Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  Candy nodded. "Now, if you'll excuse us, Mr. Woczniak . . ."

  "Look. I know you're pissed because we didn't mention the cup. But that doesn't really change anything about the case. The kid's still missing."

  "We have cooperated fully with you," Candy said, his broad face reddening. "We didn't have to do that. It was a courtesy extended to a fellow professional. We expected your full cooperation in return."

  "All right, all right. I'll level with you. I didn't mention the cup because I didn't think you'd believe me, and I knew you wouldn't allow me to help with the investigation if you thought I was a nutcase."

  Candy softened somewhat. "Well, the business about a new metal does sound a bit farfetched."

  Not as farfetched as the whole truth, Hal thought. "Besides, we didn't even know if it was a new metal or not. Miss Blessing only conducted a few tests on it. She made the assumption that it was valuable after people started trying to kill her and the boy."

  "Why didn't they go to the authorities then?"

  "What could the cops have done?" He answered himself. "Waited for the next attack, that's all. They were afraid. They ran."

  "Then these men have been pursuing the Blessing woman and the boy since before the incident on the bus?"

  "Long before, from what they've told me. Look, I'm sorry I didn't fill you in on the whole story before, but I only got it secondhand myself. Emily—Miss Blessing—isn't as wigged out as she was yesterday. She'll talk to you now. She's found some sort of code in the book from the sanitarium."

  "Is she at the inn?"

  Hal nodded, then extended his hand. "No hard feelings?"

  Candy shook it. "I suppose not," he said grudgingly.

  "Good. Now I'd like to see the file on Mr. X. Did it come?"

  Candy smiled. "It came." He opened the door. "Please let Mr. Woczniak see the new file from headquarters," he instructed his assistants. Then he gestured for Hal to enter the van. "Be my guest," he said.

  Higgins and Chastain were already absorbed in their work in the air-conditioned, windowless van. Like moles who never see the sun, Hal thought. Wordlessly, Chastain handed him the thick file and pointed to a small table where he could read it out of their way.

  The first item in the file was a pencil sketch of Mr. X. at his trial. "That's him," Hal said aloud. His voice sounded incredibly loud in the silent enclosure. "He's the guy I saw in the meadow. The leader of the horsemen."

  Higgins came over, his eyes nearly invisible behind his smudged glasses. "Are you certain?" he whispered. "Perhaps you'd better see a photograph. There's one in here." He leafed through the papers in the file and extracted a glossy picture from near the back. It was a mug shot, showing the defendant from the front and both sides. Higgins placed it on top of the pile. "Is this the same man?"

  Hal gasped. It was the same man, all right, but the detail of the photograph brought out something that he had not seen in either the pencil sketch or the face of the man in the meadow.

  "What is it?" Higgins prompted nervously. Even Chastain had turned around to look.

  "It's the eyes. The . . . eyes . . ."

  He had broken out in a sweat. The eyes were laughing, just as they had been laughing when the sword had come singing out of the air.

  Thank you, the Saracen knight had said. The silver chalice had tumbled off the altar of the abbey, and the tall stranger had caught it while blood poured over the shiny expanse of Hal's armor.

  For you, my king.

  And he had not even felt the pain of the sword, for the agony of his failure was greater.

  I knew that you, of all the High King's lackeys, would find it.

  And the dark knight's eyes shone with laughter. Like two evil lights in the darkness, they followed Hal into the spinning void, triumphant and mocking.

  My king . . .

  My king . . .

  Higgins was holding a glass of water to his lips. Chastain had picked up the file, afraid that Hal might damage it with the perspiration that poured off his face.

  "Perhaps you'd like to get some air," Higgins suggested. Clearly, neither of them wanted a sick man in their domain. Chastain was already holding a sheet of filter paper to his mouth and nose, defending himself against microbes.

  "I'm all right," Hal said. He drank the water. "Give me the file."

  Reluctantly, Chastain handed it back to him. The two men stood side by side, watching their visitor.

  "Don't you two have something to do?" Hal snapped.

