Ghostlight, p.5
Ghostlight, page 5
It was just a good thing, Truth reflected to herself, that she wasn’t a superstitious person.
But even a superstitious person would have been disarmed by the sight of the little town of Shadowkill, which Truth finally reached some forty minutes later.
Shadowkill was an archetypal Hudson River town, with rambling Victorian mansions grouped around a picture-perfect town park. There was a large war memorial in the center of the traffic circle, and a Main Street lined with antique stores and a number of cunning, trendy little shops, marking Shadowkill as one of the hamlets in “Sleepy Hollow Country” that obtained most of its income from tourism.
It was by now late afternoon, and it would have been reasonable for Truth to at least locate and stop in at her Bed-and-Breakfast to meet her hostess and drop off her bags, but now that she was so close to her goal she couldn’t bear to stop. Shadow’s Gate had loomed in her imagination for years as some sort of hideous combination of Hell House and the Bates Motel; she could not wait any longer than utterly necessary to see it as it really was and reduce it to ordinariness.
Following her directions, Truth drove up Main Street, as State 13 was now called—past shops that gave way to tidy—and costly—cottages. Then the cottages stopped, and there was about a mile where the sides of the road were edged only by running fence and grass. Then she reached the place where Main Street formed a T with Old Patent Grant Road.
Shadow’s Gate was straight ahead, and the board fencing that edged Old Patent Grant Road had been removed from the area in front of the gatehouse, so that it was possible to drive right on to the property. Truth crossed the two-lane highway and pulled up into the graveled apron in front of the gatehouse. A warning quiver of alarm made the hair on her arms and neck stand up; the very air felt charged, as if before a storm.
Don’t be melodramatic. It’s just a house, Truth scolded herself sternly. She forced herself to look around, to gather data with a scholar’s mind.
From her investigations, she knew that Shadow’s Gate was an estate dating from the days when both sides of the Hudson had been studded with the palatial enclaves of the nineteenth-century robber barons. The current house, she gathered, had been built sometime after the Civil War. The gatehouse where her car now stood was a later addition—a miniature castle in itself, complete with the mammoth clock face that gave it a faint spurious resemblance to some public building. The gatehouse building formed an arch across the drive; iron gates within that arch could be closed to bar the road into the estate to the casual intruder. Truth had seen photographs of the gatehouse in the Cavendish book, and had mentally embellished that picture: the surroundings overgrown with weeds, the rusted gates padlocked shut; everything bearing a wistful aura of decay.
Unfortunately for her peace of mind, the weeds were gone, the ornamental plantings were flourishing, and the freshly-painted gates stood open to the recently regraveled drive. Shadow’s Gate was very far from being a deserted relic of a ghostly past.
Someone is living here, Truth realized, and felt a muted ghost of the jealousy she had experienced at Aunt Caroline’s. Shadow’s Gate was hers—who dared …
“Can I help you?”
The voice belonged to the brash young man who had stepped out from behind the gatehouse. She rolled down the window and leaned out.
“I—I’m not sure. I came to look at the house,” Truth said hesitantly.
“It isn’t for sale,” the young man said, still smiling. He was several years younger than Truth, with sun-streaked blond hair and deeply tanned skin testifying to a commitment to open-air activities.
“Oh, I don’t want to buy it,” Truth said quickly. “I just wanted to look at it.” Some impulse of honesty made her add: “I grew up here—well, for a while. My name’s Truth Jourdemayne.”
By now Truth had become inured to practically every possible reaction to her admittedly-peculiar first name. This, too, was a legacy of Thorne Blackburn, but by the time she’d realized that, it had become so much her name that no amount of dislike of the giver was reason enough to change it.
“You’re Truth Jourdemayne? The Truth Jourdemayne? That’s great! And you’re here! How did you—? Oh; I, uh, guess I ought to introduce myself. I’m Gareth. Gareth Crowther? Anyway, welcome to Shadow’s Gate, Ms. Jourdemayne—I can’t think of anyone who ought to be here more. Oh, boy, this is terrific—none of us knew you were coming.”
