The Haunted Air (40 page)

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Authors: F. Paul Wilson

BOOK: The Haunted Air
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“
What
?” Lyle said. He couldn't believe what he'd just heard. “You're joking, right? You're pulling my chain, is that it?”
Charlie shook his head as he pulled clothes from his dresser and dumped them on his bed. He concentrated on what he was doing, not making eye contact.
“Nope. This is on the fo' real, bro. I'm geese.”
First the craziness this morning with the first three sitters, seeing into their lives, their pasts, their futures—what little there was for each of them. Now this. He felt as if his world was coming apart.
“But you
can't
leave. We're a team. The Kenton brothers have always been a team. Who brung ya, Charlie?”
Finally Charlie looked at him. His eyes glistened with tears. “You think I want to? I don't. We still a team, Lyle, but not in this game, yo. And not in this house.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we bust outta here together and start all over, givin' value for value, like Jack said.”
Jack … for a moment Lyle wished he'd never heard of him.
“You mean dump the game?”
“Word. And yo, the way you playin' the game lately, y'know, cancelin' sitters up and down, ain't gonna be a game left, know'm sayin'?”
Lyle winced. Charlie had a point. Lyle had canceled the morning's fourth sitting along with the whole afternoon. He couldn't handle any more. He hadn't told Charlie why.
Should he tell him now? No. It would only reinforce his determination to leave.
“But we don't
know
anything else, Charlie. We'll starve!”
“No way. We two smart guys. We get by.”
“Get by? Since when is getting by enough? I want to
make
it, Charlie. So do you.”
“Not no more. ‘What profit it a man if he gains the whole world but loses his immortal soul?' I wanna save my soul, Lyle. And yours too. That's why I want you to come with me.”
“And if I don't?”
“Then I got to roll on my own.”
“Roll on your own?” Lyle gave in to a blistering surge of anger. “Why don't you
think
on your own?”
“Say what?”
“This isn't you talking. This is that preacher down that brimstone-breathing, tongue-speaking, snake-handling wacko church you found, right?”
“We don't do no snake handlin'.”
“You're such a sucker for these guys. It was the same back in Dearborn when that Reverend What-his-name—”
“Rawlins.”
“Right. Reverend Rawlins. He's the guy who told you to boycott the Harry Potter movie.”
“That's because it promotes witchcraft.”
“How would you know? You never saw it. You never read a line of one of the books. And neither did Rawlins. He got the word from someone else who hadn't read or seen them either. But you all fell in line, marching lockstep against Harry Potter with not a scrap of firsthand knowledge.”
Charlie lifted his chin. “Don't gotta do a drive-by to know it's wrong.”
“Reading a book to make an informed decision is hardly the same as shooting someone. But you're doing the same thing here. It's this preacher at this new church, right? What's his name?”
“Reverend Sparks.”
“It's him, right? He's the one who's put you up to this.”
“Didn't put me up to nothin'! He told me this ain't no ghost, it's a demon and it's after our souls!”
A demon? Good thing Lyle hadn't mentioned the morning's strangeness. Charlie would probably think he was possessed and try to drag him off to an exorcism.
“Has he been here, Charlie? Has he seen and heard and experienced what we have? No. Has he sifted all the evidence that points to this being the ghost of a girl murdered back in the eighties? No. He hasn't moved his ass from his church down there in Brooklyn but somehow he's got a lock on what's happening in our house, knows it's not Tara Portman but Beelzebub instead. And you fall right in line and go along.” Lyle shook his head, dismayed. “You're a bright guy, bro, but you put your brain on standby whenever one of these ministers opens his mouth.”
“Don't have to listen to this.” Charlie turned away and returned to emptying his dresser.
Lyle sighed. “No, you don't. But what about that pin on your shirt? WWJD. What Would Jesus Do, right? So why don't you ask yourself that? Would Jesus run out on his brother?”
“Jesus didn't have no brother.”
Lyle almost said that some experts thought the apostle James was Jesus' brother, but he wasn't going to get into that now.
“You know what I mean. Would he?”
“Who you to talk 'bout Jesus?”
“Come on, Charlie. Answer me. You know he wouldn't. So how about you putting up with me for two more days?”
“Why?” Charlie didn't look up. “Why should I risk even one more minute?”
“Because I'm your brother. Because we're blood and we're the only family we have. How long've we been a team now?”
