Stephen King - Duma Key

It was a candlestick. The tip, where you were supposed to stick your candle, looked dark, as if it had touched something very hot instead of something cold and wet.

“There are candles in all Miss Eastlake’s rentals, because we lose the power out here all the time,” Wireman said. “We have a gennie at the big house, but the other places don’t, not even this one. But unlike the smaller houses, this one does have candlesticks from the big house, and they just happen to be silver.”

“And you remembered that,” I said. Marveled, really.

He shrugged, then looked at the Gulf. So did I. There was nothing there but moonlight and starlight on the water. For now, at least.

Wireman gripped my wrist. His fingers closed over it where the manacle had been, and my heart jumped. “What?” I said, not liking the new fear I saw in his face.

“Jack,” he said. “Jack’s alone at El Palacio. ”

We took Wireman’s car. In my terror, I’d never noticed the headlights or heard it pull in beside my own.

Jack was okay. There had been a few calls from old friends of Elizabeth’s, but the last one had come at quarter of nine, an hour and a half before we came bursting in, bloody and wide-eyed, Wireman still waving the candlestick. There had been no intruders at El Palacio, and Jack hadn’t seen the ship that had been anchored for awhile in the Gulf off Big Pink. Jack had been eating microwave popcorn and watching Beverly Hills Cop on an old videotape.

He listened to our story with mounting amazement, but no real disbelief; this was a young man, I had to remind myself, that had been raised on shows like The X-Files and Lost . Besides, it fit with what he’d been told earlier. When we were done, he took the candlestick from Wireman and examined the tip, which looked like the burnt filament in a dead lightbulb.

“Why didn’t it come for me?” he asked. “I was alone, and totally unprepared.”

“I don’t want to bruise your self-esteem,” I said, “but I don’t think you’re exactly a priority to whoever’s running this show.”

Jack was looking at the narrow red mark on my wrist. “Edgar, is that where—”

I nodded.

“Fuck,” Jack said in a low voice.

“Have you figured out what’s going on?” Wireman asked me. “If she sent that thing after you, she must think you have, or that you’re close.”

“I don’t think anyone will ever know all of it,” I said, “but I know who that thing was when it was alive.”

“Who?” Jack was staring at me with wide eyes. We were standing in the kitchen and Jack was still holding the candlestick. Now he put it aside on the counter.

“Emery Paulson. Adriana Eastlake’s husband. They came back from Atlanta to help with the search after Tessie and Laura went missing, that much is true, but they never left Duma Key again. Perse saw to that.”

We went into the parlor where I had first met Elizabeth Eastlake. The long, low table was still there, but now it was empty. Its polished surface struck me as a pitch-perfect mockery of life.

“Where are they?” I asked Wireman. “Where are her chinas? Where’s the Village?”

“I boxed everything up and put it in the summer-kitchen,” he said, pointing vaguely. “No real reason, I just… I just couldn’t… muchacho, would you like some green tea? Or a beer?”

I asked for water. Jack said he’d take a beer, if that was all right. Wireman set off to get them. He made it as far as the hallway before starting to cry. They were big, noisy sobs, the kind you can’t stifle no matter how hard you try.

Jack and I looked at each other, then looked away. We said nothing.

He was gone a lot longer than it usually takes to get two cans of beer and a glass of water, but when he came back, he had regained his composure.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t usually lose someone I love and poke a candlestick in a vampire’s face in the same week. Usually it’s one or the other.” He shrugged his shoulders in an effort at insouciance. It was unsuccessful, but I had to give him points for trying.

“They’re not vampires,” I said.

“Then what are they?” he asked. “Expatiate.”

“I can only tell you what her pictures told me. You have to remember that, no matter how talented she might have been, she was still only a child.” I hesitated, then shook my head. “Not even that. Hardly more than a baby. Perse was… I guess you’d say Perse was her spirit-guide.”

Wireman cracked his beer, sipped it, then leaned forward. “And what about you? Is Perse your spirit-guide, as well? Has she been intensifying what you do?”

“Of course she has,” I said. “She’s been testing the limits of my ability and extending them — I’m sure that’s what Candy Brown was about. And she’s been picking my material. That’s what the Girl and Ship paintings were about.”

“And the rest of your stuff?” Jack asked.

“Mostly mine, I think. But some of it—” I stopped, suddenly struck by a terrible idea. I put my glass aside and almost knocked it over. “Oh Christ.”

“What?” Wireman asked. “For God’s sake, what?”

“You need to get your little red book of phone numbers. Right now.”

He went and got it, then handed me the cordless telephone. I sat for a moment with it in my lap, not sure who to call first. Then I knew. But there is one rule of modern life even more ironclad than the one which states that there’s never a cop around when you need one: when you really need a human being, you always get the answering machine.

That’s what I got at Dario Nannuzzi’s home, at Jimmy Yoshida’s, at Alice Aucoin’s.

“ Fuck! ” I cried, slamming the disconnect button with my thumb when Alice’s recorded voice started in with “I’m sorry I’m not here to take your call right now, but—”

“They’re probably still celebrating,” Wireman said. “Give it time, amigo, and it’ll all quiet down.”

“I don’t have time!” I said. “Fuck! Shit! Fuck! ”

He put a hand on mine, and spoke soothingly. “What is it, Edgar? What’s wrong?”

“The pictures are dangerous! Maybe not all, but some, for sure!”

He thought about it, then nodded. “Okay. Let’s think about this. The most dangerous ones are probably the Girl and Ship series, right?”

“Yes. I’m sure that’s the case.”

“They’re almost certainly still at the gallery, waiting to be framed and shipped.”

Shipped. Dear God, shipped . Even the word was scary. “I can’t let that happen.”

“ Muchacho, getting sidetracked is what you can’t let happen.”

He didn’t understand this wasn’t a sidetrack. Perse could whistle up a great wind when she wanted to.

But she needed help.

I found the number of the Scoto and dialed it. I thought it was just possible that someone might be there, even at quarter of eleven on the night after the big shindig. But the ironclad rule held, and I got the machine. I waited impatiently, then pressed 9 to leave a general message.

“Listen, you guys,” I said, “this is Edgar. I don’t want you to send any of the paintings or drawings out until I tell you, okay? Not a single one . Just put a hold on em for a few days. Use any excuse you have to, but do it. Please. It’s very important.”

I broke the connection and looked at Wireman. “Will they?”

“Considering your demonstrated earning power? You bet. And you just spared yourself a long, involved conversation. Now can we get back to—”