The Haunted Air (39 page)

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Authors: F. Paul Wilson

BOOK: The Haunted Air
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“That's what I was told,” Kristadoulou replied. “I checked with the hospital—he was taken to Downstate
Medical Center—but no one would tell me how he died. They said I wasn't a relative and had no right to know, but I sensed more than ethics involved there. They were afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” Jack said.
Kristadoulou shrugged. “Of a lawsuit, perhaps. But I sensed it went deeper than that. I got the feeling it had to do with
how
he died.” He raised his hand in a stop gesture. “Don't waste any more breath on Herb Lom. I've told you all I know.”
Lyle said, “What about his wife?”
“Sara was never seen or heard from again. As if she vanished from the face of the earth. Or never existed. No one could find a single relative of hers, and Herb left no will, so the house stood vacant for years before it came back to me like an old debt and I had to sell her again. But this time no one wanted her at any price.” He smiled and pointed to Lyle. “Until you came along.”
Lyle grinned. “I wanted the place
because
of its history.”
“But now you're not so happy, is that right?”
“It's not a matter of happy. I'm just trying to get a handle on what might be going on there.”
They made small talk for a few more minutes, then thanked Kristadoulou for his time and left.
“Dmitri is a player in this,” Jack said as soon as they hit the bright hot sidewalk. “Got to be.”
“But he's dead.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, squinting in the sunlight. He pulled out his shades. “Too bad. Well, what's you're next step?”
“I think I'm going to
de
renovate that basement.”
“You mean tear down the paneling to see what's behind?”
Lyle nodded. “And tear up that concrete slab to see what's under it.”
“Who's
under it, you mean.”
“Right. Who.”
“You'll let me know what you find?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Aren't you the guy who said he's the one who kicked this whole thing off?”
“Well …”
“Well then maybe you could lend a hand and find out firsthand. You up for that?”
Besides making life miserable for Eli Bellitto and his buddy Adrian Minkin, Jack had no pressing demands on his time for the next few days, but he was curious about something.
“Let's just say we find a child's skeleton under the slab. What then?”
“I call the cops, they bring in their forensics team, and maybe they catch the guy who did it. And then maybe the spook goes back to where it came from.”
“And maybe along the way the world hears about Ifasen and his dealings with the ghost of Tara Portman?”
Lyle nodded. “That's a distinct possibility.”
Jack had the picture now. “I guess I can give you a day or two of hard labor, but on one condition: If and when you go public, my name is never mentioned.”
“You mean Ifasen will have to face the spotlight alone?” Lyle's lips twisted into a wry smile. “It won't be easy, but he'll handle it.” The smile faded. “Be a cakewalk compared to some other things.”
“Like what?” Jack said, remembering how troubled Lyle had looked before they'd met with Kristadoulou. “What happened at the house?”
“Tell you later.” He glanced around at the passersby. “Probably not a good idea for Ifasen to discuss it in public.”
“Okay. I guess I can wait. I'll head home and change and see you in the cellar. Give me an hour.”
“Great.” Lyle straightened as if trying to shrug off a burden. “I'll pick up some picks and ripping bars.”
“I'll pick up some beer.”
Lyle smiled. “Welcome to the demolition business.”
“All right, Charles,” Reverend Sparks said as he dropped into the chair behind his battered desk.
The springs in the old chair gave out an agonized squeal under his weight. The desk seemed too small for him. In fact the cluttered little office, with its sagging shelves loaded with books and magazines and scribbled drafts of sermons, its walls studded with yellow sticky notes, seemed too small for him as well.
He pointed to the rickety chair on Charlie's side of the desk. “Sit. And tell me what you needed to see me about.”
Charlie sat and folded his sweat-slick hands in front of him. “Need advice, Rev.”
Did he ever. He and Lyle had had four sittings scheduled for the morning. Lyle started acting throwed off after the first one, then getting further and further off the hinges with the next two, finally eighty-sixin' the fourth and all the others they'd booked for the rest of the afternoon and night. He wouldn't say why, but looked spooked.
Spooked … yeah, you got that right. House spooked. Charlie was spooked too.
He'd tried to pry Lyle about what was going down but Lyle clammed, lips tight, eyes somewhere else. No talking to him. Not mad. Scared. Lyle never got scared. Seeing big bro like that had shook Charlie, right down to his toenails.
He'd tried reading scriptures but that hadn't cut it. He needed to talk. So he come to the rev.