  With an unspoken dialogue of wiggling eyebrows, flaring nostrils, and lip twitches, the two analysts went back to their work.

  Hal, still shaking, forced his mind away from the image of the man in the photograph and read the file on the unnamed man who had created works of art out of the bodies of people he'd murdered. When he finished, he closed the file and ran his hand over his sweat-slick face. There was only one thought in his mind then:

  Oh, Christ, he's got Arthur.

  Candy was just leaving the inn when Hal got back. He was carrying the book Emily had translated. "Well?" he asked.

  "He's the same man," Hal said. "I think he engineered the fire at Maplebrook."

  Candy looked abashed. "I've put in a request for exhumation of the body found in his cell."

  "He was a plant."

  Candy nodded.

  "What do we do now?"

  "Give the cup to the kidnappers."

  "I told you, we haven't got the cup."

  "Then find it," Candy said acidly. "Or something like it. That's all we can do at this point. We'll make an arrest at the time of the trade."

  "You and who else? Constable Nubbit? Or are you counting on Tweedledum and Tweedledee to wrestle that maniac to the ground?"

  "I'm calling for reinforcements. We'll have plenty of men on hand."

  Hal thought for a moment. "He'll expect that," he said.

  "Perhaps. But it's still our best possibility."

  Hal tried to fight off the feeling of despair that was beginning to envelop him. Anyone who could carry off an operation the size of the Maplebrook explosion could get around a handful of cops, he knew. It wasn't hard to kill a ten-year-old boy.

  "We'll try to find them before it comes to that," Candy said.

  "Yeah. Okay." Hal turned away from the inspector and stumbled into the inn. There had to be something he could do, some place he could look . . .

  "Hal."

  It was Emily. She was dressed in a yellow sundress. Her long hair was pulled back in a ribbon. She wore lipstick. Despite his agitation, Hal smiled at the change. "How'd you make out with the inspector?" he asked.

  "I didn't tell him my theory about the ball making you live forever."

  "Good."

  "But I believe it more than ever. I went to the little town library this morning."

  "Alone?" Hal asked. "Look, I've told you—"

  "We're running out of time, Hal. I can't keep myself locked up in that room so I'll be safe while Arthur's life is in danger."

  "All right," Hal conceded. "So what'd you find?"

  "A history of Saladin."

  "The king who wanted to be pharaoh."

  "Right. You know, that's strange in itself," she said, her eyes wandering in thought. "For a Persian to become a pharaoh, as if ancient Egypt were somehow familiar to him."

  "What are you getting at?" Hal asked, a little irritably. He didn't want to spend the day in idle conversation, even with Emily.

  "I'm getting at how he died," she said. "Or rather, how he was supposed to have died. It was all very mysterious."

  "How's that? I thought you said he died of natural causes."

  "He did. At the age of fifty-five."

  "Seems kind of young," Hal said. "Which natural causes?"

  She shrugged. "That's the mysterious part. There didn't seem to be any symptoms to his illness. What's even stranger is that everyone at his deathbed said he looked thirty years younger, at that. Now, most people who are dying look a lot older than t
hey are. But Saladin appeared to be in the bloom of health when he was carried to his crypt."

  They sat in silence for a while. "What are you saying?" Hal asked at last. "That you don't think he died?"

  "That's exactly what I'm saying. A man who never ages is going to create suspicion sooner or later. I think that after three decades of rule, Saladin just looked too young for his age. So rather than let the secret of the cup be known, he decided to stage his own death."

  "He gave up the throne . . . just like that?"

  "Why not? If I'm right about the cup, he had something of much greater value."

  Hal considered it. "I'm glad you decided not to tell Candy," he said.

  "He wouldn't understand. But it makes everything fall into place. 'Bless your name.' Get it? It's the way someone would address a king."

  Hal had to admit that she made sense, even though the concept of eternal life through the powers of a metal ball didn't. Still, very little of what had happened in the past two weeks had made much sense. Taliesin's appearance and disappearance, the apparition of the castle in the meadow, his own inexplicable sojourns into the memories of another man . . . None of it could be filed away in a drawer at Scotland Yard.

