Land of Echoes cb-2

by Daniel Hecht

  He wore an expensive charcoal suit tailored to minimize his growing deformity, but it couldn't hide the deterioration that had taken place since last she'd seen him. Though he was no older than his early sixties and his hair was still mostly black, his big body appeared to be collapsing in upon itself. He lurked deeper in his chair, chin nearly riding on his chest. His high, square forehead and strong jaw were well formed but now only made him all the more grotesque, a parody of the handsome man he'd once been. A thin green cylinder of oxygen was strapped to the chair, Cree noticed, its clear plastic tube and nose feeder looped on one of the handles.

  "Your lecture was superb," Mason gurgled. Looking up at her exposed his face to the sky, and the light seemed to give him discomfort. "You struck precisely the right tone for speaking to the great unwashed of academia in terms their rigidly compartmented little intellects could grasp. Yet never the bald, craven appeal to the popular taste we see so much of these days." The big head twisted to the side again and he said to Lupe, as if scolding her, "I told you she would mature. I told you she would shine!"

  "So what brings you to Albuquerque? Surely not the conference-"

  "I live not far away now-Santa Fe. To the extent that I can be said to live" Mason chuckled. "Or to do so in any one place. I am mostly between here and Switzerland. Returning to Geneva tomorrow, in fact. One of the reasons I contacted you. It was most fortuitous, your coming at this time. Still enjoying Seattle? Your little outfit, what's it called…?"

  "Psi Research Associates."

  "— is it doing well? Doing a brisk business in ghastliness?"

  "Yes."

  "And your partner-the engineer, the physicist…?"

  "Edgar Mayfield."

  "Yes, our good Dr. Mayfield. Has he recorded the irrefutable physical evidence he so ardently desires?" Mason's expression conveyed his low opinion of Edgar's technological approach to paranormal research.

  "Physical evidence, quite a bit. Irrefutable-that's up for argument."

  "But he hasn't succeeded in winning your heart with his efforts, has he. Because, one can safely assume, you're still searching for your dead husband and remaining chaste as a statue of the Virgin Mary." A glint of malicious amusement lit the hooded eyes.

  Cree tried not to stiffen. "You know, Mason, I've never considered your sadism to be your most admirable characteristic."

  "And just what would that be, Lucretia-my most admirable characteristic?"

  Cree was tempted to say something hurtful. But, as she'd inventoried on her way up, she did admire a great many things about him. Even now, even as he did his best to be offensive, she could feel something noble in him-synesthetically, it came across as a rich crimson-and-peach- toned glow, steady and fine, just visible beneath the blackened, warted surface of his affect. Mason was the ultimate frog prince, always awakening her desire to free him from his enchantment, too ugly to bear to kiss. He was a hideous, aging man being eaten alive by some unknown malady, collapsing upon himself in a wheelchair, and he broke her heart.

  In any case, rule one with Mason was you couldn't let him get under your skin. The only way to get by was to stay yourself. Show him you were above his provocations, which, she had to believe, were nothing more than oblique affirmations of affection and intimacy.

  She touched his hand. "That you're easily disarmed by candor and affection. It suggests you have a human streak in you somewhere. That you're not the monster you think you are."

  Lupe snorted at that, and Mason joined her with a chortle, chin hard against his chest. When he recovered, his big face hardened quickly.

  "Lupe, I will need a moment to speak with Cree in confidence."

  Lupe's mahogany eyes locked accusingly on Cree's before she took her hands from the wheelchair grips and removed herself to the railing.

  "If you wouldn't mind, Cree-" Mason gestured toward the far corner of the platform, an acute angle jutting well out over the cliff face.

  Cree rolled him away from Lupe, feeling the woman's incomprehensible resentment. At the corner, she stopped the chair and came around to face Mason, leaving him oriented toward the vast space. Far below, another tramcar was inching up past the giant blue gantry.

  "Do you know I can still stand?" he asked conversationally. He didn't look at her, just stared out at the bigness.

  "No. I-"

  "I could grab the railing and pull myself up right now. Not for long, of course." His voice was flat, almost disinterested, and Cree wondered why he was telling her this. "I could even throw myself over. In fact, I come here whenever I'm in Albuquerque just to savor that knowledge."

