The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller (30 page)

Rose was too worried to relax. Martin was out there, alone, with
him.
She wanted to hide, but she couldn’t. She had to see if he was okay. So she stood up and walked into the big white room. It was so quiet now. So quiet. Rose took a tiny step toward the door with her tiny left foot, then stopped, wishing she had more courage. She took another step anyway.

I wanted to cheer her on. Tell her how brave she was. Tell her that courage didn’t mean you weren’t afraid, it meant taking those tiny little steps despite your fears! I thought about giving her a bigger, longer pep talk, but it really wasn’t necessary. Before she took another halting step, Paul opened the door.

“Dearie, could you give us a hand?” he asked sweetly. “Martin had himself a little faint and bumped his noggin.”

Rose ran past Paul down the hallway so fast she left skid marks on the white floor. Martin was lying a few feet from the kitchen table, a puddle of drool beneath his open lips. “Oh, God!” she shouted, dropping to her knees, cradling his prickly head. “Baby…talk to me!”

“I’m afraid he isn’t feeling too chatty,” Paul said, leaning over her shoulder. “He’s suffering from hypovolemic shock. What he needs now is a good long nap, so if you could give me a hand, let’s get him into this nice cushy chair over here.”

Paul didn’t need any assistance relocating Martin, but he loved group participation. He turned Martin over on his back and hooked his hands under his armpits, asking Rose to help out with Martin’s size-twelve feet. Michael entered the kitchen and was quickly recruited to grab another leg. After they eased him into his tan leather Barcalounger, Paul was about to wrap his thumb and forefinger around Rose’s neck in thanks for a job well done when Michael began tugging his sleeve like an animated chipmunk. Paul reluctantly withdrew his grip. As Rose leaned down to pat Martin’s pasty forehead, Michael whispered into Paul’s ear as quietly as he could: “I have to show you something.”

“Could you grab an ice pack from the fridge and cool down the dear boy’s head?” Paul asked Rose. She glared at him, but Paul knew she wouldn’t hesitate to fulfill his request. Rose was in full Florence Nightingale mode and as far as she could tell, Paul was as concerned about Martin’s well-being as she was.

She went to the freezer and pulled out a plastic sleeve that was the perfect size for a forehead compress. Shit, was there anything Martin wasn’t prepared for?

Actually, yes. He wasn’t prepared for Paul’s Vulcan nerve pinch and the ill effects it would have on Rose’s health if Paul left the building with her in the remaining minutes he would be unconscious. The ice pack wasn’t going to help matters either, since it would constrict the local blood vessels even more, thereby lengthening his stay in Neverland.

While Rose had her face in the freezer, Paul and Michael walked down the hallway and into the white room, closing the door behind them. “Hhmph! What do you think about that?” Paul snorted appreciatively. He sat in the white chair and gazed into the blinding vision of nothingness. He kept staring and had the biggest surprise of a very eventful day. The white wall disappeared and he was
seeing
into the hidden realm.
Oh, my! My, my, my! Now this is a room with a view. Looks like I underestimated you once again. It seems you have the gift after all!

“No!” Michael whispered from the closet, frantically pointing at the locker. “Here!”

Paul was extremely annoyed at the interruption. When he saw the bullion and Michael’s reaction, he was more amused than irritated. “Gold? You’re all hot and sweaty over a box of
gold?”

“Duh,” Bean wanted to say, but instead he asked, “Isn’t this the gold you took from Firth?”

Paul looked inside the box. “Some of it, I suppose. There was much more than this.”

“More than this?” Bean asked in a whispered cry. “Are you kidding me?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t kid about that. Firth had gobs and gobs of the stuff.
Be prepared
was his motto and like a good boy scout—or maybe Chicken Little—he stuffed as much in his mattress as he could for that long rainy day he knew was coming.”

Paul paused to savor Michael’s greed-widened eyes, before continuing in a whisper, “And as much gold as he had, Lord Firth was far from the only one, laddy. We paid visits to a number of these survivalists over the years, all with the same morbid doomsday preoccupation and a corresponding certainty in the revival of the gold standard. I can’t see why, but Martin loves the stuff. Meself, I couldn’t care less.”

“How could you not care about
that?”
Michael gasped, pointing at the shiny nuggets.

“Shit, boy, you’re as silly as he is for hoarding it. Let me tell you something about gold. It’s dirty and it’s heavy. If you like things that sparkle, consider diamonds instead. Much easier to travel with. And much, much easier to trade on the international market.” Then he added with a wink, “But if it’s gold that captures your fancy…I suggest you simply take it.”

Michael’s look of shame was instantly replaced with unvarnished admiration and an even more palpable greed. Paul stared back at him like a game show host pointing to door number three. “But what about them?” Bean asked anxiously.

Paul paused as if deep in thought. “Well, Martin will be coming around soon and I’m sure he wouldn’t take kindly to you running off with his precious baubles, now would he?”

Michael shook his head. His knees were shaking too.

“Then I suppose you have no other choice but to kill him while he’s napping.”

“I couldn’t do that!” Michael gasped.

Paul shook his head sadly. “I didn’t think so. So put down the lid and let’s see how the lad is convalescing.”

“You…could do it,” Michael suggested hesitantly.

“Oh, no,” Paul said, shaking his head vigorously, “I couldn’t possibly. Martin’s a dear old friend of mine. Still, I’ll agree it’s the best chance you’ll get and I wouldn’t stand in the way of someone so ambitious. Yet, I’m afraid you’d be totally on your own with this venture.”

