Mystery Walk

The lawyer's smile was tight and strained. "Sure. Anything you say, Wayne. I'm behind you one hundred percent."

"You gentlemen needn't stay up," Niles said, taking Wayne's elbow and leading him toward the door. "I'll see that Wayne gets his sleep. ..."

And suddenly George Hodges's face reddened with anger, and he was crossing the room to clamp his hand on the other man's shoulder "Listen to me, you—"

Niles twisted around in a blur, and for an instant there were two fingers pressing rigidly against the hollow of Hodges's throat. Hodges felt a brief, dizzying pain that almost buckled his knees, and then Niles's hand dropped to his side. A low fire burned in the man's pale gray eyes. Hodges coughed and backed away, his heart pounding.

"I'm sorry," Niles said. "But you must never touch me like that again."

"You . . . you tried to kill me!" Hodges croaked. "I've got witnesses! By God, I'll sue you for everything you've got! I'm getting out of here right now!" He stalked past them and out of the room, his hand pressed to his throat.

Niles glanced back at Bragg. "Will you see to your friend, Mr. Bragg? There's no way for him to leave tonight, because the house is kept sealed by hydraulic pressure on the doors and the first-floor windows. I reacted hastily, and I regret it."

"Oh . . . sure. Well, no harm done. I mean, George is . . . kind of upset."

"Exactly. I'm sure you can calm him down. We'll talk in the morning."

"Right," Bragg said, and managed a weak smile.

Augustus Krepsin was waiting in his huge bedroom one floor up and on the other side of the house. When Wayne had first seen it, he'd been reminded of a hospital room: the walls were an off-white, with a blue sky and clouds painted on the ceiling. There was a sunken living area with a sofa, a coffee table, and a few leather chairs. Persian rugs in soft colors covered the floor, and track lights delivered a delicate golden illumination. The large bed, complete with a console that controlled lighting, humidity, and temperature and contained several small closed-circuit television screens, was surrounded with a plastic curtain like an oxygen tent. An oxygen tank and mask were mounted next to the bed.

The chess game was still on the long teak coffee table, where it had been left the night before. Krepsin, dressed in a long white robe, sat over it, his small eyes pondering options as Niles brought Wayne in; he was wearing his cotton booties and surgical gloves. His bulk was stuffed into a specially supported Angus steerhide chair.

"Another nightmare?" he asked Wayne after Niles had left. "Yes sir."

"Come sit down. Let's pick up the game where we left off."

Wayne took his chair. Krepsin had been teaching him the fundamentals of the game; Wayne was losing badly, but the knights and pawns and rooks and whatever-they-weres took his mind off the bad dreams.

"They can be so real, can't they?" Krepsin said. "I think nightmares are more . . . true than ordinary dreams, don't you?" He motioned toward the two pills—one pink, one white— and the cup of herbal tea that was set in front of Wayne.

Without hesitation Wayne swallowed the pills and drank the tea. They helped relax him, helped smooth out the throbbing pain in his head, and when he did sleep, toward morning, he knew he would have wonderful dreams of when he was a child playing with Toby. In those drug-induced dreams everything was bright and happy, and Evil couldn't find its way into his head.

"A little man fears inconsequential things, but only a man of great character feels true horror. I enjoy our talks, Wayne. Don't you?"

He nodded. Already he was feeling better, his brain clearing, all the musty cobwebs of fear drifting away in what felt like a fresh summer wind. In a little while he would be laughing like a small boy, the worries and responsibilities faded away like bad dreams.

"You can always judge a man," Krepsin said, "by what makes him afraid. And fear can be a tool, as well; a great lever that can move the world in any direction. You of all people must know the force of fear."

"Me?" Wayne looked up from the board. "Why?"

"Because in this world there are two great terrors: disease and death. Do you know how many millions of bacteria inhabit the human body? How many organisms that can suddenly become malignant with disease and leech themselves into human tissues? You know how frail flesh can be, Wayne."

"Yes sir," Wayne said.

"It's your move."

Wayne studied the inlaid ivory board. He moved a bishop, but had no particular plan in mind other than to capture one of Krepsin's black towers.

Krepsin said, "You've already forgotten what I've told you. You must keep looking over your shoulder." He reached across the board, his face like a bloated white moon, and moved the second of his black rooks to capture Wayne's last bishop.

"Why do you live like this?" Wayne asked. "Why don't you ever go outside?"

