Sensation

by Thea Devine

  The acolyte intoned, "We are gathered here to beseech the beloved spirit of Anthony Venable, departed from this life one month and five days ago, to honor us with its presence. We en­treat you, we who mourn your untimely loss, we beg you to make yourself known to those who revere you, those who love you, through the medium of this blessed woman's hand."

  The silence was thick, deafening. The medium's body slumped back in her chair, her free hand with the planchette still on the pad.

  Everyone jumped.

  The acolyte whispered, "Is the spirit present?"

  Nothing happened. There was a pulsing in the room as if every heart was beating furiously in unison.

  "Is the beloved spirit present?" the acolyte asked again, his voice hushed.

  The medium's hand moved; the planchette moved across the

  paper making wide slashing scribbles, then circles. Then a big swooping Y, which could be seen all around the table, appeared on the page.

  "Is this Anthony Venable, our beloved soul?" More scribbling. Another big swooping Y "Tell what you wish for us to know."

  The medium's hand went into a frenzied movement. More scribbling strokes, and then four grotesquely shaped words ap­peared: TELL THEM I LIVE.

  Everyone's blood ran cold. Everyone froze. Someone shrieked. "Tell what you wish for us to know," the acolyte repeated firmly.

  The medium's hand moved again, furiously up and down and sideways, crosshatching scribbles that were meaningless, as if Venable's spirit were fighting to get out the words. And then: I WILL RETURN.

  The medium's hand slid from the table, the planchette knock­ing against the table leg; her hand slipped from the grasp of the woman next to her, the circle was broken, but the message was left, written large and clear where everyone could see it. I WILL RETURN.

  Everyone looked at each other, stunned. No one could move. No one could breathe.

  No one had expected this: a message, a promise. A resurrection.

  But on the surface, it was nothing less than that. Still, the verification had yet to be accomplished. The acolyte chose a gentleman from the audience at random, and he pains­takingly went around the room and ascertained that the windows were still closed, the door was still locked, and that there were no footprints or unusual marks in the flour.

  "All is as it was when the seance began," the gentleman con­firmed in a shaky whisper. "It happened."

  A buzz rose. It happened. They had seen it. Witnessed it. Tony Venable had been there. He lived, he would return ... The acolyte unlocked the door. "You're free to leave." No one moved. The medium came to slowly and levered her­self upright. She glanced at the page on the table and drew in a

  quick, shocked breath. Shook off the planchette as if it could bite her.

  "I hate this," she whispered, but even she was rooted in place.

  No one wanted to leave. No one spoke. It was as if they thought Tony Venable was still in the room and any sound would disrupt the moment.

  The feeling was so powerful, so pervasive, Kyger almost be­lieved it himself. They really thought Venable had spoken through the planchette. It was the most unconscionable mass hypnosis. Or something like that. Because there was no other an­swer. And Wyland was right—the thing was escalating exponen­tially. It was a marvel to behold, and it had to be stopped.

  He made a decisive movement and got to his feet. Everyone looked at him, appalled. They would stay there all night, he thought grimly, moving purposefully around the table. He wanted to look at the spirit writing. He wanted to understand how, with all that scribbling, the medium had found space enough to write those words so large on the page.

  The words looked like the lettering of a five-year-old. Or some­one who couldn't quite see what she was writing and was doing it by feel. By gut. Did it matter? As long as the mystery was main­tained and the message came across?

  All over the city, the message would have been gotten across.

  It was the most heinous deceit.

  He strode from the hotel room and into the corridor and down the steps, finding a crush of visitants who were just exiting from the upstairs rooms, in various emotional states. In tears, in whispers, exaltation, discussion, argument, prayer ...

  Shit—it had even come to that? Every last page in every last room all over the city—the same message at the same time?

  He had to know. He wheeled abruptly and raced back up the steps. Up one flight, he couldn't believe the need to know was so compelling that he was racing to get to room twenty-seven on the second floor before anyone left.

