Authors: Tony Richards
The whole square began to shake, caught up in the grip of some tremendous earthquake. Splits appeared along the flagstones. Then a chasm, about a yard wide, opened up. That only made the chaos worse. Sections of the crowd were falling into it.
They were too small to make out their faces, but some of them had to be people that I knew. I had to look away a moment.
Willets and Raine muttered a few more words. The glow within the white jewel faded. And the scene, thankfully, went away.
Sweat was running down my face. My mind was still trying to take in what it had seen – a large part of it didn’t even want to.
Finally, I peered at my companions. Even Woodard Raine looked grave.
“You have to show this to Levin,” I told them.
It was the j
udge who’d asked for proof this morning, after all. What more did he need? And I trusted him a lot more than the rest of them. Watching this, he’d call the ceremony off, whatever the opposition. He’d demand it.
The jewel on its gold chain was still floating in mid-air. Willets stepped forward and snatched it down, a determined gleam in his red-flecked eyes.
“I’ll do it right away,” he offered. “He’s at home in his study, and alone.”
He dissolved into a murky shadow, vanishing completely.
Which left me alone with Woody in the dancing candlelight. A sad, wistful expression spread across his features and his golden eyes took on a hint of dampness.
“I wish …” he whispered, almost to himself, “I could do more.”
I gazed at him. And I had never seen him look quite so ill at ease.
“I wish … I could have gone with the Doctor, at the very least. It seems ridiculous really, when I think about it. All this power at my fingertips, and I’m afraid to … to even …”
And then his voice trailed away.
That whole ghastly spectacle – he’d had to watch it twice, I knew – had obviously shaken him. And perhaps even worked something loose inside that crazy head of his. Self-knowledge … was that possible, for him?
His eyes slipped shut. You could only see a vague shape where he stood. It shuddered, going through some kind of powerful inner torment.
I felt almost sorry for him. But then, I’d be feeling sorry for all of us, if things unfolded in the way I’d seen. Our best hope was the judge, by this hour.
Lehman Willets reappeared.
And announced, “Something’s wrong!”
His face was like a detailed map of a place called confoundment.
“I – he – the judge was sitting at his desk, exactly as I thought. I appeared right in front of him. He didn’t even seem to notice me, Devries. He stared right through me. And when I spoke to him, it was like he couldn’t hear.”
My head reeled slightly as I tried to take that in.
“Was one of his pupils larger than the other?”
Willets’s head shook briskly.
In which case, it was really Levin. But his mind had been invaded, just the same way Cassie’s had.
“Try the rest,” I told the doctor. “Vernon, the McGinleys, anyone who can get this stopped. He can’t have gotten to them all.”
But could he? There appeared to be nothing stopping him. Willets nodded all the same.
“And you?” he asked me. “How about you?”
“I’m going to visit the judge myself, and try to snap him out of it.”
I’d already managed it with Cass, although I wasn’t planning to use the same tactics.
But Saruak was holding all the trump cards by this juncture. And there had to be something I could do to win a few of the good ones back.
It wasn’t too far from here to the Levin residence. But I was in a hurry, so I drove, my route taking me down avenues so lush with greenery they almost resembled public parks.
It was very quiet up here. But then it usually was. There were no stores, no malls, no movie houses. Plain nowhere for anyone to go. What was it about the rich, I wondered, that made them want to live in neighborhoods defined by their properties and little else?
I drove on through a spidery maze of silver light and shadow. Then remembered what the Little Girl had told me earlier. And so I started glancing upward at the moon. It was sailing high above the gathered branches. And there was nothing wrong with it at all, that I could see. What had she been trying to warn me of?
I came to a hairpin bend on a lofty ridge in the hill’s side. And slowed down a little, gazing at the town beneath me. There was nothing moving on its straight, broad boulevards. No headlamps showed at all. There was no sign of a light in any yard, despite the fact the weather was still warm. Far fewer lights in general, in fact.
No activity up here was one thing. But down among the ordinary people? It might just be that everyone was anxious and afraid. I got a gut feeling, though, that there was something else involved.
That instinct grew worse when I drew up outside Levin’s home.
There was no security around it, never had been. No bars or hedgerows or high fences. I guess he – and his forefathers – had always made a logical assumption. That if anyone was crazy enough to come after them, with all the power that they had, then a few bricks or pieces of iron were not going to stop them.
And besides, it would have looked all wrong. The judge’s was the most beautiful wood-built house in the entire town, all eaves and gables and scalloping and flower baskets. The conical turret in the roof even had a weather vane perched on it, an iron cockerel.
A dim light was showing, underneath the tiles up there. And I already knew that it was coming from the study. I’d been up there a few times in my old job, fetching warrants late at night.
No one answered when I yanked on the bellpull. Which was curious, since other lights were on downstairs. I could see them through the leaded windows, despite the fact that the drapes were closed. He had a family and servants, and they couldn’t all be out. So why did nobody respond?
I finally got out my pocketknife – feeling a little uneasy, doing it – and applied it to the latch. It clicked open after a few seconds. And then I put the blade away and pulled out my gun instead. The judge would have a blue fit, if he saw me waving it around his premises. But I could now feel something like a twitching in my bones. Something wasn’t right. And so, there was nothing else that I could think to do.
The murmur of a TV set came to me as I stepped into the hallway. It wasn’t at all loud. They’d still have been able to hear the bell. So why had no one even noticed it?
