Burial Read online

  Quite honestly, as far as I was concerned, Martin didn’t need to sell himself. He had more spiritual skill than anybody I had ever met, Amelia included. I had seen him raise the face of my late Indian compadre Singing Rock out of a book about Spanish painting. I had seen it, touched it, heard it talk, and that was good enough for me.

  Martin said, ‘By now, I would have expected to hear the spirits talking — even calling. But all I can sense so far is —’ he half-closed his eyes, as if he were trying to hear the strains of a very distant train-whistle — ‘darkness.’

  ‘Darkness?’ asked Michael.

  Martin hesitated. ‘Darkness, yes. Extraordinary darkness. And the movements of those who live in darkness. The movements of those who are darkness.’

  Karen squeezed my arm. ‘This won’t be too dangerous, will it?’

  ‘Oh, no, not especially,’ Martin reassured her. ‘Not unless you happen to be afraid of the dark. Not unless your own shadow makes you jump.’ He gave a brittle little laugh. ‘I’m not talking about the Prince of Darkness.’

  ‘You’d better be introduced to Naomi,’ I told him. ‘The sooner we can find out what’s wrong with her, the sooner this gentleman can get back to leading some kind of normal life.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Martin, rubbing his hands together with supreme confidence.

  Michael opened the dining room door and took two or three paces back, leaving it open.

  ‘In here?’ asked Martin, and stepped cautiously forward.

  If anything, the dining room was even gloomier and colder than it had been before, and it certainly smelled sourer. The furniture was still piled up against the opposite wall, and Naomi still stubbornly clung to her single dining room chair. She was wrapped in a dark plaid blanket Her hair was wild and she was beginning to look emaciated. Her eyes were red—rimmed with exhaustion and stress. To be truthful, she stank.

  Martin crossed the room and hunkered down to Naomi’s eye-level. At first her eyes were rolled up white in her head, but Martin patiently waited for her, his hands clasped together, and after a while her eyelids began to flutter and her pupils reappeared. She focused on Martin in perplexity; and then she glanced over at me.

  ‘Hallo, Naomi,’ said Martin, touching her blanketed knee, as if she were an old friend whom he hadn’t seen for years and years. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I feel — worried,’ said Naomi, hoarsely.

  ‘Worried?’ asked Martin. ‘What have you got to be worried about?’

  Michael said, ‘She talks to him, she talks to you, why won’t she talk to me?’

  ‘Ssh,’ said Karen; and I said, ‘Ssh.’

  Naomi said, in the tone of an irritable little girl, ‘I’m worried about what’s going to happen when …’

  Martin said nothing, but waited for her to search for the words.

  ‘I’m worried about what’s going to happen when I die.’

  ‘Why are you so concerned about that?’

  Naomi glanced quickly from side to side, as if she were trying to make sure that nobody else was listening. ‘Supposing I die in the night and fall off this chair?’

  Martin thought about that. ‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘supposing you do?’

  ‘Then they’ll get everything, won’t they? Then they’ll have shown us how strong they are.’

  ‘Who’s “they”, Naomi?’

  Naomi jerked her head towards the wall.

  The people next door?’ Martin asked her.

  Naomi shook her head. ‘He knows,’ she said, jerking her head toward me. ‘And she knows,’ jerking her head toward Karen. She looked like a pecking barnyard chicken.

  ‘Mr Erskine knows who it is?’ Martin pressed her. ‘And Ms Tandy?’

  Naomi covered her face with her hand, so that only her eyes looked out. Martin stared at her in fascination; but there was no doubt that he was disturbed too.

  ‘Now I’m beginning to understand what your friend Singing Rock was trying to warn you about,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve seen that sign before?’ I asked him. ‘You know what it means?’

  He stood up, touching Naomi on the shoulder to indicate that he appreciated her help. ‘It can signify several different things. It has a meaning in clinical psychiatry as well as folklore and spiritualism.’

  Michael put in, ‘Her analyst thinks that it’s an indication that she’s developing a split personality. A form of mild schizophrenia.’

