Authors: F. Paul Wilson

The Haunted Air (35 page)

BOOK: The Haunted Air

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The ride home hadn't been so bad, and getting in and out of the car had been bearable, but the steps â¦ even with Adrian helping him, negotiating the narrow staircase up to his apartment above the store was agony.

Finally he was able to ease himself into a recliner, close his eyes, and catch his breath.

Good to be out of the hospital and free of all those tubesâalthough his belly still quivered at the memory of Nurse Horgan removing his catheter this morning. Good to be back in his home which, in sharp contrast to the cluttered store below, was furnished in a spare, minimalist style with bare walls, naked hardwood floors, and light, spindly furniture. The recliner was a blatant anomaly; a home needed at least one comfortable chair.

“Here. Take this.”

Eli looked up and saw Adrian standing before him with a glass of water and two Percocets in his huge hands.

“You're a good man, Adrian. Thank you. How is your leg?”

He flexed his knee. “Much better. But the headaches are terrible. And I still can't remember Monday night. I remember having dinner â¦”

“Yes-yes,” Eli said, thinking, Please let's not hear that again. “The doctor said you might never remember what happened. Perhaps you should count yourself lucky you don't.”

“I don't feel lucky,” Adrian said. He crossed his long arms over his chest and hugged himself. Eli wondered if his hands touched in the back. “I feel scared.”

Odd to imagine that such a big man could be frightened. But Adrian wasn't a thug. He had a law degree and assisted Judge Marcus Warren of the New York State Supreme Court.

“You're afraid this man is going to attack us again?”

“I'm not afraid of that. In fact I almost wish he would.” Adrian balled his hands into giant fists. “I'd love to make him pay for what he did to me. No, I'm afraid that we won't get the Ceremony done in time â¦ you know, before the equinox.”

“We will. I haven't missed one for two hundred and six years. I'm not about to start now.”

“But what if we don't?”

The possibility spilled acid through Eli's chest. “The consequences for you will be minimal. You'll merely have to start a new cycle of Ceremonies.”

“But I've already invested five years.”

An initiate had to participate in an unbroken chain of twenty-nine annual cycles before the aging process stopped and invulnerability was conferred. Once the chain was broken, the count went back to zero and had to be started again.

“And that's all you will loseâfive years of Ceremonies. Nothing. For me, on the other hand, the consequences will be catastrophic. All the ills, all the injuries, all the aging the Ceremony had shielded me from for the last two centuries will come crashing back at once.”

His dying would be long and slow and exquisitely painful. These stab wounds would seem mere pinpricks.

“But after you're gone,” Adrian said, “who will perform the Ceremony?”

Eli shook his head. He wanted to ask, Do you ever think of anyone but yourself? But he held his tongue. Adrian was no different from any of the others in the Circle. No more self-centered than myself, Eli supposed.

“No one,” Eli said, relishing the growing dismay in Adrian's expression. “Unless the one who attacked us wishes to accept you as an initiate.”

Adrian frowned. “I don't understand.”

Eli sighed. They'd discussed this already, but Adrian's short-term memory still wasn't up to snuff.

“I believe the one who attacked us is an adept like myself who knows the Ceremony. That is the only way he could harm me.”

“Yes,” Adrian said. “Yes, I remember.”

“But I believe his real purpose is to destroy my Circle. He has a Circle of his own and does not want competition.”

“Then I think I should stay here with you,” Adrian blurted. “Until you're well enough to protect yourself, that is.”

Eli considered the idea and liked it. He could certainly use some assistance for the next few daysâhe could take care of his dressing changes himself, but help with meals and running errands would be most welcome.

No use appearing too anxious, though. Adrian seemed scared half to death that something would happen to him before the next Ceremony. Nothing wrong with making him sweat a little.

“I don't think so, Adrian,” he said. “I'm used to living alone. I don't think I'd do well with constant company.”

“I'll stay out of your way. I promise. Just let me stay through the weekend. I'm not going back to court until next week. I can watch over things until then.”

Like a puppy dog. Or a huge Great Mastiff, rather. Time to throw him a bone.

“Oh, very well. I suppose I could put up with it for a few days.”

“Wonderful! I'll go home, pack a few things, and be back in an hour.”

He turned and limped toward the door.

“Wait,” Eli said. “Before you go, could you hand me the phone?”

“Of course. Expecting a call?”

“Freddy is supposed to call when he's identified that woman who was quoted on TV last night. I don't want to miss that call.” He smiled. “I do hope she's having a nice day, because as soon as I learn her name, her life will go in the shitter.”

“I don't like Strauss,” Adrian said. “He said things about you last night.”

“When?”

“As he was wheeling me back to my room. He said he was beginning to wonder about you, whether you're really as old as you say you are.”

“Did he now?” This was interesting.