“Is it about your brother?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“I ain't 'xactly sure how to put it … .”
The rev let out a sigh. Charlie sensed his impatience.
“A'ight,” he said. “It's like this. We allowed to believe in ghosts?”
“Allowed?”
“I mean, are there any teachings 'bout them?”
The rev leaned back and stared at him through his thick rimless glasses. “Why do you ask?”
“Here come the hard part.” Charlie took a breath. “Our house is haunted.”
The rev continued his stare. “What makes you think that?”
Charlie gave him a quick walkthrough of the spookfest going down at the place.
“So what I'm axing,” he said as he tied it up, “is what I do about it?”
“You leave,” the rev said, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the desk. “Immediately. Your brother was reason enough to leave before, now you must free. Do not walk,
run
from that house.”
Charlie didn't feature no cut-and-run action, but he was glad the rev wasn't looking at him like he was off the hinges.
“So … you believe me.”
“Of course I believe you. And after what you've told me about your brother, it's obviously his fault. He has called up this demon.”
“Not a demon, Rev. A ghost. She say her name Tara Portman and … .”
The rev was slowly shaking his massive head. “There are no such things as ghosts, Charles. Only demons pretending to be ghosts.”
“But—”
“The dead do not come back to visit the living. Think about it: The faithful are with Jesus and when you are in the presence of the Lord you want for nothing. You do not miss the living you left behind, no matter how much you loved them in life, because you are basking in the love of
God, you are in the blinding Holy Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember Corinthians: ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.' To abandon that Presence would be … why, it would be completely unthinkable.”
Charlie nodded. He could get down with that. “A'ight, then. What about someone who ain't among the faithful?”
“They burn in hellfire, Charles. Oh, the damned would dearly love to return, every single one of them. They'd give anything to come back, even for a second, a fraction of a second, but no matter how much they want to, they cannot. They aren't allowed. They're in hell for all eternity, and they must spend every second of forever in torment. ‘The smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night.'”
“Then what—?”
“A demon, Charles.” The rev nodded gravely. “You see the simple logic of it, don't you. An angel wouldn't bear false witness to the living by pretending to be a dead person who's returned. Only a demon would engage in such a fiendish endeavor.”
“But why?”
“To seduce the faithful away from the Lord and lead them onto the path toward eternal damnation. Your brother attracted the demon, but it is you it is after, Charles.” He stabbed his finger across the table. “You! It lusts after your fragile soul so that it can serve it to its evil master on a silver platter!”
The target of supernatural evil … not me, Charlie thought, terror rising like a flood tide. Please, Lord, not me.
Charlie jumped as the rev slammed his palm onto his desktop. “Now will you leave your evil brother?”
“He's—” Charlie cut himself off.
The rev's eyes narrowed. “He's what? Are you going to tell me again he's not evil—after he's called up a demon?”
He'd been about to say just that. And Lyle didn't call up no demon. Least not on purpose. He wasn't evil, just off
track. He hadn't seen the light yet. But Charlie knew the rev wouldn't accept that.
“He's in danger too, Rev. His soul, I mean. Shouldn't we try to save his soul too?”
“From what you've told me I fear you brother's soul is lost forever.”
“I thought you always said no soul was lost forever long he still had a chance of accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior.”
The rev's gaze flickered. “Well, that's true, but do you really believe your brother will do that? Ever?”
Lyle? Not very likely, but … .
“Miracles happen, Rev.”
He nodded. “Yes, they do. But miracles are the Lord's province. Leave the miracle of your brother's salvation to Him and see to your own by leaving that house.”
“Yes, Rev.”
“Today. Do I have your word on that?”
“Yes, Rev.”
But not without Lyle. Charlie wasn't going to leave his brother in the clutches of no krunk demon.
The rev hoisted himself out of his chair. “Then you better get to it.”
Charlie rose too. “I will.” He hesitated. “Um, is Sharleen round about?”
The rev fixed him with a stern gaze. “I've seen the way you've been looking at my daughter. And I've seen the way she's been looking back at you. But I want you to steer clear of her until you've removed yourself from this evil. Right now you're at a dangerous crossroads. I want to see which path you choose before you involve yourself with Sharleen. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes.” Stung, Charlie backed away. “Very.”
Reverend Sparks thought he was a danger to his daughter. He'd have to prove himself worthy. Okay. He'd do that. Today.
