UNEARTHLY Read online

  Tom wore his old corduroy coat, a faded pumpkin color, leather at the elbows. He was a lanky, fair man with a freckled forehead and a trace of the Irish accent that had accompanied him to the States forty-odd years ago. He looked at Barry over the edges of his driving glasses.

  "Feel like talking about the accident?"

  "Sure. Wait till we get to the bridge, though."

  He nodded. Barry seemed collected to him—a little tired, but not ready to subside into one of her wordless brooding studies that both annoyed and worried him.

  At the west end of the bridge there was a place to pull off the road. They got out of the truck, leaving a complaining Meanness behind, and walked through the long shaft of the echoing bridge. Tom had a six-battery steel flashlight with him.

  Barry explained everything that had happened. They stood looking down the slope of the hill, snow fluttering through the beam of the light.

  "It's strange that he was walking away from the bridge, into the snow," Tom said.

  "If I only knew what he was doing out here."

  "I'll go along with Albert's notion. I doubt that he's a local boy."

  "He could've escaped from the reform school," Barry suggested.

  "In Cairnstown? That's twenty miles."

  "You're right. It's too far." She turned, blinking, as the wind shifted and snow flew at her eyes. "Something keeps going through my mind."

  "What?"

  "Ned's plaid jacket. You remember the one—it was orange and black."

  "Why were you thinking about that?"

  "I saw a boy in Copperwell's wearing a jacket like Ned's. And then at the hospital I was looking into the treatment room and I swear I—I saw it again for a second, all bloody, lying on the floor just where they'd thrown it after he was brought in."

  "After Ned was brought in?"

  "Yes."

  Tom touched her, as he sometimes did for reassurance, not knowing why he needed it. "What does that have to do with—?"

  "I'm trying to remember what was going through my mind while I was driving across the bridge this afternoon."

  His ungloved fingers felt her tremor.

  "Too cold for you out here. We could be sitting in the truck."

  "No, I think better when I'm cold. Don't rush me, Dad, please. This is important."

  "Take your time."

  Barry closed her eyes for half a minute. Her head turned slowly in the direction of the bridge. Light from Tom's flashlight seeped upward to her face. He felt the power of her concentration as a tingling across his forehead, in the tips of his fingers. It was all he could do to keep from stepping back, as if something awesome and vaguely threatening were contained by the shut lids of her eyes. Here was the differentness that challenged his love for his daughter, Edie's difficult legacy.

  "That's it," Barry said after a freezing interval. She looked around at her father, rather blankly, wiping away snow tears. "What I thought—what I saw—was Ned, holding his stomach, bloody, staggering, falling, trying to get down to the road for help and then the next thing I saw was this other guy, in my headlights, acting sort of—"

  "How?"

  "I dunno—dazed. Like he was already hurt and didn't know where he was. Then I braked and, bam!"

  "What do you make of it?"

  Barry sighed and shook her head. "I don't know. It doesn't explain anything, does it?"

  They were driving the last mile home when Tom asked cautiously, "Do you think Mrs. Prye might have something to say about all this?"

  Barry was jolted from a reverie of music, a piece she'd been composing in her head for days. Her shoulders came up rigidly.

  "I haven't heard from Mrs. Prye, and I'm not going to."

  "No?"

  "No. She was—definitely getting out of hand."

  "To say the least."

  "You were right when you said we had to banish her. She won't be back."

  Tom sighed, glad to hear she'd been cured from that obsession. "Well, it's for the best. I wondered how you felt about her. There's no point in bringing her back just to ask a couple of questions. She probably doesn't know the answers anyway."

  He glanced at his daughter for confirmation, but Barry's face was clean of expression; she had no more to say about Mrs. Prye.

  Tom signaled for the gates to open and turned off the road to Tuatha de Dannan.

  They all hated the black iron gates, which were obtrusive in the natural landscape of old rock walls and tall trees that formed one boundary of the farm. But as Tom's reputation and popularity grew it had become necessary to protect the privacy that was essential to his creative process. As it was, too many admirers and well-wishers still turned up unexpectedly, confident of their welcome, wanting to pass the day or a weekend with their favorite artist; they clambered over walls, tromped through hedges and gardens, and snapped photos of Tom while he was trying to sketch by the gristmill or pond.

