999

by Al Sarrantonio

  “How on earth could I have forgotten the dogs?”

  Chapter Five

  Trawley sipped tea laced with sugar and milk as she stared out the window almost touching her shoulder where splatters of rain fell in random strikes. “How long is this predicted to last? Have you heard?”

  Case followed her gaze and shook his head. “No, I haven’t. There’s still no reception on radio or television.”

  “Oh.”

  “Must be the storm. I’m getting nothing but static.”

  Trawley turned to study his face. “Me too.”

  He looked around and met her gaze. They were sitting across from each other at a table in a windowed nook of the breakfast room that was tucked away just off the kitchen. Case gripped the handle of the porcelain teapot. “More?”

  The psychic shook her head and said, “No.”

  He poured for himself and then plucked two sugar cubes from a bowl. They made a crisply papery sound as he unwrapped them. “And so what do you make of all this?”

  “Make of what?”

  “This whole thing.” Case plopped the cubes into the teacup and stirred. “Miss Freeboard seems bored beyond terminal ennui,” he went on, “yet she pressed me to take this thing on.”

  “Oh, well, yes. She did the same thing with me.”

  “She told me she was doing it as an enormous favor for a friend. Forgotten his name. Oh, yes, Redmund, I think,” recalled Case.

  “James Redmund.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why ‘Oh’?”

  “Well, Mr. Dare was going on about some friend of Miss Freeboard’s for quite a little while in the limo driving up. Said he’d ‘seen better faces in a Kuwaiti police lineup.’ Could that be the same person, I wonder? Smokes a pipe?”

  “I don’t know. Miss Freeboard told me that he’d begged her to put this thing together. Did she tell you that, too, by any chance?”

  “Not exactly. She said if it turned out that the house is haunted, she could never in good conscience make a sale at any price.”

  “No, of course not,” Case agreed with a shake of the head.

  Their eyes met eamestly for a moment, and then suddenly they broke into laughter together. “Oh, I suppose we’ll get the truth of it one of these days,” said Trawley as their chuckling tapered to smiles.

  “Yes, I’m sure that we will one day. So we will.”

  Suddenly the tempo of the rain picked up. Trawley turned to look out but the rain was slashing and the arbor of trees beyond was blurred. “Reminds me of a science fiction story I once read,” she mused. “About a planet where it never stopped raining. That could surely put an edge on, couldn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, how did you get into this field?”

  “Through death.”

  She turned her head and found him brooding out the window.

  “The death of someone close to me,” Case said very softly. “Someone that I loved more than life … more than myself. I grew obsessed with somehow proving to myself that she hadn’t been utterly extinguished. Dear God, is there any pain of loss more keen than that one? I don’t believe that I’d ever felt farther from the sun.” He turned and met Trawley’s gaze for a moment, and then looked toward the Great Room sadly. “No Cole Porter,” he noted. “Too bad. I was getting quite attached to it, really.”

  He looked down into his teacup. “Oh, I’d always theoretically believed in the soul. Matter cannot reflect upon itself. But my grief needed more than that, it needed evidence.”

  “And so here you are trying to prove that there are ghosts.”

  Case looked up into her eyes with a warm, slight smile.

  “Do you think I’ll succeed, Anna?”

  “Yes. I think you will.”

  Abruptly the rain slackened off to a patter.

  “And what of you, Anna?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, how did you come by your gift?”

  “My gift?” She said it with a trace of bitter irony.

  “You said that very oddly,” Case observed.

  Trawley stared out the window.

  “My gift,” she said dully.

  “Yes, how did you come by it, Anna? By the way, there’s an ancient Egyptian version of Genesis in which God says repeatedly to Adam, ‘You were once a bright angel,’ then describes how he and Eve have been stripped of the faculties of telepathy and knowledge at a distance. Perhaps it was natural to us once. Were you bom with it, Anna?”

  She turned and stared down at her tea.