  She gave him an exasperated smile. "Mason, how about skipping the high drama? Just tell me why we're here."

  "Do you know why I might want to do that?"

  "I can think of a lot of reasons why someone might-"

  " No-why would I, Mason Ambrose, choose to fling myself over and stain the rocks down there with my brain matter?" Now his eyes were on her, and they seemed very deep, like holes to some subterranean pit. Whatever he wanted from her, his intensity was disturbing. Forty feet away, Lupe stood at the rail, watching them from the side of her eyes. Beyond her, the tramcar slid silently up the cable.

  "You're trying to upset me. But it won't happen. Sorry."

  He shook his head. "Come along, Lucretia! You're the most talented empath I've ever encountered. You know emotions and longings. You see them. What do you see in your old mentor?"

  She appraised him. There were so many possibilities: that living as a toad in a wheelchair had become intolerable, or that by throwing himself over the edge he'd have some control over himself, otherwise denied him in so many ways. That his noble and good parts wanted to be free of the awful things in him. That his disease was progressing and promised a life of unbearable pain.

  Possible, she decided, but too obvious, not what he wanted from her now.

  "I don't know," she said finally. "Maybe that you want to know what happens after-what's on the other side. That your curiosity is that strong."

  Mason looked flattered and proud of her in a proprietary way, the folds around his mouth puckering. "Oh, you unabashed romantic. You poor naive idealist." He turned his head to frown across the deck at his assistant, and his voice turned into a snarl: "What makes you think I wouldn't do it just to get away from Lupe? Or to punish her? Look at her! My grandfather's old cowhide razor strop had more give than that woman!"

  Cree knew she couldn't hope to fathom the awful twists and coils of their relationship. She'd always suspected they were lovers, and Mason's treatment of Lupe was among the things that offended her the most about him. And he knew it.

  She let her voice get hard: "Okay, now we've done the courtesies, let's cut to the chase. What do you want?"

  "There's a situation that will interest you, here in New Mexico. One that I believe requires your talents."

  "Mason, I'm due to fly back to Seattle tomorrow. I can't just-"

  "Of course you can."

  "Sure. And you can cancel your flight to Switzerland and attend to it yourself."

  "It's not a matter of travel itinerary, it's a matter of expertise. I was consulted as a neuropsychiatrist. In that capacity, I have determined that there is no neurological or immediately evident psychological cause for the patient's extreme behavioral aberrations. This is a matter for a different set of talents."

  " Mason-"

  "And it involves a child, Lucretia. Obviously, I am not the best confidant for a child already suffering from a surfeit of terror." His hand made a disgusted gesture at his sagging face and squat body.

  "Look, I appreciate your thinking of me. But I… I got very stressed out this spring. I've had some difficult cases recently, and I made a pact with myself to take some personal time."

  "You?" He puffed air out of his lips skeptically. "What could Cree Black do for 'personal time'?"

  She stared at him. "Maybe I was wrong about you not being a monster."

  But he wasn't baiti
ng her this time, she saw. His voice was sepulchral and his stare without pretense. "How would you ever grant yourself a respite? There is no respite. Not for people like you and me."

  She almost argued that, no thanks, she was not like him. But his gaze permitted no escape or deflection. And she knew what he meant.

  He looked away to look up at the tram station, where a new flock of visitors was disembarking and fanning out at the railings. "I had another reason for bringing you up here this evening, beyond showing you a majestic view. I wanted to tell you that I've already arranged a meeting between you and the client." Cree started to protest, but he overrode her: "Her name is Julieta McCarty, and she's the founder, president of the board, and principal of a little boarding school for Navajo kids. You'll like her-a woman on a mission, just like you. No, don't bristle at me! All you have to do is talk with her, Lucretia. Afterward, you can tell her why your taking some personal time is more important than her whole life and the futures of sixty-odd bright and talented teenagers and the survival of one very special boy in particular."

  Cree crossed her arms against the chill wind and looked away from him. "You're laying it on pretty thick here, Mason. The Dickensian sentimentality."

