“Will you listen to me now, Howard?”
He nodded.
“We’re older than you, and in some ways more powerful, but this doesn’t mean we can order everything to our ends. Not by any means. It was our intention to bring Tim and his father together here for a great purpose, but David … couldn’t come this far. I’ll tell you bluntly that if he’d made it, Tim’s mother would be dead now. A killer had been dispatched to her, but at the last moment we gave him another target in order to spare her.”
“Why?”
Andrea shook her head sadly. “We’re not monsters, Howard, whatever you or others may think. It was never our intention to orphan Tim. We mean him no harm at all. Very far from it.”
“Are you saying that you’ll let me take Tim back to his mother?”
“Certainly. Did you think we’d keep him here by force?”
He was so stunned by this reply that he was momentarily speechless.
Eight hours later, with a little hustling and a lot of luck, Howard and the boy reached Albuquerque in time to board an eight o’clock flight to Chicago. Before leaving Taos, he had called Runnell in hopes that Ellen might actually be able to meet the plane, but the phone wasn’t answered. In fact, at this point she was still in Colorado and wouldn’t leave until after the funeral of Felipe Martinez, whose death had left her physically and emotionally shattered.
Tim was strangely silent, almost inert. Once they were in the air, Howard ordered a drink, but Tim wanted nothing. Eventually, as he knew he would—as he always did on long flights, from sheer boredom—Howard dozed off. When he woke after an hour, the seat beside him was empty, and he assumed the boy had gone to the toilet. After twenty minutes, he went to check and found all the rest rooms vacant. After surveying the passengers on the chance that Tim had, for some unfathomable reason, decided to sit with someone else, he asked a flight attendant if the boy seated next to him had been invited to visit the cockpit.
She looked at him blankly and said, “What boy?”
“The boy who got onto the plane with me. The boy who’s been sitting beside me since we left Albuquerque.”
The flight attendant, sensing that she might need some help on this one, called over a colleague, who agreed that the seat beside Howard had been empty throughout the flight.
“That’s just not true,” Howard said.
An officer summoned from the flight deck explained that FAA regulations required them to know exactly who was on board before takeoff, and they did. A seat had been reserved for Tim, but he was listed as a no-show.
“Mr. Scheim,” the officer said, “you’ve got to realize that if this boy was on board when we pulled away from the gate, he’d be on board now, and he’s not. That’s definite. This isn’t like a boat, where someone can fall overboard.”
“I know,” Howard said wearily. “I was asleep just now, and I guess I dreamed it.”
They were more than happy to leave it at that.
CHAPTER 47
When Andrea came to join them on the patio, after seeing Howard off, Tim was still investigating the mannequin’s controls.
“Where’s Howard?” he asked.
She sat down at the table and patted the chair beside her. When he was seated, she said: “Howard and I talked things over, Tim, and he feels he has one more lead that’s worth pursuing. While he does that, we thought you might like to stay here with me.”
Tim blinked and looked around doubtfully. “Here?”
“Yes. I think you’d like it a lot. What do you think, Samson? Do you think Tim would like it?”
“Oh, yes! We’ll have a lot of fun!”
Seeing that Tim was still doubtful, Andrea said, “Of course, you can go back to Runnell if you’d rather. Though I have to tell you that the house is as empty as when you left it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Howard called. Still no answer. But if you’d rather not part with Howard, I’ll certainly understand.”
“Oh, it isn’t that. I’d like to stay here, I think. But …”
“But what?”
Tim frowned down at the table. “Are you sure you want me to stay? You don’t even know me.”
Andrea laughed. “Don’t worry about that at all. I’m a good judge of people, Tim. I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t sure.”
“Well … all right. That sounds fine.”
She stood up and held out her hand. “Let’s take a walk together. There’s someone else I want you to meet.”
He looked back at the house. “Can I say goodbye to Howard first?”
“He’s already on his way, Tim. It isn’t as though he’s leaving forever. I’m sure he’ll be back as soon as he can be.”
“Okay,” Tim said thoughtfully.
“See you later, Tim,” Samson squawked.
Hand in hand, they walked down into the low hills ranging to the west.
When they reached the crest of a hill about a mile from the house, Andrea released Tim’s hand and said:
“You can go on by yourself from here.”
Tim looked up at her doubtfully. “Go on by myself?”
Andrea nodded.
“To where?”
She smiled. “Just keep going.”
He watched her turn away and head back down the hill. Then he shrugged and went on. Coming around a huge square block of rock, he nearly stumbled over a man sitting in the dust. He stepped back and blinked down at him.
The man was dressed in jeans and a casual shirt, but Tim’s father would have had no difficulty in recognizing him as the man he’d known in Las Vegas as Pablo. Turning his dark bull-like face up to Tim, he gave him a solemn welcoming nod.
Tim spent a full minute exploring the man’s eyes. As he’d seen once before, a universe of mysterious life seemed to move in their depths.
“What happened to your horns?”
The man smiled and tapped his temple. “They’re in here. I only bring them out to frighten little boys.”
