Superstition (34 page)

“I'm not whoever…I'm Joanna Cross…I work for you, I write for this magazine…”

“I've never seen you before in my…”

“Camp Starburst. My story on Camp Starburst boosted circulation two percent…”

“Camp what…?”

“You said the one I'm writing now on Adam Wyatt is worth a Pulitzer…”

Taylor Freestone's eyes continued to widen with alarm and disbelief. “I have no idea what you're…”

“Sam Towne! You made a donation to his department at Manhattan University, for the story that I'm doing on the Adam Wyatt experiment.”

She became aware of a movement behind her. Two of the uniformed security guards who were normally on duty downstairs in the main lobby appeared at her side.

“Just come along with us, quietly now, please,” one of them said.

She felt their hands on her arms and tried to shake them off, but they gripped tighter.

“Wait a minute, let's at least try to find out what's going on here.” The man who spoke was the one who'd been occupying her office. He stepped forward now, prepared to defend her.

“Leave this to us, please, sir,” one of the security guards said.

“I will leave it to you—as soon as I'm satisfied we all know what we're doing.” He looked at her squarely. “Now who are you? What do you want?”

She realized she had to stay calm, or at least pretend to, let them see she could do it and that she was not demented, not a madwoman but somebody worthy of respect, their respect. “I'm trying to tell you,” she said, “I'm Joanna Cross…I'm a writer…”

“Is that why you've come here?” he asked. There was a strange gentleness in his tone. She realized that despite his gallantry he was still humoring her, doing the decent thing by a troubled woman rather than sensing a truth that he meant to uncover.

“I came here,” she said, her voice trembling, “because I work here…and because I needed money…”

“The magazine owes you money?”

“No…I found myself on the street with no money…I needed…”

The man reached into his back pocket and brought out a wallet.

“Don't give her anything,” Taylor Freestone said sharply. “We have no responsibility here, don't assume any.”

“Giving her a few bucks isn't going to hurt,” the other man said.

He held out some bills. She didn't know how many, she didn't look. She thought for a moment she was going to pass out. The sheer impossibility of it all was overwhelming, and unconsciousness, with its implied promise that maybe she'd wake up and things would be all right again, seemed like the only choice before her.

But some small part of her brain was telling her to hang on, not to let go, not now, not yet. This wasn't a dream and it wasn't impossible, because it was actually happening. She couldn't run or hide. She had to face this thing and see it through.

“Take it,” the man said, still holding out the money. “I'm sorry we can't help you, but if you need money…”

“No!” Taylor Freestone protested again.

“It's
my
money, damnit!” the man snapped back. “Please take it,” he said to her more gently. “Please just take it and go—all right?”

Very slowly, realizing there was nothing to be done, knowing that whatever happened, whatever she did next or wherever she went or tried to go, she would need money, she reached out and took it.

“Thank you.” Her voice was barely audible, but she sensed that her action, her acceptance of this stranger's gift, had somehow defused the situation.

“Just get her out of here,” Taylor Freestone said to the guards. “And make sure she doesn't get back in.”

This time she didn't shake off the pressure on her arm. She let herself be led along the familiar corridors, through the lobby where Bobbie and Jane's silent gaze followed her out, through the glass doors, then into the elevator, and finally onto the street.

There they let her go, and watched until she was safely out of sight.

48

I
t was only when she asked for change in a magazine store that she realized the man in her office had given her fifty dollars—an act of surprising generosity that she wished she'd thanked him better for. Better still would have been not needing to thank him for anything.

She found a pay phone and tried Ward's number again. Still no reply. Next she phoned the lab. Peggy answered.

“Peggy, it's me—Joanna.”

“Joanna?”

“I wondered if you'd heard from Sam in the last half hour or so.”

“Sam's out right now. Actually I'm not quite sure where he is. Can I give him a message?”

“No, I…tell him I'll call back.”

“All right, Joanna, I'll make a note.”

The way she said “Joanna” didn't sound right. It wasn't the way you'd speak to a friend, or even to anyone you knew. Peggy was using the caller's first name out of politeness, not out of any sense of intimacy. “Joanna” was just a woman on the phone who could have given any name.

Joanna swallowed, forcing herself to accept what she knew was the truth. “You don't know who I am, do you, Peggy?”

“I'm sorry, I'm not sure I can quite place you. Would you like to remind me where we've met?”

“It doesn't matter,” she managed to say, and hung up.

The phone was one of a row in the subway at Columbus Circle. Nobody paid any attention to the woman who stood there with her face in her hands, leaning against the inside wall of the booth as though about to collapse. One or two people glanced her way as they passed, thinking maybe she'd just made a call and received some devastating news—the death of a loved one, perhaps, or the diagnosis of some illness more grave than she'd feared. None of them paused or came over to help. No one chose to get involved.

Joanna fished out some more coins and dialed the number she most feared calling. Her mother answered after three rings with her usual interrogatory “Hello?”

“Mom?”

A pause, then, hesitantly, “Joanna? Is that you?”

Joanna didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until it came out of her in a shuddering sob. “Mom…help me, Mom, I don't know what's happening…you're the only one who knows who I am…I've got to see you…I'm coming out there right now…”

“Who is this?”

The words cut like a knife through her brain. “Mom, you just said…I said ‘Mom’ and you said ‘Joanna’…”

“I said ‘Joanna, is that you?’ But you're not Joanna. Now whoever you are, this is not a very funny joke. Don't call me again.”

She hung up.

49

I
t was nearly three hours before Sam was finished with the police. Their questions had been probing and fueled by a deep suspicion—for which he couldn't blame them, given the circumstances. But they seemed satisfied in the end that Ward's death was suicide or conceivably an accident, but not murder.

