Superstition (41 page)

Bob Cross looked unconvinced. “I want to see that damn mirror for myself—the one with scratching on the back.”

“You will. Just give me a day or two—please?”

The older man's face took on an expression of reluctance, but he grudgingly agreed, “Okay, you're the expert. I guess we'd better listen to you.”

Sam felt an immense relief. “By the way,” he said, turning to Joanna and changing the subject, “I read your book. It's excellent.”

Her face lit up with pleasure. “Do you really think so?”

“It deserves to do well.”

“I really appreciate your saying that. Do you think we could discuss it sometime, at more length?”

“I'd be happy to.”

Things drew quickly to a close. Joanna's father, having been denied access to the “scene of the crime,” was impatient to be on the move, urging his two women to collect their belongings while he phoned down to the garage for his car. Sam said his formal good-byes to all three of them in the hotel suite, then Ralph accompanied them downstairs. When he returned, Sam was waiting for him.

“You handled that well,” Ralph said to him. “Thank you.”

“They're nice people. I hope this thing won't cause them any more upset than it has already.”

Ralph had taken a bunch of keys from his pocket, but kept them in his fist for the time being. “I don't know whether I should be giving you the keys to my house, or calling Bellevue and having you put under restraint,” he said. “But after last night, I guess I have to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

He held out the keys. Sam took them.

“Thanks,” he said. “If you move out of the hotel, let me know where I can find you.”

60

I
t took him several hours to write down the whole story. He wrote in longhand, sitting at the desk in the music room where Ralph composed his operas, which were mostly unperformed, although several orchestral pieces had been recorded on CDs that Sam found in a rack on the wall. He played a couple, and found them interesting but too obviously influenced by other composers to be memorable. He reflected, ungenerously perhaps, that it was the work of someone wealthy enough to indulge his passion, though not talented enough to earn a living from it. But he made no comment on the music in what he wrote, seeing no cause to offend the man who would most likely be the one to find and read the document.

It was only when that thought crossed his mind that Sam asked himself whether the words he was writing were in anticipation of his own death, a kind of valediction. He realized that they were. Although he did not assume that he was going to die (he no longer assumed anything), he did not see how he could continue to exist in his present state indefinitely. Six of the group were dead, and Joanna—
his
Joanna—had entered some strange limbo on the margins of a changed world in which he now found himself.

He did not speculate further upon his personal fate, merely wrote down the story in all the detail that he could recall, starting with his reading in
Around Town
of Joanna's exposé of Camp Starburst and the cynical manipulations of Ellie and Murray Ray. He wrote of his first meeting with Joanna in a television studio, and then later on Sixth Avenue after her unnerving confrontation with Ellie. He wrote of how the idea of the experiment had been born, and how his relationship with Joanna had grown with it. In swift and simple prose he set down all that had happened from that time until the time of writing almost twelve months later, and a universe apart.

What does that mean, a universe apart? Am I speaking of parallel worlds? And if so, what does that mean? It's just an idea, a way, one of many, of describing the strangeness of nature when we examine her closely. We know that in truth there is only one world: the one we are in. We know too that concepts like space and time are merely constructs of our consciousness, not things “out there” existing independently of us
.

Physicists, it is said, have paid a high price for their understanding of nature: they have lost their hold on reality. Of course, that was “reality” as defined by common sense—a transaction between “out there,” where the world was, and “in here,” where we were. Now that distinction has disappeared; the common sense that took it for granted has been proven an untrustworthy ally. There is nothing to lose our hold on anymore. That which holds and that which is held are one and the same; observer and observed are merely parts of a spectrum, neither one existing independently of the other
.

In physics we have had to learn a language that reflects both the precision of our knowledge and the ambiguity revealed by it. An electron, for example, is not a particle or wave; it is both. It exists in a “superposition of states”—until we want it, for the purposes of measurement, to be one or the other. Then it will oblige us
.

The universe in which we live is as much conceived by us as we are by it. Obvious simple rules like cause and effect have lost their power. Niels Bohr defined causality as no more than a method by which we reduce our sense impressions to some kind of order
.

No one disputes the reality of this strangeness on the microscopic level. The only question has been whether it could carry over into the macroscopic world of our daily lives. There is increasing, indeed by now overwhelming, evidence that it can
.

I myself, sitting here, am living proof
.

He set aside his pen and leaned back to look up at the ceiling. It was barely visible beyond the penumbra of the lamp on the desk. Night had fallen while he wrote. He searched for a summing up, a final phrase that would crystallize and give shape to what he was trying to say.

It was of course a hopeless task. There was no such thing as a last word.

“Living proof,” he read, and picked up his pen, but wrote no more.

Because in that moment he had heard her voice. Quite distinctly though not loudly. Nor was he sure where it had come from.

He stood up silently, as though the least sound he made might frighten her off and he would lose her, perhaps this time for good.

“Joanna?” he called out softly.

There was no response. Only then did he realize that, although he'd heard her voice, he had no idea what she'd said. Had he really heard her? Or was his mind playing tricks?

He stepped out onto the landing and listened in the darkness. The house was silent except for the muffled sound of traffic in the street. He called her name again.

“Joanna…?”

Still no response. Then, somewhere above, he heard a faint, brief sound, as though someone had passed quickly and lightly over a loose floorboard.

The darkness around him grew deeper and more dense as he turned a corner on the stairs, losing the last reflected light from the music room below. He paused and spoke again, in barely a whisper.

“Joanna, are you there…?”

Again he heard her voice, closer this time, and in a whisper like his own. There could be no doubt it was her voice, but still he couldn't understand what she was saying.

