Reborn ac-4

by F. Paul Wilson

  Reborn

  ( Adversary Cycle - 4 )

  F. Paul Wilson

  Reborn

  F. Paul Wilson

  for William Sloane, the early brewer of science with the supernatural

  Prologue

  Sunday, February 11, 1968

  He was calling himself Mr. Veilleur these days—Gaston Veilleur—and tonight he found it difficult to sleep. A remote uneasiness made him restless, a vague malaise nettled his mind, stirring up old memories and ancient nightmares. But he refused to give up the chase. He measured his breathing and soon found the elusive prey within his grasp. But just as he was slipping off, something dragged him back to full wakefulness.

  Light. From somewhere down the hall. He lifted his head to see. The glow was coming from the linen closet. Blue-white radiance was streaming out along the edges of the closed door.

  Moving carefully so as not to awaken his wife, Mr. Veilleur slipped out of bed and padded down the hall. His joints creaked in protest at the change in position. Old injuries, old wounds, reminders of each hung on, sounding little echoes from the past. He knew he was developing arthritis. No surprise there. His body looked sixty years old and had decided to begin acting accordingly.

  He hesitated a moment with his hand on the knob of the closet door, then yanked it open. The very air within seemed to glow; it flowed and swirled and eddied, like burning liquid. But cold. He felt a chill as it splashed over him.

  The source—what was causing this? The light seemed most intense in the rear corner of the bottom shelf, under the blankets. He reached down and pulled them away.

  Mr. Veilleur bit back a cry of pain and threw an arm across his eyes as the naked brilliance lanced into his brain.

  Then the glow began to fade.

  When his eyes could see again, when he dared to look again, he found the source of the glow. Tucked back among the towels and sheets and blankets was what appeared to be a huge iron cross. He smiled. She'd saved it. After all these years she'd still hung on to it.

  The cross still pulsed with a cold blue radiance as he lifted it. He gripped the lower section of the upright with two hands and hefted it with an easy familiarity. Not a cross—a sword hilt. Once it had been gold and silver. After serving its purpose, it had changed. Now it was iron. Glowing iron.

  Why? What did this mean?

  Suddenly the glow faded away completely, leaving him staring at the dull gray surface of the metal. And then the metal itself began to change. He felt its surface grow coarse, saw tiny cracks appear, and then it began to crumble. In seconds it was reduced to a coarse powder that sifted and ran through his fingers like grains of sand.

  Something has happened. Something has gone wrong! But what?

  Slightly unnerved, Mr. Veilleur stood empty-handed in the dark and realized how quiet the world had become. All except for the sound of a jet passing high overhead.

  Roderick Hanley twisted in his seat as he tried to stretch his cramped muscles and aching back. It had been a long flight from L. A., and even the extra width in first class was snug on his big frame.

  "We'll be landing shortly, Dr. Hanley," the stewardess said, leaning close to him. "Can I get you anything before we close the bar?"

  Hanley winked at her. "You could, but it's not stocked in the bar."

  Her laugh seemed genuine. "Seriously, though…"

  "How about another gimlet?"

  "Let's see." She touched a fingertip to her chin. " 'Four-to-one vodka to lime with a dash of Cointreau,' right?"

  "Perfect."

  She touched his shoulder. "Be right back."

  Pushing seventy and I can still charm them.

  He smoothed back his silvery hair and squared his shoulders inside the custom-made British tweed shooting jacket. He often wondered if it was the aura of money he exuded or the burly, weathered good looks that belied his years. He was proud of both, never underestimating the power of the former and long since giving up any false modesty about the latter.

  Being a Nobel prizewinner had never hurt, either.

  He accepted the drink from her and took a healthy gulp, hoping the ethanol would calm his jangled nerves. The flight had seemed interminable. But at last they were approaching Idlewild. No, it was called Kennedy Airport now, wasn't it? He hadn't been able to get used to the name change. But no matter what the place was called, they'd be safely down on terra firma shortly.

