They were talking about him, about how strange he was.
That, he knew, was what a lot of people talked about now.
He knew what happened when he came into a room.
People who had been talking suddenly stopped, and their eyes fixed on him.
Other people simply looked away.
Not, of course, that it bothered him. The only thing that bothered him was the dream he’d had, but he still hadn’t figured out what it meant, except that it seemed that if he had feelings in his dreams, he should, sooner or later, have them when he was awake, too. And when he did, he’d be like everyone else.
Unless, of course, he really had killed Mrs. Lewis.
Maybe, after all, there was a reason to go to the funeral. Maybe if he actually saw her body, he’d remember whether or not he had killed her.
Alex stepped through the gate of the little cemetery, and immediately knew that something was wrong.
He had a clear memory of this place, and now it no longer looked as it should have.
The walls were old and worn, and the lawn — the soft grass that the priests always tended so well — was gone. In its place was barren earth, covered only in small patches by tiny clumps of crabgrass.
The tombstones, too, didn’t look right. There were too many of them, and they, like the walls, seemed to have worn away so he could barely read the names on them. Nor were there flowers on the graves, as there always had been before.
He gazed at the faces of the people around him. None of them were familiar.
All of them were strangers, and none of them belonged here.
Then the now-familiar pain slashed through his brain, and the voices started, whispering in his ears.
Suddenly he had an urge to turn around and run away. Run from the pain in his head, and the voices, and the memories.
He felt a hand on his arm, and tried to pull away, but the grip tightened, and the touch of strong fingers gouging into his flesh suddenly cut through the voices.
“Alex,” he heard his father whisper. “Alex, what’s wrong?”
Alex shook his head, and glanced around. His mother was looking at him worriedly. A few feet away he recognized Lisa Cochran with her parents. He scanned the rest of the crowd: Kate Lewis stood next to the flower- covered coffin, with Valerie Benson at her side. Over by the wall, he recognized the Evanses.
“Alex?” he heard his father say again.
“Nothing, Dad,” Alex whispered back. “I’m okay.”
“You’re sure?”
Alex nodded. “I just … I just thought I remembered something, that’s all. But it’s gone now.”
His father’s grip relaxed, and once more Alex let his eyes wander over the cemetery.
The voices were silent now, and the cemetery suddenly seemed right again.
And why had he thought about priests?
He gazed up at the village hall that had once been a mission, and wondered how long it had been since there had been priests here. Certainly there hadn’t been any since he was born.
Then why had he remembered priests tending the cemetery?
And why had all the faces of the people looked strange to him?
The words that had been whispered in the depths of his mind came back to him.
The words from his dream. All that was happening was that he was remembering the words from his dream. But deep in his mind, he knew that it was more. The words had meaning, and the dream had meaning, and all of it was more than dreams and false memories.
All of it, some way, was real, but he couldn’t think about it now. There were too many people here, and he could feel them watching him. He had to act as if nothing was wrong.
He forced himself to concentrate on the funeral then, focusing on the coffin next to the grave.
And then, once more, he heard his father’s voice.
“What the hell is that son of a bitch doing here?”
He followed his father’s eyes. A few yards away, standing alone, he saw Raymond Torres.
He nodded, and Torres nodded back.
He’s watching me, Alex suddenly thought. He didn’t come here for the funeral at all. He came here to watch me.
Deep in his mind, at the very edges of his consciousness, Alex felt a sudden flicker of emotion.
It was so quick, and so unfamiliar, that he almost didn’t recognize it. But it was there, and it wasn’t a dream. Something deep inside him was coming alive again — and it was fear.
“How are you, Alex?” Raymond Torres’s hand extended. Alex took it, as he knew he was expected to. The funeral had ended an hour ago, and most of the people who had been there were gathered in Valerie Benson’s patio, talking quietly, and searching for the right words to say to Kate. Alex had been sitting alone, staring at a small fishpond and the waterfall that fed it, when Torres had approached.
“Okay,” he said, feeling the doctor’s sharp eyes on him.
“Something happened at the cemetery, didn’t it?”
Alex hesitated, then nodded. “It … well, it was sort of like what happened up in San Francisco.”
Torres nodded. “I see. And something happened here, too.” A statement, not a question.
Alex hesitated, then nodded. “The same thing. I came in, and for a minute I thought I recognized the house, but it’s different than I remember it. It’s the fishpond. The whole patio looked familiar, except the fishpond. I just don’t remember it at all.”
“Maybe it’s new.”
“It doesn’t look new,” Alex replied. “Besides, I asked Mrs. Benson about it, and she said it’s always been here.”
Again Torres nodded. “I think you’d better come down tomorrow, and we’ll talk about it.”
Suddenly his father appeared at his side. Alex felt his father’s arm fall over his shoulders, but made no move to pull away. “He’ll be going to school tomorrow,” he heard his father say.
Torres shrugged. “After school’s fine.”
Marsh hesitated. Every instinct in him was telling him to inform Torres that he wouldn’t be bringing Alex to him at all anymore.
But not here. He nodded curtly, making a mental note to clear his schedule tomorrow so that he could take Alex to Palo Alto himself. “That will be fine.” And tomorrow afternoon, he added to himself, you and I will have our last conversation. Keeping his arm around Alex’s shoulder, he started to draw his son away from Torres, but Torres spoke again.
“Before you make any decisions, I’d like to suggest that you read the waiver you signed very carefully.” Then Torres himself turned and strode out of the patio. A moment later, a car engine roared to life, and tires squealed as Torres shot down the road.
As he drove out of La Paloma, Raymond Torres wondered if it had been a mistake to go to Martha Lewis’s funeral after all. He hadn’t really intended to go. It had been years since he was part of La Paloma, and he knew that he would be something of an intruder there.
And that, of course, was exactly what had happened. He’d arrived, and recognized many of the faces, but most of the people hadn’t even acknowledged his presence. It was just as his mother had told him it would be when he stopped to see her before going into the cemetery.