“I wasn’t frightened.”
“I know, Tim. That’s why you’re here now.”
Tim sat down beside him in the shadow of the rock, clasped his hands around his knees, and gazed out into the hills that rolled endlessly before them. After perhaps half an hour had passed, Tim asked:
“Was it you who … arranged all this?”
Pablo thought for a while before answering. “Tim, your father left you in order to find something he wanted. Something he wanted but wasn’t strong enough to have. He became … lost. Your mother followed him and she too became lost.”
“That’s not exactly an answer. Is it?”
“Your father and mother followed their own promptings, Tim. I don’t know what more to tell you.”
His face expressionless, Tim continued to stare at the distant horizon.
“What is it you most deeply want, Tim? Do you want to go back home and school with the other boys? If that’s what you want, I promise you shall have it. You mustn’t stay here if your heart yearns for the small, humdrum world you left.”
Tim said nothing.
“Think, Tim. Tell me what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“Look here, Tim.” Pablo opened his hand and in the shadow of the rock Tim saw a column of sunlight standing in his palm. In it a swarm of sparks gamboled in a swirling dance.
“Motes of dust,” Tim whispered.
Pablo shook his head. “A world, Tim. You can visit it, if you like.” He closed his hand and the column of light vanished. “That’s only one world. There are many others I can open to you. If you want it.”
His stomach tingling with apprehension and delight, Tim nodded to show that he understood.
As the sun mounted, the shadow in which they were sitting gradually shrank and disappeared.
“We must remember to find you a hat,” Pablo said with a smile. He got to his feet and stood gazing off toward the western horizon. Without turning, he said: “You know that the people you?
??ve grown up among say we’re evil—Andrea and I, and others of our kind. Don’t you, Tim?”
“I guess so.”
“Do you understand why they say we’re evil?”
“No.”
“It’s because they know we belong entirely to this world.”
“You belong …? I don’t understand.”
“You don’t belong to this world, do you, Tim?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“This world of matter isn’t your true home. Isn’t that what they tell you, Tim? They say this world is just a way station on your journey—a testing ground. Your true home is elsewhere—in heaven—far, far from here, utterly beyond the soiling touch of matter. Isn’t that what the people of your kind teach their children?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“They teach you that this world is trash: corrupt, vile, unwholesome, malign.”
“True.”
“Then you should be able to understand why they believe we’re evil. Since we belong entirely to this world, it follows that we too are corrupt, vile, unwholesome, and malign.”
“Yes, I see.”
“The God worshiped by your kind is nothing like us, Tim. He’s remote and sublime, unsullied by the world. He’d have you think of us as ‘strange gods,’ but it’s He who is the stranger, sequestered beyond the farthest galaxy, beyond matter itself. A cosmic absence: silent, unresponsive, indifferent—but hungry for adoration. Do you understand?”
“I guess so.”
He turned to the boy with a smile. “I must warn you, Tim: If you decide to stay, you will become as we are—unredeemably sullied by the world.”
Tim returned the smile uncertainly, wondering if he was being teased.
“I won’t press you for your choice, Tim. There’s no hurry at all. Spend a few days getting your bearings. See how you feel about relinquishing the past—and all the dreams you once had for your life.”
Pablo paused to look around. “Get to know this place.”
“Is this a special place?”
“Every place is a special place, Tim.” He stood for a moment, blinking down at the ground. “Let me show you something,” he said, turning to descend the hill toward the west. After heading at a diagonal halfway up the next, he abruptly stopped and sat down in the dust. When Tim was seated beside him, he pointed at something a few feet away and said: “What do you think of that?”
The boy blinked at it. It was a slender, sickly-looking cholla cactus about ten inches high, listing to one side as if it were about to expire from sunstroke.
Tim looked at Pablo doubtfully. “Do you mean the cactus?”
Pablo shook his head. “It’s not a cactus. Spend some time in its company. Get to know it well—so well that you forget its name. On the day you can look at it without thinking This is a cactus, it will speak to you. It will tell you a secret forgotten among most of your kind for thousands of years—a secret that will forever change the way you see the world.”
CHAPTER 48
When he finally got home, Howard slept like a dead man for twelve hours, then spent the rest of Tuesday in bed reading two old mysteries by Arthur Upfield, his favorite author after Rex Stout. It was firmly in his mind to go back to work the next day—whatever “work” might mean—but when the time came, he had not the slightest inclination to do so, refusing to spend even one second thinking about the disastrous adventure of the previous week. After checking his supplies, he had to go out for some groceries and booze, but that was it. Monday morning he’d start doing whatever had to be done about Tim and the others. Meanwhile, he had sixteen more Upfields to read.
He turned the last page of the last one at eleven-thirty on Sunday night.
By Wednesday afternoon, the house in Runnell, Indiana, had become haunted: by Ellen Kennesey. She seemed to float through it on a different plane and had to force herself to reach down into the world of matter. It felt like a betrayal to dress herself Thursday morning, to feed herself, to pick up the mail, to glance at a magazine, to watch television. Performing these actions seemed to say that there was nothing to be done except continue to live. Felipe was dead, David was gone, Tim was gone.
