Burial (23 page)

I narrowed my eyes. ‘What kind of condition were you in then? I mean, were you dreaming, were you in a trance?'

Martin hesitated. ‘It's very hard to explain to somebody who's never experienced it. I call it my ghost phase. It's when I'm here in body but someplace else in mind. I was conscious of the room, conscious of you … but at the same time there's this total darkness, this total singing emptiness, and the spirits come walking out of the emptiness like people coming off a plane.'

‘Were you scared?'

‘Is the Pope Polish?'

I sat back in my hard folding chair. By the old Moulmein
Pagoda, looking lazy, I was supposed to be reading Mrs Herbert Bugliosi's tea-leaves in less than twenty minutes — what had involved me in all of this? Where had my peaceful existence suddenly disappeared to? The smiles, the flirtatious thigh-crossings, the fluttering eyelashes, the money, the idle afternoons? Today Mrs Herbert Bugliosi's tea-leaves, tomorrow Aqueduct. Leastways, that had been the game-plan.

‘What was it like?' I asked Martin, in a low voice.

He pulled a face. ‘I don't remember particularly well. It was dark. It was very dark. It was like a shadow and a magnet and a dead body. Cold, you know? Dark and cold. But alive, too, the same way that electricity's alive. Plenty of lethal voltage; plenty of sparks; but no soul.'

‘Did you see it?' I asked him.

He stared at me. ‘
See
it? I
was
it! It took me over completely.'

‘When it took you over like that were you conscious? Were you aware of what it was doing to you?'

Martin emphatically nodded. ‘You bet I was aware of what it was doing to me. That was part of its ploy, if you ask me. To kill, yes — as a grisly lesson that we shouldn't interfere. But to show us, too, that it cared so little for any of our lives that it would turn us inside-out, without a moment's hesitation. Rip, glug, splutch, Geronimo.'

‘Was it a Red Indian spirit?'

‘I don't know … I wasn't aware of it being Red Indian. Then again, I don't know very much about Red Indians. I never met one, not in the flesh. I think the only Red Indians I ever saw were in Jeff Chandler movies.'

‘Just now, you said “Geronimo.”'

He brushed his sleeve, crossed and re-crossed his legs. ‘People who jump off twenty-three-storey buildings say ‘Geronimo.' It's a figure of speech, that's all.'

‘What did he look like?'

‘I told you … he was dark and cold. A shadow, that's all I saw. And
felt
, too, right inside my body, if you want to know the real preposterous truth.'

‘But you had no feeling that he might be an Indian?'

Martin shook his head. ‘No. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he
wasn't
. You and I don't normally go around thinking “oh, we're Caucasians,” do we?'

‘I guess,' I acknowledged. I sat back and looked at him. I had the oddest feeling that he wasn't being straight with me. I couldn't think
why
. He had already been charged with murder in the first degree, and it must have been worth his while to think of
anything
that could prove his innocence, no matter how unlikely it might be.

‘My lawyer isn't exactly optimistic,' he said. He gave a cynical, lopsided smile. ‘Proving demonic possession to twelve simple people and true is going to be uphill all the way, believe me.'

‘You're really going to use that as a defence?'

‘What else can I do? I turned that poor woman inside-out. I slaughtered her husband in cold blood. If I plead insanity, they'll send me to the maximum-security insane asylum and throw away the key.'

I didn't know what to say. I felt as if Martin's plight was entirely my fault. Of course I was quite prepared to stand up in his defence and tell the court that he had been totally possessed by a vengeful, rampaging spirit, and that he hadn't been responsible for anything that he had done. But what would that achieve? They would probably send
me
to the funny farm, too.

I stood up. ‘I guess I'd better go,' I told him. ‘If you think of anything — anything at all — then, please, don't keep it to yourself. I know that it wasn't you who killed the Greenbergs, and Karen knows that it wasn't you. But we have to find a way of proving it.'

‘Listen,' said Martin, without looking up. ‘If you're thinking
of trying another seance, don't. That spirit is really very dangerous indeed — and what we saw last night … that's just the tip of a very black iceberg.'

‘Go on,' I told him.

