Revival

XII

About six weeks later I got an email from my old research partner.

I printed this out and read it over twice. Then I googled De Vermis Mysteriis and found everything Bree had told me in her email, along with one thing she hadn’t. In an antiquarian book-blog called Dark Tomes of Magick & Spells, someone called Ludvig Prinn’s suppressed grimoire “the most dangerous book ever written.”

I left my apartment, walked down the block, and bought a pack of cigarettes for the first time since a brief flirtation with tobacco in college. There was no smoking in my building, so I sat on my steps to light up. I coughed out the first drag, my head swimming, and I thought, These things would have killed Astrid, if not for Charlie’s intervention.

Yes. Charlie and his miracle cures. Charlie who had a tiger by the tail and didn’t want to let go.

Something happened, Astrid had said in my dream, speaking through a grin from which all her former sweetness had departed. Something happened, and Mother will be here soon.

Then, later, after Jacobs had shot his secret electricity into her head: There’s a door in the wall. The door is covered with ivy. The ivy is dead. She waits. And when Jacobs asked who Astrid was talking about: Not the one you want.

I can break my promise, I thought, casting the cigarette away. It wouldn’t be the first one.

True, but not this one. Not this promise.

I went back inside, crushing the pack of cigarettes and tossing it into the trash can beside the mailboxes. Upstairs, I called Bree’s cell, prepared to leave a message, but she answered. I thanked her for her email and told her I had no intention of ever seeing Charles Jacobs again. I told this lie without guilt or hesitation. Bree’s husband was right; she needed to be finished with All Things Jacobs. And when the time came to go back to Maine and fulfill my promise, I would lie to Hugh Yates for the same reason.

Once upon a time, two teenagers had fallen for each other, and hard, as only teenagers can. A few years later they made love in a ruined cabin while the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed—all very Victoria Holt. In the course of time, Charles Jacobs had saved them both from paying the ultimate price for their addictions. I owed him double. I’m sure you see that, and I could leave it there, but to do so would be to omit a much larger truth: I was also curious. God help me, I wanted to watch him lift the lid on Pandora’s box and peer inside.

“This isn’t your lame-ass way of telling me you want to retire, is it?” Hugh tried to sound as if he was joking, but there was real apprehension in his eyes.

“Not at all. I just want a couple of months off. Maybe only six weeks, if I get bored. I need to reconnect with my family in Maine while I still can. I’m not getting any younger.”

I had no intention of going near my family in Maine. They were too close to Goat Mountain as it was.

“You’re a kid,” he said moodily. “Come this fall, I’m going to have a year for every trombone that led the big parade. Mookie pulling the pin this spring was bad enough. If you went for good, I’d probably have to close this place down.”

He heaved a sigh.

“I should have had kids, someone to take over when I’m gone, but does that sort of thing happen? Rarely. When you say you hope they’ll pick up the reins of the family business, they say ‘Sorry, Dad, me and that dope-smoking kid you hated me hanging out with in high school are going to California to make surfboards equipped with WiFi.’”

“Now that you’ve got that out of your system…”

“Yeah, yeah, go back to your roots, by all means. Play pat-a-cake with your little niece and help your brother rebuild his latest classic car. You know how summers are here.”

I certainly did: slower than dirt. Summer means full employment even for the shittiest bands, and when bands are playing live music in bars and at four dozen summerfests in Colorado and Utah, they don’t buy much recording time.

“George Damon will be in,” I said. “He’s come out of retirement in a big way.”

“Yeah,” Hugh said. “The only guy in Colorado who can make ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ sound like ‘God Bless America.’”

“Perhaps in the world. Hugh, you haven’t had any more of those prismatics, have you?”

He gave me a curious look. “No. What brought that on?”

I shrugged.

“I’m fine. Up a couple of times every night to squirt half a teacup of pee, but I guess that’s par for the course at my age. Although… you want to hear a funny thing? Only to me it’s more of a spooky thing.”

I wasn’t sure I did, but thought I ought to. It was early June. Jacobs hadn’t called yet, but he would. I knew he would.

“I’ve been having this recurring dream. In it I’m not here at Wolfjaw, I’m in Arvada, in the house where I grew up. Someone starts knocking on the door. Except it’s not just knocking, it’s pounding. I don’t want to answer it, because I know it’s my mother, and she’s dead. Pretty stupid, because she was alive and healthy as a horse back in the Arvada days, but I know it, just the same. I go down the hall, not wanting to, but my feet just keep moving—you know how dreams are. By then she’s really whamming on the door, beating on it with both fists, it sounds like, and I’m thinking of this horror story we had to read in English when I was in high school. I think it was called ‘August Heat.’”

Not “August Heat,” I thought. “The Monkey’s Paw.” That’s the one with the door-pounding in it.

“I reach for the knob, and then I wake up, all in a sweat. What do you make of that? My subconscious, trying to get me ready for the big exit scene?”

“Maybe,” I agreed, but my head had left the conversation. I was thinking about another door. A small one covered with dead ivy.

Jacobs called on July first. I was in one of the studios, updating the Apple Pro software. When I heard his voice, I sat down in front of the control board and looked through the window into a soundproof rehearsal room that was empty except for a disassembled drumkit.

“The time has almost come for you to keep your promise,” he said. His voice was mushy, as if he’d been drinking, although I’d never seen him take anything stronger than black coffee.

“All right.” My voice was calm enough. Why not? It was the call I had been expecting. “When do you want me to come?”

“Tomorrow. The day after at the latest. I suspect you won’t want to stay with me at the resort, at least to start with—”

“You suspect right.”

“—but I’ll need you no more than an hour away. When I call, you come.”

That made me think of another spooky story, one titled “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.”

“All right,” I said. “But Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“You get two months of my time, and that’s it. When Labor Day rolls around, we’re quits no matter what happens.”

Another pause, but I could hear his breathing. It sounded labored, making me think of how Astrid had sounded in her wheelchair. “That’s… acceptable.” Acsheptable.

