different about Fifth Avenue. As a few huge snowflakes spiraled lazily
through the glow of streetlamps and through the lights of cars moving
along the thoroughfare, Jack gradually realized the city had reacquired
a fraction of the glitter, glamour, and mystery that it always had for
him before he'd gone to Central America but which it had not possessed
in ages. It seemed cleaner now than it had been in a long time, and the
air was crisper, less polluted.
Staring around in amazement, he slowly understood that the city had not
undergone a metamorphosis during the past few minutes. It was the same
city that it had been an hour ago-and yesterday. But when he had come
back from Central America, he had been a different man from the one who
had gone away, and on returning he had been unable to see anything good
in the metropolis or in any other works of the society he hated. Much
of the Big Apple's dreariness and degeneration had been merely a
reflection of his own blasted, burnt-out, corrupted inner landscape.
Jack returned to the Camaro, went west to Sixth Avenue, north to Central
Park, made a right turn, then another right onto Fifth Avenue again,
heading south, not sure where he was going until he reached the Fifth
Avenue Presbyterian Church. Once more, he parked illegally, took cash
from the trunk, and went into the church.
There was no poor-box as in St. Patrick's, but Jack found a young
assistant minister in the process of closing the place
for the night. From various pockets, Jack produced bundles of ten- and
twenty-dollar bills wrapped with rubber bands, and handed them to the
startled cleric, claiming to have won a fortune in the casinos of
Atlantic City.
In two stops, he had given away thirty thousand dollars. But that was
not even one-tenth of what he had brought back from Connecticut, and
those dispensations did not allay his guilt. In fact, his newfound
shame was growing stronger by the minute. The bag of money in the trunk
was, to him, like the telltale heart buried under the floorboards in the
story by Poe, a throbbing annunciator of his guilt, and he was as
anxious to be rid of it as Poe's narrator had been anxious to silence
the incriminating heartbeat of his dismembered victim.
Three hundred thirty thousand dollars remained. For some New Yorkers,
Christmas was about to come two and a half weeks late.
Elko County, Nevada.
The summer before last, Dom had stayed in Room 20. He remembered it
well because it was the last unit in the motel's L-shaped east wing.
Ernie Block's curiosity was more compelling than his nyctophobia, so he
decided to accompany Faye and Dom to Room 20, where it was hoped that
Dom's memories would be stilled by the sight of the familiar walls and
furnishings. Ernie walked between Faye and Dom, who held his arms.
During the trip along the breezeway, the frigid night wind made Dom glad
for his fleece-lined jacket. More concerned about the black night than
the chill, Ernie kept his eyes shut for the entire journey.
Faye went in first, snapping on the lights, closing drapes. Dom followed
with Ernie, who opened his eyes only when Faye shut the door.
Upon entering the room, Dom was filled with apprehension. He walked to
the queen-sized bed, stared down at it.
He tried to remember lying here, drugged and helpless.
Faye said, "The bedspread's not the same, of course."
The Polaroid had shown the corner of a floral-patterned spread. The
current model was brown- and blue-striped.
"The bed itself is the same, and all the furniture," Ernie said.
The padded headboard was upholstered with a coarse brown fabric,
slightly snagged and worn. The nightstands were plain two-drawer chests
with laminated walnut veneer. The bases of the lamps resembled large
hurricane lanterns, black metal with two panes of smoky amber glass in
each side; the cloth shades were the same amber hue as the glass in the
most of the light; the second bulb, inside the base, was shaped like a
candle flame and gave off a dim flickering glow that imitated a real
flame and was used only for its decorative effect, to enhance the
illusion of hurricane lanterns.
Dom remembered every detail of the place now that he was standing in it,
and he had the impression that a multitude of ghosts flitted teasingly
through the room, staying just at the periphery of his vision. The
ghosts were actually bad memories rather than spirits, and they haunted
not the room but the shadowy corners of his own mind.
"Remember anything?" Ernie asked. "Is it coming back to you?"
"I want to have a look at the john," Dom said.
It was small and strictly functional, with a shower stall but no
bathtub, a speckled tile floor, and durable Formica counter tops.
Dom was interested in the sink, for it was surely the one in his
recurring nightmare. But when he looked into the bowl, he was surprised
to see a mechanical stopper. And an inch below the rim of the bowl, the
overflow drain consisted of three round holes, a more modern design than
the six slanted lozenge-shaped outlets in the sink of his dreams.
