"Well, yeah," Charlie said. "But-"
"Fine, then." Jack didn't want to get sidetracked here. "But I've had the Otherness explained to me a couple of times and I still don't have a handle on it. Apparently two vast, unimaginably complex cosmic forces have been at war forever. The prize in this war is all existence-this world, other realities, other dimensions, everything is at stake. Before you start feeling important, I was told that our corner of reality is just a tiny piece of that whole, and of no special importance. But if one side's going to be the winner, it's got to take all the marbles. Even our little backwater."
"Don't tell me," Lyle said, his tone bordering on disdain. "One of these forces is Good and one is Eeeevil."
"Not quite. That would make it easy. The way I understand it, the side that has our reality in its pocket is not good or evil, it's just there. The most we can expect from it is benign neglect."
"'Thou shalt not have false gods before me,' " Charlie intoned.
"It's not a god. It's a force, a state of being, a..." Jack spread his hands in frustration. "I don't know if we can grasp anything that vast and alien."
"Does it have a name?" Lyle said.
Jack shook his head. "No. I've heard someone refer to it as the Ally, but that's not quite right. It will only act on our behalf to keep us in its possession. Other than that it doesn't give a damn about us."
"And the Otherness is... what?" Lyle said. "The other side?"
"Right. And it doesn't have a name either, but people who seem to know about these things call it the Otherness because it represents everything not us. Its rules are different than ours. It wants to convert our form of reality to its own, one that'll be toxic for us-physically and spiritually."
"That Satan, I tell you!" Charlie cried. Lyle rolled his eyes. Charlie caught it and pointed to Jack. "He just nailed Satan dead on, bro, and you know it. Why don't you stop frontin' and cop to it?"
To head off a looming argument, Jack said, "Well, the Otherness could have been the inspiration for the idea of Satan. I've heard it described as vampiric, and it sounds to me as if its idea of reality would create a hell on earth. So maybe..."
"But what does all this have to do with this afternoon?" Lyle said.
"I'm getting to that. This past spring I learned the hard way that the elements in the Otherness responsible for creating the rakoshi wanted my head for killing them. They missed me but a few people and a good-size house vanished from the face of the earth."
"Ay, yo, I remember readin' 'bout that," Charlie said. "Someplace out on Long Island, right?"
Jack nodded. "A little town called Monroe."
"Right!" Lyle said. "I remember trying to think up a way to take credit for it, or at least come up with a way-out explanation that would buy me some PR. But about half a dozen mediums in the city beat me to it." He looked at Jack. "You're telling me that was you?"
"I didn't cause it," Jack said. "I just happened to be on the scene. And I wasn't the only one there. Both sides were represented. On the Otherness team was a guy calling himself Sal Roma. Not his real name-he'd stolen it. He seemed pretty tuned in to the Otherness, like he was its main agent here. His name has popped up a couple of times since then, once I think as an anagram."
"An anagram?" Lyle said. "That's interesting. Means there's a good chance his real name is hidden in those letters. I've read that ancient wizards used to operate under aliases for fear that someone who knew their True Name could have power over them."
"I think this guy's just playing games. But if I ever learn his True Name, I'm going to find him and..." Jack stopped himself. "Never mind."
Charlie said, "You gotta personal beef with this Roma?"
The thought of Kate made the old pain new. "You could say that."
Jack glanced at Gia. She smiled her sympathy and took his hand under the table. They'd talked a lot about this in the past month or so. Gia believed. She'd seen the rakoshi, so she'd been well down the road to acceptance when he'd explained all this to her. But even after what they'd seen today, the Kenton brothers probably thought he was nuts.
He took a breath. "But back to the big hole in Monroe: Sal Roma and some nasty sort of pet of his were there for the Otherness; the anti-Otherness side was represented by a couple of guys who looked like twins. I was caught in the middle, and the twins were ready to sacrifice me for their purposes-which showed me firsthand how unbenign this so-called Ally power is. Things got kind of complicated, but the upshot is, I walked away and the twins didn't."
"You know," Lyle said, "this is all really fascinating, but what's it got to do with our house?"
"I'm getting to that. I've since learned-or at least I was told-that I've been drafted into the service of the anti-Otherness."
"Drafted?" Lyle said. "You mean you don't have any say about that?"
