by Kihn, Greg;
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Shade of Pale
Greg Kihn
CHAPTER ONE
Jukes Wahler stood next to the glass delicatessen counter and glanced through the window when he saw her. She walked alone, gliding down Forty-second Street like an apparition.
He’d never seen a more striking woman—flaming red hair cascading behind a pale, luminous face turned, incredibly, toward him. One slender ivory hand combed through her locks, casually curling a dozen or so strands around a finger.
Jukes jolted at the first impression. Even though it lasted only a few fleeting seconds, he came away with the most poignant heartache he’d ever felt.
Something reached out and pulled at him, and it wasn’t just her painfully beautiful face. There was something else. At the last fraction of a second, her head turned and she looked through the window at him. Jukes thought he saw something, a tear perhaps, glisten in the corner of her eye.
Jukes Wahler felt a sudden chill. Even through the dirty glass her gaze penetrated him. Jukes opened his mouth to speak, but there was nothing to say.
She was gone before he could react, disappearing into the sea of pedestrians, washed away.
Jukes stepped up to the window and looked where she had gone but saw only the oceanic parade of lunchtime New Yorkers.
For a moment he considered running out into the street after her, but that would have been ridiculous. He, a fifty-year-old professional man, a psychiatrist, and she … what? A twenty-year-old girl? What would he do? Run out and chase her through the streets of Manhattan like a schoolboy? Absolutely not. Jukes Wahler would never do anything like that, and the fact that he had even considered the notion, however briefly, concerned the hell out of him. All this in the space of two seconds.
He stood there, paralyzed, with his American Express card in his hand and a dazed expression on his face. He didn’t know what he felt.
“Will that be all, Dr. Wahler?”
“Huh?”
“Will that be all?”
“Ah, yeah. Thanks.”
“Are you OK? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Jukes nodded and mumbled something. Maybe he had seen a ghost; the girl certainly had a spectral quality. He signed the bill without focusing on it and looked back out the window.
Her image burned in his mind—so strange and so completely unlike everybody else. Her skin looked as pale and translucent as paper. She had an impossible complexion, like milk. He thought it must be some bizarre new makeup trend, the mutant Morticia Addams look.
The combination of her hair and skin took his breath away. She must be a model, he thought. With a face like that, in sensuous disproportion, with slightly oversize lips and eyes, she had to be something.
Jukes Wahler was not what anyone would call a “ladies’ man,” but he couldn’t help but fantasize about her. Maybe he could catch up to her, ask her … anything.
No. Wouldn’t be right. Forget about it.
He took off his glasses and wiped them with a tissue, glancing around the room. Nobody had given him a second look, and amazingly, it appeared that no one else had noticed her.
Jukes’s long, plain features were not unattractive, but he seldom drew an admiring glance from the women he met. He replaced his glasses and looked into the mirror behind the counter. Looking back at him was a bookish middle-aged man, not altogether homely, but certainly not the type to be checking out redheads at lunch.
Yet this particular woman affected him. Something about her seemed disturbing; haunting, he would have said. Yes, haunting, that was the precise word to describe her.
Her beauty had something tragic about it, something brooding and melancholy. It was an inaccessible beauty, like a distant mountaintop viewed from below.
She must be flawed, he thought. All extremely beautiful women are flawed.
She also looked vaguely familiar. Maybe he’d seen her in a photo or on TV, but no, he would have remembered. He had the oddest sensation, and he scrambled now to define it.
When she made eye contact with him, something passed between them, some dark sentiment. It was far from a casual glance. Jukes’s gut instinct told him it was purposeful, that she had pulled his face out of the crowd for a reason. Chosen him, as it were.
Jukes recalled the involuntary shiver. Now that she was gone, he wanted to close his eyes and visualize her again, to examine the mental photograph he’d taken.
“Here, Doc, a little something for the office.”
Hyman Pressman, a longtime waiter at Dilman’s Deli, handed him a white bag.
“What’s this?”
“It’s some nice fresh cheesecake, the best in town,” the waiter answered. “Harry just made it.”
Jukes looked inside the bag and smiled.
“It’s for you, Doc, no charge.”
“Hyman, you shouldn’t. I can’t accept this.”
Hyman raised his hand. “How long have I been here?”
Jukes scratched his graying temple. “I don’t know; a long time, I guess.”
“Twenty years I’ve been here, OK? So, if I want to give away a piece of cheesecake, it’s my prerogative. I see you walk in here every day, alone, eat your lunch, and pay. Never a complaint, never a problem. I wish all my customers were like that. You’re a pleasure to wait on, Doc; I mean that. Besides, you’ve been overtipping me for years and I’m starting to feel guilty about it. Take the cheesecake.”
Jukes looked at his watch. He realized he had to hurry now or be late for his one o’clock appointment.
Hyman chuckled. “You’re running behind?”
Jukes nodded.
“Then go,” Hyman said, patting the bag, “and enjoy.”
He thanked Hyman and slid out the door, walking in the same direction the girl had gone.
The urge to look for her was irresistible, and he vainly scanned the block ahead for her hair. It would have been hard to miss. He felt light-headed as he stepped along the avenue, searching for her face in the shifting crowd. He stumbled.
