Burial (10 page)

‘We have a multiple death situation,' he announced.

‘There are people dead in there? How many?'

‘Hard to say. Five at least, could be more.'

‘Well, what happened to them?' asked Jack Mackie. ‘Have they been murdered, or what?'

Deputy Fordyce began to walk across to his car. ‘I can tell you for sure that it wasn't an accident. But I can't tell you for sure that it was murder. If it was some kind of animal or animals, like two or three pit bull terriers, then the animal or animals must have been crazed right out of their skulls.'

‘And if it was a human?'

Deputy Fordyce reached into his car window and picked up his r/t microphone. ‘If it was a human, then it was only a human in the technical sense. If it was a human, then you'd better start praying that you and yours never chance across him — never.'

I was waiting outside the classroom when the break bell rang and all the kids tumbled out I stayed where I was, my arms folded, leaning against the wall, watching Amelia collect up her papers and tidy her desk. She was much thinner than I remembered her, and her hair was all pinned up in a schoolmarmish bun. She wore moon-lensed spectacles, too.

The last time I had seen her she had been wearing a crimson silk kaftan and beads and a crimson bandanna around her hair. Now she was dressed in a brown cardigan
and a cream-coloured blouse and a sensible pleated skirt. On the door there was a handprinted card which said
Mrs Wakeman
. On the blackboard behind her, she had written
Words which sound alike: There — their — ours — hours
—.

At last she finished tidying and closed her drawer. The classroom was filled with sunlight and a jam-jar of daisies stood on her desk. She came towards the door, folding her spectacles and tucking them into a red velvet case. She sensed me rather than saw me, and stopped.

‘Harry?'

I stood to attention. ‘Good morning, Mrs Wakeman.'

‘Harry, what on earth are you doing here? I thought you were dead.'

I took hold of her hand and tried to kiss her but she turned her face away. ‘Nay, not dead, my queen, but moved to midtown.'

‘You look older.'

‘Of course I look older. I
am
older. Mind you — let me look at you — you haven't changed a bit. Marriage must suit you.'

‘Divorce suits me.'

‘Oh … I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be. He was a commodities broker. He dressed me in Armani but he almost bored me to death.'

We walked along the corridor together. The walls were decorated with bright, crude paintings, Christopher Columbus landing in the West Indies, the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, a splendidly gory rendition of Custer's Last Stand. Custer had fifteen fingers on each hand and about a thousand arrows in his body. The building echoed with children's laughter and the squeak-scuff-squeaking of sneakers.

‘How did you find me?' asked Amelia.

‘Oh, it wasn't difficult. I asked MacArthur.'

‘I haven't seen MacArthur in fifteen years. How is he?'

‘Fat and bald. He's driving a taxi. You did yourself a favour, kicking him out.'

‘I should have kicked you out, too,' she remarked.

‘Oh, come on, can't we let bygones be bygones? It's all bourbon under the bridgework.'

‘You weren't very fair to me, Harry.'

I took out my handkerchief and blew my nose. ‘I did say sorry.'

She gave me a wan, indulgent smile. ‘Yes, I suppose you did. For what it was worth.'

‘Do you have time for coffee?' I asked her.

She checked her watch. ‘Ten minutes, no more. I have to get my next class ready.'

We left the dusty fenced-off compound in front of the school and crossed the street. The morning was humid and breathlessly hot, and everything looked hazy and brown. We went into a small Italian place called Marco's and sat by the window. An immense woman with hairy armpits and a hairy mole on her chin took our order for two double espressos.

Amelia took out a cigarette and I lit it for her with the bookmatches from the table. ‘When did you start smoking?' I asked her.

‘After
you,
' she said. ‘I quit for a while but I started it again when Humphrey and I got divorced.'

‘Humphrey? That was your husband's name? What was his mother, a Bogart fan?'

‘Unh-hunh. His father used to be friends with Hubert Humphrey.'

‘Jesus wept.'

