“For Christ’s sake, Harry, you’re bleeding.”
“Not anymore,” the magician and investigator of the paranormal replied in the same distant voice. He unbuttoned his shirt to show his bare chest. The thick, wiry hair there was matted with blood, but there was no longer any seepage. “I’m not even cut. The blood must have come right through my pores. Wow.”
“It’s a sign,” Madame Bellarossa intoned. Her head was tilted back now, her arms still extended out over the table. “They want to be taken seriously.”
John Luft cleared his throat loudly. When the others turned to the young man with the blond hair, dark eyes, and thin face, he took his arm from around his ashen-faced, trembling wife and tapped his watch. “Uh, I really think Linda and I should be toddling off. It’s getting pretty late.”
Suddenly Madame Bellarossa’s head came forward and her eyes opened wide. “That could be dangerous!” she snapped. “They haven’t finished telling us what they want us to know!”
For the first time since the séance had begun, Elsie spoke in words not offered as a prayer. She seemed composed now, determined. She looked directly at John and Linda Luft and spoke in a soft but firm tone. “I understand now that this thing will have to be done if there’s ever to be peace in this house. They’ve spoken to Mary this time, not to me, but I sense that they won’t harm us—as long as they can finish their story. But they want the two of you here. If we listen to all of it, I think they’ll go away at last. God knows I need to sell this house, but in good conscience I can’t allow anyone else to move in here until this is resolved. Especially not a nice young couple like you. I certainly understand your fear—but if you don’t stay and continue, then I can’t let you have the house.”
“That’s just fine with me,” the young woman said in a quavering voice as she turned toward the living room. “I’m out of here.”
John Luft grabbed his wife’s arm, pulled her back beside him. His bright eyes reflected the flickering candles as he looked around at the others, and then finally settled his gaze on Elsie. “You’re saying that this could be like a kind of exorcism? If the ghosts tell Mary what’s on their minds, and Mary tells us, then they’ll leave the house when you leave?”
It was Madame Bellarossa who answered. “That is correct.”
“Then let’s do it,” Luft said, virtually pushing his wife back down into the chair she had jumped out of when Mary had collapsed.
“Hoo, boy,” Harry Parker said, flapping the ends of his shirt in an effort to speed the drying of the blood that had soaked it, “I’ve been exposing phony-baloney occult scams for most of my life, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t mind telling you I’d really like to see how it all comes out.”
“No,” Garth said as he walked back to where Mary was still sitting on the floor, looking dazed. He put a hand under her arm, helped her to her feet. “Let’s not do it.”
The others stared at him in stunned silence, which Mary finally broke. “Garth? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Elsie,” Garth said to the old woman. “It’s your house, and your ghosts, but it’s my wife they’re using as a mouthpiece—and they knocked her to the floor to get her attention. That’s a bit rough, and it’s not at all my idea of how to start a pleasant conversation. Neither is making Harry bleed. If they want to talk to me, that’s fine, but I’m not letting Mary sit back down at that table. The only hand she’s going to hold for the rest of the evening is mine.”
“Garth,” Mary said, a quiet urgency in her voice, “it’s all right. I want to do it—for Elsie, and for John and Linda. I want to help end all this. They don’t mean to hurt me; they don’t want to hurt anybody. They’re just very angry. They want to be heard.”
“That is correct,” Madame Bellarossa whispered.
Garth shook his head. “If they need a lawyer, then let them talk through me.”
Mary said, “They won’t. They’ll only talk through me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mary replied, and then put her arms around her husband and gently kissed him on the cheek the way she had when she’d drifted up from sleep and found him awake the night after he had discovered Elsie cowering outside their back door. “Whom are you calling?” she had asked dreamily.
“Elsie.”
“Garth, it’s past midnight.”
“That’s why I’m calling. I’ve been trying to reach her for the last fifteen minutes. There’s no answer.”
“Remember she said she heard the phone ringing all the time. Now she’s probably not answering the phone, even when it really is ringing. With Elsie, I’d say that’s a healthy sign.”
Garth hung up, waited ten seconds, and then dialed again. “I’m worried about her. I want to talk to her, make sure she’s all right.”
“Garth, let the poor woman sleep. If her ghosts were hassling her, she’d be over here just like she was last night. You’re starting to act like you believe in them.”
“I believe in terror, Mary,” Garth said evenly, hanging up the phone and rising. “That’s what I saw in Elsie. I had an uncle who died from what he believed, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to Elsie. I’ll be back in a little while.”
He quickly dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers, took the flashlight from a shelf in the kitchen, and then went out into the night, down to the beach. A full moon painted the river silver and silhouetted the Victorian mansion that loomed up out of the darkness into a sky of midnight blue as he approached it. He knocked on the door, waited, and then knocked again, louder. When there was no answer, he retrieved the spare key he knew Elsie kept behind a potted plant on the porch, opened the door, and let himself in. He started as he swept the beam of his flashlight across the hardwood floor of the foyer and a moving, shiny carpet of cockroaches skittered away in all directions. There was a strong smell of rotting garbage.
