Superstition

by David Ambrose

  He was standing across the room now, looking at her, nursing his drink.

  She lifted an eyebrow the way she always did when she wasn't convinced by something she was hearing. “That sounds like a pretty smart way of keeping ourselves at the center of everything.”

  He gave a brief laugh. “The trouble is, that's where we seem to belong, and there's nothing we can do about it. Without consciousness at the center, there is no universe. If consciousness had not evolved and become aware of everything around it and from which it had sprung, there would have been no big bang, no galaxy formations, no suns, no planets, no earth, no fossils…and finally no consciousness. A loop.”

  “Then why doesn't it happen all the time? Why isn't everybody going around reinventing the past, creating people who never existed?”

  “Maybe that's exactly what's happening. Maybe we do it all the time, and that's what the past is.”

  She thought about this for a moment. “Maybe,” she said, getting to her feet, “I'll have some of that vodka.”

  She went through to the tiny kitchen and got some ice cubes from the refrigerator, then tipped a shot of alcohol over them and listened to them crack. She took a sip, letting the sensation brace her, enjoying the instantaneous sense of well-being that it gave, no less welcome for being illusory.

  “If that's what we've done,” she said, crossing back into the sitting room, “if we've created someone who never existed before we thought of him,” she looked at Sam, an odd smile playing at the corners of her mouth, “then it's rather appropriate that we called him Adam, isn't it?”

  “Maybe we knew what we were doing.”

  “Oh, no!” She held up a hand in protest. “I can swallow anything except the idea that we knew what we were doing!”

  She took another sip of her drink. “At least,” she said, “we've finally got some concrete proof that paranormal phenomena exist.”

  There was something in the way he looked at her that made her think he was about to burst into laughter. But he just shook his head, and gave a resigned smile. “No, I'm afraid not.”

  She frowned. “How come?”

  “Think about it. To anybody outside our group who finds out about Adam now, it will seem that he must have always existed. How can we prove otherwise?”

  Joanna's blood ran cold. She saw so totally the logic of what he had just said that she didn't even for a second question it.

  “That's what that old woman said. You're on your own now. Maybe she really did put a curse on me, and this is all part of it.”

  “Well, she didn't put a curse on me. Or Maggie, or Drew and Barry, or any of us in this thing with you. So I don't think that hypothesis stands up.”

  “Good,” she said, “I'm glad to hear it.” She took another sip of her drink, and was surprised to find that she'd already finished it. “Have you heard any more from Ward?” she asked.

  “I forgot to tell you with all this other stuff. He gets in tomorrow morning. I'm meeting him at his apartment at midday-can you make it?”

  “Sure.”

  “He wouldn't tell me what he's got, but he sounded excited-at least for Ward.”

  38

  They ate around the corner in a fish place. Over a bottle of Chablis, they turned over what they'd been talking about a few more times and speculated about what Ward might have come up with.

  “The first thing we do tomorrow,” Sam said, “is start researching who exactly the Adam Wyatt in that grave was.”

  “I'll get right on it. I've got some great people for fast research.”

  She linked her arm through his as they walked slowly back to her apartment, heads down, each lost in private thoughts. They undressed and shared her tiny bathroom like a couple long familiar with each other's habits. It was only once they were in bed and their bodies touched beneath the sheets that the responses of the past few months were reawakened. To their surprise and mutual delight, they lost themselves in sheer physicality for what seemed like half the night, falling at last into a sated and more contented sleep than either had imagined possible.

  “So tell me,” he said over a hurried breakfast of cereal and coffee, “have you decided yet what you're going to do about the story?”

  She had told him over dinner about Taylor Freestone's ultimatum.

  “I'm going to stick with it,” she said. As she spoke she realized that she'd made her mind up long since, she just hadn't said the words yet. She saw now there was never a choice: she could not let this story be told by anyone but herself. “I've come too far with it to quit. We all have.”