He shrugged. “Who knows.”
“You know. Tell me.”
“A'ight.” He looked up, his face a mask of resentment. “Fifteen years.”
“Right. And how long've we been in this house?”
“' Bout a year. So what?”
“So, with all that behind us, why can't you give me two more days?”
“What for? Where's it go? We on a dead-end street, Lyle.”
“Maybe not. Think for yourself a moment instead of letting the Reverend Sparks do it for you. Help me dig around that cellar.”
“No. Uh-uh. That's the demon's crib.”
“Says who? Some guy who's never been here?”
“Reverend Sparks knows about these things.”
“But he's not infallible. Only god is infallible, right? So Sparky could be wrong. Go with that a moment. What if he's wrong and what we've experienced here isn't a demon but really the ghost of a murdered child? What if we find her remains and give them back to her folks for a proper burial. Won't that be doing god's work?”
Charlie snorted and looked away. “Yeah, right. You doing God's work.”
“Take it a step further: What if those remains lead the cops to her killer and bring him to justice? Won't that be a good thing? Won't that be doing god's work too?”
Lyle wanted to ask Charlie why the hell god would let a child be murdered in the first place, but sensed his brother wavering and didn't want to blow it.
“Two days, Charlie. I bet if Jesus had a wayward brother he'd give him a couple of days if he asked for them.”
Charlie shook his head as his lips twisted into a reluctant smile. “Dawg, I hear talk ‘bout a silver-tongued devil, and now I see I'm related to him. A'ight. Two days and not a minute more. But this gotta be a two-way deal: Nothin' crackin' by Friday night, I'm geese and you with me. Deal?”
Lyle hesitated. Me too? He hadn't figured on that being part of the deal, but then, he couldn't go on as Ifasen without
his brother. And if what had happened this morning was the start of a pattern, he wasn't sure if Ifasen had any future at all, at least in this house. So he could see no downside in agreeing to Charlie's terms.
But they
were
going to find Tara Portman, or what was left of her. He could feel it.
He stuck out his hand.
“Deal.”
“Mr. Bellitto!” Gertrude cried in her booming voice as Eli stepped through the door. “You should be upstairs resting!”
She was so right. Barbed wire raked across his groin as he shuffled toward the Carrera marble sales counter. He should have stayed put, but he'd been feeling better after lunch and a nap, and so he'd given in to the urge to see his store, examine his stock, peruse the sales book. By the time he'd reached the sidewalk he realized his mistake but by then he was beyond the point of no return: Unable to face, even with Adrian's help, the prospect of turning and challenging the narrow Everest between him and his bed, he'd pushed on.
“Nonsense, Gert.” He leaned heavily on his cane as he neared the counter. “I'm fine. But do you think you could bring that stool around front?”
“Of course!” Her tightly pinned-back hair gleamed like polished onyx in the light of the overhead fluorescents. She lifted the stool as if it weighed an ounce or two and bustled her hefty frame out from behind the counter and set it before him. “There.”
She gripped one arm and Adrian the other as he eased himself back onto the seat—not sitting, merely leaning. He
wiped the cold sweat from his face with his shirtsleeve. The new clerk—what was his name? Kevin? Yes, Kevin—came over, feather duster in hand, and gawked at him.
“I'm so sorry about what happened,” he said, and sounded as if he meant it.
But did he really?
Eli hires Kevin and a few days later Eli is stabbed. A connection?
Somehow he doubted it, but it never hurt to examine all possibilities.
Eli suffered through a barrage of questions from his two hirelings about the attack; Adrian gave his spiel about loss of memory, leaving Eli with the task of supplying answers. He tossed off curt, oblique responses until he'd had enough.
“I realize this is our slow season,” he said, “but surely you two must have something better to do.”
Both immediately buzzed off—Kevin to continue dusting the stock, Gert to continue entering new inventory into the computer. Adrian wandered away, browsing the aisles.
“How are receipts, Gert?” Eli said.
“About what you'd expect.” She picked up the black ledger and extended it toward him. “As you said, it's the slow season.”
August was always sluggish, and sputtered to a dead stop by Labor Day weekend when the city became a ghost town.
Eli opened the old-fashioned ledger—he preferred seeing handwritten words and numbers on paper rather than a computer screen—and scanned through the day's scant sales. His eyes lit on one item.
