The House That Jack Built (29 page)

    Pepper had studied a book called Lookynge-Glass Magyke by Thomas De La Raiz, published in Massachusetts in 1650. She didn't believe very much of it, and some of it was nothing more than idiotic superstition; but one night she had used a mirror to tell the fortune of a young folk-guitarist and his mirror-image had been crowned with flames. Two days later he had burned to death when his tour bus overturned in heavy rain on the Garden State Parkway. She always remembered his name, Orkney Taylor. He was so burned that firefighters had thought at first that he was a monkey. Pepper had prayed for weeks afterwards that it wasn't her fault.

    She looked around the high, dusty ballroom, with its leaf-clogged skylights. She wasn't entirely sure why she was doing this cleansing. Maybe she had told Effie the truth, that she was lacking some good old honest excitement, here in Cold Spring, with its tourists and its bed-and-breakfasts and its prissy stores. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe she needed to test her strength. Maybe she needed to find out what she was made of. It was all very well purveying pantry-magic in little jars and pouches; but what of real magic? What of lives that were lived in parallel? What of coincidence? And by that she meant coincidence, two things happening at one and the same time, even though they might be separated by seven decades of calendar years.

    She stood up, making sure that she could see her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing a long white dress of very thin linen, with small puffed sleeves. Underneath it she was completely naked except for the thin silver chain that she always wore around her waist and her ouanga, her talisman. Her nipples showed through the dress like the petals of fading roses seen through thin curtains. All around the mirror she had placed a circle of seven pink candles, handmade out of beeswax. Their small flames nodded in the draught from the broken windows. They made her silver eyes shine.

    On a glossy tablet of white marble she had placed her other magical accoutrements: her moss, and her peony, and her verbena. These were surrounded by a pattern of small gold crosses, eight altogether, seven for the magic number and one for the soul she was trying to protect.

    She didn't have the same hazel twig this time, but a twig with seven different branches which she had cut from her own yard. It was not as sensitive as the usual two-forked dowsing rod, but it would help to diffuse the potent energy of Valhalla's disturbances, and protect her from any serious harm. It was the psychic equivalent of an electrical transformer.

    All the same, it was necessary for a psychic cleanser to be vulnerable. Hence her nakedness under her dress; hence her bare feet. As she had explained to Effie, ghost-busting aggression would simply make the memories of what had happened here - what was still happening here - flicker and melt away as soon as she approached.

    She lifted her hazel twig and slowly moved it from side to side. At the same time, she opened her mind, in the same way she did when she meditated. It was almost like gradually opening a canal lock, so that the cold water of everybody else's unconscious mind could come pouring in. She didn't use chants, or mantras, or any of the spoken spells which she had learned in her Aquarius days. What was needed here at Valhalla was silence, complete openness, complete neutrality.

    At first, she had no response at all, and she began to wish that she had brought her two-forked twig. She shuffled around a little more, so that she could dowse the area behind her, although she still made sure that she didn't lose sight of her reflection. She emptied her mind even more, until she was thinking of nothing but time and space and the infinite rooms of the house known as immortality.

    The candles dipped and swayed. The ballroom seemed to darken a little, as if the sun had been masked by a cloud. She glanced down at the mirror and it looked strangely misted, so that her reflection was blurred.

    Something-

    Very faintly she felt the hazel tingling in her hands. She thought she could hear music, too - not The Blue Danube that Effie had heard when she was dancing, but jazz music. Tinny, flat jazz music, playing on an acoustic Victrola.

    She moved the hazel in a hesitant semicircle. When she pointed it towards the north-western corner of the ballroom, it faded away. When she pointed it back at the south-eastern corner, she could hear it more distinctly, although it was still very feint. It sounded like one of those really early Chicago jazz bands, Johnny Dodds and the Footwarmers, or King Oliver, or Johnny De Droit.

    She heard doors opening, and footsteps. It sounded as if a man were running quickly and lightly downstairs. She heard more doors opening. A draught blew into the ballroom, and three of her pink candles were snuffed out. Broken, scented smoke drifted across the floor. Pepper felt the seven-branched hazel shiver and twist, almost as if it were frightened, almost as if it wanted to break free.

