” she said. “This will point you in the right direction.”

  It was a faded color picture of a family—a father, with glasses, and a suit with flappy lapels—a mother, in a flowery-printed frock—and a young girl in a T-shirt with braces in her teeth. They were standing in front of a handsome colonial house, with cherry trees in blossom all around it.

  “That’s Kate,” I said. “This must have been taken at her parents’ house, in Connecticut. She must be about fourteen years old.”

  Pearl nodded. “She gave me this photograph, to show to you, when the time came.”

  “So what are you trying to tell me—that she’s gone back to stay at her parents’ house?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Her parents are dead. That’s what she told me, anyhow.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Pearl! Now you’re talking in riddles, just like she always does!”

  Pearl said, “No, Gideon. Not riddles. Clues. Anybody who gives you a straight answer, they’re not telling you the truth—or not the whole truth, anyhow. But people who give you clues . . . they’re allowing you to make up your own mind, wouldn’t you say?”

  I turned over the photograph frame and looked at the back. Somebody had written on it, Old Post House, Brinsmade Lane, Sherman, May ’92.

  “You’re telling me that I should go there?” I said.

  “Up to you,” she replied, looking the other way.

  Shit. I really didn’t know what to do. For all I knew, Pearl was completely senile, and she was telling me nothing but gibberish. Yet here on the canvas was the evidence that what she was saying must make some kind of sense. The Westerlunds, and the Philipses, and the Cesarettis—all of them staring at me as if they were pleading with me to help them.

  “Tell me about Kate,” I asked Pearl.

  “What’s to tell? You know her much better than I ever will.”

  She was right, of course, and that was just the answer I was afraid of. But if I could hold her, and feel her—if we could be lovers, what difference did it make?

  “There’s one thing,” I said. “Two days ago, Kate said that there were only three days left, but she wouldn’t tell me what she meant.”

  Pearl pulled a face. “I guess she meant that time was running out. I mean, time does has an exasperating habit of doing that, doesn’t it? It runs and it runs and you can turn that hourglass over as many times as you like, it just keeps on running.”

  * * *

  I took a taxi to Starlite Records and interrupted my friend Henry Brickman in the middle of an A&R meeting with a country-rock band who looked like the crows from Dumbo.

  “I need to borrow your car, man. I wouldn’t ask but it’s seriously urgent.”

  He blinked at me unhappily through his blue-tinted glasses. “It’s new, Gideon. I only got it last week.”

  “I’ll treat it like my own, I promise.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. I remember that GTO you used to drive around in. It was one big dent.”

  All the same, he gave me the keys, and I drove his brand-new metallic gray Malibu out of the parking structure and up Park Avenue. The sky was the same metallic gray and it was starting to snow again, and I wasn’t at all sure that it was either wise or practical for me to drive all the way to Sherman, but I simply couldn’t think what else I could do.

  If Pearl was right, and Kate had been giving me clues instead of riddles, maybe that photograph of her with her parents was the answer to everything I needed to know.

  I switched on the radio, right in the middle of a commercial break. Almost unbelievably, they were playing the music for Mother Kretchmer’s Frozen Scrapple, which I had adapted as the melody for “The Pointing Tree.” It was a truly weird coincidence, but in a way it reassured me that I had made the right decision.

  “The Pointing Tree will guide you . . . along the forest track . . . your loved ones soon will weep with joy . . . so pleased to have you back.”

  It began to snow thicker and faster, and even with the windshield wipers flapping at full speed, it was growing increasingly difficult to see the highway up ahead. For the first time in a long time, I asked God to take care of me.

  “God,” I said, quite loudly. “Please take care of me.”

  Twenty-eight

  By the time I had driven up to the northern end of Candlewood Lake it was dark, and all that I could see was whirling snow. But I managed to find Sherman, with its little snow-covered bandstand, and an elderly woman in a bright yellow parka pointed me in the direction of Brinsmade Lane, while her dog yapped impatiently around her boots.

  I drove up and down for almost twenty minutes, trying to find Kate’s parents’ house. Most of the property along Brinsmade Lane was hidden behind the trees, and almost every driveway had a gate, so that it was impossible to drive in close enough to see what the houses looked like.

  I was close to giving up when God answered my prayer. A white Cadillac CTS came along the highway in the opposite direction, and turned into an entrance about twenty yards ahead of me. As it turned, my headlights caught the driver’s face, and it was unmistakably Victor.

  My heart started beating inside my chest like a drum pedal. I drove about a half mile farther on, and then I turned around. I switched off my lights and drove very slowly back toward the entrance, and parked deep underneath the branches of an overhanging laurel bush. I just hoped that Henry’s paintwork wasn’t too badly scratched.

  I climbed out of the car and walked down the driveway. The shingle was frozen so my feet crunched loudly as I walked. As soon as the house came into view I recognized it from the photograph that Pearl had shown me, even though it was hooded with snow. It reminded me of the house in those Amityville movies: a rambling colonial with tall chimney stacks, and dormer windows like a clown’s eyes. I recognized the cherry trees, too, although their branches were clogged with snow, instead of blossom. Two vehicles were parked by the garage block—Victor’s Cadillac and a black Ford Explorer.

