Soulstorm. Part 2

"Where did you get it?"

The man didn't answer.

"May I see it please?" This didn't feel good, not at all.

The man shook his head. "Sorry."

"I'm afraid I'll have to insist."

"I said no."

"Then I turn around and drive right back to New York."

The man's hand went farther up the stock of the shotgun in an unmistakable warning. "I don't think you'd better."

"I think," said McNeely calmly, "that you'd be a fool to try and stop me . . ."

"You . . ."

". . . because I can have the Colt in my armpit down your throat a whole lot faster than you can step back and bring up that twelve gauge."

Though he had no pistol, McNeely felt perfectly safe. He could tell that the shotgun was for show by the way the yokel held it. The man was no bodyguard, probably just a local hired to take tickets. "Now let me see the photograph."

The man hesitated for a moment, then handed it slowly over. McNeely focused his full attention on it, knowing that the effort expended to get him this far precluded his being blown away by the man. It was a recent photo, which surprised him. That it had been taken surrept.i.tiously he was certain. It was a black and white three-quarter profile. Only the upper portion of his body was visible, and he was wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt. There were trees in the background, and he knew it had to be the park during one of his morning workouts. These people were good despite the pitiable guard they'd chosen. He should have known it when they took his picture, but he hadn't. It was a good shot, slightly grainy, but he was easily recognizable. Telephoto, he thought, or a Minox in the bushes. Either way, it showed him that these people knew what they were doing, and convinced him more than ever that the proposition would not be on the up and up.

McNeely handed the picture back to the man, who scowled at him and walked to the gate, which he wrenched open violently, gesturing for McNeely to drive through. He did so, tipping an imaginary hat at the man, who only scowled all the more.

The road went a mile higher, winding back and forth and hugging the side of the mountain with just enough room for two cars to pa.s.s. Then on his left the trees were gone, and a large lawn stretched up to the house.

It was much lighter there at the mountain's top, without the covering shadows of the thick evergreens, and his breath caught in his throat at the sight of the building in the sudden morning glow. It was shaped like a huge stone T, the arms serving as two long wings off the thick upright which jutted out to the road. The stones of which it was built were ma.s.sive, irregularly cut gray granite blocks, which gave it the solidity of a medieval castle. But it had none of a castle's architectural fillips. No turrets pierced the crisp fall air, no cupolas curved skyward. Indeed, the lack of ornamentation gave the impression of a great stone block, a monolithic slab forgotten by a race of t.i.tans. Even the roof allowed no relief from the stiff horizontals and verticals. From McNeely's viewpoint it seemed perfectly flat, so that he could not see its surface. The only evidence of the roofs existence were foot-wide eaves that surrounded the house, jutting sharply outward as if embarra.s.sed to cause a line that did not meet another.

As McNeely drove nearer, he could see that many of the windows were stained gla.s.s, and here and there dim gleamings of color shone from rooms inside, where lamps were lit. He pulled up to the front door at the base of the T and stopped. A short stocky man in a black windbreaker opened the car door for him. "You can leave your car here, Mr. McNeely. I'll take it around the back."

McNeely nodded and got out. "Feel free to go in," said the stocky man, climbing into the driver's seat and wheeling the BMW to the left behind the house. McNeely stood alone for a minute, looking up at the house that towered three stories above him, then at the wings that stretched away from the rear of the house to either side. Large lawns lay within the two areas between the wings and the trunk of the T, but trees were everywhere else, pines mostly, though McNeely noticed a good many broadleaves as well-mostly oak, maple, and a few poplars. From the front of the house across the road to where the trees begin was less than thirty feet. It was disquieting, thought McNeely, oppressive. He looked across the lawn at the right-hand wing and grunted appreciatively at the size of the place. Each wing had to be at least sixty feet long, and it looked to be sixty feet from the front back to the wings. He wondered if there was another extension lost to his view that would make the T a cross.

Then he noticed, high in a third-floor window near the end of the right-hand wing, a dim glow. At first he thought that it was the reflection of sunlight in the windowpane, but realized immediately that the sun was still far behind the eastern trees. Within a few seconds it became too bright to be an electric light, and the whiteness of it made him think of burning magnesium. When it flared even higher, dazzling his eyes with its white fury, he started to cross quickly to the front door to alert the occupants.

