Mystery Walk

parapsychologists I was telling you about. If you can communicate with the dead—'lay the dead to rest,' I suppose you might call it—then you should be working with scientists, not traveling with a two-bit carnival or spending your life in a town the size of a postage stamp. Billy, you have much to offer; perhaps the answer to a great many mysteries ... or perhaps the beginning of new ones. Does it . . . affect you like this, every time?'

'It's only happened like this once before. That was bad too, but this is . . . agony. It's like having a long scream bottled up inside you, but you can't find your voice to let it out. I feel like I'm burning up, but I'm cold too. There's too much going on in my head, and I ... I can't think straight.' He sighed, more of a breathy moan, and let his head fall back against the seat, his eyes closed. He had to open them again, quickly, because strange blurred visions—the last things those people had seen before they died in the gondola: spinning sky and blinking lights, fingers curled in the mesh of the canopy, the world turning at frightening speed in a blaze of colors—whirled in his brain.

Dr. Mirakle drove the truck over a long bridge, and then turned off the road into an area of older clapboard houses; most of them were two-storied structures that spoke of the harsh hand of time and salt-air abrasion. Mirakle stopped the truck before a large house with a front porch and boarded-over windows. The white paint was peeling in long strips, showing the bleached gray wood underneath. They sat in the truck for a moment more, as the gray light darkened. 'You don't have to do this,' Mirakle said.

'I know. The way I feel, I don't even know if I can.'

'Was what you did worth the pain?'

Billy considered the question, then nodded. 'Yes. It was.'

'And you'd do the same thing again?'

'I don't know. I try to . . . think I'm strong enough, but I'm afraid. And I know that when I'm afraid, I get weaker' He turned his weary gaze onto Mirakle. 'I don't want to be like I am. I never asked for it. Oh God, if I just could forget about revenants and the black aura and Death for a little while! ... I want to be like everybody else.'

'Everybody else is afraid, too,' the man said quietly. 'But don't you understand that you of all people shouldn't be afraid, because you can see past Death to another kind of life? You know that going into the ground isn't the end of it; and if you can help other people see that, then . . . your life can make a difference in the whole scheme of things! My God, what an opportunity you have! If I were in my right mind, I'd try to talk you into touring the country with me, and giving some sort of demonstration of the spirit world! We'd wind up as either millionaires or skid-row bums!'

Billy smiled grimly.

'But,' Mirakle continued, 'your future lies far beyond the carnival circuit, Billy. Think about that parapsychology institute I told you about in Chicago. Will you?'

'Okay,' Billy said. 'I will.'

'Good. Well. Are you ready? We'll leave the equipment in the truck for now.'

They got out, Billy following Dr. Mirakle up a weeded-over sidewalk. It was all he could do to climb the porch steps.

'Forgive the place,' Mirakle said. He left the door open so air could circulate. 'I had to board up the windows after the glass was broken out one summer. It wouldn't be worth putting new glass in. Thank God the electricity still works.'

'Do you have a telephone?' Billy wanted to call the hospital in Birmingham again, to check on Santha Tully. Early this afternoon, when he'd called for the second time, a nurse had told him that Santha was still on the critical list and that the antivenom flown up from Florida had been administered soon after Santha had been brought in.

'No, I'm afraid not. I don't have any callers. Please, sit down.' He scooped newspapers out of the sofa and dumped them on the floor 'I know you're concerned about your friend, but I'm sure they're doing everything they can for her. We'll find a phone booth later, if you like.'

Billy nodded, wandering over to the bookshelves. He'd seen a pale gray aura around her, not a black one—did that mean there was a chance she might survive?

Mirakle said, 'Why don't you sit down and rest. I'll look in the kitchen, perhaps I can find something to eat. All right?' Billy nodded, and the man went back through a corridor to the rear of the house. 'Chicken noodle okay with you?' he called out in another moment. 'It's canned, so I presume it's safe to eat.'