He took a deep breath. ‘Something's happening, Harry. Something major. I've never felt such spirit disturbance ever. I can feel it even now. It's like the whole damned spirit world is in turmoil. You know when there's an earthquake, the way people rush around in a panic? Well, that's what it's like in the spirit world.'

‘And what happened to you yesterday? That was part of it?'

He didn't answer. I stood looking at him but he wouldn't raise his eyes and he wouldn't speak. After a while I nodded to the cop with the Elvis Presley sideburns and he unlocked the door for me.

‘Harry,' said Martin, as I was about to leave. ‘Thanks for coming. I don't blame you for what happened. I was always aware of the risks.'

‘We'll get you out of this,' I assured him. ‘I guarantee it.'

He smiled. ‘Nobody can make guarantees in our business, Harry.'

I left the precinct. I felt worried and sweaty and disoriented. I particularly didn't like what Martin had said about turmoil in the spirit world. I had seen turmoil in the spirit world before; and how it could spill over into the world of the living. The living and the dead exist side by side, cheek by jowl, and when something goes wrong in one world, it can have a catastrophic effect on the other world, too.

People can die before their time has come. People whose time has already come can walk the streets. There's only the thinnest of lines between dead and alive. Sometimes I wondered if it wasn't good old-fashioned cynicism that made me the worst of fortune-tellers, but my fear of crossing that thinnest of lines and mingling with things that didn't
concern me. Like death. Like shadows. Like women turned inside-out.

I hailed a taxi on Broadway and asked the driver to take me uptown. The day was varnished with heat, and the driver had a short-sleeved drip-dry shirt and some of the strongest body odour that I had smelled in years. He told me his son played bass in a heavy metal band. I fretted on the sticky back seat and kept dabbing my forehead with a balled-up Kleenex. ‘Sure,' I kept saying. ‘Oh, really?'

Out of the cab windows, as we drove up Broadway, I kept catching people staring at me. Bagel-sellers, cops, shoppers with too many bags. It felt as if I was under surveillance. I knew that it was nothing more than my imagination, but all the same I found it disturbing. The cab driver's eyes floated disembodied in his rear-view mirror, and he was watching me, too.
By the old Moulmein Pagoda
.

The only feeling of pride and security I had was that Martin hadn't said ‘
my
business' but ‘
our
business.' At least he considered that we were both mediums together, in the same wacky profession. At least it showed he had some confidence in me.

I wished to God that I had half his confidence.

Amelia listened to me gravely. The classroom was flooded with dusty golden light. A small boy with spiky hair and Coke-bottle eyeglasses stood a little way off, clutching a crayon drawing of bombers destroying a city. It looked a damn sight better than Picasso's
Guernica
.

Amelia said, ‘I can't, Harry, I gave it all up.'

‘I know. I know you did. But who else can I turn to? If he's lucky, Martin's going to end up in Attica for ever. It'll kill him.'

‘I heard about it on the news this morning,' Amelia said. Her eyes were pale as agates. The sun turned her hair into filaments of gold: the kind of gold that Rumpelstiltskin used to spin, before they found out his name. And when they
found out his name, he stamped his foot, and he plunged right through the floor to the world of shadows underneath, for ever. What did I tell you? Thin-skinned place, this planet.

‘Amelia,' I said, ‘I could help him if I had half of your talent.'

She looked at me acutely. ‘If the truth were known, Harry, you probably have more.'

‘Amelia … please.'

The small boy with the spiky hair came anxiously forward and presented his drawing. Amelia took it and examined it carefully.

‘It's very well drawn, Douglas. Don't you think it's kind of violent?'

Douglas shook his head. ‘That's not a town, with people or anything.'

‘Oh, no? But there are buildings here. Who lives in these buildings?'

‘The IRS.'

‘The IRS?'

Douglas nodded. ‘Daddy said that somebody ought to drop a bomb on the IRS. So that's what I did a drawing of.'

‘I see,' said Amelia. ‘So you want to take this home, to show your daddy?'

She watched him go; and close the classroom door behind him. ‘Cute kid,' I remarked. ‘He could grow up to be something big in corporate finance.'

