“I know the way,” said Cochran nervously as he shifted back around and clasped his hands in his lap, “and we won’t need to stop for gas, if it’s the Winchester House in San Jose.” He was breathing fast, but he wasn’t panicking; and it occurred to him that Crane’s ghost wasn’t nearly as scary as his dead body had been.
“Find the green chapel,” said the ghost. “Take what you’ve dished out; there’s a New Year’s Eve party coming that’ll square all debts.”
WHEN SCOTT Crane’s ghost directed Pete to take the Winchester Boulevard off-ramp, following the signs meant to lead tourists to the “Winchester Mystery House.” Cochran nodded. “Be ready to take a left onto Olsen,” he told Pete quietly. “The parking lot’s right there.”
Cody pointed at a bleak hamburger-stand marquee sign that read STEAK SAN/PASTRAMI. “I think we’re supposed to go to the San Pastrami Mission,” she whispered to Cochran. He could feel her shivering next to him.
But, “Take a left onto Olsen,” said the ghost in the back seat. Its voice was deeper now, and louder. “The parking lot’s right there.”
Cochran remembered that ghosts tended to be repetitive. And the same thought might have occurred to Cody, for beside him she whispered, “I never need mouthwash, after Mammy Pleasant has been on. Ghosts don’t have spit.” Cochran looked at her in time to see teardrops actually fly out from the inner corners of her eyes.
“Valorie never has spit—I—never have to gargle, after Valorie.”
“I don’t think you need to—” Cochran began.
“Valorie’s dead!” said Cody wonderingly. “Isn’t she?”
Cochran took her hand. “It’s—it’s not,” he stammered, “I mean, you—” The truck interior was steamy since the dead king had got in, and Cochran was sweating under his windbreaker. He wanted to say, If it works, don’t worry about it. “Whatever Valeria’s status is, Cody,” he said finally, “you’re certainly not dead.”
“But she’s the oldest of us!” Cody gripped his hand, hard, as if the truck was tipping over and she might fall out. “All the rest of us are at least two years younger! She’s the one who has our, our birth!”
Angelica leaned forward across the dead king’s ghost to squeeze Plumtree’s shoulder. “Cody,” she said strongly, “lots of people are divided from their births by some kind of fault-line. Most of them aren’t fortunate enough to know how it happened, or even that it happened—they’re just aware of a pressure-failure back there somewhere.” She paused, obviously casting about for something else to say. “Plants often can be safely severed from their original taproots, if they’ve developed newer roots further along the vine.”
Cody was hurting Cochran’s gashed thumb, and even her bandaged right hand was pulling on the door handle so hard that Cochran thought the handle must be about to break off. Her feet were braced against the slippery wet floorboards. “But have I, have any of us?” she whispered. Janis is deaf now, and her dreams were fading to black-and-white even on Friday night! Tiffany, Janis, Audrey, Cody, Luanne…are we all going to slide into the, the booming black-and-white hole that’s Valorie?”
The king’s ghost spoke now, clearly addressing Cody: “In the midsummer of this year,” said the deep voice, gently but forcefully, “you and I will be standing in happy sunlight on the hill in the lake.”
Cochran looked back at him—and didn’t jump in surprise, only experienced a dizzying emptiness in his chest, to see that the ghost was draped in a white woolen robe now, apparently dry, conceivably the same robe Crane’s body had worn when it had been lying in state in Solville. The full, King Solomon beard was lustrous and dry.
The truck rocked as Pete steered it into a parking space and tromped on the brake. “The grail castle,” he said. “The green chapel.” A tall hedge blocked the view of the estate from here, but they could see a closed gate, and signs directing tourists toward the low, modern-looking buildings to the right.
PETE SULLIVAN led the way across the parking lot, but he took his four bedraggled companions toward the locked gate instead of in the direction of the little peak-roofed booth and the Winchester Products Museum beyond it.
He had pulled his comb out of his pocket, and he appeared to be trying to break the end of it off. “I suppose they count the guests, on the guided tours,” he said to Cochran over the hiss of the rain.
“Yes,” Cochran told him. “Even one couldn’t sneak away, let alone five. And I bet they wouldn’t let a barefoot guy go anyway.”
“I don’t expect anybody’s looking this way,” Pete, said, “but the rest ot you block the view of me; act like you’re taking pictures of the house.”
Cochran took Plumtree’s elbow and stood to Pete’s left, pointing through the gate and nodding animatedly. “I’m pretending to be a tourist,” he told her when she frowned at him. “Play along.”
Pete’s comb was metal, apparently stainless steel, and he had broken two teeth off one end of it and bent kinks into them. Now he had tipped up the padlock on the gate and was carefully fitting the teeth into the keyhole.
Cochran stared between the bars of the gate at the house. Past a low of pink flowering bushes he could see the closest corner of the vast Victorian structure, a circular porch with a cone-roofed tower turret over it. Through the veils of rain beyond it he could see other railed balconies and steeply sloped shingle roofs, and dozens of windows. Lights were on behind many of the windows, and he hoped Pete’s hands could work quickly.
“When I say three,” said Pete as he twiddled with the comb teeth in the lock mechanism, “we’ll all go through the gate and then walk fast to the corner of that box hedge by the porch. I can see a sign on a post, I think tourists are allowed to be there.”
“Yeah,” said Cochran, “it’s part of the garden tour—that’s self-guided. But they may not have the gardens open, on a rainy day like this.”
“Great. Well, if anybody comes up to us,” Pete said grimly, “smile at ’em and talk in a foreign language, like you wandered out here through the wrong door. And then—” He looked down at his busy, pacifist hands. “Sid, you’ll have to cold-cock ’em.”
Cochran thought of Kootie and Mavranos back at his house, ready to risk their lives, and of the Sullivans, who had reluctantly committed themselves to this, and of Plumtree, hoping to undo the murder of the ghost that was standing right behind them. He looked back at the bearded figure, and noticed without surprise that the king’s ghost was now wearing a sort of tropical white business suit, though still barefoot. The ghost, as apparently solid as any of them, looked like a visiting emperor.
“I can see the necessity of that,” Cochran said to Pete. “Let’s hope nobody notices us.”
Pete nodded, and Cochran heard the snap of the lock. “One, two, three.” Pete was lifting the gate as he swung it open, and the wet hinges didn’t squeal; then Cochran took hold of the elbow of Plumtree’s leather jacket again and they were hurrying across the cobblestone driveway to the sign. Behind him Cochran heard the gate clink closed again, and Pete’s footsteps slapping up to where the rest of them now stood.
They halted there, rocking, and Cochran stared fixedly at the lettering on the waist-high sign while he tensed himself for any evidence of challenge; but the only sound was the timpani drumroll of the rain on the cobblestones and the smack of bigger drops falling from the high palm branches that waved overhead, and his peripheral vision showed him no movement on the shadowed porches or the walkways or hedged lawns.