The Lower Deep (19 page)

"The house in there.
Yes."

With a surprising show of energy and agility, Driscoll got out and loped across the dirt road to the gap in the fence. For two, three minutes he stood there with his head cocked forward, like an ancient, bony rooster. Then he retraced his steps, got into the Jeep, and wagged his head.

"I think not."

"You don't feel anything?" The words came out straight; Steve was too tired to add sarcasm.

"What I feel at the Azagon, becoming more and more menacing every day, I don't feel here. No. Our adversary isn't here, Steve. The voodoo people may not like us, but evidently it isn't they who are trying to destroy us. Perhaps we are being deliberately misled—by our real enemy—into thinking they are!" Driscoll solemnly reached out and laid a trembling hand on Steve's knee. "We must be on our guard, Stephen. Never, never relax. The Devil is cunning, you know."

Steve was inclined to discount the Devil at that moment. His head hurt savagely. He was tired and annoyed. Was it too late to call Louis Clermont and at least seek his advice over the phone? He must try. But first a shower.

Or was it a swim he longed for?

Yes, that was it—a swim. If only he could go down to Anse Douce and tear off his clothes and
wade out into that lovely, cooling water in the moonlight.

If he could do that, the torment would surely leave him. But he couldn't, worse luck. He was already criminally late in writing to the wife of their missing patient, Lawton Lindo, and had set tonight, Wednesday, as the absolute deadline for doing so.

What, dear God, was he going to say to her?

G
eorge Benson was awake and alert, waiting for it to happen again. To bait the trap he had gone to bed before ten, complaining of fatigue and a sore throat. It was Thursday night.

"Are you coming down with a cold, you suppose?" his wife had asked with a frown of seemingly genuine concern.

"Could be. Half the fishermen seem to have one."

"Better take something, then. I have some tablets that will help you sleep."

"Great. Thanks."

He had only pretended to take the sleeping pills, of course. After the way his dear wife had been behaving lately, any medicine she might give him was suspect. Then with his door ajar he had put a good deal of talent into a loud, rhythmic breathing with a touch of snoring, to convince her the drug was doing its intended job.

It must have been about eleven—he could not look at the bureau clock without giving the game away—when the door was gently opened wider and Alice came in to stand beside his bed. The sound of her breathing led him to believe she was gazing down at him in some peculiarly intense way, and he longed to open his eyes and look, but dared not. Anyway, for safety's sake he was lying with his face to the wall.

"Sleep, George," she said. "Sleep . . . sleep
and dream. Dream the dream again, George. Do you hear me?"

The same as before, George thought. So he hadn't just dreamed it that time. But could he be certain? On that occasion he had lain there looking up at her as she leaned over him in her froth of a nightgown. Had been keenly aware of how enticing she was. Had been mesmerized, almost, by the nearness of those lovely but always untouchable breasts. So perhaps he had dreamed some part of it.

The words, though, appeared to be some kind of ritual, and now she was using them over and over. "Sleep, George. Sleep . . . sleep . . . and dream. Dream the dream again . . .

Did she really think she had some power over him—hypnotic, perhaps—that would compel him to obey her? That would keep him sleeping while she went out to spend the night with a boyfriend? Evidently so, for she turned now and left the room, not even bothering to be especially quiet
about it. The door closed behind her with a distinct click that she must have known would wake him were he not under a spell.

Well, she was wrong. He merely felt a little drowsy, no doubt because he had lain there so long feigning sleep. And he had a headache now, for some reason. But when he heard her leave the house a few minutes later, he pushed himself out of bed in a hurry despite the headache and drowsiness. In just a few seconds he was at a front-room window, watching her.

This time, by God, he would follow and find out where she went. Maybe it didn't matter much. Maybe he wouldn't actually challenge her. But the more he knew about what was going on, the safer he'd feel. Turning from the window, he hurried back to his bedroom.

It took him a few minutes to pull slacks on over his pajamas and step into his shoes. The hurt in his head made him clumsy and slow. On the way through the dark living room to the front door he stumbled, lost his balance, and lurched into a wall, ending up on one knee in a wave of vertigo with his head seemingly about to explode. Doggedly, though, he struggled to his feet and went on.

With the door shut behind him he stumbled again on the front steps and went staggering out into the middle of the street before regaining his balance. Alice was still in sight, though—at least, someone was in motion far up the street. Aware that he might be doing a stupid thing, because anyone seeing him would surely think him drunk, he went reeling after her.

Except for the two of them, the town appeared
to be deserted. Shops were closed and dark at this hour. Here and there, in houses whose occupants left lamps burning all night, windows appeared to be pale yellow eyes peering out at him as he stumbled past. A prowling dog, all ribs, voiced a snarl at his intrusion and then fled. There were small scurrying sounds as rats scavenged among the refuse in the gutters, and of course the usual high aroma of garbage and donkey droppings. And becoming more unbearable by the minute was the hideous hammering in George's head.

His wife, he suddenly realized, had turned off the main street and disappeared. Had she seen him trailing her and made the move to throw him off, or would she have turned anyway? In either case, he had lost. No way could he quicken his pace enough to pick her up again. In fact, he could scarcely keep from sinking to his knees in the middle of the street.

Shuffling to a halt, he stood there with both hands pressed to his head. Dear God, what was causing it to pound this way? What could he do to stop the torment? Giving up his pursuit of Alice, he turned himself around and shuffled back to the house, where he walked like a zombie to his room and collapsed on the bed.

Not to sleep. The agony above his eyes would not permit that. Just to lie there on his back, staring with tear-filled eyes at the ceiling and fearfully wondering what was happening to him.

At the Azagon that Thursday night, while George Benson watched his wife disappear down the street, Steve Spence also watched from a window.