Then, even faster than it had burst into being, the light faded until the eye of the window was dark once again.

McNeely stood there, confused. He wondered if it had been an illusion, or if something had reflected the sun's low rays off several surfaces until it touched the gla.s.s of the window. Or perhaps an acetylene torch . . . a workshop.

The man who had parked his car appeared around the end of the wing, walking across the yellow lawn. When he noticed McNeely, he called to him. "You can go in, Mr. McNeely."

McNeely nodded, but waited for the man to draw nearer. "I thought I saw a fire," he said, "in that window up there."

The man looked up at the window and nodded. "Real bright light'" he asked. "Almost white?"

"Yes."

"I've seen that already," said the stocky man. "Some sort of illusion from the clouds or somewhere. That room's empty. Not a thing in it."

"I thought it might be a workshop," McNeely said. "Acetylene torch, maybe."

The man shook his head. "No such thing. Pretty peculiar though." He gestured to the door. "Like to go in?"

McNeely nodded thanks and pushed the ma.s.sive double door inward into a short antechamber with a red velvet curtain at the other end. To his left and right were two dark rooms-cloakrooms, he thought. Drawing the curtain aside, he stepped into a room so large that at first he thought himself in a chapel. The ceiling lofted up for all three stories, ending in an arched roof of dark timbers. The walls were a dark brown stone in sharp contrast to the lighter gray of the outer walls, and the heavy stone floor underfoot did nothing to alleviate the gloom of the place. Two men stood talking in low tones at the other end of the room. The older of the pair, who was facing McNeely, noticed him entering.

"h.e.l.lo there!" he cried out. He squinted to make out McNeely's face, and came closer, the younger man following. "Mr. McNeely, is it?"

"That's right." He held out his hand, which the older man took in his large paw like a bear snaring a fish.

"A pleasure. My name is Renault. Simon Renault." Renault smiled as he pumped McNeely's hand. A bear, McNeely thought again. Renault was a bear, tall, layered with fat, a huge moustache, gray-white hair, and brownish tweeds, which completed the picture. He probably loved honey. "And this," said Renault, "is Mr. Kelly Wickstrom. Mr. Wickstrom, George McNeely."

As he shook Wickstrom's hand, McNeely regarded him admiringly. He was as tall as Renault, well over six feet, but there the resemblance stopped. Whereas Renault undoubtedly tortured the scales, Wickstrom was, McNeely estimated, not over two hundred pounds, most of it muscle. His blond hair and faint moustache would have made him look like a slightly over-the-hill beach boy if it hadn't been for the lumpy-looking face that was brutally accented by a broken nose.

"Glad to meet you," Wickstrom said in an unmistakable Brooklyn accent. He looked uncomfortable, like a secretary about to be interviewed fresh out of business school.

McNeely turned back to Renault. "You're the gentleman who sent the letter, then."

"That's correct," Renault nodded. "I trust there was no trouble with the check?"

"None at all. I must admit I felt somewhat guilty taking it"-Renault looked puzzled-''for such a little service as driving up here, I mean. When will we talk about the further proposition?"

"Just what I've been asking him," said Wickstrom.

Renault smiled and looked at his watch. "It's six o'clock now. Mr. c.u.mmings has not yet arrived..."

"c.u.mmings?" McNeely asked.

"The third applicant," said Renault. "I hope he hasn't gotten lost. At any rate, why don't we begin breakfast, and you can meet the owners of The Pines. We'll wait to outline the proposition, of course, until Mr. c.u.mmings arrives. Just step this way." He spoke, thought McNeely, like a man used to being obeyed.

The three of them walked past the huge round fireplace near the center of the room. Four feet above it was a chimney opening like the bell of a giant trumpet. The copper chimney pipe shot upward between the balconies on either side of the room until it pierced the ceiling high above. "Quite a chimney," observed McNeely.

"Isn't it," said Renault, never breaking stride. He may be friendly, McNeely thought, but he's certainly not talkative.

They entered the first door on the right. It was a dining room, complete with china closet, buffet, and a long rustic oak table surrounded by two dozen hand-hewn chairs. A man and a woman were seated, drinking coffee at the far end. They rose when the others entered. They were, thought McNeely, quite handsome, and he stole a sidelong glance at Wickstrom to catch his reaction upon seeing the woman.

