Invitation

by Frank Peretti

  “And where was it?” he asked her.

  We were sitting in her small, long-dated living room. She pointed through her front window at the woods across the street. “It was right there, like it was waiting, like it was watching me.”

  Andi immediately pointed out the knotty tree, fire hydrant, and concrete seam.

  I had to look around Andi’s explosive red hair—like a sea urchin with a perm—but I expected as much.

  Nadine continued, “And then it was here. It wasn’t our house anymore, it was that house, and I was sitting in it and . . .” She trembled. “There was Clyde, sitting in the dining room.” She broke into a whimper. “But he was only a spirit. His time had come.”

  “He’d passed away a week before—” Van Epps began.

  I cut him off. “I want to hear it from her.”

  “At Daisy Meadows,” she said. “The assisted living facility. He died in his sleep. But the House wouldn’t let him rest. It chased his spirit around town until that night when it caught him . . . and sucked him into hell.”

  Ravings. I ventured a challenge. “How do you know he was sucked into hell?”

  “He was a difficult man, wasn’t he?” Van Epps asked.

  Nadine stiffened. “He didn’t mean to hurt me. It was the drink, you know.”

  “Objectivity! Scientific method!” My voice was raised. It gets that way when people don’t think. “You are a researcher, a debunker! What’s come over you?”

  Van Epps sat hunched and self-protective at his kitchen table while I paced about the room. “I thought it could pertain.”

  “Whether Clyde Morris was deserving of hell? What bearing could that possibly have on an explainable phenomenon?”

  He had to work up an answer. “I was exploring the phenomenon through her point of view.”

  “You were leading the witness!”

  Van Epps and I had had our heated discussions before. I took it in stride when he lashed out, “I came eye to eye with a posthumous manifestation of Clyde Morris! I photographed it! I felt the intensity of it! There is a human element here and we have to consider it.”

  “From an objective base, which you no longer have.”

  He halted, then raised a hand in surrender. “No. No, I don’t. That’s why I need you here.” He drew a breath, recovering a measure of professionalism. “The House exerts a strong effect on the human psyche, and I could be a case in point. When it first appeared, I truly felt it was looking into me as if it knew me. As if—note this—it knew my sins. And that look I got from Clyde Morris . . .”

  I sat next to him. “Religious guilt?”

  He smiled, nodded. “I’m sure you can relate.”

  “Of course.” Van Epps knew of my ill-fated days in the priesthood, and he’d shared a little of his Sunday school background. “I’ve found a good dose of reason and logic can make it go away . . . usually.”

  “And the power of suggestion can bring it back. In this town there’s plenty of that.”

  I rose. “Which, if I’m to be clinical, I need to apprise. Andi, get online. Find out if there’s any precedent for what we’re seeing here, any other cases of a house appearing and disappearing and . . . holding people morally accountable.” I looked at Van Epps. “Fair assessment?”

  He nodded, chagrined.

  “Want to come along?”

  “No. I’ll write up what we have so far. That should clear my system of . . . whatever this is.”

  “Good enough.”

  Port Avalon was a small town nestled on the forested hillsides above the Puget Sound. I drove less than four minutes to reach the town center, and could surmise from the boats, docks, and harbor the town’s origins as a fishing village.

  That, I guessed, had to be before the sixties and the influx ever afterward of the mystical set who favored seclusion, nature, and the nearness of the sea. Such mundane businesses as an Ace Hardware, a pharmacy, and a floral shop held precious ground amid a disproportionate measure of Eastern, animist, and mystical enterprises: tarot readers, fortune-tellers, psychic healers, shamans, meditation centers, and pagan temples. Here the objects of worship were goddesses, ascended masters, Mother Earth, any growing thing.