  “I think it's the right choice,” he said, “I'm glad.” He glanced at his watch. “Gotta go. See you at twelve.”

  He reached for his coat, they kissed, and he was gone. From her window she watched his car pull out of its space and head around the corner toward the dense traffic of First Avenue. As he disappeared from sight, her phone rang. She crossed to her desk and picked it up.

  “Joanna?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Ralph Cazaubon.”

  She was surprised by the call, but even more by the strange sense of guilt that it provoked in her, as though just by talking to him she was somehow betraying Sam. It was absurd, of course, an irrational response that reminded her of what Sam had said about superstition the first time they met.

  “Hello? Are you there? Don't tell me you've forgotten me already.”

  “No…I'm sorry, I just wasn't…it's just a surprise.”

  “I hope this isn't too early, but I wanted to catch you before you left for the office-that is if writers work in offices.”

  “Sometimes. Not today, though.”

  She wanted to ask how he'd gotten her number, then she remembered she was listed: Cross, J. E. Had she told him she lived in Beekman Place? She couldn't remember.

  “I was a little worried about you yesterday. You rushed off so suddenly I was afraid something had happened.”

  “No…not really…not happened exactly. I'm afraid it's something I can't explain.”

  Which was truer than he knew, she thought.

  “Well, as long as you're all right…”

  “I'm fine.”

  She was grateful that he didn't probe further.

  “I was wondering,” he said, as though coming to the real point of his call, “whether we might meet sometime. Is lunch or dinner good for you this week?”

  She hesitated. Not about whether to accept, but how to answer. “I'm afraid not,” she said. “It just isn't possible at the moment.”

  Why had she said that? At the moment? Was she hedging her bets? She hated herself for the thought. She had spent the night with Sam, she loved him. And yet there was something about Ralph Cazaubon that was curiously intriguing. He was attractive, undeniably; but it was more than that, something that she couldn't put her finger on.

  “I understand,” he said.

  He didn't, of course, she told herself. How could he? But again he didn't ask questions or try to insist. He was respecting her privacy, while carefully leaving the door open.

  “Can I give you my number…?”

  He gave it without waiting for an answer. And she wrote it down on the pad she kept by her phone. As an afterthought he added his address-a few blocks up on the East Side, between Park and Lexington. She knew the street well, full of large and very expensive brownstones.

  “I'll be giving a party soon-when I've finished buying curtains and sorting out colors. Maybe you'll be able to come. I'll send you an invitation.”

  “Thank you, I'd…I'd be happy to if I can.”

  That was all right, wasn't it? She felt oddly disconcerted. Not shy, exactly, not that teenage tongue-tied thing. There was just something about him, about this call, that wrong-footed her. It wasn't him so much as her. But what? Again it was something she couldn't pinpoint, something she would need to think about.

  “Well, I'm sure you're busy,” he said. “I won't keep you.” He sensed her awkwardness, she kne
w, and was trying to put her at ease. “I'm sorry again if this was a little early. But I did want to be sure you were, you know, all right.”

  “Thank you. I'm fine, really. You're very kind.”

  When she hung up she made an effort to put him and the banal little conversation they'd just had out of her mind. She was angry with herself for being so distracted when she had important things to do. She picked up the phone and dialed a number that she knew by heart. A woman's voice answered sleepily.

  “Ghislaine? You sound like you're still in bed.”

  “I was working half the night. Had a deadline.”

  “Good-I hope that means you're free to start something for me.”

  Ghislaine Letts was the best researcher Joanna knew. An academic highflier with an IQ off the charts, she lacked the discipline or aptitude to hold down any kind of routine job. By rights she ought to have been writing learned tomes or directing the fortunes of mankind in one arena or another; instead she was living in a cramped apartment in the Village and fighting an eating disorder that kept her weight seesawing between stick thin and hopelessly obese, and which would one day kill her if she didn't get on top of it. Meanwhile she was Joanna's friend and secret weapon whenever she needed to find out something that seemed beyond the limits of human ingenuity to discover.

