Legion (15 page)

The sphere then spoke. “There will be pain,” it said.

“I know.”

“You do not understand what it is.”

“I choose it,” said the bluish light. Then it waited, quietly flickering.

Many more moments passed before the white light spoke again. “I will send Someone to you,” it said.

“No, you mustn’t. You must not interfere.”

“He will be a part of you,” said the sphere.

The bluish light drew inward upon itself. Its flarings were muted and minute. Then at last it expanded again. “So be it.”

Now the silence was longer, much stiller than before. There was a heaviness about it.

At last the white light spoke quietly. “Let time begin,” it said.

The bluish light flared up and danced in colors, and then slowly it steadied to its former state. For a time there was silence. Then the bluish light spoke softly and sadly. “Goodbye. I will return to you.’’

“Hasten the day.”

The bluish light began to coruscate wildly now. It grew larger and more radiant and beautiful than ever. Then it slowly compacted, until it was almost the size of the sphere. There it seemed to linger for a moment. “I love you,” it said. The next instant it exploded into far–flinging brilliance, hurtling outward from itself with unthinkable force in a trillion shards of staggering energies of light and shattering sound.

Kinderman bolted awake. He sat upright in bed and felt at his forehead. It was bathed in perspiration. He could still feel the light of the explosion on his retinas. He sat there and thought for a while. Was it real? The dream had seemed so. Not even the dream about Max had had this texture. He didn’t think about the portion of the dream in the cinema. The other segment had blotted it out.

He got out of bed and went down to the kitchen where he put on the light and squinted at the pendulum clock on the wall. Ten after four? This is craziness, he thought. Frank Sinatra is just now going to sleep. Yet he felt awake and extremely refreshed. He turned the flame on under the tea kettle and then stood waiting by the stove. He had to watch it and catch it before it whistled. Shirley might come down. While he waited, he thought about his dream of the lights. It had affected him deeply. What was this emotion he was feeling? he wondered. It was something like poignance and unbearable loss. He had felt it at the ending of Brief Encounter. He reflected on the book about Satan that he’d read, the one written by Catholic theologians. Satan’s beauty and perfection were described as breathtaking. “Bearer of Light.” “The Morning Star.’’ God must have loved him very much. Then how could he have damned him for all of eternity?

He felt at the kettle. Just warm. A few more minutes. He thought about Lucifer again, that being of unthinkable radiance. The Catholics said his nature was changeless. And so? Could he really have brought sickness and death to the world? Be the author of nightmarish evil and cruelty? It didn’t make sense. Even old Rockefeller had handed out dimes now and then. He thought of the Gospels, all those people possessed. By what? Not fallen angels, he thought. Only
goyim
mix up devils with
dybbuks
. It’s a joke. These were dead people trying to make a comeback. Cassius Clay can do it endlessly but not a poor dead tailor? Satan didn’t run around invading living bodies; not even the Gospels said that, reflected Kinderman. Oh, yes, Jesus made a joke about it once, he conceded. The apostles had just come to him, breathless and full of themselves with their successes in casting out demons. Jesus nodded and kept a straight face as he told them, “Yes, I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.” It was a wryness, a gentle pulling of the leg. But why lightning? Kinderman wondered. Why did Christ call Satan the “Prince of this world”?

A few minutes later, he made a cup of tea and took it up to his den. He closed the door softly, felt his way to the desk, and then turned on the light and sat down. He read the file.

The Gemini killings were confined to San Francisco and had spanned a range of seven years from 1964 to 1971, when the Gemini was killed by a rain of bullets while climbing a girder of the Golden Gate Bridge, where the police had entrapped him after countless failed attempts. During his lifetime he had claimed responsibility for twenty–six murders, each one savage and involving mutilations. The victims were both males and females, of random age, sometimes even children, and the city lived in terror, even though the Gemini’s identity was known. The Gemini had offered it himself in a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle immediately after the first of his murders. He was James Michael Vennamun, the thirty–year–old son of a noted evangelist whose meetings had been televised nationally every Sunday night at ten o’clock. But the Gemini, in spite of this, could not be found, even with the help of the evangelist, who retired from public view in 1967. When finally killed, the Gemini’s body fell into the river, and though days of dredging had failed to rum it up there was little doubt about his death. A fusillade of hundreds of bullets had hit his body. And the murders had then ceased.

