CHAPTER TEN

“No word from Cathy, I take it,” Will Howard asked.

Jukes ran a hand through his hair, something he’d been doing too much lately. With Cathy gone and Loomis dead, Jukes was having trouble keeping up a decent front to the world. Will watched while he chugged down his beer and promptly ordered another.

Jukes stifled a burp and looked hard at Will. “Nothing. I don’t mind telling you, I’m really worried.”

Will Howard put his hand on Jukes’s shoulder. “Listen, buddy; I don’t have any answers. I don’t want to upset you either; I’m your friend, OK?” He took a swig of his beer. “But you’ve got to consider the most likely possibilities. This guy was once her boyfriend. She may still have feelings for him, however ill-advised. I don’t think you should rule that out. Can you say, for a fact, that she was kidnapped?”

Jukes thought about it; his eyes flickered downward. “I guess I can’t. I don’t know for sure what happened when I was lying there on the floor. Cathy’s a very complex person; I suppose she could’ve had a change of heart. Still … after the beating that Bobby gave her … I don’t know.”

“It might be possible that she chose to go with him,” Will said.

Jukes shrugged. “Yeah, I guess anything’s possible.” He ran his hand through his hair again. “At this rate, I won’t have any hair left by the end of the week,” he mumbled.

“Don’t let it eat you.”

Jukes shook his head slowly. “You go along for years, thinking everything is just fine, your life’s all nice and tidy, then wham! Something like this comes along and kicks you right in the butt.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, quietly slugging away at their beers.

Suddenly Jukes spoke. His tone of voice had changed. “I talked to Jones today. He took me to this Irish bookstore in the village, the Turf-Cutter’s Enchantment. I came across something interesting. Here, take a look at these.” He handed Will the poems by Killian. “These are from a collection called Song of the Banshee, by Brendan Killian, the other guy that died like Loomis. I think you should read them. Will, I … I don’t know what to think.”

Will read the poems once, then, without saying anything, read them all a second time. Jukes drained his glass, caught the bartender’s attention without speaking, and raised two fingers. The waiter brought another round.

Will looked uneasy. “Jesus Christ. This is spooky.”

Jukes nodded. “Spooky was the word I would have used.”

Will put the poems down and looked into Jukes’s face. “Did you ever contact Fiona Rice over at Columbia?”

Jukes nodded.

“So? What did you think?”

Jukes suppressed a smile. “I think she’s wonderful.”

Will slapped his knee, delighted. “See? What did I tell you. She’s perfect! I knew you’d like her. So?”

“So, what?”

“So, tell me everything. How did she like you? Did you hit it off?”

Jukes blushed. “Yeah, I think so. But mostly we talked about the Banshee.”

“Did you make another date with her?”

Jukes’s face froze. “It didn’t occur to me.”

Will Howard rolled his eyes. “You’re hopeless. You still have her number?”

Jukes nodded. “But like I said, we mostly talked about the Banshee.”

Will sighed. “All right. What does she say about it?”

Jukes repeated what Fiona had told him. When he was finished, he looked away.

Will picked up his beer and took a small sip, then, at second thought, took a huge swig.

Jukes drew a deep breath and spoke quietly, so no one else at the bar could hear. “You know, Will, she acts like this thing really exists.”

“Doesn’t sound like the same Fiona Rice I know. The one I know is as rational as the AMA.”

Jukes cleared his throat. His tie, already loosened, was pulled further askew. He looked straight ahead, at their reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

“Hear me out. I know this sounds crazy. But it’s possible that something extraordinary is happening here that we don’t understand, something that defies logic. How do you explain the fact that Loomis and Killian were ripped in half, just like Ulick Burke in 1504?”

Will looked around, checking to see if anyone had overheard them. “Do you know what you’re saying?” he asked.

Jukes answered with an imperceptible nod of his head.

Jukes’s apartment stood dark and cold when he got home, late again. It had been another long and bizarre day. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore. He couldn’t get Fiona Rice’s last statement out of his mind. People were being split in half in New York City and there was nothing he could do about it. If it were just another serial killer, that would be one thing, but all this Banshee talk was making him uncomfortable.

