Dean Koontz - Your Heart Belongs To Me

“Sitting on this bench, I became convinced I’d sat here many times in the past, in all seasons and kinds of weather. And I felt the most powerful nostalgic sense of…of love for this place. Strange, don’t you think?”

Again surprising him, she said, “Not really.”

Ryan looked at her. Aware of his stare, she did not return it.

“Are you experiencing any of that now?” she asked, gazing up into the aspen architecture.

Shivering, Ryan surveyed the park. “No. It’s just a place this time.”

They walked to the front steps of St. Gemma’s Church, where a bronze lamp in the shape of a bell brightened the oak doors.

“I knew what the church would look like before I went inside. And when I went in…I felt I’d returned to a much-loved place.”

“Should we pay a visit?”

Although he knew he could not have been located and followed to Colorado so quickly, Ryan imagined that if he went into the church, he would find waiting for him the woman with the lilies and the knife, this time without the lilies.

“No,” he said. “It won’t feel special now. It’ll be like the park-just a place.”

His ear lobes began to sting with cold, his eyes watered, and the icy air had a faint ammonia scent that burned in his nostrils.

On the opposite side of the church from the aspen grove lay an expansive cemetery. No fence encircled it, and lampposts flanked a central walk.

“I didn’t see this before,” he said. “I didn’t come this far. When I left the church, I was so…spooked, I guess, I just wanted to get back to the hotel. I thought I’d been poisoned.”

This statement seemed to strike Cathy Sienna as more peculiar than anything else that he had revealed. As they walked past the cemetery toward the corner, she was first silent, but then said, “Poisoned?”

“Poisoned or drugged with hallucinogenics. It’s a long story.”

“No matter how long it is, seems to me poisoned-and-drugged is a bigger leap than some other explanation.”

“What other explanation?”

She shrugged. “Whatever other explanation you didn’t want to consider.”

Her answer disturbed Ryan, and suddenly so did the graveyard.

“I’ll bet she’s buried here,” he said.

“You mean Ismay Clemm?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to look for her?”

Grimacing at the gravestones in the snow, Ryan said, “No. Not in the dark.”

On the first block of the next cross street, houses stood on only one side, facing the cemetery.

The sixth house, a Victorian place with elaborate cornices and window-surround moldings, belonged to Ismena Moon. The porch light welcomed them.

Lace curtains on the mullioned windows and a brass door knocker in the form of a wreathed cherub holding a diadem in both hands suggested the interior style.

A slim handsome woman in her mid-sixties answered the door. She had white hair, a light café-au-lait complexion, and large clear brown eyes. Her sensible black dress shoes with block heels, blue rayon dress with high round neckline and narrow white collar, white cuffs, and gathered sleeves suggested she had recently returned from vespers or another service.

“Good evening, ma’am. I’m Ryan Perry, and this is my associate, Cathy Sienna. We have an appointment to see Ismena Moon.”

“That would be me,” the woman said. “So pleased to meet you. Come in, come in, you’re dressed to catch pneumonia in this weather.”

Ismena and Ismay were not identical twins, or twins of any kind.

The parlor was high Victorian: floral wallpaper; deep maroon velvet drapes, trimmed and tasseled; lace curtains serving as sheers between the velvet panels; a cast-iron fireplace complete with kettle stand, with a black-and-gold marble surround and mantel; an étagère filled with collectible glass, two Chesterfield sofas, plant stands with ferns, sculpture on pedestals; a side table draped with a maroon cloth covered by a crocheted overlay; and everywhere a fabulous and precisely arranged clutter of porcelain busts, porcelain birds, groupings of ornately framed photographs, and knickknacks of all kinds.

Ismena Moon prepared coffee, which she poured from a Victorian-silver pot, and with which she served a generous selection of exotic cookies that she called biscuits.

While Ryan had been expecting a fifteen-minute meeting in which he might get to the truth of events on the day Dr. Gupta performed a myocardial biopsy, Ismena imagined their visit to be an occasion for socializing, with one of her favorite subjects-her sister, Ismay-as the inspiration for the get-together. She was such a charming woman, and so gracious, that Ryan could not disappoint her.

Besides, his identical-twin theory had deflated as completely as a hot-air balloon lanced by a church steeple. He needed a rational explanation for how a woman dead twenty-one months could have spoken with him on that day. For a moment, when he discovered there was a third sister, Ismana, his hope revived that she was Ismay’s twin, but she was the oldest of the three, and had died before Ismay.

“I can see how the similarity of the names would lead you to think twins,” Ismena said. “But they’re all just forms of Amy, you see, which was quite a popular name in the Victorian era, with many derivatives. Amia, Amice, Esmee, on and on.”

Victoriana, Ismena explained, had fascinated the Moon family going back to their grandfather, Dr. Willard Moon, who had been one of the first black dentists west of the Mississippi, with a patient list of mostly white folks. Ismay had been somewhat less infatuated with all things Victorian than was Ismena, but like everyone in the Moon family, she had been a great reader, and her favorite books and writers were mostly from the nineteenth century, primarily from the Victorian part of it.

Ismena indicated a book-lined alcove off the parlor, which featured two leather armchairs and reading lamps. “She was never happier than when she was in one of those chairs with a book.”

As Ismena had been talking, Ryan had stepped to the alcove to look over the titles on the bookshelves, which included complete collections of Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

Moving along the shelves, he stepped around a white marble bust displayed on a pedestal.

Ismena said, “That was a favorite thing of hers. Of course, she had to have it fixed above the parlor door, exactly as in the poem, but I am definitely not comfortable with a thing that heavy hanging over my head.”

“Like in what poem?” Cathy asked.

“‘The Raven,’” Ismena said. “Poe was her very favorite, though the poetry more than the stories.”

While she spoke, Ryan came to the Poe collection.

Ismena recited the verse from memory: “‘And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting / On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.’”

The meter of the verse, the compelling repetitions, the rhymes, the alliteration conspired to catch Ryan’s breath for a moment, not because the poem was new to him-it wasn’t-and not only because it was lyrical and brilliant, but also because the unmistakable style of Poe, his essential voice, seemed of a piece with the strange events of the past sixteen months.

As he withdrew a volume of Poe’s collected poetry from a shelf, a yet more powerful sense of the uncanny overtook Ryan when he heard Cathy, in the spirit of the moment, recite: “‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-’”

“‘-While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,’” Ismena continued with delight, “‘As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.’”

“Not sure I remember,” Cathy said, “but maybe…‘ “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door-/ Only this and nothing more.”’”