  Tuatha de Dannan, named for the second race of people to settle in Ireland (according to Celtic mythology, they were descendants of the Roman goddess Diana), had been in Edith Brennan's family for more than a hundred years: the farm was her legacy and her dowry upon her marriage to Tom, who had not yet begun to make a reputation as a painter. There were three hundred and fifty acres, including a spring-fed pond of some sixty-five acres. In places the pond had some unexpected, rugged depths, going down more than twenty-five feet. About half of the remaining property was woodland or orchards; the rest was lease-farmed, producing cash crops.

  The centerpiece of Tuatha de Dannan, on a knoll three hundred yards in from the road, was a clapboard saltbox house, remodeled and enlarged during each century of its existence. The northwest wall of the house, the most recent addition, was sheathed from the peak of the roof to the ground in twenty-eight panes of reflective glass, a stunning visual departure from the traditional architecture of the rest of the house. This mirror wall provided light for Tom's studio.

  Sharing the knoll was a stone barn that housed riding horses and chickens. Somewhat more distant from the house stood a working gristmill on a stream that fell in steps to the northeast shore of the pond.

  In the middle of the house were two columns of stone chimneys. Several of the rooms upstairs and down had fireplaces. Mrs. Aldrich had left a kindling fire going on the Texas grate in the kitchen. Barry busied herself putting soda bread and steak-and-mushroom pie in the oven; she tossed a salad. Meanness whined for his supper. Tom gave him a soupbone from the refrigerator, and he retired to a scruffy braided rug by the laundry room door to chew on it. Tom poured a stout for himself and one for Barry and set to work sharpening some knives.

  Barry said, musing, "What if he was locked up somewhere, almost all of his life?"

  "Like Rochester's wife in Jane Eyre?"

  "Chained in the attic, shut away from the light of day?" She loved it. "Wow!"

  Tom grinned at her and went to dig more kindling out of the barrel on the hearth.

  "No. No." Barry's face fell. "He looked too good for that. I mean, really put together. A hunk. If he'd been a closet case, he would've been all skin and bone and runny sores. Twisted out of shape."

  She turned away from the sink, one shoulder canted high, fingers crooked, mouth agape. She made distressing sounds in her throat. Meanness looked up warily from his soupbone.

  "Delightful," Tom said, turning away from the fire to catch her act. "Hold that thought until after we've had our supper."

  Barry's appetite evaporated, as it often did, after the first bite of food. They went over the latest financial statement from Tom's business manager. He had sold some stock at a profit and added, at auctions, to their store of rare collectibles: a mint-condition Army Colt .45 made in 1881, a Durer etching. Royalties from two collections of Tom's work had come in; the totals for the coffee-table art books were impressive. Condominiums in Paris and Manhattan, along with the farm and orchard operations, provided essential tax shelters.

  "Did you call Les?" Barry asked her father. L
es was his agent, who with his brother operated the Mergendoller Galleries in New York and Washington.

  "Forgot. I'll do it tomorrow. When will the new one be framed?"

  "Week from Saturday, Claude said."

  "What did Claude and Blighty think of it?"

  "Knocked them over."

  "How about you?"

  Barry drank the rest of her stout, wondering how to accurately express what she felt.

  "'It's like you were painting the end of the world," she said.

  Tom's eyes were on his plate, but she discerned a gleam of satisfaction. Barry knew she was right on the button.

  "But I didn't like it. Houses ought to be safe. What other safety is there?" She looked at the cold windows and heard the rising wind. "Is that how you felt after Mom died?"

  "Yes."

  "I did too, but I don't want to be reminded." She sensed she had hurt him by being too candid. "Look, what difference does it make how I feel? It's a great painting. People are going to talk about it. You know what I think Les will get?"

  "No."

  "Half a million. A new record for a Brennan."

  Tom whistled and got up to pour himself another glass of stout.

  "Did I ever tell you what my first show in fifty-three brought in? It was a sellout, remember."

