Treasure Box (12 page)

"She didn't invent Madeleine. You did. She took Madeleine out of your head. You gave her the script and she acted it out for you. What you loved was your dream of love."

"Why was she doing this to us?"

"All I know is it has something to do with what's inside that box. Obviously she can't open it herself, or she wouldn't need you."

"But if she wanted me to open it, why were Grandmother and Uncle Paul stopping me? At least, she seemed to think Grandmother was stopping me, and he blocked me the last time I tried to open it—"

"Well, see, the Grandmother and Paul, she didn't call them. They just came. The old lady is a wanderer, like
her
. Not dead. Uncle Paul—I'm not sure what he is."

"Lizzy, I'm crazy, aren't I? You've never been real and even there in the hospital I was out of my mind with grief and so I hallucinated your voice and I've been crazy ever since."

"Listen to me, Tin! Don't get weak on me! You are not insane. Everything you saw, you were made to see. And what went on in that parlor today, that was real. She didn't choose you accidentally. Like I said, you're strong. Not like her, but strong enough that she can't just do whatever she wants to you. You see through her sometimes. Like when she was controlling Mom and Dad, you saw it, you saw there was something wrong, and it really scared her, I could feel that. She needed you for some reason but she's also just a little bit afraid of you because she can't control you. So you're not without resources."

"Then teach me how to use them!"

"I don't
know
how. I never had power like that when I was alive, and I certainly don't know anything about people like this... this
user
."

"What about this Grandmother person? You said she was alive, too. And she told me to find her. Is that so she can teach me?"

"I don't know anything except that she's in a mortal body somewhere in this world, and she and the User hate each other. Whatever it is that the User wants, Grandmother's trying to stop it. And if she said for you to find her, well, maybe you should."

"But why doesn't she just find me? Madeleine did."

"I don't know, Tin. I've told you everything I know."

"What about Uncle Paul? If she didn't call him, who is he?"

"I don't understand what he is. The User got all upset and excited when he showed up. And Grandmother hates him and fears him even more than she fears the User. He's tied to this house much more tightly than any of the others. And the User and Grandmother were both fighting him the whole time at breakfast, keeping him under control. That's what I know. That's all of it."

"Lizzy, what am I going to do?"

"I don't know. Maybe they'll all leave you alone now. Maybe you can pick up your bags and walk out of here and go back to your life."

"What life? Madeleine was my life. It's like she's died, only she never lived. Lizzy, it's like losing you all over again."

"Only you haven't lost me. And as for her—what you found in her was yourself."

"Oh, that's great, now I don't have to write to Ann Landers or go on Oprah."

"Don't be a snot, little brother. I'm telling you the truth. Everything you found in Madeleine is still in you. Waiting for you to love a real woman and give all that to her."

"Yeah, well, apparently women don't come with signs announcing which ones are flesh and blood and which ones don't leave footprints in the snow."

"I don't leave footprints, either, Tin. But I still love you. That's why you have the power to call me. And maybe this User, whoever she is, maybe while she was busy trying to control you to get you to open that box, maybe she also fell in love with you a little. If she has any spark of humanity in her, I don't see how she could help it. So maybe you have some power over her, too."

"I don't want power." He sank down to the snowy step and buried his head in his hands. "Lizzy, I want my life back."

"Don't we all," she whispered.

He felt something touch him, warm and deep, like a candleburst inside his heart. Like a soft breath of joy that swept through him and brightened him, and he looked up to ask her what it was she did to him, how it was she could give him such a gift of light. But she was gone. He was alone on the front porch of an empty house.

Empty, but not empty. A house where writing appeared on doors and rats talked and a wife more dear to you than your parents, more loved than your beloved dead sister, a wife who was the whole meaning of your life could simply disappear. Could run away without leaving a footprint in the snow.

Quentin had a lot of time for thinking as he trekked through the waning afternoon to the nearest town, which was not particularly near. He had time to think as he waited for a car to come up from New York to pick him up. And on the drive down to La Guardia, and as he flew on the shuttle to Washington, and at last when he walked into the apartment where he had lived when he fell in love with Madeleine, he had plenty of time to think.

He thought of all kinds of things. About Grandmother. Lizzy had said she was a mortal, a living person. And she had said, once with her own mouth, or the image of her mouth, and once with the mouth of a rat in the fireplace, "Find me." Should he? Why couldn't
she
find
him
? And if he did find her, what then? Did she expect him to get involved in some kind of struggle between the kind of people who could do what had been done to him? Who could call the spirits of the dead and make them seem alive to some poor sap of an ordinary mortal? Would Grandmother make him face her again, face the User? No, he wasn't going to do it. The old lady could rot, the User could rot, they could all rot, they should all go down into that graveyard and stay there. Deep and cold under the snow. Stay there.

He also thought of Lizzy, of what she had said about life after death. The dead still existed, with all their memories, but the way she was living didn't sound like any theology Quentin had heard of. Why didn't anybody else know about this? He couldn't be the only one who had spoken with someone from beyond the grave. He
knew
he wasn't. So why wasn't there some book about this? And if the dead just hung around and mortal people could call them and control them and make them do things, what sense did that make? What was it all for? And why did he have to spend so many years without Lizzy?