  But one thing was real: Arthur was being held captive by a known murderer, and Hal had to get him back.

  "Brought you two a pot of tea," Mrs. Sloan said, placing two cups in front of them.

  "Thank you," Hal said. "And thanks for the use of your car."

  "Oh, that's no problem," the woman said. "You might want to go see the fair, if you've got the time. It's just opening today, down at the grounds near the old amusement park."

  "No, I don't think—" Emily began.

  "What did you say?" Hal interrupted.

  "About the fair?"

  "The amusement park."

  "Well, it's not much anymore," Mrs. Sloan said. "Been abandoned since 1971, when the owner run off somewheres with the butcher's daughter, and her only fourteen." She clucked disapprovingly. "The village sold off the rides and things to pay for taxes, but no one ever did get around to clearing off the site. An eyesore, that's what it is. But it turns out the place is smack in the middle between Dorset and Somerset counties, and neither one is willing to go to the trouble to clean it up. He had no kin, don't you know. The counties has been arguing about it for years."

  "Was it named Heatherwood?"

  "Heatherwood, that's right. I used to take my boys there when they was lads."

  "Where is it?"

  She told him. "But don't expect to find much," she cautioned.

  He stood up. "Sorry about the tea, Mrs. Sloan. Let's go."

  "Hal!" Emily called, trying to keep pace with Hal as he bolted for the door.

  The motor in the Morris was already running when she caught up with him. "Do you think that's where they've got Arthur?"

  Hal didn't answer, but he knew as soon as he saw the park that Arthur wasn't there. The grounds were accessible by three major roads, for one thing. For another, the fairgrounds were only a few hundred yards away. There was no way to hide either horses or people in the scattered, tumbledown buildings that remained.

  They got out and walked toward the wreckage. The ground was deeply pitted where the rides had been pulled out like bad teeth. There was still a partial track of a kid's roller coaster rusting in the sun and the plywood silhouette of a clown rising above what used to be a funhouse.

  "You can tell we're not in America," Hal said.

  "Why's that?"

  "Because this place closed over twenty years ago, and it's still standing. Back home, the vandals would have eaten every board by now."

  "All I can tell is that you're from New York," Emily said, but Hal didn't hear her. He was looking up at the clown sign. At its base, in faded letters above the entrance to the funhouse, were the words:

  SPOOK-O-RAMA

  JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS

  It was sinister-looking. There was something about the combination of clowns and evil that had always given Hal the shivers. It affected everyone the same way, he supposed; that was why so many horror movies had clowns in them.

  Saladin is taking the boy to a place of darkness. A place fearful to you. A place you will remember.

  The old man's words came back to him with a jolt. A place fearful to him? Perhaps. But he had no memory of this amusement park.

  Unless it was the memory of the picture on the postcard. Could that have been the reference?

  "I'm going in," Hal said.

  "This place doesn't look much more sturdy than the sanitarium," Emily said apprehensively.

  "You're not coming. Wait in the car."

  "What if the roof falls in on you this time?"

  "Then drive to the fairgrounds."

  "For help?"

  "No. Buy yourself a cotton candy." He kissed the end of her nose.

  He walked her back to the car, took his flashlight from the glove compartment, and gave her neck a squeeze.

  "Hal?" Emily was blushing. "I'm glad things aren't too awkward between us . . . because of last night," she said.

  He touched her hair. He wanted to tell her how happy he had felt to see her face in the morning, how long it had been since he'd felt comfortable in the presence of a woman. But he remembered how she had cried out in misery after their moment of love. It had been too late for her, she had said. Too late for them.

  And so perhaps it was. "I'm glad it happened," he said softly. He could smell the clean scent of her hair. "You're very beautiful."

  She looked at the ground.

  "I'll be back in a minute," he said. As he turned to enter the funhouse, he could still smell her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  A place of darkness, Hal thought. Well, the Spook-O-Rama certainly qualified as that. Despite the deterioration of the building, no light at all got through.

