Specimens Part 10

"Well, now I'm thinking things like, could there be paint with some poison in it, peeling or outga.s.sing from the walls, giving some of the people who live inside those walls some strange delusions?"

"Dr. Baer. Paint peeling for more than a hundred and twenty years? And in between James and Mr. Stanton, a lot of people who were presumably never bothered by it at all?"

"We don't know that there was no bothering in between the eighteen-fifties and the nineteen-seventies ... but you are right, that's quite a span of time for anything like paint to remain chemically active, / would think. Hmm. Lead poisoning? I wonder."

Nancy's attention had drifted away: "What? I'm sorry, Dr. Baer, I didn't quite . . . ."

"Never mind. Say, Nancy, my friends call me Conrad."

She was still off somewhere amongst her worries. "Dr. Baer, I think we should go to ...

to some authorities."

"Yes, but you see you hesitate to specify which ones. But tomorrow we will decide that, tomorrow we'll take action. We'll go to see Dan, maybe in the late morning or afternoon. . . . You know, d.a.m.n it, Nancy, it still gets me that there may be an Indian mound under that house. Talk about coincidences. Adding another one like that would really be too much.''

''It's just my idea that the house is on a mound. I'm no expert."

"Nor are you flighty enough to be seeing burial mounds everywhere when they ain't there. Not when you've got bigger worries. So maybe, I say, there is a mound. Not that I can begin to guess what possible connection it might have with our problem."

They dined, sparingly, at an excellent and expensive restaurant.

"I'm not coming to work tomorrow, Doctor Conrad."

"Come in the morning, take a taxi or something.

You car is there, remember?"

''I can phone Susie for a ride, she lives up my way.''

"Good. Because I would like to see a man there in the morning who really knows something about outga.s.sings from the earth. And also a lady friend of mine who knows more about old books than you and I put together. Which I guess wouldn't necessarily be much, but she's pretty good. Then you and I will in the afternoon cut cla.s.s once more, and drive out here and talk to Dan. Then if things look bad, we'll call in whatever help we need - if not so bad after all, then we'll just have come out so you can show me the mound. And we can give him back his book. Okay?" "Okay." She reached across the table and seized him by the thumb and squeezed it quite ferociously. "Can I say thanks just once again?"

... it just seemed ultimately unfair, that the night should still bring him no rest, whose waking hours had turned completely into nightmare.

Dan knew full well, even as the Oriana-dream began again, that it was really a Thursday night in the thirty-sixth summer of his life, that he was in his own bed physically and that his body was asleep. But still he must experience the dream again, the same in every detail. It was as if he were strapped, with eyelids forced apart, before a wide screen on which this horror-doc.u.mentary that he already knew by heart was beginning to unfold again.

Oriana dismounted with the others from the wagon, was led into the house, dozed first in the kitchen chair and then upon the floor. When again the crab-machine came for her (when Dan had uncrated it on Thursday afternoon, he had looked for any mark made by the heavy frying pan, and thought he found one, not a dent but a sharply polished spot half the size of the nail on his little finger), Dan's eyes through Oriana's were fixed again upon its waving limbs, its curiously shod feet . . . and with a kind of electric snap the dream changed on him in a way that it had never done before.

Now he knelt again in the medicine man's wiry body, which was quivering with what must be fear as his hands anointed the crab with stinking grease from his bark bucket, while before him in the roofless earthen pit the blue flames played over the convex monolith . . .

. . . snap again, and he was Peter, running in mad terror across the summer field, the breeze of his running cool on his wet skin, knowing that the metal beast must be in close pursuit ....

. . . and snap again, and Dan was wide awake, sitting up in his own rumpled bed, with somewhere outside the window shades the light of early dawn, grayness coming in enough to make a Rohrschach blob of Nancy's pictured face at his bedside.

"But he wasn't caught," Dan said into the empty room. Peter had been naked when he fled the swimming hole, and now his body down below was clothed in shirt and overalls.

It hadn't caught him until later, when the vigilantes had followed the crab's six-footed trail back to Schwartz's house and burned it down. ...

Somehow Dan had always a.s.sumed that the dreams were sent by the enemy to torment him. But maybe not: maybe it didn't even know just what he dreamed. Maybe instead they were warnings, messages meant somehow to be helpful, sent to him from the other victims down below, from tortured minds that did not truly sleep, messages getting through the strange linkage that the enemy had made among them all.

