The bloodstone, p.6
The Bloodstone, page 6
Abruptly, he sat up straight, his brief respite broken. For an instant he was confused, groping. He’d heard something. He tried to think clearly. A sharp thud. Like the slam of a...
Still half asleep, he rose and stared at the bedroom door. It was now shut. Off to the side, the arm on the record player lifted back, a new record fell into place, and the needle returned to a playing position.
“Chandal?” he shouted and threw open the bedroom door. He listened to his voice echo through the apartment, while still another detached part of his mind listened to an alien sound, strange and distorted.
He turned back to stare at the record. Warped, he thought. Then as he listened further, he realized that the flat quality of the sound, deliberately nasal and off-key, was part of a chorus of human chants. The record must have been recorded at a high level of volume, because although he had not touched the audio control, the sound was three times louder than the previous recording.
He felt his face grow cold.
At that instant, the chanting stopped. In the silence he heard the mournful flat notes of a flute and then a woman’s voice.
“Blood turn to stone. Stone to fire. Burn, burn, burn....”
The voice faded away, replaced by a shrill, high-pitched sound of a whistle. Quickly Ron reached out and turned off the record player. “What in the hell is this?” he muttered. He lifted the record from its cradle. No label.
He shrugged. Probably a recording of some second-rate play that had closed in one night. He wondered if Chandal had been in the chorus of chanters. No jacket, he observed. Yet there was a design of sorts pressed into the center. He had difficulty trying to determine just what that symbol was. An animal? He squinted, and as he gazed uncertainly at the record, he suddenly had the uneasy feeling that he, too, was being gazed at. Something jolted him and he swung around. The room was empty and quiet. The silence was deafening.
Then a faint noise. At the sound he looked through the glass doors to the balcony, where he saw someone standing back in the corner, regarding him silently.
“Hello?”
The image vanished. He frowned and stepped forward. No, whoever it was had slipped down the back stairway that led to the beach. He squinted down, but could see nothing. “Damn,” he breathed softly.
Moments later he closed the front door behind him, testing it to see that it had locked. Now he moved quickly down the single flight of steps, hoping to avoid contact with anyone.
“Mr. Talon?”
He turned with a start. “Yes?”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” asked Mrs. Stoner with a smile.
Her question pulled a grimace to his face. “Oh, yes. Yes, thank you.”
“Please tell Chandal when you speak with her that we all were asking for her and miss her.”
“Sure. She’ll be glad to hear that.”
“Really such a sweet girl. I hope she is happy in New York.”
Ron let the back of his hand run across his mouth. Mrs. Stoner waited, still smiling. A kind of lopsided smile that made him extremely nervous. “Thanks,” he said and pushed past her.
As he slid into his Jag, Ron could still see Mrs. Stoner watching him. What the hell was she waiting for, he wondered. Should he have tipped her, maybe? Or was she looking for a job as an actress? The woman remained motionless, looking after him.
In the rear-view mirror he watched the woman grow smaller, as the Jag kicked gravel up, dust swirling behind the car, until she was lost from view.
The tension he now felt carried him a few miles and then hunger took over to occupy his mind. He had dinner at his favorite pub—a steak, baked potato, French bread, salad and two vodka tonics, and then coffee at home in his den. It wasn’t until then that he found himself restless again. He stared at the phone and willed it to ring, for it to be Chandal.
Slowly he formulated a thought. Dr. Luther. Chandal had talked about him often, fondly, as though Luther had guided her through impossible times. Only Dr. Luther, she had seemed to say a hundred times, could have saved her.
Ron took a swallow of black coffee. He shook his head wearily and tried to disengage himself from thought. The idea pestered him, grew into full flower before he could block it. Certainly Luther should be notified. He would want to know that Chandal had deliberately gone against his advice. Don’t go to New York, he had warned.
