Seven Kinds of Death (18 page)

NINETEEN

Charlie entered the dining
room, his hands deep in his pockets, scowling fiercely, to hear Sheriff Gruenwald say to Johnny, “All we really know is that Victoria Leeds must have got into the condominium before you took your group in. There just wasn’t time enough afterward.” He looked at Charlie. “Hi, what’s up? Oh, I forgot, they’re having a party or something?”

“Or something,” Charlie snapped. “I was invited to go somewhere else.” He cocked his head, listening. “They can’t seem to make up their minds where they want the party to happen.”

Across a narrow hall from the dining room, with both doors standing wide open, was the television room. The voices became clearly audible:

“This will do just fine,” Constance said. “Plenty of chairs, that card table is about right, don’t you think?”

“It’s okay,” Ba Ba said in a lower voice that sounded sullen.

“Good, let’s just arrange things in here.” Constance was being inhumanly cheerful and brisk.

Charlie sat down at the dining-room table and glanced at the sketch Bill Gruenwald had made of the condo complex. Tootles’s little retreat, the path through the woods. He did not linger over the sketch, but was listening intently to the voices from the dining room.

“How we used to do it,” Constance said, “was to have the two Ouija enablers sit at the table, and the others sit around them holding hands. You have to promise not to say anything, or make a sudden movement. You know, respect for the method, the people using the Ouija, the others in the room, and so on. Agreed? Max, I’m not sure you’ll like this. Wouldn’t you rather join Charlie, wherever he is?”

Max’s voice rumbled, nearly inaudible, but he was protesting, that much was clear.

“All right,” Constance said, “but you’ll have to abide by the rules, just like everyone else.” There was a pause; he must have nodded or somehow agreed silently. She went on, “Whoever is at the end, should be prepared to take notes if there is a message. Spence, would you do that? At this end, maybe. Do you have a notebook or something, a pen? Just put it where you can get at it without having to leave the group.”

Charlie got up and crossed the hall, to stop in the doorway where he could look into the television room. There was a grand piano, a large television, many cushions on the floor, several overstuffed chairs and a sofa, and additional cane chairs with woven seats. Constance was standing at a card table where Tootles and Ba Ba already were seated with the Ouija board and planchette between them. Tootles looked murderously angry. The others had drawn a line of chairs close to the table. Now Constance sat down next to Toni and took her hand. Max took Constance’s hand, and after a second Spence sat down and took Max’s other hand. Paul was ashen; he moved like a robot with jerky motions when he crossed to sit by Toni.

Charlie was aware that Bill Gruenwald and Johnny Buell had joined him at the doorway. He took Johnny’s arm and pulled him away, his finger to his lips. Back in the dining room he said in a low voice, “They’ll close the doors if they catch us snooping. Listen.” Babar’s voice carried to them clearly.

“Is anyone there? Hello. Is anyone there?” A lengthy silence followed. “Sometimes you have to ask through the Ouija,” Babar said, and another silence followed.

“You guys were talking about how anyone got into the complex?” Charlie asked Bill Gruenwald in a very low voice. The sheriff nodded; Charlie lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “That’s the easy part,” he said, still speaking softly. He listened again, then said, “They, the killer and Leeds, must have seen Buell and his group enter, and simply went through when the gate was open. A step off the access road, behind the trees, and it was done. He left the building open when he took the group upstairs. How long does it take to get inside, duck out of sight?” He cocked his head, and put his finger to his lips again. He took the few steps to the door to the music room and stood there silently. Johnny and the sheriff came after him.

“It’s not working,” Tootles said flatly. “I can’t help it if it doesn’t work. There’s no way to make anything happen.”

Constance was thinking back to her girlhood, a time when she was thirteen or fourteen, one of a group of high school girls who had stayed up all night playing with Tarot cards, the Ouija, palmistry. There had been a lot of giggling, and not a little apprehension and even fear that was always denied as quickly as it became recognized. They had been in the Olsens’ basement rec room. Ba Ba had not been allowed to join them; she had been too young at eleven or possibly twelve.

Constance had not played with the Ouija since that night so many years ago. One of the girls had become hysterical, she recalled; how easy it had been then to become hysterical, to have other girls patting, touching, kissing, even envying the one who had succumbed. How they had longed to faint. One good faint would have been worth two cases of hysteria.