  "I know exactly. After commissions you took home twenty-three hundred bucks."

  "Half a million, huh?" he said softly.

  "The Sharmans and the Kameos will go to war to get their hands on it. But I'd rather see it at the Whitney or the Philadelphia, if you want my opinion. It's too good to be in a private collection."

  "Eat, you're thin as a rail." He always reacted to praise with some minor criticism of her. Barry had learned to ignore him—it was just a personality flaw—but years ago his habit had hurt her a lot and led to woeful misunderstandings. "And quit looking at the telephone."

  Barry was surprised."Was I looking at the phone?" He nodded. "All during supper."

  "So what?"

  "Don't get huffy." Tom sat opposite her again. Meanness got up and padded over to his chair. Tom let a hand dangle; the hound licked his fingers. Barry cringed. Then she gazed thoughtfully at the wall telephone.

  "Maybe I ought to call the hospital. He might be conscious now."

  "Barry—" Tom rubbed flaking skin off his upper lip with a knuckle. "Whoever this boy is—whatever the circumstances—I don't want you feeling guilty about what happened."

  "I don't!''

  "Then stop brooding." He took a piece of bread, soaked it in cooled meat gravy, and slipped it under the chair to Meanness.

  "No, Dad! He's going to get off his diet and then he'll stink up the whole house."

  Tom smiled contritely.

  "'Well, you better not let him sleep upstairs tonight." Now out of sorts, Barry got up and began scraping plates into the disposal.

  "And I'm not brooding. You don't understand. Maybe he's going to die and we'll never know anything about him."

  Her tone made Tom edgy. He thought about the unknown young man in the hospital. Probably he wasn't hurt too seriously. In a day or two he'd be released and Barry's concern would lessen, before it became obsessive. There really wasn't anything for him to worry about. Plenty to be thankful for—the accident could have been much worse if she'd lost control and the Volvo had left the road. Time to count his blessings and not think of the coincidence, his own obsession, now deeply buried but capable of stirring, resurrecting with it all the old horrors that for two years had left him a man in a trance, incapable of working.

  Tom took his pipe, matches, and tobacco pouch out of various shirt pockets. "Give you a hand with the dishes?"

  "No, thanks. You better start plowing the drive. Dal's driving up tonight, and he won't be able to get to the house."

  Chapter 4

  Stewart Ivorson returned to the Anatolia hospital at a little after nine o'clock to find out how the accident victim was coming along and to talk to the head of Neurology, Dr. James Edwards, a man in his forties with a short haircut and the wiry thinness of the marathon runner. Edwards took the policeman to an intensive care unit on the second floor to see the patient.

  "Do you have a name for us?" Edwards asked.

  "Not yet. There was no indication he was camping out in the park. No missing persons reports have been filed locally. We checked all schools and colleges in the area, but nobody wandered off or was absent without permission. What do you have?"

  "Contradictions," Edwards said. "This one has me baffled."

  They stopped by the bedside of the patient. He was wired to both electrocardiograph and electroencephalograph machines, which monitored his heart rate and produced tracings of his brain waves on a continuous strip of paper.

  The young man's eyes were closed; he was unconscious. Fluids dripped from bottles on either side of the bed into veins in his arms. A catheter had been inserted.

  His urine was a flawless white. But his heart rate and respiration were noticeably slow. He was on oxygen and an endo-tracheal tube had been inserted in his airway. To Ivorson the face in repose looked unfinished, smoothly sculpted but without so much as an irregular pore, a vein, a pimple, a tinge of life. The face gave Ivorson the willies. He looked away.

  "How long has he been out?"

  "He was admitted at four fifty-three this afternoon. Call it five hours."

  "What's wrong with him?"

  "Physically, not much. Everything works, but slowly. There's no indication of intoxication with alcohol, barbiturates, or tranquilizers."

  "Diabetic?"