  And not a moment too soon.

  Commercial flights were a pain. Like being trapped at a cocktail party in your own house. If you didn't like the company, you couldn't just up and leave. He much preferred the comfort and convenience of his private Learjet, where he could call all the shots. But yesterday morning he had learned that the plane would be grounded for three days, possibly five, waiting for a part. Another five days in California among those Los Angeleans, who were all starting to look like hippies or Hindus or both, was more than he could tolerate, so he had bitten the bullet and bought a ticket on this Boeing behemoth.

  For once—just this once—he and Ed were traveling together.

  He glanced at his traveling companion, dozing peacefully beside him. Edward Derr, M.D., two years younger but looking older, was used to this sort of travel. Hanley nudged him once, then again. Derr's eyes fluttered open.

  "Wh-what's wrong?" he said, straightening up in his seat.

  "Landing soon. Want something before we touch down?"

  Derr rubbed a hand over his craggy face. "No." He closed his eyes again. "Just wake me when it's over."

  "How the hell can you sleep in these seats?"

  "Practice."

  Thirty years of regular attendance together at biological and genetic research conferences all over the world, and never once had they traveled on the same plane. Until today.

  It would not do to have the pair of them die together.

  There were records and journals in the Long Island house that were not yet ready for the light of day. He couldn't imagine any time in the near future when the world would be ready for them. Sometimes he wondered why he didn't simply burn them and have done with the whole affair. Sentimental reasons, he guessed. Or ego. Or both. Whatever the reason, he couldn't seem to bring himself to part with them.

  A shame, really. He and Derr had made biological history, and they couldn't tell anybody. That had been part of the pact they had made that day in the first week of 1942. That and the promise that when one of them died, the other would immediately destroy the sensitive records.

  After more than a quarter century of living with that pact, he should have been accustomed to it. But no. He had been in a state of constant anxiety since taking off from Los Angeles. But at last the trip was over. All they had to do was land. They'd made it.

  Suddenly came a violent jolt, a scream of agonized metal, and the 707 tilted a crazy angle. Someone behind them in coach screamed something about a wing tearing off, and then the plane plummeted, spinning wildly.

  The thought of his own death was no more than a fleeting presence in Hanley's mind. The knowledge that there would be no one left to destroy the records crowded out everything else.

  "The boy!" he cried, clutching Derr's arm. "They'll find out about the boy! He'll find out about himself !"

  And then the plane came apart around him.

  One

  Tuesday, February 20, 1968

  1

  A form was taking shape out of the darkness, shadows were merging, coalescing into an unholy shape. And it moved. In utter silence the night became flesh and glided toward her.

  Jim Stevens leaned back in his chair and stared at the paper in the typewriter. This wasn't going the way he wanted. He knew what he wanted to say but the words weren't capturing it. It was almost as if he needed new words, a new lang
uage, to express himself.

  He was tempted to pull one of those Hollywood scenes. Rip the paper out of the platen, ball it up, and toss it at the wastebasket. But in four straight years of writing every day, Jim had learned never to throw anything away. Somewhere in the mishmash of all the unpublished words he had committed to paper might lurk a scene, an image, a turn of phrase that could prove valuable later on.

  No shortage of unpublished material, unfortunately. Hundreds of pages. Two novels' worth neatly stacked in their cardboard boxes on the top shelf of the closet. He had submitted them everywhere, to every publishing house in New York that did fiction, but no one was interested.

  Not that he was completely unpublished. He glanced over to where "The Tree," a modern ghost story, sat alone on the otherwise bare ego-shelf in the bookcase. Doubleday had acquired that two years ago and had published it last summer with the publicity budget accorded most first novels: zero. What few reviews it received had been as indifferent as its sales, and it sank without a trace. None of the paperback houses had picked it up.

  The manuscript of a fourth novel sat at the far left corner of his desk, the Doubleday rejection letter resting atop it. He had hoped the astonishing success of Rosemary's Baby would open doors for this one, but no dice.