  “Shoot,” said Ghislaine, stifling a yawn.

  “All I've got is a name, dates, and a graveyard…”

  39

  Ward Riley, Joanna realized as she entered his apartment for the first time, must be a very rich man indeed. He lived in the Dakota Building, a neo-Gothic pile on Central Park West, built toward the end of the last century and one of the most prestigious addresses in Manhattan. It was famous as the place where John Lennon was shot, and also as the location for the film Rosemary's Baby in the sixties. And to people like Joanna who liked to read occasionally, it was also the setting of Jack Finney's marvelous novel about time travel, Time and Again. A place, as she said to herself, with interesting associations.

  A Chinese manservant showed her into a sitting room that was high ceilinged and light, with a commanding view over the park. The place had a distinctly oriental flavor, with everything in it-antique bronzes, carvings, lacquered work, and delicately colored paintings-giving the impression of having been chosen with fastidious and exquisite care.

  Ward and Sam were already in conversation. They rose to greet her. Ward, with his usual formal courtesy, shook her hand and asked if she would like coffee, which they were drinking, or anything else. She said no thank you, and sensed rather than saw the manservant discreetly withdraw, leaving them to talk in private.

  “Well,” she said, taking a seat on a long sofa with her back to the light, “I hear you were in Sweden. Did you find the man you were looking for?”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly. “As I said, he's never hard to find when you need him. He was holding a symposium for a group of bankers and industrialists in a castle near Stockholm.”

  “Just your average group of pilgrims on the hard road to enlightenment?” The remark was more ironic than malicious. Ward smiled faintly.

  “Shahan says-that's his name, Shahan-Shahan says that self-denial has no meaning once the self is properly understood.”

  “Well, maybe he's right,” she responded equably. “I wouldn't want to give him an argument right now.” She glanced at Sam. “Did you tell Ward about the grave?”

  “Yes. But only just before you arrived.” He looked at the older man. “I'm not sure yet what his reaction is.”

  Ward answered cautiously. “I'm not sure yet myself. It's not inconsistent with what's known of these phenomena.” He looked at Joanna. “I'll be curious to see what your research into this grave turns up.”

  “Was Shahan familiar with ‘these phenomena’?” she asked.

  “Indeed, yes. He has no personal experience, but he quoted texts on the subject written nearly three thousand years ago. As I think we were all aware, the phenomena are as old as recorded time.”

  “And did he think,” she continued, “that Adam could have caused the deaths of Maggie, and Drew and Barry?”

  Ward again hesitated over his reply. “ Caused, perhaps, is too strong a word. The phenomenon is powerful, and potentially destructive. But it's a destructiveness more of the kind that you and Roger talked about-an incompatibility more than outright malevolence. It's a thought-form, made of energy- our energy.

  And energy is finite. It can't be in two places, doing two things, at once. In the end either the tulpa will exist, or its creators will. But not both.”

  There was a silence as they absorbed the implications of Ward's somewhat apocalyptic statement. Sam sat staring into space, hands cupped beneath his chin in an attitude almost of prayer.

  “What I'd like to know,” he said, “is why this has happened. To us. This group. This experiment. Why didn't Adam just fade out when we wanted him to? What's made him hang on to his existence like this?”

  “I get the feeling he's not just hanging on to it,” Joanna said quietly, “he's fighting back.” She turned to Ward. “Did Shahan think there was anything at all we can do?”

  Ward pulled a long white envelope from inside his jacket. Even though he had stepped off an international flight only hours ago, he wore, as usual, an impeccable suit, silk shirt, and tie.

  “In here,” he said, “I have a mantra. It's a very particular form of mantra, called a partita: a protective rite. They're used widely throughout Tibet and eastern Asia to ward off danger and disease, and exorcise evil spirits.”

