Floater

by Gary Brandner

  In his short lifetime Frazier’s scientific knowledge had far exceeded that of his peers and most of the adults with whom he came in contact. Ever curious, he had mastered the principles of digital and analog computerese while others still struggled with algebra. His knowledge in life made it easier for him in his disembodied state to essentially become one with the machines. It took only a brief sortie into the supposedly sealed files of the giant credit reference companies to find out all he wanted to know.

  Having located the three, the next step was getting to them. Timeless travel was one of the early skills he had perfected. Even as he lay on his boyhood bed and projected his other self out and away, he found he could cover limitless distances with no measurable time lapse.

  Now he had only to psychically place himself in Los Angeles, and there he was, in the Hollywood Hills, just outside the little house where Lindy Grant lived with her daughter.

  It was impossible not to relate the moment to a time long ago in another world when he had floated avidly outside the young Lindy Grant’s window and observed her at forbidden acts. There was no emotion now in the spectral presence of Frazier Nunley. No feeling resembling nostalgia. All that remained, all that kept him from raging madness was the terrible gnawing ache for revenge.

  It did not take Frazier long to sense the vibrations of the little house where Lindy Grant lived. Nicole, the daughter, was the main focus of Lindy’s life. There was a man involved somehow, but he was unimportant. It would be through the daughter that he could touch Lindy most deeply.

  Frazier did probe, gently and tentatively, at Lindy’s mind, just to test her susceptibility. He was not yet ready to fully enter the minds of his principals. He found Lindy to be tough and resourceful. The Floater was far from home, and his powers at this distance were limited. He moved away from Lindy to concentrate on an easier target — the daughter.

  Slipping into the girl’s mind was easy. Frazier accomplished it the first time with minimum effort while the girl and Lindy were eating dinner. Nicole’s shallow little mind was involved in some meaningless daydream about a teenage movie idol, and Frazier had simply gone in and pushed her aside.

  Once inside her head, Frazier found Nicole a thoroughly objectionable child. Self-centered and heedless of the feelings of others, she went her mindless way, accepting the gifts of nature in the beauty of her face and her body as no more than her due. She was, Frazier noted, much the way her mother had been when he had known her. Maybe that was being unfair, but “fair” no longer had meaning for the Floater.

  Once inside Nicole, he kept his head down for several minutes, concentrating on the feel of the silverware and the taste of food. It was always a heady experience to enter a living body and enjoy the corporeal senses, but it was also draining on his psychic energies. Frazier knew he must not spend too much time here if he wanted to deliver his message to all three of his people.

  He raised Nicole’s head and looked across the table at Lindy, studying her closely for the first time. This was the girl, grown-up, who had seemed so desirable and unattainable to him twenty years ago. There was no desire in him now.

  Lindy was still attractive. Exceptionally so. But no emotion survived in the Floater, save one. As he regarded the woman who had hurt him so grievously, who had stolen his life from him, she looked up suddenly.

  The face of Nicole must have mirrored his thoughts, because Lindy gave a start and spilled wine from the glass she was holding. Not yet ready for a confrontation, Frazier slipped out of the girl’s mind as swiftly and easily as he had entered. Lindy continued to look curiously at her daughter, but the girl’s normal vacuous expression was back, and the moment was past.

  Frazier let a week go by before making his next move. Now that he knew he had the power, he wanted to savor his triumph. To draw it out.

  This time the mind of the idiotic child was thoroughly engrossed in what she was doing to a pair of denim pants. Frazier entered her and put her tongue and vocal cords to use.

  “Lindy!”

  The sound that came out was nothing like the girl’s own whining voice, and Lindy had whirled from the sink where she was washing dishes.

  “It’s payback time.”

  That was enough, the Floater decided, for this time. The look on Lindy’s face had the beginnings of an anxiety that, before he was through, Frazier would nurse into mind-numbing terror. He left the mind of Lindy’s daughter and moved on to the next of the three.

