Superstition

32

Her first impulse had been to run, to put as much distance as she could between herself and those taunting, somehow unspeakably evil words.

But distance, she realized, offered no escape. Physics spoke of a curved space-time continuum, but the thought had been a mere abstraction until now. Suddenly it described a trap, surreal, inescapable, and singular, that she and all of them were in.

She looked around at the three men with her. Pete was white and standing with his arms pressed hard against his stomach, looking as though he might pitch forward any second in a faint. Ward Riley stood erect and preternaturally still, scarcely breathing as he gazed in grim silence at the ominous scrawl on the window. Roger Fullerton's shoulders had a slope to them that she had never seen before, reflecting, it seemed to her, a passivity made up in equal parts of shock and resignation, as though things had reached a point where further comment was impossible.

Only Sam reacted with what might, in more normal circumstances, have been called presence of mind. He had crossed the room and grabbed a camera almost before she realized he had moved, and was already clicking off shot after shot of the scrawled message, hopping from one side of the window to the other, moving in and out and shifting focus like some paparazzo ambushing his subject in a restaurant door.

Joanna felt her anger rise again. She wanted to scream at him, accuse him of all the things she had accused him of earlier-only more violently, because it was worse now. The thing was actually in the room with them, turning their lives and everything they believed in upside down-and all he could do was take photographs, like some fool on a day out at the beach.

She felt a gentle pressure on her arm. Roger Fullerton had come to her side, and she saw concern in his eyes. She thought how odd it was, funny almost, that a moment ago she had been watching him, and now she found him watching her. She opened her mouth, wanting to say something, make some joke about it, but all that emerged from her throat was a shuddering sound that ended in a sob. She didn't resist as Roger guided her to the sofa and settled her onto it. She looked at him and nodded mutely in thanks for his kindness. He reached out to brush a lock of hair from her face and tuck it behind her ear, a gesture of such tenderness that she felt her eyes sting with tears.

Then Sam was on his knees before her, looking up anxiously into her face. He took her hands in his.

“You all right…?”

“I'm fine.”

The words came out clearly, cleanly, their sound somehow filling the void inside her into which for a second she had been afraid she might implode. The worst had passed. Reality, or something approaching it, was beginning to return.

Her gaze moved to the camera that still hung around Sam's neck. He gave a faint smile, sheepish and apologetic. “I had to get pictures. It's not something you see every day.”

She wanted to laugh, but she didn't trust herself: she was afraid that something else might come out. So she just shook her head and held on to his hands a little tighter.

“Don't be afraid,” he said, “it's nothing that can hurt us.”

It was the wrong thing to say. The anger she had felt earlier welled up in her again. She snatched her hands from his. “How can you say that? It's already killed Maggie, and Drew and Barry…!”

“We don't know that. We don't know it, and I don't believe it.”

The others were looking at them, but she felt no embarrassment. They were all in this together, and there was nothing that any of them could say that didn't affect them all.

“Then just what do you believe, Sam? Would you like to tell us what's going on?”

“ We are doing it. Maggie died of a heart attack, Drew and Barry died in an accident. We are looking for reasons.” He pointed to the words on the window. “ We did that.”

She sat back in impatience and closed her eyes, too weary and frustrated to argue, and too unsure of her ground. Besides, what difference did it make? Things happened; understanding why they happened didn't change them.

There was a silence in the room, broken by Ward.

“‘Joie de vivre,’” he murmured. “It's an everyday French phrase for which there's no equivalent in English. We don't say ‘joy of living,’ we use the French. ‘Joie de vivre.’”

Pete too looked over at the window, where the words were still visible, although the condensation was beginning to evaporate. “You'd have to be pretty much a psycho to use ‘joie de vivre’ as a reason for killing somebody.”

Sam was on his feet again, moving in close to the window for a few last shots, using flash this time.

“Unless in some twisted way,” Joanna began, taking up Pete's remark, “he saw his ‘joy of living’ as somehow incompatible with that of his victims.”

Pete looked at her. “Why would that be?”

“Other worlds.”

The remark had come from Roger, murmured more to himself than in response to Pete's question. He was sitting in an armchair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and gazing at his clasped hands.

Joanna said, “Sorry, Roger?”

He straightened up and looked at them all. “The world in which Adam exists cannot include a future in which there are people who will invent him. As Joanna says, it's a problem of compatibility.”

Sam turned from the window, removing the finished roll of film from his camera. “Aren't we getting a little speculative here, Roger? Even by what you used to call the ‘liberal standards of paranormal research’?”

Roger smiled thinly. “I was merely offering an idea.”

“One that sounds uncomfortably plausible,” Ward said quietly, “and all the more reason why we have to terminate this thing.”

“But what are you saying ‘this thing’ is?” Sam persisted, joining them.

“Basically, I share your view,” Ward said. “Adam is something we've created. A thought-form. Whether he's responsible for these deaths, I don't know. How would we prove it either way? But I do know that he or ‘it’-this ‘force’-is now beyond our control, and I think we need help if we're going to do something about that.”

Sam looked at him differently. “Help?” An edge of suspicion had entered his voice. “What kind of help exactly?”

Ward hesitated, tipping his head noncommittally. “I'd like to talk to some people.”

“May we know who?” The question wasn't put aggressively, but it implied what they were all thinking: that they were in this together and had a right to know who else he proposed involving.

Ward understood, and replied willingly. “It's really just one person. I suppose you'd call him a guru, or a kind of one.” He gave a slight laugh. “Although I don't know how many kinds there are. I've known him twenty years. He doesn't have a cult or a following-at least not one where the members know each other. I know a couple of people he's taught, one of whom passed him on to me. I don't know where he's from or where he lives. He travels all the time, can be anywhere in the world, but if you need him you'll always track him down with a few phone calls.”