  He dropped his voice to an urgent whisper: "You were right that I'd die to know. Just as you would. This situation at the school-it could be the breakthrough we both want, the one that brings us as close to the other side as we can get without dying ourselves. I'd love nothing more than to take it on. But I am simply not the right one for the job! It requires your talents. Beyond the empathic elements needed, this will take someone physically robust and mobile. Don't pass this up, Lucretia! Don't."

  His intensity gave her pause. If Mason Ambrose said it might be a breakthrough case, he had good reason. She felt the familiar kindling of her senses, the awakening of that ravening curiosity.

  But there was no way to communicate how important it was to take the time she needed. Time for life. How last spring in New Orleans she'd realized the full extent to which she'd slipped into obsession, into an emotional world so narrow that she'd become little more than a ghost herself. Preoccupied with death and haunts, with the past. Always looking through but never at the sunlit world of daily, physical life, always straining to see into the twilight that lay beyond. How she was, as Mason said, married to a dead man, unable to live as a flesh-and-blood woman. That she'd been turning into a kind of ghost herself.

  It had nearly killed her, but out of the Beauforte House investigation and her unexpected attraction to Paul Fitzpatrick had come a hard-won determination to live. For the first time in the nine years since Mike's death, she had admitted to herself the need to get over him. To shed the confusion and guilt she felt whenever she felt drawn to another, living, man. Taking this case now would mean that once again she was putting life on hold in favor of the afterlife.

  "I can't, Mason," she said finally. "I'm not going to do this one. I'm truly sorry."

  Mason gave his head a skeptical toss. "Fine. As I say, you can tell it to Julieta McCarty. That's her now. And she's got the school physician with her-Dr. Tsosie. Excellent!" And he waved to a woman and a man who were descending the ramps toward them wearing expressions Cree knew only too well: the look of people coping, poorly, with the inexplicable.

  4

  After outrage at Mason's presumption, Cree's first response was surprise at the woman's appearance. Julieta McCarty was tall, narrow waisted, dressed in snug jeans, cowboy boots, a man's blue work shirt, and a denim jacket with cuffs rolled one turn to reveal silver and turquoise bracelets. She had enviably big black hair that tossed freely in the wind, flashing almond-shaped blue eyes, and a tan augmented by a touch of bronze coloring that suggested Native American or Hispanic blood. Cree's first thought was, stunning. Movie star stunning. Definitely not anyone's idea of a typical high school principal. Too curvaceous, too young-no older than her midtwenties.

  Seeing her at close range changed Cree's first impression somewhat. Nearer, her real age was evident in her face: closer to forty than thirty. The skin around her eyes and mouth was etched with a skein of fine creases that told of a life in the dry high-desert air and hard sun. Her eyes held a searching look full of wariness, worry, fatigue, doubt, determination.

  It was a look Cree had seen in other people trying to deal with an incomprehensible experience, to live when their every belief and expectation had been called into question. It was also a look she saw far too often in the mirror.

  The eyes made a twang in Cree's chest, a feeling of such poignancy that she forgot her anger at Mason. In one glance the connection was made, so real Cree could almost see it, a shimmering golden cord arcing between them and binding them together.

  Remaining a pace behind Julieta, Dr. Tsosie was a Native American man in his midforties. He wore khakis, jogging shoes, a blue nylon windbreaker parted to reveal a white shirt and a belt cinched by an ornate silver buckle. A beeper and cell phone clipped on the belt marked him as a physician. The brown eyes that shone from under the brim of his cowboy hat were somber and appraising, and though he maintained an impassive face Cree sensed that the root of his current caution was a protective urge: He was looking out for Julieta, determined to help her through whatever crisis she was enduring.

  Meeting them, especially Julieta, had a fated, inevitable feel. As they shook hands, Cree inwardly cursed Mason, hating that he could tell exactly how she'd react. That he'd known her for the soft touch she was, that her immediate and overpowering empathy for Julieta would compel her to take the woman's problems as her own.

  Mason made only a halfhearted effort to keep the pleasure off his face. Cree wanted to kick him.

