F Paul Wilson - Novel 05

by Mirage (v2. 1)

  "So what's going on there, darling?' Liam said at her shoulder. "Anything that matters?"

  "Mostly bad news," Julie said. "A whole file of bad news. Stuff I never knew."

  Dad, it seemed, had had his share of problems.

  She shoved the letters back in and closed the file. Maybe the next—

  Suddenly she heard Alma's voice in the hall outside: "Have you seen Julia?"

  Her heart pounding, Julie eased the drawer shut as quickly and as silently as she could while Alma listened to a muffled, unintelligible reply, probably from Sam's nurse.

  Julie leaned close to Liam and whispered in his ear. "Grab that door. She could be coming in here!"

  Outside, she heard Alma say, "Well, if you see her, please tell her I'm looking for her."

  Julie had the right door, Liam the left; they were backed into the cabinet and pulling them closed as the latch on the study door turned.

  She is coming in!

  They stood there, cramped together in the darkness with the handles of the file drawers pressing against Julie's back. She felt Liam close to her, heard his breathing. She was surprised he didn't make a joke. Nothing seemed to scare him.

  The only light came from the bright slit between the doors. Julie put her eye to it.

  Alma was crossing the room. She went to the windows that overlooked the gardens and stared out.

  Looking for me?

  "What's she doing?" Liam whispered. Liam's lips were close to her ears.

  Julie didn't reply—it was reckless to say a single word in here. He was close. She could sense the warmth of him, feel his breath on her neck. So close. Almost like in the memoryscape...

  And then she remembered: She'd left the key in the wall-cabinet lock. What if Alma saw it?

  After a moment at the windows, Alma turned away and headed for the bookshelves. She found the book she wanted, pulled it out, and left, closing the door behind her.

  She certainly seems to know her way around, Julie thought. How often does she stay here? Julie had never given much thought to the women in Eathan's life.

  She pushed the doors open and turned to the file cabinet containing her father's papers. She rolled the numbers on the combination lock.

  "Now why would you be doing that?" Liam said in a hushed voice.

  "Because we're getting out of here."

  "But we've only just started—"

  "It's too dangerous. She could be back for another book or to return that one anytime. I don't want to get caught."

  Liam said nothing as she closed the big doors again—this time with Julie and him on the outside—and locked them. But she pocketed the key instead of returning it to the desk. She didn't want Liam to know where to find it.

  She turned to him. "How will you get out of the house?"

  "Leave that to me. But before I do get out, I've got a favor to ask."

  "What?"

  "I want to see Sammi."

  Julie felt herself tense as she realized that for a nanosecond she'd actually considered agreeing to it. How had she let herself fall under this man's spell? He was a prime suspect behind Sam's condition, and here they were, acting like co-conspirators against Eathan.

  "Just for a moment," he added when she didn't reply.

  "No. Absolutely not."

  His fair skin reddened with anger. "Why the hell not? I love her. She means everything to me."

  "Neither you nor anybody else is getting near Sam until I find out what happened to her."

  He started toward the door. "Then I'll find her myself."

  "There's a nurse with Sam whenever I'm not. You go anywhere near her room and I'll be on the phone to Scotland Yard, telling them that Liam O'Donnell is in North Yorkshire."

  He spun and faced her. "Bloody hell you will!"

  "In a New York minute," she said levelly, meeting his glare.

  He stood facing her, his jaw clenched, his hands opening and closing into fists. For an instant Julie was afraid she'd crossed an invisible line with him. He looked as if he were going to attack her.

  But he didn't.

  "Be damned, then," he said softly.

  And then he was striding for the door. He opened it a crack, peeked out, then was gone.

  Julie hurried after him into the hall. Empty. Suddenly frightened, she hurried down to Sam's room.

  If he's there, she thought, if he harms her, I'll never forgive myself.

  But only the nurse and Sam were there. Where had Liam gone?

  She turned and saw Alma walking down the hall toward her. She had her yellow pad under her arm.

