Audrey Rose

6

Except for two functioning tables and a lineup of tuxedoed waiters, silently manning their posts at strategic peripheral intervals, patiently awaiting the nine thirty closing time, the Des Artistes Restaurant seemed poised on the precipice of sleep.

Bill and Janice quietly made their way through the hushed, somber atmosphere, en route to the barroom, which lay just beyond the restaurant in a small, partially enclosed niche.

Kurt, the bartender, gave Bill and Janice a smile of recognition as they stood on the threshold of the darkly paneled room, searching among several faces for a sign of Hoover. There were only five customers present.

“Mr. and Mrs. Templeton, I’m Elliot Hoover.”

Janice jumped, startled; Bill swung about, too fast, betraying his surprise. Hovering before them was a face they would have sworn they’d never seen before.

The hairless pale skin, clear and unwrinkled, belonged to a man of twenty. The smile, sweet and ingenuous, disclosed two rows of small white teeth sandwiched between colorless thin lips. On closer inspection, the light-brown hair was somewhat sparse and receding, yet could this be the forty-six-year-old man they had read about in Who’s Who?

Hoover noted their surprise, and his smile deepened, as he suggested, “There’s a quiet table over there in the corner.”

Bill and Janice followed him like a pair of sheep being escorted by a Judas goat to the killing room. They sat together, against the wall, at the wave of Hoover’s hand, while he took the chair opposite them across the table.

“I want to thank you both for agreeing to see me tonight,” Elliot Hoover began, in a low, soothing voice that seemed to dicker over the selection of each word. “I truly appreciate it.”

Marie, the pretty barmaid, appeared at their table, smiling inquiringly.

“Would you care for something, Mrs. Templeton?” Hoover politely asked Janice.

“No, thank you,” she replied.

“I’ll have a scotch and water,” Bill said.

“Do you have Chinese gunpowder tea?” inquired Hoover.

“I think they may have some in the kitchen,” Marie ventured.

“That’ll be fine for me, thank you,” he said, dismissing Marie and turning his attention back to Bill and Janice. “I also want to apologize for the mysterioso behavior these past few weeks,” he continued with a small, embarrassed chuckle. “I know how frightened you must have both been, and I’m sorry, but it was necessary. You had a perfect right going to the police, Mr. Templeton; under the circumstances I probably would have done the same thing myself. But all the subterfuge, the clumsy disguise were necessary steps that had to be taken before this meeting could be arranged.” Hoover paused a moment to allow the words to sink in before he continued. “Actually, the preparation for this meeting has taken seven years to arrange. Seven years of travel, investigation, and study, calling for a total reconditioning you might say, of my spiritual and intellectual perspectives.…”

Bill felt Janice’s cold hand steal into his beneath the table as Hoover continued to talk, the words tumbling out of his mouth in quick, short, explosive bursts that, Bill decided, sounded labored and prearranged. Many phrases he used were stilted, uncomfortable, as though he’d read them in a book and had memorized them.

He was in the midst of telling about the seven years he had spent traveling, how Pittsburgh, his home, could not provide him with the proper background for his investigations, and how his search had taken him to India, Nepal, the frozen reaches of Tibet, where in the sanctuaries of certain lamaseries, he first began to glean (“glean” was his word) the light of truth, when Bill interrupted him in midsentence.

“Er … excuse me, Mr. Hoover, but what the hell is this all about?”

“It isn’t easy saying what I’ve got to say to you,” Hoover spluttered. “It requires a certain foundation of knowledge, of understanding.…”

Hoover’s hand shook as, obviously flustered, he gratefully reached for the tea Marie placed before him. Bill had drained half his scotch before Hoover was able to go on, groping for words.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve placed myself in your position and how unbelievable what I’m going to tell you sounded to me. I’ve done many things since arriving in New York—committed many bizarre acts, indeed—which are totally alien to my nature. I mean, the bio in Who’s Who should have given you some insight into the kind of man I am.… I’m not the kind of person who would do these things for no reason, you must believe that.”

Hoover flung the disjointed sentences across at Bill in a quavering, impassioned barrage. He met his cup halfway and took a sip of the strong black tea, which gradually brought his shaking hand under control.

“Before I go on, I must ask you both a question. Do either of you know anything about”—here he paused a moment before measuredly pronouncing the word—“reincarnation?”

The tension in Janice’s grip on Bill’s hand relaxed a bit as she slowly shook her head in the negative. Bill, convinced he had heard “green carnation,” could only stare dumbly at Hoover and wait for further information.

“My entire upbringing,” Hoover continued, “has always steered me away from a serious belief in Karma.…”

The statement was utterly baffling to Bill, it didn’t connect with his train of thought. What the hell was Karma and what did it have to do with flowers?

“But after seven years of seeking and meditating, I began to experience the reality of reincarnation and now believe, as the Koran tells us, that ‘God generates beings and sends them back, over and over again, till they return to Him.’”

“Did you say ‘reincarnation’?” Bill suddenly asked, finally linking into the drift of Hoover’s words.

“Yes, Mr. Templeton,” Hoover replied warily, “the religious belief of nearly one billion people on earth, a doctrine accepted by some of the greatest men our world has produced, from Pythagoras to Schopenhauer, from Plato to Benjamin Franklin.…”

“Oh,” Bill said lamely, swallowing the last of his drink.

“Understand, I don’t expect you to accept or believe in the ethics of Karma, any more than I did at first. What I am asking is that you keep an open mind to the things I’m about to tell you. You will doubt them, of course. You may even think I’m insane. Quite natural. I accept your skepticism beforehand. But do hear me out.”

“Okay,” Bill said. “Go ahead.”

“Ten years ago”—Hoover began his story on a note of solemnity—“there was an accident. And in this accident my wife and daughter were taken from me. It was very quick, very sudden. For a long time it left me paralyzed mentally. For a year I did nothing, went nowhere, avoided people. The vacuum they left in my life was unbearable.” A quick mote of brightness flecked his eyes. “And then, one day, I had this distinct feeling that they were near me. I felt as if my daughter, her name was Audrey Rose, was very close to me. I had never believed in life after death or the supernatural; I thought it was probably an aberration of my mind brought on by the painful loss, as if my mind were trying to compensate—to fill in the gap. But it was a good feeling, and I didn’t reject it. In fact, the sense of Audrey Rose’s closeness gained in intensity as time went on and served to put me back on my feet, brought me to the point where I could deal with life again and with people—”

“Would you care for something else?” Marie had sidled up to their table, unobserved, causing Janice to jump slightly.

“I’ll have more tea, thank you,” Hoover said.

“Do it again.” Bill said, handing her the empty glass. “Make it a double.”

Janice remained silent.

After Marie cleared the table and left, Hoover shut his eyes, composed his thoughts, and continued.

“About a year and a half after the accident I was at a dinner party and—now, please bear with me—one of the guests was a woman who claimed she could read minds. It’s called psychometrize. She’d take your ring or some other personal possession and, through it, tell you things about yourself, as psychics do, about your past, present, and future—like one of those magicians you see on the stage. I thought it was stupid, silly; people can’t do these things. Anyway, the friend who brought me to the party persuaded me to give the woman my ring, and she began telling me things about myself—very accurate things—about my past that only I knew. And then she started describing my daughter, as if she were a child of about two, and I got very upset. I started to leave when she stopped me and asked why I was so reluctant to talk about her. I told her that Audrey Rose had died in an accident and that the memory was still very painful. She laughed and shook her head.” Hoover’s voice rose in pitch slightly as he attempted to duplicate the woman’s speech. “ ‘Your daughter is alive,’ she said. ‘She’s come back.’ And she went on to describe my daughter as being a lovely blond child, living in a beautiful home in New York City. She gave Audrey Rose your daughter’s name, Ivy, combined them so dramatically that they were the same person, they were one and the same, and I thought, Oh, this is impossible! It was very shocking, upsetting, and so I left.… It was a very disturbing feeling when she told me all this.… And I told her she was crazy, she was wrong, and I took my ring back, and I left.…”

The words were spilling forth at a rapid rate. Bill felt himself wince under the viselike grip of Janice’s hand as she increased pressure apace with Hoover’s incredible statement.

Hoover filled his cup from the pot of tea and continued his story in a quieter, more controlled voice.

“Almost a year went by. I couldn’t help thinking about the incident, of course—it was natural to want to believe in such things—but I considered myself an intelligent, rational person and tried to push the whole thing away from me. But I couldn’t really. The things she said, the way she described Audrey Rose, the accuracy, it was all too convincing, and so I clung to the hope that perhaps she might be just another fraud. But I did nothing about it.”

After another slight pause, Bill thought to heighten the dramatic effect, Hoover picked up the threads of his story.

“The year was 1966; the month was December. I happened to be in New York on a business trip when I saw an ad in the Times, announcing a lecture appearance of a famous psychic at Town Hall—he was a well-known expert on paranormal phenomena and a clairvoyant as well. For some overpowering reason, I felt I had to attend. I remember giving up a ticket to Hello, Dolly!, which was the hottest show on Broadway at the time.

“The weather that night was miserable; it was almost impossible to find a cab, but I finally did and arrived at the hall as the lecture was in progress. I walked down the aisle as quietly as possible and had got to my seat when I realized that the speaker had paused in his lecture and was looking at me—studying me, actually, with a look of amazement. It took him a couple of seconds to recover his poise and continue with the lecture, which mainly centered on ESP and thought-transference experiments.”

While Hoover took a sip of tea, Bill sneaked a glance at Janice. Perspiration glazed her perfect skin; her eyes were riveted exclusively on Elliot Hoover, scrutinizing him with all the awe and uncertainty of a scientist on the brink of a fearful discovery. Bill squeezed her hand reassuringly, but the tenseness remained.

“After the lecture,” Hoover continued, “as I was about to leave the hall, he pointed his finger at me and indicated that he wanted me to wait. I joined him in his dressing room, where he immediately apologized for staring at me and told me about an aura, surrounding me, that had first caught his attention—”

“A what?”

“An aura. A kind of halo of light that emanates from certain persons and can be apprehended only by a specially attuned consciousness.”

“Oh.”

“Like the woman at the party the year before, he told me things about myself, very accurate things about my past, about my daughter, describing her as if she were alive and referring to your daughter as my daughter, all very detailed—descriptions of the kind of clothes she wore, and the friends she had—but it was my daughter, in your daughter, born again. He told me of the home she lived in, describing the living room with a large white fireplace and a lovely paneled ceiling with paintings set into it … and the room upstairs, where Ivy slept … the yellow and white gingham curtains, the bright terry-cloth bedspread … the dresser drawer that always sticks, second one from the top.…”

Janice flinched. She remembered well the checkered gingham curtains which she had made from a magazine pattern just before Ivy’s birth. And the terry-cloth bedspread that Aunt Wilma had sent them, discarded years ago. And that awful drawer, second from the top, that still defied the strongest, most patient attempts to pry open.

Janice spoke for the first time. “How old was your daughter when she … died?”

“Audrey Rose was just five, Mrs. Templeton. She and her mother were driving to Harrisburg on the turnpike. They were in a storm. The road was slick. The car skidded and smashed into another car and went down a steep embankment.” Hoover’s eyes reflected the painful memory of the tragedy. “They died before help could get to them.”

Janice bit her lip in hesitation, before asking the next question: “When … did it happen?”

Hoover didn’t answer at once. For a long moment, his eyes probed across the table, first into Janice’s face, then Bill’s, measuring his audience, pacing himself with care, before softly replying, “August 4, 1964, a little after eight twenty in the morning, a few minutes before you gave birth to Ivy at New York Hospital.”

Janice remained sitting, immobile, locked in the grip of Hoover’s penetrating gaze. Bill coughed and rose to his feet.

“Well, Hoover, this is certainly a lot of information you’ve given us. Give us a couple of days to think about it.”

Elliot Hoover stood up, flustered, as he saw Bill clutch Janice’s arm and begin to assist her to her feet.

“Y-you do understand what I’ve told you, Mr. Templeton?” Hoover stammered, placing himself in their path in a futile attempt to delay their departure.

“Sure,” Bill replied genially. “Your daughter died and was reincarnated in our daughter. In effect, you are saying that our daughter, Ivy, is really your daughter, Audrey Rose.”

“Well … yes,” Hoover said, attempting to gauge Bill’s sincerity. “I think we should talk more and come to some kind of … understanding. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I know that legally there’s nothing I can do about this. And even if there were, I wouldn’t do that to you. I know what it is to lose someone you love.”

“Yeah, sure.” Bill steered Janice purposefully past Hoover toward the restaurant archway. “We’ll think about it, see if we can’t come up with some answers.”

“May I call you tomorrow?” Hoover directed his words at their backs as they moved rapidly away from him.

“Call my office,” Bill flung back over his shoulder; then, with a trace of sarcasm: “I think you know the number.”

Carole Federico, sitting at the dining-room table playing solitaire, rose to leave as Bill and Janice entered the apartment. Their parting exchanges were brief and friendly: Did they have an interesting evening? Ivy went to bed soon after they’d left; there were no phone calls, how about dinner with the Federicos Saturday a week?

After Carole left, Janice looked in on Ivy, while Bill prepared himself for bed. They hadn’t spoken of their meeting with Hoover, nor would they, Janice knew, until later, in the darkness of their bedroom.

Gazing down at the lovely blond innocence of her sleeping child, Janice felt suddenly chilled throughout by the terrible prescience. Incredibly, they had met the enemy, had estimated his forces, had learned of his objective—Ivy.

A soft, fretful moan from Ivy, a flinching, her sleep disturbed by some dream. A wave of dread swept through Janice as she recalled the year of the nightmares. Pray God they never return.… Janice felt her child’s head. Cool. Normal. A good sign.

The warmth of her own bed felt good as she slipped between the paisley-print sheets and geared her troubled mind to the silences of the night.

Soon Bill would join her, and they would talk.

Having removed his robe, Bill turned off the bed lamp and crawled into bed beside her. His hand groped for hers beneath the sheets. Janice waited to see which of them would speak first. But as the seconds ticked by and Bill’s breathing rhythm began to extend itself into even patterns, Janice realized that if she didn’t speak, he would soon be asleep.

“Bill, talk to me!”

“For God’s sake, Janice, relax.” Bill sighed deeply. “We’re in good shape. The man’s a nut. There are places for nuts. They’re called nut houses.”

“He knew you’d say he was crazy. He predicted it and was even willing to accept it.”

“Sure, because that’s how their twisted minds work. They tell you what you’re going to think in advance to put you off guard. They hook you that way, don’t you understand?”

“No, Bill, I don’t understand. I’m scared to death.”

“That’s reasonable. Nuts are scary people.”

“That’s not why I’m scared. I’m afraid he isn’t a … nut.”

“You believe his story? You buy his Karmas and auras?”

“He believes it.” Janice put all the force and feeling she could manage behind the quietly uttered phrase. “He believes what he said, sincerely. I could tell by the way he looked.…”

“How did he look? Pale face, weird, empty eyes—is that the look of a normal, healthy man?”

“But why would he do it? Why would he come to us with such a story?”

“The answer to that is locked up in his crazy brain, Janice, and I’m no mind reader.”

“I can see that you’ve decided not to answer any of my questions in a rational manner.”

“Tell me one question you’ve asked that I can answer rationally.”

“All right. What if he isn’t crazy? What then?”

Bill smothered a yawn. “If he isn’t crazy? Well, then”—Bill considered his choices—“it’s possible he’s doing it for money. He’s an extortionist. He’s come up with this elaborate scheme to get our money.”

“What money?”

“That’s not the point. The extortionist theory makes good sense to me.”

“You mean, he spent seven years traveling around the world just to come back here and take our money, which doesn’t exist?”

“How do you know he traveled anywhere? Because he told you so? I say he never went anywhere. He’s always lived in New York. He’s got a racket. He pulls names out of the phone book. He finds his marks and zeros in on them. Disprove it.”

“What about Who’s Who?”

“A borrowed identity. Can the real Elliot Suggins Hoover stand up and identify himself? No. Because he’s dead.”

“You don’t know that for a fact.”

“No, Janice. The only thing I know for a fact is that he isn’t from the FBI, the CIA, or the IRS, and that takes a hell of a load off my mind. Anything else I can handle.”

Janice heard his final words dribble off into a deep yawn. He was edging off into unconsciousness.

“Bill?”

“Hmmm?”

“How are you going to handle this, Bill?”

“Depends,” Bill mumbled, half asleep. “I’ll talk to Harold Yates tomorrow. Whatever this guy is, psychotic or extortionist, Harry’ll know what to do.” Another yawn, followed by a barely audible “Night …”

“Good night,” Janice said, and thought to herself: But what if he’s neither?

For a long time, sleep eluded her.

The storm had passed over the city, leaving a clear, cold night in its wake. Tomorrow would be a beautiful autumn day.

7

And so it was.

Crisp, cold, bracing, a pollution-defeating gift from the northern reaches of Canada.

Bill and Ivy lucked in on a cruising cab at the corner of Sixty-seventh Street. As they drove down the broad, slushy avenue toward the Ethical Culture School, a fine spray of mud freckled the cab’s windows, drawing a somber gray curtain across the vivid day. Ivy loved cabbing it to school, even though the ride took less than a minute. It lent a note of elegance to the start of her day.

Watching her bright and smiling morning face—open, innocent, trusting—Bill felt a quick constriction in his chest. How utterly vulnerable she was. How helpless. How dependent and needful of his care and protection.

He watched Ivy half turn at the big double doors, smile and wave him a kiss, then enter the school building. He waited a few seconds to make sure she was safely inside before giving the cabdriver his office address. Bill knew Hoover wouldn’t be there this morning. Now that he had made his move, had his foot in their door, his Sherlock Holmes days were over, Bill thought with a grim smile. Exit Hercule Poirot.

The cab skidded slightly as it took the sharp left down Fifty-seventh Street and barely missed sideswiping a standing bus. Bill hardly registered the event. His mind was on Hoover.

He’d talk to Harry. Harry would know. Harry was his link to all legal remedies. Meanwhile, there was one wheel he could put into motion: The part about Hoover’s child’s death occurring at the precise moment of Ivy’s birth could be checked out. Either Pittsburgh or Harrisburg newspapers would have covered the accident, if true, or the state police would have a report on file. He’d ask Darlene to start checking immediately.

By the time the cab deposited Bill outside the sterile black monolith that contained his office he was like a boxer waiting for the bell to sound—primed, tense, and ready for action.

The first punishing jolt occurred just outside his office when Don Goetz signaled to him from the opposite end of the hallway and slowly approached wearing the face of doom.

“Jack Belaver had a coronary last night,” he glumly informed Bill.

“How is he?” Bill stammered, quickly evaluating the myriad significances of this stunning piece of news.

“He’ll live, they say. But he’ll be out of action three months, at least.”

Jack Belaver was senior vice president at Simmons and handled its largest accounts, the most impressive being Carleton Industries, a diversified giant whose corporate fingers reached into every nook and cranny of the electronics industry. Its account represented a tidy two and a half million per annum to Simmons. Its yearly sales convention would start this coming Thursday on the beach at Waikiki. Jack Belaver played a key role in prepping and staging the sales show. Simmons could ill afford to lose Jack at this critical juncture.

“The old man would like to see you,” Don said in the same subdued voice.

Sure, Bill thought, knowing damn well why.

“Okay,” he said aloud, and entered his office, whereupon he received his second jolt of the morning.

Sitting at Darlene’s desk was a sec-temp replacement, a swarthy girl with stubby figure and eyes that were slightly crossed behind thick tortoiseshell glasses. Darlene, she told him nasally, was at home with the flu. Wow! He was really fielding them this morning.

Her name was Abby, and she couldn’t quite get the drift of what Bill was asking her to do—couldn’t understand what newspapers he wanted contacted and what accident he wanted verified.

Bill made legible notes on a yellow legal pad and hoped.

Stepping out of Pel Simmons’ office an hour later, Bill had the hunched-over, totally drained look of a man carrying a hod of bricks. Not only had Pel asked him to sub for Jack Belaver on the Hawaiian adventure, but he had instructed him to stop off in Seattle on the way back and look in on another of Jack’s accounts, DeVille Shipping, which was making funny noises of late.

“Sorry to load this on you, Bill, but with a backstop like Don, you’re the only man who’s sparable.”

“Sure, Pel,” Bill said. “I’ll plan to leave on Friday.”

“Make it Thursday. You’ll need the time there to brief up.”

Back in his own office, his message sheet told him that Hoover had called twice during his absence. Sinking wearily into the Eames recliner, Bill heaved a sigh of profound hopelessness and softly uttered, “Shit.” A box of paper clips was close at hand. Singly and with studied deliberation, he extracted them one by one and shied them across at the Motherwell, aiming at the black deltoid shape in the center. Of all the rotten luck. Of all the rotten times to be leaving town. How would he break the news to Janice? She was in semishock as it was. Oh, by the way, honey, I’m going to Hawaii for a week, how does that grab ya? Probably send her over the edge.…

Unless! Unless!

Yes, why the hell not? They’d all go. They could take Ivy out of school for a week and fly to Hawaii as a family. The trip would do them all good. He’d be on the company’s expense account. They could manage the rest of the money. It would, of course, be unique, a man in his position, taking his wife and child on a ball-buster of this kind, but hell! The alternative of leaving them alone and unguarded.…

His spirits buoyed by pleasant thoughts of sun, surf, and safety for all of them, Bill quickly rose and walked across to the Motherwell, reclaiming the paper clips scattered over the sofa and floor. When Abby stuck her head into the room, she found Bill down on his knees, picking “things” out of the carpet.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered, “but I flashed.…”

“What is it?” Bill said sternly.

“Mr. Hoover is on the line.”

“I’m at a meeting and won’t be back till late this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait,” Bill ordered, as she was about to duck out. “What about the Pittsburgh newspapers?”

“They’re checking. They’ll call back later, collect.”

“Okay. Call Mr. Harold Yates, that’s Y-A-T-E-S, you’ll find it in the Rolodex, and ask him if he’s free for lunch.”

“Yes, sir.” Abby gulped and disappeared.

Harry, as it turned out, was in court and wouldn’t be able to see Bill until three o’clock, please confirm. Bill did, then put in a call to Janice through the Des Artistes house line. Janice answered after a great number of rings, and Bill listened as Dominick announced him.

“Anything new there?” Bill asked.

“No,” Janice said.

“Any phone calls?”

“A couple, on the other line. But I didn’t answer them.”

“Good.”

Bill was about to tell her of their impending trip to Hawaii when Janice suddenly remembered: “A package came.”

“A what?”

“A package. Mario brought it up a few minutes after the mail. It was delivered by hand.”

“Well, what’s in it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it.”

Bill paused a moment, then quietly asked, “Why not, Janice?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m afraid.”

“All right.” Bill softly sighed. “Why don’t you open it now?”

“Just a minute.”

The light on Bill’s number two line flashed, then stopped, remaining alight, as Abby took the call at her desk. In a moment, it went dark. Hoover again, Bill surmised, knowing that Abby would hardly have hung up that quickly were it anyone else.

The sound of paper tearing preceded Janice’s voice. “It’s books. Four of them.”

“Who from?”

“I suppose from Mr. Hoover. They seem to be religious books. Very old. One is called The Annotated Koran. Then there’s the Upanishads—I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it right—A Modern Translation. There’s also a diary.”

“Is there a letter? A note or something?”

“There’s an envelope in Dialogues on Metem … psychosis, by J. G. von Herder.…” Again the sound of paper tearing as Janice opened the envelope. “It’s from Hoover, a list of page references for each book, handwritten and signed, ‘Sincerely yours, E. Hoover.’”

“Okay,” Bill said after careful consideration. “Keep them. They may be useful as evidence.”

“Has he called there?”

“Yeah, a couple of times, but I’m not taking his calls till I’ve spoken to Harry Yates.”

There was a pause.

“Bill?” There was a childlike tremor in her voice.

“Yes, honey?”

“Will he be at school when I pick up Ivy?”

“No. He wasn’t there this morning.”

“What if he is?”

“If he annoys you, call a cop.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered in a choked voice.

A few minutes after Bill hung up the phone, he remembered he hadn’t told her about their Hawaiian fling. He considered calling her back, then decided against it. It would only add to her state of confusion. He’d tell her tonight in bed.

The books, partially exposed in their torn wrappings, remained on the dining-room table the entire morning. Janice walked past them at least a dozen times but conscientiously refrained from noticing them. The little game was self-defeating, however, for at ten past two, after having loitered over her hair and clothing far too long to justify the simple expedition to the school and back, she still found herself with better than thirty-five minutes and nothing to do.

Fully dressed in coat, rain boots and white fake-fur hat, she fixed herself a cup of instant coffee and stood drinking it in the kitchen, the edge of the books, sliced by the frame of the doorway, just within range of her vision.

Standing above the stack of books, cup in hand, her fingers tracing the battered embossed cover of the one on top, she had no memory of having walked up to them, nor could she stop herself from turning back the cover and revealing a hardly legible inscription at the top of the frontispiece. Handwritten in a pale mauve ink was the inscription “R. A. Tyagi, ’06,” and beneath it, in a brighter, bolder hand, “E. Hoover, ’68.” The book’s title, printed in a delicate floral design, was The Bhagavad-Gita—An English Translation. The publication date was: “1746—London.”

Janice gently grasped a sheaf of the yellowed pages and allowed them to riffle slowly through her fingers, causing a small eruption of powdery dust to drift upward from the heart of the ancient volume. The pages seemed to fall in clumps, signifying the more studied portions of the text. At one such point, she read. “As a man, casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into others that are new.…”

On another page, she read: “For certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve.”

Janice shut the book decisively and stepped away from the table, feeling very much a traitor for having so easily capitulated to the enemy. Bill was right. It was nonsense.

Janice picked up the pile of books and carried them to the hall closet, where, standing on a chair, she consigned them to a shadowy corner on the top shelf, next to several volumes of Bill’s more graphic pornography.

