A Stir of Echoes

A Stir of Echoes Page 20

I CAME TO WITH A VIOLENT RUSH. Sight and sound broke over me like club blows: Sentas starting toward me, face mottled with hate, his wife holding him back; Anne pushing up from her chair to help me; the room spinning and wavering around me. There was a terrible dryness in my throat and upper chest as if those areas had been blotted of all moisture. My head ached pulsingly.

"Honey!" I stared at Anne's fear distended face as she knelt by me.

"Lemme go!" I heard Sentas snarling. "Who the hell does he think he is, pullin' a stunt like this!" And Mrs. Sentas' voice, near hysterical, telling him, "Stop it! Stop it!" I couldn't follow the transition from their struggle in the living room to their exit from the house. Time and movement ran together crazily. I thought they were there and then they weren't. I thought I was on the floor and then I was lying on the sofa with Anne bending over me, patting at my face with a cold, wet cloth.

"Water." It was the first thing I managed to say. I sounded like a legionnaire discovered in the desert, dry-lunged and hoarse. I asked for it again and I must have looked terrible because Anne ran into the kitchen and brought back one of the big brown glasses filled with water. I drank it in one convulsive swallow.

Then I sighed and sank back. "Gawd," I said, "I forgot about that one."

"What?" She still looked frightened.

I patted her hand, smiling feebly. "I'm all right," I said. "I forgot about mediums' getting violently thirsty. Not that I'd planned on conking out like that. What in God's name happened?" She told me.

"No wonder they left," I said.

"With a bang," she said. She shook her head with a pained smile. "This has been one hell of a summer," she said.

I returned an equally pained smile and we held on to each other. There wasn't much humor left in us, though. I could feel that old gnawing half-terror, half-awe coming back again.

"Anne," I said.

"Don't say it," she said.

I swallowed. "All right," I agreed, "but-about Sentas." She drew back, looking worried. "You sure made him angry."

"I think I know why," I said.

She didn't ask the question but I knew she was thinking it.

"Helen Driscoll never went back east," I said.

"She-?" Anne stared at me, waiting.

"She died here," I said. "Sentas killed her."

"What?"

"I'd bet on it," I said. "It all fits. If he knew she was back east why should it bother him so much? What happened tonight, I mean."

"Well, I... sort of-"

"What, honey?"

"I thought maybe he'd-been having an affair with this Helen Driscoll and was afraid you knew about it and were trying to blackmail him or something. I don't think he believes what you said about the-the medium business."

"I don't think so either," I said, "but his reaction was too strong if it's only what you think-which I think too, of course. I believe he was sleeping with Helen Driscoll. But I also believe that he killed her, then wrote that note to make it look as if she'd gone back east, to New York."

"But-where is she then?"

"Probably buried in some canyon," I said.

Anne shuddered. "How awful," she said. "But... how can we be sure? If she is dead, how can the police prove anything?" I sensed that she was talking quickly to keep to the surface details, avoiding that plunge into the significance of Helen Driscoll's being dead yet being seen and heard.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm sure any testimony I gave would be laughed out of court."

"If only they knew where this woman was buried," Anne said, "assuming you're right-and I'm half inclined to believe it." She shuddered again. "Oh, God," she said. "And he was here-going for you."

"Shhh." I put my arms around her and patted her back. I tried to think of an answer. But what I'd said was perfectly true. What could I tell the police that could, possibly, convince them? I'm a medium and the murdered woman appeared to me in a vision? They would laugh me out of court. They wouldn't even let me in court in the first place; they'd laugh me out of the station house. And yet I knew it was true. I knew it. Everything pointed to it. The reaction Sentas had shown to Richard's speaking his name that night. The reaction he'd shown to what I'd said tonight. His obvious attempts to keep his wife away from our house lest she discover anything. The note supposedly left by Helen Driscoll. The fact that her sister had never seen her leave. The basic situation itself-an ugly, dictatorial wife, an animal like husband; and, finishing the picture, the wife's good-looking sister living in the next house-probably threatening to tell about Sentas' infidelity; the fury rushing to Sentas' brain, his wild little eyes looking for something to hurt with, to "I'll be damned," I said.

"What?"

"The poker," I said. I went over to it and, bracing myself, picked it up. Anne saw the way I twitched. "This is why I left it on the floor that night," I told her. "It's-" Gingerly, I let it drop. "That's what she was killed with," I said.

Anne looked at me, at the poker.

"Bring it over here to the lamp, will you?" I asked.

"Do I-have to?"

"I can't touch it, honey," I said.

As if it were a snake, she brought it over and held it under the bright aura of the lamp.

"I figured as much," I said.