When it came to the supernatural, Jukes was a clinical skeptic, but now a kernel of doubt had shattered his resolve. He wasn’t so sure anymore; he wasn’t so sure about anything.

This is the twentieth century, an age of enlightenment. What ancient powers and evil curses could possibly exist now?

He turned on the lights and the dark disappeared. He turned on the heater and waited for his apartment to warm up. It was as simple as that—man’s own creations ruled his universe, dispelled the darkness and chased the chill. No magic there, just solid fact. It’s dark; you turn on the light. It’s cold; you turn on the heater. Where did the Banshee fit in? What switch did you flick to get that?

Facts were the spine of Jukes’s world, even when dealing with the nebulous workings of the human brain. He was a professional, he feared nothing, and, at least before this day began, he thought that nothing was beyond his understanding.

But now, after Loomis’s death, after Cathy’s abduction, after Killian’s poems, after Fiona Rice’s revelations, what conclusions could he draw? He wasn’t so sure.

He checked his messages, hoping to hear Cathy’s voice. He half expected to find a message from her saying it was all a mistake, a joke, a put-on, and she’d be right home. Bobby was really just pulling a gag; he didn’t mean it. He’d be right over with a six-pack and a good explanation.

The first two messages rolled by, mundane and lengthy; then the unmistakable sound of Cathy’s voice jumped out at him.

“Jukey? Jukey, are you there? I’m just calling to let you know I’m all right. I can’t talk right now. But … I’m OK, so don’t worry. Look; I’ll be in touch. I gotta go. Bye.”

Click. The machine turned off.

He rewound and played it several times, his heart pounding. In the background, faintly, he could hear some noise that might have been music. The more he listened, the more he became convinced that it was music, and he imagined that he could even tell what kind—ska. It was very hard to tell from the short piece of tape, but he thought he could hear the distinctive herky-jerky rhythm guitar. And horns. It could be horns.

Years ago, Jukes had gone with a few friends to see some ska bands in the Village. He remembered liking the crazed, speeded-up reggae dance music. The bands all had horn sections and guys with skinny ties and bad haircuts.

Jukes took the tape out of the message recorder and replaced it with a new one. He put the cassette with Cathy’s voice on it in his pocket and trudged off to his bedroom.

He looked forward to getting into bed and closing his eyes.

Jukes Wahler never had a problem falling asleep. Now life was turning into one big, fat problem. He doubted sleep would come easily this night.

Even after the beers, his mind raced, twisting itself around his anxieties like a worm on a hook. He kept thinking of Cathy’s voice on the tape. And the music.

She must have gone with him voluntarily. Why is Cathy like that? As a psychiatrist, Jukes felt he should have some idea.

Jukes took another mental trip back to childhood, searching, as always, for the root cause of his anxiety. He closed his eyes, leaned back, and time-traveled back to high school.

He sat at his desk and ran his fingers over the tactile surface of the wood. It was gouged and pitted with graffiti, carved deeply into it with the pointed end of a protractor, the only legal weapon in a student’s arsenal in those days. He looked around at the other kids in his class and saw that they were as mean and immature as he remembered. They teased each other mercilessly and were cruel in an unthinking way that only adolescents can be. To Jukes, school life was a constant test, and an everyday struggle to survive in the same world with them.

Them. Why did he care what they thought?

Why was that so damn important? he wondered Why is it so significant for people to belong? His life had improved immeasurably once he’d stopped trying to socialize and became the solitary man he was today.

The smells of the classroom came back to him, the singular odors of the old school building, and he realized that he’d not smelled them in thirty-five years. In his mind, it was winter, and the ancient heater warmed the room unevenly, like a campfire on a frigid night. Parts of the room were arctic, and other parts were like a sauna. As the decrepit radiator became hot, the layers of school-day life began to bake and give off a myriad of unpleasant odors. Gum, paper wads, spit, paint, puke, glue, pencil shavings, eraser crumbs, and other refuse of academe were activated and reeked like the boiler room in Hell.