She had no right to live, no business being alive. And so she wandered the house like a ghost awaiting release, eating little, smoking endlessly, drinking much—she allowed herself that. Periodically her more sensible instincts told her it was time to turn her back on Felipe and David and Tim—time to put an end to this chapter of her life and start a fresh page, but so far she’d managed to throttle these impulses before they were fully born.
One thing she had done, unghostlike: The day after returning from that nightmare in Colorado she’d gone into a sporting-goods store and bought a pistol, a .25 caliber revolver. It was for protection (she now knew how badly she needed protection) but it was really for murder. She intended—cheerfully and without hesitation—to murder Nick Wolf and Artie Goodman if she ever had the opportunity. She was sure that this would release her from her spectral existence, would make her solid and whole again. She kept the pistol, loaded, on the table beside her bed, hoping they would someday come for her.
It didn’t even cross her mind to file a missing-person complaint. Reporting Tim’s disappearance to the police would have struck her as about as useful as reporting it to the weather bureau.
Friday night seemed special to her, and she drank a little more than usual, because this was the first week’s anniversary of her encounter with Felipe—valiant little Felipe, who died so pointlessly, saving someone who had no business being alive at all.
On Monday Howard was mildly surprised to wake up feeling almost normal. He had no terrible misgivings about the future, no inclination to berate himself for the terrible mistakes he’d made in the past. Yet, after all he’d been through, it felt peculiar to feel so … unpeculiar—to shower, shave, eat breakfast, put on a suit, and go to his office as if were just another workday.
After going through the mail that had piled up during his absence and changing the message on the answering machine, he swivelled his chair around to stare out the window. Time at last to wonder what he was going to do next.
He decided to start with something simple: dialing Ellen Kennesey’s number in Runnell. Sounding groggy, as if woken from a deep sleep, she answered on the fourth ring.
“Sorry,” Howard mumbled, “wrong number,” and hung up.
Well, at least he knew that much. Tim had someone to come home to. All Howard had to do now was figure out how to extricate him from that nightmarish house on Morningstar Lane. It seemed more like a job for Doc Savage than for Howard Scheim. He knew, of course, that he wasn’t strictly obliged to do anything. In theory, he could tell Ellen where to find her son and let her handle it, but, having personally delivered the boy into Andrea’s hands, this was unacceptable.
He needed to assemble a board of advisors.
Knowing that Richard Holloway, the expert on yoo-hoos and computers, would be the hardest to reach and the hardest to pry loose from a busy schedule, he started with him and got lucky.
“Hey, Howard, how are you doing? Shake that cold finally?”
“Yeah, days ago.”
“Terrific. What’s up?”
Howard outlined what he had in mind and was answered by a long silence.
“You there, Richard?”
“I’m here. I’m thinking. I hope you won’t mind my asking, but … do I owe you something?”
“Not at all. If anything, I’m in your debt.”
“I’m glad, Howard, because I don’t want to hear about your adventures in Colorado or New Mexico. I hate to say it, but I’m not curious and I’m not interested and I don’t want to be involved in any way.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Howard said, “but I guess I understand.”
“I hope I’m not a huge disappointment to you.”
“Absolutely not,” Howard said, lying gallantly. “I wouldn’t want to involve you if you didn’t want to
be.”
Not a great beginning, but in truth Richard was the least essential member of the board.
He next called Aaron, who could have no possible grounds to back out, and asked if he was planning to be at the club tonight.
“No,” the old man said. “Not tonight or tomorrow night. I have guests.”
“Wednesday night?”
“Yes, I can be there then. You got something to report?”
“I’ve got lots to report. Can you reserve the conference room for seven-thirty? I’ll be bringing two other people, and we’ll need privacy.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
He had to think about the best way to handle Denise Purcell. A personal visit would be more compelling, there was no doubt about that. But having him right there, she’d probably insist on knowing the whole story before agreeing to attend the meeting. He didn’t want to spend an hour with Denise at this point, he wanted to spend two minutes, so he dialed her number.
When he had her on the line, he said, “Hi Denise. This is Howard Scheim, the King of Pentacles.”
“Hello, Howard,” she replied levelly. “How are you?”
“Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered, more or less the way you said I’d be.” She didn’t accept this invitation to inquire. “I’d like to have an opportunity to tell you what’s been going on and to ask your advice.”
“Advice about what?”
“You said I’d be following the sword of the Page of Swords. I don’t know if you remember.…”
“I remember every reading I give.”
“Well, you were right about that. I’ve been following this lad’s sword, but we’ve become separated. You might say that he’s … stranded. He’s a very nice twelve-year-old named Tim Kennesey—you’d like him.”
“Howard, don’t try to con me with that ‘you’d like him’ bullshit. I don’t want to get involved in this. I’ve got plenty of people to like already.”
“I’m not asking you to get involved, Denise, believe me. I’m just asking you to listen.”
“Howard, look. I don’t even want to hear about it. Can’t you get that through your head?”