brittle bones.
Our lives have been defined—and deformed—by our afflictions. My deformations are primarily social; his are largely physical.
A year ago, Carol had died of cancer. Now Dr. Jessup was gone, too, and Danny was alone.
I left the master bedroom and hurried quietly along the hallway toward the back of the house. Passing two closed rooms, heading toward the open door that was the second source of light, I worried about leaving unsearched spaces behind me.
After once having made the mistake of watching television news, I had worried for a while about an asteroid hitting the earth and wiping out human civilization. The anchorwoman had said it was not merely possible but probable. At the end of the report, she smiled.
I worried about that asteroid until I realized I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I am not Superman. I am a short-order cook on a leave of absence from his grill and griddle.
For a longer while, I worried about the TV news lady. What kind of person can deliver such terrifying news—and then smile?
If I ever did open a white paneled door and get skewered through the throat, the iron pike—or whatever—would probably be wielded by that anchorwoman.
I reached the next open door, stepped into the light, crossed the threshold. No victim, no killer.
The things we worry about the most are never the things that bite us. The sharpest teeth always take their nip of us when we are looking the other way.
Unquestionably, this was Danny’s room. On the wall behind the disheveled bed hung a poster of John Merrick, the real-life Elephant Man.
Danny had a sense of humor about the deformities—mostly of the limbs—with which his condition had left him. He looked nothing like Merrick, but the Elephant Man was his hero.
They exhibited him as a freak, Danny once explained. Women fainted at the sight of him, children wept, tough men flinched. He was loathed and reviled. Yet a century later a movie was based on his life, and we know his name. Who knows the name of the bastard who owned him and put him on exhibit, or the names of those who fainted or wept, or flinched? They’re dust, and he’s immortal. Besides, when he went out in public, that hooded cloak he wore was way cool.
On other walls were four posters of ageless sex goddess Demi Moore, who was currently more ravishing than ever in a series of Versace ads.
Twenty-one years old, two inches short of the five feet that he claimed, twisted by the abnormal bone growth that sometimes had occurred during the healing of his frequent fractures, Danny lived small but dreamed big.
No one stabbed me when I stepped into the hall once more. I wasn’t expecting anyone to stab me, but that’s when it’s likely to happen.
If Mojave wind still whipped the night, I couldn’t hear it inside this thick-walled Georgian structure, which seemed tomblike in its stillness, in its conditioned chill, with a faint scent of blood on the cool air.
I dared not any longer delay calling Chief Porter. Standing in the upstairs hall, I pressed 2 on my cell-phone keypad and speed-dialed his home.
When he answered on the second ring, he sounded awake.
Alert for the approach of a mad anchorwoman or worse, I spoke softly: “Sir, I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“Wasn’t asleep. I’ve been sitting here with Louis L’Amour.”
“The writer? I thought he was dead, sir.”
“About as dead as Dickens. Tell me you’re just lonesome, son, and not in trouble again.”
“I didn’t ask for trouble, sir. But you better come to Dr. Jessup’s house.”
“I’m hoping it’s a simple burglary.”
“Murder,” I said. “Wilbur Jessup on the floor of his bedroom. It’s a bad one.”
“Where’s Danny?”
“I’m thinking kidnapped.”
“Simon,” he said.
Simon Makepeace—Carol’s first husband, Danny’s father—had been released from prison four months ago, after serving sixteen years for manslaughter.
“Better come with some force,” I said. “And quiet.”
“Someone still there?”
“I get the feeling.”
“You hold back, Odd.”
“You know I can’t.”
“I don’t understand your compulsion.”
“Neither do I, sir.”
I pressed END and pocketed the cell phone.
3
ASSUMING THAT DANNY MUST BE STILL nearby and under duress, and that he was most likely on the ground floor, I headed toward the front stairs. Before I began to descend, I found myself turning and retracing the route that I’d just followed.
I expected that I would return to the two closed doors on the right side of the hall, between the master bedroom and Danny’s room, and that I would discover what lay behind them. As before, however, I wasn’t drawn to them.
On the left side were three other closed doors. None of those had an attraction for me, either.
In addition to the ability to see ghosts, a gift I’d happily trade for piano artistry or a talent for flower arranging, I’ve been given what I call psychic magnetism.
When someone isn’t where I expect to find him, I can go for a walk or ride my bicycle, or cruise in a car, keeping his name or face in my mind, turning randomly from one street to another; and sometimes in minutes, sometimes in an hour, I encounter the one I’m seeking. It’s like setting a pair of those Scottie-dog magnets on a table and watching them slide inexorably toward each other.
The key word is sometimes.
On occasion, my psychic magnetism functions like the finest Cartier watch. At other times, it’s like an egg timer bought at a cheap discount store’s going-out-of-business sale; you set it for poached, and it gives you hard-boiled.
The unreliability of this gift is not proof that God is either cruel or indifferent, though it might be one proof among many that He has a sense of humor.
The fault lies with me. I can’t stay sufficiently relaxed to let the gift work. I get distracted: in this case, by the possibility that Simon Makepeace, in willful disregard of his surname, would throw open a door, leap into the hallway, and bludgeon me to death.
I continued through the lamplight that spilled from Danny’s room, where Demi Moore still looked luminous and the Elephant Man still looked pachydermous. I paused in the gloom at an intersection with a second, shorter hallway.
This