  What Victor was doing here, I couldn’t even begin to guess. Kate had told me that her parents were dead, but she had never told me that she had inherited their house. Was she here, too? She hadn’t been in touch with me for two days, after all. Maybe she lived here in Sherman most of the time, and only visited Victor occasionally, which is why she didn’t keep any of her clothes at St. Luke’s Place. But no clothes at all? Not even a spare sweater or a change of underwear?

  I could see lights shining in the hallway, and the living room. I crossed the lawn where Kate had been photographed with her parents, all those years ago, and I stood in the snow-covered flower bed so that I could look inside the living room window.

  The room was furnished and decorated in colonial-style, with dark oak chairs and tables, and chintzy drapes. A large stone fireplace dominated the left-hand wall, but it was blackened and dark and heaped with dead ashes. Above the fireplace hung a nineteenth-century portrait of a Puritan woman in a bonnet, her lips pursed as if she disapproved of everything, especially being painted.

  I listened. I was sure that I could hear very faint music coming from someplace inside the house. Tony Bennett, singing “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” I dodged around the side of the house, keeping my head down and staying close to the wall, until I reached the kitchen window at the back. There were no lights in the kitchen, but the door was half-open, so that I could see into the hallway. A mirror was hanging on the wall, just beside the front door, an
d for a second I glimpsed Victor in it, as he crossed from one room into another. I had the chilling feeling that he had caught sight of me, but that was only an optical illusion.

  I climbed the steps to the kitchen door, and tried the handle. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. Maybe there was a cellar door, or a window I could pry open. I circled around the house as quietly as I could, although I managed to kick over a stack of flower pots, filled up with snow. I stayed perfectly still, listening, in case Victor had heard me, but Tony Bennett continued crooning, and nobody came out of the house to take a look.

  At the side of the house, I found a small high window that probably illuminated the cloakroom, or the stairs. Not far away, underneath a fir tree, there was an old wooden chair with a broken arm. I dragged the chair close to the house, right underneath the window. Then I picked up a rusty old trowel that somebody had left embedded in the soil, and climbed up onto the seat.

  I was trying to force the point of the trowel into the side of the window when I heard a crackling noise close behind me. I turned around and almost lost my balance. It was Jack Friendly, in his long black coat, his breath smoking like Satan himself.

  “Well, well. If it ain’t my nosy friend from Venice. What brings you here, slick, as if I didn’t know?”

  I climbed awkwardly down from the chair, and held up the trowel in front of me.

  “Where’s Margot?” I challenged him.

  Jack took a step closer. “Margot’s safe and sound for now, always providing that you play along. So what are you going to do with that? Plant me to death?”

  “Just take me to her. I want to make sure that you haven’t hurt her.”

  “Hurt her? Now why should we hurt her?”

  “For the same reason you hurt the Westerlunds and the Philipses and the Cesarettis, and God alone knows how many more families.”

  “Life is just a horse race, Gideon. You have your winners, and you have your losers. Can’t be helped, no matter how hard you try.”

  “You’re a total bastard, Jack.”

  He grinned at me, and his eyes glittered. “I certainly like to think so.”

  He led me around the side of the house, toward the front door. Halfway there, I tossed the trowel into the snow.

  He opened the door for me and we stepped into the brightly lit hallway. It was freezing cold, but I could hear a furnace rumbling in the basement, and smell the dusty tang of radiators heating up.

  Jack closed the door and called out, “Victor! Hey, Victor! Found your friend outside!”

  I looked around. The pink floral wallpaper was scuffed, and most of the pictures were all hanging crooked, as if somebody had been fighting in here. On the right-hand side there was a curving staircase, with a galleried landing, but upstairs was in darkness. I had the impression of an elegant family home that had been visited by tragedy, and hadn’t been lived in ever since.

  Victor suddenly appeared from the living room, still wearing his overcoat and black leather gloves. Under his bright orange tan, he looked tired and pale, and he had bags under his eyes. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me.

  “Gideon,” he said. He sniffed, and wiped his nose with his finger. “Crappy night for driving out to the sticks. You thought about my proposition?”

  “I’m more worried about Margot. Is she here? You haven’t hurt her, have you?”

  “She’s here, yes. And, no, my friend, we haven’t hurt her. In fact we don’t have any intention of hurting her, nor you neither, if you’re cooperative.”

  “I want to see her.”

  “Sure. No problemo. Follow me.”

  Victor beckoned me along the hallway. We entered the kitchen, which was huge, and chilly, with a brown-and-white-tiled floor, and a massive butcher block table. A motley collection of antique copper saucepans was suspended from the ceiling, although they were tarnished, almost black. Two red and green sacks of IGA groceries were standing on the hutch, waiting to be unpacked.

  “Takes a hell of a time for this dump to warm up,” said Victor. “By the time it’s livable-in, it’s usually time to drive back to the city.”