Ron pictured a possible conversation. “Dr. Luther, I’m Ron Talon. A friend of Chandal Knight’s.” “Oh, how nice,” the doctor would say, “and where is Chandal? Anyplace but New York, I hope.”
Ron found himself reaching now for the phone. His lips were half-turned up at the corners in a guilty smile. “You tell her, doc,” he muttered and dialed New York information. After a brief exchange, he received the number for Lakewood Sanitarium.
He paused for a moment before dialing through. He felt like a rat, a squealer. He knew what he wanted—a decision handed down from on high. From all-wise doctor to confused patient. Get some sense in your head. Go back to L.A. The squealer told me you disobeyed my orders.
Ron stared at Chandal’s picture on his desk and dialed. It was for her own good, he told himself, and heard the voice say, “Lakewood, may I help you?”
“Yes. I’m trying to locate a Dr. Luther.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Luther is out of the country at the moment. Could someone else help you?”
“Oh. No, thank you. Ah, do you suppose I might get a number where he could be reached? It’s very important.”
“Is it an emergency?”
“Well, I... it concerns an ex-patient of his.”
“If you wish, I’ll take your number,” the voice said briskly. “When the doctor calls in, I’ll see to it that he gets your message.”
“Thank you.”
After that, Ron tried to watch T.V, tried to read, found he was biting his nails to the quick. The image in his head was that of the empty Malibu apartment where Chandal ought to be right this minute. At least she should be if she wasn’t here in the Hollywood Hills with him.
He felt like a schoolboy with a crush but dialed the Malibu number anyway. Two rings and he knew that listening to a phone ring in an empty apartment wasn’t going to solve anything. He had started to drop the phone into its cradle when there was a click as someone picked up the receiver. His heart leaped as a woman said hello, but immediately he knew it was an older woman’s voice.
“Chandal?”
A pause. Some sort of strange music in the background.
“No. You’ve dialed wrong.”
“Is this 724-4329?”
“4319.”
“I’m sorry,” Ron said. “I...”
In the next instant the connection was broken.
Ron frowned. He thought of the music in the background. That same flat quality....
He hesitated and then redialed. This time there was no answer.
Slowly he replaced the receiver and saw himself standing in the shadows of the empty Malibu apartment. Around him the darkness seemed to have life and purpose. And he heard a familiar voice: “Did you find what you were looking for?” Ron saw Mrs. Stoner’s smiling face again, her quick eyes examining him.
The Doberman’s snarl echoed. Saliva dripped from its mouth.
Ron thought of distance. The sound of ringing like cathedral bells. It was the telephone.
“Hello?”
The line crackled, buzzed and then went dead.
In the silence he could feel exhaustion taking hold of him. He stood interminably by the phone without moving. He wished Chandal had talked with him before she had gone. He wished she had said something, anything, about her desire to go to New York. Just a word or two—something.
He stared out of his window at the empty street. How confused and alone he felt. There was something terrifying in the feeling. Moments later he dropped onto his bed. He flicked off the light. In the darkness the thought came to him: “Let all dreams and phantoms of the night fade away, lest our bodies be polluted.”
And then he slept.
CHAPTER SIX
MARCH 22ND, SUNDAY, THE CITY SLOWED.
Doreen Hammer was sitting on the couch, the only place in the carriage house where a person could sit for more than five minutes without being disturbed. Her drink, not quite finished, tilted precariously on the armrest. With her feet propped gracefully on the corner of the coffee table, her hair thrust up in its usual ponytail, she leafed idly through a dogeared copy of Vogue.
“There, that should do it!” Chandal let the dust rag drop to her side and viewed the room, punched a pillow into submission on the stuffed chair near the fireplace, then frowned and stepped back to view the room’s full effect from the door.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked.
Over the top of the magazine Doreen cast a perfunctory eye around the room and caught sight of Chandal staring at her. She looked around more attentively then and said, “I think it looks beautiful.”
“You think?” Chandal asked rather doubtfully and sighed.