“Are you okay?”

“Another stroke, I’m afraid.” Shtroke. “My speech isn’t as clear as it once was, but I assure you my mind is as clear as ever.”

Pastor Danny, heal thyself, I thought, and not for the first time.

“Bit of news for you, Charlie. Robert Rivard is dead. The boy from Missouri? He hung himself.”

“I’m shorry to hear that.” He didn’t sound sorry, and didn’t waste time asking for details. “When you arrive, call me and tell me where you are. And remember, no more than an hour away.”

“Okay,” I said, and broke the connection.

I sat there in the unnaturally quiet studio for several minutes, looking at the framed album covers on the walls, then dialed Jenny Knowlton, in Rockland. She answered on the first ring.

“How’s our girl doing?” I asked.

“Fine. Putting on weight and walking a mile a day. She looks twenty years younger.”

“No aftereffects?”

“Nothing. No seizures, no sleepwalking, no amnesia. She doesn’t remember much about the time we spent at Goat Mountain, but I think that’s sort of a blessing, don’t you?”

“What about you, Jenny? Are you okay?”

“Fine, but I ought to go. We’re awfully busy at the hospital today. Thank God I’ve got vacation coming up.”

“You won’t go off somewhere and leave Astrid alone, will you? Because I don’t think that would be a good id—”

“No, no, certainly not!” There was something in her voice. Something nervous. “Jamie, I’ve got a page. I have to go.”

I sat in front of the darkened control panel. I looked at the album covers—actually CD covers these days, little things the size of postcards. I thought about a time not too long after I’d gotten my first car as a birthday present, that ’66 Ford Galaxie. Riding with Norm Irving. Him pestering me to put the pedal to the metal on the two-mile stretch of Route 9 we called the Harlow Straight. So we could see what she’d do, he said. At eighty, the front end began to shimmy, but I didn’t want to look like a wuss—at seventeen, not looking like a wuss is very important—so I kept my foot down. At eighty-five the shimmy smoothed out. At ninety, the Galaxie took on a dreamy, dangerous lightness as its contact with the road lessened, and I realized I’d reached the edge of control. Careful not to touch the brake—I knew from my father that could mean disaster at high speed—I let off the gas and the Galaxie began to slow.

I wished I could do that now.

The Embassy Suites near the Jetport had seemed all right when I’d been there the night after Astrid’s miracle recovery, so I checked in again. It had crossed my mind to do my waiting at the Castle Rock Inn, but the chances of running into an old acquaintance—Norm Irving, for instance—were too great. If that happened, it would almost certainly get back to my brother Terry. He’d want to know why I was in Maine, and why I wasn’t staying with him. Those were questions I didn’t want to answer.

The time passed. On July Fourth, I watched the fireworks from Portland Promenade with several thousand other people, all of us ooh-ing and ahh-ing as the peonies and chrysanthemums and diadems exploded overhead and were doubled in Casco Bay, where they swayed on the waves. In the days that followed, I went to the zoo in York, the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, and the lighthouse at Pemaquid Point. I toured the Portland Museum of Art, where three generations of Wyeths were on view, and took in a matinee performance of The Buddy Holly Story at Ogunquit Playhouse—the lead singer/actor was good, but no Gary Busey. I ate “lobstah” until I never wanted to see another one. I took long walks along the rocky shore. Twice a week I visited Books-A-Million in the Maine Mall and bought paperbacks which I read in my room until I was sleepy. I took my cell with me everywhere, waiting for Jacobs to call, and the call didn’t come. On a couple of occasions I thought of calling him, and told myself I was out of my mind to even consider it. Why kick a sleeping dog?

The weather was picture-perfect, with low humidity, innocent skies, and temperatures in the low seventies, day after day. There were showers, usually at night. One evening I heard TV weatherman Joe Cupo call it “considerate rain.” He added that it was the most beautiful summer he’d seen in his thirty-five years of broadcasting.

The All-Star game was played in Minneapolis, the regular baseball season resumed, and as August approached, I began to hope that I might make it back to Colorado without ever seeing Charlie. It crossed my mind that he might have had a fourth stroke, this time a cataclysmic one, and I kept an eye on the obituary page in the Portland Press Herald. Not exactly hoping, but…

Fuck that, I was. I was hoping.

During the local news on July 25th, Joe Cupo regretfully informed me and the rest of his southern Maine viewing audience that all good things must end, and the heatwave currently baking the Midwest would be moving into New England over the weekend. Temperatures would be in the mid-nineties during the entire last week of July, and August didn’t look much better, at least to start with. “Check those air-conditioning units, folks,” Cupo advised. “They don’t call em the dog days for nothing.”

Jacobs called that evening. “Sunday,” he said. “I’ll expect you no later than nine in the morning.”

I told him I’d be there.

Joe Cupo was right about the heat. It moved in Saturday afternoon, and when I got into my rental car at seven thirty on Sunday morning, the air was already thick. The roads were empty, and I made good time to Goat Mountain. On my way up to the main gate, I noticed that the spur leading to Skytop was open again, the stout wooden gate pulled back.

Sam the security guard was waiting for me, but no longer in uniform. He was sitting on the dropped tailgate of a Tacoma pickup, dressed in jeans and eating a bagel. He put it carefully on a napkin when I pulled up, and strolled over to my car.

“Hello there, Mr. Morton. You’re early.”

“No traffic,” I said.

“Yeah, in summer this is the best time of day to travel. The Massholes’ll be out in force later, headed for the beaches.” He looked at the sky, where blue was already fading to hazy white. “Let em bake and work on their skin cancer. I plan to be home, watching the Sox and soaking up the AC.”

“Shift over soon?”

“No more shifts here for any of us,” he said. “Once I call Mr. Jacobs and tell him you’re on your way, that’s it. Job over.”

“Well, enjoy the rest of the summer.” I stuck out my hand.

