Shade of Pale (2 page)

Jukes smiled his sympathetic smile. “Well, that's what I'm here for. How can I help you, Mr. Loomis?”

Loomis looked around the room, his eyes darting from corner to corner, lingering at the window, then returning to Jukes's face. A thin patina of sweat glistened on his brow. “I don't have much time. I mean, I don't know if she's waiting for me outside—”

“She?”

“Right. You see, I know this sounds insane, but … To tell you the truth, I'm having trouble believing it myself, but I'm being stalked.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. “I see. Why don't you have a seat and tell me about it.”

Loomis sat down on the brown leather couch; Jukes took a seat opposite.

“Can you identify the person who's stalking you? Maybe that's something for the police.”

Loomis blinked. “No. It's not like that.” He heaved a sigh and hung his head. “She's … she's the angel of death and she's been following me.”

“Who are you talking about?”

Loomis ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I'm being stalked by something … inhuman. Something that takes the form of a beautiful young woman. But she's not a woman; she's a monster!”

“You think this woman is a monster?”

“Absolutely.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I see her everywhere. She's put the evil eye on me; it's driving me crazy.”

Jukes chewed his pencil pensively. “Mr. Loomis, you're a banker, right?”

Loomis nodded.

“Fifty-two years old, single—”

“Divorced.”

“Divorced,” Jukes repeated, “no obvious health problems, and apart from this delusion—”

“It's no delusion.”

“Mr. Loomis, in time we will both come to understand and deal with this, but I want you to know, it
is
a delusion. There is no bogeyman, or bogeywoman, as the case may be.”

“She's real, damn you! I've seen her with my own eyes!”

“OK, why don't we begin by you telling me when you first became aware of this … this problem.”

Loomis wiped his mouth with a stained and wrinkled sleeve. His eyes danced wildly in his head. He lit a cigarette with shaking hands, sucked on it desperately, then blew the, smoke across the room. Jukes winced; he disliked cigarette smoke.

“She came into the bank, a complete stranger. I'm in New Accounts, and my desk is near the door. She just came in and looked at me. Never said a word, just stared at me with those devil eyes.”

“I see; please go on.”

“I asked if I could help her, you know, like I ask all the customers. But she just stared at me. I began to get the oddest feeling—dread, I think. She scared me, Doc; she really did. I was struck dumb. For a minute I thought I was having a heart attack, but Dr. Howard says that wasn't it. It was the weirdest damn feeling; I can't describe it physically. I felt like I was paralyzed for a second.”

Jukes immediately thought of the girl he had seen through the window at Dilman's. He brushed the thought away.

“I swear it, Doc; I couldn't move.

“Then I started seein' her everywhere. At the train station, on the street, everywhere. I realized she was stalking me.”

“Always the same girl?”

“Always.”

“Are you sure?”

Loomis nodded. “Well, for one thing, she's hard to miss. Hair as red as hellfire and unusually pale skin … I mean really white, like the dead. I've never seen anyone like her. She's beautiful at first; then, when you look further, she's monstrously ugly. Also, she looks like she's been crying.”

A shiver oscillated down Jukes's back. Loomis was describing the girl he'd seen earlier through the window. Not only that, but the man was describing precisely the anxious feeling Jukes had experienced when his and the girl's eyes met.

It's a series of remarkable coincidences, that's all
.

Jukes cleared his throat. “Why do you think she's stalking you? It could be just a series of coincidences. I see many of the same people every day; there's nothing abnormal or unearthly about it. This is New York City.”

Loomis shook his head. “No, I thought of that. She only makes eye contact with me, no one else. She seems oblivious to the other people, and here's the weird part:
it's like they don't even see her
. I mean to tell you, Doc, the way she looks at me, I can feel her searching my soul. It's like she's probing for something. Gives me the creeps. It's hypnotic. Then I get that feeling again. I don't know if this word describes it, but I think it was something like a
swoon
. I think I was
swooning.
Helpless, like. There's nothing concrete I can show you, but I'm scared, Doc, more scared than I've ever been.

