I didn’t stop to leap out of the truck and do a victory lap around it, but instead angled east-southeast. I intended to circle the developed part of the estate and return to the guest tower, to see if Annamaria might be under siege.
On that rolling land, the big tires and apparently customized suspension provided a ride that was less like bounding over rough territory than like being on a boat as it slid up the face of a wave, down the back, and wallowed through a trough toward the next wall of water.
I weltered along a glen, searching for an easy way up the next slope, which was thick with brush in some places and rocky in others. Abruptly the landscape all around me rippled vertically, as if snakes of heat were rising from it again, though the air remained cool.
Paulie Sempiterno and Mrs. Tameed had spoken of eddies and a full tide. They hadn’t been talking about the sea, but about this phenomenon.
As I squinted at the way ahead, resisting a greasy nausea, the quality of the light changed, although not as dramatically as when morning had turned to night in a minute. The pale grass became a darker gold, the silver weeds tarnished. Racing shadows swelled and withered and swelled and slithered across the land.
I slowed, braked to a halt, and reluctantly looked up.
For a moment, I saw again the yellow sky that frightened me more than did the primate swine. These were not merely Earth’s heavens in the throes of Armageddon. An apocalypse is a revelation, and this was an apocalyptic sky, in the sense that it revealed what humankind, by its arrogance and reckless certitude, would bring down upon itself.
The quivering thermals that had brought the fearsome skyscape now shimmered it away. The heavens became mostly blue again, with an armada of ordinary storm clouds still threatening in the north, where they had been all morning, as if riding at anchor.
I hadn’t imagined those hostile yellow heavens any more than I had dreamed that I’d stepped through a doorway into a time prior to Roseland’s existence. Both moments had been as real as the warm saliva that Ms. Victoria Mors had spat in my face.
I sat in the landscaper’s truck, in the glen between two hills, letting my heart quiet itself. Usually I can knit clues into a theory while on my feet and dodging anything thrown at me, but in this case I needed a moment of stillness to make sure that I didn’t drop a stitch.
The massive wall around Roseland, perhaps housing fantastical machinery like that I had seen in the cellars of the mausoleum, not only physically isolated the estate but also set it apart in other ways. These acres were an island of the irrational in the sea of everyday reality.
Whatever the intention had been behind Roseland’s creation, the dire events of the moment were side effects that no one had expected. After the fact, they had taken steps to defend against those side effects: the bars on windows, the steel shutters, all the guns and stores of ammunition.
The freaks might be only an infrequent threat. Nevertheless, to live in this bedlam, the people here must have believed that whatever benefit they received from the system they created was worth the cost of nightly wariness and occasional full assaults by creatures that seemed to belong here less than to some other time or place.
I thought that I knew what the benefit might be, why they didn’t simply pull the master switch and eliminate the mortal threat of the freaks.
And I suspected that the benefit was simultaneously a curse. It led to their conviction that they were far superior to anyone not of Roseland. Not merely superior. They saw themselves as gods and the rest of us as animals.
Men and women who seek to become gods must first lose their humanity.
Noah Wolflaw’s homicides and the complicity of the others in his crimes seemed neither insane nor criminal to them, any more than I would consider myself mad or criminal for hooking a fish, gutting it, and cooking it for dinner. I satisfied a hunger. Wolflaw would say that he merely satisfied a more exotic appetite. To him, my fish was as far below me on the ladder of species as the women he killed were below him.
Wolflaw had not merely lost his humanity. He had thrown it away with all the force that he could muster.
My next step, after checking on Annamaria, would be to find out who the people of Roseland really were. They were either not who they claimed to be or not only who they claimed to be.
I am one megasuspicious pretty-boy, pathetic, stupid cocker.
The time-out had served me well. I drove farther along the glen, looking for a place where the hillside was navigable.
Suddenly he was standing forty feet in front of me. I could have driven straight through him, but I braked to a halt.
There in the wild grass, he wore a three-piece suit and a necktie. From five feet in front of the trucklet, he regarded me with that deadpan look that had once been famous.
He was portly, with a round face and full cheeks and two chins, but not immense like Chef Shilshom. Unlike the chef, he had come by his physique not by indulgence but because of genetics, having been stout as a small child. His lower lip protruded far past the upper, as if he were pondering how best to deal with a problematic person whom he wished to be rid of but did not wish to insult.