She joined the waiting mothers in front of the school, and at three o’clock sharp the bell rang and the exodus began. Less than five minutes later Ivy appeared at the double doors and smiled her way down the steps toward Janice. Hoover was nowhere to be seen. Bill had been right. No doubt, he was right about everything, Janice thought, her confidence in her husband’s judgment growing by leaps and bounds.

For the first time in nearly a week Janice found herself heading north at a leisurely pace instead of in a panic. Ivy chattered continually. Janice laughed unreservedly. It was like old times for both of them.

“I don’t know if he’s an extortionist or a nut or let’s say he’s a man who believes this to be so. We’re talking about an area that a lot of people don’t know anything about.…” Harold Yates paused a moment to organize his thoughts and place them in their proper legal perspective.

Bill sat on the couch, adjacent to Harold’s Barca-Lounger, from which, in a semisupine position, Harold conducted all his business. There was no desk in the office. A low cocktail table immediately to his right sufficed to accommodate two telephones, a cup of pencils, and several legal pads.

“But regardless of whether he’s a … nut, as you say, whatever the definition of that is,” Harold continued in a slow, pedantic manner, “regardless of whether he’s an extortionist, you’re really concerned about what you can do to protect your family from being bothered by this person. Now I have a question to ask you. Did he make any demand upon you?”

Bill considered carefully. “He didn’t come right out and make a demand, except to say that he wants to see us again and that we have to come to some kind of understanding.”

“What understanding? Does he want Ivy?”

“No. He said he doesn’t want to claim her or take her away, that he couldn’t legally, and in any case wouldn’t, since he knows what it is to lose someone you love. Don’t you see, Harry? It’s a pitch. We’re being primed for a shakedown.”

Harry mulled on this. “Is your question: What are your legal rights?”

“My question is: How do I get him off our backs?”

“Well, when you say off your backs, if he continues to intrude on your privacy, in terms of following you wherever you go, calling you at home, asking to see members of your family, he has no legal right to do that. If the amount of attention he is paying your family is bothersome or a nuisance, you can go to court and apply for an injunction restraining him from harassing or annoying you and your family. If he violates that injunction, he is in contempt of court and will be punished by the court. Punishment for contempt of court is subject to imprisonment.”

Bill’s eyes remained staring across at the lawyer.

“If we do take him to court, how do I prove that all this actually happened?”

“There are ways you can obtain proof. For example, next time he calls and wants to come to your house to talk, have a witness present.”

“Isn’t Janice a witness?”

“Certainly she is, but it would be better if you had an unrelated person present. Conceivably, you might get this Hoover to write you what he wants and proposes to do, or perhaps secretly tape his conversations.…”

That was it, Bill thought with a quick surge of elation. He’d tape him. Surely, Russ Federico would lend him the equipment and even help him set up the living room and work the machine. Russ could be the unrelated witness at the same time. Bill heard Harry droning on in the background of his thoughts and quickly shifted his concentration back to what his friend and lawyer was saying.

“The tape, while probably inadmissible, could certainly be used to convince the police that this man is bothering you and enable you to avail yourself of their legal restraints and powers.”

“I think I can arrange to tape our next meeting,” said Bill rising.

“Not so fast. Where are you going?”

“To set things up.” Bill glanced at his watch. “I haven’t got much time.”

“You intend to do this that soon?”

“I intend to do it tonight.”

“In that case, there are some questions I will want you to ask him.” Harold’s stubby hand reached for a legal pad and sharp pencil. “A few simple bedrock questions the answers to which will have some legal force and validity in a court of law, if indeed that is the course we select to pursue.”

Bill slowly sat back down on the couch and watched Harold bring the rubber end of the pencil up to his thick semiparted lips and begin mentally formulating the substance of his first question.

“One,” he said.

The meeting with Russ had gone as expected; he was not only willing, but eager to help Bill. They agreed to rendezvous at the apartment at six thirty and, as Russ put it, rig the place for action. Bill hadn’t gone into great detail with Russ, only that he was being preyed on by a shakedown artist and that he needed Russ’ expert help to nail the bastard. They discussed the kind of equipment Russ would use and its deployment. Hiding the wire connecting the mike and recorder would pose a problem, he felt, unless he used a wireless mike, which was kind of temperamental and not as dependable as a direct hookup. Russ finally decided to bring a variety of systems and test them all before Hoover arrived.

Bill felt a growing excitement as he saw each step of his plans dropping neatly into place.

Before leaving Russ’ studio, he had called Janice, told her what they were up to, and suggested she arrange with Carole for Ivy to spend the night there.

“He called this afternoon, Bill.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No,” Janice said. “I let Dominick take a message. He left a phone number.”

“Okay, let me have it.”

“Just a sec.” Janice was back almost immediately. “555–1771.”

Bill dialed the number and was surprised to hear a woman’s voice say, “Good evening, YMCA.”

“Good evening,” Bill said. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Elliot Hoover, please.”

“One moment, please.” A sharp click, followed by a buzzing sound and then by a subdued male voice: “Fourth-floor dormitory.”

“Elliot Hoover, please,” the woman said.

“One moment, please.”

Bill put his hand over the mouthpiece and quietly asked Russ, “Nine o’clock okay?”

“Nine thirty,” Russ whispered back.

Bill could hear the echoing sound of footsteps approaching. Then Hoover’s voice said, “This is Elliot Hoover.”

“Bill Templeton here.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Templeton.” The voice held a note of eagerness.

“I’d like to get together with you tonight, at my apartment, say nine thirty?”

“That will be fine. Thank you.”

Yes, Bill thought, jumping over a dirt-encrusted snow drift at the corner of Fifty-ninth and Central Park West, it will all work out fine.

“A girl named Abby called. She said that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette confirmed the information you wanted: that Sylvia Flora Hoover and her daughter, Audrey Rose, were killed in a car accident on the Harrisburg Turnpike a little after eight thirty on the morning of August 4, 1964.”

No kiss, no hello, no chance to take off his coat and boots; Janice assaulted him with the information the moment he pushed open the door.

“Okay,” Bill said quietly, edging his way around her into the apartment.

“Okay?” she shrilled back.

“Take it easy, baby. Let me take off my coat and make us a drink,” he said soothingly, although the rich winy odor on her breath informed him that she hadn’t waited to be asked. “We can talk about this thing reasonably.”

“Oh, God,” she moaned softly.

“Janice!” Bill’s voice sharpened. “I don’t know what you’re building here. But I want you to know that I do not believe in spooks, ghosts, haunts, auras, Karmas, or any of that crap. There’s got to be a simple, real-life explanation to all this.”

Janice took a quick step back.

“All right, give me one!”

“Okay, off the top of my head. The guy picks his mark, finds when their child was born—the exact minute of birth—then does research on what child died at that very same time. He’s got the whole country to pick his child from. And once he matches them up, he simply steps into the character of the dead child’s father and makes the hit. Reasonable?”

Janice stared back at him without saying a word. He could tell by the softening lines in her face that his explanation had scored with her. Not entirely, but enough to permit him to take her into his arms and kiss her lost and haunted eyes.

“And that’s off the top of my head.” Bill smiled. “Believe me, Janice, we’re gonna get to the bottom of this thing and shake ourselves loose from this creep. I promise.”

He kissed her lips and felt her mouth open and her body lose most of its tension. But for Ivy upstairs, zealously packing her overnight bag for her sleep-over date with the Fed-ericos, Bill might have made love to her then and there.

Russ showed up at six twenty-five with a mountain of sound gear. Mario and Ernie helped him lug it off the elevator and down the corridor to Bill’s apartment.

For the next hour, Bill’s voice intoning, “One, two, three, four, five, six … do you read me? Do you read me? Six, five, four, three, two, one … come in, Russ, do you read me?” filled the apartment and filtered through to Janice, in the kitchen, preparing sandwiches and dressing a large salad of mixed vegetables, lettuce, and tomatoes. Ivy had left on her overnight journey a few minutes before Russ had arrived, toting a much too heavy suitcase and her favorite TV dinner under her arm.

At eight fifteen, Russ, Bill, and Janice were seated around the living room, finishing the last of the sandwiches and beer and surveying their handiwork. The wireless mike hadn’t worked, compelling them to string a wire from the microphone, concealed among the autumn leaves and flowers in the vase next to the sofa, clear across the long living room, hidden under a series of carpets and up the staircase wall to their bedroom, where Russ had set up his Nagra recording equipment. It would be up to Bill to get Hoover to sit in precisely the right spot on the sofa in order to guarantee a usable signal. Janice felt the whole thing was too complicated to work. The men were not discouraged by her skepticism and continued to work with enthusiasm, perfecting the setup, until nine twenty-five, when the phone rang.

Bill lifted the receiver gingerly and said, “Yes?” Then, after a pause; “Okay, send him right up.”

Bill signaled Janice with a quick motion of his finger. She heard Russ’ footsteps ascending the stairs to their bedroom to man his post, and she quickly moved to her own prearranged position at the far end of the sofa adjacent to the one intended for Elliot Hoover. She would be the decoy, Bill reasoned, to lure Hoover to that part of the room.

A pronounced hush settled over the apartment, a conscious, collective stillness such as one experiences in a theater, just as the houselights dim and the curtain goes up.

8

The doorbell rang.

Janice heard Bill and Hoover mumble something incomprehensible to each other as they walked down the long, narrow hallway toward the living room and assumed it to be some form of salutation. There was a sense of madcap, Janice thought, in the act of two men, undoubted enemies, observing the gentle amenities prescribed by a rigid upbringing—like two opposing generals shaking hands before a slaughter.

Bill’s face was stern, set, ungiving, as he preceded Hoover through the carved doorway and into the living room and attempted to guide him toward the area of the sofa with a slight wave of his arm. But Hoover stopped on the threshold and remained standing, critically surveying the room, his doleful eyes filled with great awe as they slowly took in each detail of the walls and ceiling. The soft pink light of the sconces accented the clear, unlined pallor of his face, lending it a youthful, priestlike placidity.

Bill had turned quickly when he realized that Hoover’s attention was elsewhere and now stood impatiently waiting for their guest to make a move.

“It’s exactly as he described it,” Hoover said in a small, incredulous voice. “The fireplace … the white stuccoed walls … the ceiling paintings”—his eyes found the staircase—“and the staircase, with the carved head newel post.…” He walked to the staircase and placed his fingers on the Viking’s head in a delicate, tentative gesture, as if he were seeking tactile corroboration to confirm the fact that his eyes were not deceiving him. His gaze slowly drifted up the banister to the top of the staircase, and his eyes became pinpoints of curiosity.

“The bedrooms … upstairs”—his voice was hushed with emotion—“three of them … Ivy’s to the left of the stairs.…”

Bill girded himself for action. If Hoover took one step up the stairs, he would charge across the room and tackle the son of a bitch.

But Hoover held his ground and turned his attention to Bill.

“Am I right?” he asked with a smile that Bill decided was smug.

“Umm … yeah …” Bill said, shifting about nervously. “I … er … think we’d better get this thing started, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly,” Hoover replied, and quickly crossed the room, taking in the slipshod arrangement of carpets concealing the microphone wire. He sat on the sofa where he was meant to sit, and Bill took the seat immediately to his right.

“Uh … I wonder, Mr. Hoover,” Bill began, groping, “if you’d mind going through the … highlights again of what you told us last night? We were kind of hazy, and … you hit us with so much.…”

Hoover thought a moment. “Is there any particular part that you would like me to repeat?”

Janice was sure that Hoover knew he was being recorded.

“No, no,” Bill said. “Just a general summary of things, you know, starting, say, with the death of your wife and child.”

Elliot Hoover took a deep breath and shut his eyes. There was a sense of ritual in the gesture, a rallying of inner strengths to muster support for a time of trial. When he spoke, it was in short, well-organized, fact-filled sentences.

“My wife and child died in a car accident on August 4, 1964. About a year later, I met a woman, a psychic, who told me that my daughter had returned to life, in the body of another person, and was living in New York City. My tendency was to scoff at the notion, but I did find it intriguing. A year later I attended a lecture given by a well-known parapsychologist, and he told me substantially the same thing the woman had a year before, that my daughter was living in the body of a child named Ivy, and he went on to describe her home, which was identical to the environment I now find myself in.”

The simple, direct manner of his delivery gave Janice the chills. He really seemed to believe this.

“Who are these people?” Bill interrupted.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The two psychics? What are their names?”

“I never knew the woman’s name. The man was Erik Lloyd.”

“Erik Lloyd?”

“Yes, he”—Hoover’s eyes lowered in respect—“died several years ago.”

“Uh-huh,” Bill commiserated. “That’s too bad.”

He could have predicted both answers. Hoover obviously thought he was dealing with novices.

“All right,” he continued, his eyes fastened on Hoover, “at that point, we’re talking about 1965 to ’6. You say that two people, psychics, told you your daughter was alive and living in New York and that her name was Ivy, is that correct?”

Janice thought Bill was overplaying it. Still, Hoover answered forthrightly and without seeming concern.

“Yes,” he replied. “That’s correct.”

“Well, why didn’t you come here then and claim her?”

“It was never my intention to claim her. Nor is it now.”

“Well, why didn’t you at least come and look us up, as you’re doing now? What took you, was it, seven years to decide whether or not she was really your child?”

“Mr. Templeton”—Hoover’s voice was soft with patience—“as I explained last night, my entire background, my religious upbringing, the sum and substance of all I was and believed in, were strongly opposed to such ideas. I was a scoffer and a disbeliever, as you are now.”

“So you went to India to discover the truth?”

“I went to many places, Mr. Templeton, met and stayed with many families, many teachers; learned of a way of life that was totally alien to mine; joined my life with theirs; embraced their customs; shared their poverty; partook of their beliefs and their philosophies; and, in time, with the help of God, and the wisdom of Siddhartha Guatama, their Buddha, came to know the reality of their religious convictions.”

Hoover turned to Janice.

“Might I please have a glass of water, Mrs. Templeton?” he asked.

As Janice rose and walked toward the kitchen, Bill’s next question faded off in the background.

“Understand, Mr. Hoover, when it comes to reincarnation and things like that, I’m at ground zero. Tell me. What are these religious convictions you’re talking about? And what convinces you that they’re right and that you are right in what you’re doing?”

Janice wondered if Hoover took ice in his water and decided finally to serve the ice separately. The thought of Russ, upstairs, listening to this strange conversation, brought a fleeting smile to her lips. Somehow Hoover didn’t seem so frightening tonight. He had no doubt been through a very bad experience and was a tortured man, willing to believe in anything. Janice almost felt sorry for him.

When she returned with the tray, Hoover was speaking in a voice charged with passion.

“The ego in man never dies. It keeps coming back over and over again, having gained in wisdom during each sojourn spent on other planes of being between the incarnations. Therefore, some souls are older in wisdom, have enjoyed more stages of spiritual and intellectual evolution, so that a great teacher may be an older soul than, say, a bricklayer or a savage.…”

“Ummmm, yeah …” Bill said as Janice put down the tray.

“I didn’t know if you wanted ice,” she said unsurely, placing the glass of cubes on the table next to Hoover.

“No, thanks,” he said with a quick smile. “I take it straight.”

“What did you do for money, Mr. Hoover,” Bill asked, “for sustenance during all this time? I mean, you quit working back in sixty-seven. How did you support yourself during all those years?”

Janice was sure this was one of Harold Yates’ questions.

Hoover finished drinking his water and answered simply. “A great deal of money came to me from the death of my wife and daughter. A double indemnity policy amounting to more than two hundred thousand dollars has more than provided for me during these years.”

Bill did a quick mental calculation: At eight and one-half percent interest, two hundred grand would net him seventeen thou per year, which, if true, was enough to support him on any number of truth searches.

“While the money, on the one hand, was abhorrent to me,” Hoover continued, “I did make positive use of some of it. There’s still a great deal left as my needs are very simple.”

“When did you come to New York?”

“This year, on the twelfth of July.”

“And you used a disguise?”

“Not until I was pretty sure I had … found the right people.”

“You mean us?”

“Yes.”

“How were you sure we were the right people?”

“A process of elimination. I had only three real clues: She lived in New York City; her hair was blond; her name was Ivy. That, plus the time of her birth, which had to be soon after Audrey Rose’s death. I went to the boards of health in all five boroughs and checked the birth records. I found six girls who were possible: two in Queens, one in the Bronx, one in Brooklyn, and two in Manhattan. All had been born within a year of Audrey Rose’s death. But only one was born at the moment of her death. Your daughter.”

His words settled deeply into the atoms of the room. Janice licked her lips, which had suddenly become parched. Bill cleared his throat.

“Isn’t that a little unusual,” he ventured, “a person coming back so quickly? I mean, I always heard it took … uh … a long time to come back. I mean, people who believe in it, always speak of having lived during the time of Caesar and Davy Crockett, you know? Isn’t it unusual for someone to die one second”—Bill snapped his fingers—“and be born the next second? I mean, you tell me—”

“In my experience, Mr. Templeton, I have found that those who die an early or violent death and are interrupted from experiencing the full opportunities of their mental, physical, and spiritual growth often return sooner than those who die in peace at a ripe old age. Oftentimes a soul may return at the instant of death. In Tibet each Dalai Lama is the immediate incarnation of his predecessor. When a Dalai Lama dies, Tibetan notables immediately begin a search for the new incarnation.”

“And they always find him?”

“For five centuries they have never failed.”

“How do they do it?”

“By interpreting certain portents. After the thirteenth Dalai Lama died, they placed his body on a throne, facing south. After several days, they found that his face had turned to the east, where curious cloud formations were also seen in the vicinity of Lhasa. High lamas and notables went to all parts of Lhasa in search of the newly born Dalai Lama.”

“And they found him?”

“Yes. In the village of Taktser, they found a boy of two, living in humble surroundings. When the leader of the party, Lama Kewtsang Rinpoche, entered the house, the little boy went to him immediately and sat on his lap. Around the lama’s neck was a rosary which had belonged to the thirteenth Dalai Lama. When the child saw it, he recognized it and wanted it. The lama promised to give it to him if he could guess who he was, and the boy said, Sera-aga, which means, ‘A lama of Sera.’”

Bill coughed.

“Okay, so you found your girl. Why the disguise? Why all that Secret Service stuff, following us around, scaring the hell out of us?”

“I apologize for that,” Hoover replied with a look of regret. “But I had to be sure you were the right people. That Ivy was the right child. The times of death and birth, although pretty remarkable, were still not convincing proof. It might still have been only a coincidence.…”

“And your research convinced you that we were the right people?”

“Try to understand, Mr. Templeton. In the Buddhist belief, death becomes a mere incident in life, a change of scene, a brief journey in which the soul wanders in search of a new life, selecting the parents to whom it wishes to be born. Audrey Rose would naturally have sought out a life and parents similar to those she knew and loved in her previous life. It was no accident that she chose you. The kind of people you are, the depth of love and understanding, the quality of intellect, the way of life you offered made you the perfect family in which to be reborn.”

“What if Audrey Rose hadn’t died?” Bill interjected. “What would our daughter have become, an empty shell?”

“She would have become the receptor of another soul.”

Bill shook his head. “You would think, if that were the case, that she’d remember some of her past lives.”

“Such remembrance would only complicate her present life, Mr. Templeton. Hindus consider it tragic if a child remembers a former existence, for this, they believe, signifies an early death.”

Bill heaved a deep sigh, as if catching his second wind.

“Okay,” he continued, his mind ferreting among the questions still left to be asked, seeking the proper, logical successor to the last. “So you came to New York, and using a disguise, started observing our family.…”

“No, not immediately. As I said, there were others, but for one reason or another they didn’t fit. I started observing your daughter a little over a month ago, and almost at once I began to see little things in Ivy that did indeed remind me of Audrey Rose.…”

“Like what?”

“The way she walks, for example. Her tendency to get lost in a daydream whenever she walks. The funny habit of licking her lips just before she starts to speak. Her sudden laugh; the way she throws back her head when she laughs; the gentle sadness in her eyes when something painful occurs—like that day, Mrs. Templeton, when you both stopped to help that injured pigeon.…”

Janice felt her soul turn white as he went on to describe the myriad, lovely, subtle gestures and qualities that were Ivy’s exclusive property—those rare, tenuous nuances of movement, style, and nature that Janice thought she herself had only been aware of. She was suddenly thankful that Ivy was not around, that she was safely tucked away with Carole downstairs, beyond the proximity of Elliot Hoover’s strange and terrible insight.

“All these things, these little idiosyncrasies were Audrey Rose’s, Mr. Templeton. In so many ways, the two of them are one and the same person.”

“Do they also resemble each other?”

“No. It is only the spirit which passes from life to life; the physical you is new with each birth. Here”—Hoover reached into his pocket and removed his wallet; he carefully extracted a small photograph from its Plasticine container and handed it to Bill—“a picture of Audrey Rose, taken about a month before she passed on.”

Bill studied the picture. The face he saw staring back at him was round, flat-featured, and plain. Her hair was straight, light brown, and resembled her father’s, as did her eyes. Bill passed the photograph to Janice, who glanced at it briefly and quickly thrust it back at Bill as if it were something diseased and contagious. Bill offered the photograph back to Hoover, who gingerly reinserted it into its protective covering.

“Well, Mr. Hoover,” Bill said, flashing his best smile, “we seem to have come to the point where I’m supposed to ask you what it is exactly that you want from us?”

Hoover smiled back. “Nothing more or less than you and your wife are prepared to give me.”

“Well, like what?” Bill urged. “You tell us.”

Hoover’s eyes became distant, serene. “This chance to see Ivy occasionally, to watch her grow, to be of help, if needed.…”

“That might be difficult to arrange.”

“Not if I became your friend. Your neighbor. I intend to settle in New York and take up my professional life once again.” Hoover saw the stiff lines of resistance on their faces and quickly added, “Understand, I’ll make no demands on your time or expect any special privileges or considerations.…”

Yeah, sure, Bill thought hotly, in a pig’s ass you won’t.

“And, of course, Ivy would never know about our … relationship. As I said before, it would be dangerous for her to know.…”

Bill held up his hand. “Okay, I have a question. Since, by your own admission, your presence does present a danger to Ivy, and since you say you care about what happens to her and that you wish to be of help to her, why don’t you just step out of the picture? That would be the greatest help you could give her, as I see it. Right now, our daughter is a normal, healthy child. Aren’t you interested in seeing that she stay that way? I mean, say that there is a little bit of your child mixed up in her somehow, why take a chance on destroying them both?”

The question was a good one, direct, simply expressed, to the point, and Janice was proud of Bill for having thought of it. There was no way Hoover could answer without betraying his own selfish interest. She watched Hoover press the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger and knew that behind the bland gesture was a mind that was racing.

“You are right of course,” he finally said. “It would be the simplest thing for me just to walk away. And it’s quite possible it may ultimately come to that. But put yourself in my position, Mr. Templeton.…”

He was interrupted by the sudden ring of the house telephone—a strident, continual ring that signified danger. The last time it had rung like that was when the building was thought to be on fire.

Bill jumped up and dashed down the hallway. Janice rose, as did Elliot Hoover, startled and confused by the sudden activity.

Bill snatched up the receiver and heard Dominick’s tense voice say, “go ahead, Mrs. Federico.”

“Bill?” Carole’s frantic whisper stung his ear. “Bill, get down here! Something’s happening to Ivy!”

“What is it?” Bill snapped.

“I don’t know … she’s … she’s running around the room, crying.…” Carole’s voice heightened with panic. “She’s having some kind of nightmare.…”

“Coming!” Bill said, slamming down the receiver and turning to Janice, standing white-faced behind him. “It’s Ivy! Get Kaplan’s number!”

The fleeting look between them raised the shroud on a memory shared, yet abhorred. Janice felt a chill sweep through her veins as she pulled the leather-bound telephone book from the kitchen drawer, then found herself floating featherlike, through the service door and down the fire stairs in pursuit of Bill. She was unaware of her feet as they sped her down the iron and concrete steps to the floor below, transporting her to the Federicos’ door, where Bill stood, knocking lightly and quietly calling, “Carole! It’s Bill!” An anxious heart pounded in Janice’s ear merging with the noise of the chain as it slipped off its track and the door opened inward. Carole stood on the threshold, her tense face white as a sheet.

“Upstairs,” she cried faintly and hurried after Bill, who pushed past her through the archway into their small living room and up the short flight of stairs.

“Everything was fine,” she panted frenziedly. “She had dinner … went to bed on time … then I heard these noises … I was in the kitchen … I went up … and … you’ll see … it’s … it’s frightening … I mean … she’s sleepwalking or something … and crying … I tried to wake her up … but I couldn’t.…”

The door to the spare bedroom was partially ajar. Bill waited before entering, listening to the terrified little sounds emerging from the room; the scampering of bare feet on the carpeted floor; the light impact of a body crashing into object; the soft, mouselike weeping of infantile anguish, desperately repeating the same pleading litany of strung-together words, “Mommydaddy mommydaddy mom-mydaddy mommy hothothothot mommydaddy…,” they had heard on certain other nights more than seven years before.

As Janice quietly entered the room behind Bill, the bizarre, incredible memory of that distant time, sapped of reality for seven long years, sprang back to sudden and pulsating life.

Totally oblivious to their presence, Ivy’s eyes shone wildly; her feverish face was swept with a thousand nighttime terrors as she fled about the small, cluttered room this way and that in random disorder, knocking into furniture, chairs, sewing machine, desk, climbing over the larger pieces in order to gain some unknown, desperately sought objective. As before, the tiny, babylike, fretting sounds, “mommydaddy mommydaddy hothothot mommydaddy…,” underscored her tortured necessity to succeed.