“What does he do for an encore-sing a duet with himself, or perform a rain dance?” The question came from Roger, and the uncharacteristic sarcasm was jarring.

But Ward took no offense and looked over at him with a kind of dry amusement. “In view of what we've all been through recently, I'm not about to apologize for anything I say that might sound marginally superstitious. Frankly, I'd have thought we were all beyond embarrassment on that score.” As he spoke his eyes flickered to the window, where the writing was still visible, though drops of condensation were running down the glass now, making dark lines through and underneath the words.

“Like it or not,” Ward said, “something has taken root in our lives. It makes no rational sense, but we all know it's happened. Whether it killed Maggie, or Drew and Barry, I don't know. Whether it wants to kill all of us, or why…I don't know that, either. But I want to talk about it to this man, because he's the only person I can think of who'll maybe make sense of it.”

He crossed to where his overcoat lay on the back of a chair. Nobody spoke as he began to put it on.

“By the way,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “he cured me of pancreatic cancer twelve years ago-solely through diet and meditation. Of course the medical profession says that's nonsense, it was a spontaneous remission that would have happened anyway, as they do in a small percentage of cases.” He shrugged. “Who can say? I know what I believe.”

He took a step toward the door, then turned again. “I'll be in touch in a couple of days, Sam. Three at the most.”

Roger started to follow him. “I'll walk out with you, we can share a cab.”

He paused to say good night to Joanna, planting a kiss on her cheek, then carried on after Ward.

“Look, I didn't mean to belittle the idea. On the contrary, the way things are going in physics, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody discovered a new particle called ‘superstition’ any day now…”

Pete left with them. Joanna stayed behind while Sam saw them out. She could not take her eyes off those three mysterious, mocking words daubed across the windowpane, their condensation trails suddenly reminding her of trickling blood. Finally, to break their spell, she stepped forward and vigorously wiped out all trace of them, using her hand and the sleeve of her dress. When Sam returned a moment later she was gathering up her things.

“You're leaving?”

She nodded briefly, saying nothing. He saw that the window was wiped clean, but he didn't comment.

“Please stay.”

“I really need to be on my own.”

He seemed to think about arguing, then decided against it and stepped aside to let her pass. “By the way,” he said, “your editor called me this afternoon.”

She stopped. “Taylor Freestone? Why?”

“To offer funding for the department. Or at least a generous contribution. I wanted to thank you, but I haven't had a chance to until now.”

“You've got nothing to thank me for. This is the first I've heard of it.”

“He said you'd told him about Barry and Drew. He wanted to offer his sympathies-and, apparently, make sure we stayed in business. He must really like what you're writing.”

“I suppose he must.” She started out again.

“I'm not in denial. You're wrong about that.” He had turned to keep her in view as she moved to the door, but he didn't follow her. “I'm as disturbed by all this as you are.”

Again she stopped and turned to look back at him. “But you're not afraid, are you? You're cool and detached. That's what I'm finding a little hard to live with.”

“I'm just refusing to jump to conclusions. I'm sorry if that upsets you.”

The protest in his voice was matched by the impatience of her reply. “If this ‘thing’ is responsible for those deaths, it's our fault. Why do I feel that doesn't worry you? You just accept it. The only question you ask yourself is how does it work?”

“The only question I ask is what evidence we have for believing that-”

“We don't have any evidence for anything!” Her anger boiled up again, but she controlled it with an effort. “You said it yourself the other night! We're not a court of law. We're not repeating some experiment and confirming a result. We're caught up in something that none of us understands, and I'm afraid, Sam. Can't you understand that?”

“Of course I can,” he said, his tone conciliatory. “I am too. We shouldn't be quarreling like this. There's no reason.” He took a step toward her, but she backed away.

“No, don't…not now…”

She saw the hurt in his eyes, but there was nothing she could do about it. In a way that she couldn't change or as yet even get used to, she was coming to see him as the opposite of everything she'd thought he was. From being a lone visionary fighting against prejudice he had become a skeptic, splitting every hair and exploiting every loophole until all certainty dissolved into a cloud of doubt and ambiguity. She was weary of it all.

“Perhaps Roger's right,” she said. “What we believe doesn't matter. There's no final theory.”

“It doesn't mean that what we believe is unimportant…”

“Tell me, Sam, what do you believe?”

“Believe?” He looked faintly surprised at the question. “You mean about life, death, the universe, and everything?”

She ignored the faint sarcasm in his voice and waited for an answer.

“I suppose,” he said after a moment, “I believe, like Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living.”

“What about good and evil? Do you believe in them?”

“As opposing forces in constant war with one another?” He shook his head. “No.”

She accepted the reply impassively.

“You know what I can't get out of my head?” she said. “What Pete said about witches-how it happens.” She paused. “But you'd call that just superstition, wouldn't you?”

He shrugged and offered another apologetic smile. “Yes.”

They stood motionless, eyes locked across the space that separated them.

“Stay with me,” he said.

It was a plea, touching in its simplicity. But she shook her head.

“Not tonight. I'm going to take a pill and gamble on eight hours of oblivion making me feel human again.”

They kissed chastely at the elevator, but she refused to let him ride down with her. The rain had stopped and taxis, she insisted, would be plentiful this time of night. It wasn't so much that she wanted to get away from him, just that the need to be on her own was urgent now. She needed to think her own thoughts-or not think at all. Another presence, any presence, would be painful to her raw nerves.

“Christ,” she thought, as she counted off the floors through the gate of the descending elevator cage, “what a mess. What an ugly, fucking, total mess.”