999

by Al Sarrantonio

  A booming thunder gripped the sky by the shoulders and shook it. Dare entered and dropped a light bag to the floor. “Joan, I owe you a flogging for this,” he complained. “I knew that I never should have done it.”

  “Well, you did it,” Freeboard told him. “Now for shitssakes, watch your mouth, would you, Terry? I had to practically beg these two people to do this.”

  She removed her yellow windjammer hat and then gestured to the open door, where the psychic seemed to falter as she climbed the front steps. “Terry, give Mrs. Trawley a hand,” ordered Freeboard. Dare snailed toward the psychic unhurriedly and reached for her bag with a drooping hand. “May I help you?”

  “Oh, no thank you. I’m fine. I travel light.”

  “Yes, of course. Tambourines weigh almost nothing.”

  “Jesus, Terry!”

  Trawley entered, took off her hat and set down her bag. “That’s all right,” she told Freeboard with a smile; “I didn’t hear it.”

  Freeboard leaned into the wind and shut the door. In the silence, it was Dare who first noticed the music. “Dearest God, am I in heaven?” he exclaimed. “Cole Porter!” The author’s face was alight with a child’s pure bliss as from behind the stout doors that led into the Great Room drifted a melody played on a piano.

  Dare stared. “My favorite: ‘Night and Day’!”

  Freeboard moved toward the doors.

  “That you in there, Doc?” she called out.

  “Miss Freeboard?”

  The voice from within was deep and pleasant and oddly unmuffled by the thickness of the doors. Freeboard opened them wide and stepped into the Great Room. All of its lamps were lit and glowing, splashing the wood-paneled walls with life, and in the crackle of the firepit flames leapt cheerily, blithe to the longing in the strains of “Night and Day.” Freeboard breathed in the scent of burning pine from the fire. The sounds of the storm were distant.

  “Yeah, we’re here!” she called out. She smiled, moving toward the piano, while at the same time removing her dripping sou’wester. Behind her came Dare and, more slowly, Anna Trawley. Freeboard’s boots made a squishing sound. They were soaked.

  “Ah, yes, there you all are again, safe and sound,” said Gabriel Case. “I’m so glad. I was worried.”

  He had strong good looks, Freeboard noticed. The firelight flickered and danced on his eyes. She saw that they were dark but wasn’t sure of their color.

  “This storm is amazing, don’t you think?” he exclaimed. “Did you order this weather, Mr. Dare?”

  “I ordered Chivas.”

  Dare and Freeboard had arrived at the piano and stopped. Anna Trawley hung back beside a grouping of furniture that was clustered around the fireplace. She was glancing all around the room with a vaguely uncertain and tentative air.

  “Are you a ghost?” said Dare to Case.

  Freeboard turned to him, incredulous, her eyes flaring.

  “What crap is this?” she hissed in a seething undertone.

  “That’s how they show them on the spook ride at Disneyland,” said Dare, not lowering his voice: “a lot of spirits dancing while a big one plays piano.”

  Abruptly Freeboard put a hand to her forehead. “This has happened before,” she said, frowning.

  Case raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

  “I’m having déjà vu,” Freeboard answered, troubled.

  “This is neither the time nor the place,” snapped Dare.

  Freeboard put her hand down and looked at him oddly.

  “Jesus, Terry. I knew you were going to say that.”

  “How could you?”

  “And I knew what Dr. Case was going to say.”

  “That’s incredible,” said Case. He lifted his hands from the keyboard. “Déjà vu reflects backward, not forward,” he said. He turned his head slightly and looked past Freeboard. “Ah, here—”

  “Comes Morna.”

  Dare and Freeboard had said it together with Case.

  Case stared. He glanced to Morna for a moment—she was standing close by—and then stood up, looking mildly puzzled.

  “How on earth could you have known Morna’s name?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dare. He looked perplexed.

  “It’s all happened before.”

  At the quiet voice, they all turned and saw Trawley in a chair by the fireplace. Her haunted stare was on Case.

  “You too?” Dare asked her.

  The psychic turned to him and nodded. “Yes.”

  Freeboard lowered her head into a hand.

