Treasure Box (21 page)

"Get out," she said. "You're never coming back here, do you understand me?"

"Sally, I didn't hurt her. She called me here. She wants my help, and I want to help her. I just said something that made her angry because it was true."

Mrs. Tyler's answer fairly burned on the walls, the same word, over and over:

LIAR LIAR LIAR

"But she'll get over it," said Quentin, "and when she does we need to talk again."

"Not a chance," said Sannazzaro. "Now get out, you and your friend Bolt. You've caused enough trouble in this rest home."

"All right, I'm going."

"I've already punched the alarms to bring the police and paramedics. So you'd better go fast."

"Thanks for waiting to find out the truth before calling in the cavalry," Quentin said angrily. "I didn't violate your trust."

"My trust ended when my friend screamed. It sounded like you were tearing her apart with your bare hands!"

Quentin burned with frustration at having lost Sannazzaro's friendship so unfairly. Yet even her snap judgment of him made him want to be closer to her. Because she was the opposite of Madeleine. Instead of being exactly what he wished for, shaped to his every desire, she was completely herself, and whatever she gave him she would give him freely, as an equal. Most people Quentin knew were at least a little bit like Madeleine, trying to outguess him, trying to give him whatever he wanted to get on his good side. So he could never be sure who they really were. He might not understand Sannazzaro, but whatever she was, it was real. He wanted to reach out and shake her and shout at her until she believed him: I'm real, too. I'm as real as you are. But then, maybe he wasn't. Maybe you had to be as pure to stay in the company of good people as to survive among beasts.

Chief Bolt sauntered out of the elevator. "Anybody dead?" he asked cheerfully.

"You are, if you don't get out of here right now," said Sannazzaro. "I'll kill you myself and call it self-defense."

They got in the elevator, Sannazzaro with them. "I'm going to see you out the door and into your car and driving away."

Wordlessly they rode down. But as she followed them to the door, she thought of something else to say. "I'm going to have a guard posted at her room. Her estate can afford it and I'm going to make sure you never get in there again."

Quentin stopped just outside the glass front door, the snow blowing around him. He could hear the sirens of the approaching emergency vehicles. "Sally," he said, "I kept my word and did no harm. When you want me back here, just call me. I'll come."

Sannazzaro closed the door in his face and locked it.

Bolt was already waiting beside the car. "Get in, bonehead, we don't want to be here all night answering questions."

Quentin didn't want to stay with Bolt, but there wasn't much choice right now. There was only one car that would get him away from here before the police arrived, and Bolt had to be in it. Quentin had a hard time opening the door, trembling as he was with rage and frustration and weariness and fear at the things that Mrs. Tyler had told him, at Sannazzaro's unfairness. No, it wasn't that at all. He was trembling from the cold. That's all.

He backed the car out of the stall and headed for the parking lot entrance.

"Don't turn right, you fool, turn left!"

"But that's where the sirens are coming from."

"We don't want to look like we're running away from them, Quentin. Do we?"

"Fine, whatever, you're the cop." Quentin pulled out onto the snowy road and drove back the way he had come. They were passed by an ambulance and a firetruck. But no police. Sannazzaro hadn't called the police after all. Or else the police were slower than the others. He didn't linger to find out.

Not till they got back on the freeway did Bolt finally ask the obvious question. "Now do you mind telling me what the hell happened?"

"I should ask
you
, Bolt. What got into you back there?"

"What are you talking about?" said Bolt. "I didn't do anything.
You
were the one who got to talk to the old lady. Fill me in."

Back when they were eating chili together, Quentin had told him everything he knew up till then. But now, having seen the way he acted with Sally Sannazzaro, wondering if there might be something to Sally's belief that he had tried to smother the old lady—now Quentin didn't feel like telling him anything.

"She didn't make any sense," he said. "She was delusional. I don't know what she thought I was, but she got frightened and screamed."

"Well, since she's been a turnip for several years now, do we count screaming as an improvement or a deterioration?" asked Bolt. The wry tone was back in his voice, now. He was himself again. Or maybe he had been himself back in the rest home. How could Quentin know?

"I liked Sally," said Quentin.

"Yeah, she's a real charmer."

Quentin looked up at the freeway sign announcing the next exit. Only it didn't say the name of a town.

GO AHEAD

Go ahead?

"I got news for you, Quentin," said Bolt. "From what I know of women, Sannazzaro doesn't like you."

She did, though, for a little while.

The sign that should have announced restaurants at the next exit had also been altered.

OPEN THE BOX

"Of course, what do I know about women?" said Bolt.

The sign promising gas stations now said:

I WANT YOU TO

Go ahead, open the box, I want you to. Gee, thanks, Grandmother.