For Jukes, who sat next to the wheezing metal dinosaur, it was enough to make him gag sometimes. He hated the smell of the old school building in the winter. It all came flooding back to him as he sat in his apartment decades later, looking back on those days, spying on the past, like a alien voyeur.

His gangly, ungraceful body seemed to attract accidents, constantly bumping his way through the obstacle course of life. The acne cases came and went, usually at their apex during periods of high sexual drama.

And Jukes suffered.

Shadows crept ominously in the corners of his bedroom, hiding nightmares, waiting for him to sleep. He constantly scanned the room, squinting at the darkness. His once secure and comfortable world was now filled with a hideous new uncertainty.

He tossed, searching for a comfortable position. The wind came up outside, and a light rain began to fall. A siren in the distance made him jump. It didn’t sound right.… It sounded unreal, even vaguely human. Though he was in the center of the biggest city in the world, he felt as if he were all alone, hundreds of miles from civilization.

He read until his eyes at last grew heavy and he drifted off to sleep with the book lying open on his chest.

He had no way of knowing how long he had been asleep when nature called. It was time to pay for the luxury of those four beers. He lay there with his eyes closed, not wanting to wake up and go to the bathroom, postponing the inevitable. It felt so good, so cozy, in bed.

Jukes cleared his throat and opened his eyes a tiny bit, just enough to realize that he’d left the light on.

As soon as they were open a crack, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

The Banshee stood over him.

He had never been so shocked and afraid in his life. He jumped backward in the bed, hitting the headboard. When he tried to shout, only a dry whisper came out.

Jukes went numb and felt thousands of tiny needles prick his skin as if, suddenly, each goose bump on his body were acutely painful. Every pore on his skin flared open and secreted a dot of moisture. In a twinkling he was bathed in sweat.

The Banshee stared. Her hair undulated in a nonexistent ghostly breeze.

Fear gripped him in its icy hands; it twisted his senses until he thought he might actually hyperventilate.

The Banshee’s face swam before him, liquid and changing. Her tears fell and stained the bedcovers faintly red. Jukes’s eyes were riveted on hers. He whimpered like a child, afraid to move, more afraid than he had ever been, and more afraid than he could ever have imagined.

At last he found his breath and screamed. He screamed to wake the dead, again and again, sucking air and gasping loudly between shrieks.

He felt the room spinning. The Banshee never moved; she stood over him, statuelike. Her eyes, still dripping tears, drilled into him. He got the distinct impression that she was very old and very powerful. The age he could sense; the power he could feel. She was not just some hopeless spirit, aimlessly haunting the world of the living, but a thinking consciousness with a purpose—she caused change. She was causing Jukes to change.

His world was being stripped bare. Nothing would ever be the same again, now that he knew she existed.

He prayed he was dreaming.

He knew he was; he had to be. These things were impossible; they just couldn’t be happening. He was having a nightmare, brought on by the stress of the last few days. That and those crazy poems of Killian’s. His subconscious mind was sending him a message—relax; you’re getting too involved.

But it seemed so real. He had never had a dream so real, so vivid. He could taste it, feel it, smell it, and, if he wanted to, touch it.

He blinked and rubbed his eyes, surprised to find that he, too, was crying. The tears came off on his hands like the residue of hysteria. He blinked at them stupidly.

Looking up, he saw her face clearly. She had a face like no other: utterly beautiful, yet ghostly, the features of it howling a tragic lament. He saw the pain there.

He looked closer and his eyes blurred. Her face seemed to swim, shape-shifting, showing a cinematic vision of mental images of her age-old misery. He felt, rather than saw, her eternal damnation and found the tears rapidly welling up in his own eyes again. The rush of emotion from looking at her made him dizzy.

His heart threatened to explode from his chest.

One by one, every conflicting passion rose up within him. It quickly became too much to take, and he couldn’t bear to look at her. He tried, unsuccessfully, to turn away.

