Late at Night (2 page)

“I
am,
“ she insisted. “There are a lot of people like me, with special interests, special gifts. I’m not so unusual.”

“Baby, come
on!
“ He spoke while chewing; a rarity for him. “This is me you’re talking to. You’re—weird. A very nice person, but weird. You’re obsessed, fixated. You’re dragging me into a world I want no part of. It’s just not my scene. All those rituals, those silly ceremonies, the things you and your friends talk about. Your so-called ‘gifts.’ ” He was getting angry now. So he was jealous of her friends. “I’ve had it up to here.”

“It never bothered you before. You’re just using your distaste for my preoccupations as an excuse.” She could feel tears coming.
No. Not in front of him! You’re a big girl! A grown woman. He isn’t worth it. You’ve lived without him, without a man, before. You were happy and fulfilled and will be again.
At least the waiting would be over, the waiting for this moment that had finally arrived.

“That’s not true,” he said. “I didn’t let it bother me at first because you were attractive, lovely. So sweet, and nice to be with. You really have many fine qualities.” She felt like a schoolgirl in front of the principal.
You’ve been a naughty girl, which is a shame, since you really have many fine qualities.
“But I can’t handle the other shit; not any more. Maybe if I loved you …”

There, it was out. He Did Not Love her.
Did you hear that, dearie? He doesn’t love you. Probably never did.

He skipped a beat, watching her eyes as her face looked down disconsolately at the plate. He resumed immediately, racing his words. “I’m very fond of you. Always will be. I think I even-loved you—for awhile. If I was in love, deeply, truly in love with someone, I could put up with anything. But I guess I’m not really in love. ‘Cause all this stuff you’re into bugs the hell outta me. I don’t love you enough to put up with it.”

This stuff. This stuff.
She got up quickly from the table, overturning her wine glass. It looked as if there were bloodstains on the linen. “Wait a minute!” he called. But she was weaving her way between the damnably close tables
that
prolonged her humiliation, and out the door before he could call out again. The ultimate test: he did not follow her.

Out on the street she felt miserable, but free.
Was
she weird? Did it matter? What was the point in continuing the luncheon; everything had been said. He wanted out, so she’d give him his freedom. What more was there to say?

The rain had softened to a light drizzle. She took out a plastic scarf and tied it around her head, grateful she had worn her raincoat instead of the bright blue jacket she’d bought the other day. Instinctively she’d known this was to be their final get-together; appearances wouldn’t matter. She could have walked in all rouged and blonde and sexy, and the end result would have been the same. To hell with him!

Still, it hurt getting dumped.

As she made her way back to her apartment, she wondered what had finally prompted her to get up out of her chair and leave the restaurant. The realization this his mind was made up, that there’d be no second chances? Or his remarks about her “weird” activities, his insults directed at her, her interests, her friends? Her
abilities?
Could it be that that upset her more than the thought that she was being dumped? Maybe he’d been right. Maybe she
was
fixated. The trouble was, she was a believer and he was not. Well, screw him. Her gifts would never leave her, dump her, the way he had. They would sustain her throughout her lifetime. Of that she was sure.

Weird. Odd. Freaky. Strange.
She’d been called all those and worse by better people than him. Sooner or later she’d meet a believer who would be a perfect romantic match. Out of her current crowd the prospects were few, if not non-existent. But someday … She did not believe in movie-star romances, but knew that someday someone would come along who would eagerly and easily share space with her, and despite the usual, normal difficulties, the occasional fights, it would be good, and it would be warm, and it would be beautiful.

Up in her apartment, she patted her cat hello and opened the window. She loved to listen to the rain. She stared at herself in the mirror, trying to reaffirm her attractiveness in her own mind. She walked from room to room, wondering what to do. It was Saturday, her day off. Bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, lounge—she always called her living room her “lounge.” Bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, lounge.
He
had probably already filled the vacancy—had several candidates lined up—but she was left alone, all alone, until … ? At least there was “nothing of his in her apartment; she wanted a clean break as much as he did.
No! You. Will. Not. Cry.

