Earthquake Weather (68 page)

“Long dark hair,” said Angelica. “Is it a man or a woman?”

“There’s a beard,” said Pete.

The figure had turned its head in profile to look back at the vehicle, and Cochran recognized the high forehead and chiselled profile. “It’s—” he began.

Beside him, Plumtree jumped violently. “The Flying Nun!” she wailed.

“—Scott Crane,” said Angelica, after giving Plumtree a startled glance. “I remember the face from when he was stretched out dead on my kitchen table down in Solville. Well, we’re really in the animal soup now.” She levered open her door, and the sudden chilly breeze inside the truck carried the earthy smells of wet grass and stone. “Uh … hop in,” she called over the increased hissing of the rain, squinting as she leaned out of the still slowly moving truck. Obvious fright made her speak too loudly. “Where you headed?”

With shaking hands, Plumtree cranked down the passenger-side window, and Cochran flinched at the damp wind in his face.

Scott Crane’s ghost turned to face them—it might have been naked under the makeshift poncho, but it was decently covered at the moment. Its beard and long hair were dark and ropy with rain water. “Jack and Jill went up the hill,” the figure called back, “to fetch a chalice of
aquamort.
To the grail castle, to take away the container of the god’s reconciling blood.” Its voice was baritone but faint, like a voice on a radio with the volume turned down. “I will brook no … trout,” the ghost said.

“Before its time,” agreed Plumtree. The voice was Cody’s, and fairly level, though Cochran could hear the edge of hoarse strain in it. “We can drive you there,” she cried. “But you got to tell us where to turn.”

Can we get there by candlelight?
thought Cochran, quoting the old nursery rhyme;
aye, and back again.

“And we might need to stop for gas,” said Pete shakily.

Cochran was shifted around with his right elbow down the back of the front seat now, and he saw Angelica visibly consider climbing into the back of the truck or even over the front seat and right onto his lap; but by the time the king’s ghost had limped to the truck’s side door she had simply slid all the way over to the left.

The ghost was as solid as a real person as it climbed in—the truck even dipped on its shocks—and when the dripping bony face turned toward the front, Cochran could feel cold breath on his right hand. “What gas would that be?” the ghost asked. “Not nitrous oxide, at least. I’m running on a sort of induction coil, here.” Its eyes squinted ahead through the rainy windshield. “Straight on south,” the ghost said, pulling the door closed with a slam. The thrashing of the rain on the highway shoulder was shut out, and there was just the drumming on the truck’s roof.

“I know the way,” said Cochran nervously as he shifted back around and clasped his hands in his lap, “and we won’t need to stop for gas, if it’s the Winchester House in San Jose.” He was breathing fast, but he wasn’t panicking; and it occurred to him that Crane’s ghost wasn’t nearly as scary as his dead body had been.

“Find the green chapel,” said the ghost. “Take what you’ve dished out; there’s a New Year’s Eve party coming that’ll square all debts.”

When Scott Crane’s ghost directed Pete to take the Winchester Boulevard off-ramp, following the signs meant to lead tourists to the “Winchester Mystery House,” Cochran nodded. “Be ready to take a left onto Olsen,” he told Pete quietly. “The parking lot’s right there.”

Cody pointed at a bleak hamburger-stand marquee sign that read
STEAK SAN/PASTRAMI.
“I think we’re supposed to go to the San Pastrami Mission,” she whispered to Cochran. He could feel her shivering next to him.

But, “Take a left onto Olsen,” said the ghost in the back seat. Its voice was deeper now, and louder. “The parking lot’s right there.”

Cochran remembered that ghosts tended to be repetitive. And the same thought might have occurred to Cody, for beside him she whispered, “I never need mouthwash, after Mammy Pleasant has been on. Ghosts don’t have spit.” Cochran looked at her in time to see teardrops actually fly out from the inner corners of her eyes.

“Valorie never has spit—I—never have to gargle, after Valorie.”

“I don’t think you need to—” Cochran began.

“Valorie’s dead!” said Cody wonderingly. “Isn’t she?”

Cochran took her hand. “It’s—it’s not,” he stammered, “I mean, you—” The truck interior was steamy since the dead king had got in, and Cochran was sweating under his windbreaker. He wanted to say,
If it works, don’t worry about it.
“Whatever Valorie’s status is, Cody,” he said finally, “
you’re
certainly not dead.”