Of all the possible reactions—humor, disbelief, confusion—this was one she’d never seen. Obviously her name meant something to him, but he was so innocently delighted to discover who she was that it was hard to take offense.
“But, hey! You’ve got to come up to the house and meet Julian,” Gareth added. “It’ll be great!”
“I don’t think, Mr., um …” Truth began.
Gareth wilted visibly at this rebuff. “Call me Gareth. And—please. It won’t be any trouble. Julian isn’t, like, doing anything right now. And you could see the house. That’s what you’ve come for, right? To see your house? Julian’ll be glad to show you around.”
He gazed at her so hopefully that Truth began to feel a bit guilty at refusing. Gareth was obviously a big bluff hearty puppy-dog of a man who never expected to give or receive unkindness. And she did want to see the house. Could the Blackburn estate possibly have been settled enough for the place to be sold? No one had any reason to tell her if it had, after all.
“Julian, I take it, is the new owner?” Truth said.
“Yeah,” Gareth said. “We just moved up here a few months ago, in May.”
Truth wondered a bit at that—even on such short acquaintance, Gareth Crowther somehow didn’t seem a likely partner for someone who could afford a property that cost, at a very conservative estimate, several hundred thousand dollars.
“Go on up,” he said encouragingly. “Please.”
You’ve come such a long way; you might as well. Go on. Just take a look. The silent urging was so strong that it seemed a thing separate from herself, and still Truth hesitated.
As a parapsychologist, Truth Jourdemayne believed in the unseen world of perceptions beyond the ordinary and communications beyond speech. As a scientist, she preferred any normal explanation to a paranormal one. This niggling hunch was probably simply her own unconscious desire to lay childish bugbears to rest.
“Okay, I will,” she said, deciding. “Thanks, Gareth, you’ve been very kind.”
“Thank you, Ms. Jourdemayne,” Gareth said, sweeping her an impish mock-bow.
“Truth,” she said. His smile widened. He stepped back as her car drifted forward through the freshly-painted gates.
You could not see the main house from the gatehouse, Truth realized as she drove. She had the peculiar sense that she had just driven into a picture, or a movie—into a world that was real in a different fashion than the world she had just left, and had its own rewards and dangers.
Once you were on the estate property, the twentieth century vanished. There wasn’t another house in sight; she couldn’t even see the power lines she knew must be here. The gravel drive swung first left, then right as it cut through the young forest surrounding the house; the roadway was deeply ditched on both sides to carry off summer rains and winter snowmelt, and filled at the moment with drifts of leaves like golden doubloons plundered from some ghostly galleon.
Truth did her best to rein in her fancy and concentrate on the meeting ahead. Who was Julian? Why had he bought Shadow’s Gate? Gareth had seemed to know who she was; how awkward was this meeting going to be?
Suddenly the wood opened out and Truth could see the house ahead. Without conscious volition, she brought her car to a stop.
Shadow’s Gate was a sprawling example of nineteenth-century Hudson Valley Gothic. It bore the look of a fairytale castle built as a stronghold for a war in Neverland. In contrast to other Hudson River mansions constructed of native timber or imported marble, Shadow’s Gate was fashioned of the local pale gray stone. Three cone-roofed towers set with long narrow windows rose up from the edges of the rambling structure, and off to one side Truth could see the geometric shape of a glass house, or conservatory, jutting outward as if it wanted nothing to do with the stone walls that supported it. The five acres or so immediately around the house were immaculately tended; across the sweep of green lawn she could see a lacy white gazebo, and high box hedges that might be a maze. Beyond those artifacts of civilization the autumn forest took possession of the landscape once more. The Shadow’s Gate estate was a parcel of slightly over 100 acres.
The hundred-acre wood. Just like in Winnie-the-Pooh.
Seeing Shadow’s Gate was like seeing a scene she’d thought safely buried in a children’s book brought to jarring life. Truth had always been certain that she retained no memories from her early childhood, as was perfectly typical—after all, most people report having no childhood memories dating earlier than their seventh or eighth year—but it seemed, now, that she was wrong.