He was not disappointed. Wickstrom's mouth opened slightly and his eyes grew dreamy for a second before he smiled and nodded politely. There was little guile in this Kelly Wickstrom, McNeely thought. He would be easy to read.

The man at the end of the room, however, was a different story. McNeely disliked him instantly, though he did not know precisely why. There was an aura about him of something wrong. He was a bit too good-looking, a bit too tall, a bit too controlled and confident and overwhelmingly at ease in the way he gazed condescendingly at them and rested his thin tapered fingers on the woman's shoulder. It was clear to George McNeely that this man was a fool, albeit a rich and dangerous one.

But there was something else, something that made the hair on McNeely's neck stir, the longer he looked at the man. McNeely had lived too long with the scent of death not to recognize it now.

"May I present Gabrielle and David Neville," intoned Renault. "And this is Kelly Wickstrom and George McNeely." The couple crossed to them, the woman first, the man following, and Kelly Wickstrom struggled to keep the grin of wonder off his face. He'd seen pretty women before-h.e.l.l, his wife had been pretty as anything-but he couldn't remember ever before standing in the presence of beauty, its violet eyes s.h.i.+ning into his.

He managed well enough so that the grin just felt dopey as she shook his hand, and he realized that she'd said something he'd missed.

"Pardon?" he asked. He could feel his cheeks getting hot and hoped she wouldn't notice.

There was amus.e.m.e.nt in her eyes. "I asked how was your drive up here?"

"Fine. Fine, thank you. It's beautiful country."

"A bit untamed for the East, eh?" said Neville, turning from McNeely to grasp Wickstrom's hand. Wickstrom thought the grip was a little too strong to be friendly, but resisted the urge to squeeze back. He needed the job too badly to antagonize his prospective employer.

"Untamed is right," said McNeely. "Desolate is more like it."

"Very true." Neville smiled. "The nearest towns are twenty miles on either side of our mountain. Wilmer is north-on a clear day you can see it from the overlook out back. South is Ticono."

Wickstrom chuckled. "Sounds like an oil company."

"Doesn't it?" Neville said politely, but beneath it Wickstrom sensed an undercurrent of impatience, and decided not to joke again.

"Shall we sit down?" Gabrielle Neville asked. Wickstrom could barely keep his eyes off her as the party moved tableward. She was utterly elegant, feminine without being in the least pneumatic. Her figure was slim, almost boyish, and Wickstrom wondered what it would be like, not to bed her, but just to hold her. At that moment he envied Neville his wife far more than his wealth.

While the others sat, Renault and Gabrielle disappeared into the hall and returned within a minute with plates of eggs, toast, and bacon. Behind them, pus.h.i.+ng a tray with a coffee service for eight, was a man wearing a denim jacket and chinos. He was tall and gaunt, and his hair was pure white, belying his age, which Wickstrom judged to be not over fifty. Renault introduced him as Whitey Monckton, a New York architect and contractor who had just finished some work on the house. Monckton seemed friendly enough, but ill at ease, and Wickstrom caught him jumping at small noises in the hall and overhead that seemed to be only the sounds that any old house makes.

The five of them were halfway through breakfast when the man who had parked Wickstrom's car came in from the hall, followed by another man in a Burberry topcoat with a briefcase.

"c.u.mmings," barked the stranger in a crisp tenor. "Seth c.u.mmings. Jesus, I'm sorry I'm late, but I must have taken a wrong turn back along the line. Then, of course, when I got here, I wanted to drive straight through, but the . . . gentleman at the gate seemed rather security-conscious, so I had to spend some time with him." c.u.mmings looked around the table, smiling at each in turn.

"Quite all right," Renault boomed. "You've not missed a thing of import." Introductions were made, and Wickstrom noticed an odd reaction from c.u.mmings when the Nevilles were introduced, as though he recognized the name. But he said nothing, and soon was eating along with the rest.

When the meal was finished, Monckton and Gabrielle cleared away the dishes, and Neville rose to his feet. "The time has come, the walrus said, to speak." Wickstrom smiled at the allusion without being able to place it. "I think that we may adjourn to the den for the proposition we have to make to you gentlemen. If you'll follow me . . ."

They walked down the hall, past the mammoth room through which they'd entered the house, and across to the other wing into a large den whose windows looked out on the front lawn. Once they were comfortably seated in thick leather chairs, Neville nodded to Renault.