  I walked about, “fishing” for data and beginning to understand Van Epps’ conundrum. Port Avalon was saturated with the human need for explanation, for an answer to the question Why, for a basis of knowing good and evil or even the existence of such things. I had long ago established to my comfort that such cosmic questions developed only from our need for survival and holding our societies together, but as this town demonstrated, those who could accept morality as a matter of utility and not “truth” were few, and the pervasive norms of this place could easily aggravate the old “pang of conscience.” Poor Van Epps. This place was getting to him.

  And getting to me as well, I thought, halting on the sidewalk. Across the street I saw what an unprepared mind could take to be a cosmic coincidence.

  There, engaged in conversation with the gypsy-costumed proprietor of Earthsong’s Psychic Readings, was the brusque and urbanesque tattoo artist, Brenda . . .

  I’d forgotten her last name and that was fine with me, but her dreadlocks and slinking posture were unmistakable.

  A plague on this town! In that moment I nearly believed some game master somewhere was moving us about like chess pieces. It was more than enough that she’d been on the same plane Andi and I took to Seattle, and not only she, but the wide-eyed giant we called Tank, and all by happenstance. Yes, I argued with myself—and the town—happenstance, even if Tank should show up in Port Avalon as well.

  Perish the thought. The last time Andi, the tattooist, the giant, and I were lumped together, it was to invade that ridiculous Institute—trespassing, vandalizing, and resorting to pointless acts of heroism. Heroism! Now there was another conundrum: If in this random and purposeless universe there was no basis for right and wrong, how could there be any point to heroism?

  I deliberately gave my head a shake to cast off all this tizzy. I thought I would turn away.

  If anyone ever attributes my decision to fate, luck, God, or any other capricious power, I will fervently deny it. I was, after all, “fishing,” and if the fish might be across the street . . .

  I crossed, though it pained me.

  “Well—” was as far as my greeting went before Earthsong got whammy-eyed.

  “Ohhh!” she said with serpent-handed histrionics. “You are looking for someone!” She reeked of incense and her bracelets jangled. It was strictly carnival. “Would you like to know more?”

  Brenda—I recalled her last name was Barnick—seemed pleasantly surprised at the sight of me. “Oh, this is the guy! I was—”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like to know more, anything you have to say.”

  Brenda made a face that telegraphed are you putting me on?

  I’d been struck in that moment by another coincidence. I had a fish on the line, tugging. I wanted to land it.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Earthsong

  I felt in violation of my own precepts, sitting in Earthsong’s mystical, candlelit parlor, listening raptly as she went through a well-rehearsed spiel. Yes, the crystal ball was there in the center of the table; the incense was burning and tainting everything, including ourselves; a carved, ruby-eyed raven perched above our heads lending mood and . . . vibration? Brenda shot me many a sideways glance through the proceedings, but I suggested by my own behavior the role she should play: gullible, enraptured. She fell into it quite well.

  “I see . . . a child!” said Earthsong, waving her fingers over the crystal ball. “Young . . . innocent . . . blond hair. Strangely silent.” She then sneered. “Ha! He is thought to have a gift, but next to me, he is nothing! He knows nothing of the real powers! It was a waste to consult him! A waste!”

  I was not experienced in discerning drug-affected behavior, but I had to suspect she was high on something. I would definitely consult the streetwise B
renda afterward.

  The fortune-teller continued. “He was a prisoner but broke his bonds and is free! And now . . .” She made eye contact for effect. “You seek him!”

  “And where is he?” Brenda asked.

  Role playing? At least it spurred the conversation.

  “This is the cry of the powers! Where is he? Where is he?” Earthsong consulted her crystal ball. “Ask the House. The House will know. The House . . .”

  From there she went into a fit, something she must have learned by watching the channelers on television in the eighties. We got nothing more from her except the amount of her fee: Twenty dollars.

  Brenda and I made our way up the sidewalk, chained to each other by curiosity.

  “What does she mean, ask the House?” Brenda mused.

  “What the devil are you doing here?” I demanded, turning to her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I explained Van Epps’ invitation, meaning I had to detail the bizarre reasons as well—and explain what I could of the House.

