Dr. Lockwood was just parking his Mercedes 350 SL outside of the Ludvico Clinic when Harold drew up beside him in his rattling Toronado and gave him a wave of greeting. He stopped on the sidewalk, a neat, immaculately-dressed man with a goatee beard and large California-style spectacles. Harold often used to think that he would have been happier in Hollywood than he was in Salem: he had a naturally exhibitionist nature and a love of medical jargon that ranged from "sibling shock" to "acceptory neurosis" and back again.348Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZu0c0waeQm
He was very professional, however: thorough and knowledgeable and careful in the finest tradition of New England's country physicians, and his love affair with medical ritz couldn't really be held against him.
"Morning, Harold," he said cheerfully. "Come on in and have some coffee."
"I just came to see Anne," Harold told him. They walked together up the sun-flecked pathway to the clinic's glass-fronted reception area. Inside, it was calm and air-conditioned, with smooth background music and expensive potted plants, and a discreet waterfall which tinkled into a free-form goldfish pool. Seated at a desk at the far side of the reception room was a stunningly pretty blonde nurse with a white uniform and a white cap and spotless white medical shoes. She probably didn't know the difference between a cyst and a cistern, but who gave a damn? She was all part of Dr. Lockwood's "convivial clinic" them.
"Any calls, Katie?" Dr. Lockwood asked her, as he passed her by.
"Mr. Lawson, that's all," said Katie, flashing sooty black eyelashes at Harold. "Oh, and Dr. Berger from Beth Israel."
"Call Berger back for me in ten minutes, will you?" asked Dr. Lockwood. "Forget Lawson until he calls back himself. Was it his fibrositis?"
"I guess."
"Come in, Harold," Dr. Lockwood beckoned him. "And, thanks, Katie."
"You're welcome," purred Katie.
"She's new," Harold commented to Dr. Lockwood, walking into his large cream-painted office, and looking around. He still had the large Andrew Stevovich oil-painting on the wall, a moon-faced woman and two moon-faced men, a picture which he had known in every detail, every shade, every angle, because he had sat opposite it for hours on end, talking to Dr. Lockwood about his depression and his bereavement.
Dr. Lockwood sat down at his wide teak desk and sorted briefly through his mail. The desk was bare except for the morning's mail and a small bronze abstract sculpture in a twisted triangle, which Dr. Lockwood had once told Harold was meant to represent the self-curative strength inherent in all humans. It always looked more like a serious case of indigestion to him, but he had never said so.
"Anne," he said, as if continuing a sentence that he had left half-completed, "Anne is suffering from a broken wrist, severe bruising, muscular strain, swollen tendons, and shock. Well, I imagine the shock has likely subsided by now, but the physical damage will take a few days to correct itself."
He paused, frowned at a letter from John Ford Crowley, and then looked up at Harold with an expression that wasn't very far away from shock. "I don't suppose you want to tell me how Anne got that way?" he asked Harold.
"Didn't Anne tell you herself?"
"Anne said she was jogging, and she fell, but I really find that hard to believe. Particularly since she must have fallen with her legs stretched wide apart, as if she were a ballerina doing the splits; and especially since the external scratches and lesions on her skin all indicate that she was naked at the time."
Harold shrugged, and made a face that was supposed to be interpreted as noncommittal.
Dr. Lockwood watched Harold for a while, tugging his beard between thumb and forefinger. At last, he said, "I'm not suggesting for a moment that Anne's injuries are anything to do with you, Harold. But I'm a doctor, remember, and I have to wonder. Goes with the territory, you see. I don't only deal with the effect, I've got to do what I can to find out the cause in case the effect happens again. I mean, I'm not just a simple mechanic."
"I know that, Dr. Lockwood," Harold nodded. "But, trust me, there's nothing going on here that's---what would you call it---untoward, or anything like that."
Dr. Lockwood pursed his lips, obviously dissatisfied.
"Look," Harold said, "I haven't been beating her up. I hardly know her."
"She was with you the night she got hurt, and at some time during that night she was nude."
"I happens, doctor. People do get naked at night. But, trust me, her nudity was nothing to do with me. Neither were her injuries. All I did was drive her down here so that you could take care of her."
Dr. Lockwood stood up, and walked around his desk with his hands thrust into his pants pockets. "Well," he said, "I have no way to prove you wrong."
"Do you want to prove me wrong?"
