Superstition

by David Ambrose

  The phone rang. Ralph went back to the room where they'd been sitting to answer it.

  “Hello? Oh, Bob…” He gestured to Joanna that it was her father. “How are you? You want Joanna, she's right here…?”

  He broke off, his face clouding. Joanna, realizing something was wrong, came quickly to his side.

  “What is it?”

  He gestured her to be patient while he listened.

  “You're kidding. When was this?”

  He listened some more, then he said, “That's the weirdest thing. We just had someone here looking for her. It must be the same woman.”

  Joanna's patience, never remarkable, was reaching its limit. She was holding out her hand for the phone, expecting him to pass it over any moment, but instead Ralph said, “No, sure, I understand. I'll tell her. Okay, bye, Bob.”

  He hung up and turned to her. “That is quite extraordinary.”

  “What? What?”

  “Your parents have had some strange woman at the house banging on their door and claiming to be you. It must be the same woman Sam Towne was looking for.”

  “Is she there now?”

  “No, she got away. Apparently your mother was alone and freaked out and called the police. Who can blame her? Your father got back in time to see the woman, but then she gave them the slip.”

  “What was she like? What did he say?”

  “Not much-only that she was about your age, dark hair. He said Elizabeth's still pretty shaken, but she'll call you tomorrow. He just wanted to warn us in case the woman shows up here. She must be some kind of weirdo-a stalker or something.”

  “Jeez!” Joanna gave an involuntary shudder. “That's a little creepy.”

  Ralph reached out to brush back the hair where it fell across her forehead. “Don't worry, the cops seemed to think she was harmless. They said there was a name for it, some kind of syndrome-people who develop an obsession about being someone else. Maybe it'll turn out to be somebody you went to school with, or college. I've heard of that kind of thing happening.”

  “All the same, I don't like it.”

  He took her in his arms and held her face against his. “Don't worry, nothing's going to happen to you. I'll make sure of that.”

  54

  She took the subway from Grand Central and emerged on Sixty-eighth Street. Minutes later she was on the street that she had walked along the day before with Sam. The house they had seen then had been neglected, closed up and uninhabited. Tonight its windows blazed with light, and its door, painted in a green so dark that it was almost black, bore the number 139 in plain brass characters.

  Filled though she was with an apprehension bordering on terror, she stepped up and rang the bell. She heard a lock turn, and the door opened. There was no recognition in Ralph Cazaubon's face when he saw her.

  “Ralph?” She spoke his name uncertainly, her voice caught somewhere in her throat.

  A look came into his eyes. Not recognition, but understanding of some kind.

  “Do you know me?” he asked her.

  “Yes. Don't you know me?”

  He shook his head slightly, then checked himself. “Yes, I think I know who you are.”

  There must have been some change in her face, some expression of relief or gratitude for the tiny crumb of comfort he had offered her, because she saw it reflected in his. There was a sympathy in the way he looked at her, a kindness that had become in so short a span of time quite alien to her.

  “Do you? Do you really know me?”

  There was a pleading in her eyes and voice that touched him. He could not believe that this poor disturbed creature meant ill toward anyone.

  “I think you'd better come in,” he said.

  As she stepped into the light, he saw that her hair was dank and tangled from the rain that had been falling earlier. There was a red mark on her cheek where she'd been scratched by something. Her clothes were creased and dirty, and her shoes caked with mud that had splashed up her legs.

  She looked around, then turned to fix her gaze on him as he closed the door behind her. The words began to tumble out of her.

  “Nobody knows who I am anymore. Only you. And this morning I was so afraid of you I ran away. I went to my parents’ house and they locked me out, they didn't know me…and then I heard someone say their daughter's name was Cazaubon, Joanna Cazaubon…”

  “Come through, in here…”

  He took her arm and steered her gently through into the drawing room where he had sat with Sam two hours earlier.

  “Sit down. Don't be afraid, don't worry about anything. I'll do all I can to help you.”

  “But do you know what's happening? Do you understand?”

  “I think I do.”

  She became agitated suddenly. “I have to talk to somebody. His name's Sam Towne. I must find Sam, we must call him…”

  “Sam Towne was here earlier.”

  She seemed both surprised and reassured to hear this.

  “He was here…?”

  “Two hours ago. He was looking for you.”

  “We must call him now…Please, I must see him…Sam will know what to do…we must get him here…”

  “Yes, of course, I'll call him.”

  Just then, distantly, he heard his wife call “Ralph…?” She was coming down the stairs.

  The woman with him reacted instantly. “Who's that…?” she asked abruptly, as though the voice she had heard belonged to someone with no right to be there, an intruder whose presence was both an affront and a threat to her.

  He didn't answer her question. All he said was, “Wait here a moment, please.”

  “But I have to see her…”

  “You will. But just sit down a moment, please.”

  She sat obediently on the edge of the sofa that Sam had occupied earlier. Ralph started out of the room. At the door he glanced over his shoulder; she was still there, tense and ready to get up and follow him if he gave the word.