He shook it. “Any idea what he’s up to? I can keep a secret; I’m bonded, you know.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

He gave me a wink as if to say we both knew better, then waved me on. Before I went around the first curve, I watched in the rearview mirror as he grabbed his bagel, slammed the Tacoma’s tailgate shut, and got in behind the wheel.

That’s it. Job over.

I wished I could say the same.

Jacobs came slowly and carefully down the porch steps to meet me. In his left hand was a cane. The twist of his mouth was more severe than ever. I saw a single car in the parking lot, and it was one I recognized: a trim little Subaru Outback. On the back deck was a sticker reading SAVE ONE LIFE, YOU’RE A HERO. SAVE A THOUSAND AND YOU’RE A NURSE. My heart sank.

“Jamie! Wonderful to see you!” See came out she. He offered the hand not holding the cane. It was obviously an effort, but I ignored it.

“If Astrid is here, she leaves, and leaves this minute,” I said. “If you think I’m bluffing, just try me.”

“Calm yourself, Jamie. Astrid is a hundred and thirty miles from here, continuing her recovery in her cozy little nest just north of Rockland. Her friend Jenny has kindly agreed to aid me while I complete my work.”

“I somehow doubt that kindness had much to do with it. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

“Come inside. It’s hot out here already. You can move your car to the parking lot later.”

He was slow going up the steps even with the cane, and I had to steady him when he tottered. The arm I grasped was hardly more than a bone. By the time we got to the top, he was gasping.

“I need to rest a minute,” he said, and sank into one of the Shaker-style rockers that lined the porch.

I sat on the rail and regarded him.

“Where’s Rudy? I thought he was your nurse.”

Jacobs favored me with his peculiar smile, now more one-sided than ever. “Shortly after my session with Miss Soderberg in the East Room, both Rudy and Norma tendered their resignations. You just can’t get good help these days, Jamie. Present company excepted, of course.”

“So you hired Knowlton.”

“I did, and believe me, I traded up. She’s forgotten more about nursing than Rudy Kelly ever knew. Give me a hand, would you?”

I helped him to his feet, and we went inside to where it was cool.

“There’s juice and breakfast pastries in the kitchen. Help yourself to whatever you want, and join me in the main parlor.”

I skipped the pastries but poured myself a small glass of OJ from a carafe in the huge refrigerator. When I put it back, I inventoried the supplies and saw enough for ten days or so. Two weeks if they were stretched. Was that how long we were going to be here, or would either Jenny Knowlton or myself be making a grocery run to Yarmouth, which was probably the closest town with a supermarket?

The guard service was finished. Jacobs had replaced the nurse—which didn’t completely surprise me, given Jacobs’s own increasingly iffy condition—but not the housekeeper, which meant (among other things) that Jenny must also have been cooking his meals and, perhaps, changing his bed. It was just the three of us, or so I thought then.

We turned out to be a quartet.

The main parlor was all glass on the north side, giving a view of Longmeadow and Skytop. I couldn’t see the cabin, but I could glimpse that iron pole jutting up toward the hazy sky. Looking at it, things finally began to come together in my mind… but slowly, even then, and Jacobs held back the one vital piece that would have made the picture crystal clear. You might say I should have seen it anyway, all the pieces were there, but I was a guitar player, not a detective, and when it came to deductive reasoning, I was never the fastest greyhound on the track.

“Where is Jenny?” I asked. Jacobs had taken the sofa; I sat down opposite him in a wingback chair that tried to swallow me whole.

“Occupied.”

“With what?”

“None of your beeswax now, although it will be shortly.” He leaned forward with his hands clasped on the head of the cane, looking like a predatory bird. One that would soon be too old to fly. “You have questions. I understand that better than you think, Jamie—I know that inquisitiveness is a large part of what brought you here. You will have answers in time, but probably not today.”

“When?”

“Hard to tell, but soon. In the meantime, you will cook our meals and come if I ring.”

He showed me a white box—not so different in appearance from the one I’d used that day in the East Room, except this one had a button instead of a slide switch, and an embossed trade name: Notiflex. He pushed the button and chimes went off, echoing from all the large downstairs rooms.

“I won’t need you to help me go to the toilet—that I can still do myself—but I’ll need you standing by when I’m in the shower, I’m afraid. In case I slip. There’s a prescription gel you’ll rub into my back, hips, and thighs twice a day. Oh, and you’ll have to bring many of my meals to my suite of rooms. Not because I’m lazy, or because I want to turn you into my personal butler, but because I tire easily and need to conserve my strength. I have one more thing to do. It’s a large thing, a vitally important thing, and when the time comes, I must be strong enough to do it.”

“Happy to make and serve the meals, Charlie, but as far as the nursing part goes, I assumed Jenny Knowlton would be the one to—”

“She’s occupied, as I told you, so you must take over her… why are you looking at me like that?”

“I was remembering the day I met you. I was only six, but it’s a clear memory. I made a mountain in the dirt—”

“So you did. It’s a clear memory for me, too.”

“—and I was playing with my soldiers. A shadow fell over me. I looked up and it was you. What I was thinking is that your shadow has been over me for my whole life. What I ought to do is drive away from here right now and get out from under it.”

“But you won’t.”

“No. I won’t. But I’ll tell you something. I also remember the man you were—how you got right down on your knees with me and joined in the game. I remember your smile. When you smile now, all I see is a sneer. When you talk now, all I hear is orders: do this, do that, and I’ll tell you why later. What became of you, Charlie?”

He struggled up from the sofa, and when I moved to help, he waved me away. “If you have to ask that, a smart boy grew up to be a stupid man. At least when I lost my wife and son, I didn’t turn to drugs.”

“You had your secret electricity. That was your drug.”

“Thank you for that valuable insight, but since this discussion has no point, let’s end it, shall we? Several of the rooms on the second floor are made up. I’m sure you’ll find one to your taste. I’d like an egg salad sandwich for lunch, a glass of skim milk, and an oatmeal-raisin cookie. The roughage is good for my bowels, I’m told.”