"I just want to find out what's happened, that's all. Listen, Harold, that girl wasn't injured in any athletics accident. You and I both know that. I'm not trying to pry, or act like a one-man watch committee. But it would help me medically to know how she got herself brusied and sprained and roughed up so badly. I mean, her injuries aren't consistent with anything but...well, if you want to have it straight, S&M."
Harold stared at him. "You can't be serious! S&M? You really think that Anne Putnam and I were..."
Dr. Lockwood raised his hand and blushed. "Harold, please, you don't need to explain yourself."
"I obviously do have to explain myself if you think that I was tying Anne Putnam to the bedpost and beating her up!"
"Okay, I'm sorry," said Dr. Lockwood. "I didn't mean to suggest for a moment that..." He paused, leaving his sentence unfinished. "Well, I'm sorry. It was just that I couldn't think how else she could have come by the injuries of this particular nature. Please. It was very rude of me."
"It would have been even more rude if I had actually been beating her up," Harold remarked.
"I said I was sorry, didn't I? Now, do you want to see her? She should have finished her medication program by now."
Dr. Lockwood led Harold out of his office and along the corridor, his softsoled shoes squeaking on the highly-waxed floor tiles. He was still embarrassed; Harold could tell that by the color of his ears. But what else could he do, except deny that Anne and he had been playing torture chamber games? He wasn't going to believe that Nancy's ghost had turned Anne upside down and brutalized her by psychokinesis.
Anne was sitting in a white bamboo chair in a corner of her room, watching the $20,000 Pyramid. She looked pale and tired, her arm was strapped up, and both her eyes were bruised. She clutched her robe around her as if she were cold.
"You've got a visitor, Anne," said Dr. Lockwood.
"Hi," Harold told her. "How are you feeling?"
"Better, thank you," she said, and switched off the television by remote. "I had a few nightmares last night, but they gave me something to help me sleep."
Dr. Lockwood left them and Harold sat down on the end of the bed. "I feel really guilty about what happened to you," said Harold. "I shouldn't have let you come up to the cottage."
"It was my fault for tampering," said Anne. "I should have realized that Supay was far too strong for me."
"You're safe, that's all that matters."
Anne looked up at Harold. Her left eye was badly bloodshot. "At what price, though? That's what's bothering me."
"None whatsoever. I was considering that opinion already."
"You were really considering letting Supay go free?"
"Of course I was. It was offering me my wife and my child back. What would you have done?"
Anne looked away. On the lawn outside, in the sunshine, a meadowlark tentatively hopped, and then flew off. "I guess I would have done exactly the same thing," she said. "But now I feel that you had to make that decision because of me. It's as if my life is being exchanged for all those others."
"All what others."
"All those others who will die when Supay gets loose."
"Who says anybody's going to die, just because a 300-year-old demon is set free?"
"Supay is far more than 300 years old," Anne corrected him. "It was already centuries old when George Badger brought it to Salem. It had been known in Incan culture since the dawn of recorded time. And always, it has demanded its sacrifices. Human hearts to feed its stomach, unfinished lives to feed its spirit, human affection to keep it warm. It is a parasite without any purpose except to exist; and it was only because the Incas used it to threaten any of their people who refused pay homage to Inti the sun-god, and because George Badger tried to use it to frighten the people of Salem into coming to church more regularly, that it had any useful function at all. I promise you, Harold, when Supay is set free, it will immediately seek more souls.
"Anne," Harold protested gently, "these are modern times. People don't believe in this stuff anymore. How can Supay possibly have any influence if people don't believe in it?"
"It doesn't matter whether they believe in it or not. You didn't believe that Nancy could return from the grave until you saw her; but that didn't diminish the power of her manifestation, did it?"
Harold was silent for a while. Then he looked at her and shrugged. "It's too late now, anyway. I've made Supay a promise. I'll just have to stick to it and see what happens. I still don't think it's going to be that much of a danger."
"It will be worse than you can possibly imagine. Why do you think I begged you to let me die? My life is nothing compared to what Supay will do."
"But I promised," Harold reminded her.
"Yes, you promised. But what's a promise to a demon worth? If you had made a promise to Hitler, and broken it, would anybody have held you guilty? Would anybody have said that you were untrustworthy or disloyal?"
"Hitler might have. Just as Supay might, if I break my promise to set it free."
"Harold, you have to break your promise. I need you openly to say to Supay that you refuse to set it free."
"Anne, I can't! It'll kill you!"
"My life doesn't matter. Besides, if you're really so skeptical about Supay's powers, you shouldn't worry."
"I'm not skeptical about its powers. I just don't think that it's got the strength to survive in a society that doesn't believe in demons anymore."