Each time she’d get by an obstacle and seem to approach the door or window—her flailing, groping, reaching toward the glass—she would draw back suddenly in pain and plunge back into the helter-skelter circle of confusion, weeping, crying, mewling her plaintive lament, “Mommydaddy mommydaddy hothothothot mommydaddy mommydaddy.…”

Janice’s hand grasped Bill’s tightly as they stood rooted, just inside the room, helplessly watching the macabre spectacle, knowing, from past experience, how ineffective they both were during these crises.

“Ivy, it’s Daddy,” Bill pleaded, stretching out his arms to embrace her as she passed him, her eyes blazing lights projecting out of a feverish face, as she drew away from him and fled to a far corner of the room.

“Call Dr. Kaplan, Janice,” he whispered huskily.

WAIT!”

The voice was Elliot Hoover’s, speaking from the doorway directly behind them. Janice turned and saw him looking intently at Ivy, rushing about the room at a quickened pace, totally driven by the acute urgency of her nightmare. Hoover’s eyes were fixed on the tormented child, critically observing every movement and gesture she made, listening tot eh rasping, thoroughly exhausted voice repeating, “Mommydaddy mommydaddy hothothot mommydaddy mommydaddy.…”

Janice felt Bill’s hand stiffen in hers as he, too, turned and planted a stern, warning look on the interloper.

But Hoover ignored them both, his eyes and mind wholly devoted to their daughter, trying to define the meaning of the terrible hallucination in which she was caught. And then a look of inexpressible sadness swept across his face; his eyes grew large and haunted as he uttered, “My God,” in a barely audible breath.

He quickly stepped past them into the room and worked his way closer to Ivy, who was reeling about dizzily, near the window, her hands seeking the glass, reaching for it, gropingly, each time pulling back in pain and fear, as if it were molten lava.

“Audrey!” The word burst out of Hoover like a shot: “Audrey Rose! It’s Daddy.” And he took another step toward the agonized child fretting at the window, waving her thin arms at the glass despairingly, pleading with the demons without in the high-pitched, sorrowing voice of a child half her age, “Mommydaddy mommydaddy hothothothot mommydaddy mommydaddy.…”

“Audrey Rose! I’m here, Audrey! Here!”

Janice’s knuckles turned white in Bill’s hand as she watched Hoover take still another step toward Ivy, who gave no indication that she heard him or was aware of his presence.

“Over here, Audrey! It’s Daddy! I’ve come!”

Bill’s hand sought release from Janice’s grip, and she knew he was about to move, about to seize Hoover and throw him out of the room. She saw the murderous intent in Bill’s eyes and flashed him a look entreating patience.

“Audrey! This way, darling! Audrey Rose! It’s Daddy!”

Suddenly, Ivy swung about from the window and turned her flushed, fear-ravaged face to Hoover, gazing up at him like a suppliant asking for mercy, the beseeching babble of words shifting to “Daddydaddydaddydaddydaddydaddydaddydaddy.…”

“Yes, Audrey! It’s Daddy! It’s Daddy! This way, Darling!” he desperately urged in a breathless voice. “This way, Audrey Rose! This Way! Come!” And taking a step backwards, he extended his hands to the startled child, offering direction, inviting trust. “This way, darling! This way!”

Slowly, the anguish and panic seemed to drain from their daughter’s face; the rapid, feverish intensity of the words seemed to relax, to space out and become more defined, “Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy.…”

“Yes darling, this way,” Hoover coaxed, bending down and extending his two arms fully to her. “Come, Audrey, come!”

“Daddy … daddy?” Her eyes remained fastened on a point just beyond the image of Hoover, squinting hard to penetrate the opaque veil of the all-engulfing nightmare.

“This way, Audrey Rose! COME!” His voice rose to a command. “COME AUDREY!”

A prickle of fear coursed up Janice’s spine as she saw the face of her own child begin to soften with recognition, begin to lose the ravaged and brutalized look of terror. Teardrops hanging on her eyelids—the great blue eyes which now shone so large and brilliant out of her white and worn face—she slowly extended her hands to Hoover, in a tentative, testing manner. “Daddy?”

“Yes, Audrey Rose! It’s Daddy!” Hoover encouraged, in a subdued voice charged with emotion. “Come, darling.…”

“Daddy?” And with a smile that seemed to answer him, she scampered forward into his arms, clutching him in a deep embrace. And thus they remained, clinging to each other, like a pair of lovers finally meeting after a long and wearying journey.

Bill stood like a man in a trance, his shadow thrown vague and large upon the two of them by the hall light behind him. His face was pale; his eyes were wet and glistening; his mouth quivered with parted lips. His whole being seemed absorbed in the anxiety and tenderness at his feet.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he sputtered hoarsely, in a Janice hardly recognized. He stood, waiting for an answer, the lines in his face continuing to move, to speak, though his voice had stopped.

Elliot Hoover rose slowly, lifting Ivy up with him in his arms. When he turned to Bill and Janice, they saw that she was asleep, breathing normally, her lovely face now calm and composed in restful slumber. The man who had released her from her bondage took a step closer to Bill and gently conveyed the precious burden into its rightful arms.

“It was the accident,” Hoover said starkly. “There was a fire … the windows were closed … she couldn’t get them open, and there was no way of getting her out of the car … I was told that it lasted for some minutes.…”

A strange stillness seemed to close all around them. The very air seemed hushed and solemnized.

A cough behind Janice made her aware that Carole had been witness to the entire drama. She had forgotten about Carole, had forgotten about Russ, still upstairs in their bedroom.

“I’ll be leaving now,” Hoover said, a look of profound concern in his eyes. “There’s a great deal I must think about. You were both very kind to see me. Good night.”

With a token smile, he excused his way past them and left the room. Janice could hear his footsteps fade away through the lower regions of the apartment and finally disappear. Bill heard nothing. His entire attention was caught up in the subdued and peaceful cadence of Ivy’s even breathing, as she slept, satisfied and calm, in his arms.

Russ was still in their bedroom, breaking down the sound equipment and packing it, when Bill carried Ivy past their door to their door to her room.

“Everything okay?” Russ asked Janice, who had paused at the open door.

“I think Carole needs you,” she said wanly.

“Oh, yeah? What’s up?”

“There was some trouble with Ivy—She’ll tell you.”

Russ nodded and picked up his recorder. “I’ll go right down.”

At the door he turned to Janice with a parting shot. “By the way”—he grinned, placing the reel of tape down on the bureau—“this guy’s bananas!”

“I’m sorry, Janice, I just don’t buy it.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, I don’t buy it.”

“Okay.” Her voice was soft, bereft of passion, past caring any longer what he bought or didn’t buy.

The darkness of the room seemed darker than Janice ever remembered it. Each lay awake, their bodies separated, hands disconnected, dwelling on their own private islands of despair.

“Suggestive hypnosis? Isn’t that what Dr. Vassar called it?”

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“well, that’s what it was. It worked for her, it’s worked for him. Suggestive hypnosis.”

“You mean he’s a psychiatrist?’

“Or a hypnotist.”

Janice suddenly felt sorry for Bill. He had been through a bitter, emasculating experience and was desperately trying to regain some semblance of mastery over the situation.

“You don’t believe it’s possible?” he asked.

“That he’s a hypnotist? No.”

“All right, then, what do you believe?”

He was forcing her to think.

“All right,” she said quietly. “I do not think he’s a hypnotist. I do not think he’s a nut. I do not believe in reincarnation. I believe that Elliot Hoover is a dedicated, persuasive man with a single purpose in his life. For some reason, he wants our child. With all his sweet, poetic, religious talk, he’s got a fire burning inside him that won’t let him quit till he gets what he wants.” She heard her voice quiver and felt tears sting at her eyes. “So you’d better stop him … before he destroys us all.…”

Janice turned her head into the pillow and let it all come out. Bill was there at once, holding her, caressing her body, kissing the tears from her face.

“It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it?” he whispered huskily. “But don’t worry, he’s not about to get what he wants … I promise you that!”

His hand moved to her breast, kneading its soft and pliant goodness, finger tracing the corona of her nipple, feeling the gravel begin to ripple and rise along with his own passion. Her sobs were stifled by the depth of his lingering kisses. They made love. Afterward they both slept.

Janice awoke abruptly at three ten, having heard a sound from Ivy’s room. But when she looked in, Ivy was sleeping peacefully in the arms of her stuffed panda. Janice felt her head. It was hot. If the pattern of seven years ago persisted, her fever would grow by morning.

She tiptoed from the room and returned to bed. Neither she nor Bill slept the rest of the night.

9

Even after a long shower and a lingering shave, Bill looked haggard and spent, and he spoke in a voice that was gritty with weariness. He told Janice about the trip to Hawaii as he stood in the kitchen doorway sipping coffee.

“Goody for you,” Janice replied. The flippancy of her remark failed to camouflage fear and accusation.

“I’m planning to take you and Ivy with me.”

“Really? How will we manage that, rent a hospital plane?”

“She’s not that sick, Janice.”

“She will be. Give her time.”

“Maybe Dr. Kaplan can give her something.”

“For God’s sake, Bill,” Janice said, with a sort of wild fatigue, “you know what course these things take! By afternoon she’ll be burning with fever … and there’s not a damn thing Kaplan will be able to do about it beyond aspirin and bed rest.”

Bill drew a deep breath and said, “Well, we’ll see,” then told her about Jack Belaver’s heart attack, why he couldn’t turn down the assignment, and how it would be pure hell going without them. But Janice scarcely heard him through the noise of the water tap whipping up a from of suds on the breakfast dishes, forcing him to raise his voice in competition.

“I don’t know why you’re acting like this—”

Janice turned off the water and looked at him with quiet intentness. “You really don’t?”

His answer was to stride purposefully away from her into the living room and pick up the telephone. She heard him dial a number, then say in a voice loud enough for her to hear, “Extension 7281.” A pause. “Don Goetz, please, this is Mr. Templeton.” Another pause. “Hi, guy. Listen, Don, I pulled something in my back and gotta go to the bone man. Cover for me today, will you?… Yeah? What else is cooking?… Well, you can handle that.… Get hold of Charlie Wing if you get into trouble.… And, oh, Don, tell that girl of mine to get me three good seats on tomorrow’s flight to Hawaii.… Yes, three. Janice and Ivy are going with me.… And Don, tell her to make it the last flight of the day that gets there before midnight.” A chuckle. “Pel said Thursday, and Thursday, it’ll be.…”

Bill didn’t return to the kitchen. Janice heard him go upstairs, where he spent several minutes before presenting himself at the kitchen door, dressed for the street and carrying Russ’ tape recorder.

“You really believe she’ll be well enough to travel?” Janice said with gloomy skepticism.

“I’m not ready to predict anything, Janice. If she’s okay, your tickets are there; if not, I’ll cancel them.” His voice shifted to a more lethal register. “One thing I will predict, though, it’s the end of the line for Mr. Hoover—we won’t be bothered by him again.” He held up the tape recorder for emphasis. “If you need me, I’ll be with Harold Yates.”

He left without kissing her.

Janice puttered in the kitchen another ten minutes, then fixed Ivy a large glass of orange juice and carried it upstaits.

Ivy was sitting up in bed, alert and active, cutting figures out of an old Vogue with Janice’s sewing scissors. Except for a slight headache, she was gay, buoyant, talkative, and, as in the past, seemed to have no memory whatever of her nightmare.

“I’m making a family,” she said with a lovely smile as Janice reached out and felt her head. It seemed a bit cooler. Perhaps Bill was right after all. Perhaps they would be able to make the trip.

Thoughts of the warm, clear, multicolored waters, the soft rain showers with their incredible rainbows, the balmy, sensuous nights beneath an impossibly yellow moon gradually quieted Janice’s restless spirit.

Ivy had to tell her, “The doorbell’s ringing.”

Janice descended the steps with a racing heart. The mail had been delivered earlier. No one came to the front door without first being announced—unless it was Carole.

“Who is it?’ Janice asked through the bolted door.

“It’s Dominick, Miz Templeton,” came the muffled reply. “I got a delivery.”

It was a potted plant, a hothouse chrysanthemum with tow large white blooms. The pot, a Mexican ceramic, was encircled by a red ribbon with a small envelope bearing the florist’s name attached to it. Janice thanked Dominick and brought the plant into the kitchen. She paused a moment, gazing grimly at the gift, before opening the envelope and extracting the card.

Tiny, precise handwriting covered both sides of the stiff cardboard, forcing Janice to seek a patch of sunlight in order to read it. The message was in quotes, and said:

Take the flowers. The blossom perishes as completely as if it had never existed; but the roots and bulb hold in subjective embrace the most minute details of that flower. When the cycle, the basic law, is fulfilled, the subjective entity thrills, expands, clothes itself again with the specimens of cells and reproduces the plant in all its former perfection and beauty. Thus do flowers reincarnate and express the same elemental soul of the plant. How much more reasonable is it that the intense individualization in man should also be conserved by subjective periods in his life history?

And below it was the credit line: “Esoteric Astrology, by Alan Leo.”

A shudder of superstition and fear went through Janice as she tore the card into small pieces and threw them into the trash can. Next, with a set face and trembling hand, she picked up the plant and all its green tissue and, holding it away from her body as if it were something loathsome, carried it out to the service hall incinerator and dropped it down the chute. It was the only thing to do, she thought, sensing a sudden power and mastery over her destiny, a perfectly normal, healthy reaction to a foe’s sneak attack.

The house telephone was ringing as she reentered the apartment. She closed the service door and bolted it, before taking up the receiver.

“There’s a Mr. Hoover on the line, Miz Templeton,” came Dominick’s high-pitched voice. Janice felt a leap of panic and was about to refuse the call when she abruptly changed her mind. She had acted resolutely and correctly with the flowers; what then had she to fear from the man who had sent them? He was the enemy, and the enemy must be dealt with.

“Connect him, please,” she said as her quivering hand went to her head and brushed a wisp of hair away.

“Hello, Mrs. Templeton?” Hoover’s voice bore a distinct note of anxiety.

“Yes,” replied Janice tremulously.

“Good morning, thank you for talking to me. I just called to find out how your daughter is.”

“Ivy is much better,” answered Janice very gravely.

“But not well enough for school. You’re very wise to keep her home.”

The statement required no answer, and Janice made none.

Hoover picked up the slack with: “I wonder if you’d mind my dropping in? I think we have a great deal to talk about.”

“You’ll have to ask my husband about that.”

“Would you put him on, please?’

“He isn’t here.”

“Oh?” Hoover seemed surprised. “His office said he was home ill.”

“He’s gone to see the doctor.”

“I hope it’s not serious.” Then, shifting mood: “By the way, have you had a chance to look at the books I sent you?”

“No. I haven’t the time for books. Besides, I’m not interested in the subject.”

“Oh?” said Hoover quietly. “I thought, after what happened last night, you might want to know more about … the subject.”

“You’re wrong, Mr. Hoover.” Janice was finding a new strength in her voice. “Nothing happened last night to increase my interest in your books.”

“I don’t believe that, Mrs. Templeton. I saw the look on your face when”—he paused, seeking the right words to express his next thought—“when Audrey Rose sensed my presence nearby and made contact with me through Ivy. You had the look of a person who had just witnessed a miracle, as it surely was. Your husband was too overwrought to perceive it, but you certainly did.”

“The look you saw on my face, Mr. Hoover, was the look of a mother in despair over the health of her child. It is a look I often wear, as my daughter often experiences these attacks.”

“She does?” Hoover said, as if stung.

“Yes, Mr. Hoover, several times a month over the last nine years,” Janice lied. “What happened last night was not unique, nor was what you did to calm her. Her psychiatrist uses a similar technique to bring her out of these trances. It’s called suggestive hypnosis.”

“I didn’t know Ivy was under the care of a psychiatrist,” Hoover replied, as if berating himself for having failed to discover this fact in his research on them.

“Well, she is. And the cause of her problem has been fully defined and is well known. It relates directly to an accident she had when she was an infant—a milk bottle that was too hot burned her fingers and made a lasting impression on her mind. The ‘hot, hot, hot’ she babbles refers to the milk bottle and nothing else.” Janice could hardly believe the words were her own.

“Your psychiatrist approves of this theory?”

“Yes, she does.”

“I think she’s wrong,” said Hoover in a voice deflated of energy. “I think your daughter may be in far greater trouble.”

“You may think that, Mr. Hoover, but we do not. We believe in our doctor, have confidence in her training and experience, and trust her completely. Furthermore,” Janice continued, socking it home to him, “we believe in medical science, not in superstition.”

Hoover was silent a moment, then spoke in a tone that was quietly respectful, and even sympathetic.

“Do you have a religion, Mrs. Templeton?”

“No, I don’t believe in religion.”

“Were you always an atheist?”

“Yes, always. And I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop sending me your religious books, your flowers, your sayings, or anything else regarding your beliefs, as I have absolutely no interest in the subject, nor do I have the time to continue this conversation, so goodbye, Mr. Hoover....”

Janice quickly lowered the receiver onto its cradle without giving him a chance to say another word. She was trembling with the fevered excitement of an athlete who has just won a race, her heart fluttering, but her soul uplifted by success. A drink, she thought, would be marvelous. She had never drunk liquor this early in the morning, but this was a morning like no others.

Sipping the neat scotch, seated in the rocker, vaguely hearing the television upstairs, Janice wondered why she had lied to Elliot Hoover about the history of Ivy’s nightmares. It was fear. He was seeking a wedge into her mind. He was the enemy. One doesn’t share truths with the enemy.

Actually, the nightmares had struck only once before—beginning one night soon after Ivy’s second birthday and persisting for nearly a year.

Dr. Ellen Vassar, whom Bill promptly nicknamed Braünnhilde, had swooped down into their lives like an avenging angel, her strong, heavily accented voice and razor-sharp Freudian mind probing, questioning, analyzing, and finally succeeding in casting the demons out of Ivy’s dreams.

Janice recalled the strong, humorless face of the German psychiatrist at their last session and her parting words to them.

“Your child was expressing some special fears of separation from you, Mrs. Templeton, and she appears now to have mastered those fears, which children do as they grow older. However, do not treat her as though she were in any way special and fragile. Simply treat her as any three-year-old. You should have no further trouble.”

And now, seven years later, the demons were back, with a renewed and murderous fury.…

Janice felt a glacial chill rise within her and quickly swallowed some scotch to dispel it.

Suggestive hypnosis? That was Bill’s theory. It had worked for Dr. Vassar. Why not for Elliot Hoover? Well, why not? His explanation was too self-serving and convenient to be believed.

She was less certain of why she had lied to Hoover about her religion.

Born a Catholic, she had gone through all the rituals of that somber faith and had actually enjoyed being frightened by the nuns’ talk of death and resurrection when she was a child. The church, St. Andrew’s, was hewn out of ancient and silent stone, covered with fungus and stained with bird droppings. Entering its massive, silent mustiness was like walking into Dracula’s castle. Yet she had truly believed in all the lovely, improbable promises of heaven, the sick, terrifying threats of hell.

She had stopped believing even before high school. She went to mass each Sunday to please her parents, as a matter of rote. The Latin words and rites had been reduced to a meaningless jumble by then. In her third year of high school she left the Church. Her parents never said a word. They were pained by her decision, but they never said a word. In the back of her mind, Janice feared a terrible retribution for her sin of inconstancy. She knew that when the time for death came, she would wish to have the last blessed sacrament read over her and receive extreme unction.

Maybe this was God’s retribution, she thought—the empty glass dangling from her fingers—sent down to her in the form of Elliot Suggins Hoover.

Harold Yates lay stretched across the Barca-Lounger like a reclining Buddha. His damp features were screwed up in a curiously bemused smile as the tape came to an end.

“Boy, when you bump into ’em, you sure bump into ’em.” He chuckled softly.

“He’s gotta be a kook, right?”

“I don’t know, Bill. That’s hard for me to say. He seems to know what he’s talking about. I means, he certainly puts his case forth in a logical manner. He’s not a ranting hysteric. He’s a clam, reasonable person who seems to believe what he’s saying.”

“What the hell are you saying, Harry?” Bill’s voice was unsteady. “You telling me I’ve got to honor this guy’s demands?”

Harry held up the flat of his palm in Bill’s face.

“Whoa Bessie! Back up! I said nothing about honoring his demands. I said you can’t stop him from believing what he wants to believe in. When it comes to honoring his demands, you certainly cannot give in to him, for then you will have taken another member into your family. So regardless of what he wants, you must take steps initially to protect yourself and your family, and the law will help you in doing this.”

“Okay, give! What steps?”

“Well, initially you might adopt a less vigorous attack. You might tell him, next time he calls, that whatever he believes, thinks, or feels about your daughter sheltering the spirit or soul of his daughter, you do not subscribe to his thinking, you don’t feel that you can permit him visitation privileges, nor can you allow him to interfere with the normal course of your family life. And then you tell him, if he’s going to persist, that you’ll take legal steps to restrain him from bothering you.”

Bill thought about this, a look of uncertainty on his face.

“Is there some special way, some special legal language I should use to tell him these things?”

“If you want, I could write you a letter,” obliged Harry. “you could send it to him, registered mail, or even have it hand-delivered, return receipt requested, telling him to cease and desist from doing this objectionable act and, if he does not stop, that you are authorized to seek whatever legal remedies are available. The effect of this letter is of no real legal significance, except it is evidence to the court, should you seek injunctive relief, that Hoover was advised that what he was doing constituted a nuisance and was objectionable to you and your family.”

With a slight strain of tension in his face, Harry advanced the Barca-Lounger to the sitting position and depressed the button for his secretary. “It’s the best way to proceed, Bill; we find ways to discourage him, ways short of hauling him into court or a police station. I mean, we try all kinds of peaceful ways before we bring down the majesty and the awesome force of the law.”

The secretary, a tall woman in her early sixties, had silently entered, taken her chair, and pencil poised over memo pad, was waiting.

The “majesty and awesome force of the law.” The words had a fine, comforting ring to them, Bill thought with a tinge of emotion as he entered the elegant elevator and smiled his routine hello to Ernie.

Harry had written a strong, solid letter, couched in all those intricate, fearsome phrases that lawyers use to strike terror in the hearts of their opponents. They had sent it via special Red Arrow messenger to Hoover’s YMCA address, to be delivered into his hand, and with signed receipt to be returned to Harry’s office for safekeeping.

Having opened both locks with his two keys, Bill still had to ring, as Janice had kept the chain bolt on the door.

She seemed gayer, her mood lighter, as she took the tape recorder from his hand, placed it shakily down on the floor, then rose on her toes to kiss him, losing her balance in the process. Bill held her arms to steady her and chuckled, “Well, well, somebody’s been juicing it up.”

Janice grinned. “What the hell—”

It was just after three o’clock—a bit early in the day to be potted but, “What the hell,” Bill agreed and went to the kitchen for ice.

Janice told him the good news as he knocked ice cubes into the martini shaker. Ivy’s temperature was down to absolute normal, and Bill was an absolute genius for having predicted as much, at which point she started humming “Isle of Lovely Hula Hands” and doing sensuous things with her hips. Bill hummed along with her as they hulaed their way to the liquor cart in the living room, where Bill filled the shaker with gin and refreshed Janice’s drink. Oddly, the crisp, cold jolt of pure alcohol had a sobering effect on Bill, and a moment of seriousness ensued as he told Janice about Harry’s letter, trying to recall the specific words and phrases: “harassing, molesting, invading …” and “an ex parte order shall be issued …” and the majesty and awesome force of the law.…”

“He called this morning and sent me a plant,” Janice told him, spacing her words out with care to keep from slurring.

“Sent you what?”

“A plant—with a note saying that even flowers do it—reincarnate, that is.”

“The bastard.”

Janice’s face screwed up in a sly and wicked smile. “I dumped it in the incin … erator,” she said falteringly. “Pot, plant, flowers, poem, the works—”

Bill grinned and clinked his glass to hers. “That’s my gal.” They sipped their drinks and looked at each other approvingly. Then Bill asked, “He called, you said?”

“Yup. Right after the plant came—and went.”

“What’d he want?”

“Wanted to come up, what do you think?”

“What’d you say?”

“Told him to … bug off, mister … go peddle yer karmers up the street!”

Bill burst out laughing. “You didn’t?”

“Or words to that effect.” Janice winked with pride and nodded her head. “He got the message all right.”

Putting down his drink, Bill reached out, drew his brave, besotted wife into his arms and kissed her soundly.

The telephone rang.

Each felt the other flinch. They drew apart.

Bill took a deep breath, then picked up the receiver.

“Yes,” he said, brusquely, then relaxed and offered the phone to Janice. “It’s Carole, for you.”

Janice’s face fell; it would be a long and weary siege, but there was no way to refuse the call.

Bill picked up drink and shaker and went upstairs to visit Ivy, whom he found sitting on the floor, Indian-style, surrounded by elements of Clue. Her eyes shone with a healthy glow as she reached up, took his hand, and placed it against her cool face.

“One game; Daddy, please?” she begged, gazing up at him with her impossible-to-refuse smile. “Mom played terrible,” Ivy complained. “I beat her without even trying.”

Bill could well understand why.

By the time he had finished the last dividend in the shaker they had played two games, which they split, and were on the final lap of the third. The time was ten to five, and good odors were wafting up to them from the kitchen.

Bill wondered if Hoover had received the letter. There was a way to check that. He made two purposeful blunders, allowing Ivy to take the third game. Her victory whoops followed him into the bedroom, where he put in a call to Harold Yates.

“Letter delivered, signed receipt returned, currently stashed in my file case,” Harold informed him with a deep rumble of satisfied laughter.

“Great,” Bill said. “He hasn’t tried to call me.”

“Nor should he! He’s on notice. From this point on, if he bothers you or your family in any way, we go to court and file for injunctive relief.”

“Yeah,” Bill said, then added, “We leave for Hawaii tomorrow, Harry. It’s business, but I’m taking Janice and Ivy along.”

“Excellent. Your timing couldn’t be better. If you want my opinion, you’ve heard the last of Mr. Hoover, so relax and enjoy your trip. Call me when you get back.”

