Norman Partridge - Wildest Dreams

“Spare me the wounded sarcasm. You’re a smart woman. I’m not much on metaphysics, but I read a chapter from one of your books. You can write.”

“You know how hard it is to sell a book?” Janice asked, and it wasn’t the kind of question that called for an answer. “It’s hard. I know. I couldn’t sell my first two. I had to publish them myself. I lost money on both of them. If it wasn’t for my gift, I would have starved.”

Her talented hands rested on her thighs, silver bracelets gathered like manacles. I knew Janice wasn’t lying about her powers. When it came to psychic impressions from physical objects, I had no doubt that she was the real deal. She had to be. One touch from her fingers and she’d known all about my knife and the things I had done with it. There was no way she could beg, borrow, or steal that information from anyone on earth, living or dead.

But with a wild talent like that, I didn’t understand how money could have been a problem for her. “Seems to me that you could have made plenty of money with your powers alone,” I said.

“Sure. But people don’t want to know the truth. Not really. They can’t take it. The truth isn’t worth a dime. It’s ugly. Pretty lies are the things that sell.”

“And you sold more than your share.”

“That’s right. Pretty lies were my stock and trade. Bring me a couple grand and your dead husband’s pipe, and I’d give you a show. I’d sit you down in a cozy little new-age parlor in front of a roaring fire, and I’d hold that pipe in my hands, and I’d close my eyes as if I were closing them for the very last time. I’d pretend to contact my spirit guide, Natasha Orlovsky, one of the Cliffside witches. Never mind that Natasha was never a witch at all, just a scared teenager who was hanged as a result of mass hysteria. Never mind that I’d never seen Natasha’s ghost, or that the Natasha I pretended to conjure up was a recycled character from a historical horror novel I sold under a pen name for a quick two grand.

“Never mind any of that. I’d close my eyes, and I’d smile, and I’d whisper a few lines of college Russian. Then I’d tell my client what she wanted to hear, whispering in soothing tones that her dear departed husband was so happy in the afterlife, so glad that his widow had remarried that nice fellow who owned the hardware store, so pleased that she’d spent that extra fifteen hundred bucks for a burial plot near a fountain because listening to those sweet little songbirds splashing around sure did make his eternal slumber a lot more comfortable.

“If that was what the old lady wanted to hear, that was what I’d tell her. And I’d hold on to her dead husband’s pipe, even though holding it was like swallowing poison. I’d think of the two grand the old lady had in her purse-the same amount of money I got for a horror novel that took four months of solid work to write. And while I thought of the old lady’s money and how fast I was going to make it mine, I could almost taste the dead man’s tobacco in my mouth, and I could almost feel that rough little lump growing inside my cheek, the one that turned into a cancer that the doctors hacked off along with a good chunk of jawbone.

“I’d feel the dead man’s hate as his wife pretended she needed something from the hardware store, when he knew she only wanted to cry on the shoulder of the cross-eyed bastard who owned the place. I’d feel all of it, just the way the dead man had felt it.

“In a finger snap, I’d live the day his wife came home with the news that the cross-eyed bastard was hiring her twenty hours a week. She hated to go to work, but she didn’t see how they could turn down the income. And she was right about that. They did need money. He couldn’t work anymore. Hell, no one wanted to go to a barber who was missing half his face.

“So he wasn’t going to stop her from working. Or blowing the cross-eyed son of a bitch in the back room. Or whatever else she was getting paid to do. Because with her out of the house he could spend the long afternoons sucking on his pipe with the little asshole mouth the doctors had left him. Holding that sweet smoke in his mouth while he imagined his wife bent over a display of garbage disposals, giving it up for the cross-eyed bastard she’d marry as soon as she buried his cancer-ridden corpse in a boneyard with a fountain that attracted flocks of birds which would no doubt shit all over his tombstone at every opportunity.”

Janice drew a deep breath and held it. If she wanted to confess, I’d let her. Maybe the time had come.

“That was why you didn’t shake my hand when we first met,” I said. “And why you didn’t want to touch the backpack.”

“I can’t stand to touch anything anymore. That’s what ruined me as a medium. After a while I couldn’t hold the pain, and smile, and tell those pretty lies. It started to burn me down. I knew I had to make a change.”

“What about your third book? It was a big hit, wasn’t it? You must have seen some money from that.”

“And I earned every penny. To make the kind of sales my publisher expected, I had to do a book tour. That meant dozens of interviews, and lots of people wanting to test me.”

“Lots of little old ladies wanting to hand you their dead husbands’ pipes.”

“Exactly. I came home from the tour with a deal for another book, but I was burned out. I locked myself in the house for a couple months. I tried to write, but I was completely blocked. I couldn’t stand to go out. Complete strangers seemed to know everything about me.” She laughed. “It was my own fault. Like every neophyte celebrity, I’d given it up to People. They printed all my pretty lies, but that wasn’t enough. People wanted more. They always want more, until they’re done with you. All I wanted was to be left alone.

“That was when Circe Whistler entered my life. I knew she lived in Cliffside, but we’d never met. She called me out of the blue and suggested we get together for lunch at her place. Somehow, I felt that I could talk to her. Or maybe it was just that I’d been cooped up alone for so long, I would have talked to the first person who showed me some sympathy. Anyway, I trusted Circe instantly. By the time lunch was over, I’d spilled my guts. I told her everything.”

“Why?”

“I think…” Janice hesitated. “I don’t know why…but I think that somehow Circe saw right through me, and she made me talk. I started to think that maybe…well, just maybe there really was some truth to the things that Diabolos Whistler preached, and maybe Circe, being his daughter-”

I laughed. “Now, that sounds like the prettiest lie of all.”

“I know! It sounds crazy. I don’t believe it-not in my head, anyway. But my gut tells me something else.”

“Okay. Say you’re not lying. Say Circe seduced you with dark promises of juicy book deals and large royalty checks. But something else must have happened, something that brought you to the point where you found yourself picking up the guy who cut off her father’s head.”

“When you put it that way, I wonder what happened myself.”

Janice was quiet for a while. I left her to her silence, and I kept my eyes on the road. I didn’t want to miss the turnoff. The rain was hammering now. Loud, hollow, ringing on the truck cab like it was empty, like we weren’t inside it at all.

I flicked the wipers on high. They whipped back and forth, fast and sure, beating like purposeful metronomes.

The sound made me uneasy. I felt like I was marching in step, like something beyond my control was directing my actions.

Those thoughts were for someone like Janice Ravenwood. I tried to banish them from my mind, but they stayed with me as I raced forward through the storm, as the wipers lashed back and forth, keeping time, setting the pace. The tempo didn’t slow, and neither did I. Not long enough to gather my thoughts or consider my actions. The wipers beat time, and my foot pressed hard on the gas pedal, and the truck roared forward, carrying us to a place we had to go, the only place I could go.