  “Does this house belong to you, too?” I asked him. “Or should I say Penumbra?”

  “I told you, Gideon. I’m a man of substance.”

  “So what happened to Kate’s parents? They sell you the place, for a nominal price?”

  “I got it very reasonable, let’s put it that way.”

  “In other words you put the squeeze on them, just like you put the squeeze on the Westerlunds and the Philipses and the Cesarettis and just like you’re putting the squeeze on me?”

  Victor crossed the kitchen to a large green-painted door, took a key out of his coat pocket, and unlocked it. “I don’t like the word ‘squeeze,’ Gideon. ‘Negotiation,’ that’s what I prefer.”

  “Oh, really?” I challenged him, although I can’t say that I wasn’t frightened of what he was going to do next. “How about ‘extortion’?”

  Victor grinned, and for the first time I saw a gold tooth shining. “I like you, Gideon. You got class. You got character. And I have to say it took some nerve for you to drive out here. I like nerve.”

  “I want to see Margot,” I insisted. I was still shaking with cold.

  He lifted one finger and said, “Follow me. But mind the steps, okay? There’s one or two of them loose.”

  He opened the green door and went down the steps into the cellar. I hesitated, but Jack said, “Go ahead, go on,” and I followed him.

  Victor was right: two steps wobbled when I trod on them, and one of them was missing.

  When I reached the bottom of the steps, I could see how vast the cellar was. It had a very low ceiling, but it stretched the whole length of the house, so that its farther recesses were hidden in darkness. On the left-hand side there were rows and rows of wine racks, more than half-filled with dusty bottles of wine, but the rest of the cellar was crowded with tea chests filled with books and ornaments and lampshades. I saw an old Zenith television and a Hula-Hoop and a wooden ironing board and a child’s bicycle with its front wheel missing.

  In a recess on the right-hand side stood a large old-fashioned gas-fired furnace, which was roaring stentoriously as it tried to heat up the house. In front of it, Margot was lying on a lumpy red couch, blindfolded with a red woolen scarf and her wrists and her ankles fastened with silver duct tape.

  As we approached, Margot swung her legs around and sat up. “Let me go, you skunks!” she screamed. “You can’t keep me here! Let me go!”

  “Hey, easy,” said Victor. “I brung your friend to see you’re okay.”

  “What? Let me go! You’re going to go to prison for this! Let me go!”

  I went over and knelt down beside her, and took hold of her hands. “Margot, it’s okay, it’s me.”

  “Gideon? Oh, thank God! Get me out of here! I’m going crazy!”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. They want me to promise that I’ll keep my mouth shut about Penumbra, and I’ve said that I will.”

  “Please get me out of here, Gideon! Please!”

  I turned to Jack. He was smiling, and popping his knuckles. “Just untie her,” I said. “I’ve given you my word. I won’t say anything to anybody, ever, about what you did, even if that means I deserve to rot in hell the same as you do.”

  “No need to be hostile, Gideon,” said Victor.

  “Hostile? You should both get the death penalty for what you’ve done.”

  Victor shrugged. “They don’t have the death penalty in Sweden. Nor in Britain. Nor in Italy neither. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “I should kill you myself.”

  “Well, there’s no need to go to extremes. All I’m asking is that you keep quiet about something that you don’t have any proof of anyhow. And that you transfer over the title to your apartment.”

  Margot said, “What? What does he want you to do?”

  “He wants me to hand over my apartment, the same way he made the Westerlunds and the
Philipses and the Cesarettis give him their apartments.”

  “But you can’t, Lalo! That’s your apartment! That’s your home!”

  “I don’t think I have a whole lot of choice. It’s either that, or you and I disappear and nobody ever sees us again.”

  Margot took a deep breath and screamed out, “Help! Somebody help us! Help! Somebody let us out of here! Call the police! Help!”

  Victor waited until she had finished, and then he said, “Nobody can hear you, doll-face. You’re down in a cellar, more than a half mile from the nearest highway, and the same distance from the nearest neighbor, so you might as well save your breath.”

  I stood up. “Come on, Victor. I’ve agreed to keep my mouth shut, and you can have my apartment just as soon as you’ve drawn up all the paperwork. Let her go, why don’t you?”

  Victor shook his head. “I’m not stupid, Gideon. But I promise you this. As soon as your signature dries on that deed, she’ll go free.”

  “Do you really think I trust you?” I retorted. I was trying very hard not to rile him, but I was so angry and frightened that my voice was shaking. “You’re a cold-blooded murderer, Victor. Maybe Jack did all of your torturings and killings for you, but there’s just as much blood on your hands as there is on Jack’s.”

  “Hey,” said Victor, in a conciliatory tone. “There’s no need to get all gnarly about it.”

  But at that instant, there was a loud slamming sound, and all of the lights in the cellar went out. We were plunged into darkness.

  Victor said, “Goddamned circuit breaker! Jack—you got a lighter?”

  I thought of grabbing Margot and trying to head for the stairs, but it was so dark that I was completely disoriented, and I doubt if we would have made it even halfway there before Jack or Victor caught up with us.