Instantaneously, Kinderman was back in the audience and he knew that he was dreaming. The screen had grown larger, filling his vision, and in place of Casablanca he saw two lights against a pale green wash of endless void. The light at the left was large and coruscating, flashing with a bluish radiance. Far to its right was a small white sphere that glowed with the brilliance and power of suns, yet did not blind or flare; it was serene. Kinderman experienced a sense of transcendence. In his mind he heard the light on the left begin to speak. “I cannot help loving you,” it said. The other light made no answer. There was a pause. “That is what I am,” the first light continued; “pure love. I want to give my love freely,” it said. Again there was no answer from the brilliant sphere. Then at last the first light spoke again. “I want to create myself,” it said.
The sphere then spoke. “There will be pain,” it said.
“I know.”
“You do not understand what it is.”
“I choose it,” said the bluish light. Then it waited, quietly flickering.
Many more moments passed before the white light spoke again. “I will send Someone to you,” it said.
“No, you mustn’t. You must not interfere.”
“He will be a part of you,” said the sphere.
The bluish light drew inward upon itself. Its flarings were muted and minute. Then at last it expanded again. “So be it.”
Now the silence was longer, much stiller than before. There was a heaviness about it.
At last the white light spoke quietly. “Let time begin,” it said.
The bluish light flared up and danced in colors, and then slowly it steadied to its former state. For a time there was silence. Then the bluish light spoke softly and sadly. “Goodbye. I will return to you.”
“Hasten the day.”
The bluish light began to coruscate wildly now. It grew larger and more radiant and beautiful than ever. Then it slowly compacted, until it was almost the size of the sphere. There it seemed to linger for a moment. “I love you,” it said. The next instant it exploded into far-flinging brilliance, hurtling outward from itself with unthinkable force in a trillion shards of staggering energies of light and shattering sound.
Kinderman bolted awake. He sat upright in bed and felt at his forehead. It was bathed in perspiration. He could still feel the light of the explosion on his retinas. He sat there and thought for a while. Was it real? The dream had seemed so. Not even the dream about Max had had this texture. He didn’t think about the portion of the dream in the cinema. The other segment had blotted it out.
He got out of bed and went down to the kitchen where he put on the light and squinted at the pendulum clock on the wall. Ten after four? This is craziness, he thought. Frank Sinatra is just now going to sleep. Yet he felt awake and extremely refreshed. He turned the flame on under the tea kettle and then stood waiting by the stove. He had to watch it and catch it before it whistled. Shirley might come down. While he waited, he thought about his dream of the lights. It had affected him deeply. What was this emotion he was feeling? he wondered. It was something like poignance and unbearable loss. He had felt it at the ending of Brief Encounter. He reflected on the book about Satan that he’d read, the one written by Catholic theologians. Satan’s beauty and perfection were described as breathtaking. “Bearer of Light.” “The Morning Star.” God must have loved him very much. Then how could he have damned him for all of eternity?
He felt at the kettle. Just warm. A few more minutes. He thought about Lucifer again, that being of unthinkable radiance. The Catholics said his nature was changeless. And so? Could he really have brought sickness and death to the world? Be the author of nightmarish evil and cruelty? It didn’t make sense. Even old Rockefeller had handed out dimes now and then. He thought of the Gospels, all those people possessed. By what? Not fallen angels, he thought. Only goyim mix up devils with dybbuks. It’s a joke. These were dead people trying to make a comeback. Cassius Clay can do it endlessly but not a poor dead tailor? Satan didn’t run around invading living bodies; not even the Gospels said that, reflected Kinderman. Oh, yes, Jesus made a joke about it once, he conceded. The apostles had just come to him, breathless and full of themselves with their successes in casting out demons. Jesus nodded and kept a straight face as he told them, “Yes, I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.” It was a wryness, a gentle pulling of the leg. But why lightning? Kinderman wondered. Why did Christ call Satan the “Prince of this world”?