  “No,” she said softly. “I wasn’t bom with it at all. It came when I’d suffered a severe concussion. I was driving my four-year-old daughter to school. The road was icy. I skid and hit a pole. She was killed.”

  “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry.”

  The psychic looked up, staring off with concern.

  “Someone’s frightened. I’m feeling someone’s terror.”

  “He’ll be fine,” said Case.

  Trawley turned and searched his eyes inscrutably.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’m just guessing.

  “Guessing what?”

  “That you’re sensing our esteemed Mr. Dare. I really think he’s half frightened to death.”

  “Yes, that could be.”

  Case’s brow knitted slightly. “He asked me if he’d brought along two little dogs. What a question!”

  “Yes, he asked me that, too.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  She looked suddenly blank.

  Case waited, and then turned to another subject.

  “Have you ever tried reaching your daughter?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “With success?”

  “I don’t know. I reached someone.”

  “You’re not sure of it?”

  “Dead people lie. They’re just people.”

  He leaned back and pressed his palms against the edge of the table. “How amazing you should say that!” he declared.

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “No, I meant it confirms something for me.”

  “Really.”

  Case seemed to grow energized; his eyes sparkled. “There’s a fascinating book by a Latvian scientist named Raudieve who claimed to hear voices of the dead on a tape recorder. It’s called Breakthrough: Electronic Communication with the Dead. Do you know of it?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Right. The author says more or less the same thing as you: that the dead know no more than when they were alive and gave false and often contradictory answers to his questions.”

  Trawley nodded.

  “The voices were faint,” Case went on, “and quite fleeting, almost buried under amplifier noise, and with a strange and unexpected lilting rhythm. Some moaned and said ‘Help me’ and seemed tormented. Others seemed content, even happy. Raudieve heard one voice that he was able to recognize, an old colleague from medical school. Raudieve asked him to describe his situation in a word or two—the voices are so difficult to hear and detect—and he answered distinctly, ‘I’m in class.’ Is this striking you as balmy, by the way?”

  Trawley gently shook her head but her eyes smiled faintly.

  Case went on: “Another time Raudieve asked—of no one in particular, he says—’What is the purpose of your present existence?’ and he heard back very clearly, ‘Learning to be happy.’ What a statement! When I read it I got the strong feeling that what Raudieve was in touch with was precisely the afterlife described by C. S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, with the dead being all in the same place, really; it’s how they perceive it makes it heaven or hell; and their perception is shaped by how they’ve lived their earthly lives.” He looked down and shook his head. “I don’t know. When Raudieve asked where they were, he heard a voice answer clearly, ‘Doctor Angels’; then there came another voice that said, ‘It’s like a hospital.’ And then later someone answered, ‘Limbo.’”

  “It’s the
Disturbed Ward of a lunatic asylum.”

  Case glanced up at the psychic. He looked puzzled.

  Trawley was staring at him intently.

  “And some of the inmates,” she finished, “are dangerous.”

  Case held her gaze without expression, unblinking.

  “Yes, no doubt,” he said finally.

  “No doubt.”

  “Getting back to Raudieve and the tapes …”

  “Oh, yes, do.”

  “He gave up the experiments when the voices grew threatening. But before that he’d asked them, ‘Does God exist?’ and back came the answer, ‘Not in the dream world.’ When I read that it chilled me for some reason. Don’t know why. Then it suddenly occurred to me that the dream world wasn’t there—it was this one.”

  For a time Case probed the psychic’s eyes.

  She broke the silence.

  “Did you ever remarry?” she asked.

  Case said, “No.”

  Bright yellow sunlight shafted through the window.

  They turned their heads and stared out at the sky.

  “Ah, sun. The storm’s broken,” said Case.

  “So it has.”

  “The sky’s a wonder after rain, don’t you think? There really are some very lovely things about this world. Sometimes we tend to grow attached to its griefs.”

  Trawley turned to him. Color had risen in her face.

  “What do you mean?”