Kinderman quietly turned the page. This section concerned the mutilations. Abruptly he stopped and stared at a paragraph. The hairs on his neck prickled up. Could this be? he thought. My God, it couldn’t! And yet there it was. He looked up and breathed and thought for a while. Then he went on.

He came to the psychiatric profile, based largely on the Gemini’s rambling letters and a diary he’d kept in his youth. The Gemini’s brother, Thomas, was a twin. He was mentally retarded and lived in a trembling terror of darkness, even when others were around. He slept with a light on. The father, divorced, took little care of the boys, and it was James who parented and cared for Thomas.

Kinderman was soon absorbed in the story.

With vacant, meek eyes Thomas sat at a table while James made more pancakes for him. Karl Vennamun lurched into the kitchen clad only in pajama bottoms. He was drunk. He was carrying a shot glass and a bottle of whiskey that was almost drained. He looked at James blearily. “What are you doing?” he demanded harshly.

“Fixing Tommy more pancakes, “ said James. He was walking past his father with a plateful when Vennamun savagely struck his face with the back of his hand and knocked him to the floor.

“I can see that, you snotty little bastard, “ snarled Vennamun. “I said no food for him today! He dirtied his pants!”

“He can’t help it!” James protested. Vennamun kicked him in the stomach, then advanced on Thomas, who was shaking with fear.

“And you! You were told not to eat! Didn’t you hear me?” There were dishes of food on the table, and Vennamun swept them to the floor with his hand. “You little ape, you’ll learn obedience and cleanliness, damn you!” The evangelist pulled the boy upright with his hands and began to drag him toward a door that led outside. Along the way, he cuffed him. “You’re like your mother! You’re filth. You’re a filthy Catholic bastard. “

Vennamun dragged the boy outside and to the door of the cellar. The day was bright on the hills of the wooded Reyes Peninsula. Vennamun pulled open the cellar door. “You’re going down in the cellar with the rats, goddamn you!”

Thomas started trembling and his large, doe eyes were shining with fright. He cried, “No! No, don’t put me in the dark! Papa, please! Please–’’

Vennamun slapped him and hurled him down the stairs.

Thomas cried out, “Jim! Jim!’’

The cellar door was closed and bolted. “Yeah, the rats’ll keep him busy,” snarled Vennamun drunkenly.

The terrified screaming began.

Later, Vennamun tied his son James to a chair, and then sat and watched television and drank. At last he fell asleep. But James heard the shrieking throughout the night.

By daybreak, there was silence. Vennamun awakened, untied James, and then went outside and opened the cellar door. “You can come out now,” he shouted down into the darkness. He got no reply. Vennamun watched as James ran down the stairs. Then he heard someone weeping. Not Thomas. James. He knew that his brother’s mind was gone.

Thomas was permanently institutionalized in the San Francisco State Mental Hospital. James saw him whenever he could, and at the age of sixteen ran away from home and went to work as a packing boy in San Francisco. Each evening he went to visit Thomas. He would hold his hand and read children’s storybooks to him. He would stay with him until he was asleep. This went on until one evening in 1964. It was a Saturday. James had been with Thomas all day.

It was nine p.m. Thomas was in bed. James was in a chair at his bedside, close to him, while a doctor checked Thomas’ heart. He removed the stethoscope from his ears and smiled at James. “Your brother’s doing just fine.’’

A nurse put her head in the door and spoke to James. “Sir, I’m sorry, but visiting hours are over.”

The doctor motioned James to remain in his chair, and then walked to the door. “Let me speak to you a moment, Miss Reach. No, out here in the hall. “ They stepped outside. “It’s your first day here, Miss Reach ?’’

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, I hope you’re going to like it here,’’ said the doctor.

“I’m sure I will.”