  • • •

  Delivering the message to Roman Dixon had been even easier. The instrument Frazier chose was an old woman whose mind was largely gone anyway. It was not pleasant going into her head — like being in a closed room with something that was decaying. But it would serve his purpose.

  “Roman!” Again the voice came out harsh and gravelly, but the name was clear.

  So clear that Roman looked up from the magazine he was reading as though he’d been shot.

  “It’s payback time.” Almost a growl. Frazier forced the tired old facial muscles of the aged woman into an expression Roman could not possibly mistake, then he left. Again, trouble well begun.

  • • •

  The mind of the young Puerto Rican woman he chose as the messenger for Alec McDowell was a much more pleasant place. Her thoughts were simple and sad: she was tired, her boyfriend was fucking her neighbor across the hall, her baby had a persistent cough. None of these mundane problems was of any importance to Frazier; he merely noted them in passing as he pushed the young woman’s mind aside and took its place.

  “Alec!”

  So unaccustomed was he to being spoken to by a member of the maintenance crew that Alec could not believe where the voice had come from. Frazier gave him a minute to peer around the room, looking for some other source, before he continued.

  “It’s payback time.”

  “What did you say?” Alec managed, finally understanding that the harsh voice had come from the Puerto Rican.

  Frazier spread the woman’s lips into a parody of a smile before he left, giving Alec a glimpse of the hatred that had built over twenty years. Then he slipped out of her head, and the young woman’s face went slack.

  • • •

  With these initial contacts made, the next task for Frazier was to get the three of them back to Wolf River. Back where the balance of power would shift to him. The idea of a class reunion afforded him grim amusement. The chances that anyone would want to return to celebrate the anniversary of that ill-starred class were remote at best. The likelihood of these three even considering such a thing was nil. Ah, but there were ways to manipulate people in direct opposition to their will. There were ways.

  Frazier chose a woman employed at the Wolf River post office to write and mail the invitations. He caught her at the end of the day when she was tired and preoccupied with thoughts of her coming vacation. It took considerable exertion to maneuver the woman’s hand through the three short messages, and to address the three envelopes, but Frazier was fired with his mission of bringing the three people closer to him. Here in Wolf River his energies were at their peak, and he was able to complete sending out the invitations in an hour.

  Afterwards the woman was troubled by her inability to remember the last hour of her shift. And for some weeks she was plagued by headaches. These things Frazier Nunley neither knew nor cared about. He had but one purpose, and every ounce of his concentration was given over to achieving it.

  Revenge.

  He knew, of course, that the invitations alone would not bring these people back. They would read them, wonder about them, and probably throw them away. But they would not forget. Lindy, Roman, and Alec would now have one more thing to disturb their sleep.

  Frazier was by then approaching the fulfillment of his plans, but still he was in no hurry. Death by drowning took an awfully long time. The Floater would not let his three people get off quickly.

  Back to Los Angeles then, and once again into the mind of Lindy’s daughter, Nicole. Fr
azier had learned that once he had entered someone’s mind, the next time it was easier. Rather like leaving the door unlocked for reentry. Or — and the astral Frazier Nunley appreciated the analogy — once you had possessed someone sexually, you knew you could do it again. It was an experience Frazier had never had in the flesh, so he had to content himself with the psychic equivalent.

  This time he entered when Nicole was sleeping. Easy. The girl stirred slightly, but did not waken.

  Frazier didn’t need her entire mind, so it was unnecessary to suppress Nicole’s intellect. He noted with contempt her silly dreams of clothes and boys and the beach, and he brushed on past. The Floater simply made a small space for himself in the area he wanted, like slipping unseen into a tiny corner of a cluttered room.

  He would need to spend only a short time in Nicole. Just long enough to plant the psychological seed. It would be his first practical use of the power he had discovered when he shattered old Henry Ulbricht’s arthritic fingers.

  He planned nothing so drastic with Nicole; just a little hurt that would get her attention. And Lindy’s. There would be time for the real pain later.

