From Black Rooms (29 page)

In the parking lot around the hotel, the same people who'd pushed and shoved to escape the fire turned around to watch and gossip about it. A couple of them pointed out Calvin as one of the survivors, but he walked away from them without turning around. Thank God he and Natalie had gone to bed ful y dressed; Calvin wished now that he'd worn his shoes as wel , for the asphalt felt as frigid and hard as a glacier under his stockinged feet.

When he reached the edge of the hotel's property, he stretched his hands as far apart as he could and angled the knife to saw the nylons wrapped around his wrists. Calvin left them on the ground where they fel , closed the switchblade, and slipped it in the front pocket of his jeans. He needed to find a phone--there had to be
someone he could call for help--but before he could go
in search of one, a numbness deeper than the Boston cold penetrated his limbs. He wanted to run, to yel , to
move, but instead he stood there and folded his arms,
smiling a smile that he did not feel and that was not his.

"Don't even think I'l let you save her, Cal," he heard himself say. "That psycho can cut her to ribbons, for al I care. Just like he did me."

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, he babbled, buried in the
back of his own head. Humpty Dumpty had a great

fall...

But Calvin knew that al the nursery rhymes and al the Beatles songs in the world couldn't put him together again.

It was a smal consolation to him that, although he could not retain control of his body, neither could Tranquil ity. She wanted to march him straight to the police and concoct a "confession" to give them, but she barely made it half a block before she was displaced by the forlorn spirit of a bag lady who froze to death while sleeping in a doorway during a snowstorm. She went wandering in search of the mongrel puppy that had been her only companion in life, only to be supplanted by a drug dealer vowing vengeance on the rival hoods who shot him. He gave way to a Minuteman who fought as part of a Continental Army that was too poor to afford snappy uniforms like those worn by the staff at the Patriot's Pride. He simply goggled in awe at the

wonderland of excess wrought by the democracy he'd sacrificed himself to help found. A parade of others fol owed, each hijacking Calvin's form for a brief time in futile pursuit of objectives that no longer mattered. Pedestrians went out of their way to clear the sidewalk for the man who shambled among them with only socks on his feet, muttering in one voice, then shouting with an entirely different accent and intonation. No doubt the bandages on his head contributed to the assumption that he was mental y il . If they noticed the stains on his shirt, they must have presumed that the blood was his own. A few cop cars passed him during his

peregrinations through the streets, but every metropolis has more homeless weirdos than it knows what to do with, and the police had more pressing emergencies to address.

Calvin witnessed it al as a hapless observer, with no more power over his own destiny than a piece of scrap paper tossed by the wind. He tried every possible mantra he could think of, to no avail. Meanwhile, he was forced to watch the inhabiting souls squander the precious minutes he needed to find Natalie. Tranquil ity taunted him with the utter negation of his current existence when she reclaimed his body as it wandered along Commercial Street near the Cal ahan Tunnel to Logan Airport.

"You know, Cal, I could just throw you in front of the next bus that rol s by here." She did a precarious tap dance on the curb as traffic thundered past only a foot away. "But I want you to feel how worthless you are. Do you suppose he's cut her open yet? You oughta

know, Cal--you're a deadtalker now, after al . Of course, maybe she doesn't want to come and talk to you, because you got her kil ed." She chuckled. "Maybe she hates you even more than I do. Wouldn't that be a laugh!"

No, Calvin thought. Let me die, let me be a walking
puppet--just don't let Natalie hate me.

If he'd had control of his eyes, he would have wept, and the inability to let out the emotion felt worse than choking on smoke with a cloth stuffed in his mouth. He couldn't accept that Wax and Tranquil ity were right. There had to be some way he could fend off the dead, to recover his autonomy. What was it Cal ie had told him?

Your mantra has to be special. Something you believe
in.

What did he believe in? Calvin once lacked an answer to that question, but now he had one: Natalie. She was the only thing to come into his life in which he had absolute faith. She had believed in him more than he'd ever believed in himself, and now his belief in her would save him. For her sake as wel as his, he would find a way to be himself again.

