Death Trance

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Have you decided where you’re going to go?’

  Randolph hesitated and then nodded. ‘Yes, I have. To Indonesia.’

  ‘Indonesia?’ Wanda echoed in bewilderment. ‘Is there any particular reason?’

  ‘Yes,’ he told her, ‘there is.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had friends in Indonesia.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘So you’re just going off on your own?’

  Randolph leaned his head on the back of the seat and stared out the window. ‘I’m taking a friend. Well… more of a guide than a friend.’

  Wanda said, ‘You worry me.’

  Randolph turned and looked at her and smiled. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, I promise you. Really, there’s nothing. Besides, I didn’t know you cared.’

  ‘Of course I care,’ Wanda retorted. ‘You don’t think that a secretary can work for a man from nine o’clock in the morning until seven o’clock at night, day after day for three years, and not get to care about him?’

  ‘Well, that’s flattering,’ Randolph said. ‘But I promise you, I’ll be okay.’

  Wanda said, with a flush in her cheeks, ‘Take me with you.’

  Randolph looked at her carefully for a long moment. Then he said, ‘How should I react to that suggestion?’

  ‘You can react to it in any way you like. But the way I see it, you’ve suddenly found yourself abandoned, cut loose with no stability and no ties, and if you’re not two-hundred-per-cent careful, you’re going to find yourself drifting off right away from reality, right away from everything you know.’

  ‘You do sound like Dr Linklater,’ Randolph said.

  ‘Well, what if I do? Dr Linklater called me a couple of times after you left the Mount Moriah Clinic and he’s just as worried about you as I am. I happen to agree with everything he says, if you must know. You need taking care of, someone to keep your feet on the ground. I flattered myself that maybe it could be me. I know you well enough, after all. Maybe you forget some of the time that I exist. But I was hired to take care of you and after a while it stopped being a job and started being a vocation instead.’

  Randolph looked at her and for almost the first time, he realized how pretty she was with her dark, wavy hair; her wide-apart, bright blue eyes; her fully curved, vivid pink lips. He knew that since she had been working at Clare Cottonseed, she had broken off a longstanding engagement to a naval officer from the US Navy air station at Millington and that immediately afterwards she had briefly dated a musician and then a devastatingly handsome young executive from the Baptist Memorial Health Care System, Inc. But Randolph had never realized how much she cared about him; not romantically of course, but as a man who counted on her loyalty, her undemanding friendship and her continued daily devotion.

  ‘You’ve embarrassed me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied, flustered.

  ‘No, no. The fault is all mine. You’ve embarrassed me because I never realized until now how well you look after me. I’ve been taking you for granted ever since you’ve worked for me. Expecting everything and giving nothing.’

  ‘That’s not true, Mr Clare. You’ve always been appreciative, and you pay me well. I can’t ask for anything more than that.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Wanda. You can and you just have.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well … let’s just say that you may be right. I may need somebody to keep me anchored. It isn’t easy, losing a family. It’s strange rather than sad. Your whole world suddenly ends up as ashes in your hands … all your plans, all your schemes, everything you ever took for granted. It’s nothing but ash that blows right through your fingers. And do you know what? You suddenly find yourself free when you never expected to be. You suddenly find that you have nobody else to worry about, nobody else to take care of. You can get up in the middle of the night and play jazz and nobody says, “Come back to bed, for God’s sake, I’m trying to sleep!” You can lie in the tub for three hours, until the water’s cold and your fingers get crinkly, and nobody says, “Come on out and here’s a towel to wrap around yourself.” That’s the strange part. That’s what hurts. And maybe that’s where you and Dr Linklater are especially understanding and right. Maybe I do need somebody to stop me from floating away.’

  Randolph thought to himself as he watched the sunlight flicker through the passing trees and dapple Wanda’s face: You’re hedging your bets, Mr Handy Randy, the way you always do. You’re just making sure that if Dr Ambara’s theories of reincarnation are untrue, you have someone to protect you, someone to salvage your vanity and your confusion.