"This isn't the same," he said. "The sink was old, with a rubber
stopper attached to a bead-chain and hung from the cold-water faucet."
"We're always upgrading the place," Ernie said from the doorway.
"We took that sink out eight or nine months ago," Faye said. "We
replaced the Formica then, too, although it's the same color as before."
Dom was disappointed because he had been convinced that at least some
memories from those lost days would begin to return to him when he
touched the sink. After all, judging from the stark terror of the
nightmare, something particularly frightening had happened to him at
that very spot; therefore, it seemed likely that the sink might act as a
lightning rod upon the supercharged memories that drifted in the
darkness of his subconscious, drawing them back in a sudden crackling
blaze of recollection. He put his hands on the new sink, but he felt
only cold porcelain.
'Anything?" Ernie asked again.
"No," Dom said. "No memories . . . but bad vibrations. If I give it
time, I think the room might break down the barriers. I'll sleep here
tonight, give it a chance to work on me . . . if that's all right."
"No problem Faye said.
The room's yours."
Dom said, "I have a hunch the nightmare will be worse here than it's
ever been before."
Laguna Beach, California.
Although Parker Faine was one of the most respected of living American
artists, although his canvases were assiduously collected by major
museums, although he had been commissioned to create works for the
President of the United States and other luminaries, he was not too old
and certainly not too dignified to get a thrill from the intrigue upon
which he was engaged in Dominick Corvaisis' behalf. To be a successful
artist, one needed maturity, an adult's perception and sensitivity and
dedicat
ion to craftsmanship, but one also had to hold on to a child's
curiosity, wonder, innocence, and sense of fun. Parker held tighter to
those things than most artists did; therefore, he fulfilled his role in
Dom's plans with a spirit of adventure.
Each day, when he picked up Dom's mail, Parker pretended to go about his
business without the slightest suspicion that he might be under
surveillance, but in fact he searched surreptitiously, diligently for
the watchers-spies, cops, or whatever they might be. He never saw
anyone observing him, and he never detected a tail.
And each night, when he left his house and went to a different pay phone
to await Dom's prearranged call, he drove miles out of his way, turned
back on his own route, made sudden turns calculated to throw off a tail,
until he was sure that he was not being followed.
A few minutes before nine o'clock, Saturday night, he arrived by his
usual devious means at a telephone booth beside a Union 76 station. A
hard rain fell, sluicing down the Plexiglas walls, distorting the world
beyond and screening Parker from prying eyes.
He was wearing a trenchcoat and a rainproof khaki hat with the rim
turned down all the way around to let the rain run off. He felt as if
he belonged in a John le Cared tale. He loved it.
Promptly at nine o'clock, the phone rang. It was Dom. "I'm on schedule,
at the Tranquility Motel. This is the place, Parker."
Dom had a lot to tell: a disturbing experience in the Tranquility
Grille, Ernie Block's nyctophobia.... And by indirection, he managed to
convey that the Blocks had received strange Polaroid snapshots, too.
Discretion was essential; if the Tranquility Motel was, indeed, the
center of the unremembered events of the summer before last, the Blocks'
phones might be tapped. If the listeners heard about the photographs,
they would know they had a traitor in their midst, and they would surely
find him, and there would be no more notes or photos forthcoming.
"I've got news, too," Parker said. "Ms. Wycombe, your editor, left a
message on your answering machine. Twilight in Babylon had another
printing, and there are now a hundred thousand copies in the stores."
"Good God, I'd forgotten the book! Since Lomack's house four days ago,
I haven't thought about anything but this crazy situation."
"Ms. Wycombe has more good news she wants to share, so you're to call
her as soon as you get a chance."
"I'll do that. Meanwhile . . . seen any interesting pictures?" Dom
asked, indirectly inquiring if any more Polaroids had been received.
"Nope. No amusing notes, either." When the headlights of passing cars
swept across the booth, the thin skin of flowing water on the
transparent walls flared briefly with a ripplingshimmering brilliance.
Parker said, "But something came in the mail that'll knock your socks
off, buddy. You've identified
three of the names on those moon posters at Lomack's. So how'd you like
to hear who the fourth one is?"
"Ginger? I forgot to tell you. I think her name's on the motel
registry. Dr. Ginger Weiss of Boston. I intend to call her tomorrow."
