Late at Night (10 page)

And it was really too bad, she thought, feeling at last reasonably safe and sound up here in her room. Too bad, because Ernest Thesinger was an all-around nice guy, one of those rare birds who was gracious and thoughtful and pleasant and willing to listen.

Attractive, masculine, without being overbearingly macho, which he could easily have been, all six-foot-two of him, with those broad shoulders, that bushy mustache. He projected a quietly handsome image. His eyes were small and burned with intelligence. His mouth was sensitive, wide, with a full lower Up that gave him a contemplative look. His nose was a bit too fleshy, bulbous, but it fit his face, and its bulk was overshadowed by his mustache, which was full and long and nicely trimmed. His black hair was worn short, curling at the edges and in the back. She could picture him so perfectly in front of her, a man of strength and resonance, an artist. Thirty, maybe older. His big hands and arms could have held her so nicely. He would have been so warm  …

Well, you did it again,
she thought. You really turned him off, didn’t you? He must have thought you had a screw loose. I wonder if Lynn ever has these problems. I know that Cynthia doesn’t. And why should she? Andrea thought with a bitterness that surprised her. A woman whose assets were as obvious as Cynthia’s could be flighty, fruity, psychic, and silly, but men would overlook anything in her case.

She lay down on the bed and nestled her head in the pillow. It was so soft, refreshingly cool against her face, a nice contrast to the warmth of the blanket.
I won’t change for anyone,
she said to herself determinedly. Not Ernest Thesinger, not Bob, not Steven, none of them.
My “beaus. ”
She giggled. None of them could take it, could they?
Well,
she thought,
I am what I am and I can’t change it, and wouldn’t even if I could. But, Mr. Thesinger, if you think I’m through with you, you are very sadly mistaken.

As she did every night of her life since that fourteenth birthday when she had heard the first odd murmurings in her head and learned in the morning about her grandmother dying, she suppressed the thoughts and words and pictures bouncing around in her brain, a jumbled miasma of other people’s deeds and consciences, and let the weariness overtake her. She was not religious, but she could not resist saying one more silent prayer:

Lord, don’t let me die on this island.

Chapter 16

Ernie couldn’t sleep.

Normally he would write in the evening—he did his best work then—typing until as late as six in the morning before tumbling into bed satisfied. It would take him several days to change his sleep patterns—although he had to admit he felt pretty tired, what with getting up early to begin with so he’d make the boat on time; then the trip over, and that eerie walk with Andrea. He should have been able to fall asleep the minute his head hit the pillow but, while his body was exhausted, his mind kept working, working.

Mostly he thought about Andrea. Had he said anything, done anything to turn her off? No, he didn’t think so. She was just weird—lovely, enchanting, quite personable when she wanted to be—but nonetheless weird. The question was: was she weird enough to make him turn away? It was really academic. As soon as this weekend was over he would never see her again. They’d return to their own worlds, and that would be that. Still, Boston was rather close to New York, just four or five hours away by train. If he said he’d be in touch … ?

He tried to force his mind off the subject of Andrea Peters. She intrigued him, nothing more.
Admit it,
he said to himself,
she intrigues you because you’re not used to such attractive women.
He realized with the start that always comes with self-enlightenment that because of his shy, introverted nature he almost always dated women who were ordinary—and therefore less threatening—in looks, intelligence, and demeanor. Was that really true? Even Andrea wasn’t really the oversexed, swinger type, like that Cynthia Marcovicci. But neither was she quite like Betty Sanders. Poor Betty. Ernie had known quite a lot of Bettys, and while the women in his life had never been quite so plain or unprepossessing, they were more like Betty, for all the wrong reasons, than he would have liked to admit. Being with a plain person because you valued inner qualities like warmth, compassion, and goodness was one thing. Being with them because you weren’t threatened was another. Even fat, aging Gloria Bordette—she reminded him of no one so much as old-time movie star Mary Boland—was too “show bizzy“ and exciting for his comfort. Andrea seemed like nice, safe middle ground. Not too dull. Not too garish. A perfect in-between.

