Son of the endless night, p.42
Son of the Endless Night, page 42
"What? Oh, no— I get that way when I'm— trying to swallow something that just won't go down."
"Let me say a little more about vibrations. Remember, you asked. Vibrations can be harmonious or disharmonious. Tell me, have you ever met someone to whom you took an instant dislike, or spent time in a place you could hardly wait to be away from?"
"Sure."
"That was a matter of your vibrations clashing with those of the other person or with the vibrations of the locality. Our own vibrations are harmonized by the mind, and when the mind is not in control then our vibrations fall more and more out of sympathy with those of nature. The consequences, over a long period of time, can be drastic."
Sigrid was wearing a long-sleeved shirt today; it was cool in the cave through which they were walking. They each carried a staff to help them negotiate the jumbled floor. Conor thought of the scars on her back and said, "How were you possessed?"
"Oh, it happened when I was young and, not stupid, but gullible. Also I had the susceptibility that attracted the wrong spirits, once they had their opportunity to appeal to me. A Ouija board was the catalyst; do you know Ouija boards?"
Conor nodded.
"They are not the innocent toys most people seem to think. A Ouija board is a channel of communication through which unknown spirits may associate with the living. And there are cosmic laws of attraction or invitation the spirits are obliged to obey.
"My friends and I, through the use of our Ouija board, made contact with a spirit that pretended to be positive, angelic, in order to gain our confidence. Well, my friends soon became tired of the game, but I continued with the board, maintaining contact with the spirit for many months— and at night, when I was supposed to be asleep. That is the worst time to have any traffic with spirits. This demon was a real flatterer, and I became captivated by him, his little predictions of the future that always came true. It wasn't enough I had become so dependent on his nightly messages; I had to ask to see him. That's all it took. I became infested, not with just one demon but many."
"Why do you stay here, Sigrid?"
"To do what good I can in return for the charismatic help Sundial gave me. Because of the vibrations here that exclude any possibility of evil influence. Haven't you felt it by now, the difference?"
"I don't know. I slept better last night than I have in weeks, and I didn't need four drinks to get to sleep in the first place. I didn't even want a drink."
"It would take a few days longer— who knows— before you felt so completely at home here you might never want to leave."
"But I have to leave. My brother's going to die."
She ducked her head as if chastised and went along silently for a while. Soon they had to climb a heap of rubble that blocked the floor of the rugged cylinder they had been walking through. Atop the rubble pile Conor found himself looking down into an abyss, as well lighted as the walls of the cave around them.
"This is as far as we go? How deep is that hole?"
Sigrid handed him a piece of basalt. "Toss this in, and count the seconds until you hear it hit the bottom. More physics."
Conor threw the rock, but it had scarcely left his hand when the abyss tremblingly vanished before his eyes, like a mirage. He heard a small splash as the rock hit water, the black surface of a pool that had been so immaculately still it had mirrored without flaw the roof and walls of the cavern they were in.
"Only four inches deep," she said. "We can walk across it easily, and go down to the tidal pools from here. There you will see very interesting sea creatures, the like of which you will not find anywhere else in the world. Then it is just a short way to the beach, where we can swim."
"All right." But Conor was reluctant to leave the cavern so soon— the cool, the blessed windlessness— and return to surface things. Here, in solitude, he could be intimate with a woman he had come to adore on terms that satisfied the heart but did not involve sex.
She sensed his need to linger and, loosening the straps of her small carryall, sat down with her elbows on her knees and smiled up at him. He sat, too, more gingerly, not finding a lump of rock that suited his contours.
"Sigrid, what do you think she's going to do?"
"Edith? Well, I don't know what to say. You would have to know her for a long time to realize how deeply disturbed she is by the plight of your brother. Don't think for a moment she has lost her taste for confrontation, or her hatred of the evil which Zarach' represents."
"But her husband is dying."
