Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (69 page)

 
          
"Don't
—
" the voice that forced
itself from Ms. Quentin's throat was hoarse and masculine, oddly familiar.
"Don't
—
"

 
          
Colin
leaned forward. Was she dreaming? Faking? Or was this a true trance?

 
          
"Don't
let me
—
"
The voice broke off, and there was a confusion of sound, as though several people
were talking at once.

 
          
"Who
are you?" Colin asked. "What do you want?"

 
          
Ms.
Quentin's eyelids fluttered; she awoke as if she'd been asleep.

 
          
"What?"
she said, struggling to get up. "What's going on?"

 
          
Though
she'd certainly been faking earlier, what had come after she fainted
—
of which she had no memory
—
was undoubtedly genuine. Ms.
Quentin belonged to that class of psychics who had genuine powers but resorted
to trickery on those all-too-frequent occasions when the Gift would not present
itself. Colin would not be foolish enough to disregard her message, mystifying
as it was.

 
          
It
was a cry for help
—
but from whom?

 
          
A
couple of weeks later Claire was replacing the books on one of the high
shelves. Most of the browsers at the bookshop had the usual tendency to replace
the books wherever was convenient, rather than where they belonged, and after a
few weeks of that, it was difficult to find anything. The weather had settled
into the endless string of fair temperate days that marks a
California
summer, and the air this
close to the ceiling was stifling. It was a relief when she heard Colin
summoning her from the front of the store.

 
          
"Claire?
I think this must be the lady you mentioned to me."

 
          
Claire
hurried down the ladder and came out to the desk. A dark-haired woman was
standing in front of the counter, talking to Colin. She bore a certain
resemblance to Emily Barnes, but where Emily possessed the gawky ethereality of
youth, this woman was definitely a grown-up. Claire recognized her from their
previous meeting.

 
          
"Dr.
Barnes, is it?" Colin asked. "I heard that you had moved into a house
which once belonged to our dear friend Alison Margrave."

 
          
Claire
saw how Leslie Barnes shied away from the mention of Alison's name, as though
it held no good associations for her.

 
          
"The
book you gave me on poltergeists contained the only sensible thing I've ever
read about them. I came back to see if you had anything else," Leslie said
to Claire.

 
          
"I'll
start you with the Anstey and Margrave monograph," Claire answered.
They'd been out of it, she remembered, the last time Dr. Barnes had called, but
that had been back in January.

 
          
She
went to get the book, since she'd just been handling it, and when she came
back, they spoke for a few minutes about the seance the previous week, and the
fake psychic that Colin had exposed. But that wasn't what Dr. Barnes had come
to the bookstore to hear, and Claire knew it.

 
          
"It's
none of my business," Claire began hesitantly, "but I hope that your
interest in poltergeists does not indicate that . . ." She glanced toward
Colin. "How shall I say this?"

 
          
Colin,
bless him, had just the right words. "What Claire is trying to say is that
at one time we knew your new house well, and it's no secret that ever since
Alison's death there have been disturbances reported there. I'd hoped that when
you and your sister moved in
—
a psychologist and a musician
—
that there would be no more
disturbances. I knew that Alison would be unhappy with anyone living in the
house who did not share her interests
—
"

 
          
"But
that's impossible!" Dr. Barnes burst out vehemently. "You
can't
believe
that! The dead
—
if they survive
—
why would they still be
interested in what happens to what they left behind?"

           
Because there is unfinished
business here,
Claire thought, but did not voice the thought aloud.

 
          
"I
hardly know what to say to you. I don't have any idea how much you know about
these things . . ." Claire began.

 
          
"Nothing,"
Dr. Barnes said flatly.

 
          
And
abruptly Claire remembered why it was that Leslie Barnes had looked so
familiar, even when they were meeting for the first time. "I find that
hare to believe," she said, as gently as she could. "Not if you are
open-minded enough to investigate a poltergeist
—
and forgive me, Dr. Barnes;
I don't think much of the
Enquirer,
but there must have been something
to that story they printed last year. Let me
—
"

 
          
"Claire."
Colin's voice was quietly firm. "She came to us for books, not for unasked
advice."

 
          
Claire
blinked at Colin in mild surprise. It was unlike him to withhold help, but for
some reason, he did not wish her to offer. She thought about the newspaper
story. If it was to be believed, Leslie Barnes, then a school psychologist in
Sacramento
, had experienced a vision
that led police to the notorious "Pigtail Killer." No wonder she had
wanted to move as far away from that as possible. How horrible that would be,
to find one's self in the mind of a serial killer. . . .

 
          
"Oh,
please," Leslie Barnes burst out. "If you know anything at all about
this business, I'm at my wit's end! I was just thinking that I needed all the
help I could get!" She looked from one to the other of them pleadingly.