He imagined his own travails, using her as a springboard to face his own demons.

Then, as the swirling whirlpool of feelings closed over his head, he felt the last emotion, the last passionate embrace of life. He felt profound sadness for her.

Jukes got a sense of great spiritual power from the Banshee; the air itself seemed to crackle with it like static electricity. Images flashed in his mind, strobelike, as if his whole life was an open book to her, a series of pictures. Then he saw himself through her eyes for a split second.

He saw himself screaming. He saw the tears streaming down his fear-distorted face. He saw his eyes devoid of all understanding, an idiot’s eyes.

He saw himself as he imagined she did—a pathetic, logic-bound huckster, turning neurosis into a livelihood.

Then she raised her hand and all his mental motion ceased. He was suddenly at peace, all his own thoughts washed away.

And he gazed at her.

“Who are you?” he asked.

You know who I am. Her voice echoed in his head telepathically; inside him a chord resonated.

“What are you?”

I am justice. Destiny.

Jukes saw his own breath making misty vapor and realized that the room had suddenly become graveyard cold. He was nearly hyperventilating. Great clouds of air, warm from his lungs, swirled in the space between them.

Jukes had merely to think his question. “Why are you here?”

I seek to intervene, before death.

He was about to ask her if that meant he was going to die when her face rippled. He looked at her now as if through heat waves; she shimmered in and out of focus.

Jukes reached out. She began to fade.

Just before she disappeared her face changed and he saw, for a split second, the face of a monstrous hag.

When Jukes awoke, the sun streamed through the windows with dazzling brightness. It blinded the pinprick f-stop settings of his sleep-shot eyes. The day was well under way, after eleven o’clock, and he was still in bed, sweating.

Was it all a dream? Jukes blinked and tried to recall the way he had felt in the Banshee’s presence.

Then he saw the bedsheets, punctuated with droplets of faint pink fluid, dried now. The tears of the Banshee.

Those tiny dots of color shattered him.

He rejected his conclusion as quickly as he arrived at it. The tearstains had to have a logical explanation; they must. Perhaps they had come from him.

He lay back down in the bed, his head throbbing mechanically. He wanted to call the office and cancel the day’s appointments but realized that he was already so late that his secretary would think something dreadfully wrong had happened to him. Why hadn’t she called?

The message machine was blinking. There were several messages, but he hadn’t heard the phone ring once. She had probably been frantically trying to get in touch and he had somehow slept through it all.

His head ached with the slightest movement. Things were quickly going from bad to worse and, at this rate, would soon be beyond his damage control.

Jukes faced the thought with trepidation—either he was suffering some sort of delusional neurosis because of Cathy … or the Banshee was real.

He stumbled to the shower. As he turned on the water, he tried to separate the nightmare from reality; then he thought, That’s exactly how Loomis felt.

He wanted to shake off the feeling of profound sadness that he had received from the Banshee, but it clung to him tenaciously. He stepped into the hot water stream and soaped his body.

Why had she come to him? Was he being stalked now, just as poor Loomis had been? Would he suffer the same fate? Fear crept back under his skin, scratching at the outer edges of his sanity like a dog scratching at a locked door.

He let the water pound down on him, willing it to wash away the tangle of feelings. He hoped it was his own sanity that was in question and not the laws of nature.

He turned off the shower and stepped out. As he dried himself, he made up his mind to go into the office after all. He needed to soldier on and walk again in the world of the familiar. People counted on him and he could not let them down.

He forced himself to get dressed even though his hands were still shaking.

Jukes Wahler walked into a wasps’ nest of missed appointments.

He did his best to pick up the threads of the day and tie them together, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Later that afternoon the phone rang and Jukes picked it up absently. “Hello?”

“Dr. Rice from Columbia is calling on line one.”

“Thank you,” he said as he punched the button.

“Dr. Wahler? This is Fiona Rice at Columbia.”

Jukes felt the bittersweet pang of irony; why did it always have to be like this? He wished he were in a better mood.