  "Ah, Julie," she said pleasantly. "There you are. I've been looking all over for you. Where have you been hiding?"

  "Just killing time until I can take another look into the memoryscape." She glanced at her watch. "Still a couple of hours to go before the States are awake."

  "I can hardly wait. But listen, I think I've come up with something on the Venice memory from last night. Venice isn't important. Neither is that diva—at least not of crucial importance. The key to the memory is the opera itself."

  "Otello? Why?"

  "I'm not exactly sure yet. Maybe the painting is the key. If the subconscious is trying to get a message out, it will do so using symbols. Just like in a dream. The lion in the gondola represents Otello. He was known as 'the Lion of Venice.' So that's the key." She laughed. "Key to what, though, I can't say."

  Julie shrugged. "Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe the painting is just a key to get us to the Venice memory, which just happened to take place during a run of Oteilo."

  "Could be," Alma said. "But I don't think so. Frightfully involved, isn't it. But I truly believe Otello himself is the key to that memory. Samantha is speaking to us through her own art and through the art that spoke to her during her life. We simply need to see more. We need more pieces of the picture she is trying to paint for us." She held a book up to Julie. "I found this in your uncle's study: 'Stories of the Great Operas.' Might be of some help."

  Alma's enthusiasm was contagious, but Julie felt compelled to leaven it with a dose of reality.

  "If indeed she's really trying to communicate with us, and if there's enough of her subconscious left to finish the job."

  "I'm quite sure of the first; and I'm praying for the second. Let me know the instant you're ready to go back inside her. We must make the most of every possible opportunity."

  Julie glanced at her watch again. Hours to go before Dr. S. would be in his office. Why wait that long? She'd visited Sam's memoryscape without him before. Why not do it again?

  "To hell with New York," she told Alma. "What's wrong with right now?"

  Nineteen

  Maybe I should approach Sam's comatose memoryscape as a sort of dreamscape. During dream states, the body is paralyzed and the doors are shut on outer reality. Cholinergic neurons in the pontine-geniculate occipital system fire erratically , sending bursts of waves throughout the higher areas of the brain. These PGO waves disrupt the cognitive networks of rational, orderly flows of information, allowing irrational, disorderly thoughts, emotions, and images to swirl through the mind. At this point only the inner reality exists, and all the rules are off. A dream is the result of the poor cortex trying to make sense of the chaos.

  —Random notes: Julia Gordon

  You enter the memoryscape where you left it—deeper-level gallery. Your heart sinks as you look about and see no new paintings on the walls. You had hoped for a change.

  You drift outside the gallery.

  Still a drowned world, a vast expanse of stagnant water broken by dark, scattered fragments of land. Low in the sky to your left, the giant crescent moon slouches down the eternal starless night, sinking into the horizon of the endless black sea.

  No gondola waits at the shore this time. You guess that was a one-time-only ride. You scan the dead waters, looking for some sign of life. You see nothing, and your sense of hopelessness deepens.

  The night grows deeper as the f
ar waters drown the moon. You watch it disappear, and when it is gone you find yourself in a darkness so profound it swallows even the wan light leaking from the gallery behind you.

  The darkness invades your soul, enveloping your will. You can see no reason to stay here, no hope of changing this watery wasteland.

  Maybe—you think—you don't have the guts for this.

  But as you reach for the Exit button, you hear a crunch behind you. Turning, you see the gondola, waiting. As before, no gondolier. Heartened but wary of expecting too much, you step aboard but remain standing as it begins its journey.

  And then, far ahead in the distance, a spark. You squint toward it. An illusion? Wishful thinking?

  No, it's there, it's real. But so far away and so faint you would have missed it had the moon been up.

  A long trip across the trackless sea as the spark gradually becomes a blob of light—but high above the waterline. As you near it you see an island rearing sixty or seventy feet above the sea. You see dead trees clustered at its center and marble doorways cut into its flanks. You've seen this place before. In a painting: Arnold Bocklin's Isle of the Dead.