Our coffee arrived but I don't think either of us really wanted it I would have preferred a Jack Daniel's, straight up. Amelia smoked and smiled and played with the sachets of Sweet'n'Lo. She still had that world-weary prettiness that had first attracted me, all that time ago. In those days, she had run a mystic bookstore in the Village, The Star Cat.
That was when the world was still innocent and bright of eye, and rents were low. But in the late seventies Amelia had eventually gone broke, and that was when she and MacArthur had split up, and she and I had spent some time together. I don't know whether you could call it an affair, or even a relationship. I was somewhat less than sane in those days; given to drinking and nightmares and bad temper, and Amelia had suffered more than she should.

Amelia had deserved somebody much kinder than me; and I had needed somebody much stronger than Amelia. In the end I hurt her, just to get myself free.

‘MacArthur said you'd been teaching for nearly six years,' I remarked.

She nodded. ‘The remedial class. The poor little kids who can't tell the difference between ‘cat' and ‘hat'. I love it, though. It's very rewarding.'

‘You don't do any of that occult stuff any more?'

‘Never. What about you?'

‘Oh, I'm still telling the fortunes. Reading the palms, laying out the cards, probing the entrails.'

‘I thought you were finished with all that.'

‘Well, it's a living. And people still need to feel that the real world isn't all there is.'

Amelia sipped her coffee. ‘I can't stay very much longer,' she said. ‘Was there any particular reason you wanted to talk to me? I mean, apart from old times' sake?'

‘There was something,' I said, cautiously. ‘Kind of a favour, really, for a friend of a friend.'

‘A girlfriend, no doubt.'

‘You know her, Karen Tandy. Well, Karen van Hooven these days. She's divorced, too.'

‘Go on,' said Amelia, with a warning note in her voice.

‘It's hard for me to explain. You really have to see it for yourself. Karen has some friends called the Greenbergs. They live on East 17th Street, not a particularly salubrious
area but their apartment's okay. One Friday evening about three weeks ago Mr Greenberg went off to the synagogue, and when he came back he found that something strange had happened.'

‘Harry, if this is something weird, then I don't want to know.'

‘Amelia, I don't know who else to ask!'

‘I don't care, I don't want to have anything to do with it! Don't you think the last time was bad enough? It took me
years
to get over the nightmares, you know that. I still can't look at a table without feeling frightened of what might come out of it — even now, even today!'

I sat back and lifted my hands in surrender. ‘I'm sorry. You're right. I shouldn't even have come here.'

‘Harry,' said Amelia, ‘You seem to think that you can use people like characters in your own TV series. You seem to think that when you ask me a favour, I'm going to come running. In spite of how you treated me; in spite of the fact that for fifteen years you haven't written or telephoned or even sent me a Christmas card. In spite of the risks, too. Especially in spite of the risks.'

I looked down at my coffee, trying to appear as chastened as possible. To tell you the truth, I would have done anything not to have had to ask Amelia to help me. But whether I liked it or not, there was nobody else. She was the only person I had ever come across who could do for real what I could only pretend to do — contact the spirit-world. She was spiritually sensitive to the point where she could hear whispers when she walked past cemeteries. The dead, if you can believe it, whispering to each other in their sleep.

Amelia said, ‘You can't ask me, Harry. It's simply not fair.'

‘You're right,' I agreed. ‘I should have tried to find somebody else. It's just that we don't know where to turn next.'

‘Did you tell Karen you were going to ask me?'

I shook my head. ‘I didn't want to raise her hopes. Or Michael Greenberg's hopes, either.'

‘How is Karen these days?' I could sense that Amelia was circling around this conversation, anxious to know more, yet equally anxious not to commit herself.

‘Karen's fine.' I touched the back of my neck. ‘She still has a scar there, but that's all. I guess we all carry some kind of scar.'

‘You said she was divorced.'

‘That's right. She couldn't face the idea of having children. I guess it's understandable.'

‘And these friends of hers — what's this strange problem they've been having?'