“Charlie—”

“No more,” he said, hobbling toward the elevator. “Soon you’ll know everything. In the meantime, keep your bourgeois judgments to yourself. Lunch at noon. Bring it to the Cooper Suite.”

He left me there, for the time being too stunned to say a word.

Three days went by.

They were broiling hot outside, the horizon blurred by a constant haze of humidity. Inside, the resort was cool and comfortable. I made our meals, and although he joined me downstairs for dinner on the second night, he took all the rest in his suite. I heard the TV blaring loudly when I brought them, suggesting that his hearing had also gone downhill. He seemed especially fond of the Weather Channel. When I knocked, he always turned it off before telling me to come in.

Those days were my introduction to practical nursing. He was still able to undress and start the water for his morning shower himself—he had an invalid’s shower-chair to sit on while he soaped and rinsed. I sat on his bed, waiting for him to call. When he did, I turned off the water, helped him out, and dried him off. His body was a wasted remnant of what it had been in his days as a Methodist minister, and his later ones as a carny agent. His hips stuck out like the bones of a plucked Thanksgiving turkey; every rib cast a shadow; his buttocks were little more than biscuits. Thanks to the stroke, everything slumped to the right when I helped him back to his bed.

I rubbed him down with Voltaren Gel for his aches and pains, then fetched his pills, which were in a plastic case with almost as many compartments as there are keys on a piano. By the time he’d gotten them all down, the Voltaren had had a chance to work, and he could dress himself—except for the sock on his right foot. That I had to put on myself, but I always waited until he’d hauled on his boxers. I had no interest in being eye-to-eye with his elderly schlong.

“All right,” he’d say when the sock was pulled up to his scrawny shin. “I’ll do the rest myself. Thank you, Jamie.”

He always said thank you, and the TV always went on as soon as the door was closed.

Those were long, long days. The resort’s pool had been drained, and it was far too hot to walk the grounds. There was a health club, though, and when I wasn’t reading (there was a shitpoke excuse for a library, mostly stocked with Erle Stanley Gardner, Louis L’Amour, and old Reader’s Digest Condensed Books), I exercised in solitary, air-conditioned splendor. I jogged miles on the treadmill, pedaled miles on the stationary bicycle, stepped on the StairMaster, curled hand weights.

The only station the TV in my quarters got was Channel 8 out of Poland Spring, and the reception was lousy, producing a picture too fuzzy to watch. The same was true of the wall-size job in the Sunset Lounge. I guessed there was a satellite dish somewhere, but only Charlie Jacobs was hooked up to it. I thought of asking if he would share, then didn’t. He might have said yes, and I’d taken everything from him that I intended to. Charlie’s gifts came with a pricetag.

All that exercise, and still I slept like shit. My old nightmare, gone for years, returned: dead family members sitting around the dining room table in the home place, and a moldy birthday cake that gave birth to huge insects.

I woke shortly after 5 AM on the morning of July 30th, thinking I’d heard something downstairs. I decided it was the remnant of my dream, lay back down, and closed my eyes. I was just drifting off when it came again: a subdued clatter that sounded like kitchen pots.

I got up, stepped into a pair of jeans, and hurried downstairs. The kitchen was empty, but I glimpsed someone through the window, descending the back steps on the side of the loading dock. When I got out there, Jenny Knowlton was slipping behind the wheel of a golf cart with GOAT MOUNTAIN RESORT decaled on the side. On the seat beside her was a bowl with four eggs in it.

“Jenny! Wait!”

She started, then saw it was me and smiled. I was willing to give her an A for effort, but that smile really wasn’t up to much. She looked ten years older than when I’d last seen her, and the dark circles under her eyes suggested I wasn’t the only one having sleep problems. She’d stopped dyeing her hair, and there were at least two inches of gray below the glossy black.

“I woke you, didn’t I? Sorry, but it’s your own fault. The dish drainer’s full of pots and pans, and I hit it with my elbow. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to use the dishwasher?”

The answer to that was no, because we never had one. What my mother taught me was that it’s easier to let stuff air-dry, as long as there’s not too much. But kitchen cleanup wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came for eggs.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

She looked away. “I can’t tell you. I made a promise. In fact, I signed a contract.” She laughed without humor. “I doubt if it would stand up in court, but I intend to honor it, just the same. I owe a debt, the same as you. Besides, you’ll know soon enough.”

“I want to know now.”

“I have to go, Jamie. He doesn’t want us talking. If he found out, he’d be mad. I just wanted a few eggs. If I ever have to look at another bowl of Cheerios or Frosted Flakes, I’ll scream.”

“Unless your car’s got a dead battery, you could have gone to Food City in Yarmouth and picked up all the eggs you wanted.”

“I’m not to leave until it’s over. You, either. Don’t ask me anything else. I have to keep my promise.”

“For Astrid.”

“Well… he’s paying me a great deal of money for a little bit of nursing, enough to retire on, but mostly for Astrid, yes.”

“Who’s watching out for her while you’re here? Somebody better be. I don’t know what Charlie’s told you, but there really are aftereffects from some of his treatments, and they can be—”

“She’s well cared for, you don’t need to worry about that. We have… good friends in the community.”

This time her smile was stronger, more natural, and at least one thing came clear to me.

“You’re lovers, aren’t you? You and Astrid?”

“Partners. Not long after Maine legalized gay marriage, we set a date to make it official. Then she got sick. That’s all I can tell you. I’m going now. I can’t be away for long. I left you plenty of eggs, don’t worry.”

“Why can’t you be away for long?”

She shook her head, not meeting my eyes. “I have to go.”

“Were you already here when we talked on the phone?”

“No… but I knew I would be.”

I watched her trundle back down the hill, the golf cart’s wheels making tracks in the diamond dew. Those gems wouldn’t last long; the day had barely begun, and it was already hot enough to pop sweat on my arms and forehead. She disappeared into the trees. I knew that if I walked down there, I’d find a path. And if I followed the path, I’d come to a cabin. The one where I’d lain breast to breast and hip to hip with Astrid Soderberg in another life.