I believe in Natalie, he thought, the words strengthening
his resolve like a good, stiff drink. I believe in Natalie. In the midst of doing a merry, mocking jig with his blistered feet, Tranquil ity wobbled and frowned. Calvin sensed that the balance of wil s had tilted in his favor. I believe in Natalie, he thought, his repetition accelerating with his eagerness. I believe in Natalie I
believe in Natalie I believe in Natalie...

Tranquil ity pressed his hands to his temples. "No! I won't, I won't, I won't," she bleated, as if refusing to say uncle.

And yet, though she pursed his lips in spite, the next words out of his mouth were his. "I...believe...in
Natalie!"

You can't get rid of me, Cal, Tranquillity spat into his
consciousness. Not ever.

But he did.

"I
believe in Natalie!" he shouted to the passing traffic
and the filthy street and the starless darkness of the overcast night sky. "I BELIEVE IN NATALIE!" Calvin ripped the skul cap of bandages and foil from his bald head, flung it on the pavement, and stomped on it with his sore feet, chanting the only protection he'd ever need against fear and death.

The ice water of urgency quickly cooled his initial euphoria. He had no car, no money, no shoes, and no idea how long he would be able to retain his hard-won freedom. Despite what Tranquil ity had said, the fact that Natalie hadn't knocked gave him hope that she might stil be alive, but he had no way to locate her in time.

Or did he?

Calvin looked down at the finger streaks of blood he'd rubbed on his shirt, now dried to a rusty brown. The
dead travel fast, he remembered reading in some book
back during his col ege days.

Although he did not have a spectator mantra and knew nothing about how to summon a specific soul, he bal ed his fist around the stained cloth and cal ed to Wade Lindstrom with his mind. To open himself to

inhabitation again, he stopped reciting his newfound protective mantra, risking that the touchstone of blood would draw Wade to him before any stranger's soul could knock.

Calvin shuddered as the al -too-familiar prickling sensation stiffened the stubble on his scalp. His brain again absorbed images of Natalie's mother, young and glowing with the first light of marriage and

motherhood, but thoughts of another woman col ided with them. A somewhat older woman, with a timid

smile and pale blue eyes, her brown hair pinned up with Puritan restraint. A name accompanied the memory:

"Sunny."

"Kiddo?" he heard himself say. Wade glanced around, perplexed to find himself alone on a dreary Boston thoroughfare.

It's Calvin, sir. It took a moment for him to adjust to
communicating by thought rather than speech. I need
your help.

"Oh." His shoulders sagged with Wade's

disappointment. "I thought it would be Natalie or Cal ie cal ing me."

That's why I need to talk to you. The man who killed
you has them--

The news of his own demise appeared to shock Wade.

"Wait! Kil ed me? I thought my heart gave out."
No. I think it was the bad man your granddaughter
talked about--the guy named "Evan." He also killed
my ex, and now he's kidnapped Callie and Natalie.
You've got to help me find them.

"Evan... Natalie's father spoke the name as if it were the only thing left that could frighten him. "Tel me what to do."

Go to Natalie. See if she can tell you where she is. Then
come back and knock and tell me what you've found
out.

"Of course. I would have gone to her before now, but...I've been renewing some old acquaintances."
Natalie's mom? Calvin guessed. And...Sunny?

Wade shook Calvin's head and took a sudden interest in the holes forming in his threadbare socks. "I got lonely al those years Nora was in the hospital. Then I met Sunny and my life seemed complete again. They've

both waited for me to join them...and I stil love them both. It's...strange."

As Wade Lindstrom pondered the dilemma of his

transcendental polygamy, Calvin couldn't help but recal the paternal shade embracing Cal ie in the portrait Natalie had drawn. Dan Atwater, absent yet

omnipresent. When the time came, with whom would

Natalie choose to spend eternity--the F.B.I. agent hero and father of her child, or the failed artiste and ex-con forger?

Calvin decided not to worry about that until they were al dead. God wil ing, that might not be for a long time...if he got moving.

Have you ever touched Serena? he asked Wade. Shaken
hands or whatever?