Dan froze in his sitting position in his bed, his heart beating suddenly with the double adrenalin of hope and fear. Those four words he had just spoken aloud were echoing and re-echoing in his mind. He was afraid that his understanding of them had come too late to do him any good; and he was terrified that he had vocalized them for the enemy to hear. He sat there waiting for control to clamp down, for his life to be extinguished because now he knew the enemy's weakness and was too dangerous to be allowed to live. But maybe those spoken words had been too cryptic for an enemy who did not know what went on in his dreams. There was only the gradual brightening of the morning's light.

TWELVE.

Nancy's wrist.w.a.tch indicated just three minutes after two, on Friday afternoon when Baer pulled his car up in front of the house on Benham Road. The morning's talks with experts at the Museum had provided a more-or-less expert opinion that the book was probably really a century or more old, but had been less helpful in offering support for the theory of noxious chemicals or natural gases.

The first think Baer did on getting out of the car was to squint about him at the lay of the land. "I see what you mean about the mound," he muttered, nodding. "It just could be. But after grading, and housebuilding, and who knows what, on top of a few thousand years' erosion, there's really no way to tell without digging in. Anyway, we'll see."

He followed Nancy up the short walk to the low little wooden porch, where she pushed at the doorbell and then peered in through the little gla.s.s panels beside the door.

No one answered. "Looked like his car's in the garage," Nancy murmured. They had seen as they drove up that the garage doors were shut.

Baer grunted, feeling suddenly, and really for the first time, somewhat sorry that he had gotten into all this. Maybe the young man was after all simply enjoying himself with another girl friend, human beings being what they were. Some appealing person like Nancy comes up with this intellectually beautiful puzzle, into which all known fact- pieces do not seem capable of fitting, and when listening to it one tends to forget that in the real world it is more than likely that some of the bits taken as fact are mistakes or lies or imagination. Nancy of course is an intelligent, reliable girl, but still. . . .

''I've got a key,'' she said with sudden decisiveness, opening her small shoulder bag.

"I'm going in."

Baer said nothing, standing with hands behind his back. Unlocking the door, Nancy called in: "Hey! Anybody home?" When no answer came she went on in, stopping almost at once to shake her head at the living room's untidiness. Sofa pillows were disarranged and a corner of the rug turned up. She remained for a moment staring at a small suitcase and a small brown paper bag with its top twisted shut, that rested together among disturbed cushions in the middle of the sofa.

Baer hovered at the doorway, frowning uneasily, as Nancy took in these sights and then walked purposefully into another room. After being left alone in silence for a moment, Baer followed.

She was in the kitchen, which was in the same sort of casual mess as the front room.

A couple of small spills, coffee or c.o.ke or something else brownish, had dried on the tile floor. The thought of blood, which turned brown when it dried, crossed Baer's mind. A plastic baseball bat lay in a corner, and a toy water pistol among the scattering of unwashed dishes beside the sink. A pad of notepaper and a pencil were on the Formica tabletop, as if someone had perhaps just been making out a grocery list. An ashtray holding several cigarette b.u.t.ts was there too.

"Maybe he's gone shopping," Baer offered. "Maybe." Nancy stared down at the table.

"Dan doesn't smoke."

No lipstick on the b.u.t.ts, thought Baer. But then a lot of girls don't wear that stuff these days. Why did he keep thinking there was another woman mixed into it? Just a feeling.

Nancy had left the kitchen and was now opening what must be the bas.e.m.e.nt door.

"Dan, are you down there? Children?"

No answer. She closed the door again and moved along. Baer followed her to the ascending stairs.

''Guess n.o.body's home, Nancy.'' He felt a growing uneasiness, not at what they might discover in the house, but at Dan's coming home and finding him, almost a total stranger, practically searching his bureau drawers. And Baer's wife, when he told her the story, would purse her lips and shake her head, I told you so, Mr. Smart Professor ....

"I guess not," Nancy agreed. But she went on upstairs anyway. Baer hesitated again but then trudged after her. Wouldn't want to be just standing in the living room, unrecognizable and undefended, when the householder came home. In the upstairs hall he came to a stop, looking with his neck bent backward at the trapdoor to the attic. He felt the pressure of the diary in his inner coat pocket.