They ate as a family, around the dining room table, at six fifteen. Janice had whipped up a Mexican gala out of cans and packages: a cold gazpacho, allowed to thaw to room temperature from its frozen state, small tamale pies, and bowls of spicy chili, with hot biscuits substituting for the missing tortillas, and topped off with lime sherbet and sesame cookies. Bill and Janice drank Cold Duck with their meal; Ivy drank milk.

Ivy went to bed at eight fifteen, kissing Janice five times and Bill ten, before drowsily snuggling up to Panda for the night. Janice remained with her until she was sound asleep, then went in search of aspirin. The hours of tippling had had their effect on her, producing a dull headache and a logy feeling of depression.

Entering the bedroom, Janice found Bill half packed, moving swiftly and expeditiously between drawers and suitcase, whistling softly as he worked. Janice sank wearily into a chair and gazed at her empty suitcase, unable to cope with the chore ahead of her. Bill flashed her a smile of encouragement, went to her bureau and opened the top drawer for her, prompting her into activity. Janice smiled wanly, struggled out of the chair, and had just taken her first limping step when the house telephone rang downstairs. The ring was normal, noncontinual, routine, yet for Janice in her debilitated state it had the effect of the bells of hell heralding the demon host.

She felt Bill’s hand in hers, and saw the calm smile of assurance on his face, and heard him confidently say, “Pack,” before hurrying out of the room and down the stairs to answer it.

“It’s Mr. Hoover, Mr. Templeton.” The voice belonged to Ralph, the night desk man.

Bill was hardly surprised, yet his heart was pounding.

“All right, put him on.”

“He’s here,” corrected Ralph. “He wants to come up.”

Christ, Bill thought, the prick has nerve.

“Tell him we’re in bed, Ralph,” Bill said harshly. “No, wait! Put him on the phone … I’ll talk to him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bill could hear Ralph mumbling directions to Hoover and could visualize the thin, wiry body making its way across the lobby to the alcove containing the house phones.

“Mr. Templeton?” The voice echoed desolately in the instrument. “May I come up and see you?”

“No,” Bill said. “We’ve just gone to bed.”

—A sound from above reverberated on the ceiling … Janice must have dropped something.…

“I got your letter—the one your lawyer sent. I’d like to discuss it.…”

“There’s nothing to discuss, Mr. Hoover. The letter is self-explanatory and clearly states my position.”

—Footsteps running across the ceiling … a heavy door slam … what the hell was Janice doing?

“I don’t see why you felt the need to go to a lawyer. It’s a matter we could have discussed between ourselves.…”

“Look, Mr. Hoover, I do not wish to have any further discussions with you on this or any other matter. The letter is intended to sever our relationship once and for all. Understood?”

—Was that sobbing? Or laughter? It was hard to tell through the thick paneling and inset paintings.…

“Please, Mr. Templeton, if you’ll just let me speak to you, I think you’ll agree that you need my help as much as I need yours—”

—“Bill! For God’s sake, Bill!” It was Janice! Shouting!

“Listen, Hoover, if you don’t hang up and leave the premises of this building forthwith, I will call the police!”

Bill slammed down the receiver and dashed around the archway into the living room.

—Rat sounds … pattering across the ceiling … a chair falling … directly overhead … Ivy’s room!

Bill’s feet took the steps two at a time to the upper landing, stopping short at Ivy’s open door, almost stumbling over Janice sitting on the floor, sobbing, childlike, staring up at him with a hypnotized horror, shaking her head plaintively, choking out words: “S-she’s … she’s … looking for him.…”

“Stop it!” Bill shouted, seizing her by the arms and pulling her roughly to her feet.

“Daddydaddy daddydaddy daddydaddydaddy.…” the high-pitched clutter of words spilled out through the open door beside them.

“S-she’s looking for her … daddy!” Janice sobbed with rising hysteria.

“Janice!” Bill shouted again, louder, and shook her hard. “Stop it, Janice!”

The sharpness of his voice was therapeutic. The sobs suddenly abated, became dry heaves in a face that was pale and filled with terror and confusion.

“Call Dr. Kaplan! I’ll take care of Ivy! Go now, hurry!”

Janice faltered, glanced about like a person caught in the middle of her own nightmare. She started to move, then stopped as the squealing, beseeching “Daddydaddy daddydaddydaddy …” grew stronger and more demanding, the sound of furniture toppling and things spilling—books, dolls, games, balls—grew more pronounced.

“Go, Janice!” Bill commanded.

Janice looked at Bill with eyes that fought for composure; then, pulling herself together with obvious effort, she began to edge furtively away toward their bedroom, glancing rapidly back toward Ivy’s room, as if fearing the sudden emergence of something monstrous.

Bill waited till Janice had entered their bedroom before turning to the lilting voice and the desperate sounds of his daughter’s room.

“Daddydaddy daddydaddydaddy.…” The piercing staccato became more frenetic as the slight body jumped upon the bed and started kicking at the bedsheets which impeded forward momentum, finally forcing her to fling herself, headfirst, onto the floor to escape their tangling grip. Bill shuddered at the sound her forehead made as it connected solidly with the corner leg of the pink and white dresser. He charged forward to grasp her, to help her, to comfort her, but she deftly eluded his arms and, oblivious of injury or pain, continued her madcap roundelay uninterrupted. Her hair, newly washed and dried, was frizzed up in a bouffant halo around her face, making it seem smaller than normal and lending a note of insanity to the dainty, flushed features and bright saucer eyes roving constantly in search of “Daddydaddy daddydaddydaddy.…” Bill could see a red welt begin to appear on her forehead directly above her left eye. She had hurt herself terribly. A sudden rush of fear swept through Bill. He had to do something to stop her from disfiguring herself.

“Ivy!” he shouted, taking a step toward the child, now climbing over a chair that had toppled over. “Ivy! It’s Daddy! I’m here, Ivy!” Consciously or unconsciously, his voice had taken on the same tone and timbre as Hoover’s voice. “Ivy! I’m here, Ivy! Here, darling!”

Ivy seemed neither to see him nor to hear him, as she clambered to her feet and tripped across the room to the window and started to make grasping gestures at the glass, drawing quickly back from the cold pane whenever her flexing fingers got too close, her fierce and frightened voice reverting to its former plea of “Daddydaddydaddy mommy-mommymommy hothothothot daddydaddydaddy.…”

Bill took several steps closer to her and sank to his knees. “Over here, Ivy! It’s Daddy! This way, darling!”

Suddenly, as if his words had got through to her, she spun about and stared at him with large, questioning eyes.

“Daddydaddy, daddy, daddy.…” The panic in her voice lessened; the pitch descended; the big eyes sought, searched, probed through some invisible density for a glimmer of light.

Bill was encouraged. He was making contact. She had calmed down noticeably. She seemed to be hearing, listening. He raise two arms to her and stretched out beckoning fingers and in a strong, hopeful voice offered her the sanctuary she seemed to be seeking.

“This way, Ivy! Come! It’s Daddy! Come!”

Even as he spoke, the waxen pallor of her feverish checks increased until she looked like a corpse with living eyes.

“Ivy! THIS WAY, IVY! COME! IT’S DADDY!” His voice rose with fierce excitement. His fingers clutched at her nightgown.

At his touch, she drew back sharply as if struck and spun about toward the window, seeking escape, her voice rising in pitch and hysteria, “Daddydaddy daddydaddy daddydaddy …, ” her two hands slamming against the frosted glass in desperation and panic, then pulling away with a terrible scream of pain, “Hothothothot hothothothot HOTHOTHOTHOTHOT” over and over, holding up her hands before her tearful, anguished eyes, studying the burned and blistering flesh.

Seeing the awful redness of his child’s hands deepen and a blister begin to form on the middle finger of her left hand, Bill feared he would collapse and faint. This wasn’t possible, wasn’t reasonable. The glass was cold, frosted over.… Somehow he managed to raise himself to his feet and stood like an automaton, hovering helplessly above the weeping form of his darling child, who was rocking back and forth on her knees, softly crooning, “Daddy, daddy, daddy, hothothothot …, ” licking the scorched fingers of her hands, the high, melodious whimpers and sobs commingling with the sharp hiss of the radiator directly behind her.

The radiator!

Bill’s eyes widened with suppressed excitement as the simple, factual, logical culprit stood before him, beneath the window, its scalding cast-iron panels releasing jets of steam through a nozzle designed to relieve the awful pressure of its boiling interior.

“Oh, God—her hands!” Janice’s stark voice came from the doorway, causing Bill to jump and spin about. She stood in the doorway, backlit by the hall light, staring down at Ivy, rocking pitifully back and forth in a paroxysm of sobs and lamentations, “Daddydaddydaddy hothothothot …, ” licking and sucking her burned fingers.

“What happened?” Janice gasped, taking a step into the room.

“The radiator—she fell against it and burned her fingers.”

Janice began to sway unsteadily. Bill reached out and held her. “Have we got something in the house?”

“There’s … there’s some ointment in the kitchen cabinet.”

“Stay with her. I’ll get it.” Bill gently forced Janice to sit on the edge of the bed and started to leave. At the door he turned.

“What about Kaplan?”

“He’s coming.…” The voice was dull, lackluster.

Bill left the room, closing the door.

Expressionless, Janice could only sit and watch the moaning, weeping, rocking bundle of misery across the room, the pink tongue licking furiously at the welting fingers, the squealing voice intoning, “Daddydaddy daddydaddy.…”

Ivy! Dear God! It was Ivy! Her Ivy! Her baby! Alone, abandoned, hurting! Needing! Locked in the steel vault of her nightmare. Unable to get out. Struggling to survive—to stay alive till help came. Help? What help? What combination was there to open the door—to release her from her terrible bondage? For Ivy, there was none. No combination. None. For Ivy, none. But!

“Audrey! Audrey Rose! Come!”

The voice was soft, barely a whisper. Gentle. Humble. Begging.

“… daddydaddy daddydaddy daddyhothothothot.…”

“Audrey Rose! I’m here, Audrey!”

Inviting. Entreating. Insisting.

“… hothothothot daddydaddy daddydaddy.…”

“AUDREY ROSE! COME!”

Strident. Compelling. Commanding.

“… daddydaddydaddy hothothothot daddydaddy.…”

But the door remained shut.

“I’ll look in tomorrow; meanwhile, keep using the cold compresses to reduce the fever and keep her hands outside the covers. Those burns are nasty, and even the light pressure of a blanket might irritate them. Let her stay in your bed where you can keep an eye on her. The Nembutal suppository should make her sleep through the rest of the night. By the way, Bill, if I were you, I’d get in touch with that psychiatric clinic first thing in the morning. They helped her once, I recall.”

Lying there, inert, folded into the trembling form of her child, Janice heard the doctor’s words.

The quarter moon forced a wan path through the Venetian blinds onto the flushed and quivering face lying on the pillow next to her. Caught in the twilight of her own sedated brain, Janice tried to penetrate beyond the flesh life of the lovely face, beyond the glazed, half-open eyes, the two windows, the pair of light and air holes, that must surely lead into the dungeon where the restless soul of Audrey Rose, bound as with a seven-fold chain, lay captive and alert.

10

“Dead?” It was not so much a question as a shocked reiteration.

“Yes, I’m sorry.” The voice coming through the telephone belonged to Dr. Benjamin Schanzer, director of the Park East Psychiatric Clinic—a name totally unfamiliar to Bill. “Dr. Vassar passed away more than two years ago.”

“Oh.…” Bill paused, redirected his thoughts. “My daughter was a patient of Dr. Vassar’s … about seven years ago.”

“I see.”

Bill found himself groping. “She had a problem and … Dr. Vassar helped her. The problem seems to have returned.”

“Let me see … that would be in 1967 … a bit before my time, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, I believe a doctor … Wyman was director of the clinic then.”

“Dr. Wyman is still a practicing member of the clinic. Why don’t I put you through to his office?”

“Thank you.”

“Not at all.”

Bill was seated in his own office. It was just after nine o’clock, and the floor was still deserted. Abby wouldn’t arrive until nine fifteen. Don usually dragged himself in around ten. Bill was the early bird this morning and with reason. There was a lot to do and fewer than five hours in which to do it; a lot of loose ends to tie up before takeoff time. That, plus another reason, one that he hated thinking about. For the first time in their marriage he had felt the overwhelming need to escape this morning. Immature, irrational, inconsiderate, cruel—the fact remained that he had to get away.

Ivy’s tears had awakened him; normal tears, a natural reaction to the pain in her hands. As usual, she remembered nothing of the nightmare and was willing to accept Bill’s explanation of the accident with only one question.

“If I burned them on the radiator, going to the bathroom, how come I didn’t wake up?”

“Because we put ointment on quickly, and burns only hurt later on.”

“Oh, yes,” she remembered. “Like when I got sunburned on the beach last summer.” Though terribly hurt and feverish, she still managed to bring a smile to her lips, a smile of acceptance, of a willingness to start the day off on a positive, hopeful note.

Janice, however, awakened into a vacuum.

Mute, unresponsive, unapproachable, she went through her morning chores as if she were a wind-up toy. Neither Ivy’s complaints nor her gentle probings seemed to get through to Janice.

“Sorry to have kept you so long.” Dr. Schanzer’s voice came back on the line. “It seems Dr. Wyman won’t be coming in for the rest of the week. But Dr. Perez, who was interning here at the time, may have some memory of the case.”

“Well, may I speak to Dr. Perez?”

“Hold on, please.”

The first hint of apathy showed when he told Janice of his decision to scrub the trip to Hawaii—that he’d sooner quit than go without them. Her response was to make none. Then, when he asked if her silence signified that she wished him to go, she still said nothing, simply continued squeezing oranges. Finally, and with some heat, he asked her what the hell it was she wanted him to do? To which she replied, “I think you should go.” The words were fine, but the spirit behind them left much to be desired. When he suggested they keep her and Ivy’s tickets in abeyance, to be used the moment Ivy’s temperature eased off, she said, “Okay.” Again, the content of the reply was acceptable, but not the force and feeling behind it. When he asked her if she was afraid to be left alone, afraid that Hoover might annoy her or that Ivy might have a relapse, she said in the same bland, listless tone, “Why should I be afraid? The majesty of the law will protect me against Hoover, and Dr. Kaplan’s suppositories will help me with Ivy.”

It was at this point that he felt the need for some fresh air. He suggested they both meet with Dr. Vassar later in the morning and make immediate arrangements to get Ivy back into therapy, to which Janice replied, “If you wish.” And that was it. The sum and substance of their morning dialogue—the totality of their exchange,

“Hello, this is Dr. Perez speaking; to whom do I speak?” The voice was thin; the accent South American.

“My name is William Templeton, Dr. Perez. Our daughter, Ivy, was a patient of Dr. Vassar’s some years ago.…”

“Dr. Vassar died two years ago.…”

“Yes, I know, Doctor, but there are some questions I would like to ask you since I understand you were at the clinic during the time my daughter was being treated.”

“Please ask.…”

“First, I’d like to know, do you still have Dr. Vassar’s records pertaining to my daughter’s case?”

Dr. Perez answered without hesitation, seemingly without thinking.

“Yes, we are a group practice at Park East, and all physicians’ case records are kept in a master file room. That would include Dr. Vassar’s case records as well.”

“Might I have access to those records?”

“Yes, you must sign a request for them, and we will be happy to turn them over to any other physician.”

“That’s another thing I want to discuss Dr. Perez. My daughter’s problem has recurred, and we have no other physician at this time. Would it be possible for you to take on this case?”

“Yes, it is possible. One moment, please.” There was a short pause during which Bill heard Perez breathing. “Mr. Templeton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I have here a space in my book on December 14, at one o’clock.…”

“No, Dr. Perez, perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. My daughter is quite ill; she requires attention immediately.…”

“Then it would be impossible for me to take your daughter’s, case. Perhaps another doctor in the clinic might do it.”

“Fine, fine. My wife and I would like to come to the clinic this morning and make some kind of arrangement. Whom do we see?”

“Dr. Schanzer would be the person to see.”

Bill then called Janice and told her that Dr. Vassar had died, and she asked, “What from?”

“I don’t know,” Bill said peevishly. “I didn’t think to ask. What the hell’s the difference?”

“None, I suppose,” was her reply. The apathy persisted, deep-grained and enduring.

“I made an appointment to see the head of the clinic at ten thirty. Do you think Carole would be willing to stay with Ivy?”

“I’ll ask,” she said.

“We can have lunch afterward. I don’t have to check in at Kennedy till two fifteen.”

“Fine.”

The anteroom of the Park East Psychiatric Clinic had undergone a few minor alterations but essentially corroborated the image Bill had held in his memory for seven years. The wall of undraped windows exposed the same lovely knoll of park, although the trees then were as yet untouched by snow. The character of the paintings on the opposite wall had, however, made the transition from European Impressionism to American Modern, relying heavily on Nolan and Robert Indiana.

Five people were seated in the anteroom when Bill arrived at ten forty-five. Janice was not among them. He gave his name to the receptionist and was told to be seated. At eleven o’clock Janice had still not arrived. Bill was considering calling home when a young, pretty girl appeared at the far end of the room and addressed herself to the entire group.

“Mr. Templeton?”

Bill followed her down a corridor to a long, windowless room containing a large conference table with more than a dozen chairs ranged around it. A file folder had been placed on the table.

The girl smiled at him and said, “Dr. Schanzer’s schedule is quite tight this morning. He hopes to be able to pop in from time to time to talk with you.”

When the girl left the room, Bill took off his outer coat and placed it over the back of a chair. He loosened his tie somewhat, as the room was oppressively warm. His eyes gravitated to the legal-size manila folder with the word “Templeton” boldly printed in blank ink on the tab. It seemed thinnish to Bill, considering the time Dr. Vassar had spent with them: those multiple in-depth family and individual sessions, held either in her office or at the apartment, some lasting as long as five hours, depending on the need and circumstances.

Bill stared at the folder and wondered what Dr. Vassar had discovered about them: what secrets that sharp, intuitive brain had managed to ferret out; what conclusions she had come to concerning Ivy’s strange and terrible illness that she hadn’t shared with them. He had only to open the folder and look.

His fingers extended to the manila cover and stopped. The German woman’s wide, formal face and deep, penetrating eyes seemed to float above it.

Bill slowly drew back the cover.

The top sheet was a scrap of yellow, lined paper with strong handwritten notations. The writing had a foreign character about it; some of the letters such as the S’s and L’s were difficult to make out. She even wrote with an accent, Bill thought, as he slowly picked out the words.

Differentiation of disturbances of consciousness of epileptic origin from those of psychiatric origin is frequently very difficult—there is no prior history of epilepsy in this case—no temporal lobe disturbances indicated through physical examinations….

And below it, the name “Cullinan, 555-7751.”

Cullinan had been the doctor who had run electroen-cephalographic tests on Ivy just prior to her treatment at the clinic.

The next page was written on the back of a letter, a circular listing psychiatric pamphlets for sale. It seemed that Dr. Vassar made her notes on anything that came to hand.

“Hysterical phenomenology—???” was the question written across the top. And then a longer paragraph below:

Patient shows symptoms of somnambulistic state. Parents describe movements as being in response to the manifest content of the dream. The meaning may be an escape from the temptations of the bed; however, this would be unusual in the case of a child not yet three. Yet possible—since parents report child possesses ability to portray images and carry out complex actions during dream state.…

And below it: “Will arrange to be present during next seizure.”

Bill remembered the call he made to Dr. Vassar that night seven years before. It was two in the morning, and he wondered if he should disturb her, but she answered the phone on the first ring and said in a clear alert voice, “I will come.” She arrived soon after and spent the entire night with Ivy, alone, behind a closed door. There were many such nights that followed in the next year.

Bill quickly skipped over two scraps of paper, each containing the brief notations “See Kretschmer” and “See Janet,” and came to a small, thin notebook with a pebbled cover of imitation leather. It was a diary, an eyewitness account of her sessions with Ivy during the seizures, written in a fast, shaky hand, as though she had made the notations as the actions were happening. The first entry was dated 1/18/67, and read:

Purposive action … trying to get out … touching things and pulling back as though they were hot … complicated motor actions … strange … bizarre … most uncommon at this early age … at times during spell she seems to be shrinking back from things not visible to anyone else … tries to climb over the back of a chair—and succeeds! Appears well coordinated and shows a degree of muscular coordination and skill of an older child. (Test subject’s ability to climb over chair during wakened state.) She tries to reach the window-pane, then pulls her hand back whenever she is about to touch it … then reaches for it again, in continuous dramatic posturing episodes … accompanied by weeping, fretting, trembling … babbling … “Hothothotdaddydaddy—” Seizure continued until five twenty at which time subject succumbed to exhaustion and fell into feverish sleep. Body temperature: 103.6 degrees.

Bill turned to the next entry, date 1/25/67.

At first, subject seemed to be trying to get away from something … possible traumatic episode relating to incident of isolation … locked rooms? … but now movements seem to indicate less escape behavior, less trying to get away from something than trying to go toward something.… her motions grope toward things, not away from them.… approach behavior which is suddenly stopped by.… imagined thermal barrier … painful … hot … “Hothothothotdaddydaddydaddy.” babble may relate to traumatic event experienced in the past, yet early age seems to negate this possibility … possible event relating to prenatal trauma? Difficult birth? Discuss with obstetrician. Possible event relating to very early age … stove? … fire? … possibly hot sun? … beach? … somewhere in summer where surfaces were very hot? metal frame of perambulator? … accidentally touched? … doorknob in direct sunlight might have been too hot … (discuss with parents).…

The heat in the room was becoming unbearable. Bill stood up and removed his jacket. His shirt was stained with perspiration. He folded his dark suit jacket over the back of the adjoining chair and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Then he turned the page of the diary to the next entry.

2/20/67 … results of chair-climbing test during wakened state disclosed subject unable to climb over chair successfully without falling … but within dream state is able to climb over chair and appears to show much greater creative muscular skill and coordination than one would expect in a child of two and a half … particularly striking: although the child has the typical speech pattern of a two-and-a-half-year-old, with the somnambulistic state, she appears to be talking with the enunciation and speech patterns of a much older child, perhaps five or six years of age … “Hothothotdaddydaddydaddy …” display clear, precise enunciative dexterity even during rapid, staccato bursts.… (Test subject’s speech competence during wakened state.)

The next page contained a brief note:

Dr. Osborne, attending obstetrician, disclaims any untoward or unusual event during fetal development or birth of subject. Perfectly normal in all respects. Air conditioning in nursery normal—no record of malfunction—no accident with heat—hot glass—surgical instrument.

Bill smiled as he recalled the joyous August morning of Ivy’s birth. Janice had opted for the Read Method, without fear and without drugs. She had remained fully alert as Ivy slipped into the world at exactly 8:27.03, clocked in by Bill’s stopwatch. She was born with her eyes open and seemed fully aware of her world and the people in it. Even unwashed, her awesome beauty was clearly evident. There had been no problem whatever.

Bill sighed and turned the page.

4/3/67 … results of speech-dexterity tests during wakened state disclosed subject unable to enunciate staccato word pattern with same degree of skill as within dream state … subject tends to slur words, loses “t” sound altogether in rapid word stream, “Hothothothot …” and has difficulty in coping with the “d” and “m” sounds in words “daddy” and “mommy” word streams.…

4/21/67 … the window seems to be her main goal—an unattainable goal, the glass pane presenting a barrier of prodigious heat … the fires of hell? … attempts to approach glass unsuccessful as heat too intense … stumbles back … falls … weeps … corneal and pupillary and deep tendon reflexes are present … patient does not bite her tongue or urinate … she becomes red in the face rather than blue or white … bodily temperature increases evident whenever approach behavior takes her to window.…

Bill rubbed his eyes a moment. Drops of sweat had flowed into them from his forehead. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. He then looked at his watch. It was only ten past eleven. He put it to his ear to see if it hadn’t stopped. He felt certain he had been in the room longer than ten minutes. But the watch was ticking normally. He thought about calling Janice. There was a phone on a table at the end of the room. He decided to give her another ten minutes. He wondered if Hoover had tried to call the house. His eyes traveled down to the notebook, spread open before him, beckoning. He could think of no other matters to delay his turning the page.

In summary, what we have here is a child who, at age two and a half, appears to have developed, much earlier than one usually sees it, a somnambulistic form of hysteria … she appears to be reenacting some earlier traumatic experience in which heat or fire is the motivating force … there are very peculiar circumstances which have come up during treatment—namely, that within somnambulistic state, both language and motor activity show a degree of maturity greater than what the child shows normally, which is a most striking and unusual thing.…

The next page read:

Treatment: somnambulism is a manifestation of hysteria … hypnotherapy indicated, yet not possible because of early age of child … suggestive therapy applied with some positive results … strong authoritative suggestions during dream state—strong insistence and pressure to give up the symptom—found some response indicating child is a very susceptible somnambulist … hence, using the suggestibility of the child in order to command the traumatic experiences to go away, positive results were achieved over a period of forty-one sessions of varying durations.…

The next page of the notebook was blank. Bill riffled through the rest of the pages, expecting to find nothing more and was surprised to see another entry on the last page.

We are dealing here with something of which limited knowledge and information preclude full diagnostic evaluation. Jung’s concept of archetypes … possible relation to behavior here … possibly child is reenacting an experience which is not her own, but is in her mind, without having happened to her lends some credence to possible Jungian interpretation … may be event not expressing child’s own experience, but something from the collective unconscious??? …

Bill turned over the black-pebbled cover and closed the notebook. The perspiration on his neck had turned to an icy chill. He sat still, emptying his mind of all thought, for thought at this moment was an enemy, challenging reason, encouraging doubt. He could almost see the German woman’s face grinning at him.

The door pushed inward. Dr. Schanzer’s secretary held it open for Janice.

“Your wife is here, Mr. Templeton,” the secretary said cheerfully, and quickly left.

