Captain Quad (23 page)

Peter was still glowing from his adventures of the night before, and not even the Froot Loop antics of his mother could spoil all of that. What had happened in Kelly's bedroom had been as glorious as it was inexplicable. The forgotten fire of functioning nerve endings, the matchless joy of motion. . . and the sure knowledge that, even after all this time, even after all that had befallen them, Kelly was still in love with him. That revelation had nullified his initial fury at the stranger's trespass. After all, there had been nothing left for Kelly after the accident but to carry on, to go through the motions of living, and to hope that, when death came, she would not have to face it alone. Though his embittered heart told him differently, Peter knew that it was he who had turned her away, and not the other way around, as he would have his brother believe. Who could blame her for taking comfort from another man?

But she wouldn't have to do that anymore.

"Séance, eh?" Peter said, grinning at Sam's troubled face. "Well, Sammy, you never know. That might just prove interesting."

As the hour approached—midnight, the medium had insisted—Leona was plagued by a steadily escalating panic. Furtive attempts at dousing that panic—frequent side trips to the toilet with complaints of a nervous bladder, sloshing back mouthfuls of Jack—served only to boost it to a higher gear.

The medium, Eliza Cook, sat in a trancelike hush at the dining room table while her assistant—a fat, dough-faced woman named Tabitha—gobbled Cheezies from a bowl Leona had set out prior to their arrival. Leona had found the woman's name in the Northern Life personals. "Eliza! Professional Medium! Tarot Reader! Fortunes told! Séances Held! By Appointment Only." Leona had held off for as long as she could, waiting for Peter to return on his own. But he never had. Not outside of her nightmares.

Eliza guaranteed results.

Everything was in place. The windows were draped, those without curtains slung with blankets Leona had scavenged from her bed; all of the lights but one had been doused, the phone was unplugged, and Sam was out for the evening. Leona had insisted. She didn't want the brat busting in and spoiling the whole show, spouting lies about Peter still being alive.

It was ten before midnight, and this time Leona's bladder really was full. "I'll be right back," she slurred to the seer's assistant, who nodded and sucked an orange finger.

"She's gone," Tabitha whispered once Leona had rounded the corner. She stifled a burp, then reached for her Pepsi.

Eliza, whose real name was Myrt, shifted in her seat. A cramp in her lower back had been nagging her since before she'd sat down, but she had not allowed herself to let on. In this business, style was everything. In the half hour before midnight, she routinely made a show of "achieving the correct plane," which involved sitting as still as a statue and ignoring such minor annoyances as cramps, itches, and worst of all, boredom. Not that attention to detail was going to matter for much longer if this silly bitch kept hitting the bottle. Still, she was paying with queen's currency, a hundred dollars' worth, and she deserved the full show.

"How do I look?" Eliza asked her assistant, whose job it was to add, with properly timed oohs and aahs, to the drama of Eliza's illusions.

"Like a three-dollar hooker," Tabitha answered, giggling into a ham-sized fist.

"Kiss my—"

Tabitha toed the medium's ankle, transporting her instantly back into trance. A moment later Leona shambled into the room. At Tabitha's instruction she sat across from Eliza at the small oval table, hands clasped eagerly in front of her. Her eyes were round and swimming, but they never left Eliza's somber face.

With a porcine grunt, Tabitha stood. She lit the single stubby candle that was part of their gear, then waddled over and switched off the overhead light. Returning to her seat, she sucked the last sweet ounce of Pepsi from the can before setting the empty on the floor by her feet. Then she lowered her fleshy lids.

In a cathedral voice, Eliza began.

"We are assembled here this night to call up the unquiet spirit of"—for a terrible moment she couldn't recall her client's name; then it came to her—"Leona Gardner's beloved son Peter." She raised her eyes to the ceiling, letting them rest on a huge and intricate water stain. It looked like a cartoon orgy up there. "Taken in the dawn of his life, he wanders the labyrinth of the nether world, lost and bewildered, seeking the light of his mother's love. Only she can deliver him from this trackless limbo. Only she can dispatch him to God." Eliza thrust her arms overhead. Cheap Asian bracelets chattered on her wrists. "Come to us now, O Sleepless Spirit. Give us a sign."

