This Present Darkness (15 page)

“Marge will set another appointment for you.”

“Thanks a lot.”

Marshall checked his watch, went to the door, and opened it. “Come on in, Alf.”

Alf Brummel had been sitting in the reception area. At the sight of Marshall he jumped awkwardly to his feet. He looked the way one might a split second before being hit by a train.

Marshall grabbed Alf by the hand and shook that hand excitedly. “Hey, buddy! Say, seeing as how the two of you don’t seem to know each other very well, let me introduce you. Alf Brummel, this is Reverend Oliver Young. Reverend Young, Alf Brummel, chief of police!”

Brummel didn’t seem to appreciate Marshall’s cordiality at all, but Young did. He stepped forward, grabbed Brummel’s hand, shook it, and then pulled Brummel quickly into his office saying over his shoulder, “Marge, make another appointment for Mr. Hogan.”

But Mr. Hogan had left.

SANDY HOGAN SAT
dismally at a small lunch table in a campus plaza shaded by an expansive grape arbor. She was staring at a slowly cooling, microwaved, packaged hamburger and a slowly warming half-pint carton of milk. She had made her classes that morning, but they had all slipped by her, mostly unabsorbed. Her mind was too much on herself, her family, and her belligerent father. Besides, it had been a horrible way to spend the night, walking clear across town and sitting all night in the Ashton bus depot reading from her psychology textbook. After her last class of the day she tried to take a nap out on the lawn in the sculpture garden and had managed to doze for a short time. When she awoke, her world was no better and she had only two impressions: hunger and loneliness.

Now, sitting at this little table with a machine-vended lunch, her loneliness was stealing away her hunger and she was on the brink of tears.

“Why, Daddy?” she whispered in very soft tones, dabbling her straw in her carton of milk. “Why can’t you just love me for what I am?”

How could he have so much against her when he hardly even knew her? How could he be so adamant against her thoughts and philosophies when he couldn’t even understand them? They were living in two different worlds, and each disdained the other’s.

Last night she and her father had not said a word to each other the
whole evening, and Sandy had gone to bed depressed and angry. Even as she lay there listening to her folks turning out the lights, brushing their teeth, and turning in for the night, they seemed half a world away. She wanted to call them into her room and reach out to them, but she knew it wouldn’t work; Daddy would make demands and place conditions on their relationship instead of loving her, just loving her.

She still didn’t know what had terrified her in the pit of the night. All she could remember was waking up plagued by every fear she had ever known—fear of dying, fear of failure, fear of loneliness. She had to get out of the house. She knew, even as she hastily dressed and ran out the door, that it was foolish and pointless, but the feelings were greater than any common sense she could muster.

Now she felt very much like some poor animal shot into space with no means of returning, floating listlessly, waiting for nothing in particular and with nothing to look forward to.

“Oh, Daddy,” she whimpered, and then she began to cry.

She let her red hair fall down like soft blinds on either side of her face and the tears dropped one by one to the tabletop. She could hear people passing, but they chose to live in their own world and left her alone in hers. She tried to cry softly, which was hard to do when her emotions wanted to rush out of her like the cascade from a broken dam.

“Uh …” came a soft and hesitant voice, “excuse me—”

Sandy looked up and saw a young man, blond, slightly thin, with big brown eyes full of compassion.

The young man said, “Please forgive me for intruding … but … is there anything I can do to help?”

IT WAS DARK
in the living room of Professor Juleen Langstrat’s apartment, and very, very quiet. One candle on the coffee table cast a dull yellow light on the ceiling-high bookcases, the strange oriental masks, the neatly arranged furniture, and the faces of two people who sat opposite each other, the candle between them. One of the people was the professor, her head resting against the back of her chair, her eyes closed, her arms outstretched in front of her, her hands making gentle sweeping motions as if she were treading water.

The man sitting opposite her was Brummel, also with eyes closed, but not mirroring Langstrat’s expression and actions very well. He looked stiff and uncomfortable. At short intervals, and for a split second, he would crack his eyes open just enough to see what Langstrat was doing.

Then she began to moan and her face registered pain and displeasure. She opened her eyes and sat upright. Brummel looked back at her.

“You don’t feel well today, do you?” she asked.

He shrugged and looked at the floor. “Ehhh, I’m okay. Just tired.”

She shook her head, not satisfied with his answer. “No, no, it’s the energy I feel from you. You’re very disturbed.”

Brummel had no answer.

“Did you talk to Oliver today?” she probed.

He hesitated, and finally said, “Yeah, sure.”

“And you went to talk to him about our relationship.”

That got a reaction. “No! That’s—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

He wilted a little and let out a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, sure, we talked about it. We talked about other things too, though.”

Langstrat probed him with her eyes as if doing some kind of X-ray scan. Her hands opened and began to wave in the air just slightly. Brummel tried to sink out of sight into his chair.

“Hey, listen,” he said shakily, “it’s no big deal—”

She began to speak as if reading off a note pinned on his chest. “You’re … frightened, you feel cornered, you went to tell Oliver … you also feel controlled …” She looked at his face. “Controlled? By whom?”

“I don’t feel controlled!”

She laughed a little to put him at ease. “Well, of course you do. I just read it.”

Brummel looked for a split second toward the telephone on the end table. “Did Young call you?”