Was there something she could do to ease the heartache? If only she could wipe away the next few weeks, wake up when all the pain was gone! Was there someone she could call? A shoulder to cry on, an understanding friend? Yes, what about —no,
she
was out of town for the weekend. Besides, the friend she had thought of calling was involved in a whirlwind affair with a handsome and eligible bachelor. Would her friend want someone to call her and talk about how awful it was to be dumped while she herself was on a romantic high? No. Anyway, who needed the inevitable pity and condescension?

Bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, lounge. The grain of an idea was growing in her mind. She wondered: should she? Dare she? Bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, lounge. She needed something to perk up her spirits, she needed to do something she had never done before. Why not? Didn’t she have a right? Especially now.

Bedroom.
But what? Now that she had made up her mind to go ahead she had to decide on exactly what it was she was going to do?
Kitchen.
It had to be something that would take time, that would involve her totally, take her mind off of her depression.
Bathroom.
She stopped in her tracks, struck by the determined look on her face in the mirror. There was a smudge on the glass; she wiped it off with her fingers. It came to her in a flash. A query. An unspoken query about her own future.
Lounge.
Well, why not? Yes! that was it— that was it? It was one of the most dangerous … she would have to proceed with extreme caution. Hut she could do it if she tried.

Why not?

She knew she was taking a terrible risk. Of all the arcane arts, what she was about to attempt was considered one of the hardest and most foolhardy acts of all. She might not like what she would see.
What if there was nothing to see?
Would she be able to deal with what that meant? Would she?

If you’re going to go through with it, do it now. No more delays. Do it!

First she must decide upon the place. Bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, lounge. That was easy. Bedroom. It would be more private that way. She could lie down while waiting. There was less noise from the street. Yes, the bedroom. Perfect.

She went over to the large wooden trunk to one side of the closet, and took out everything she would need. Candles, chalk, ancient leathery tome full of poems and instructions for old potions. Most of it would come from her own mind. And he had dared to scoff, that—that
boy
in the restaurant. Would he have laughed if he had seen what she was really capable of doing? Would he have laughed then? She placed all the objects in their proper place, began the incantation—merely a focal point, a way to center in on her powers— and tried to relax. Damn him. Damn them all!

She lay down on her bed. Relax, relax. She concentrated, prayed, got in touch with cosmic forces most people didn’t dare to dream of. She felt a tugging inside her, something pulling at her soul. (Or was that the spaghetti and meatballs?) She giggled. Part of her refused to believe that it would happen. Part of her didn’t want it to.

But the part of her that
wanted
to be successful won out in the end. Mystic forces combined with her own unnatural prowess, and doors in space opened, corridors of existence were warped and bent. She cried out in agony; something was wrenched unwillingly from her sanity. There was a rush of air, a twisting of nerve and synapse. Something screamed.
She
screamed. The world had a tear in it.

Finally, her strength recovered, she got off the bed and looked around.

Nothing appeared to have changed. She looked hesitantly at first, then desperately, for anything to indicate that
something was different.
But everything was the way it had been. The mystic objects that she’d placed around the room were gone, but that was to be expected. Everything else was just as it had been.

She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

But wait—on the night table. Something was there. Some object. She was certain it had not been there before. Positive. She reached out to grab it, feeling that she was already being called back, that the effects of the spell were ending. Too soon. Not soon enough. As her fingers closed around the object on the table, she noticed a shadow, a shadowy figure, standing off to one side. She could not get a clear look at it; already things were beginning to fade. She felt that tugging again. Had the figure been there all along? Probably. She had not noticed it until now, over there in the one dark corner of the room. It was approaching. She wondered who—or what— it could be. She felt a terrible, petrifying sense of danger. She forgot all about the object in her hand, her intention to look at it and to see what it was, what it might tell her. The figure was coming closer. She wanted to scream. Her heart was beating faster, the sound of it pounding in her ears. The figure raised an appendage; an arm, she imagined. She did scream. There was a sudden, sharp pain. Then blankness.

* * *

When she woke up it was nighttime.

She was completely exhausted. She was lying on her back and her fingers were wrapped around something.
What is this? How did it get here?
She had never seen it before.