“He said he did some background on you years ago, and found you were born in the 1940sâI forget the yearâto a pair of Italian immigrants.”

“Yes, he confronted me with that early on, and I explained to him that it was a false identity. I searched out and contacted a number of poor couples named Bellitto until I found a pair who agreedâfor the appropriate sumâto register my name as a home birth. They're dead now and cannot back me up, so I fear you'll just have to trust my word.”

“Oh, I do,” Adrian said. “Don't get me wrong, I'm just repeating what Strauss told me. He said he could never prove one way or the other whether you were as old as you say you are or just plain crazyâagain, his words, not mine. He told me last night that now that you've been wounded, he's starting to lean more toward crazy.”

“Is he now,” Eli said. “How ungrateful. I believe I shall have to have a word with Freddy.”

“Don't tell him I told you.”

Eli stared at Adrian. For a bright man he could be so naÃ¯ve at times.

“Why do you think he said any of this to you? He knew you'd tell me. He
wanted
you to tell me. He's having second thoughts and hopes I will ease his doubts. What he doesn't understand is that I don't care what he thinks. However, his police contacts are valuable to the Circle so I
suppose I must confront him and settle this.”

“Wait till you're feeling better,” Adrian said.

It was so much easier in the old days, Eli thought. I didn't need the Circle. Once a year I'd simply find a wayward child, perform the Ceremony, and go my way. But things have become so complicated these days. With crime detection techniques what they are, one needs backup, connections, networks to safely secure a child year after year.

He needed the Circle as much as the Circle needed him. But they needn't know that.

Eli loosed a drawn-out sigh and rubbed his eyes. “Maybe I should disband the Circle and go it alone. That was how I began â¦ alone.”

Eli peeked through his fingers to see if his little speech had had the desired effect. The look of horror on Adrian's face confirmed that it had.

“No! Eli, you mustn't even think that! I'll talk to the others. We'llâ”

“No. I shall handle it. I'll give it one more chance. Now, you run off and get your things while I make some calls.”

After Adrian was gone, Eli leaned back in his recliner and closed his eyes.

â¦ he could never prove one way or the other whether you were as old as you say you are or just plain crazy â¦

Sometimes, Eli admitted, I wonder about that myself.

He had memories of his early years in eighteenth-century Italy, his discovery of the Ceremony in a stone vault in Riomaggiore among the Cinque Terre along the Liguorian coast, and then the long trail of hundreds of years and hundreds of sacrificed children, but they were vague, almost as if he'd dreamed them. He wished he could recall more detail.

What if Strauss's suspicions were correct? What if he were no more than a murderous madman trying to turn back the clock, who'd told his mad stories to himself and others so many times he'd come to believe them?

No! Eli slammed his fist against the armrest of the recliner.
What was he thinking? He wasn't mad or deluded. It was the pain, the drugs â¦

â¦ the wound â¦

Yes, the wound. There lay the wellspring of his doubts. He shouldn't have been wounded at all. That was the legacy of the Ceremonyâlife and personal impregnability. It didn't make an adept invulnerable to petty injuries like papercuts and such. But a stab wound â¦ the blade was supposed to glance off the skin.

Unless it was wielded by another adept.

Uneasy, Eli took out the number Strauss had given him last night and tapped it into the phone. And just like last night, his attacker was “not available at this time.”

Eli broke the connection and simmered. He would put the number into speed dial and keep calling. The man had to turn his phone on sometime, and one of those times Eli would connect. And then they'd talk, and Eli would learn about his attacker, induce him into a slip of the tongue, and then he'd have him.

Lyle suppressed a yawn as he went through the preliminaries with a new sitter. Not that he was bored talking about his spirit guideâhow could Ifasen feel anything but excitement about communing with his ancient mentor Ogunfiditimi? Lyle was dead tired. He felt as if he'd spent the night completing an ironman triathlon.

Tara Portman or whatever it was had rested easy last night after the spirit-writing display. No noises, no blood, no breakage. Still sleep had eluded Lyle. The mere expectation of noise, blood, or breakage had turned his mattress into a bed of nails.

Charlie, on the other hand, looked fresh and fully rested this morning. That Bible of his, no doubt.

But Lyle's malaise went beyond fatigue. He couldn't pin it down. Not so much a matter of feeling bad as not feeling
right
. He felt â¦ changed. The world looked and felt different. Shadows seemed deeper, lights brighter, sharper, the air felt charged, as if something momentous was in the offing.

He shook it off. He had work to do.

With the Channeling Room repaired, they'd begun rescheduling sittings. Lyle had adjusted the day's appointments to leave room for the meeting with Konstantin Kristadoulou. He'd called the old real estate agent first thing this morning and set up a meeting at one o'clock. He'd left a message for Jack about the time and place.