  ‘Well, he’s quite correct,’ Martin agreed. ‘Psychiatric patients who cover their faces or who make improvized masks are often trying to indicate that they’re “someone else.”’

  ‘And you think this is Naomi’s problem?’ asked Michael.

  Martin gave him a wry smile. ‘Let’s be honest about this. Naomi is exhibiting several tell-tale symptoms of schizophrenia. A progressive withdrawal from the real world. Hallucinations, in the form of threatening voices and images. A tendency to remain rigidly in the same place. I can understand why her analyst thinks that she could be schizophrenic.’

  ‘But?’ asked Michael.

  ‘But look around you,’ smiled Martin. ‘How does her analyst explain this furniture? How does he explain these pictures?’ He tried to straighten one of the pictures so that it hung downwards, instead of sideways, but as soon as he let it go, it swung back up to a horizontal position. ‘There is so much paranormal activity in this room, it makes Amityville look like The Wonder Years. And it’s so tenacious. I never saw such tenacious activity before. Usually, a mischievous spirit grows tired of the game after a while and goes off to make mischief someplace else. But this spirit is determined This spirit is like a pit bull that won’t take its teeth out of your leg, even if you break its back.

  He said to Michael, ‘Have Naomi’s doctors offered any kind of explanation for any of this?’

  Michael shook his head. ‘Dr Stein seems to think that she’s doing it herself — I don’t know — out of spite, or menopausal derangement. He won’t say how. I never saw a change of life that could make a thousand-pound sideboard move across the room. He keeps talking mumbo—jumbo about psycho-kinetic influences and mind-over-matter. I don’t know whether he really believes in it; but he hasn’t offered any other suggestions. Dr Bradley prefers to ignore it.’

  Martin looked around the dim, rancid room, his breath fuming from the chill. ‘He prefers to ignore it? How can he ignore it?’

  I made one more attempt to straighten up one of the paintings. It stayed vertical for a moment or two, then dragged itself back to the horizontal.

  I said, as lightly as I could, ‘I guess he ignores it the same way that you and I ignore muggers and junkies and guys sleeping in cardboard boxes. That’s what you call self-absolution, isn’t it? If you ignore it, you don’t have to worry about it. Doctors are good at that kind of thing.’

  Martin touched the walls, touched the furniture. ‘Well …’ he said, ‘whatever your Dr Bradley believes, there’s something here. We’d better start trying to find out what it is.’

  ‘How are you going to do that?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I’m going to communicate with it.’

  ‘You’re going to get in touch with it?’ I asked him. ‘You’re going to hold a seance?’

  Karen looked anxious. The last time that she and I had been involved in a seance, she had come face to face with the spirit who — eventually — had almost killed her.

  ‘Harry …’ she said. ‘Not for me, please.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Martin told her. ‘I’m not holding a seance in the conventional sense — you know, everybody holding hands, knock-knock, is there anybody there? They’re not very effective, in any case, seances like that. The more people you get involved, the more psychic resistance you build up. If you want a really clear message, then it has to be one-to-one.’

  ‘Can I help?’ I asked him.

  Martin glanced around the room, his eyes quick and analytical, searching for anything amiss, his hand pressed thoughtfull
y over his mouth. ‘Yes, you can. I’ll be going into a transplanar trance. There’s a possibility that I may have to go in pretty deep to locate the spirit that’s responsible for this. It’s being very unresponsive and it may be hiding in a very complicated way — taking on the shape of another spirit, for example, or dispersing its mind through several levels.

  ‘In spite of your self-deprecation, Harry, you do have quite impressive sensitivity. I want you to be my anchorman; the guy who belays me.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that if you sense that anything is going badly wrong, you should bring me back. No questions, no arguments — no matter what I appear to be saying to you, you should bring me back.’

  ‘How am I supposed to know if anything’s going badly wrong?’

  ‘You’ll know, believe me.’

  ‘And what do I do to bring you back?’

  ‘You simply shake me and wake me.’

  I puffed out my cheeks. ‘I sure hope you know what you’re doing.’