Amelia smiled. ‘He's severely disturbed. His mother abandoned him when he was five, while his father was away in Alaska, working for Exxon. He was left to look after his two-year-old sister for nearly two weeks, all on his own. He cooked for his baby sister, he bathed her, he told her stories. He even went shopping. It was only when he burst into tears in the middle of class that anybody realized that anything was wrong.'

‘Shit,' I said.

‘Yes,' smiled Amelia. ‘Shit. But we can't help everybody, all of the time, no matter how much we may want to, and no matter how hard we may try.'

‘Meaning that you won't come and help me now?'

‘I don't know, Harry. It sounds like trouble. It sounds like such bad trouble.'

I dry-washed my face with my hands. ‘All right, Amelia. I understand. It's your life. When it comes down to it, I don't even think that I had any right to ask you.'

‘Harry —'

‘Forget it. I don't want you doing anything for old times' sake. There isn't any worse reason for doing anything than that. I'll find somebody else. There are dozens of spiritualists in yellow pages.'

Amelia said, very softly, her words falling through the afternoon sunlight like tissues, ‘You think it's Misquamacus, don't you?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Who else?'

‘You told me that Misquamacus had sworn to kill you.'

‘He did. In no uncertain terms.'

‘So why don't you let things lie? Forget about Martin; forget about the Greenbergs; forget about the whole damned thing? Whatever you do, it's only going to make matters worse.'

‘But Martin said there's something major going down. Something serious. He said the spirits were rushing around like blue-assed flies.'

‘And you really think that it's anything to do with you? For God's sake, Harry, stop trying to be responsible for the whole damned world! Go home, read your fortunes, flirt with all your old ladies. Forget it.'

‘But Martin —'

‘Martin knew the risks. That's what he told you. Every medium knows the risks. There's nothing more that you can do.'

I paused, then threw up my hands in acceptance. ‘Okay …
if that's the way you feel about it.'

‘Harry, I'm sorry. But that is the way I feel about it I'm not going to jeopardize this — any of this — my life, these kids — just to rub a little feel-better ointment on your conscience.'

‘All right,' I told her. ‘I completely understand. Karen and I will just have to manage the best we can.'

‘You won't put Karen into any danger, will you?' Amelia said, in a sharp voice.

‘Amelia, please. I wouldn't risk hurting one hair on Karen's head. Karen and I are — well, Karen and I have become close.'

Long pause. Kids singing in the corridor outside. ‘
Round, round, rosie, cuppie, cuppie shell, the dog's gone to Charleston, to buy a new bell
.'

‘
Close,
' Amelia repeated, as if she didn't understand what the word meant.

I didn't say anything. But I could see the thought of Karen and me getting together gradually working its way down through Amelia's brain like one of those puzzles where a marble drops out of a hopper and rolls down a ramp and then spins down a helter-skelter and then counter-balances a see-saw and then drops down a chute.

I shrugged. ‘You know, friendly. Why not? For old times' sake.'

‘You shouldn't do anything for old times' sake,' Amelia retorted. ‘There isn't any worse reason.'

‘Well,
touché,
' I told her.

She picked up the workbooks on her desk, and shuffled them straight. ‘I'll come take a look,' she said. ‘I'm not making any promises. I can't give you any guarantees. But I'll come take a look.'

I leaned over and kissed her. ‘That's what I was hoping you'd say.'

The turbulence was now so severe that Deke tapped Willard on the shoulder and said, Time we headed back! We'll just have to look for the rest of the strays tomorrow!'

Reluctantly, Willard said, ‘Guess you're right. Those clouds up ahead don't look none too healthy, do they?'

‘Never saw nothing like them,' Deke confessed. ‘And that lightning … what kind of lightning would you call that? It aint fork and it aint sheet. It's kind of like falling rain, almost.'

Willard eased the Jetranger's cyclic stick to the right, and the helicopter began a wide, bumpy turn. They were flying at less than five hundred feet over the sagebrush, and for the past twenty minutes they had been buffeted by some of the most aggressive and unpredictable gusts that Willard had ever encountered. He had flown through thunder-squalls that had killed cattle by the score, and in Vietnam he had lifted Hueys in and out of Saigon in every kind of tropical storm that the Lord God had ever whipped up.