'That's fine, thanks.' Billy stepped into another large room, his shoes stirring up clouds of dust. The room held a cluttered desk and an upright piano with yellow keys. He punched his finger at a few of them, hearing off-key notes ring like a stabbed cat. Then he went through another door into the hallway, and there was the staircase that Dr. Mirakle had told him about. A single bulb studded the ceiling at the top of the stairs, casting a murky gray glow.

Billy touched the banister. He could hear Mirakle wrestling with pots and pans in the kitchen, at the hallway's end. He climbed the steps slowly, his hand clenching the banister, and when he reached the top he sat down. Water was running in the kitchen. Billy said softly, 'Kenneth?' He waited for a few minutes, trying to concentrate through a wall of leftover terrors. 'Kenneth?' he whispered.

There was a figure at the bottom of the stairs. It stood motionlessly for a moment, then placed a foot on the first step.

Billy sighed and shook his head. 'I don't think there's anyone here. There might not have ever been.'

'I know,' Mirakle replied softly. 'I . . . had once hoped that Kenneth was here, but . . . that's a selfish hope, isn't it? If some part of him remained, that would mean he was troubled, wouldn't it?'

Billy nodded.

'I don't know what Ellen saw, if indeed she saw anything at all, but we both had to shoulder a lot of pain. I think . . . seeing Kenneth's ghost was a way for Ellen to deal with his death, but instead of laying him to rest she tried to resurrect him. He was a very good boy. You would've liked him. Is there ... is there nothing of him left?'

'Oh yes.' Billy rose to his feet. 'You bring him back to life when you remember him. Remembering doesn't have to be sad; it's a good thing, because you can keep your son with you all the time, in your heart and your memory. I think he's resting easy now, and he's gone on to whatever's waiting, but he's still alive inside you.'

Dr. Mirakle smiled wistfully. 'Yes. And I guess that's good enough, isn't it? Kenneth always remains a young man in my memories; he's always handsome in his uniform, and he's always the best son any man could ask for.' He lowered his head and Billy heard him sigh deeply. Then he said, 'I'd better check the soup. I've been known to burn it,' and returned to the kitchen.

Billy stood at the top of the stairs for a while longer, his hand on the railing. But there was nothing there. Nothing stirred the air around him, nothing tried to make desperate contact, nothing yearned to shrug off its earthly pains and pass on. The house was silent and at peace. Billy descended the stairs and returned to the piano room. He ran his hands over the heat-cracked wood of the piano, tracing fingers over the battered and worn keyboard. He sat down on the bench and hit a single note that reverberated sharply in the air. Then another note, down in the bass register, that moaned like a low wind on a winter's night. He hit three notes at the same time, and winced at their discordant wail. The next try, though, the sound was sweet and harmonious, like a cooling balm against the fever that churned within him. Looking at the keyboard, trying to figure it out, was a mystery in itself: why were some keys black and others white? How could anybody make music out of it? What did those pedals down there do?

And suddenly he brought both fists crashing down onto the keyboard. Notes shrieked and shrilled, and Billy could feel the vibration thrumming up his wrists, up his forearms, his shoulders, his neck, and right to the top of his skull. The sound was awful, but somehow the energy he'd expended had cracked the hot cauldron of emotions in him, a tiny crack allowing a trickle to escape. Billy hammered again, with his left fist. Then with his right. Then both fists were coming down like pistons, and the house was pounding with a rough, jarring noise that perhaps harmonized with the music of terror and confusion. The old piano seemed about to burst with explosive noise; under Billy's relentless pounding several pieces of ivory flew off like rotten teeth. But when he stopped and he listened to the last echoes dying away there did seem to be a music in them: an eerie harmony of ignorantly struck chords, fading away now, fading into the very walls of the house. And Billy felt as if that cauldron had split down the middle, all the terrors and pains streaming out and flooding through him into this instrument that stood before him.