  Martin smiled. ‘That’s what I enjoy about being a psychic sensitive, Harry. It’s different every time. You never know what you’re doing.’

  He took off his coat, and nonchalantly dropped it. Instead of falling on the floor, it dropped sideways and draped itself over one of the legs of the Greenbergs’ dining-table. I was impressed by that. That was what I called style. That was like Norman Schwarzkopf using a blazing Kuwaiti oil-well to light a cigar.

  He unfastened his silver cuff-links and rolled up his shirt-sleeves. ‘There’s one thing I think I need to clear up before I start. Naomi here said that you and Ms Tandy both knew. What exactly did she mean by that?’

  I looked across at Karen, but Karen turned her face away.

  I said, with some reluctance, ‘Karen and I were both involved in a serious psychic disturbance once, that’s all.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Twenty years. A little more.’

  ‘Was it anywhere near here?’

  ‘Unh-hunh. It was up at the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital, on Park Avenue.’

  ‘Do you think it could be in any way connected to what’s happening here? Even remotely?’

  ‘How could it? Who knows? The spirits move in mysterious ways, you should know that.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Harry. How often does your average man in the street get himself involved in a serious psychic disturbance? Once in a lifetime? You’re more likely to meet the Pope in the Chock Full O’ Nuts.’

  ‘You want my honest opinion?’ I retorted. ‘I’ve been racking my brains, but I can’t see how this psychic disturbance could possibly be connected to my psychic disturbance. I accept that Singing Rock was trying to warn me about something, but I don’t see how or why he could be warning me about this.’

  Martin lifted both hands in apology. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ I told him, cooling down. ‘It’s just that — well, it was pretty damn harrowing, that’s all. It took me a long time to get over it. Maybe I should have had therapy. Karen went through years of it. She doesn’t like to talk about it, even now. So you can see why we don’t take very kindly to the suggestion that we might have to go through it all over again.’

  ‘All right,’ Martin conceded. ‘But if there is a connection, I want you to understand ahead of time that we’re going to find out about it very quickly indeed. In fact, it’s essential that we find out about it very quickly indeed. So it’s better that you’re prepared for it The more I know, the quicker I can locate this spirit The more I know, the stronger I can be.’

  I couldn’t take my eyes away from Karen. One hand half-covered her eyes and the other hand was pressed against the back of her neck. I went over to her and said, quietly, ‘It’s going to be okay. I guarantee it.’

  ‘Just like you guaranteed you could help Naomi?’ Michael put in.

  I tried to control my temper. ‘I’m doing my best, capiche? Martin’s the very best there is.’

  Martin said to Michael, ‘If you don’t object, Mr Greenberg, I would find it easier to cope with this disturbance if you and Ms Tandy were to leave the room. You are obviously feeling tired and hostile — no fault of your own. Ms Tandy is obviously feeling afraid. Neither of those feelings is very conducive to safe transplanar trancing.’

  ‘What about Naomi?’ asked Michael.

  ‘She’ll be fine. I’ll take good care of Naomi, believe me. That’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘All right,’ Michael agreed. ‘Is there anything you need?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Martin. ‘A bowl of water. An ordinary kitchen mixing-bowl would do.’

  Michael went to fetch the water. He handed it carefully to Martin, and Martin set it down on the floor. To my surprise, it stayed where it was.

  ‘Spirits have no influence whatsoever over water,’ Martin told me. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know that.’

  ‘What about the bowl?’

  ‘They can’t move the bowl because the bowl is holding the water. There’s a very interesting chapter on spirits and water in Daneman’s Psychic Phenomena.’

  ‘You’re the genuine goods, aren’t you?’ I told him.

  ‘I do my best,’ he said, without much of an effort to sound modest. ‘Now, if we could be left alone …?’

  With obvious reluctance, Michael and Karen left the dining room. Karen gave me an intense, anxious look, and blew me the smallest of kisses, and then closed the door behind her.