  Once in the girl’s mind, Frazier focused his fierce psychic concentration on one tiny patch of skin on the girl’s pert little nose, just where it flared over the nostril.

  Pimple, he thought. Ugly, swollen pimple.

  After a moment he was gratified to feel, through the girl’s sleep-dulled senses, a tightening of the flesh over the nose. Nicole mumbled something and reached up in her sleep to rub the spot with one hand.

  Now grow. Grow slowly. But grow!

  Lindy entered the girl’s room then, and Frazier slipped out quickly as Nicole awoke. Only a faint reddening was visible on the side of her nose, but the thought was planted deep in the girl’s subconscious, and Frazier well understood the power of the subconscious to affect the physical. By the end of this day it would be a ripe, disfiguring boil. Had he possessed a voice, the spectral Frazier Nunley would have laughed in crazy triumph at this confirmation of his power to hurt and disfigure. But he could not tarry to enjoy the eventual damage. He had other work to do.

  • • •

  With grim humor, Frazier hit the other two where they would feel it most. Roman, the boastful cocksman, he gave a rash in the genital area. The temptation was powerful to rot the bastard’s dick off completely, but that would spoil the fun he was planning for later, when he had them all together.

  For Alec, the talker, the choice was obvious. His tongue. As the Floater concentrated on the ugly hunk of muscle from the root to the tip, and started making it swell, he reveled in the knowledge of how easy it would be to choke off all the air to Alec’s lungs. Let him know how it felt to struggle to the point where the brain bursts for just one more breath of air. That too could wait.

  • • •

  Now that each of the three had experienced a sample, a very small sample, of what he could do to them, it remained only to remind them where the Floater wanted them to be, and when.

  Lindy’s computer was a perfect device for delivering the message to her. The Floater watched her face as she read the summons that overrode whatever she typed in:

  HELLO, LINDY.

  WOLF RIVER INN.

  SATURDAY, JULY 11.

  BE THERE OR THE GIRL REALLY GETS HURT.

  Before leaving it, Frazier jammed the computer, making it impossible to erase the glowing green message. Then, from a floating position just over the monitor screen, he enjoyed Lindy’s confusion, watching it change slowly to comprehension and, finally, fear.

  Good. There would be more to come.

  • • •

  A momentary entry into the mind of Roman’s doctor was not difficult to achieve. The man was preoccupied with an impending increase in his malpractice insurance and was giving little attention to the minor complaints of his patient.

  He moved the doctor’s hand to spell out the message he wanted on the prescription blank. The doctor, without rereading it, handed the page to Roman, and for a moment Frazier thought the ignoramus was going to throw it away. But no, he read it. Frazier was especially pleased with the warning he had put in the last sentence:

  I’ll make you really hurt down there.

  Roman almost seemed to feel the threatened pain. “Down there” was where he lived. He would show up.

  • • •

  Doing Alec was the one the Floater enjoyed most. It let him get into the old gypsy woman — simple enough with her brain rotting with disease. He had a chance to act, to be, for a few moments, a person again, however common.

  The revulsion on Alec’s face was Frazier’s reward as he breathed the gypsy’s foul breath at him and delivered the summons. He had to fight down an impulse to kiss Alec full on the mouth and let his recently afflicted tongue experience the taste of death and decay.

  That too could come later.

  The plan was in motion. The Floater had done his job well. Perhaps he would pay them each one more short visit just before they were to leave. Until then, he would rest.

  CHAPTER 23

  LINDY

  She slept badly the first night back in Wolf River.

  For one thing, the air conditioner had an annoying arhythmic clunk that grew louder as the night progressed. She tried turning the thing off, but the hot, airless night pressed down on her like a giant sweaty hand. She decided battling the clunk was better than suffocation.

  Her dreams, when she did sleep, were not conducive to rest. They were filled with dark memories and floating clowns and a waitress who smiled with somebody else’s face. When she awoke, the sheets of her bed were cold and wet, and clung unpleasantly to her body.

