Late at Night (24 page)

Out in the living room Anton was feeling no pain.

“Hello, dear fellow,” the pianist said, raising his glass. Ernie ignored him. Drunks always got on his nerves.

Ernie fixed himself a nice stiff drink and drank fully half of it before lowering his glass. Anton was studying him, amused. Ernie glared back and said, “What happened to everyone else? Frighten them off?”

A very dark, very sinister look crossed Anton’s face, but only for an instant. It was replaced by the silly grin and vacuous expression of before. “Mrs. P. is still sick,” he said, “but at least she’s stopped screaming. Delirium, that’s all. Poor Betty has been put to bed by our hostess. It seems the strain of the trip has been too much for our Miss Sanders.” He burped, coughed into his mouth. “Lynn is upstairs pouting, and the handyman—what’s his name—is inside attending to the cook. The cook and the handyman. Quite a combination if I say so myself.”

“And cousin John?” Done with his first drink, Ernie fixed himself another.

“Went tottering off into the great wilds of Borneo to search for the two little housegirls. I don’t doubt he’s boffing them in the bushes at this very minute. The lech. First Lynn, then the house children. What’s next for our favorite solicitor? Babies perhaps?”

Ernie ignored the man’s inane ramblings. “Damn. Someone should have gone with him. Why didn’t you tell John I was in my room?”

“Really,” the pianist huffed, as if offended. “You mean you wanted him to come knocking on your door while you were alone in there with our beauteous local ‘sensitive?’ Tell me,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “just how sensitive is she?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ernie said. “We were just talking.” Anton chortled and sat down heavily on the sofa, spilling part of his drink in his lap. He flicked away what he could of the liquid, and said, “If you say so, chum.”

“Why didn’t
you
go with—oh, never mind.” Ernie drank his second drink slowly. It wouldn’t do him or anyone else any good if he wound up in the condition Anton was in, although he knew that part of Anton’s dopiness was mere theatrics. The man loved letting his hair down and acting silly at the slightest provocation.

The door to the storage room Ernie slept in opened and Andrea stepped out, looking more alert than she had been all night. “Andrea, are you all right?” Anton, who’d been nodding off, or pretending to, on the sofa, looked up and took an interest once the young woman appeared.

“I’m all right,” she said. “How are you? Look, I didn’t mean to scare you in there, it’s just that—”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” Ernie said, lifting his glass in a mock salute.

She nodded. “I’m glad you understand.”

“How about you?” He indicated his drink.

“Nothing for me, thanks. I need a clear head. Maybe later.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Listen. I think I have a fix on that book of yours. I mean on the book.”

Ernie was instantly galvanized. “Where?”

“It’s still in the house. Upstairs. I can—I can feel it. It’s too difficult to explain, but if we go upstairs I might be able to pinpoint it exactly.”

“Then let’s go.”

Anton leaned over the edge of the couch and yawned. “Don’t tell me you two are going to spend the night in his room
reading.”

“Shut up, Anton,” Andrea said in a calm, no nonsense voice.

Anton feigned indifference. “It’s your libido, my dear.”

“Come on,” Andrea said, taking Ernie’s hand and leading him to the staircase. His curiosity piqued, Anton stood up—straighter on his feet than one would have expected—and walked in their direction. “Where are you two going? You’re up to something and I want to know what it is.”

“It doesn’t concern you, Anton.”

“Suffron, stay out of this.”

He looked at both of them in turn. “Don’t order me about. I’m not that inebriated, I assure you.” His tone was steady, too, and menacing. Ernie suspected Anton was one of these people who could let liquor affect him if he wanted to, but could easily shake off those same effects if it suited his purpose. “Neither of you own this house. If you can go upstairs, so can I.”

Andrea sighed. “We don’t have time to play games. Come with us if you want to.”

“Are you sure?” Ernie asked. “Remember— ‘our friend.’ ” He nodded his head in Anton’s direction meaningfully.

“It’s a possibility,” she admitted. “But if he is the one, he’ll find we’re not sitting ducks the way the others were.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ll find out,” Ernie said. He followed Andrea up the staircase, and Anton followed him.

