by Tim Powers
“Great guy,” said Vickery, his eyes on the lanes ahead. “Only tried to kill us yesterday.”
“Nobody’s perfect.” She shifted her feet on the carpeted floor. “When’s this heater going to get hot?”
“Any second,” said Vickery, breathing deeply. He had started shaking, and he gripped the wheel tightly and glanced at the rear view mirror. “I think,” he said, but his voice was unsteady; “I think,” he went on carefully, “we got away.” The shaking gradually abated as he watched the lane-divider lines flash past under the tires, and he felt himself slowly relax, muscle by muscle.
“A mess,” he said finally. “Yeah, you could say so. At least three people shot, ejected shell casings—”
Hot air was blowing from the vents now, but Castine was still shivering and hugging herself. “Fingerprints on those?”
“I didn’t load this one, and I doubt Santiago has ever been fingerprinted. He may never even have popped the magazine out of that gun.” He yawned, creaking his jaw and squeezing tears from his eyes. He blinked them away and added, “Oh, and they’ll find a lot of pictures of Tom Hanks from Polar Express.”
“Good thing Biloxi didn’t manage to score a sex robot.”
Vickery managed to grin. “Maybe he did, that’s why we didn’t see him there.”
Castine laughed weakly, then choked it off.
For several rushing miles neither of them spoke. Then Castine stirred and said, “Are you going to return this car to Galvan? I think there’s a lot of tar on the upholstery.”
“Sure. At least we didn’t leave it in some other world this time, and we did save her nephew and the niños.”
“Return it tonight?”
“Tomorrow sometime, or Friday. If we stop for a lot of hot coffee somewhere, I can drive a couple more hours tonight. Back to Barstow.”
“Better get it at a drive-through window. Nobody’ll let us sit in a booth.”
“Oh—yeah, good point.”
She yawned too. “Barstow sounds fine. Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.” Vickery nodded, acknowledging the quote from Peter Pan. “I can spell you,” Castine went on, “driving, if I get enough coffee too.” She stetched out and turned to look at him. “You okay? I don’t mean just to drive.”
“Oh—yeah.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m responsible for a couple more ghosts now—”
“You share Harlowe’s with Santiago.”
“—But,” and he remembered something he’d told himself last year, “they killed themselves, in a way, by putting me in a position where I had no choice.” He spread his fingers for a moment on the steering wheel, and cleared his throat. “It wasn’t—damn it, it wasn’t my idea.”
She touched his shoulder, then clasped her hands in her lap. “Your neighbors in the trailer park are going to remark on this car.”
“S’all right. Galvan never reports cars that get stolen.”
“You should take the bed tonight.”
“You’re still the guest. I’m still on the couch.”
“Sleep till noon, anyway.”
“I’ve got to get to Mass sometime. Tomorrow—today!—is All Saints’ Day. Holy day of obligation.”
“Oh. That’s right, I remember.” She rearranged herself on the seat. “Okay if I sleep for a bit here? Wake me up if you get tired.”
“Sure.”
Traffic was light at this hour of the night, and Santa Monica Boulevard would be coming up in about five minutes. There would certainly be an open MacDonald’s or something.
He glanced at Castine. Her chin was on her chest and she was softly snoring, and the slow whisper of surf rushing past a couple of hundred feet away to his right seemed to echo her. He smiled; as a Secret Service agent he had gone much longer than this without sleep, and in fact he felt wide awake. Maybe he’d drive straight on till morning.
EPILOGUE:
All Saints Day
Vickery turned the volume down on the radio when he heard the squeak of the trailer’s bedroom door. He had opened all the windows an hour ago, but left the air conditioner turned off; Autumn had finally caught up with Barstow’s weather, and the thermometer that hung outside the kitchen window read sixty-eight degrees. Beyond it, the desert stretched away to the distant railroad tracks under a silver sky.
He stepped away from the radio and poured coffee into a cup, and stirred two spoonfuls of sugar into it. It was on the table when Castine came blinking into the kitchen.
She sat down in one of the two chairs and nodded toward the radio as she took hold of the cup with both hands. “Turn it up.”
“Just an ad right now.” Vickery poured a cup for himself and sat down in the other chair. “But—Gale Reed did die, yesterday afternoon. Natural causes.”
Castine bared her teeth. “Ugh. Then that was her ghost, on the staircase. Did we—I suppose we must have caused it.”
“I think we, what, gave her a chance to . . . ” Vickery paused to take a sip of the coffee. “To finally help undo what she helped to do, fifty years ago.”
“Good of us.”
Vickery let that go. He looked at her face and hands. “It looks like you got just about all the tar off.”
“It took a while. You probably had a cold shower—I bet I used up all the hot water.”
