The Rebirth of Wonder (9 page)

Chapter Nine

That evening Maggie's call to lock up didn't
come until seven. Art had lost track of time, and hadn't noticed
his empty stomach. He hurried home, but was too late to join his
father at the table; he had to scrounge up his own dinner.

He had intended to ask the Bringers if they
could identify the mysterious bone-handled knife, but he had missed
his chance; all but Maggie were long gone, and by the time he
remembered his intention she, too, had left.

The next day's call was for four in the
afternoon, Maggie told him; that meant he had plenty of time to go
through the theater books in the Bampton library again, this time
looking for any reference to Merton Ambrose.

He found not a trace; the name did not appear
anywhere. Not in the card catalog, not in the theater books, not in
any of the reference books he checked.

Frustrated, he wandered out onto the
sidewalk, where he found Marilyn sitting on the ornamental stone
wall by the Leader Federal Savings Bank. She waved at him.

He hesitated, then strolled down the block
and hoisted himself up beside her.

For a moment the two of them sat side by side
in friendly silence, enjoying the shade of the maples and studying
the scattered spots of afternoon sunlight that had found a path
through the leaves and now wandered about the sidewalk beneath
their dangling feet.

It couldn't last forever, though. “Ever hear
of Merton Ambrose?” he asked, still watching the play of light. A
solitary ant was scouting the concrete, he noticed.

She considered the question carefully while
she, too, watched the ant, and then looked up and replied, “No;
should I have?”

Art shrugged.

“
Is he an actor?”
she asked. “TV, or movies?”

“
No,” Art told her,
turning his attention from the ground to his companion's face.
“He's a playwright. Or a magician, maybe. He wrote the play that
those people are staging.”

“
Oh!” Marilyn was
suddenly intensely interested; she forgot all about the ant and the
sunlight and the maples. “Merton Ambrose, was
it?”

Art nodded.

“
And it's called
The Return of Magic
, you
said?”

“
Yup.”

Marilyn glanced past Art at the library, and
said, “I take it you were just looking it up; what's it about?”

“
I didn't find it,”
he answered. “Didn't find a trace of it anywhere. It's gotta be
really obscure.”

Marilyn thought that over,
then shrugged. “Well, at least it'll be different, then; I don't
think I could stand seeing yet another production of
Oklahoma!
”

“
I don't know,” Art
said, trying to spot the ant again. “There's something funny about
the whole thing.”

She blinked at him, then asked, “Why?”

“
Oh, I don't know, a lot of little things.” Art
hesitated, and then explained, “They won't let me watch them
rehearse – but they can't really be rehearsing yet, and why
shouldn't I watch blocking? I haven't seen a script, or any costume
sketches, or anything; they haven't touched the lights, or started
building sets. And I haven't heard anyone say a
single line
from
the show!”

“
They won't let you watch?” Marilyn stared at him.
“Then what have you been
doing
all day?”

He grimaced. “Cleaning the prop room – I've
been meaning to do that for years, to go through all that junk down
there and throw out most of it. Or maybe sell it, hold a big
rummage sale.”

“
Good idea,” she
said, thoughtfully.

Art didn't bother to answer.

They sat silently for a moment, Art staring
down at the cracks in the sidewalk, Marilyn watching him do it. The
ant had gone.

Marilyn was the next to speak. “They haven't
started on the sets or anything?” she asked.

“
Nope.”

“
So what are
they
doing, while you're cleaning
the prop room?”

Art shrugged. “I don't know. I honestly can't
figure it out.”

“
Do you think
they're really getting ready for a show? I mean, maybe it's one of
these minimalist things, with a bare stage. Or they've got a set
ready-built somewhere that's getting shipped in.”

“
Really, Marilyn, I
just don't know,” Art told her. “I don't have any idea at
all.”

“
If they aren't doing a show,” she persisted,
“what
are
they doing?”

“
Marilyn, I
don't know
,” he insisted.

“
Are they dealing
drugs, maybe?”

Art shook his head. “Nobody else ever comes
to the theater,” he said. “Where are their customers?”

“
If you're in the basement all day, how do
you
know
nobody comes?”

Annoyed, Art found himself unable to answer
that. A week ago he'd have said he could hear people come in, but
after a couple of days with the Bringers, who almost seemed to
appear out of thin air and then vanish just as mysteriously, he was
no longer going to make any such claim.

Marilyn didn't press the point. Instead, she
suggested, “Or maybe it's prostitution; didn't you say they were
mostly women?”

“
Not mostly,” Art
protested. “About half of them, same as any bunch of actors. It's
just the ones who talk to me are the women.”

Marilyn nodded.

Art added, “And that's normal enough, too, I
guess.”

“
So maybe the men
are pimps...”

Art sighed. “You're being silly,” he said.
“One of the women looks about ninety and talks like Don Rickles,
and one of the others looks like, I dunno, Pearl Bailey or
somebody. The others all look good enough, I guess, but what's
that, four hookers to support a dozen people?”

“
So maybe the men
peddle their asses, too.”

“
In Bampton? Oh,
come on!”

“
Sure, in
Bampton!”

“
A bunch of
strangers, coming to Bampton for that?”

It was Marilyn's turn to have no good answer;
after a pause, she said, “Okay, so they're dealing drugs...”

Art turned away in disgust and slid down off
the wall.

“
Hey, wait, Art, I'm
sorry!” Marilyn called.