  “One second,” he said. “I'll be right back.”

  He slipped out and closed the door behind him, then ran up the stairs to intercept Joanna. They almost collided at the first landing.

  “I heard the bell,” she said. “Who was it?”

  “It's her,” he said in a whisper, “the woman who was at your parents’ earlier.”

  “Where is she-?”

  “The sitting room.”

  She made a move to pass him, but he blocked her.

  “No-I think it's better you don't.”

  “But I have to see her. I want to find out who she is.”

  “Darling, let me handle it-please.”

  “Maybe I know her. Like you said, it could be somebody I went to school with…”

  “She's obviously disturbed, I don't think we should risk provoking some kind of crisis.”

  “There's already a crisis if she's going around pretending to be me. I want to see her.”

  He didn't argue further, just let her pass and followed her down the remaining stairs and into the hall. He made sure he was right behind her as she pushed open the door into the drawing room.

  They both stopped and looked around. The room was empty.

  She turned to him. “She doesn't seem to be here now.”

  He looked around again, bewildered. “She was right there, on the sofa.”

  “Well, she must have left.”

  Ralph quickly checked the room. There was no hiding place.

  “She can't have left,” he said. “We'd have heard the door.”

  “Maybe not if she didn't want us to.”

  “For God's sake,” he said, “this is ridiculous. Who is she?”

  55

  It was almost three in the morning when Sam finally closed Joanna's book and set it down on the table by his chair. For a while he didn't move. Then he ran his hands over his face and through his hair, and got up to pour himself a large whiskey.

  As she had told him, it was an extraordinary story-the more so for being familiar i
n all but a handful of its details. It was everything that the group had invented about Adam, but set out now as historical fact and authenticated by a comprehensive index of sources. Even the various pictures of Adam, attributed though they were to portraitists and sketch artists of the period, were unmistakably of the man drawn by Drew Hearst way back at the start of the experiment.

  But this version of Adam had become a very different person from the one they had intended to create. This was a man who had betrayed the trust first of his patron, Lafayette, then of his wife, and subsequently almost everyone with whom he had come into contact. In Paris, during the period leading up to revolution, he had consorted with thieves and whores and scoundrels of all kinds. When asked once by the generous though despairing Lafayette why he behaved so badly, he answered insolently, “Joie de vivre!” It was the only explanation he ever gave for any of his actions.

  The magician Cagliostro became his ally, and together they conspired to defraud the gullible Cardinal Rohan of a fortune in the Diamond Necklace Affair. When Cagliostro was thrown in jail for his part in the plot, he kept quiet about Adam's involvement because Adam, who still had connections at court through his unfortunate and much abused wife, represented his only chance of getting out.

  Cagliostro's silence was rewarded when Adam did in fact secure his release, but in return Adam demanded the magic talisman which had thus far in his life protected Cagliostro against all enemies. It would do so, Adam said, one last time, when he handed it over in return for his freedom and his life and went into exile outside France.

  The talisman was shown in one of the book's illustrations. Sam was familiar with the design it bore. It was the design he had first seen indistinctly in the wax impression left on the floor that terrifying night in Adam's room at the lab, then later and more clearly in the book given to Joanna by Barry Hearst.

  According to legend, Adam had kept the talisman with him all his life, even having it buried with him in his tomb. Something else he had never abandoned was his strange love of the French term “joie de vivre,” for which no equivalent existed in English, and which he not only had engraved upon his tomb but also had already incorporated into the Wyatt coat of arms-a vanity he had acquired in England, along with a second wealthy and aristocratic wife.

  His return to America after her suspicious death had marked the start of the third long period of his life. Rich, and with the acquired airs and graces of a nobleman, he had become an immensely wealthy and successful banker, and finally even a renowned philanthropist. Whenever, as had happened occasionally, some whispered rumor of the dreadful reputation he had left behind in Europe reached across the ocean and threatened the high regard in which he was now held at home, the bearer of such gossip either mysteriously disappeared, or recanted his lies and lived on in comfort as the willing and obedient servant of the all-powerful Adam Wyatt.

  Sam found himself gazing out into the night through the very window on which the words “Joie de vivre” had mysteriously appeared only a few days ago-that common phrase which Adam had distorted and so strangely made his own.

  “Dear God,” he murmured to himself, and instantly wondered if unconsciously he'd meant it as a prayer.

  He decided that perhaps he had.

  56

  The crash woke them both. Ralph reached for the light and swung his feet out of bed in one movement. He grabbed his robe and looked at Joanna, who was sitting up, pale with shock.

  “Stay there,” he said, starting out.

  “Ralph-be careful. There may be somebody in the house.”

  “I doubt it-after making that much noise.”

  He ran down the stairs, switching on lights as he went. There was no further sound or movement anywhere. On the floor below their bedroom he pushed open all the doors one by one, including the one to the music room where he worked. There he grabbed his old baseball bat from a corner before taking the remaining stairs to the hall. When he got there he stopped in his tracks.