  She returned my favor, explaining, “Got an invitation, plane ticket and everything, from a tattoo agent in Seattle, something about starting a franchise. Called himself a tattoo broker! That should have been a clue right there. It was a rip-off. They get me the work and take a percentage, but the fine print says I can only work through them and they own my designs. So screw ’em, but thanks for the free ride.”

  “But what are you doing here?”

  “Don’t get your boxers in a wad. I saw a poster in the agent’s lobby, said you were lecturing at Evergreen State. I said, ‘Hey, what’re you guys doing plugging a don’t-believe-in-nothing guy like this?’ The agent tears the poster off the wall and throws it in the fireplace.”

  I could see her watching it in her mind’s eye.

  “I saw you burning, curling up, going to ashes. I called Evergreen—what’s that face for? Yeah, I called ’em, and they said you were coming up here to see a friend.”

  “You came here because somebody burned a poster of me?”

  “Listen, I’d need more than that to trouble myself over you.” She dug in her shoulder bag and brought out a sketchpad. “I saw this right after that.”

  She showed me her drawing of a snaky logo with scaly lettering: Psychic Readings, Fortunes Told. We both looked back to verify the same logo above Earthsong’s front door.

  “You saw this on the bulletin board?”

  She sniffed her impatience and pointed to her head. “In here, man. I see things in here and I draw them. That’s why I stopped there to talk to the lady. I said, ‘Hey, I’m trying to find somebody,’ and right then, there you were. Now you do what you want with it, but that’s what happened.”

  “So that’s how she got the idea we were looking for someone . . .” I mused. “Except I wasn’t. Not you, not the little blond kid.” I chuckled. “She couldn’t have been further off.”

  “So why’d you spend the twenty bucks?”

  We’d come to my car. I nodded to the passenger door. “Let’s have a chat.”

  Inside, I cautioned her to secrecy and continued. “It seems my friend Van Epps has a close relationship with that lady. The moment I reached her front door I caught the odor of her incense—it’s a smell that permeates Van Epps’ leather jacket. He’s been to her place on a regular basis.”

  “Did you see the needle tracks on her arms?”

  “I was going to ask you—”

  “She was high. Heroin. I’ve seen it.”

  “High and careless. Being a charlatan, she guessed wrong and told us somebody else’s fortune. But the information is likely true: Somebody’s looking for a child—”

  “I’ve seen the kid.”

  “—and I have to wonder what Van Epps knows about it.”

  “Are we talking or just you?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’ve seen that kid.”

  I had to clarify. “Where?”

  She indicated her head again.

  “I suppose you have a drawing?”

  “Not on me.”

  “Hmph.”

  “It’s on Cowboy’s arm. A little blond kid, standing there with the rest of us.”

  We were going over a cliff. I applied some brakes.

  “Let’s categorize what we have. You claim to be here following information gained through some kind of psychic means—”

  “No I don’t!” she argued.

  “Whatever, all right? Just for now?”

  “I don’t do trances and I don’t trip out . . . and I don’t have a freaky carved raven!”

  “Granted. But let’s put all that here in this category”—I indicated a small corral with my hands, then indicated another beside the first—“and another category here, for data gathered the old-fashioned way, through observation.”

  She was either bored or miffed, looking elsewhere.

  I proceeded anyway. “In the second category, Earthsong is tied to Van Epps, and that being the case, he may know something about this child, something he’s chosen not to talk about.”

  She looked at me again. “She’s jealous of the kid, you know that.”

  I nodded. “He supposedly has a gift she went out of her way to discredit.”

  “So he’s a threat, so he’s real.”

  “I agree.”

  “So what about the rest of it? The kid in prison and breaking out and somebody wondering where he is . . .”