Art stopped, and waited, standing by her
knees. He didn't look at her; instead he studied the stones that
had been fitted together to make the wall on which she sat – or
perhaps had just been stuck on the surface, it was hard to be sure.
In any case, the wall was hardly traditional New England dry stone;
it was obviously held together with mortar or cement.

When she was certain that he wasn't about to
depart, Marilyn asked, “Okay, so do you really think they're
putting on this play?”

Art shrugged. “What
else
could
they
be doing?”

“
Umm... kiddie porn,
maybe? Or some kind of cult thing?”

At that Art looked up. There was that
mysterious knife to explain – with its bone grip and strange
carvings, might it be some sort of ritual dagger?

He didn't want to get Marilyn off on another
tangent, though.

“
Maybe,” he
said.

“
If you figure it
out, tell me,” Marilyn said. “Or just give me a call sometime
anyway.”

“
All right,” he
said.

For a moment the two of them remained as they
were, looking at each other without making direct eye contact; then
Art turned away.

“
Guess I'll go sort
some more old props,” he said.

“
Have fun,” she
said.

She sat on the wall, watching him go.

The dimness of the theater seemed somehow
different today, Art thought; it wasn't as familiar and comforting.
Maybe that was because, this late in the day, the theater was
hotter than outdoors – it held the heat. He ambled up the aisle to
the lobby and got the air conditioning running.

The Bringers weren't due
for almost an hour. He wasn't entirely sure why he had come early;
sorting props wasn't exactly his idea of a grand and glorious good
time. Sitting in the shade talking to Marilyn
was
a good way to pass the time, but
somehow he hadn't wanted to stay there.

There was something a little uncomfortable in
his friendship with Marilyn just now; he figured it was because she
was going to be leaving in a month. What was the point in getting
closer to her when she would be leaving, and he would be
staying?

Better to just keep his mind on his work,
such as it was.

He took his time coming down the aisle again,
and used that time to study the proscenium, the curtain, the
stage.

It all looked just as it had three and a half
days ago, when the Bringers had first arrived; they hadn't so much
as moved the curtain, so far as he could tell. There were no sets,
no props.

However, he realized, he did see marks on the
stage – those would presumably be for blocking, for showing the
cast who belonged where in various scenes. He climbed up on the
stage and looked.

Every other production he'd ever worked on
had used colored tape for blocking marks, but the Bringers had used
chalk, white and red chalk. They had drawn a white circle center
stage, about fifteen feet in diameter, with little red symbols here
and there around the circumference.

It was a very neatly drawn circle, obviously
not done freehand; the symbols, on the other hand, looked like
little more than scribbles to Art. He could make no sense of any of
them.

As he walked around the circle, he remembered
Marilyn's suggestion that the alleged play was a cover for some
sort of cult activity. The idea had a certain plausibility that
made him uneasy; this chalk figure could be some sort of mystic
figure for an occult ritual.

But it was probably just blocking marks.

Maybe the play had some
sort of ritual
in
it. It was about magic, after all.

But what if it
was
some kind of occult
ceremony these people were planning, rather than a play? What
then?

Well,
what
then? What business was it of
his?

Not much. People had a right to their own
beliefs. That was in the Constitution.

But it would mean they had lied to him, and
to his father, and that was wrong, that was a violation of the
rental contract. And why would they lie? It wasn't any big deal if
they wanted to hold a ritual, was it?

And why in the theater? There were some local
pagans in Bampton, people who called themselves Wiccans, who held
meetings, and they always held them outdoors, not in theaters.

So the Bringers weren't Wiccans, obviously.
Maybe they were Satanists, and the fact that the foundation had
originally been a church had appealed to them.

But Maggie had apparently not known that the
theater was built atop a ruined church until he had told her.

He looked down at the chalk lines on the
scuffed wood of the stage and frowned. He was being silly. They
were just a bunch of actors and prestidigitators. These were
blocking marks. And the knife in the basement wasn't anything
special; someone had dropped it somewhere, that was all, and it had
wound up in the prop room by accident.

But why couldn't he find
any mention of Merton Ambrose or
The
Return of Magic
? It was all rather
odd.

He would, he decided, bring the knife up here
and wait for the Bringers, and ask a few questions. Simple
enough.

When he started down the stairs the theater
was empty and silent. By the time he had fetched the dagger and
started back up, even though it was still ten minutes before four,
he could hear voices; the Bringers had begun to arrive.

He was spotted the instant he reached the top
of the stairs. “Ah, Arthur!” Innisfree called. “I'd wondered where
you were!”

“
I was getting this
from the basement,” Art explained, carefully holding the knife out
by the blade, hilt extended. “I think one of you must have left it
here the other day.”

Innisfree and Morgan, the two closest of the
four Bringers in sight, came to look.

“
A fine weapon,”
Morgan said, “but not mine.”

“
Nor mine,”
Innisfree said. He looked up and gestured to the man in the turban
– who also wore a loose white shirt and black denim
jeans.

Art took the opportunity to transfer the
knife to his left hand and hold out his right.

“
Art Dunham,” he
said.

After a moment's startled hesitation, the
turbaned man took the offered hand and replied, “Mehmet
Karagöz.”

“
Pleased to meet
you,” Art said.

“
Thank you; it is an
honor,” Karagöz answered, dropping Art's hand. “May I?” He gestured
at the knife.