Haunted Air rj-6

by F. Paul Wilson

  How dare they? The Ceremony was to be performed without pain to the lamb. That would debase the ritual. The point was not pain but to gain life everlasting. The annual death of a child was an unfortunate but necessary price that had to be paid.

  How lamentable that he had to ally himself with such creatures, but in these increasingly Big Brotherish times, he needed their power and influence to safeguard the Ceremony and guarantee its annual performance.

  But Dmitri was different. His focus was on the end, not the means. He soon became an indispensable member, especially once the Ceremony was moved to the basement of his home. It was perfect. The stones did indeed resonate with a strange power, and the dirt floor was a perfect resting place for the lambs. Disposing of a body, even once a year, had always been a perilous chore.

  Eli would be performing the Ceremony at Menelaus Manor to this day were Dmitri still alive. But his doctors discovered that he had his father's cancer-too early to be helped by medical science, and too early to be saved by the Ceremony, for Dmitri had participated in nowhere near the twenty-nine he needed for immortality and invulnerability.

  Unable to face the same agonizing death as his father, he'd seated himself on the dirt floor of his cellar and put a bullet through his head. What a loss... a terrible, terrible loss. Dmitri had been like a son to Eli. He still mourned his passing.

  "I wonder who's living there now?" Adrian said as he drove on.

  "I checked that out already," Strauss said. "Couple of brothers named Kenton. Bought it a year ago."

  Eli felt a surge of excitement. Could they have tracked down his nemesis? "Do you think one of them could be our 'Jack'?"

  "Doubt it. I ain't got much in the way of contacts here in the one-fourteen, but I did learn that not only are these two guys brothers, but they're also brothers-if you know what I mean."

  Excitement dipped toward disappointment. "They're black?"

  "'S'what I'm told. You said your attacker was white. No chance you could be wrong?"

  "I wouldn't know," Adrian said. "I can't remember. The last thing I remem-"

  "He was white," Eli said, jumping in before Adrian could launch into his litany. "So that leaves them out."

  "Who knows?" Strauss said. "A guy who can raise Tara Portman from the dead can maybe turn himself white too."

  Eli was about to tell Strauss that this wasn't a joking matter when Adrian spoke.

  "I don't care who they are as long as they don't dig up the cellar."

  The remark brought silence to the car. That had been the great fear after Dmitri's death: the new owners would excavate the cellar. Eli had wanted a member of the Circle to buy the place so they could go on using it, but no one wanted his name connected with a house that held the remains of eight murdered children.

  "The possibility of that is so small," Eli said, "I've ceased to worry about it. Step back and consider it objectively. How many homeowners, no matter how extensively they renovate a home, tear up their cellar floor?"

  "Virtually none," Adrian said.

  Strauss said, "Just lucky for us the people who bought it poured a cement floor over the dirt down there."

  "It didn't bring them much luck, though," Eli said.

  Strauss barked a laugh. "Yeah! Two slit throats and still nobody has a clue. If you don't close a murder in forty-eight hours, chances are you'll never close it. It's been years for that one. Guess by now you could call it a perfect crime."

  Eli had been shocked when he'd read about the dead couple, and worried that the crime scene investigation might venture too deeply into the cellar.

  And then there'd been the mutilation of the little boy adopted by the next owners. Eli had begun to wonder if a combination of the Ceremony and those strange stones lining the basement could somehow have laid a curse on the place.

  "The other thing I'm worried about," said Adrian, "is that key ring."

  "So am I, Eli." Strauss tapped Eli on the shoulder. "It connects you to the girl, and you can be connected to me. That's not good. Not good at all."

  Adrian stopped at a red light. He continued to stare straight ahead as he spoke. "I've had nightmares about something like this happening because of that trophy cabinet of yours, sitting out there in your store for all to see. I always thought it was risky and... and arrogant as well."

  Eli stared at him. Had he just heard correctly? Had Adrian, so deferential despite his size and strength, actually dared to call him arrogant? He must be furious, and very frightened.

