Psychlone (10 page)

“Hello,” he said, swinging the door open. “Pleased to meet you.” He craned his neck. The porch was empty. He looked down and saw a few chunks of gravel on the doormat. Making it back to the couch was difficult. He lay on his back, feet flopped over the far arm, trying to make sense of his feverish impressions. “I'm still dreaming,” he said. “Christ, what a headache."

The door rattled again. Something tinked against the window glass above the couch. Fowler opened his eyes and sat up on one elbow, parting the curtains. Something gray passed out of view, perhaps a squirrel jumping down from the eaves. “Go away."

More liquids was the prescription, always more fluids. In the kitchen, he poured another glass of orange juice and wondered how a bourbon slug would taste added to it. “I'm not that sick,” he decided.

He leaned against the refrigerator as he drank the glass down. The acid juice tickled his throat. He sincerely despised all the debilitating symptoms of colds, all the tiny pains and dull aches and vacant drynesses behind the nose, and overwhelming wetness under the nose ... There were no vitamin C tablets in the cabin or he would be dosing himself without caring whether Linus Pauling was right. If there was the barest chance the ascorbic acid made viruses feel half as irritated as they were making him feel, mega-vitamin therapy was justified. “Death and destruction to all the little buggers.” He returned to the couch and tried to concentrate on a million tiny metal spears, each one going deep into a virus, rupturing its little protein wall, spiking its delivery tube, splintering its insidious genetic material.

Again the door rattled. He decided it was the wind.

Again the window glass tinked. He didn't hear it.

He was deep asleep, his face flushed and beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead, across his chest, and staining the underarms of his shirt.

Something brought him sharply upright on the couch a long dream-passage later. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, clearing away the swimming images. There was a knock on the door. He stood up, preparing to be unsteady. But his footing was strong, his fever was gone and he was no longer weak.

He checked himself over quickly, wiping his nose—which was dry—swallowing without pain in his throat, focusing his eyes without an answering jab in the front of his head. He was well.

“Yes?” He swung the door open. A tall, black-haired man in a fawn-colored business suit, very natty, smiled at him.

“Mr. Fowler? Lawrence Fowler?"

“Larry, yes. And you're—"

“Samuel Prohaska. I'm a reporter for CBS in Sacramento, local news. I called your wife—"

“Not yet, you haven't."

“Well, your friend in Los Angeles, and she indicated you were up here—are up here—with the same doubts I have about the case."

“I don't know if they're the same. You didn't tell the police, did you?"

“No, sir. Nor did I tell my boss. I'm technically on vacation. But I met Henry Taggart when I was covering a book convention in San Francisco."

“Come on in. I'm just getting over something—a cold, I think. I caught it this afternoon and now it's gone."

“What?” Prohaska smiled, confused.

“And my Z has been sandblasted in the driveway, so I can suggest you park your car off the gravel if you value the finish."

Prohaska closed the door behind himself and looked at Fowler doubtfully. Fowler brushed back his hair, straightened his sweater, and returned the look.

“Sam—if I can call you that—are you willing to stick around through tonight? You may find out what really caused it all. Have the time?"

Prohaska nodded.

“I don't think you have any idea what it was."

“Probably not,” the reporter admitted.

“Good. Now be skeptical. I'm going to tell you what's happened to me so far, and I want a sane opinion."

Prohaska sat down on the couch.

“First, something to drink? Plenty of orange juice—vitamin C, you know. I'm beginning to think Linus Pauling is right."

Tim stared blankly out the window. It was a nice house, with a large room for him. Suzanne, Rick's wife, was nice to him, all blond-haired and slender and dressed in business outfits because she worked as a secretary in the church. Very pleasant.

Tim knew he had to get out of there or they would all be dead soon. Even as he built his models or walked with Rick through the new school he would be attending, Tim knew he was a time bomb. Sooner or later, the image of the Lorobu people—and the others—would appear and the blood on his hands would glow, and he would be consumed.