A few minutes later, he made a cup of tea and took it up to his den. He closed the door softly, felt his way to the desk, and then turned on the light and sat down. He read the file.
The Gemini killings were confined to San Francisco and had spanned a range of seven years from 1964 to 1971, when the Gemini was killed by a rain of bullets while climbing a girder of the Golden Gate Bridge, where the police had entrapped him after countless failed attempts. During his lifetime he had claimed responsibility for twenty-six murders, each one savage and involving mutilations. The victims were both males and females, of random age, sometimes even children, and the city lived in terror, even though the Gemini’s identity was known. The Gemini had offered it himself in a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle immediately after the first of his murders. He was James Michael Vennamun, the thirty-year-old son of a noted evangelist whose meetings had been televised nationally every Sunday night at ten o’clock. But the Gemini, in spite of this, could not be found, even with the help of the evangelist, who retired from public view in 1967. When finally killed, the Gemini’s body fell into the river, and though days of dredging had failed to turn it up there was little doubt about his death. A fusillade of hundreds of bullets had hit his body. And the murders had then ceased.
Kinderman quietly turned the page. This section concerned the mutilations. Abruptly he stopped and stared at a paragraph. The hairs on his neck prickled up. Could this be? he thought. My God, it couldn’t! And yet there it was. He looked up and breathed and thought for a while. Then he went on.
He came to the psychiatric profile, based largely on the Gemini’s rambling letters and a diary he’d kept in his youth. The Gemini’s brother, Thomas, was a twin. He was mentally retarded and lived in a trembling terror of darkness, even when others were around. He slept with a light on. The father, divorced, took little care of the boys, and it was James who parented and cared for Thomas.
Kinderman was soon absorbed in the story.
With vacant, meek eyes Thomas sat at a table while James made more pancakes for him. Karl Vennamun lurched into the kitchen clad only in pajama bottoms. He was drunk. He was carrying a shot glass and a bottle of whiskey that was almost drained. He looked at James blearily. “What are you doing?” he demanded harshly.
“Fixing Tommy more pancakes,” said James. He was walking past his father with a plateful when Vennamun savagely struck his face with the back of his hand and knocked him to the floor.
“I can see that, you snotty little bastard,” snarled Vennamun. “I said no food for him today! He dirtied his pants!”
“He can’t help it!” James protested. Vennamun kicked him in the stomach, then advanced on Thomas, who was shaking with fear.
“And you! You were told not to eat! Didn’t you hear me?” There were dishes of food on the table, and Vennamun swept them to the floor with his hand. “You little ape, you’ll learn obedience and cleanliness, damn you!” The evangelist pulled the boy upright with his hands and began to drag him toward a door that led outside. Along the way, he cuffed him. “You’re like your mother! You’re filth. You’re a filthy Catholic bastard.”
Vennamun dragged the boy outside and to the door of the cellar. The day was bright on the hills of the wooded Reyes Peninsula. Vennamun pulled open the cellar door. “You’re going down in the cellar with the rats, goddamn you!”
Thomas started trembling and his large, doe eyes were shining with fright. He cried, “No! No, don’t put me in the dark! Papa, please! Please—”
Vennamun slapped him and hurled him down the stairs.
Thomas cried out in horror, “Jim! Jim!”
The cellar door was closed and bolted. “Yeah, the rats’ll keep him busy,” snarled Vennamun drunkenly.
The terrified screaming began.
Later, Vennamun tied his son James to a chair, and then sat and watched television and drank. At last he fell asleep. But James heard the shrieking throughout the night.
By daybreak, there was silence. Vennamun awakened, untied James, and then went outside and opened the cellar door. “You can come out now,” he shouted down into the darkness. He got no reply. Vennamun watched as James ran down the stairs. Then he heard someone weeping. Not Thomas. James. He knew that his brother’s mind was gone.
Thomas was permanently institutionalized in the San Francisco State Mental Hospital. James saw him whenever he could, and at the age of sixteen ran away from home and went to work as a packing boy in San Francisco. Each evening he went to visit Thomas. He would hold his hand and read children’s storybooks to him. He would stay with him until he was asleep. This went on until one evening in 1964. It was a Saturday. James had been with Thomas all day.