Again her image in his mind’s eye.
As a psychiatrist, Jukes couldn’t help but see people in an analytical light, and today it seemed like everyone he saw on the streets of New York City needed therapy.
He passed some street people who were sitting on the pavement babbling incoherently. Jukes tried not to make eye contact as he hurried on his way.
A block later he passed a bag lady rooting through a garbage can. She looked up at him as he walked by. The look of recognition in her discolored eyes shocked him and made him instantly defensive. Her filthy hand shot out and clutched at his arm. He tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let go. She shouted gibberish into his face, her breath unearthly.
“You’ve seen her,” the old woman hissed. “I know you’ve seen her.”
Jukes recoiled with the look of inconvenience that many veteran New Yorkers get when confronted by something unpleasant. The old lady made no move to follow him as he quickly stepped away and moved past her, down the street.
He walked into his office and picked up a stack of messages. “Any calls, Ms. Temple?” He shuffled the deck of papers.
“Yes, there were several. Dr. Howard called and he’s sending someone over.”
Jukes looked up. “Will’s sending me patients?”
She nodded. “Apparently so. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Dr. Howard a GP?”
“He is. It must be a referral.”
Ms. Temple smiled, professionally pleasant. “Did I mention that Mr. Avila’s here?” She nodded in the direction of a man dressed as a clown.
He sat with his legs cross
ed on the black leather couch in the waiting area, reading an old copy of the New Yorker. It was Jukes’s one o’clock appointment—a man who made his living as Carbinkle the Clown. Carbinkle the manic-depressive, coke-snorting clown.
“He’s been waiting about ten minutes. He just came from an engagement … I guess.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Jukes put the bag with the cheesecake in it on her desk and patted it. “This is for you, Ms. Temple,” he said. “The waiter at Dilman’s gave it to me.”
“But you’re on a diet,” she said quickly, “and you want me to have all those lovely fat calories. How thoughtful of you. Thanks a lot.” The thank-you was pure sarcasm.
Jukes shrugged.
“Before you go, sign these,” she said.
“What would I do without you?” he murmured, signing the documents.
“Probably get somebody else,” she replied, deadpan.
Ms. Temple handed him a file and looked across the room. He followed her eyes and found his patient sitting in an exaggerated position, legs crossed, giant clown shoes flapping, glaring at him.
“Mr. Avila! Sorry to keep you waiting. Please come in.”
Late that afternoon, with the sun shining nearly horizontally through the blades of the wooden Venetian blinds, Ms. Temple stood in Jukes’s office.
“There’s a Mr. Declan Loomis waiting to see you; it’s the man Dr. Howard sent over. He seems very uncomfortable in the waiting room. Here’s the file.” She handed him a thin folder.
Jukes scanned the pages. “Send him in, Ms. Temple.”
He read that Declan Loomis was suffering from what Dr. Howard called “delusions and hallucinations,” and, he noted, the conservative Will Howard found Loomis “dangerously paranoid.”
Jukes looked up as a nervous-looking, rather disheveled businessman in his early fifties entered the room.
“Please come in, Mr. Loomis. I’m Dr. Wahler.”
Jukes got up and shook Loomis’s sweaty hand, then carefully closed the heavy soundproof door. It latched with a satisfying click.
As soon as the door closed, Loomis started talking. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Doc. I really appreciate it. I don’t know where else to go.”
Jukes smiled his sympathetic smile. “Well, that’s what I’m here for. How can I help you, Mr. Loomis?”
Loomis looked around the room, his eyes darting from corner to corner, lingering at the window, then returning to Jukes’s face. A thin patina of sweat glistened on his brow. “I don’t have much time. I mean, I don’t know if she’s waiting for me outside—”
“She?”
“Right. You see, I know this sounds insane, but … To tell you the truth, I’m having trouble believing it myself, but I’m being stalked.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. “I see. Why don’t you have a seat and tell me about it.”
Loomis sat down on the brown leather couch; Jukes took a seat opposite.
“Can you identify the person who’s stalking you? Maybe that’s something for the police.”
Loomis blinked. “No. It’s not like that.” He heaved a sigh and hung his head. “She’s … she’s the angel of death and she’s been following me.”
“Who are you talking about?”
Loomis ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I’m being stalked by something … inhuman. Something that takes the form of a beautiful young woman. But she’s not a woman; she’s a monster!”
“You think this woman is a monster?”
“Absolutely.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I see her everywhere. She’s put the evil eye on me; it’s driving me crazy.”
Jukes chewed his pencil pensively. “Mr. Loomis, you’re a banker, right?”
Loomis nodded.
“Fifty-two years old, single—”
“Divorced.”
“Divorced,” Jukes repeated, “no obvious health problems, and apart from this delusion—”
“It’s no delusion.”
“Mr. Loomis, in time we will both come to understand and deal with this, but I want you to know, it is a delusion. There is no bogeyman, or bogeywoman, as the case may be.”
“She’s real, damn you! I’ve seen her with my own eyes!”
