A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Finally, I let her go. I dressed her as best I could, and stretched her out on the cushions. I called the emergency squad, then drove my car to the corner and waited until I saw them wheel her body out to the ambulance. Then I headed for the airport.

  I hated abandoning her to the medical examiner, but I knew the police would want to question me. They’d want to know what the hell we were doing up in that tower during a storm. They might even take me into custody. I couldn’t allow that.

  I had someplace to go.

  I arrived in Marco Polo Airport without luggage. The terminal snuggles up to the water, and the boats wait right outside the arrival terminal. I bought a ticket for the waterbus—I could barely look at the smaller, speedier water taxis—and spent the two-and-a-half mile trip across the Laguna Véneta fighting off the past.

  I did pretty well leaving the dock and walking into the Piazza San Marco. I hurried through the teeming crowds, past the flooded basilica on the right—a Byzantine toad squatting in a tiny pond—and the campanile towering to my left. I almost lost it when I saw a little girl feeding the pigeons, but I managed to hold on.

  I found a hotel in the San Polo district, bought a change of clothes, and holed up in my room, watching the TV, waiting for news of a storm.

  And now the storm is here. From my perch atop the Campanile di San Marco I see it boiling across the Laguna Véneta, spearing the Lido with bolts of blue-white energy, and taking dead aim for my position. The piazza below is empty now, the gawkers chased by the thunder, rain, and lightning—especially the lightning. Even the brave young Carabinieri has discovered the proper relationship between discretion and valor and ducked back inside.

  And me: I’ve cut the ground wire from the lightning rod above me. I’m roped to the tower to keep from falling. And I’m drenched with rain.

  I’m ready.

  Physically, at least. Mentally, I’m still not completely sure. I’ve seen Beth twice now. I should believe, I want to believe . . . but do I want it so desperately that I’ve tapped into Kim’s delusion system and made it my own?

  I’m hoping this will be my last time. If I can see Beth up close, see her throat, know that her wound has healed in this place where she waits, it will go a long way toward healing a wound of my own.

  Suddenly I feel it—the tingle in my skin as the charge builds in the air around me—and then a deafening ZZZT! as the bolt strikes the ungrounded rod above the statue of St. Mark. Millions of volts slam into me, violently jerking my body . . .

  . . . and then I’m in that other place, that other state . . . I look around frantically for a splotch of yellow and I almost cry out when I see Beth floating next to me. She’s here, smiling, radiant, and so close I can almost touch her. I choke with relief as I see her throat—it’s healed, the terrible grinning wound gone without a trace, as if it never happened.

  I smile at her but she responds with a look of terror. She points down and I turn to see my body tumbling from the tower. The safety rope has broken and I’m drifting earthward like a feather.

  I’m going to die.

  Strangely, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it should. Not in this place.

  Then in the distance I see two other figures approaching, and as they near I recognize Kim, and she’s leading a beaming towheaded boy toward Beth and me.

  A burst of unimaginable joy engulfs me. This is so wonderful . . . almost too wonderful to be real. And there lies my greatest fear. Are they all—Beth, Kim, Timmy—really here? Or merely manifestations of my consuming need for this to be real?

  I look down and see my slowly falling body nearing the pavement.Very soon I will know.

  ANNA

  The bushy-haired young man with long sideburns arrives on deck with two cups of coffee—one black for himself, the other laced with half-and-half and two sugars, the way his wife always takes it. Rows of blue plastic seats, half of them filled with tourists heading back to the mainland, sit bolted to the steel deck. He stops by a row under the awning. His wife’s navy blue sweatshirt is draped over the back of one of the seats but she’s not there. He looks around and doesn’t see her. He asks a nearby couple, strangers, if they saw where his wife went but they say they didn’t notice.

  The man strolls through the ferry’s crowded aft deck but doesn’t see his wife. Still carrying the coffee, he ambles forward but she’s not there either. He wanders the starboard side, checking out the tourists leaning on the rails, then does the same on the port side. No sign of her.