"The children's rooms hardly looked lived in, even," Nancy fretted, coming out of what was evidently one of them. "I mean, they're lived in, but there's a kind of. . . of disused air about them. A little dust beginning to settle. Know what I mean?"

"Lived in, but disused? No, I don't know exactly."

She closed her eyes, thinking. "All right, I can be more accurate than that. A house with children is normally in constant turmoil. Toys and clothes and things are moved and broken and thrown around. Laundry piles up, walls and furniture get marked.

Adults can leave a mess, too, but they tend to run in ruts, in tracks, unless they're deliberately being destructive. This house has - adult ruts. As if the kids have hardly lived here since the last time I saw them."

"I don't know ..."

"And downstairs, that little brown paper bag on the sofa. In that are a couple of toys that I brought for the children when I was here two nights ago. It's still sitting there forgotten, beside the suitcase with some of my things in it.''

Baer didn't know what to say in the way of rea.s.surance, but he wasn't required to try as yet, because Nancy moved off down the hall abruptly to stop inside another doorway.

"This was - this is going to be our room."

Following, Baer saw that the double bed had been slept in and was unmade. Mild disorder generally prevailed. A small click nearby made him turn his head sharply; it was only the digital clock-radio switching numerals. Two-fifteen. Nancy for a change had almost a smile on her face; he saw that she was gazing at her own picture, which was prominent at bedside.

"Well, Nancy, we could wait around for Dan to come home. Or, we could move on and come back a little later."

"Move on? Where would we go?"

He thought. "Do you know any of the neighbors at all? How about the lady who found the points?"

"Mrs. Follett, yes. I've scarcely met any of the others."

"Then I think we ought to go and see if Mrs. Follett is home. Talk about archaeology, if nothing else. Maybe we'll learn something."

She was too nervous to consider waiting around in the house. "I'll leave Dan a note,"

she said as they went quickly down the stairs.

''If you wish. You could say . . ." It seemed to be growing hotter in the old house, and coming down behind Nancy he lost the thread of his thought somewhere on the upper steps. He wiped at his forehead with his handkerchief. What was this bulge in his inside coat pocket? Oh yes, the red book, the . . .the diary.

"Say what?" she questioned vaguely, looking back at him from the bottom of the stairs, her eyes now as uncertain as he knew his must be.

"Let's get outside, Nancy, it's stifling in here."

Outside, she had taken three steps toward the car before she remembered to turn back and lock the front door of the house.

In the Toronado, he flipped on the air-conditioning at once. "Better," he said, as the cool air came. He looked at his watch again, with the feeling of reorienting himself after a nap. Only two-eighteen. ''Now for Mrs. Follett. I deduce that must be her house right ahead."

"Right. Wow, that cool air does feel better. I was getting a little dizzy in the house."

Baer eased the car out into the road, and downhill a hundred feet or so before turning off onto the gra.s.sy shoulder again, to park under the shade of a large elm before the Folletts' house. Mr. Patrick Follett evidently saw them arrive, for he, graying and wiry, copy of Time in hand, met them at the door before they had a chance to ring a bell or knock. Behind him came Mrs. Follett, ap.r.o.ned, wiping her hands. The smell of something baking was in the air.

Mrs. Follett hugged Nancy as if she were a long-lost friend. ''How are you, dear? And how are Dan and the children?" She led her visitors inside.

"I - I was hoping you could tell us something." "Oh? Won't you sit down?" ''The truth is, I'm worried about Dan. Oh, I'm sorry. This is Dr. Baer, from the Museum. He drove me out today. He - he's interested in the projectile points, and also in the chance that our house may be on an Indian mound."

''How do you do." Baer shook hands with his hosts, studied them, and decided not to waste time pretending to talk science. "Nancy here is really concerned about her fiancee, and I admit I am getting that way too. Maybe there's nothing to worry about, but ..."

Mrs. Follett was already nodding understandingly, for some reason not surprised at their worry. But she said, in hopeful tones: "I saw him walking out yesterday afternoon, and he seemed well enough. Waved to me, but didn't stop to talk." Nancy asked: "And the children?" Mrs. Follett blinked. "Well, I understand that they were sent away to school. Dan told me that - let's see, on Wednesday morning."