Leona's eyes flooded with tears. She did not want to send her son to God; she wanted him back, to play for her as he had been trying to do on that single wondrous night, to remain with her always. But she dared not open her mouth, dared not disturb the medium. She had spoken at length with the assistant over the phone and had been forewarned against creating any disruption once the séance had begun. She had answered a lot of questions then, too, personal stuff about Peter's life, and had assumed it important to the process.

As she lowered her arms and dropped her chin back to level, Eliza caught a glimpse of Leona's earnest expression and made a show of flashing her eyes, rolling them back in a splendid display of deepening trance. Her mother, a fraud in her own right, had always said Myrt would wind up in show biz.

The three women joined hands, closing the mystic circle. "Come to us now," Eliza repeated in her husky working voice. "Come to us, O Wandering Spirit. Speak through Mother Eliza."

Hovering above his piano, Peter smirked angrily. As before, the sight of his mother, the woman he had once loved more than any other, blinded him with blood-colored rage. With the entire force of his being, he reached down and pounded the keys.

Then he flew at Eliza like a fireball.

Immediately on the heels of the piano's tuneless belch, the candle flame guttered with a tiny roar, as if exposed to a sudden draft. Startled, Tabitha looked sharply at Eliza. The medium sucked in a sharp gust of air, and then her eyes popped open like blinds. Her fists clamped brutally shut, causing both Leona and Tabitha to wince. In the dancing light of the candle flame, Eliza's lips purpled to a sickly burgundy.

Leona gave a delighted squeal.

Tabitha, who didn't have a clue what was going on, started to get up from the table. None of this shit was in their repertoire, and how in the fuck had Myrt got that piano to pitch a fit? In the past Myrt had always forewarned her about any of the cute little special effects she sometimes rigged. And she never got this downright peculiar. She looked like she was having a heart attack, and Tabitha decided it was time to put a stop to it.

But Eliza's grip tightened, and Tabitha thumped back down in her seat, stifling a cry, the small bones in the blubber of her hand grinding like faulty gears.

"Peter?" Leona cried. "Peter, are you here?"

Eliza's head lolled forward, her iron grip suddenly slackening. A fat bead of drool took a swan dive from her lower lip.

From the floor beside her Tabitha's empty pop can rose to the level of her nose. It imploded, then described a whistling arc through the air. It struck the K-Mart oil painting over the mock fireplace, punching a knuckle-size hole in the canvas before clattering to the floor.

Eliza, looking stunned, lifted her head and gawked hazy-eyed at Tabitha. "Wha—" she managed to say.

Then a whining whirlwind surrounded them. Eliza's hair, hung in a tight Gypsy's braid, stood smartly at attention on the top of her head. A faint band of metallic blue light encircled them, crackling with malign energy. Transfixed, Tabitha turned to Eliza, fear and befuddlement in her eyes. Eliza, still shell-shocked, gazed back blearily.

"Peter?" Leona whispered.

And the whirlwind ceased. As if shot, Eliza recoiled against the back of her chair. She stiffened, eyes widening, lips curling back to reveal stained, uneven teeth. A run of meaningless syllables slopped out of her mouth, and then she barked like a startled dog. Her face seemed at war with itself.

Then: "Hi, mom," she said in a husky masculine voice.

Tabitha clutched her heart.

"Why don't you throw these simple sluts out and clean up your act?"

"Peter?"

"Yes, Mommy dearest," Eliza said, turning to face Leona. "It's me. Remember this?
"

Enraptured, Leona looked on as Eliza's face rearranged itself, muscles forced beneath wrinkled skin into configurations contrary to remembered patterns. Her eyebrows peaked into exaggerated arcs, and her mouth shaped an impish grin, the effect one of a battered, effeminate Jack Nicholson.

"Heeeeeere's Johnny!" Eliza sang out with maniacal glee: Peter's impersonation of Nicholson as the homicidal caretaker in The Shining, the one that had always gotten a roar out of Leona and Sam and Kelly and his football buddies. "Remember?"

"Oh, Peter," Leona moaned, tears glazing her bloodshot eyes.

"Fuck this!" Tabitha squealed. She grunted and got to her feet, snatched her purse off the table, and rumbled like a semi toward the exit. As she clasped the knob and hauled the door open, Eliza went momentarily slack. There was a blast of stale air, and then the door swung shut in its frame, salting plaster dust into Tabitha's hair. With a yelp she jerked at the knob again, and this time made good her escape. Her footfalls sounded like receding thunderclaps in the hallway.