There you go again. Back to thinking about Andrea.

It was no use. He just couldn’t sleep, and he wasn’t alert enough to start working on the article. The bit with Andrea might make a nice sidebar—“strange vibrations” on Lammerty Island—but so far he hadn’t seen enough of the place to even work up a few atmospheric opening paragraphs. Damn it. Didn’t he bring along anything to read? He’d been in the middle of a really terrific Ross Macdonald mystery. He searched among his belongings, but realized with dismay that he’d forgotten to bring the book along. He had noticed bookshelves in the living room. Perhaps he could find something there. He put on shirt and trousers and slippers and stepped into the small hall that led to the lounge.

Inside the living room, he turned on a small lamp near the bookshelves, and started scanning the titles. A real dry collection, he noted. Dry and dusty. There were ancient works by obscure, long-dead authors, and several collections of poetry. Works by Chaucer, Pope, and Bronte. A complete selection of Dickens’s novels. No, he wasn’t in the mood for Dickens, even if
A Tale of Two Cities
was one of his favorite books. What he needed was some good escapist literature, some nice trashy page-turner or literate horror story, maybe Sheldon or Koontz or James Herbert.

There! On the bottom shelf he saw a pile of paperbacks, clumped one on top of the other, as if they didn’t really deserve to be placed upright and therefore become part of the bookcase’s prime material. There were some romance titles like
Love’s Honor Lost—he
couldn’t stomach the stuff. Westerns—was this Evanson’s pile? He knew the fellow had a weakness for Zane Grey. A couple of “Fletch” mysteries he had already read. A 1000-page bestseller about the sins and suffering of the Miami Beach jet set. Three lengthy historical sagas, part of a series of wealthy victims of the guillotine during the French Revolution. So far, nothing that really piqued his interest. Ah, wait a minute—what’s this? The last book was about a maniac loose in a nursing home and he’d already read it, but the next-to-the-last book looked as if it might have possibilities. It was called
Late at Night,
by Max Schumann. Typical “paperback original” stuff. The cover was a striking portrait of a young woman screaming her head off. Behind her was a very old mansion, with a light on in the second story window, a shadowy figure watching from within. Above the all-caps letters of the title, which were raised in the style of most modern paperbacks, was a glinting axe dripping with gore. Ernie chuckled. All the stock horror symbols: old house, screaming woman, bloody axe. He loved it.

He quickly read the back cover copy. THEY OFFENDED THE FORCES OF EVIL, SO ONE BY ONE THEY DIED. Then, in smaller print:
They had come to Hargity Island to investigate its reputation for being a focal point of occult forces. The Island had a macabre history of death and dismemberment, a hideous past full of horror and bloodshed Then Andrew Tennington, the man who hoped to write a book on the Island’s history, discovered
another
forbidden book, a secret tome that foretold the deaths of everyone on the island. And before he even knew what was happening, the terrible events described in the book began to come true, until nearly no one was left but Andrew—and a crazed maniacal killer who would stop at nothing to use the forces of Hargity Island for itself! Will Andrew be able to save himself before his own predicted murder takes place?

Ernie felt a momentary chill. Talk about coincidences. A book about an island that sounded very much like this one, even a main character who had a vague resemblance to himself—although he was a magazine writer, not a book author. He flipped to the first page inside the cover. It was an explicit description of someone being murdered, taken from the body of the novel itself.
This stuff gets more gruesome every day.
Well, he was hooked. Wild horses couldn’t have made him put this one back. Someone from the group must have brought it along, though he couldn’t imagine why they would have put it there and not in their room. Maybe it was Lynn’s or John’s. He couldn’t picture old Gladys Horn-bee reading this sort of material.

He went back to the storage room, took off all of his clothes except his underwear, and nestled under the covers of the cot. Opening the book, he settled in and started happily reading Max Schumann’s
Late at Night.