She knew this place. To enter its doors was to promise to keep an appointment she was more than twenty years late for.
Truth’s heart slammed against her ribs at a speed suggesting panic. For only an instant the world—the car, the friendly autumn forest—was gone, and she stood naked in a place where torches made a pillared cathedral of light. She was come to judgment, but those who called her little knew what they had called to face them—
Truth shook her head, puzzled. The memory, fantasy, whatever it had been, slipped away like a dream, leaving behind it only the sense of a challenge that must be met.
“Creepy.” She spoke aloud, and the last of the dream-sense vanished. The house ahead was nothing more than a stately Victorian mansion, freshly tenanted after a span of years.
“Déjà vu, that’s what they call it,” Truth told herself, slipping the car into Drive once more. Déjà vu, the sense of having been somewhere before. Often cited by psychics as proof of their powers, but rarely that. A complex trick of the mind, nothing more.
Nothing more.
When she pulled up in front of the house, there was a man waiting for her on the front steps.
Gareth must have phoned up from the gatehouse, Truth realized. She got out of her car reluctantly, slinging her purse up over her shoulder. The man came down the steps, moving around the car to greet her.
“Hello,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Julian Pilgrim. Welcome to Shadow’s Gate, Ms. Jourdemayne.”
Truth did not miss his quick assessment of her, and was suddenly glad she’d taken the trouble to dig out—and wear—one of the outfits she usually saved for professional conferences: a skirt and matching jacket in olive wild silk worn with an ivory peau de soie shell. The low-heeled coffee-colored pumps and matching oversized Coach bag completed the picture of an efficient, official, and normal person.
In the moment Julian Pilgrim took to appraise her, Truth conducted an evaluation of her own. She saw a man a few years older than she, with thick silky black hair and eyes the startling topaz blue of a Siamese cat’s. His face had all the patrician arrogance of that noble breed, and his body a positively feline suppleness. He was dressed as if attending the same imaginary conference that Truth was; a jacket of subtle expensive tweed, dark slacks, a shirt with the dense, close-woven whiteness of linen open to expose his strong, brown throat. His hands were innocent of rings, and the Rolex on his left wrist was a thin, gold whisper of privilege. Looking at his hands made a faint shudder run through her body; before she could stop herself, she wondered what they would feel like touching her bare skin.
The only jarring note in this perfection was the bangle Julian Pilgrim wore upon his right wrist.
One would expect any jewelry this man wore to be elegant. The wristcuff was not. It had the dull, grainy look of pig-iron, into which, senselessly, a design in pure gold had been inlaid. She glimpsed it only a moment in her assessment; following the direction of her gaze, Julian shook his cuff down to conceal it. He wore French cuffs; the cufflinks were flat squares of red enamel.
Their mutual assessment had taken only moments; Truth smiled, and shook the extended hand.
“I’m Truth Jourdemayne—as you know,” she said. “And you’re the new owner of Shadow’s Gate?”
“I think of myself as a custodian only. When a man buys a three-hundred-year-old house, he must face the fact that he is only an ephemeral episode in the life of the house. But please. Do come in. Have you traveled far?” He radiated the same spellbinding fascination as one of the big cats—a tiger, perhaps—and wore his aura of charismatic masculinity like a laurel crown of triumph, seemingly unconscious of his effect on the female population at large.
“We’re almost neighbors; I work at Taghkanic College, over in Amsterdam County.”
Normally she would have been more specific, as, technically, Truth worked for the Bidney Institute and not for the college, but some instinct held her back from revealing too much too soon. “I didn’t realize that Shadow’s Gate was on the market,” Truth added.
“It wasn’t.”
Julian gestured for her to precede him up the steps, and then brushed close to her to open the front door.
She glanced around herself, standing in the doorway. Jeweled multicolored light spilled in through the stained-glass gallery windows, threatening to carry her off again into that strange state of altered memory. She closed her eyes and looked away, stepping inside.