“I can't eat; I can't sleep; everything's going to hell at work; I can't seem to concentrate anymore I just keep thinking about her.”

These are classic symptoms of cocaine psychosis
, Jukes thought. “Mr. Loomis, have you ever experimented with drugs?” he asked.

“No. Never.”

“No cocaine? Amphetamines? Opiates? LSD? Marijuana?”

“Absolutely not.”

Jukes treated businessmen for substance abuse problems regularly, and he could spot the signs. But something about Loomis suggested that drugs weren't the problem.

“And you have no idea who this woman is?”

“No, but I've got a pretty good idea
what
she is.”

“What do you mean?”

Declan Loomis sat up, stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray that Jukes reluctantly kept handy for his smoking patients, and sighed. “Maybe I came to the wrong place. Dr. Howard said you might be able to help me—”

“I can help you, Mr. Loomis. I can help you more than you might care to admit right now.” Loomis shifted in his seat uneasily. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. I know that you sincerely believe you're being stalked by a monster. But have you ever considered that you might be wrong? Have you considered that your input, your senses, might be compromised?”

“Compromised? By what?”

“The subconscious mind. What you believe to be the truth may not be the truth at all.”

“If you mean I'm crazy—”

“You're not crazy, Mr. Loomis, but you appear to be in a state of stress right now, and it's quite possible you're disoriented and maybe a little confused. You have all the classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia: feelings of being followed, pursued, by a nameless person, feelings of dread, loss of sleep—it all adds up.

“The mind can channel stress in unexpected directions. It can create situations that appear to be real.”

“All right, fuck it.” Loomis stood up suddenly and was about to go for the door when Jukes put a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Please. Mr. Loomis. I can help you.”

Loomis scowled. “You think I'm hallucinating? You think I'm on drugs? Is that your only explanation for what's happening to me?”

“No. Not at all. There are hundreds of explanations. But I had to ask; it's standard procedure in a case like this.”

Jukes got a good look into Loomis's eyes for the first time and felt another chill. For a moment they settled, stopped dancing, and gazed hopefully into his. The look, the absolute mark, of fear was there like a caged animal.

Loomis drew a breath and held it. “It's the Banshee, Doc. The angel of death. I'm a dead man.”

“Sit down.”

Loomis collapsed back onto the couch. “God help me. God help us all.”

Jukes poured him a paper cup of water.

Loomis drank it down in one gulp, then crumpled the cup in his hand. “Do you know what the Banshee is, Dr. Wahler?”

“The Banshee? It's an Irish myth, isn't it? Some sort of supernatural being?”

Loomis nodded. “It's a female entity, something like the grim reaper.”

“What makes you think this woman is the Banshee?”

Loomis paused, choosing his next words carefully. “I know it in my heart. Don't ask me to explain. I don't know why, but I just know.”

“Have you always known about the Banshee?”

“Yeah. My grandfather told me when I was a little boy in Ireland.”

“Tell me more about your grandfather.”

“In my family, the Banshee had come before. My grandfather knew it; that's why he told me. You see, only certain people are marked.”

“Do you believe you are marked, Mr. Loomis?”

“Yeah.”

“Because of something you did?”

“Yes.”

“What would that be?”

“I am born of the Loomis clan, and the Banshee knows us. The damned thing is out there waiting for me, and when the time comes, she will kill me the same way she killed my grandfather and countless others along my family line. But, most importantly, I know who she is, and the Banshee
only kills those who know her face.
”

Jukes let those words hang in the air.

“Only those who know …,” Loomis repeated in a whisper.

“Do you have any guilt feelings about your grandfather or anyone else in your family?”

“No, God damn it! Skip the fifty-cent psychoanalysis! You don't understand. This is real. Only the people who know her die.
I know her
. She's been following me! Don't you see? I am going to die and there's nothing you or anybody else can do about it!”

