“I understand.”
“Just one question. The car you’re driving—why did you want to know whose it was?”
Joe said, “Some seriously unpleasant bastards are looking for me. If they find me, I don’t want to get any innocent people in trouble just because I was using their car.”
“Whole world’s already in trouble, man. Haven’t you noticed?” the caller asked, and then he disconnected.
With the exception of the cop—or former cop—in the bookstore, these people who were hiding Rose Tucker and providing security for her were amateurs with limited resources compared to the thugs who worked for Teknologik. But they were thoughtful and clever amateurs with undeniable talent for the game.
Joe was not halfway through Santa Monica, with the ocean still far ahead, when an image of the book spine rose in his mind—the name Henry James.
Henry James. So what?
Then the title of one of James’ best-known works came to him. The Turn of the Screw. It would be on any short list of the most famous ghost stories ever written.
Ghost.
The inexplicable welling of the oil-lamp flames, the flashing of the numbers on the clock, the jangling pots and pans now seemed as if they might have been linked, after all. And as he recalled those images, it was easy in retrospect to discern a supernatural quality to them—although he was aware that his imagination might be enhancing the memories in that regard.
He remembered, as well, how the foyer chandelier had dimmed and brightened and dimmed repeatedly as he had hurried upstairs in response to the shotgun blast that had killed Charlie Delmann. In the fearsome turmoil that had followed, he’d forgotten that odd detail.
Now he was reminded of countless séance scenes in old movies and television programs, in which the opening of the door between this world and the realm of spirits was marked by the pulsing of electric lights or the guttering of candles without the presence of a draft.
Ghost.
This was absurd speculation. Worse than absurd. Insane. There were no such things as ghosts.
Yet now he recalled another disquieting incident that occurred as he’d fled the Delmann house.
Racing from the kitchen with the smoke alarm blaring behind him, along the hallway and across the foyer to the door. His hand on the knob. From behind comes a hissing cold, prickling his neck, drilling through the base of his skull. Then he is crossing the porch without any memory of having opened the door.
This seemed to be a meaningful incident as long as he considered it to be meaningful—but as soon as scepticism reasserted itself, the moment appeared to be utterly without import. Yes, if he had felt anything at the back of his neck, it should have been the heat of the fire, not a piercing chill. And, yes, this cold had been different from anything that he had ever felt before: not a spreading chill but like the tip of an icicle—indeed, more finely pointed yet, like a stiletto of steel taken from a freezer, a wire, a needle. A needle inserted into the summit of his spine. But this was a subjective perception of something that he had felt, not a journalist’s measured observation of a concrete phenomenon. He’d been in a state of sheer panic, and he’d felt a lot of peculiar things; they were nothing but normal physiological responses to extreme stress. As for the few seconds of blank memory between the time when he’d put his hand on the doorknob and when he’d found himself most of the way across the porch… Well, that was also easily explained by panic, by stress, and by the blinding power of the overwhelming animal instinct to survive.
Not a ghost.
Rest in peace, Henry James.
As he progressed through Santa Monica toward the ocean, Joe’s brief embrace of superstition loosened, lost all passion. Reason returned.
Nevertheless, something about the concept of a ghost continued to seem significant to him. He had a hunch that eventually he would arrive at a rational explanation derived from this consideration of the supernatural, a provable theory that would be as logical as the meticulously structured prose of Henry James.