Shortly after ten that morning, while I was reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles (one of my late sister’s favorites), the first floor was filled with the chiming of Jacobs’s call-button. I went up to the Cooper Suite, hoping not to find him lying on the floor with a broken hip. I needn’t have worried. He was dressed, leaning on his cane, and looking out the window. When he turned to me, his eyes were bright.

“I think today might be our day,” he said. “Be prepared.”

But it wasn’t. When I brought him his supper—barley soup and a cheese sandwich—the television was silent and he wouldn’t open the door. He shouted through it for me to go away, sounding like a petulant child.

“You need to eat, Charlie.”

“What I need is peace and quiet! Leave me alone!”

I went back up around ten o’clock, meaning only to listen at the door long enough to hear the cackle of his TV. If I did, I’d ask if he didn’t at least want some toast before he turned in. The TV was off but Jacobs was awake and talking in the too-loud voice people who are going deaf always seem to use on the phone.

“She won’t go until I’m ready! You’ll make sure of it! That’s what I’m paying you for, so see to it!”

Problems—and with Jenny, it seemed at first. She was close to deciding she’d had enough, and wanted to go somewhere. Back to the Downeast home she shared with Astrid seemed most likely, at least until it occurred to me that it might actually have been Jenny he was talking to. Which would mean what? The only thing that came to mind was what the verb to go often meant to people of Charlie Jacobs’s age.

I left his suite without knocking.

What he’d been waiting for—what we’d all been waiting for—came the next day.

His call-chime went off at one o’clock, not long after I’d taken him his lunch. The door to the suite was open, and as I approached, I heard the current weather boffin talking about how warm the Gulf of Mexico was, and what that augured for the coming hurricane season. Then the guy’s voice was cut off by a series of harsh buzzing sounds. When I walked in, I saw a red band running along the bottom of the screen. It was gone before I could read it, but I know a weather warning when I see one.

Severe weather during a long hot spell meant thunderstorms, thunderstorms meant lightning, and to me, lightning meant Skytop. To Jacobs, too, I was betting.

He was once more fully dressed. “No false alarms today, Jamie. The storm cells are in upstate New York now, but they’re moving east and still intensifying.”

The buzzing started again and this time I could read the crawl: WEATHER ALERT FOR YORK, CUMBERLAND, ANDROSCOGGIN, OXFORD, AND CASTLE COUNTIES UNTIL 2 AM AUGUST 1. POSSIBILITY OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS 90%. SUCH STORMS MAY PRODUCE HEAVY RAIN, HIGH WINDS, GOLF BALL–SIZED HAIL. OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES NOT RECOMMENDED.

No shit, Sherlock, I thought.

“These cells can’t dissipate or change course,” Charlie said. He spoke with the calmness of either madness or absolute certainty. “They can’t. She won’t last much longer, and I’m too old and sick to start over with someone else. I want you to bring a golf cart around to the kitchen loading dock, and be ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

“To Skytop,” I said.

He smiled his lopsided smile. “Go now. I need to keep an eye on these storms. They’re producing over a hundred lightning-strikes an hour in the Albany area, isn’t that wonderful?”

Not the word I would have chosen. I couldn’t remember how many volts he’d said a single lightning-strike produced, but I knew it was a lot.

In the millions.

Charlie’s call-bell went off again a little after 5 PM. I went upstairs, part of me hoping to see him downhearted and angry, another part as damnably curious as ever. I thought that was the part that would be satisfied, because the day was darkening rapidly in the west, and I could already hear mumbles of thunder, distant but approaching. An army in the sky.

Jacobs was still listing to starboard, but excitement—he was fairly bursting with it—made him look years younger. His mahogany box was on the end table. He had shut off the TV in favor of his laptop. “Look at this, Jamie! It’s beautiful!”

The screen displayed NOAA’s projection of the evening’s weather. It showed a tightening cone of orange and red that went directly over Castle County. The timeline projected the highest probability of heavy weather arriving between seven and eight. I glanced at my watch and saw it was five fifteen.

“Isn’t it? Isn’t it beautiful?”

“If you say so, Charlie.”

“Sit down, but get me a glass of water first, if you will. I have some explaining to do, and I think there’s just time. Although we’ll want to go soon, yes we will. In carny terminology, we’ll want to DS.” He cackled.

I got a bottle of water from the bar refrigerator and poured it into a Waterford glass—nothing but the best for guests of the Cooper Suite. He sipped and popped his lips in appreciation, a leathery smack I could have done without. Thunder rumbled. He looked toward the sound, his smile that of a man anticipating the arrival of an old friend. Then he turned his attention back to me.

“I made a great deal of money playing Pastor Danny, as you know. But instead of spending it on private jets, heated doghouses, and gold-plated bathroom fixtures, I spent mine on two things. One was privacy—I’ve had enough of Jesus-shouting pagans to last me a lifetime. The other was private investigation firms, a dozen in all, the best of the best, located in a dozen major American cities. I tasked them with finding and tracking certain people suffering from certain diseases. Comparative rarities. Eight such illnesses in all.”

“Sick people? Not your cures? Because that’s what you told me.”

“Oh, they tracked a representative number of cures, too—you weren’t the only one interested in aftereffects, Jamie—but that wasn’t their main job. Starting ten years ago, they found several hundred of these unfortunate sufferers, and sent me regular updates. Al Stamper minded the dossiers until he left my employ; since then, I’ve done it myself. Many of those unlucky people have since died; others replaced them. Man is born to illness and sorrow, as you know.”

I didn’t answer, but the thunder did. The sky in the west was now dark with bad intentions.

“As my studies progressed—”

“Was a book called De Vermis Mysteriis part of your studies, Charlie?”

He looked startled, then relaxed. “Good for you. De Vermis wasn’t just a part of my studies, it was the basis of them. Prinn went mad, you know. He ended his days in a German castle, studying abstruse mathematics and eating bugs. Grew his fingernails long, tore out his throat with them one night, and died at the age of thirty-seven, painting equations on the floor of his room in blood.”