Anne reached up and touched the back of his hand. "And there's Jane, too, isn't there? And your unborn son?"
"Harold looked at her for a moment and then lowered his eyes. "Yes," said Harold. "There's Nancy."
They sat for a very long time without saying anything to one another. In the end, Harold got up from the bed, bent forward, and kissed Anne on the forehead. She squeezed his hand for an instant, but didn't speak, not even to say goodbye. Harold closed the door behind him as silently as if he were closing the door in a house of death.
On the way out, he came around the corner into the reception room and bumped straight into Mr. Colin Knight, in a wheelchair. He was being pushed along by Tyee, and Sarah Prentiss was walking just a little way behind. They looked dressed for an outing: old man Knight was wearing a black derby and an opera cape, a silver-topped cane held between his knees; Tyee wore an overcoat in gray Prince-of-Wales check; and Sarah was dressed in a clinging dress of gray wool, through which her chill-tightened nipples showed with considerable prominence.
"Well met, Mr. Winstanley," said Colin Knight. He reached out his hand, and Harold shook it. "Or rather, ill met, under the circumstances. Anne told me on the telephone what had happened."
"She called you?"
"Of course. I am like an uncle to all my witches." He smiled, although there was very little humor in his eyes. His expression instead was suspicious, searching, and critical. Harold felt there was a magical circle surrounding these people; a psychic bond into which he had unwittingly blundered, setting off alarms within all of their collective minds. If he had hurt Anne in any way, if he had compromised the understanding they had between them to raise the George Badger from the sea-bed and deliver Supay to Colin Knight's house without delay---then he felt uneasily sure that all of these people would know about it within even bothering to ask.
"Anne is---very much better," Harold said. "Dr. Lockwood says that she will be able to go home later today, or early tomorrow. He just wants to make sure that she's out of shock."
Colin Knight said, "It was your dead wife, she told me. A manifestation of your dead wife."
"Yes," Harold said. He looked up at Tyee. His face gave nothing away. High-cheeked, impassive, he didn't blink once, or deflect for even a moment that cold, penetrating stare. "Yes, there was some sort of conflict between them. Anne was trying to give me some temporary peace from ghostly visitations and I think my wife objected."
"You mean Supay objected. For it is the demon, you know, which causes your wife to appear this way."
"I mean----Supay," Harold said. He felt ridiculously guilty. All three of them were looking at him as if he had just sold his mother to a white slave-trader. It was obvious that they sensed something; although quite what it was they couldn't be sure.
Sarah said, "It would probably be better if you were to stay away from your house for the next few weeks. Have you anywhere you can go?"
"I could stay with my father-in-law, I guess, down at Dedham; and that, incidentally, talking about my father-in-law, it seems that he may be able to bankroll the raising of the George Badger."
"Well, that is good news," said old man Knight. "But why stay all the way out at Dedham? If you care to, you can stay with me, at Tewksbury. I have a spare suite of rooms which you are quite welcome to use for as long as you like. It would be quite convenient, too, wouldn't it, while you and your colleagues are raising the ship? You could keep me in touch on your progress from day to day, and in return you could use my library for any additional research you might need."
Harold glanced from Sarah to Tyee to old man Knight. It would probably be stuffy and oppressive, living at Knight's mansion, but on the other hand it would give him access to all of old man Knight's papers and books; and he might even be able to discover how he proposed to deal with Supay once the demon was raised from the bottom of the sea. If he knew what Knight intended to do, and how he was going to keep the demon in bondage, then he might also be able to find out how to break the bonds, and set the demon free.348Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr0HkSGbwbz
Colin Knight had probably invited Harold because he wanted to keep an eye on what he was doing, just as much as Harold wanted to spy on him. But he didn't mind that. The real test of wills would come when Supay was discovered, and salvaged.348Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMN88Q9kl3g
"I'll call you," said old man Knight. "When you've packed, Tyee will come down and help you to move. Won't you, Tyee?"
Tyee gave no indication that he would or he wouldn't, or even that he had heard. Sarah came closer to the wheelchair, and said, "We mustn't be away too long, Mr. Knight. Let us go visit Anne, and then get back. Mr. Winstanley, I'm very glad that you're making progress with the finance."
The three of them went off down the corridor, the wheels of Colin Knight's wheelchair making a light purring noise on the tiles.348Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYCWjLiQ22a
Outside, a cold wind was rising, and Harold was beginning to think that there was something sinister in the air. Something chilly, something threatening, and something that would erupt soon.348Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk0WvjVbtiJ