 
          
Claire
glanced at Colin. He would not act
—
but he would not stop her
from acting, either.

 
          
"Has
there been any poltergeist activity in the house itself?" Claire asked.

 
          
Leslie
Barnes took a deep ragged breath, and it all came tumbling out
—
the crank calls that had
begun while she and Emily were still living in Berkeley
—
the disconnected doorbell
that rang when there was no one there and continued to ring after she'd ripped
it out of the wall
—
the troubled nightmares that had plagued both her and
Emily, of a blood-drenched howling man. . . .

 
          
In
such company, the poltergeist phenomena were almost innocuous, but it was
obvious that Leslie Barnes was terrified at the thought that the psychic
flashes that had begun so suddenly had not simply vanished, but taken on a new
and more terrifying manifestation.

 
          
"Take
these home and read them," Claire said, holding out two books, the monograph
and the book Alison had written by herself. "And if you like, I can come
over this evening and try to see what's going on in your house."

 
          
"Are
you a medium, too?" Dr. Barnes said, abrupt suspicion and open hostility
in her voice. Claire kept her face still, knowing what was going through the
younger woman's mind. Like many of her own patients, Leslie Barnes knew that
she desperately needed help, but was deeply wary of accepting any.

 
          
Claire
shook her head, searching for the words that would soothe the other j woman's
fears. "I've had a little experience, nothing more. I'm not sure I ca find
out anything, but I do know the house, and I could try."

           
"Oh, Colin, how could we
not
help her?" Claire demanded as soon as Dr. Barnes had left. "You
saw
—
that
poor woman was at the end of her tether! What if
—
if Alison has chosen her
—
if she's the one
—
"

 
          
"She's
strong enough to handle it," Colin said with that calm conviction that was
sometimes his most irritating trait.

 
          
"And
you think she's
chosen
to scare herself blue with a poltergeist, I suppose,"
Claire said tartly.

 
          
"Possibly
not," Colin admitted. "But I do know that she's chosen to date Simon
Anstey."

 
          
Could
that possibly be true?
Claire wondered as she walked up the hill to the
house later that day. While Colin would certainly not have said such a thing if
it were not so, it was nearly impossible to believe.

 
          
Claire
had known Simon for a bit over twenty years now, and she had never seen him
with anything less than a stunningly dazzling woman, the sort of international
trophies men of riches and fame tended to collect as a way of keeping score.
While Leslie Barnes was certainly pretty enough, she wasn't in that class, nor,
Claire knew intuitively, did she desire to be.

 
          
Perhaps,
scarred as he is, he does not wish to have to compete with a whole man for a
more beautiful woman's attention.
Even as she framed the thought, Claire
discarded it. Such a course of action would have required a certain reasonable
humility from Simon, and as far as she had seen, supreme arrogance was still
his key character trait.

 
          
Claire
shook her head at the unconscious assumptions her thoughts betrayed
—
as if an accident of beauty
truly were a woman's only desirable trait. It was possible that Simon had
simply lost interest in what he could so easily gain, and was looking, as he
matured, for a woman who could be his intellectual match. Whatever his
reasons, Simon was not wooing Leslie Barnes because of feelings of inadequacy.
But what
were
his reasons?

 
          
Claire
mounted the front steps of the house.

 
          
It
has been twenty-three years since I first entered this house.

 
          
For
a moment time folded in on itself, and it was not a sultry May evening, but a
bleak November night. Claire stood in the front hall, looking toward light and
warmth, and fearing them both from the roots of her soul.

 
          
"Sins
. . . I suppose it's too much to hope for that I've been committing any?"

 
          
Those
long-past words echoed through her mind. What a long way she had come in just
one lifetime!

 
          
And
others still had as far to travel. . . .

 
          
Leslie
answered the door, looking elegantly casual in white linen slacks and a
sleeveless pale blue turtleneck sweater. The combination suited her dark beauty
perfectly. She welcomed Claire into the house, and as the two women lingered
over a cup of tea in the kitchen, becoming Claire and Leslie to each other,
Claire told Leslie a little of her own beliefs and encouraged Leslie to talk
about her experiences.

 
          
She
listened as Leslie told her of the horror of seeing Juanita Garcia dead in a
drainage ditch
—
first in a vision, then when she led the police to the
scene of the crime. She'd moved to
Berkeley
to escape the notoriety she
gained from the case, and had fallen into what sounded as if it had been a disastrous
relationship with the brother of the detective on the Pigtail Killer case. Joel
Beckworth was one of those draconian rationalists whose only defense against
the Unknown was to ridicule it, and Leslie seemed only relieved that she'd
managed to make a break with him
—
over buying Greenhaven, of all things.