"Not a thing, apparently. My guess is that because I'm somewhat responsible for the demise of the twins, I'm supposed to replace them. But if the Great Whatever that drafted me thinks I'm going to go trotting about putting out Otherness-started fires, it better think again. I don't know about my predecessors, but I've got a life."
"What you mean, 'Otherness-started fires'?" Charlie said.
"Not sure, but I've got an idea that most of the strange things that happen in this world-what people like to call paranormal or supernatural-are really manifestations of the Otherness. Anything that terrifies, confounds, and confuses us, anything that brings out the worst in us makes it stronger."
Charlie banged his fist on the table. "You talking 'bout Satan, dawg! The Father of Lies, the Sower of Discord!"
"Maybe I am," Jack said, wanting to avoid a theological argument. "And maybe I'm not quite so sure of as many things as I used to be. But I'm pretty sure that I'm tagged as anti-Otherness, and because of that, I'm the one who triggered everything that's been going on in your house."
Jack looked around the table and found Lyle staring at him. "You're telling me you triggered that earthquake?"
"Either that, or it's all pure coincidence. And I've been told no more coincidences in my life."
Lyle's eyes widened. "No more coincidences... that means your life's being manipulated. Now that's scary."
"Tell me about it." Jack's gut crawled every time he thought about it. He looked at Gia. "So can you see now why I don't want Gia near that house?"
"Oh, yes," Lyle said, nodding. "Assuming what you've told us is true-and so far you haven't struck me as schizo-then yes, definitely. And as much as I hate to say it-because I've always thought they were such a lame joke-we seem to be dealing with a bona fide ghost Would something like that be related to this Otherness of yours?"
Jack felt himself bristling. "First off, the Otherness isn't mine. I did not come up with the idea, it was pushed on me, and I'd be a much happier man if I'd never heard of it. Second, no one's handed me a book or a manual and said, 'Here, read this and you'll know what you're dealing with.' I'm piecing this together as I go along."
"Okay. I misspoke. I'll rephrase: Why should we think this ghost is related to the Otherness?"
"Maybe it's not. But then again, maybe all the violent deaths in Menelaus Manor somehow created a focus of Otherness. Maybe that focus was concentrated in the fault line beneath the house. When I crossed the threshold I hit a trip wire and... boom."
Lyle shook his head. "I still think that little girl's connected to Gia." He turned to her. "Did she look at all familiar to you?"
Gia shook her head. "Not a bit. If she is a ghost..." She shook her head. "I've never believed in ghosts either, but what else can you call her? If she is one, I think she may have died in the sixties. She looked dressed to ride a horse, so her clothes don't date her, but she kept singing a song-"
"'I Think We're Alone Now'?" Lyle said.
"Yes! You heard it too?"
"Yesterday. But I didn't see her."
"Well, it's a sixties song-late sixties, I think."
"Nineteen sixty-seven, to be exact," Jack said. "Tommy James and the Shondells on the Roulette label."
Lyle and Charlie stared at him in surprise. Gia wore a wry smile; she was used to this.
Jack shrugged and tapped the side of his head. "Chock full of useless information."
"Not so useless this time," Gia said. "It gives us an idea of when she might have been killed."
"Killed?" Charlie said. "You think someone killed her?"
Gia's face twisted. "You didn't see her. Her chest had been cut open." She swallowed. "Her heart was gone."
"That could be symbolic," Jack said, giving her hand a squeeze.
He wished to hell Gia had never come within miles of Menelaus Manor. This was all Junie Moon's fault. And his for agreeing to drive Junie to her medium. If they'd stayed at that damn party...
"After all the blood we just saw?" Lyle said. "If that's symbolism, it's way overboard."
"Tell them about Sunday night," Charlie said.
Lyle looked uncomfortable as he told them about the shape in the shower, the blood-red water flowing into the drain.
A real Psycho moment, Jack thought.
He described the writing on the mirror before something shattered it. Then...
"I'd seen blood on Charlie's chest on Friday and Saturday nights. Maybe seen isn't the right word. Had visions? Hallucinated? But Sunday night was different. I was the one with blood down my front then, and when 1 pulled up my shirt it looked like my chest had been cut open. I..." Lyle looked at his brother. "We both could see my heart beating through the hole."
"Dear God," Gia whispered.
"It lasted only a second, but if whatever's there thought that would scare us off, it was wrong. Sleep's been pretty hard to come by since then, but we're staying. Right, bro?"
Charlie nodded, but Jack didn't pick up a truckload of enthusiasm there.