But that would be this afternoon. This was now, and Lyle wasn't happy with now. Melba Toomey was a far-from-ideal sitter. Lyle blamed his distracted state for allowing her to slip past the screening process. She would not be a good subject at any time, but especially not as the first of the day.

But she'd paid her money for a private sitting and now faced him across the table in her housedress and flower-decked straw hat, dark eyes bright with expectation in her black face.

According to the information on her questionnaire, Melba was fifty-three and cleaned houses for a living. Not at all typical of Ifasen's clientele, and certainly not the social class he was courting.

Lyle cringed at the thought of how long it must have taken her to save enough for a private sitting. But she'd said on her questionnaire that she'd come to him because he was blackâdidn't say African-American. Black.

Melba Toomey wanted to know if her husband Clarence was alive or dead; and if he was dead, she wanted to speak to him.

Lyle did his utmost to avoid the class of sitter whose concerns deprived him of precious wiggle room. Melba was
the worst of that class: Alive or dead â¦ was there a more black-or-white, yes-or-no proposition than that? It left him zero wiggle.

He'd have to do a cold reading on Clarence through Melba to try and get a grip on what kind of man Clarence was so as to make a roughly educated guess on whether he might be alive or dead.

I'm going to be sweating for my daily bread this round, he thought.

Lyle had placed two potato-size stones on the table, telling her that they were from Ogunfiditimi's birth place and, because Ogunfiditimi hadn't met her before, it enhanced first-time contact if she kept a good grip on those stones. It also kept her hands where Lyle could see them.

To set the moodâand kill some timeâLyle treated Melba to the histrionics, the table and chair tipping, then settled down to business.

Lyle came out of his pseudo trance and stared at her, watching closely. Her features were slightly fuzzy in the dim red light from overhead, but clear enough to pick up what he needed. Body language, visual cues in a blink of the eyes, a twist of the mouth, a twitch of a cheek â¦ Lyle could read them like an old salt reads the sea.

First, some try-ons. She'd mentioned on her questionnaire that Clarence had been missing since June second. He'd start there.

“I'm getting a sense of a state of absence â¦ of separation since â¦ why does early June keep popping into my head?”

“The second of June!” Melba cried. “That's when I last saw Clarence! He went off to work in the morning and never came home. I haven't seen or heard from him since.” She worked a used tissue out of her housedress pocket and dabbed her eyes. “Oh, Lord, you do have the gift, don't you.”

Oh, yes, Lyle thought. The gift of remembering what you've forgotten you've told me.

“Please keep your hands on the stones, Melba,” he reminded
her. “It weakens contact when you remove them.”

“Oh, sorry.” She placed her hands back on the stones.

Good. Keep them there, he thought.

The last thing he wanted her to do was reach for her pocketbook. Because Charlie, covered head to toe in black, should have crept out of his command center by now and be ready to grab it from where it sat on the floor next to her chair.

“I told the police but I don't think they's doing much to find him. They don't seem the least bit interested.”

“They're very busy, Melba,” he told her.

Her distress sent a shot of guilt through Lyle. He wasn't going to do any more for her than the cops.

Value for value â¦

He shook it off and formulated another try-on. The first had been just an easy warm-up, to break the ice and gain a smidgen of her confidence. From here it got a little tougher.

Look at her: cleans houses, bargain-rack clothing; he couldn't see Clarence as a corporate exec. She mentioned him going off to work as if it were a routine thing. Good chance he had a steady blue-collar job, maybe union.

Try-on number two â¦

“Why do I want to say he worked in a trade?”

“He was an electrician!”

“A loyal union man.”

She frowned. “No. He was never in a union.”

Whoops, but easy enough to save. “But I get the feeling he
wanted
to be in the union.”

“Yes! How did you know! That poor man. He tried so many times but never qualified. He was always talking about how much more money he could be making if he was in the union.”

Lyle nodded sagely. “Ah, that was what I was picking up.”

Let's see â¦ blue-collar, frustrated â¦ maybe Clarence liked to knock back a few after work? And even if he was
a teetotaler or an ex-drinker, the
temptation
to drink offered a ready fallback.

“I'm getting the impression of a dimly lit place, the smell of smoke, the clink of glassware â¦”

“Leon's! That awful place! He'd go there after work and come home reeking of beer. Sometimes he wouldn't come home till after midnight. We had such terrible fights over it.”

Drunk â¦ frustrated â¦ go for it, but keep it vague.

“I'm led to say that some harm was done?”

Melba looked away. “He never meant to hurt me. It's just that sometimes, when I got him real mad after he came home late, he'd take a swing. He didn't mean nothin' by it. But now that he's gone â¦” She sobbed and grabbed the tissue to dab at her eyes again. “I'd rather have him home late than not at all.”

“I'm losing contact!” Lyle said. “The hands! The stones. Please stay in contact with the stones.”

