Late at Night (21 page)

“I can do it,” Lynn said. “Betty’s ‘a guest.’ ”

Betty was quick to contradict her. “I don’t mind. Really I don’t.”

Lynn was in no mood to argue. “Suit yourself.”

Everson took the two flashlights. The Swede went by himself to get the medical supplies, instructing Betty to wait until he returned.

“Some trip this is turning out to be,” Everson muttered.

Lynn swiveled, faced him. “What did you say?”

Everson paused, then lost all decorum. “You heard me.” His tone was hostile.

Lynn addressed no one in particular. “Next he’ll be blaming me. You wait. He’ll say this trip was
my
idea and all
my
ideas are stupid.”

“Lynn, for heaven’s sake.” Everson was switching the flashlights off and on, checking to see if they’d stay lit for a reasonable period.

She pressed on. “You were the one who suggested this trip. I’ve always hated this island and that awful old woman who lived here. She spent her money on obscure, ridiculous institutions all her life, and what was left was eaten up by that private nurse of hers. And what does she leave me, this godforsaken—”

“I thought you were excited about owning this place, about having access to, what did you call It?”

Lynn’s eyes flared as if Everson was about to enter forbidden territory, to say something she did not want the others to hear. “Never mind,” she shouted. Ernie sensed that she was showing the others a rare side of herself. All the tension— the missing housekeepers, Everson’s manner, and whatever strain there had been between the two of them before—was just too much for the woman. For just a second, she looked a little mad. “I wish we had never come here. It was a mistake.”

“You won’t get any argument from me on that,” Everson growled. During all this Anton was looking on, his face amused, his eyes mildly contemptuous. Betty was still in the doorway, wringing her hands. She looked as if she was about to cry. The strain of it all was getting to her, too. Suddenly Ernie realized that Betty
was
crying, that long wet streams of tears were running down over her chubby cheeks. She was clearly an extremely sensitive woman, a fragile chipmunk who overreacted to emotional situations.

“Why, Betty, dear, what ever is the matter?” Anton purred, gliding over to where she stood and taking her hands in his own.

“It’s nothing, Betty,” Lynn assured the woman. “John and I fight all the time. Everything will be all right.”

Betty looked at them, her eyes and nose red, her flesh pale. “I—I’m so frightened,” she stuttered. “This island. The girls disappearing. Mrs. Plushing getting sick. And you and John fighting. It’s as if this island is making us all fall apart.”

Anton chose that moment to shrug off the condescending, overly charming manner he had been using on the woman. “Oh, come now—that’s the stuff of moronic horror films. This island isn’t doing anything to us.” His sharp tone brought a fresh flood of silent tears. “Stop whimpering,” he ordered. Then, in a calmer, softer voice, the one he’d used before, he said, “Please, dear. You’ll only make matters worse. Everything is going to be all right. We’re all just a little overwrought.” Slowly, carefully, he soothed the little chipmunk back into his control, and even managed to get Betty to smile, a tentative one at first, then a big, toothy, infatuated grin. “I’ll—I’ll be all right,” she said.

Lynn made a silent diagnosis. “I’ll go upstairs and get you a valium.”

Ernie had been on the verge of sneaking into his room to check for the book, when Andrea came running into the lounge from the kitchen. “Mrs. Plushing is terribly ill. She keeps asking for Hans to come see her.” She and Ernie exchanged anxious glances.

“Did someone mention me?” The Swede appeared behind Andrea, holding a black Boston bag. “I found the medical supplies, Mr. Everson.”

Suddenly the air was full of a series of horrible screeches; high-pitched wails of agony and terror. Everyone knew where they were coming from. “My God!” Everson exclaimed. “What can be wrong with the woman!”

The lawyer led Hans and Betty into Mrs. Plushing’s room. Anton went to fix himself a drink. Ernie was about to follow the others, when Andrea grabbed him and motioned him to follow her into his room. He closed the door to the makeshift bedroom and asked her what was up.

“I was being melodramatic before; I’m not any longer. We are all in terrible danger.”

“Did you look for the book?” he asked.

She was visibly annoyed with the interruption, but answered. “Yes. I went through everything in Han’s and Eric’s room—and then snuck into the women’s quarters while Mrs. Plushing was sleeping. I had finished searching when Mrs. Plushing started murmuring in her sleep. She’s burning with fever, Ernie, and she kept asking to see Hans. Said she had something important to tell him.”