Toni’s hand in hers had been trembling earlier, but now was still, and had even warmed up. She removed her hand from Toni’s, gave Max’s hand a little squeeze, and then withdrew from his grasp. His hand had been warm and firm from the start.

“Let me try,” she said to Ba Ba, who still looked furious.

“I’d rather not,” Ba Ba said. “When it’s a bad night, it’s best to leave it alone.”

“Oh, we don’t know that it’s really a bad night, do we? Maybe Tootles is just too upset. And she has every right to be upset. It’s been one thing after another, hasn’t it?”

Glaring, Tootles stood up and went to the chair Constance had just left. She took Max’s hand, and then Toni’s. “Let her have a go at it,” she said in a tight voice. Constance smiled at her, then at Ba Ba.

Toni had been afraid, then she had known nothing was going to happen. The way Marion had been sitting, the stiffness of her shoulders, the set look on her face, her whole attitude had said clearly that there was nothing to be afraid of because nothing was going to happen. Now the fear leaped back, redoubled, quadrupled, overwhelming. Constance would make something happen, she knew. She could not control the trembling in her hands. Marion tightened her grasp on one side, while on the other side Paul’s hand was shaking every bit as much as Toni’s.

“Is anyone there?” Ba Ba demanded, the same words as before, but with a difference; now it was a challenge.

Constance laughed. “Let’s ask with the planchette.”

After they moved the planchette around the board to ask, an interval passed that seemed too long to endure; no one moved; the planchette did not move. Babar looked sleek and fierce, Constance relaxed and bright-eyed with interest. Then the little planchette began to slide. Constance glanced at Spence, who was staring at the Ouija with a look of disbelief. When she nodded at him, he released Max’s hand to pick up his pen and notebook. Standing in the doorway, fists clenched, Charlie felt a stirring of memory, a stirring of an atavistic reaction to the strange and unnatural that raised the hairs on his arms, down his back. Abruptly he turned and went back to the dining room.

“Jesus,” Gruenwald muttered. “I didn’t know people still believed in stuff like that. Isn’t your wife a Ph.D. psychologist? Does she believe in that?”

Charlie glared at him. “Why don’t you do your job and let her do hers,” he said in a low mean voice. “You need some more pointers? How about the rope? Trace it. Who around here has rope, and why? Trailer tie-down? Camping rope? Boating? Why nylon? Because it makes a tidy little package that can go into a purse, or a pocket? Were the ends burned to stop raveling? Trace the ash, lighter fluid, barbecue starter, gasoline? What was used? A match? Candle? Gas burner? Cigarette lighter? God, the labs today can tell you the name of the gas company! Have you even thought to look over clothes, see if you come up with fibers, nylon fibers in pockets for example, or fibers from her clothes on the knees of someone’s pants? Why don’t you just get on with your job and don’t worry about what my wife believes?”

Gruenwald tightened his lips into a thin line. He started to gather up the papers he had spread on the table. Johnny Buell looked at him, then very quickly away, as if embarrassed for him.

“Who is there?” Constance asked in the next room. Charlie went to the door again. Constance had a strained, expression; she was pale. She had not counted on this, she was thinking. Ba Ba had gone into a trance that was legitimate; she was in a somnambulistic trance from all appearances, and the planchette was racing around the board.

Charlie’s fists tightened.
Something was wrong.
Late into the night they had talked; he had gone over that other time with her, reviving all the terror he had felt that day when Babar had summoned a ghost, a spirit, a something, and it had touched him with fear and loathing. Last night Constance had said, “If this is going to work at all, it has to be as real as it was to you the first time you saw Ba Ba at the board. You have to let it run without interference or nothing will happen. She’s probably even better now, more experienced at this, but we’re more experienced, too, Charlie.” She had said that he no longer was that young kid, groggy with fatigue, stupefied with coming out of a deep sleep into something weird. Last night it had sounded reasonable. Now, watching with his fists balled so hard that his forearms were starting to spasm, all he could think was
something was wrong.
Constance was too pale; he could see a sheen of sweat on her upper lip, the way the tendons in her neck were too tight, the fierce set of her jaw. The thought came to him with the force of a blow to the solar plexus:
she would be the target.

