The Fifth Harmonic

by F. Paul Wilson

  Maya leaned forward, her face intent. “Perhaps you could not help it.”

  “That's a cop-out.”

  “No. Listen to me. Perhaps some stronger force inside was driving you. Perhaps because you are more than a doctor . . . you are a healer. When the Mother chooses her healers, they cannot resist.”

  Not “the Mother” again.

  “Let's not romanticize this,” Will said. “I'm a doctor. A guy with a trade. Someone who's learned about the body and knows a few tricks about how to fix it.”

  “Surely it is more than a trade.”

  “Okay, maybe it is. It's just that sometimes I find myself trying to compensate for those docs who seem to think the M.D. degree confers godhood.”

  “But the fact remains, you were so devoted to your practice that it cost you your marriage. How do you explain that?”

  Will shrugged. He didn't want to get into this. He'd been through it all during marriage counseling. He hadn't had an answer then, and he didn't have one now.

  “Did you always want to be a doctor?” she said.

  “Always . . . much to my father's chagrin. He wanted his only son to be a lawyer, join his firm.” Will shook his head at the memories of their battles. “Never gave up. Went to his grave still trying to convince me to go back to law school and become a medical-legal specialist. But let's get off me and—”

  “But that is why we are here: you.”

  “We're here because of this thing in my throat. Let's get to the bottom line here: Can you do for me what you did for Savanna?”

  “No.” She shook her head and looked away. “I dearly wish I could but . . .”

  Will was surprised by the jolt of alarm that flashed through him. She couldn't turn him away!

  “But what?”

  “Savanna was accepting. She let me reach her. You . . . you have placed many many walls between yourself and someone like me.”

  “How can you say that? We haven't even spent an hour together.”

  She was looking at him again. “I can tell . . . your sixth chakra is completely blocked.”

  “So?”

  “It's also called the third eye. Yours is essentially blind. It would take me years to help you as I helped Savanna.”

  “I don't have years.”

  “I know.”

  They sat in silence, Will wondering why he felt crushed. He didn't believe in any of this hokum anyway.

  “What is your full name?” she said. “What does the ‘W. C.’ stand for?”

  Will took a breath. He'd always hated his name. “Wilbur Cecil Burleigh.”

  Maya threw back her head and made a sound that was half laugh, half groan of dismay. “I should have known!”

  “What's wrong?”

  “Your mother must have sensed how you would turn out. Mothers know.”

  “I don't get it. They're family names.”

  “I have studied names. Each has a meaning, and I believe they attach to people for a reason. ‘Wilbur’ means the shining man, or the resolute brilliant one. Burleigh means dweller behind the fortress walls. And Cecil . . .” she shook her head. “Cecil means blind.”

  Wearily, Will pushed himself up from the chair.

  “Then I guess there's no point in—”

  “But there might be a way,” she said softly.

  “I'm listening.”

  “You will think it radical.”

  “Can't be more radical than what the surgeons and radiologists have in mind. Try me.”

  “You will have to put yourself completely in my hands.”

  He paused, thinking: You're talking to a control freak, lady. Be careful what you ask.

  “I don't know if I like the sound of that.”

  “I am not sure yet what it will entail, and I know it will sound like a huge step to you. But it will be no small step for me either. I will have to put my own life on hold while I concentrate on yours.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because . . . ,” She bit her lower lip. “Because for the longest time I've had the feeling that I was sent—or ‘drawn’ or ‘guided’— here, to this place, at this time, for a purpose. And you may be that purpose.”

  Cue The Twilight Zone music, he thought.

  “Hear me out,” she said, as if she sensed him withdrawing. “Savanna comes to me, I help her; she in turn goes to you, and sends you to me.” Maya's green eyes sparkled with excitement. “Don't you see? A circle has been closed, and now another one opens: You are a healer—a wounded healer—and I believe I am here to help you go on healing. But because you are the shining blind man in the fortress, you must learn to see before you can be healed. And you will not be able to see until we break down the walls of your fortress and let in the light. We must strip away all the layers of insulation you have built up over the years.”

  “Insulation? Against what?”

  “Against the greatest healing force in the universe.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “You will know it when you allow it to find you.”

  Will sighed. “Okay. I'll bite: What do I have to do?”

  Maya rose and began a slow circuit of the basement. “You must liquidate all your belongings and assets, pension plans, everything.”

  “Ah, I see. The old sell-all-that-you-own-and-give-it-to-the-poorand-follow-me routine.”

  “Follow me, yes, but put aside enough money for travel, and give only half to charity. The other half you will put into an irrevocable trust that will go to your daughter or your ex-wife or any charity upon your death.”

  A psychic healer talking about irrevocable trusts—Will's bullshit alarm began to howl. And yet, he was baffled.

  “But the whole idea of my following you would be to circumvent a certain minor complication called death.”

  “The liquidation unburdens you of your lifelong accumulation of material baggage. Those possessions form one of your many walls, but it is the flimsiest, the one most easily breached.”

  “Easy for you to say. What happens on the outside chance that I don't die? Do I get the remaining half back?”