  The man places the coffee on the seat with her sweatshirt and searches through the inner compartments and the snack bar. He begins to ask people if they’ve seen a blond woman in her mid-twenties wearing a flowered top and bell-bottom jeans. Sure, people say. Dozens of them. And they’re right. The ferry carries numerous women fitting that description.

  The man finds a member of the crew and tells him that his wife is missing. He is taken to the ferry’s security officer who assures him that his wife is surely somewhere aboard—perhaps she’s seasick and in one of the rest rooms.

  The man waits outside the women’s rooms, asking at each if someone could check inside for his wife. When that yields nothing, he again wanders the various decks, going so far as to search the vehicle level where supply trucks and passengers’ cars make the trip.

  When the ferry reaches Hyannis, the man stands on the dock and watches every debarking passenger, but his wife is not among them.

  He calls his father-in-law who lives outside Boston. He explains that they were on their way over for a surprise visit but now his daughter is missing. The father-in-law arrives in his chauffeur-driven Bentley and joins the young man in storming the offices of the Massachusetts Steamship Authority, demanding a thorough, stem-to-stern search of the ferry and too damned bad if that will delay its departure. The father-in-law is a rich man, influential in Massachusetts politics. The ferry is detained.

  The state police are called to aid in the search. The Coast Guard sends out a helicopter to trace and retrace the ferry’s route. But the wife is not to be found. No one sees her again. Ever.

  “Ow!”

  William Morley grabbed his right heel as pain spiked through it. His knee creaked and protested as he leaned back in the chair and pulled his foot up to where he could see it.

  “I’ll be damned!” he said as he spotted the two-inch splinter jutting from the heel of his sock.

  Blood seeped through the white cotton, forming a crimson bull’s-eye around the base of the splinter. Morley grabbed the end and yanked it free. The tip was stiletto sharp and red with his blood.

  “Where the hell . . .?”

  He’d been sitting here in his study, in his favorite rocker, reading the Sunday Times, his feet resting on the new maple footstool he’d bought just yesterday. How on earth had he picked up a splinter?

  Keeping his bloody heel off the carpet, he limped into the bathroom, dabbed a little peroxide on the wound, then covered it with a Band-Aid.

  When he returned to the footstool he checked the cushioned top and saw a small hole in the fabric where his heel had been resting. The splinter must have been lying in the stuffing. He didn’t remember moving his foot before it pierced him, but he must have.

  Morley had picked up the footstool at Danzer’s overpriced furniture boutique on Lower Broadway. He’d gone in looking for something antiquey and come out with this brand-new piece. He’d spotted it from the front of the showroom; tucked in a far rear corner, it seemed to call to him. And once he’d seen the intricate grain—he couldn’t remember seeing maple grained like this—and the elaborate carving along the edge of the seat and up and down the legs, he couldn’t pass it up.

  But careless as all hell for someone to leave a sharp piece of wood like that in the padding. If he were a different sort, he might sue. But what for? He had more than enough money, and he wouldn’t want to break whoever did this exquisite carving.

  He grabbed two of the stool’s three legs and lifted it for
a closer look. Marvelous grain, and—

  “Shit!” he cried, and dropped it as pain lanced his hand.

  He gaped in wonder at the splinter—little more than an inch long this time—jutting from his palm. He plucked the slim little dagger and held it up.

  How the hell . . .?

  Morley knelt next to the overturned stool and inspected the leg he’d been holding. He spotted the source of the splinter—a slim, pale crevice in the darker surface of the lightly stained wood.

  How on earth had that wound up in his skin? He could understand if he’d been sliding his hand along, but he’d simply been holding it. And next to the crevice—was that another splinter angled outward?

  As he adjusted his reading glasses and leaned closer, the tiny piece of wood popped out of the leg and flew at his right eye.

  Morley jerked back as it bounced harmlessly off the eyeglass lens. He lost his balance and fell onto his back, but he didn’t stay down. He’d gained weight in his middle years and was carrying an extra thirty pounds on his medium frame, yet he managed to roll over and do a rapid if ungainly scramble away from the footstool on his hands and knees. At sixty-two he cherished his dignity, but panic had taken over.

