Eight

GAVIN STOPPED IN HIS TRACKS halfway to the elevators. The busy crowd parted around him like a stream flowing around the sides of a rock. Though he was completely still, his mind raced. Now he remembered where he’d seen the jewelry in the newspaper article picture.

The necklace? Is that the connection?

With the box tucked under his arm, he turned and faced the entrance of the bar and grill.

How can I find out?

Then it came to him. His sluggish steps forward turned into a trot, carrying him to the resort’s business center on the other side of the area. He found an empty terminal, plopped down in a chair, swiped his resort access card, and began to type.

Two minutes later, he was entering his credit card information into a genealogy website. Normally, he would have balked at the thirty-five-dollar fee to establish an account, but this was important. He was finally on the path to figuring some of this out.

When the answer appeared on his screen, Gavin belted out a loud “Yes!” and slapped the computer table. Two of the other users in the small area responded with a chastising “Shhhhhhh!”

He ignored them as he shot from his seat and raced to the valet station outside.

Nine miles and fifteen minutes later, he pulled up to the curb. Half-expecting Madame Kovács to be in her chair on the porch, he was relieved when she wasn’t. It gave him a moment to prepare what to say.

He rapped gently on the screen door and waited.

What if she’s not here? Or worse, what if she’s next door at the store?

The idea of another confrontation with Puma Jacket made his blood run cold. He knocked harder. “Madame Kovács?”

Muffled yelps rang out from behind the door.

Stupid little dog.

There was the sound of a mild skirmish between pet and master, and the high-pitched barking faded into a back room. Finally, the main porch door came alive. Two locks twisted and clicked into place, followed by the squeak of old hinges.

The fortuneteller cracked the door a few inches and looked through the screen.

Man, she’s ugly. Maybe I was wrong about Torri and her.

“Madame Kovács, I need to ask—”

Upon recognizing Gavin, she immediately cut him off. “No, go… go from here! The police come for my nephew. You make police come and take him.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry about that. Look, I don’t want any trouble, but I need your help.”

“No help! Go!”

“But Madame Kovács, the woman in yellow, I know who she is.”

“Nothing here for you. Be leaving.”

The opening in the door grew smaller.

“Wait, I’m here about Torri! I need to talk to you. I need to speak to you about—”

The door slammed.

Gavin went “all in” and shouted, “It’s about your daughter! I need to talk to you about your daughter, Torri.”

There was a silence. He knew that she was still on the other side of the door, since the locks hadn’t twisted.

“Madame Kovács? I know you can hear me. Look, I’m sorry. I know we got off to a bad start the other day, but… “

He looked at his feet, listening for a response from inside.

“Madame Kovács, I… I need to know how to stop her. How do I stop Torri?”

To his surprise, the door reopened wider than before.

“Stop? Szellem… there is no stop, only waiting for her ninetieth year.”

She gripped the emerald pear necklace like a first-time skydiver pulling the parachute cord. “Machine not for you. Bad… no selling.”

She doesn’t know I have it.

“Are you saying—her ninetieth birthday—this keeps going until then? All right, okay, but help me understand. How does the machine work? Is it like a horcrux, or a—a whatchamacallit—a Koschei-egg-type-thing that Torri is fused with? The typewriter, it keeps her spirit somehow?”

She shifted her eyes from him, but not before Gavin caught a glimpse of her shame. He asked, “What is it? What happened to her?”

Kovács stared at the ground. “I try… you say protect… yes, protect her.”

“Like with an incantation or something?”

“I not know this word, but I protect her, but… she’s jumping.” She looked up with a hateful grimace that made Gavin shiver. “She jumping because of him.” The old woman pantomimed spitting in disgust. “He put his bad blood in her, make crazy, baby bad blood and Victoria crazy. My chant for her long life… good, happy life. That is spell, but now she gone.”

Gavin couldn’t believe it—tears were actually streaming down Kovács’s cheeks.

“Protect her. I protect Torri, but when she jumps, it make szellem, make ghost. Now she’s korlátozott… you say is ‘trapped.’ She is trapped, and no to stop for many years.”

“Can you undo it—reverse the protection spell or whatever it is?”

She was shaking. “Korlátozott! No! She become undone! Gone forever.”

“Okay, just calm down a minute. It’s okay.” Gavin spoke slowly, accentuating each word. “I need you to tell me how to stop this. What happens if I—or someone else—gets rid of the antique?”

She was on the verge of hysterics. “There is not stop—she is szellem!”

I’m losing her.

“Madame Kovács, I want to help Victoria—Torri. How can I help?”

“No help. She is szellem and is to try to return.”

Return? Now we’re onto something.

“Return how, Madame Kovács? How can Torri try to return if she died from the suicide? How does it work?”