  Jim reached over and picked up the letter. It was from Tim Bradford, his editor on "The Tree." Although he knew it by heart, he read it again.

  Dear Jim,

  Sorry, but I'm going to have to pass on Angelica. I like its style and I like the characters. But there's no market for the subject matter. No one will be interested in a modern-day succubus. I'll repeat what I said over lunch last year: You've got talent, and you've got a good, maybe great, future ahead of you as a novelist if you'll just drop this horror stuff. There's no future in horror fiction. If you've got to do weird stuff, try sci fi. I know you're thinking of how Rosemary's Baby is still on the best-seller list, but it doesn't matter. The Levin book is an aberration. Horror is a dead end, killed by the A-bomb and Sputnik and other realities that are scary enough…

  Maybe he's right, Jim thought, flipping the letter onto the desk and shaking off echoes of the crushing disappointment that had accompanied its arrival in the mail on Saturday.

  But what was he to do? This "weird stuff" was all he wanted to write. He'd read science fiction as a kid and had liked it, but he didn't want to write it. Hell, he wanted to scare people! He remembered the ripples of fear and jolts of shock he'd received from writers like Bloch and Bradbury and Matheson and Lovecraft when he'd read them in the fifties and early sixties. He wanted to leave his own readers gasping, to do to them what the masters had done to him.

  He was determined to keep at it. There was an audience for his writing, he was sure of it. All it took was a publisher with the guts to go find it. Until then he'd live with the rejection. He had known it was an integral part of a writer's life when he started; what he hadn't known was that it could hurt so much.

  He closed his research books on Satanism and witchcraft and got up from the desk. Time for a break. Maybe a shave and a shower would help. He got some of his best ideas in the shower.

  As he rose he heard the mail slot clank and detoured toward the front door. He turned on the hi-fi on his way through the living room. The Rolling Stones Now! was on the turntable; "Down the Road Apiece" began to cook through the room. The furniture was all leftovers from when Carol's folks had owned the place: austere sofas, slim-legged chairs, asymmetrical tables, lots of plastic—the "modern look" from the fifties. When they got some money, he promised himself to buy furniture designed for human beings. Or maybe a stereo instead. But all his records were mono. So maybe the furniture would be first.

  He scooped the mail off the floor. Not much there except for his paycheck from the Monroe Express—a fair sum this week because the paper had finally paid him for his series of feature articles on the "God Is Dead" controversy.

  Great. He could buy Carol dinner tonight.

  Finally to the bathroom. "Hello, Wolfman," he said to the mirror.

  With his dark brown hair hanging over his thick eyebrows, his bushy muttonchop sideburns reaching almost to his jawline, and tufts of wiry hair springing from the collar of his undershirt, all framing a stubble that would have taken the average guy three days to grow, his old nickname from the Monroe High football team seemed as apt as ever. Of course, the hair on his palms had been the real clincher. Wolfman Stevens—the team's beast of burden, viciously ramming through the opponent's defensive line in play after play. Except for a few unfortunate accidents—to others—his football years had been good ones. Great ones.

  He was adopting the new long-haired look. It hid his ears, which had always stuck out a little farther than he liked.

  As he lathered up the heavy stubble on his face, he wished someone would invent a cream or something that would stop beard growth for a week or more. He'd pay just about anything for a product like that. Anything so he wouldn't have to go through this torturous ritual every day, sometimes twice a day.

  He scraped the Gillette Blue Blade in various directions along his face and neck until they were reasonably smooth, then gave his palms a quick once-over. As he was reaching for the hot-water knob in the shower, he heard a familiar voice from the direction of the living room.

  "Jimmy? Are you here, Jimmy?"

  The thick Georgia accent made it sound like "Jimmeh? Are you heah, Jimmeh?"

  "Yeah, Ma. I'm here."

  "Just stopped by to make a delivery."

  Jim met her in the kitchen where he found her placing a fresh apple pie on the counter.

  "What's that awful music?" she said. "Dear me, it boggles the ears."