  “No. The whole idea is to cut yourself off permanently from those possessions. Thinking about how and when and if you will get them back will only distract you. You must banish them from your life with no hope of ever retrieving them. That way they cannot distract you.”

  “Then who—?”

  “Two years from now, if you are still alive, the remainder will go to me.”

  The alarms ringing in Will's head rose in pitch and volume.

  “Oh, I see,” he said slowly. “That will bring a windfall your way. Aren't you afraid it will ‘burden’ you?”

  “Not at all.” She gave him a level stare. “Because I will not have it for long. I have uses for it. And if indeed you are alive two years from now, can you say that I will not have earned it?”

  She had him there. But Will knew there was a catch; had to be. He simply couldn't see it at the moment. Just for the hell of it, though, he decided to play along.

  “Okay, let's say I do all that. Then what?”

  “Then you must meet me in Mesoamerica, where we will seek out your own personal cure.”

  “Mesoamerica?”

  “Maya country.”

  The Mayas came from Mexico, didn't they? Hunting for his own “personal cure” . . . really, this was getting more ridiculous by the minute.

  But then again, going away with this strange and beautiful woman . . .

  “And how long will this little trip take?”

  “Two weeks at most—I hope.”

  That did it. Will stuck out his hand. “Nice meeting you, Maya. Thanks for your time, but I've got to be moving.”

  She clasped his hand with both of hers and held on.

  “No. Please, Dr. Burleigh. Do not go.”

  He saw genuine concern in her eyes. For what? The money . . . or him?

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “Nothing. Please, I want
you to think about—”

  “With all due respect, I quite literally do not have time for this. I thought I'd give you a try, figuring I could spare a few days and a few bucks on the very outside chance that there might be something to this. But liquidate all my assets? Travel to Mexico and spend weeks looking for my ‘personal cure’? Sorry. I've lined up better ways to spend my last months.”

  “What could be better than healing yourself?”

  “Traveling to France, catching the harvest in Bordeaux, visiting the chateaux.”

  He'd spotted a notice in The Wine Spectator a few weeks ago and on a whim had booked the trip. He'd always wanted to see France. Finally he was going to do it.

  Will gently pulled his hand free. “I wish you luck. You seem like a decent person who sincerely wants to help, but this stuff isn't for me.”

  “It is not just me who wants you healed,” she said, following him as he trotted up the steps to the first floor. “So does your Mother.”

  He didn't look back. “I told you: my mother's dead—heart attack six years ago.”

  “You know very well that I did not mean your human mother—I meant the All-Mother.”

  “Oh, that mother. How could I forget about her?”

  She went to the desk in the front room and removed a business card from the drawer.

  “Never forget the All-Mother,” she said, pressing the card into his hand. “She will give you a sign. Watch for it. She will smile on you to let you know that she wants you to be saved. Call me when she does.”

  Let me out of here!

  “I'll keep my eyes open. Meanwhile, I've got to run. Bye.”

  And then he was through the door and back on the steaming sidewalk. Back in the real world. Relief poured through him.

  He headed directly for his Rover. As he slid behind the wheel he glanced up and saw Maya standing in her doorway, watching him with her jade stare. She was saying something. He couldn't hear her, but her lips seemed to form the words, “You'll be back.”

  4

  Grézillac, France

  Will sat alone in the dark on the wrought iron settee under the cherry tree at the base of one of Chateau de Mouchac's towers. He swirled his glass of La Louvière 1988. By the light of the rising moon, he stared into the maelstrom of red liquid and asked himself for maybe the hundredth time since sunset, Why am I here?

  A tour of the Bordeaux wine country, eleven people wandering the vineyards, seeing the ways different wines are made, visiting the famous chateaux for tastings.

  Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die —not an empty cliché for Will. He'd been eating way too much cheese and foie gras, and drinking extraordinary amounts of wine. But merry? Not a chance.

  Why am I here?

  For the beauty? Yes, that sounded like a good reason. A few days in rural France, watching the wondrous changes in the light from hour to hour, were all it took to understand why Impressionism had developed here. Hell, it would have been a miracle if it hadn't.

  Rural France . . . Will now considered the phrase redundant. On the train ride from Charles de Gaulle to Libourne he'd been amazed by how much of France was farmland—mile after mile after mile of planted fields. A country of farms and villages with a few cities plopped down here and there like fried eggs on a griddle.

  As he'd traveled farther and farther south, he'd wondered when he would see the first vines. Then he'd entered the wine region and was soon wondering where he wouldn't see a vine. Every square inch of land that was not given over to the absolute necessities of life— things like a house, garage, or driveway—was planted with vines.

  Chateau de Mouchac sat on a small rise in Grézillac, a tiny village in the Entre Deux Mers region of Bordeaux. Entre Deux Mers— Between Two Seas. Not really. Between two rivers was more like it. But since the Garonne and the Dordogne were so tidal, with the Atlantic surging miles upriver at high tide, Entre Deux Mers was not a complete misnomer.

  Someone had begun building Mouchac back in the twelfth century. All that remained now of the original walls were what appeared to be low stone fences. The four towers and the current U-shaped house had been added in the fourteenth century.

