Whispers (47 page)

"Schizophrenic."

"Probably," Hawthorne agreed. "But I don't think we should rule out the possibility that Marsden was sane and that he was merely reporting a genuine paranormal phenomenon."

"Say again?"

"I'm suggesting that Christian Marsden might really have been possessed in some way or other."

"You don't mean that," Joshua said.

"To paraphrase Shakespeare--there are a great many things in heaven and earth that we do not and cannot understand."

Beyond the large office window, as the slate-colored bank of clouds continued to press into the valley, the sun sank westward, beyond the Mayacamas, and the autumn dusk came prematurely to St. Helena.

As he watched the light bleed slowly out of day, Joshua said, "Why did Mr. Frye want the Marsden journal so badly?"

"He believed he was living through an experience similar to Marsden's," Hawthorne said.

"You mean, Bruno thought some dead person was trying to take over his body?"

"No," Hawthorne said. "He didn't identify with Marsden, but with Marsden's victims. Mr. Frye believed that his mother--I think her name was Katherine--had come back from the dead in someone else's body and was plotting to kill him. He hoped that the Marsden journal would give him a clue about how to deal with her."

Joshua felt as if a large dose of ice-cold water had been injected into his veins. "Bruno never mentioned such a thing to me."

"Oh, he was quite secretive about it," Hawthorne said. "I'm probably the only person he ever revealed it to. He trusted me because I was sympathetic toward his interest in the occult. Even so, he only mentioned it once. He was quite passionate in his belief that she had returned from the dead, quite terrified of falling prey to her. But later, he was sorry that he had told me."

Joshua sat up straight in his chair, amazed, chilled. "Mr. Hawthorne, last week Mr. Frye attempted to kill a woman in Los Angeles."

"Yes, I know."

"He wanted to kill her because he thought that she was actually his mother hiding in a new body."

"Really? How interesting."

"Good God, sir! You knew what was going on in his mind. Why didn't you do something?"

Hawthorne remained cool and serene. "What would you have had me do?"

"You could have told the police! They could have questioned him, looked into the possibility that he needed medical attention."

"Mr. Frye hadn't committed a crime," Hawthorne said. "And beyond that, you're presuming he was crazy, and I make no such presumption."

"You're joking," Joshua said incredulously.

"Not at all. Perhaps Frye's mother did come back from the grave to get him. Maybe she even succeeded."

"For God's sake, that woman in Los Angeles was not his mother!"

"Maybe," Hawthorne said. "Maybe not."

Although Joshua was still sitting in his big office chair, and although the chair was still resting squarely on a solid floor, he felt curiously off balance. He had pictured Hawthorne as a rather cultured, mild-mannered, bookish fellow who had gotten into his unusual line of business largely because of the profits it offered. Now Joshua began to wonder if that image was altogether wrong. Maybe Latham Hawthorne was as strange as the merchandise he sold.

"Mr. Hawthorne, you're obviously a very efficient and successful businessman. You sound as if you're well-educated. You're far more articulate than most people I meet these days. Considering all of that, I find it difficult to believe that you put much credence in such things as séances and mysticism and the living dead."

"I scoff at nothing," Hawthorne said. "And in fact I think my willingness to believe is less surprising than your stubborn refusal to do so. I don't see how an intelligent man can not realize that there are many worlds beyond our own, realities beyond that in which we live."

"Oh, I believe the world is filled with mysteries and that we only partially perceive the nature of reality," Joshua said. "You'll get no argument from me on that. But I also think, in time, our perceptions will be sharpened and the mysteries all explained by scientists, by rational men working in their laboratories--not by superstitious cultists burning incense and chanting nonsense."

"I have no faith in scientists," Hawthorne said. "I'm a Satanist. I find my answers in that discipline."

"Devil worship?" Joshua asked. The occultist could still surprise him.

"That's a rather crude way of putting it. I believe in the Other God, the Dark Lord. His time is coming, Mr. Rhinehart."