"Yeah, I think so. Why?"

She was supposed to meet us here in Boston. I only pray
she made it. Calvin checked his location, sighted a
service station about a block away. After you find
Natalie, go tell Serena to meet me at the Exxon on
Commercial Street, okay?

"I'l do my best." Wade smiled. "Good luck, son. Save our girls."

I will.

As Wade flew off into the ether like Mercury to deliver his messages, Calvin trudged toward the gas station, whispering his mantra to ward off not only the dead but also pain and cold and worry: "I believe in Natalie. I
believe in Natalie. I believe in Natalie...

24

The Ex

FORM OF A PULSING headache, an aftereffect of her drug-induced sleep. She opened her eyes to find herself looking sideways at the gray vinyl of car upholstery. She tried to cal out to Cal ie, but a strip of duct tape sealed her mouth. When she attempted to sit up, she discovered that while she was passed out Evan had taken the precaution of roping her wrists to her ankles behind her back to immobilize her, as if trussing up the legs of a rodeo calf. She knew Evan had done it, for he'd tied her up the same way the last time they'd been together, when he'd abducted her a decade ago.

If she had any remaining doubts about the identity of her captor, Evan ended them when she started to writhe.

"Take it easy," he said, guessing what she wanted.

"She's right here next to me. She's smal er than you are, so it might take her longer to snap out of it." Natalie angled her face upward until she could see Evan peering down at her over the back of his car seat like a castle guard on a parapet. He no longer wore a disguise other than the blond of his hair, and she recognized the covetous longing in his expression even in the bluish predawn light inside the car. Age lines, colored

contacts, and hair dye could not keep her from

distinguishing a face that had once been as familiar to her as her own, yet he had never looked as much like a stranger to her as he did now.

She tried to pry her lips apart beneath the sticky polymer of the tape, but Evan shook his head. "No, I won't let you talk quite yet. I want you to feel how I felt at Corps headquarters. Trapped and silent."

He stretched an arm out over the back of his seat to play with the strands of her wig. "Except you can't real y know what it was like. A soul cage gives a whole new meaning to the word solitary. For ten years, I had no one to talk to--not even the dead." His voice became as brittle as thin ice. "Maybe I should put you in a soul cage for ten years. Maybe then you'd understand." Natalie breathed harder, imagining herself imprisoned in a makeshift soul cage of Evan's construction, without the comfort of a single soul, living or dead. A black room worse than death.

"And yet, Boo, even after everything you've done to me, I stil find it hard to hate you." Evan quivered with emotion--whether from anger or love or self-loathing or frustrated lust, it was impossible to tel . "Al that time, I tried. I didn't say a word to anyone, because I was practicing al the vicious, hurtful things I wanted to say the next time I saw you. But here we are, and I can't remember any of it."

He glanced out the windshield of the parked car at the lightening sky. "Pancrit's boys wil be here soon. The doc wants to know what Bartholomew Wax said to you, and he'l do stuff to your kid until you tel him what it was."

Reaching over to the seat beside him, Evan cupped Cal ie's chin in the claw of his hand and pul ed her face forward until Natalie could see how he pinched the girl's slack cheeks. "It's a shame, because she's a pretty thing." He cast a withering look at his former lover.

"S
he should have been mine."

Natalie convulsed with fury, so livid that she mistook the tingling of her skin as the rush of blood to her head.

"But I can forgive and let live." Evan pushed Cal ie back against the headrest. "I have no loyalty to Pancrit. We can drive away from here right now and never see him again. We'l al be a family, and I'l raise Cal ie as my own."

He smiled. "I can see you're already thinking of al kinds of objections to my generous offer. That's why I'm not going to take the tape off until you've had a chance to calm down a bit. I suggest you consider my proposition careful y before you give me your answer." The pricking sensation in her fingers and toes, which Natalie had blamed on the rope cutting off her

circulation, grew stronger. Not now, she thought, exasperated that some dead nuisance had chosen that moment to knock. She was about to shoo it away with her protective mantra when it spoke to her.