“I negotiated a rather delicate arrangement with the estate,” Julian said, following her through the doorway. “My preemptive bid to purchase is being held in escrow, and I’m living here with some of my … associates … while the last details are being worked out. But am I bringing you unwelcome news? Perhaps you’d planned to live at Shadow’s Gate yourself?” His deep voice was like sueded velvet, weaving a spell that had nothing to do with the house.
“I don’t think so,” Truth said shortly.
“I must admit I feel quite honored by a visit from Thorne Blackburn’s daughter,” Julian added. “Anything I can do to make your visit more enjoyable …”
So he did know who she was. Truth felt herself stiffening up, despite Julian’s obvious charms and his apparent desire to please her. She wondered just who the dangerously attractive Julian Pilgrim’s unnamed associates were—and what sort of association it was.
“I only came to see the house,” Truth said brusquely.
“And so you shall,” Julian said, taking her arm. “I shall give you the grand tour.”
“I expect it has been rather embarrassing for you, being Thorne Blackburn’s daughter,” Julian said about an hour later.
Their last stop on the grand tour had been the room Julian had called his office; a surprisingly small room tucked in beneath the grand staircase. It was filled with built-in bookcases, which were in turn filled with books—the sort that are read, not bought “by the yard” from a decorator for the look of the thing. Red silk brocade covered the walls everywhere books did not; either the original material or a cunningly antiqued copy. There was a desk in the middle of the room with comfortable overstuffed Victorian chairs set on either side. A chinoiserie liquor cabinet in the corner and the Oriental rug on the floor completed the furnishings. Oddly enough, the room was completely without windows.
Truth looked startled at the insightful comment. Julian smiled mockingly.
“Oh, come, Ms. Jourdemayne—the look of horror that crossed your features when I merely mentioned your father’s name would be clue enough to an intellect even duller than I pride myself on having that this was not a welcome subject.”
Truth looked away, making a production out of choosing a seat so he would not see her blush. He’d been nothing but kindness itself for the last hour, showing her over the house and property, discoursing knowledgeably on its history—and never mentioning Thorne Blackburn once.
She ran through all the possible responses she could make. “I’m sorry if I seem rude,” she said at last, settling on the most harmless. “But—”
“But you are tired of being treated as if you are not a person, with your own desires and necessities, but a sort of psychic hotline to a man you cannot even have known very well,” Julian said. “And whose interests you may not even share.”
Now that was a mild way of putting it.
“Yes,” said Truth gratefully. She felt herself warming to Julian on a level transcending mere physical attraction, as if the unspoken camaraderie of old friendship already existed between them.
“I,” said Julian, “do not ask others to share my interests—although when they do, it’s an unexpected bonus.” He laughed, and Truth felt herself smiling in return. “Some sherry, perhaps, Ms. Jourdemayne?”
“Yes, thank you. And please call me ‘Truth,’ Mr. Pilgrim.”
“And you must call me Julian,” he responded, going over to the cabinet atop which a crystal decanter and glasses reposed upon a silver tray as formally as in any Oxford don’s study.
“Forgive me for mentioning,” he went on after he had served them both with tiny delicate crystal glasses filled with the sweet, garnet-colored wine, “but of course you are aware that you are named for the Blackburn Work, are you not?”
From Julian a question that would have been annoying coming from anyone else became a matter of simple curiosity.
“I’m not very familiar with the Blackburn Work,” Truth admitted cautiously.
“Children hardly ever know their parents—or what is important to their parents—and the glare of publicity turned on the Work by Blackburn’s disappearance couldn’t have helped. Occultists—like parapsychologists—do their best when not being hounded for a ‘sound bite’ for the six o’clock news.”
Truth raised her eyebrows, saying nothing, and Julian chuckled at her surprise.
“‘You know my methods, Watson, now apply them,’” he quoted happily. “Anyone working in the field is familiar with the Bidney Institute, no matter which pan of the balances his soul is weighed in, and besides, how could I fail to recognize the author of Some Preliminary Inquiries into a Statistical Basis for Evaluating Clairaudient Perception? I wish I had been able to come to Bern to see you deliver it; it seems we have had to wait far too long to meet.”