“The sturgeon? We sold it?”
He'd had that stuffed monstrosity sitting in the window since he'd opened the shop. He'd started to believe it would be there when he closed the place.
“I not only sold it, I got the tag price for it.” Gert beamed proudly. “Can you believe it? After all these years I do believe I'm going to miss that ugly old fish.”
Eli flipped back to Tuesday, the day the green clerk had been here alone, literally and figuratively minding the store.
He was almost afraid to look. To his surprise he saw a fairly long list of sales. It seemed Kevin had risen to the occasion. Maybe the boy—
Eli froze as his gaze came to rest on a line that read:
Key chain—$10—Jack.
No! It's not … it can't … it's …
Gripping the counter for support, Eli levered himself off the stool and began a frantic walk-shuffle toward the rear, toward the display cabinet
—his
display cabinet.
“Mr. Bellitto!” Gert cried behind him. “Be careful. Whatever it is you need, I'll get it for you!”
He ignored Gert, ignored the flashes of pain strobing through his pelvis, and kept moving, leaning on his cane as he rode the desperate edge of panic, trying to stay on this side of it by telling himself that the entry was a mistake, an antique watch fob that that dolt Kevin had mistaken for a key ring.
But urging him past that edge was the memory of the oddly dressed red-haired man who had come in Sunday night and offered him ridiculous sums for a silly trinket. He hadn't given much thought to the incident, writing the man off as someone killing time and playing the dickering game: If it's for sale, find out how low it will go for; if it's not, find out what it will take to make the owner part with it.
But now … now the incident loomed large and dark in his brain.
He rounded a corner. The cabinet was in sight. The lock … he allowed himself a thin smile … the lock, the dear, dear brass padlock was still in place and snapped closed, just like always.
And the key ring, that cartoon rabbit key ring was—
Gone !
Eli sagged against the cabinet, gripping the oak frame, sweat from his palm smearing the glass as he stared at the empty spot on the second shelf.
No! He had to be dreaming! This had to be a mistake!
He grabbed the padlock and yanked on it, but it held firm.
The air seemed full of shattered glass, every breath shredding his lungs.
How? How could this be? He had the only key. Objects don't move through solid glass. So how—?
“Mr. Bellitto!” Gert's voice behind him.
“Eli!” Adrian. “What's wrong?”
And then they had him surrounded, Gert, Adrian, and the silent Kevin. Yes … Kevin, the weasely, sniveling little shit.
Eli glared at him. “You sold something out of this cabinet, didn't you?”
“What?” Kevin paled and shook his head. “No, I—”
“You did! A key ring with a rabbit! Admit it!”
“Oh, that. Yes. But it couldn't have come from here. I don't have the key.”
“It did!” Eli shouted. “You know damn well it came from here! Tell me how you got it out!”
“I didn't!” He looked ready to cry. “The man brought it up to the counter. When I saw that it didn't have a price tag—”
“There!” He raised his cane and shook it in Kevin's face. He wanted to beat his head to a spongy pulp. “Right there that should have told you something! How do you sell something without a price tag? Tell me!”
“I-I-I called you at the hospital about it.”
“That's a lie!” He raised the cane higher. He'd do it. He'd kill him, right here and now.
“It's true!” Kevin had tears in his eyes now. “I tried to ask you about it but you said to figure it out for myself and hung up on me.”
Eli lowered the cane. Now he remembered.
“That was why you called?”
“Yes!”
Eli cursed himself for not listening.
“What did this man look like? Reddish hair, long in the back?”
Kevin shook his head. “No. He had brown hair. Brown eyes, I think. Very average looking. But he called you by your first name and said you were friends. He even left his name.”
Yes, Eli thought sourly.
Jack
. Useless. He knew no one named Jack.
Whoever it was must have picked the lock on the cabinet. But then … why pay for it? Why not just walk out with it in his pocket?
Unless he wanted to make sure I knew.
He's taunting me
Just as his attacker had taunted him before stabbing him.
One man tries to buy the key ring Sunday night, another man attacks me and frees the lamb Monday night, a third man virtually steals the key ring the following morning.
Could they all be the same man?
Eli felt a sheet of ice begin to form along the back of his neck. Just as he stalked the lambs, was someone stalking him?
“Get me upstairs,” he said to Adrian. “Immediately.”
He had to get to his phone. He had a number he needed to call.

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