Melba grabbed them again. “I'm sorry. It's justâ”

“I understand, but you must hold the stones.”

“Got her wallet here,”
said Charlie's voice in his ear-piece. Obviously he'd made it back to his command center with the pocketbook.
“Picture of her and some fat guyâI mean, I could be looking at the Notorious B.I.G. hereâbut no kid pics.”

Lyle said, “I'm looking for children but â¦”

He left a blank space, hoping she'd fill it in. As with most sitters, she didn't disappoint.

“We didn't have any. Lord knows we tried but â¦” She sighed. “It never happened.”

“Not much else goin' down here,
” Charlie said.
“Keys, a lipstick, heyâbeat this: a harmonica. Bet it ain't hers. Good shot it's her old man's. I'll get the bag back lickity.”

While waiting, Lyle made a few remarks about Clarence's weight problems to bolster further his psychic credibility. The picture he'd formed of Clarence was that of a frustrated, money-squeezed, bad-tempered drinker. An answer to a dead-or-alive question on a guy like that had to
lean toward dead. He might have got himself involved in some quick-buck scheme that went wrong, leaving him food for the worms or the fish.

Lyle felt a tap on his leg: Charlie had returned the bag.

Lyle cleared his throat. “Why am I hearing music? It sounds reedy. Could it be a harmonica?”

“Yes! Clarence loved to play the harmonica. People told him he was terrible.” Melba smiled. “And he was. He was just awful. But that never stopped him from trying.”

“Why do I sense his harmonica nearby?”

She gasped. “I brought one with me! How could you know?”

Preferring to let her provide her own answer to that, Lyle said, “It might facilitate contact if I can touch an object that belongs to the one we seek.”

“It's in my handbag.” Melba glanced at her hands where they rested on the stones, then back at Lyle. “Do you think I could â¦ ?”

“Yes, but one hand only, please.”

“We gonna take this poor lady's money, bro?”
Charlie asked in his ear.
“She ain't exactly our usual breed of fish.”

Lyle couldn't give him an answer, but the same hesitancy had been nibbling at him throughout the sitting.

He watched Melba free her right hand, pull her handbag up to her lap, and fish out a scratched and dented harmonica with “Hohner Special 20 Marine Band” embossed along the top.

“This was his favorite,” she said, pushing it across the table.

Lyle reached toward it, then stopped as warning alarms rang through his nerve ends. Why? Why shouldn't he touch the harmonica?

After a few awkward seconds, with Melba's expression moving toward a puzzled frown, Lyle set his jaw and took hold of the harmonicaâ

âand cried out as the room did a sudden turn and then disappeared and he was standing in another room, a suite in the Bellagio in Vegas, watching a fat man he knew to
be Clarence Toomey snore beside a blonde Lyle knew to be a hooker he'd hired for the night. He knew everythingâthe half-million-dollar lottery prize Clarence had won and kept secret from his wife until he'd collected the money, how he'd left home and never looked back.

Melba's cry from somewhere in front of him: “What's wrong?”

Charlie in his ear:
“Lyle! What's happenin'?”

The feel of the harmonica in his hands â¦ uncoiling his fingers one by one until â¦

The harmonica dropped onto the table and abruptly Lyle was back in the Channeling Room, looking at Melba who faced him with wide eyes and her hands pressed against her mouth.

“Lyle! Answer me! Are you all right?”

“I'm okay,” Lyle said, for Melba's sake as well as his brother's.

But he was anything but okay.

What had just happened? Was it real? Had he truly been looking at Clarence Toomey or imagining it? It had seemed so real, and yet â¦ it couldn't be.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He didn't know what to make of it.

“Ifasen?” Melba said. “What happened? Did you see anything? Did you see my Clarence?”

What could he say? Even if he were sure it was trueâand he wasn't, not at allâhow do you tell a woman that her husband is bedded down in Vegas with a hooker?

“I'm not sure what I saw,” Lyle said. Couldn't get much truer than that. He pushed back from the table. “I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut short our session. I â¦ I don't feel well.” No lie. He felt like hell.

“No, please,” Melba said.

“I'm sorry. I will refund your money.”

“Mah man!”
Charlie said in his ear.

“I don't care about the money,” Melba said. “I want my Clarence. How will I find him?”

“The lottery,” Lyle said.

She looked at him. “The lottery? I don't understand.”

“Neither do I, but that was the message that came through the clearest. Check with the New York State Lottery. Ask them about Clarence. That's all I can tell you.”

If she did that, and if Lyle's vision had been realâa big ifâshe'd learn about Clarence's big win. She could hire someone to track him down, maybe get a piece of whatever was left.

She wanted to find her husband, but success was going to bring her only a load of hurt.

Charlie appeared, looking at him strangely. He had to be bursting with a million questions, but couldn't ask them while Melba was here.

BOOK: The Haunted Air

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