The necromancer smiled.
The book. She’s found the book. I can tell. I thought she was the one hiding it from me, but I was wrong. She’s been trying to break through the barrier, too—and has succeeded. Well, it will do her no good. In a very short while
I’ll
have the book, right where I want it. In my hands. And if the bitch thought I was powerful before, if she thought I used the powers of the book aptly when I didn’t even know where it was, wait until she hands it over to me and I blow her and her friend and everyone left alive on this island to kingdom come.

Soon. Soon!
The necromancer could hardly subdue its excitement.

Soon
this game will be over. And I will be the one and only winner.

The necromancer controlled itself, calmed itself down.

And waited.
Soon!

Chapter 42

Andrea proceeded to walk up to the second floor, pause on the landing, then walk up to the third floor with renewed determination. Once there, without stopping, without knocking, she marched right into the “master bedroom” and over to Lynn’s bed. Lynn was laying down, eyes open. The lamp on the night table was on and she was at first surprised, and then annoyed, at the interruption.

“What’s going on? What do you want, Andrea?”

Lynn looked past her friend and saw Ernie, then Anton, and was not amused. “What do you want? John isn’t here.”

“We’re not looking for John,” Andrea said. She bent down, thrust out her right arm, and started searching for something under the bed. “Andrea!” Lynn’s voice rose in stridency and anger. “What the hell—”

Andrea stood up suddenly.
“This
is what we were looking for.” She turned to Ernie. “It was stuck on the underside of the box spring with masking tape.” She pulled off the thin strips of adhesive and handed the book to Ernie. ”
Late at Night.
This
is
what we’re looking for, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ernie said cautiously. So, it was real, had been real, all along. A chilling sensation ran up and down his spine.

It was the same book, same cover, same type face, same everything. He began to flip through it, looking for the sections that he hadn’t already covered the night before.

“What is that?” Lynn wanted to know. “What was it doing under my bed?”

“Some women have men under their beds,” Anton said. “Other women have books.”

“I don’t know what it was doing there,” Andrea replied. “Maybe you can tell us.”

“Some stupid paperback novel,” Lynn exclaimed. “Who cares? I still don’t know what’s going on.”

Anton stepped over to the bedside and sat down next to Lynn. “Yes, why all this fuss about some cheap paperback? Curiouser and curiouser.” Lynn gave him a dirty look, then got up off the bed and stood over by the window. “Answer me, someone!”

“Ernie found this book last night in the bookshelf downstairs. By morning it had disappeared. I was able to tune in on the aura it emitted and traced it to this room. Something was blocking the book’s emissions before—or should I say someone—but once I had penetrated the psychic barricade it was a simple matter to find it.”

Ernie felt slightly apprehensive. How did he know Andrea had “traced” the book? She had found it so quickly that it seemed possible that she had planted it under Lynn’s bed herself.
No, you have to stop thinking like that. You have to trust the woman.
He felt three pairs of eyes boring into him; Andrea had left it up to him to fill in the rest.

He expelled the air in his lungs, rubbed his forehead, then forged ahead. “This book—it’s a story about this island, about an expedition. It’s the story of a young woman and her lawyer friend who bring some associates to the island. One by one people start disappearing—and dying.”

“Preposterous,” Anton said. “These silly trash novels. What they won’t think of next. Do you expect us to be frightened or something?”

“The characters in this novel—are us.”

Lynn was raising no objections. Ernie suspected she knew more than she was telling. Could she be the “friend” Andrea had warned him about? Anton, on the other hand, tried to grab the book from Ernie’s hands and kept harping on how ridiculous the whole thing was.

Ernie turned to the page that first introduced Anton’s literary counterpart. “Read this,” Ernie said. “It’s the description of a
famous concert pianist
who is a member of the party. See if it doesn’t sound like you.”

Anton took the book. It was not a flattering description. Anton’s nostrils flared and his face reddened slightly, but he seemed to recognize himself. He began flipping pages rapidly, stopping now and then to read a paragraph or two, pacing the short length of the room twenty times a minute. Lynn had dropped all protestations and stood by the window, looking pale and nervous. Ernie and Andrea watched Anton, wondering what his final reaction might be.