    The footsteps came nearer, across the library. There was a moment's hesitation, and then the double doors were flung open, and Craig walked in.

    'Well, well,' he said. 'If it isn't Ms. Moriarty.' He came towards her, and looked around at her candles and her mirrors and her dishes of magic plants. 'What's this, then, raising the devil?'

    'I didn't see any vehicles. I didn't think there'd be anybody here.' Pepper lowered her hazel, although it was still twitching and writhing, and the branches were bending back like spindly fingers.

    Craig paced around the magic circle. He was wearing a black turtle-neck and black slacks and shiny black shoes. His eyes looked puffy, as if he hadn't been sleeping well.

    'There are no vehicles here because Norman drove me up here, and he's gone over to Carmel to order some more coving. I have to say that I'm not too happy about people just wandering in here without asking me,' he said. 'We've already had one fatal accident; we don't want any more.'

    'I'm sorry,' said Pepper. 'I guess I should have asked. I'm only doing this for Effie's sake.'

    'Doing what? Conjuring up ghosts?'

    'Mr. Bellman, I don't believe in ghosts, you know that. But the psychic atmosphere here is very threatening. If I can cleanse it, I'm sure that Effie will be very much happier about coming to live here.'

    'Oh, you're sure, are you? Well, may I ask what gives you the right to poke your nose into my affairs? How would you like it if I went around to that crackpot store of yours and fumigated it because I didn't like the smell of crushed spiders or dried dogshit or whatever it is you put in those potions of yours? You'd be angry, wouldn't you?'

    Pepper bit her lip. 'I guess I would, Mr. Bellman. But that doesn't really give you the right to be so offensive.'

    'You think I'm being offensive? I'm very sorry, I apologise. Next time that you try to come in here with your mumbo-jumbo I'll throw you out without a word.'

    Pepper hunkered down and began to blow out her candles and collect up her crosses and her potions. 'I've said I'm sorry. I didn't mean to poke my nose in. I was thinking of Effie, that's all; and I was thinking of you, too.' She stood up. 'Whatever you say to me now, Mr. Bellman, you won't be happy here at Valhalla until you've cleansed it from top to bottom.'

    He reached out and gripped her left wrist, so that she dropped the hazel. He looked directly into her eyes.

    'I'm happy here already,' he said. 'This house is me. This house is what I am.'

    'Please, let go of me, Mr. Bellman.'

    But he kept on gripping her wrist until it hurt. 'You know something, you have very special eyes. I never saw eyes like yours before. What colour would you say they were?'

    'Please, you're hurting me.'

    Craig paused for a moment, and then released her. 'Maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you should cleanse the house, after all. Do you want to try?'

    'I think I'll call it a day,' said Pepper. 'If there were any psychic vibrations, they'll have taken a powder by now. They don't react well to boorish behaviour.'

    'You're angry with me now,' Craig grinned. On the floor, only two or three inches away from his left foot, the hazel was still twitching and rearing, as if it were a skeletal hand that was trying to take a grip on his ankle. Pepper glanced down at it, and then back at him.

    'I'm not angry with you, just disappointed. You're so darned... testy.'

    'Testy? And that surprises you? I was a high-flying international lawyer who had his career cut short by a stupid taxi driver and a bunch of geeks. I thought I was one of the glittering few. I thought I was invulnerable. I feel cheated. I feel frustrated. I feel furious, too. You're disappointed? I have an anger inside of me you could never understand. I never expected life to be fair but I didn't expect it to be vindictive.'

    'So, life didn't turn out the way you expected. You feel pissed. But why take it out on Effie?'

    'What do you mean? I'm not taking it out on Effie! We haven't had such a good time in years!'

    'She doesn't like the house, Mr. Bellman. She hates it.'

    'Unh-hunh.' He wagged his finger at her. 'At first she hated it, I'll grant you that, but not now. She's beginning to like it now. Last night she told me that it was really starting to grow on her.'