It was nine P.M. Thomas was in bed. James was in a chair at his bedside, close to him, while a doctor checked Thomas’ heart. He removed the stethoscope from his ears and smiled at James. “Your brother’s doing just fine.”
A nurse put her head in the door and spoke to James. “Sir, I’m sorry, but visiting hours are over.”
The doctor motioned James to remain in his chair, and then walked to the door. “Let me speak to you a moment, Miss Keach. No, out here in the hall.” They stepped outside. “It’s your first day here, Miss Keach?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, I hope you’re going to like it here,” said the doctor.
“I’m sure I will.”
“The young man with Tom Vennamun is his brother. I’m sure you couldn’t miss it.”
“Yes, I noticed,” said Keach.
“For years he’s come faithfully every night. We allow him to stay until his brother falls asleep. Sometimes he stays the whole night. It’s all right. It’s a special case,” said the doctor.
“Oh, I see.”
“And, look, the lamp in his room. The boy is terrified of darkness. Pathologically. Never turn it off. I’m afraid for his heart. It’s terribly weak.”
“I’ll remember,” said the nurse. She smiled.
The doctor smiled back. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Good night.”
“Good night, Doctor.” Nurse Keach watched him walk down the hall, and her smile immediately turned down to a scowl. She shook her head and muttered, “Dumb.”
In the room, James gripped his brother’s hand. He had the storybook in front of him, but he knew all the words; he had said them a thousand times before: “ ‘Good night, little house, and good night, mouse. Good night, comb, and good night, brush. Good night, nobody. Good night, mush. And good night to the old lady whispering “hush.” Good night, stars. Good night, air. Good night, noises everywhere.’ ” James closed his eyes for a moment, weary. Then he looked to see if Thomas was asleep. He wasn’t. He was staring up at the ceiling. James saw a tear rolling down from his eye.
Thomas stammered, “I l-l-l-love you, J-J-J-James.”
“I love you, Tom,” his brother said softly. Thomas closed his eyes and was soon asleep.
After James left the hospital, Nurse Keach walked past the room. She stopped and came back. She looked in. She saw Thomas alone and asleep. She came into the room, turned off the lamp and then closed the door behind her when she left. “A special case,” she muttered. She returned to her office and her charts.
In the middle of the night, a shriek of terror sounded in the hospital. Thomas had awakened. The shrieks continued for several minutes. Then the silence was abrupt. Thomas Vennamun was dead.
And the Gemini Killer was born.
* * *
KINDERMAN LOOKED up at a window. It was dawn. He felt strangely moved by what he had read. Could he have pity for such a monster? He thought again of the mutilations. Vennamun’s logo had been God’s finger touching Adam’s; thus always the severing of the index finger. And there was always the K at the start of one of the victims’ names. Vennamun, Karl.
He finished the report: “Subsequent killings of initial K victims indicate proxy murders of the father, whose eventual dropout from public life suggests the Gemini’s secondary motive, specifically destruction of the father’s career and reputation by way of connection with the Gemini’s crimes.”
Kinderman stared at the file’s last page. He removed his glasses and looked again. He blinked. He didn’t know what to make of it.
He jumped to the telephone just as it rang. “Yes, Kinderman here,” he said softly. He looked at the time and felt afraid. He heard Atkins’ voice. Then he didn’t. Only buzzings. He felt cold and numb and sick to his soul.
Father Dyer had been murdered.