The one thing he could not permit himself to do was think of Madeleine. The pile of books about sex was still on his nightstand—he hadn't been back to this apartment since they got married. He had never slept with her here. But her face was everywhere in this place. He blotted her out. She wasn't real. But he remembered the feel of her under his hand. How perfect her skin was. How cool and dry, and yet how warm when she should be warm.

Of course she was perfect. So were the berries and the pineapple and the pears. So was the luster of the table and the dishes and the goblets. Everything was perfect because the User took it out of his head. And she knew all the right things to say and do because the User stole it out of Lizzy's memory or trapped Lizzy inside the illusion. Forced Lizzy into this hideous fantasy in which all that Quentin amounted to was a pair of hands to open up the lid of a box.

Well, why go to all this trouble? Why
him
? With the kind of power the User had, why not just take some poor sap from up the road, walk him on down to the big house on the Hudson, and tell him to open the box?

The box was the big deal. There was some kind of barrier protecting the treasure box, locking the User outside. She apparently had thought that Quentin could get past that barrier and was furious when he didn't.

But what stopped him? He felt no barrier. He was about to open it when she ran out. Why did she give up so soon? Questions that had no answers.

Who was the User? Where was she? And how much power would she have with a .45 bullet boiling through her skull?

He lay there in the bed. Three in the morning. Trembling and cold. Check the thermostat. Already hotter than he normally kept his house. He must have taken a chill this afternoon on the road. Last night at this time he had been sleeping in a bed full of cobwebs after making love to his imagination. Last night he had slept in a stone-cold house that he only thought was warm. Why didn't he freeze to death? Did the User have the power to keep him warm? Four in the morning. He was starving. He had tried to eat the crackers in the cupboard, the only food in the apartment that hadn't passed its expiration date, but they were like dust in his mouth. He got up now and ate them anyway, and drank tap water, it felt like gallons of tap water. He showered. He took all his clothes out of his suitcases, clothes that had been put into dusty drawers and a filthy wardrobe, and laid them out to air. The clothes he had actually worn, the day he arrived at the house and today when he left, he threw them all into the garbage. He threw away the toothbrush from his kit. Five in the morning, he slipped back between the sheets and now he could sleep, still not letting himself think of Madeleine.

But sometime in the night, his mind went where he dared not let it go, and he woke up sobbing in grief for her. Madeleine, Mad, Mad. I don't care if you were a lie, I loved you. I loved you and you left me and I didn't do anything to deserve it, I was good to you. He cried himself back to sleep.

When he woke again it was five in the afternoon. Dark outside already. He got up and called the garage that kept his DC car. In the time it took them to bring it over, he showered again, dressed. He came out to meet the driver, tipped him, then got in the car and drove to Tysons Corner and picked up some shirts and slacks, socks and underwear. A new pair of running shoes. A new razor, new kit, two new suitcases exactly like the ones he already had. A new winter jacket. He drove home and changed into new clothes, then put everything that had been in the house on the Hudson, including the clothes he had stuffed in the garbage in the wee hours of the morning, packed them into the old suitcases, and carried them out to the Dumpster. It was nine o'clock. He drove to Lone Star and ate peanuts and steak soup and it was all ashes in his mouth but he went on and ate the salad and the filet because he was not going to let this thing kill him. He was going to go on with his life.

He got home and the message light on his answering machine was blinking. Someone had called.

But that wasn't possible. When he was away from one of his residences—which was most of the time—he had all the calls automatically routed to a single answering service in Nebraska. When he got to one of his residences and wanted to start receiving local calls on his own phone, he would call in and punch in the code to release calls to that particular phone number.

Only his parents, his lawyer, and Madeleine had the codes that would allow them to override his answering service and reach the answering machine in this residence. And his parents and his lawyer had no idea he was here. They would assume he was still at Madeleine's family house on the Hudson River.

Which meant that the message on his machine had to be from Madeleine. Except that Madeleine didn't exist. Which meant that it had to be from the person behind Madeleine. The person who made her. The User, who could wander free from her body and follow him wherever he went, who would know where he was, who would know he was away when the phone call was made so her intention was to leave a message on the tape, and not talk to him directly.

He could hear Lizzy's voice telling him that the User wasn't done with him yet. She hadn't got what she wanted. If she needed him before, she still needed him. Only now it wouldn't be love that she used to motivate him.

He didn't want to hear the message. But he reached out and touched the PLAY button.

"Quentin Fears? This is Ray Cryer. We're worried that we haven't seen Madeleine since you ran out on her yesterday. We have the local police looking for her, but it occurs to us she might be out looking for you and you may find her first. If you do, we'd appreciate a call. Her mother and sister and I are worried sick. Just worried sick. I know you were very angry yesterday, but I hope you'll still help us find our little girl. The local police here might call you to ask you some questions. I hope you'll cooperate with them. You have our number." There was an emotional catch in his voice at the end.

Ray Cryer? Madeleine's mother and sister? These were people Madeleine had never spoken of. Quentin had certainly never met them. Nor did he have their number. But he had no doubt that they would be completely convincing to the police. That was what the User did best—completely convincing people.