“The young man with Tom Vennamun is his brother. I’m sure you couldn’t miss it. “

“Yes, I noticed,’’ said Keach.

“For years he’s come faithfully every night. We allow him to stay until his brother falls asleep. Sometimes he stays the whole night. It’s all right. It’s a special case,” said the doctor.

“Oh, I see.”

“And, look, the lamp in his room. The boy is terrified of darkness. Pathologically. Never turn it off. I’m afraid for his heart. It’s terribly weak. “

“I’ll remember,” said the nurse. She smiled.

The doctor smiled back. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Good night.”

“Good night, Doctor.” Nurse Keach watched him walk down the hall, and her smile immediately turned down to a scowl. She shook her head and muttered, “Dumb. “

In the room, James gripped his brother’s hand. He had the storybook in front of him, but he knew all the words; he had said them a thousand times before: “ ‘Good night, little house, and good night, mouse. Good night, comb, and good night, brush. Good night, nobody. Good night, mush. And good night to the old lady whispering “hush.’’ Good night, stars. Good night, air. Good night, noises everywhere.’ “ James closed his eyes for a moment, weary. Then he looked to see if Thomas was asleep. He wasn’t. He was staring up at the ceiling. James saw a tear rolling down from his eye.

Thomas stammered, “I l–l–l–love you, J–J–J–James. “

“I love you, Tom,” his brother said softly. Thomas closed his eyes and was soon asleep.

After James left the hospital, Nurse Reach walked past the room. She stopped and came back. She looked in. She saw Thomas alone and asleep. She came into the room, turned off the lamp and then closed the door behind her when she left. “A special case,’’ she muttered. She returned to her office and her charts.

In the middle of the night, a shriek of terror sounded in the hospital. Thomas had awakened. The shrieks continued for several minutes. Then the silence was abrupt. ThomasVennamun was dead.

And the Gemini Killer was born.

Kinderman looked up at a window. It was dawn. He felt strangely moved by what he had read. Could he have pity for such a monster? He thought again of the mutilations. Vennamun’s logo had been God’s finger touching Adam’s; thus always the severing of the index finger. And there was always the K at the start of one of the victims’ names. Vennamun, Karl.

He finished the report: “Subsequent killings of initial K victims indicate proxy murders of the father, whose eventual dropout from public life suggests the Gemini’s secondary motive, specifically destruction of the father’s career and reputation by way of connection with the Gemini’s crimes.”

Kindernian stared at the file’s last page. He removed his glasses and looked again. He blinked. He didn’t know what to make of it.

He jumped to the telephone just as it rang.”Yes, Kinder–man here,” he said softly. He looked at the time and felt afraid. He heard Atkins’ voice. Then he didn’t. Only buzzings. He felt cold and numb and sick to his soul.

Father Dyer had been murdered.

DEAR FATHER DYER,

Soon you may be asking yourself, “Why me? Why does a stranger place this burden in my hands rather than in those of his colleagues who are scientists and surely better suited to the task?” Well, they aren’t better suited. Science leans to these matters like a child to his medicine. I would guess that you’ll be skeptical about it yourself. “Another nut with a weeping statue of Jesus that cries real tears,” you’ll probably say. “Just because I’m a priest, he must think I’ll swallow any old miraculous cow, and in this case a purple one at that.” Well, I really don’t think that at all. I’m putting this on you because I can trust you. Not your priesthood, Father–you. If you were planning to betray me, you already would have done it. But you haven’t. You’ve kept your word. That’s really something. When we spoke, it wasn’t under the seal of the confessional. Any other priest–any other person–would probably have blown the whistle on me. But before I laid my burden upon you, I gauged you. I’m so sorry your reward is yet another obligation. But I know you’ll follow through. That’s the thing of it. You’ll do it. Aren’t you glad that you met me, Father?

