by Simon Clark
***
”Robyn?”The voice of her best friend on the telephone rose in surprise.
”Robyn? Haven't you thought of the obvious?”
”I'd planned to make an appointment with my doctor in the morning.”
”First things first,” her friend said. ”Meet me outside the supermarket in half an hour.”
”The supermarket? Gillian? What on earth for?”
”They have a pharmacy."
***
With his father snoring on the sofa and his mother asleep in her room, Ellery Hann moved through the apartment like a ghost. His brother had taken the opportunity of stealing a twenty-dollar bill from the wallet the stranger had returned yesterday. Now big bro had gone bowling with his buddies. If you were interested, you could flip a coin to see whether he would be home by midnight or they'd get a call from the police. The odds were the same. Ellery's brother had a knack of getting into fights or being accused of petty theft or criminal damage. Last week it was trashing a pay phone with a tire iron, just for the hell of it. Not that Ellery bothered about the twenty-dollar bill. Ever since he'd started spending time at the Luxor, stuff like money and personal possessions had become unimportant. He should have learned the lesson years ago because of the times his elder brothers and father took the cash grandparents gave him or smashed his toys… He shrugged. No, that didn't matter anymore. Silently he walked into the living room, where his father grunted through forty winks on the sofa. Ellery checked the mirror. He looked at the line of his own delicate jaw, then glanced at his father's chunky slab of bone that formed his bottom jaw. His elder brothers could have been delayed clones of the snorting bear of a man, but Ellery looked nothing like him. Ellery's cheekbones were high and molded silky fine skin. His father's were buried beneath bulging flesh blemished with red veins that looked like pen doodles. The woolly mane of crinkly hair was nothing like Ellery's either. His was pure black, fine and absolutely straight.
Ellery's gaze roamed the apartment that his mom had battled to keep clean for so long it had broken her health. Bronchitis and a heart murmur kept her bedridden for most of the day. The only time she rose was to cook meals or tidy at least a little of the mess his father and brothers made. For the last half hour Ellery had ghosted through the place, silently washing the dishes, straightening drapes, wiping away dust and grease spills on work tops, emptying ashtrays. He'd lived here twelve years. It seemed no more like home now than the day he walked through the door.
In elementary school his teacher had asked the class to draw a picture of home. Ellery had turned in a detailed and precocious drawing of a vast structure that lay in ruins beneath clinging shrouds of moss, vines, spindly bamboo canes, and olive trees whose thick limbs were somehow apelike. Beneath the growth and the decay his pencils had sketched an uncanny trace of domes, towers and bizarre external staircases that climbed across the face of ancient walls. In Ellery's mind's eye that was the place he saw when he thought the word: HOME.
***
Robyn stood in Gillian's bathroom staring at her own reflection. Her eyes looked back at her. It's strange; even though you've had the biggest shock of your life and your mind's in turmoil, you can look calm. Untroubled, even. It was so weird. She should be screaming or beating her head with her hands.
But look at that, she thought, not a flicker of emotion.
The sound of fingernails clicking on wood reached her. Robyn realized that Gillian had tapped before, trying to attract her attention.
”Come in”Robyn told her in a voice that sounded strangely flat to her ears. ”It's not locked.”
Gillian slid her head around the edge of the door as if uneasy about walking into the bathroom. ”Everything OK?”
”I guess it must be. At least it explains why I felt so weird.”She forced a smile. ”And it proves I'm not dying.”Then Robyn held up the pen-sized cylinder of plastic from the pregnancy test kit for Gillian to see.
Her friend took one look, then put her hand to her mouth and cried, ”Oh my God! I don't believe it!”
CHAPTER 7
Robyn Vincent was in no state to take the train home. Instead, Gillian drove her.
Robyn knew the question would sound idiotic beyond belief, but she found she had to voice it. ”Pregnant? How on earth can I be pregnant?”
Gillian glanced at her but said nothing. The answer was blisteringly obvious.
”I-I know how…”Robyn shook her head in disbelief. ”But pregnant! It doesn't make sense.”
”Don't beat yourself up over it, Robyn. These things happen.”
