guest list for July 6, two summers ago, but who had thus far been
unreachable. They were behind the check-in counter, sitting opposite
each other at the oak desk, which had kneeholes on both sides. A pot of
coffee stood within reach on an electric warming-plate.
Ernie composed a telegram to Gerald Salcoe, the man who had rented two
rooms for his family on July 6, the summer before last, and who was
unreachable by phone because his number in Monterey, California, was
unlisted. Meanwhile, Faye went back through last year's guest book, day
by day, looking for the most recent entry for Cal Sharkle, the trucker
who had stayed with them on that July 6. Yesterday, Dom had tried the
telephone number Cal had printed in the guest registry that night, but
it had been disconnected. The hope was that a more recent entry would
provide his new address and phone number.
As they performed their separate tasks, Ernie was reminded of countless
other times throughout their thirty-one years of marriage when they had
sat facing each other at a desk or, more often, at a kitchen table. In
one apartment or another, in one house or another, at one end of the
world or another, from Quantico to Pendleton to Singapore, nearly
everywhere the Marines sent him, the two of them had spent long evenings
at a kitchen table, working or dreaming or worrying or happily planning
together, often late into the night. Ernie was suddenly filled with
poignant echoes of those thousands of huddled conferences and shared
labors. How very fortunate he had been to find and marry Faye. Their
lives were so inextricably linked that they might as well have been a
single creature. If Colonel Falkirk or others resorted to murder to
terminate this investigation, if anything happened to Faye, then Ernie
hoped he would die, too, simultaneously.
He finished composing the telegram to Gerald Salcoe, called it in to
Western Union, and requested immediate deliveryall the while warmed by a
love that was strong enough to make their dangerous situation seem less
threatening than it really was.
Faye found five occasions during the past year when Cal Sharkle had
stayed overnight, and in every case he had listed the same Evanston,
Illinois, address and phone number that he had entered in the registry
for July 6 of the previous year. Apparently, he had not moved, after
all. Yet, when they dialed this number, they obtained the recording
that Dom had gotten yesterday, informing them that the telephone had
been disconnected and that no new Evanston listing existed.
On the chance that Cal had moved out of Evanston into the "Windy City"
itself, Faye dialed Area Code 312 Information and asked if there was a
number for Calvin Sharkle in Chicago. There was not. Using a map of
Illinois, she and Ernie placed calls to Information in the Chicago
suburbs: Whiting, Hammond, Calumet City, Markham, Downer's Grove, Oak
Park, Oakbrook, Elmhurst, Des Plaines, Rolling Meadows, Arlington
Heights, Skokie, Wilmette, Glencoe. . . . No luck. Either Cal
Sharkle had moved out of the Chicago area, or had dropped off the face
of the earth.
While Faye and Ernie worked in the first-floor office, Ned and Sandy
Sarver were already preparing dinner in the kitchen upstairs. This
evening, after Brendan Cronin arrived from Chicago, after Jorja
Monatelia and her little girl flew in from Vegas, there would be nine
for dinner, and Ned did not want to leave preparations until the last
minute. Yesterday, when all six of them joined forces to prepare and
serve the evening meal, Ginger Weiss had observed that the occasion was
almost like a family holiday gathering; and indeed, they felt an
extraordinary closeness though they hardly knew one another. With the
idea that reinforcement of their special affection and camaraderie might
give them strength to face whatever lay ahead of them, Ned and Sandy had
decided that tonight's meal ought to be like a Thanksgiving feast.
Therefore, they were preparing a sixteen-pound turkey, pecan stuffing,
scalloped potatoes, baked corn, carrots with tarragon, pepper slaw,
pumpkin pie, and made-from-scratch crescent rolls.
As they chopped celery, diced onions, cubed bread, and grated cabbage,
Ned occasionally wondered if what they were cooking was not only a
family feast but also the last hearty meal of the condemned. Each time
that morbid thought rose, he chased it away by pausing to watch Sandy as
she worked. She smiled almost constantly, and sometimes softly hummed a
song. Surely, an event that had induced this radical and wonderful
change in Sandy could not ultimately culminate in their deaths. Surely,
they had nothing to worry about. Surely.
After three hours at the Elko Sentinel, Ginger and Dom ate a light
lunch-chef's salads-at a restaurant on Idaho Street, then returned to
the Tranquility Motel at two-thirty. Faye and Ernie were still in the
office, which was filled with appetizing aromas drifting down from the
apartment upstairs: pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, onions fried lightly in
butter, the yeasty odor of baking bread dough.
"And you can't smell the turkey yet," Faye said. "Ned just put that in
the oven half an hour ago."