"Wednesday?" Nancy sounded stupid.

"Yes."

"Away to school?" She took the chair she had been offered earlier, and Baer came to stand at her side.

''That's what Dan told me. Dear... I hardly know how to say this, but for once I've really acted like the neighborhood busybody. I suppose I'd better tell you about it now."

Follett cleared his throat, and put a hand on his wife's shoulder. "Well, I don't know if you can say 'for once', as if it were the absolute first time. But anyway, Nancy, Dr. Baer, you see I used to be a.s.sociated with the sheriff's office in this county, and the police chief here and some of the boys are old buddies of mine. So maybe the wife and I call them up a little more casually than we would otherwise."

"What my husband is trying to say, dear, is that on Tuesday night I heard some sounds like . . . well, like screaming, from over there, or so I thought. Patrick had fallen asleep on the sofa, and he sleeps like a log. Didn't hear anything. But then Wednesday morning I saw Dan, and he looked so . . .so strange. I made Pat call the station, and later on in the day a couple of detectives came over and paid Dan a visit. They looked through the house and talked with him, and they were satisfied there's nothing wrong. The children had been sent away somewhere to school."

Nancy was shaking her head, stubbornly and with an expression on her face mat looked like mounting horror. "Are you sure? I mean, did you actually talk, yourself, with the police after they went over there?"

Follett shook his head. "No, honey, Chief Wallace called me back. Said everything seemed okay. He's a good man, and I'm sure the men he sent were competent."

''But Dan told me Wednesday night that the children were having dinner at some neighbor's house." She could get no help from any of the faces looking at her. ''What school were they supposed to have been sent to? Did the police say that?"

"I didn't ask them, honey," Follett said with the ghost of a chuckle. "Figured we'd stuck our noses in far enough."

Baer was looking toward the piano, where there stood the photos of a couple of grown-up young people. "Mrs. Follett, may I ask, are those your kids by any chance?

Yes, well, then you've raised a couple of your own. You know how kids yell sometimes when they're being spanked or if they're just upset. Like they're being murdered."

"I understand what you're getting at, Dr. Baer. My husband suggested the same thing.

But no, this didn't sound like any ordinary outburst. And then when I went over there next morning and saw Dan - I had found another arrowhead, and that gave me a pretext - he didn't seem at all himself. And he had these fresh scratches on his face.'' Mrs. Follett raised a hand to her own cheek, and Nancy nodded.

Mrs. Follett went on: ''Now I've been trying to think where I saw the children last. I know they were out there Tuesday evening, about dusk, playing in their yard . . . now come to think of it, isn't that strange? I mean they must have been shipped off to school that night, or very early Wednesday."

''Well, they could have been,'' her husband argued.

"But none of their suitcases are gone," said Nancy in an almost forlorn voice. "And none of their good clothes. If he did pack them off to a boarding school somewhere to get them away from ... if he just packed them off, I don't know what they took along to wear.

"Want me to give the Chief another call, young lady?" Follett asked.

''No. I don't want to impose on you. But..." She turned her head from side to side as if not knowing which way to go.

Baer patted her shoulder. ''Nancy, maybe you and I will just drive over to the police station. This may be a bit too complicated to go into it all over the phone. Mr. Follett, I think maybe you could do one more helpful thing if you would, give your friend the chief one more call and tell him there's two people coming to see him who are really not as crazy as they may sound at first.''

Follett agreed. ''Let me see if he's in." He went into the next room and got on the phone.

Nancy had a good grip on herself again by the time she and Baer got back into his car, a little after three o'clock. "Some things I've thought of," she began, in a business-like voice. "Things we've found out, rather. I don't know what they mean, and I don't even have them in order of importance, probably, but I think we ought to list them all, at least verbally."

"All right,'' said Baer, starting the car for the drive to the police station.

"Clue Number One," Nancy said. "The non-missing suitcases and clothes; I can't believe the kids have really gone to boarding school. Clue Number Two, cigarette b.u.t.ts in the kitchen; if Dan's gone back to smoking, it's a bad sign. Clue Number Three, two different stories as to where the children are. I know he told me they were at a neighbor's." She opened her mouth as if to add more, but then was silent.