”You don't have to drive so slowly you know? My condition isn't that delicate.”
”Sorry ”This can't have happened. It can't have. You know me, Gillian. I'm so damn careful about everything. I don't cross the road unless I've looked both ways a zillion times.”
”Rubbers?”
Robyn shook her head. ”Birth control pill.”
”You might have missed taking one.”
”Aw, please, Gillian, that's the oldest excuse in the book. Sorry, dear, I forgot to swallow the pill one night. I'd have thought anyone with a scrap of sense…” She pushed her knuckle against her lips. She realized she was pouring scorn on herself now, not on some wide-eyed high-school student who insisted she was pregnant because of industrial sabotage in the condom factory or the pill she took must have come from a dud batch. ”Shit, how can I have got into such a mess, Gillian?”
Her friend gave her a sympathetic glance.
”You know this is just crazy… absolutely crazy…”Robyn stared out the side window. Suddenly sidewalks seemed to be full of pregnant women or young couples with strollers that contained screaming babies. ”We were careful. I never missed a single pill.”
”I'm sorry Robyn. You shouldn't be going through this.”
”Sheesh, it all happened so quickly. I'm on the pill and I take a pregnancy test and I get a positive result. That's not physically possible, is it?”
Gillian could only make a painful hop of her shoulders.
”It's too early to know I'm pregnant. Unless the tester kit was faulty”Robyn saw a glimmer of hope. ”They're not one hundred percent accurate, are they?”
”You'd best make an appointment to see your doctor, Robyn.”
Ahead lay Robyn's house on a street of mansions with swimming pools.
Hell, soon she couldn't even call this home. The bank would repossess within the next few weeks. What then? Raise her child in a two-bed apartment with Mom and Emerson? Good God. What a start in life. She shuddered.
The sound of Gillian's car slowing down at the house brought reality kicking its way savagely back.
”I'll have to get it over with and tell Mom now”Robyn unbuckled the seatbelt. The fluttering movements sprang up in her stomach again. Jeez, there could have been a bird in there beating its wings like crazy.
Another thought struck her. ”And how on earth do I tell Noel?”
”Robyn, it's not easy but my advice is as soon as possible.”
”I don't know how he's going to take it. He's only just started college.
He'd even planned to take a year off when he qualified to travel around the world. Now with this…” She rubbed her stomach. ”My God, what's he going to say, Gillian?” Tears welled up in her eyes.
Gillian hugged her. ”My sister was a year younger than you when she had Benjamin.”
”Eighteen? She was still a kid herself.”
”She coped… no, more than that, she did great. She's so happy you'd think she'd burst.”
Robyn dabbed her eyes. ”Okay. Time to face the music.”
***
At home Benedict West drew the blinds to shut out the sun. Down in the yard the old man's dog was barking at birds in the sky. Butch did that when he saw the migrating bird flocks in the spring and fall. Maybe Butch had been born with the soul of a bird and wanted to join the flight. Benedict loosened a button on the Hawaiian shirt, then poured himself another coffee. With
that done, he switched on the Betamax VCR.
He'd had to hunt through many a junk shop to find a Betamax machine that still worked. All those years ago after failing to interest the police in making a serious search for Mariah, he'd returned to the Luxor, determined to discover the truth himself. By that time the place had closed. The receivers had nailed boards over the doors and windows and erected a sign at the entrance to the parking lot. for sale: redevelopment site.
Nothing short of fury erupted inside him. He wasn't going to take these kinds of setbacks anymore. Not from disinterested cops. Not from a boarded-up building. He'd pried off one of the boards guarding a rear door, then kicked through a door panel. They were only ply, so he smashed a large enough hole to crawl through. The place had been stripped bare of fixtures and fittings. But in the lobby he'd found stacks of cartons. Someone had scrawled the word trash on them. In one he found six of the old-style videotapes with typewritten labels glued to them that read Benjamin Lockram. Volume 1-A Memoir and so on, right up to volume seven. Volume five was missing.
That's how one Benedict West had turned detective. But how the hell do you start investigating a missing persons case? He didn't know. All he could think of was that the first step would be to take all these cartons home and sift through them for clues. After all, he was convinced of one thing: Mariah Lee had walked into the Luxor. Mariah Lee had never walked back out.
