"Thank you," said Rascasse's ringing voice. "And would you now say 'Find me,' please."
"Find me," said Marrity in a baffled tone.
And Charlotte could hear the head whispering again. It was only one voice this time: "Two days I sat beside my body, staring at the holes in my chest."
It had said this before, she recalled.
"Thank you for letting us know where they are," said Rascasse's voice. Charlotte frowned in puzzlement, then remembered that ghosts existed backward; presumably Rascasse was trying to get an answer to a question before asking it.
She sighed and switched to Marrity's perspective.
Through it she could see the afternoon sunlight glinting on the polished black brows, and on the silver plates tacked to the cheek and jaw. From the height of Marrity's vision she could tell that he was still standing.
Surreptitiously she felt in her purse for the bottle.
Marrity took solace in the faith that he would soon forget all of this. No, not forget it — never have experienced it.
"I went to my grandfather," came the whisper from the forever slightly parted coal lips, "to find out who I am, where I came from."
"Thank you for telling us where they are now," said Rascasse again. If he was impatient, his high-pitched inorganic voice didn't reflect it.
"But I have no mother, really," came the whisper, more faintly now. "Only children."
"You've told us where your children are," said Rascasse, like a hypnotist. "Where are your children now? Thank you for telling us."
Your children? thought Marrity; but he had to strain to hear the whisper now: "My mother will hide them," it said, "or try to. Everyone who dwells here is safe."
Everyone who dwells here is safe.
Marrity's breath had stopped. That was the sign over Grammar's back door. What else had the thing said? I went to find my grandfather… holes in my chest… children… my mother will hide them…
Abruptly the skin on his arms tingled and his vision narrowed to include only the glittering black-and-silver head, as his body understood before his mind permitted itself to.
A moment later he was out of his seat and halfway down the aisle, gripping the bar on the back of one of the seats, gasping for breath and ready to vomit.
"That's my father!" he yelled hoarsely. He was facing the back of the bus and blinking rapidly. "That's — what am I — that's my father's head."
"Shit!" muttered Golze at the front of the bus.
"Turn it off!" Marrity shouted. "Can he see me?"
Rascasse's voice seemed to come from right in front of Marrity. "The ghost is gone. The imbecilic thing gave us no clue to where to find your self — your younger self. I'd hoped that when you asked, it might tell us — I guess it doesn't know."
"It did tell us," came Golze's weak voice. "The Ouija board pointer moved before Marrity said, 'Find me.' Before is after, for ghosts. Hinch, back the truck around to face south."
"It pointed to the letter T," said the woman in sunglasses, whose real name was apparently Charlotte.
"No," grated Golze, "it pointed in a direction."
The bus vibrated as Hinch started the engine, and then the shadows and light moved across the seats as the bus backed around in a wide circle in the parking lot, and Marrity saw the supermarket swing past outside the left-side windows. The bus slowed to a halt, facing south now.
The Ouija board pointer now rested on the pin at the letter A.
"The young Frank Marrity," said Golze distinctly, "is now behind us. Northeast of here."
"He's in the hills, I'll bet," chimed Rascasse. "This vehicle is far too big and slow. Hinch, radio to Amboy — tell them we need full support."
There's no towels," said Daphne meekly.
Frank Marrity was sitting on the floor against the kitchen cabinet, next to Bennett, and he looked up and saw Daphne shivering in the hall entry in her old jeans and blouse, which were now visibly wet.
He got to his feet, leaving the bottle beside Bennett. "Not even any curtains," he agreed. "Sorry, Daph, I should have thought of that before I said you could take a shower. You could sit downstairs by the windows, it's sunny there."
His voice echoed in the empty house. Until Daphne had spoken, the only sounds had been from outside: birdcalls, faint sounds of car motors, a helicopter thudding over the hills.
"It's been half an hour again," said Moira. She was leaning against the rail, her back to the sloped ceiling of the living room on the lower level.
Marrity peered at his watch. Sure enough, it was 12:35. He turned to the telephone as Daphne pattered barefoot down the stairs.
As soon as he had dialed the number, the Jackson man said, "Hello?" apparently before the phone had even rung.
"It's me, it's been—"
"Right. Where are you?"
Daphne's voice echoed up from the living room behind and below Moira: "Dad, can I lay out on the deck? You can see the Hollywood sign real close!"
"It's inaccessible," said Bennett, still sitting on the floor. "And the only street it overlooks is across the canyon."
"Go with her, would you, Moira?" said Marrity. Into the phone he said, "We're at the top of—" And then he paused to ask Bennett, "Where are we?"
Moira sighed and pushed herself away from the rail.
"Go up — give me that." Bennett stood up and took the phone. "Go up Beachwood till it loops sharp to the right and becomes Hollyridge, which heads back downhill. I'm his brother-in-law. The sister, correct. We're the third house downhill after the Hollyridge dogleg, on your right." He paused, listening. "Yes, I'll turn it on." He hung up the phone. "The porch light. He wants us to turn it on."
"Do you know where the switch is?"
Bennett turned toward the door. "Gotta be by the — hey!"
Marrity had grabbed the pockets of Bennett's coat and yanked the pistol free and then lunged down the stairs, mostly sliding along the banister.
His attention had been caught by a sharp pain in Daphne's cracked ribs, and in the same instant he had experienced her sensory impressions of a cloth pressed over her mouth and the breath driven out of her nose from hard constriction around her arms as she was abruptly lifted up backward; Daphne's jerky field of view was only of the converging treetops overhead, but she heard Moira grunt sharply. Marrity felt Daphne's bare heels kick at the aluminum-pole railing as she was hoisted over it.
When Marrity burst out onto the sunlit deck, a young man in a sweatshirt was outside the northside railing, facing him but leaning away; the man's tan-gloved hands gripped a rope moored to the railing, and he was clearly about to slide down to the dark slope below. Moira was sprawled on the deck planks behind Marrity, her hair over her face.
Daphne was gone.
Marrity lifted the pistol and fired it straight into the man's chest.
Marrity saw the man jerk his blond head forward and fall away from the balcony, and as the ejected shell flew through the open door into the living room, Marrity sprang to the rail and swung one leg over it, tucking the hot pistol behind his belt and grabbing the rope with both hands as the echoes of the shot rapped back from the far side of the canyon. The sound of the helicopter was louder out here.
He tried to go down the rope hand over hand but mostly slid, with the bristly rope burning the skin off his palms, his legs flailing uselessly in the rushing, empty air. He landed jarringly, sitting down on the body of the man he had shot, and rolled off and began crawling up the leafy slope even before he could suck air into his shocked lungs. His vision was dimmed, but he could see figures scrambling up the slope above him.