  ‘You really want to come with me?’ he asked redundantly but magnanimously, as if he were asking a starving peasant woman if she wanted anything to eat.

  Wanda nodded. ‘To Indonesia? You mean it?’

  Randolph gave her a smile that meant yes. ‘I don’t think I deserve you,’ he said in a congested voice.

  Wanda took his hand and clasped it carefully between hers. She had long, perfectly manicured nails painted shell pink. A small gold band on the third finger of her right hand. No wedding band, no engagement ring. She said softly, ‘You deserve more than you think. You’ve always been kind and understanding to everybody around you. Your friends, your family, people in the office. I’ve heard you. I’ve seen you.

  Why should it be so hard for you to accept that those same people want to show you some kindness now that you need it?’

  They reached the funeral home on Madison. The four hearses were already lined up along the kerb and the caskets had been carried inside. The front window of the funeral home reflected the jostling afternoon traffic, the shoppers and the tourists and the street musicians, the ragged clouds and the shining windows and the dark blue sky. The living, hurrying past the dead. There were gilded letters on the window in an old-fashioned script that read ‘Arjemian & Prowda, Funeral Services.’

  Randolph spent only ten minutes in the chapel there. Wanda waited outside. She was afraid to see him cry, and afraid that she might cry herself. The four Clare caskets were laid side by side on a long purple-covered plinth, and candles burned, and the sun gradually died behind a stained-glass window showing Jesus Christ with his arms outstretched in sympathy. ‘And He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall be no longer any death; there shall be no longer any mourning, or crying, or pain.’

  Randolph, kneeling, with the trousers of his black suit hitched up so that the knees wouldn’t crease, with his starched white collar cutting into his neck, thought to himself: Why does the life everlasting have to be won at such terrible cost? If the life everlasting is true, why can it be achieved only through death, through grief, and through agony? What kind of God is it who gives us the world and everything in it, and the capabiliiy of loving so fiercely, and then takes it all away?

  When he had first fallen in love with Marmie, his love had been jumpy and light and erratic. But the love of middle age was something else altogether. It burned inside of him like the greatest fire ever lit. It was overwhelming, so strong that it was almost an obsession. In middle age he had begun to understand for the first time the marriage vows that he had taken. With my body, I thee worship.

  And worship had not been a word too strong for the way he had felt about Marmie, nor for the way she had felt about him.

  He tried to say a prayer over the caskets in which his family now lay but all he could manage was, ‘Good-bye. I love you.’

  But when he reached the door of the chapel, he turned around, looked at the caskets and the dipping candles and whispered, Til see you again. I’ll do my best. I promise.’

  Wanda stood in the polished-marble reception area, her hands clasped in front of her, staring out the window at the passing traffic. Randolph touched her arm and she looked up at him to see if he had been crying.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘I’m fine.’

  The vice-president of the funeral home came forward and said,
Thank you, Mr Clare.

  Monday morning at Forest Hill?’

  Randolph nodded dumbly. He found it impossible to describe the way he felt. One part of himself was sure that Marmie and the children were gone forever, but another part of himself was clinging desperately to the belief that Dr Ambara was right. He was a doctor, wasn’t he, an educated man, and if he said that Marmie and the children were still alive in heaven or wherever they were, then they must be, surely. I mean, how could they possibly have vanished without a trace, like the blown-out flames of the chapel candles? Vanished, like blown-away smoke?

  Randolph said to Wanda, ‘Would you have dinner with me tonight? At Clare Castle?’

  ‘Can Herbert take me home to change?’ she asked.

  ‘Is that the only condition?’

  ‘You must promise to talk about your family if you feel like it.’

  Randolph lowered his head. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I can promise you that.’

  Herbert opened the limousine door for them and they climbed inside. Wanda said,

  ‘There’s just one thing. I don’t want you to think that I’m taking advantage of you because of what happened to your family. I don’t want anything out of this except to know that you’re feeling better.’