  “Hey, wait a minute, guys. I’m getting weirded out.”

  “Yes, it truly is amazing,” said Case. “Awfully strange.” He continued to stand behind the piano, but his arms were now folded across his chest. He seemed somehow not a part of the group, but an observer, detached, as if watching the unfolding of a play.

  Freeboard put a hand to her head, walked sluggishly over to a sofa and sat on the back of it. “I’ve got to sit down,” she said weakly. “I’m feeling so tired all of a sudden.”

  “Now that you mention it,” said Dare, “ditto.” He headed for the furniture grouping. “What is it?” he wondered aloud. “I feel utterly drained for some reason. And I’m feeling disconnected from things.”

  Freeboard nodded. “Yeah, me too,” she said softly.

  Dare sat down on the sofa behind her.

  “What is it, Joanie? What could it be?”

  “I don’t know.” Abruptly Freeboard winced, as in pain. “Jesuspeezus, my head!” she complained.

  “Is this house playing tricks with us already, Dr. Case?” Dare asked. “I mean, presuming there are tricks to be played.”

  Inscrutable, Case glanced over at Trawley and asked, “What’s your read on all this, Anna? What do you think? Are you having the same reaction?”

  Trawley nodded.

  Case unfolded his arms and scratched his head.

  “Well, this is all too bizarre,” he said.

  “You mean it’s creepy,” said Freeboard.

  “It’s so hard to accept that you knew Morna’s name,” pondered Case.

  Dare looked up. “What did you say?”

  “Accept.”

  And now Freeboard was staring at Case intently, her eyes growing wide with some jarring realization.

  “Accept,” Dare murmured to himself.

  The quiet word was affecting him strangely. Why?

  “Just so baffling,” said Case: “Three people with the same déjà vu; with jamais vu, in fact.”

  Freeboard rose from the back of the sofa, perplexity and nascent alarm in her eyes. “Hey, wait a second! What the fuck is going on here?” she demanded. Her tone was belligerent and angry.

  “Yes, we’re trying to figure that out,” Case said blandly.

  Freeboard strode up to him, stopped and examined his face.

  “You’re not Gabriel Case!” she declared.

  Dare turned to her, taken aback.

  “What on earth are you saying, Joanie?”

  “I’m saying this guy is a fake! He’s not Case!”

  Dare looked at Case and became more confused, for he read his expression as fond, perhaps pitying.

  “Are you bleeding mad, Joan?” he exclaimed.

  Freeboard whirled on him.

  “Terry, I’ve seen pictures of the man! I’ve talked to him!”

  “Then why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  “Who gives a shit, Terry! Who cares! All I know is, this man isn’t Dr. Case!”

  “Yes, it is!” insisted Dare.

  “It is not!”

  “It is! He looks exactly the same as every other time before: the same scar, the same—!”

  The author abruptly broke off as the meaning of his words began to register upon him. “What on earth?” he whispered, shaken.

  “Terry, what is it?” asked Freeboard tremulously.

  She’d seen the look on Dare’s face and felt a dread.

  “What in G
od’s name is happening to us?” breathed Trawley.

  Stunned, Dare slowly stood up.

  “This keeps happening again and again,” he said numbly.

  Freeboard walked over to Dare, her face ashen.

  “What is it? What’s wrong with us, Terry? Tell me!”

  But the author was staring at Case, transfixed.

  “Who are you?” he asked him in a weak, dead voice.

  Freeboard and Trawley turned their heads to look at Case.

  “Yes, who are you?” the psychic repeated dully.

  Case scrutinized each of their faces intently. “Come with me,” he said gravely. “1 have something to show you. I think that perhaps you’re now ready. Will you come? We’ll just go for a pleasant little walk on the beach.”

  The trio stood motionless and silent. Something submissive had entered their beings. Their eyes and their postures had changed. They looked crumpled.

  Case turned a kindly look to Freeboard.

  “You seem tired, Joan,” he said to her gently. “Are you tired?”

  She shook her head mutely.

  “Then come,” said Case. “Let’s go.”