  "Thank you for coming, Julieta. Joseph, it's a pleasure to see you again." Mason had conjured his public persona of charm and authority. He pushed back his cuff to glance at his watch and then smiled up at them. "Shall we stay outside and catch the sunset, or would you like to confer over dinner? I took the liberty of making reservations at the High Finance here-their strip sirloin is quite splendid. In either case, I know Lucretia is eager to hear the specifics of your situation."

  Julieta McCarty admitted that she was too tense too eat, so they opted against dinner. Instead, Cree rolled Mason's chair down another series of ramps to the ridge trail below the restaurant, where they strolled slowly as they talked. The wind had died, but the air was turning chilly; Mason took a blanket from a pouch and arranged it over his legs. Back on the deck, Lupe found a position that allowed her to keep an eye on them, opened a paperback, and pretended to read.

  The sun was swelling as it descended, a bloated red balloon just above the horizon. On Sandia crest, the light that saturated every west-facing feature had turned a succulent orange-pink, startling in its contrast with the blues of evening infiltrating from the east. The light had named the mountain, Mason explained: sandia was the Spanish word for watermelon.

  Mason lectured them as if they were a postgrad psych class and he was putting forward a case study for them to solve: "A fifteen-year-old boy, presenting intermittent but extreme symptoms. Two rounds of exhaustive testing show no cranial abnormalities and no seizure activity. Blood chemistry good, no indication of chronic disease or drug abuse. Good general health history. Psychological tests show a fairly normal adolescent male profile: issues with status and self-esteem, resistance to authority-the usual. Appears to be an active, healthy young man with a higher-than-average IQ and a notable talent at visual art, which brought him to the attention of Oak Springs School. Like many kids his age, he has a minor history of trouble-graffiti, a little vandalism, one arrest for underage driving and one for possession of marijuana at the age of thirteen. But he has no drugs in his system now and he claims he hasn't taken anything for two years. The hospital's initial diagnosis is dehydration and stress. After the second and third episodes and the diagnostic batteries that followed, their psych staff conclude he's faking it-this is a desperate bid for attention by a child deeply troubled for reason
s not yet understood. They prescribe Prozac and talk therapy on an outpatient basis-"

  "Diagnosis completely unsatisfactory to school administrators," Julieta interrupted. "This infuriates me-nobody could fake what he was doing! He-"

  She cut herself off as Dr. Tsosie lightly touched her elbow. They exchanged a short glance and Julieta calmed herself with an effort.

  "Diagnosis fails," Mason went on, unperturbed, "to consider the severity of symptoms or reliable observations of their anomalous nature by the residential staff, the school nurse, and the school physician. At which point Dr. Tsosie sought me out. I then spent two days at the school, during which I reviewed the patient's medical records, observed him while full symptoms were presenting, and conducted interviews. After which I decided that a further referral was necessary. By serendipitous good fortune, my first choice for that referral was soon to be in the area for a speaking engagement at UNM." Mason shut his eyes, tipped his head, and for a long moment let the rich light play on his skin. "Which brings us to Sandia Ridge for a sumptuous sunset and the joint contemplation of a most unusual and dire neuropsychological phenomenon."

  They had stopped at the end of the ridge path. Beyond stood a forest of ponderosa pines, now a shadowy cathedral shot through with shafts of light that cut the tree canopy into an intricate lattice. A few sightseers clung to the rail far behind them, snapping photos. On the lower path, just back of the crest, other visitors had begun returning to the tram station, chattering, clutching sweaters and windbreakers tightly around them.

  "I still don't know anything about the boy's condition," Cree said. "From what you've told me so far, I can't see why you think I might be of any help. What-he claims he's seeing ghosts?"

  "I think we're getting ahead of ourselves here," Dr. Tsosie interposed. He'd stayed quiet throughout their conversation, maintaining a reserve that he seemed to overcome only with difficulty. "Dr. Ambrose, you have an impressive reputation. But I'm here because I need some reassurance that we're doing the right thing. I don't know anything about Ms. Black and I'm skeptical of supernatural explanations. That we're up here talking to a… I don't even know what you call Ms. Black… a medium?"