Hawthorne spoke calmly, pleasantly, as if he were discussing nothing more unusual or controversial than the weather. "I look forward to the day when He casts out Christ and all the lesser gods and takes the throne of the earth for His own. What a fine day that will be. All the devout of other religions will be enslaved or slaughtered. Their priests will be decapitated and fed to the dogs. Nuns will be ravished in the streets. Churches and mosques and synagogues and temples will be used for the celebration of black masses, and every person on the face of the earth will worship Him, and babies will be sacrificed on those altars, and Beelzebub will rein until the end of time. Soon, Mr. Rhinehart. There are signs and portents. Quite soon now. I look forward to it."

Joshua was at a loss for words. In spite of the madness that Hawthorne spouted, he sounded like a rational, reasonable man. He was not ranting or screaming. There was not even a vague trace of mania or hysteria in his voice. Joshua was more disturbed by the occultist's outward composure and surface gentleness than he would have been if Hawthorne had snarled and yelped and foamed at the mouth. It was like meeting a stranger at a cocktail party, talking with him for a while, getting to like him, and then suddenly realizing that he was wearing a latex mask, a clever false face, behind which lay the evil and grinning countenance of Death himself. A Halloween costume, but in reverse. The demon disguised as the ordinary man. Poe's nightmare come to life.

Joshua shivered.

Hawthorne said, "Could we arrange a meeting? I'm looking forward to having an opportunity to inspect the collection of books that Mr. Frye purchased from me. I can come up there almost any time. What day would be convenient for you?"

Joshua wasn't looking forward to meeting and doing business with this man. He decided to stall the occultist until the other appraisers had seen the books. Perhaps one of those men would understand the value of the collection and would make an equitable offer to the estate; then it wouldn't be necessary to traffic with Latham Hawthorne.

"I'll have to get back to you on that," Joshua said. "I've got a lot of other things to take care of first. It's a large and rather complex estate. It'll take quite a few weeks to get it all wrapped up."

"I'll be waiting for your call."

"Two more things before you hang up," Joshua said.

"Yes?"

"Did Mr. Frye say why he had such an obsessive fear of his mother?"

"I don't know what she did to him," Hawthorne said, "but he hated her with all his heart. I've never seen such raw, black hatred as when he spoke of her."

"I knew them both," Joshua said. "I never saw anything like that between them. I always thought he worshipped her."

"Then it must have been a secret hatred that he'd nurtured for a long, long time," Hawthorne said.

"But what could she have done to him?"

"As I said, he never told me. But there was something behind it, something so bad that he couldn't even bring himself to discuss it. You said there were two things you wanted to ask about. What's the other one?"

"Did Bruno mention a double?"

"Double?"

"A look-alike. Someone who could pass for him."

"Considering his size and his unusual voice, finding a double wouldn't be easy."

"Apparently, he managed to do it. I'm trying to find out why he thought it was necessary."

"Can't this look-alike tell you? He must know why he was hired."

"I'm having trouble locating him."

"I see," Hawthorne said. "Well, Mr. Frye never said a word about it to me. But it just occurred to me...."

"Yes?"

"One reason he might need a double."

"What's that?" Joshua asked.

"To confuse his mother when she came back from the grave looking for him."

"Of course," Joshua said sarcastically. "How silly of me not to think of that."

"You misunderstand," Hawthorne said. "I know you're a skeptic. I'm not saying that she actually came back. I don't have enough information to make up my mind about that. But Mr. Frye was absolutely convinced that she had come back. He might have thought that hiring a double would provide him with some protection."

Joshua had to admit that Hawthorne's idea made more than a little sense. "What you're saying is that the easiest way to figure this out is to try to put myself in Frye's head, try to think like he did, like a paranoid schizophrenic."

"If he was a paranoid schizophrenic," Hawthorne said. "As I told you, I scoff at nothing."

"And I scoff at everything," Joshua said. "Well ... thank you for your time and trouble, Mr. Hawthorne."

"No trouble. I'll be waiting for your call."

Don't hold your breath, Joshua thought.