"Yes. As I understand it, the disease will eventually shut down his senses one by one; then he will simply forget how to breathe. They have been married forty years. Think of all they must have shared in their love for each other, the good things that life returned to them: the art, the music, the books." Sigrid gestured toward the pool, the surface of which was motionless again. "What she has left is an illusion, which is only complete when at rare times he is stimulated in some unknown way to speak as if he had never been afflicted. Then Edith is happy, and grateful for those moments that still remain of the marvelous life she enjoyed with him. But the day will soon come when the rock falls, the water trembles; then no matter how long she waits, the illusion will not reappear. He will not speak again. He will live on for a while, but he will have left her forever."
78
Judge Natty Eames found the second weekend in April— "mud season" in southern Vermont— too cold for a backyard barbecue, but it was the sixth wedding anniversary of his daughter Olivia, and for the past year and a half he'd been so busy that he and his wife had not had many opportunities to visit the grandchildren, of whom there were two. Natty and Violet (everybody had called her "Buff" as long as she could remember) deliberately drove over to Dorset early, arriving a little after one o'clock. More than a hint of forsythia was showing along the gravel driveway; long gilded tassels of willow hung down at the edge of the pond, where the last ice of winter lay submerged in shallow thinning platelets.
The house had been little more than a drafty cottage when the kids had started out, but Greg was an architect and he'd done a job on the original that Buff claimed put it in the House and Garden class. He'd also cleaned out the choked slow-running stream and dammed it, creating the broad reflecting pond that looked so beautiful at the height of spring and again during the fall foliage season. Natty's grandchildren were not allowed to play anywhere near the pond, which lay almost at the front door; their fenced play area was well to the back of the house in a birch grove. Greg had gone all out here. There were sturdy places to climb and crawl and jump and (pretend) to hide; sandboxes, swings, and slides.
Greg and Olivia were genuinely excited by their anniversary gift, a ruby glass punch bowl Buff had unearthed in an out-of-the-way antique shop near Chester Depot. Buff wouldn't even tell Natty what she'd paid for it, but she knew her antiques better than most of the shyster dealers around, and she could strike a hard bargain.
Buff pitched in to give Olivia a hand before the rest of their company showed up. Little Thaddeus, who was three and a half, and Tussy, just turned five, vied for their grandfather's attention. He took them along to the play yard and put them on swings, where he alternated pushing each child. Tad was barely past the timid stage, gripping the chains tightly, not sure he wanted to match Tussy's cries for "higher, Nattypop!"
As he played with the two children Natty Eames found himself thinking about the Devon case. He knew he had acted rightly when he put that smart aleck defense attorney in his place. All the publicity would fizzle for young Kurland now; come Monday he'd have a lot of egg to wipe off his face. Only Natty stood to gain, by showing everyone that this trial was going to be conducted his way.
"Higher, Nattypop!"
The wind had sharpened, and Natty trembled in his treasured plaid mackinaw, which had been around for so long Buff jokingly told everybody Natty had named the mackinaw in his will. He glanced over one shoulder at Trent's orchard, the northern boundary of Greg and Olivia's property, and the crest of the hill beyond. The temperature had been in the low forties but seemed to be plummeting; the barbecue might have to be moved indoors.
"Can I get down now?" Tad said. He had to say it twice before Natty heard him.
"Yes, all right." Natty brought the boy's swing to a sudden stop by grasping both of the chains above Tad's little fists. Tussy continued gleefully to soar, her toes pointed toward the blank treetops. Birds flew away from those trees in a ragged line, a signature of wings in the sky, writing off the hour of false spring they had enjoyed.
So cold, Natty thought; maybe we'd all better go in. He turned his head to follow little Tad's progress to the largest of the wooden slides Greg had built.
"Watch me, Nattypop!"
"Be careful."
Natty laughed, and then his teeth chattered. The wind was coming straight down off the hill almost strong enough to blow Tussy out of her seat as she blithely pumped herself up until at the peak of her rise she was horizontal to the ground. The chain of the swing he was holding trembled from the force she exerted on the framework.