So, as the hot spring morning became a hotter spring afternoon, with the sounds of Chicago enjoying that first taste of summer, Benedict slotted volume 1 into the hulking case of the ancient Betamax machine with its chromed levers and knobs. Then he sat down to watch Benjamin Lockram, one-time manager of the Luxor, give him a guided tour of the building that had devoured Mariah Lee.
***
”Where's Mom?”
Emerson padded out of the house to block her way as Robyn headed to the patio at the rear. Mom all but camped out there with Minute Maids and a stack of novels when the sun shone.
”Never mind your mother, Robyn. We have important matters to discuss.”
Sunday. And Emerson stood there in a gray business suit and striped tie.
Through the thin hair weave, his bald head shone glossy as an egg in the sunlight. Robyn blinked at him. She had the most important news a daughter could share with a mother, and yet Emerson blocked the path that ran through the gap in the hedge. This she didn't need. God, she had to see her mother now while she had the courage to get the words through her lips. Mom. I'm pregnant. Now Emerson stopped her.
”Emerson, I've got to see Mom. I need to speak with her: ”Later”
”No, I need to-”
”Robyn, listen to me. You've lived at my expense for the last three years. I haven't complained. I'm not complaining now”
”At your expense? This is my mothers house.”Her stomach fluttered. Those weird spasms were coming. Jesus, it was like a war being fought in that area between her hips. Did all women get these sensations when they were pregnant?
I feel so weird. Lightheaded. I need to sit down.
But all Emerson did was block her path while jabbering away about family responsibilities. He pointed his finger at her like it was a gun. Jeez, what was wrong with the man? Come to that, what's wrong with me? I feel so hot I could explode. My stomach's really hurting. This wasn't pregnancy, this was torture.
”So, Robyn, what's your answer?”
Dear God, what was the question? Robyn's head swirled. The sun blazed into her eyes. At the edge of her vision green streaks flowed by as her eyes blurred. Emerson's face loomed at her, swollen-looking, angry. Even the man's eyes bulged.
”Don't be evasive, Robyn. I've run my own company for twenty years. I know when people are shitting me.”
”I'm not shitting you.”
”Give me an answer then. Will you permit your mother to liquidate your trust fund?”
”That money's mine. Dad left it for me.”
”Robyn. We are going to be homeless. Understand that, you silly selfish child. For your mother's sake allow me to invest that money for you, so this family can live as it has always done. In comfort… with dignity Robyn nearly lost her balance as vertigo took hold. ”No. It's not yours.
My father left me that money when-”
She didn't get any further. Emerson's full-blooded slap drove her back against the wall of the house. Standing there, gasping, her hand held to her cheek, she stared at Emerson in horror. The look of fury in his eyes told her he was going to strike her again. She even saw him bunch his fists and take a pace forward. Then, at the last moment, he slammed his fist down against the side of his leg and walked back into the house.
***
”My name is Benjamin Isiah Lockram. I am eighty-four years old. For the last half of a century I have been the owner and manager of the Luxor Dance Hall. Seventy years ago I walked through those doors back there… through the turnstile and onto the dance floor where I'm standing now.
That's when the Luxor stole my heart. The look of the building, the sounds, smells, the feel of the place fascinated me. Obsessed me might be a more apt description. It's still got my heart. I'll never leave…”
Alone in the gloomy living room, Benedict West watched the video. It had been recorded back in 1979, according to the date on the cassette label.
He knew it by heart, he'd seen it so many times. Why had the owner of the dance hall gone to the trouble of making the homespun TV documentary? At first Benedict had dismissed it as a hobby thing. A way of passing time on a wet Sunday Using what must have then been a sparkling new invention. Home video equipment had been in its infancy then. The shot of Lockram standing there on the dance floor sparkled with flashing dots, courtesy of the ancient tape, while the soundtrack had a back fizz of static. Every so often the entire image would take a little walk offscreen before bouncing back as the tracking mechanism took control again. Benedict sipped his coffee while watching the Luxor's then-owner talk. The old guy wore a sober suit in a dark material with a white shirt and plain blue tie. A sharp-dressed man. For an eighty-four-year-old he looked fit, with a wiry frame that crackled with an energy all its own. The body language could have been poached from a younger man, too. When he talked he moved lightly on his feet, gesturing with his arms. The face was pure giveaway though. Deep lines etched the forehead. More lines radiated sunburst patterns from his eyes to a hairline that, although it hadn't receded, had turned pure white.