She smiled with amusement. “There was no need to. Oliver is very close to the Universal Mind. I’m beginning to meld with his thoughts now.” Her expression hardened. “Alf, I really wish you were doing as well.”

Brummel sighed again, hid his face behind his hands, then finally
blurted, “Hey, listen, I can’t tackle everything at once! There’s just too much to learn!”

She put her hand on his comfortingly. “Well then, let’s deal with these things one at a time. Alf?” He looked up at her. “You’re frightened, aren’t you? What are you frightened of?”

“You tell me,” and it was almost a dare.

“I’m giving you a chance to speak first.”

“Well then, I’m not frightened.”

At least not until this very second, when Langstrat’s eyes narrowed and began to bore into him.

“You are indeed frightened,” she said sternly. “You are frightened because we were photographed the other night by that reporter from the
Clarion.
Isn’t that right?”

Brummel pointed his finger at her angrily. “See, now that’s exactly one of the things Young and I talked about! He called you! He had to have called you!”

She nodded, unabashed. “Yes, of course he called me. He withholds nothing from me. None of us withholds truth from all the others, you know that.”

Brummel knew he might as well open up. “I’m concerned about the Plan. We’re getting too big, too big to hide anymore; we’re risking exposure in too many places. I think we were careless to meet out in public like that.”

“But it’s all been taken care of. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Oh no? Hogan’s on our scent! I suppose you know he was asking Oliver some very delicate questions?”

“Oliver can handle himself.”

“So how do we handle Hogan?”

“The same way we handle anyone else. Are you aware that he talked to Oliver about problems he’s having with his daughter? You should find that interesting.”

“What kind of problems?”

“She’s run away from home … and yet she still had the desire to be in my class today. I like the sound of that.”

“So how do we use it?”

She smiled her cunning smile. “All in good time, Alf. We can’t rush things.”

Brummel got up and began to pace. “With Hogan I’m not so sure. He may not be the pushover that Harmel was. Maybe having Krueger arrested was the wrong thing to do.”

“But you got access to the film; you had it destroyed.”

He turned to face her. “And what did that get us? Before that they weren’t asking any questions, and now they are! Come on, I know what I’d think if I got my camera back and the film was ruined. Hogan and Krueger just aren’t that gullible.”

Langstrat spoke soothingly, putting her arms around him like the tendrils of a vine. “Ah, but they are vulnerable, first to you, and ultimately to me.”

“Just like everybody,” he muttered.

He should have expected her reaction. She grew very cold and frightening and looked right into his eyes.

“And that,” she said, “is another topic you discussed with Oliver today.”

“He tells you everything!”

“The Masters would tell me even if he didn’t.”

Brummel tried to turn his eyes away from her. He couldn’t stand whatever it was that made such beauty so immensely hideous.

“Look at me!” she insisted, and Brummel obeyed. “If you are not happy with our relationship, I can always have it terminated.”

He looked down, stuttered a bit. “It’s—it’s okay …”

“What?”

“I mean I’m happy with our relationship.”

“Truly happy?”

He felt desperate to appease her, to get her to let go of him. “I … I just don’t want things to get out of control …”

She gave him a slow, vampirish kiss. “You are the one who needs more control. Haven’t I always taught you that?”

She was cutting him to pieces and he knew it, but she had him. He belonged to her.

He still had a concern he couldn’t shake. “But how many adversaries can we continue to remove? It seems like every time we get rid of one, bingo, another pops up in his place. Harmel went out, in came Hogan …”

She completed the thought for him. “You took care of Farrel, and
in came Henry Busche.”

“It can’t go on. The odds are against us.”

“Busche is as good as gone. Isn’t there a confidence vote this Friday?”

“The congregation is getting good and upset. But …”

“Yes?”

“You know he removed Lou Stanley from the church for adultery?”

“Ah, yes. That should help the congregation decide.”

“A lot of them agreed with that move!”

She backed away in order to gaze at him better, freezing his blood with her eyes. “Are you afraid of Henry Busche?”

“Listen, he still has a lot of support in the church, more than I thought he did.”

“You
are
afraid of him!”

“Somebody’s on his side, I don’t know who. And what if he finds out about the Plan?”

“He will never find out anything!” If she had fangs, they would have been showing. “He will be destroyed as a minister long before then. You will see to that, won’t you?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Do not bow to this Henry Busche! He bows to you, and you bow to me!”

“I’m working on it, I said!”

She relaxed and smiled. “Next Tuesday, then?”

“Ehh …”

“We’ll celebrate Busche’s Friday demise. You can tell me all about it.”

“What about Hogan?”

“Hogan is a limp and weakened fool. Don’t worry about him. He’s not your responsibility.”

Before Brummel knew it, he was standing outside her back door.

Langstrat watched him through her window until he drove off, taking the usual alley route where he would not be seen. She opened the drapes to let some light in, extinguished the candle on the coffee table, then took a folder from her desk drawer.

Soon she had arranged in neat piles the life histories, personality profiles, and current photographs of Marshall, Kate, and Sandy Hogan.
When her eyes fell on the photograph of Sandy, they glinted maliciously.

Hovering invisibly over Langstrat’s shoulder was a huge black hand adorned with jeweled rings and bracelets of gold. A deep and seductive voice spoke thoughts to her mind.