Shade of Pale (14 page)

His heart threatened to explode from his chest.

One by one, every conflicting passion rose up within him. It quickly became too much to take, and he couldn't bear to look at her. He tried, unsuccessfully, to turn away.

He imagined his own travails, using her as a springboard to face his own demons.

Then, as the swirling whirlpool of feelings closed over his head, he felt the last emotion, the last passionate embrace of life. He felt profound sadness for her.

Jukes got a sense of great spiritual power from the Banshee; the air itself seemed to crackle with it like static electricity. Images flashed in his mind, strobelike, as if his whole life was an open book to her, a series of pictures. Then he saw himself through her eyes for a split second.

He saw himself screaming. He saw the tears streaming down his fear-distorted face. He saw his eyes devoid of all understanding, an idiot's eyes.

He saw himself as he imagined she did—a pathetic, logic-bound huckster, turning neurosis into a livelihood.

Then she raised her hand and all his mental motion ceased. He was suddenly at peace, all his own thoughts washed away.

And he gazed at her.

“Who are you?” he asked.

You know who I am. Her voice echoed in his head telepathically; inside him a chord resonated.

“What are you?”

I am justice. Destiny.

Jukes saw his own breath making misty vapor and realized that the room had suddenly become graveyard cold. He was nearly hyperventilating. Great clouds of air, warm from his lungs, swirled in the space between them.

Jukes had merely to think his question. “Why are you here?”

I seek to intervene, before death.

He was about to ask her if that meant he was going to die when her face rippled. He looked at her now as if through heat waves; she shimmered in and out of focus.

Jukes reached out. She began to fade.

Just before she disappeared her face changed and he saw, for a split second, the face of a monstrous hag.

When Jukes awoke, the sun streamed through the windows with dazzling brightness. It blinded the pinprick f-stop settings of his sleep-shot eyes. The day was well under way, after eleven o'clock, and he was still in bed, sweating.

Was it all a dream? Jukes blinked and tried to recall the way he had felt in the Banshee's presence.

Then he saw the bedsheets, punctuated with droplets of faint pink fluid, dried now.
The tears of the Banshee.

Those tiny dots of color shattered him.

He rejected his conclusion as quickly as he arrived at it. The tearstains had to have a logical explanation; they must. Perhaps they had come from him.

He lay back down in the bed, his head throbbing mechanically. He wanted to call the office and cancel the day's appointments but realized that he was already so late that his secretary would think something dreadfully wrong had happened to him. Why hadn't she called?

The message machine was blinking. There were several messages, but he hadn't heard the phone ring once. She had probably been frantically trying to get in touch and he had somehow slept through it all.

His head ached with the slightest movement. Things were quickly going from bad to worse and, at this rate, would soon be beyond his damage control.

Jukes faced the thought with trepidation—either he was suffering some sort of delusional neurosis because of Cathy … or the Banshee was real.

He stumbled to the shower. As he turned on the water, he tried to separate the nightmare from reality; then he thought,
That's exactly how Loomis felt
.

He wanted to shake off the feeling of profound sadness that he had received from the Banshee, but it clung to him tenaciously. He stepped into the hot water stream and soaped his body.

Why had she come to him? Was he being stalked now, just as poor Loomis had been? Would he suffer the same fate? Fear crept back under his skin, scratching at the outer edges of his sanity like a dog scratching at a locked door.

He let the water pound down on him, willing it to wash away the tangle of feelings. He hoped it was his own sanity that was in question and not the laws of nature.

He turned off the shower and stepped out. As he dried himself, he made up his mind to go into the office after all. He needed to soldier on and walk again in the world of the familiar. People counted on him and he could not let them down.

He forced himself to get dressed even though his hands were still shaking.

Jukes Wahler walked into a wasps' nest of missed appointments.

He did his best to pick up the threads of the day and tie them together, but his heart wasn't in it.

Later that afternoon the phone rang and Jukes picked it up absently. “Hello?”