“I don’t see how that means that we’re all in danger.”

“It’s not that,” Andrea told him. “There’s a— a presence—on this island. A distinct, individual presence that’s evil and strong and getting stronger all the time.”

Ernie tried to suppress his impatient sigh but it escaped before he could do so. Andrea gave him a livid glare, and started for the door. “Oh damn you! You’re all alike. You come to me with a ridiculous story about a precognitive book that anyone else would commit you for, and I bother to listen—and yes—to believe. But when I want to tell you what’s bothering me, you stand there sanctimoniously and have the gall to—”

He grabbed her, thinking of the icy barrier he had witnessed between Lynn and his cousin, not wanting that same barrier to form between him and Andrea. He did the first thing that came to mind. No amount of apologizing or conversation might get to the woman the way she was feeling, but if he could shock her out of her indignation …

And that was why he found himself crushing her in his arms, and pressing his lips down on top of hers. She struggled for a second, but only a second, and for a moment he was afraid he’d made a terrible mistake, that he’d come on like a macho peabrain reducing to a sex object a woman who was trying to be taken seriously by someone she’d befriended. He braced himself for the slaps, the accusations, the belittlement that was sure to follow.

Instead, he felt Andrea giving in, then taking over, pulling him closer and pushing her tongue into his mouth. They couldn’t have held each other any tighter. He heard Andrea moaning, sighing. And then, when they seemed to be running out of air, and not before, he let her go and looked down to see her reaction firsthand.

Andrea was smiling, out of breath. “If I’d known it was that easy to get you to kiss me I would have gotten angry a lot sooner.”

The words rushed out of him. “Please. I didn’t do that to shut you up. It was my way of—of telling you that I care about you and your feelings and I feel like a shit because I did what I did back there. I should have listened to you. Please—I’m a reactionary, square, conventional shithead of a man who’s freaked out by all this supernatural stuff. And it will—it will take time.
I want time,
Andrea.”

“I don’t care what your motives were,” she said. “I’m only glad you finally got around to doing it. The kiss, I mean. And as for the other, well—I know how hard it is for most people to understand.”

“You were right, of course. I let you help me out, you listened to me and believed me, and,” he swung his foot out, kicking his suitcase, “look what I go and do.”

“Forget it.” She sat down on the bed. “Will you listen to me
now?”

“Yes. Go ahead.” He sat down on the bed In side her, prepared to become engrossed in her every utterance.

“Like I said earlier, there are bound to be many psychic currents, many—how can I phrase it?— auras on an island like this; on any space that’s been inhabited, and has had any kind of history, especially one as melodramatic as this. Violence, torment, anguish; these are strong emotions, emotions which, some people think, can live on longer than calmer, softer emotions.”

“Hate is stronger than love. An old theme of horror stories.”

She nodded. “Anyway, whether these currents are just electromagnetic energy from the brain, energy that never dies converted to psychic energy, or if there are actual souls or spirits floating around us—well, no one really knows. But in any case, I’ve felt these currents, spirits, energy sources, ever since I landed on the island. They’re concentrated here.”

“Don’t you feel these currents all the time wherever you are?”

“Yes, to some extent, although I’ve learned, while I’m wide awake at least, to tune them out. I have to, for my sanity’s sake. But in a town or city, just walking around, there are so many
living
people surrounding me, that their sheer vitality and consciousness just overwhelms any
psychic
energy that might be floating around. Here on the island it’s different. There are only a few of us, alive.

“And, Ernie,” she said grimly, “we’re outnumbered.”

Ernie leaned back on the bed and struggled to find the right words. “What do you mean? You think the spirits of the dead people here are out to harm those of us who are living?”

She shook her head violently. “No. Not at all. It’s always been said ghosts don’t hurt people. Only the living can hurt people. And that’s what the problem is. I’ve sensed something troubling me ever since we landed, and I’ve finally realized what it is. Psychically, he or she was trying to hide from me, but I’ve broken through due to sheer persistence. There’s another psychic on the island, one potentially more powerful than I am. Someone who’s using the psychic currents on the island for his or her own devices. It’s either someone who was on the island all along, or someone who came to the island with us.”

“You mean, one of
us?
Someone we know?”