“Come join the fun,” he said, pulling out the chair next to his. Janice looked very pretty, he thought: cool, fresh, and wearing an outfit he didn’t remember seeing before. She had obviously taken pains to please him, which was a good omen.

“Better take off your jacket,” he warned. “This place is a steam bath.”

“I’m okay,” she said, sitting down beside him.

“How’s Ivy?”

“Much better. Her temperature is down to one hundred. Dr. Kaplan stopped by and changed her bandages. He doesn’t think the burns will leave a scar.”

“Thank God,” Bill said strongly, then asked, “Carole with her?”

Janice nodded. “They were watching Let’s Make a Deal when I left.”

“Anyone call this morning?”

“No,” Janice said, knowing to whom he referred.

Bill sat down and tossed her the folder. “Dig in,” he said.

“Anything interesting?” Janice opened the folder and started reading the first scrap of yellow paper.

“A lot we already know; a lot I don’t understand.”

Bill rose, put on his jacket, and excused himself to get a drink of water. Walking down the long corridor, looking for a water fountain, he almost collided with a young, swarthy man emerging from a brightly lit office on the right and wondered if this might be Dr. Perez. He found a men’s room hidden inside a small alcove and went in. The water felt cold and bracing against his face as he bent his head down into his cupped hands and even drank some of it. He gave Janice enough time to finish reading before returning to the conference room.

Dr. Schanzer was with Janice when he arrived, the folder clutched in his hand possessively. Janice looked decidedly paler than when he had left her.

“Forgive me for keeping you waiting, Mr. Templeton.” Dr. Schanzer’s dark-brown eyes twinkled at him. He was a stocky white-haired man with powerful arms and chest. “I was telling Mrs. Templeton here that Dr. Noonis, one of our associates, might find a slot for your daughter later this week. He has five thirty on Friday afternoon open; if that’s convenient, we could set up an appointment for a family interview.”

“I don’t know,” Bill hedged. “We were planning a trip.…”

“My daughter and I will be here, Doctor,” Janice interposed. “Friday will be fine.” The statement was uttered in the same dull monotone he had heard that morning: impassive, indifferent, apathetic.

“Fine,” Dr. Schanzer intoned. “Then I’ll make the appointment for you.” He rose to leave.

“Doctor—” Bill’s voice stopped him. “Can you tell me what archetypes are?”

Bill noticed Janice’s quick, grave look through the corner of his eyes. The doctor shut the door and formed a small smile on his face. He seemed almost amused by the question.

“Jungian archetypes. The word is a contrivance of Dr. Jung’s. It refers to what he called the collective unconscious. In his work with schizophrenics, he was struck by the frequent appearance of images which were remarkably similar in patients of widely varied backgrounds. The evidence suggested to him that the mind of man as well as his body bears traces of his racial past, that his longings, expectations, and terrors are rooted in the prehistory over and above his experiences as an individual.”

“Do people in your profession subscribe to this theory?”

Dr. Schanzer chuckled. “Let me say, Mr. Templeton, that people in my profession attempt to keep an open mind at all times. Dr. Jung was a brilliant man, but something of a maverick—a lot of his theories are pretty explosive, yet there is merit in a great many of them.”

“Do you believe that people can remember things that they didn’t personally live through?”

The smile on Dr. Schanzer’s face lessened somewhat.

“I, for one, do not believe in a racial unconscious, Mr. Templeton, or in memories inherited from the collective prehistory of an individual’s background.”

“Thank you,” Bill said.

“Ten days without the two of you—it’s gonna be pure hell, you know that.”

They were back in Rattazzi’s, sitting, Janice thought, at the very same table. It was a few minutes before one o’clock, and the room was filled with people and noise. Everyone seemed to be shouting, Bill included.

“I mean,” he continued, a touch too sorrowfully, “you don’t even leave the hope that you might join me in a day or so.”

His face was flushed; his eyes were beginning to glaze. The straight gin was having a decided effect on him. Janice had resolved to stay sober. Since she would be alone now with Ivy and an uncertain future lay before them, a clear head was essential.

“I don’t believe there is a hope that we can,” Janice answered quietly. “Considering what’s been happening to us lately, do you?”

“I think you’re taking this whole business too seriously.”

Janice looked at him, unbelieving.

“What amazes me is that you don’t.”

“Okay, I left myself wide open for that one. Let me rephrase. The health and happiness of my family are of prime concern to me. Your depression, Ivy’s problem, I take very seriously. I am trying to do something about them.” His sentences were spaced out and slightly tipsy. “To you, I can only offer love, understanding, and extreme patience. To Ivy, I offer the additional benefit of expert medical help, which she will receive. The business I do not take seriously is all the business with Hoover and archetypes, and all the crazy mumbo jumbo that’s been going on in our lives, lately.…”

“For God’s sake, Bill—” Janice exploded. “You honestly think that what’s been happening to Ivy is nothing more than a simple illness like … like the flu? And what you read in Dr. Vassar’s book—you don’t see a connection to Hoover—you consider her opinions and conclusions all a pack of mumbo jumbo?”

The waiter brought Bill’s martini.

“Do it again,” he mumbled and, picking up the fresh drink, quaffed half of it in one gulp. He focused bleary eyes across at Janice and continued in a low, husky voice.

“I don’t think that a D-r in front of a person’s name necessarily makes them infallible. You know, there are a lot of dumb doctors in the world—”

“Oh, wow! You really believe that?”

“Yeah. And since you bring it up, let me tell you a little more about what I really believe. I’m a firm believer in things as they are. Not what they seem to be, but what they are. Dig? I may not like some of those things, but I know damn well I can’t change them, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna try.…” He raised the glass and finished the drink down to the olive. “I believe that up is up and down is down. I believe that if I stood on this table and dived off headfirst, I’d probably break my neck. There’d be no guardian angel around to cushion my fall. I’d be taken either to a hospital or to the morgue. If I died, I would either be cremated or planted in the ground, and it would be the end of me. No harps, no wings, no pitchforks, no nothin’. Finis!” He paused to allow the message to sink in. “I do not believe that I would ever find myself floating around some maternity ward, waiting to sneak into the body of some unsuspecting infant as he came popping out. I’m sure he would resent it, and I know I would be horrified.…”

Janice suddenly found herself laughing, in spite of herself.

“No, don’t laugh!” he cautioned, raising his voice. “I’m not kidding, and I’m not finished!”

The laughter departed Janice’s face as she saw the look of intense sincerity in his red-rimmed eyes.

“I believe that hot is hot and cold is cold!” He picked up a book of matches from the table and struck one. “I believe that if I hold my finger to this flame, it will burn and cause a blister!” His finger approached the flame and remained there.

“Bill, don’t!” Janice put out her hand to stop him.

Bill blew out the match and held his reddening finger up to her.

“See it getting red,” he said with absolute seriousness. “It will form a blister—as it should!”

He picked up the glass of ice water with his other hand.

“Now, if I place my finger against this frosted glass of ice, it will cool it, for ice does not burn! And no power on earth can make this ice burn my finger!” The words were spilling out of him, compulsively, and he was shouting, attracting the stares and side glances of people around them.

“Ice doesn’t burn! No matter how long I hold my finger to the glass, it will not burn or form a blister!”

It slowly came to Janice that what she was hearing was not a man’s drunken ramblings, but the anguished cry of a man whose sense of reality had been sorely tested and who was fighting to hold onto the last shred of sense and reason left to him.

“Fire burns! Ice cools!” he continued, loudly. “Now if that isn’t a law of Copernicus or Galileo, let’s just call it the law of fucking Templeton! Accepted? Fire burns! Ice cools! And never the twain shall produce the same effect! Accepted?”

The room had quieted noticeably. People were looking directly at them. Tommy appeared with Bill’s drink and genially asked if they cared to order.

“Sure,” Bill said, “what the hell—”

But the force and energy were gone from his voice. The earthquake had subsided. He ordered for them both, mechanically, Janice nodding in agreement to his first suggestion.

Watching Bill raise the drink unsteadily to his lips, seeking to allay his turmoil and confusion in its numbing effect, a gust of pity and dread swept through Janice. The frosted glass had been the giveaway. Ice is cold. Fire burns. The cold and frosted window had burned Ivy’s hands, not the radiator. He had seen, with his own eyes, the groping, seeking hands press against the pane of frosted glass, then pull away, reddened and scorched. “Fire burns! Ice cools!” The hot, fiery radiator had been the logical culprit, not the cold, Jack Frosted pane of glass directly above it. To a mind as well ordered and rooted in reality as his, this could be the only possible, the only acceptable explanation.

Oh, Bill, Bill! Janice’s heart reached out to him. Sweet, confused, beset darling! Her eyes, moist with tears, gazed across the table at the dear face, lowered over the plate of food, scooping forkfuls into his mouth, chewing, tasting, or perhaps not tasting.

Toying aimlessly with her own food, Janice felt a further pang of hopelessness. While she had resented Bill’s purposive obtuseness, his unwillingness to buy all the “mumbo jumbo,” she had found a certain comfort in it, too. Whatever the facts were, his rigid, doubting-Thomas attitude had lent a certain balance to their lives, had brought a note of sanity to their world suddenly gone mad. It would be missing now, this leveling force, this good, solid, healthy skepticism. From now on, there would be two of them to corroborate insanity, to galvanize the atmosphere of fear and tension in their home.

Outside on the street, Bill and Janice waited for a cab. The day had turned gray again, and the air had a smell of rain in it. Bill waved his arm toward cabs as they proceeded sluggishly down the street, but the gesture was useless; the cabs were either filled or unwilling to stop. Still, he continued to wave at them, while Janice insisted that she really preferred to walk home. The food had sobered Bill somewhat, and his face held a slightly guilty, sheepish expression as he bent down to her and kissed her lips. Holding her tightly, he softly apologized for his behavior and told her that he would phone her at nine in the morning, her time. Tears stung at Janice’s eyes as she clung to him, loving him, wanting to comfort him, wanting to tell him that she knew of his terrors and confusions, and not knowing quite how to say it.

He gave her a slip of paper with his itinerary typed on it: the times of arrival in LA and Honolulu, the name of the hotel where he was registered, and several phone numbers at which he could be reached. It also contained Harold Yates’ office and home phone numbers in the event she might need him. He begged her to call him in Honolulu at any time and for any reason.

“And if things work out,” he added, “get in touch with my secretary, and she’ll have your tickets validated in less than an hour.”

Janice nodded and told him to put a Band-Aid on his finger, which had formed a small blister. They kissed again and whispered, “I love you,” to each other, standing in front of Rattazzi’s; then Bill left her and started to walk toward Madison Avenue. The tears in her eyes blurred her vision as she stood watching his tall form mingle and finally get lost in the crowd.

A sharp gust of wind swept up the narrow side street, chilling Janice to the bone. She drew her coat collar tightly around her throat and walked briskly toward Fifth Avenue. Her thoughts remained with Bill, gently reiterating the image of his kind and generous face, smitten now by shock and bewilderment, challenging the evidence of his eyes, defending his reason, struggling to survive.

The heavy-laden clouds were reluctant to commit themselves as Janice walked up Fifth to the corner of Fifty-first Street and waited with an army of people for the light to change.

Looming above her, across the street, stood St. Patrick’s Cathedral—its Gothic lines plunging upward, springing like a fountain at the leaden clouds. The weird transplant from the Middle Ages, nestled incongruously in the midst of Manhattan’s steel, glass, and pollution, seemed to Janice less an anachronism than a monstrous joke that the Catholic Church had played on the city.

Walking past its complex gray stonework and carved metal portals—several of which were open and draped with purple velvet bunting—Janice had the sensation of walking past a colossal genie, squatting imperiously with his fly open, inviting the world to enter and partake of his magic and miracles.

Groups of tourists were entering the church through the open doors at the southern end; at the same time other tourists were emerging from the doors at the northern end, maintaining a constant equilibrium within the church. Janice walked up the steps and merged with the stream of people going through the doors at the southern end.

Entering the nave, she sensed a stillness that absorbed the hollow sounds of shuffling, pushing, whispering humanity as it sluggishly circled around the cavernous hall. Just inside the doorway was a marble font of holy water, the basin stained with greenish rings of sediment denoting various water levels throughout the years of its use. The couple in front of Janice, an elderly man and woman, dipped their fingers into the water and crossed themselves. Janice walked by it without partaking of its solace.

There in the semidarkness Janice was moved counter-clockwise down the side aisle along with a group of tourists craning their necks toward the various points of interest. To her left was the central apse of the cathedral, ringed by lines of stained glass windows caught in the upward drive of buttressed walls that seemed to rise to the very heavens. The main altar and sanctuary dominated the center of the cathedral, with long rows of pews falling back from it. Except for several prayerful people occupying the pews, there was no service in progress at this hour.

To the right of the side aisle were a series of lesser chapels, each devoted to a particular saint. In the chapel of St. Joseph was an open coffin, draped in purple, with the body of some church dignitary lying in state and solitude. Janice saw the tip of the corpse’s nose peeking out of the coffin and was momentarily mesmerized. The people behind her gently, insistently pushed her onward.

Soon Janice found herself alongside another small chapel. A few candles burned at the altar, shedding a gloomy light on the carved inscription in the marble balustrade: Saint Andrew. Janice’s face grew warm, her eyes and mouth hot. She stepped out of the path of those moving along behind her and took a step into the chapel.

At first, in the dim light, she thought she was alone. But when her eyes adjusted, she realized that a man was standing in a far corner, his head bowed in meditation.

Janice stepped up to the altar. She felt her hands shaking as they reached out to the cold marble railing. She wondered what it would be like, kneeling again, after so many years. Slowly, she descended to the platform, feeling a shock of pain as her knees pressed into the hard surface. A wave of guilt swept over her for feeling pain. It was a sign of her apostasy.

St. Andrew looked down at her with forgiveness, but Janice wasn’t deceived. The face was made of plaster; the forgiving eyes were formed by an artist’s hands. God’s face, she was certain, would not be so forbearing and understanding. Thinking of God brought the face of Father Breslin to her mind. He had been the monsignor of St. Andrew’s parochial school, which she attended as a child. His stern, wrinkled, flushed face had been the terror of the classrooms. His commanding voice, booming down a hallway after some hapless child, was like a preview of God’s wrath. Janice shivered in remembrance and turned her attention back to the face of St. Andrew. She recalled how the nuns’ expressions would soften when they spoke of him, telling the students of his humility and modesty and lack of pretensions as he roamed across the lands preaching the Gospel of Jesus. And how, when he was sentenced to death in Achaea, he insisted on being crucified on an X-shaped cross so as not to duplicate the passion and death of Our Blessed Saviour. How easily they spoke of death, the sisters, and how easily the children had accepted it.

She reached out for a taper, but her hand shook so, she could hardly gain a light from a burning candle. When she did manage to light the taper, she found it impossible to bring it to the wick of the new candle. It remained in her hand, trembling before her eyes transfixed by the bright and leaping flame.

Ice cools; fire burns, she thought, as she watched the sputtering fire travel down the length of the taper toward her waiting fingers. It would cause a blister to form. And well it should. For fire burns.

A hand covered her own—strong, yet gentle. A voice said, lightly and with humor, “You certainly have an ardent devotion to St. Andrew.”

The trembling of the flame was stilled as the hand—a man’s hand, the wrist encircled by a white French cuff held together with black button links—swiftly and surely guided the flaming taper to a new candle and lit it. A breath blew out the taper.

Janice felt herself trembling anew as the hand disengaged itself from hers. Staring at the floor and the black wing-tipped shoes, glowing under ages of wax, her eyes moved up the black worsted trousers shining at the knees, to the breviary held under the same arm as the straw hat and up to the face. Like Father Breslin’s, it was wrinkled and flushed, but not stern, and the voice was not booming or frightening.

“St. Andrew is my namesake.” He smiled. “I never visit New York without stopping in and having a chat with him.”

Janice could only stare at the elderly priest, into the helpful face that seemed to be offering. He had taken her hand. Suddenly, he had taken her hand. It had been as if God’s hand had closed over hers. A flood of faith rose up in her. Was this man sent to her? The sisters had always said that God never forgot His own.… Was it possible? It was no less possible than all the other mysteries that surrounded her life in recent weeks.

Janice felt the wet of tears on her face and saw a disturbed look enter the priest’s eyes.

Smiling, she stammered, “I went to St. Andrew’s Church when I was a child.”

“And where was that?”

“Portland.”

“You’re a long way from Portland.” He noticed that her hands were still trembling uncontrollably, and Janice saw that he noticed.

“Is there any way of getting back?” he asked gently.

The next thing she knew, she was weeping like a child into her hands. The priest seemed disquieted and looked around nervously to see if they were being observed. He removed his neatly ironed handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her, but Janice quickly took her own from her purse and tried to smile.

“I’m sorry, Father,” she apologized.

The old priest paused as he considered, then asked, “May I be of service to you?”

Janice attempted to rise, but her knees were frozen. The priest saw her dilemma and took her arm. Needle sharp pricks of pain coursed through her legs as she tried to stand on them, and she swayed uncertainly. The priest continued to support her and slowly guided her toward a bench in the corner of the chapel.

“Shall we sit down?”

Janice allowed herself to be seated, grateful for the positive act of assistance he was offering, yet knowing that any possible conversation with the priest was unthinkable.

“Father, I don’t know if I have any right to be asking for help. I’ve been away from the Church for a long time, and I’m not a practicing Catholic—I”—her mind sought the correct words—“I haven’t been to the sacraments for many years.…”

“How long?”

“Fifteen … sixteen years.…”

The priest was pained. “And why are you here now?”

“I’m in trouble.”

His eyes softened. “Isn’t that the way of it? Trouble always brings us to our knees.”

“I don’t know how to tell you. I don’t even know how to say these things to myself, Father.” She thought of Hoover and the difficulty he had in saying them. “It seems so ludicrous when you put it into words.…” She paused and shook her head. “But then … I see what it’s doing to us … my daughter, my husband … turning us around in all kinds of circles.…” Her eyes sought the priest’s eyes. “Father, may I ask you?”

“What is it?” There was a strained, fearful note in the old man’s voice.

“I know our faith doesn’t believe … in reincarnation … and yet things have happened that cause me to wonder if it may not be so.”

The priest measured her closely. It was the last thing he had expected to hear.

“What things?”

“My daughter …” Janice started, then stopped, and re-plotted the direction of her thoughts. “A man”—she began again—“has come into our lives. He … he has told us—my husband and me—that our daughter is … the reincarnation of his daughter who has been dead for many years.”

The old man shut his eyes and lowered his head, as in prayer. After a moment, he softly asked, “Is your husband a Catholic?”

“No, Father.”

“Your daughter, was she baptized?”

“No, Father.”

“How old is she?”

“Just over ten.”

He looked up at her through eyes that were incredulous—that had seen so much, yet apparently knew so little, and attempted to penetrate the mask of tears, seeking insight into the mind and soul of the strange, tormented woman before him.

“And you believe what this man has told you to be true?”

“Things … strange things have happened that convince me that it may be true, Father.”

Again, the priest shut his eyes and placed his hand over them, feeling bewildered, under pressure to give earnest attention to a matter that struck him as entirely absurd.

“You must know the texts. The Gospels do not substantiate such a belief. We don’t hold with such beliefs. We believe in endings, and beginnings, and middles. A life doesn’t travel around in circles. There’s a movement, there’s a drive to our life, there are goals … we’re going somewhere!”

Janice wept. “I know, Father, and yet this has come into our lives … and I’m troubled.…”

The priest looked at her suddenly with eyes that had hardened.

“You’re so troubled,” he said sternly. “Do you think you would be in this trouble if you had held onto what you were given? To what God gave you? Christ promised from the very beginning that His spirit would be with the Church. And the Church has reacted wisely for two thousand years—the only human institution to have withstood time and spaces and revolutions—and has given us something solid to hold onto.”

“I’m all mixed up, Father.”

“Because you’ve been listening to the world. You’re floating here, you’re floating there, you must stop listening to all these alien forces; you’ve got to get hold of yourself, get back to basics, get back to what God has given you … you have to get back to home.” The priest’s face had reddened, and his hands were shaking. “You must get meaning into your life, a point!”

“Until this man came, there was a point to my life, Father.” Janice sobbed into her handkerchief.

“You can’t entertain these alien thoughts … they’re evil thoughts … Our Lord said, ‘If your eye scandalizes you, cut it out.” So this man has come into your life, he is evil! You mustn’t pay attention to him! You must cut him out of your life! He is a danger to you—”

“It’s my daughter, father … she is the one in danger … she has these terrible dreams, dreams that punish her … and he is the only one who seems able to relieve her.”

The priest raised a halting hand to her tearful face.

“You must return to the institution that Christ dwells in. It will help you ward off the powers of error, to withstand lies and deceits and all the snares of the evil one.”

He gazed at the woman sitting next to him, weeping bitterly, and his voice softened. “As a girl you were told to avoid the near occasions of sin, and you have let this man and his force invade you. You must turn your back on him; you must give yourself to the truth, the one Holy Catholic Faith.”

The priest rose, concluding the interview.

“I would suggest you go to your parish priest and make a confession and throw yourself on God’s mercy. Open your hand to Christ.”

He reached down to the bench and picked up his breviary and straw hat, but did not leave. He seemed unable to escape the strange and disagreeable situation and remained gazing down at the weeping young woman, who could only nod her head in agreement to his parting advice. He tried to put it from him, to simply walk away from it, but could not. A feeling of profound failure seized him. What did he know of the matters she had brought up, the problem she had laid at his feet? Reincarnation? A never-ending cycle of lives? It was childish, if not wicked. And yet how implicitly he believed in the miracles recorded in the Bible, how carefully he regulated his life by their messages. The old priest suddenly felt very confused and … useless.

“My dear woman, let me bless you,” he said with heart-felt compassion, gently pressing the palms of his hands against the sides of Janice’s wet face. “May Almighty God bless you,” he intoned, drawing the sign of the cross in front of her eyes, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.”

Janice didn’t watch him leave. She stayed there alone, in the shadow of St. Andrew, waiting for her anguish to abate and her mind to compose itself before quietly rising and joining the stream of tourists circling the cathedral.

At ten minutes past three Janice left the protective sanctuary of the church and stumbled through the portals back into the bleak and alien world without.

11

The long walk home from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in a driving rain was a revivifying tonic for Janice. The sharp spears of rain striking her face had a cleansing, therapeutic magic to them, and Janice held up her head to receive them. They were reality: cold, stinging, painful, shocking her into a full and sudden awareness of herself and the world around her—the real, present, only world there was in her particular speck of eternity.

Drenched, she arrived at the corner of Sixty-seventh Street and stood a moment gazing up at the massive stone and glass façade of Des Artistes, glistening wetly in the faltering autumn light. Bill’s fortress, she thought with a grim smile. Their bulwark of defense against the enemy without had been useless against the enemy within. Somehow, in planning the building, the artists had failed to provide against intruders from the spirit world. Garlic and wolfbane should have been mixed into the mortar.

She found Carole and Ivy playing checkers on the living-room floor. Ivy’s cheek felt cool against her own. Carole remained to finish the game, then picked up her needle-point and went to the door, flashing Janice a high sign to accompany her.

“He insists on seeing you tonight,” Carole whispered in a kind of delight. “He said he knows that Bill is away, but that you and he gotta talk for Ivy’s sake.” Her face twisted into a funny fright mask. “Gee, hon,” she tremoloed, “why don’t you call the cops? Like Russ says, this guy’s bananas.”

Janice smiled wanly and said, “I may do just that if he keeps it up.”

“If you need help, give a yell. We’re having dinner with Russ’ brother, but we’ll be home by eleven.”

“Thanks, Carole, for everything,” Janice said, meaning it, but glad to see her friend leave.

Janice had failed to shop for food and had to scrounge together a supper for them out of odds and ends. She found a half-filled box of spaghetti in the cupboard and prepared it with butter and Parmesan cheese. They ate it with gusto at the dining-room table, along with canned Bartlett pears and glasses of milk. Afterward they watched television until eight thirty, then went upstairs.

While Ivy sat up in bed, reading her newest Nancy Drew mystery, Janice went about preparing the room.

“What’s that for?” Ivy asked, referring to the large four-panel screen Janice had brought in from her own bedroom.

“It’s for the window; there’s an icy draft coming through the edges of the panes. We’ll have to have them resealed.”

“I don’t feel it.”

“It’s there,” Janice said, spreading the screen to its fullest extension and raising it above the radiator. For some minutes, the sheer bulk resisted all efforts to force it behind the radiator, causing Janice to swear softly and Ivy laughingly to admonish, “Watch your language, Mother; there are children present.” But the screen finally found its way past the various pipes, and now a Chinese red and gold motif totally obscured the window.

“Hey, that looks nice,” Ivy said, surprised. “Can we keep it there?”

“We’ll see,” Janice said, as she packed layers of blankets around the offending radiator. “I don’t want a repeat of what happened last night,” she explained, moving about the room, tidying up, but mainly pushing the bulkier pieces of furniture off into corners, out of harm’s way, and setting the stage for possible action.

At ten minutes past nine, after tucking Ivy in with Panda and kissing them both, Janice turned off the light and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She then walked into her own bedroom, opened her little phone book to the letter K, and placed it facedown next to the telephone. Her mind briefly reviewed all she had done, and only after having assured herself that she had forgotten nothing did she allow her head to seek the softness of her pillow. She would rest. Not sleep, she hoped. She would remain dressed, and keep the light on, and just rest, as she waited.

A sound woke her. She keened her ears, listening. She heard the rain, very softly, against the window. And even softer at first, the faint patter of feet—mincing, tiny steps, and the terrible twittering voice: “Daddydaddydaddy-hothothothot—” rising, fading, then rising again, louder: “Hothothothot!”

Janice shook the sleep from her eyes and looked at the clock. 10:05. She had dozed off after all.

