Time Out of Mind (19 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Corbin turned his head and rubbed his eyes, taking a
deep breath to help clear away the minor vision that had
taken shape. That
was
Gwen he was with, he told himself.
Long dress or no, it was Gwen. Not a hallucination. It's getting, he thought, to the point where I can't even day
dream without wondering where the dreams are coming from. Knock it off, Corbin. He looked to the north. But if
he had not, and if he'd strolled partway down Fifty-seventh
Street, he would have come upon the remains of the church
that he thought his imagination had provided. He would
have seen the magnificent facade of the Calvary Baptist
Church, carefully torn down some fifty years before and reinstalled as the face and motif of the Salisbury Hotel. He
would have recognized it nonetheless. And as for the
ghost's religious preference, if Corbin had chosen
to establish
it, he had now ruled out the Baptist denomination and
also the Catholic faith. Admiring the exterior of Saint Patrick's was not the same as suffering to set foot inside. Cor
bin would have wondered at this obvious prejudice against
the Roman church, particularly having attended Notre
Dame, but would have recalled upon reflection that preju
dice in nineteenth-century America ran deep against the
Irish as well. The feelings of Corbin's ghost, who seemed
obviously of an upper class, would have been ambivalent
at best. And his church, the one Corbin and Gwen were
peacefully ambling toward, might have been the Fifth Avenue Collegiate, which stood almost catty-corner from Saint
Patrick's Cathedral. Or it might have been the very fash
ionable Fifth Avenue Presbyterian which, he would find,
still stands or the Saint Thomas Episcopal Church, which
also remains although not in its original form thanks to one of the many great fires that regularly gave impetus to the
redesign of New York City.
These thoughts, however, were far from Corbin’s mind
as he looked northward along Seventh Avenue toward Cen
tral Park. He could not resist dropping his eyes to the spot
on the sidewalk where he remembered seeing the woman's
hat on that dark night. Emma's, Anna's, Ina's hat. What
ever her name, there was no imagining that hat. Not unless
his imagination was so highly developed or his subcon
scious so teeming with unsuspected information that he
could correctly name a style, the toque, and its source, Lord
& Taylor's Broadway store when Lord & Taylor doesn't
even have a Broadway store that anyone living remembers.
But as for the spot where he'd picked up that frozen mass
of cloth and feathers, not even the snow and ice looked the
same. A block up and across the street he saw the corner
where, according to Gwen's map, he had stumbled upon
the frozen corpse of the man named George. There was
another very old building there too. Talk about ornate stone,
Corbin thought, from where he stood it seemed as if every square inch of it was covered with the most intricate gin
gerbread carvings he'd ever seen on any structure. An ut
terly unforgettable building once you've seen it. And he
had not seen it. Not before today.
“
Are you ready?” Corbin turned at the sound of Gwen's
voice. She approached him, stuffing her notebook into the
shopping bag and pulling out one of the books they'd pur
chased. She leafed through its index as they walked slowly
toward Fifty-eighth Street. “Did anything happen while you were standing on the corner?” she asked.
“
Nothing. Nothing at all.” He decided not to mention
that they'd gone to church together.
”
I mean in your head. At the very least, your mind must
have wandered back to that night in your dream.”
“
Well, sure,” he admitted, “but there's not a thing in
this neighborhood that rings any kind of a bell.”
“
The Osborne certainly did.”
How could I know the Osborne and not know Carnegie
Hall right across the same intersection? Or this building
over here?” He pointed to the delicately carved edifice,
almost the size of the Osborne, whose name he could now read over the main entrance. The building was the Aíwyn
Court.
The Alwyn Court,” Gwen noted, flipping forward from the index. “The Alwyn Court, designed by
...
so-and-so.
Started 1907 and finished 1909. There's a lot of business
here about how they made clay blocks from terra cotta
molds and then plastered repetitions of the same designs all
over the surface of that building. Rather looks like lace,
doesn't it? It also looks as if they've sandblasted the soot
off it recently. It must look just as it looked in 1909.”
“
I've never seen it. I'm sure.”
As for Carnegie Hall, it says here that that building was
completed in 1891. There. It fits.”
“
What fits?”
“
The Osborne was first occupied in 1885 according to
the superintendent inside. He says it's the oldest building
in this area except for a few small commercial lofts. If your
ghost knew the Osborne during the period from 1885 to 1891, and he hadn't seen it again until today, nothing else
in the vicinity would have been familiar to him. Even Sev
enth Avenue is much wider now.”
Wait a minute.” Corbin stopped. “How do you make
a street wider?”
“
By slicing off some sidewalk, naturally.”
