True Believer (20 page)

But what happened here didn’t fall neatly into any of those categories. The lights struck Jeremy as neither fraud nor coincidence, and yet it wasn’t an honest mistake, either. There was a ready explanation somewhere, but as he sat in the cemetery in the rush of the moment, he had no idea what it could be.

Through it all, Lexie had remained seated and hadn’t said a word. “Well?” she finally asked. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know yet,” Jeremy admitted. “I saw something, that’s for sure.”

“Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“No,” he said. “Actually, this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything that even remotely struck me as mysterious.”

“It is amazing, isn’t it?” she said, her voice soft. “I’d almost forgotten how pretty it could be. I’ve heard about the aurora borealis, and I’ve often wondered whether it looked like this.”

Jeremy didn’t respond. In his mind’s eye, he re-created the lights, thinking that the way they’d risen in intensity reminded him of headlights of oncoming cars as they rounded a curve. They simply had to be caused by a moving vehicle of some sort, he thought. He looked toward the road, waiting for passing cars, but not completely surprised at their absence.

Lexie let him sit in silence for a minute and could almost see the wheels turning. Finally, she leaned forward and poked him in the arm to get his attention again.

“Well?” she asked. “What do we do next?”

Jeremy shook his head, coming back to her.

“Is there a highway around here? Or another major road?”

“Just the one you came in on that runs through town.”

“Huh,” he said, frowning.

“What? No ‘ah’ this time?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I’m getting there, though.” Despite the inky darkness, he thought he could see her smirking. “Why do I get the impression that you already know what’s causing them?”

“I don’t know,” she said, playing coy. “Why do you?”

“It’s just a feeling I get. I’m good at reading people. A guy named Clausen taught me his secrets.”

She laughed. “Well, then, you already know what I think.”

She gave him a moment to figure it out before she leaned forward. Her eyes looked darkly seductive, and though his mind should have been elsewhere, he again flashed on an image of her at the party and how beautiful she had been.

“Don’t you remember my story?” she whispered. “It was my parents. They probably wanted to meet you.”

Perhaps it was the orphaned tone she used when she said it— simultaneously sad and resilient—but as a tiny lump formed in his throat, it was all he could do not to take her in his arms right then and there, in the hope of holding her close forever.

Half an hour later, after loading up the equipment, they arrived back at her house.

Neither of them had said much on the way home, and when they reached her door, Jeremy realized that he’d spent far more time thinking about Lexie as he drove than he had about the lights. He didn’t want the evening to end, not yet.

Hesitating before the door, Lexie brought a hand to her mouth, stifling a yawn before breaking into an embarrassed laugh.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “I’m not normally up this late.”

“It’s okay,” he said, meeting her gaze. “I had a great time tonight.”

“So did I,” she said, meaning it.

He took a small step forward, and when she realized he was thinking of trying to kiss her, she pretended to fiddle with something on her jacket.

“I suppose I should call it a night, then,” she said, hoping he took the hint.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “We could watch the tapes inside, if you’d like. Maybe you could help me figure out what the lights really are.”

She looked away, her expression wistful.

“Please don’t ruin this for me, okay?” she whispered.

“Ruin what?”

“This . . . everything . . .” She closed her eyes, trying to collect her thoughts. “Both you and I know why you want to come inside, but even if I wanted you to, I wouldn’t let you. So please don’t ask.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No. You didn’t do anything wrong. I had a great day, a wonderful day. Actually, it’s the best day I’ve had in a long time.”

“Then what is it?”

“You’ve been giving me the full-court press since you got here, and we know what’ll happen if I let you through that door. But you’re leaving. And when you do, I’ll be the one who’s hurt afterward. So why start something you have no intention of finishing?”

With someone else, with anyone else, he would have said something flippant or changed the subject until he figured out another way to get through her door. But as he looked at her on the porch, he couldn’t form the words. Nor, strangely, did he want to.

“You’re right,” he admitted. He forced a smile. “Let’s call it a night. I should probably go find out where those lights are coming from, anyway.”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly, but when he took a small step backward, she caught his eye.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Good night, Lexie.”