There were large prints, sketches of the Civil War, on the walls all around me. This town had missed out on that completely. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence sat behind a pane of glass. And several gleaming flintlock muskets were suspended from brass hooks.
A grandfather clock, more than a century old, clucked to itself over in the far, dim corner.
All of the lampshades here were opalescent, and the lighting very mild, subdued. I edged through the soft mist of it toward the doorway of the living room.
Fleur Levin and her two sons – Thad and Darius, both nearly grown-up – were sprawled across the couch and the matching high-backed chairs, gazing frozenly at the TV screen. Their attention was fixed on …
Nothing much at all, in point of fact. A program about home improvements, which I didn’t imagine they really needed to watch. It was being broadcast from a small apartment in the Boston area somewhere, hardly the kind of place they might be interested in. All the same, they were staring at it like store window dummies.
I stepped fully into view. But they didn’t even seem to take in the fact I was there. Not even when I called to them.
It brought back very unpleasant memories. This was far too much like going into the house next-door to mine, and finding Mrs. McGaffrey silent in her chair. Almost exactly the same, in truth. Only the jabber of the show’s presenters made it any different.
I could feel my palm becoming slightly damp against the grip of my revolver. And a bug seemed to be crawling down my neck again. Should I try to rouse them, bring them back to life? But that was not what I had come here for.
Quietly, I headed up, then went along the corridor. There were more prints of battles, redcoats against blues this time. The thick, patterned carpet made my footfalls almost silent. The door to Levin’s room was closed.
I rapped at it briefly with my knuckles.
“Judge?”
No answer. So I tried again.
“It’s Ross Devries.”
I went in. Only one small light was on, casting a pool of canary yellow round him. Judge Levin was seated behind a magnificent four-panel cherrywood desk. Its fittings had an almost unreal luster. The lamp sitting on it was a black one, apothecary-style, with a big round shade.
The top was dark green leather – golden scrolling round its edges – the color of which precisely matched the swivel chair that he was seated on. The man was in his rolled-up shirtsleeves – pinstripes, blue on white – his jacket flung behind him and his cufflinks to one side. He was in the act of lighting a long, thick cigar. Smoke swirled around the lamp bulb. His huge diary, also leather-bound, was opened up in front of him. The date of the page that he was looking at was Friday. Tomorrow. Merely a few hours away.
Practically today
, I told myself.
He didn’t look up at me. And maybe he was simply lost in thought. I’d known him get that way before, so I stepped in a little closer.
He
still
didn’t notice, despite the fact that I was standing right in front of him. He shifted the cigar to the grasp of his left fingers, then picked up an ornate fountain pen and began scribbling quickly.
I peered upside-down at the words that he was writing.
They were all the same word, repeated in a constant row in that perfect, copperplate script of his.
Reunion.
I felt a chill run through me.
“Judge?” I tried.
His head remained down and he kept on at it.
“Judge Levin? Can you even hear me?”
I put my gun away. There was no need for it. But … what had Saruak done to him?
His hand paused. And his gaze came slightly up. It avoided me altogether, going over to the darkened window of the room instead.
“It must all go perfectly,” he murmured.
That was not for my benefit. He’d taken on a musing look, and he was talking to himself.
“Not a hitch,” he whispered. “Not the slightest small mistake. It’s vital, if we are to leave this place.”
I’d had enough. If – as with Cassie – physical force was the only way, then that was what I’d have to resort to. I wasn’t going to hit the man exactly. But I marched around his desk.
Reached for his starched white collar. I could at least try to shake some sense back into him.
My fingertips passed straight through the linen, without feeling anything there at all.
My shadow was sloping across him, and he didn’t even notice that. His gaze remained on the windowpane.
“It must go like clockwork. Must,” he sighed. “It is our only hope.”
If he seemed completely calm, I felt anything but. My fingers twitched involuntarily as they withdrew. They felt as if I’d plunged them into an ice bucket. What had just gone on?
Very carefully, I reached out again. Then tried to settle my grip on Levin’s narrow shoulder.
It passed straight into his body, although I could still see it. My hand and the corner of his shoulder looked superimposed, two images drawn on glass and laid across each other. And I could still feel nothing there. No resistance in the slightest, not even the faintest pressure.
The cigar continued smoldering in his left hand, though. I reached across and dabbed at it. And I could smell the smoke. It was real enough.
So was the pen, when I brushed my fingertips across that. Perfectly solid, cool enamel. Judge Levin seemed oblivious to everything I did. But if he was an illusion, then I couldn’t see how he could hold real objects. That simply wasn’t possible. And so I tried to touch the man again.
I passed my palm across his gaze, first. His eyes didn’t waver, holding on the window. I seemed totally invisible to him.
Then, cautiously, I set my fingers against the side of his face.
Or tried to. Like before, they went right through.
His attention dropped back to the diary. And he started writing something else. It wasn’t just a single word, repeated, this time. It was a message that was being spelled out. And not his words either, at a guess.
Having a problem, Mr. Devries?
it asked.
I looked around quickly, but there was no sign of the Manitou.
Levin’s hand continued moving.
Maybe the people in this town have stopped believing in you. They believe in me, though … utterly.
Which told me all I really needed to know. Levin was still with me. But was totally in Saruak’s grasp.
And there seemed to be no way that I could wrest him out of it again.