“OK, why don’t we begin by you telling me when you first became aware of this … this problem.”
Loomis wiped his mouth with a stained and wrinkled sleeve. His eyes danced wildly in his head. He lit a cigarette with shaking hands, sucked on it desperately, then blew the, smoke across the room. Jukes winced; he disliked cigarette smoke.
“She came into the bank, a complete stranger. I’m in New Accounts, and my desk is near the door. She just came in and looked at me. Never said a word, just stared at me with those devil eyes.”
“I see; please go on.”
“I asked if I could help her, you know, like I ask all the customers. But she just stared at me. I began to get the oddest feeling—dread, I think. She scared me, Doc; she really did. I was struck dumb. For a minute I thought I was having a heart attack, but Dr. Howard says that wasn’t it. It was the weirdest damn feeling; I can’t describe it physically. I felt like I was paralyzed for a second.”
Jukes immediately thought of the girl he had seen through the window at Dilman’s. He brushed the thought away.
“I swear it, Doc; I couldn’t move.
“Then I started seein’ her everywhere. At the train station, on the street, everywhere. I realized she was stalking me.”
“Always the same girl?”
“Always.”
“Are you sure?”
Loomis nodded. “Well, for one thing, she’s hard to miss. Hair as red as hellfire and unusually pale skin … I mean really white, like the dead. I’ve never seen anyone like her. She’s beautiful at first; then, when you look further, she’s monstrously ugly. Also, she looks like she’s been crying.”
A shiver oscillated down Jukes’s back. Loomis was describing the girl he’d seen earlier through the window. Not only that, but the man was describing precisely the anxious feeling Jukes had experienced when his and the girl’s eyes met.
It’s a series of remarkable coincidences, that’s all.
Jukes cleared his throat. “Why do you think she’s stalking you? It could be just a series of coincidences. I see many of the same people every day; there’s nothing abnormal or unearthly about it. This is New York City.”
Loomis shook his head. “No, I thought of that. She only makes eye contact with me, no one else. She seems oblivious to the other people, and here’s the weird part: it’s like they don’t even see her. I mean to tell you, Doc, the way she looks at me, I can feel her searching my soul. It’s like she’s probing for something. Gives me the creeps. It’s hypnotic. Then I get that feeling again. I don’t know if this word describes it, but I think it was something like a swoon. I think I was swooning. Helpless, like. There’s nothing concrete I can show you, but I’m scared, Doc, more scared than I’ve ever been.
“I can’t eat; I can’t sleep; everything’s going to hell at work; I can’t seem to concentrate anymore I just keep thinking about her.”
These are classic symptoms of cocaine psychosis, Jukes thought. “Mr. Loomis, have you ever experimented with drugs?” he asked.
“No. Never.”
“No cocaine? Amphetamines? Opiates? LSD? Marijuana?”
“Absolutely not.”
Jukes treated businessmen for substance abuse problems regularly, and he could spot the signs. But something about Loomis suggested that drugs weren’t the problem.
“And you have no idea who this woman is?”
“No, but I’ve got a pretty good idea what she is.”
“What do you mean?”
Declan Loomis sat up, stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray that Jukes reluctantly kept handy for his smoking patients, and sighed. “Maybe I came to the wrong place. Dr. Howard said you might be able to help me—”
“I can help you, Mr. Loomis. I can help you more than you might care to admit right now.” Loomis shifted in his seat uneasily. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. I know that you sincerely believe you’re being stalked by a monster. But have you ever considered that you might be wrong? Have you considered that your input, your senses, might be compromised?”
“Compromised? By what?”
“The subconscious mind. What you believe to be the truth may not be the truth at all.”
“If you mean I’m crazy—”
“You’re not crazy, Mr. Loomis, but you appear to be in a state of stress right now, and it’s quite possible you’re disoriented and maybe a little confused. You have all the classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia: feelings of being followed, pursued, by a nameless person, feelings of dread, loss of sleep—it all adds up.
“The mind can channel stress in unexpected directions. It can create situations that appear to be real.”
“All right, fuck it.” Loomis stood up suddenly and was about to go for the door when Jukes put a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Please. Mr. Loomis. I can help you.”
Loomis scowled. “You think I’m hallucinating? You think I’m on drugs? Is that your only explanation for what’s happening to me?”
“No. Not at all. There are hundreds of explanations. But I had to ask; it’s standard procedure in a case like this.”
Jukes got a good look into Loomis’s eyes for the first time and felt another chill. For a moment they settled, stopped dancing, and gazed hopefully into his. The look, the absolute mark, of fear was there like a caged animal.
Loomis drew a breath and held it. “It’s the Banshee, Doc. The angel of death. I’m a dead man.”
“Sit down.”
Loomis collapsed back onto the couch. “God help me. God help us all.”
Jukes poured him a paper cup of water.
Loomis drank it down in one gulp, then crumpled the cup in his hand. “Do you know what the Banshee is, Dr. Wahler?”
“The Banshee? It’s an Irish myth, isn’t it? Some sort of supernatural being?”
Loomis nodded. “It’s a female entity, something like the grim reaper.”