The little exit sign had also been changed.

DIE

"By the way, have you been noticing the signs?" said Bolt.

"Have you?"

"Somebody doesn't like you," said Bolt. "Can Sannazzaro do that?"

"I doubt it," said Quentin. "It's the old lady. She's a witch. Rowena's a witch. My wife Madeleine was a succubus."

For a moment Bolt was angry. "Rowena's not a witch!"

"Just think about it for a second," said Quentin. "Those words aren't going up on those signs by themselves."

"It's the old lady."

"Yes, it's the old lady. But the other stuff
wasn't
her. Rowena's the one who keeps her tied down to that bed. It's a war between witches, fighting over a dragon, flinging succubuses around to win the cooperation of the occasional man. Don't think for a minute that just because you loved Rowena, she isn't one of them."

"Yeah, well, what do
you
know about Rowena?"

"Nothing. I know absolutely nothing about anything, Bolt."

"Me too."

"You can say that again. If you hadn't been acting like a prick back at the rest home, Sannazzaro wouldn't have gotten so angry at me."

"I don't know what gets into me when I'm around that woman," said Bolt. "If there's any witch in this whole business, it's her."

I'm not calling them witches metaphorically, Quentin wanted to say. I'm telling you that the woman you love probably had you enthralled, under control. That's probably what was happening to you back in the rest home.

But there was no point in saying it. Because if it was true, Bolt wouldn't be able to understand it.

"Anyway, it's been a long time since lunch," said Bolt. "If by some chance one of these signs actually says something about food instead of carrying your hate mail, you up for dinner?"

How could he think of eating?

But now that he mentioned it, Quentin was hungry too. "You sure the police won't be looking for us?"

"We've changed counties now," said Bolt. "That sign that said
liar
about eight times was the county line. Besides, I don't think Sannazzaro really called the cops."

"No, I guess not."

"See? She likes you, Quentin. Not calling the cops on you—man, that's love."

Quentin had to laugh in spite of himself. Bolt was back to himself again. Things would settle down at the rest home, too. Sannazzaro would realize that she overreacted. Mrs. Tyler too. Everything would be fine.

In the meantime, what had he learned? He thought of all the stories of witches he had heard and read. The warty noses and pointy chins were obviously just prejudice against age. The magic potions were the stuff of alchemy, or the lore of folk medicine, which was used to both cure and curse. But the idea of witches calling upon the dead, sending succubuses to sleeping men, collecting macabre body parts from people they knew, all of these must have had roots in true incidents. Even the stories of witches worshiping Satan... for what might happen if this beast that Mrs. Tyler talked of should succeed in taking control of an adult body? There were plenty of people who worshiped Hitler. Caligula made himself a god. What if the beast took over some poor devil of a druid? What would that look like to people who didn't understand what those witches were doing, or who the man they worshiped really was? For the lifetime of the man it inhabited, the beast might well make witches into his personal slaves, holding bacchanals that would fit even the most bizarre medieval accounts. Witches, succubuses, dragons, the devil. To some people they would always be myths. But not to the people who were born with a greater ability to commune with spirits living and dead.

What about me? Quentin couldn't help but wonder. He certainly had nothing like the power of these women, but he had some. He had called to Lizzy without realizing it—and without having any relic of her, either. The moment he imagined having a relic of her, he thought of what that would have entailed, taking some fragment of her body. Wasn't that just what the transplant doctors had done? Organs of her body had been scattered across the country and kept alive, binding her spirit to them until at last they died. He shuddered in revulsion.

"Turn the heat up if you're shivering," said Bolt beside him.

Quentin thought of how Bolt, poor man, was in love with a witch and never realized it. Rowena kissing him in the kitchen. Quentin had been pretty thoroughly enchanted by a succubus; how much stronger must it have been for Bolt, who kissed the witch herself? Was that the exact method a witch used to enthrall a man? The kiss that wakens the sleeping princess. The kiss that turns the frog into a man. A kiss before dying.

He tried to sort through all that Mrs. Tyler had told him about thralls. A man with no will of his own. The beast would leap right past him to the woman who owned him. So if Bolt was enthralled, that would explain why Rowena couldn't use him to open the box. It would expose Rowena as surely as if she opened it herself. But what
could
a thrall do? Had she sent him to try to murder her mother? Maybe he wouldn't even know that was what he was about to do? His rational mind would have to make up some alternate explanation for his own actions, such as wanting to rearrange the old lady's pillows. He loved and honored Mrs. Tyler; he couldn't possibly imagine killing her. Even if he found himself in the act of murdering her, the idea would be inconceivable to him.