He thought it wise not to tell them too much about Adam Wyatt and the whole experiment, saying merely that Ward took an interest in his work and had volunteered to take part in a series of experiments that were essentially statistical. The mention of statistics had deadened their interest sufficiently to let the whole topic of the paranormal slip by unexplored. Sam gave his personal details and said he'd be glad to make himself available for any further questioning.

Before leaving, and with the distraught manservant's approval, he made some calls from the phone in the apartment's main reception room. The first was to Joanna's mobile phone. He tried three times, each time getting a recording that told him there was some error in the number he had dialed, which was not currently allocated to any subscriber. He knew there was no error, but didn't persist.

He tried her number at Beekman Place, and listened to the phone ring out—until it was answered by a man with a Bronx accent.

“Fiedler's Deli.”

Sam checked the number with the man. He'd dialed correctly, but this was not Beekman Place and there was no Joanna Cross at that location, only an assortment of sandwiches and salads that could be delivered in the neighborhood at no extra charge. Sam apologized for troubling the man and hung up.

He called the
Around Town
office and asked for Joanna Cross. The request caused a flurry of excitement; he could hear muffled conversations around the phone, people being called, advice sought. Finally he was put through to Taylor Freestone.

“Who is this?”

“My name is Sam Towne.”

“Sam Towne? That's the second time I've heard that name today. The woman you're asking about, Joanna Cross, mentioned it when she was in here.”

“I'm trying to find her.”

“Well, you won't find her here. I don't know who she is, but security has orders to keep her out if she ever comes back. Who is she, anyway?”

Sam hesitated. “I'm not sure I can tell you that, Mr. Freestone. I'm sorry to have troubled you. Good-bye.”

When he hung up he waited a moment before dialing again. He was too afraid that he already knew what he was going to hear. All the same, he had to face it. If only as a scientist, he had to put his theories to the test. Peggy answered the phone.

“Any messages for me, Peggy?”

“There was a call from Carl Janowitz at that funding board you've been talking with. One from Bob Gulliver in the dean's office. And one from a Joanna Cross. She seemed to think we knew each other. Has she worked with us as some point?”

“Yes, actually she has, Peggy.”

“I can't quite place her. Anyway, she said she'd call back.”

He thanked her and hung up. He debated whether to try calling Joanna's parents. He didn't have their number, but could probably find it easily enough.

But what would he say? What could he?

There were other things he had to do first, things that would cause no unnecessary distress to others. Above all he had to keep a tight grip on himself and his own sanity, remembering that he was a scientist who must confront the situation he was in with as much emotional neutrality and clarity of mind as he could muster, asking questions and not hiding from the answers, whatever they might be and wherever they might lead.

Before leaving, he walked to the window and stood motionless for some moments, looking out. He remembered how the narrator in Jack Finney's story of time travel—he and Joanna had talked about it only yesterday—had stood at a window in this building and looked out on a New York of the past.

Sam knew that what he was looking out on now was something far more alien than the past.

50

I
t had started to rain while she was on the train. Now, as she emerged from the station, it was pouring hard and the November dusk was closing in.

There was no sign of a cab anywhere, so she took up her place at the head of the taxi stand under cover of the station forecourt, and waited. She felt little except a strange numbness, a detachment from reality that reminded her of the way her mouth felt after a shot of novocaine at the dentist—still there, but mysteriously untouchable.

It was a defense mechanism, she told herself, while marveling at the fact that knowing something didn't change the way it worked or the effect it had. But if it were not for this strange sense of being there and yet not there at the same time, she knew that the madness hovering on the edges of her consciousness would overwhelm her, and she would disintegrate totally.

A cab swished up and stopped to disgorge a couple who went through to the ticket office, then it pulled around and picked up Joanna. She gave her parents’ address and sat back, hoping the driver wasn't the talkative kind. He wasn't.

She tried to analyze her feelings, to observe and define what was going through her mind, but found it impossible. Everything both conceivable and inconceivable seemed to be happening at once in her imagination, but she didn't know what she was actually thinking. That too, she supposed, was part of the defense mechanism that was enabling her to function well enough and long enough to reach her destination. What would happen when she got there was another question—one that she found herself unable even to contemplate.

The gate to her parents’ driveway was shut, so she paid off the cab and walked to the house. There was a wind coming up, driving the rain at an angle into her face. She lowered her head and pulled up her collar, quickening her pace.

At the door she paused a moment, protected by the small portico, and shook out her hair. For the first time it struck her that maybe they wouldn't be at home. There were lights in the house, but they always left lights on. Then she recognized the thought for what it was—a delaying mechanism to put off the confrontation that she knew was going to be the most painful and traumatic of them all. She rang the bell.

She heard it ring in the distance. Skip began to bark, running toward the door from wherever he'd been—probably asleep by the fire or curled up in his basket in the kitchen. She called his name through the door, but the barking didn't stop and turn into excited whimpering the way it usually did when he recognized someone's voice. She called his name again, but his bark just became more agitated.

A light went on over her head, then her mother's voice came tinnily from the speaker by her shoulder.

“Who is it?”

“Momma, it's me.”

There was a long pause, during which Skip continued to bark, scrabbling at the door now as though trying to claw his way through and attack her. She could hear her mother calling out to him, maybe even coming to get him and hauling him physically away, because his barking became more distant but lost none of its excitement.

She knocked on the door several times and called out, “Momma? Momma, are you there?”

When her mother spoke, it was through the entry phone again. She sounded different now, strained and ill at ease.

“Are you the person who called me earlier?”

“Momma, for heaven's sake, it's
me
. Let me in—please.”

She could hear Skip's barking through the speaker, but distant and hollow sounding now, as though he'd been locked in somewhere.

“Why are you doing this?” her mother asked. “If you don't go away, I'll call the police—do you understand?”