"Mr. Wickstrom, Mr. McNeely, Mr. c.u.mmings," said Renault. "First of all, we wish to thank you for being here today. The offer that we are about to make is one that you need not feel required to accept. The retainers you have been paid are yours to keep regardless of what you decide today. Of course, we hope that you will accept, but the choice is entirely yours.

"What we are asking for are your services for one month, thirty-one days starting today through the end of October. Does that pose a scheduling problem for any of you? . . . Good. All we ask is that you live here, inside The Pines, for that period of time."

Renault looked around as if expecting a question. Wickstrom gave him one. "Doing what?"

"Whatever you wish. There will be the three of you and Mr. and Mrs. Neville. There are restrictions, of course. And certain things that may seem eccentric to you. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for all of them.

"I can see the questions on all of your faces. What is this really about, I suppose you're asking yourselves. Well, to be honest, there is more to this than just a one-month vacation. The Pines is an odd house. Things have happened here, and things have been heard and seen here that are difficult to explain. Mr. Neville will go into greater detail in a moment. It is primarily from curiosity on his part that this project was conceived. The house has stood empty for a number of years, and when Mr. Neville was made aware of its curious history, his interest in it grew until he came up with the idea of spending a long period of time here to see if the rumors and legends had any truth in them."

Rumors? Legends? What the h.e.l.l, Wickstrom wondered, was this all about? And what was next? Vincent Price popping out of a closet to tell them ghost stories? The whole thing was crazy.

George McNeely was doubtful, too, not of Renault's sanity, but rather his honesty. Curiosity? Bulls.h.i.+t, McNeely thought, biting back a smile as he looked at David Neville. The man was practically ravening. Not outwardly, but McNeely could see it in the eyes. There was more than curiosity there, even the curiosity of an out and out occultist. McNeely had worked a long time on reading men's eyes, and even longer on keeping his own blank and emotionless. The skill had saved his life several times. Words lie, acts lie, but eyes? Never.

"Of course," Renault went on, "it would be necessary to have companions, so you gentlemen were-"

"Why?" asked McNeely.

"Why ... what?"

"Why are companions necessary? Surely a few servants would do as well." He knew his comment might be interpreted as rude, but he wanted to break Renault's irksome air of preparedness, to see how he handled a protest, and mainly to see how Neville reacted to the question.

"Let me, Simon," said Neville with a cold smile. "Mr. McNeely, disposing of servants was my little idiosyncrasy. I wanted a certain type of person around my wife and myself . . . people very much like you and Mr. c.u.mmings and Mr. Wickstrom. Tough people. People who wouldn't be scared by a few ghost stories, whose imaginations wouldn't run away with them. For that same reason I didn't want any so-called psychics. They feel obligated to see ghosts, and if there aren't any to see, they'll make them up."

Wickstrom cleared his throat. "Why, uh, why us specifically? I mean-"

Neville held up a hand. "Please, Mr. Wickstrom, all in good time. I've already jumped about more than I like," he said, glancing at McNeely. "I'd like to tell you about the house now, and then Simon can fill you in on the details of your acceptance . . . if, of course, you all accept.

"The Pines was built by my grandfather, Robert D'Neuville, who later took the name Neville. He'd been in this country since 1880 and decided to finally Americanize it. The family was, and still is, in the import-export business. Trade was particularly good in the first decade of this century, and my grandfather found himself a multimillionaire. He'd worked nonstop for many years, but was now secure enough to want to take things easy for a change.

"So he built The Pines. He scouted for a location for a number of years, looking for someplace no more than a day or two's journey from New York, yet a place that was isolated, many miles away from the nearest town or even the nearest house. He found it here.

"He chose this mountain because of its spectacular northern view. One can see nearly a hundred miles on a very clear day, and on a clear night the lights of Wilmer are easily visible. That was, however, as close as my grandfather wanted anyone to come. So in 1907 he bought hundreds of thousands of acres all around-it was the property of the National Forest Service, but already by that time the Neville family had done the Roosevelt administration a great many favors, so the transaction was easily made, particularly since Grandfather wanted to leave it in its pure state. The forest service had named this mountain, predictably enough, Pine Mountain, because of the pines that blanket it, so Grandfather decided to call the house The Pines."

"Imaginative, wasn't he?" McNeely said dryly.