She had spent most of the day trying to put her stamp on her new home—chairs and sofas had been arranged to create new areas, the antique teacart had been turned into a bar, a few items had been discarded, others relegated to the brownstone’s basement. She had, however, the uneasy feeling that nothing had actually been accomplished. That the personality of the carriage house was somehow independent of her, stronger than her, and that nothing could be done to alter it.
Absently Chandal brushed a few strands of loose hair away from her eyes. “You know, it’s strange about the pictures, isn’t it?”
Doreen reached for her drink. “What’s wrong with the pictures?”
“They’re cheap, to put it bluntly. I wouldn’t have believed whoever lived here would fill his walls with bad pictures. He was an antique lover—a man of taste. I mean, can’t you just picture a Degas over there?”
As Chandal spoke, she dumped an armload of debris into an empty box, then grabbed a jar of furniture polish from the small table in the foyer.
“Sure, I guess so. Who is he?”
“Are you kidding? He’s a painter—a very famous painter!” She shook her head. “Doreen, from now on, don’t admit to anyone that you don’t know who Degas is.”
“The secret will go to my grave with me.”
“Damn! Look at the dust on this mantel. It’s an inch thick.”
“It’s about the same depth as the dust on my mantel,” grinned Doreen.
“Funny. Very funny.”
Doreen said, “Mike doesn’t think so.”
Their eyes locked for a moment. Doreen stirred uneasily.
Chandal turned and finished polishing the mantel. “I just read where they had a great exhibition of Degas’s works at the Metropolitan Museum.”
“I’ve never been to a museum.”
“Well, you should go. You’d love it.”
“Okay. Next time you go—take me with you.”
“What?”
“I’d love to go to the museum with you.”
“Oh, sure,” Chandal agreed. “Maybe some night we’ll...” She broke off and pulled at the silver chain around her neck. The bloodstone jerked slightly. She thought she’d heard something. Her eyes quickly came to rest on the door to the den. She listened closely.
“What’s the matter?” Doreen asked with unabashed curiosity. “You look a thousand miles away. Back in California with what’s-his-name....”
“Ron,” Chandal muttered, still listening. There it was again—that sound. She could hear it faintly, a screeching of sorts. Like fingernails being scraped across a blackboard. She’d heard that sound before, hadn’t she?
Doreen let her feet drop to the floor. “Chandal?”
“Just a minute.” Chandal laid the dust rag on the mantel and moved quietly to the den. Hesitantly she opened the door and peered into the room, wondering what it was she had expected to see. The small light over the desk was on and swaying slightly, casting a moving beam of weird light back and forth over the desk’s grimy surface and oblique shadows on the dampened walls. Yet the air in the room was perfectly still.
That’s odd, Chandal thought. She hadn’t been in this room today. Had she? No, she could say with confidence that she had not.
“Dreadful!” shrilled Doreen.
“What?” Chandal turned with a start.
“This room.”
Chandal swallowed hard and then said, “Before, when I emptied the trash. Did you come in here?”
“No,” Doreen said simply. “Why?”
“Well... the light is on... and it’s moving.”
They looked at each other for a moment, then Doreen shrugged. “You probably left it on.”
“No. I haven’t been in here.”
“Sure you were. When I first came in. Don’t you remember?”
Chandal hesitated, then shook her head.
“Sure. You even shut the door.”
This left Chandal utterly perplexed. Once again she stared at the light.
“The first thing I’d do with this room is paint it,” Doreen said, walking through the room like a contractor making a bid for a job. “Then I’d get a nice big furry rug, hang a few pictures....”
Chandal saw Doreen more than heard her, saw her fumble around in the dimness, lifting old magazines from the table, picking up the candelabra, then spinning an old globe of the world until she came to study a group of islands in the Pacific. Suddenly the world seemed cupped in Doreen’s tiny hands, and from nowhere—the faint tang of... salt?