  Too late—it was empty except for the acolyte who was just picking up the page on which the message was written.

  LIVE ... RETURN—he saw the words, similarly written by the medium in this seance, similarly disjointed, large, scraggly—

  and he whipped around and ran up to the third-floor seance room.

  But this room was empty, too, and it felt as if the air were sucked out, and a different kind of thickness hovered in the at­mosphere.

  There was no remnant of what had occurred there except for the blank pad on the table at the place where the medium had sat.

  He didn't have a pencil. Shit. He ripped off the top page and folded it into his pocket. Raced out into the hall, looking for an­other stairwell to take downstairs.

  Looking, looking—too many doors, too many choices—he didn't need choices now; he needed a pencil. He needed to shake the eerie feeling that pounded within him—

  He could have believed, he thought. He'd been that close to succumbing to the atmosphere, to the will, the need of those around him.

  He was too susceptible—and maybe he wasn't the right man for—

  —what—? He stopped short. Down the hall, far ahead of him, he saw her—at the least likely moment when every nerve, every sense needed to be focused elsewhere—he saw her.

  Or he was dreaming .. . no—-he saw her, just a glimpse of her beautiful face, her chocolaty hair in a loose rolled bun, as she dis­appeared into a room on the arm of just one man this time; as she looked back into the hallway over her shoulder, just before the door closed, he saw her.

  His delectable, edible virgin whom he couldn't get out of his mind.

  The goddamned virgin who was as elusive as Tony Venable's ghost.

  Help me .. .

  Save the world.

  He raced the hallway, too late—by the time he reached the door into which she might have gone, he couldn't remember which of the three or four it was along that wall.

  He took note of the numbers—32, 34, 36, 38.

  He didn't have time for this. He didn't need a slippery virgin haunting him, tiptoeing around the edges of his consciousness, complicating his life.

  He needed a pencil.

  He knocked on the first door. A man answered, not the man he had seen with his virgin. Not her room. He gathered his wits. "Could I borrow a pencil?"

  "Oh, for Christ's sake—" The man slammed the door.

  Thirty-two eliminated. Now what?

  He didn't have time for this.

  How long would it take to knock on three other doors. Shit. Damn.

  The paper crackled in his pocket, the proof, the key?

  He needed a pencil.

  He had to see Wyland.

  Help me ...

  He felt her pull.

  Help me ...

  England needed him.

  His needy, mysterious virgin would have to wait.

  "I'm damned." Wyland stared at the sheet, which they had covered with pencil scrawl to bring up some of the indented im­pressions of the letters from the medium's spirit message.

  He didn't need to see much.

  ... LIVE ... RETURN ...

  "How does one stop such a thing?" he murmured. "And they wanted it. There was no way to stop it from happening." He ran a hand over his chin and shook his head. "It's the damnedest thing..."

  "Hypnosis," Kyger said.

  "Do you think so? Everyone susceptible to the same contr
ols? Even you?"

  "It's possible." Was it?

  Wyland was skeptical. But the evidence was there. At dozens of locations around London, hundreds of people had received the same message at the same time in the same words through the same mechanism.

  Some kind of mesmerism had to be in play: it was the only an­swer.

  Except there had to have been cynics among them, and how could they, too, have been so receptive?

  They had been, they were, and Kyger was proof of that, and it

  galled him that he had been drawn in like all the believers. He had been stunned, and chilled by the words as the medium scrawled them on the page. Which made it more imperative than ever that he find something to countervent this growing move­ment to make Tony Venable into a martyr, a saint.

  "There's been nothing else?" Wyland asked.

  "Nothing concrete. The coincidence of the sevens—you can't build a case against him on that." And Wyland didn't even know about the whore at the Bullhead.

  If he even remembered what he thought had happened. At this point, he was questioning all his senses and whether he could even be effective.