Dangerous people, these witches. As dangerous when they loved you as they were when they hated you. That is, if they ever really loved anybody, instead of just using them.

Quentin pressed the long-distance speed dial number for Wayne Read on the cellular phone. It didn't really matter now if Bolt heard him or not. Rowena and Mrs. Tyler and half the witches in the world could be listening in on all his conversations and he'd never know it.

The salutations over, Quentin got to the point. "If you don't have the address for the so-called Duncans yet, I have more information. The wife was born Rowena Tyler. And their address is probably in the file of Mrs. Anna Laurent Tyler at the Willoughby Retirement Home." He gave him the address.

"We're still checking out other leads too," said Wayne. "If you were just there, why didn't you get the address yourself?"

"I didn't part on good terms with the management."

"So how is our investigator going to get the information?"

"It doesn't have to be admissible in court, Wayne."

"You've been reading too much detective fiction, Quentin. Most private investigators have no burglary skills whatsoever."

"Most
burglars
have no burglary skills. Just walk in during business hours, take the file, Xerox the sheet with the address, and walk out. They're shorthanded right now."

"Quentin, you live in a fantasy world."

"We all do, Wayne. I just found out I was married to a succubus who was created by a witch. It's year-round Halloween now."

"We'll find a sane way of getting the address."

"Thanks."

"By the way, Quentin, you asked me how to go about divorcing a woman who doesn't exist?"

"I thought it might be a problem."

"No problem at all. No divorce needed. There wasn't a marriage."

"What do you mean?"

"All the documents—license, certificate—she never signed them."

"I watched her." But of course that meant nothing; Quentin knew it as he said it.

"It's your signature on both lines of every document. You're married to yourself, Quentin."

"At least I know I'll be faithful."

"Good-bye, dear lunatic. Try to stay uncommitted for a little longer—at least until you've paid my bill."

"I'll do my best."

Bolt laughed when Quentin hung up the phone. "Listen, if Rowena doesn't want you to find out where she is, nobody's going to get a true address."

"So I guess we'll have to hope she
does
want me to find her."

"I don't imagine you'll take me with you."

"Believe me, Bolt, if she wanted you to go to her, I wouldn't be able to stop you."

"Damn straight," said Bolt, pretending to be joking.

Rowena existed in the real world somewhere. Sooner or later, Wayne Read's investigators would find her; if she still had a use for Quentin, she would let them find her. The creator of the succubus that Quentin had loved and lost—yes, he would have something to say to her when they met.

It usually wasn't hard for Quentin to wait for other people to do their work. His career for many years had consisted of giving people the money and support to make a go of something. He would get periodic reports about how things were going; he would meet with them now and then; but by and large he let them do what they loved to do, what they had dreamed of doing, and waited until it was fairly clear how things were going to turn out.

In a way this was the same thing. Caught up in other people's dreams, waiting to find things out. The trouble was that he wasn't sure what the dream was, or who was the dreamer, or whose nightmare it would be when all was done.

He toyed with the idea of waiting in Mixinack for Wayne's report—Bolt even offered to let him stay on the couch in the study of his big old Victorian house. But Mixinack was the place where the treasure box was, and it wasn't the treasure box Quentin wanted to get into at the moment.

What
did
he want? After dropping off Bolt at his office to pick up his car, Quentin drove south on a road denuded of traffic by the storm. The advisories on the radio begged people to stay off the highways during what they were already calling the "Blizzard of '96." The airports were closed. Quentin wouldn't be catching a flight tonight. He should have looked for a motel and holed up to wait out the storm. Instead he kept driving south. Not because the weather would be better there—word was that the storm would do a better job of shutting down Washington than the budget impasse. The people that the grande dame had known as the Duncans, who were almost certainly Rowena Tyler and her husband and child, lived somewhere in the DC area. And they were the people he had to see. To find out how much of Mrs. Tyler's story was true. To find out what they really wanted of him. And to get some idea of how to extricate himself from all this.

Because he did want to get out. A few days ago, all he wanted was Madeleine. Now all he wanted was his liberty. A man who has loved the perfect lover isn't likely to find a substitute very soon. Rowena could give him that lover back, possibly, but he had a feeling her price for such a service would be too high. So why look for her and her family? Why not drive west until he found some open airport and fly on to California, to Hawaii, to Tokyo or Singapore. He thought of places he had always wanted to see but never took the time for, because there was no one to see them with. Jerusalem. Kilimanjaro. Machu Picchu. The Great Barrier Reef. The Himalayas. Tashkent. Timbuktu. There was no more reason to wait for a companion. Either he would see them alone or not at all.