  "First thing I thought of. Negative. Also we've ruled out hepatic and hypothyroid comas. His urine is normal. He's not bleeding internally. There are no broken bones. We did a spinal series and an angiogram. All vertebrae are intact, and the flow of blood to the brain is unobstructed. Temperature remains subnormal—it's down to eighty-seven degrees. That and the absence of a maculohemorrhagic rash rules out infection: meningitis, a host of viruses like Rocky Mountain spotted fever. I'd like to do a CAT scan, but we don't have the equipment.

  The doctor took a rubber-tipped reflex hammer from a pocket of his hospital smock.

  "Watch this."

  He pressed the metal end of the hammer against the patient's right heel and drew it sharply toward the toes. The foot flexed and the toes curled tightly. He did it to the other foot, with identical results.

  "What does that prove?" Ivorson asked him.

  "If his corneal, pupillary, pharyngeal, tendon, and plantar reflexes are within normal limits, we should be able to wake him up. But we can't."

  "This guy goes against the books."

  "And how."

  "So he's in a coma?"

  "Not really. Coma is a condition produced by disease or encephaloma. The EEG doesn't indicate the presence of scar tissue, intercranial bleeding, or episodic dysfunction of any kind."

  Edwards picked up a handful of EEG tracings and studied them, frowning. He looked up at the policeman. With a pen he pointed out lines on the graph paper. "The brain is constantly producing electrical energy. By pasting electrodes around the head we can record the amplified neuronal activity as waveforms. These nice steady steep waves indicate alpha activity, which is linked to eye movements; they tend to disappear during wakeful periods. The size of these delta waves indicates deep sleep. I ordered the EEG two and a half hours ago. He's been in delta sleep all that time. All the waves are diminishing rather drastically now because he's cooling off, but still there hasn't been a trace of beta or theta waves."

  "What are those?"

  "They're associated with a flow of imagery and thought: with anxiety and dreaming. Even newborns have enough mental activity to produce increased frequencies. But he doesn't."

  "In other words, his mind is a blank."

  "A couple more hours like this, I might be convinced. He's not in any kind of sleep cycle I'm familiar with."

  The doctor studied the blips on the oscilloscope that reported h
eart activity. The rate was thirty-two beats a minute. A little slower, he thought, than when he'd come in. Edwards put the handful of graph paper back in the collecting tray. "If we just knew who he was, if we had a medical history . . ."

  Ivorson shook his head regretfully.

  "It's almost as if he's running down to a full stop," Edwards said, staring at the face of the young man. "And there's nothing we can do to prevent

  Chapter 5

  Snow was still falling heavily when Dal Brennan showed up, his Mercedes coupe like a white mushroom in the lights of the dooryard. Barry had been curled up in a favorite wing chair in the family room listening to an old Beatles album, Rubber Soul, searching for an offbeat inspiration for one of her own compositions. She put her guitar aside, went into Tom's den. He was dozing slipperless by the fire, a book in his lap. Barry helped herself to a little of the Jameson's he'd been sipping, then gently shook him awake.

  "Dal's here."

  Dal came into the house with two small Gucci cases and a girl in a hooded shearling coat. She was superbly blond, blue of eye and blood, undoubtedly finished to a high gloss at the most exclusive schools in Switzerland and America. She had a wide smile and dimples more valuable than anything they could sell you at Cartier's.

  Dal gave his sister a road-weary grin as he took off his glasses. "Barry, this is Tinker Botsford."

  "Hi! I feel like I know you already. Dal talks about you so much. I think Barry's such a cute name for a girl."

  Barry held her own smile for a count of ten, letting her silence go on almost too long. Dal fidgeted and shot her a look:

  "So is Tinker," Barry said slowly.

  "My real name's Eunice. But who needs it?"

  "Good point. Where d'you go to school?"

  "Columbia."

  "Fabulous."

  "Isn't it? I really like it a lot." Tinker looked all around, nodding her approval of what she had seen so far. "This is cozy." Her eyes settled on Barry again. "Are you a painter too?"

  "No. I write music. Sometimes."

  "I'll just put these bags upstairs," Dal said.

  "I think I'd better go too," Tinker said, showing her dimples again. "It's been a long time between stops. Oh, has it been snowing! I didn't think we'd get here. I thought we might have to spend the night in Port Chester, or some godawful place like that."