“Elsie?!” he called. “Don’t be afraid! It’s Garth! I’ve come to make sure you’re all right!”
There was no answer. He reached to his left and flipped a light switch, but the house remained shrouded in darkness. From somewhere upstairs, barely perceptible, came flopping and scratching sounds, as if someone or something with long nails was hopping around and slapping bare hands or feet against the floor. He went to the foot of the stairs and the flopping and scratching sounds grew more pronounced.
“Elsie?!”
There was another flop, the crash of a lamp or dish hitting the floor, and then he heard a soft moan. He immediately bounded up the stairs, heading for the old woman’s bedroom on the second floor. The door was closed. He yanked it open, stepped into the room.
Garth Frederickson was a man who had faced death a hundred times, and he no longer feared anything, but he was thoroughly startled when something slimy, soft, and heavy smacked into the side of his head and claws raked his cheek. He stumbled and went down to one knee as the thing fell off him and leaped away into the darkness, landing fifteen feet away with a sharp slapping sound. But the shock passed as he realized almost immediately what the thing was, and even as his heartbeat rapidly began to return to normal, anger, swift-running and hot, rose in him.
He got back to his feet and swept the light around the room until the bright beam found Elsie huddled on the floor beside her bed, her arms wrapped around her. Her face was purple, and she was rapidly opening and closing her mouth in a desperate struggle to breathe.
“It’s Garth, Elsie,” he said, flashing the light on his face as he quickly went to her. He set the flashlight on a dresser, where it illuminated half the room, and then lifted Elsie up and sat her on the edge of the bed. He braced one hand against her back, then gently pressed on her chest, released the pressure, pressed again. “Breathe, Elsie. Come on, now; breathe. I’m here now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“The ghosts …”
“I’m pretty sure your ghosts have finished their work for the night and gone home. If they are still in the house, I
guarantee I’ll break their necks and make real ghosts out of them.”
There was a scratching sound in the half of the room still in darkness, and then a heavy slap. The woman’s eyes went wide, and she again began to hyperventilate.
“I’m going to take care of that in a minute,” Garth said easily, “just as soon as I get you breathing normally. It won’t do for you to have a heart attack. I’m here, and I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. I’m going to see what I can do about taking care of your ghost problem. Now take a deep breath and tell me you’re not afraid any longer.”
Gradually, the woman’s color and breathing became more regular. She took a deep, shuddering breath and slowly let it out. “I’m not afraid.”
“Tell me again.”
“You’re here, Garth. I’m not afraid.”
“Good,” Garth said as he rose from the bed and picked up the flashlight. “Now just sit there; be calm, and keep breathing normally.”
He stepped to the foot of the bed, swept the light around the floor, finally spotted the thing in a corner. In three quick strides he was across the room. He bent down as the creature was about to leap away, gripped it firmly around the haunches, picked it up. Thick, powerful legs with webbed feet clawed at the air as the animal writhed in Garth’s hand.
“Oh, my God,” Elsie said, putting her hands to her mouth. “What is it?!”
“Just what it looks like, and it certainly didn’t come out of the Hudson. Do you need to use the bathroom right away?”
“I … don’t think so.”
“Good,” Garth said evenly as he casually tossed the creature into the bathroom adjoining the bedroom, then closed the door. “I’ll take care of it later.”
“Do you believe me now about the ghosts, Garth?”
“I most certainly do, my dear, and I plan to do a little exorcising. Listen to me: I’m going downstairs to get the lights back on; it’ll take me about five minutes. I want you to just sit where you are, keep taking deep breaths, and think happy thoughts. I’ll be right back. Things are going to be all right now. Okay?”
“O … Okay.”
The living carpet of cockroaches scattered from the beam of light as Garth descended from the second floor and crossed the living room, flipping light switches as he went. The smell of rotting garbage grew more pungent as he went down into the basement. He opened the circuit-breaker box, flipped all the switches that had been turned off, and the lights in the house came back on. Next he moved around the cavernous, dust-filled basement, brushing aside thick, intricate tapestries of cobwebs as he went. The wine cellar that hadn’t been used in decades was empty, save for a mound of broken black plastic bags that was piled to waist height, spewing garbage. River rats as big as woodchucks scurried away as Garth swept the beam of his flashlight over the expanse of rotting food. He found a second cache of garbage in a tool room, and in another five minutes found an unlocked basement window. He locked the window, and then went back up to the second floor, where he found Mary, dressed in jeans, sandals, and a baggy sweater, sitting on the bed next to Elsie.
“We owe our friend and neighbor an apology, Mary. She really has been haunted, and somebody did, in fact, touch her neck—probably after soaking his hand in ice water. Now I plan to do a little haunting of my own.”
“What the hell is that?!” Mary said, jumping off the bed as the creature in the bathroom smacked against the door.