  "The Stones, Ma."

  "You'll be thirty in four years. Aren't you just a little old for that sort of thing?"

  "Nah! Brian Jones and I are the same age. And I'm younger than Watts and Wyman."

  "Who are they?"

  "Never mind."

  He ducked into the living room and turned off the hi-fi. When he returned to the kitchen, she had taken off her heavy cloth coat and laid it across the back of one of the dinette chairs. She was wearing a red sweater and gray wool slacks. Emma Stevens was a short, trim, shapely woman in her late forties. Despite the faint touches of gray in her brown hair, she could still draw stares from much younger men. She wore a bit more makeup and tended to wear clothes that were a bit tighter than Jim liked to see on the woman he called Mother, but at heart he knew she was a homebody who seemed happiest when cleaning her house and baking. She was a bundle of energy who volunteered for all the charitable functions in town, no matter whether the beneficiary was Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow or the Monroe High School band.

  "I had extra apples left over after I made Dad's pie, so I made one for you and Carol. Apple was always your favorite."

  "Still is, Ma." He bent to kiss her on the cheek. "Thanks."

  "I brought some Paladec too. For Carol. She's looking a bit poorly lately. Some vitamins every day will make her feel better."

  "Carol's just fine, Ma."

  "She doesn't look it. Looks peaked. I don't know what to contribute it to, do you?"

  " 'Attribute it to,' Ma. At."

  "At? I don't know what to contribute it at? That doesn't sound right."

  Jim bit his lip. "Well, at least we both agree on that."

  "So!" she said, brushing imaginary crumbs off her hands and looking around the kitchen. Jim knew she was inspecting the countertops and the floors to see if Carol was still measuring up to the standards of spotlessness Ma had adhered to all of Jim's life. "How are things?"

  "Fine, Ma. How about you and Dad?"

  "Fine. Dad's at work."

  "So's Carol. She's at work too."

  "Were you writing when I came in?"

  "Uh-huh."

  It wasn't exactly the truth, but what the hell. Ma didn't consider freelance writing Real Work, anyway. When Jim rode the night desk part-time on the Monroe Express, that was Re
al Work, because he got paid for it. He might sit there for hours, doing nothing more than twiddling his thumbs as he waited for something newsworthy to happen in the Incorporated Village of Monroe, Long Island, but Ma considered that Real Work. Hunching over a typewriter and dragging sentences kicking and squealing from his brain to put on paper was something else.

  Jim waited patiently. Finally she said it.

  "Any news?"

  "No, Ma. There's no 'news.' Why do you keep bugging me about that?"

  "Because it's a mother's parenteral obligation—"

  " 'Parental,' Ma. 'Parental.' "

  "That's what I said, parenteral obligation to keep checking as to if and when she's going to become a grandmother."

  "Believe me, Ma. When we know, you'll know. I promise."

  "Okay." She smiled. "But remember, if Carol should drop by someday and say, 'Oh, by the way, I'm three months' pregnant,' I'll never forgive you."

  "Sure you will." He kissed her forehead. "Now, if you don't mind, I've got to—"

  The doorbell rang.

  "Are you expecting company?" his mother said.

  "No. Not even you."

  Jim went to the front door and found the mailman standing on the front step holding a letter.

  "Special delivery, Jim. Almost forgot it."

  Jim's heart began to race as he signed the return receipt. "Thanks, Carl." Maybe they'd had a change of heart at Doubleday.

  "Special delivery?" Ma was saying as Jim closed the door. "Who would—?"

  His heart sank as he read the return address.

  "It's from some law firm. In the city."

  He tore it open and read the brief message. Twice. It still didn't make sense.

  "Well?" Ma said, her fingers visibly twitching to get at the letter, her curiosity giving the word a second syllable: Way-elll.

  "I don't get it," Jim said. He handed her the letter. "It says I'm supposed to be present at the reading of Dr. Hanley's will next week. I'm listed as one of his heirs."