I don’t quite know how to do this. It’s awkward as hell. I want so much for you to trust in my judgment, to believe me. I’m afraid that won’t be easy. What I’m going to be saying will make you cringe. So let’s go about it this way, please; it might be best. Just suspend your curiosity for a while and read no further until after you have followed these few instructions, which I’m now about to give you. First, get your hands on a reel–to–reel tape recorder, one with controls that allow for rapid replay. Better yet, use mine. I’ll Scotch–tape a key to my house to this letter. Now look in the cardboard box that I’ve sent you. It contains a few reel–to–reel recordings that I’ve made. Find the one marked “January 9, 1982.” Thread it onto the recorder. The footage counter has to be resting at zero when the end of the leader hits the capstan at the left. When this is done, fast–forward to 383, then plug in the earphones, set the volume controls to maximum (not the output, only microphone and line), and set the speed at low. Then push “Play” and listen. You’re going to hear amplifier hiss and static at uncomfortable levels. Please bear with it. Then shortly you will hear the sound of somebody speaking. It ends at 388 on the counter. Keep playing and replaying the section with the voice until you’re sure that you know what’s being said. It’s fairly loud, but the static tends to blur intelligibility. When you know what’s being said, set the speed at high–which is double–and repeat the procedure. That’s right. I want you to repeat the procedure. Forget what you heard the first time. Listen again. Please follow these instructions and do not read further until you have done so.

Though I trust you, this continues on a separate page. We all need the help of grace now and then.

Now you’ve listened. What you heard at the slower speed, I’m sure, is a clear male voice saying, “Lacey.” And at the faster speed, the same information on the tape becomes the equally distinct words “Hope it.” Now here you must take the leap of faith and of common sense that I have nothing to gain by misrepresenting. And now I will tell you how I made that tape. I put a blank reel of tape–unused–on the recorder, plugged in a diode (it screens out all sound from the room or the environment, yet acts like a microphone of sorts); I set the speed to low, said out loud “Does God exist?” set the microphone and line to the highest settings, and then pushed the buttons for recording. For the next three minutes, I did nothing at all but breathe and wait. Then I stopped recording. When I played back the tape, the voice was there.

I sent the tape to a friend at Columbia University. He ran it through a spectrograph for me. He sent me a letter and some copies of the spectrographic readings. You’ll find them in the box. The letter says the spectrographic analysis concludes that the voice cannot possibly be human; that to get that effect you would have to construct an artificial larynx and then have it programmed to say those words. My friend says the spectrograph can’t be wrong. Furthermore, he couldn’t understand how a word like “Lacey” transmuted into “Hope it’’ at twice the speed. Note also–and this is my comment, not his–that the answer to my question is unresponsive, if not totally meaningless, unless it is played at twice the speed of the original recording. That rules out any freak sort of radio reception–which tape recorders cannot do anyway, Father–that might be invoked as an explanation, along with coincidence. You will doubtless want to satisfy yourself on these matters; in fact, I urge you very strongly to do so. My friend at Columbia is Professor Cyril Harris. Call him. Better yet, get a second opinion, another spectrographic analysis, preferably done by someone else. I am certain you will find that the result is the same.

I started making these recordings a few months after the death of Ann. There is a patient in the psychiatric ward of the hospital, a schizophrenic named Anton Lang. Please don’t talk to him about this; he has very real problems which will only tend to lessen the phenomenon’s credibility, along with mine, I would have to suppose. Lang had complained of a chronic headache, which caused me to come into contact with him. I, of course, read his history, and found that for years he’d been making tape recordings of what he characterized simply as “the voices.” I asked him about them, and he told me some things that were intriguing and suggested that I read a book on the subject. The title was Breakthrough. It was written by a Latvian, Konstantin Raudieve, and is available in English through a British publisher. I ordered a copy and read it. Are you with me so far?