  Will marveled that all this had been completed long before Christopher was a gleam in Mr. Columbus's eye.

  Mouchac had its own label, and its vineyards rolled away on the surrounding hills. Will had stood at his bedroom window this morning shortly after dawn, staring in wonder as the liquid rays of the rising sun poured across the tops of the rows of merlot and sauvignon blanc, etching the fields with stripes of golden fire.

  Harvest was in progress. The white sauvignon grapes had been hauled to the winery out back and pressed this afternoon. The juice had been vatted to await the start of fermentation, and the air out here was rich with the yeasty-sour tang of the fromage, the discarded skins and stems, sitting now in a pulpy pile outside the pressing room. Delirious swarms of gnat-sized fruit flies would feast until the leftovers were carted away tomorrow.

  He'd drunk the sparkling pousse rapière aperitif and nibbled some foie gras, but a casual remark by one of the tour's oenophiles had killed his appetite. No longer able to sit still, he'd excused himself from the long, glass-laden oak table and wandered outside, taking a bottle of LaLouviere with him. He'd considered strolling the tree-lined path down to Grézillac's village center, but decided against it. Not much there beyond a few stone houses and mankind's three most durable and indispensable institutions: a church, a graveyard, and a bar. Instead, he'd watched the setting sun ignite pink clouds in the azure sky.

  The remark . . . he'd heard it a dozen times in the past few days, but it had struck home with vicious force tonight. They were tasting a new red, straight from the barrel, and one of the men had said, “Very nice—this should open up beautifully in another five to seven years.”

  Five to seven years? Will had thought. I don't have five to seven months!

  Now the nearly full moon had risen and he was still on the iron bench, suffering the perseverative question: Why am I here?

  Damn. I can't say I'm making new friends . . . I'll never see these people again. I can't even say I'm storing up memories . . . I won't be around to remember any of this.

  And so he was in a rather black mood when Catherine found him.

  “Room for another on that seat?” she said.

  Will shifted to his right and lifted the bottle out of her way.

  Catherine was average height, fortyish, and a bit on the plump side, but lively and pretty in a Lynn Redgrave sort of way. The tour consisted of four couples, plus Catherine and her brother, with Will as odd man out. The tour director had seated them together at the first dinner, and they tended to pair off on the daily vineyard walks. During those walks he'd learned that she too was divorced but had nothing good to say about her ex other than the fact that he was wealthy enough to afford whopping alimony payments.

  Will had gathered from a few chance remarks by some of the other males on the tour that they had a pool going as to when he and Catherine would wind up in the sack.

  Sorry, boys, he thought. No winner.

  He and Annie had had a passably active if not terribly inventive sex life during their marriage, and Will had had a few brief flings since the divorce, but nothing serious. His sex drive, however, seemed to have shifted into low gear since he'd read the path report on the tumor. In fact, sex rarely crossed his mind these days.

  Even if that weren't the case, Catherine could be a little wearing. She seemed to think she was an authority on everything and had a tendency to expound on any subject, no matter how common or widely known.

  And to further dampen any nascent lust, damned if he hadn't begun recently to sense a swelling at the back of his tongue. His imagination? Or was the primary tumor finally announcing its presence?

  If his thoughts were on any woman, it was Maya. Why, he couldn't say. He almost wished she were here. She was a kook, certainly, but an intriguing one, and more interesting than an
yone on this tour.

  “Are you all right?” Catherine said.

  “Oh, I'm just great,” he told her.

  “Good. Because you didn't look so hot when you walked out. We all thought you might be sick.”

  “Just needed some air.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, moving closer. “I—”

  He felt her stiffen and glanced at her. Catherine was leaning forward, staring at the sky.

  “Oh, my God, will you look at that!”

  Will looked up and was startled to see a piece missing from an upper corner of the moon, as if some celestial predator had taken a bite out of it. Just moments ago it had been almost perfectly round.

  Catherine bounded from the seat and dashed toward the chateau, calling for everyone to come out.

  Will stayed where he was while the rest of the party emerged from the dining hall and gathered in Mouchac's courtyard, oohing and ahhing as they gazed skyward. Catherine returned to his side, but remained standing and staring at the shrinking moon.

  “This morning's paper had mentioned that an eclipse was due,” she said, “but I'd forgotten all about it. It isn't going to be a full eclipse, though.”

  The upper three quarters of the moon were gone now, leaving only a glowing horizontal crescent hanging in the sky.

  “Looks like a big grin, doesn't it,” Catherine said. “Like the Cheshire Cat in Alice.” She slipped into her lecture mode. “The monthly crescents of the moon are a result of the angle of the sun, you know. This is different. That's the earth's shadow up there. So in a sense, the earth is making the cat disappear, leaving us with just the smile.”

  Will's glass slipped from his fingers, spilling wine on the grass as he shot to his feet.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “That it's good old Mother Earth creating that smile up there.”

  Shaken, he took a step toward her. “Who are you? Who told you to say that?”

  Catherine backed away. He could see the alarm on her face. “What are you talking about, Will?”

  His head was buzzing like a wasp nest. “Who sent you?”

  She moved further away. “I think you've had too much to drink.”