  Or air, it seemed. It was as hot as an oven inside. Hal reached up and banged on the low arched ceiling with his flashlight. The tunnel-like structure reverberated with a hollow, metallic din. Corrugated aluminum. No wonder it was so hot. During the years of the park's operation, the funhouse had probably been reasonably well ventilated, with fans blowing through ductwork, but the fans had no doubt been sold off when the place closed down.

  He poked through a thick mass of cobwebs and picked up the edge of a cardboard skeleton painted Day-Glo green. It had been attached to a retractable spring by wire, but the wire had long since rusted away. Now the skeleton lay flat, in pieces, its bloodshot eyeballs furry with dust.

  His feet touched something soft. The old walking-over-the-dead-body sensation, he remembered with a feeling of youthful nostalgia. At this point, if the electricity were turned on, a lever beneath the row of foam corpses would trigger a deafening noise and the sudden appearance of several garishly illuminated tombstones. This was where the girl you were with worked herself up to an almost authentic-sounding scream. It was the signal that you were allowed to put your arm around her, as long as you didn't grab her tits. There was definitely no tit-grabbing in the funhouse. That had to wait for the Tunnel of Love, although he had never actually seen an amusement called the Tunnel of Love. They were given names like Sinbad's Journey or Dream Ship, but they served the purpose: You rode on a conveyor belt covered with plastic and two inches of water, and got out with an erection that could knock over a telephone pole.

  At the third "corpse," there was a wild chorus of chattering squeals that made Hal jump. When he jerked the flashlight beam down toward the ground, he saw a nest of rats scurrying in all directions from the comfort of the foam stuffing. A fat one scampered over his feet.

  He recoiled in distaste, and considered turning back. Arthur wasn't here. Anyone who had come earlier would have frightened off the rats. He looked back briefly. Then outside, from ahead, not behind, he heard the sputter of a motorcycle, which told him that he had gone more than halfway through the Spook-O-Rama. He decided to head for the exit.

  He hopped over the ra
t-infested cushion and walked quickly, scanning both sides of the twisting tunnel with the light. Nothing, he thought. He tried to remind himself that the picture on the postcard had been a dim lead at best from the beginning.

  The rotten part of it was, it was the only lead. And it had led nowhere. How much time did he have left? How much did Arthur have? Was the boy's life being measured out in days now, or hours? Or minutes? Or was he already dead?

  Hal was walking so quickly that he almost missed it. A painting on the wall, bright colors and the sort of realism one didn't usually find in funhouses. It was more like a portrait a family would hang in their living room, the portrait of a boy with red hair . . .

  The round circle of light stopped dead on the boy's face. It was Arthur's, unmistakably, perfectly captured, down to the pale blue eyes and the scattering of freckles over the nose. The painting itself was exquisite, museum quality, but there was something terribly unsettling about it.

  The eyes, Hal decided. Something was wrong with the eyes. They had no animation in them, no life, almost as if the subject were . . .

  Hal sucked in his breath. The boy in the painting was seated in a wooden ladderback chair. Only the top corner of the chair was visible. Hal had seen that. What he hadn't noticed until now were the ropes that seemed to grow out of the bottom of the painting. The kid was tied to the chair.

  (A ladderback, had it been a wooden chair up there in that attic room oh Jeff oh no oh God . . .)

  He knew it had been. And the background of the painting, those lovely unobtrusive gray curls, were smoke, because the place was on fire, Jesus, and Arthur's eyes were funny-looking because they were dead, just like Jeff Brown's . . .

  Unconsciously, Hal had backed away from the painting until he hit the far wall. He gasped, dropping the flashlight.

  No, no, leave me alone, oh help me, no

  And then he heard the gunshot outside, and his fear exploded. Emily was in the car. Hal started running toward the exit with the instinct of a policeman.

  Two more shots had fired by the time Hal got out of the funhouse. Between them, he could hear Emily's terrified shrieks.