  Case shrugged and stared down at the table. “I once heard of a woman addicted to surgery. She had endless unneeded operations. Not in a masochistic way, you understand. She’d simply grown attached to the pain. She couldn’t bear to be without it for too long. It had become her very reason for existence.”

  He looked up and met her riveted gaze.

  “We’ll have a séance later?” he asked her.

  Trawley looked flustered and ill at ease.

  “Very possibly,” she answered him tersely. “We’ll see.”

  Case turned to the window, staring out moughtfully, and his brow began to wrinkle a little as he nodded and murmured to himself, “Perhaps we should. Yes, maybe this time we should try something new.”

  Trawley stared. “ ‘This time,’ did you say?”

  Case turned to her blankly. “I’m sorry?”

  “You said, ‘This time.’ What did you mean by that?”

  Case looked foggy. “I haven’t a clue. My mind wandered.”

  She stared at him steadily. “Yes. That happens to me, too.”

  ‘"I’m so sorry.”

  She picked up her teacup.

  “So you teach at Columbia,” she commented.

  “Yes.”

  “Such a stimulating atmosphere to work in. Do you live near the campus, by chance?”

  “No, I commute,” said Case. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, just curious, that’s all. No special reason.” Trawley sipped at her tea, and as she set down her cup it made a tiny but prolonged faint clattering sound against the brittle porcelain of the saucer. Case darted a glance to the cup, her trembling hands. She lowered them swiftly to her lap and out of sight. After a moment Case lifted his gaze.

  “You’re still worried about Dare?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes,” said Trawley. “I’m worried about all of us, really.”

  “Don’t be concerned,” Case told her.

  “Why not?”

  “Nothing ever seems to happen here until dark.”

  “Boys? Where are you, my babies? Are you here?”

  Lost and forlorn, confused, frightened, Dare made his way slowly along a hallway. Setting out to find his dogs, he had entered the hall from which Morna had first been seen to emerge, and in moving from hall to connecting hall he’d soon found himself wandering in a maze and completely unable to retrace his steps.

  He opened a door and looked into a bedroom.

  “Boys? Are you here? Maria? Pompette?”

  Through a window sunlight sifted into the room, thin and filtered through the branches of giant oaks. A narrow beam had found its way unbroken to a bureau. Dare stared; he thought it odd that no dust motes danced within it. The next instant the dust motes appeared in the beam, swirling swiftly in a spiraling Brownian movement. For a moment Dare contemplated this event, then dismissed it and again called out softly, “Here, boys!”

  He heard an ominous creaking sound from the hall, like that of a single, tentative footstep, and then the sound of a door closing quietly somewhere. Dare held his breath. He stepped out into the hallway and looked down its length. Nothing. He exhaled, then carefully moved down the hall again. “’Come on, boys! Maria Hidalgo? Pompette?” He made smacking summoning sounds with his hps.

  Dare came to another door and stopped, but as he was about to push it open he heard yet another strange sound from somewhere. At first it sounded like the distant buzzing of bees, but then as Dare stood motionless, straining to hear, it became a low murmuring, indistinct and run together, of several men speaking—praying?—in Latin. Confounded, Dare stopped and attentively listened and then saw something moving at the end of the hall, a black shape. He saw it open the door of a room at the end of the hall, walk into it, and close the door behind it. The author’s eyes widened. And then suddenly he leaped from his skin with a yelp as from behind him a hand came down on his shoulder. Dare whirled, his heart pounding.

  “Oh, there you are,” said Gabriel Case. He was standing there, smiling indulgently. “Mr. Dare, I’ve been searching for you everywhere. Really. Exploring the house, are we?”

  “Yes. I mean, no.”

  The author put a hand to his chest to still his heart.

  “My God, I’m awfully glad to see you,” he exhaled with relief.

  “I had a feeling that that might be the case.”

  “I got lost.”

  “Not so difficult to do in this house: it’s disordered, no sense to where anything lies or leads. Come along,” urged Case, “we’re right this way.” He opened a door and led Dare into yet another hallway.