Her eyes widened. “Back from other side into this world.” She gestured making an arc with one hand landing in the other with a clap. “Return. Must not happen this thing bad. She try to recon-sti… sti-tu… Torri try re-consti-tu… “

Gavin butted in. “Reconstitute? Are you trying to say reconstitute, as in re-form into flesh?”

Kovács nodded as she stroked the pear-shaped necklace. “Powerful chant, very powerful magic at work.”

“How do you stop it from happening?”

Kovács pointed at him. “No stop. This why she must not do this. She die with much hate on heart. Come back in evil.”

She wiped tears from her eyes, saying flatly, “Machine not for you to buy. You must leave alone.”

“Or what? What if I get the machine? What happens if Béla sells it to me?” Remembering he’d been taken away, Gavin corrected himself. “What if your other nephew gives it to me or someone else? Then what?”

“Not for sale, too dangerous.”

“But what would happen? Please, Madame, I have to know.”

She wiped her eyes and stared at him for what felt like an eternity.

“Please. What is it?”

“The doure sint,” she said in a cautious whisper and then spat on the ground as if expelling a mouthful of poison.

“The what?” He felt sweat roll down the back of his neck and licked his lips to wet his parched lips. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“It like a… like the coin,” she said, pointing at her trembling palm, then to the veiny back of the hand.

Gavin fumbled in his pocket and presented a quarter. To his astonishment, she opened the door and came forward, taking it from him. This was a breakthrough.

She held the coin up, slowly turning it from side to side. “Yes, this way.” She pointed to the heads side. “We here.” Twisting it to show the tails side. “Torri side. We not to see that side. But with doure sint, Torri change to our side.”

He knew they were making progress. The very fact that Kovács was speaking to him at all and had even come outside was huge. But what did it all mean? “Doure sint is what?”

She handed the coin back heads-up in his palm. “It make person on here,” she tapped it, “energy for szellem to come back to form.”

“But how?” Gavin asked, studying the coin before pocketing it. “How does someone dead—a szellem or ghost or whatever—use someone on the living side to rebuild their body? I mean wouldn’t they already have a body buried in the ground?”

“Spirit not connected to body, so it use doure sint to rebuild flesh.”

“So, whoever has the machine controls the ghost?”

Kovács shook her head, indicating a frustrated “no.” It wasn’t just the language barrier between the two of them. These concepts were completely foreign to Gavin, but still he pressed for answers. “So does the… szellem get the energy from someone when they die?”

Her eyes widened, and though it wasn’t a smile on her harelip face, Gavin saw she was pleased. “Yes, like battery.”

“The dying energy is like a battery?”

“Not dying, what energy remain.”

He pictured taking double-As from a radio to put them into a TV remote with dead batteries. “Let me get this straight. If someone is killed before their time, they have leftover energy in their spirit or whatever?”

He paused as she nodded.

“And that’s what Torri would use to make a new form of herself, to make a new body? That energy would be with the dying person to take over into another realm unless something like Torri intercepted it and took it from them.”

Kovács nodded again, but he was thinking of the twenty-something-year-old dancer. How many years would she have had left if she had not drowned before her time? What about the boy on the bike? He was at least ten years younger than that. But he’d only had a seizure, right? The grim thought of him dying in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital flooded Gavin’s thoughts. Had he died?

Gavin forced himself back into the moment. He had to know more. What was going to happen to him? “Madame Kovács, I still don’t understand how using the machine works. How does that fit in to all of this?”

“Fit in?” she asked with a puzzled expression.

“The person who types… “ he felt in his pocket for the coin and then decided against pulling it out again. “How does the machine, the item she’s fused with, turn the user in the doure sint?”

“It become part of them, too, like it part of szellem.”

Shit!

This was not what he wanted to hear, that he and Torri were somehow cosmically joined now.

Before he could ask if he were a candidate for possession by the ghost, she added, “Brain is like waterwheel.” She placed her hands atop her head and then removed them as she pantomimed the circular motion of the turning of a wheel in front of her chest. “When person awake, thinking, thinking, thinking.” She pointed back at her wrinkled forehead. “Always thinking when awake ‘Should I do this, should I do that.’” She paused, waiting for Gavin to confirm that he understood.

“Right, I get it. The person is awake, thinking about different things.” He spoke impatiently, trying to urge her to the point.

“These things, thinking things, many of things in day we think of, each little energy that make wheel turn.” She returned to the hand gestures of a waterwheel spinning being pushed by a stream. “That energy makes…” She struggled for a word for a few seconds, finally settling for, “tunnel tube for szellem to come from one side of coin to other side. This why no one can have machine.”

Gavin scratched the back of his neck. It was moist with sweat. “So, what can be done to stop the connection, to stop szellem from coming through?”

Kovács looked confused. Gavin attributed the bewildered look on the language barrier between them. Before he could rephrase the question using different terminology, the old woman blurted out, “How you know these words?”