That night, while Tim lay in bed upstairs, a government psychologist visited the house and told the Townsends about the boy's condition. Rick sat in the easy chair, chin in hand. Suzanne perched on the edge of the couch, her face drawn from a long day at work. The thin, birdlike psychologist walked back and forth on the living-room carpet, his knees making faint cracks, as he described Tim's trauma and what they would have to do to alleviate it. Suzanne glanced up at the ceiling. She wanted to ask if Tim should be sleeping so near the baby, but it was too frightening an idea to voice.

Rick didn't half understand what the man was saying. He distrusted psychologists. Suzanne had once had a nervous breakdown and the psychologists had done her no good at all.

“I don't think you'll have to worry about violent behavior,” the man concluded. “Not against you or your child, anyway. Again, I commend you for taking Tim in—"

“He's my brother,” Rick said.

“Yes, and he's a very frightened young boy. Remember that."

“It's going to be hard to forget,” Rick said.

“He has a lot of trauma to overcome, but with your help, I think he can do it. Do you, yourselves, have any problems I might be able to help you with before I go?"

Rick shook his head.

Tim was sitting up in bed, watching the window. The air in his room was cold. The voices were coming again. The hurt ones, the angry ones, the ones half there. One voice emerged that he could understand—Georgette, his mother. She faded and another replaced her. Tim tried to rub his stained hands on the counterpane. “Go away,” he said. “Please go away."

He scrunched his eyes shut. The faces of people from Lorobu flashed in his head like images on a pack of shuffled cards. He twisted his head back and forth, trying to drive out the vision.

He couldn't. Behind the faces, rapidly fading, there arose redness, then a purple smoke, something like water ... and for the first time, he saw them....

Eyeless, mouths open.

He screamed. They remained, calling for him, hungry and in pain. His voice was raw and failing by the time Rick and Suzanne and the psychologist came into the room.

As Tim writhed on the bed, Rick shouted at the psychologist who stood in the door, doing nothing. There was nothing any of them could do, and Tim knew that.

BOOK TWO

Celebrating company, Fowler brought out Jordan Taggart's last steak, fried it with onions, and served it with boiled potatoes and two cans of beer. The reporter ate appreciatively and complimented his cooking.

“You said you met Henry,” Fowler said. “How? What did you think of him?"

“I was covering a booksellers’ convention in San Francisco,” Prohaska said after swallowing a piece of steak. “We were talking about how the conglomerate bookstores were edging out smaller operations. He was telling me about his problems in the area, with the big outfits in Ohio buying all the local chains and running them like rubber stamps. I said I'd like to do a story on it, so he bought me a drink and we talked for several hours. Got quite a story out of it. Ran two three-minute segments in Sacramento. I like books and bookstores, so we met about a month later in San Francisco and visited all the old bookstores around Union Square. He seemed a very intelligent, friendly guy. I invited him and his family to visit mine in Sacramento if they ever came up. But he said he wasn't married. Something of a swinging bachelor, I gathered."

“He did okay with women."

“Then, when they died, I covered the basics of the story for my station. But I couldn't believe it had happened the way the police said. Now, you tell me all this about Jordan Taggart looking out for haunts and I'm not so sure he wasn't crazy."

“Stick around."

“I intend to. One way or another, it's a story."

“But it isn't news any more. How do you justify following up old news?"

“Not all modern journalism is flash-and-go."

“Sounds like a rare bit of wisdom,” Fowler said. He stood and began to clear the table.

“We're both breaking the law, you know,” Prohaska said as he stacked the plates in the sink. He lifted his can of beer. “Breaking, entering, stealing."

“Yes, and I wonder why we haven't been approached yet."

“Nobody knows you're here. Bishop's pretty far away and things are kind of slow up here.” He walked into the living room and looked through the front window. “It's going to get slower, too. It's starting to snow.” He turned back to the kitchen. “You're nuts, you know. Believing ghosts could have killed them."

“Not directly killed them,” Fowler reiterated. “Besides, it was Jordan's idea, not mine. I was brought up here to check it out. And there's evidence—of a sort."

“But do microwave emissions—and I'm no physicist, so you can fool me—always indicate spooks?"

“No. I don't know what they indicate. They're just part of the environment surrounding the event, which was in itself like nothing I've ever experienced. Until something else happens—"

“You sound positive it will."