“Dr. Rice from Columbia is calling on line one.”

“Thank you,” he said as he punched the button.

“Dr. Wahler? This is Fiona Rice at Columbia.”

Jukes felt the bittersweet pang of irony; why did it always have to be like this? He wished he were in a better mood.

“Dr. Rice. You can call me Jukes, you know. I thought we agreed.”

“Of course. I forgot.”

There was an awkward silence, as if she expected him to fill in the conversation the way most men did. Fiona Rice was an attractive woman and it was her experience that men used these gaps in the conversation to ask her out on dates, make compliments, get fresh, or whatever.

So far, Jukes hadn't been at all like any other man she knew. He seemed a gentleman. He was also shy, and she found that utterly charming in a world full of bullish, egotistic bores.

For a second, she'd forgotten why she called.

“I've been thinking about the Banshee—”

Jukes sat up. “Really?”

“Yes, and I thought maybe we could get together and talk about it some more.”

“That sounds good to me. I'm having myself a bad day of biblical proportions.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, Jukes. Is there anything I can do?”

“Ah, no, Fiona, that's OK. I appreciate your concern.”

“Sometimes it helps to have somebody to talk to, and you seem like such a nice guy.”

Suddenly he had an overwhelming urge to be with her, to talk to her, to look in her eyes, to hear her voice. His throat was dry, but he managed to speak evenly. “Let's meet somewhere for dinner.”

“Are you up for an adventure?”

“Sure. Why not?” he said. Normally he avoided adventures, sticking close to the familiar, to the things he knew. With Fiona he felt somewhat embarrassed by his predictability.

He thought,
Why am I doing this? I'm already lying to her
. Adventure? I
hate adventure. This
woman,
this fine woman, why would she be interested in me?

As soon as he thought it, Jukes knew that kind of negative self-assessment was poison. He realized with sudden certainty the terrible damage he was doing to himself. But why was it happening? It was not like him. He was a trained professional, yet he was thinking more like one of his patients.

The loss of emotional equilibrium almost made him dizzy.

What was doing this to him? The Banshee? Cathy? Who had destroyed his structured, logical world and left him unable to find even the most basic answers?

He took a deep breath.
Physician, heal thyself
.

Jukes Wahler did a very unprofessional thing and canceled some of his afternoon appointments. He had never done that before, for any reason. But knowing his patients as well as he did, he knew that none of those scheduled for the rest of the day were in critical condition.

He needed time to think.

The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Room was not crowded. Fiona had suggested it. It was a dark wood-paneled room with filtered light and lots of plants. A big Arthur Conan Doyle fan, Fiona loved the place and came here whenever the opportunity presented itself.

There was an air of respectability and refinement to the place It was never loud or raucous. Fiona thought that was wonderful, especially here, in the heart of the most intense city in the world.

On the walls were framed reproductions of many of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book covers. Their table happened to be under a poster of the cover of a fifties paperback version of
The Lost World
. Across the room from them was a picture of the author with a photograph in his hand. The photograph showed several fairies dancing in an English garden.

Fiona followed Jukes's gaze. Her voice was bright. “Sir Arthur assumed that photograph, an obvious fake, to be absolute proof of the existence of fairies,” she said as they sat down together. “Photographing fairies became all the rage. Few people actually believed in them, but it was quite sensational in its day. People are always interested in things that can't possibly exist.”

Jukes was too distracted to really look at the pictures. His mind was far away.

“Not unlike the Banshee.” She smiled.

Jukes seemed distracted and Fiona wondered what was wrong. She felt his shyness and the great weight that seemed to be on his shoulders.

“Isn't this place great?”

Jukes nodded.

“I come here every once in a while when I want to get away. I love the decor; don't you?”

Jukes nodded again.

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a fascinating man.”

“Something bad has happened,” Jukes said suddenly, changing the subject.