  Naomi whispered, ‘I’m worried … I’m worried about dying in my sleep … I’m worried they’ll take my chair …’

  Martin laid a hand against her cheek. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Naomi … You’re not going to die in your sleep. Before you know it, this will all be over, and you’ll be able to put your chair any place you want to.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Naomi, in almost pathetic hope.

  ‘Really,’ he smiled. Then he turned to me and said, ‘First of all, I’m going to try to contact that spirit guide of yours, Singing Rock? I want to find out exactly what he was trying to warn you about … and whether it’s connected with Naomi and Greenberg and what’s been happening here.’

  ‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘If you have to.’ I didn’t like the sound of this at all. It gave me a cold, dreadful feeling that I hadn’t felt for twenty years; and which I had hoped that I would never feel again.

  ‘Harry,’ said Martin. ‘If there was any alternative …’

  ‘I hear you,’ I told him.

  ‘Spirits don’t warn you for nothing. They don’t make phony alarm calls.’

  ‘All right. I said all right, all right?’

  ‘All right, fine.’ Martin sniffed, and looked around. ‘Do you smell that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have rhinitis.’

  ‘Do you smell herbs, and maybe smoke?’

  I sniffed loudly. ‘Kind of, yes.’

  ‘Did you ever visit the prairie?’

  ‘Any special prairie?’

  ‘I don’t know, sagebrush, prairie, that’s what this smells like. Sagebrush and balsam-root And outdoor fires.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. We have a spirit who barbecues.’

  Martin ignored that remark. He must have learned by now that my first response to anything frightening was to laugh. If you go to a horror movie, you hear people laughing, and not because they think the film is funny. Laughing is one of the first things that human beings do to chase away the devil.

  ‘Singing Rock was an Opie, right?’ Martin asked me.

  ‘He was an Indian, yes, an Oglala Sioux. He ran some kind of insurance business. But he was a medicine-man, too.’

  Martin sniffed again, and thoughtfully closed his eyes, but he didn’t say anything more.

  ‘Will we see him again?’ I asked, at last. ‘Like we did with the book?’

  Martin opened his eyes. ‘That’s what the water’s for.’

  ‘Oh, sure, yes. I nearly forgot about the water.’ />
  Martin approached the wall where all the furniture was heaped, and cleared aside two chairs so that he could reach it. He stood staring at it for quite a long time. I stayed where I was, trying to smile at Naomi, and glancing at the bowl of water from time to time. Nothing had happened yet, except that the surface was faintly rippled. That could have been caused by nothing more than the draught under the door, or Martin’s footsteps jarring the floorboards as he walked. Quite honestly, I felt embarrassed about looking at it. I had never heard about spirits and water; and I didn’t have the slightest idea what to expect. Martin made me feel even more like a charlatan than Karen; and that was saying something. Karen had always come to me with such earnest pleas for help — with such belief in my psychic abilities — that I almost hated her for it. But you couldn’t really hate a girl like Karen. Well, I couldn’t, anyway. She was so trusting, so child-like, so darn defenceless.

  Martin raised both hands and pressed them flat against the wall. This seemed to agitate Naomi, who jiggled and swayed in her chair, although it was obvious that she wasn’t going to leave it, no matter what. She stared at me, wide-eyed, and begged, ‘What’s he doing? What’s he doing? Tell him to stop!’

  I laid my hand on her shoulder. ‘Ssh, don’t worry, Naomi. Martin really knows what he’s doing. Like, he’s the Craig Claiborne of spiritualism.’

  ‘Tell him to stop,’ Naomi repeated, in a voice like glass.

  ‘Naomi, sweetheart, we’re trying to help you. We’re trying to find out what’s made all your furniture move, and we’re trying to get rid of it for you. Come on — don’t get anxious. Don’t fret. This is all going to work out good.’

  ‘But the shadows,’ Naomi fretted. ‘What about the shadows?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told her. ‘What about the shadows?’

  ‘They bit him. They bit him!’

  ‘They bit him? Who?’

  ‘Naomi nodded wildly toward the left-hand side of the wall. ‘He was there and they bit him!’

  ‘The shadows bit him?’ I asked. How can a shadow bite anybody?’