But was there really anyplace on earth where he could be free of this? Maybe they would give up on him and find someone else to do their bidding. But was that better than having him do it? After all, their next victim might be a man who did have some connection to the world. A husband, a father, someone whose destruction would leave a hole. While Quentin knew that even if this business killed him, what difference would it make? His will had been changed to turn everything over to his parents. They would allow Wayne to follow through with all the existing partnerships, and then they'd do a pretty good job of philanthropy, getting rid of his entire fortune before they died, except for whatever they needed to make sure they finished out their lives in comfort. His death would leave the same hole in the world that a fish leaves when it's pulled wriggling out of the ocean.

So why should he turn this over to somebody else? Quentin was expendable. Be a good soldier, he told himself. March the march, up to the front, take aim, and fire your best shot. Then die if you must. But let it be with a bullet in front, not in the back. Facing the enemy.

Oh, aren't we getting dramatic? He laughed at himself and changed to another radio station as the previous one faded into the white static of the falling snow.

The Jersey Turnpike was closed. He started searching for alternate routes and ended up, about three in the morning, driving the deserted streets of downtown Philadelphia. A policeman pulled him over.

"Don't appreciate the joyriding, mister," said the cop. "Can't you see it's dangerous out here?"

"Got no place to go, Officer," said Quentin. "The airports are snowed in and I want to get back to DC."

"Find a motel and get to sleep."

"Then my car will be covered in snow and I'll be stuck in a city that's closed down tight."

"Better than having us dig you out of a snowbank three days from now, stiff as a board."

"Officer, will it be OK if I promise to find a safe place to bed down, and then just keep driving where I want? Or are you going to follow me and arrest me for trying to get home?"

The policeman looked at him with disgust. "Do what you want." Then he went on back to his patrol car.

Do what I want. Well, that's great advice. But what if the thing I want most in all the world can't be done? Because I want to go home, Officer, and home isn't that apartment in Herndon and it isn't my folks' house in California. Home is where the people who live there need me to come home to them, and worry about me when I'm gone. There's no such place on this earth, no matter how far I drive.

What's so wrong with feeling sorry for myself? Better that than trying to get other people to feel sorry for me. And
somebody
sure ought to, because my life is definitely in the pitiful range, if it hasn't already dropped on down into disastrous.

Oh, Lizzy, why did you have to go riding that night? Or why couldn't I have gone with you? Why couldn't we have done the transplant the other direction? It was a brain you needed, and mine was OK. You would have done so much better with it than I ever have. Why couldn't they transplant my life into you, so you could live it for me?

"Buck up, Tin," said Lizzy.

She was sitting beside him, shifting her weight in the seat to get comfortable.

"You're a pretty good snow driver.
That's
something they didn't bother teaching us in driver's ed back in high school."

"Thanks," said Quentin. "Sorry. I didn't mean to call you."

"No sweat. Truth is that I like it when you do. Time doesn't pass out there the way it does for you, so you can't exactly get bored, and there's plenty to do, depending on how you define
do
, but I gotta say I miss having a body. I never really used it, Tin."

"I was just thinking that myself."

"No, you were thinking that you were as useless as the turd of a dog who just died."

He laughed in spite of himself.

"You were thinking that you're the guy who really needs a hand grenade to land in his foxhole so he can dive on it, save his buddies, and have the President give the Medal of Honor to his parents, along with eight boxes containing his remains."

"Lizzy, is there any way through this thing?"

"There are a thousand ways through this thing, Tin. But they might all end up with you dead."

"Is that so bad? You're doing OK."

"Sure. Death's all right. But not worth going through any extra trouble to get here. You miss everything when you're here, Quentin. Even the pain. Even the despair."

"So is Mrs. Tyler right? Will the treasure box kill me?"

"Treasure box. What you mean is, is the beast real? Well, I didn't know what to call it till just now, diving into your memory to see what the old lady told you about it, but I'd say that's a pretty fair description of the bad thing in that house."

"She put it in the box. It isn't good to let it out."

"I don't know, Tin. As long as it's in that box, it's going to keep trying to suck people in to get the box open. But if it dies, maybe it'll be a while before somebody calls to it. Opens up to it and lets it in."

"Come on, Lizzy. Last time it got sucked into a year-old baby."

"She was lying to you, Tin."

"It wasn't in the baby?"

"Oh, it was, all right. But it didn't just happen along. Didn't just
come
. She called it."

"Man, that's even worse than what I said to her."

"She didn't realize that's what she was doing. She thought she had this brilliant baby, and so she wanted it to learn everything. She was pushing."

"Like those people who try to get their kids into college-prep nursery schools?"

"I guess."