  “We’ve been missing you,” he said.

  “I’ve been missing a tall brandy-soda. Incidentally, what’s that priest doing here?”

  “What priest?”

  “How would I know? Boris Karloff’s old chaplain!” Dare expostulated. “I just saw him down the hall back there.”

  Case halted. “Are you serious?”

  “Please don’t do that to me, Doctor.”

  “Call me Gabriel,” said Case.

  “I said stop that!”

  “Doctor,” Case quietly amended.

  “Thank you. I thought I heard this murmuring and mumbling in Latin, then I saw this tall priest walking by. You mean you don’t know who he is?”

  Case mulled it over, then again began to walk. Dare followed.

  “Are you Catholic, Mr. Dare?”

  “Ex-Catholic.”

  “Is there actually any such thing?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “We’re all alerted to seeing something in this house,” Case said soothingly. “Our unconscious expectations have been heightened. And you’ve heard me say some nuns were once exorcised here.”

  “You’re suggesting I’ve had a papally induced hallucination?”

  “I’m suggesting that you’re more of a believer than you say, and saw shadows, or, more likely, that you’re sending me up. Can you tell me which it is, Mr. Dare?”

  “Let’s find a drink.”

  Anna Trawley checked the time, sat down at the desk and then penned a new entry into her diary. She wrote:

  It’s 5:23 p.m. I am shaken and not certain as to why I had tea with Case. My attraction grows stronger. And yet so does my sense that he is somehow a peril to me, to my soul, to my very life. When I’m near him I tremble. Isn’t that absurd? God help me, I simply cannot figure it out. Am I dotty? Yes, of course, that might explain almost everything. How easy to become insane. And yet certain odd puzzles are not of my imagining. He and Morna don
’t agree on where he lives: one says close to the Columbia campus, and the other—Case himself—says far, far away. It’s too bizarre. Perhaps one of them—the girl, I would think—misunderstood me. But that’s a minor matter. The main thing is my instincts are crying out danger. And not merely from Case. I continue hearing voices, threatening, angry. I know I’m not imagining them.

  They are here.

  Chapter Six

  Smothering, shrieking in terror, trapped in a narrow dry prison of night, Freeboard wakened abruptly from a brief, light doze and sat up on the bed with a whimpering cry. She put a hand to her forehead. It was chilly and damp. “Shit, that stupid dream again!” she muttered. She waited, then at last she swung her legs off the bed, stood up, trudged into the bathroom, turned on a tap and splashed cold water onto her face. Drying off with a towel, she looked in the mirror. Get a hold! she admonished herself. It didn’t work. The dream was recurring and always disturbed her, yet she couldn’t remember when she’d started to have it. Involuntarily, she shivered. She needed to be out of this room, to be with people. She hurried from the bathroom, picked up a clean ashtray and banged it once sharply against the wall.

  “You in there, dickhead?”

  Freeboard waited. Nothing. Silence. She put back the ashtray, strode to the door and walked out into the hall. There she looked up and down but saw no one. It’s so quiet, she thought. She walked to the railing and glanced down at the Great Room. It was empty and still. The sconce lights were on.

  “Terry?”

  Freeboard waited. Then she heard something, voices, to her right. They were low and murmury, indistinct. She turned toward the sound. It was coming from the long empty hall that ran past Dare’s and Trawley’s rooms. At the end was a door. Freeboard stared at it, puzzled, then strode toward it purposefully as she heard the low voices again; they seemed to be coming from that direction. She got to the door and pushed it open, and as she did the voices ceased and there was sudden, deep silence. Freeboard frowned. She was peering down a long windowless corridor at the end of which stood another door. “Terry, you flaming asshole,” she called, “is that you screwing around in there?” Freeboard heard a door softly closing behind her. Turning quickly, she saw Trawley coming out of her room. The psychic saw her and approached, looking tense and troubled. “Something in there?” she asked. She was looking past Freeboard into the darkened inner hall.