Most of the book consisted of Raudieve’s transcriptions of voice recordings that he had made. Their content wasn’t terribly encouraging, I fear. They were trifling and inane. If these were the voices of the dead, as this Latvian professor was convinced that they were, was this really all that they had to tell us? “Kosti is tired today.” “Kosti works.” “Here there are customs at the border.’ “We sleep.” It put me in mind of the ancient Tibetan Book of the Dead. Do you know it, Father? It’s a curious work, a manual of instructions preparing the dying for what they would face on the other side. The first experience, they believed, was a decisive and immediate confrontation with transcendence, which they called “the Clear Light.” The newly dead spirit could opt to join with it; but few did, because most were not ready, for their earthly lives had not properly prepared them; and so after this initial confrontation, the dead went through stages of deterioration as they dwindled toward eventual rebirth into the world. Such a state, it struck me, might produce the inanities and banalities recorded not only in Raudieve’s book, but also in most of the spiritist literature. It’s pretty sickening, discouraging stuff. And so, to say the least, I wasn’t exactly thrilled by Breakthrough. But it had a preface by another author named Colin Smythe, and this I found to be quite understated and credible. So were various testimonials written by physicists, engineers and even a Catholic archbishop from Germany, who had all made recordings of their own and who seemed not so anxious to proselytize the reader as they were to speculate on the causes of the voices, considering, among other things, the possibility that the voices were imprinted on the tape in some way by the experimenter’s unconscious.

I decided to try it. Let’s face it, I was crazy with grief over Ann. I own a little Sony portable recorder. It’s small enough to stuff in the pocket of a coat, but you can rapidly reverse and replay with this model, something I was soon to discover was important. One evening–it was summer and still quite light out–I sat down in my living room with the Sony, and invited any voices who could hear me to communicate and manifest themselves on the tape. Then I pushed “Record” and let the blank cassette run from start to end. Then I replayed it. I heard nothing except for some noise in the street, and some loud static and amplifier sounds. I then forgot the whole thing.

A day or two later I decided to listen to the tape again. Somewhere in the middle I heard something anomalous, a little click and then a faint, odd sound that was barely audible; it seemed embedded in the hissing and the static, if not at some level underneath those sounds. But it struck me as something that was–well–a little curious. So I went back to that spot and kept playing it over and over. With each repetition, the sound grew louder and more distinct until finally I heard–or thought I heard–a clear male voice shouting my name. “Amfortas.” Just that. It was loud and distinct and not a voice that I recognized. I think my heart began to race a little bit. I went through the rest of the tape and heard nothing, then returned to the spot where I’d heard the voice. But now I couldn’t hear it. My hopes fell away like a poor man’s wallet falling over a cliff. I began to replay the section repeatedly again, and then again heard the faint odd sound. About three repetitions after that, I could again hear the voice clearly.

Was my mind playing tricks? Was I superimposing intelligibility onto scraps of random noise? I played more of the tape, and now where I hadn’t heard a thing before another voice popped out at me. It was a woman. No, not Ann. Just a woman. She was speaking a rather long sentence, the first part of which, even after many repetitions, I was simply unable to understand. The whole thing had a very odd pitch and rhythm, and the accents on the words were not where they belonged. The words also had a very lilting effect; they valleyed, then continuously ascended. The latter was the portion I could understand: “… continue to hear us,” the woman was saying, but because of the lilt, it sounded like a question. I was simply astonished. There wasn’t any doubt that I was hearing it. But why hadn’t I heard it before? I decided that my brain had probably accommodated to the faintness of the voice and its oddities, and had learned how to knife through the veil of static and hiss to the voice just beneath it.

Now doubts set in again. Had my tape recorder simply picked up voices from the street, or perhaps from next door? There were times when I could hear my neighbors talking. One of them might have mentioned my name. I went into the kitchen, which is a little more removed from the street, and I made a new recording with a fresh cassette. I asked aloud that anyone “communicating” with me repeat the word “Kirios,” which had been my mother’s maiden name. But on playback I heard nothing, just the usual odd sound here and there. One of them resembled the sudden braking of automobile tires. No doubt from the street, I thought. I was tired. Listening had taken intense concentration. I did no more recording that night.

The following morning, while waiting for the water to boil for coffee, I listened again to both the tapes. “Continue to hear us” and “Amfortas” I heard quite clearly. On the second tape, I focused on the braking sound, replaying it again and again, and suddenly my brain made a strange accommodation, for instead of the noise I heard the words “Anna Kirios” spoken in the high–pitched voice of a woman and with rapid–fire speed. I let the water for the coffee boil over. I was stunned.