“This is not a good time,” I told him. “My plate is full. My cup runneth over. I’m sorry. I don’t usually speak in clichés. And those weren’t references to your weight. I’m just frazzled. I’m not able to deal with one more complication.”
Among some of the lingering dead who have come to me for help, a couple have been famous performers in their lifetimes. In spite of what you might think if you closely follow the entertainment-news programs on TV and the Internet, celebrities do have souls.
In the first three of my memoirs, I have written about my rather long relationship with Mr. Elvis Presley’s spirit. He appeared to me when I was in high school, and we hung around together for quite a few years. For reasons he was slow to make clear to me, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll was reluctant to move on to the Other Side, though he wanted to be there. The problem was not anything as simple as that he was worried there would be no deep-fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches in the next life. Eventually I helped him cross over.
Then came Mr. Frank Sinatra. His spirit was my companion only for a few weeks. They were memorable days. As a poltergeist, as in life, Mr. Sinatra could throw a heck of a hard punch when you needed backup.
I don’t know why I assumed that if the spirit of another famous person were to come to me, seeking assistance in moving on from this world, he or she would have been a renowned singer.
The gentleman in the suit walked around to the passenger side of the mini truck. He had an unusual aura of authority because it was in no way stern or superior and because it was twined with an air of congeniality.
“Sir, I am honored, I really am, that you would come to me for assistance. I’m an admirer. If I survive this, I’ll do what I can for you. But, see, there’s so much going on in Roseland that my head will explode if I have to think about one more thing.”
He put his hands to his head and then flung them away, fingers wide, as if depicting the consequences of a detonating skull.
“Yes, exactly. I’m sorry about this. Never say no to a spirit in need. That’s my motto. Well, it’s not my motto, but it’s a principle of mine. I don’t have a motto. Unless maybe ‘If it’s worth eating, it’s worth frying.’ I’m babbling, aren’t I? That’s because I’m such a fan. I really am. I guess you hear that all the time. Or did when you were alive. I guess you don’t hear it as often since you’re dead.”
The dire situation in Roseland was not so much the reason for my nervous babbling. And I was not rattled by the fact that I really was an admirer of his work. Those were both causes, but I was also intimidated by that deadpan expression, which suggested that he had the patience to outwait me until my resistance wilted, and because it reminded me of the wit and intelligence that were behind it. Elvis? Piece of cake. Sinatra? Mostly easy. But I was out of my league with this one, who was probably smarter than me by a factor of ten.
“You’ve waited a long time to cross over,” I said. “Must be thirty years. Give me another day. Then we’ll talk. Or I’ll talk, since you can’t. But just now, you know, there’s all these bad people. And dead bodies. The woman on the horse. The imprisoned boy. And a ticking clock. You know all about ticking clocks. Who knows more about ticking clocks than you? And I’ve got pigs to deal with! They’re big, mean, walkin’-tall pigs, sir. You never had to deal with primate swine. I’d be no good for you right now.”
He smiled and nodded. He waved me on.
As he turned away, before he dematerialized, I said, “Wait. Mr. Hitchcock.”
He faced me once more.
“You weren’t … you didn’t … I mean, you didn’t die here, did you?”
He grimaced and shook his head. No.
“Did you ever visit Roseland when you were alive?”
He shook his head again.
“Back in the day, did you ever do business with Constantine Cloyce’s movie studio?”
He nodded, and his expression was uncharacteristically fierce.
“I guess you didn’t like working with him.”
Mr. Alfred Hitchcock put one finger in his mouth, as if to make himself gag.
“But you’re not here because of him.”
No.
“You’re here just for me.”
Yes.
“I’m flattered.”
He shrugged.
“Just let me get the boy out of here. Then we’ll take a meeting. That was a Hollywood joke. Not a very good one.”
His smile was grandfatherly. I thought I was going to like him, assuming that I would live long enough to know him better.
He waved me on again.
I drove a hundred feet along the glen until I found a navigable place in the hillside. When I looked back, Mr. Hitchcock was gone.