He waved it aside. Last night a cold shower had not been unwelcome. “And there was a report about a New Age Halloween celebration gone wrong at Topanga Beach. Seven people dead, including the ChakraSys guru, five of them from gunshot wounds.”
“Five?” Castine spread the fingers of one hand. “Harlowe, that guy Tony, and Sandstrom . . . oh, and he shot old Chronic . . . ”
“And Sandstrom’s pal, Coastal Eddie. He was shot in ’68, but it took him fifty years to finally fall off the porch.”
Castine shivered. “It’s done now, right? The egregore, the old house visions? We were getting Sandstrom’s view, in them, and he’s gone now.” She looked over the rim of her cup at the low sky outside the window.
“A lot of things are done. You said yesterday that I’ve been living out here as if I were . . . what was it?”
“Marking time,” said Castine. “Waiting.” He nodded and didn’t say anything more. She went on hesitantly, “Agnes said you got your Secret Garden book. And she said it probably—” She didn’t finish the sentence.
Vickery nodded. “The sea water washed Mary’s spirit out of it. Pratt’s ghost too. But—” He had been holding his coffee cup, and now put it down. He didn’t meet Castine’s eyes. “I baptized her, pronounced the words while I think she was still there, anyway, and we were in salt water.”
Three chords had been playing in his memory all morning; he remembered now that he had heard them last night in the phantom house—the heavy guitar interlude in Hendrix’s “And The Wind Cries Mary.”
Castine reached out as if to touch his hand, then just spread her fingers and let her hand fall to the table. “Can you—?”
“Baptize a spirit that never lived? I don’t know. I’m sure a priest would say the whole thing’s nonsense. Sacrilegious nonsense. But she’s . . . at some kind of peace now.” He looked at the ceiling and then gave Castine a tired smile. “I think I’ll take down the pinwheels from the roof and throw them in the ocean too.”
“A clean sweep,” agreed Castine. “I suppose I’ve been marking time too, this past year—waiting!—staying on at the Transportation Utility Agency.” She sipped her coffee and nodded toward the radio. “The news didn’t have anything about a couple who fled the scene in a car covered with clown pictures?”
“No.” He sat back and sighed. “They’re talking to some of the event organizers—Biloxi, and Avalon somebody—but I don’t think any of them will be eager to say much. Blame it all on the dead guys would be the best bet. The news did say the place was a weird mess, with pictures of Tom Hanks on signs everywhere. And they said four old-style Harley Davidson motorcycles were found at the scene, one of them in prist
ine condition and the other three just rusted-out wrecks.”
“Well, that’s what sort of bikes ghosts would ride, isn’t it? The last run of the Gadarene Legion. The last rerun.” She stretched. “What if the cops talk to us?”
“Well, you’ll be back in Maryland soon. And Sebastian Vickery was an identity that never existed anyway. If anybody ever fingerprints me, I’m Herbert Woods, onetime LAPD cop and Secret Service agent. And in the meantime I’m Bill Ardmore.”
“Bill Ardmore the saucer nut. How’s your leg?”
“UFOlogist. I cleaned it and put a bandage on it. I’ll live.”
“And we can finally burn that old blood-stained sock of mine, right? It’s still in my coat pocket.”
“Burn it and bury the ashes,” Vickery assured her.
“What do you suppose will become of those girls? Amber and Lexi?”
“Oh—I suppose Fakhouri and the Egyptian Consulate will get in touch with the U.S. authorities, if they haven’t already—see that they’re sent to any family they may have, or at least put someplace where they’ll get . . . foster care, therapy?”
Castine nodded. “I think Fakhouri hopes to get them away from L.A. altogether. Just before they took off last night, he told me he was finally rescuing the two girls from Garbage City.”
Vickery blinked. “That’s a bit harsh.”
Castine stood up and crossed to the stove. As she refilled her cup from the coffee pot, she said, “When were you thinking of returning Galvan’s car?”
Vickery looked at his watch. “It’s only noon. I thought I’d drive you to the airport, then drop off her car. And, if she doesn’t kill me, catch the 5 PM Mass at Blessed Sacrament on Sunset and take a bus back up here.”
“Blessed Sacrament,” she said, carrying her cup back to the table. “I remember that church. I can get a flight tomorrow—how about if I come along? All Saints Day—it is a holy day of obligation, after all. And if we stop at Hesperia and get my stuff, my credit cards, I might still be able to rent a car, to drive you back here.”
“You don’t mind meeting Galvan? I don’t think she’d actually kill us, but she won’t be happy. I punched her in the stomach yesterday.”
“You did?” Castine laughed softly. “All things considered—no, I won’t mind.”