When I went to the hospital that day I brought along the tapes and the tape recorder, and over the lunch break I played the key selections for one of the nurses, Emily Allerton. She didn’t hear anything, she told me. Later I tried it on Amy Keating, one of the charge desk nurses in Neurology. I keyed to a selection from tape number one and she held the speaker pressed close against her ear. After just one playing, she handed me the tape recorder and nodded.

“Yes, I hear your name,” she said, and then returned to whatever she’d been doing. I decided to rest the matter at that, at least with the nurses.

Over the following weeks, I was obsessed. I bought a reel–to–reel tape recorder, a pre–amplifier and earphones, and I began to spend hours each night making tapes. And now it seemed that I never failed to get a result. In fact, the tapes were virtually filled with voices in an almost continuous, even overlapping stream. Some were too faint to even bother deciphering, while others had varying degrees of clarity. Some were at normal speed, while others were intelligible only when I slowed them down to half speed. Some were not even apparent until I’d done this. I kept asking for Ann, but I never heard her. Now and then I’d hear a woman’s voice saying, “I’m here,” or “I’m Ann.” But it wasn’t. It wasn’t her voice.

One night in October I was listening to a playback of a tape that I’d made the week before. It had an interesting fragment on it, a voice saying “Earth control.” After several repetitions I went a little past it, and then suddenly I caught my breath. I heard a voice saying, “Vincent, this is Ann.’’ I felt a tingling from the base of my spine up to my neck. It wasn’t just my mind saying this was her voice; it was my body and my blood, my memories, my being, my unconscious mind. I played and replayed it, and each time I felt that same tingling, like a thrilling. I even tried to suppress it, but I couldn’t. It was Ann.

The next morning my hopes and my doubts were inseparable. Wasn’t this voice a projection of my wish? Intelligibility superimposed over random noises indigenous to tape? I decided now to settle this matter decisively.

I consulted Eddie Flanders, an instructor at the Georgetown Institute of Languages, and a friend who had once been my patient. God knows what I told him, but I got him to listen to the voice of Ann, When he took off the earphones, I asked what he’d heard. He said, “Somebody’s talking. But it’s really so faint.” I said, “What are they saying? Can you make it out?” He said, “It sounds like my name.”

I took the earphones away from Ed and ascertained he was listening to the proper section. Then I had him listen to it again. The result was the same. I was utterly baffled. “But it is a voice,” I asked him, “not just noise?” “No, it’s clearly a voice,” he said. “Isn’t it yours?” “You hear the voice of a man?” I asked. He said, “Yes. It sounds like you.’’ That more or less ended my research that day. But the week after that I came back. The institute maintained its own recording studio for the making of instructional tapes. They had powerful amplifiers and professional Ampex recorders. They also had a microphone that was installed in a soundproof booth. I prevailed upon Eddie to help me make a recording. I went into the booth and turned away from Eddie’s view while I made my little speech inviting the voices to manifest on tape. I also asked two direct questions, requesting as replies the words “affirmative” or “negative,” as these would be easier to detect on playback than merely a simple “yes’’ or “no.” Then I left the booth and closed the booth door behind me and signaled Eddie to turn on the tape and begin to record. He said, “What are we recording?” I said, “Molecules of air. It has to do with some studies of the brain that I’m doing.” Eddie seemed satisfied and we recorded at maximum gain and at a speed of 71/2 i.p.s. After three minutes or so we stopped and listened to the playback at maximum gain. Something rather odd was on the tape. It wasn’t quite a voice. It was more of a gurgling sound and approximately ten times louder than any of the voices I thought I was hearing on my home recordings. Its approximate duration was seven seconds. We could hear nothing else on the rest of the tape. “Is that a normal sort of noise you get at times when you’re taping?” I asked. I was thinking of sound propagation by something within the equipment itself. Ed said no, that couldn’t be. He seemed genuinely puzzled and he told me that the sound should not be there. I suggested a defect in the tape. He thought possibly this was so. After minutes of replaying the sound, it seemed to have something of the quality of a voice. We couldn’t come close to making out its sense. We called it a day.