"You've stolen some of my thunder. But you'll be surprised to hear you
got a letter today from Dr. Weiss. She sent it to Random House on
December twenty-sixth, but it got caught in their bureaucracy. Anyway,
she's at the end of her rope, see, and then she gets hold of a copy of
your book, gloms your photo, and she gets this feeling she's met you
before, and that you are a part of what's been happening to her."
"Do you have the letter with you?" Dom asked excitedly.
Parker had it in his hand, waiting. He read it, glancing now and then
at the night beyond the booth.
"I've got to call her right away," Dom said when Parker finished the
letter. "Can't wait till morning now. I'll talk to you again tomorrow
night. Nine o'clock."
"If you'll be calling from the motel, where the phones are likely to be
tapped, there's no point in my running out to a phone booth."
"You're right. I'll call you at home. Take care," Dom said.
"You, too." With mixed feelings, Parker put the receiver on the hook,
relieved that these inconvenient nightly journeys to a pay phone were at
an end, but also certain that he would miss the intrigue.
He stepped out of the phone booth, into the rain, and he was almost
disappointed when no one took a shot at him.
Boston, Massachusetts.
Pablo Jackson had been buried that morning, but he was with Ginger Weiss
throughout the afternoon and evening. Like a ghost, his memory haunted
her, a smiling revenant in the chambers of her mind.
Keeping to herself in the guestroom at Baywatch, she tried to read,
could not concentrate. When not preoccupied with memories of the old
magician, she was eaten up by worry, wondering what would become of her.
She got into bed at a quarter past midnight and was reaching for the
switch to turn off the lamp when Rita Hannaby came to tell her that
Dominick Corvaisis was on the phone and that she could take the call in
George's study, down the hall, adjacent to the master bedroom. Excited
and trepidatious, Ginger put on a robe over her pajamas.
The study was warm and shadowy with dark oak paneling. The Chinese
carpet was beige and forest-green, and the stainedglass lamp on the desk
was either a genuine Tiffany or a superb reproduction.
George's puffy eyes made it clear that the call woke him. He began
surgery early most mornings and was usually in bed by nine-thirty.
"I'm sorry," Ginger told him.
"No need," George said. "Isn't this what we've been hoping for?"
"Maybe," she said, unwilling to raise her hopes.
Rita said, "We'll give you privacy."
"No," Ginger said. "Stay. Please." She went to the desk, sat down,
picked up the uncradled handset. "Hello? Mr. Corvaisis?"
"Dr. Weiss?" His voice was strong yet melodic. "Writing to me was the
best thing you could've done. I don't think you're nuts. Because
you're not alone, Doctor. There are more of us with strange problems."
Ginger tried to respond, but her voice cracked. She cleared her throat.
"I ... I'm sorry . . . I'm not ... I don't ... don't usually cry."
Corvaisis said, "Don't try to talk until you're ready. I'll tell you
about my problem: sleepwalking. And my dreams . . . about the moon."
A thrill, half cold fear and half exultation, throbbed through her. "The
moon," she agreed. "I never remember the dreams, but they must involve
the moon because that's what I wake up screaming about."
He told her about a man named Lomack in Reno, dead by his own hand,
driven to suicide by an obsession with the moon.
Ginger sensed some vast gulf beneath her, a fearful unknown.
"We've been brainwashed," she blurted. "All these problems we're having
are the result of repressed memories trying to surface."
For a moment there was a stunned silence on the line. Then
the writer said, "That's been my theory, but you sound sure of it."
"I am. I underwent hypnotic regression therapy after I wrote to you,
and we turned up ev
idence of systematic memory repression."
"Something happened to us the summer before last," he said.
"Yes! The summer before last. The Tranquility Motel in Nevada."
"That's where I'm calling from."
Startled, she said, "You're there now?"
"Yes. And if possible, you ought to come. A lot has happened that I
can't risk talking about on the phone."
"Who are they?" she asked in frustration. "What are they hiding?"
"We'll have a better chance finding out if we all work together."
"I'll come. Tomorrow, if I can book a flight that quickly."
Rita started to protest that Ginger was in no condition to travel. In
the many-colored light of the Tiffany lamp, George's scowl deepened.
To Corvaisis, Ginger said, "I'll let you know how and when I'll arrive."
When Ginger hung up, George said, "You can't possibly go all that way in
your condition."
Rita said, "What if you black out on the airplane, become violent?"
"I'll be all right."
"Dear, you had three seizures last Monday, one after the other."
Ginger sighed and slumped back in the green leather chair. "Rita,
George, you've been wonderful to me, and I can never adequately repay