She nodded, and after an awkward pause, she turned toward the door. Jeremy took that as his signal to leave, and he stepped off the porch as Lexie took her keys from her jacket pocket. She was sliding the key into the door when she heard his voice behind her.

“Hey, Lexie?” he called out.

In the fog, he was nothing but a blur.

“Yes?”

“I know you may not believe it, but the last thing I want to do is hurt you or do anything that would make you regret that we’ve met.”

Though she smiled briefly at his comment, she turned away without a word. The lack of response spoke volumes, and for the first time in his life, Jeremy was not only disappointed in himself but suddenly wished he were someone else entirely.

True Believer

Eleven

Birds were chirping, the fog had begun to thin, and a raccoon scurried across the bungalow porch when Jeremy’s cell phone rang. The harsh gray light of early morning passed through the torn curtains, smacking him in the eye like a prizefighter’s punch.

A quick glance at the clock showed it was 8:00 a.m., way too early to talk to anyone, especially after pulling an all-nighter. He was getting too old for nights like that, and he winced before groping for the phone.

“This better be important,” he grumbled.

“Jeremy? Is that you? Where have you been? Why haven’t you called? I’ve been trying to reach you!”

Nate, Jeremy thought, closing his eyes again. Good God, Nate.

Meanwhile, Nate was going on. He had to be a long-lost relative of the mayor, Jeremy thought. Put these two in a room, hook them up to a generator while they talked, and they could power Brooklyn for a month.

“You said you were going to keep in touch!”

Jeremy forced himself to sit upright on the side of his bed, though his body was aching.

“Sorry, Nate,” he said. “I’ve just been tied up, and the reception isn’t too good down here.”

“You’ve got to keep me filled in! I tried calling you all day yesterday, but I kept getting put through to your voice mail. You can’t imagine what’s going on. I’ve got producers hounding me left and right, coming to me for ideas about what you might want to discuss. And things are really moving. One of them suggested that you do a piece on these high-protein diets. You know, the ones that tell you that it’s okay to eat all the bacon and steaks you want and still lose weight.”

Jeremy shook his head, trying to keep up.

“Wait? What are you talking about? Who wants me to talk about what diet?”

“GMA. Who did you think I was talking about? Of course, I said I’d have to get back to them, but I think you’d be a natural at this.”

The man sometimes gave Jeremy a headache, and he rubbed his forehead.

“I have no interest in talking about a new diet, Nate. I’m a science journalist, not Oprah.”

“So you put your own spin on it. That’s what you do, right? And diets have something to do with chemistry and science. Am I right or am I right? Hell, you know I’m right, and you know me—when I’m right, I’m right. And besides, I’m just tossing out ideas here—”

“I saw the lights,” Jeremy interrupted.

“I mean, if you have something better, then we can talk. But I’m flying blind here, and this diet thing might be a way to get your foot—”

“I saw the lights,” Jeremy said again, raising his voice.

This time Nate heard him. “You mean the lights in the cemetery?” he asked.

Jeremy continued to rub his temples. “Yeah, those lights.”

“When? Why didn’t you call me? This gives me something to run with. Oh, please tell me you got it on film.”

“I did, but I haven’t seen the tapes yet, so I don’t know how they turned out.”

“So the lights are for real?”

“Yeah. But I think I found out where they’re coming from, too.”

“So it’s not real . . .”

“Listen, Nate, I’m tired, so listen for a second, will you? I went to the cemetery last night and saw the lights. And to be honest, I can see why some people consider them to be ghosts, because of the way they appear. There’s a pretty interesting legend attached to them, and the town even has a tour planned for the weekend to capitalize on it. But after I left the cemetery, I went looking for the source and I’m pretty sure I found it. All I have to do is figure out how and why it happens when it does, but I have some ideas about that, too, and hopefully, I’ll have it figured out by later today.”

Nate, for a rare moment, had nothing to say. Like the trained professional he was, however, he recovered quickly.