Then Jukes told her about Cathy's abduction. Fiona was shocked. She listened sympathetically, watching the hurt in his eyes grow as he filled in the details. He even gave her some background on Cathy's life, pointing out the failures he'd made as her guardian. After an hour he abruptly stopped talking and ordered another drink.

Jukes became quiet again. She found she could read him like few other men in her life—odd, because she had only known him a day or two. Something about him was so fragile, so vulnerable, and it drew her in. Jukes had never been one to hide his inner feelings from the people around him. He'd always been a guy who wore his heart on his sleeve.

Fiona let some quiet time pass.

She really liked this sensitive, caring man. His eyes were misty now, something she found extremely alluring even though it was the height of his tragedy. Her voice, soft and expressive, slid gently into the quiet minutes like a velvet glove.

“Have you thought of hiring a private detective?”

Jukes looked up. “What?”

“A private eye. They find missing people all the time.”

Jukes nodded. “Well, it has crossed my mind, but isn't that just a lot of Hollywood crap?”

Fiona smiled; she had gotten through. “Not necessarily. I happen to know of a reputable agency right here in this neighborhood.” She fished a card out of her purse and handed it to Jukes. “These guys are excellent. They helped a friend of mine out recently. She was trying to track down her ex-husband. They found him tending bar in the Bahamas.”

Jukes looked at the card.

MERKEN DETECTIVE AGENCY

PRIVATE INVESTIGATION AND SECURITY

SINCE 1962

“You keep their card in your purse? What are you expecting to happen?”

Fiona flashed a genuine smile; her whole face seemed to light up. She had a sparkle in her eye that he hadn't seen until this moment and he suddenly became aware again of how extraordinary she was and, more important, how much she seemed to enjoy his company. She smiled at him in a way that he hadn't seen before.

Jukes found himself wondering what Cathy would think of her. Instantly that thought pulled him back into melancholia. Cathy would like her very much, he thought. She was certainly pretty enough, and intelligent.

“I don't normally carry business cards for private eyes in my purse, but this friend of mine—”

“The one with the ex-husband in the Bahamas?”

“Right. She was very impressed with them and she insisted that I put their card in my pocketbook. I mean they tracked this guy all the way down there; they must be good.”

Jukes was trying not to stare at her. She seemed to get lovelier with every passing minute. He cleared his throat continuously, became aware of it, stopped, then started again, unconsciously.

“That guy probably left a paper trail and lived a normal life. Bobby is underground. I'm sure he's not running around New York using a MasterCharge and a Visa card. The man is a reptile, a bottom feeder. He's probably under a rock somewhere.”

“All the more reason to call. What can it hurt? Like I said before, they're professionals.”

Jukes put the card into his breast pocket. He turned his attention back to Fiona.

“I hope you don't think that I'm like this all the time. It's just that I'm rather upset right now. I really like you and …”

Jesus
, he thought.
My sister's out there with that madman and I'm getting horny? What kind of brother am I?
He became aware that Fiona was staring at him.

“Yes?” she said.

“Ahh, I … well, maybe we could … uhm, maybe we could go out.”

He waited for what seemed like a year for her to answer. It had really only been a few seconds.

“I'd love to,” she said. “I thought you'd never ask.”

Jukes blushed.

Jukes called the Merken Detective Agency and gave them complete descriptions of his sister and Bobby Sudden. He included everything he knew about Bobby, including the music he thought he heard in Cathy's phone call.

They seemed confident and Jukes felt a little better. At least now he could tell himself that he was doing all that could be done. Between the cops and the private detectives, something was bound to happen. The only thing that Jukes was worried about was that Bobby may have split town, taking Cathy out of the city.

But he would not fail her this time. The past would not haunt him again. This time, he would be decisive.

The image of the boy by the boat dock glaring up at him and daring him to fight lingered in his mind. The expression of arrogant stupidity on the boy's face hadn't changed in all these years. He still leered like a bully up the hill at Jukes, freezing time around that terrible moment and accentuating every detail of his own inadequate life.