"You think that's what it's trying to do?" Jack said. "Scare you off?"
"What else? It's sure not trying to make friends. And it doesn't seem to want to hurt us-"
Jack had to laugh. "You damn near drowned less than an hour ago!"
"But I didn't. Maybe I wasn't supposed to. Let's face it, if it wanted to kill me, it had its chance Sunday night. It could've smashed my head instead of my bathroom mirror."
"That's a point," Jack said. "But maybe you're not the one it's interested in. And the question remains: Why now? You've been in that house for almost a year, you said. Why should this thing wait for my arrival on Friday night to start manifesting herself?"
"Not just your arrival," Lyle said. "Gia's too."
Jack looked at him. "You're just not gonna drop that bone, are you?"
Lyle shrugged. "I can't help it. I still think it's connected to Gia."
"Can we stop with the 'it' business?" Gia said. " 'It' is a 'she.' A little girl."
"But do we know that for sure?" Lyle said. "Maybe it can take on any form it wants. Maybe it's chosen to look like a little girl because it knows that's what'll get to you."
Gia blinked. Jack could tell she hadn't considered that possibility. Neither had he. Uneasiness crawled through his gut. Maybe Gia was involved after all.
After a heartbeat's pause, Gia shook her head. "I don't buy that. I think she's limited in what she can do and she's trying to tell us something."
"What?"
"That back in 1967 or thereabouts a little girl was murdered in your house and she's buried in the basement."
Silence at the table, everyone staring at Gia.
She stared back. "What? Look at what we've got." She ticked off her points on her fingers. "A little girl with a hole in her chest, singing a song from 1967, leaving a trail of blood to a basement full of blood, that drains away through a hole in the floor. Open your eyes, guys. It's all right there, staring you in the face."
Lyle gave a slow nod. He glanced at Charlie. "I think we need to learn more about our house."
"How we do that?" Charlie said.
"How about that old Greek who sold us the place? I didn't pay much attention at the time, but didn't he go on about how every time the house has changed hands, he's been involved? What was his name? I remember it was a real mouthful."
Charlie grinned. "Konstantin Kristadoulou. Can't forget no mouthful like that."
"Right! First thing tomorrow I'm going to call Mr. Kristadoulou and set up a meeting. Maybe he can shed some light on our ghost."
"Include me in that meeting," Jack told him. "I've got a stake in this too."
More than you can imagine.
"Will do," Lyle said.
Gia leaned forward. "But what about tonight? Where are you sleeping?"
"In my bed."
She shook her head. "Aren't you...?"
"Scared?" He smiled and shrugged. "A little. But I figure it must be-"
"She."
"All right, she must be trying to tell us something. Maybe she wants us to do something, then she'll go away. How can I find out what that is if I'm not there?"
Sounded logical enough to Jack, but he thought he spotted something in Lyle's eyes as he spoke. Working on another agenda, perhaps? Jack wondered what it could be.
He'd worry about that later. Right now his first imperative was to escort Gia back to Manhattan and convince her to stay there. Bad enough to feel that the Otherness had painted a bull's-eye on his back; the possibility that Gia might be targeted too dragged a coil of concertina wire through his gut.
First his sister, then Gia and their unborn child... was that the plan? Crush his spirit-destroy everyone he loved or mattered to him-before crushing him?
Listen to me. Sound like a raving paranoiac.
Hey, everybody! I'm so important, there's a cosmic power out to get me and everybody close to me!
But... if he had indeed been drafted into the supposed shadow war, it might be true.
Jack felt the breath leak out of him. He had to find a way to get himself discharged, even if it was dishonorable.
But first-first-first: place Gia out of harm's way.
12
"Like I told you before," Fred Strauss said, his voice halfway to a whisper. "He's a ghost, a fucking ghost."
Eli Bellitto lay in his hospital bed and stared at the flickering polychromatic beacon of the TV screen in his darkened hospital room.
"Who's a ghost?" Adrian said.
Strauss sat at the right foot of the bed, Adrian at the left. The big man had propelled himself into the room in his wheelchair. His left knee was braced and straight out before him. Even in the dim light Eli could see the pair of ugly purple swellings on his bare scalp. His long arms hung at his sides, almost touching the floor.
"The guy who clobbered you and stabbed Eli," Strauss said, his words clipped with impatience. "Haven't you been listening?"