Corbin glanced around doubtfully. “They don't strike me as being narrower. They look as wide as they
ought to be.”
“
Many of these buildings,” Gwen explained, “had stone
steps or even little walled gardens extending onto the sidewalks. When the thoroughfares had to be widened, the city
required that all the stoops and such had to be removed.
The same thing was done in parts of London around the turn of the century.”
Corbin frowned. The explanation made sense and yet it
annoyed him. Images flashed through his mind of hand
some facades by the thousands being defaced by crowbars and sledges. The images slowed and he began to pick out
individual houses, residences, that seemed to have special meaning to him. Even a few names associated with these
town houses flitted past but flew on before he could seize
them. One name stayed. Tammany. The Tammany Hall
Irish. Who no doubt threw themselves into the vandalizing
of these homes with indecent glee.
Think of it as a kindness,
yer Lordship. Ye walk about with yer nose so high in the
air, yer like to trip over the dom thing anyways.
“
Let's keep moving,” Corbin said.
fore crossing Seventh Avenue. Corbin's toes had become numb inside his unlined shoes and the dropping afternoon
sun was providing less warmth than before. The comfort
of the Plaza Hotel, still two long blocks distant, was be
coming a welcome prospect even though it meant an hour
or two of uncomfortable scrutiny by Gwen's uncle Harry.
Nor did Corbin pause on the Alwyn Court's corner where
the man named George had died under drifts much softer
than the mounds piled there now. But a few feet from the
corner, Corbin sucked in a breath.
What is it, Jonathan?”
“
Nothing.”
knew this street. It was narrow, much narrower than any
other side street they'd seen that day. And it was deep in shadow, almost dark. Like the street in his dream it sloped downward, several degrees more sharply, he thought, than
the incline of Fifty-seventh Street.
“
It is the same street, isn't it?” she asked.
Corbin nodded. Ahead of him he could almost see her.
It was here that she turned, afraid and angry, and saw him
advancing upon her. It was here that she put her hand to
her mouth, the mouth he must have slapped because it had
a smear of blood on it, and then cried out vainly for help
at a window sealed against the storm. She turned and ran
from him. Tiny steps. Her hands held wide for balance.
Corbin's umbrella flicked out and he followed.
Gwen Leamas matched his steps. “You see her, don't
you?”
“
Sort of,” he whispered.
“
Are you all right?”
“
Yes.”
“
You're remembering?”
“
Yes.”
She held on to him in silence.
Remembering. Yes. Impressions began to flood at him
so quickly and so ill relatedly that he could scarcely seize
upon a single one. There was a child. An infant. An infant
he despised almost as much as the woman who ran from
him. Whose child? His own? No. Not his. It was once but not now. Not ever again. The child was behind him some
place. In a crib made of woven reeds. In that building.
“
She was my—” He stopped himself.
“
Say it, Jonathan.”
His wife. I'm sure of it now. There was a baby,too. A
son.”
“
What else?” she urged quietly.
”
I think you might have been right about the Osborne.
I think that's where they lived. The baby's asleep there in
a little room with no windows. Like a dressing room. He's
all alone. There was a nurse and a maid, but neither one
showed up because of the storm.”
Jonathan.” Gwen took a breath. “Do you feel at all
that you might have been that child?”
“
No,” he snapped.
“
Easy, Jonathan.” She put a hand on his arm. “It's a possible connection, that's all.”
“
I'm not the child. There's no connection between me and that infant.” There was still an edge to his voice.
“
But the woman is your wife.”
“
His wife. Yes.”
“
So she had the child by someone else.”
Put yer back into it, lad. Jab with the left, then again, then dig hard into the ribs.
Corbin raised both hands to his face and stared down and
across the narrow street in the general direction of a non
descript hotel. “It's where she was going,” he said quietly.
“He lived down there. In another apartment house. The
Flats.”
“
The Flats?”
“
It's what the place was called. The Something Flats.
Spanish Flats, I think, but there were other names, too. It's
him. The same man.”
Which him? The man you beat up in the Hoffman House?”
“
Yes.” Corning? Carney? Car…”
“
You beat him because your wife bore his child?”
“
Yes.” Carling.
“
And it's also why you let her die.”
“
Carling. Ansel Carling. That was his name.”
Gwen bit her lip. Her hands trembled with excitement.
“She was running to him? Away from you?”
Twice the man I am. Twice and more, she said. But I took his measure, by God. And the whole of New York
knows it now.”
“
Jonath—”
She said that his child will be twice the man as well.
But we'll give the lie to that boast, you and I. It's blood
that counts above all the rest. Proper blood. And a proper home. You shall have a home, Margaret. You shall have a
grand new life and the son you give me will grow up brave
and strong.”