  Joanna watched Sam as he listened to Ward. She could see that he was torn between the belief he wanted to have and the doubts he instinctively felt toward formal ritual.

  “ Paritta? ” he said. “It sounds like something you might get in a Mexican restaurant. Do you think it can work in New York?”“Why not?” Ward said. “New York is where Adam was created.”

  Sam pursed his lips and shrugged. “I'm open to anything…”

  The ghost of a smile passed over Ward's face. “Fortunately this isn't something you have to believe in to make work. You simply have to perform the ritual in the correct way at the appropriate time. But there must be no deviation from the form laid down.”

  “So what is this mantra?” Sam asked, glancing at the envelope in Ward's hand.

  “I can't tell you-yet. After he wrote it down, Shahan sealed this envelope himself. It must not be opened, and what is written down must not be spoken, until all five of us are gathered in the place where we created Adam. Otherwise,” he returned the envelope to his inside jacket pocket, “whatever force the paritta has will be lost, and with it quite possibly our struggle against Adam.”

  Sam spread his hands in a way that implied he would go along with whatever Ward wanted, regardless of his personal reservations. Ward inclined his head in acknowledgment.

  “I'm sorry if these restrictions seem irritating or even naive, but I'm afraid they're an important part of the ritual. I've taken the liberty of calling Roger. He can get in from Princeton by six. If it's agreeable to both of you, and of course Pete, I suggest we meet in Adam's room at the lab.”

  The phone in Joanna's purse buzzed. She excused herself and answered it. It was Ghislaine.

  “You said this was a rush job, so I thought you'd like to hear what I've come up with so far.”

  Joanna covered the mouthpiece and whispered to the two men watching her. “It's my researcher. She's got something.”

  Ghislaine's voice continued in her ear. “It's just what I've been able to pull from various sources, mainly ones I can access on the Net. I'll have something fuller in a couple of days.”

  “It's okay, just give me what you have.”

  “It's probably easier if I e-mail it. Where do you want me to send it?”

  Five minutes later the three of them were gathered around the PC on the glass-topped desk in Ward's study. They watched as the words scrolled up the screen and were simultaneously printe
d out alongside.

  ADAM WYATT-Colorful adventurer who won patronage of Marquis de Lafayette, commander of French troops assisting rebel colonies in American War of Independence. Returned to France with Lafayette, where he married into aristocratic family-his wife was a member of Queen Marie Antoinette's inner circle at court. Ultimately fell foul of the revolution, and he and his wife were sentenced to death. Wife apparently executed, but for reasons not entirely clear Wyatt given last-minute reprieve and went free. Settled in England, where he had a second marriage to wealthy heiress in 1795. After her death in 1799 he returned to America a rich man, made a further large fortune in banking, married a much younger girl (surprise, surprise!) who bore him five children and survived him by several years.

  That's the digest. Now here's the interesting part that I'm still following up. There were suggestions in various quarters that Adam Wyatt was not entirely what he appeared to be. Two men claimed he staged the incident that won him Lafayette's approval-something about a runaway horse that threatened to give away strategic positions the night before Yorktown. If true, that means he deliberately risked American and French lives, and maybe the battle, in order to get in solid with Lafayette. Apparent motive seems to have been, in part at least, usual one of pregnant girl back home and brothers with shotguns. Truth of allegations unknown. All that is known is that remaining accuser still alive on Wyatt's return in 1799 was murdered shortly after.

  It also seems that Wyatt forfeited the support of Lafayette sometime after reaching Paris. Having married into a family with which Lafayette was connected, he proceeded to have many affairs and get into very questionable company-hints of black magic among other things. His name is coupled in a number of references with the Marquis de Sade, the mysterious and almost equally weird Count de Saint-Germain, and in particular with an old swindler called Cagliostro, supposedly an alchemist and magician, who got thrown into jail over a famous scam called the “Diamond Necklace Affair.”