  Staring and moving as if in a reverie, the trio followed Case outside. It was dawn but a heavy fog enshrouded them. Another storm was on the way: swift gray clouds scudded low above the river, and far to the north they could see dim lightning flashes, brief bright souls in the dark. Case escorted them in silence through the grove of oaks and to the path along the river where Trawley and Freeboard once ventured but then mysteriously had stopped. And now, as they neared the sharp bend in the shoreline, it was Dare who first halted, staring quietly ahead. The others stopped with him, uncertain, apprehensive. A gusting breeze ruffled Trawley’s dress.

  “Do you wish to continue?” Case asked softly.

  No one answered. No one moved. Then at last it was Freeboard who broke away from them and strode toward the curve in the shoreline. One by one, then, slightly faltering, the psychic and the author followed. Apprehensive but satisfied, Case stayed behind. He looked to his right. Then he walked to a marshy, reeded area, where he parted a clump of brush and stared sadly at the tiny, sun-bleached skeletons of what appeared to have been two dogs. He looked up at a sound from around the bend. A horrified shriek. Freeboard. Case sighed and looked regretful, shaking his head. He hastened to catch up with the others.

  Around the bend Anna Trawley had fainted. Their eyes wet with tears, Dare and Freeboard helped her up, and then together, legs trembling, they walked toward the shore where they stood and stared mutely at the rusted wreckage of a capsized motor launch whose name, though blistered and faded, could be read: Far Traveler.

  A tiny sob escaped Trawley.

  “We’re all dead,” said Freeboard numbly.

  Dare nodded his head, looking dazed.

  He said, “We died in the storm coming over.”

  “That’s correct.”

  They turned and saw Case coming toward them. When a few yards away, he stopped and surveyed them, and then said to them:

  “You were the ghosts haunting Elsewhere.”

  With a whimper, Trawley slumped and fell back against the wreckage. Dare reached out a trembling hand to Freeboard.

  “Hold my hand, love,” he said, his voice quavering slightly.

  Freeboard took his hand and gripped it firmly.

  “It’s okay. I’m with you, Terry,” she said.

  “And I with you.”

  Case appraised them for a moment, then spoke. “I never quite completed my history of the house,” he began. “I don’t suppose you’d like to hear it.”

  “Oh, now, stop that,” snapped Dare, recovering. “Bad enough to be dead without having to stand in the damp and hear tired old rhetorical devices. Could we simply go on with it, please?”

  Case smiled. “For the longest time—years after their death—Edward and Riga Quandt haunted the mansion, frightening and unbalancing the tenants, even killing a few, by the force of their hatred and rage at one another. But by the middle of the eighties they had made their peace, accepted their deaths and decided to move on. But then four years ago, you came. You and the launch captain died coming over. The captain moved on. You three didn’t. Or, to be more precise—you wouldn’t; you refused to accept that you were dead.”

  “Yes, I know that now,” Dare sighed. “I understand. I see everything clearly now. Very clearly.”

  “In that case you can explain why you refused to accept your death,” Case challenged. “Can you do that, Mr. Dare?”

  “Yes, of course. I was terrified that death meant damnation.”

  Case nodded. “Quite so. And you, Anna? Can you see what held you back?”

  “Only dimly, I’m afraid.”

  “You’d grown addicted to your grief for your daughter.”

  “Oh, dear God!”

  “Strange attachments that we make, don’t you think?”

  Trawley shook her head. “Could that really be so?”

  “Am I some kind of orphan here?” Freeboard said testily.

  “Oh, Joan,” said Case.

  “Oh, yeah, Joan.’ Cheezus-peezus,” she grumbled.

  “You were terrified of dying,” Case told her.

  “Shit, so’s everyone. Come on, now. What else?”

  “You couldn’t bear to let go of your toys,” Case said gently.

  Dare turned to her loftily and sniffed, “So immature.”

  Freeboard glared.

  “And what now?” Trawley asked. “Do we leave here?”

  “That’s entirely up to you,” replied Case. “You may choose to cross over or choose to stay. In the meantime, my assignment here is mercifully finished.”

  Freeboard wrinkled up her nose. “Your assignment?”