"I do go outside, occasionally. When I have a trip scheduled. Forty-nine seconds between the door and the limousine. Forty-six seconds between the limo and the jet. But don't you understand what floats in the air? Every plague that ever ravaged across cities and countries, destroying hundreds and thousands, began with a tiny microorganism. A parasite, riding a sneeze or clinging to a flea on a rat's hide." He leaned toward Wayne, his eyes widening. "Yellow fever. Typhus. Cholera. Malaria. The Black Plague. Syphilis. Blood flukes and worms can infect your body, drain your strength, and leave you a hollow shell. The bubonic plague bacillus can lie dormant and impotent for generations, and then suddenly it can lay half the world to waste." Small droplets of sweat glimmered on Krepsin's skull. "Disease," he whispered. "It's all around us. It's outside these walls right now, Wayne, pressed to the stones and trying to get in."

"But . . . people are immune to all those things now," Wayne said.

"There is no such thing as immunity!" Krepsin almost shouted. His lips worked for a few seconds before he could speak. "Levels of resistance rise and fall; diseases shift, parasites mutate and breed. Bubonic plague killed six million people in Bombay in 1898; in 1900 it broke out in San Francisco, and the same bacillus that causes plague has been found in the ground squirrel. Don't you see? It's waiting. There are cases of leprosy in the United States every year. Smallpox almost spread into the United States in 1948. The diseases are still out there! And there are new bacteria, new parasites, evolving all the time!

"If disease could be controlled, so could death," Krepsin said. "What power a man would have! Not to have to . . . fear. That would make a man godlike, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know. I've . . . never thought about it that way." Wayne stared at Krepsin's bulbous face. The man's eyes were fathomless pools of ebony, the pores in his flesh as big as saucers. His face seemed to fill the entire room. Warmth coursed through Wayne, and a feeling of safety and belonging. He knew he was safe in this house, and though he might have nightmares sent by the witch-woman, she couldn't get in at him. Nothing could get in at him: not pressures or responsibilities or fears, not any of the diseases of real life.

Krepsin rose from his chair with a grunt like a hippo rising from dark water. He lumbered across the room, drew aside the plastic curtain ringing his bed, and pressed a couple of buttons on the command console. Instantly images appeared on the three videotape screens. Wayne squinted and grinned. They were video tapes of his television show, and there he was on the three screens, touching people in the Healing Line.

"I've watched these again and again," the huge man said. "I hope I'm watching the truth. If I am, then you're the one person in the world who can do for me what I want." He turned to face Wayne. "My business is very complex and demanding. I own companies from L.A. to New York, plus many in foreign countries. I make a phone call, and stocks do what I want them to. People do anything to get close to me. But I'm fifty-five years old, and I'm susceptible to diseases, and I . . . feel things slipping away. I don't want that to happen, Wayne. I'll move Heaven—or Hell—to keep things as they are." His black eyes burned. "I want to keep death away from me," he said.

Wayne stared at his hands, clenched in his lap. Krepsin's voice echoed inside his head as if he were sitting within a huge cathedral. He remembered his daddy telling him to listen hard to what Mr. Krepsin had to say, because Mr Krepsin was a wise and just man.

Krepsin put his hand on Wayne's shoulder. "I've told you my fear," he said. "Now I want to hear yours."

Reluctantly at first, Wayne began. Then he told more and more, wanting to get it all out of him and knowing Mr. Krepsin would understand. He told him about Ramona Creekmore and the boy, about how she'd cursed both of them and wished his father dead, about his Daddy's death and rebirth, how she was making him have nightmares and how he couldn't get her face, or the demon boy's, out of his mind.

"She . . . makes my head hurt," Wayne said. "And that boy . . . sometimes I see his eyes, staring at me like . . . like he thinks he's better than me. . . ."

Krepsin nodded. "Do you trust me to do the right thing for you, Wayne?"

"Yes sir I do."

"And I've made you feel comfortable and safe here? And I've helped you sleep and forget?"

"Yes sir. I . . . feel like you believe me. You listen to me, and you understand. The others ... I can tell they're laughing at me, like up on the Tower. . . ."

"The Tower?" Krepsin asked. Wayne rubbed at his forehead but didn't reply. "I want to show you how sincere I am, son. I want you to trust me. I can end your fear. It would be a simple thing. But . . . if I do this thing for you, I'll soon ask you to do something for me in return, to show me how sincere you are. Do you understand?"

The pills were working. The room had begun to slowly spin, colors merging together in a long rainbow scrawl. "Yes sir," Wayne whispered. "They should burn in the fires of Hell forever. Forever."

"I can send them to Hell, for you." He loomed over Wayne, squeezing his shoulder. "I'll ask Mr. Niles to take care of it. He's a religious man."

"Mr. Niles is my friend," Wayne said. "He comes in at night and talks to me, and he brings me a glass of orange juice just before I go to bed. . . ." Wayne blinked and tried to focus on Krepsin's face. "I . . . want some of the witch's hair. I want to hold it in my hand, so I'll know. ..."

The huge face smiled. "A simple thing," it whispered.