  Randolph touched her arm. ‘I hope you’ll accept it as a compliment if I tell you that I knew that already.’

  ‘That’s a compliment,’ she agreed.

  They had dinner in the sun room because it was more informal than the dining room.

  The walls were cluttered with watercolours: scenes of European beaches, mountains in New Mexico, girls with fluttering parasols. The oil lamp on the table shed a gentle, diffused light and sparkled on the silver cutlery. Randolph ate sparingly. His stomach seemed to have become permanently knotted since Marmie’s death and it was all he could do to chew his way through two small fillets of red snapper with a little broccoli.

  Wanda said that she was on a never-ending diet but he persuaded her to have some of Mrs Wallace’s glace chestnuts. Mrs Wallace waited on them kindly and discreetly, although she occasionally joined in their conversation with a remark or two. She had always done this and so Randolph was used to it. She still believed that she was ‘quality.’

  After dinner they sat in the large living room, with its polished floors and green and white floral drapes, and looked out over the gardens. It was so humid that all the French doors were open and the bushes glowed with fireflies. Randolph put on a record of Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 and poured them each a glass of sauvignon from the Cakebread Winery.

  ‘Was this one of Marmie’s favourites?’ Wanda asked, listening to the music. She had changed into a flowing chiffon dress with wide sleeves and a striking pattern of crimsons, blacks and yellows. Her hair was brushed into wild curls, and for the first time, Randolph saw her as a girl and nothing else. The businesslike secretary had been left behind in the office.

  ‘No,’ he told her. ‘Marmie hated Brahms.’

  ‘Exorcizing ghosts?’ asked Wanda.

  Randolph reached across to a side table for his lighter. ‘No. I don’t believe in ghosts.

  Not in that way.’

  ‘What do you believe in?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Some sort of life everlasting, I suppose. But I’ve never had to think about it except when my parents died, and in those days I guess I was too busy to try and work it out.’

  ‘Dr Linklater said he was concerned that you were too calm.’

  Randolph lit his pipe. ‘Just because I’m calm, it doesn’t mean I’m not grieving. I’ve taken his advice and I’ve tried not to bottle my feelings up.’ He paused for a moment, studying the flame of his lighter. ‘I do cry, you know,’ he said in a level voice.

  Wanda said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.’

  ‘You’re not intruding.’

  She stood up and walked across to the open window. Moths flitted against the coach lamps on the patio and there was a constant sawing of cicadas. She sipped her wine in silence for a while and then said, ‘What made you choose Indonesia?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘If you’re serious about taking me along, then yes.’

  Randolph crossed his legs and puffed at his pipe. He looked at Wanda with an expression she had never before seen on his face: strangely introspective and unfocused, as if he were talking to someone inside his mind rather than to her. ‘They have an interesting view of death in Indonesia,’ he said. ‘The Hindus see it as a purely temporary condition and they believe that even after people have died, they are still with us, quite close by.’

  Wanda looked at Randolph anxiously. ‘You haven’t been reading any crazy books, have you?’

  Randolph shook his head. ‘I’ve just been talking to someone very knowledgeable and very sincere. Someone who went through the same experience as mine and came out the other side of it with the sure and certain knowledge of life everlasting.

  Isn’t that what they say at funerals?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Wanda said in a whisper. ‘But what are you trying to tell me?

  That Marmie and the children aren’t really dead at all? I mean, is that why you’re going to Indonesia … to try to make some sort of contact with them through some kind of Hindu religious ceremony?’

  ‘Marmie and the children are dead in the sense that they no longer inhabit their physical bodies. But their spirits, their personalities, what they actually are … that hasn’t died. At least that’s what the Indonesians believe, and I’d like to believe it too.

  In fact, I think I do believe it.’

  ‘But how can going to Indonesia help you?’ Wanda asked. She came over and sat down next to him. He laid aside his pipe in the heavy onyx ashtray.