Fuck!
Bean clutched the Luger in the pocket of his army coat as he stared at the gold again.
Could he do it? Could he really kill him?
“But if I used this…” Michael mumbled desperately, pulling the gun out, “wouldn’t that bring the cops up?”

Paul chuckled, breathing in the scent of Michael’s rising corruption like a fragrant wine. “So use your hands…a kitchen knife,” he said after a long, deep sigh. “Personally, I don’t care if you use a candlestick in the ballroom with Professor Plum—all I know is that you better think fast. I can’t imagine you’ll stand much of a chance with Martin awake.”

“What about the girl?” Michael asked, thinking as fast as he could.

Paul looked into Michael’s hungry eyes. He knew there wasn’t a chance in Hades that Bean could actually pull it off, but it wouldn’t hurt to let him try
,
would it? It wouldn’t hurt to give the lad some practice!

“I’ll take care of the girl,” he said flatly. “The rest is up to you.”

When Rose heard the door close at the end of the hallway, she stopped halfway between the freezer and Martin, the ice pack numbing her fingers. Then she remembered the way Michael had been looking at the gold.
They’re going to rob him!
She ran over to Martin’s chair. “C’mon, you gotta wake up,” she whispered, shaking him hard.

He was out like a log. She looked nervously down the hallway, wondering what they were up to back there. She tiptoed down the hallway and put her ear against the door. At first, she heard mumbling, then Paul’s voice, “So use your hands…a kitchen knife…”

Rose gasped involuntarily, covering her mouth with one hand while she leaned against the wall for support. Her knees were buckling. She kept listening anyway. Her ear was pressed so tightly against the wood that she could have been standing on the other side.

She missed the part about Firth. But she heard the worst part, about Martin and…her.

“I’ll take care of the girl. The rest is up to you.”

She heard their approaching footsteps and ran as quickly and as silently as she could down the hallway. When she reached the kitchen, it looked like a fork in the road. To the right, Martin, still unconscious in his chair, like a football fan passed out from too much beer and pizza. To the left…the doorway. It was crazy to stay. They were going to kill her. Martin too. But when she saw him there, helpless as a sleeping child, she couldn’t leave him. So she ran over to Martin and shook him so hard his belt buckle jangled. But dammit, he wouldn’t wake up!

BRRRRAAAAAANNNNGGGG!
Michael was turning the doorknob when Martin’s buzzer rang. It was incredibly loud, more like a car alarm than an intercom buzzer. Martin had rewired it. He heard buzzers going off in the apartments on all sides of them too, even above and below.
What the fuck was going on?

Michael timidly stepped through the doorway. Paul gripped his shoulder and pushed him out of the way. He was holding an Uzi in the other hand. Bean fell to the floor. His legs snagged Paul’s ankle, tripping him. By the time Paul disentangled himself and clomped down the kitchen hallway, the buzzers had stopped ringing. He turned into the living room and got a surprise more disconcerting than the buzzer concerto. Martin was awake…and he had a shotgun pointed at Paul’s face.

“Drop it,” said Paul, leveling the Uzi at Rose, who was crouched behind Martin and the Barca. “I’ll spray her with a dozen bullets before your slug even tickles my nose.”

“Shoot him!” yelled Rose. “He was going to kill us while you were sleeping.”

“He wasn’t sleeping, dear…he was unconscious,” Paul corrected her. “And I had no intention of doing you any harm, lad, though I must confess my young protégé here was thinking of relieving you of all those Spanish doubloons.”

“Drop your weapons and walk to the door,” Martin said, glaring from Bean to Paul.

Michael dropped his pistol instantly. Paul groaned in disgust, not lowering his weapon an inch. “You know I’m not one to back down from a challenge, boy. Do you really think this is the best time to get into a firefight—with the cops standing right on your doorstep? Or did you think those buzzers were from the Girl Scout cookie drive?”

“I’m giving you a chance to leave,” Martin said. “I’ll deal with them later…and you too, if that’s what you want.”

Paul looked at Rose and then at Martin’s trigger finger. It was already squeezing.

He could scarcely believe what he was seeing. Martin was awake and had the drop on them to boot. Only an hour earlier, he had rescued Martin at the last possible instant from being gunned down in the street, and now Martin had awakened from his semi-coma just in time to prevent Bean from bushwhacking him. This was incredible. Preposterous! It was destiny.

God is good!
he thought, his eyes glued to Martin’s trigger. Then he rephrased his mental exaltation more suitably to,
God, he’s good!

Yes, it was time to give credit where credit was due, and not to himself for once, though he felt a swell of pride at all his contributions. But no, this was Martin’s victory. He had saved himself. He knew Martin had absolutely no awareness of his accomplishment, or why his buzzer had been pressed so propitiously, but that didn’t matter in the least. It all happened anyway, at Martin’s silent, cataleptic command—by the power of his
will
.

“Hhmph!” Not even Loren could rival such a synchronistic display. Martin’s life had been threatened while he was unconscious and he had done something about it. The final omen had arrived and conveyed with it all his greatest hopes.

Martin was ready. By sunset tomorrow the
Turning
would transform them and…

But what if it wasn’t Martin bending the quantum field? What if Johnny was protecting Martin and that little bitch in preparation for their own ascension into glory? Could his power have eroded to the point where such an outcome was possible? No. He refused to accept that. Martin belonged to him.

Rose and Michael stared at Paul like he was crazy, standing there so motionless, squeezing his trigger, his eyes locked on Martin’s like a
Star Trek
tractor beam, his red-cheeked grin threatening to split his lips.