Neville bristled. "He was a businessman, Mr. McNeely, and as such had little time for imagination." Then he smiled in discomfort, as if angry at himself for being baited. "I think you can see that from the design of the house, which he did himself. He wanted it simple and functional, which it is, except for the Great Hall, the large room through which you first entered. There he wanted the feeling of an old royal hunting lodge. The house was to be an escape, a retreat to which he and his family could come in the summer to hunt and relax. It was, however, many years before he could occupy it.

"The construction started in 1909, and was plagued with accidents. Three men were killed during the first year, when a scaffold collapsed, and in 1910 a fire broke out when there was no one on the site, completely gutting the structure. Only the stone remained. Grandfather had it rebuilt, and in late 1913, The Pines was completed. But the war was coming, the s.h.i.+pping lanes were endangered, and Grandfather was busier than ever. He spent none of the summer of 1914 here, nor any summers of the war years that followed.

"At last, in 1919, he had the place furnished and brought his family here, along with several servants, intending to stay through July and August. Unfortunately, his youngest son, my father's younger brother, became ill one night and died before morning. It's still not known what caused his death, though the examining doctor called it a 'brain fever.' The boy's death crushed my grandfather. He took his family back to New York at once, and refused to bring them here again. The next summer he returned with a few business a.s.sociates and some other acquaintances, though he would not take either of his surviving sons. He also brought friends here to hunt deer in the fall. Then, a few years later, strange things started to happen.

"There was a rumor, never substantiated, that a poet friend of my grandfather's had something to do with the death of a woman here. Supposedly she was the mistress of one of the guests, and her death was hushed up for fear of scandal. Whether the poet purposely killed her or drove her to her death in some other way is not known, but he himself committed suicide not a year after the supposed event."

"I don't understand," said Wickstrom. "There must have been a body..."

"Always the policeman, eh, Mr. Wickstrom?" Neville said patronizingly. "Now, if you were wealthy and a death of an unknown and uncared for person occurred in your house-miles from civilization-and it threatened to destroy the reputations of two of your friends, don't you think you could somehow see to it that that unknown person stayed unknown?"

"No," said Wickstrom simply. "I don't think I could."

Neville looked at him for a long moment. "No, I suppose you couldn't. Maybe my grandfather didn't either. Maybe it never happened. It's a moot point anyway, as it was only a rumor. The next event, however, really did occur.

"An industrialist, of a family whose name you would all recognize if I mentioned it, went mad in this house in the fall of 1928. No one knows why nor how. His manservant simply found him in bed one morning babbling incoherently. It was a.s.sumed that something he'd seen or heard during the night had stolen his wits, as the novelists put it. At any rate, he never regained his sanity."

"Excuse me," c.u.mmings interrupted, "but was he at all unbalanced to begin with?"

"Evidently not, Mr. c.u.mmings. He was a shrewd businessman with little time for trifling or believing in the supernatural. Not unlike yourself, eh?" c.u.mmings chuckled politely while Neville went on. "After that, the s.h.i.+t, you'll pardon the expression, hit the fan. Guests started seeing visions both night and day around the house and grounds, people who looked real and substantial one moment and would vanish in the next. There was no rhyme or reason to the appearances, and it seems that these ghosts, if you will, were all very different from one another. In fact, it seems that no two guests ever saw the same apparition, so there is no 'Lady in Gray,' or 'Headless Nun' of long tradition.

"Nightmares became plentiful, and the guests were also filled with highly realistic premonitions. It's said that one young and healthy financier felt so strongly that his own death was imminent that he made his will and settled all his accounts. A month later the crash of '29 sent him and dozens of others out of their office windows to the pavement below.

"My grandfather, oddly enough, was never victimized by any of these phenomena, but after a time he grew to believe in them. In 1930 he shut up The Pines, placing a permanent guard at the cabin you pa.s.sed below. Between then and the forties there was not one attempt made at burglary or vandalism."

"That's more incredible than the ghosts," Wickstrom said, "especially during the Depression. Didn't people know about this place or what?"

"Oh, they knew about it," Neville answered. "Everyone in the county did. They just stayed away. The rumors spread, and, after all, they were mountain people with mountain superst.i.tions."

"Were there any superst.i.tions locally," asked McNeely, "about Pine Mountain itself?"