The implications were clear. Quentin had better do what they—no, what the User—wanted, or the police would be looking far and wide for a woman they would never find because she didn't exist. And when they didn't find her, it would start looking very bad for Quentin. Her parents say that Quentin had a fight with her. He snuck away with his suitcases, and ever since then they haven't seen their daughter. Why did he sneak off? Where is Madeleine? Your Honor, you don't have to find a body to know that there was foul play.

No. A murder trial was out of the question. There had to be
some
evidence. The mere disappearance of a person wasn't enough. But that didn't mean that the police wouldn't be convinced that there was a murder. That they wouldn't be dogging Quentin's heels for months and years looking for Madeleine. And the publicity. No, it wouldn't even take publicity. It would just take visits from police investigators to all of his partners and all of the political people he knew in every city where he did business—Madeleine had met them all, and if the User forgot any of them she could just drop in on Quentin's own mind and take the list out of his memory. He had no secrets from the User. The cloud of suspicion would grow around him. His parents. They would question his parents.

"You have our number." No doubt the police would hear Ray Cryer say that. Even if he erased this tape, there was probably also a recording on the other end, and then they would wonder
why
he had erased his copy. And since he didn't have the number, what choice did he have? He had to go back to New York, back to the house on the Hudson. Where the police would ask him about that night he spent in the house. If he said he slept in the house with Madeleine and had breakfast with her family, they'd go in and find a cold, dark, waterless house with only his footprints in the dust and only one side of the bed slept in. If he said the house was empty and dark, the police would doubtless find it sparkling clean and well lived-in, with Ray Cryer expressing his bafflement that Quentin would tell such an obvious lie.

He couldn't win. There was no escape from her. He might as well give up and head back there first thing in the morning. Or get in his car right now and drive all night and...

No way. That's what the User wanted. For all he knew, she was putting these thoughts in his head right now to try to bring him back. Well, Lizzy had told him he was strong. He had some power to resist her. And the User wasn't all-powerful, Lizzy had said that, too. It strained her there in the library at breakfast to keep six dead people under control, maintain the illusion of Madeleine, and show various servants bringing in imaginary food, all at once. During the police investigation the User wouldn't have half so much to do. She wouldn't have to produce the deep illusion of Madeleine at all. As for this Ray Cryer, he might be a real person and not a mental construct at all. Making the house look clean and lived-in would be a cinch. But could she create the illusion of detailed chemical evidence? Bloodstains? Anything that would convince a court that a crime had been committed? Maybe—but wouldn't she have to know exactly what the lab technicians would need to look for? Could she make her illusions show up on a photograph? Or would she have to follow the photograph constantly to make sure everyone saw the right things when they looked at it? If she knew enough and had power enough to do all that, then there was no point in his even trying to resist her.

But she wasn't infinitely powerful. Her limits could be reached. And he was not going to roll over and play dead.

It was eleven at night. He called his parents in California.

"She left me," he said. Almost his first words.

"No," said Mom.

"Aw, Quen, I'm so sorry," said Dad. "I never would've thought. She was so—you two were so perfect together."

"I don't know where she is. She didn't tell me where she was going."

"How could she do that?" said Mom. "You just don't do that. Decent people don't..."

"Does her family know where she might have gone?"

Here it came—the beginning of his counter-story. Since he had never met or heard of this Ray Cryer, he wasn't going to go along with the User's story that they knew each other. "I never met her family. She took me to the house on the Hudson, but there was nobody there." That was dangerous, he knew, since they were telling the police that he
had
met her parents. But if they gave him a lie detector test about meeting Madeleine's parents at the house, he could pass it. "And then today, this afternoon, she left."

"But that's so odd," said Mom. "She was taking you there to meet them."

"Did you fight?" asked Dad.

"I had questions. She had no answers. She knew I wasn't happy but no, we didn't fight."

"Oh, son, it'll work out, I know it will," said Mom. "When she realizes you love her no matter what—"

"I do love her, Mom."

"Well there you are. She'll come back, Quen. How could she not? The way you two looked at each other, it was so sweet, you're so much in
love
with each other, for pity's sake!"

"Dad, Mom, it's not just that she's gone. I'm worried."

"What about?" asked Dad.

"What if something happened to her? She just walked out. I don't know where she went. I didn't see her on the road as I walked to the next town. I didn't see her footprints in the snow."

Silence on the other end of the line.

"Quen, I know this is out of line, but I have to ask. You didn't hit her or anything, did you?"

Mom was furious. "How dare you even suggest such a thing about Quentin!"

"Calm down, Mom, it's all right. If she doesn't turn up soon, the police are going to ask exactly the same question, and they ought to. Dad, I never raised a hand to her or hurt her in any way. The last time I saw her she was fine."

"Why do the police even have to be involved in this?" said Mom. "Wives leave husbands all the time."

"I never met her parents, but now all of a sudden I have a phone call from a man claiming to be her father and he probably is. But he's lying and saying that I met him, which I didn't, and he has the police looking for her and they're going to question me."