PART TWO
The greatest event in the history of the Earth, now taking place, may indeed be the gradual discovery, by those with eyes to see, not merely of Some Thing but of Some One at the peak created by the convergence of the evolving Universe upon itself.…
There is only one Evil: Disunity.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16
9
Dear Father Dyer,
Soon you may be asking yourself, “Why me? Why does a stranger place this burden in my hands rather than in those of his colleagues who are scientists and surely better suited to the task?” Well, they aren’t better suited. Science leans to these matters like a child to his medicine. I would guess that you’ll be skeptical about it yourself. “Another nut with a weeping statue of Jesus that cries real tears,” you’ll probably say. “Just because I’m a priest, he must think I’ll swallow any old miraculous cow, and in this case a purple one at that.” Well, I really don’t think that at all. I’m putting this on you because I can trust you. Not your priesthood, Father—you. If you were planning to betray me, you already would have done it. But you haven’t. You’ve kept your word. That’s really something. When we spoke, it wasn’t under the seal of the confessional. Any other priest—any other person—would probably have blown the whistle on me. But before I laid my burden upon you, I gauged you. I’m so sorry your reward is yet another obligation. But I know you’ll follow through. That’s the thing of it. You’ll do it. Aren’t you glad that you met me, Father?
I don’t quite know how to do this. It’s awkward as hell. I want so much for you to trust in my judgment, to believe me. I’m afraid that won’t be easy. What I’m going to be saying will make you cringe. So let’s go about it this way, please; it might be best. Just suspend your curiosity for a while and read no further until after you have followed these few instructions, which I’m now about to give you. First, get your hands on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, one with controls that allow for rapid replay. Better yet, use mine. I’ll Scotch-tape a key to my house to this letter. Now look in the cardboard box that I’ve sent you. It contains a few reel-to-reel recordings that I’ve made. Find the one marked “January 9, 1982.” Thread it onto the recorder. The footage counter has to be resting at zero when the end of the leader hits the capstan at the left. When this is done, fast-forward to 383, then plug in the earphones, set the volume controls to maximum (not the output, only microphone and line), and set the speed at low. Then push “Play” and listen. You’re going to hear amplifier hiss and static at uncomfortable levels. Please bear with it. Then shortly you will hear the sound of somebody speaking. It ends at 388 on the counter. Keep playing and replaying the section with the voice until you’re sure that you know what’s being said. It’s fairly loud, but the static tends to blur intelligibility. When you know what’s being said, set the speed at high—which is double—and repeat the procedure. That’s right. I want you to repeat the procedure. Forget what you heard the first t
ime. Listen again. Please follow these instructions and do not read further until you have done so.
Though I trust you, this continues on a separate page. We all need the help of grace now and then.
Now you’ve listened. What you heard at the slower speed, I’m sure, is a clear male voice saying, “Lacey.” And at the faster speed, the same information on the tape becomes the equally distinct words “Hope it.” Now here you must take the leap of faith and of common sense that I have nothing to gain by misrepresenting. And now I will tell you how I made that tape. I put a blank reel of tape—unused—on the recorder, plugged in a diode (it screens out all sound from the room or the environment, yet acts like a microphone of sorts); I set the speed to low, said out loud “Does God exist?” set the microphone and line to the highest settings, and then pushed the buttons for recording. For the next three minutes, I did nothing at all but breathe and wait. Then I stopped recording. When I played back the tape, the voice was there.
I sent the tape to a friend at Columbia University. He ran it through a spectrograph for me. He sent me a letter and some copies of the spectrographic readings. You’ll find them in the box. The letter says the spectrographic analysis concludes that the voice cannot possibly be human; that to get that effect you would have to construct an artificial larynx and then have it programmed to say those words. My friend says the spectrograph can’t be wrong. Furthermore, he couldn’t understand how a word like “Lacey” transmuted into “Hope it” at twice the speed. Note also—and this is my comment, not his—that the answer to my question is unresponsive, if not totally meaningless, unless it is played at twice the speed of the original recording. That rules out any freak sort of radio reception—which tape recorders cannot do anyway, Father—that might be invoked as an explanation, along with coincidence. You will doubtless want to satisfy yourself on these matters; in fact, I urge you very strongly to do so. My friend at Columbia is Professor Cyril Harris. Call him. Better yet, get a second opinion, another spectrographic analysis, preferably done by someone else. I am certain you will find that the result is the same.
Legion Page 15