Ohhh, Benedict. Why do you do this to yourself? Switch off. Drive the car. Sit on the shore. Find a diner. Eat lunch… He always ran through the mantra as soon as he watched Lockram's tapes. He didn't need to do this. Mariah Lee had gone. She wasn't coming back. He'd tried to trace her. Failed. There was no shame in that. He should let go.
But I can't, he told himself grimly. Just like the Luxor claimed the heart of a fourteen-year-old Benjamin Isiah Lockram all those years ago, its got its hooks into me. There's something about the place.
Shit.
When Lockram held out his hands on the flickering screen and uttered the melodramatic words, Benedict found himself mouthing them with him.
”Behold the Luxor!”
In a few moments Lockram would begin a tour of the Luxor. A detailed tour that took in every passageway, storeroom, closet and office, as well as the dance floor and stage area. He filmed architectural details in close-up, revealed carpentry techniques. The voice-over also compared the Luxor to the great Chicago dance halls of the Jazz Age. The Paradise. The Aragon. The Trianon. Huge pleasure palaces for the working man and woman that could hold eight thousand people. Magnificent buildings designed in imitation of Moorish castles with full-sized palm trees in the lobby and maple dance floors that rode on cushions of felt and springs so the clientele would feel as if they literally danced on air. Those were smart places where tuxedoed floorwalkers patrolled to make sure that people didn't dance the forbidden jitterbug, or scandalously dance too close. The Luxor, though splendid in its Egyptian tomb get-up, was
smaller, lay further out of town, and was a ”come let your hair down” kind of place. If you wanted to jitterbug the night away or dance cheek-to-cheek with the warm flesh of your choice, why, then, you go straight ahead and do it.
Almost ten years ago Benedict had watched these videotapes for the first time. What unfolded wasn't an old man's bit of hobby program-making, it was something else. The description had eluded Benedict for a few moments as all those years ago he'd sat in this very room watching the screen in a half-doze, not considering it to be of any importance at all.
It was only when Lockram (who must have been operating the camera by himself) filmed a sequence of shots in an apartment with a ”This is where I live. The apartment lies directly over the lobby and ticket office…”that Benedict lurched up straight on the sofa. A ghostly sense of premonition warned him he was nearing a significant part of the video. The camera floated through the apartment, a kind of ghostly eye, seeing everything. A sequence of views: the kitchen with brass pans hanging from a rack; the living room with a big old hunky TV in the corner and a radiogram beside it. Van Gogh prints of cornfields and starry nights on the walls. A hallway. A glimpse of an open bathroom with a shower. Then a shot straight into a wall mirror that proved Lockram operated the camera. His deeply lined face appeared like some ravaged landscape behind the camera. And what a camera! A huge twin lens monster that trailed cables down to the videotape deck that Lockram carried slung over one shoulder on a strap. The manufacturer must have been straining the word ”portable” to near destruction when they applied it to that fifty pounds of hardware the old man hefted around.
As the screen revealed a traveling shot of the hallway toward a half-open door at the end, Lockram spoke the commentary live. Exertion forced him to take deep breaths between sound bites. Respiration came as a whoosh. ”People tell me… that the Luxor is haunted… they're afraid to be alone here… after dark… No… No… there aren't any ghosts here in the Luxor. There is something else, though… far more powerful… far more destructive… infinitely more dangerous than shades of past lives… This TV recording is… my testament… Now… this is the nursery…” A shot of a room containing a crib in the corner and a bed in the center. Toys lined a shelf in a neat row. They looked as if a child has never played with them. Pristine. Barely touched. ”This is the bedroom. And this is Mary, my wife…”