“Dr. Rice. You can call me Jukes, you know. I thought we agreed.”

“Of course. I forgot.”

There was an awkward silence, as if she expected him to fill in the conversation the way most men did. Fiona Rice was an attractive woman and it was her experience that men used these gaps in the conversation to ask her out on dates, make compliments, get fresh, or whatever.

So far, Jukes hadn’t been at all like any other man she knew. He seemed a gentleman. He was also shy, and she found that utterly charming in a world full of bullish, egotistic bores.

For a second, she’d forgotten why she called.

“I’ve been thinking about the Banshee—”

Jukes sat up. “Really?”

“Yes, and I thought maybe we could get together and talk about it some more.”

“That sounds good to me. I’m having myself a bad day of biblical proportions.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Jukes. Is there anything I can do?”

“Ah, no, Fiona, that’s OK. I appreciate your concern.”

“Sometimes it helps to have somebody to talk to, and you seem like such a nice guy.”

Suddenly he had an overwhelming urge to be with her, to talk to her, to look in her eyes, to hear her voice. His throat was dry, but he managed to speak evenly. “Let’s meet somewhere for dinner.”

“Are you up for an adventure?”

“Sure. Why not?” he said. Normally he avoided adventures, sticking close to the familiar, to the things he knew. With Fiona he felt somewhat embarrassed by his predictability.

He thought, Why am I doing this? I’m already lying to her. Adventure? I hate adventure. This woman, this fine woman, why would she be interested in me?

As soon as he thought it, Jukes knew that kind of negative self-assessment was poison. He realized with sudden certainty the terrible damage he was doing to himself. But why was it happening? It was not like him. He was a trained professional, yet he was thinking more like one of his patients.

The loss of emotional equilibrium almost made him dizzy.

What was doing this to him? The Banshee? Cathy? Who had destroyed his structured, logical world and left him unable to find even the most basic answers?

He took a deep breath. Physician, heal thyself.

Jukes Wahler did a very unprofessional thing and canceled some of his afternoon appointments. He had never done that before, for any reason. But knowing his patients as well as he did, he knew that none of those scheduled for the rest of the day were in critical condition.

He needed time to think.

The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Room was not crowded. Fiona had suggested it. It was a dark wood-paneled room with filtered light and lots of plants. A big Arthur Conan Doyle fan, Fiona loved the place and came here whenever the opportunity presented itself.

There was an air of respectability and refinement to the place It was never loud or raucous. Fiona thought that was wonderful, especially here, in the heart of the most intense city in the world.

On the walls were framed reproductions of many of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book covers. Their table happened to be under a poster of the cover of a fifties paperback version of The Lost World. Across the room from them was a picture of the author with a photograph in his hand. The photograph showed several fairies dancing in an English garden.

Fiona followed Jukes’s gaze. Her voice was bright. “Sir Arthur assumed that photograph, an obvious fake, to be absolute proof of the existence of fairies,” she said as they sat down together. “Photographing fairies became all the rage. Few people actually believed in them, but it was quite sensational in its day. People are always interested in things that can’t possibly exist.”

Jukes was too distracted to really look at the pictures. His mind was far away.

“Not unlike the Banshee.” She smiled.

Jukes seemed distracted and Fiona wondered what was wrong. She felt his shyness and the great weight that seemed to be on his shoulders.

“Isn’t this place great?”

Jukes nodded.

“I come here every once in a while when I want to get away. I love the decor; don’t you?”

Jukes nodded again.

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a fascinating man.”

“Something bad has happened,” Jukes said suddenly, changing the subject.

Then Jukes told her about Cathy’s abduction. Fiona was shocked. She listened sympathetically, watching the hurt in his eyes grow as he filled in the details. He even gave her some background on Cathy’s life, pointing out the failures he’d made as her guardian. After an hour he abruptly stopped talking and ordered another drink.

Jukes became quiet again. She found she could read him like few other men in her life—odd, because she had only known him a day or two. Something about him was so fragile, so vulnerable, and it drew her in. Jukes had never been one to hide his inner feelings from the people around him. He’d always been a guy who wore his heart on his sleeve.