“Okay, okay, give me a second to figure out the best way to play this. I’m thinking of the television folks here . . .”

Who else would he be thinking of? Jeremy wondered.

“Okay, how’s this?” Nate was going on. “We open with the legend itself, sort of setting the scene. Misty cemetery, a close-up on some of the graves, maybe a quick shot of a black raven looking ominous, you talking in voice-over . . .”

The man was the master of Hollywood clichés, and Jeremy glanced at the clock again, thinking it was way too early for this.

“I’m tired, Nate. How about this? You think about it and let me know later, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I can do that. That’s what I’m here for, right? To make your life easier. Hey, do you think I should call Alvin?”

“I’m not sure yet. Let me see the tapes first, and then I’ll talk to Alvin, and we’ll see what he thinks.”

“Right,” he said, his voice rising in enthusiasm. “Good plan, good idea! And this is great news! A genuine ghost story! They’re going to love this! I told you they were hot and heavy about the idea, didn’t I? Believe me, I told them you’d come through with this story and that you wouldn’t be interested in talking about the latest diet fad. But now that we have a bargaining chip, they’re going to go crazy. I can’t wait to tell them, and listen, I’ll be calling you in just a couple of hours, so make sure you keep your phone on. Things could be moving quickly . . .”

“Good-bye, Nate. I’ll talk to you later.”

Jeremy rolled back onto the bed and pulled the pillow over his head, but finding it impossible to fall back to sleep, he groaned as he got up and made his way to the bathroom, doing his best to ignore the stuffed creatures that seemed to be watching his every move. Still, he was getting used to them, and as he undressed, he hung his towel on the outstretched paws of a badger, thinking he might as well take advantage of the animal’s convenient pose.

Hopping into the shower, he turned the water as far as it would go and stayed under the single jet for twenty minutes, until his skin was pruned. Only then did he begin to feel alive again. Sleeping less than two hours would do that to a person.

After throwing on his jeans, he grabbed the tapes and got in his car. The fog hung over the road like evaporating dry ice on a concert stage, and the sky had the same ugly tones as it had the day before, making him suspect that the lights would appear again tonight, which not only boded well for the tourists this weekend but also meant that he should probably call Alvin. Even if the tapes were okay, Alvin was magic with a camera, and he’d capture images that would no doubt make Nate’s finger swell up from making frantic calls.

His first step, though, was to see what he’d caught on camera, if only to see that he’d captured something. Not surprisingly, Greenleaf didn’t have a VCR, but he’d seen one in the rare-book room, and as he drove along the quiet road that led toward town, he wondered how Lexie would behave toward him when he got there. Would she go back to being distant and professional? Would the good feelings from their day together linger? Or would she simply remember their final moments on the porch, when he’d pushed too hard? He had no idea what was going to happen, even though he’d devoted much of the night to trying to figure it out.

Sure, he’d found the source of the light. Like most mysteries, it wasn’t that hard to solve if you knew what to look for, and a quick check of a Web site sponsored by NASA eliminated the only other possibility. The moon, he’d learned, couldn’t have been responsible for the lights. It was, in fact, a new moon, when the moon was hidden by the earth’s shadow, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the mysterious lights only occurred in this particular phase. It would make sense: without moonlight, even the faintest traces of other light would become that much more obvious, especially when reflected in the water droplets of the fog.

But as he’d stood in the chilly air with the answer within reach, all he could think about was Lexie. It seemed impossible that he’d only met her two days earlier. It made no sense. Of course, Einstein had postulated that time was relative, and he supposed that could explain it. How did the old saying about relativity go? A minute with a beautiful woman would pass in an instant, while a minute with your hand placed against a hot burner would feel like an eternity? Yeah, he thought, that was it. Or close, anyway.

He again regretted his behavior on the porch, wishing for the hundredth time that he had taken her hint when he’d been thinking about kissing her. She’d made her feelings obvious and he’d ignored them. The regular Jeremy would have forgotten all about it already, shrugging the whole thing off as inconsequential. For some reason, this time it wasn’t so easy.