"Tussy, you'll fall out of there." He was getting the sniffles; with his other hand he searched a deep pocket for his handkerchief.
"No won't! Love you, Nattypop!"
"I love you, too, Tussy." Tad was swooping down the slide, shouting. Natty laughed again, but the laughter turned abruptly to ice in his throat. The chain he was holding with his right hand had twisted, inexplicably, and was tightly wound around his wrist.
What the devil? Natty thought.
The seat of the swing jumped up several inches and the other chain formed a loop. He'd had no time to think of how to free himself and now the other chain came down swiftly over his head, rasping coldly against his stuck-out ears, and grabbed him around the neck just below the jawline.
Then the swing began to move, jerking the little judge off his feet, dragging him in his galoshes helplessly to and fro while his face turned the color of blackberry wine. He was conscious for only about another six seconds, just long enough to hear Tussy's first terrified scream as she swung by him twice, three times before she had the wits to dig in her heels and bring herself to a stop. His neck was sadly twisted, but his eyes were open. He smiled at Tussy. The smile filled with fresh blood. She ran to the house.
79
"We'll rest here a few minutes, Philip," Edith Leighton said to her husband. She had detected a slight wheeze, a reluctance to lift his heels from the cindery path as they walked.
He smiled in agreement, responding to the gentle pressure of her fingers on the inside of his elbow. They'd followed the edge of the two-hundred-foot cliff for a quarter of an hour that she had filled with conversation: about music, about a retrospective of Philip's paintings that his long-time London gallery had in the works, about a new biography of Leopold Mozart she had received in the mail and was eager to dip into. Every day she saw to it that her husband took at least a half hour of mild exercise. Sometimes Sigrid accompanied him to the beach, but those outings worried Edith. Philip was an excellent swimmer and she feared that he suddenly might decide to head for open water, where unpredictable strong currents could pull him in less than a minute well out to sea; there would be no way to catch up to him before he became exhausted and drowned.
They sat together on a plaza bench beneath the wide overhanging roof of one of the school pavilions. Shady here, the wind not so obstreperous. The children had gone to their homes for the weekend.
Edith had brought along a folio of recent drawings by a protege of Philip's in years gone by; the young man was now gaining important recognition in Italy and America. She turned the loose drawings over slowly. Beside her Philip looked down at them, nodding. Then he raised his head to gaze out to sea, at a palette of thick massy whites and starry cobalt. His hair riffled around his ears.
"I don't remember the name of the young man we've been spending so much time with," he said apologetically.
It was, she thought, a little like having the radio on all the time, not knowing when you're going to have reception because of a favorable change in atmospheric conditions.
"His name is Conor Devon."
"Oh, yes." He didn't speak again for a sun-filled block of time, during which she smoothed feathers of dormant gray and looked into an ear wishing, whimsically, to be moth-sized, hurled through convoluted channels to his spacious and perplexing mind, there to be ignited in a blaze of the richness she was certain still existed.
Then Philip said, "It sounds very important to me, Edith."
"What does?"
"The demonic possession trial. Zarach' Bal-Tagh is involved."
"Yes, I'm sorry to say."
"Is it because of me you won't go?"
"Of course I don't want to leave you. Also I fear I no longer have the strength."
"Strength is often a matter of conviction, and of faith. Have you lost your faith?"
"No."
She watched his face. He was smiling slightly. That faint touch of radiance, the clarified brow. But she couldn't tell what he was thinking, or if he was thinking at all.
"What does the council say?" he asked her.
"I'm not yet prepared to bring the matter before the council."
"But you intend to."
"Yes. And then— "
"I think we ought to be guided— as we always have— by the will of the majority." He turned then, and looked into Edith's eyes. His hand grasped hers, reassuringly. She mulled the we. "You know that I'll be all right here. Sigrid is very protective. I am very fortunate."