  Wyland seemed to think so. So it would be back to the Bullhead as soon as could be. It was the one tangible bit of infor­mation they had. The one place he might uncover a saint's dark side.

  Kyger was pacing the room. "This is where I've come to in the month I've been involved in this. I've found that the common man thinks Tony Venable was as common as he is; the elite cele­brate his life and mourn what he could have done for them; and the man on the street is perfectly willing to discuss and defend his every last word and action of the past five years.

  "The fact that sevens seem to be a recurring motif surround­ing him ... or that they whisper in the streets about a death mark that was found on his body—there's nothing to take public there. There's no proof, nothing concrete. Just whispers. There's noth­ing negative, nothing against him, really. Nothing that would bring him down from his pedestal to where he will be renounced and reviled.

  "It will not be his theories. Much as it is clear to you and me what he was about, too many people don't really understand the fanatical nature of his philosophy, and it's no use explaining it. He got to them first, and nothing will sway them from their de­votion. It's as simple as that.

  "And now we've had this seance, which only proves how well organized and determined his followers are, and which has promised nothing more than he—or whoever takes his place and bears his message— will come back to life."

  Wyland was nodding as he went through each point.

  "So it seems to me, I'm continually trying to grab hold of smoke. It's a funny comparison actually, because of course you can make something of smoke. You can inhale a mouthful and blow rings. And he has us jumping through them, even from be­yond the grave."

  "Exactly. We have nothing. We have smoke and evanescence."

  "So—" Kyger said, pausing delicately.

  "Exactly ... you have to go back to the Bullhead."

  "I thought tomorrow as soon as I can make ready."

  "That would be best. It's really our only lead. The money you need will be made available tomorrow afternoon, just as previ­ously," Wyland said, holding out his hand. "Good luck then, I'm counting on you."

  There was just one thing more he needed to do before he re­turned home. It was by then around eleven o'clock, because he'd gone straight to Wyland's office from the hotel. It was too late to do much, if anything, about the edible virgin, but, he thought, with some subtle bribery and a little charm, he might possibly find out her name.

  She was hallucinating again; she thought she'd caught a glimpse of her hired bull in the hallway just before her father hus­tled her into the room.

  She felt a consuming fury that she was so powerless, and that her father had had her under lock and key even to attend the seance.

  And worse, that could have been the Bullhead man within a dozen yards of her, and he hadn't seen her, and he didn't know she was even there.

  He couldn't help her now, here anyway. And how on earth would she ever find him if things went on this way?

  She had to do something. Her father just wasn't responding to the coaxing and cooing Angilee, and she was choking on the gall every time she opened her mouth.

  She watched in frustration as her father shut the hotel room door firmly behind them. That was the end of that. The sideshow was over, the message had been imparted, and Angilee must go back into her golden cage like some performing monkey.

  "Here we are," Zabel said jovially, handing her onto the bed. "Wasn't that something? What do you make of it?"

  Oh, and he wanted her opinions now, too? Ha, "It was a big fake," she said trenchantly, hoisting herself up as best she could onto the side of the bed.

  Zabel looked shocked, and regretful he'd even asked her. And then he thought she ought to be thinking what he did. "Really? It was so real."

  "It was a side show, Father, nothing more, nothing less. Nothing, in fact, that I would boast about having been part of with any child of mine."

  So much for obedience, Zabel thought. "I cannot wait to hear what Wroth thought. He must have attended one of the sessions, being as loyal to Venable's memory as he is."

  Angilee barely heard him. She was thinking about escape, and how to get hold of some money and the key to the lock. "I'm cer­tain he must have," she said abruptly as she absorbed what he had said. She had to think, and thinking about Wroth was just too taxing right now.

  "Well..." Zabel rumbled, whatever he might have said peter­ing off as she seemed irresponsive. "I thought it was really pow­erful." And she should, too, he thought irritably.