  The antique hat and coat stand that normally stood near the foot of the stairs lay some twenty feet away on its side by the front door. There was a gash on the door's paintwork where it had hit, as though the heavy object had been thrown against it like a missile.

  He approached cautiously, holding the baseball bat ready to defend himself in case whoever had performed this considerable feat of strength was still hiding somewhere. But there was no sign of anyone, no sound or movement.

  Looking around him and keeping his back to the wall so that nobody could take him by surprise, he reached down and hefted the iron stand in one hand as though to reassure himself that it really did weigh as much as it had the last time he'd had cause to move it. The strength that it had taken to fling it this distance would be frightening to confront; the reason why anybody might have wanted to do it was even more alarming to speculate upon. It made no sense.

  He stepped over the stand without even trying to haul it upright. The drawing room was in darkness and the door partly open. He approached in a half-crouch, both hands gripping the handle of the bat, ready to lash out at the first movement. When he reached the door he slammed it with his shoulder, banging it back against the inner wall. At the same time he hit the light switch.

  The room was empty, nothing had been disturbed. He went around it, circling the furniture to make sure that nobody was hiding behind anything, bat still in hand and ready to swing. There was nobody, and nowhere in the room where anybody could hide.

  As he straightened up, lifting a hand to rub his nose in puzzlement, he sensed a movement in the doorway behind him. He spun around-and only Joanna's cry of alarm checked his swing before the hard wood smashed into her face. He let the bat fall to the floor and grabbed her in his arms, his fingers digging into the flesh beneath the thick white robe she wore.

  “For God's sake, Jo, I could have killed you! I told you to stay where you were.”

  “I was afraid.”

  He could feel her trembling.

  “It's all right, Jo…there's nobody here…”

  “How did the coat stand get over there?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Ralph, there must have been somebody here.”

  He didn't answer; he didn't know what to say. But he felt her stiffen, felt her scream before the sound even left her throat. She had seen something over his shoulder.

  Ralph turned in time to see the big Venetian mirror that hung above the fireplace lurch crazily into space and fly across the room, moving like a playing card tossed by some unseen giant hand. A corner of it caught the back of the sofa. There was a sound of tearing fabric, then it cartwheeled on, smashing over an antique writing desk and against the far wall.

  A moment later, in the sudden unreal silence, neither of them could hear anything except the sound of their own breathing and the beating of their hearts. They clung to each other, conscious of nothing other than the sheer impossibility of what they had just seen.

  “I saw somebody,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

  “Where?”

  “In the mirror. Just before it came off the wall. I saw a woman, standing over there, watching us.”

  They both looked in the direction she was pointing. There was nobody.

  “Can you describe her?” he said.

  “I only saw her for a second. Dark hair, a light coat, about my age. She had a kind of wild look about her, like she was half crazed or something.”

  “It's the woman who was here earlier.”

  She looked at him. “Ralph, this doesn't make any sense. I'm scared.”

  “We're getting out of here-now.”

  “It's two in the morning. Where will we go?”

  “It doesn't matter where we go. Why don't you call that place your parents stay-they know you.”

  “Okay.”

  “We'll call them from upstairs…”

  He took her by the arm, his eyes darting everywhere with each step for any threat or hint of movement. In their bedroom they pulled on
clothes and gathered up the few things they would need to take with them. They spoke hardly at all, except when Joanna called the hotel to check they had a room and to say they'd be there in fifteen minutes.

  A loud crash came from somewhere on the floor below. They froze and looked at each other. She sensed he was debating whether to investigate.

  “Don't-!” she said.

  He started for the door. “That was the music room.”

  “Ralph, leave it!”

  He looked back at her. “Stay here, finish packing. I'll only be a second.”

  She watched him disappear down the stairs, wanting to call him back, but saying nothing. Instead she picked up the overnight bag she had already half filled and went into the bathroom. She grabbed a toothbrush, comb, a few cosmetics…and heard the door click softly shut behind her.

  Her first thought was that she mustn't think at all. A door closing by itself was no mystery: a draft of air, or perhaps she'd caught it coming through and caused it to swing shut slowly after her. It was nothing to worry about, even now after what had been happening. She would simply walk over and open it again.

  It wouldn't budge. The handle turned, but when she pulled it the door didn't “open. It wasn't locked, it was sealed shut by some force, some power, that didn't want her to leave.

  She banged it with her hand, held flat, her palm slapping the smooth surface, and called out for Ralph. There was no answer, no footsteps coming to help her. She waited, then she banged the door again, with her fist this time, then both fists. And she called out, louder. She hammered with her fists and cried out for Ralph, until she realized that her hands hurt and her throat was sore.

  Fear stole over her slowly, stealthily, like delayed shock. She became aware that she was fighting uselessly to hold it back, a Canute-like struggle that she couldn't win. Fear, like pain, she knew, would always overwhelm you in the end. You had to let it, but find something to cling to while it passed-even if no more than the idea that it would pass in the end.

  But suppose it didn't? Suppose the fear stayed, became a permanent, eternal, tortured scream with no escape…?