  But now the light is a glowing rectangle atop the island. You leave the gondola and glide toward it. Soon you realize that this light is the window of a diner. A Phillies Cigars sign runs across its roof—ONLY 50—and its window glass turns an impossible curve. The counterman, wearing a white paper cap, works under the wooden counter. It should be Formica, you think, but it looks more like oak or mahogany.

  In the corner, near the two large chrome urns, a sharp-nosed man sits next to a woman in a red dress. They're smoking and drinking coffee. On this end of the counter, a lone man in a hat sits with his back to you.

  You know this scene. It's Hopper's Nighthawks. A lonely painting, a city painting ... an eerie painting.

  Forgetting about Sam and why you're here, you hurry for the door. If you had feet you'd be running. You've always wondered who this couple was, where they were coming from or going to, what they were saying to each other. Now at last you can find out.

  You pull on the handle but the door doesn't budge.

  You rattle the latch. The couple at the counter turn and stare at you. The counterman leans over the counter and says something you can't hear. He points to the door, then points to his right. You back up a step and see a hand-printed sign taped to the glass.

  ENTER THRU THEATER AROUND CORNER

  You nod, wave, and hurry around the side of the diner. It looks so warm and bright in there and you long to come in from the dark.

  But the theater around the corner also looks closed. The marquee is dark and cluttered with a meaningless jumble of letters. You can see the name atop the marquee: THE PALLAS.

  You wonder: Shouldn't it be "Palace"?

  But never mind. That's not important. You approach the ticket booth. A small, naked bulb somewhere below the counter lights the interior but it's empty. You continue on, past torn and faded posters in their display cases, to the door. The hinges creak in agony as you push through.

  Dark inside. But not completely. A dull glow leaks from behind the concession stand. You smell popcorn but the popper looks empty. The glass front of the counter is broken and the candy looted. Popcorn is strewn about. It crunches under your feet. The light fades as you move farther inside, until it's as dark as the moonless night outside. How are you supposed to get to the diner through here? It doesn't make sense.

  Suddenly you see flickering light ahead, coming from the left. You move toward it, turn....

  You're in the back of a theater. An empty theater. Something is playing on the screen, loud, full of color and activity, but the picture is out of focus and the sound garbled. Then you notice that the theater is not quite empty. Two people sit in the very front row. Curious, you move down the aisle.

  And as you near the screen it shrinks, becoming progressively smaller until it's the size of a thirteen-inch TV set. And seated before it are two little girls, ages seven or eight.

  Sam and Julie ...

  "I'm going to kill the waaaaabbit!"

  On the TV screen, Elmer Fudd, in armor and horned helmet, chases Bugs Bunny dressed as a golden-pigtailed Rhine-maiden across a fantastic Valhallan landscape.

  "I don't think 1 like this show," Sam says, peeking out from behind the chair cushion she's begun holding in front of her face. "It's stupid."

  "What—are you scared?" Julie says, her voice dripping with contempt. "It's only a dumb cartoon! Not like they're real people or anything."

  Siegfried Fudd again calls out his murderous promise— "I'm going to kill the waaaaabbit!'"—and Sam ducks behind her cushion.

  That does it for Julie. She's had it with Sammi's weirdness. One cartoon character threatening another—big deal. They do it all the time. And even if you're stupid enough to think they're real, they always bounce back, no matter what happens. Look what that coyote lives through.

  "Stop being a baby, Sammi. Look at it."

  A muffled "No!" from behind the cushion. "And no one can make me!"

  "Oh, no?"

  Incensed by the challenge, Julie grabs the cushion and tears it from Sammi's grasp.

  Sammi cries, "No!" and turns away, burying her face in her arms.

  Julie leaps on her and a wrestling match begins.

  "No, Julie! No! Please don't make me look!"

  But Sammi's pleas fall on deaf ears.

  You want to grab hold of the little girl you were and shake some sense into her. Doesn't she see that her sister is frightened—truly frightened? Terrified of that noisy cartoon. But young Julie can only see that her sister is being silly. Who can be afraid of drawings? She'll show Sammi there's nothing to be afraid of, whether she likes it or not.