"Or flashcards. They make their babies learn words from flashcards."

"She got the kid to call things it didn't have the brains to control. I don't care how smart a one-year-old is, Tin, walking and talking and all, it doesn't know how to deal with something as old as life itself. It came and the baby was gone, just hanging on to its own body like a passenger hanging from the back of the bus, begging the driver not to close the door."

"How did you learn all this, if the old lady doesn't know it?"

"After the passenger's been dragged long enough, he starts begging the driver to close it. Cut him loose. Even if it means he crashes onto the pavement."

"You found baby Paulie."

"I didn't like anybody else in that house. Baby Paulie was lonely and scared. I didn't realize how he was connected until now."

"So he
was
still there."

"Only sort of. Mrs. Tyler wasn't wrong. Best thing she could have done was cut him loose from a body he'd never have the use of again. If only she'd actually done it, instead of leaving him lingering, attached to that treasure box. But of course now it's too late. When that box opens, somebody's going to find themselves looking down the throat of the beast. And Paulie will still be along for the ride, as will the person the beast devours."

"Me."

"I hope not," said Lizzy. "Please don't."

"So I should run."

"I don't know. Maybe you should stay and win."

"Can I?"

"These witches are powerful, but you're not nothing. You've got some strength in you. And there's something else, too. You aren't trying to get something out of this."

"What, survival is nothing?"

"No, you don't even really care about that, either. One thing's for sure about all these guys, the witches and the beast. They
want
something. They're so hungry it hurts to be around them. They think that being hungry is the same as being strong. So the less you want, the weaker you look. Maybe that'll protect you."

"How hungry was Paulie when the beast took
him?
"

"Very, very hungry. Babies are nothing
but
hunger, and his mother was teaching him what to be hungry for. You can bet that even if the beast hadn't come, he would have grown up to be a monster."

Quentin laughed. "Yeah, I've seen children like that."

"No joke, Quentin. Monsters aren't born, they're made. By monster parents, or they make themselves by their own desires. But they don't come out of the womb deformed. There's always a path that leads away, even if they don't take it."

"Our parents weren't perfect either, Lizzy."

"But they were good people, and we knew that, we saw it. That's enough, if the child also wants to be good."

"And you learned all this by being dead?"

"No, Quentin. I learned all this by looking into your memories and seeing what you've learned without even realizing you learned it."

"What, is this like Madeleine? Am I talking to myself again?"

"Ever since I died, Quentin, when you talk to yourself you're talking to me. I'm in there. I'm part of you. You didn't have to steal some relic of mine, the way those witches do. I gave you my heart long before they cut it out of me. Along with my kidneys and my corneas."

"Nowadays they take livers and lungs, too."

"Car parts, body parts—automobile accidents are the great growth industry of America."

"I know you got
that
out of my head," said Quentin. "I read that somewhere."

"Quentin, you
are
hungry for something."

"What?"

"For a good life. For a life worth living."

"Sure I am. Who isn't?"

"But what if the price of that was killing somebody else?"

"Come on, Lizzy."

"Sometimes good people have to do terrible things. Mrs. Tyler had to decide what to do when the beast took her baby, no matter whose fault it was that it got invited in. Mom and Dad had to decide to let them cut me apart and kill my body so some good use could come from it."

"I've never forgiven them for that, either."

"They've never forgiven themselves, either. But they went on living, like Mrs. Tyler goes on living. Because that's what good people do. They make the terrible choices sometimes, and then they live with the results, because they did right, or at least the closest thing to a right choice that they could find."

"So who are you telling me to kill?"

"The beast, Quentin."

"But you said when the box opens..."

"Find the beast and kill it. Send it back out into darkness."

"It'll just find somewhere else to come in again."

"Maybe not for a long time. And then someone else will have to find it and kill it. But you will have done your part here and now."

"Lizzy, I've never even hit anybody in anger in my life."

"Don't be angry now, either. No matter who it is, no matter what they've done to you. Even the beast itself—don't be angry, don't be hungry for revenge. Because if it takes
you
down its throat, then you'll be the one begging for someone to cut you free."

"Like you begged me."

She shrugged. "Look. Baltimore signs. That's close to Washington, right?"

"Like halfway from Philadelphia, maybe. With this snow I may never get there. I'm insane to be pushing on through like this."

"No, you're close now. You're going to make it."

"Lizzy, why can't you stay with me all the time? Just to talk to? Think what we could do together. The life we could live!"

"Nothing you do can turn it into a life for
me
. And if I'm here with you, it won't be a life for you, either. You called to me a lot, after that first year, but you didn't see me showing up, did you? Not till you were in real trouble. The rest of the time I left you alone."