I touched her hand; her long pale fingernails. It's very unsettling, touching somebody you used to hold so intimately, after so many years of separation.

‘Amelia, if you don't want to get involved, I'd rather you didn't know.'

Amelia eyed me narrowly through the ribboning sunlit smoke of her cigarette. Out in the street, a young Hispanic kid pressed his face to the window and made a squint-eyed, mouth-blown-out expression. ‘Nice neighborhood,' I remarked, nodding to the kid; who didn't run away, but pulled ever-more grotesque faces.

Amelia smiled. ‘Tell me what's wrong. Maybe I can make some suggestions. Maybe I can recommend somebody.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘I guess the most accurate way of describing it is to say that it's a poltergeist manifestation. When Michael Greenberg got home that night from the synagogue, his wife didn't answer the door. He had to call the fire department to rip it down. He found his wife in the dining room clinging to this single chair, and the rest of the furniture up against the opposite wall.'

‘The furniture seemed to have moved by itself?'

‘Not seemed, did.'

‘How can you be so sure? It's possible that she moved the furniture herself, isn't it?'

‘Amelia, I've seen it for myself. It's up against the wall and every time anybody tries to move it away from the wall it just slides back again. On its own.'

Amelia frowned at me. ‘I don't understand. The furniture's
still
up against the wall?'

‘That's right. And nobody can shift it Naomi Greenberg's sitting on this one chair, keeping it anchored by her own weight in the centre of the room, and she's not going to let it go for anything. She's been sitting on it for nearly three weeks, God damn it. Eats on it, sleeps on it, won't let it go.'

‘Can't they move her?'

‘Michael's arranged for regular visits from two different psychiatrists. They're both worried that she'll have some kind of catatonic fit if they try to move her.'

‘So what on earth can I do? I'm a sensitive, not an exorcist.'

‘Naomi says she saw shadows on the wall … some kind of creature.'

‘And?'

‘I think I may have seen it, too.'

Amelia rearranged the sachets of sugar again. ‘I have to tell you, Harry, this doesn't sound at all like poltergeist. Poltergeist don't pull things across the room like that; and they certainly don't keep them there. They're very erratic and temperamental. They're the spiritual expression of somebody's anger. Nobody stays angry for three weeks, do they? Not unless they're a very disturbed character indeed.'

I didn't want to tell Amelia about the way in which Naomi had covered her face with her hands. It was too strongly reminiscent of the events that had taken place at the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital; especially since Naomi had insisted over and over that I knew what she was trying to describe. It gave me
too deep a feeling of dread to think that there might be any connection. I didn't really believe that there
could
be any connection. But all the same, I didn't want to frighten Amelia and I didn't particularly want to frighten myself, either.

What I had seen at the Greenbergs' apartment had already been frightening enough.

‘Any suggestions?' I asked Amelia.

‘I'm not sure,' she said. ‘I've never heard about anything like it before.'

‘Maybe it's nothing to do with spirits,' I said. ‘Maybe it's just some kind of electrical fault.'

‘Electrical fault?' she asked me, in the tone of voice that she probably used when one of her less bright remediais asked her the difference between cartoon characters and real life. I remember we had a kid at school who insisted that Mr Magoo lived at home with him, but I guess that's another story.

‘I just wanted to make sure that it
wasn't
spirits,' I said. ‘That's why I threw caution and good manners and human decency to the winds and came round to ask you a favour.'

Amelia unfolded a paper napkin and took out a pen. ‘Listen,' she said, ‘there's a man I know who lives on Central Park West. His name's Martin Vaizey. He's very sensitive, and particularly good at contacting wayward spirits. I think he may be able to help you even better than I could.'

I tucked the napkin in my pocket without reading it. ‘Well,' I said, ‘I knew I could count on you.'

‘Don't make the mistake of underestimating Martin. He's very, very good. He's talked to John Lennon a few times. Of course they were practically neighbours.'

‘He's talked to John Lennon? You mean
after
he was shot?'

Amelia nodded.