The voice suddenly rose to a shriek, became chambered, “HOTHOT HOTHOTHOT!” reverberating, grating across the corridor into Janice’s ears. She covered them with her hands and heard the rush of blood and the pounding of her own heart. The telephone!

—Fists pounding, beating at—something!

Her hands shaking, Janice turned over the directory and sought “KAPLAN.” Her fingers had trouble staying in the holes as she dialed.

—Scratching, ripping sounds—tearing at—what?

“Dr. Kaplan’s service, hold on, please—”

“Damn!”

Seconds passed, then a minute.

“HOTHOT HOTHOTHOT!” The screaming shook the house.

“Dr. Kaplan’s service, thank you for waiting—”

“Dr. Kaplan, please!”

“Is it serious?”

“Yes!”

—Pounding, tearing, beating—

“Name?”

“Janice Templeton.”

“Phone number?”

“555-1461.”

“The doctor will call you shortly.”

“Hurry, please, it’s an emergency!”

—Scraping, bruising, scratching, shouting—

Janice dropped the receiver on the cradle and pushed herself off the bed and made her way to the door.…

“HOTHOTHOT HOTHOTHOT!” echoing, rebounding, filling the hallway with madness and terror, lashing out at Janice with shattering impact, rushing to meet her as she stumbled past the staircase and across the corridor to the bedroom door still closed as she had left it. She paused, panic growing in her, then pushed it open and stared into the sound-consumed darkness.

“HOTHOTHOT HOTHOTHOT” blasted into her face, pitifully sobbing out the words in choked, agonized throat-rasping bursts!

Vague outlines appeared in the darkness as Janice’s terrified eyes sought to adjust. The specter was at the window, flailing white sleeves and bandaged hands digging, scratching at the Chinese screen, prodded, impelled by the continual, unabating “HOTHOTHOT!”

“Oh, God—the screen!” Janice heard herself gasp and, reaching for the light switch, illuminated the room.

Her hands jerked up to her eyes. “No! Oh, God!” she said, nearly voiceless, her eyes blurring with dizziness. “Oh, dear Mary, Mother of God, No!” she cried, feeling a deep nausea rising within her.

For at the window stood her child, screaming, beating, tearing at the Chinese screen, ripping at the varnished and painted canvas with the nails of her hands, now bandageless and exposed, the scorched and blistered fingers bleeding from her superhuman efforts to tear through the barrier and reveal the thing she both craved and hated, desired and feared—the window, her symbol of hope and despair, of horror and salvation, the fires of hell, the doorway to heaven—her unattainable goal.

“Ivy—dear Mary!” Janice tried to say the names—to link them together in a cry of desperate appeal to the powers above, to seek the intercession of the Mother of Jesus in this her moment of severest agony—but her voice wouldn’t work, refused to obey her brain’s command, and all that emerged was a soft and abject sob.

“Help me,” she cried to herself. “Dearest Mary, help me to help my child!”

Her hands clenched and unclenched, the nails of her fingers biting deeply into the flesh of her palms, as she struggled to keep from fainting.

“Dearest Mary, Mother of God,” she whispered chokingly.

The telephone rang, barely audible beneath the sounds of hysteria surrounding her. She felt something that was dying inside herself flicker back to life, energize her numbed, inert body into action. Finding her legs, she turned and stumbled out of the room and headed for the telephone in her bedroom, where the bellowing screams followed her with increasing intensity.

“Has the doctor reached you, Mrs. Templeton?” the woman’s voice asked.

“What? No!” Janice snapped back.

“Well, he’s en route from the hospital and will call you the moment he gets home—”

“HOTHOTHOT HOTHOT!” The screaming voice suddenly grew stronger, and the patter of naked feet emerged into the hallway, running—

Janice froze. The door! She had left the bedroom door open!

There was a flicker of silence—a heartbeat’s suspension of all sound—followed by the awful noise of the small body tumbling down the staircase, descending to the floor below with a scream that coincided with Janice’s scream as she dropped the phone and plunged headlong into the hallway and up to the railing. Her hands clutched the fanciful balustrade to steady her weak and trembling body.

The child had landed in a light, crumpled ball of flesh and flannel and was just getting to her feet as Janice forced herself to peer over the railing. Miraculously, the fall seemed not to have injured her seriously, for she was up in a flash, scampering and twittering about the living room, reviving the same plaintive diatribe: “Hothothothot daddydaddydaddy hothothot—” Driven by the same desperate need to escape the torments of the all-consuming flames that still burned hot and bright in the foreground of her unconscious, she rushed toward the long bank of windows overlooking the rain-soaked city and began making her fearful, fretting obeisances at them.

“Daddydaddydaddy daddydaddydaddy hothothothot!”

Janice descended the stairs, clinging to the railing, feeling her way down with her hands, unable to tear her eyes away from the frightening apparition below.

Ivy was now standing before the near window, in profile, whimpering in terror, her bleeding hands making undulating, praying-mantis motions toward the dreaded glass, seeking, yet repelled by its proximity. Descending closer to her, Janice could see that she had not escaped from her fall entirely unharmed. The left side of her face was badly bruised, and a thin line of blood trickled from her nose.

A sudden misstep. Janice fell down the remaining three steps, descending to the wooden floor and landing heavily on her hands and knees. The clatter and noise of the fall and the accompanying scream elicited no reaction whatever from the child, whose agonized and haunted eyes remained totally locked in the grip of her own terrible plight at the window. “Daddydaddydaddy hothothothot!”

Spears of pain shot up through Janice’s legs, drawing sobs from her lips, yet she did not seek to rise from her knees.

—It was correct that she be on her knees, for wasn’t this the attitude of penance, of contrition and confession, and acts of reparation?

Forcing her body upright, so that her full weight might be brought to sustain itself on the points of her sore and aching knees, Janice heard the words come tumbling out of her in a torrent of passion. Clear, bell-like, plucked intact from the forgotten halls of childhood, her voice spoke out to the God of her one and true faith.

“Oh, my God! I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love.…”

“HOTHOTHOT HOTHOTHOT—!”

The child’s voice rose to a shriek as she drew back from the window in horror and, spinning about, went stumbling across the room toward the far bank of windows, climbing desperately over chairs and other pieces of furniture as they got in her way.

The voice in Janice continued without interruption as she tracked across the room on raw and smarting knees in pursuit of her tormented daughter.

“… Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen!”

“Daddydaddydaddy daddyhothothot—” She was on the sofa, seeking to stand on the soft and giving cushions, losing her balance, falling to the floor.…

“Lord, have mercy on us.

“Christ, have mercy on us.

“Lord, have mercy on us.

“Christ, hear us.

“Christ, graciously hear us.

“God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.

“God, the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.

“God, the Holy Ghost.…”

—Rising; whimpering; climbing back on the sofa; standing; swaying; falling.…

“Holy Mary, pray for us.

“Holy Mother of God,

“Holy Virgin of virgins,

“Mother of Christ,

“Mother of divine grace,

“Mother most pure,

“Mother most chaste.…”

—Struggling to her feet; panting, weeping; climbing; falling; striking her head against the table edge; bleeding.…

The telephone rang.

The voice in Janice stopped. A wondrous look came into her eyes. The doctor!

She clambered to her feet and fell forward onto the sofa, as her legs gave way beneath her. She reached across to the phone and snatched it up. A hum. A long, steady hum. Still the phone kept ringing. It kept ringing distantly. Humming and ringing at the same time. With Janice poised at the fulcrum of both sounds. Her mind could not take it in, could make no sense of it.

The house phone! It was the house phone that was ringing! In all the hysteria she had forgotten to hang up the receiver upstairs, and the doctor was contacting her through the house line.

“DADDYDADDYDADDY HOTHOTHOTHOT!”

—Bruised; bleeding; climbing back onto the sofa; on her knees; swaying precariously to and fro in genuflection before the altar of her despair.…

Janice rose, pulled the cocktail table out of harm’s way, and plowed across the living room and into the hall corridor, hands grasping at furniture and walls to keep her upright, and finally falling to her knees just within reach of the telephone. With a pained cry, she grabbed at the receiver and pulled it down upon her.

“Doctor!” she gasped.

Dominick’s voice answered. “Miz Templeton, there’s a Mr. Hoover down here in the lobby.”

Janice’s tearstained face blanched, stiffened, then quieted. Her stark eyes became impassive, while the house around her shook with the cries and bleatings of her one and only child. She had asked for God’s help, and He had answered.

“Miz Templeton?”

“Yes!” she said inaudibly.

“What’d you say, Miz Templeton?”

“Yes, send him up!” Janice cried, dropping the phone.

Holding onto the doorknob, Janice pulled herself painfully up to her feet. She felt dissociated from her body and swayed dizzily. She shut her eyes to steady herself for a moment, then directed her shaking hand to the chain bolt.

The elevator rose with a hum.

A panel of light and a clang of doors announced Hoover, dramatically spotlighting his exit, as he stepped out of the suspended vehicle and paused, hat in hand, staring down the long, dark hallway toward Janice. As the elevator descended behind him, plunging him into silhouette, he took a step forward and stopped again, testing the mood and temper of the enemy, probing the terrain for hidden pitfalls and booby traps before daring to advance further. Janice remained at the door, watching him, waiting for him to approach, but he didn’t move.

Suddenly, the shrieking voice pummeled at Janice’s back and spilled out into the hallway.

“DADDYDADDY DADDYDADDYDADDY!”

Hoover took a tentative step forward.

“Hurry!” Janice screamed at him.

Her senses absorbed the events of the next minutes in the abstract—fleeting images, some vague, some clear, with little continuity and no particular order of importance: the smell of wet wool as Hoover sped past her through the door; his stance as he paused on the threshold of the living room, recalling the circus lion tamer she had once seen as a child; her tripping over the telephone, still on the floor, as she hesitantly closed in on Hoover’s back; her skinned knees leaving bloodstains on the hall carpet; Hoover’s booming voice dominating her own sobs of pain and the screams of her child.

“Audrey Rose! It’s Daddy! Here, darling! I’m here!”

“Daddydaddydaddydaddy!”

“NO! HERE, AUDREY ROSE! DADDY IS HERE, DARLING!”

A delirium of sound—mad patterns of movement—approaches, denials, entreaties, rejections—a lunatic kaleidoscope of sight and sound—leading finally and inevitably to the first startled suspension of disbelief—the bright look of recognition—the heart-stabbing smile of pure joy on the blood-smeared face—the quick scamper into waiting arms and the unifying embrace, bringing with it the sudden, blessed absence of sound—the descent of calm—sweet, languorous, settling peacefully on the torn air, mending the breaks, renewing silence.

Hoover remained kneeling, cradling the child in his arms, comforting her, quieting her with gentle strokes and soft whispers. Almost immediately, her wet eyelids began to flutter and close in sleep.

Janice stood, tightly clinging to the back of a chair to keep from falling, watching through tears, as Hoover rose with the sleeping child in his arms and slowly, so as not to waken her, carried her up the stairs and into her room.

Janice was scarcely aware of following them; her bruised and aching body seemed to move under some automatic compulsion. She only knew that somehow she had arrived at the bedroom door and was silently observing Hoover as he gently removed her child’s pajamas and placed her naked and sleeping form on the bed. Then, moving rapidly between bedroom and both bathrooms, Hoover assembled his makeshift clinic of towels, Bactine, Solarcaine ointment, Band-Aids, a basin of warm, soapy water, and several washcloths.

He worked on Ivy’s wounds with a sure and practiced touch, washed the encrusted blood from her face and hands, then sterilized and bandaged the cuts. He spread ointment on the raw and blistered fingers and wrapped them loosely in two towels. Janice’s numbed brain took in each motion and gesture, accepting it all without question.

“Fresh pajamas!” He flung the words crisply over his shoulder. It was the first time he had addressed Janice that night.

She stumbled to the bureau and removed a flannel nightgown. As she turned to deliver it, she found Hoover standing behind her. His eyes probed the dazed, ravaged face with a look of great sadness, then glanced down her messy, torn dress to her blood-smeared legs. He sighed deeply and gently took the garment from her hands.

After easing Ivy’s flushed body under the covers, he turned to Janice and, taking her arm, softly whispered, “Come, let me help you now.”

The warm water felt soft and soothing against Janice’s bruised, chafed skin as Hoover cleansed her knees and legs with the soapy washcloth. She sat where he had placed her on the edge of her bed and watched him as he knelt at her feet, deftly maneuvering the wet cloth around each cut, carefully avoiding direct contact with any open wounds. It vaguely occurred to her that she should be resisting these intimate ministrations, but at the moment she had neither the energy nor the mental capacity to do anything about it.

As Hoover worked on her legs, words tumbled out of him in quick whispers which, for a long time, Janice failed to hear. Her ears received his intonations as simply another sound in the room along with the clock and the water trickling into the basin each time he wrung out the washcloth. When her fractured brain did finally begin to absorb the content of his words, she discovered that he was lecturing her in the gently condescending tone of a teacher instructing a student.

“I know you don’t take the responsibility of a child lightly. I see the guardrails on your windows. I’ve seen the way you hold Ivy’s hand when you cross the street. But we’re dealing here with something far greater than Ivy’s physical welfare. We’re dealing with something that’s indestructible. Her soul. And that’s what we must help and try to save—the soul of Audrey Rose which is in pain and torment.…”

His hands were manipulating her legs with the towel, drying the excess water with soothing, mopping motions.

“A pain and torment as real as the actual physical torment that took Audrey’s body out of this life. Ivy is experiencing the same anguish that Audrey experienced in that terrible fire, and Audrey will continue to abuse Ivy’s body until her soul is set free.”

His words throbbed dully in Janice’s head.

Dear God, what was he saying?

“She will keep pushing Ivy back to the source of the problem; she’ll be trying to get back to that moment and will be leading Ivy into dangers as tormenting and destructive as the fire that took Audrey’s life.”

The softly uttered words oscillated in and out of Janice’s blurred consciousness, chaotic, distorted, a medley of terrifying catchwords and phrases. Soul. Harmful. Ivy. Danger. Audrey Rose. What was he saying?

Shut it out!

“And now I can no longer just leave. It might have been simple once, when your husband so rightly asked, well, why if we’re doing such a good job with the child, why don’t you just go away and leave us to raise her? Fine! There was nothing I could say to that. He had the justice of man and God on his side. Why do you come here and upset our lives? Why do you come into my home and bring your turmoil with you? What can we do for you, man? We don’t know how to help you! But! Look what happened! The very first night I entered your home.…”

He was massaging her legs now with the baby oil in long, kneading, provocative strokes, replacing weariness with euphoria.

“That very first night, there was Audrey Rose! Wanting! Needing! Crying out for help! For my help! Saying, here, Daddy! I’m here. I need you, Daddy. And making her presence known to me.”

The stroking action of his hands eased off somewhat.

“You lied, Mrs. Templeton. I know you lied. Your daughter didn’t have these attacks all through her life as you told me. Isn’t that true? She never had these nightmares before I came, did she?”

“Once before,” Janice blurted huskily, “when she was two and a half. They lasted nearly a year.”

Hoover looked stunned. “Two and a half?” He slowly rose to his feet, wiping his glistening hands on the towel. “That would have been in 1967—the very time I was here in New York City, doing a series of articles for the Steelman’s Quarterly—”

He remained standing before Janice’s wavering vision, his eyes pinpoints of intense concentration as his mind reviewed the awesome connection of the two events.

“My God,” he whispered in a kind of benediction. “That far back?” He turned to Janice. “Even then she was pleading for my help!” And seizing her arms with a strength that astonished her, he raised her up to the level of his eyes. “Do you understand now, Mrs. Templeton? It’s the cry of a soul in torment! Can you bear to hear it? I cannot!”

“Then get out of our lives!” Janice snapped back at him. “This only happens when you’re near. Ivy has been fine and healthy all these years.”

“No, you’re wrong! Your daughter’s health is an illusion. As long as her body shelters a soul that is unprepared to accept its Karmic responsibilities of earth life, there can be no health, not for the body of Ivy or the soul of Audrey Rose. Both are in peril!”

Janice shook her head, as though ridding herself of hearing him.

“I don’t know what you’re saying—”

“I’m saying that Audrey Rose came back too soon.”

Too soon? Oh, dear God, what on earth was he talking about?

“After World War Two, many children came back too soon. Victims of bombings and concentration camps, bewildered, confused by their own untimely deaths, these souls rushed to get back into a womb, rather than the new astral plane they should have gone to.”

He was a nut. Bill said he was a nut. Bill was right.

“And, like them, so did Audrey Rose move from horror back to horror, instead of remaining on a plane where she might have meditated and learned to put together her past lives before seeking a new one.” There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was choked with emotion.

“She came back too soon, Mrs. Templeton, and because of it, Ivy is in great danger.”

His eyes, moist and limpid, fixed themselves on Janice’s drawn and frightened face. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“No,” Janice shouted, staring at him in unblinking incredulity. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“That’s because you know so little, and there is so much you need to know. Because your fear keeps holding you at arm’s distance from what you have seen and heard and know within you to be the truth.”

“What truth?” Janice struggled to free herself from his grip, but Hoover’s hands held fast to her arms. “My husband says that you’re crazy! That you’re a nut and belong in a nuthouse, and I think he’s right!”

Hoover’s grip relaxed somewhat. He gazed at her deeply, sadly.

“That’s your fear talking, Mrs. Templeton.”

“No, damn it, it’s me talking!” Janice sobbed. “Now please go!”

For a fleeting instant, in the midst of Janice’s sobs, Hoover seemed to lose his poise, but he held on and softly replied, “I’ve frightened you. I’ve been clumsy, and I’m sorry.”

His hands continued to hold her arms, to support the sagging weight of her bruised and weary body.

“I know you love your daughter,” he continued in a very gentle voice, “and are seeking what is best for her. Love tries, love is so desperate to help, but it must also question and take chances until no more cries are heard. How do you think a man like me, accustomed to a life of credit cards and soft mattresses, could spend seven years with cows and rice? Come on, Mrs. Templeton, I’m no nut. I didn’t give up a fine career and a position in life for no reason. A story, an incredible story that two people told me, grabbed my heart and made my heart search. That’s God, Mrs. Templeton, that’s love, when your heart moves faster than your fear.”

His lips were inches from Janice’s face; she could feel his breath on her cheeks.

“Will you open your heart and try to understand what I’m saying?”

“I don’t know,” Janice murmured uncertainly through softening tears. “I don’t know what you want of me.”

“I want your help and your trust. The soul of a child is crying, Mrs. Templeton. She is crying over a pain that occurred more than ten years ago, and she will keep suffering this pain unless we can help her.”

Janice turned to him in woebegone confusion.

“Help her … soul?”

“Yes,” Hoover said brightly, sensing contact. “We must form a bond to help her get through this ordeal. A bond that is so tight and so filled with all the love you have, and all the love that I have, that we can carefully mend her, patch her, get rid of the scar tissue, wipe it out so that Audrey Rose’s soul may be put to rest once again. We are all part of this child, Mrs. Templeton. We have all had to do with the making of her, and only we can help her. You and I. Together. You will help Ivy. I will help Audrey Rose.”

His voice held a hypnotic power, lulling, gently tugging at Janice’s defenses.

“How?” she heard herself softly inquire. “How will you help her? You say she’s trying to kill Ivy. How can you or anyone stop her?”

“I must try,” Hoover asserted. “I must be with her, close to her, to pray and do good for her soul. Audrey was only five when she died. In her brief time on earth she was just coming to an awareness of the beauties of life.” His voice cracked with emotion. “I must return her soul to that awareness of God’s manifestations, the beauty and oneness of the earth life she knew and loved before the fire seared her soul with its destructive force.”

Janice felt his hands tighten on her arms and herself being drawn closer to him. He was crying openly, without shame.

“Not for me and for the fact that I miss her, but to quiet her spirit, which is the right of every one of us. Please, please allow me to help her!”

Janice began to weep, holding her face away from him, avoiding the sting of his passion.

“Don’t shut the door on me, Mrs. Templeton,” he cried breathlessly. “Please allow me to come into your life. Allow me to serve you, and Ivy, and Audrey Rose.” The tears overflowed his eyes and were coursing down his smooth cheeks. “This is why I’m here tonight. This has been the meaning of my journey. All those years of seeking and searching, of questioning and doubting have been a prelude to this one moment in time and space.”

Pausing for emphasis, he drew Janice closer to him.

“Can you now just push me aside, Mrs. Templeton? Can you do this now? Reasonably?”

“No,” Janice cried weakly, feeling the wet of her own tears on her face.

“Thank you.” Hoover exhaled, grateful for her understanding. “Forgive me. I’m not an evil man. I’m not a saint. What I am is a man who now knows that God sent him on a journey of absolute necessity. And there must be no further talk of separation between us. For we are so connected. You. Your husband. Your child. Audrey Rose. And I. We have come together by a miracle and are now inseparable.” He paused, for emphasis, then went on in a stronger, more urgent voice. “Say yes, Mrs. Templeton. Please!”

“Yes.” Janice wept, feeling her breath commingling with his, as his hands continued to grip her tightly.

His face softened, and she thought he would kiss her, would not have found it extraordinary, nor would she have resisted, but he did not.

His hands relaxed and slowly withdrew.

Unsupported, Janice took hold of the bedstead as she felt she might fall. Her legs were like water.

Hoover’s eyes remained fixed on her, but the tension had left them. He smiled in a kindly way and said, “Get some rest, now. I’ll let myself out. We’ll talk again in the morning.”

At the door, he turned and again smiled. “Good night, Janice,” he said, pronouncing her given name with all the confidence and assurance of a conqueror.

She heard his footsteps trailing off through the apartment, then the distant click of the front door closing. Still, she remained standing, listening to all the old familiar noises of night reassert themselves: the clock, a distant siren, a car horn, and, added to them, another sound—unexpected, intrusive, demanding.

Janice groped about the room, tracking the wildly buzzing sound to its source, and discovered the telephone, still off its hook, on the floor where it had fallen. Her head reeled as she bent down and replaced the phone on its cradle. The moment she did, it rang, causing her to jump.

“Mrs. Templeton—” It was Dr. Kaplan’s voice. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last hour, but your line’s been disconnected.”

“It’s all right, Doctor,” Janice stammered. “Everything’s all right, now.”

“Is the child all right?”

“Yes, Doctor, she’s fine. She’s sleeping quietly now.”

“Good. Keep her on aspirin and plenty of liquids. I’ll stop by tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

The rain, buoyed and driven by ocean winds, lashed against the long row of windows overlooking the night city. From where Janice sat in the rocker, the beads of water glistening in the foreground of a thousand lights appeared like diamond pendants tracing their mysterious paths down the glass panes. The tumbler of scotch in her hand was freshly filled from the half-empty bottle of J & B on the sewing table beside her. Liquor, fortunately, had an energizing effect on Janice, heightening her perceptions even as it dulled her senses and quieted her alarms.

The time was one ten. Two hours earlier Elliot Hoover had left, and now Janice sat in the nearly dark living room beneath the cavorting nudes, waiting for morning to come.

She had decided to consider five o’clock as heralding dawn, at which time she would awaken Ivy. She had ordered the VIP limousine for five thirty. The sharp chill in the room had forced her to slip into her fur-lined raincoat, so that now she sat in the rocker fully dressed, with two packed suitcases on the floor beside her, sipping scotch and waiting.

There had been a jungle of decisions to pick her way through, and Janice prided herself on having been able to thrust emotion aside and channel her thoughts down a fairly straight and practical path.

Her first move had been to the telephone, to call Bill and throw the whole thing at him. She had actually placed the call and was waiting to be connected to the Reef Hotel when she changed her mind and canceled it. Bill would simply tell them to come to Hawaii and might even convince her, but Janice knew that it was too late for Hawaii—too much had happened that night to be remedied by a Hawaiian tranquilizer.

It was then that Westport came into her mind, and the dreamy month they spent on the Sound the summer when Ivy was six years old. They had rented a cottage right on the water. Sound-Side Cottages, the colony was called. They’d probably be closed this time of year, but remembering that their cottage was equipped with a fireplace and wall heaters, Janice placed a call to the Stuarts, in Westport.

Mrs. Stuart, the owner’s wife, answered after the fourteenth ring and was less angry at being disturbed than Janice expected she’d be. Although the cottages were indeed closed until late spring and there was some hesitation, arrangements were finally made with Mr. Stuart to let Janice have one of the cottages the following day, but only after twelve noon, since it would require a full airing and cleaning.

In less than an hour she had packed two bags with a week’s worth of clothing for both of them, plus Ivy’s schoolbooks, Clue, Scrabble, WordKing, and medicinals; checked the balance in her checkbook; and counted her cash, fifty-eight dollars and ninety cents—enough to pay for the VIP limousine and lunch in Westport. She’d decided to splurge on the cab ride to Westport in deference to Ivy’s fever, which persisted even though she was sleeping soundly. She packed her electric blanket and would pack Ivy’s when she awakened.

The idea was to vanish for a time without trace, clue, or scent. Janice needed time to think, away from the pressure and hysteria of Elliot Hoover. If, as he insisted, Ivy’s life was in danger, and past history could be trusted, the danger was more acute with Hoover nearby than when he was far away. There had been no nightmares in his absence.

“We are so connected. You. Your husband. Your child. Audrey Rose. And I. We have come together by a miracle and are now inseparable.”

He had invaded their home, planted his stake, and established his right to be there.

Janice shook her head dazedly and wondered which was the more incredible: that it could all be true, or that she was willing to accept it as being true? She was not a gullible person, had never been a believer in the occult or the supernatural. But this was different. She was directly involved, an eyewitness, a participant in Audrey Rose’s little game of spiritual hide-and-seek.

She took a large swallow from her glass and thought how good if, in the end, Bill was right, and Elliot Hoover turned out to be just another crazy person shattered by his loss, unable to cope, employing magic as a means of compensating for the brutal blow that life had dealt him.

But deep inside, she knew differently. And Hoover knew that she knew.