“Joanna…? Where are you…?”

He groped in the darkness for a light switch, and cried out in shock as his hand connected with the feel of warm, firm flesh. Her unseen fingers interlaced themselves with his, and held him tight.

“I'm here,” she said. Her voice was clear now, so close to him that he could feel her breath on his. Her body pressed against him, soft and warm. He held her naked in his arms, and in the dark her lips found his.

He felt a movement of her hand against his chest and realized she was unbuttoning his shirt. Brushing her fingers aside, he tore off his clothes in what seemed like a single unbroken movement. He didn't try to speak, he knew he couldn't. The beating of his heart was like a hammer in his chest as she led him blindly through the dark until he felt the bed against his legs.

They tumbled onto it, devouring one another with a violence and a passion that seemed inexhaustible and endless. The only sounds they made were cries and gasps of need, desire, and satisfaction, until, sated at last, they lay entwined in silence.

“I'm so happy,” she whispered. “I knew you'd come. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore.”

He pulled her to him, feeling the swell of her breasts, the curve of her stomach and thighs, and the film of perspiration covering her skin as it pressed against his own. He could feel her, but he could not see her. He knew that the dancing lines and contours he fancied he had glimpsed from time to time as they made love were simply his imagination creating mental images from the sensual contact of their bodies.

“I want to see you,” he said. “I have to.”

“Yes, I know.” There was a softness in her voice, as though the words came through a smile of tenderness. Her hand traced the contours of his face. “It's all right. You can put on the light.”

He reached out to where he remembered seeing a bedside lamp, his fingers feeling for the switch. He found it—but, for some reason he did not fully understand, he hesitated.

“Don't be afraid,” she said.

He pressed.

There was a searing flash of light, like an explosion. Worse even than the pain that scorched his eyes was the blistering, asphyxiating sound—like the roar of an inferno, all around him, all consuming, burning through his brain.

He didn't know how long it lasted, but as the blinding whiteness faded and the silence gradually returned, there came too a strange emptiness and an absence of all feeling.

Somewhere he heard a howl of pain and fear. It was his voice, he knew, but it no longer seemed to be a part of him.

She spoke again, calm, reassuring, in control, as though she had known all this would happen and was here to guide him through it.

“It's all right, my darling…don't be afraid…you're safe now…”

He cried out in startled rage, “I can't see…where am I…?”

Feeling returned abruptly, as it does after an injury when the body has been momentarily anesthetized by shock. But it was not pain he felt now, merely the sensation of being on his feet, stumbling forward like a blind man, arms outstretched in search of unseen obstacles.

Her voice came again—so close now that it seemed to be inside his head.

“Come…come with me…”

He felt her hand on his, its touch so light as to be barely there at all. He took a few more steps, and then the ground beneath his feet seemed suddenly to fall away.

But he himself did not fall. It was as though the house, the city, and the world around it were opening into endless space. He felt that he was flying, borne aloft by a mysterious, all-powerful and all-embracing force. He knew that she was with him, but he was not sure how he knew.

Then the thought came to him that she was not with him, but was now in some way part of him. The idea seemed so obviously and inevitably true that he did not question it, or wonder how it could be so, or where it was that they were going.

He just relaxed and let what was happening take its course, until it seemed it would go on forever…

61

R
alph Cazaubon had tried to call the house all afternoon, without success. The first day he had left Sam Towne to his strange vigil undisturbed, but on the second had found himself wondering so much what was going on that it became hard to concentrate on anything else.

All the same, he'd waited until after lunch to call. The morning had been spent looking at apartments to rent. So far he'd found nothing that seemed ideal for Joanna and himself, but there was no hurry: she was happy with her parents, and he'd promised to drive out to join her that night. Perhaps they'd take a vacation, he'd suggested, fly off to the sun where they could put the nightmare behind them. She had liked the idea. They said they'd talk about where over dinner.

So the afternoon was his last chance to find out what was happening with Sam Towne, preferably before dark. Although he disliked admitting it even to himself, he had no wish to be in that house—his house—after dark. He had already made up his mind that he was going to sell it. Even if the events of two nights ago never happened again, he couldn't bring himself to live there any longer. Above all, he couldn't let Joanna take that risk. He hoped only that Sam would somehow find a way of ending the possession that had so mysteriously entered the place; a house in the grip of such a thing would not be easy to sell, not even in that neighborhood and at a bargain price.

He rang the bell for several minutes before taking the duplicate keys from his pocket and inserting them in the door's two main locks. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, and entered.

The coat stand was still where it had been two days ago, so he couldn't push the door all the way back but had to slide through sideways. He saw Sam Towne the moment he was through.

His naked body lay facedown at the foot of the stairs. His arms were out, as though he'd tried to break his fall, and his head was twisted at an angle that left no doubt that he was dead. His eyes were open as though staring in shock at the pool of his own blood that had congealed on the floor into a patch of dark and lusterless vermilion, almost black in the fading light of the late Manhattan afternoon.

EPILOGUE

I
f I don't go back,” she said, “this thing will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I refuse to accept that. I have to walk through the house just once, and then it will be over. Exorcised.”

Ralph tried to talk her out of it, but she was adamant. It had been ten days since Sam Towne's death. Ralph had met one of Sam's brothers, who had come down from Boston to arrange for the body to be shipped to Cape Cod for a family funeral. The death had been classified as accidental, with no suspicion of foul play: the fact that the deceased had fallen down the stairs while attempting to establish whether or not the house in which he'd died was haunted was of no great interest to the city authorities. Even if the presumption was that he'd been pushed, the law made no provision for the criminal prosecution of ghosts or other disembodied spirits.