    'She's only saying that because she doesn't want to wreck your marriage.'

    'Wreck our marriage? Are you crazy? We're closer than ever. We talk together, we go places together, our sex life's terrific. Okay, I'm very far from being perfect. But our marriage is helping me to convalesce. Just like this place. I love it. It gives me strength. It gives me actual, physical strength.'

    'Effie thinks it's frightening. That's why I offered to cleanse it.'

    Craig kept on circling around and around her, outside the circle of unlit candles. 'And if you do manage to cleanse it?'

    'Then you may still experience some psychic vibrations, but there won't be any noises or visions or anything like that. You probably won't feel anything more than a faint disturbance in the air.'

    Craig said, 'You remind me of somebody. It's your cheekbones. Maybe your mouth, too. You remind me of... no, I can't remember.' He turned around, so that he was standing with his back to her, and he didn't say any more.

    'I'll be going now,' Pepper told him.

    'Why don't you stay?' His tone sounded different now, much colder and much more controlled.

    'I thought I was poking my nose in. I thought you didn't want me here.'

    'You came to cleanse, why don't you cleanse?'

    'I'm not sure that I can do it while you're here. You're very vibrant. Psychically speaking, of course. You're not sensitive, not like Effie. But you're definitely vibrant. I'm trying to pick up other emotions, but all I can pick up is you.'

    'Then maybe you should start with me.' He turned back and his eyes were even blacker than before.

    Pepper lifted her head and listened. She could still hear the jazz playing in another room. 'Are you having a party?' she asked him.

    Craig listened too. Then he said, 'I don't hear anything.'

    'Jazz, I thought it was.'

    'Jazz?'

    Pepper picked up her hazel twig. It was still quivering; and there wasn't any question that it was bending its branches towards Craig. She pointed it directly at him, while he watched her with a small, amused smile on his face. She slowly paced around him, and wherever she went, it kept on bending itself in his direction.

    'This is very unusual,' she said. 'Most of the time, when there's a strong psychic vibration, the hazel shies away. I never saw it showing such attraction for anything before.'

    'I guess I must be a very attractive guy.'

    She stepped a little closer to him, and now the hazel began literally to writhe, like octopus tentacles. All the time, Craig kept his eyes on her, unwavering, with the same small smile.

    'What do you think?' he asked her.

    'You're right,' she said. 'It is you. Or at least, it's using you. The house itself is filled with psychic disturbance; but you are the point of focus. It's like the house is a camera full of psychically-sensitive film, and you're acting as the lens.'

    'You mean Effie's been seeing things because of me? Half of the time I wasn't even there!'

    'You wouldn't have to be there. You started something the moment you stepped into this house, you really did. You triggered it off. I don't know how, but we can try to find out, and I'm pretty sure that we can cleanse it.'

    Craig looked down at her array of magical accoutrements. 'How do you normally cleanse things? Eye of newt and leg of toad, and then abracadabra?'

    'As a matter of fact I was going to use mirrors. You reflect the image of the room in which the psychic disturbance is taking place from one mirror to another, through thirteen mirrors, until the image of the room is so dim that you can hardly see it. If that sounds like superstition, actually it's quite scientific. It's like Einstein - if you slow down the time it takes for you to see something, you slow it down in real time, too. Right here, we need to separate what's happening yesterday from what's happening today, and to do that we only need to lose the teentsiest fraction of a second. That's all.'

    'What about a man? How do you go about cleansing a man?'

    'It's pretty much the same. He has to be reflected in thirteen mirrors.'

    'Do you think I need cleansing?' His voice was lower now, and slower. She took one step back but he took one step forward.

    'I don't know. I'd have to do some more research. I never came across a situation like this before.'

    She stepped back again, and again he stepped forward.

    'Ms. Moriarty,' he said, 'you know how I feel about this house. I want to live here and I want Effie to live here with me. Happily, and because she really wants to. If there's something about me that causes these - disturbances, whatever - don't you think you owe it to Effie to stop me doing it?'