  “Yes, Morna and I—we were sent here to lead you to discover the truth. Each time in the past that you almost confronted it, you’d reject it and then start the whole cycle all over, reliving again and again your first arrival here at the mansion; all but the shipwreck, of course; you blocked that out, just like everything else that would bare your delusion. That’s why you had no memory of your walk on the beach, Joan, because you knew around the next bend was Far Traveler. Incidentally, you’ve been acting out this fantasy for years, dear hearts, even after we arrived here to help. Stubborn sorts!”

  Trawley gasped and put a hand to her cheek.

  “And so that’s why you seemed so familiar to me.”

  “Yes.”

  Trawley sighed. “So it was not another lifetime.”

  “No, Anna,” said Case.

  “I’m crushed.”

  Dare turned to Freeboard and spoke to her quietly. “Isn’t it hysterical? You couldn’t sell the house because you were haunting it.” Freeboard lowered her head into a hand. “Honest to God, if you weren’t dead already …” she murmured.

  “Speaking of which,” spoke up Trawley. “We were eating and drinking and all that sort of thing. Have we got new bodies?”

  “Heavens no,” replied Case. “It’s all an illusion, my dear, nothing more. You’ve all been creating your own reality. The island and the mansion are solid, they are here, but you’ve all reconstructed them to fit your delusion.”

  “We’re not solid?” the psychic persisted.

  “You are not.”

  “Not even astral sort of somethings or other?”

  “Give it up,” Dare advised her.

  “Get a life,” added Freeboard in an undertone.

  Dare turned to her and nodded approbation.

  Case lifted his chin. “Now then, what have you decided?” he asked. “I must say, if nothing else, I do hope that if you cling to the earth you’ll at least have some pity on those poor, abused people who’ve been trying for so long to live peacefully at Elsewhere. You know; Paul Quandt and his family, poor darlings. You’ve given them a devil of a time. No pun intended.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” asked Dare.

  “You had them ter
rified out of their wits! You remember all that burning and flinging about and those nightmarish poundings that so frightened you all? Don’t you know what was causing all that?”

  “I can hardly wait to hear,” Dare said dryly.

  “The Quandts brought in Jesuit priests to drive you out!”

  The author turned to Freeboard with a smirk of satisfaction.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Oh, be quiet, Terry.”

  “Priests!”

  “Shut—up!”

  They heard someone clear his throat. It was Case. “And so what’s it to be?” he asked. “A change of frequency? I certainly hope so. I must say, I’ve grown fond of you all. Very fond.”

  Freeboard looked down and shook her head, uncertain.

  “Boy, I really don’t know,” she said.

  Case looked at her with fondness.

  “I must say, I would miss you, Joan.”

  She looked up in surprise and said, “Me?”

  “There’d be no more loneliness there. No more tears.”

  Freeboard’s eyes began to fill.

  “That’s the deal?” she asked.

  “That’s the deal.”

  “This world was never meant to be a home to us, Joan,” said Case. “This world is a one-night stand.”

  Abruptly Freeboard’s eyes lit up in surmise. “Hey, it’s you! You’re the angel in my dream! Gabriel! ‘The clams aren’t safe’; that meant the river!”

  “Well, I know what I’m doing,” said Dare.

  Freeboard turned to him and lifted an eyebrow. “You’re going?”

  “Yes!” exclaimed Dare. “I’m off!” The author threw a kiss in the direction of the river. “Adieu, space-time!” he called out. “Be good!”

  He was beginning to disappear.

  “Hey, wait for me!” Freeboard shouted.

  She, too, was beginning to vanish.

  “Adieu, sucky speed-reading critics and reviewers!”

  Dare was almost invisible.

  “Hey, slow down a second, will you?” Freeboard nattered.

  “Oh, well, of course, I’m at a much higher frequency, Joanie.”

  The next moment they were gone. But a raucous cry of pique and frustration was heard, then a slap, and then the voice of Dare complaining: “No hitting in the afterlife, Joanie!”

  Case and Trawley remained, and they looked at one another and smiled as they heard a dim yapping, as of two little dogs.