Though he’d dated a lot and hadn’t exactly become a hermit after Maria had left him, he had seldom done the spend-thewhole-day-talking-with-someone thing. Usually, it was just dinner or drinks and enough flirtatious conversation to loosen the inhibitions before the good part. Part of him knew it was time to grow up when it came to dating, maybe even try to settle down and live the sort of life his brothers did. His brothers readily concurred, and so, of course, did their wives. They were of the widely shared opinion that he should get to know women before trying to sleep with them, and one had gone so far as to set him up on a date with a divorced neighbor who believed the same. Of course, she’d declined a second date, in large part because of the pass he’d made at her on the first. In the past few years, it just seemed easier to not get to know women too well, to keep them in the realm of perpetual strangers, when they could still project hope and potential on him.

And that was the thing. There wasn’t hope or potential. At least, not for the sort of life his brothers and sisters-in-law believed in, or even, he suspected, the kind Lexie wanted. His divorce from Maria had proved that. Lexie was a small-town girl with small-town dreams, and it wouldn’t be enough to be faithful and responsible and to have things in common. Most women wanted something else, a way of life he couldn’t give them. Not because he didn’t want to, not because he was enamored of the bachelor scene, but simply because it was impossible. Science could answer a lot of questions, science could solve a lot of problems, but it couldn’t change his particular reality. And the reality was that Maria had left him because he hadn’t been, nor ever could be, the kind of husband she’d wanted.

He admitted this painful truth to no one, of course. Not to his brothers, not to his parents, not to Lexie. And usually, even in quiet moments, not even to himself.

Though the library was open by the time he got there, Lexie wasn’t in yet, and he felt a pang of disappointment when he pushed open the office door only to find the room empty. She’d been in earlier, though: the rare-book room had been left unlocked, and when he turned on the light, he saw a note on the desk, along with the topography maps he’d mentioned. The note took only an instant to read:

I’m taking care of some personal things. Feel free to use the VCR. Lexie

No mention of yesterday or last night, no mention of wanting to make arrangements to see him again. Not even an acknowledgment above the signature. It wasn’t exactly chilly as far as notes went, but it didn’t leave him with the warm fuzzies, either.

Then again, he was probably reading too much into it. She might have been in a rush this morning, or she might have kept it short because she planned to be back soon. She did mention it was personal, and with women, that could mean anything from a doctor’s appointment to shopping for a friend’s birthday. There was just no way to tell.

And besides, he had work to do, he told himself. Nate was waiting and his career was on the line. Jeremy forced himself to focus on chasing the tail end of the story.

The audio recorders had picked up no unusual sounds, and neither the microwave nor the electromagnetic detector had registered the slightest energy variances. The videotapes, however, had picked up everything he’d seen the night before, and he watched the images half a dozen times from every different angle. The cameras with the special light-filtering capacity showed the glowing fog most vividly. Though the tapes might have been good enough to provide a small still to accompany his column, they were far from television quality. When viewed in real time, they had a sort of home-video feel to them, one that reminded him of cheesy tapes offered in proof of other supernatural events.

He made a note to purchase a real camera, no matter how much celery his editor would eat because of it.

But even if the tapes weren’t of the quality he’d hoped they would be, observing the way in which the lights had changed during the twenty-two seconds they were visible assured him again that he’d indeed found the answer. He popped the tapes out, perused the topography maps, and calculated the distance from Riker’s Hill to the river. He compared the earlier photographs he’d taken of the cemetery to photos of the cemetery he found in books about the town’s history, and came up with what he assumed to be a fairly accurate estimate regarding the rate that the cemetery was sinking. Though he wasn’t able to find any more information on the legend of Hettie Doubilet—the records from that period shed no light on the subject—he made a call to the state water bureau concerning the underground reservoir in this part of the state, and one to the department of mines, which had information on the quarries that had been dug earlier in the century. After that, he tapped a few words into a search engine of the Internet looking for the timetables he needed, and finally, after being put on hold for ten minutes, he spoke to a Mr. Larsen at the paper mill, who was eager to help in any way he could.