  When she finally gave up on sleep, the travel alarm she had placed beside the bed read five minutes to seven. Lindy had an impulse to call California to see if Nicole was all right. Or to talk to Brendan. She rejected both ideas immediately. In the first place, it was still the middle of the night out there, and in the second, she really didn’t have anything to say. If Nicole was not all right, her friend’s parents had the number of the inn and they would get in touch with her. And Brendan would think she was crazy, scared by a plastic doll in a soup tureen.

  She showered and dressed quickly, anxious to get out before she had to see Roman and Alec. Being with them made her feel unclean.

  She hurried out through the empty lobby to the street. The day was overcast, with a heavy feeling to the air. Lindy walked down Main Street to the drab-looking Kountry Kitchen Kafe, which stood where Bonnie’s Gift Shop used to be. A pair of weather-beaten men who looked like farmers were eating breakfast in silence at the counter. They gave Lindy a brief look and returned to their food. She took a stool at the far end and took the menu from the clamp attached to the napkin dispenser.

  A waitress brought a glass of water and silverware. She was a fat peroxide blonde with a bitter curve to her mouth. Loose flaps of skin hung on her upper arms.

  “Help you?”

  “I think I’ll just have a sweet roll and coffee. Is the orange juice fresh?”

  “Frozen.”

  “Never mind, then.”

  Lindy looked up from the menu to see the waitress still looking at her.

  “I know you,” the woman said.

  Lindy searched her memory. Nothing clicked. “I-I’m sorry, I don’t think I — ”

  “Lindy Grant.”

  “That’s right,” she admitted.

  “Jesus, you look just the same.”

  Unconsciously Lindy narrowed her eyes. Something about the way the woman tossed her head — a gesture too young for her … Good Lord!

  “Merilee Lund!”

  “That’s me. Only it isn’t Lund any more. It was Spielman for a while, then Gotschke for too long.”

  “Well, you look … fine.”

  “That’s a crock. I know how I look. But you. Jesus, how do you do it?”

  “Just metabolism, I guess.” Lindy was embarrassed by the physical comparis
ons. To get off the subject she said, “So you’ve been married a couple of times?”

  “To my everlasting sorrow. A salesman from Milwaukee the first time. Planned to start his own machine tool business. Went through all of his money, then all of mine, then went back to Milwaukee to live with his mother.”

  “Men can be bad news,” Lindy said.

  “Hell, Avery Spielman was an angel compared to my last ex. Joe Gotschke. From the Gotschkes out by Split Rock. Maybe you know them.”

  “I remember the name,” Lindy lied.

  “I’d like to forget it. Gave me three kids and half a dozen broken teeth. Then he ran off with an Indian squaw, and I never saw a nickel’s worth of child support or anything else.”

  “Rough,” Lindy said. She stole a peek at her watch.

  Merilee caught the glance. “Oh, hey, I’m not doing my job. That was a donut and coffee?”

  “Sweet roll. Cinnamon, if you have it.”

  “I think so.”

  She moved up the passageway behind the counter, and Lindy tried not to look at the broad rear end and the varicose veins visible beneath the short uniform skirt. There was no way she could relate this woman to the bouncy, supple-bodied cheerleader she remembered.

  Merilee came back with the coffee and cinnamon roll. She placed them on the counter and leaned forward, braced on her fat elbows, obviously expecting more conversation.

  “So who’d you marry?” Merilee asked. “Nobody from here, I guess.”

  “I haven’t married anybody,” Lindy said.

  “Smart.”

  “I always thought maybe you and Todd Hartman might end up together.”

  Merilee snorted. “Not likely. You were the one he had the hots for. Last I heard he married some rich bitch from Chicago and went to Washington to be a financial adviser or some damn thing.”

  “How about that,” Lindy said, knowing how witless the comment sounded, but not able to think of anything else to say.