Mystery Walk

In a halting voice, Wayne told them what he'd dreamed. It was a hellish vision of Jimmy Jed, a skeleton in a yellow suit gone green and rotten with grave dirt, screaming that the witch of Hawthorne had sent him to Hell where he would burn forever if Wayne didn't free him. When he was finished, a terrible groan came from Wayne's throat, and tears glittered in his eyes. 'She knows where I am!' he whispered. 'She's out there in the night, and she won't let my daddy come to me anymore!'

Bragg had gone a sick gray. Wayne's obsession with his dead father was getting worse, Hodges realized. For the past four nights, Wayne had been awakened with nightmares of Jimmy Jed and the Creekmores. Last night, he'd even sworn that he'd seen the Creekmore boy's pallid face grinning through the window at him. Wayne was coming to pieces, Hodges thought, right out here on the sunny Coast.

'I can't sleep,' Wayne gripped Niles's smooth white hand. 'Please . . . my daddy's rotted, and I . . . can't make him all right again. ...'

Niles said softly, 'Everything's going to be fine. There's no need for you to be afraid, not while you're in Mr Krepsin's house. This is the safest place in the world for you. Why don't you put on your robe and slippers? I'll take you to see Mr Krepsin. He can give you something to calm your nerves—'

'Now just one damned minute!' Hodges said angrily. 'I don't like all these late-night 'visits' Wayne's been having with Krepsin! What's going on? We came here for a business conference and so far all we've done is hang around this crazy house! Wayne's got other obligations. And I don't want him taking any more pills!'

'Herbal medicine.' Niles held Wayne's robe for him. 'Mr Krepsin believes in the healing power of Nature. And I'm sure Wayne will agree that you're free to go anytime you please.'

'What? And leave him here with you? Wayne, listen to me! We've got to get back to Fayette! This whole thing is as shady as the dark side of the moon!'

Wayne tied his robe and stared at him. 'My daddy said I was to trust Mr. Krepsin. I want to stay here for a while longer. If you want to go, you can.'

Hodges saw that the young man's eyes looked blurry and dazed. His grip on reality was lost, Hodges knew . . . and just what kind of pills was Wayne being given? 'I'm begging you,' he said. 'Let's go home.'

'Jim Coombs is going to take me up in the Challenger tomorrow,' Wayne said. 'He says I can learn to fly it, no trouble at all.'

'But what about the Crusade?'

Wayne shook his head. 'I'm tired, George. I hurt inside. I am the Crusade, and where I go, that's where the Crusade goes too. Isn't that right?' He looked at Henry Bragg.

The lawyer's smile was tight and strained. 'Sure. Anything you say, Wayne. I'm behind you one hundred percent.'

'You gentlemen needn't stay up,' Niles said, taking Wayne's elbow and leading him toward the door. 'I'll see that Wayne gets his sleep. ...'

And suddenly George Hodges's face reddened with anger, and he was crossing the room to clamp his hand on the other man's shoulder 'Listen to me, you—'

Niles twisted around in a blur, and for an instant there were two fingers pressing rigidly against the hollow of Hodges's throat. Hodges felt a brief, dizzying pain that almost buckled his knees, and then Niles's hand dropped to his side. A low fire burned in the man's pale gray eyes. Hodges coughed and backed away, his heart pounding.

'I'm sorry,' Niles said. 'But you must never touch me like that again.'

'You . . . you tried to kill me!' Hodges croaked. 'I've got witnesses! By God, I'll sue you for everything you've got! I'm getting out of here right now!' He stalked past them and out of the room, his hand pressed to his throat.

Niles glanced back at Bragg. 'Will you see to your friend, Mr. Bragg? There's no way for him to leave tonight, because the house is kept sealed by hydraulic pressure on the doors and the first-floor windows. I reacted hastily, and I regret it.'

'Oh . . . sure. Well, no harm done. I mean, George is . . . kind of upset.'