Then she realized where it had come from, that she had failed to let go of it when everything had started fading away. For a moment she was thunderstruck with the implications, the possible repercussions, the meaning of it all.

But then she remembered something else.

The figure, that figure in the shadows, that had come out of the corner and approached her, approached her as inexorably as death.

And she knew, irrefutably, incontrovertibly, that somehow, in someway, back there, back then, she had stood on the very threshold of her own unlamented demise.

Chapter 1

The boat left the party of fourteen on Lammerty Island and headed back for the mainland. The skipper had been a joking, jovial man who spent much of the trip debunking the tall tales about ghosts and strange occurrences that revolved around the island. He would have made some members of the expedition feel a little better if he had stayed for dinner, after all; but he and his first mate—his eldest son, actually—had things to do in town and couldn’t wait.

He would return early Monday morning, he told them, for the trip back.

The party stood on the dock watching the boat go. Gloria Bordette was smoking like a chimney, one after the other, looking about anxiously for signs of friendly life. Her young lover, Jerry Hardington, looked as blasé and as beautiful as ever. He lifted up two heavy bags, both of which belonged to Gloria—his own stuff was in a knapsack on his back—and said somewhat petulantly, “Which way do we go?”

Lynn Overman spoke up at once. “Let’s see. That way, I think. I’ve only been here once before, when I was a little girl. We go up this path, over the little bump, and through those trees over there. See? You can see the top of the guest house from here.”

There was a burst of appreciative “ahs.”

“Beautiful. Just beautiful,” Betty Sanders sighed. “It’s paradise!” She shook her squat little body and took a deep breath and scrunched up her shoulders like a cat about to sleep after eating a canary.

“Let me take those, ma’am,” Hans Swenson said as he swooped down and took Betty’s suitcase and traveling bag in his enormous, weather-beaten paws. A big, tall Swede of forty-five, he would have been twenty-six-year-old Betty’s perfect man if only he drank less beer and had more hair.

If not quite paradise, Lammerty Island in springtime was indeed a sight to behold. On this particular day the sun was shining brightly overhead and there was a mild, pleasant breeze blowing in from the sea. If you squinted just a bit you could see the mainland, but the view out onto the immeasurable vastness of the Atlantic was more memorable. The island was basically flat, with some dips and rises here and there, cliffs along one side, and the small hill just before the guesthouse that Lynn had referred to as a “bump.” And it did look like a bump, a small nodule of dirt and weeds lying across the pathway. Most of the vegetation that could be found on the island was only just starting to reaffirm its existence since the frigid death of winter, but the visitors could hear the cawing, flapping sounds of. seagulls and other birds in the air overhead. On both sides of the dock were shattered outcroppings of jagged rock upon which the tides drummed their relentless beat. It was not warm today, and several members of the “expedition,” as they’d come to call themselves, were wishing they had worn sweaters and overcoats. Winter was supposed to be over, true, but this was an island in the middle of nowhere, not a condo in Miami or a beachfront in Malibu. An island. In the middle of nowhere.
Nowhere. A
deserted, presumably
haunted
island. The mind boggled.

They began the trek to the house. “Imagine, Lynn,” Cynthia Marcovicci, a very lovely, slender brunette of twenty-six kept saying over and over, “You own your own island! It’s so fantastic. I thought only millionaires owned their own islands.”

Lynn exchanged grins with the attractive middle-aged man walking along beside her. He was John Everson, her lawyer, and both knew only too well that one did not have to have a million dollars in order to own an island. Since he represented the estate of Gladys Hornbee, Lynn’s eccentric aunt, it had been Everson’s pleasure to tell Lynn that she had been left her aunt’s Atlantic retreat, and his regret to also inform her that the island was just about the only thing that the aunt had had left to pass on. “It’s in such an awkward location,” he had told her. “I don’t think anyone will want to buy it. But perhaps some weekend we can go out and look it over; you can decide what you want to do. Bring a group of friends, perhaps. The island has quite a history. You’re into all that stuff, aren’t you? You should find it fascinating.”