Garth opened the door, went into the bathroom, and once again grabbed the animal, which had landed in the bathtub. He brought it into the bedroom, held it up. “It’s just a big frog.”
Mary’s eyes went wide as she stared at the creature, and she laughed nervously. “A very big frog!”
“It is that. I’d estimate this guy weighs upwards of fifteen pounds, and, unless it was stolen, it set Elsie’s ghosts back about a thousand dollars. These big guys come from South America. You may remember a few years back when some guy imported one and tried to enter it in that famous frog-jumping contest. It was finally disqualified after a lawsuit, but not before it had eaten half the competition.”
Mary shook her head. “Garth? I saw all the cockroaches downstairs, and the whole place reeks of garbage. You and I do know that Elsie keeps a clean house. What’s going on here?”
“Elsie’s going to tell us,” Garth replied, tossing the giant frog back into the bathroom and once again closing the door. He went to the bed, put his hand on the old woman’s shoulder. “Elsie, you said once before that you couldn’t afford to, as you put it, sell the house for a song. But somebody has been trying to buy it for a song, haven’t they?”
“Well, I don’t …”
“Did somebody come to you and make an offer after the stories about this house appeared in the papers and you couldn’t get any more buyers?”
Elsie brushed a wisp of white hair away from her eyes and looked up at Garth. “Yes—a really nice young couple. They came to see the house two or three times, looked all around from the attic to the basement. They made me an offer, but it was way too low. How did you know?”
“Being in this house must enhance my psychic powers. Elsie, I want you to tell me all you know about this nice young couple.”
She did, and in a few days Garth had compiled sufficient information from computerized bank files, motor-vehicle records, credit bureaus, former employers, real-estate agents, the former owner of the house in an expensive section of Westchester where John and Linda Luft now lived, and their current neighbors, to visit the Luft home, where there was a large For Sale sign stuck in the front lawn.
“John Luft?”
The young man who had answered the door stared at Garth, making no effort to hide the suspicion in his dark eyes. He had the look of a man who was suspicious of a lot of people, and with good reason.
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“My name’s Garth Frederickson. I’m a friend of Elsie Manning. She asked me to come around and speak to you.”
At the mention of Elsie’s name, the suspicion left John Luft’s eyes, instantly replaced by an expression of innocence and charm. “Elsie Manning. What a lovely old lady. How is she?”
“Actually, she’s not doing too well—that house is really too much for her. She’s very anxious to sell it, and you and your wife were the last people to express an interest. That’s why I’m here.”
Now other things moved in Luft’s eyes, greed and triumph. He started to laugh nervously, cut himself off, licked his thin lips. “Uh, sure. Come on in.”
Garth entered the house and followed John Luft, who was walking jauntily and snapping his fingers, into a living room decorated with huge, garish, abstract paintings that Garth judged were expensive, but of dubious artistic merit.
“You want a drink or something?” Luft continued, motioning for Garth to sit down in an overstuffed chair.
“No, thanks,” Garth replied, easing himself down into the chair and casually crossing his legs.
“Garth Frederickson,” Luft said as he sat down on a sofa and studied the rangy, powerfully built man with shoulder-length, thinning, wheat-colored hair and soulful brown eyes who was also studying him. “You’re pretty well known, right?”
“Am I? I don’t have the slightest idea.”
“Yeah. I’ve seen your picture in the papers. You’re a private investigator. You’re married to Mary Tree—my wife and I love her music, buy all her records—and you’ve got a weird little brother who’s even more famous than you are.”
Garth smiled thinly. “It sounds like you’ve got me pegged.”
“Uh, how come Elsie sent a private detective to talk to me?”
“She didn’t send a private detective; I’m here as her friend and neighbor. She asked me to speak with you on her behalf.”
“She’s … ready to sell the house?”
“Yes. Are you and your wife still interested in buying it?”
Luft again licked his lips, swallowed, and cleared his throat. “Is she willing to accept the las
t offer we made her?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars, yes.”
The other man leaned back on the sofa, grinned. “How about that?”
“You’ve got yourself quite a bargain, Mr. Luft; two hundred thousand dollars for a house worth three quarters of a million. Considering the neighborhood you’re in, you’ll probably get more than enough from the sale of this house to buy the one in Cairn outright.”
“Yeah, well, Linda and I have been pretty lucky with our real-estate investments. We got this house at a good price, but for a very good reason. We were ready to go into hock up to our eyebrows to buy it, and then our building inspector discovered not only that the well on the property is polluted with toxic waste, but also that there was a big termite infestation—lots of structural damage. There were other major problems as well. The owner was so disgusted that he just wanted out. He accepted our second offer. We’ve put a lot of money into fixing up this house.”
“I’ll bet you have.”
“Had to take out a huge home-equity loan to pay for the repairs. That’s why we couldn’t afford to offer Elsie any more than we did. But then, I figure we’re doing her a favor. What with what happened with the court case and all, she’s really in a jam. Nobody else wants to buy it, and she needs to go to a nursing home.”
Lone Wolves Page 9