“Really?”

He gave the one-sided shrug, accompanied by the one-sided grin. “Who knows for sure? A cautionary tale if true, but the histories of such visionaries were written by people interested in making sure no one else followed their paths. Religious types, for the most part, overseers of the Heavenly Insurance Company. But never mind that now; we’ll speak of Prinn another day.”

I doubt it, I thought.

“As my studies progressed, my investigators began a winnowing process. Hundreds became dozens. Early this year, dozens became ten. In June, the ten became three.” He leaned forward. “I was looking for the one I’ve always thought of as Patient Omega.”

“Your last cure.”

This seemed to amuse him. “You could say so. Yes, why not? Which brings us to the sad story of Mary Fay, which I just have time to tell before we remove to my workshop.” He gave a hoarse laugh that reminded me of Astrid’s voice before he’d cured her. “Workshop Omega, I suppose. Only this one is also a well-equipped hospital suite.”

“Run by Nurse Jenny.”

“What a find she was, Jamie! Rudy Kelly would have been at a loss… or have gone yipping down the road like a puppy with a wasp in his ear.”

“Tell me the story,” I said. “Let me know what I’m getting into.”

He settled back. “Once upon a time, in the seventies, a man named Franklin Fay married a woman named Janice Shelley. They were graduate students in the English Department at Columbia University, and went on to teach together. Franklin was a published poet—I’ve read his work and it’s quite good. Given more time, he might have been one of the great ones. His wife wrote her dissertation on James Joyce and taught English and Irish literature. In 1980, they had a daughter.”

“Mary.”

“Yes. In 1983 they were offered teaching positions at American College in Dublin, as part of a two-year exchange program. With me so far?”

“Yes.”

“In the summer of 1985, while you were playing music and I was working the carny circuit with my Portraits in Lightning gaff, the Fays decided to tour Ireland before returning to the States. They rented a camper—what our British and Irish cousins call a caravan—and set out. They stopped one day for a pub lunch in County Offaly. Shortly after they left, they collided head-on with a produce truck. Mr. and Mrs. Fay were killed. The child, riding behind them and strapped in, was badly injured but survived.”

It was an almost exact replay of the accident that had killed his wife and son. I thought then that he must have known it, but now I’m not so sure. Sometimes we’re just too close.

“They were driving on the wrong side of the road, you see. My theory is that Franklin had a beer or glass of wine too many, forgot he was in Ireland, and reverted to his old habit of driving on the right. The same thing may have happened to an American actor, I think, although I don’t recall the name.”

I did, but didn’t bother to tell him.

“In the hospital, young Mary Fay was given a number of blood transfusions. Do you see where this is going?” And when I shook my head: “The blood was tainted, Jamie. By the infectious prion that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob, commonly called mad cow disease.”

More thunder. Now a boom instead of a mumble.

“Mary was raised by an aunt and uncle. She did well in school, became a legal secretary, went back to college to get a law degree, quit the program after two semesters, and eventually resumed her former secretarial duties. This was in 2007. The disease she was carrying was dormant, and remained so until last summer. Then she began suffering symptoms that are normally associated with drug use, a mental breakdown, or both. She quit her job. Money was in short supply, and by October of 2013, she was also suffering physical symptoms: myoclonus, ataxia, seizures. The prion was fully awake and hard at work, eating holes in her brain. A spinal tap and MRI finally revealed the culprit.”

“Jesus,” I said. Old news footage, probably watched in some motel room or other while I was on the road, began playing behind my eyes: a cow in a muddy stall, legs splayed, head cocked, eyes rolling, mooing mindlessly as it tried to find its feet.

“Jesus can’t help Mary Fay,” he said.

“But you can.”

His answer was a look I couldn’t read. Then he turned his head and studied the darkening sky.

“Help me up. I don’t intend to miss my appointment with the lightning. I’ve been waiting for it my whole life.” He pointed to the mahogany box on the end table. “And bring that. I’ll need what’s inside.”

“Magic rods instead of magic rings.”

But he shook his head. “Not for this.”

We took the elevator. He made it into the lobby under his own power, then dropped into one of the chairs near the dead fireplace. “Go to the supply room at the end of the East Wing corridor. In it you’ll find a piece of equipment I’ve been avoiding.”

That turned out to be an old-fashioned wheelchair with a wicker seat and iron wheels that screeched like devils. I rolled it down to the lobby and helped him into it. He held out his hands for the mahogany box, and I handed it over—not without misgivings. He held it curled to his chest like a baby, and as I rolled him through the restaurant and into the deserted kitchen, he resumed his story with a question.

“Can you guess why Miss Fay quit law school?”

“Because she got sick.”

He shook his head disapprovingly. “Don’t you listen? The prion was still dormant at that time.”

“She decided she didn’t like it? Her grades weren’t good enough?”

“Neither.” He turned to me and gave his eyebrows an old roué’s waggle. “Mary Fay is that heroine of the modern age, a single mother. The child, a boy named Victor, is now seven years old. I’ve never met him—Mary didn’t want that—but she showed me many pictures of him while we were discussing his future. He reminded me of my own little boy.”

We had reached the door to the loading dock, but I didn’t push it open. “Does the kid have what she has?”

“No. Not now, at least.”

“Will he?”

“Impossible to be entirely sure, but he’s tested negative for the C-J prion. So far, at least.” More thunder boomed. The wind had begun to pick up, rattling the door and making a momentary low howling beneath the eaves. “Come on, Jamie. We really must go.”

The loading dock stairs were too steep for him to negotiate with his cane, so I carried him. He was shockingly light. I deposited him in the passenger seat of the golf cart and got behind the wheel. As we drove across the gravel and onto the downward-sloping expanse of lawn behind the resort, there was another clap of thunder. The clouds to the west of us were purple-black stacks. As I looked, lightning forked down from their distended bellies in three different places. Any possibility of the storm missing us was gone, and when it hit, it was going to rock our world.