I cruised to the top, started down the farther slope—and braked sharply when I saw four freaks beyond the next vale, in single file, following the ridgeline of a lower hill.
Although the novelty of their appearance had worn off, they were no less strange than ever, creatures that might have stepped out of a delirium inspired by a tropical disease, conjured by a mind in the sweaty grip of malaria, more suited to a world with a yellow sky than to even this Roseland, which itself seemed at times to be a fever dream.
Because the electric vehicle was quiet and because the swine things were as usual intent upon making their way toward whatever mayhem they had in mind, I hoped they might not notice me. They noticed. They came to a halt and turned to stare directly at me.
I pulled the wheel to the right, intending to turn 180 degrees and retreat at full speed. The vehicle wouldn’t move. The battery was dead.
Thirty-two
THE FREAKS SAW ME, BUT THAT DIDN’T MEAN THEY would find me important enough that they would deviate from their current mission just to rip my head off. There’s nothing special about my head, except to me, of course, no tattoos or nose rings or gold teeth that would make it a worthy trophy.
This squad included none of the grotesquely deformed kind with ungainly limbs. They were all strapping specimens who conformed to the highest standards of their monstrous breed, any of them worthy of a best-in-show prize at the next competition on the Island of Dr. Moreau.
They seemed more organized and purposeful than previous groups. They hadn’t been shambling along the crest of the hill, but instead trotting single file in what seemed to be a disciplined procession. Furthermore, each held the same weapon in its right hand—an axe with a head that included both a cutting edge and a hammer. This uniform weaponry and the fact that they all sported foot-long scraps of red cloth that dangled from their left ears suggested perhaps a smaller tribe within the larger one.
They were on a reconnaissance mission or had a particular target and a timetable for taking it out. Or perhaps this was lunchtime in Swineville and the slops were in the trough, in which case the burly young beasts would want to get there before the best stuff had been scarfed up by greedy pigs.
Sitting in the mini truck, I sought to inflate my optimism until it was bigger than the balloon tires. But the cold sweat on my brow and on the palms of my hands belied my confident smile.
I stared across the vale at the four, trying to show no fear. They stared at me, probably insulted because I wasn’t showing any fear.
When you consider how difficult it often can be for two people of the same nationality, the same community, the same race, and the same religion to understand each other’s point of view and to live in harmony, you can see why I had doubts that this encounter would end with hugs and professions of eternal friendship.
The four freaks moved at the same time, coming off the far crest and descending the hill toward the vale between their slope and mine. They didn’t advance at a run, but slowly, and not in single file, but side by side.
Perhaps their measured reaction, so different from the frenzied pursuits and snarling fury I previously witnessed, meant that they were not as driven by hatred as others of their kind, that they did not love violence for violence’s sake, that they were a more moderate sect open to dialogue and compromise.
I got out from behind the steering wheel and stood beside the mini truck.
When the four were halfway down the farther hill, they began to swing their axes at their sides, in unison: forward, back, forward, back, forward and around in a full circle; forward, back, forward, back, forward and around.…
Considerably less hopeful of finding common ground, I drew my pistol. Although I disliked firearms, I wished I had a handgun of a higher caliber than 9 mm.
The Beretta had seemed more than adequate until I found myself without wheels, in open land, challenged by four primate swine in circumstances that allowed a better look at them than I’d had before. Each towered over six feet and weighed perhaps three hundred pounds. The articulation of their knee joints, hips, and spines was nearly human, which ensured that any comic potential in their appearance was forfeited; in them I could see no slightest suggestion of Porky Pig. They had long-toed feet and hands with fingers, not cloven hooves, although it appeared that the nails on all of their limbs were of dark-brown hornlike material that tapered into talons designed to eviscerate.
I would have preferred to flee rather than to try to stand them off, but I wasn’t confident that I could outrun them. I was lighter and more limber than they were, and I should therefore be faster. Wild boars, however, have a top speed of thirty miles an hour. I didn’t know whether there was enough swine in these creatures for them to run that fast, but I knew for sure that, if they could, there wasn’t enough swine in me to escape them.
As they reached the bottom of the opposing hill and entered the grassy vale, I fired one round into the air. In retrospect, letting off a warning shot in that situation seems as foolish as shaking a finger in disapproval at a looming grizzly bear.