“… your fear keeps holding you at arm’s distance from what … you know … to be the truth.”

He was right.

Her fear had steadfastly veered her mind away from a direct confrontation with the logic of all she had seen and heard.

“… you know so little, and there is so much you need to know.…”

Janice rose and, swaying unsteadily, minced her way to the hall closet, where, standing on a chair, she foraged about the dark corner of the upper shelf until she finally brought forth the book she sought.

Seated once again in the rocker, Janice pulled the floor lamp closer to her side, and gazed down at the large leather-bound diary in her lap.

Scuffed, worn, abused by time and the elements, it bulged with swollen pages and paper clips, fastidiously directing the reader’s attention to the more cogent passages in the seven-year hegira of Elliot Hoover.

Flipping through the segmented pages, Janice immediately recognized the small, dainty script. The earlier portions were clearly written in black ink; the later pages, many of which were stained and discolored, in barely legible pencil. This, in itself, seemed to trace the route of Hoover’s quest for the truth, from the comforts and niceties of Western civilization to the hardships encountered on his journey through India.

There were no datelines, printed or otherwise, and each page was crammed to the margins with a spillage of words, writing as he spoke, in staccato bursts of information.

The first page contained his name and the date, which was April 17, 1968. And, just below it, two words, hand-printed in large block lettering: “I START!”

And, turning the page, so did Janice.

12

I left my ticket upstairs. Had to find the landlady to unlock the door and bribe the cabdriver to wait. Already the whole thing is too hard to handle.…

Air India is terrific. We have a hostess named Suman and a pilot named O’Connor. Next to me is this elderly lady who keeps touching Suman’s outfit. A sari in pink and purple. My companion’s name is Mrs. Roth, and she said she’s “in woolens.” Suman doesn’t seem to mind, so I told her I was “in woolens,” too.…

I’m feeling a little weak. We’ve been in the air almost a day and that means a lot of martinis. Also double Lassi.

Suddenly, I’m scared, like I’m the new kid in school and they’re not going to like me.…

Dumdum Airport. I think that’s the whole reason I chose Calcutta to land in. Just to look at that sign.

Took a cab to the hotel where I’ll rest before starting the railway tour in the morning. Indian State Railways. I’ll travel light. A few changes—some shirts, ties, slacks, a pair of shorts—and my credit cards can take care of anything that might come up. At all times, I’ll have my notebook, my $10.95 “Travel to India” fact book, and a book on reincarnation which, by the way, I cover with a brown paper bag.

It’s hot, and I think I just saw a dead man lying on the street.

My hotel overlooks the Maidan. It’s like Central Park.

I cross Chowringhi Road, which takes awhile to do. At the southern end of the park is the Victoria Memorial, very marble, with a statue of Queen Victoria herself. Leaning on the statue right now is a skinny Indian boy about seven, selling something in a little bag to a group of people watching a performance of the

Gita

. I’m surprised I recognized it. I remember something about … “between us, lies the difference …” you know, like, I remember about past lives, and you don’t.…

I buy a bag from the boy and find it is grain. Am I supposed to eat it? I pass student meetings, prayer meetings, and I see dancing bears and a fortune-telling monkey. I give the monkey some grain, and I eat some, too. That monkey could have all my answers.…

The first paper clip in the diary secured a thin sheaf of pages representing days, weeks, months—of what adventures Janice was excluded from knowing—which led her eyes to a page bearing the printed caption “Benares.”

I’m walking and many things are coming at me. First is the smell of jasmine, very sweet. Then the smell of smoke, and that’s not so sweet. And the crowds—the crowds of people—wedding processions, crowds of cows, buffalo, and there are some with long Biblical beards who are nude except for loincloths, and pilgrims on foot, and streams of camels, and children yelling, laughing, squalling, and bells, I hear bells all over, and then I see corpses wrapped in white silk or linen. They’re on bamboo stretchers, and they’re being marched to the Ghats, where they will be deposited and await their turn to be cremated.

I talk to a man who cannot understand me, nor can I understand his language. Later another old man approaches me, and he speaks English with a British accent but is still difficult to understand. He tells me that his ambition has been to visit Benares once in his lifetime, and that now he has realized this ambition and, if possible, he would care to remain here to die. He tells me that the waters here hold the powers of salvation. All the waters do in India, but the main sanctuary is Benares. The old man tells me that people who have never in their lives walked out of their villages will come and make a pilgrimage to Benares. And they’ll take about a week to do so and are absolved of all their sins and stand a good chance for spiritual salvation. He also tells me that if he could have his ultimate goal attained, it would be not to be reborn at all.

Right now, there is smoke twisting up in the sky, and it is from the burning corpses in the Ghats, and I’m half afraid to investigate further. I do not understand my fear, unless it has something to do with the fiery deaths of my wife and child.…

I watch the bodies being removed from the bamboo stretchers, with the families in attendance, as they prepare the bodies for cremation. The Ghats are over three miles in length, three miles of steps that lead down from a very steep bank into the sacred river. And these stone steps wed this great Hindu city to the Ganges.

Water, flowers, smoke, fire—all are forces of divine meaning to these people. In the Ganges are bathing bodies, while in the Ghats are burning bodies. Life and death, the living and the dead, moving onward together in close proximity and in perfect harmony.

Kids. Young children, watching bodies being burned. Flesh being burned. And they’re smiling and handing out flowers. They’re even giving funeral cakes called

pindas

to the dead. Imagine that! Cakes. Pastries. To the dead.…

I think of Sylvia and Audrey Rose, their ashes mingled with those of the ’62 Impala, sealed together in copper cylinders, consigned to the great forgettery in Mount Holyoke Mausoleum. I think of the quick Baptist service … words read from a book … postures, posings, the regulated silence, a tear shed, a brief exchange of grief—all over in less than an hour. No cakes. No

pindas.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation be made to your favorite charity. No ritual offerings of prayer, daily, monthly, yearly, or otherwise.

Janice flipped past a thicker group of clipped pages to the next entry Hoover thought essential for her education.

There is a fact of life here that means everything we do each day is potentially a pious act. I’m grasping, I think, either a truth about the way these people live, or I’m imagining a very wonderful way to live. I must learn more. And that’s not going to happen in forty-five days.

That, perhaps, is the most important thing I discovered in Benares—that time is unimportant.

The way that woman launders her clothes is as pious an act as that man who hasn’t stopped looking at the sun. I don’t know, I might be getting far afield of reality. Perhaps it’s just a poetic way of seeing a life-style that is totally new and different to me. Or maybe there is indeed that poetry here in the sounds and vibrations of work and religion.…

Reincarnation here seems a fact of life.

Destruction, which confused me at first, which caused me to wonder why there was a temple for a goddess who was the consort to the god of destruction, is an equal fact of life.

Destruction and creativity go hand in hand. As I look around me, I see temples and homes that are lopsided, I suppose from the floods during the monsoons, and practically falling into the river, held up by the river. And once again, the idea of destruction—of life persisting, of life continuing, of life fighting on in the midst of all this destruction—seems to pull me toward an understanding of a basic truth, as yet unclear to me. And in trying to define this basic truth, I’m brought back to all the reading I did back in the States. The reading that didn’t make sense there but that now, in view of all that I see around me, must become a whole new education.

I will start by staying here in Benares, the seat of the Hindu religion, using my knapsack as a pillow if I must and continue to watch these cremations to understand why death can be considered a holiday. And what they are celebrating. If it is the final death, if, as that old man said to me, he is not to be reborn again, then what he is celebrating is God. Union with God. But if he has not yet got to that point, then what he is celebrating is another chance toward union with God, a closer step.

It was here that Hoover forsook pen for pencil, which made the going extremely rough.

I’ve come across a student who speaks little English and whom I am now fortunate enough to share my thoughts with. He explains to me that in Buddhism the problem of true knowledge arises as a personal problem, and this is why Buddha sat and meditated and finally arrived at the truth. This is very important for me to understand because it is just that which compelled me to come to India. To personally find the way to truth.

So much of what I’m saying now began in conversation back and forth between my new friend Sesh and myself. A little corny, perhaps, but he teaches me some of his language, so I will teach him some of mine. He wears a

safa,

a cloth head covering that is wound around his head loosely to protect him from the sun’s heat, since he remains outdoors most of the time. He also wears the

lengha,

the trousers that look like pajamas, and he has given me a shirt called the

paharen.

When I tried to thank him for it in my effusive Western way, he became very upset and walked away, and I didn’t see him for at least an hour. I thought I had lost my friend Sesh. He returned then and told me that to thank someone for something is to take away part of the act of giving. I am learning so much each day.

As I think of the noble truths, the Eightfold Path, I am chaotic in my joy, yet even that joy must be pushed in a direction, an order, a balance toward evolution.

In a way, the destruction of my wife and child was almost a reconstruction of me. The fact of their death, of Audrey Rose’s death, in all her beauty and her joy, set me into a dying cycle and forced me to reexamine our lives together. If I believe in God, as these people do, then I must believe that somewhere along that noble Eightfold Path, I failed. I failed and, in doing so, polluted the environment around me. In some way or another, I destroyed the order, and so the imbalance made something as lovely and wondrous and bright as Audrey Rose’s spirit incapable of surviving around it. Am I accepting blame? I don’t know yet.

When I look at Sesh and the time he’s taking with me, I realize that what these people want is to do good. And if I can prove God and reincarnation to myself here, as Buddha did to himself, if I can find a creative way of life, then it is because I want to do good. If the souls of Sylvia and Audrey Rose are in pain, then I must do good for their souls. If I can do this little, I will have done a great deal toward getting them closer to the cycle of bliss which is their right.…

The small, thick writing swam before Janice’s eyes, and she was forced to rest them a moment before continuing. Flipping to the next entry, she found that matters hadn’t improved; if anything, the shape of the words were even more blurred.

Sesh and I walk to Sarnath, the center of the Buddhist world, because it is at Sarnath that Buddha preached his first sermon, and we are going to see where it is partially recorded on a stone. It is here that he revealed the Eightfold Path that leads to the end of sorrow, the attainment of inner peace, enlightenment, and ultimately, Nirvana. It is here that he established his doctrine of the middle way, which is the golden path between extremes of asceticism and self-indulgence.

He came upon four great truths. Suffering is universal. Cause of suffering is craving or selfish desire. Cure is the elimination of craving. And the way is to follow the middle way. A path of practical action. To do this, we have the Eightfold Path which is: Right knowledge. Right intention. Right speech. Right conduct. Right means of livelihood. Right effort. Right mindfulness. Right concentration. And the five precepts: Abstaining from the taking of life. Abstaining from the taking of what is not given.…

The writing at this point was indecipherable, and Janice could not continue. Flipping past several similarly difficult segments, she came to an entry written in pen, and her eyes felt suddenly cleansed.

I look at Sesh; no Hindi comes to mind: no English comes to mind. I see a tear in his eye, and it doesn’t even fall down his cheek. We know we have to part. We have rededicated ourselves to the need for finding truth. For we have shared a desire for life, a need for absolution, a need to understand reincarnation in order to love God. We have given each other that gift.

And a few pages later, still in pen:

I walk for many days. I walk because I know I have made a commitment now to live out something in daily deeds that before was just an ideal.

I find something else, too. I find that in walking, I am becoming very aware of my body, its needs, what I can do without. I can now go without food for a while, but I cannot go without truth and faith. That is my joy right now. And I am hurting my feet, and my back is tired. I am not used to this, but it’s forcing me to become very cognizant of this flesh that is carrying me through God’s world. To figure out why I am housed inside this flesh, to understand the idea of the soul occupying the body, rather than the soul having a body, which is what I used to believe. And in this walk I’m learning that we are in eternity. Eternity is here with us now.

And a page later:

As I walk, I see in front of me a small girl with long black hair, almost to her ankles, pulled back in a braid, huge eyes, a bit downcast, a tight little white shirt, and a bright, bright shawl, green and orange and pink, over her. She has a basket with her, and as I get closer, I see there is nothing in the basket. I have half an orange left. I give it to her, and she gobbles it up.

She says, “Prana,” which I know to mean “breath.” So I take it to be her name. I say to her, “Prana ji,” which I have learned is the endearing suffix to add to a name. As we walk, she sings. I can’t tell if there are words to the song.

She leads me to her family’s house. As we are nearing the house, I see buffalo, I see the water tank which is in so many villages. The water tank, artificially built, looks like a pond. I see a very old lady walking with a brass pot on her head, walking to the tank, and I see a robust man with a curly black beard. He has two chairs on his head. They stop what they’re doing, and they look at me. The man puts the chairs down. I don’t know what I’m going to say, and he leads me into the house. As he does, I’m glad that I remembered to take my sandals off. I’ll probably never put them on again. The man, who seems to be Prana’s father, says to me, “Amdhu,” and holds out his hand. I take it and we shake, and I say, “Elliot,” and he says to me, “

Atcha,

” and I say, “

Atcha

,” with a laugh,

atcha

meaning okay.

The woman of the house scours the floor with sand. She rises when we enter and draws her shawl up over her head. Her hair is just like her daughter’s hair, long, in a braid, parted in the middle, and she wears a huge ring in her nose, as well as earrings and big silver bracelets on her ankles. Prana has sweet gold earrings in her ears, and there is a lovely jewel that falls from the long sari that the old lady wears over her head.

The woman’s name is Rama, and she looks to be having another baby.

The old lady enters the house, and her hair, long like the other women, is absolutely white. Her name is Shira, she seems to be the grandmother, and she wears the

kabja,

the blouse which covers the top of the body, and a loose-fitting petticoat, the

chania,

and over all is the eternal sari. She still has the brass pot on her head, but now she removes it, and we all sit on the floor where there is a meal. We eat

chapati

, the bread. It has been freshly baked for this meal and is served hot.

At the meal, too, are Uncle Chupar, Aunt Kastori, and Shakur, their son. These Indians live like many Indians in the villages, in what they call joint families. Almost like a miniature commune. All the property is communally owned, and the earnings of all the individual members are thrown into a common pool. There is great emotional security, and there is great economic security. If we think it does not offer much privacy or solitude, we must think only of their religion and how it invites them to go into themselves for privacy and solitude.

And later:

The family Pachali’s day begins at 4

a.m.

We bathe in icy cold water, and prayers are begun. The women join in the meditations but soon get down to household chores, churning butter, making buttermilk, leaving the men to continue with their meditations and prayers.

There are daily rituals which are accomplished by every member of the family. The first is

Bhuta Yajna,

an offering of food to the animal kingdom, symbolizing man’s realization of this obligation to less evolved forms of creation. In this way we come to understand instinctively that the weaker animals are also tied to a body identification as we are, but they do not have the quality of reason that we have. So as we help those that are weaker than ourselves, we can feel sure that we will be comforted in like manner by higher, unseen beings. That is the first form of daily worship. The second form is a ritual of silent love, silent love for nature. This is the way we surmount the inability to communicate with earth, sea, and sky. The other two daily

yajnas

are

Pitri

and

Nri,

these being offerings to ancestors so that daily we may acknowledge our debt to past generations, since it is their wisdom that has brought the light on us today.

I observe Amdhu and Rama and the real bond of love that exists between husband and wife. They treat each other with great gentility, although they are not openly affectionate in public or in front of their children. Rama sacrifices, at all times, for Amdhu and her children, keeping them the center of her universe and serving them at all times. She is concerned for Amdhu’s religious progress, feeling that the deeds she carries out for him will help him progress toward God. There is also a very close attachment between Amdhu and his daughter, Prana. Until puberty, she is allowed to accompany him on all male gatherings. With the knowledge that she will be sent to another home at marriage, she’s treated with indulgence by her father.

Arun, like all boys his age, spends more and more time outside the women’s quarters, in the vicinity of the men, in the company of his father and uncles who indulge him. But Amdhu always maintains a certain formality with him. The desire for sons is great, for only a son can adequately perform the death rites and the annual ceremony that assures peace to his father’s soul.

And so at all times death is looked upon quite openly with a sense of responsibility, planning, and a knowledge that every day lived leads toward that death which, in turn, will ensure a worthy progression to the next life.

And then:

I see great poverty, pain, sickness, drought, famine. Yet, in the midst of calamity, I see life progress with joy and love, with great care, and with great reverence.

The family is a microcosm of God’s world.…

Two large paper clips were necessary to fasten the thick group of pages that led to the next entry, which, surprisingly, found Hoover in a different part of India—in the forests of the south. For some reason he had left the Pachali family and either did not think it important enough or did not want Janice to know why. The two paper clips were all that barred her from learning more. Without hesitation, she flicked them off and renewed her relationship with Amdhu, Arun, Prana, and the rest of the family.

The drought continues. Failure of the monsoon to arrive on time makes the difference between abundance and blight. The entire village suffers. What few food stores are left are carefully divided between all the villagers.

Rama’s twins, who are just over a year old, cry a great deal, the girl more than the boy, since Rama favors him, nurses and feeds him first while the girl gets the leftovers, which is very little.…

The boy Khwaja, cries, but the girl, Sarojini, no longer cries. Prana, too, is ill from hunger, as is Rama, since the greater portion of what little food there is must go to the men. There is no hostility in this seemingly callous act of willful deprivation. It is simply part of a deeply ingrained tradition. In every village family, the women are fed last.…

Things are critical.…

On hands and knees, we all scour the parched fields for vagrant roots and seeds.…

A child in the village has died, and two others are soon to die. The family left this morning with the child’s body for the Ghats at Benares, eighteen kilometers to the north. Wrapped in white linen, the tiny form of the dead girl seemed to tremble with life as the cart trundled over dry clods of earth. The entire family pulled and pushed the cart. It will take them all day and all night to reach Benares.…

Prana has stopped speaking. Her large eyes can only stare at me. I must try to rehabilitate her and the village with whatever I possess. For two years now, I have not thought of the money or any of the ways and means of the life I left. But now I must think about it. And act!

Benares. Heat at 118 degrees. Sidewalks and streets covered with prostrate bodies, sacred cows chewing on coconut husks.

I have been here five days now, living in the transients’ settlement down by the riverbanks. Rejected air-conditioned hotel. Should have rejected American meal (Southern fried chicken and apple pie, first in two years). Made me violently ill.…

I am waiting for Barclay’s Bank to receive a wire from their correspondent in New York City approving my credit. I have contacted a man—shifty fellow—regarding grain stores which are black-market. He promises me vans will deliver supplies immediately that money, in American dollars, is received. I put my faith in him, reluctantly, but what choice have I? I have bargained for eight vanloads of rice, flour, and food grains for planting. They will be distributed among our own village and the neighboring villages, stretching the food as far as it will go. It will take all the money from the accident benefit to accomplish this. I like to think that Sylvia and Audrey Rose would approve.…

Strong ocean winds, lashing rains, and an extreme drop in temperature. The monsoon has come. With the suddenness and force of an avenging god. In minutes, the streets of Benares are flooded. The river is forced hundreds of yards beyond its banks. I hear that some of the villages to the south have become mudholes in the space of a day. There is no traffic, trucks, carts, cows, or people, as the roads are impassable.…

Barclay’s Bank has received a wire from their correspondent in New York. It seems my credit cards are not sufficient identification to satisfy my Pittsburgh bank. Forms will have to be filled. Signatures compared. A delay of at least a week.…

All is lost.…

The monsoon is in full flood. Every day it rains and rains and rains. The Ganges covers the land to each horizon in a vast, swirling grayness. Treetops protrude from the water, and now and then the bloated carcass of a cow or a human corpse is carried across my vision.…

All over the floods are spreading across the land. Men, women, and children labor to stem the water’s fury, but cannot. I wonder about my village and think about Amdhu and Rama and the children and how it is with them.…

The flood control officer attached to the Rescue Commission in the third sector told me today that most of the villages to the south are under water. He said that all India is suffering severely and that it’s one of the worst monsoons in memory.…

The flood tide has retreated, leaving the land dark and loamy with death and decay. Good for planting. But where are the people?

Arriving at my village, I see it all but deserted, and there are no dwellings left. It’s as though a huge trowel had smoothed the land.…

I find Jafar Ali and his two boys trudging among the muddy runnels. He tells me they were away when the water came. He also tells me that Aunt Kastori is somewhere about but will say no more. He seems dumbstruck.…

The settlement stretches along the left bank of the river. Water still. Intense sun.

A few bodies of drowned dead are laid out in beautiful symmetry along the base of the rocky piles. Aunt Kastori and I forage about for Pachali faces, but terribly bloated features make it difficult to recognize Amdhu, Rama, Prana, Shira, Arun, the twins, Uncle Chupar, Shakur.…

Aunt Kastori joins another family in their search as well as ours. They are friends from a neighboring village. Even in her grief, Aunt Kastori cannot help being what she is—a busybody. She had been visiting neighbors on high ground when the flood tides swept across the village, taking people, dogs, cows, houses, everything. Her busybody ways saved her life.…

I secretly wish not to find any members of my family here among the rescued dead. I prefer to think of them now as part of the river, which Sesh once told me contains chemical properties that can dissolve a human body in less than a day, flesh, hair, and bones.…

We find Prana’s body. Bleached. Puffed. Her belly distended as though she had eaten a great meal.…

First Audrey Rose. Now Prana.…

Aunt Kastori wails her grief, which will be shortlived, as Indians do not brood over death. I shed no tears. I find I can look upon Prana’s death and no longer feel the need to cry, which was not true of Audrey Rose’s death.

The Ghats are working at full tilt day and night.…

The sweetly acrid smoke infiltrates every pore of Benares’ ancient skin. Long lines of carts, rickshaws, and bamboo stretchers exceed the city’s limits as families progress in sluggish clusters toward the steps leading down to the sacred river. Since death is defiling, all are anxious to cremate their corpses quickly so that the spirits of the dead may be purified.

There is bargaining and bribery going on with the police, who keep the lines in order. Some of the wealthier families are escorted to the front of the line.…

I wait my turn, along with Aunt Kastori and the slight linen-clad form lying across the seat of the rickshaw wallah I hired.…

Flowers in water-filled vases cover the floor of our rickshaw. Freshly cut this morning, they are beginning to wilt in the unsparing humidity.…

Aunt Kastori carries the ceremonial tray of

pindas.…

Although I am neither family nor blood relation, I will light the cremation fire, but that is as far as I will go. I will not remain for the offering of the

pindas,

nor will I perform the annual ceremony for the spirits of Prana or her family. I am neither worthy nor prepared for that responsibility.

In the midst of all this death I cannot keep my mind from dwelling on life. Not life past or life future, but life present—full, sweet, beautiful, bursting with promise.…

In the presence of Prana’s ruined beauty, I experience no enlightenment. I sense no lesson to be learned from her wasted and emaciated body or from the final anguish of her cruel death. I can foresee no consequence of good being derived from all of the terrible suffering I have witnessed.…

I do not understand any of it.…

Standing now within sight of the Ghats, watching the bodies burn, I know that these steps I take to the river will be my last, for in the morning I shall depart this city, never to return.…

I know not in what direction I will go, or why.…

I am hopelessly lost.

Janice’s eyes blurred with strain and emotion as she raised them from the small, difficult pencil scratchings of Hoover’s diary and glanced at her wristwatch. Four fifteen. There was much left to read, but she would have to stop now and think about waking Ivy. The limousine would be arriving in an hour.

After replacing the diary on the upper shelf of the hall closet, she went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.

Watching over the witch’s caldron of bubbling oats, Janice’s mind reeled with a dizzying jumble of thoughts. While she understood only some of what she’d read, the sheer passion of Hoover’s words had made a profound and powerful impression on her.

All at once Janice felt herself in the grip of nausea, her body shuddering uncontrollably in huge, lumbering waves. She shut her eyes and tried to will it to stop, even tried to find humor in her own pathetic weakness. But she was finally forced to rush upstairs to the bathroom to vomit. Afterward, she felt better.

Ivy was surprised to be leaving the house in the dark, but was so tired and feverish she hardly questioned it. She allowed the chauffeur to bundle her up in robes and almost immediately fell asleep.

Dominick, too, was slightly mystified at the early departure and asked Janice if they were joining Mr. Templeton.

“Yes,” Janice replied. “Look after our mail.”

The rain had slackened to a fine drizzle. A silvery luminescence slid between a stream of dark and roiling clouds above their heads. Autumn leaves, sodden, had collected at the curbside, and the wind blew bitingly off the Hudson River, lashing their faces with the sting of winter.

It was five twenty-six when the limousine pulled away from the building and plunged smoothly ahead into the morning mist.

13

Sound-Side Cottages were not, after all, designed for winter use. Situated as they were on an unsheltered knoll of land fronting the storm-swept Sound, their flimsy, clapboard façades creaked and groaned under the onslaught of the wintry gale. Lacking insulation of any kind, the sievelike walls admitted icy drafts of wind and moisture.

Janice and Ivy sat by day directly in front of the fireplace, bundled up in electric blankets, reading books, and feeding logs onto the sputtering fire. The first vestiges of the storm had greeted their arrival nearly a week before, starting with a gentle rain and steadily burgeoning into a full-fledged nor’wester, bringing snow, wind, and driving sleet in continual cycles.

They would have moved out after the first day (there was a snug inn just outside town) had not Mr. Stuart shrewdly insisted on the full two weeks’ rent up front.

Janice had come to Westport to think—to sort out her alarms and confusions and attempt to tidy her mind—but now, a week later, she was in as great a state of mental upheaval as when she had left New York. Hoover’s diary, that simple, deeply felt chronicle of death and despair, had only served to reinforce his sincerity, and validate his dark assertions. “… the soul of Audrey Rose … will keep pushing Ivy back to the source of the problem; she’ll be trying to get back to that moment and will be leading Ivy into dangers as tormenting and destructive as the fire that took Audrey’s life.” His words, like portents flung ahead, clung like amulets before her eyes.