"He says dinner's at eight," Ernie told them, "but I suspect the
odors'll drive us mad and force us to storm the kitchen before then."
Faye said, "Learn anything at the Sentinel?"
Before Ginger could tell them what she and Dom had uncovered, the front
door of the motel office opened, and a slightly pudgy man entered in a
burst of cold whirling wind. He had hurried from his car without
bothering to put on a topcoat; although he wore gray slacks, a dark blue
blazer, a light blue sweater, and an ordinary white shirt, rather than a
black suit and Roman collar, his identity was not for a moment in doubt.
He was the auburn-haired, green-eyed, round-faced young priest in the
Polaroid snapshot that the unknown correspondent had sent to Dom.
"Father Cronin," Ginger said.
She was as immediately and powerfully drawn to him as she'd been to
Dominick Corvaisis. With the priest as with Dom, Ginger sensed a shared
experience even more shattering than the one which she had shared with
the Blocks and Servers. Within The Event that they had all witnessed
that Friday in July, there had been a Second Event experienced by only
some of them. Although it was a frightfully improper way to greet a man
who was a virtual stranger and a priest, Ginger rushed to Father Cronin
and threw her arms around him.
But apologies were not required, for Father Cronin evidently sensed the
same thing she did. Without hesitation, he returned her hug, and for a
moment they clung to each other, not as if they were strangers but
brother and sister greeting each other after a long separation.
Then Ginger stepped back as Dom said, "Father Cronin," and came forward
to embrace the priest.
"There's no need to call me 'Father." At the moment I neither want nor
deserve to be considered a priest. Please just call me Brendan."
Ernie shouted up
stairs to Ned and Sandy, then followed Faye out from
behind the check-in counter. Brendan shook Ernie's hand and embraced
Faye, obviously feeling great affection for them, though not a closeness
as powerful and inexplicable as the tremendous emotional magnetism that
pulled him toward Dom and Ginger. When Ned and Sandy came downstairs,
he greeted them the same as he had Ernie and Faye.
Just as Ginger had done last night,- Brendan said, "I have a truly
wonderful sense of . . . being among family. You all feel it, don't
you? As if we've shared the most important moments of our lives . . .
went through something that'll always make us different from everyone
else."
In spite of his insistence that he did not deserve the deference
accorded a priest, Brendan Cronin had a profoundly spiritual air about
him. His somewhat pudgy face, sparkling eyes, and broad warm smile
conveyed joy; and he moved among them, touched them, and spoke with an
ebullience that was infectious and that somehow lifted Ginger's soul.
Brendan said, "What I feel in this room only reassures me that I've made
the right decision in coming. I'm meant to be with you. Something will
happen here that'll transform us, that's already begun to transform us.
Do you feel it? Do you feel it?"
The priest's soft voice sent a pleasant shiver up Ginger's spine, filled
her with an indescribable sense of wonder reminiscent of what she'd felt
the first time that, as a medical student, she had stood in an operating
room and had seen a patient's thorax held open by surgical retractors to
reveal the pulsing, mysterious complexity of the human heart in all its
crimson grandeur.
"Called," Brendan said. The softly spoken word echoed eerily around the
room. "All of us. Called back to this place."
"Look, " Dom said, packing a paragraph of amazement into that one
syllable, raising his arms and holding his hands out to show them the
red rings of swollen flesh that had appeared in his palms.
Surprised, Brendan raised his hands, which were also branded by the
strange stigmata. As the men faced each other, the air thickened with
unknown power. Yesterday, on the telephone, Father Wycazik had told Dom
that Brendan was relatively certain no religious element was involved in
the miraculous cures and other events that had recently transformed the
young priest's life. Yet the motel office seemed, to Ginger, to be
filled with a force that, if not supernatural, was certainly beyond the
ken of any man or woman.
"Called," Brendan said again.
Ginger was gripped by breathless expectancy. She looked at Ernie, who
stood behind Faye with his hands on her shoulders, and both their faces
were full of tremulous suspense. Ned and Sandy, who were by the rack of
postcards, holding hands, were wide-eyed.
Ginger felt the flesh prickling on the back of her neck. She thought,
Something's going to happen, and even as the thought took form,
something did.
Every lamp in the motel office was aglow in deference to Ernie's
uneasiness in the presence of deep shadows, but abruptly the place was
even brighter than it had been. A milkywhite light filled the room,
springing magically from molecules of air. It shimmered on all sides
but rained mostly from overhead, a silvery mist of luminosity. She
realized this was the same light that featured in her unremembered lunar
dreams. She turned in a circle, looking around and up through spangled
curtains of brilliant yet soft radiance, not in search of the source but
with the hope of remembering her dreams and, ultimately, the events of
that long-lost summer night that had inspired the dreams.