“I still don't believe you did it,” Jack said.
Gia sipped her green tea and tried to read his expression: Shock? Dismay? Anger? Fear? Maybe a mixture of all.
“I'm fine, Jack. Besides, it wasn't as if I had much choice.”
“Of course you had a choice.” He'd settled down from his original outburst and now wandered her kitchen, circling the breakfast table with his hands jammed into his jeans pockets. A barely touched beer sat on the table, condensation pooling around its base. “You could have said to yourself, ‘Going alone to visit the possibly psycho father of a murdered girl and not telling anyone where I'll be is a dumb idea. Maybe I'll just skip it.'”
“I had to know, Jack. It was going to drive me crazy if I didn't find out about her.”
“You could have told me what you were doing.”
“You would have thrown a hissy fit, just like you're doing now.”
“I don't throw hissy fits. I would have tried to talk you out of it, and if you still insisted I could have gone along as backup.”
“Who are you kidding? You've become so superprotective since I told you I was pregnant, you'd have probably locked me in a closet and gone yourself.”
“Maybe I'm suddenly superprotective because you're suddenly Repairwoman Jane.”
This was getting nowhere. Another sip of her tea—too sweet. She'd overdone the honey.
“Do you want to know what I found out?” she said.
“Yes, I do.” He grabbed his beer and quaffed a few inches. “I just wish you hadn't found out the way you did.” He sat on the end of the table. “Tell me. Please.”
Gia told him about Joe Portman, about Tara's mother and brother and what had befallen them since her abduction. She told him about the day of her disappearance, how she'd been wearing the exact same clothes, how she'd left the stable area to go down the block for a pretzel and was never seen again.
“She did that every Thursday?” Jack said.
Gia nodded. “Why? Is that important?”
“Could be. Means she had an established pattern of behavior. That says to me there's a good chance it wasn't a random snatch. Somebody had been watching her. She'd been marked.”
Gia felt a chill. An innocent child, walking the same route every Thursday afternoon, just going for a snack, never realizing she was being stalked. How many pretzel runs had her abductor watched before deciding to pounce?
She rubbed her arms to smooth the gooseflesh. “That's so creepy.”
“Because you're dealing with creeps. Just like …” His voice drifted off as he frowned.
“What?”
“Just like Bellitto and his buddy. The kid they snatched the other night—”
“Duc.”
“Right. He had a pattern too, at least according to his mother. Down the block for ice cream every night around the same time. The kid was already in the store when Bellitto and Minkin arrived and parked outside. They knew he was coming out. They were waiting for him.”
“Just like someone was waiting for Tara between the stables and the pretzel cart. A pattern of behavior?”
Jack stared at her. “You mean a pattern of behavior in the abductors of looking for victims with a pattern of behavior?”
“You don't think this Bellitto could be responsible for Tara too, do you?”
“Be a hell of a coincidence if he was.”
“But—”
“Yeah. I know.” Jack's expression was grim. “No more coincidences.”
“I still don't see how such a thing could be.”
“Neither do I. Let's face it, just because some crazy old lady said it doesn't mean it's true.” He could still hear the old woman's Russian-accented voice as he leaned over Kate's grave.
Is not coincidence. No more coincidences for you.
He shook his head, willing the memory away. “What else did you learn?”
Gia snapped her fingers. “Oh, I learned that the sixties tune was really an eighties tune. Tiffany—”
“Right! Tiffany covered ‘I Think We're Alone Now'! How could I have missed that? Especially after she was in
Playboy.”
“She was? When?”
“Don't remember. Heard it on the radio or something.”
“Well, according to her father Tara sang the song all the time. But you know what really creeped me out? She was a Roger Rabbit fan.”
Jack didn't exactly go white, but his tan abruptly became three shades paler.
“Jeez.”
“What's wrong?”
He told her about the locked display cabinet in Eli Bellitto's shop, how it was filled with kids' knickknacks that he wouldn't part with at any price, and how one of them was a Roger Rabbit key ring.
Gia's skin crawled. “Do you have it with you?”
“No. It's back home. Let's not go jumping to too many conclusions here. Probably sold a million or two Roger Rabbit key rings back in the eighties.”
“You could take it to the police and—”
He blinked. “The who?”
“Sorry.” What was she thinking? This was Jack. Jack and police didn't mix.
He said, “I wish I had a way to connect Tara and the key ring … so I could know for sure. Right now I can only suspect Bellitto.”