  ‘I’m not asking for judgement here, Wanda,’ he told her gently. ‘I’m not asking for your opinion on whether I’m screwy or not, or whether spirits really do exist. My wife and my family were suddenly killed and I didn’t even have the chance to protect them, or hold their hands, or tell them good-bye. That’s why when someone said he believed the dead could still be reached, even after they were cremated … well, that’s why I was prepared to give him some time.’

  He paused and then went on. ‘It seems to be possible for certain Indonesian religious adepts to get in touch with spirits, to talk to them, to actually see them sometimes. That’s why I’m going to Indonesia, to try to find one of these adepts and see if he can’t pull off the same trick for me.’

  Wanda whispered, ‘Randolph … Randolph, believe me, it can’t possibly work.’

  ‘Who says it can’t possibly work? You? The Pope? Cardinal Baum? The Smithsonian Institution? The man I’ve been talking to says different. Maybe it doesn’t work.

  Maybe it does work but needs a greater act of faith than I could ever give it. I’m prepared to come back home with nothing more than a suntan and a three-thousand-dollar bill from the Djakarta Hilton, but at least I won’t spend the rest of my life wondering if it might have been possible, even for a second, to talk to Marmie again, and to the children, and to tell them how much I love them.’

  Wanda touched his shoulder, a gesture more guarded than she would have made to a man who was not her employer. There were no tears in Randolph’s eyes but his throat was strung tight with emotion and she could tell that he was suffering, although she could only half-guess just how much. To Randolph, the pain was worse than knives, worse than fire, worse than anything he could ever have imagined.

  ‘And you really want me to come with you?’ Wanda asked.

  He shrugged. ‘If you can put up with me. I’m not forcing you to come, not by any means.’

  They listened to more music and talked very little. At ten o’clock Charles came around and closed the French doors because the insects were flying in. Wanda checked her watch and said, ‘I must go.’

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t particularly inspiring company,’ Randolph apologized.

  She took his hand. ‘No, y
ou were very interesting, believe me. I always thought you were so practical, so pragmatic. It’s fascinating to see you taking a chance on something extraordinary.’

  ‘Well, maybe I’m cracking up,’ he said wryly, guiding her through to the front door where Charles was waiting with her wrap.

  ‘You won’t know until you try it,’ Wanda said. She reached up and kissed his cheek.

  She was soft and warm and smelled of Chanel Cristalle. He recognized it because Marmie had always liked it but had never been able to wear it. He was suddenly grateful that Wanda had come and spent the evening with him, particularly since his fretting about Marmie and the children had torn away at the evening’s conversation like the teeth of a nutmeg grater.

  In the library, the telephone rang. Randolph said, ‘That may be Neil. I’d better answer it.’

  Wanda said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Are you coming in to the office?’

  ‘For a while probably. Good night.’

  Wanda gave him a small wave that was unexpectedly shy. Then she went quickly down the steps to the driveway, where Herbert was waiting for her with the limousine.

  Randolph went through to the library and picked up the phone. It was Neil and he sounded tired. ‘They’ve had another complication out at Raleigh. It seems like they can’t get hold of the right valves. Anyway, I’m going to see what I can do in the morning. We may be able to fly them in from Germany.’

  ‘Any news from Orbus Greene?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘A kind of a holding message from one of his assistants. Apparently the Association is talking to its lawyers, in case the deal you suggested has any legal ramifications.

  But the general view seems to be that they could very well be interested.’

  They don’t have too damned long,’ Randolph said. ‘If we can’t make up our shortfall by the middle of the week, Sun-Taste is going to start pushing us real hard.’

  ‘I don’t see that we have any alternative but to wait for them,’ said Neil. ‘After all, where else are we going to get cottonseed oil?’

  ‘I’ll get it from Egypt if I have to. I might even talk to Don Prescott at Gamble’s.’