The planchette moved faster and faster spelling out words: Y—O—U—C—A—L—L—E—D—B—E—F—O—R—E—I—C—A—M—E—I—A—M—S—T—I—L—L—H—E—R—E

“If you are here, you can hear my voice,” Constance said clearly. “You have to leave, go back where you came from. No one here needs or wants you any longer.”

I—W—I—L—L—N—O—T—L—E—A—V—E—P—A—U—L

“Tell it to go away, Paul,” Constance said. “Just say the words. Tell it.”

The planchette began to skitter across the board, back and forth jerkily, not pausing anywhere long enough to see if it was on a letter, skidding to the edge, back; then suddenly it flew off the board and landed in Ba Ba’s lap. She did not move, her hands remained suspended before her as if her fingers were still resting on the planchette. Slowly her hands were lowered until her fingertips touched the Ouija board.

Her face did not change expression; she looked like a Buddha contemplating nirvana.

“I won’t leave,” Ba Ba said in a thick unrecognizable voice. “Paul needs me. Paul wants me.”

Charlie’s stomach spasmed at the sound of that voice.

“Tell it!” Constance demanded, facing Paul, who was shaking violently.

“Get out,” he cried then. “Just get the fuck out. Go back to the hell you came from! Leave me alone! Get out!” His voice rose to a near scream. “Get out! Get out!”

“No!” Toni moaned. “I want it. Don’t leave!” She tried to wrest her hand free from Tootles’s grasp.

“Jesus God,” Gruenwald whispered.

His words, so close to Charlie’s ear, yanked him back from a wild plummeting fall toward that other room out of the past. For a moment the two scenes appeared superimposed on one another. He shut his eyes hard, and when he opened them again the past was gone.

Max was as rigid as death, as was Tootles. She was holding Toni’s hand in a hard grip. And Toni looked ready to pass out; her pale face had taken on a bluish cast. She twisted her hand away from Paul; he jumped up, clutched the table holding the Ouija board, and screeched at it.

“Get out of my life! Get out!”

The Ouija board seemed to jerk convulsively; it twisted and spun around and slid across the card table and sailed off to the floor. The silence and stillness that replaced the frenzy stretched out until, abruptly, Paul slumped, rocking the table that he still clutched with both hands. He didn’t fall, and after a second he straightened again. Constance felt as if she had been released from an enveloping restraint. She flexed her fingers.

“It’s gone,” Paul whispered hoarsely. “It’s gone!”

Charlie let out a breath he had not realized he had been holding. Toni moaned again and ducked her head. After a second Constance picked up the board and returned it to the table. Ba Ba stirred and put the planchette on the board. She looked dazed.

In the doorway Charlie felt his muscles start to relax, leaving him feeling exhausted with a dull ache here and there; he turned and went back to the dining room, followed by Johnny and the sheriff.

“Jesus,” Gruenwald said again in a low voice.

“It… there’s more,” Ba Ba whispered.

Constance wanted to deny it, to cry out.
No!
This wasn’t part of the plan; Ba Ba’s part was finished. But Ba Ba was rigid, staring straight ahead as if entranced again. “Let’s make sure it’s gone,” Constance said, and she heard her voice as strained and as unfamiliar as the voice that had come from Ba Ba only moments earlier. “Ba Ba?” They positioned their hands. There was a brief silence and then she said, “Is anyone there?”

Gruenwald and Johnny went back to the door to watch; this time Charlie did not join them. Every instinct was crying out to stop this, stop it now, stop it completely, and never start it again. He felt hot and cold all at once, and he could almost feel the pallor of his face; sweat between his shoulder blades chilled him, and he knew he would not be able to stand in the doorway and watch again.

“Spence,” Constance said in her unfamiliar voice.

It took a long time, the letters all ran together as they had done before; the planchette sped up and it was hard to make certain the letters were all noted. Constance said each one when the window paused over it. When the message stopped, Spence read what he had written:

Tell Diane manuscript is in drawer with Buffalo nickels.

“Are you still there?” Constance asked the board. There was a long silence. “It’s over.” She removed her hands from the planchette. Ba Ba stirred and straightened her fingers; she looked very relaxed and sleepy.

“What the devil does that mean?” Spence asked, studying the message. “Something to do with her work?”