Fowler smiled. “Until something else happens, you'll have to take my word for it. There is something peculiar going on here."

“Think its connected with Lorobu?"

Fowler shook his head. “I doubt it. Lorobu's a long way from here. I haven't been keeping track of it much. I thought it would end up nerve gas or something, and we'd never really know what happened."

“Whatever it was, it's sealed tight as a drum. Nothing leaks out of that town now."

“Sounds like the defense department to me."

“Yes,” Prohaska said, “but our station got a few stories from eyewitnesses. A highway patrol officer, before he shut up, and a state trooper. Sounds very much like what happened here. Which reminds me—shall we tie bells around each other's neck? Might be safer that way."

“I think staying awake will be enough."

“Your advantage,” Prohaska said. “I had a long drive today. I'm sleepy already."

“Then how about a walk after cleanup?"

When the dishes were rinsed and dried, they put on parkas and stood in the doorway, looking across the gravel drive, the two cars already sprinkled with snow, and the quiet, cold night. “Is this Taggart's jacket?” Prohaska asked, holding up one arm.

“Jordan's, I think,” Fowler said. The reporter nodded.

“Weather forecast was for about a foot of snow tonight. The roads won't be clear until late morning tomorrow."

“I don't intend to go anyplace,” Fowler said. “Not outside of walking distance, anyway. I found a trail that's clearly marked, but we'd better stick to the drive tonight. Perhaps follow the road."

“Real exciting stuff,” Prohaska said. “I'm missing the camera team already."

“I want to keep my head clear. The cabin is comfortable, but I feel vulnerable inside."

“How much more vulnerable outside, then?"

“We can see what's coming."

Prohaska laughed. “Jesus, I feel like I'm in an old Ghost Busters movie. Lon Chaney and Bob Hope. I can't write anything useful about this kind of crap."

They walked along the side of the road for several dozen yards, saying little, keeping their shoulders hunched against the cold air and drifting flakes. Through the quick-flying snow clouds Fowler could see a few bright stars. Then something crashed in the woods to their left and Prohaska jumped. “What was that?"

“An animal,” Fowler said softly, standing his ground, looking sideways through the black trees. “A deer perhaps.” “Or a bear,” Prohaska said. “Want to turn back?"

“No,” the reporter said, reaching into his coat pocket for a cigarette. “Does smoking bug animals, you think?"

“I don't know. I'm not much of a woodsman."

“Funny, I thought you'd be the Sierra Club type."

“Nope, just a well-to-do young executive."

“What in hell are we doing out here, then?"

Another crash, farther away, decided the question for them. “That was back by the cabin,” Prohaska said. Fowler nodded. It can move things, he thought.

“Let's go back and check it out,” he said. “I feel pretty refreshed already."

“That's the word, is it? I'll remember. Refreshed."

The gravel drive was covered by a thin blanket of snow. Everything was still around the cabin and its clearing, as though the snowflakes were absorbing all sound. Fowler walked past the Z, idly brushing snow off its roof. Prohaska was behind him, his cigarette a red star in the dark. The porch light cast a yellow glow across the snow-patched front yard. “Hold it,” Prohaska said behind him. “There's something in front of my car.” Fowler turned and saw the reporter take two steps to the station wagon. “Somebody's moved a bag under the wheels."

Then the reporter stopped. Something in the line of his back made Fowler stiffen. “Come look,” the reporter murmured. Fowler walked up behind him and bent down by the car's bumper. Three great swaths had been cut out of the gravel in front of the station wagon. The dirt, gravel and snow had been piled up under the front wheels, then tamped down smooth to form a slushy mound.

“It'll freeze around the tires and you won't be able to get out,” Fowler said. “Let's dig it out."

“No, look on this side. Just beyond the tire.” Prohaska pulled out his lighter and flicked it on. The flame was steady in the still air. Fowler looked at an extension of the mound. “It's like a head,” Prohaska said, bending lower with the lighter.

The shadows fell at the right angle and they stared at a crude sculpture of a face. There was a long, flat-ended nose and two deep depressions for eyes. “Like a pig,” Prohaska said.