  Arrogant? Eli couldn't dredge up any anger. Adrian was right. Displaying the trophy cabinet had been arrogant and even foolhardy, but not half as arrogant and foolhardy as what Eli had done on Saturday.

  Maybe the impetus had been the unbidden thoughts of Tara Portman the night before, perhaps it was nothing more than mere ennui, but whatever the reason, Eli had yielded to an urge to flaunt his invulnerability. So on Saturday afternoon he had told someone that he had killed hundreds of children, and that another would die with the next new moon, all but daring him to do something about it.

  Eli permitted himself a fleeting smile. Adrian would shit his pants if Eli told him.

  Instead Eli said, "Be that as it may, the trophy cabinet had nothing to do with our current predicament."

  Strauss leaned back and returned to his slouch in the rear seat. "Maybe it did and maybe it didn't, but it was a bad idea all around. That kind of in-your-face shit threatens us all. Maybe you don't care, but we do."

  "I sympathize, and I'll try to take your feelings into account in the future," Eli said. If the Circle had a future.

  They lapsed again into silence as the car moved into traffic, then Adrian cleared his throat.

  "Eli, am I the only one bothered by you thinking of Tara Portman for no good reason on Friday night, and then this stranger popping into your shop on Sunday to try and buy the key ring? Then someone-possibly the same man-attacks us Monday night, and steals Tara's key ring on Tuesday. And today he claims that Tara is 'back'-whatever that means. Could he have brought her back on Friday night?"

  "She's not back!" Eli said, his voice rising of its own accord.

  "Then why, of all possible lambs, did you think of Tara Portman?"

  "What time was this?" Strauss said, leaning forward again and refouling the air of the front seat with his breath. "That you thought of her, I mean."

  "I don't know. I wasn't watching the time. Late, I'd say."

  "You know what else happened late Friday night? The earthquake."

  Eli remembered reading something about that. "I didn't feel a thing."

  "But locals around here did. The paper said it was centered in Astoria."

  "Dear God," Adrian whispered.

  "Oh, come now," Eli said. "You can't seriously believe one has anything to do with the other. That's absurd!"

  But was it? Eli felt an Arctic chill blow through the chambers of his heart. He couldn't let on how deeply the scenario Adrian and Strauss were describing disturbed him. It only heightened his feelings of being at the mercy of chance as well as the forces of nature itself.

  "Perhaps it is," Adrian said. "But you can't help wondering, can you."

  No, Eli thought. You can't.

  He realized the only thing that would assuage this mounting malaise and uncertainty was another Ceremony to bulwark his defenses.

  "For the moment," he said, "let's turn away from lambs of the past and focus on a lamb for the present." He glanced at Strauss. "Any progress in the matter of Ms. DiLauro's child, Freddy?"

  "Some. I spent a little time watching her place today." He laughed. "I was wearing my old blues-they still fit me, y'know-and I waltzed them up to her door after I seen her leave her place alone. I figured if the kid was there, I'd pull the old your-mommy's-been-hurt routine, but she wasn't home. Learned from a neighbor's maid that she's away at camp."

  "Really?" Eli said. He felt a surge of hope.

  "Why are you fixated on her?" Adrian said. "We can snatch a child anywhere-"r />
  "We've succeeded in lasting this long because we don't take chances. This situation has interesting possibilities. Think: A child disappears from a camp in the woods and the first thing everyone assumes is that she wandered off. They waste precious time beating the bushes for her when all the while she could be miles away, unconscious, in a car speeding toward the city..."

  "Yes," Adrian said, nodding. "I see. Which camp?"

  "That's the problem. This maid didn't know."

  Adrian groaned. "Do you know how many summer camps there are in the tri-state area? We'll never find her."

  Eli's mood sank. Adrian was right. There were hundreds, maybe thousands.

  Strauss slapped the back of the front seat. "Never say never, my friend. I'm working a few angles. I've already recruited Williamson. He'll be full speed on the trail of little Victoria Westphalen tomorrow."