  My God! If I hadn’t been wearing glasses—!

  Thankfully, he was alone. He rose, brushed himself off, and regarded the footstool from a safe distance.

  Really—a “safe distance” from a little piece of furniture? Ridiculous. But his stomach roiled at the thought of how close he’d come to having a pierced cornea. Something very, very wrong here.

  Rubbing his hands over his arms to counter a creeping chill, Morley surveyed his domain, a turn-of-the-century townhouse on East Thirty-first Street in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. He and Elaine had spent just shy of a million for it in the late eighties, and it was worth multiples of that now. Its four levels of hardwood floors, cherry wainscoting, intricately carved walnut moldings and cornices were all original. They’d spent a small fortune refurbishing the interior to its original Victorian splendor and furnishing it with period antiques. After the tumor in her breast finally took Elaine in 1995, he’d stayed on here, alone but not lonely. Over the years he’d gradually removed Elaine’s touches, easing her influence from the decor until the place was all him. He’d become quite content as lord of the manor.

  Until now. The footstool had attracted him because of its grain, and because the style of its carving fit so seamlessly with the rest of the furniture, but he wouldn’t care now if it was a genuine one-of-a-kind Victorian. That thing had to go.

  Tugging at his neat salt-and-pepper beard, Morley eyed the footstool from across the room. Question was . . . how was he going to get it out of here without touching it?

  The owner of Mostly Maple was at the counter when Morley walked in. Though close to Morley in age, Hal Danzer was a polar opposite. Where Morley was thick, Danzer was thin, where Morley was bearded, Danzer was clean shaven, where Morley’s thin hair was neatly trimmed, Danzer’s was long and thick and tied into a short ponytail.

  A gallimaufry of maple pieces of varying ages, ranging from ancient to brand new, surrounded them—claw-footed tables, wardrobes, breakfronts, secretaries, desks, dressers, even old kitchen phones. Morley liked maple too, but not to the exclusion of all other woods. Danzer had once told him that he had no firm guidelines regarding his stock other than it be of maple and strike his fancy.

  Morley deposited the heavy-duty canvas duffel on the counter.

  “I want to return this.”

  Danzer stared at him. “A canvas bag?”

  “No.” With difficulty he refrained from adding, you idiot. “What’s inside.”

  Danzer opened the bag and peeked in. He frowned. “The footstool you bought Saturday? Something wrong with it?”

  Hell, yes, something was wrong with it. Very wrong.

  “Take it out and you’ll see.”

  Morley certainly wasn’t going to stick his hand in there. Last night he’d pulled the old bag out of the attic and very carefully slipped it over the stool. Then, using a broom handle, he’d upended the bag and pushed the stool the rest of the way in. He was not going to touch it again. Let Danzer find out firsthand, as it were, what was wrong with it.

  Danzer reached in and pulled out the footstool by one of its three carved legs. Morley backed up a step, waiting for his yelp of pain.

  Nothing.

  Danzer held up the footstool and rotated it back and forth in the light.

  Nothing.

  “Looks okay to me.”

  Morley shifted his weight off his right foot—the heel was still tender. He glanced at his bandaged left hand. He hadn’t imagined those splinters.

  “There, on the other leg. See those gaps in the finish? That’s where slivers popped out of the wood.”

  Danzer twisted the stool and squinted at the wood. “I’ll be damned. You’re right. Popped out, you say?”

  Morley held up his bandaged hand. “Right into my palm. My foot too.” He left off mention of the near miss on his eye.

  But why isn’t anything happening to you? he wondered.

  “Sorry about that. I’ll replace it.”

  “Replace it?”

  “Sure. I picked up three of them. They’re identical.”

  Before Morley could protest, Danzer had ducked through the curtained doorway behind the counter. But come to think of it, how could he refuse a replacement? He couldn’t say that this footstool, sitting inert on the counter, had assaulted him. And it was a beautiful little thing . . .

  Danzer popped back through the curtain with another, a clone of the first. He set it on the counter.

  “There you go. I checked this one over carefully and it’s perfect.”