  “And the House knowing . . .” We now had a bag of pieces that didn’t connect. “I’ll have a word with Van Epps about it, if only to get his reaction.” Then, wanting data first and accepting explanation later, I added, “In the meantime, let me know if you see any more pictures.”

  She gave me a look.

  “No, please do.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  Gustav Svensson

  Van Epps disappointed me—not for lack of information I could at least infer, but for lack of honesty with me, his old compatriot in skepticism.

  He asked me about my walk through the town. I recounted my impressions and introduced Brenda. He asked if we’d noticed the overburden of mystics and charlatans, and of course we had.

  “Places like . . . Earthsong’s Psychic Readings,” he said with a sardonic wag of his head. “So typical.”

  How notable that he brought up the fortune-teller without my mentioning her. I pursued it. “We gave her a try, as a matter of fact. She put on quite a show.”

  He sneered, he scoffed, he chided me for wasting my time and money.

  “She spoke of a missing child,” I said with a mockery to match his. “Obviously, a ‘reading’ that had nothing to do with us.”

  He laughed along with me but drummed his fingers nervously and would not dwell on the subject.

  From there, things went into a limbo that became more and more constricting. We went to several homes around the neighborhood and town, but the reactions we got were as Van Epps predicted from his own experience: No one talked about the House.

  After that, a day passed, then another, and we became like survivors in a lifeboat, stuck in close proximity with nowhere else to go. Van Epps and I fell into quarrels over old information when we weren’t exhausting each other in protracted academic discussions. His house was sizable enough for his guests but not sizable enough to prevent friction between myself and the two women.

  Andi, lacking something to do, began jabbering about patterns: The dimensions of the cupboard doors were golden rectangles, the teakettle played a continuous tone progressing through ten degrees of the scale and ending on an accidental, the pattern of the living room carpet repeated every forty-eight inches, which was the same number of flowers in the pattern multiplied by four, so there had to be more twelves or multiples of twelve somewhere. There was no turning her off.

  Brenda, always edgy, wandered, explored, got to know some people, but the idleness weighed upon her and she simply could not find something to like. She didn’t like the to
wn, she didn’t like the house, she didn’t care for Van Epps and, of course, she could not accommodate herself to me—a mutual feeling I had no incentive to correct.

  And all along, Van Epps kept pressing us: “It’ll show up again. Count on it. You’ll see.”

  Then came October 6. The day held no significance for me, but for Andi, it was the number six, the number the Institute seemed so fond of, which was divisible into twelve, which constituted the pattern she was waiting for. “It’s the sixth! I think we’re going to get something today!”

  I got out of the house—alone. That was the point.

  I walked the same loop around the neighborhood, past the same trees, hedges, yards, and yapping dogs I’d memorized by now, vexed by the monotony, the sameness, the cyclical repetition . . .

  Until I noticed a different sensation. Beneath my vexation, a sense of gloom moved in like a mood swing on a cloudy day . . . feelings associated with the memory of a woman I could not have . . . shadows of regret . . . anger . . . the day I tore off my clerical collar.

  Blast! I had long ago buried all such issues. It had to be the town, the idleness, and now my being exiled as it were, a solitary soul on an empty sidewalk in a strange town. I dashed the memories from my mind—

  And felt a sense of foreboding as if being followed. Watched.

  I looked about. No one behind me—

  The moment my eyes came forward, I saw only twenty feet away . . . Him? It? I will use the term specter to convey the appearance of the man and, I admit, the chill, the danger I felt. He was motionless, like a post. His eyes, pasted over like those of a dead animal, were locked on me. How he could make such an instant appearance and from where, I could not tell.

  He was dressed like an aged mariner: old slicker, drooping hat, work boots. His complexion was cold and gray, and he was dripping wet, standing in a puddle of water though it was a rainless day.

  He took a step toward me, and then another, the grim expression steady as a mask. Intuitively, I considered my size and strength and so resolved to stand my ground. The boots squished and left wet footprints on the street. The slicker dripped as if being rained upon.