Ginger saw Sandy reach into the glowing air with one hand, as if to
grasp a fistful of the miraculous light. A tentative smile pulled at
Ned's mouth. Faye smiled, too, and Ernie's expression of childlike
wonder was almost laughably out of place on his ruggedly hewn face.
"The moon," Ernie said.
"The moon," Dom echoed, the stigmata still blazing on his hands.
For one thrilling moment, Ginger Weiss was poised on the brink of
complete understanding. The black, blank membrane of her memory block
trembled; revelation pressed strenuously against the far side, and that
membrane seemed certain to split and spill forth everything that had
been dammed beyond it.
Then the light changed from moon-white to blood-red, and with it the
mood changed from wonder and growing delight to fear. She no longer
sought revelation but dreaded it, no longer welcomed understanding but
withdrew from it in terror and revulsion.
Ginger stumbled back through the bloody glow, bumped against the front
door. Across the room, beyond Dom and Brendan, Sandy Sarver had ceased
reaching up to seize a handful of light; she was holding tightly to Ned,
whose smile had become a rictus of repulsion. Faye and Ernie were
pressing back against the check-in counter.
As scarlet incandescence welled like fluid into the room and filled it
from corner to corner, the stunning visual phenomena were augmented by
sound. Ginger jumped in surprise as a loud three-part crash shook the
sanguineous air, jumped once more as it repeated, then flinched but did
not jump when it came again. It had a cardiac quality, like the
thunderous beating of a great heart, though it featured one more stroke
than a usual heartbeat: LUB-DUB-dub, LUBDUB-dub, LUB-DUB-dub.... She
knew at once that it was the apparitional noise of which Father Wycazik
had spoken in his telephone conversation with Dom, the noise that had
arisen in Brendan Cronin's bedroom and had shaken St. Bernadette's.
But she also knew that she had heard this very thing before. This entire
display-the moonlike light, the blood-red radiance, the noise-was part
of something that had happened the summer before last.
LUB-DUB-dub ... LUB-DUB-dub ...
The window frames rattled. The walls shook..The bloody light and the
lamplight began to pulse in time with the pounding.
LUB-DUB-dub ... LUB-DUB-dub ...
Again, Ginger was approaching a shocking recollection. With each crash
of sound and throb of light, long-buried memories surged nearer.
However, her inhibiting fear grew; a towering black wave of terror bore
down on her. The Azrael Block was doing what it was designed to do;
rather than let remembrance have its way with her, she would plunge into
a fugue state, as she had not done since the day Pablo Jackson had been
killed, one week ago. The familiar signs of oncoming blackout were
present: She was having difficulty breathing; she trembled with a sense
of mortal danger so strong it was palpable; the world around her began
to fade; an oily darkness seeped in at the edges of her vision.
Run or die.
Ginger turned her back on the phenomenal events transpiring in the
office. With both hands, she gripped the frame of the front door, as if
to anchor herself to consciousness and thwart the black wave that sought
to sweep her away. In desperation, she looked through the glass at the
vast Nevada landscape,
at the somber winter sky, trying to block out the
stimuli-the impossible light and sound-that pushed her toward a dark
fugue. Terror and mindless panic grew so unbearable that escape into a
hateful fugue seemed almost preferable, yet she somehow held fast to the
doorframe, held tight, held on, shaking and gasping, held on, terrified
not so much by the strange events occurring behind her but by the
unremembered events of that summer of which these phenomena were only
dim echoes, and still she held on, held on ... until the three-stroke
thunder faded, until the red light paled, until the room was silent, and
until the only light was that coming through the windows or from
ordinary lighting fixtures.
She was all right now. She was not going to black out.
For the first time, she had successfully resisted a seizure. Maybe her
ordeal of the past few months had toughened her. Maybe just being here,
within reach of all the answers to the mystery, had given her the heart
to resist. Or maybe she had drawn strength from her new "family."
Whatever the reason, she was confident that, having once fended off a
fugue, she would find it easier to deal with future attacks. Her memory
blocks were crumbling. And her fear of facing up to what had happened
that July 6 was now far outweighed by the fear of never knowing.
Shaky, Ginger turned toward the others again.
Brendan Cronin tottered to the sofa and sat, trembling visibly. The
rings were no longer visible in either his hands or Dom's.
To the priest, Ernie said, "Did I understand you? That same light
sometimes fills your room at night?"
"Yes," Brendan acknowledged. "Twice before."
"But you told us it was a lovely light," Faye said.
Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers Page 60