  Morley reached out, slowly, tentatively, and touched the wood with the fingertips of his left hand, ready to snatch them back at the first sharp sensation. But nothing happened. Gently he wrapped his hand around the leg. For an awful instant he thought he felt the carving writhe beneath his palm, but the feeling was gone before he could confirm it.

  He sighed. Just wood. Heavily grained maple and nothing more.

  “While I was inspecting it,” Danzer said, “I noticed something interesting. Look here.” He turned the stool on its side and pointed to a heavily grained area. “Check this out.”

  Remembering the near miss on his eye, Morley leaned closer, but not too.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “There, in the grain—isn’t the grain just fabulous? You can see a name. Looks like ‘Anna,’ doesn’t it?”

  Simply hearing the name sent a whisper of unease through Morley. And damned if Danzer wasn’t right. The word “ANNA” was indeed woven into the grain. Seeing the letters hidden like that only increased his discomfiture.

  Why this unease? He didn’t know anyone named Anna, could not remember ever knowing an Anna.

  “And look,” Danzer was saying. “It’s here on the other one. Isn’t that clever.”

  Again Morley looked where Danzer was pointing, and again made out the name “ANNA” worked into the grain.

  Morley’s tongue felt as dry as the wood that filled this store. “What’s so clever?”

  Danzer was grinning. “It’s got to be the woodworker. She’s doing a Hirschfeld.”

  Morley’s brain seemed to be stuck in low gear. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Hirschfeld—Al Hirschfeld, the illustrator. You’ve seen him a million times in the Times and Playbill. He does those line caricatures. And in every one of them for the last umpteen years he’s hidden his daughter Nina’s name in the drawing. This Anna is doing the same thing. The shop probably doesn’t allow its woodworkers to sign their pieces, so she’s sneaked her name into the grain. Probably no one else but her knows it’s there.”

  “Except for us now.”

  “Yeah. Isn’t that great? I just love stuff like this.”

  Morley said nothing as he watched the ebullient Danzer stuff the repl
acement footstool into the canvas duffel and hand it back.

  “It’s all yours.”

  Morley felt a little queasy, almost seasick. Part of him wanted to turn and run, but he knew he had to take that footstool home. Because it was signed, so cleverly inscribed, by Anna, whoever that was, and he must have it.

  “Yes,” he mumbled through the sawdust taste in his mouth. “All mine.”

  At home, Morley couldn’t quite bring himself to put the footstool to immediate use. He removed it from the canvas bag without incurring another wound—a good sign in itself—and set it in a corner of his study. He felt a growing confidence that what had happened yesterday was an aberration, but he could not yet warm to the piece. Perhaps in time . . . when he’d figured out why the name Anna stirred up such unsettling echoes.

  He heard the clank of the mail slot and went down to the first floor to collect the day’s letters: a good-sized stack of the usual variety of junk circulars, come-ons, confirmation slips from his broker, and pitches from various charities. Very little of a personal nature.

  Still shuffling through the envelopes, he had just reentered the study when his foot caught on something. Suddenly he was falling forward. The mail went flying as he flung out his arms to prevent himself from landing on his face. He hit the floor with a brain-jarring, rib-cracking thud that knocked the wind out of him.

  It took a good half minute before he could breathe again. When he finally rolled over, he looked around to see what had tripped him—and froze.

  The footstool sat dead center in the entry to the study.

  A tremor rattled through Morley. He’d left the stool in the corner—he was certain of it. Or at least, pretty certain. He was more certain that furniture didn’t move around on its own, so perhaps he hadn’t put it in the corner, merely intended to, and hadn’t got around to it yet.

  Right now he wasn’t certain of what he could be certain of.

  Morley found himself wide awake at three a.m. He’d felt ridiculous stowing the footstool in a closet, but had to admit he felt safer with it tucked away behind a closed door two floors below. That name—Anna—was keeping him awake. He’d sifted through his memories, from boyhood to the present, and could not come up with a single Anna. The word was a palindrome, so reversing the order was futile; the only workable anagram was also worthless—he’d never known a “Nana” either.