Fiona let some quiet time pass.

She really liked this sensitive, caring man. His eyes were misty now, something she found extremely alluring even though it was the height of his tragedy. Her voice, soft and expressive, slid gently into the quiet minutes like a velvet glove.

“Have you thought of hiring a private detective?”

Jukes looked up. “What?”

“A private eye. They find missing people all the time.”

Jukes nodded. “Well, it has crossed my mind, but isn’t that just a lot of Hollywood crap?”

Fiona smiled; she had gotten through. “Not necessarily. I happen to know of a reputable agency right here in this neighborhood.” She fished a card out of her purse and handed it to Jukes. “These guys are excellent. They helped a friend of mine out recently. She was trying to track down her ex-husband. They found him tending bar in the Bahamas.”

Jukes looked at the card.

MERKEN DETECTIVE AGENCY

PRIVATE INVESTIGATION AND SECURITY

SINCE 1962

“You keep their card in your purse? What are you expecting to happen?”

Fiona flashed a genuine smile; her whole face seemed to light up. She had a sparkle in her eye that he hadn’t seen until this moment and he suddenly became aware again of how extraordinary she was and, more important, how much she seemed to enjoy his company. She smiled at him in a way that he hadn’t seen before.

Jukes found himself wondering what Cathy would think of her. Instantly that thought pulled him back into melancholia. Cathy would like her very much, he thought. She was certainly pretty enough, and intelligent.

“I don’t normally carry business cards for private eyes in my purse, but this friend of mine—”

“The one with the ex-husband in the Bahamas?”

“Right. She was very impressed with them and she insisted that I put their card in my pocketbook. I mean they tracked this guy all the way down there; they must be good.”

Jukes was trying not to stare at her. She seemed to get lovelier with every passing minute. He cleared his throat continuously, became aware of it, stopped, then started again, unconsciously.

“That guy probably left a paper trail and lived a normal life. Bobby is underground. I’m sure he’s not running around New York using a MasterCharge and a Visa card. The man is a reptile, a bottom feeder. He’s probably under a rock somewhere.”

“All the more reason to call. What can it hurt? Like I said before, they’re professionals.”

Jukes put the card into his breast pocket. He turned his attention back to Fiona.

“I hope you don’t think that I’m like this all the time. It’s just that I’m rather upset right now. I really like you and …”

Jesus, he thought. My sister’s out there with that madman and I’m getting horny? What kind of brother am I? He became aware that Fiona was staring at him.

“Yes?” she said.

“Ahh, I … well, maybe we could … uhm, maybe we could go out.”

He waited for what seemed like a year for her to answer. It had really only been a few seconds.

“I’d love to,” she said. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Jukes blushed.

Jukes called the Merken Detective Agency and gave them complete descriptions of his sister and Bobby Sudden. He included everything he knew about Bobby, including the music he thought he heard in Cathy’s phone call.

They seemed confident and Jukes felt a little better. At least now he could tell himself that he was doing all that could be done. Between the cops and the private detectives, something was bound to happen. The only thing that Jukes was worried about was that Bobby may have split town, taking Cathy out of the city.

But he would not fail her this time. The past would not haunt him again. This time, he would be decisive.

The image of the boy by the boat dock glaring up at him and daring him to fight lingered in his mind. The expression of arrogant stupidity on the boy’s face hadn’t changed in all these years. He still leered like a bully up the hill at Jukes, freezing time around that terrible moment and accentuating every detail of his own inadequate life.

He’d replayed that scene at the boat dock over and over in his mind for years. The boy, his sister, his failure to react in time, his fear.

He wondered if Cathy remembered it. He wondered if it had the same meaning for her as it did for him.

He wondered what the boy’s life had been like. What had become of him? Had he become another Bobby? Was he out there now, somewhere in the world, doing the kinds of inhuman things to women that Bobby did?

Had he confronted the boy, what would have turned out differently?

Questions that had no answers swirled in his befuddled mind.