And that was all. Philip continued to gaze at her, the rust-flecked familiar gray eyes without flaw but also lacking alertness, his too-placid demeanor suspect: she sensed he had turned a comer, into another long blank alley. The grip he had on her hand loosened. Edith bowed her head, then looked at the sea, finding distances threatening; she had too long ago carefully steered her life inward. To travel so far, to pit herself once more against the force she loathed— her lips trembled at the thought. There was fear, which was realistic. And a stealthy stiffening of the backbone.
Perhaps, she thought.
80
There were fourteen criminal court justices in the Southern Judicial District of Vermont. Following the shocking death of Natty Eames, the case of Vermont v. Devon rotated to the youngest of these judges, Knox Winford, who was thirty-four years old.
In the five years since he'd become a judge, Knox had proved himself to be a young man of probity as well as ambition. Everybody knew that Knox was pretty well marking time waiting for the senior senator from the Green Mountain State to keel over after eight terms in Washington, so that he could run for the vacated office. But he was not lazy. He continued to be a good student of the law and was known for his sensitivity to constitutional rights. He wasn't immune to cronyism, but he chose the right cronies. He had not yet been corrupted by expediency. For one thing, he didn't need the money. His paternal grandmother had sold maple syrup and wooden salad bowls to tourists and made enough in her four outlets to put together a solid trust fund for Knox, the apple of her eye. His wife's family was well-to-do, and ambitious for him.
Knox had known, even before his friend Adam Kurland threw the curve ball labeled Notice of Defense of Demonic Possession at Judge Natty, that the Devon case was going to be a huge mess. He was glad he didn't have to sit.
When the case fell to him, he had numerous options. He could have excused himself without citing any very compelling reason. He could have postponed the trial on technicalities until it was time for him to resign and run for the Senate. He could have called Adam in and given him the same treatment, more or less, which the lawyer had gotten from Natty Eames. He could have applied more subtle and indirect pressures that would have resulted in a summary invitation for Adam to appear before the Ethics Committee of the State Bar Association. But Knox Winford had a couple of traits that eventually would weigh for and against him as a legislator. He was curious, and felt that law was a process, not Holy Writ; and he was not abusive of the power that he held.
So he met informally with Adam to talk it over, Cokes and burgers in his chambers, and this time Adam went prepared to justify his proposed defense. He took with him both tapes recorded during the manifestations of Zarach' Bal-Tagh. He took depositions from Father James Merlo, Conor, and Lindsay.
It was a long session. Knox was impressed by Adam's sincerity and didn't think that he was having a nervous breakdown. The tapes, however, failed to make much of an impression on the judge: he was familiar with criminal-court actions in other states that had involved cases of multiple personality. He was nearly ready to offer Adam a deal that would get everybody off the hook and the trial smoothly behind them. But he postponed his decision for two days and went around to the jail to see the prisoner for himself.
First he talked to Steve, the head jailer with the flamboyant copper-colored mustache. Steve said, "Tell you this much, Your Honor, he's not like any psycho we've ever had in here."
"What do you mean?"
"He's had us all spooked, at one time or another. I had to fire one of my boys the other day, good boy too; he just couldn't bear up under the strain anymore. Prisoner got the drop on him. That doesn't happen in my jail."
"How does he behave? Is he difficult to handle?"
"Not since a couple months ago, when he demolished the interview room. Harbison doubled up on his tranquilizers and that quieted him. Considerably. But now he's too quiet."
Steve took a few moments pondering the best way to express his dissatisfaction and uneasiness with this lull.
"Your Honor, I do some hunting for grizzly. That does take a certain amount of balls, you'll have to admit. Been almost face to face with them, no dogs, just a goddam big hunk of hair and fangs and claws like a leaf rake, when you see a grizzly reared up no farther away than I am from you, I mean you tremble. You feel all of a sudden like what you've got in your rifle is jellybeans. I'll tell you what. I'd rather be out in the woods right now facing down a grizzly bear than sitting here knowing he's downstairs— and he's behind bars. So do you want me to get him up here, Your Honor?"