“But she’s the oldest of us!” Cody gripped his hand, hard, as if the truck was tipping over and she might fall out. “All the rest of us are at least two years younger!
She’s
the one who has our, our
birth
!”

Angelica leaned forward across the dead king’s ghost to squeeze Plumtree’s shoulder. “Cody,” she said strongly, “
lots
of people are divided from their births by some kind of fault-line. Most of them aren’t fortunate enough to know how it happened, or even
that
it happened—they’re just aware of a pressure-failure back there somewhere.” She paused, obviously casting about for something else to say. “Plants often can be safely severed from their original taproots, if they’ve developed newer roots further along the vine.”

Cody was hurting Cochran’s gashed thumb, and even her bandaged right hand was pulling on the door handle so hard that Cochran thought the handle must be about to break off. Her feet were braced against the slippery wet floorboards. “But
have
I, have any of us?” she whispered. “Janis is deaf now, and her dreams were fading to black-and-white even on Friday night! Tiffany, Janis, Audrey, Cody, Luanne … are we all going to slide into the, the booming black-and-white
hole
that’s Valorie?”

The king’s ghost spoke now, clearly addressing Cody: “In the midsummer of this year,” said the deep voice, gently but forcefully, “you and I will be standing in happy sunlight on the hill in the lake.”

Cochran looked back at him—and didn’t jump in surprise, only experienced a dizzying emptiness in his chest, to see that the ghost was draped in a white woolen robe now, apparently dry, conceivably the same robe Crane’s body had worn when it had been lying in state in Solville. The full, King Solomon beard was lustrous and dry.

The truck rocked as Pete steered it into a parking space and tromped on the brake. “The grail castle,” he said. “The green chapel.” A tall hedge blocked the view of the estate from here, but they could see a closed gate, and signs directing tourists toward the low, modern-looking buildings to the right.

Pete Sullivan led the way across the parking lot, but he took his four bedraggled companions toward the locked gate instead of in the direction of the little peak-roofed booth and the Winchester Products Museum beyond it.

He had pulled his comb out of his pocket, and he appeared to be trying to break the end of it off. “I suppose they count the guests, on the guided tours,” he said to Cochran over the hiss of the rain.

“Yes,” Cochran told him. “Even
one
couldn’t sneak away, let alone five. And I bet they wouldn’t let a barefoot guy go anyway.”

“I don’t expect anybody’s looking this way,” Pete said, “but the rest of you block the view of me; act like you’re taking pictures of the house.”

Cochran took Plumtree’s elbow and stood to Pete’s left, pointing through the gate and nodding animatedly. “I’m pretending to be a tourist,” he told her when she frowned at him. “Play along.”

Pete’s comb was metal, apparently stainless steel, and he had broken two teeth off one end of it and bent kinks into them. Now he had tipped up the padlock on the gate and was carefully fitting the teeth into the keyhole.

Cochran stared between the bars of the gate at the house. Past a low row of pink flowering bushes he could see the closest corner of the vast Victorian structure, a circular porch with a cone-roofed tower turret over it. Through the veils of rain beyond it he could see other railed balconies and steeply sloped shingle roofs, and dozens of windows. Lights were on behind many of the windows, and he hoped Pete’s hands could work quickly.

“When I say
three,
” said Pete as he twiddled with the comb teeth in the lock mechanism, “we’ll all go through the gate and then walk fast to the corner of that box hedge by the porch. I can see a sign on a post, I think tourists are allowed to be there.”

“Yeah,” said Cochran, “it’s part of the garden tour—that’s self-guided. But they may not have the gardens open, on a rainy day like this.”

“Great. Well, if anybody comes up to us,” Pete said grimly, “smile at ’em and talk in a foreign language, like you wandered out here through the wrong door. And then—” He looked down at his busy, pacifist hands. “Sid, you’ll have to cold-cock ’em.”

Cochran thought of Kootie and Mavranos back at his house, ready to risk their lives, and of the Sullivans, who had reluctantly committed themselves to this, and of Plumtree, hoping to undo the murder of the ghost that was standing right behind them. He looked back at the bearded figure, and noticed without surprise that the king’s ghost was now wearing a sort of tropical white business suit, though still barefoot. The ghost, as apparently solid as any of them, looked like a visiting emperor.

“I can see the necessity of that,” Cochran said to Pete. “Let’s hope nobody notices us.”