After he put down the receiver, Joshua stood up, stepped to the big window, and stared out at the valley. The land was now settling into shadows under the gray clouds and the purple-blue edges of the oncoming darkness. Day seemed to be changing into night much too rapidly, and, as a sudden cold wind rattled the windowpanes, it also seemed to Joshua that autumn was giving way to winter with the same unnatural haste. The evening looked as if it belonged in gloomy, rainy January rather than early October.

In Joshua's mind, Latham Hawthorne's words spun like dark filaments of a black web on some monstrous spider's loom: His time is coming, Mr. Rhinehart. There are signs and portents. Soon now. Quite soon.

For the past fifteen years or so, the world had seemed to be rushing downhill with no brakes, totally out of control. A lot of strange people were out there. Like Hawthorne. And worse. Far worse. Many of them were political leaders, for that was the line of work that jackals often chose, seeking power over others; they had their hands on the controls of the planet, lunatic engineers in every nation, grinning maniacally as they pushed the machine toward derailment.

Are we living in the final days of the earth? Joshua wondered. Is Armageddon drawing near?

Bullshit, he told himself. You're just transferring your own intimations of mortality to your perception of the world, old man. You've lost Cora, and you're all alone, and you're suddenly aware of growing old and running out of time. Now you have the incredible, grand, egomaniacal notion that the entire world will go with you when you die. But the only doomsday drawing nigh is a very personal one, he told himself. The world will be here after you've gone. It'll be here a long, long time, he assured himself.

But he really wasn't certain of that. The air seemed to be full of ominous currents.

Someone knocked on the door. It was Karen Farr, his industrious young secretary.

"I didn't realize you were still here," Joshua said. He glanced at his watch. "Quitting time was almost an hour ago."

"I took a long lunch. I have a few things to catch up on."

"Work is an essential part of life, my dear. But don't spend all your time at it. Go home. You'll catch up tomorrow."

"I'll be finished in ten minutes," she said. "And just now two people came in. They want to see you."

"I don't have any appointments."

"They've come all the way from Los Angeles. His name's Anthony Clemenza, and the woman with him is Hilary Thomas. She's the one who was--"

"I know who she is," Joshua said, startled. "By all means, show them in."

He walked out from behind his desk and met the visitors in the middle of the room. There were awkward introductions, then Joshua saw to it that they were comfortably seated, offered drinks, poured Jack Daniel's for both of them, and pulled up chair opposite the couch where they were seated side by side.

Tony Clemenza had an air about him that appealed to Joshua. He seemed pleasantly self-assured and competent.

Hilary Thomas radiated a brisk self-confidence and quiet competence much as Clemenza did. She was also achingly lovely.

For a moment, no one seemed to know what to say. They looked at one another in silent anticipation and then tentatively sipped their whiskey.

Joshua was the first to speak. "I've never put a lot of faith in such things as clairvoyance, but, by God, I'm having a little premonition right now. You haven't come all this way just to tell me about last Wednesday and Thursday, have you? Something's happened since then."

"A lot has happened," Tony said. "But none of it makes a whole hell of a lot of sense."

"Sheriff Laurenski sent us to see you," Hilary said.

"We hope you'll have some answers for us."

"I'm looking for answers myself," Joshua said.

Hilary tilted her head and looked curiously at Joshua. "I think maybe I'm having a premonition of my own," she said. "Something has happened here, too, hasn't it?"

Joshua took a sip of his whiskey. "If I were a superstitious man, I'd probably tell you that ... somewhere out there ... a dead man is walking around among the living."

Outside, the last light of day was snuffed from the sky. The coal-black night seized the valley beyond the window. A cold wind tried to find a way around the many panes of glass; it hissed and moaned. But a new warmth seemed to fill Joshua's office, for he and Tony and Hilary were drawn together by their shared knowledge of the incredible mystery of Bruno Frye's apparent resurrection.

***

Bruno Frye had slept in the back of the blue Dodge van, in a supermarket parking lot, until eleven o'clock that morning, when he had been awakened by a nightmare that resonated with fierce, threatening, yet meaningless whispers. For a while, he sat in the stuffy, dimly-lit cargo hold of the van, hugging himself, feeling so desperately alone and abandoned and afraid that he whimpered and wept as if he were a child.