Adrian's short-term memory hadn't quite recovered yet and he'd been having difficulty following Strauss's excuses for coming up empty in his search for their attacker. Even Eli found his repeated questions annoying.
Adrian shook his head. "I have no memory of it. I remember having dinner last night, and after that... it's all a blank. If it weren't for my knee and this pounding headache, I'd think you both were having me on."
Adrian had regained some of his recent memory-at least now he accepted that this was August instead of July-but he'd made this same statement at least half a dozen times since his arrival. Eli wanted to throw something at him.
I'm the one who's suffered the real damage! he wanted to shout. You just got a knock on the head!
He clenched his teeth as a new gush of magma erupted in his groin. His left hand flailed about, found the PCA button, and pressed it; he prayed he hadn't already used up this hour's morphine allotment.
What a day. An afternoon from hell. A nurse, a three-hundred-pound rhino in white named Horgan had come in and insisted he get up and walk. Eli had refused but the woman would not take no for an answer. She may have been black but she was a Nazi at heart, leading him up and down the hall as he clung to his rolling IV pole, his catheter snaking between his knees, his half-full blood-tinged urine bag dangling from a hook on the pole for all to see. Agony enhanced by humiliation.
And then Dr. Sadiq had visited, telling him that he had to walk more, and how tomorrow they'd be removing his catheter-Eli's buttocks clenched at the thought of Nurse Horgan dragging the tube out of him, and that caused another eruption of pain. Dr. Sadiq said he anticipated discharging Eli tomorrow morning.
Not soon enough as far as Eli was concerned. As long as he could take this PCA unit with him.
"In other words," Eli said to Strauss as the morphine took effect, "once we trim away all your excess verbiage, we are left with the simple fact that you've failed us."
The detective spread his hands. "Hey, I can only do so much. It's not like you two've given me a whole lot to work with."
It frightened Eli to know that his attacker was still unidentified.
He knows me, but I don't know him.
He could be in the hospital now, pretending to be visiting someone else, but all the while waiting for Strauss and Adrian to leave so that he can come in and finish the job.
If only they had his name. The Circle could take it from there. With their connections they'd make short work of him.
"Did you bring me his number?" Eli asked Strauss.
"Yeah." He fished a piece of paper out of his pocket "Got it here."
"Dial it for me."
"You're kidding. It can't be traced and he doesn't-"
"Dial it now!"
Shrugging, Strauss punched the number into the bedside phone and handed Eli the receiver. After four rings, Eli heard a disembodied voice say the client he'd called was not available. He handed the phone back to Strauss.
"Leave the number on the nightstand."
"Waste of time, I tell you. Guy doesn't keep his phone on."
"I'll keep trying. Who knows? I may get lucky."
Eli wasn't sure exactly what he'd say, but the phone number was his only link to the man who'd violated him.
"Hey," Strauss said, pointing to the TV screen. "Isn't that-?"
Eli shushed him and turned up the volume when he recognized the Vietnamese child's face. He missed the introduction as the scene cut to a dark-skinned woman reporter on a crowded sidewalk, a scene obviously shot earlier in the day.
Her name was Philippa Villa and she was doing man-on-the-street interviews about how, in the wake of little Due Ngo's recent abduction, people thought child molesters should be treated.
Child molesters! Why did everyone assume that the child was going to be sexually molested?
As each bloated visage from Manhattan's multihued lumpen proletariat flashed onto the screen to mouth predictably banal comments about capital punishment being "too good for them," Eli's anger grew. These ignoramuses knew nothing of the Circle's exalted purpose, and were casting them as perverted lowlifes. They were being egged on by this reporter, this Philippa Villa. The Circle had a powerful link within the media. Eli would see to it that this woman's career came to a screeching halt.
He was about to change the channel when the reporter's grinning face filled the screen.
"And if you think the folks we've just seen are tough, you should have heard one woman who did not want to appear on camera. I wrote down what she said: 'The guy who snatched that little boy should be castrated-'"
Eli stifled a moan as he relived the moment when the blade of his own knife sliced into his tenderest flesh.
"'And after that he should have his hands cut off so he can never touch another child, and then his legs cut off so he can never stalk another child-'"
He saw Strauss lean back, as if trying to distance himself physically as well emotionally from the TV.
"'-and then his tongue ripped out so he can never coax another kid into his car, and his eyes put out so that he can never even look at a child again-'"
He saw Adrian wince and run a trembling hand over his face.