Now he was confused. “What words? What are you talking about?”

She looked terrified. “’Coming through’? How do you know this?”

“I just asked how someone would keep the szellem from coming through.”

She backed away, but not to retreat into the house. Her trembling steps were headed in the direction of Béla’s shop. “How do you know this ‘coming through’?” Her eyes were extremely wide. She accused him, “You have it, don’t you?”

“Have what?” Gavin bluffed, but he could tell she was on to him.

“You took it?” she screamed. Her tone was incredulous as she repeated the words, this time in the form of a statement. “You… you took it.”

Gavin moved toward her as her backward steps carried her to the steps of the deck. The moment was surreal. He realized he’d offered a dumb shrug in his defense.

She was on the ground level now. “You don’t push keys?” The question’s hopeful tone evaporated as quickly as she uttered it. “No typing, right?”

“Madame Kovács, I need your help, and I can pay you any amount to have—”

Still moving away from him in fear, she shook her head from side to side, but her dark eyes never broke with his. In remarkably clear English, she proclaimed, “Then it has already begun, and we are all in danger.”

The words stunned him as he watched her make her way into the shop.

He knew that if he stuck around, he’d likely see Puma Jacket brandishing the shotgun from earlier. Gavin fled to his car and sped away before that could happen.

Gavin returned to the resort, involuntarily replaying Kovács’ words of doom. “It has already begun, and we are all in danger.” He’d gladly take the antique back there if he could, but he’d never get the chance with Puma Jacket wanting to settle the score. There was one thing left to try, the idea that had come to him while talking to Theo and his would-be girlfriend, Katelyn, in the grill. The hallway of the seventh floor was empty as he exited the elevator. He rushed into his suite, tossed the empty produce box on the bed, and headed for the balcony door.

He stopped short, hearing a series of rapid-fire strikes from outside. At first, it sounded like gunfire, but then he quickly placed it—more typing. Moving as quietly as possible, Gavin peered at the machine from behind the curtain of the sliding door.

Whether she was finished or knew he was watching, the typing stopped.

His heart pounded wildly, and he felt nauseated. The prospect of leaving text on the paper, if only even for a minute, tortured his mind, but he struggled to pull back the curtain.

Gotta do it, Gav. You have to.

He thought of the bicycle boy, who might be dead now, and the murdered dancer. Who knew what new malevolent sentences Torri had typed? He had to stop it, to burn the message. He must go through the door. If he truly was the doure sint, he was the only one who could stop this. What if she possessed the power to blow up the hotel and typed something about a bomb? Or somehow set fire to the seventh floor? The lives she’d get from something like that—the power—it was more than he could comprehend. It was up to him to stop this.

He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. The door lock clicked more loudly than he expected. With the curtain still drawn, he couldn’t see the machine. Gavin listened a moment for more typing, but there was only the labored sound of his breathing.

He had to see what she had typed. He had to know.

Gavin took a deep breath, slid the curtain back, opened the door, and charged through it.

Half expecting it to burn him, he lifted the typewriter from the table and ran back into the suite. He hurled the machine onto the bed. It landed upside-down with its keys clamoring together, jangling as they extended into the center opening of it.

With his body pressed against the nearby wall, he waited for something to happen, for the machine—for Torri—to retaliate.

It didn’t move.

What had she typed? He had to know. He had to stop it.

Gavin took a step toward the corner of the bed where it landed, and then he stepped back against the wall. Exhaling another deep breath, he mopped the sweat from his brow. He placed another square of Nicorette gum in his mouth and chewed it frantically.

Finally, he advanced to the machine and flipped it to the upright position. The hammers returned to their ready positions, revealing greasy, black text. A different confusion and fear descended upon him as he read.

YOU DISOBEYED ME, GAVIN. I TOLD YOU NOT TO LEAVE. THERE WILL BE A RECKONING FOR ALL THAT YOU'VE DONE, AND IT'S ALREADY STARTED. IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME NOW. OVER HALFWAY THERE ALREADY. CAN YOU FEEL ME COMING THROUGH? ARE YOU READY FOR IT? WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, GAVIN?

She knew him.

Remembering what Madame Kovács had said about the meaning of doure sint, he accidentally swallowed the gum. A second later, he snapped to. He’d carry out his plan. Gavin lunged for the top of the scroll like a maniac, shouting, “Let’s see what you can do without paper!”

He pulled with all his might, unrolling a length of the beige parchment as tall as himself. Throwing the curling ribbon of paper behind him, he reached for where it connected within the machine’s undercarriage and heaved again and again.

“If a car can’t crash without gas, a story can’t be typed without something to print on!”