This one, in a second-floor bathroom, overlooked the grounds at the rear of the retreat.

Steve had gone there for water with which to down more aspirin, after working with a patient in that part of the building. He still had a savage headache. The feeling of pressure that had begun during his drive through The Hounfor had never left him. It had abated at times, chiefly when he happened to be too busy with the many problems of his job to think much about it, but whenever he let himself question the reason for it, there it was waiting to be endured again.

As a man who had enjoyed good health all his life, who in fact still looked and felt rugged enough to give a good account of himself in almost any athletic endeavor, he was deeply apprehensive.

There were night-lights in the Azagon's hall bathrooms, so he had not needed to turn on a brighter one to obtain his glass of water. His eyes, then, were adjusted to dimness when he heard someone cough in the yard below and stepped to the window.

Easily identified by his slouch and general build, the cougher was Ti-Jean Lazaire, the Azagon's chef, walking across the lawn toward the road. The same road he had traveled before, on his way to the house of the coffin-maker in Dame Marie's voodoo, village.

Steve watched, undecided. Should he try to follow again? His aching head said no, leave it alone; if anything were going on there in The Hounfor, Lieutenant Etienne would have uncovered it. But Lawton Lindo was still missing. Elizabeth Langer's tale of having seen him swallowed up by the
sea had been neither proved nor disproved. If following Lazaire again would shed even a faint glow on that seemingly insolvable puzzle

Wait, though. Someone else had the same idea, it seemed. Even as Steve hesitated, weighing the torment of his headache against the remote chance that another night of lost sleep might help to solve the mystery, he saw the back door of the Azagon open and a second figure emerge. This one, in khaki pants and a flowered sport shirt but gliding with the grace of a ballet dancer, was also easily identified.

Juan Mendoza, here in St. Joe to recover from a nervous breakdown, was apparently as keen on being a sleuth as Steve was. As the Cuban glided across the lawn in Lazaire's wake, Steve felt a vast relief. With the pressure in his head increasing, he knew he should slow down.

Pressure? Strange that he should think of it that way. Earlier, Paul Henninger had used that very word to define the cause of
his
headaches, and now the Belgian had apparently given up. Unable or unwilling to leave his bed, he had relegated his duties to assistants and even protested when Circée Orelle, the husky head housekeeper, insisted he get up so she could change his sheets.

He was too ill to seek help elsewhere, as Louis Clermont had rather vaguely suggested. The "pressure" was just too debilitating, he insisted.

Come to think of it, several others had also been using the word "pressure" of late, in lieu of something more precise. Lindo, Morrison, Wynn, old Tom Driscoll . . . how many others?

"Just what do you mean by 'pressure,' Paul?"

"Well, Doctor, what do you mean by it? You've been using the word, too, you know."

Yes. Well, in his case it meant a persistent pain starting above the eyes and extending over the top of his head to the back of his neck. As though his head were in a rubber-jawed vise that was slowly being tightened. The Spanish Inquisition had probably used an instrument of torture to produce the same hellish effect. But, in addition, this pain or ache or pressure, whatever one chose to call it, also brought with it a fear, or at least an uneasiness, that some external force might be striving to dominate his mind.

Paul Henninger had said, "I feel as though I were being taken over, mind and body, by someone or something stronger than I. It's terrifying."

It was.

Anyway, he wouldn't have to go out tonight, thank God. Having downed the aspirin to relieve the "pressure," he could now return to his room secure in the faith that in the morning Detective Juan Mendoza, when questioned, would be able to tell him where the cook had gone.

He should, however, just take a few moments now to look in on Henninger again before going to bed. Louis Clermont had suggested he keep a close watch on the man. "It's my hunch he will be more vulnerable, if that is the word, at night," Clermont had said. "George Benson says that he seems to be, and the Jourdan girl's troubles, too, all seem to occur after dark."

Despite the aspirin, the headache was still trying to destroy him as he descended the stairs to the manager's first-floor room. He found himself
trying to tread lightly on the bare wood, to reduce the jarring. Paul Henninger's door was shut, but a glow at the threshold indicated he had a light on. He usually did now.

Opening the door quietly, Steve said in a voice not loud enough to disturb a sleeper, "Paul? You awake?"

From the bed came a rasping sound, as of a man struggling to fill his lungs with air. It went on and on until Steve began to wonder how much air Henninger's lungs could hold. Then the bed suddenly erupted in violent motion.

Puzzled, Steve stepped forward and looked down. The Belgian was having a nightmare, it seemed. His thrashing feet kicked the top sheet loose and his flailing arms became entangled in it, then flung it aside, all but knocking Steve over with it. When Steve at last freed himself from its folds, the man on the bed had become less violent in what he was doing.

What he was doing, Steve decided, was swimming. The stroke was a mixed-up breaststroke, the arms being used properly but the feet pounding up and down. Amazingly, the man was holding his breath as he swam.

Resisting an impulse to interrupt the nightmare—if it was a nightmare—Steve forced himself to watch. Incredible, he thought. No man could hold his breath that long!

There was, of course, that fellow who'd been in the news a while ago with a record-breaking deep-water dive that had kept him underwater for a seemingly impossible length of time. He had explained his talent by saying it was possible for
human beings to discipline themselves even to live underwater if they were willing to devote the time and effort to it. The mind had to be conditioned as well as the body. Something like the mind and body control of Yoga.

And, of course, there was that anthropologist fellow who insisted he had actually seen the fabled "merpeople" of the South Pacific—humanoids called by the natives "Ri" or "Ilqai"—who lived in the sea and were sometimes washed ashore dead or caught in fishermen's nets.
Seen
them, he said. Twice. In the sea off the island of New Ireland, near New Guinea.