  But you know differently.

  You've begun to see what colors and lines and pictures mean to Sam, how her perceptions, her view of life were so different from yours that, in a very real sense, she grew up on a different planet. A scarier planet.

  And as much as you want to stop this replay, you can't. You can only watch helplessly as Julie steadily overpowers the sister who never had much will to fight, even to protect herself.

  Julie manages to pull Sammi's face free of her arms. Panting, struggling, she gets her sister's head tilted up to face the TV screen. But Sammi keeps her eyes squeezed shut.

  "Open your eyes, Sammi! Open them!"

  "No! I don't want to see!"

  Frustrated, seeing no way to get Sammi's eyes open, Julie glances at the TV screen and notices a lull in the cartoon. She tries another tack. She releases her sister from the head-lock and rolls away from her.

  "Oh, forget it," she says. "The stupid cartoon's over anyway."

  With that, Sammi opens her eyes and looks at the screen. There, in Technicolor, Bugs Bunny lies splayed on a rock, eyes closed, limp arms akimbo, while a lone flower weeps over him.

  Sammi lets out an ear-piercing screech and leaps to her feet. She stands and stares at the screen, crying, "He's dead! He's dead!"

  And then she runs screaming from the room.

  Little Julie stares after her, baffled.

  "What's the big deal?" she says softly. "It's only a cartoon."

  On the TV, Bugs raises his head and looks out from the

  screen. "Well, what did you expect in an opera—a happy ending?"

  You turn away, disgusted with yourself, and wondering what Alma's making of all this. You know you're not being entirely fair to the younger Julie. She couldn't understand Sam—didn't have the tools even to try. And even now you doubt the older, wiser Julie has all the necessary tools.

  Perhaps it's just the challenge, or perhaps it's something deeper, but you're trying. Trying like all hell.

  You hunt around for a way into the diner, but find no exit doors. No way in or out except via the entrance. You hurry out, back to the street. But next to the ticket booth, blocking your way, is another matrioshka doll, this one in the shape of Bugs Bunny, rocking back an
d forth on its round base.

  You've no time for this, yet you can't resist finding out what nests inside. You touch the doll and it splits across its middle. The top pops off and there's Elmer Fudd in hunter's gear, trying to look fierce as he clutches his shotgun to his chest. Another touch, another split, and Bugs is back again, carrot in hand, that insouciant, wiseacre grin on his face.

  But as with all the preceding matrioshkas, this is as far as it will go. Bugs inside Elmer inside Bugs. What does it mean? Does it mean anything?

  You hurry back to the darkened theater front and turn left. When you reach the welcoming light from inside the diner, you pull on the door again. Still locked. You start to knock on the glass but stop cold.

  It's different inside. The couple at the far end of the counter by the urns—the woman in the red dress now wears your mother's face, and the man has become Eathan. Not a young Eathan, but Eathan as you know him now. And the man sitting alone—he's now your father. And the counterman, Liam. He looks up from whatever he's frying on the grill and grins at you.

  Disturbed, frightened, you back away. This is too crazy, even by Sam's standards. You turn and flee, soaring off into the night. Forget the gondola. Just go.

  The dripping moon is half-risen from the sea on the far side of this drowned world. You aim for it, sensing that is the way back to the gallery. As you glide you notice something rippling the surface of the moonlit water below. Could it be whatever brushed the hull of your gondola last night?

  You swoop down, but by the time you reach the surface the ripples have spread and dissipated. You hover there, wondering what could live in these dead waters.

  Suddenly a splash. You turn and see a tentacle as thick around as a man's thigh uncoiling from the surface. The black water rolls off its skin. Its suckered undersurface reaches for you, the puckered mouthlike pores ready to grab and hold you.

  You cry out—your voice in the real world startles you. Then you dart away, leaving the thing to slide back into the sea.

  What would it have done to you? Dragged you down to join Sam in her coma?