“This is uncanny, impossible,” Anton thundered. “Who could have written this book? We’re all in here. Every one of us.” He looked at their hostess. “Lynn. You and John. In the book you’re called Linda Bauman and Joseph Edwards, but it’s still the two of you. The house, this house, is described exactly as it is.”

“Other people have been to this island,” Lynn said quietly. “Anyone could have written a novel set on Lammerty Island.”

Ernie jumped in, mentioning all the possibilities and improbabilities that he had considered and rejected the night before. “You’ll have to read it yourself and see what we mean. The book is about what’s happening on this island
this very minute.
The story in that book
is now
taking place.
We are
the cast of characters. Everything in that book has come true, or might come true, before the night is up.”

“Speaking of which,” Andrea said, taking the book from Anton, “shouldn’t we see what is
going
to transpire? At least according to,” she read the cover, ” ‘Mr. Schumann’?” She stopped short for a second, as if startled by the name, recognizing something.

“What is it?” Ernie asked.

“No—nothing,” Andrea said, shaking off whatever had upset her and beginning to flip through the book. At one point she started reading. Anton and Ernie watched her, her lips moving furiously, her body trembling. “My God —my
God.
Ernie—you were right! Anton—this is incredible. Horrifying.”

Anton and Ernie exchanged incredulous glances. For once they were too shaken to snap at each other.

“My Lord.” Andrea looked up from the pages for a moment, white-faced and frightened. “The visions, the feelings I had downstairs, of what was happening to Jerry and Cynthia. This book describes it. If that really happened to them— and I know it did—God help them. God help them.”

Ernie couldn’t stand still any longer. He took the book from her, and began scanning the pages past the point where she had been. “I have to find out what happened to the others. The housekeepers. Gloria. Eric. The middle of the booklet’s see—”

Lynn spoke up at last. “I can’t believe you three, standing around like children. As if you could really predict the future by reading some idiotic book. I think you’ve all gone crazy. Absolutely crazy.”

“Don’t sit there and pretend to us,” Anton bellowed. “That book is an outrage, an—an abomination. An invasion of privacy. The work of the devil.” He started moving slowly, threateningly towards Lynn, his body quivering, eyes wide and full of menace. “You little witch. You invited me, all of us, on this trip. And now we find
—that.
You know what’s going on, you and your decrepit old lover.”

“Shut up!
I don’t know anything about that book. You come bursting in here, accusing me.”

Andrea took Ernie’s arm. “Let her see it. Once she reads it herself she’ll—”

Lynn spat out her words. “I’m not interested. I thought you were a friend of mine. I thought you and Anton were both friends of mine. But I see I was wrong. You’re all against me. Even John—”

“Here!” Ernie shouted. “John has gone searching for the housekeepers—yes, that’s it!” He read out loud: ” ‘Edwards realized that he had taken the wrong path, and was heading away from the old mansion and towards the other end of the island.’ ”

He flipped the page, anxious to see what was going to happen.
I can’t believe I’m doing this,
he thought.
Can I really believe this book is magical? That it dictates or has somehow recorded our future actions?
Yet he kept reading, silently, ignoring the battle occurring on the other side of the room.

Anton was inches away from Lynn. “You’d better tell us what that book is, who wrote it, and what it’s doing here,” he said. “Or I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Yes, drunk. And bound to get drunker. After reading that book.”

Lynn saw a scapegoat. She pointed to Andrea.
“She
found it. She probably put it there under the bed. To place me under suspicion. Andrea’s the psychic, the freaky one, we all know that.”

“Come on, Lynn—you’ve been going on about witchcraft and the supernatural ever since the very first day I met you,” Anton argued. “You may not have. Andrea’s psychic powers, but you share the same interests. You’re practically a fanatic on the subject. Worse even than Andrea. I wouldn’t put it past you to have planned this entire trip just so you could work some spell on us, or use this island for some demonic purpose. Is the season right? Is it the right day of the week? Are the planets in conjunction?” He looked at Andrea, who was hanging on his every word, alarmed and showing it. “She used to bore me silly with all that stuff. She’s gone through a dozen boyfriends and it’s no wonder. We all get sick of her—”