Charlie said, “Many years ago I told you about how the iron rod on Skytop attracts the lightning. Much more than an ordinary lightning rod would. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever come here and see for yourself?”

“No.” I told this lie without hesitation. What had happened at Skytop in the summer of 1974 was between me and Astrid. I suppose I might have told Bree, if she’d ever asked about my first time, but not Charlie Jacobs. Never him.

“In De Vermis Mysteriis, Prinn speaks of ‘the vast machinery that runs the mill of the universe,’ and the river of power that machinery draws on. He calls that river—”

“Potestas magnum universum,” I said.

He stared at me, bushy eyebrows hiked to what had once been his hairline. “I was wrong about you. You’re not stupid at all.”

The wind gusted. Ripples raced across grass that hadn’t been cut in weeks. The speeding air was still warm against my cheek. When it turned cold, the rain would come.

“It’s lightning, isn’t it?” I said. “That’s the potestas magnum universum.”

“No, Jamie.” He spoke almost gently. “For all its voltage, lightning is a mere trickle of power, one of many such that feed what I call the secret electricity. But that secret electricity, awesome though it may be, is itself only a tributary. It feeds something much greater, a power beyond the ability of human beings to comprehend. That is the potestas magnum universum of which Prinn wrote, and it’s what I expect to tap today. The lightning… and this”—he raised the box in his bony hands—“are only means to an end.”

We passed into the trees, following the path Jenny had taken after she’d gotten her eggs. Branches swayed above us; leaves that might soon be ripped away by wind and hail were in agitated conversation. I abruptly took my foot off the cart’s accelerator button, and it stopped at once, as electrically powered vehicles are wont to do.

“If you’re planning to tap into the secrets of the universe, Charlie, maybe you should count me out. The cures are scary enough. You’re talking about… I don’t know… a kind of doorway.”

A small one, I thought. Covered with dead ivy.

“Calm yourself,” he said. “Yes, there’s a doorway—Prinn speaks of it, and I believe Astrid did, as well—but I don’t want to open it. I only want to peek through the keyhole.”

“In God’s name, why?”

He looked at me then with a species of wild contempt. “Are you a fool, after all? What would you call a door that’s closed against all of humankind?”

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

He sighed as if I were hopeless. “Drive on, Jamie.”

“And if I won’t?”

“Then I’ll walk, and when my legs won’t carry me any further, I’ll crawl.”

He was bluffing, of course. He couldn’t have gone on without me. But I didn’t know that then, and so I drove on.

The cabin where I’d made love to Astrid was gone. Where it had stood—swaybacked, slumping in on itself, tagged with graffiti—was a nifty little cottage, white with green trim. There was a square plot of lawn, and showy summer flowers that would be gone by day’s end, stripped clean by the storm. East of the cottage, the paved road gave way to the gravel I remembered from my trips to Skytop with Astrid. It ended at that bulging dome of granite, where the iron pole jutted toward the black sky.

Jenny, dressed in a flower-print blouse and white nylon Nancy Nurse pants, was standing on the stoop, arms crossed below her breasts and hands cupping her elbows, as if she were cold. There was a stethoscope looped around her neck. I pulled up at the steps and walked around the golf cart’s snout to where Jacobs was struggling to get out. Jenny came down the steps and helped me get him on his feet.

“Thank God you’re here!” She had to shout to be heard over the rising wind. The pines and spruces were bending and bowing before it. “I thought you weren’t coming, after all!” Thunder rolled, and when a flash of lightning followed it, she cringed.

“Inside!” I yelled at her. “Right now!” The wind had turned chill, and my sweaty skin was as good as a thermometer, registering the change in the air. The storm was only minutes away.

We got Jacobs up the steps, one on each side. The wind spun the thin remnants of his hair around his skull in whirlpools. He still had his cane, and hugged the mahogany box protectively against his chest. I heard a rattling sound, looked toward Skytop, and saw bits of scree, smashed out of the granite by the lightning strikes of previous storms, being tumbled down the slope by the wind and off the edge of the drop.

Once we were inside, Jenny couldn’t get the door shut. I managed, but had to put some real muscle into it. When it was closed, the howl of the wind dropped a little. I could hear the cottage’s wooden bones creaking, but it seemed sturdy enough. I didn’t think we’d blow away, and the iron rod would catch any close strokes of lightning. At least I hoped so.

“There’s half a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen.” Jacobs sounded out of breath but otherwise calm. “Unless you’ve polished it off, Miss Knowlton?”

She shook her head. Her face was pale, her eyes large and shining—not with tears, but with terror. She jumped at every clap of thunder.

“Bring me a small taste,” Jacobs told me. “One finger will be plenty. And pour one for yourself and Miss Knowlton. We’ll toast to the success of our endeavor.”

“I don’t want a drink, and I don’t want to toast anything,” Jenny said. “I just want this to be over. I was crazy to get involved.”

“Go on, Jamie,” Jacobs said. “Bring three. And speedily. Tempus fugit.”

The bottle was on the counter next to the sink. I set out three juice glasses and poured a splash into each. I very rarely drank, fearing booze might lead me back to dope, but I needed this one.

When I returned to the living room, Jenny was gone. Lightning flashed blue in the windows; the lamps and the overhead flickered, then came back bright.

“She needed to see to our patient,” Jacobs said. “I’ll drink hers. Unless you want it, that is.”

“Did you send me to the kitchen so you could talk to her, Charlie?”

“Nonsense.” Smiling on the good half of his face; the other half remaining grave and watchful. You know I’m lying, that half seemed to say, but it’s too late now. Isn’t it?

I gave him one of the juice glasses and set the one meant for Jenny on a table at the end of the couch, where magazines had been arranged in a tasteful fan. It occurred to me that I might have entered Astrid’s body for the first time on the very spot where that table stood. Hold still, honey, she’d said, and then, It’s wonderful.

Jacobs raised his drink. “Here’s to—”

I tossed mine off before he could finish.