  Wesley Williamson was a longtime member of the Circle and deputy director of the state banking commission. Eli didn't know how he could help, but he'd leave that to Strauss.

  "He'd better hurry. If we don't complete the Ceremony by midnight Friday, we'll have to wait until next month."

  Eli couldn't bear the thought of spending a whole month in his current state. Not just the fear and uncertainty, but the vulnerability, which was so much worse. His nameless enemy would have all that time to move against him.

  "I'm doing my best, okay? This is short notice, but we'll get her. So sharpen up your knife for Friday night."

  IN THE IN-BETWEEN

  The entity that was Tara Portman floats in darkness and frustration. The one she was sent for has stayed away. She has something Tara wants, something Tara desperately needs.

  She must find a way to bring her here. She thinks she knows a way. Tara touched her while she was here, perhaps she can touch her in another way, beyond these walls. Touch her and make her return.

  And then what? What will happen to Tara after her purpose is finished? Will she be returned to nothingness? Anything, even this half-existence, is better than that.

  Stay here. Yes... but not alone. She does not want to stay here alone...

  THURSDAY

  1

  Break time.

  Jack glanced at the clock above the Kentons' kitchen sink: 10:15. Was that all? Seemed as if they'd been working a lot longer than two hours. He sipped his Gatorade and considered the progress they'd made.

  When he'd arrived, Lyle and Charlie had already started chipping away at the concrete along the edges of the crack. If there'd been a gap in the earth below after the quake, it was gone. Just a groove in the dirt now. Jack had brought along some blues CDs as a compromise between his kind of music and the Kentons'. He heard no objections when he put on a Jimmy Reed disk, so he picked up a pickax and joined in, swinging in time to the beat, chain-gang style.

  He started off stiff and achy. Yesterday he'd worked muscles he rarely used and they awoke today tight and cranky; but ten minutes of swinging the pick loosened them up.

  Two hours later they'd widened the gap to maybe four feet. Slow, hard work. And hot. The cellar had started out cool but the heat thrown off by the exertions of three bodies soon raised the temperature. Like a sauna down there now. Jack could see he was going to need lots of Gatorade before the day was through, and lots of lager after.

  He and Lyle sat and sipped at the kitchen table in their damp T-shirts. The faint breeze through the windows and open back door carried little cooling power. Charlie had grabbed a paper and a donut and retreated to the shade of the backyard with the morning paper. He'd said little all morning.

  "Something wrong with Charlie?"

  Lyle's eyes gave away nothing. "Why do you ask?"

  "Pretty quiet."

  "He's just going through a phase. Not your worry."

  Right. Not Jack's business why the brothers Kenton weren't getting along. But he liked these two, and it bothered him.

  He dropped the subject. He lifted the front of his T-shirt and wiped his face. "Ever hear of air-conditioning?"

  "Not much use when the windows and doors won't stay closed."

  "Still?"

  Lyle nodded. "Still. If I close them they don't reopen as fast as they used to, but eventually they do."

  "Tara, you think?"

  Another nod. "I get the feeling she's trapped here. She wants to get out-maybe she keeps trying-but can't."

  Just then Charlie burst through the door, waving the morning paper. "Yo, Jack! Peep this!" He had the Post folded back and then in half, commuter style. He dropped it on the table and pointed to a headline. "Is this you, dawg? This yo' setup?"

  Jack picked up the paper. Lyle came around and peered over his shoulder.

  SHE SHOULD'VE KNOWN BETTER Elizabeth Foster, better known as psychic advisor Madame Pomerol, has had her second brush with the NYPD in one week. Just last Sunday morning she and her husband Carl were found wandering the financial district unclothed; but the charges are more serious this time: the Federal government is involved. Foster and her husband Carl were picked up yesterday afternoon trying to pass phony hundred-dollar bills at La Belle Boutique on Madison Avenue. The Treasury Department is investigating.