Pete nodded, and Cochran heard the snap of the lock. “One, two,
three.
” Pete was lifting the gate as he swung it open, and the wet hinges didn’t squeal; then Cochran took hold of the elbow of Plumtree’s leather jacket again and they were hurrying across the cobblestone driveway to the sign. Behind him Cochran heard the gate clink closed again, and Pete’s footsteps slapping up to where the rest of them now stood.

They halted there, rocking, and Cochran stared fixedly at the lettering on the waist-high sign while he tensed himself for any evidence of challenge; but the only sound was the timpani drumroll of the rain on the cobblestones and the smack of bigger drops falling from the high palm branches that waved overhead, and his peripheral vision showed him no movement on the shadowed porches or the walkways or hedged lawns.

Plumtree had actually read the sign. “That iron cap in the ground is to the coal chute,” she told him. “And those windows up on the second floor there to the left are where the old lady’s bedroom was. ‘The Daisy Bedroom’—huh!”

“We’re supposed to,” panted Pete, “find the Winchester woman’s ghost—and, I guess, a—container?—of the
pagadebiti
wine.” He turned to the ghost. “You can do those things?”

The tall, bearded ghost was looking at Cochran when it echoed Pete’s last sentence: “You can do those things,” it said hollowly.

“I guess that’ll do,” sighed Pete. “Up onto the porch there, everybody, and I’ll unlock us a door.”

They found a modern-looking glass door with an empty carpeted hall visible inside. A decal on the glass read
PLEASE NO ADMITTANCE EMPLOYEES ONLY
, but Pete was able to pop back the bolt with a contemptuous fiddle-and-twist of his kinked comb-teeth.

“We should hear a tour-party, if one’s nearby,” whispered Cochran as he stepped inside. Angelica was leading the king’s ghost by the hand, and Plumtree had sidled in ahead of them and was now carefully standing on the other side of Cochran from the ghost. “We’ll hear the guide talking, and the footsteps. Move the
other way
if we do, right?”

They hurried down the corridor toward the interior of the great house, and soon the corridor turned left and they were in a broad, empty Victorian entry hall lit by electric lights that mimicked gas lamps. Polished carved mahogany framed the windows and doors and the corners of the ceiling, and paneled the walls from the wainscot down; and the floors were a sort of interlocking-plaid pattern of inlaid maple and walnut. The panes in the two front doors were hundreds of carved quartz crystals arranged in fanciful flower and fleur-de-lis patterns, set in webs of silver and lead and bronze.

“How many rooms did the old lady build here?” asked Angelica in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” said Cochran. “Two hundred.”

“Can we—
call
her ghost, somehow? We can’t search every damn room!”

“The goose of Winchester can’t hear to hiss,” said the king’s ghost. “A bolt-hole, a hidey-hole, is where she is—hidden, escaped from Dionysus like a possum hidden in its own pouch.” He touched the glossy, deeply imprinted white wallpaper.

“Swell,” said Cody. “Let’s move on.”

They hurried down the hall, and found themselves in a vast, dark ballroom. Even in the shadowy dimness Cochran could see that the floor, and the framed and paneled and shelved walls, and the very ceiling way up above the silver chandelier, were of glossy inlaid wood. Far out across the floor on one side was a pipe organ like a cathedral altar, and in the long adjoining wall a fireplace was inset between the two tall, narrow windows that let in the ballroom’s only light.

Cochran could faintly hear the muffled creak and knock of footsteps on the floor above, and he looked around helplessly at the huge, high-ceilinged room. He was aware of nearly inaudible creaks and rustles from the far, dark corners of the room, and realized that he’d been hearing these soft flexings ever since they had entered the house; and he had steadily felt attention being paid to him and his companions, but it felt childish and frightful, nothing like a tour-guide or a security guard. Could the ghost of Mrs. Winchester be looking at them now from some remote shelf or alcove, flitting along after them from room to room? He flexed his right hand—but got no sense of help from the god.

“Let’s just goddamn keep going,” he whispered.

“Sid—!” gasped Plumtree. “Look at the stained-glass windows!”

Cochran focused his eyes on the panes of leaded glass that glowed with the gray daylight outside, and he noticed that they each portrayed a long banner curling around ivy-vine patterns. And there was stylized lettering, capitals, on each banner—
WIDE UNCLASP THE TABLES OF THEIR THOUGHTS,
read the one in the left-hand window, and on the banner in the right was spelled out
THESE SAME THOUGHTS PEOPLE THIS LITTLE WORLD.