He looked at me reproachfully, then swallowed his—except for one drop that dribbled down the frozen side of his mouth. “You find me odious, don’t you? I’m sorry you feel that way. More than you’ll ever know.”

“Not odious, scary. I’d find anyone scary who’s monkeying around with forces beyond their comprehension.”

He picked up the drink that had been meant for Jenny. Through the glass, the frozen side of his face was magnified. “I could argue, but why bother? The storm is almost upon us, and when the skies clear again, we’ll be done with each other. But at least be man enough to admit you’re curious. That’s a large part of what brought you here—you want to know. Just as I do. As Prinn did. The only one here against her will is poor Jenny. She came to pay a debt of love. Which gives her a nobility we cannot share.”

The door behind him opened. I caught a whiff of sickroom odors—pee, body lotion, disinfectant. Jenny closed it behind her, saw the glass in Jacobs’s hand, and plucked it away. She swallowed with a grimace that made the tendons in her neck stand out.

Jacobs bent over his cane, studying her closely. “May I assume… ?”

“Yes.” Thunder boomed. She gave a little scream and let go of the empty juice glass. It hit the carpet and rolled away.

“Go back in to her,” Jacobs said. “Jamie and I will join you very shortly.”

Jenny re-entered the sickroom without a word. Jacobs faced me.

“Listen very closely. When we go in, you’ll see a bureau on your left. There’s a revolver in the top drawer. Sam the security guard procured it for me. I don’t expect you’ll need to use it, but if you do, Jamie… don’t hesitate.”

“Why in God’s name would I—”

“We spoke of a certain door. It’s the door into death, and sooner or later each one of us grows small, reduced to nothing but mind and spirit, and in that reduced state we pass through, leaving our bodies behind like empty gloves. Sometimes death is natural, a mercy that puts an end to suffering. But all too often it comes as an assassin, full of senseless cruelty and lacking any vestige of compassion. My wife and son, taken in a stupid and pointless accident, are perfect examples. Your sister is another. They are three of millions. For most of my life I’ve railed against those who try to explain that stupidity and pointlessness with prattlings about faith and children’s stories about heaven. Such nonsense never comforted me, and I’m sure it never comforted you. And yet… there is something.”

Yes, I thought as thunder cracked hard enough and close enough to shake panes of window glass in their frames. Something is there, beyond the door, and something will happen. Something very terrible. Unless I put a stop to it.

“In my experiments I’ve glimpsed intimations of that something. I’ve seen its shape in every cure the secret electricity has effected. I even know it from the aftereffects, some of which you have noted. Those are trailing fragments of some unknown existence beyond our lives. Everyone wonders at one time or other what lies beyond the wall of death. Today, Jamie, we’ll see for ourselves. I want to know what happened to my wife and son. I want to know what the universe has in store for all of us once this life is over, and I intend to find out.”

“We’re not meant to see.” Shock had stolen most of my voice, and I wasn’t sure he’d hear me over the rising wind, but he did.

“Can you tell me you don’t think about your sister Claire every day? That you don’t wonder if she still exists somewhere?”

I said nothing, but he nodded as if I had.

“Of course you do, and we’ll have answers shortly. Mary Fay will give them to us.”

“How can she?” My lips felt numb, and not from the alcohol. “How can she, if you cure her?”

He gave me a look that asked if I were really that clueless. “I can’t cure her. Those eight diseases I mentioned were picked because none are amenable to cure by the secret electricity.”

The wind rose to a shout, and the first erratic bursts of rain struck the west side of the house, hitting so hard they sounded like thrown pebbles.

“Miss Knowlton turned off Mary Fay’s ventilator as we were coming here from the resort. She’s been dead for almost fifteen minutes. Her blood is cooling. The computer inside her skull, wounded by the disease she carried from childhood but still marvelous, has gone dark.”

“You think… you actually think…” I couldn’t finish. I was flabbergasted.

“Yes. It’s taken years of study and experiment to reach this point, but yes. Using lightning as a road to the secret electricity, and the secret electricity as a thoroughfare to potestas magnum universum, I intend to bring Mary Fay back to some form of life. I intend to learn the truth of what’s on the other side of the door that leads into the Kingdom of Death. I’ll learn it from the lips of someone who’s been there.”

“You’re insane.” I turned toward the door. “I won’t play any part in this.”

“I can’t stop you if you really mean to leave,” he said, “although to go out in a storm like this would be the height of recklessness. Would it help if I told you that I’ll proceed without you, and that would put Miss Knowlton’s life at risk, as well as my own? How ironic it would be if she were to die so soon after Astrid was saved.”

I turned back. My hand was on the knob; rain was pounding against the door on the other side. Lightning printed a brief blue rectangle on the carpet.

“You can find out what happened to Claire.” His voice was low now, soft and silky, the voice of Pastor Danny at his most persuasive.

The voice of a coaxing devil.

“You might even be able to speak with her… hear her tell you that she loves you. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Always assuming she’s still there as a conscious entity, of course… and don’t you want to know?”

There was another flash of lightning, and from the mahogany box, a poisonous greenish-purple wink of light shot through a gap in the latch, there at one second, gone the next.

“If it’s any comfort to you, Miss Fay agreed to this experiment. The paperwork is in apple-pie order, including a signed affidavit giving me power to cease so-called heroic measures at my own discretion. In return for my brief and entirely respectful use of her remains, Mary’s son will be taken care of with a generous trust fund that will see him well into adulthood. There are no victims here, Jamie.”

So you say, I thought. So you say.

Thunder roared. This time, just before the stroke of lightning, I heard a faint clicking sound. Jacobs did, too.

“The time has arrived. Come into the room with me or go away.”

“I’ll come,” I said. “And I’ll be praying nothing happens. Because this isn’t an experiment, Charlie. This is hell’s work.”

“Think what you want and pray all you like. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I ever did… although I really doubt it.”

He opened the door, and I followed him into the room where Mary Fay had died.