He heaved at the roll a fifth and a sixth time. The coarse roll of stock curled into a pile around his feet and showed no end in sight. After a few more strenuous tugs at the sheet of stock, Gavin realized there had to be an impossible amount of volume inside in relation to the size of the machine. He stepped back, slipping on the paper that filled the area. Stumbling across the suite, he steadied himself by grabbing the edge of the desk chair.

He sat down to collect himself and looked at the room. The paper scroll covered the floor around the bed like a giant anaconda. Resembling stacks of paper figure eights, the amount of paper from the machine was unsettling in the way it defied physics. As he attempted to process the impossibility of it all, there were a dozen or so sharp cracks from the typewriter.

He sprang from the chair to read the message.

STRONGER

The air was thick with the pungent aroma of lavender, making it hard to breathe. The page advanced upward, and the hammers of the device typed in rapid succession, advancing the page upward with each rendering.

STRONGER I'M GETTING STRONGER IT WON'T BE LONG NOT LONG NOW WITH YOUR HELP

He thought about Madame Kovács’ waterwheel analogy. If what she said were true, the very energy from his conscious thoughts was building a bridge for Torri to enter the physical realm. Fear gripped his heart, but he was too hypnotized by the alternating movements of the keys and hammers to look away.

I'M GETTING STRONGER CAN YOU FEEL IT TOO? A RECKONING FOR YOUR SELFISHNESS UNFAITHFUL GAVIN'S RECKONING UNFAITHFUL

When it stopped, a dizzying nausea overtook Gavin, causing him to grip his throbbing temples. He collapsed to his knees upon the paper pile.

Through his constricted throat, he uttered, “What reckoning? Why? Because of cheating on Jo? That’s nothing to do with you.”

Gavin ripped the scroll of paper from the top of the carriage and then grabbed the machine, stormed across the suite to the front door, and slammed it to the ground in the hallway outside.

“Let it be someone else’s problem now!” he shouted with his back against the closed door.

Half a minute later, he was looking through the peephole. The device was too close to the door to be seen through the tiny opening, but he felt it there, waiting for him.

A porter or maid would come by and pick it up soon enough. Whether they threw it in the dumpster or kept it for themselves didn’t make a difference to him. He’d be free from her, and that was all that mattered.

He contemplated moving it further down the hallway near the elevator so no one would connect it with him.

“Connect it with him.” That was the problem now, wasn’t it? It would’ve been a good plan except that he was connected to the device and to Torri. He was the doure sint, bound to her and the machine beyond the natural realm, a bond that wasn’t as easily discarded as a porter emptying the used dishes from Gavin’s room service trays. Besides that, everyone at the hotel knew that the loud typing had been coming from Gavin’s room.

Dammit!

Opening the door a crack, he saw the infernal thing just as he’d left it. Of course it was exactly the same. He released the door handle, allowing it to click closed.

He thought about how Torri could type anything and attribute it to him, how she could type a confession for the police about the murdered girl.

Gavin yanked the door open and dragged the machine back into the room. Seething, he made his way to the bathroom and lowered the device into the tub.

Once outside, he slammed the bathroom door.

He had to think.

Come on, Gav. Get control of yourself.

He paced directly outside of the bathroom and lit a cigarette.

The cigarette was halfway to the filter when an idea came to him. He chided himself for missing something so obvious.

Bursting into the area, he knelt, reaching over the edge of the tub, and began to type.

The keys resisted and didn’t budge. He tried again, harder this time, striking the keys with the index fingers of his right and left hands—no response.

Had he broken it when he threw it down in the hallway?

Frustrated, he struck the keys with his fist. The impact delivered a sharp pain. Gavin pulled back and examined the cuts on his knuckles.

To his surprise, the typewriter made a metal clank sound. The temperature of the room dropped a chilling fifteen to twenty degrees in an instant. He detected the scent of lavender.

Determined to finish it off, he tried typing a sentence to destroy the device. When the keyboard gave way to his touch, he typed as quickly as he could.

I may only have one chance.

As he typed, he shouted the words. “The writer destroys the typewriter!”

But the result on the page was different. Displayed were the same number of characters that he’d typed, but the message read:

IT WON'T BE THAT EASY, GAVIN MY DEAR.

In part panic and part fury, he reached over and turned the faucet knobs on high and exited the bathroom. He retreated into the suite and gathered the rolls of paper that covered the floor. It took a bit of time to compress all of it down into small wads. By then, the tub was close to overflowing onto the floor.

Gavin shoved the paper into the bathroom, turned off the water, and slammed the door again. A couple of seconds later, he opened it, grabbed some towels, clicked the light off, and shut it again.

Stuffing the towels securely under the door of the bathroom, he asked, “What the hell have I gotten myself into?”

He dragged the desk chair across the room, positioning it directly in front of the bathroom. He collapsed into the chair, wondering how to defeat this thing, wondering how much time he had to do so before the doure sint bridge was complete enough for Torri Barta to come through.