Chandal sniffed. A more sinister odor took its place, a rottenness, yet at the same time bittersweet. She could feel herself drifting back in time. Back to the bare remnants of her existence, to the hard fact of human essence. She didn’t feel well, something was wrong. She tried to tell herself it was the close airlessness of the tiny room, but she knew the lack of air, the vacuum she now felt, was in her. She felt stifled.
Doreen was talking again. Her chattering distracted Chandal, separated her from her own feelings. Something strange was occurring, Chandal thought. But what? Doreen’s face became visible again as she stepped from the shadows. They moved out of the den, leaving the place to its own darkness, with Chandal still not sure just what had happened. Just what it was she had experienced. Doreen kicked off her shoes, sat on the couch with her legs tucked under her body and took an orange from the glass bowl of fruit on the side table. “This is a great place, really,” she declared and dug her fingernails into the peel.
“Hey,” Chandal blinked. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yeah, I’m eating your decoration.”
Bemused, Chandal shook her head and turned to squint out the window into the courtyard, then glanced anxiously up at the fifth-floor window of the brownstone.
“I know it’s part of the whole effect,” Doreen chortled, “but look at it this way. The atmosphere you’ve created makes me feel comfortable, happy. Free to eat your oranges which, by the way, I can’t help feeling are very bad for you....”
“They’re very healthy,” Chandal said automatically, still staring vaguely out the window. “The Vitamin C, you know....”
Outside, the huge expanse of blue sky was spotted here and there with slow-moving clouds. Dazzling sunlight streamed through the window onto Chandal’s upturned face. It had begun as a wet, chilly day, a hard-to-get-out-of-bed day, but it had rapidly warmed and Chandal found herself unzipping her white cardigan sweater and throwing it lightly onto the couch, feeling comfortable in her thin flannel shirt and faded broken-in denims. The air in the carriage house was leaden and the partly opened window breathed a familiar perfumed magic. The exposed patches of earth which surrounded the trees smelled raw and fresh.
Still, Chandal was filled with a heaviness, a vague apprehension of sorts. A deep longing. What was she doing here? she wondered not for the first time.
Instinctively, she used the lilac-scented handkerchief which she had found lying beside her bed that morning and dabbed the side of her throat. The lilac sweetness assailed her nostrils. Quickly she shoved the handkerchief into her jeans’ pocket. Then she threw herself onto a large pillow on the floor and folded her long arms above her knees.
“You know,” Doreen went on without missing a beat, “I still have a feeling that a hundred years from now we’ll all find out we shouldn’t have been eating oranges. It’s because of nature, you see. Nature’s wonderful. If oranges were so good for you, nature wouldn’t have made them so goddamn hard to peel! Like nuts. I’m convinced that nuts are deadly poison. Nobody can tell me different.”
“That room,” Chandal murmured.
Doreen blinked. “What?”
“The den, have you noticed? It has a strange odor.”
“Mildew.”
“But it’s a sweet sort of—” She broke off.
Someone had knocked, no—pounded, on the front door. Emergency kind of pounding. Odd, uncivilized blows aimed at a door which had become, for the moment, an opponent.
“What in the name of God is going on?” asked Chandal.
Both girls stood at the same time.
“Oh, Jesus!” Doreen began backing away to the fireplace. “Oh, God—it’s almost five o’clock!” she squealed. “I’ve been here two hours already.”
“So what’s two hours?” Chandal said lightly, but she had an uneasy glimmer of understanding.
The pounding grew louder.
So that’s how it is, huh, Chandal thought and wrenched open the door to face Mike Hammer whose anger was disproportionately harsh for the offense.
He stared past Chandal to where Doreen stood, his lips pinched in rage. His wiry black hair dropped sharply over his forehead and stopped short of covering his deeply intense brown eyes. His lean body appeared unshaken, fitted loosely into corduroy trousers that were taken up sharply around his waist with a black belt. His plaid shirt hung open down the front, revealing a soiled T-shirt.