The phone rang. Jukes snatched it up expectantly, almost glad for the momentary diversion. He was strict about not being disturbed when with a patient, so he knew the call had to be important.

Ms. Temple's voice came through the receiver. “I'm sorry, Dr. Wahler, but it's your sister; she says it's an emergency.”

Jukes sighed. “Cathy? All right, put her on.”

Jukes looked up at Loomis and said, “Excuse me; I have a call I have to take. It'll only be a second.”

“Hello?”

The voice came over the line uneasy and quivering. “Oh, Jukey, I'm so glad I found you! It's Bobby; he … he beat me up again! He broke the television and—”

Jukes cut her off. “Ah, Cathy, I'd love to talk to you—I really would—but I'm with a patient right now. Would it be possible for me to call you back in thirty minutes?” Jukes was careful to avoid an annoyed modulation of voice. He kept his conversational tone professionally even.

Cathy's breathless voice crackled in the earpiece. “Oh … OK, uhm, I'm sorry. I'm at the Doral Hotel, room 651.”

“Stay where you are. I'll get right back to you; I promise. Do you have the number there?”

Cathy recited the phone number and Jukes jotted it down.

He's beating her up again
, Jukes realized as he hung up.
That shithead Bobby is asking for it. Why in God's name does she stay with him? He's already sent her to the hospital once
.

Ever since their parents died, Jukes had looked after his little sister, had taken care of her. It was his father's last request.

But Cathy was wild.

Things have really been going downhill since she met Bobby. I hated that asshole photographer at first sight, with his tattoos and his leather pants
.

Bobby the monster. The boyfriend from Hell. Drugs, kinky sex, God knows what else. Poor Cathy is in way over her head this time. But the more he abuses her, the more she keeps coming back
.

He turned his attention back to Loomis. The good doctor, the miracle worker, was about to solve some more problems. By compartmentalizing his thinking, he was able to put the thoughts of Cathy aside and focus on Declan Loomis. He looked at the haunted, troubled face of the man across from him.

The poor bastard, I want to help him. Right after I help Cathy. Seems like I'm helping everybody
.

But who's going to help me?

CHAPTER TWO

Mrs. Willis had pains. She always had pains. Thirty years ago, when she was seventy-two years old, she had what she called “good days and bad days”; now they were all bad days.

Little aches and pains had merged into one long body ache. Her 102-year-old bones creaked when she got out of bed each morning, winter or summer.

She slowly padded her way into the kitchen and filled her teakettle with water. While she waited for it to boil, she went into the narrow living room of her row house and greeted her miniature zoo.

“Hello, little darlings,” she whispered.

Her Irish accent still colored the words, though she'd been a resident of Manhattan for over sixty years. Mrs. Willis would be forever Irish. She carried it with her in every fold and wrinkle of her freckled skin, like the scent of talc and clover.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked them.

The 102 glass figurines, one for every year she'd survived, stood mute and fragile. She thrust an ancient, gnarled finger into the shelves and straightened a tiny glass elephant. Most of the figurines were smaller than her thumb and deliberately delicate. She had collected animals of every description over the decades, and when she become too old, her many loyal admirers brought animals to her from all over the world.

They resonated with her thoughts. The more fragile and tiny, the better the reception, the louder the broadcast. When she first married, her husband explained that radio waves, floating invisibly in the air, could be magically caught in a tiny crystal. Once caught, they could be listened to.

Later she discovered that miniature glass figurines could capture thoughts and ethereal “faerie messages” from beyond. Her husband told her it was because she had the second sight and that the little glass animals only triggered her psychic abilities.

They spoke to her. They told her things. They let her listen to the ocean of thoughts and emotions that roiled just outside her door. In the great city, all things were there.

“I think I'll have my tea out here in the living room, where I can think so much better.”