  But things get worse. A search of their Upper East Side apartment-also known as "Madame Pomerol's Temple of Eternal Wisdom"-not only turned up thousands more of the funny money, but provided indisputable evidence that this particular psychic medium is little more than a scam artist.

  Jack had to grin as the article went on to describe the eavesdropping devices found in her waiting room, the electronic ear pieces hidden in her hats, the monitors, the trapdoors, and most damning of all, the files on her clients, filled with xeroxes of driver licenses, Social Security cards, bank statements, and notes containing more than a few scathing comments about their weaknesses, predilections, and obsessions. As a result, the Manhattan DA was preparing to add charges of fraud and conspiracy to defraud to the federal counterfeiting rap.

  "They're done!" Lyle cried. "Gone! Fried! Fini! Madame Pomerol will be reading palms for cigarettes in either Rikers or a federal pen! Is this your fix?"

  "I do believe it is."

  "The queer? How'd you manage that? You plant it on them?"

  "Trade secret, I'm afraid."

  "You done it, G!" Charlie said, grinning for the first time all morning. "You nailed her!"

  Jack shrugged. "Sometimes things go according to plan, sometimes they don't. This one did."

  He stared at the article, basking in the sunny sensation of a job well done. He'd set the Fosters up for a fall and had known they'd tumble sooner or later. He was glad it turned out to be sooner.

  The big if in this particular fix-it had been how they handled their cash. Did they deposit it and write checks, or spend it? Jack had banked on the latter. With a good cash flow-real cash, not checks and charges-that they probably didn't declare, they'd tend to pay for things in cash to leave less of a money trail should the IRS come sniffing.

  Lyle clapped Jack on the shoulder. "Remind me never to get on your wrong side, Jack. You are not a man to mess with!"

  If Jack had his way, Eli Bellitto would soon feel the same, only worse. Much, much worse.

  As they all headed back down to the cellar, Jack sensed a better mood than when they'd started the break. They retrieved the pickaxes and renewed their combined attack on the concrete slab, tossing the broken chunks onto the pile of paneling.

  By midday they'd broken up half the slab. After a quick lunch of juicy gyros at a Greek deli up on Ditmars, they returned to work.

  "You know what?" Lyle said as he surveyed the rubble mat had once been a basement. "I think two of us should start digging in the dirt while the other keeps after the concrete."

  Jack kicked at the hard packed, red-brown soil. Not a hell of a lot softer than the concrete.

  "You mean, start looking for Tara."

  "Right. The sooner we find her, the sooner we can stop pretending to be day laborers and go back to being gentlemen of leisur
e."

  "How will we know it's her?"

  Lyle stared at the dirt. "You still think she's got company down there?"

  "I'd bet on it."

  "Well, we'll cross that bridge whenever." Lyle looked up at Jack. "You game to dig a little dirt?"

  "Not exactly my idea of a fun treasure hunt," Jack said, "but I'll give it a go."

  Lyle turned to his brother. "How about you, Charlie? Dirt or 'crete?"

  Charlie shrugged. "I'll stick with the slab."

  "Okay. We'll rotate around if anybody wants to switch." He leaned toward Jack and spoke in a stage whisper. "And if you should happen to find the remains of the Missing Link while you're digging, don't let Charlie know. He doesn't believe in evolution and it would upset him."

  Charlie said, "Step off, Lyle."

  My sentiments exactly, Jack thought.

  Lyle grabbed the shovel and jammed the spade into the dirt. "Well, it's true, isn't it. You believe the universe was created in six days, right?"

  "That what it say in the Bible, so that what I believe."

  "So did Bishop Usher, who ran down all the dates in the Bible and the ages of all people mentioned. According to his calculations, the earth was created on October 26, 4004 BC." He tossed a shovel full of dirt aside and struck a pensive pose. "I wonder if that was a.m. or p.m.? Anyway, seems to me the earth's packed an awful lot of growth and development into six thousand years."