"What?"

"He scrubbed it off. I'm sure there isn't a speck of evidence on it." Anne grimaced, knowing exactly what I meant by evidence; I could see it in her mind. She put the poker back in its holder as I stood staring into the fireplace.

"Wouldn't there be some other evidence?" she asked.

"It's probably all gone by now. I wouldn't even know where to start looking."

"If it's true," Anne said, "couldn't they- make him tell?" I shook my head. "Without the body it wouldn't mean a-"

It hit me. "I wonder," I said.

She didn't speak but I saw fear creeping back into her face.

"Those old stories," I said, "about-ghosts, about the haunting of houses. They very often find, buried underneath the houses-"

"Tom." She looked sick. "For pity's sake."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I know it's a hideous thought but-well it might be true, Anne. That look on the woman's face. Pleading."

"Tom, please..."

"Well, there's only one way to find out."

"No," she murmured; then, repelled, added, "Now?"

"Sentas may leave, Anne. If he thinks I have anything definite against him he might get out."

"Yes, but-" She sank down heavily on the sofa. "I can't help you," she said. She shook her head. "Oh God, I hope this is all a dream," she said. "If I find out we've been living on top of a-" She closed her eyes.

"I'll only be a few minutes," I said. I started for the kitchen.

"Tom?"

I turned in the doorway.

"Where... where are you going to look?" she asked.

I gestured weakly. "Under the house I guess," I said. "He wouldn't have-done it in the back yard. It might get dug up accidentally."

I looked at her pained expression a moment, then turned away. "I'll be right back," I said. I went out into the cold night air and down the alley to the side door of the garage. Inside, I flicked on the light and found the hand shovel-it would be too confined under the house to use the long-handled one. I pulled the battery lantern off its hook and went outside again.

It was no wonder Anne felt as she did, I thought as I moved into the back yard. The idea that we might have been living for more than two months above the grave of a bludgeoned woman was not a pretty one.

There was no cellar; you rarely find one in a California tract house. There was only a small concrete half wall by the hose outlet pipe and an opening just big enough to squeeze through. Letting down the lantern and shovel, I pulled out the metal-framed screen and leaned it against the house. Then I switched on the lantern, grabbed the small shovel and crawled under the house.

It was like a refrigerator under there. The sandy ground was cold and damp. I played the beam of the lantern around, feeling a loosening of relief with every added moment that revealed only flat, untouched earth.

It didn't last. With a start, my arm froze; the white beam of light held on a tiny mound of earth. I felt my heartbeat quicken to a slow, dragging thud. My immediate instinct was to back out fast and leave, tell the police, let them see what was there.

Then I knew I couldn't. It might, after all, be something else. The house was not old. Its builders might have buried some trash there-plaster, wood scraps, bits of cement.

Swallowing, I crawled toward the mound; and, as I did, the doubt began to fade in me. Because it seemed as if I heard someone speak a word in my mind and the word was yes.

It was very cramped by the mound and I had to lie almost prone as I dug. In the silence the only sound was the sprinkling thud of the wet, brown earth as I tossed it aside. I tried to ignore the rising pulse of awareness in my mind. Hurry, it seemed to say, hurry. I held myself back. I'll be glad when this is over, I told myself, glad when we can return to a semblance of normal living. Perhaps I could find a legitimate medium who could teach me to control this ability completely, this "wild talent." Then it couldn't hurt us, then I could - A retching sound tore from my lips and I lay staring at the hand I had uncovered. Little flecks of dirt were skittering from the edges of the hole and bouncing from the fingers. I couldn't take my eyes from them.

Abruptly, then, I plunged the shovel blade into the earth and backed off as quickly as I could. "All right," I mumbled. "All right, it's done. It's done." Now there was the proof and it was done. Outside, I stood quickly and brushed off my shirt and trousers. I put back the screen, then walked to the kitchen door, turning off the lantern.

In the kitchen I put the lantern on the table. Anne turned quickly in the living room and looked in at me. She didn't say a word. I went in.

"Oh," I said, surprised, "hello, Elizabeth." She was sitting in the green chair wearing her topcoat. She nodded once.

"I told Elizabeth to come over if she felt lonely," Anne said. It was only something to say to fill time, I knew. There was only one thing on her mind.

"Well..." I glanced at Elizabeth. "Have you-told-?"

"No."

Elizabeth was staring at my clothes. I looked down and saw that they were stained by the wet earth.

"Well, did you find anything?" Anne blurted suddenly.

I swallowed. "She's down there," I said.

"Oh, God."

There was a rustle from the other side of the room. "So," I heard Elizabeth say. When I turned, she was pointing the Luger at me.