'Exactly. I'm sure you can calm him down. We'll talk in the morning.'

'Right,' Bragg said, and managed a weak smile.

Augustus Krepsin was waiting in his huge bedroom one floor up and on the other side of the house. When Wayne had first seen it, he'd been reminded of a hospital room: the walls were an off-white, with a blue sky and clouds painted on the ceiling. There was a sunken living area with a sofa, a coffee table, and a few leather chairs. Persian rugs in soft colors covered the floor, and track lights delivered a delicate golden illumination. The large bed, complete with a console that controlled lighting, humidity, and temperature and contained several small closed- circuit television screens, was surrounded with a plastic curtain like an oxygen tent. An oxygen tank and mask were mounted next to the bed.

The chess game was still on the long teak coffee table, where it had been left the night before. Krepsin, dressed in a long white robe, sat over it, his small eyes pondering options as Niles brought Wayne in; he was wearing his cotton booties and surgical gloves. His bulk was stuffed into a specially supported Angus steerhide chair.

'Another nightmare?' he asked Wayne after Niles had left. 'Yes sir.'

'Come sit down. Let's pick up the game where we left off.'

Wayne took his chair. Krepsin had been teaching him the fundamentals of the game; Wayne was losing badly, but the knights and pawns and rooks and whatever-they-weres took his mind off the bad dreams.

'They can be so real, can't they?' Krepsin said. 'I think nightmares are more . . . true than ordinary dreams, don't you?' He motioned toward the two pills—one pink, one white— and the cup of herbal tea that was set in front of Wayne.

Without hesitation Wayne swallowed the pills and drank the tea. They helped relax him, helped smooth out the throbbing pain in his head, and when he did sleep, toward morning, he knew he would have wonderful dreams of when he was a child playing with Toby. In those drug-induced dreams everything was bright and happy, and Evil couldn't find its way into his head.

'A little man fears inconsequential things, but only a man of great character feels true horror. I enjoy our talks, Wayne. Don't you?'

He nodded. Already he was feeling better, his brain clearing, all the musty cobwebs of fear drifting away in what felt like a fresh summer wind. In a little while he would be laughing like a small boy, the worries and responsibilities faded away like bad dreams.

'You can always judge a man,' Krepsin said, 'by what makes him afraid. And fear can be a tool, as well; a great lever that can move the world in any direction. You of all people must know the force of fear.'

'Me?' Wayne looked up from the board. 'Why?'

'Because in this world there are two great terrors: disease and death. Do you know how many millions of bacteria inhabit the human body? How many organisms that can suddenly become malignant with disease and leech themselves into human tissues? You know how frail flesh can be, Wayne.'

'Yes sir,' Wayne said.

'It's your move.'

Wayne studied the inlaid ivory board. He moved a bishop, but had no particular plan in mind other than to capture one of Krepsin's black towers.

Krepsin said, 'You've already forgotten what I've told you. You must keep looking over your shoulder.' He reached across the board, his face like a bloated white moon, and moved the second of his black rooks to capture Wayne's last bishop.

'Why do you live like this?' Wayne asked. 'Why don't you ever go outside?'

'I do go outside, occasionally. When I have a trip scheduled. Forty-nine seconds between the door and the limousine. Forty-six seconds between the limo and the jet. But don't you understand what floats in the air? Every plague that ever ravaged across cities and countries, destroying hundreds and thousands, began with a tiny microorganism. A parasite, riding a sneeze or clinging to a flea on a rat's hide.' He leaned toward Wayne, his eyes widening. 'Yellow fever. Typhus. Cholera. Malaria. The Black Plague. Syphilis. Blood flukes and worms can infect your body, drain your strength, and leave you a hollow shell. The bubonic plague bacillus can lie dormant and impotent for generations, and then suddenly it can lay half the world to waste.' Small droplets of sweat glimmered on Krepsin's skull. 'Disease,' he whispered. 'It's all around us. It's outside these walls