Ivy’s temperature had returned to normal soon after their arrival, and her hands, which Janice scrupulously medicated and bandaged each morning and evening, were beginning to heal. Thus far she had been spared the ordeal of the nightmares, which, to Janice, was a mixed blessing since this only confirmed Elliot Hoover’s theory of their origin.

Possibly the biggest shock was Bill’s reaction when she called him that first morning. He accepted each of her bombshells calmly and quietly, making no real protest, but probing her on every detail of her evening with Elliot Hoover: what he did upon entering, how long it took for him to quiet Ivy, what he said to Janice afterward, how long he remained, and what his parting words were. He thought her decision to flee to Westport was a good one; was glad they hadn’t come to Hawaii since it was hot, sticky and dull; told her to stay put until he arrived, which would probably be just after the weekend as he was cutting out the trip to Seattle, and screw Pel.

Monday, the day before Bill was to arrive, the storm drifted out to sea and, like a curtain being drawn across a child’s painting, disclosed a big, yellow, make-believe sun in a sky of azure blue.

The morning was a special gift for Ivy.

As they trudged along the water line, gingerly sidestepping the larger breakers, Janice rejoiced to see a faint tint of pink return to Ivy’s pale cheeks and hoped her appetite would return as well. They walked barefoot down miles of beach, seeking treasure given up by the sea during the storm. The booty presented itself to them in a continual line at the water’s edge, like a long counter of goods at the dime store. Shells, crustaceans, rocks, pebbles, sea plants, bits of driftwood, punctuated by larger set pieces—cruciforms of tree limbs, massive pilings, acres of bubbly seaweed—a variety of manufactured oddments: sea-weathered boards, bricks, and sundry bottles and rusted cans, their labels and messages obscured by tides and time.

“Look, Mommy!” Ivy called. “It’s dead!”

Janice, who had been lagging some distance behind, now approached to find her daughter squatting at the water’s edge over a large dead fish. Huge bites had reduced its flesh to the skeleton. A small shell had found a home in its eye socket.

“Come away from it,” Janice gently ordered and, taking Ivy’s hand, quickly led her past the mutilated carcass.

“It looked so—dead,” Ivy said, incredulous.

“Dead is dead,” Janice lightly replied.

“Is that how people look when they die?”

“People look like people, not like fish.”

“I mean, all stiff and—broken?”

“Sometimes. If the death is violent.”

“Like in a car accident?”

Janice felt her heart leap.

“Yes,” she replied, her voice faltering slightly. “Like in a car accident.”

“It’s awful dying like that.”

Janice said nothing.

“Sometimes I have dreams about it,” continued Ivy.

Janice bit her lip. Then: “What kind of dreams?”

“Oh. Dying dreams.”

“In a car accident?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I dream I’m dying in my bed. And everybody’s standing around me and crying. Bettina says the living suffer more than the dead. Her mother still suffers.”

“Do you have these dreams a lot?”

“No. Just sometimes.”

They walked a bit in silence.

“Will you mind very much?” Ivy asked wistfully.

“Mind?”

“Dying.”

“Yes.” Janice’s voice was heavy, stark. “I’ll mind very much.”

“I suppose I will, too,” Ivy said simply. “Especially if it’s in a terrible car accident.”

The conversation ended, leaving Janice to battle the rattling crash of the breakers with her own pounding heart.

There could be no doubt.

No doubt at all.

Audrey Rose’s terrors were beginning to leak into Ivy’s waking thoughts.

For a week, her daughter had been free of nightmares.…

The week away from Hoover.…

Audrey Rose sensed her father’s presence.…

—“Wanting! Needing! Crying out for my help! For MY help!”

His proximity alerted Audrey Rose, brought on the cruelly punishing nightmares.…

Away from Hoover there would be no nightmares.…

She must do everything in her power to keep Elliot Hoover away from her child.…

Somehow, she must think hard, and find a way to keep them apart … forever—

On their return to the cottage they passed a group of uniformed girls about Ivy’s age, sifting and sorting among the sea forms. A nature study class, Janice surmised, private, probably parochial, and very expensive. A middle-aged woman, not a nun, was seated nearby on a camp chair, attending her brood. There was an exchange of smiles between Janice and the woman as each paid tribute to the glorious morning, while Ivy squatted among the girls and became part of the class.

The scene was idyllic, restful, secure, an obvious and perfect answer.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“No discussion, Janice, I’m not buying—”

“Why not?”

“I’m not going to let this guy break up my family, that’s why not.”

Bill had rented a car at the airport and had driven directly to Westport, arriving just after 10. p.m. With Ivy safely asleep, they stood on a tuft of knoll a few paces away from the cottage, within sight of the moonspeckled waters of the Sound.

“I happen to like our life the way it is,” Bill continued hotly. “All of us together under the same roof. I’m surprised to hear you suggest such a nutty idea. Correction: I’m not that surprised. You’re really sold on this guy.”

“What does that mean?”

“You let him in, didn’t you? You let him help you—wash your wounds, take care of things, isn’t that what you told me?”

“I did it because I had to do it—”

“You didn’t have to do it—you could have waited for Kaplan!”

“I couldn’t—For God’s sake, I was there, you weren’t! Ivy was going crazy, I was afraid she’d kill herself—I had to let him in because only he could help her! Is it possible you still don’t understand that?”

“Right, Janice—on that point we part company. To me, Elliot Hoover is no miracle man. To me, he’s a misguided nut who seems to have made a hell of an impression on my wife!”

Janice shut her eyes and flexed her hands. Her voice, kept soft, was filled with shocked disbelief.

“You’re right, he’s made a hell of an impression on me. He’s scared me half to death; that’s what he’s done. Most of the time I’m so scared I can’t think straight. He’s got me talking to myself when I’m not talking to priests or screaming to God on my knees. He’s got me drinking in the mornings and stealing off in the dead of night to escape from him. Not because I’m afraid he’s a nut, but because I know he’s sane. Because I believe what he believes is true. Because I accept the fact that our child is the victim of some cosmic screw-up, and as long as she is near him, she’s in terrible danger of losing her life.”

Janice was trying not to cry, but could not stop the tears from coming.

“But the most terrible and frightening thing of all is that I’m completely alone in all this … that with all you’ve seen and heard, with all the evidence clearly stated before your eyes and ears, you still choose to ignore it. Bill, we’re in trouble! Sooner or later you’ve got to come out from under that fig leaf of yours and face it!”

Janice was sobbing now, but Bill made no move to hold her or soothe her. His face took on a masklike appearance.

“Okay, you’ve had your say. Now let me have mine.” The voice was grave, subdued. “To begin with, what you believe, I can never believe. Even if Hoover took me on a personal tour through St. Peter’s Gate and gave me a point-of-sales pitch, I still wouldn’t believe it. It’s not my reality. Although I will admit the day I left you and went to the airport my head was twisting and turning in every direction. I was glad to be leaving the whole mess behind me—you, Ivy, Hoover, all the sick bullshit we’ve been going through. Imagine. Me, model father, glad to be getting away from my own wife and child, whom I love more than life itself. But that’s the way I felt—glad and guilty, glad and guilty, glad and guilty, halfway across the country.

“I tried to remove the guilt with many applications of gin and vermouth, but it didn’t work—the glow grew, my head hurt, but the pricky feeling remained. I tell you, it was pure agony, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Until, somewhere over Kansas, I happened to look down and saw the nation going by, forty thousand feet below me, and I started to focus on life and all its problems from that vantage point, watching cities, plains, mountains, the Rockies, the miracle of America going by from sea to shining sea—and me, encased in another miracle, a massive hunk of steel hurtling through space at the speed of sound. And it suddenly dawned on me that these were the miracles that really meant something—not Hoover’s miracles, but the miracles that living men made: taming lands, building incredible machines. These were the real miracles!

“And then I began to get the glimmerings of an answer. It was raining at this point, you see—we were in the clouds and rain was streaking against the window—and I said to myself, ‘Into each life a little rain must fall.’ A helluva cliché, but that was the answer. Hoover was the rain in our lives, like heart trouble or cancer, and thinking of him in this way, as a disease, he became less ominous and more manageable. I mean, you take cancer to a doctor, and if he can’t help, you go to another doctor and then to a specialist, and you keep on fighting and fighting to the bitter end … you don’t give up. Same with Hoover … you take him to a lawyer, and if that doesn’t help, you go to the police and ultimately to court, and quite possibly that may fail too, but you don’t give up—you don’t cut and run, you don’t hand in your ticket, give up your job, your home.… You don’t break up your family, Janice—you stick it out together and fight with guns, rocks, clubs, anything that comes to hand in order to keep what you’ve got and love. If all else fails, we’ve got to be the minutemen: you, me, Ivy, together as a family. And as long as we remain as a family, we’ve got a chance to beat this son of a bitch.…”

“… of a bitch, a bitch, itch …”

His voice came to a discordant halt, sending the final word echoing across the expanse of water like a rock skimming its surface. In the silence that followed, the soft wave sounds reestablished themselves. Janice stood motionless, letting the gentle noise wash over her boggled, benumbed brain. He wouldn’t understand, couldn’t understand, and she suddenly felt too weary to care any longer whether he did or not.

“So forget about boarding schools for Ivy. Tomorrow morning we’re going to return to our home. As a family.”

The words were uttered softly, but with Biblical obstinacy and determination, closing off all channels of discussion.

So be it.

“All right,” Janice said.

They returned to the city in the late afternoon of November 13, a Wednesday.

Janice’s eyes quickly scanned the solitary, shadowy parts of the street as the car pulled up in front of Des Artistes.

Bill, she noticed, did the same, though less obviously.

There was no sign of Hoover.

Janice watched Ivy kick listlessly at the curbside drift of blackened snow as Mario and Ernie helped Bill carry the suitcases into the lobby. There was a swiftness to Bill’s movements that betrayed his anxiety to get off the street as quickly as possible.

“Better get her inside,” he told Janice, and climbed into the car to return it to the Hertz people.

Janice complied.

The bottle of scotch was where she had left it, open and half consumed on the sewing table next to the rocker. The cork was nowhere in sight.

The entire living room seemed slightly tipsy, furniture, draperies, pillows, askew or out of place—victims of the nightmare.

Janice restored order while Ivy watched TV.

Upstairs, the basin of water was on the bedroom floor, a sediment of brownish grit formed on the bottom. Janice thought of Hoover’s hands washing her legs as she emptied the soiled water into the toilet and rinsed the basin clean.

Ivy’s room was at the epicenter of the cyclone—furniture upended, blankets and bedsheets coiled together in twisted, knotted balls, the Chinese screen, still at a slight angle, covering the window, the subtle motif of the center panel torn and mutilated beyond recognition.

Janice spent the better part of an hour returning the room to its normal state, but could do nothing with the screen since it was stuck solidly behind the radiator. She and Bill together finally pried it loose and carted it back to their bedroom.

Upon first seeing the screen, Bill had asked her what the hell had happened. She told him. His face blanched.

They ate sandwiches from the Stage Delicatessen (Bill had picked them up on his way back from the car rental), along with beer and milk. As they were finishing their meal, the house telephone rang.

Bill calmly ate the last of his sandwich before rising to answer it. His composure was too calculated to pass for indifference.

Russ. Mario had told him they were back. Did they need anything? Carole had baked a large lasagna and they were welcome. Bill thanked Russ and told him they had just finished dinner and were making an early night of it as they were all beat.

Which was partially true, Janice thought worriedly, observing Ivy’s heavy-lidded eyes and drawn, pale face—she seemed ready to flake out at the dinner table. Her milk glass was empty, but her sandwich had been hardly touched. Janice reminded herself to make an appointment with Dr. Kaplan in the morning. Unless, she bleakly reflected, we have need of him sooner.

The bath forgone, Janice tucked Ivy into bed just shy of eight o’clock, and almost immediately she fell asleep. She stayed with her child for a long time, listening to her soft, even breathing, before leaving the room and quietly closing the door.

She found Bill in their bedroom, lethargically unpacking his suitcase, lingering over the disposition of each item as though reluctant to complete the task. Janice snapped open her own suitcase. There was only one exchange between them.

“Is she asleep?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she whispered back.

They both continued to unpack in a silence that was charged with tension and expectancy.

They didn’t have long to wait.

Audrey Rose arrived at eight fifteen.

“Mommydaddy mommydaddy mommydaddy hothothothot—”

Bill snapped his finger at the telephone …

“Kaplan!”

… and dashed out of the room.

Janice dashed to the telephone. (teamwork)

—snatched it up and, the number burned in her brain, quickly dialed it from memory.…

“HOTHOTHOTHOTHOThothothot—”

Agony rose and fell as the bedroom door opened and closed.…

“Yes?” Kaplan, thank God!

“Doctor, it’s Janice Templeton, please come right away!”

“I’ll be right over.”

Janice stumbled forward into the hallway, zooming toward bedlam—

“Hothothothothotdaddydaddydaddy—”

—opened the bedroom door—

“HOTHOTHOTHOT—”

—saw Ivy, head thrown back, howling up at Bill, standing staunchly between her and the window, arms akimbo, legs outstretched, the Colossus of Rhodes, the human barrier to her ravening need—

“HOTHOTHOTHOT—”

—bandaged fists flailing and pelting him, ripping at shirt and trousers with a strength that brought beads of sweat popping to his face—

“Kaplan’s coming!” Janice encouraged.

“HOTHOTHOTHOTHOT—”

—Ivy’s face a raging mask of fear and anguish, fists pummeling Bill with maniacal force and accuracy; thudding impacts collecting him in sensitive regions of belly and groin, causing him to wince in pain and seize the thin arms to stay the vicious hammerblows—

“HOTHOTHOTHOT—”

Janice gasped as Ivy’s teeth sunk into the soft flesh of Bill’s arm.

“Janice! Help me!” he croaked, wrenching his arm from her bloodied lips.

Janice charged toward her daughter’s back, arms extended, and threw herself at her legs, engulfing them in a viselike embrace.

Bill grabbed Ivy’s arms.

Wriggling, struggling, squirming, they carried her screaming to the bed, eased her down, and lay upon the small, convulsing, jerking body to still it.

Gradually, the volcano abated, the body relaxed, the screaming imprecations became soft, plaintive cries, childlike: “Mommydaddy mommymommydaddy hothothot—”

Gently conveying the relaxed arms to the strong grip of his left hand, Bill grasped the sheet with his free hand and quickly bound her wrists. His face was dripping sweat, and he was breathing hard. Clinging to the legs, Janice watched the shocked face of her husband as he tied the end of the sheet to the scrollwork of the carved headboard, then rose to repeat the same process with her legs.

Shortly, their daughter, in all her pale perfection, lay trussed and suspended between the two corded sheets firmly secured to the bed. Both sheets were bespeckled with Bill’s blood.

For a long time, neither spoke. They stood by the bed gazing down at the gently twisting body, in mute horror.

“My God,” Bill groaned hoarsely.

The doorbell rang.

Kaplan!

“Stay with her,” Bill ordered brusquely, and bounded out of the room and down the stairs, flicking on light switches in living room and hallway … twisting two locks … removing the chain bolt … opening the door to—

Hoover. Standing pale, smiling nervously, hand extended in a semi-offering gesture, noting the bleeding arm and the sweated face filled with shock—

“Hello,” he ventured unsurely.

“H-how the hell did you get up here?” Bill choked out in a haggard whisper.

“I—” Hoover began.

“Who allowed you up?”

“I … live here.”

Stunned, stupefied silence.

“What?” breathed Bill.

“I sublet a small apartment on the fifth floor—while you were gone. We’re neighbors.”

A film of red drew a veil across the pale face as Bill felt the throb of blood in his temples and a spasm of rage gorge his throat.…

“You son of a bitch!” Bill exploded, and thrust his hands at the thin neck, seeking to enclose it, to squeeze it, to tear it apart—

“No, please—” the face begged, falling away from Bill’s grasping, flexing fingers, falling backward, downward, floatingly—causing Bill’s hands to grapple with air, a mirage, unattainable. A foot in Bill’s groin, assisted by his own forward momentum, sent his hulking body into the air in a gentle arc, suspending it in space for a fleeting instant, then dropping all one hundred and eighty-two pounds of it onto the hard tile floor with a sickening, brain-rattling thud.

Bill felt his head bursting and knew there were broken parts inside him. Tricky bastard, he thought in his agony, vaguely aware of doors opening and closing down the hallway.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Templeton.” Hoover’s voice came through an echo chamber. “Here, let me help you—”

Bill felt a steellike grip on his arm, as Hoover assisted him to a sitting position. The sight of Mrs. Carew’s round face, watching solicitously from a distance, completed the indignity, sending a jolt of adrenaline pumping through his damaged body, rekindling energy, recharging rage.

“I’ll kill you, you prick,” he groaned, and with a sudden lunge and cry, grabbed Hoover’s legs, wrenched him off his feet, and pulled him down on top of his own body. Rolling about on the floor, Bill’s arms encircled the lean, hard waist in a tight hammerlock and started to apply pressure, when a sudden electrical shock coursed up his spine, immobilizing his body and sending star bursts shooting across his darkening vision. He sensed Hoover’s strong fingers digging into the nape of his neck, impinging on a particular artery. Totally paralyzed, Bill felt himself slipping from consciousness, as Hoover’s agitated voice begged, “Please, Mr. Templeton—I hear Ivy—”

“DADDYDADDYDADDYDADDY—”

Her shrieks, tunneling their way through the apartment and down into the hallway, were partially obscured by Janice’s frantic scream: “Bill, my God!”—all vaguely apprehended, as was Janice’s drained, shocked face staring down at Hoover in unblinking disbelief and hostility.

“Let go of him!” she screamed, and began tugging at Hoover’s arm with a strength that was fierce.

“DADDYDADDYDADDYDADDY—”

“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” Hoover answered, releasing the artery in Bill’s neck and plunging toward the open door.

Blood gushed back into Bill’s head, causing his vision to pulsate with reds and blacks, as the life force slowly returned to the stunned brain.

“Bill, Bill!” Janice cried, on her knees beside him, cradling his thickly throbbing head against her breast.

Other doors opened, other people emerged, some in robes—faces Bill didn’t recognize—remained watching mutely, as Bill coughed and gasped for breath and tried to bring his eyes to focus on the door of their apartment, which was now closed.

“Get a cop!” he shouted in a rasping voice. “That son of a bitch’s got my kid!”

A movement of neighbors, complying, as Bill struggled to his knees and, with Janice’s help, stood up on legs that seemed to belong to someone else.

His face ashen and wild, he stumbled forward toward the door, using Janice’s body as a crutch, and tried the knob, needlessly since he knew the door would be locked, then started to pound on the metal facing with both fists.

“Son of a bitch, bastard! Open the door, you goddamn bastard!”

The stream of obscenities overflowed the banks of reason, punctuated by battering blows against the door, sending shuddering waves rebounding down the length of the hallway.

“Somebody get a passkey!” he hurled back over his shoulder. “The guys a kook, a psycho, hurry!”

Mrs. Carew detached herself from the small knot of onlookers and quickly waddled down the hallway toward the elevators.

Janice could only watch helplessly, attempting to keep her own hysteria from bursting loose, as Bill continued shouting, cursing, and pummeling the door with his fists.

“Bill, darling,” she pleaded, trying to keep her voice under control. “It’s all right. He won’t harm her.”

Bill spun a ravaged, sopping face around at her—eyes bulging, trickles of spittle at the corners of his trembling mouth (a face she had never seen before)—and bellowed in a harsh, accusing voice, “Keep the hell out of this! I’ve had enough of your bullshit, too!”

Janice flinched, reeled away from him, her heart pumping wildly, in rhythm to the pounding fists resumed and intensified, as was the voice issuing forth, horrible and coarse, from the face she didn’t know.

The distant clang of the elevator door.

Dominick, with keys, white-faced and grim, trotting up to them, selecting from the tinkling bunch first one key, then two, inserting—twisting—opening—SNAP!—the chain bolt flexing—

Bill pressed his mouth into the narrow slit.

“Open up, Hoover,” he shouted a bit more reasonably. “The police are coming!”

Silence from within—deep, ominous.

“What’s the trouble?”

Two young police officers had approached, unseen, their winter blues exuding a frigid breath.

“A man’s in my house with my child, Officer! He assaulted me, then locked us out!”

“Do you know this man?” the shorter of the two officers asked.

“His name is Elliot Hoover,” Janice answered when Bill failed to.

The taller officer stepped up to the door and, raising his nightstick, beat a quick, sharp tattoo against the metal panel.

“Mr. Hoover!” His voice was shrill with authority. “I am a police officer! Open the door!”

He waited the prescribed interval of time for a reply, then turned to Bill.

“Is there another entrance to the apartment?”

“Of course.” Bill slapped his head, angry at his own stupidity. “The service entrance, around by the fire stairs!”

They were running—Bill, the policemen, Dominick (fiddling with his keys), and Janice, loping after them in great awkward strides, the sound of neighbors’ whispers and buzzings closing fast behind her.

It was all useless, Janice knew, and as Bill surely must know, the chain lock was never left unhooked on the service door.

Dominick inserted the key, twisted, and pushed. The door opened inward, unencumbered.

Janice froze. A thought too awful to contemplate tantalized her mind. He would not be there, nor would Ivy; he would have left and taken with him—Ivy? No, not Ivy. Audrey Rose, his child.

A deep sigh rumbled out of Bill as he led the policemen and Dominick through the door on the run. Janice lagged behind, in no hurry to confirm her suspicions. The neighbors remained in the service hallway, eagerly curious, wishing to enter, but questioning the propriety of doing so.

Janice heard Mrs. Carew solemnly call after her, “I do hope Ivy’s all right, dear.”

Janice arrived in the living room in time to see the file of men clumping grimly down the staircase. Bill’s face was chalk white.

“They’re gone!” he informed Janice flatly, then raised his voice. “He’s kidnapped Ivy!”

Without breaking stride, they hurried through the living room and to the front door, Dominick advising the policemen, “If you’re talking about Mr. Hoover, he just sublet Mr. Barbour’s suite on the fifth floor.”

As they approached the elevator, the door of the second elevator slid open and discharged Dr. Kaplan. Janice noted his startled expression as the human stampede bore down on him.

“Ivy’s been kidnapped, Dr. Kaplan!” Bill yelled at him. “Come with us!”

“Yes, certainly,” the doctor murmured in complete bewilderment and allowed himself to be swept up in the tide of bodies plunging ahead into Dominick’s elevator.

As the door clanged shut, Janice saw the covey of concerned neighbors, led by Mrs. Carew, pile into the other car.

The trip down was made in tense silence. Janice’s head throbbed painfully as her eyes critically studied the dry, scuffed leather of Dr. Kaplan’s medical bag, worn and battered from years of faithful service, not unlike the binding of Elliot Hoover’s diary.

What happened then was to be forever recorded in Janice’s mind as a series of flickering images—a speeded-up old-time movie, with the nightstick rapping sharply against Mr. Barbour’s door the curtain raiser.

“Mr. Hoover, I am a police officer! Open this door!”

No verbal reply, yet the sound of scurrying footsteps within, clearly heard by all.

“Mr. Hoover, I will ask you once more to open this door!”

The belated reply, distant, muffled: “No.”

Bill shouting, “Open up, you son of a bitch!”

The shorter policeman cautioning, “That’ll do, sir.” Then turning to Dominick and nodding.

—Inserting the key—

—Opening the door—

—Chain bolt snapping—

—Revealing a thin slice of foyer and Elliot Hoover, partially seen, standing by a Grecian column, grim-faced, resolute—

—The policeman thrusting his badge through the opening—

“Will you please open this door, Mr. Hoover?”

“No. There’s been enough insanity for one night.”

—The policeman turning to Bill: “What’s your name, sir?”

“William Templeton.”

—The policeman addressing Hoover: “Do you have Mr. Templeton’s child secreted on your premises?”

—Hoover, flustered, replying angrily: “They tied her to the bed—!”

—The policeman simplifying: “Is there a child on your premises?”

“A child is sleeping upstairs—peacefully.”

“Does the child belong to Mr. Templeton?”

—A pause, Hoover’s gaze holding theirs implacably. Then: “No. It is my child who is sleeping.”

—The policeman, confused, whispering to Bill: “What does he mean?”

—Bill spluttering: “He’s a nut! Break down the door!”

—The policeman consulting Dominick: “Does Mr. Hoover have a child?”

—Dominick shaking his head: “He didn’t have any yesterday when he moved in.”

—The policeman’s stentorian voice booming through the slit: “I will give you thirty seconds to open this door. If you do not comply, I will send for the riot squad to break it down!”

—Mrs. Carew’s sharp intake of breath—

—Ten seconds—

—A smothering hush of anticipation—

—Twenty seconds—

—Another moment of dogged resistance; then Hoover giving way, slowly approaching the door—

—Twenty-five seconds—

—The door closing—

—The chain disengaging—

—The door opening gradually—

—A sigh of relief, generally exhaled—

—Hoover standing mutely in defeat, in the center of Mr. Barbour’s Grecian spa—

—Bill pouncing through the door with an animal cry, pushing Hoover roughly aside, running up the narrow staircase, followed by the shorter policeman—

—The taller policeman guarding Hoover, watchfully, his right hand near his gun holster—

—Bill descending, carrying Ivy (thank God), sleeping soundly, freshly cleaned, her hands rebandaged—

—Dr. Kaplan’s knowing hand feeling Ivy’s forehead—

—The shorter policeman stalking up to Hoover, sober-faced: “My name is John Noonan, police officer first class, Badge number 707325. I am placing you under arrest for the suspected felony of kidnapping.”

—Hoover’s eyes seeking and finding Janice’s, probing them sadly and with accusation—

—The taller policeman removing the handcuffs from his belt, as his partner produces a booklet and reads from it: “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney and have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you, without charge, during questioning.…”

—Applause—

Was it really applause Janice heard in the surrounding hubbub of neighborly approval, as Elliot Hoover was led, manacled, down the hallway to the elevator, in the grip of the two policemen?

Applause?