Eliza perked up again. Her eyes were like doll's eyes. "You want to see me, Mom?" she said in a voice that was not her own.

"Oh, yes, Peter, I do."

"I'm in room 908, at the University Hospital."

Leona flinched as if kicked.

"You can't miss me, Mom. I'm the head at the bead of the bed." There was a dry, cackling laugh. "Oh, and one other thing. . .”

Eliza reached out, caught Leona by the front of her blouse, and pulled her across the table until their noses touched.

"I am not dead."

Six years' worth of vaulted anger let go in a mushroom cloud of destruction. Its initial instrument, Eliza sprang to her feet and flung the heavy pine table on its side, snuffing out the candle and plunging the room into darkness. The table edge clipped Leona on the chin, a stiff wooden uppercut that sent her sprawling to the floor. Dazed, she got to her feet and lurched to the nearest wall, her nails scuttling over the uneven plaster like roaches. She found the light switch and threw it up.

"Peter?"

Eliza spun to face her. In the time it had taken Leona to turn on the light, the medium had pulled over a bookcase, stuffed a stockinged foot through the television screen, and toppled a dozen dusty figurines to the floor. Now her face contorted horribly and she charged at Leona like a rhino, head down, shoulders hunched, heels thudding the tiles. Halfway across the room her toe caught the edge of a throw rug, and she sailed head first into the back of the couch. Her head struck a steel strut, and when her body hit the floor, it was boneless.

Blind with fury, Peter quit his unconscious host and rose like a mist to the ceiling. At the sight of the destruction he had wreaked, an arresting awe overcame him and he simply hung there, surveying it, a triumphant general in a hovering chopper. He had caused all of this. Peter Gardner, vegetable. This was fantastic! This—

"Peter?"

Leona stumbled into view beneath him, yellow eyes rolled toward him, withered hands upheld in the beseeching posture of the damned.

Pathetic.

Peter started toward her, so jammed full of hatred and fury and confused love that his thought processes were momentarily reduced to a maddening whine at the midpoint of his skull.

He started toward her—

And an eyeblink later he was back in his body, his rage condensing into a frustrated cry in the bullhorn hollow of his throat. As he opened his mouth to expel it, a nurse walked in with a sedative. She took one look at him, spun on her heel, and was gone. Peter caged the shout behind clenched teeth. His mouth felt full of ashes.

Looking down at his mother only seconds before, he had dearly wanted to kill her.

By 3:00 a.m. Peter had achieved a level of calm that was more or less compatible with rational thought. That wretched, murderous whine in his skull had subsided, and his rage had flamed down to cooling cinders. Now he lay in the pale winter moonlight, reflecting on what had taken place in his mother's apartment.

First, and most important, he had influenced physical objects. He had actually made things move. When he pondered this fact—really thought about it—the sheer excitement it caused him was almost too much to bear. The piano keys had flattened under his touch (as they had the first time he visited his mother, he reminded himself; that single clean chord had not been part of a dream after all), and he had crushed that pop can as effortlessly as a normal man might squash a paper cup. The possibilities this fact alone created simply boggled his mind. It was like being the Invisible Man. Jesus, if he wanted to, he could really put a spook on some people—his good buddy, Dr. Lowe, for instance. Wait until Harry does himself up and then make the syringe do a jig in the air. What a roar that would be! Or—God, yes!—he could rob a bank! Just float in and cram a rucksack full of crisp new hundreds. He and Sammy could move to Tahiti. . .

But there was more, and Peter felt an odd blend of dread and astonishment as he contemplated the rest.

He had entered that woman's body. True, he'd done the same thing the night before with the cocksucker in Kelly's bed, but that guy had been asleep. This woman had been fully conscious, and yet she'd been easy to take over. It seemed more a matter of intellect than anything else. He'd literally outsmarted her, tricked her narrow little mind into taking a powder.

And that made him wonder how long he could have stayed inside her. How long might he have pulled her strings?

Could I have taken her over permanently?

This thought, for all its incredible possibility, struck him as ludicrous. Even as he rode her he'd sensed that his hold on her was tenuous. Some awakening force in the woman had gradually begun to repel him, and although he'd jerked her around like a mad marionette for a few minutes, he'd felt like a rodeo stuntman on the back of an irate bull. The effort had exhausted him.