  She looked up at him, hearing the petulant tone that said she wasn't paying attention to him the way he expected, and she schooled her expression into one of complete agreement. "Oh, yes—powerful—and mysterious. Everyone believed it. How did they do it, really?"

  And all the while she was thinking, planning. Tonight, she had to get out of there tonight. Maybe the hired man was actually somewhere in the hotel. Maybe someone knew him.

  She needed money, too, because if it came to that, the next step was she would seek him out where she had first encountered him. It wasn't that unlikely that he'd be there; maybe he was there every night. Maybe she could just hide out there until he came.

  That was better, Zabel thought. "Very powerful. People be­lieved it. I almost believed it."

  "... yes, it was very convincing," Angilee said, furiously mar­shalling the points of her plan. Zabel slept in the other bedroom, which meant unless she could keep him from cuffing her wrist, she would never get out of the room or get hold of any money. "Almost. .. spiritual." How could she convince him to take off the cuff?

  "Exactly." Zabel liked that assessment, which dovetailed nicely with what he had thought but couldn't express. "Spiritual. Tony Venable was very spiritual." With that, he retreated to the sitting room, and Angilee almost screamed.

  She examined her wrist instead. Not too badly scraped by the cuff. Yet. It could be worse. She could make it worse. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing to make Zabel feel guilty about it. She began twisting the cuff against her bare skin. How desperate was she? That really hurt. It didn't matter. She'd take care of the in­jury later.

  "Wroth will be here soon," Zabel called from the outside room.

  Angilee's heart dropped. Never tonight. It HAD to be tonight— she couldn't stand it one minute longer. Come into my parlor, Father dear. But you didn't pray for the moment you could de­ceive your father, especially if you were planning to prowl around a whorehouse looking for a male ... a male what... ? A male butt ... to bribe into marrying you ...

  Don't think about it.

  She kept rubbing the cuff against her wrist. It hurt now. She gritted her teeth. This was too drastic; no one should have to re­sort to such tactics. She made a sound as she dug the edge of the cuff into an already angry-looking red welt.

  Zabel appeare
d suddenly at the bedroom door, and she dropped her arm guiltily. "Something wrong?"

  She pouted. "This cuff is chafing my wrist. I've been wearing it day and night now for several days, and it really hurts. You need to give me some respite from this, you really do. Even for an hour."

  Zabel eyed her warily, and she felt that fulminating impa­tience. Now she must beg. Fine, she'd beg. "I'll be good, I promise. I won't do anything out of line. I'll just sit here quietly, and when Wroth comes, you can fasten the thing back on again."

  So she'd lied. She had no compunction about lying. Not now. Maybe later, if she thought about it.

  He examined her wrist. There were two angry-looking red welts, just as she said. He looked into her eyes. They were shiny with tears. She was hurting. She was going to marry Wroth; she had been much more compliant in the last few days. Was there re­ally a reason to punish her more than was necessary?

  "All right. All right," he agreed gruffly. "An hour." He kept the key in his pocket. How would she get the key from his pocket, locked up this way? He removed the key, unfastened the cuff, and it fell onto the bed. "But I'm locking you in your room," he added. "Just as a precaution."

  She didn't care; she pushed herself back onto the bed as Zabel left her, as she heard the click of the lock. She had an hour. A pre­cious little hour to discover how she could impair the cuff so he couldn't lock her up again. And then, after he returned from his late night of carousing with Wroth, she had the rest of the wee hours of the morning to figure out the rest.

  Chapter Five

  He was in a similar room at the Bullhead, similarly furnished, lit low with flickering candle sconces, and that sweet, head-fogging fragrance clogging his senses. It was almost as if he had never left. He'd been here perhaps five hours, but in this place, night was day and day was night, and he felt as if he'd been there forever.

  Nothing had changed, not the whores, not their practiced ca­resses, not his boredom. He was alone now, taking a break so he could gather his thoughts and figure out what to do now that he was here.