“Why not take it to the house. See if she reacts.”
Jack stared at her. “What a great idea! Why didn't I think of that?”
“Because you're merely Repairman Jack. Only Repairwoman Jane could come up with that.”
“Touché,” he said with a smile and toasted her with his beer. “You think she'll respond?”
“Only one way to find out. When do we bring it over?”
“‘We'?” He rose, shaking his head. “‘We' are not going back to that house. Oh, no. One half of ‘we' stays here while this half goes alone and returns with a vivid eyewitness account of whatever happens.”
Gia had expected this. “Not fair. It was my idea.”
“We've been over this already, Gi. We don't know this thing's agenda.”
“That ‘thing' is a little girl, Jack.”
“A
dead
little girl.”
“But she appeared to me. Not you, not Lyle, not Charlie. Me. That's got to mean something.”
“Exactly. But we don't know what. And that's why you shouldn't get within miles of that place. It's got an unhealthy pedigree, even stranger and weirder than what's in Lyle's Menelaus Manor brochure.”
Worse than the part about the mutilated child? Gia didn't think that was possible.
“What? That real estate agent told you something, didn't he.”
“He told me lots of things, and I'll tell you later, but right now we have to agree that you're staying away from that place.”
“But I'm the one she contacted.”
“Right. She sent a message and you received it. Now we're going to dig up what might be her grave. If we find
her, and she can be linked to Bellitto, you'll have done plenty. You've pointed the way.”
“But what if there aren't any clues?”
“Well, then at least she gets a proper burial. And maybe that's what her father will need to kick start his life back into motion.”
Gia wasn't concerned with Joe Portman right now. It was Tara who consumed her. Her need was like a noose around Gia's neck, drawing her toward Menelaus Manor. If she didn't yield to it she felt sure it would strangle her.
“She wrote ‘Mother,' Jack. I don't think she meant her own mother—Dorothy Portman is brain dead. I think she meant me. It may be twenty-some years since Tara was born, but she's still a child. She's still nine years old and she's frightened. She needs a mother. That's a comfort I can provide.”
“How do you comfort a ghost?” Jack said. He slipped his arms around her and pulled her close. She caught the lingering scent of his soap, felt the afternoon stipple of whiskers on his cheeks. “I guess if anyone could, you'd be the one. But tell me: If Vicky were here instead of away at camp, would you be so anxious to go back to that house?”
What was he saying? That this need she felt burning through her veins was simply displaced yearning for her own child? She had to admit it wasn't such a far-fetched notion, but she sensed that the longing within her went beyond that.
“Maybe, maybe not, but—”
“One more question: If Vicky were here, would you take her along?”
That caught her off guard. Her reaction was immediate: Of course not. But she didn't want to voice it.
“That's not the point. Vicky's not here, so—”
Jack tightened his hug. “Gia? Would you?”
She hesitated, then, “All right, no.”
“Why not?”
“I'm not sure.”
“I am. Because it's an unstable situation, and you wouldn't want to expose Vicky to an unpredictable outcome. Right?”
Gia nodded against his shoulder. “Right.”
“Then why expose your second child to that same unstable situation?”
She sighed. Trapped by unassailable logic.
“Please, Gia.” He backed away to arm's length. “Stay away. Give me a couple of days to help Lyle find her bones. Then maybe the circumstances won't be so unstable or unpredictable and we can reassess the whole situation.”
“Oh, all right,” she said. She didn't like it but she'd been backed into a corner. “I suppose a couple of days won't matter.”
“Great.” He let out a whooshing breath. “That's a relief.”
“For you maybe. How about me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if that house is potentially dangerous for me, what about for you?”
Jack smiled. “Did you forget? Danger is my business.”
“I'm serious, Jack.”
“Okay. I'll check in regularly.”
“Leave your phone on in case I need to get in touch.”
“Will do.” He wriggled it out of his pocket and pressed a button. She heard a beep as it activated. He glanced at the clock. “Got to go. Pick a place for dinner—anyplace but Zen Palate—and I'll tell you all about Konstantin Kristadoulou's history of the Menelaus cellar and the findings of our archeological dig down there.”
Gia sighed. All secondhand, but she supposed it would have to do.
“And the key ring,” she said. That was what she wanted to know most of all. “You've got to tell me what happens when you cross the threshold with that.”
“Yeah,” Jack said softly. “That could be very interesting. But how do you top an earthquake?”

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