Chapter 17

It is here! Someone has found it! It is in this very house!

The necromancer, as it liked to refer to itself, looked just like an ordinary human being, and for most of its life that’s exactly what it had been. But when it had mastered the black arts, the science that was sorcery, it knew that it was far, far more than an ordinary person. When the necromancer practiced its magic, when it conjured spirits, spoke to the dead, or just lay back and let the thoughts and feelings flow into its mind, that’s when it was truly inhuman; it no longer referred to itself in such
human
terms as “he” or “she.” It was now a
thing,
an arcane, mysterious creature that was well above petty human laws and attitudes. The necromancer was almost a god.

Something had happened just a few minutes ago. As it lay in its bed, a sharp tingle had made itself known, a warning jab that pulled the necromancer out of weary-pre-sleep and into the realm of full consciousness again. The object! The object the necromancer had become aware of earlier, the object it was determined to find; someone else had found the object, had touched it, held it, taken it someplace. Now it was the necromancer’s duty to get that object from this other person. Even if it meant killing him or her. What was the death of a mere mortal compared to the glorious realization of the necromancer’s dreams? This island alone could instill great power. The object, because of some odd mystical properties the nature of which the necromancer had yet to ascertain, could focus, channel the island’s power into an irresistible and unstoppable force. Truth be known, the necromancer could not yet quite imagine how it would use that power; only that anybody who had ever wronged the necromancer would
pay,
and pay dearly.

These stupid unwitting idiots all around it. The necromancer had come onto the island with them —right out in the open—and they hadn’t even known. The necromancer had stood there and
talked
to them, chatted with them, eaten with them, and they hadn’t had the slightest idea of what it really was. They thought the necromancer was just like all the rest, the fools, but the necromancer knew it was much, much more.

On this island the necromancer’s powers were intensified. The necromancer did not know-would probably never know—why it had been chosen to have such undreamed-of abilities. Some were the product of years of study, night after night of trial and error. Others just seemed to be there, waiting for something to bring them out. Whatever the case, they belonged to the necromancer alone, and the necromancer knew how to use them. Even without the necromancer’s being aware of it, its powers were at work. They were responsible for its being alerted that someone had possession of that mystical object. The necromancer had to be very, very careful now. And clever.
If necessary,
the necromancer thought, and the thought bothered it not in the least.
I will have to destroy every last person on this island.

Except for myself, of course.

The necromancer knew one thing that the others never even suspected.

Death can be so pretty.

Chapter 18

Ernie was in the middle of the novel’s first chapter. The more he read, the more incredible it seemed. Who was this Max Schumann anyway? A mindreader? Was it some kind of joke?
Late at Night
looked like a regular book and was from a well-known, legitimate publisher. Whoever this Max Schumann was—there was no author’s bio—he seemed positively prescient.

The island in the novel was definitely Lammerty. There was no mistaking it. The author described this very guest house as if he himself had slept there, and also made mention of the ship, aptly describing the feelings of terror it had apparently awakened in psychic Andrea; as well as the old Burrows house, the even older remnants of the original Pauling mansion, and all of the fact-based murders and deaths that had occurred there. So far, nothing strange. After all, Lammerty Island was famous in certain circles, and anyone could have done a little research and used the island for a novel’s location. He believed a couple of writers had already done so, so there was nothing unusual in that. It was just funny that he’d happened upon the novel while he was actually on the island where the story itself took place.

But it was when the characters were introduced that things really began to get weird. Andrew Tennington shared quite a few of Ernie’s own characteristics. All right, many writers are inhibited, quiet; that’s why they write for a living instead of, say, going on the stage. But “Andrew” even
looked
like Ernie, and the description was a pretty thorough one. Andrew’s innermost thoughts—and there weren’t many of them, the book raced along at a speedy clip—were different from Ernie’s, which was some comfort. Anything else would have had Ernie climbing the walls.