“Yes, probably. And I just don’t know who it could be. Lynn, Betty, Gloria, even Anton— though he’d be loath to admit it—they all share an interest in psychic phenomena and the supernatural. But if any of them have advanced beyond the curiosity stage, to become actual
practitioners,
they kept it a secret from me.”

“What about Everson? Jerry? One of the others.”

“No. I don’t think so, but I just can’t be sure. Anyway,
you’re
in the clear. I would have sensed it about you a long time ago.”

“That’s good, but you haven’t told me how this places us all in danger.”

“Don’t you see? This person—whoever it is— is… I hesitate to say ‘evil,’ it’s so corny—but that’s what it comes down to. They’re playing with dangerous forces.”

“It sounds like witchcraft, black magic.”

“Some people might call it that, but to me it’s
science.
That’s why I’ve always been interested In the paranormal
and
the supernatural. One deals with the human mind, the other with ‘ghosts.’ But to my way of thinking, they’re two sides of the same coin, and can both be explained scientifically. I believe they’re aspects of a science so advanced it’s beyond the understanding of most of us, beyond even my understanding. A psychic person—what some would call a witch—is merely a person who can use the powers of his or her own brain more so than the rest of us can. Telekinesis, precognition—it’s all brain power; nothing spooky about it.”

“What about foretelling the future? I’m sorry, but I can’t believe in fate.”

Andrea spoke deliberately. “Some say that history repeats itself, that time is a circle, that we’ve all done this before and will do it again. Our lives are not so much preordained as
lived over
again.”

“Depressing. You mean a child who dies at ten is doomed to keep dying at that age, never living out his lifespan. I can’t see it.”

“I never said it made sense, or that it was true. It’s just one theory out of a hundred that might explain precognition. Another theory is that precognitive individuals are subconsciously picking up the thoughts and feelings of those around them, or those whose future they wish to predict. They simply make educated, speculative guesses, from information which appears to them in dreams, visions, what have you. That’s why most psychics are wrong a lot of the time. Sometimes their speculations come true; sometimes not.”

“I could deal with that theory a lot better than the other one.”

“Now, as for the psychic who’s with us on this island, and as to why I think he or she is dangerous. I can’t put it into words. I’m psychic, and I know—in part at least—what my companion is up to. And Ernie, I’m convinced now that those girls—the housekeepers—that they’re dead.”

A vision of two bare white skeletons flashed through Ernie’s mind and he swallowed.

“And I think this psychic killed them, that he or she used the forces of the island, channeled them, to somehow bring about the deaths of those girls. You might be surprised to learn that I don’t have a wild imagination. This never even crossed my mind until a little while ago. It’s not a guess or a feeling. I
know
it. I’ve read this other psychic’s mind.”

“You couldn’t possibly be wrong?”

She shook her head sadly, her eyes full of fear and regret. “There’s a slim chance. For their sake, I hope so. But I don’t think I’m wrong.”

“But why? What did those girls ever do to anyone? The poor kids.”

“I don’t know. It’s easy to call our friend malevolent, maybe even psychotic, but even psychotics have their reasons. They might not make sense to anyone else, but there’s a twisted inner logic to what they do. I think our friend has killed those girls and intends to kill the rest of us. And I think your book is involved in it all. I have an impression of it now, for the first time, even though the psychic is trying to block it. Either he or he has the book in his or her possession, or is looking for it, too, and trying to keep me from finding it first. I think that’s what it must be. Perhaps in some insane way, this person is trying to—eliminate the competition?”

“But whoever it is must know you’re the only other psychic around; you make no secret of it.”

“Yes, but while that would make me extra-sensitive to his powers, more vulnerable in some ways; because I’m a seasoned pro at this I’ll also be harder to get rid of—through psychic means, at least. I have a theory that those two housekeepers—well, one or both of them had some small degree of psychic ability—most of us do in one form or another—only, they probably didn’t even know it. That’s why they had those awful experiences, saw and heard what they did. Either the psychic currents themselves were attracted to them because of their sensitivity, or else our friend was able to exploit that sensitivity, to test his powers, by making those girls undergo what they did. It will be easier for him to destroy sensitive, imaginative, easily frightened people, people with phobias and fears and neuroses.
Believers.
People who don’t believe, who aren’t afraid of the dark, frightened of ‘ghosts,’ may not be as susceptible to a psychic attack or manifestation.”